Damascius, and the silencing of Proclus, through the attack on Proclus’ trick. (Try to follow if you are inclined to philosophy, and if only for the joy of detecting a philosophical, dialectical genius).
The silencing by Proclus of the whole pagan Philosophy was perfectly understood by Damascius, who thus put an end to the development of this Philosophy. Proclus’ trick consists in appealing to an ineffable Beyond each time he finds himself obliged to contradict what he says by speaking (in the Here Below) of the Here Below. If it is impossible to do this by speaking of Something, as when speaking EITHER of A only, OR Not-a only, so that one is obliged to say “both” AND A AND Not-a, it does no harm there (here), since there is something else “outside” of the Something, this Other-thing being NEITHER A, NOR Non-a. If the Discourse which reveals a Something which is AND A AND Not-a, contradicts itself by saying it (actually, this discourse is a contradiction in terms, by definition, moreover) and is thereby reduced to silence, this Silence reveals an Other-thing which is ineffable precisely because it is NEITHER A, NOR Not-a. In other words, the Other-thing is nothing of what the Something is, and it is in this that its transcendence consists: the transcendent Other-thing is not Something.
/ To which Damascius replies that, in this case, the Other-thing is nothing at all, which means that there is no Transcendence. Damascius’ (atheistic) critique of the (theistic) notion of Transcendence takes place in two stages.
/ 1 / He begins by showing that the process of “transcendentalization” is, though transcendent by definition, infinite in the sense of in-definite. Indeed, if the contradiction between A and Not-a obliges us to postulate a Something which is neither A nor Not-a and which is thus the “relation” to all that is either A or Not-a, the Discourse, taken as a whole, must speak “at the same time” AND of what is (A and Not-a) AND of what is not (neither A nor Not-a), so that the whole of the Discourse is again contradictory. The principle of transcendentalization therefore demands that we go beyond this new AND-AND by a new NOR-NOR: beyond the Something which is not only A and Not-a, but which is still neither A nor No-a, there is an Other-thing, which is neither one (A and Not-a) nor the other (neither A nor Not-a). Now, already the first Transcendent was absolutely unique and one, since all distinction was excluded from it; and it was therefore absolutely ineffable. The method of transcendentalization therefore obliges us to posit beyond the first unique transcendent, a second Transcendent, unique and one as well: we thus obtain an ineffable Beyond which is situated beyond the Beyond and which is revealed in and by a Silence which is beyond Silence. [[[More particularly, i.e., philosophically: [Proclus himself is content to admit that if one “ascends” in a continuous way (discursively) from C to B (passing through a and b), one must make a “leap” to a go up from B to A: he “ignores a the starting point A’ in the Ascent. It was Damascius who reminded him of this, by showing that the eternal (-spatial) coexistence of the Proodos and the Epistrophe results in a coincidence of A with A’, that is to say, of the Theos with the Hyle. But by substituting Matter (A’) for God (A) [as Damascius seems to want to do] we admit (implicitly) that the circle C is not discursive and therefore that the alleged notion B is at most only a Paranotion (or a Sign: a spelling or a :proper name”), even a Pseudo-motion (or a Symbol, “mystical” or mathematical) – Moreover, from the fact that what is outside of C is both A and A’ (since the Proodos is supposed to be co-eternal (with the Epistrophe), Damascius concludes that A = A’ (and not that A’ = A): for him, what corresponds to Speech is Matter only so that the Speech can relate only to Matter, unless one admits that there is outside the Something which is AND A AND A’ an Other thing which is NOR A NOR A’, which, for Damascius, would be the the height of absurdity, since it would be a question (A being God and A’ Matter Nothingness, the two Ineffable silent and Silence ineffable) of a God who would be “above” God, or of a Matter which is “below” Matter ( = Nothingness), even of an “Ineffable” which would be outside the Ineffable or of a “Silence” which would be beyond Silence]]].
/ / 2 Be that as it may, it is obvious that once set in motion, the process of transcendentalization can no longer be stopped; as long as we admit a single ineffable Transcendent, we can admit as many as we like. Now, it is here that the second stage of the critique of transcendentalization by Damascius begins. From the moment that transcendentalization is in-definite, the Transcendent is not the unique, finite and de-finite One, but the In-finite without goal or term, devoid of any structure. Besides, if all Transcendents are ineffable, there is no way to distinguish them from each other, since all silences are equal. Now, the contra-dictory Discourse is equivalent to Silence: to say of Something that it is A and Not-a at the same time amounts to saying nothing at all about it, namely neither that it is A nor that it is is Not-a. Thus, the NOR-NOR that is Theos is equivalent to the AND-AND that is Hylé. But, since the ineffable Transcendent is in-finite in the sense of in-definite, it is better to call it not God, but “Matter”. Damascius himself seems to have deduced from this reasoning a kind of materialist Atheism, even of atheistic Materialism, given that “Discursive Materialism” is by definition incapable of deducing the Discourse that it is itself [[[[Damascius claims that if A ( = Eleatic Hen) being already “divine”, ineffable and silent, B must be beyond the divine silent Ineffable and A “beyond” this already hyper-transcendent B. Hence Damascius concludes that as soon as one admits an (ineffable) Transcendent, one cannot stop superimposing other hyper-transcendents upon it. Whence the need to substitute for the transcendent Ineffable ( = God) an immanent Ineffable ( = Matter), which is equally in-definite or open to infinite regression. But Damascius may have seen that this “regression” is in fact nothing more than an “infinite mathematical progression” (in the final analysis: the indefinite series of positive and negative integers). The immanence of the Ineffable (“material”) would then signify the possibility of a mathematical Physics (replacing Energo-logy, while Mathematics replaces Onto-logy). If this were so, Damascius would renounce Philosophy, even the System of Knowledge, in favor of Mathematics and Physics (the Phenomenology being replaced by a Phenomenometric, that is to say, by the “exact” natural sciences). In other words, the contradiction between Platonism and Aristotelianism would reduce to silence the whole of Discourse degenerating into a set of (mathematical) Symbols, which would relate to the whole of “Matter” which corresponds to it [what actually happened, moreover, in the sixteenth century for the whole of pagan philosophy (insofar as it was not transformed into Christian philosophy)]]]
/ By silencing Proclus, Damascius believed he had silenced (desperate, moreover) all human discourse and therefore Philosophy as such. But, in fact and for us, Damascius had only reduced to silence, even to Contradiction, Pagan Philosophy, which, by deliberately excluding (Spatio-)temporality, deliberately ignored anthropogenic Negativity. For us, the Pagan Theos was in fact Hylé because it was not Negativity or Totality, but Pure Identity, by definition ineffable and mute.
In order to be able to speak OF ANY discourse [having a meaning] or, what is the same thing, Of Discourse (Logos) as such, we must begin by positing a discourse [ endowed with any meaning] whatever it may be. Because putting it down ourselves is so easy that it would make no sense to wait for it to be given to us, for example by falling from the sky, or elsewhere. But to do so, we will only ask ourselves if we actually have the (conscious and voluntary) intention to do so. That is to say that before positing it, we must presuppose it (as a discourse endowed with any meaning, not yet effectively posited, but as in front of and able to be posited by us, later). In other words, we must begin by ascertaining within ourselves the intention to speak (as well as the “will,” moreover optional or “free,” to actually do so). Or, to put it still another way, let us say that at the beginning (in an arch) the Discourse (Logos) is [for all those for whom discourse has a meaning] not a position (thesis), but a sup-position or, for say it in Greek, a
HYPO-THESIS.
The Hypo-thesis being the intention to speak in order to say anything which nevertheless makes sense, it suffices for us to act in accordance with this intention by saying anything whatsoever (which we can, of course, refrain from indefinitely, on the condition that we do not account for our voluntary silence in and through discourse, “justifying” or otherwise), to effectively posit the Discourse as any discourse whatsoever. Now, if we do so, the discourse thus posited by us will presuppose, for us, nothing other or more than the Hypothesis, which was precisely the intention of positing the discourse in question. In other words, this discourse can be posited without having been preceded by another effective discourse, although it can only be posited in the present by supposing in the past the intention (conscious and voluntary ) to do so. We can also say that the first discourse actually emitted arises, for us, in the present, by supposing in the past a “virtual” discourse (whose “power” it “actualises”), which pre-supposes it. -supposes to be put into action” in the future. This being so, we can say that the first (actual) discourse which is posited, without sup-posing (in and by its presence in the present) any (actual) discourse emitted in the past, which would presuppose it itself, and without pre-supposing (in the same present of its presence) another discourse (actual or virtual) which would be emitted in the future by sup-posing it- this being so, we can say that this first discourse is a pure and simple position (of the Discourse as such) or, to continue speaking Greek, that this discourse “first a is a
THESIS
However! If, after having occupied this first discursive position and having rested there as much as we please, we re-pose the thetic discourse in question, in order to say anything about it, we will find that by understanding its meaning whatever it is, we necessarily understand, by this very meaning, the meaning of a virtual discourse, which we could take as its “contrary” or its “negation”. And by speaking about this observation as much as necessary, we will end by saying that if, by impossibility, the “negative” or “contrary” discourse had no meaning, the “positive” or thetic discourse would also not have meaning of its own; and therefore would not be effectively posited as Discourse (by definition endowed with meaning), despite the hypo-thesis, which was the intention to speak and even an intention that we had had the feeling of having achieved. In other words, if the thetic discourse posited in the first place actually has any meaning S, Non-S is also a discursive meaning, which can consequently be that of an effective discourse so-called, having a meaning contrary to that of the thetic discourse. We. we must therefore say that the positive discourse, posited as a thesis, in fact presupposed, at the very moment of its positing, “the negative discourse” which one could call “contrary thesis”; -by presupposing this discourse if not as effective, at least as virtual or as being able to be actualised after the first “actualised” thesis, and in any case as supposing the actuality of the latter in a present which will have become past when its future will be present in the act of the second thesis “or contrary”. However! If we say all this now, we must add that at the time when it was actualised, the Thesis itself did not say it. But if, assuming the past actuality of this Thesis, we actualise in the present its discursive negation, which is the contrary “thesis”, we can and must say that this supposes the first “Thesis” as already actualised in the past. And as presupposing (in fact, if not for itself), if only as virtual, the contrary “thesis” as to be actualised in a present which was yet to come when the first Thesis was the only discourse present. Or even, to put it in a perhaps simpler way: if one can emit a Thesis (by positive definition) without speaking of the contrary Thesis, which is its negation, it is rigorously impossible to discursively deny a Thesis without explicitly mentioning it. Because if it is very easy to occupy any position that no one occupies and to lose interest in other positions occupied or not, one can occupy a position by dislodging someone only by knowing in advance where this position is or, at least, by noting it at the very moment of its occupation. When you don’t take a stand against anyone, you can very well imagine being alone in the world. But who (even if his name is Don Quixote) would want to take any position against someone he says (believing) doesn’t even exist? Be that as it may, we will say that any posited discourse provokes (sooner or later) an op-posed discourse, which means that any discursive position is opposed (actually or virtually) to an op-posed discursive position or counter-position, even to speak Greek again, to an
ANTI-THESIS.
