1.05.2021
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt, The Freedom To Be Free
Arendt actually acknowledges how 'topical' ( announcing ahead of her time how redundant and archetypical the study of post world war two theory actually becomes the neo -liberal antithesis to progress in the modern fixation and fetishization of nazi culture and that of its surrounding distortions to the future of humanitarianism ). Assuming that the text had been published after her work 'On Revolution' the work references and the historical context of the revolutions that had incurred within the time frame of both world war one and world war two. "“Still, in the world’s present configuration where, for better or worse, revolutions have become the most significant and frequent events—and this will most likely continue for decades to come—it would not only be wiser but also more relevant if, instead of boasting that we are the mightiest power on earth, we would say that we have enjoyed an extraordinary stability since the founding of our republic, and that this stability was the direct outgrowth of revolution.”( 14 ) Arendt acts as a catalyst almost to the circumstantial occurrence introducing the violence of revolution into society. She talks about The Bay of Pigs in the overthrow of Fidel Castro, emphasizing the suffering of the people although also reinstating that it was a result of a malfunctioning security breach. Paralleling this example to the French Revolution and reasserting the importance of Immanuel Kant and Condorcet, asserting that revolution is necessary in order for the society to experience freedom. Interestingly enough she also states that the word revolution in itself is not used in the regular vocabulary of the time although more-so resurfacing and structuralizing the 17th century meaning mostly refering to the astrological meaning through the sun and ( for example, the copernican revolution of the earth ), the eternal cosmos, and the universal structure in contradiction to the cataclysm of anarchy and rebellion in the political term. “Hence, what actually happened at the end of the eighteenth century was that an attempt at restoration and recovery of old rights and privileges resulted in its exact opposite: a progressing development and the opening up of a future which defied all further attempts at acting or thinking in terms of a circular or revolving motion.” ( 20 ). The nature of revolution was necessary for people to experience freedom, 'by god's blessing restored' the nature of freedom through the oppression felt in order for revolution to incur.
Excerpt From: Hannah Arendt. “The Freedom to Be Free.” Apple Books.
Excerpt From: Hannah Arendt. “The Freedom to Be Free.” Apple Books.
1.04.2021
Karl Jasper
Karl Jasper and the introduction of the Cypher, the philosophical means to creating " pathological" truth telling, through the justification of a unitary system that is devoid of prejudice allowing for the philosophical abstraction that could eliminate the objective realm of metaphysic, subjective and religious perspectives considered to be contaminants. The numerical cypher allowed for commonalities in thought that were shared providing leeway to pacifism and tolerance.
A transposition cypher for example, or a permutation cypher, is a series of letter coded by numbers and geographically shifted in order to keep its shape. The reader would therefore enter the transposition into the matrix in order to variate and decode the message. The transposition is essentially a variation on cryptography. Jasper utilizes the cypher in his work near the end of world war 2 though attempting to reprogram operations at the University of Heidelberg in evicting sympathizers from their respective placements in power. The reflectivity of his oppression by germany through the course of world war two is reflected in his text " The Question of German Guilt" 1947. Jasper contemplates his own understanding of german citizenry amidst the holocaust in concealing and berating his Jewish wife through the imposition of nazi germany. Guilt is not alien to freedom but comes precisely from being free. His guilt resonates in metaphysical and political guilt in contradiction to criminal or moral guilt, and in this the differentiation between humanity and the obscured illusion of antisemitism projected by " mephistopheles " aka the oppressive tyranny of the socialist party of nazi germany more agreeably known as " mephistopheles" or " National Socialism " for the sake of not psychologically detrementalizing my own mind with repetition.
"We want to accept the other, to try to see things
from the other’s point of view;infact, we virtuallywant
to seek out opposing views. To get at the truth, an opponent
is more important than one who agrees with us. Finding the
common in the contradictory is more important than hastily
seizing on mutually exclusive points of view and breaking
off the conversation as hopeless." ( 6 )
The nature of the text copy and pasted in itself ( I remember to be ) in school, upon identification with the nature of intertextuality and cryptography. Jaspers states that we fight for the purity of soul, against the immortalization of our invincible selves. Invariably our own capability in the ease to survive, leads us to act in virtue, the obsolescence of our bodily forms through the effluence of sustainability encourages us to take risks, optimizing the future for less fortunate and dares us to exhibit high moral standards for the betterment of society.
