01/2000--03/2000 13. The three aspects (7) 01/07/2000 The second aspect: the priority of relations to things (5)
Heidegger (sorry, not about Hegel now) considered
human existence as 'being-there' (Dasein) or being-in-the-world instead of as the subject of
the modern world-view. It is worthy of notice for us that the lack of 'as' in an object does not mean simple, pure perception. Perception without 'as,' which would give us, so to speak, naked data, is not fundamental but derivative from simple, understanding-perception, which already has the 'as-structure.' (*2) This structure was intriguingly developed and varied into
the 'four limbs-structure' by Hiromatsu. Not only in sense perception but also in recognition and
judgment we can notice the factor or limb of 'as something more'; when you look at an eraser
gain after having shut your eyes for a few seconds, you recognize it as
the same eraser; with a judgment "A is B" we take A as something more or
B. Hiromatsu told that it is not an associated representation in our
mind; when you see an eraser on a desk, you do not have a representation of the
eraser somewhere in your mind other than its visual image on the
desk. If we consider this 'something more' separately or by
itself, it assumes a character of being ideal a la Plato. The 'something more' is
neither physical nor psychic realia. (e.g., it is
neither a representation nor
an image in
our mind). In many cases real and particular features of the written
triangle are not very important; it does not matter whether the figure be white or
red, big or small, and its lines be a little curved or not. Further you can
sometimes do well with forming a triangle even with your fingers or making
sounds, "triangle," instead of the written figure--if they are recognized as a geometric triangle, which is their
meaning. Signs and languages are the phenomena that have been made to clearly show their 'something more' with vital importance. (*3) ------------------------------------------------- (*1) Sein und Zeit, Paragraph 32 (*2) ebenda. (*3) Hiromatsu, The Intersubjective Ontologic-Structure of the World, 1972,
Chapter One. 14. The three aspects (8) 01/15/2000The second aspect: the priority of relations to things (6) If you only points out
the ideality of phenomenal objects and its importance, and are satisfied with
that, you might be an idealist in the traditional sense, even sometimes 'misled' into believing in the divine Being, or into some
kind of mystification. Hiromatsu was a historical materialist, and stepped
forward: In this case, his visual image of the dragonfly was different from mine
because he looked at the creature from other angle. Nevertheless both he
and I recognized the phenomenon as a dragonfly, for we are adults with
common knowledge. Who is then that 'someone'? In the case above he
was an adult with common knowledge who had been molded through
education, association, etc., namely, a sort of social product, in which the
daughter had yet little participated. 'Someone' is, like 'something more' of the
objective side, characterized
with its ideality. The adult person above or 'man' was neither my friend nor I.
We
were only his examples. He is not old, young, tall, short, …that is, not any
particular person. Yet he must be every adult who has common knowledge. ------------------------------------------------- (*1) Here this adult person or man is not objectified, that is, it is not 'something more' of an objective phenomenon. (*2) We do not in principle accept the 'subject--object schema' of modern philosophy which substantializes both terms, the subject and the object. But since there must be a knowing side (the subjective moment) and a known one (the objective moment) in the epistemology scene, it would be admitted for us to use these words, the subject and the object, as an expedient. (*3) Hiromatsu, The Intersubjective Ontologic-Structure of the World, 1972,
Chapter one.