The Anti-thesis, which opposes the Thesis, sup-poses the latter as posited or as pre-supposing it while being posited (certainly, in the second time, that is, by the anti-thesis). If, taken and understood in itself or in its isolation (that is to say in its only connection with the Hypo-thesis), the Thesis itself does not posit and does not even pre-suppose the Anti-thesis, it nevertheless presupposes it insofar as it is itself sup-posed by the latter. Now, since the Thesis is actualised before the Anti-thesis, the latter presupposes the Thesis as already actualised or posed. The Anti-thesis can therefore only be actualised (in the present) by also actualising the Thesis, as sup-posed by it and pre-supposing it. In other words, the Anti-thesis re-poses the Thesis which, by thus re-posing itself, pre-supposes the Anti-thesis which sup-poses it. Thus, the “first” or “isolated” Thesis, which is only posed, but not yet re-posed, is sup-posed by the Anti-thesis as past. But the same thesis, as re-posited in and by the Anti-thesis as pre-supposing it, is presupposed by the latter as present, that is to say as actual in the present of the actuality of the Anti-thesis itself. In other words, if the Anti-thesis can only posit itself by opposing the Thesis, it actualises, by positing itself in the present, not only itself, but also the thesis that it re-establishes. -pose by sup- posing.
Thus, if the presence of the Thesis can be isolated or soltary, that of the Anti-thesis is necessarily, that is to say, everywhere and always, a co-presence with the thesis to which it opposes. As soon as there is the Anti-thesis, there is therefore not a single discourse (endowed with meaning), but two: Anti- thesis itself, and the Thesis that it must suppose and therefore re-pose in order to be able to oppose it in action. But, for us, these two speeches are one. Indeed, if the Anti-thesis and the Thesis can isolate themselves from the Hypo-thesis (by “forgetting it”), we must consider them both as “conforming” to the latter, even as “resulting” (discursively) from it, that is, by way of “deduction” or “inference”). The Anti-thesis can (and even must) negate the Thesis as a discourse properly speaking, that is to say, as a discourse endowed with a meaning that is by definition “coherent”. It can say that the “thesis” that it re-poses in order to oppose it is a “contradiction in terms” and that it is thus equivalent to a silence (with sound or not), devoid as such of any kind of meaning, which can only be discursive, and that any true meaning can only be “common” (even “compatible”) with the meaning of “antithetical” discourse. And the re-posited Thesis can also say as much about the antithesis that it presupposes in order to oppose it in turn. But we cannot forget the Hypo-thesis without which neither Thesis nor Anti-thesis could emerge. Now, this Hypo-thesis was the intention to say anything that made any sense. We therefore have no reason to prefer the Thesis to the Antithesis or vice versa, nor to eliminate one for the sole benefit of the other. Moreover, if the Anti-thesis were, by impossibility, right to say that the Thesis has no meaning (or, what is the same thing, that it is a pseudo-discourse which contradicts itself and therefore discursively cancels everything he says), it would lose its right to say that it itself has a meaning. For if S had no meaning, the Non-S would have even less. But, conversely, the negation of S can only be absolutely devoid of any kind of meaning if S itself had none.
Therefore, we must say, without any hesitation, that the Thesis and the Anti-thesis have one and the same reason to claim the Hypothesis. In other words, it is neither one nor the other, understood and taken in isolation, but only the two taken and understood together, which completely actualise the intention to speak in order to say anything ( sensible dex”), which was their common “hypothesis”. However! Having no (discursive) reason to prefer one of the two contrary theses to the other and therefore being unable to forget either of them completely for the exclusive benefit of the other. We can therefore speak of them validly only by restating them as a single discourse, the meaning of which can only be one. But this one and unique meaning will be “at the same time”” (that is to say, in the present where the unique discourse which re-poses the Thesis and the Anti-thesis will be present) S and No-S. Now, obviously and by definition, S has nothing in common with Not-S, so that the discourse in question will have no common sense and, consequently, no sense at all. Indeed, in this “synthetic” discourse, what will be said in the “antithetical” part whose meaning is Not-S, will contradict everything that had been said in the “thetic” part, which the “anti-thetic” part supposes. Thus the so-called “synthetic” discourse will be equivalent, at least for us, to any kind of silence, by definition devoid of any discursive meaning whatsoever. In other words, we will not be able to assign to this pseudo-discourse (yet “synthetic” or “total” in the sense that it re-unites all the “parts” of any discourse) any position in the ” Universe of discourse”. Neither that of the Thesis, nor that of the Anti-thesis; because we cannot place the Whole (by definition de-finite or “finite”) in one of these parts. Nor in any other position whatsoever, since the Whole cannot be situated elsewhere than in the set of its parts. Thus, the pseudo-discourse that has presented itself to us will not be placed in any of the possible discursive positions: it will necessarily be situated, that is to say, everywhere and always, alongside or outside of all these positions. . And we can say it in Greek (Stoic, moreover), by saying that this “third” discourse, also uttered in accordance with the one and unique discursive Hypothesis, is a
PARA-THESIS
It’d be tried on another occasion.
AFTER IT, WE HAVE THE SYN-THESIS
SYNTHESIS
One can begin a discursive development from S only by re-beginning that which leads to S and ends there (unless it rebegins). This shows that when one has stopped speaking after having completely developed the Syn-thesis, one has hypothetically said all that one can say without repeating oneself, following through on the intention to speak/to say anything whatever (meaningful). Thus, on the one hand, the discursive actualisation of the Syn-thesis does not prevent one from continuing to speak, since one can indefinitely re-say what one has said by actualising it. On the other hand, since this same actualisation obliges either to say nothing more, or to re-say what one has said, it is indeed an actualisation of everything that one can say in the proper sense of the word, that is, without contradicting oneself by denying everything one has said and thus reducing oneself to silence.
However, there are two (discursive) reasons why this is so. On the one hand, the Syn-thesis says all that can be said because it re-says not only what the Thesis had said at the beginning, but also what the Anti-thesis said later in contradicting this. Now, by denying everything that the Thesis affirms (explicitly or implicitly), the Anti-thesis affirms everything that this Thesis denies: not explicitly, it is true, since it denies nothing in actuality, but implicitly or in Potentia. Thus, insofar as the Thesis says something (by explicitly affirming it), the Anti-thesis says (explicitly, by affirming it) all that the latter does not say (thus implicitly denying it). Consequently, the Syn-thesis, which re-says what the Thesis and the Anti-thesis say, effectively says everything that can be said. And this is in accordance with the “Principle of excluded middle”, which says that if you want to say anything of anything, you must say either S (this S being any meaning whatsoever), or Not-S . Whence it follows that nothing else can be said of them, so that having said both, one can no longer say anything at all. Which would be true, a curious thing, even if we were ready, in order to be able to say something else, to say what contradicts itself. On the contrary, it is only because of this truly universal “principle” that one can contradict oneself (when one says something), even when one does not want to. On the other hand, if by re-saying what the Thesis and the Anti-thesis say, the Syn-thesis says all that one can say, it can say it (by re-saying the two contrary theses”) in the strong sense, that is to say without finally annulling the discourse by the fact of contradicting at the end all that was said there at the beginning.
But this is only possible because the Discourse develops in time. Indeed, a “Principle of Identity” rightly tells us that if there can be a sense in saying anything about anything, the anything that is said thus has no meaning only if we say it about what we are talking about and not about something else. What remains true even if the meaning is a “misinterpretation”, or even a “suppressed” meaning (in the sense of annulled). By saying nonsense (of meaning) about something (whatever this something), one says (implicitly) that what one speaks about is what one said insofar as one says it. What one makes explicit by saying that the something one speaks of can only “correspond” to what one says of it insofar as what one speaks of remains just as “identical to itself” (it is that is to say remains one and the same thing) “identical to itself” (that is to say is the same) as the meaning of what is said about it.
Now, this indefinite maintenance in identity with itself/oneself both of everything one says and of everything one speaks about (in so far as one speaks about it), generally incites those who speak to forget that these two identities, each one in itself, and!, are, in fact, not only an instantaneous presence in the spatial expanse, but also a temporal duration. Otherwise, one could deduce from the “Principle of [supposedly ‘eternal’ or ‘timeless’, i.e. purely spatial] identity”, taken [rightly] as a presupposition necessary to the “Principle of the excluded middle” [which says quite rightly that what would be neither S, nor Non-S, cannot be said not only nowhere, but still never], a “Principle of contradiction” which would affirm [ wrongly] that nothing can be S and Not-S (whatever S), so that to say the two of anything would be to say nothing at all and would thus be equivalent to that silence to which all discourse is reduced which would have been deprived of all its meaning (by cancelling each of its meanings by an “opposite” meaning).
It is moreover by “spatializing” the discourse and by reducing everything that is spoken of in it to a single extent, that the Thesis and the Antithesis constitute as a whole the Para-thesis which, by developing completely, cancels itself as meaningful speech, contradicting itself everything it says. The Para-thesis is finally reduced to silence (in accordance with the “Principle of contradiction”) by trying to pose in the only extension (that is to say simultaneously, for lack of being able to do it outside of duration or in the ” eternity”) the meaning of the Thesis and that of the Anti-thesis; and it remains forever silent (in accordance with the “Principle of the excluded middle”), for lack of being able to pose anywhere and anytime a meaning that would be other than those of the Thesis or the Anti-thesis. Which means that it would be absolutely impossible to say anything (with meaning, or even with “sense”) if you had no time to do so. And the fact is that any discourse whatsoever has everywhere and always, that is to say necessarily, a certain duration (which is, moreover, a certain duration, in the sense of being measurable). Now, very fortunately for the Discourse, we have plenty of time to update it. And having a certain time, we can actualise it as Syn-thesis.
Provided that the formula of the “Principle of contradiction” is amended in such a way as to take account of the fact that it takes time to say anything (meaningful) and that, consequently, one can only speak of what is also in time, even if it means lasting there in such a way as to remain identical to itself (at least insofar as one speaks of it) as long as the meaning of what one says “is”. It will then be necessary (what is commonly said, without, however, always drawing all the consequences) that nothing can be such that there is a meaning in saying (without contradicting itself) that this is S and Not-S “is” at the same time. On the other hand, we never contradict ourselves anywhere (and we even sometimes say very sensible things) by saying, in the Present, that what was only S in the Past, will now only be Non-S in the future. If you have any doubts, let’s get back to coffee. Instead of saying to the boy like the other time: “Bring me beer, but don’t bring it to me”, I will say to him this time: “Bring me beer, but don’t bring it to me before half an hour”. And you will see that he will be very surprised (perhaps even furious, if he [wrongly] perceives a touch of irony on my part), but will not consider me crazy in any way and will (probably) bring the beer (maybe even “immediately”). Now, if we agree on this point, everything else flows from the source.
If the Syn-thesis says everything that can be said (without contradicting itself), this is done neither by the Thesis nor by the Anti-thesis. Because the Thesis does not say what the Anti-thesis says and the latter only re-says what the former says by contradicting it. As for the Para-thesis, it only claims to say everything, but in fact it does not do so, since, taken and understood as a whole, it says nothing at all. Thus, if one wanted to stop at the Para-thesis, all the discourse uttered until then would be reduced to silence and the intention of speaking about the Hypo-thesis would not be realised and could never be realised. By closing the discursive circuit by returning to the Hypo-thesis from the Para-thesis, one obtains a circuit that is too short, which is in fact only a short-circuit. Instead of actualising the Hypothesis, we would have its total cancellation; instead of a discursive development, there would be a permanent silence. And there would be nothing surprising there, since one can speak only in Time and since Time is introduced into Discourse only in and by Syn-thesis (although Discourse itself is always done in time, which allows it to last and only to be cancelled as meaning after the Para-thesis was developed for a long time, in opposites).