Why extrapolate one's means to serendipity in positive circumstance, if only to be capable of exhibiting a hypothesized unilateral growth ?
Notably, Jasper through the introduction to the text, clarifies the nature of the writing in that some germans, polish or otherwise european subjects are self declaratively guilty. They identify themselves as the guilty party and face the forbearing " consequences " in that of whatever they may have existed as ( if any ). Citizens aimed to cleanse and to repent " to think and to do right". THIS, is contrary to those who believed their cause to be righteous in fleeing to abstract parts of the globe (upon failure of the political party in forcibly dominating its surroundings) perhaps therefore inevitably furthering strains of backwards antisemitism.
Those who walked ambiguously away from the circumstances proceeded with no sense of guilt or responsibility for the atrocities committed, they abandon the wreckage and show zero motivation to "better" the respective countries ( germany and/ or otherwise), most notably german citizens in their support of socialist germany.
Jaspers states "That the victors condemn us is a political fact which
has the greatest consequences for our life, but it does not help
us in the decisive point, in our inner regeneration." ( 22 )
Hence his identification as a german citizen in being hypothetically defeated by the allies and therefore instilling the reinterpretation of guilt as this hypothetical unified political party ( on part of the debased german nationality) and apart from identification with the National Socialists or thus perversities with abstracted union in abiding by the worship of "mephistopheles". Again identifying the 4 differentiations in the types of guilt experienced by the losing party in that:
1) Criminal Guilt
2) Political Guilt
3) Moral Guilt
4) Metaphysical Guilt
In differentiating in the type of guilt that the guilty german subject experiences, the clarification of the charge is identifiable. A judge is present in identifying political and criminal guilt through the victorious party via political liability, moral guilt discussed among humanitarians with a conscience and a commitment to solidarity and metaphysical guilt to be abated spiritually as a subject to relegate amongst scholars. Every form of guilt is a reality and each comes into the context of every consequential form of guilt. "If human beings were able to free themselves from metaphysical guilt, they would be angels, and all the other three concepts of guilt would become immaterial." (27)... (66) The morality of the guilt involved is a reciprocation of the power issues involved in communities, the false deification of the entitled and therefore the misuse of power debased by the guilt of human existence in being subject to the positions of power, are playing into the substructure of the deformed community.
Jasper then goes on to critique the ability of the individual to blatantly play the alienated subject in the face of dictatorship and political misrepresentation, the nature of the citizen in turning a blind eye to the privatization of the governmental legislation. He illuminates political absence, lack of responsibility and the acting in showing blind obedience to the political state.
Having witnessed political dictatorship in the rise of the National Socialists, Jasper then reconfigures Herodotus to Political Liberty via Greek liberty and Persian despotism.
"Thus there can be no collective guilt of a people or a groupwithin a people - except for politicaliability. To pronounce a group criminally, morally or metaphysically guilty is an error akin to the laziness and arrogance of aver- age, uncritical thinking." ( 36)
The German Questions ( 66 /41 )
German citizens were subject to international guilt at disturbing world peace, posters were hung with photographs and text " You Are The Guilty" with no indication of the authority, although the movement is then paralleled to the Roman Empire and the ability of the citizen to claim their own moral right.
The guilt in two examples thereafter is
a) political guilt, wherein the citizen is guilty of sustaining and tolerating the political party at fault.
b) moral guilt, as the citizen is hypothetically guilty of supporting the political party morally.
again, the next two examples in
c) metaphysical guilt, where the citizen witnesses the crimes or 'uncharitable testimony'
d) criminal guilt, wherein the citizen participates in the crimes and is invariably guilty
The Differentiation of German Guilt ( 70 / 45 )
The crimes are evident regardless of if the citizen or german subject pleads guilty. The Allied forces in the construction of the Nuremberg Trials attempted to deal with the hate crimes committed.
