KARL JASPERS FORUM

TA63 (Leslie / Rees)

Commentary 31 (to C25, Johnson)

( 0-D AND AT )
by Glenn C Wood
23 January 2004, posted 14 February 2004

<1>
ANALYSIS

Perhaps I should withhold detailed response to C25 until after HM's reaction (also I'll be involved again in another overdue project). It was another tantalizing exposition. (I think our dialogue is unique, and it's hoped there's at least some appreciation for relating to KJ.) It was hypnotically impressive to the degree that one could wish it were true, that the origin of man had finally been located, i.e., located to the degree that explicit beauty is the search for implicit beauty. Here was manifested a systematic explicit movement of thought with the implicitness of poetry and prose. This while affecting a biosphere like aura which almost seemed designed to preclude analysis and empirical testing, conflict, and thereby sustain the theory. The, or a, good theory has to be testable in some way other than dialectics and emotion, and self-analysis and analysis by others ought not be thought off limits. The empirical ground where this is possible was only hinted at (culture, behavior, decisions). The origin of man cannot be determined, proven or disproven. Embarrassing provincial efforts (like a hog's tooth misinterpreted to be the bridge between man and beast) have left evolutionists resorting to syntactics, (the relative use and meaning of linguistic signs within a sentence) some pragmatics (the relation of linguistic signs to the user), and with semantics (relation of linguistic signs to things) bringing up the rear.

<2>
DISAPPOINTMENTS

There were some stultifying expressions in C25. It did not seem necessary to associate the theory of abstract evolutionism with HM's personalistic and historic fallback symbol, the apeiron of Anaximander. It will be interesting to see what the editor of the KJF does with this comparison. On the surface it seemed like a complement by compliment, a hope for supplemental assistance in the conflict with the West's most preserved written code of conduct (which the young need and the old can often forget, forget their youth and what they are regreting), and help for avoiding seeing the views had already been expressed before and since Anaximander, differing only in incidental contents.

<3>
LAYING CLAIM TO ONE TREE IN THE GARDEN OF TREES

JJ's use of the imagined pine forest seemed a little rustic and not very historic. I understand his abstract theory better by reflecting on the Genesis account of the fall. There's an abundance of incommensurable trees in the forest of experience for the mind to digest without directing the decision faculty to one focal point -- even though cosmic in scope -- and then territorially guarding it; it has the effect of putting a shell around an "evolved" one-worldtree decision, a cell for the beholder. There's no need to partake of one tree even if it's a metatree. When that happens, if one is gifted with imagination, one has this flash of "now I know" followed by a systematic defense mechanism. A felt need for an explicite holistic (but absolutized by the use of "cosmic") approach seems to have fallen into a whole idea which everybody with "evolved" talent most see in the same way, but especially using the same terminology. The tree JJ is in that judges right from wrong is: "NATURAL ORDER IS FUNDAMENTALLY SUBJECTIVE."(4.4) The only thing I can see correct in that absolute is that we can't think at all without thinking. But the world or cosmos we find ourselves in is objective, and so is the self momentarily objectified during the thinking process. Though it has been pointed out before, one can't have subjectivity without objectivity, the latter being a prerequisite for self imaging to which it is subjected. "Objectivity, therefore, comprises these three at first separable moments: it signifies objectness (being-an-object), perceptibility (being-a-thing), validity (being-a-claim to affirmation or to perception" and "Consciousness of Being lies simultaneously in the grasping of the object and in the consummation of subjectivity," and "Existenz appears in the interwining of subjectivity and objectivity. (Truth and Symbol, "Objectivity as Cypher, The Grasping of Being in the Subject-Object Polarity").

<3>
EXISTENZ

Existenz has no definable content but is not loose toward implications as though we conjured -- due to "evolution" -- anything or nothing, God or devil. It represents a leaning toward the invisible in ultimate situations. Existenzen cannot ontologize subjectivity nor objectivity; neither can the fundament of Being.

<4>
GOOD STUFF

There's some really good stuff in C25. Some of it has the force of prayer -- to evolutionism. Most of it declares a power of positive thinking, albeit from a certain naiveness. It is a commendable effort to get the best good works out of others holding that suggestive cosmic/worldview the essence of which is transcendence without Transcendence. Besides some superb thoughtful connections, it presents an opportunity to show the need for an objectivity to avoid subjectivism. It seems I'd said that before, but it needs empirical demonstration -- more later. It also shows the embracing strength of the decision factor, and the mind's power to influence micro and smaller phenomena. Such does seem to argue against the direction and hopefulness of Hontela's micro research regarding the origin of consciousness. I mean if decision has causal efficacy, what chance in freedomless does a micro-entity have in manifesting uninhibited conduct in the face of a force that can amend the second law of thermodynamics. Consciousness is at least objectivity though most vague in times of comfort; it includes pain, memory, and consequential decisive structures.

<5>
BEYOND MELIORISM AND ICONIC PATHOS (JJ'S<4>)

My detailed response (if time allows) will not depart from past efforts to show where KJF's views may differ from those of KJ's. From his works on history and psychopathology an application can be made and compared to JJ's evolutionism -- which remains decisively and radically a meliorism, i.e. the world is getting better everyday in everyway, and only those with most "evolved" minds can visualize it. This will return us to the empirical testing field. The wholeness KJ's referes to is more than the wholeness of the JJ strain of evolutionism; more than holistic but includes it, absurdly more in a healthy sense, wholly other, beyond the explicit and implicit, beyond, before, and after abstraction, beyond clannish decisions, and includes "a faith which neither sees nor possesses but trusts, in association with a traditional faith handed down by persons that are admired and loved" (From KJ's Gen. Psycho., The Human Being As A Whole).

I've got to go and hope to return in a few weeks.

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Glenn C Wood