In other words, only the Syn-thesis completely realises the “primordial” intention of speaking or, in other words, perfectly actualises the Hypothesis of the Discourse whatever it is or as such. Indeed, the Thesis does not by itself exhaust the discursive possibilities, since, by not saying itself what the Anti-thesis will say, it does not say everything that can be said. Moreover, the Thesis virtually surpasses its own “thesis”, since the latter will provoke (sooner or later, but necessarily, that is to say everywhere and always) the “contrary thesis” which is the Anti -thesis. For if it didn’t, what it said didn’t have a meaning that could be denied (in a discursive or sensible way), which means that it wouldn’t have any meaning at all and therefore wouldn’t be real speech. (“consistent with the hypothesis”). But, by actualizing itself, the Anti-thesis provoked by the Thesis does not actualise by itself either the totality of the Discourse that is “in potency” qua Hypo-thesis. For by saying everything that the Thesis does not say, it re-says what the Thesis said only to contradict it or deny it, that is to say, to annul it as a discourse endowed with meaning [which it does by affirming, moreover wrongly, that which the thetic discourse said itself in the final analysis]. Moreover, the whole of the virtual Discourse that is the Hypothesis can only be actualized completely or perfectly in and by the whole of the thetic and antithetical discourses. It is this integral or integrating actualisation that begins as Para-thesis. But it fails in coming to an end, because the whole of the para-thetic discursive development effectively contradicts itself and therefore annuls its own meaning, so that the completed Para-thesis is no longer a discourse at all (not even in power). Now, we have seen that the attempt at integration or para-thetic synthesis fails because the Para-thesis, while developing itself discursively and therefore, in fact, in the extended duration of the Universe [which allows it to cancel itself out, by contradicting itself, only after a certain time, more or less long, moreover], speaks only of what, for it, extends without really lasting [being “instantaneous” or “eternal”, that is to say, situated in a stationary “instant” even spatialized (nunc stans)], or of what co-exists only, without ever preceding nor following itself anywhere. This is how the Para-thesis speaks of Thesis and Anti-thesis. And this is why, by trying to say everything “at the same time” (that is to say, at the same time), (( the Para-thesis ends by noting what it cannot say: neither what the Thesis had said, nor what the Anti-thesis said while contradicting it. Now, the Syn-thesis succeeds precisely where the Para-thesis fails. It re-says what the Thesis and the Anti-thesis had said, and it can do so without what one of the two said contradicting or discursively cancelling everything that the other had said, because it re-says the one after the other, taking into account and rendering the account discursively, by repeating them both, not without the deep “meaning” involved in the fact that the one is posterior to the other. It thus says effectively (without contradicting itself) not only all that the Anti-thesis said by contradicting all that the Thesis had said, but also all that the latter said at a time when nothing yet contradicted it. And that is why it says, while re-saying it, all that one can say without contradicting oneself, thus actualising in and by one and the same discourse which is its own, the totality of the Potential Discourse which it presupposes as a Hypothesis, or as an intention to speak in order to say anything and therefore everything that has any common sense (as meaning).
If the actualisation of the Hypo-thesis by the Thesis, the Anti-thesis and the Para-thesis introduces the Discourse into the extended duration of the Universe, it is the Syn-thesis alone which introduces this extended duration into the Discourse, insofar as the latter is actualised as this synthetic, integral or uni-total discourse that it is itself as long as it lasts and extends. It is by this “temporalisation” of the meaning of the discourse that it is itself (and which is “temporal”, as are all discourses whatever they may be) that the Syn-thesis differs essentially from the Thesis, the Antithesis and the Para-thesis. It is maintaining itself as discourse not only “for a time” (that is, during the time that a discourse is not contradicted, neither by itself nor by another discourse), but all the time that it has been, is and will be what it is, that is to say, discourse endowed with a meaning that does not contradict itself (neither by itself, nor by a counter-sense-saying). By saying (explicitly) that everything one speaks of (without contradicting oneself) is S and S only (which means, implicitly, that one cannot speak of anything as a Not-S), the Thesis, which in fact says it in a hic et nunc of the extended duration of the Universe or of the World-where-one-speaks, does not itself bind to this hic et nunc, in its own discourse, nor this speech itself, nor the meaning of what is said there. It is the same for the Anti-thesis when it says (explicitly) that, nothing of what one speaks (without contradicting oneself) being able to be S, one can say nothing, except that everything is No -S. Because in saying it, one could neither say what should not be said, nor when one said what one should. (???) Now, if neither the Thesis nor the Anti-thesis situate themselves, in the extended duration in which they are actualized (in different hic et nunc) as discourse, neither what they speak of, nor what they say about it (by contradicting one another), the Para-thesis does not do so either when it speaks of what it had said, and it does not situate itself either. -even in the extended duration in which it is actualised (in a hic et nunc distinct from the preceding ones), neither as such, nor in relation to the Thesis and the Anti-thesis of which it speaks. The Para-thesis therefore results in the Silence of the contra-diction because it can neither situate the Thesis (or the meaning of what it says) before or after the Anti-thesis (or the meaning of what it says), nor situating itself after or before them. And this is how it is inevitably led to mean all “at the same time” [and not even “at the same time”, to tell the truth, since what has neither “before” nor “after is not in “time”, nor therefore in the “present”, unless it is a question of the so-called “present” of a so-called “eternal presence”], which forces, in the end, to say nothing at all [after having vainly, but for a long time, tried to say “partially” anything].
Quite different, on the other hand, is synthetic discourse. On the one hand, the Syn-thesis situates itself, in the extended duration of the Universe where it is actualised, after the Para-thesis which, for it, is preceded by the Anti-thesis, which precedes the thesis. And the Syn-thesis thus situates itself, in the extended duration where the hic et nunc of its own discursive actualisation is situated, not only as the effective discourse that it is, but also as the meaning of this discourse. In other words, the Syn-thesis is not only, like all discourses whatever they may be, a temporal discourse, but also a “temporalised” discourse. When the Syn-thesis begins its discursive development (that is, its actualisation), it re-says everything that the Thesis had said without modifying or adding anything to it; -except the assertion that what it re-says (as Syn-thesis) has been said (by the Thesis), as not contradicted (by the Anti-thesis), only in and for the past. Having said all this, the Syn-thesis continues its development by restating all that the Anti-thesis had said, without modifying it and adding only the assertion that it is only in and for the Present of its actuality that the Anti-thesis contradicted everything that the Thesis had previously said and affirmed, therefore, becoming the opposite of everything that the latter said. Now, by the very fact that the Syn-thesis says so, everything that the Para-thesis said before it becomes “without-objects, since the latter spoke only of the (spatial) co-existence of the Thesis and of the Anti-thesis, disregarding the fact of their (temporal) succession. The Syn-thesis might not re-say the Para-thesis at all, since the latter itself says nothing at all, having previously reduced itself to silence, by not re-saying either what the Anti-thesis said before it, nor what the Thesis had said before it, only contradicting everything that it itself had said. In other words, in synthetic repetition, the Para-thesis (which has reduced itself to silence by contradicting itself) could be present only in and by what the Synthesis does not say (and this which cannot be said without contradicting itself). But the Syn-thesis could just as well re-say everything that the Para-thesis had said, without contradicting itself for all that, since it would re-say the para-thetical sayings by temporising them, that is to say, by situating them, in relation to synthetic discourse, in a past which was a future for the Antithesis which contradicted the Thesis which had preceded it in time. As for the Syn-thesis itself, it completes its own discursive development or is completely actualised as such, by adding to what it has re-said that everything it says is said in its present for any future: because what it says here and now can never be contradicted anywhere, since it does not contradict anything itself and it not only re-says everything that has been said (in the past) as being able to be contradicted (in a present yet to come), but still everything that was said (in a present already past) by contradicting it (as co-present) . The temporalisation” of the Discourse aside, the Syn-thesis only re-says what the Anti-thesis said “in its time”, which itself re-says the Thesis by contradicting it (the two thus saying together all that one can say). The Syn-thesis is therefore nothing other, nor more, but nothing less either, than the “temporalised” Anti-thesis, that is to say, the Anti-Thesis being situated in a Present (of the extended duration of the Universe) which is also the Future, because in relation to it (as well as in and for itself) the Thesis is only the Past.
This is how the Syn-thesis differs not only from the Thesis, since it re-says what the Anti-thesis had said and what the Thesis did not say, but also from the Anti-thesis, since in re-saying it, it no longer contradicts what the Thesis said as the Anti-thesis had done (but only re-says it, like a “past thesis”). And it differs finally from the Para-thesis, because the latter did not manage to re-say, neither what the Anti-thesis said, nor what the Thesis had said, while the Syn-thesis re-says itself (successively) what one and the other said. The Syn-thesis re-says everything that the authentic Thesis said, that is to say, the discourse that said everything that was not (yet) contradicted; but it re-says it as no longer being contradicted, because it has already passed. And it re-says everything that the authentic Anti-thesis said; but it re-says it without contradicting anything, because at the moment it re-says it, everything that could be contradicted by re-saying the Antithesis, is no longer said at all, having only been said in the past. In short, the Syn-thesis is the future of the Anti-thesis which is present without any Thesis other than that of a definitive past. Thus, the Syn-thesis cancels the Thesis and the Anti-thesis as co-present; but it preserves the Thesis as past and sublimates it as negated by the Anti-thesis, which is also annulled as contradicting the Thesis, but preserved in what it presently affirms and sublimated, insofar as it is henceforth alone to say it, without contradicting anything, nor being itself contradicted. And it is as annulled, preserved and sublimated by “temporalization” (even “dialectically suppressed: aufgehoben) that Thesis and Anti-thesis indefinitely maintain their discursive presence in the Present of the extended duration of the Universe where they are actualised; and this as one and the same Syn-thesis, which is the fully developed Discourse or the fully actualised Hypo-thesis.