Jasper makes it clear that the trials were not completely efficacious for various reasons, firstly, not all guilty german citizens were tried. Only the officials of the nazi party were held accountable ( 'criminally' accused germans) who had participated in the crimes directly. The whole of the german people were not held accountable. Secondly, the subjects tried were held to the accountability of the International Military Tribunal... ( from my perspective, the fact that they were even tried and not executed immediately is beyond humanitarian). Additionally, at the trials ( held in Nuremberg ) the witnesses to the trial are german citizens. " The criminal state is tried against its whole population." Germany planned and prepared the war internally, it was not provoked by any threat, it acted in its own violent means to self destruction.
He also states that the clear benefit of this trail is to condemn the leaders while excusing the greater german civility from penalization. The germans witnessing the trials also subject to their own whims in a vote in favour of the trials in hope that they succeed or to regard the entirety as a sham trial with skeptic 'nihilism'. The fact that Jasper actually even expresses the audacity in stating this is to me beyond discomfort. The righteousness of the allies to not execute and to re-implicate the violence and hatred of the corruptions incurred is almost too humanitarian. In a way the graces shown by the trials reinstates the peace and validity of humanity and silently mocks the barbarianism and lack of etiquette shown by the guilty party. The contrast in the barbarianism of war to the courtly devaluation of contemplating the lives of such guilty party is stark and powerful. All the trials did explicitly was to disenfranchise the german state in its liability, leaving the citizens impoverished to struggle in their own vanity.
Jasper also notes a lack of feeling in the accomplices of hitler are notably well known for showing no signs of moral conviction, no sense of guilt and no understanding of evil. The nature of the german citizen to differentiate from good and evil is still corrupted. They share a collective guilt, knowingly having dodged the circumstances of the crimes committed, the moral, metaphysical, political and criminal guilt with no fault or consequence to be faced. The acknowledgment of the guilt in itself is an assertion to safeguard the guilty with the apprehension of good faith that might have been bestowed by the allied forces in their disbandment of wartime violence and atrocity. The ground under the german people had not been taken as punishment. The germans attempted to reform their own nationalistic identification as germans as they had struggle to differentiate themselves by religious belief.
Possible Excuses
The German people are also subject to trying to excuse themselves from guilt, with said excuses. For example why had people been subject to concentration camps, hypothetically for the reason that they had resisted the party ( verbally ) and were therefore subject to incarceration. Hannah Arendt writes on Organized Guilt, (1945) on terror, where people were being killed through a sense of duty. Arguably Germany has open boarders and rationalizes that the strong militaristic force is only due to the surrounding territories in order to prevent invasion. The geographically bound territories can also hypothetically be blamed for the lack of libertarian and democratic spirit, Jasper remarks that the transient state is only a repercussion of the transient phenomenon of organized governance.
Jasper writes that England had abandon them in favour of peace ( 1935 ) Ribbentrop through the naval non- aggression agreement with hitler, in addition to the Molotov-Ribbentrop wherein Russian and Germany dispute and delegate the national disposition of what would be land distribution in Poland.
Internally to German citizens, the allied forces have appeared to forsake the perpetrations of nazi occupation in Germany agreeing to coordinate with the National Socialist party as patrician of the country-state. " The German Question" was originally written by Wilhelm Röpke, as a manual to the reformation of postwar Germany. He reminisces over the early warning signs shown by the German governance that the world dismissed resulting from the National Socialist Party in Germany and going so far as to endure their company at events and worldly gatherings without a second thought to the internal conflict that had been occurring. Jasper juxtaposes the state with the political party, regarding the 'invasion' of the National Socialist ( identifiably a terrorist organization ) as ruling party to Germany, as such regarding Germany as one of the first victims to suffer the atrocities later seen through Europe, most notably genocidal terror and Mass Hypnosis. I disagree with Jasper when he states that the ruling causes in Germany is the derivative of the holocaust and mass incarceration. He states that " Yet there the guilty were a few
Germans, a small group (plus an indefinite number of others
capable of cooperating under orders) German anti-Semitism
was not at any time a popular movement. The population
failed to cooperate in the German pogroms; there were no spontaneous acts of cruelty against Jews, The mass of the
people, if it did not feebly express its resentment, was silent
and withdrew." (90). If this were the case would then not the crisis of National Socialism as a " terrorist organization" in confronting german ideals be stopped and reprimanded before infiltrating surrounding countries and the rest of Europe !? The nature of dictatorship also though, is identifiably internal. He notes that if a similar example of primitive despotism, thus situation hypothetically incurring in North America that we would be doomed, as the situation needed to be aided by outside influences ... He commends the allies for not relinquishing the same fate bestowed upon the mass incarcerated as to what may have become of the 'german peoples', as to repay evil-with-evil, would therefore make more evil and bear new calamities.