15. The three aspects (9) 01/24/2000 The second aspect: the priority of relations to things (7) In a word, Hiromatsu's 'four
limbs-structure' is that something as
something more exists to somebody as someone. (Gegebenes als etwas Mehr gilt
einem als jemandem.) We should go into detail of that structure a little
more (*1), in order to shed light on our former argument: Now, from a historical point of view we would like to call
a real 'something' of a given the material moment and its
'something more' the formal one. The sentence with many strata of meaning in our
argument 1), 'A fisherman who bought a car yesterday was my uncle,'
bases on the fact that I took some fisherman as a man who bought a car yesterday
and that then I took that fisherman as my uncle. So we would be able to tell that every noun is a proposition
and that a proposition is the partition of the unity of a noun after
Hegel, who said, "Every thing is a judgment." (*3) and that a judgment
(Urteil) is
really the original partition (Ur-teil, i.e., ursprüngliche Teilung) of a
concept. (*4) ------------------------------------------------- (*1) cf. Hiromatsu, The Intersubjective Ontologic-Structure of the World, Chapter one. (*2) cf. 12. Re: language, totality, correspondence, dated 12/16/1999. (*3) "alle Dinge sind ein Urteil." (Enzyklopädie, Abschn. 167) (*4) "Die etymologische Bedeutung des Urteils in
unserer Sprache ist tiefer und drückt die Einheit des Begriffs als das
Erste und dessen Unterscheidung als die ursprüngliche Teilung aus,
was das Urteil in Wahrheit ist. 16. The three aspects (10) 02/01/2000 The second aspect: the priority of relations to things (8) A phenomenal
object, Hiromatsu's analysis continues (*1), changes its being or, precisely,
so-being (Sosein, not there-being, Dasein) totally according to its
'something more,' that is, how we see an object, even if its material
aspect stays just as before. This is the reason why empiricism has generally (?) been at a
disadvantage against idealism albeit with the practical popularity of the former
in
the modern period; and why the previously quoted problem occurs: The seemingly transcendental form of an object, 'something more' is, though, an corresponding product to the process of intersubjectifying our consciousness; the coagulation of object's form synchronizes with our becoming ideal someone, which is a social role in the broad sense (an adult, an ideal- English speaker-listener, etc.). Or rather, both are just the two sides of the coin. (*3) We sometimes hear such questions today, "What is 'Being' itself?" "Why are existents accessible to us at all?" The answer would be, I suppose, that when you observe some object, e.g., a rabbit, you have already become a hunter or a fancier of small animals. 'Being' is merely the abbreviation for the cohesion between ideal 'form' and ideal 'someone.' ------------------------------------------------- (*1) cf. The Intersubjective Ontologic-Structure of the World, Chapter one. (*2) cf. 11. Re: language, totality, correspondence, dated 12/09/1999. (*3) Hiromatsu, The Intersubjective Ontologic-Structure of the World, Chapter one. 17. The three aspects (11) 02/14/2000 The pre-personal world (1) It is about time to examine our pending problem,
intersubjectivity, without which Hegelianism will not stand up. But typical
modern world-views tend to take solipsism of some sort. For example: The argument above, which is technically called 'the
proposition of the personalness (*1)' (Satz der
Persönlichkeit), is one of our common knowledge. Some people would say, "It seems, though, crazy to deny the personalness of the
phenomenal world, for . . . " The fact above does not qualify us to insist that the sound of a crow (a phenomenon or given) is my personalia that belongs to me inherently. That is,
Generally speaking, phenomena belong to the totality of the world, which includes myself, other people, physical and cultural environments. The phenomenal world is, Hiromatsu then concludes, pre-personal or non-personal originally. (*3) ------------------------------------------------- (*1) Later on Mr. Mxx kindly informed me in his post dated 02/15/2000
JST. >But one could say, "the particularity of the subject," the point being that a specific cognition is, to some degree, a function of the particular knower. Or again, "the cognitive specificity of the subject."< (I appreciate such suggestions indeed. As a non-native speaker of English, I am almost blind to the contextual usage and nuances of words. Euphemism and the definite/indefinite article are also difficult for me to deal with.) After much consideration, I still continue to use the word 'personalness' as a translation of 'Persönlichkeit.' I would like to use the terms as follows: "Modern epistemology presupposes the isomorphism of the subject: i) we are all wearing the same 'transcendental' glasses, metaphysically or physiologically, to see our objects. So if we see the same object, our perceptions too must be identical with each other in principle. ii) Each of the subjects, of course, has its 'particularity' and 'specificity' to some degree as 'a function of the particular knower,' because of his nature, education, etc. But that does not hinder our possible, if not certain, agreement on the cognition of the same object. "We do not deny the 'particularity' nor 'specificity' in the context above, but the isomorphism of the subject, which ontologically has nothing to do with history and culture, should be rejected. And we do not accept the immanent belongingness of consciousness to the atomistic subject, which is just 'personalness.'" (*2) Wissenschaft der Logik, Einleitung, Suhrkamp Verlag, Werke in zwanzig Bänden, Bd. 5, S. 44) (*3) cf. The Intersubjective Ontologic-Structure of the World, Chapter one. 18. The three aspects (12) 02/26/2000 The pre-personal world (2) Some people often insist their ownership of consciousness