In short, the Discourse in potency (that is to say, the Intention-to-speak, sup-posed discursively as a Hypothesis) is actualised during an effective discursive process, which lasts and extending. This process begins with the actualization of the thetic discourse, which says that everything (what we talk about) is S (whatever this S) and that nothing (what we talk about) is Not-S. For a time, no speech contradicts what this first speech says. Then comes a moment when a second discourse is actualised, which is antithetical because it contradicts everything that was said by the first: it says that nothing (of what we speak) is S and that, consequently, everything (what we talk about) is Non-S. The co-existence or co-presence of these two contrary discourses in the Present relegates to the Past the solitary presence or existence of the Thesis, while the possible presence of the Anti-thesis only is still situated in the Past. In the course of their co-presence, the contrary theses discursively cancel each other out. Thus, taken and understood as a whole, the discourses actualised until now are reduced to the purely virtual Discourse of the discursive origin: everything that is said, in the Present, by contradicting itself, is only hypothetical, and the Discourse as such de-actualises itself to re-become the virtual or potential Discourse that is the discursive Hypo-thesis or the Intention-to-speak. If this discursive-Intention or this Discourse-to-come is also actualised in the extended-duration, it CAN be presented as a re-telling of the Thesis (assuming that whoever will re-present it in the Present [with a view to the Future] will be able to completely forget the Past, which also implied what was to come when the Thesis it now re-presents presented itself for the first time). In this case, the discursive process is re-produced as it is; and it CAN re-occur in this way “indefinitely”. The Discourse as such will then remain everywhere and always hypothetical, we will speak “endlessly” according to the discursive-Intention, that is to say, the desire to say something; but, in fact, nothing will be said. For the Discourse never being finished, its meaning will always remain in-definite or not “definite”. This discourse will be constantly actualised in a present to come or already past, but it will never be in action in the present. A day MAY come, however, when the Hypo-thesis will be actualised not by a thetic discourse which does not yet deny anything, nor by an antithetical discourse which affirms only to contradict, nor even by para-thetics discourses, where all the contrary theses mutually contradict each other, thus canceling everything that can be said, but by a single discourse that says everything while contradicting nothing. This synthetic discourse can only re-say what the Anti-thesis said. But, as a result, it will also re-say the Thesis, which has already been re-spoken by the Anti-thesis, due to the fact that it was denied by the latter. Only, by relegating the Thesis to a Past without a presence to come, the synthetic discourse will not contradict it (with a view to the Future) in the Present where it will itself be present, contrary to what the Anti-thesis did when its own presence was a Present. Thus, the actuality or the effective presence of the Syn-thesis relegates to a Past (without present future) not only the Thesis without Anti-thesis, but also the latter, insofar as it contradicts by its presence the Thesis as a Thesis still present and not already past, as well as the Para-thesis, which presents itself only to re-present as co-present, to itself and between them, the Thesis and the Anti-thesis . Now, if the co-presence of the Thesis and the Anti-thesis (one of which is prior to the other, but which together exhaust all the possibilities of the Discourse as such), what is the presence of the Para-thesis (which is the set of discourses whatever they may be, reduced to the state of Virtual Discourse or Discursive Hypo-thesis, that is to say, reduced to the sole Intention-to -speak, constantly renewing itself, but never realising itself), is henceforth only a Past in relation to the Present where the Syn-thesis presents itself, & where this Present can have no other discursive Future than that of an “indefinite” re-presentation of this Syn-thesis itself. For unless we suppose that a fine day will come, when all will cease to understand in the evening not only all that had been said in the distant past, but also all that was still said on the morning of this very day, nothing can no longer be said without saying (or being able to say) that what is said, re-says what has been said, given that everything has already been said. But since we could say everything without contradicting anything, we haven’t contradicted what we said either. The Syn-thesis, which does not contradict anything, does not therefore cancel itself out as discourse, but is presented as a discourse in action. And since it re-says everything, it is any Discourse or Discourse as such that has been actualised in and by the actuality of the Syn-thesis. In other words, the Discourse ceases to be Hypo-thesis as soon as it is actualised as Syn-thesis (but not before). From now on, the Discourse in potential sup-poses the Discourse in action (which presupposes it): one can no longer have in the Present an intention to speak, in or for the Future, except with a view to re-saying ( in whole or in part) what has already been said in the Past. In a Past, moreover, where one contradicted, in a certain present, everything that one had said (in the past) in order to contradict everything that had been said before; so that all were silenced there by and for all. In the presence of such a contradictory or para-thetical universal silence, the desire was born to say in one and the same synthetic discourse all that one can say, without contradicting anything more. At the cost of great efforts, this discursive desire was one day fully and definitively satisfied. But since then, it is now enough to have it, to be able to satisfy it easily.
That said, I would like to sum up everything I previously said about the Dialectic in a single word, borrowed from Hegel’s own vocabulary. We have, in fact, said everything about “the Hegelian Dialectic” by saying that this Dialectic is an Aufhebung. Unfortunately, no translation of this common German word can render its triple meaning: suppression or cancellation, preservation and elevation or sublimation. This is why I am obliged to replace it with an artificial technical term, moreover compound, such as “dialectic-overcoming” for example. But we might find a much better solution. Be that as it may, we effectively sum up everything that can be said (without contradicting oneself) when speaking of the Dialectic (if not discovery, at least one which was definitively and completely brought to light by Hegel), if one says that the Syn-thesis dialectically suppresses the Thesis and the Anti-thesis (the Para-thesis “suppressing” itself in a non-” dialectical” manner, that is to say without “preserving” or “rising” above anything, including itself). Indeed, the Syn-thesis PRESERVES the Thesis, as one “conserves” the Past by “keeping” its memory (Er-innerung); but it REMOVES (in the sense of canceling) the Anti-thesis as a “contrary thesis”, even as a “negative” or “negative” Thesis of “Nihilism”, which does not present itself (anymore) in the actuality of the Present only to contradict what is actually said there in its very presence; it is thus that it RAISE itself above the Thesis (which it suppresses as present, but preserves, for the present to come, as past) and the Anti-thesis (which it suppresses in its negating presence, but retains for the future as re-saying everything it had said in its past, without however contradicting anything in its present), thereby RAISING the Thesis and the Anti-thesis above themselves, insofar as the Syn-thesis is itself this same ex-Antithesis, which henceforth no longer contradicts the Thesis, although it continues to suppose it in the future as having been contradicted by it in a present which is now definitively past.
TO BE CONTINUED. EDITED, ETC.
For a much larger discussion, where the history of philosophy itself unfolds itself through thus scheme – a text of 15, 000 words or so, you could try to see:
הערות שהיו סתם. שיהיו. ״רופאים החותכים, שורפים, דוקרים ומענים חולים, דורשים על כך שכר שלא מגיע להם לקבל״. הרקליטוס על רופאי שיניים (נערך שם, שם).מילים אחרות לבדיחה המרקסיסטית: ״את זה הדיאלקטיקה כבר פתרה״: עבור הגל, התוצאה של ה”דיאלקטיקה” הקלאסית של ה”דיאלוג”, כלומר הניצחון שזכה ב”דיון” מילולי בלבד, אינה קריטריון מספיק לאמת. במילים אחרות, “דיאלקטיקה” דיסקורסיבית ככזו אינה יכולה, לדבריו, להוביל לפתרון סופי של בעיה (כלומר, פתרון שנשאר ללא שינוי לכל עת), מהסיבה הפשוטה שאם אתה משאיר את הבעיה בדיבור, אתה לעולם לא תצליח “לחסל” סופית את הסותר או, כתוצאה מכך, את הסתירה עצמה; כי להפריך מישהו זה לא בהכרח לשכנע אותו. “סתירה” או “מחלוקת” (בין אדם לטבע מחד גיסא, או מאידך גיסא, בין אדם לאדם, או אפילו בין אדם לסביבה החברתית וההיסטורית שלו) ניתן “לבטל באופן דיאלקטי to done away with dialectically (כלומר, לבטל במידה שהם “שקריים”, לשמור במידה שהם “נכונים”, ולהעלאות לרמה גבוהה יותר של “דיון”) רק במידה שהם משוחקים ומוצגים במישור ההיסטורי של חיים חברתיים פעילים שבהם “מתווכחים” על ידי פעולות של עבודה (נגד הטבע) ומאבק (נגד בני אדם אחרים). אמנם, האמת היוצאת מתוך ה”דיאלוג הפעיל” הזה, הדיאלקטיקה ההיסטורית הזו, רק ברגע שהיא הושלמה, כלומר ברגע שההיסטוריה מגיעה לשלב האחרון שלה במדינה האוניברסלית וההומוגנית, וזאת מאחר שהיא מרמזת על סיפוק האזרחים החיים בה. שהרי, “סיפוק”, שולל כל אפשרות של שלילת פעולה, ומכאן של כל שלילה באופן כללי, ומכאן, של כל “דיון” חדש על מה שכבר נקבע. אך, אפילו מבלי לרצות להניח, עם מחבר הפנומנולוגיה של הרוח, שההיסטוריה כבר כמעט “הושלמה” בזמננו, אפשר לטעון שאם ה”פתרון” לבעיה היה, למעשה, היסטורית תקף או לפחות “תקף” מבחינה חברתית לאורך כל התקופה שחלפה מאז, אם כן, בהיעדר הוכחה (היסטורית) להיפך, וכי יש זכות לראות בו “תקף” מבחינה פילוסופית, למרות “הדיון” המתמשך של הפילוסופים על הבעיה. בכל הנוגע לזה, אפשר להניח שברגע המתאים, ההיסטוריה עצמה תשים קץ ל”דיון פילוסופי”, המתמשך והאינסופי, של הבעיה שהיא למעשה “פתרה”. הדיאלקטיקה לא פותרת כלום. רק ההיסטורי ה. /// אבל למה ככה? הנה, הגל, ומהפכות ישראליות. -1. זה בהיעדר זיכרון היסטורי (או הבנה) שמתקיימת לה סכנת התמותה של ניהיליזם או ספקנות, זו שתבטל הכל בלי לשמר דבר, אפילו בצורת הזיכרון. חברה שמבלה את זמנה בהקשבה לאינטלקטואל ה”נון-קונפורמיסטי” באופן קיצוני, שמשעשע את עצמו בכך ששולל (מילולית!) כל נתון (אפילו הנתון ה”סובלימטיבי” שנשמר בזיכרון היסטורי) אך ורק משום שהוא נתון, בסופו של דבר שוקעת לתוך אנרכיה לא פעילה והיעלמות. כמו כן, המהפכן שחולם על “מהפכה קבועה” השוללת כל סוג של מסורת ואינה לוקחת בחשבון את העבר הקונקרטי, למעט ההתגברות עליו לכאורה, מסתיימת בהכרח או באין של אנרכיה חברתית או בביטול עצמי, פיזית או פוליטית. רק המהפכן שמצליח לשמר או לבסס מחדש את המסורת ההיסטורית, על ידי שימור בזיכרון החיובי את ההווה הנתון, שהוא עצמו הדחיק לעבר על ידי שלילתו, מצליח ליצור עולם היסטורי חדש המסוגל להתקיים. או: 2. אם חיה, או אדם כחיה, מגיעה לצומת המסתעפת לשני כיוונים, הרי שהיא יכולה ללכת ימינה או שמאלה: שתי האפשרויות תואמות כאפשרויות, עוד שהן אפשרויות. אבל אם החיה באמת לוקחת את הדרך ימינה, לא ייתכן שהיא גם לקחה את הדרך שמאלה, ולהפך: שתי האפשרויות אינן תואמות כמי שכבר התממשו. חיה שיצאה בדרך ימינה חייבת לחזור על עקבותיה כדי לצאת לדרך שמאלה. גם האדם כחיה חייב לעשות זאת. אבל בתור אדם – כלומר, כהוויה היסטורית (או “רוחנית” או, טוב יותר, דיאלקטית) – הוא אינו חוזר על עקבותיו. ההיסטוריה לא חוזרת לאחור, ובכל זאת היא מסתיימת על הדרך שמאלה לאחר שהיא עלתה על הדרך ימינה. זה בגלל שהייתה מהפכה, זה בגלל שהאדם שלל את עצמו כמחויב לדרך ימינה, ולאחר שהפך, כך, להיות אחר ממה שהיה, שהוא סיים בדרך שמאלה. הוא שלל את עצמו מבלי להיעלם לחלוטין ובלי להפסיק להיות אדם. אבל החיה שבו, שהייתה בדרך לימין, לא יכלה לגמור בדרך שמאלה: לכן היא נאלצה להיעלם, והאדם שאותו היא מגלמת היה צריך למות. (זה יהיה נס אם מהפכה תוכל להצליח בלי שדור אחד יחליף את השני – בצורה טבעית, או פחות ! יותר אלימה). 3. בינתיים, החיה לקחה ימינה. פאנדר, זאוס! בקראטילוס של אפלטון, הרמוגנס שואל על השמות היפים הנוגעים למידות טובות; איננו יודעים אם הוא חושד שהמידות הטובות אינן אלא שמות נאים. לפי סוקרטס, אבל, “הדברים היפים” (ta kala) היו במקור “הדברים כביכול” (ta kaloumena), ו”שם” היה “הוויה שיש אחריה חיפוש”; כך שהביטוי של הרמוגנס, “שמות יפים”, מסמל “שאלות של הוויה כביכול.” עד כאן על ההוויה, ו-! ההוויה? ״עלות השחר״ היא כבר על הזמן אחרי ה-und, היכן שהיידה!