chaz wyman wrote:lancek4 wrote:Not to stray too far from our discussion here- but, please address this question: what is occurring when we propose to our selves that we may set aside our ideas for the sake of understanding another person? What am I understanding and how have I been able to set aside my ideas?
This is ridiculous. It is our very bias, our knowledge and our own ideas upon which are the necessary ground for the examination and understanding on another's.
Derrida who was an advocate of engaging with the other's subjectivity demanded that the Hermeneutic circle can only be followed by the reflection of one's own subject.
I do not remember too much of Derrida; I think I have an idea of what you are saying, but maybe you could spell it o0ut for the would be layman.
It sounds like you are saying (I could be worng; please let me know) that D is saying that the 'world of the subject' (the hermuneutic circle) in reality must be divided so that there is an individual subject after this Being comes upon the other as a spearate object being.
My point does not address what may be what we know now of logicing and theory. My point has to do with how such ideas (of now) are situated in a scheme of history. I am not attempting, at this point, to make a sound argument for N; first there are terms and ideas which need to be made plain, if this is possible.
I think I am beginning to see the probelm we are encountering here.
I will attempt to address this problem by making explicit my position with regards to N:
How do we consider N? how do we come upon him? Folllowing AUK it is obvious and common that we take N as an historical element, as if his wrinttings are of an essential past. As if he was saying something that has been consistent for 140 years.
A question: (which I think Chas will like): if what N is saying is not a mystery bt the explanation Chaz states above, then bascially you are saying that we continue to study N because everyone is an stubborn dense idiot, Because the point he was making (the point Chaz gives of him) is not getting through, that even though the logicking was made apparent, no one is listening: religion is everywhere.
I am right ?? Or are we progressing and eventually there will be this N type world where people stop making 'religious' realities? But, and, everyone being a stubborn idiot, even those who still read him do so because they also are caught in this idea of progress, that somehow they might encourage this progress by learning some essential historical truths by which humanity may become a better enlightened creature.
I side with, as I think Chaz will in this case: but perhaps I am a passimist ( I sound like it but I do not see my self as a pessimist): everyone is an idiot.
If we take the essential history, such as what AUK elludes to, then we might see that N was so admimant because he felt that the world needs to 'wake up'. That what he found and was telling the world was something it needs to know, And that by his telling he is letting be known to the world so that it might be relived of this weight of religious positing, that one day there will be an ubermensche human who has put away his idols.
I submit this is not happening; and this is what post-modernism fed upon: the despair that supposedly occured because the rational postivist progress has not occurred. Religion persists. Poeple will not do withou thier idols.
I propose that this seems to be the case becuase the idols are the Objects of truth. Such objects cannot be removed (ala N) through Willing them to be gone: the idols are ubiquious to humans being.
The case in point here is that now, when we look at N in this way, we are looking at him as an idol; we see him through the 'idol' that we call 'history', as if what we know of N, what we have decided N is saying, is fixed and moves through time as a fixed object, an object in-itself, the truth of N that was his interpreted meaning from when he wrote it and others read it.
Thus, what I am saying is that the meaning N is attempting to confer is missed by this objectification of his authorship. And this is why he says he is speaking to a few who might hear him: because the most of the mostest majority will be looking for the objective truth of what he is saying, the fixed truth that carries its essential meaning through time in the object of the writtings, as well as the fixed meaning that is carried as if 'in' the writting itself -- and will miss it because they are 'fixed' upon an obtainable truth gained through 'idols' -- the truth that has been gained by the separating oneself from the object of its reality through the method he has been trained and told to use, the method that has been gained by the 'resentful' humanity. By this type of orientation uppon the world, the reader remains detached from what he is saying and gathers 'his' truth, in the same way as we figure that chair there is equivellent to the terms by which we identify it, as as if there terms relate fixed absolute truths through time.
Now, similarly, if we take this historical N in the way AUK is speaking, then we might see that Christianity predominated the real world view. Colonialism negated and silenced all opposition and usurped its power into itself though the means of actual physical coresion as well as hegemonic discourse.
There was no 'liberal' or non-christian way of comeing upon the world, at least in Europe. His minimal exposure to alternative world views came in the form of Buddist and hiundu writting which were only recently being made known to the West at the time. So when N was speaking of Christianity - sure what Chaz says is correct -- but N could not speak in dialectically by any other means: Chrsitianity was a ubiquitous feature of discussion about the world and reality. One could not speak of reality of existance without addressing what was typically known as 'reality', the method by which most of the mostest majority (or at least considered majority) knew of and refered to automatically in order to come upon a reality.
He was speaking of the specific religious order but not only and not merely: he was speaking of existance. The only (or at least the predominant, in that noone could miss references to Chrisitan references and categories) dialectic that was avaliable to use against existance was the Christian world. Thus, is N was saying anything, he was saying something particularly More than that the Christian God does not exist: his rhetoric is much too involved for such a simple suggestion. He is speaking of the manner by which humanity come upon realiy and how this reality, the 'normal' 'herdsman' reality, is informed by idols, in the manner of which I have pointing out above. And thereby distinguished himself as having been come upon by such a view not through any type of willing, not through any type of method of appropraiting the true object, but exactly its opposite: something 'more than' or 'super' human:
A humanity that does not exempt 'evolution' or 'progress' from idolitry -- and N proposes evolution and progress are 'Christian' notions.
