Date: Sun, 9 Mar 2003 23:35:43 +0800
Subject: Re: 'art of gloss'



On Sunday, March 9, 2003, at 04:35  PM, rick issan wrote:

> An ergodic [ergon work + hodos way] aspect relates
> to how each part or a sizable set of parts equally
> represents the whole and so recurs in other parts.
>
> What would truth be if it were a single situation,
> severely limited to one's own perspective and even
> limiting that perspective as a result to be truth?

Yes, what would truth be if it is only ever given to oneself? But isn't 
that 'single perspective' Dasein, or the phenomenological life world, 
or one's own lived experience and its phenomenal world? For me, there 
is no access to the 'whole' if by that you mean 'something' to which 
the totality of all possible experiences relate. There is only the 
'whole' that is given in one's own lived experience of this world and 
one's self. So yes, as far as finitude goes, I would say that there is 
only this phenomenal world, one's own 'perspective' if you like, but 
it's a perspective that doesn't look onto a larger truth that somehow 
exists and bounds all our experiences together. At least you might like 
to view truth that way but it's just an idea or a notion of 'wholeness' 
which is itself derivative of what actually gives itself in the first 
place, which is one's own existence.

So I would say phenomenologically speaking that truth is in the first 
case what is given in the phenomena of one's own lived experience. That 
we can talk about truth and come to an agreement or not signifies 
merely that there are regularities in our phenomenal experience. 
However I don't see what good it does to then suppose that there is a 
higher order of truth that regulates how we perceive and understand 
things and that we need to access this 'external' truth beyond our 
individual lived experience. Especially since the only way to gain 
access is via our own senses which just brings me back to my own 'world 
perspective'.

Furthermore, the only way we could agree on such a (mythical) truth 
beyond one's own lived experience is to argue about it, and this 
argumentation is as old as philosophy itself and can only be done on 
the basis of our individual finitude. I can't see that there is 
anything that can guarantee truth beyond this finitude, unless you have 
faith in god, or believe in a transcendental noumenal realm, or some 
other kind of non-sensible 'experience'. There is only this phenomenal 
world, and I can only speak for myself. We can still argue for 
transcendental/existential/phenomenological regularities that should 
hold true for any Dasein, but that truth is something that you can only 
attest to for yourself cos it's only given as one's own lived 
experience.

> A revelation of being is not limited to experience
> or meditative engendering of an experience, but is
> had in theories that gather and order experiences.

This is completely antithetical to my own understanding of a 
'revelation of being'. And I don't think this holds at all for either 
Husserl's or Heidegger's philosophies. Theory is theory, and if you 
have a revelatory experience whilst reading then fine, but I don't 
think the theory is itself the fundamental ecstasis that Heidegger 
writes about. For instance, a disclosure of the temporality of Dasein 
is not a reading exercise, nor is it a theoretical understanding of 
what he writes - it's a disclosure of the temporalising structure of 
one's own lived experience that can only be demonstrated by and to 
oneself. Reading has such a temporal structure, but this structure also 
regulates the world understanding that lets you sit comfortably in 
whatever dwelling you're in and unproblematically just ... read. As far 
as I know, the revelation of being is precisely this disclosure of the 
temporal being of 'experience' and nothing else. It's entirely limited 
to one's own lived experience cos what else is there?

As a methodology, phenomenological theories can only suggest ways of 
approaching a description of the analyst's own experience of things. If 
you follow the method and gain access to the authentic 'ownmost' 
phenomena then you can describe this for others to either agree with or 
not. Again, there is no 'outside', no definitive absolute 'truth' 
beyond the phenomena themselves. As the maxim goes, 'back to the things 
themselves'. From this perspective there is no final arbiter of truth 
apart from one's own attestation. All 'theories that gather and order 
experiences' can only do so as imperfect, partial guides for one's own 
path and its truths.

> This cosmic logic had with authentic attentiveness
> to what lies clearly before as well as to what may
> be such from other stances and others' structures.
>
> "... ha me oida oude oiomai eidenai" [Apology 21d]

So now you've completely lost me cos I can have no notion whatsoever of 
a 'cosmic logic', and whose logical truth would that be anyway?

> Is then this acknowledged ignorance, humility both
> epistemic and ethical, the beginning wonder at all
> things and the final say on human need to relearn?

Heidegger never suggested there was a way out of historical finitude 
and its hermeneutic circle, and the neo-Kantians of his time thought 
this was a fundamental flaw and failure of the existential analytic. 
What Heidegger did however was describe or 'point to' the way in which 
finitude is temporally constituted as finitude, and this ontological 
beginning opens up an entirely new way of approaching the problem of 
what truth is and how we can know it. As fundamental ontology it's a 
'beginning wonder', and it completely releases us from any reliance on 
notions of truth beyond what is actually given in phenomena.

At least, that's how I understand his path of thinking, and especially 
in relation to Husserl's phenomenology.

Cheers,

Malcolm




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