-guerre, גר, ״שוכן״—היעדר של כל ספק אפשרי נראה בבירור, אך פורש בצורה גרועה, על ידי דקארט. למעשה ואצלנו, אין הבדל עקרוני בין המושג EGO למושג VASE. ברגע שהאדם “מבין” את המושגים המדוברים, הוא בטוח ללא כל ספק אפשרי, שהמשמעות VASE של המושג VASE, בדיוק כמו המשמעות EGO של המושג EGO, היא / is (“משהו” ולא “כלום”) . ההוויה של המשמעות EGO לא מרמזת יותר או פחות על קיומו של אגו ב-hic et nunc מאשר ההוויה של המשמעות VASE מרמזת על קיומו של אגרטל ב-hic et nunc. קיומו, כאן ועכשיו, של אגרטל או אגו מתגלה רק בתפיסה ועל ידי התפיסה/ in and by Perception (ושכוללת מה שנקרא בכתובים חוש פרופריוצפטיבי / proprioceptive). עכשיו, זה כלל לא משנה. אבל אם זה בכלל משנה, אז האגרטל ולא האגו (כי-) דקארט רוצה להסיר ספק מה- / להגיע אל ה- מציאות החיצונית, אז VASE מה-EGO. אז הנה בבקשה. ו- תודה גם לך. =+ אגב ה-vase בהתחלה: בפרודיה על דקארט, וולטייר כותב (“מכתבים פילוסופיים, 13”): “אני גוף ואני חושב: אני לא יודע יותר מזה” (או “זה כל מה שאני יודע על זה [je n’en sais pas d’advantage]” ). דקארט, איך אריסטו אמר? האדם הוא החיה היחידה שצוחקת. —זה מעניין לראות כמה הבורות שלנו אחורה היא ממש על הפונדמנטליסטים שמעולם לא קראנו. התער של אוקאם, שגם אותו או אפילו עליו, אף פעם לא קראנו באמת, נשמע כמו פרפרזה של פסקה מאריסטו, מהטופיקס (ככלים וכללים כלליים למחשבה של הפילוסוף כדיאלקטיקן) – בעבר, כמובן, כולם התחילו עם זה, ואריסטו היה ״הדוקטור של הכנסייה״: It is also a fault in reasoning when a man shows something through a long chain of steps, when he might employ fewer steps and those already included in his argument: suppose him to be showing (e.g., that one opinion is more properly so called than another, and suppose him to make his postulates as follows: ‘x-in-itself is more fully x than anything else’: ‘there genuinely exists an object of opinion in itself’: therefore ‘the object-of-opinion-in-itself is more fully an object of opinion than the particular objects of opinion’. Now ‘a relative term is more fully itself when its correlate is more fully itself’: and ‘there exists a genuine opinion-in-itself, which will be “opinion” in a more accurate sense than the particular opinions’: and it has been postulated both that ‘a genuine opinion-in-itself exists’, and that ‘x-in-itself is more fully x than anything else’: therefore ‘this will be opinion in a more accurate sense’. Wherein lies the viciousness of the reasoning? Simply in that it conceals the ground on which the argument depends. אני לא יודע כלום על תערו של אוקאם. לא קראתי אותו, אעשה זאת בקרובֿ עכשיו, זה לומר, כשיש לי נקודת מוצא/עניין, ובזמן האחרון, וזה יהיה לתמיד, אני די עיקש בלהשאיר שמועות בגבולותיהן, כלומר, מקור שגוי, אך אם מפתה גם, אז אולי מקור שגוי למקור הקורא עצמו לקריאה, אבל אני יודע מהקונטקסט המתלהב של השמועות, כי העניין מאד פופולארי ב״פילוסופיה״ של כותרות- פילוסופיה עכשווית, כלומר, אקדמית, כאילו היה לעיצוב מינימליסטי של שולחן – אני לא יודע עדיין מה התער של המזדיין הזה אומר, אבל מעניין אם גם הוא מסתיים ב-caveat הבא של אריסטו: Wherein lies the viciousness of the reasoning? Simply in that it conceals the ground on which the argument depends. טוב נו. —מומחה לתקופה הכחולה של פיקאסו. לא, לא, זה לא כולל את התקופה הורודה, מה?! הייתה לו תקופה של rose, שו האדה רוז? טוב נו, כשם שאמרתי, אני מומחה בעל שם עולם לתקופה הכחולה של פיקאסו. כן, היה שם כחול, אבל זה לא מדוייק. אם אעז, אומר: התקופה הכחולה זאת התקופה שבה פיקאסו צבע את הציורים שלו בכחול. הופה! אני אצבע את השלכת בירוק?! סבבה! תודה פרופסור. היה מרתק איתך, אבל ממש. אף פעם לא חשבתי כך על התקופה הכחולה! אף אחד לא מסביר את התקופה הכחולה טוב כמוך! אני מכור לאיך שאתה מסביר את התקופה הכחולה! נכון שאף אחד לא מסביר את התקופה הכחולה טוב כמוהו? נכון?! שקט, סטודנט דביל, תהיה בשקט. [סטודנטים במדעי הרוח, איזה חנונים מגוחכים, למות]. This strange dynamics of the contradiction in religion amazes me. It is perhaps the radical opening to the Word into history, hence history, while having this combined with this radical closure to history as being implied from the Word from without history: /// From the moment that God wanted to create Man in his image, it was in a human body that he necessarily had to be incarnated (contrary to what certain theologians at the end of the Middle Ages asserted, more or less seriously, perhaps following Origen). In other words, in the “human nature” of Christ, the human essence is linked in a univocal and necessary way to the human body. This leads us to admit that this link is just as necessary in all men, whatever they may be, being the same everywhere and always, that is to say, even after death and, possibly, before birth. But the arbitrary character of the Incarnation, that is to say of the real presence of the Spirit in the World, incites us to introduce into a purely human man an element that is always “free” from the necessary link between the “human soul” (essence) and the “human animal” (body). Thus, while admitting “secular” Hellenic or scientistic anthropology, Christian Theology affirms “alongside” a “magical” anthropo-theism which contradicts this anthropology in toto and always, that is to say, even after death and possibly before birth. But the arbitrary character of the Incarnation, that is to say of the real presence of the Spirit in the World, encourages us to introduce into purely human man a “sovereign” or “free” element vis-à-vis the necessary connection between the essence “human soul” and the body “human animal”. Thus, while admitting “secular” Hellenic or scientistic anthropology, Christian Theology affirms “on the side” a “magical” anthropo-theism which contradicts this anthropology. //// Today, and as if all changes are being adjusted and accounted for, I have found a similar dynamics in Buddhism, in a sense, that is; and we have this, of course (my hand is hurting. I hit the keys like crazy)///: Theology [which implies, by definition, as a “strange body”, the “divine [?] word”, revealed by a Revelation that is certainly discursive, but not “deducible” from the set of strictly human theological discourses, which are nevertheless supposed to have and be able [?] to develop in a coherent [?] way the (discursive) meaning of the revealed notions (and the notion of Revelation); now, this is an obvious contradiction, but it is this contradiction which leads back to Revelation. Or: it is the imperfect or incomplete character of this development, even the incoherence of the development, which brings Theology to perfect itself, by ending with a return to its starting point, being interpreted as a revelation of the fact that the revealed meaning necessarily involves non-discursive or non-developable elements in and through coherent discourse] seems to have first come to light on the occasion of Christology, including the dogmas of the incarnation of the Logos. and of the crucifixion of Jesus, that is to say, of the historical event par excellence, which was this death, supposed to have been violent, but voluntary and highly conscious, not only from the beginning of the torture until its end, but still as a project or pre-vision, if not desired, at least admitted and “verified” with full knowledge of the facts. /// Okay, and this is okay: some things should be said, whatever.—2 Possible Introductory Notes to Plato’s Possible Introductions. 1. In the present state of things, it is practically impossible to justify an exposition of Platonic philosophy by quotations. We know only the Dialogues of Plato. Now, these are all or almost all polemical, and they have this particularity that the doctrine of Plato himself appears in them only between the lines. Plato conceals it on purpose, because its discovery by the reader (or the listener) is supposed to be a touchstone of his philosophical aptitudes. Often, the opinions of the adversaries whom Plato criticises are presented in such a way (especially when the dialogue is led by someone other than Socrates: Stranger of Elea, Timaeus, Critias, etc.) that one can perfectly identify these opinions, at least at first sight, with an authentic Platonic doctrine, especially if one does not take sufficient account of the Socratic “irony” and the “joke” (paidia) of Plato. We can therefore produce “quotes” in support of almost any interpretation or misinterpretation of Platonism. Under these conditions, it would be better to give up quoting Plato as long as an adequate interpretation of each of his Dialogues does not establish the authentic meaning (Platonic or not) and the scope (ironic, pleasant or “serious”) of each word in it (i.e., the great project of Leo Strauss, Jacob Klein, etc., except that there is no etc.). However, such an interpretation has barely begun. Therefore, when I quote Plato in what follows, I ask the reader to trust me with regard to the interpretation of the quoted passages. For there can be no question of justifying the proposed interpretation of the Platonic texts in the present work. Moreover, an informed reader will see that my interpretation often deviates greatly from the traditional interpretation. /// To begin with, and with respect of the dialogues, let us say the following: it could be said that each of Plato’s Dialogues is an “image” of that curious (and in no way “obvious”) way of seeing things, according to which one can speak the truth only if one is silent [as well], while being able to be “truly” [that is, humanly] silent only to the extent that one speaks [not of Silence itself (which would in no way be contra-dictory), but further of that of which one is silent (which is contra-dictory to the extent that that silence is “justified” by the assertion that it is impossible to speak of it)]. Indeed, in every true Dialogue, an explicitly discursive Thesis is opposed to an Anti-thesis, which itself also is explicitly discursive. But in a Platonic Dialogue (which is an au- thentic Dialogue), the discursive Synthesis is never made explicit. It is present only implicitly in the discourse put into dia-logue form ((dia- logué)), and it belongs to the hearer or reader of the Dialogue to make it explicit. Now, if the interlocutors of the Dialogue speak, their hearers (for the Platonic Dialogues were spoken or “played” during the lifetime of their author) are silent. It is therefore in silence or from Silence that the one, unique Truth springs forth, begotten by the clash of the two “contrary” discursive Opinions. But this Truth is Knowledge only to the extent that it is itself discursive. That is where the Contra-diction in Platonic Theology resides. / From here, to begin the discourse. To go to: dialectics-ontology. /// 2. If we only knew Plato through the texts of Aristotle, we would have the impression of dealing with a second-rate philosopher, belonging to the so-called “Pythagorean” School, but with an eclectic tendency. On the one hand, under the influence of a certain Cratylus, Plato would have tried to combine Pythagorism with Heracliteism, by way of purely terminological modifications, without even trying to solve the fundamental problems involved. Moreover, that Plato would also have been influenced by Socrates. But his orientation, both Pythagorean and Heraclitean, did not allow him to properly understand what the latter wanted: whence the absurd theory of Ideas which substantialises the Socratic Universals and situates them, one does not really know where, outside the Cosmos, like so many objects supposed to be “eternal”, but in fact modelled on the things of this world (cf. Met., 1078b, 30-10794, 3). In short, taking Aristotle literally, one might have thought that the so-called Plato distinguished himself by a verbalism which is eclectic to the point of being incoherent and which contributes nothing to the real solution of the philosophical problems. Aristotle spent twenty years with Plato and devoted so many pages to him (it is true, all “critical”) in his own works. But we would, on the other hand, understand very well why Tradition speaks to us of rather tense relations between the Pupil and the Master (which is not contradicted, incidentally, nor by the famou but dubious Elegy from Aristotle to Eudimus, nor by the famous but inconclusive testimonial of friendship found in the Nicomachean Ethics). However, all this is only pure appearance, and even without knowing the works of Plato, one could see, just by reading what Aristotle says about them, the exceptional importance of the latter for philosophical history. For, as I will try to show, the three Aristotelian texts quoted above suffice to show that Plato was the first to develop the thetical Para-thesis of Philosophy. As for the so-called “Pythagoreanism” of Plato, it is very difficult to say, since we know almost nothing of the “pre-Platonic Pythagoreanism.” In any case, what Aristotle tells us about it (with the obvious intention of diminishing Plato’s originality) is quite contradictory. On the one hand (ibid., 9875, 12), he claims that Platonic Participation is just another name for Pythagorean Imitation. But, on the other hand (ibid., 9876, 28-30), he says that for the Pythagoreans the Numbers (moreover mathematical) are constituent-elements of the sensible Things themselves, whereas, for Plato, the Numbers (both mathematical and ideals, even numbered-Ideas) are separated from Things or transcendent in relation to their whole (which is the spatio-temporal Cosmos). Now, it is precisely this transcendence which makes the set of Ideas (which is the eternal Cosmos noetos) a manifestation of the parathetico-thetic Concept and therefore, of Plato, a very great philosopher. On the other hand, we can very well speak of Pythagorean atomic-numbers or numerical-atoms without speaking at all of Concept, whatever it is, that is, to say anything truly philosophic. It is thus, for example, that “Timaeus” (- Eudoxus) constructs a Cosmos where one can do everything except talk about it and where there is no place for the Concept itself nor for Philosophy which talks about it. In other words, the so-called “Pythagoreans” contemporaries of Plato may very well have been not philosophers, but pure “Scholars of the Democritean type, who were concerned only with Physics properly speaking, that is to say, with Energo-metrie (or more exactly, given the time, of Energo-graphy). Be that as it may, we can without great damage (even “historical”) completely neglect the alleged & Pythagorean sources a of Plato and retain only the “influence” of Socrates, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, that of (direct or indirect) Heraclitus, to which must be added that of Parmenides. / That I have already done.