simply from their own 'sense-certainty.' But
when you shout with glaring eyes, "This is my money! I'm certain of it," your money is, in
fact, part of currency in general use. So your money is accepted by
others. And your 'ownership' of the money means that you are under the
protection of the law, more precisely, that you are set in certain social relations to other
people and social products. Other people would argue from a formalistic view point: "Every time we
perceive something and report it, we can indeed add our judgment, 'I perceive
(think),' before
it." Still many of us stick to a natural, in a sense, feeling:
my consciousness is mine. Some Sartrian would say in a sciential way, "As
for object-positioning consciousness (conscience positionnelle du monde), your
argument of the pre-personalness of consciousness might be right. But
non-positioning self-consciousness (conscience non-positionnelle de soi) is
surely personal." When I look at a table in my room, for instance, I
have a consciousness of the table, which is called 'object (i.e., the table)
-positioning consciousness.' ------------------------------------------------- (*1) " Alle denkenden Wesen an sich einfache Substanzen sind, als solche also . . . Persönlichkeit unzertrennlich bei sich führen, und sich ihrer von aller Materie abgesonderten Existenz bewußt sind." (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Von den Paralogismen der reinen Vernunft, B 409)(*2) cf. Being and Nothingness, Introduction, III. 19. The three aspects (13) 03/08/2000 The pre-personal world (3) Surely, Sartrian 'nonreflexive self-consciousness'
is no longer an old-fashioned functional pure-I that is the successor of
the substantial soul, inherited the functional aspect of the latter and still
plays an active part in social sciences. But the point is, from our angle, whether there is any need of
presupposing outside the phenomenal world the Sartrian subject, which is
a monitoring-I of some sort, and is objectively and realistically 'nothing.' Let us start with the former example: when asked about what I
am doing, I instantly come to myself and have
self-awareness that I have been checking the table. That is where Hiromatsu brings forth a counterargument: but what
were the
actual facts in this case?" He examines them again (*2): What about nonreflexive self-consciousness itself? Hiromatsu admits after Sartre that it is itself not an object, that it does not posit any particular object, and that it covers, so to speak, all the field of one's consciousness. But he refuses to deduce form those facts that nonreflexive self-consciousness is something subjective that exists outside the phenomenal world, or that is a purely functional agent that lacks contents. Nonreflexive self-consciousness is the consciousness of the perspective or configuration of the phenomenal world. If the subject should be something to that the world exists or appertain, but that is not in it, and that is phenomenally nothing, then we deny such a thing. And if we talk about the moments of the subject and the object, they only exist as a mutually mediated relation in the phenomenal world, not as the two transcendental terms of the modern (or Sartrian) 'subject--object schema'. ------------------------------------------------- (*1) cf. Being and Nothingness, Introduction, III. (*2) cf. The Intersubjective Ontologic-Structure of the World, II, 1. 'The Ontologic-Foundations of Intersubjectivity,' sec. 1; and see Being and Meaning, part one, chapter two, sec. 3. 20. The three aspects (14) 03/27/2000 The third aspect: the creation of meta-worlds (i.e., Substance as Subject) (1)
As
Hegel says, relational determinations (Verhältnisbestimmungen), such as 'over and
under', 'father and son,' have their being in their
opposition to each other:
If
his thought had had its limits here and been within the scope of relationism, he would not have become so famous nor notorious.
His ideas,
however,
spread beyond: The viewpoint of contradiction and dialectic movement, I think, does not necessarily or inevitably follow from that of 'existence for another' or relationism in general. For example, structural linguistics, which is based on relationism or 'the system of difference,' has said nothing about the inherent movement of a meaning into the opposite one or about something like that.
The
concept of contradiction holds the central position of Hegelianism from
the first. The young Hegel set forth his twelve theses in the
habilitation-process in 1801, the year when he published the essay, The Difference Between Fichte's and Schelling's System of
Philosophy, and six years before the publishing of his first main book, The Phenomenology of
Spirit. ------------------------------------------------- (*1)
"Oben
ist, was nicht unten ist; oben (*2) "Die Entgegengesetzten enthalten insofern den Widerspruch, als sie in derselben Rücksicht sich negativ aufeinander beziehende oder sich gegenseitig aufhebende und gegeneinander gleichgültige sind." (ebenda, S. 77) (*3) ">>Alle Dinge sind an sich selbst widersprechend<<, . . .so wäre der Widerspruch für das Tiefere und Wesenhaftere zu nehmen. . . . er [der Widerspruch] aber ist die Wurzel aller Bewegung und Lebendigkeit;" (ebenda, S. 74 f.) (*4) "Es ist dasselbe [Dialektische--Taki] überhaupt das Prinzip aller Bewegung, alles Lebens und aller Betätigung in der Wirklichkeit." (Enzyklopädie, Abschn. 81, Zusatz 1) (*5)
"Das dialektische Moment ist das eigene Sichaufheben
solcher endlichen Bestimmungen und ihr Übergehen in ihre
entgegengesetzten. (*6) "Contradictio est regula veri, non contradictio falsi." (Habilitationsthesen, Suhrkamp Verlag, Werke in zwanzig Bänden, Bd. 2, S. 533) (*7)
"Syllogismus est principium
Idealismi. Comments and suggestions are always welcomed. e-mail : takin@be.to
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