Purification
The self critique of the citizens, both historically and personally are necessary and both examples reflect upon one another. Comparatively the individuals who are able to complete their understanding of self recognized guilt and the unaffected guiltless. The argumentative nature of thus in the unassailed remains intact, they seek to destroy others in generalized judgements in disrupting the solidarity. Hitlers enterprise was notably diabolical in nature, although Jasper notes that he recognized the fact that he may not be able to generate a solidarity in the " passive resistance " to the national socialist party through disassociation.
Dodging Purification
Germans cannot be deduced to a common denominator, the escaped in their own righteousness are still subject to the totality of their birthplace. Jasper cites the nature of a jew emigrated to New York who hosted Hitler's picture on the wall of his room because he was unaided in his longing for the homeland. In a way the sense is prolonged by defiance through the edification of sentimentality.
Phenomenology of Perception by Maurice Merleau Ponty
All of these books are basically free : https://voidnetwork.gr/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Phenomenology-of-Perception-by-Maurice-Merleau-Ponty.pdf
The cover is reminiscent of Hirst's 1986 'Spot Painting', probably designed to illustrate the metaphysical suffrage in each spot particularly this one piece completed in 1986 painfully and obviously less organized and linear than most of the other Spot Paintings in his series. This painting was one one of the first in the dot series completed at Goldsmith's explaining the lack of rhetoric and linearity seen in the rest of the collection such as "Untitled" with black dot " to be completed in 1988. The works appear to be completed mechanically although a series of assistants were hired to execute the project. Many of the titles in the subsequence series, "Pharmaceuticals" were conceptually designed to interrogate the chemical company Sigma Aldrich which he found in a catalogue titled " Bio Chemichals for Research and Diagnostic Reagents" in marketing various chemicals used for biomedical research. The work is quintessentially commercial, noting the variables in the trade of biochemicals even today used ( bought and sold ) for the purposes of experimentation in vaccinating the corona virus. The variations in the spots use mathematical equations to create balance and harmony notably in his later works.
... Have I ever mentioned to you that I am dating the filthiest entity in the history of mankind ? He is like a broken down fat squealing subspecies trying desperately to escape the excrementally infested mud-puddle where he has in fact, been literally, ecstatically consuming his own fecues, failing to escape his own babbling dribble albeit over dramatically, each squeal more obnoxiously desperate and mind dissolving then the last.
I think writing this may help as it has in the past, nothing is off limits and seemingly, the move vulgar and grotesque, the better. It is apparent that this motion is against my ( clearly amiable and formidable ) character although the hatred is blinding, every day I wake up to grimace at the thought of my most recent encounters with the barbarianism of the backwoods in the northern country, devoid of civilization and humanity, bleakly starved of culture and humanity, painful to the eye.
The predomination of Op art subsequently became predominate in the late 1960's, cubism at the fall of the industrial revolution and the automatism of the cognitive in the dawn of photography in the retinal abstractions devised through expressionism.
One might argue that the beginning of impressionism itself becomes an early form of illusion as the paintings quite simply record the diffractions of light as it reflects on the surface of objective form as it intercedes with the retinal nervous system. Ponty takes the two straight lines in Müller- Lyer’s optical illusion and uses this to describe sensation through the retinal advisory of the receiving qualities.
Colour, he notes is not a sensation but a sense. The quality of the colour is a dimension of deviating sensation and the effect that it has on the cognitive, for example the play of light upon the object is just a spacial configuration in the way that effects the mind. Ponty also notes that all consciousness is not immediate of quality and that consciousness ( is not a variation of quality and time ) as it is an object for the consciousness of the object to reside in. He also notes that consciousness should not be subject to prejudice, noting that the abstraction of the optical illusion is merely visual through the retinal sensory, as quality is not merely defined by the retinal capabilities of the object.