—2 Notes. Plato’s Mathematics.1. The religious character of Platonic Theology also explains why Plato presented Mathematics, not as a simple “degeneracy” of Energo-logy, that is to say, as its trans-formation into metrics, but as something intermediate between this and Phenomenology or Phenomenometrics. In Plato, Energo-logy assures the link between Phenomeno-logy and an Onto-logy understood as a religious one, that is to say, as a transcendent “Axiology”. This is why his Energo-logy is “ideal” or “animist”, and not “atomist” or “material”. In other words, the Platonic Ideas are also religious values, that is, non-quantifiable values. Moreover, in Plato, there is only an ideal pseudometry. The notion of the Idea certainly degenerates into a symbol when it is deprived of its meaning and Plato calls these symbols “Numbers”. But he is careful to specify that these are “ideal numbers” which, precisely, cannot be divided and cannot be added together (being many ordinals). Now, Aristotle rightly remarks that such “Numbers” have nothing to do with ordinary mathematical numbers (cardinals). And Plato recognises this himself, since he inserts the mathematical Numbers between these ideal Numbers and the concrete magnitudes, which are measured phenomena. Thus, from the psychological point of view, Plato’s “systematic” errors relating to Mathematics are explained by his basic religious attitude: by understanding Onto-logy as a Theology, he necessarily had to exclude Mathematics from it and reject them in Energo-logy; but the religious (“ideal”) character of the latter did not allow the introduction of Mathematics properly so called; the latter obviously not being able to be considered as a degeneration of Phenomenology, Plato was obliged to introduce into his System a “mezzanine” in order to house there “pure” Mathematics.=2Plato’s “error” relating to the “systematic situation of Mathematics gave rise not only to the “negative criticism” of Aristotle, but also to attempts at “positive criticism”, even a reworking of the Platonist System inside the Academy. According to Aristotle, Speusippus seems to have drawn the consequence of the transcendence of the Platonic Ideal World by identifying Ideas with “mathematical” Numbers. From the point of view of Mathematics itself, it was an “improvement on Platonism.” But, from the point of view of Philosophy, it was either an “incoherence” or a relapse into the Parmendian Thesis. For if Speusippus had identified the mathematical World with the Being-given, he would have rediscovered the systematic construction “on two floors without the beautiful floor” of Parmenides (while discovering in Philosophy the “mathematical” character of the Being-given). But he didn’t. He kept the Platonic construction “on three levels, because he kept the ex-Ideas that had become Planets in the same situation that Plato assigned to his ideal World “between” the empirical Cosmos and the doubly transcendent Parmenidean One. In other words, Speusippus retained the Platonic location of the Ideal World, but he dislodged the Ideas from it or, more exactly, he suppressed them as Ideas, retaining in a way only their numbers, which thereby ceased. to be “ideal”, and became ordinary “mathematical” Numbers or, at least, were supposed to become. But, in fact, it is the whole Platonic system which thus becomes “incoherent”. No doubt we know very little about Speusippus. But judging from the Epinomis of his friend Philippe d’Opus, as well as from the falsifications carried out by the editors (?) of the Laws, the Sciences benefited very little from the so-called “mathematisation” of the Platonic Ideas by Speusippus, while Philosophy in general and Platonism in particular suffered greatly from it. The fact is that Speusippus was, it seems, the first to take Plato’s Myths literally. The “imaginary description” of the ideal World ceased to be considered as “imaginary”, even fictitious, and passed itself off as an Energogology forming an integral part of the “Platonic” philosophical System properly called. Doubtless, by suppressing the Ideas, Speusippus must have eliminated the Platonic images which relate to them. But he did so only to put in their place a “magic of numbers” and an “astral religion” which were taken up by Neo-Platonism and which there took on, in a Jambilic, a distinctly “paranoid” character. But it does not seem that the Old Academy let itself be taken in by this. Xenocrates seems to have seen the danger of the “Speusippian” suppression of the Ideas of Plato. He therefore reintroduced them into the trap (in any case, System, while merging them with Numbers, which would also be both “ideal” or “conceptual” and “able mathematics”, even “metric”). But we do not see how Xenocrates could have succeeded in such an attempt at “fusion” and we do not know, in any case, anything precise on this subject. We only know that Aristotle thought nothing good of this second attempt to “reform” Platonism; he even says that it leads to a result which is “worse” than the Platonism reformed by Speusippus and than the original Platonism of Plato himself (cf. Met., 10836, 1). Moreover, these attempts had no future within the Academy, which soon sank into “scepticism”.3 MORE, perhaps:1Plato’s continuum theory and its solution to Zeno’s “paradox”. According to Plato, the Continuum (- Heraclitean River) would be resolved into pure Nothingness if it were not consolidated by a series of fixed and stable points, which are whole numbers (odd). The Aristotle-Brouwer theory applies to everything between landmarks. But each of these must be “defined” in itself and not as an “in-between” (“Dedekind cut”). We must therefore complete the Aristotelian (or Brouwerian) “refutation” of Zeno by saying that Achilles indeed catches up with the Tortoise if the two are situated somewhere “between” 1 and 3. But if the Tortoise is in 3 and Achilles is in 1, the great warrior does not catch up with the Tortoise, for the simple reason that neither of the two could move (it is to this theory of the continuum that the passage from the Timaeus seems to allude which says that the Atlantis was formerly attached to the Continent by a series of islands allowing it to be reached without getting lost in the Sea without shores (cf. Tim., 24, e-25, a and Crit., III, b). 2If the Dyad (the indefinite) is the “principle” of Multiplicity as such (which, moreover, only becomes truly quantitative when it ceases to be qualitative), it must be said that there is a multiplicity in each Number, even odd (that is to say in each Idea). Indeed, the “reason” for the difference between these numbers of the multi-odd is two, just as it is the case of the Even Numbers, which is a “multiple” by definition (3-1=5-3=2 and 4-2=6-4=2). The Dyad is, therefore, constitutive of the multiplication of all Numbers, odd or not, and therefore of their “order”, as well as “internal multiplicity”. However, each even Number is multiple (double) also in itself, while the odd Numbers imply “duality” (multiplying) only in and by their reciprocal relations.3In dealing with the Platonic Ideo-logy, one must carefully avoid misunderstandings that can easily arise. It does not act, for Plato, to “deduce” the set of Ideas from a “combination” of the notions of the One and the Dyad-indefinite. As doubly transcendent Theos, the One is both silent and ineffable: it does not “reveal itself” (“instantly” or sense of “punctually”, i.e. as a pseudo-hic and nunc without extension, nor duration) than in and by silent Ecstasy. Now, we cannot “deduce” anything discursively from the Silence; or, which comes to the same thing, we can “deduce” anything or everything from it. This is precisely why Plato does not admit human Wisdom (that is to say, the System of Knowledge), at least during the lifetime of man. [In Aristotle, the situation is different, because if the Nous is silent, it is not ineffable, at least not as Prime mover, that is to say, insofar as it is “embodied” in Matter-“ether” as Ouranos; the “induction” which leads from the sublunar World, through the celestial World, to the Nous understood as the Immobile-Motor, can therefore (at least in principle) be “reversed into a” deduction which “deduces” from the Prime-Motor first the ‘second’ immobile-Motors and then (via the Ecliptic) the Motors ’embodied’ in ‘elementary’ Matter; it is this “deduction” which is discursive Wisdom or the System of Knowledge.] As for Plato’s indefinite Dyad, it can serve just as well as the starting point of a “deduction” as Aristotle’s Hyle. Taken by themselves, the Dyad and the Hyle are pure Nothingness, hence, once more, silent or Ineffable. As a constituent element of Discourse, the Dyad is the Negation or the No [while the Hyle is the “middle term”, logically “excluded”, between the Positive and the Negative, being one and the other ” at the same time” (although only one of the two “contraries” is in it entirely”, the other being only “in potentiality”).] Applied to One, the No becomes the Not-one or the Multiple as such (moreover discursive), the One thereby becoming the Non-multiple or the Unity, also discursive. The One being “without quality”, the Multiple (as Not-one is purely qualitative), each Unit of this Multiplicity being qualitatively different from all the others; the differentiation is that of the Identical, that is to say, of a spatialization. Taken thus, the Dyad is Spatiality [and it is then the counterpart of the Aristotelian Hyle, which is also double in itself. However, spatial Units are no longer Ideas (atomic) since…they are “both ethereal AND elementary!”………//////// זהו, לא יכול עוד…3 SHORT SPECULATIONS 1. It is precisely the absence of Mediation that characterises both the Thesis and the Anti-Thesis of Philosophy. Because as soon as it speaks of Mediation (one mediates its statements, even demonstrates what it shows discursively), it is necessarily either (- first) Para-thesis (in so far as the Mediation is spatial or partially made), or (- finally) Syn-thesis or System of Knowledge (in so far as the Mediation is temporal or “total”, that is to say insofar as Philosophy shows everything, in de-monstrating everything it showed). Moreover, the Dialectical Scheme reveals this chrono-logy to us: the middle term B supposes the extreme terms of the “first”; and A is all that it is because it is the first” (which presupposes the “second without supposing it), just as B is what it is as “the second” (which supposes the “first” without presupposing it, since it denies it / say-it to the contrary). Therefore, the first philosophy could not but be thetic or ‘Parmenidean’, while the second had to be antithetical or ‘Heraclitean’. Only a third philosophy could be para-thetical and it had to be insofar as it was a Philosophy other than the two which preceded it. If, by impossibility, the order of the three philosophies had been other than the “dialectical” or chronological order, there would have been no history of Philosophy, but a succession in time of different discourses, which would not have “meaning” in the sense that the successive discourses could not be re-said in one and the same coherent discourse or one which is endowed with a unique and “definite” meaning (so that none of its constitutive-elements, that is to say, none of the successive discourses would have any meaning either). But if one wants to explain why the three successive philosophies were elaborated in determined hic et nunc, one must appeal to the “socio-historical” explanation. Finally, only “psychology” can make it clear why, for example, the Thesis was elaborated by Parmenides rather than by Heraclitus or any other Greek, contemporary and belonging to the same social milieu. 2. Here again, the Dialectical Scheme reveals the chronology. Because the fusion (discursive in and by the System of Knowledge) of three constitutive-elements supposes their distinction (discursive in and by Philosophy, properly speaking). In other words, the first “variant of the third philosophy could only be a thetic, that is, “Platonic” Para-thesis.3. The purely logical development of the Para-thesis is all the more difficult because it is necessarily contradictory in terms”. For it is very difficult to see whether a “contradictory” development is “correct” or not (this development being, moreover, “complete” as soon as it makes explicit the contradiction implied in the fundamental notion). Personally, I don’t think that a “non-Platonic” variant of the Thetical Parat-hesis is possible. Because if it were, we would certainly have found it in the more than two millennia history of traditional Platonism. It must be said, however, that the “correct” and complete distinction between what I call Onto-logy, Energo-logy and Phenomenology goes back only to Kant and that even today it is still far from being “clear”. Now, since the “specificity of traditional Platonism comes precisely from a certain confusion between Energology and Phenomenology, one cannot be sure that there is no “virtual” Platonism which would be based on a “Kantian” distinction of the three-logies. But again, this seems unlikely to me. For if such a variant existed “in potential”, why would it not have already been actualised, for example by Schelling, who was endowed with an undeniable philosophical “genius”. Generally speaking, I have the impression that the “phenomenalist” presentation of Objective-Reality, which constitutes the “specificity” of traditional Platonism, is an integral part of the “correct” (although “contradictory”) development. ”) of the Thetical Para-thesis as such. If this were so, then authentic Platonism would not admit “non-Platonic” variants.וזה תרנגול של פיקאסו. לא כחול. אבל היה לי מלא אריסטו לאחרונה וכתבתי מלא על תרנגולות. תקופת התרנגולות. שיירשם. זאת הייתה תקופת התרנגולות שלי.
הערה על פילון [[[בגלל שהוא בכל זאת יהודי לא עלינו, וזה קצר, ולא הכי פילוסופי בעולם (מבחינת שפה לפחות, אבל לא רק), אני תרגמתי (לא בלי עזרת גוגל) את ההערה (באנגלית) העוקבת (מבחינת סדר פוסט זה) את הטקסט בעברית (ההקשר הכללי שממנו נמתחה הערת הפוט-נוט הזאת היא דווקא אגב עוד ניסיון להראות כמה הסטואיקנים הם לא דתיים, ולמעשה המשך אותנטי פחות או יותר של אריסטוטליאניזם; וכן, הגל דומיננטי כאן; עוד ניסיון וכאמור, די בשוליים)]]]: הערה על פילון: אנו יכולים להצביע בהזדמנות זו על הדוקטרינה הפסאודו-סטואית של החכם שאנו מוצאים כי פותחה על ידי פילון ב-Quod omnis probus liber sit. במבט ראשון, פילון פשוט חוזר שם על מה שאומרים הסטואים (השוו עורך Loeb, כרך ט’, עמ’ 23): החכם הוא אינו עבד (מכיוון שהוא לא פוחד משום דבר, אפילו לא מהמוות) והוא גם לא מאסטר (שכן הוא אינו מחפש תהילה, כלומר הכרה על ידי אחרים) [למרות שהוא “מוכר” (אוטומטית) על ידי שאר החכמים]. אבל, למעשה, ועבורנו, בכך שהוא חוזר על דבריהם, פילון מתכוון למשהו אחר מזה שאליו הסטואים אכן מכוונים. עבורו, החכם הוא למעשה דתי, וזה, בהגדרתו, מאסטר (שכן הוא מוכן להקריב את חייו כדי להשיג או לשמור על הכרה (על ידי אלוהים) ועבד (שכן הוא מפחד מהמוות עד כדי כך בקשת חסד [מאת אלוהים] על מנת לשמר או להשיג חיים [נצחיים]). אם החכם הסטואי הוא אפוא תופעה בורגנית ספציפית (ההוויה הבורגנית ה”מושלמת”, יתרה מכך, האינטלקטואל), האדם הדתי הפילוני מסמל את האזרח: אלא שאלוהים ואלוהים בלבד אמור להיות מסוגל להעניק לו את ההכרה שהוא מבקש (במחיר כניעה מוחלטת וחד-צדדית, המניחה ומתנה את ה”הכרה” המיוחלת) יתרה מכך, האיש הדתי. של פילון דומה לחכם הסטואי, בזאת: גם הוא “חופשי” במובן של היותו “בלתי תלוי” ב”תנאים חיצוניים”. אבל אם החכם הוא “חילוני”, במובן שחייו כאן-למטה הם ” מאושרים” לא משנה מה הנסיבות שבהן הוא חי, האיש הדתי נמצא בכל מקום ותמיד “אומלל” בחיי העולם הזה (כאן-למטה), יהיו אשר יהיו, כאשר הוא יכול להיות “מאושר” רק בעולם הבא, כלומר לאחר מותו (שזה אפוא “טוב” ארצי). זה על התפיסה הדתית של “חכמה” שהתימות של היהדות, שאין להם שום קשר עם תפיסת האיש החכם הסטואית, מושתלות (על ידי) ב-פילון.
A Note ON Philo: We can point out on this occasion the pseudo-Stoic doctrine of the Sage that we find developed by Philo in Quod omnis probus liber sit. At first sight, Philo simply re-states there what the Stoics say (cf. ed. Loeb, vol. IX, p. 23 sq.): the Sage is NEITHER a Slave (since he fears nothing, not even death) NOR a Master (since he does not seek glory, that is to say, recognition by others) [although he is (automatically) “recognized” by the other Sages, who recognize him a-priori qua sage, as if a non-particular species of the SAGE, when he, as them, is otherwise too alone to be “recognized” by others; indeed, it is this state of affairs in its endurance (self-sufficiency) which make the a-priori “recognition” to be imagined as always-already in-existence]. But, in fact, and for us, Philo means something other than them by repeating them. For him, the Sage is in fact a Religious, and this one is, by definition, Master (since he is ready to sacrifice his life to obtain or maintain recognition (by God]) AND Slave (since he fears death to the point of asking for grace [from God] in order to preserve or obtain [eternal] life). If the Stoic Sage is thus a specifically bourgeois phenomenon (the “perfect” Bourgeois being, moreover, the Intellectual ), the Philonian Religious prefigures the Citizen: except that it is God and God alone who is supposed to be able to give him the recognition he seeks (at the cost of an absolute and unilateral submission, which presupposes and conditions the hoped-for “recognition.”) Moreover, the Religious man of Philo has this in common with the Stoic Sage: he is also “free” in the sense of being “independent” of “external conditions.” But if the Sage is “Secular,” in the sense that his life here below is “happy” whatever the circumstances in which he lives, the Religious man is everywhere and always “unhappy” in worldly life, whatever it may be, and can only be “blissful” in the hereafter, that is to say after his death (which is thus an earthly “good”). It is on the religious notion of “Wisdom” that the Judaic themes, which have nothing to do with the Stoic doctrine of the Sage, are grafted in Philo.
“כל טיעון אד הומינם הוא טיעון דיאלקטי.” עכשיו מה זה טיעון אד הומינם? חלק ממכם יידעו את זה. מהו טיעון אד הומינם? תלמיד: טיעון המכוון נגד אדם, ולא נגד נושא. מורה: לא. זה לא מספיק מדויק. בטיעון אד הומינם הכוונה היא שהנחת היסוד שממנה אתה מתחיל ניתנת על ידי היריב / חבר בשיחה שלך, בדיאלוג שלך איתו בעצם… אתה טוען מהנחות היסוד האלה וזה לא רלוונטי לטיעון הזה האם הנחות אלו נכונות או לא. אבל די בלהפריך אותן כדי להפריך אותו, וזה, אם הוא ייתן לך משהו להתחיל איתו… ומה שהוא מעניק לך זו הנחת היסוד. ואז תסיק מזה מסקנות; ואם המסקנות הרסניות לעמדתו, אז היא מופרכת. עד כדי כך הטיעון יכול להיות בעל ערך רב, אבל הוא לא כמובן טיעון מדעי ממש, כי הוא לא מתחיל מהנחות יסוד נכונות בהכרח ולפיכך אנו רואים כיצד. . . וכל זה . . . קשור לדיאלוגים האפלטוניים. אפשר לשאול: האם הטיעון הוא בתוך האינדיבידואל, או סוג של אינדיבידואל? אבל זאת כבר שאלה מרחיקת לכת לעכשיו… במקום, נאמר: האם בטיעון אד הומינם כדיאלקטיקה פרופר (הערת עורך: במשמעות עכשיו של דיאלוג, תזה ואנטי תזה על בסיס היפותזה מובלעת הנקראת לחשיפה…) יש תן וקח הדדים? גם. או זאת הגדרה אחרת של אותו עניין, כאילו…עניינו אנו. ואפשר לומר (עורך: חוץ מההבדל של ההתחלה, שאני מתחיל במה שהוא נותן לי כהיפותזה לטיעון ולא באפוריה עצמה…) כי בפרזנטציה או באקספוזיציה המדעית אין בהכרח תן וקח. יכולה להיות אקספוזיציה קוהרנטית ללא כל תן וקח, והאחרון הוא גם, כמובן, חלק מהטיעון של אד הומינם כטיעון דיאלקטי, כשם שנאמר על ידי אריסטו עצמו אגב, בתחילת הרטוריקה. === כל זה לקוח מתחילת השיעור הראשון על הרטוריקה של אריסטו. המורה היה רוצה לנסוק לכל כך הרבה מקומות, אבל הוא התחיל במה שנתנו לו: התלמיד טען כי זה ״טיעון המכוון נגד אדם, ולא נגד נושא״, גופו של אדם ולא גופו של עניין, וכל השטויות שכל המזייני שכל האקדמיים, חלקם אפילו פילוסופים פחחח של פח, מקשקשים בתגובה נעלבת, כאילו מישהו אמר להם פעם את האמת, קרי, שהם אידיוטים אחו-שרמוטה. אז חלאס עם זה, ועוד לטעון כי טיעון אד הומינם זו טעות לוגית הלקוחה ממה שאריסטו אמר…וזה עוד כקומון נויילגד… מהטקסטבוקס… בורות אינסוף. ===טוב יאללה יוסי. לא, השואה לא קשורה לזה. מה עם הפלאפל? הבנתי. ממשיכים בשיעור. קרא את הפסוק הבא (עורך: פסוק. ״רטוריקה״ נו: שהיהודים לא יבהלו מהפאגאני).