He states that the object is not ambiguous, and only appears to be so through our inattention. The visual is seized by the eyes and what become sensation is what is sensed. The behaviour of the individual is then subject to reflex that patterns the nerval system through its sensory advisors indicating the nature of the objective world and reproduced or computed in a likewise manner to the cognitive mind. Ponty states "For example, the
intensity of a sound under certain circumstances lowers its pitch; the
addition of auxiliary lines makes two figures unequal which are objectively equal." (33). In this circumstance if one takes the obscene wailing of aforementioned full grown primitive male beast in an attempt to attract the attentions of his mother, the nature of the sound and notable intensity would be subdued in the company of any other subsequent males of general age and likeliness. The colour of the subsequent subject's face would then redden in colour due to the nature of the demands and wailing. The nature of the phenomenon is obviously oblique, the isolate nature of unpopulated environment hence creating the ideal environment for the subjects irrational and explicit behaviour.
One might assume that the hypothesized " sensible " nature of attempted external stimulus would subdue the oblique primitive's hoarding desperate shrilling wails for attention, albeit, the dramatization of the subject becomes intensified.
The sensory status of the apparatus devised by the subject, Ponty notes, is no longer fit for the transmitter. The cortical or cognitive revelations to the sensitivity of temperature for example through the reappearance of the sensation via memory. The same follows for colour in the state of the individuals initial experience of the sensation, and the following recollection upon seeing the colour again through repetition. Sensation is not subject to reflection or memory and is directly related to the object.
The sensation instigated by one's bodily surroundings become the phenomena experienced through nerval signals, for example the peripheral experience as an identified elementary psychic function ( although not a superior function) as it is not connected to the bodily function/ or the bodily substructure.
Sensation is not subject to reflection or memory and is directly related to the object.
Ponty notes that Gesalt theory, as a revelation of the early 1900's becomes the subsequent epitome of reflection due to the study of patterns and recognition in the philosophically and psychologically introduces sensations that are no longer physical variables, numerically opening up the universe into the void of mathematical phenomenon.
In conclusion, noting the revelations induced by the Muller Lyer diagram, the apparatus appears to have unequal lines, when in fact they are equal. The line, isolated in its objective is equal to the other line equally isolated. Ponty notes that these observations are only detectable through analytic perception. The concept of the image only becomes real though sensation, it is not the analytic truth or fact, just the sense perceived through the retinal conjuncture that becomes relevant through the superstructure of consciousness.
The nature of primitive thought is essentially the basis of perception devoid of analytical thought, the impoverishment of perception that they are unable to critique and translate.
Phenomenology of Perception
Catherine Malabou
Plasticity is important in a number of works of Merleau-Ponty. The ontological dimension of the body wherein Ponty has organized ( in his book ) this dialogue of a series of different traditions in philosophy and phenomenology, and existentialism. Rousseau, Husserl, Sarte, sciences like psychology and neurology becomes a mix becomes a unique synthesis between science, philosophy and art that is the meaning of plasticity. What we have discovered through the study of motricity is in short, a new sense of the word sense. What we have discovered is a new meaning to the word sense. Sensation and signification. The study of movement that comes from psychology becomes the study of the profound, the study of meaning and signification and sense, as sensation.
Ponty translates the meaning sense into sensation. The ontology of the status of the body, what it means to be a body, but also to locate where plasticity where it appears, and what we have to see ourselves as in the crossing of this new meaning of sense, between sensation and signification and the in-between what Ponty calls perception. These things are profoundly intertwined, perception is not exactly sensation, but the bluntness of the sensibility. Perception is what what we have in front of us, but not around us, and is what we do not see. The context of perception is what we see literally see, and also what we perceive to be around us. It is the cognitive organization in the contextualization of our objective surroundings.
Ponty and Sarte both contradict one another through obstruction. Embodied cognition is the reflexology of the body through the way that we use the body, to engage with the world and to experience our surroundings through the neurological conscious state. Ponty will outline and build up a position or example to critique before critiquing it. He will counterpose his own theory and break it down after building it to make a point.
Merlo Ponty asks " What is Phenomenology" what is the study of essences ( as in what things are, or what they exist as). The lived time and the lived world, nothing objective or scientific which removes the subjective from the experience. The objective world is devoid of life and is inhuman, so therefore the concept of phenomenology is the description of experience.
He therefore describes science as a derivative form of knowledge ( according to Ponty) everything in science has already been built on an experiencing subject, the way we understand the world is the grounding and the foundation of the perception. Science looks to understand what relations between variables are, although it does not question why or how things are they way they are. Husserel quotes " To the things themselves" independent to themselves fundamentally, there is nothing if there is no viewing subject.
The constituting subject prior to being and time Eg. Descartes' concept of Mind, or Sartre's Preservation of Freedom. Grounded in a lived account and the foundational way in which we encounter the world through a fixed state.
The background of our reflection takes place through a very earthy perspective. The phenomenological reduction according to Ponty is an idea that Husserl conducted, and was designed to uncover how things are constituted for a conscious subject. i. eidetic reduction from the natural entity to the fixed entity through the eidetic entity itself.
Transcendental reduction is bracketing the physical object to shift the focus, instead, to the transcendental object. The idea here is that we are looking at how the object becomes an object ( instead of the object itself ) is the subject looking at the object.
Examples of the transcendental objects are The Noesis and the Noema.
The Noesis, which is essentially the structuring the experiences of the act, or what the subject brings to the act through perception ie. The perception of perceiving.
The Noema, is the structure given the act essentially is the object with the Noesis is direted towards. The subject and the object. The HYLE, which is the greek word for matter, is basically ammounts to constraining or limiting experiences which confirm or deny our expectations or anticipations that are held by the object. The Hiel is the Noma, you are the Noesis structuring the experience. The physical object serves that purpose, to reaffirm the nature of truth.
The transcendental objects are seen through the phenomenological reduction which combines the transcendental object as the essence of things in the world. Things studied do not exist without the the observer which is why we study phenomena. These things are independent of us and therefore exist independently, so they come with a meaning. Phenomenology tells us that what we include as the description as the intentional constitution of things. The objective approach does the opposite in bracketing the subject to see what is there. What is there without a subject is bringing the subject back into the perspective.
Ponty states that phenomenological reduction appears to be a return to the transcendental consciousness wherein the world is spread out in transparency and is therefore trapped in solipsism and in the essence.
Locked into transcendental consciousness we are trapped into the objective void of perception.
Fundamentally we exist in the world, we cannot separate ourselves from the world completely, because we are so thoroughly immersed in the world is by suspending the movement of consciousness. The phenomenological reduction means that we cannot see ourselves without the world influencing what we see. The most important lesson of reduction is the impossibility of complete reduction and how we see that objects are structured by us and vice vera. We can never completely achieve reduction and separate ourselves of the world. Through phenomenological reduction he also says that every reduction is inevitably concerning essences, the essences of the world. We are not separating existence in essence, it is the essence of something that exists, so Ponty looks at the idea we're not breaking from the external world, not the abstract idea. Its a not a theme of discourse, we are rather looking to see the thing as it is for us prior to the climatization of the every day definition that we can intellectually defend through the eidetic reduction, or the phenomenological reduction can never be complete.
Intentionality is more Husserl although the crucial aspect of phenomenology, similar to Sartre, all consciousness is intentionality, everything is directed towards all of our conscious states or acts are directed to something or of something so there is no kind of pure abstract consciousness, all consciousness is of something ( intentionality). This is not teleology from outside, although rather a recognition that consciousness is a project of the world, it is fundamentally engaged in the world.
There are 2 types of intentionality, act intentionality and operative intentionality. Act Intentionality - The intentional act - is concerning our judgements and deliberate decisions. Things that we are deliberately acting on. Directly.
Operative intentionality is a natural tendency to the world, the intentionality almost automatically fundamentally underlies our existence that is conducted by our desires that exist and manifest undeliberately.
Phenomenology and philosophy, is not to articulate a prior existing being, rather a founding being. This is what philosophy is about, uncovering how those things are there for us. Not the primary truth but the actualization of the truth, so the study of how the world is revealed to us opposed to how something exists independent of us and that the subject is fundamentally engaged in.
It is always inclusive of this experience perceiving subject, therefore it is important to us in understanding how the world appears. To take into account the subject. The whole project of philosophy takes place therefore within the historical context which is the history of the individual subject and interrogates itself in a way that other disciplines do not understand ( the starting point ) whereas the philosophy wants to understand how it is constructed, For Us.
This is why philosophy will never end, there will always be new ways for the world to be understood and interpreted. It is not something that can be complete.
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