מזכיר! הנה אריסטו בטיעון מעניין על זה. אני חושב שזה מאד רלוונטי לימינו, ספקנות וכולי, וקשור לאד-הומינום. תוך כדי שכתבתי על משהו אחר…אולי יעניין אותך: It is interesting to note that Aristotle fully realized the situation (seeing very well that the “philosophers” who “speak” to deny the very possibility of Discourse [properly speaking, that is to say, having a de-finite meaning and thereby developing into a discursive Knowledge which is integrated into the System of Knowledge] are nothing other than the sophisticated Rhetoricians, headed by Heraclitus, who does not accept the ” Principle of contradiction”). According to Aristotle, one cannot “refute” (i.e. contradict) someone who does not claim to be telling a “truth” (i.e. who does not say that he is speaking In the proper sense of the term); but he, who says that he discursively affirms the impossibility of all discourse, speaks in the proper sense of the word and “contradicts himself” in doing so, since he contradicts (in speaking) what he says (in speaking of the Discourse as such and therefore also of the discourse which is his own) (cf. Met., K, 5; 1062, 32-1062, 11).
בקיצור: argumentum ad hominem הוא לא שתי המילים האחרונות, אם מתעקש על הלטינית שלמדת מהלטיניות בפורנו: a1628 J. Clare Conuerted Iew (1630) 114 You must..distinguish, when a Father writeth doctrinally..(ex professo) of any subiect, from that, which he writeth..in heate of dispute with his Aduersary:..in this later kind, he often disputeth, ad personam. או אי די או הפלא הזה שכל שפה צריכה!
ה”אדם” יכול להיות “ידיד” או “אויב” של המדינה. כעת אין קשר בין “חברים” ל”אויבים” מלבד זה של הדרה הדדית (שהיא – כאשר היא מתממשת לחלוטין – מלחמה עד מוות, הנקראת מלחמת ההשמדה) – כלומר, ביטול האינטראקציה. לכן אפשר לומר שאין אינטראקציה נכונה מה שנקרא בין “חברים”, מצד אחד, לבין “אויביהם”, מצד שני. המדינה נוטה להתגבר, או לספוג, את כל “אויביה” (מלחמות השמדה או כיבוש), ואם היא לא מצליחה, היא מנסה לבודד את עצמה מהם פוליטית ככל האפשר (אידיאל האוטרקיה). נטייה זו לבידוד מתורגמת לתחום המשפטי באמצעות העובדה ש-Droit (לאומי) שאושר על ידי המדינה מוחל רק על אזרחים. זרים, כביכול אויבים, הם בהגדרה “מחוץ לחוק”. בדרך כלל אומרים שלאדם יש את ה”Droit” לעשות כל דבר לאויב: להרוג אותו, לשדוד אותו וכן הלאה. אבל במציאות אין כאן שום “Droit”, אלא פשוט היעדר Droit: הזר אינו נושא Droit; או ה- Droit אינו חל על יחסים בין זרים או עם אזרחים. באם אין אינטראקציה אמיתית בין A ל-B אם A, או A ו-B, הם זרים, אז אין (גם) מצב משפטי כלל. / אם א’ אזרח וב’ זר, כלומר אויב, המדינה מעמידה את עצמה בכל המקרים לצדו של א’. לכן היא לא חסרת פניות ולא דיסאינטרסנטית; זה לא מצב של שופט (שלישי) אלא של מפלגה, ולכן המצב הוא פוליטי אבל בכלל לא משפטי. כאשר א ו-ב שניהם חברים, המצב הוא, לעומת זאת, בהכרח משפטי; שכן אם המדינה לוקחת את א’ וב’ בהיבטים הפוליטיים שלהם כ”חברים”, הם שווים במובן זה ששניהם חברים ולא אויבים. לפיכך הם ניתנים להחלפה – כלומר, המדינה היא חסרת פניות והיא גם “חסרת עניין” במובן זה שנציגה, כלומר הממשלה בתפקידה כשופט, יכול להיות כל אחד בכלל. אכן, כל בן ארצו הוא חבר לכל בן ארצו אחר: לכן כל שופט יתייחס אליו כאל ידיד. כל יחסי הגומלין בין חברים פוליטיים יכולים אפוא ליצור מצב משפטי ממשי במובן זה שהמדינה יכולה למלא את התפקיד של שופט חסר פניות וחסר עניין (חוסר הפניות והדיסאינטרנטיות הבא לידי ביטוי במשפט בין א׳ וב׳, שבה הזהות של א׳ וב׳ לא חשובה, וא׳ יכול להתחלף בב׳, והתוצאה עדיין תהא זהה, כבתוך וביחס לסטטוס המשפטי השווה- שעה שהמשפט מוכרע על פי המקרה ולעיקרון המקרה). בלי יכולת שכזאת, אין סמכות למשפט. / אפשר לומר, אם כך, כי האפשרות של יחסים משפטיים היא הביטוי בתחום ה-Droit לעובדה הפוליטית של “ידידות”, בעוד שהיחס הפוליטי של ידיד לאויב מתבטא משפטית באי-אפשרות של מצב משפטי ממשי. אבל כדי שבאמת יהיה מצב משפטי בין “חברים”, על שופט המדינה עדיין להיות חסר עניין במובן זה שהוא לא בו-זמנית צד, מרכיב של האינטראקציה שהוא שופט. כעת, אם נדרשים א’ ו-ב’ בתפקידם כאזרחים, המדינה נמצאת בעצם עובדה זו באינטראקציה פוליטית איתם. לכן היא תמיד צד ואינו יכול להיות שופט במובן הנכון של המונח. כדי שיהיה מצב משפטי, אם כן, יש צורך 1) שהמדינה קשורה לחברים פוליטיים, ש-א׳ ו-ב׳, המקיימים אינטראקציה, הם אזרחים; ו-2) ש-א׳ ו-ב׳ נמצאים באינטראקציה לא פוליטית ביניהם, כך שהמדינה יכולה להיות חסרת עניין בטיב האינטראקציה ביניהם ולא להיות צד שעה שהיא אמורה להיות שופטת. / בחברות מפותחות יותר, לאט לאט, ה-Droit משתרע מעבר לגבולות הלאומיים. כך מוסיף המשפט הרומי ל- jus civile הלאומי [החוק המחייב את האזרחים הרומיים] jus gentium [חוק המחייב את כל העמים], אשר חל גם על מי שאינם אזרחים. כמובן, זה רק עניין שם של “נתינים רומיים”, של תושבי האימפריה הרומית. אבל באופן עקרוני, אפשר להחיל את זה על כל מי שהוא (השוו את הרעיון הרומי של jus naturale [חוק טבעי או זכות], נפוץ למין האנושי), ובדרך זו מיישמים אותו במדינות מודרניות. אבל ההבחנה בין jus civile ל- jus gentium, שהרומאים שמרו עד הסוף, מלמדת שבמקור Droit למעשה, כלומר, Droit באישור המדינה, הוחל רק על נתינים. בכל מקרה, אם המדינה שופטת זר, זה בגלל שהיא מדמה אותו, במישור המשפטי, ל”חבר” – כלומר לאזרח. ליתר דיוק, הוא מופשט מההבדל הפוליטי בין חבר לאויב, כאשר המתדיינים נלקחים בהיבט הלא-פוליטי שלהם – כלומר, אם תרצו, כ”נייטרלים” מבחינה פוליטית (בפוליטיקה, אין ניטרליים: הלא-ידיד הוא בהגדרה אויב ולהפך. להתייחס לאדם או לחברה, או בעצם מדינה, כאל “נייטרלי”, זה פשוט לא לקיים איתם יחסים פוליטיים; זה רק לקיים יחסים כלכליים, תרבותיים, דתיים וכן הלאה). מעשית, זה אפשרי כל עוד היחסים הפוליטיים נשארים בפוטנציאל – כלומר כל עוד השלום שולט. בזמן מלחמה, אזרחי האויב הופכים שוב ל”אויבים” פוליטיים ובכך מפסיקים להיות נתינים של אותו Droit . הם נהיים שוב “מחוץ לחוק”. כמובן, במדינות מתורבתות, אזרחי אויב לא נמסרים לגורלם. יש להם מעמד. אבל למעמד הזה כבר אין שום דבר משפטי. עניין פוליטי בלבד. בכל מקרה, ה-Droit שתקף עבור אזרחים מפסיק להיות מיושם אוטומטית על אויבים. / בקיצור, ברגע שהיחס הפוליטי של ידיד-אויב מתממש, היחס המשפטי נעלם, או עובר למצב של פוטנציאל, שאינו מיושם עוד על ידי המדינה. לכן, המדינה מיישמת את ה-ה-Droit שלה על זרים רק אם היא לוקחת אותם בהיבט הלא-פוליטי שלהם, אם היא לא מתייחסת אליהם כאל “אויבים”. במילים אחרות, זה ה-ה-Droit שנקרא אזרחי שמוחל עליהם, ולא ה-ה-Droit שנקרא ציבורי (שאינו, יתר על כן, ה-Droit כהלכה מה שנקרא). המדינה רואה אותם כחברים בחברה שנוצרה על ידי מכלול המשפחות, או כחברי החברה המורכבת על ידי מכלול היחסים הכלכליים וכו’. בדרך זו ברומא, זרים נהנו מה-ה-Droit של [נישואים] ו-ה-Droit [סחר או מסחר], אך לא מה-ה-Droit של המדינה וכך זה תמיד. שום מדינה לא תעניש זר כי הוא היה עריק בארצו, או בוגד, וכן הלאה, והיא לא תדאג לגבי ה-Droit שלו להצביע , וכן הלאה: כי זה לא מתייחס אליו כאל נושא ה-Droit של מדינה זרה אלא כאל “אדם פרטי” שאינו אזרח, רק בן משפחה, סוחר, וכן הלאה. / מכאן זה ברור שאין מצב משפטי בין הישראלי לפלסטיני, שנשפט, moreover, רק מהפן האזרחי, כך כאוייב. קיומו הוא הפיכתו של המשפט במקרים האלה למשפט בינלאומי (במקרה הטוב) ונראה, עוד נראה, שעוד זה כנראה, שכנראה אין סוף לדחקות, או אולי ככה? {{{הבה נניח שקבוצה של צרפתים מקימה בצרפת אגודה של עושי רע. לחברה זו יכולה להיות דרויט המתאים לה: כללים משפטיים, סכסוכים אמיתיים שנשפטו בהתאם לכללים אלו על ידי “שלישים חסרי עניין” (שנלקחו מתוך החברה), ואכיפת פסקי דין אלו על ידי מעין משטרה פנימית. לכן הדרויט שלה יהיה אמיתי. וזו הסיבה שהסוציולוגים צודקים לדבר על “דרויט השודדים”. אבל החברה הזו אינה מבודדת; היא לא אוטונומית: שכן כל חבר הוא גם אזרח צרפתי. כעת ככזה הוא יכול לחמוק, אם ירצה בכך, מהדרויט המדובר. די לו ללכת ולראות את המשטרה הצרפתית כדי שתגן עליו בצורה יעילה (לפחות עקרונית) מפני הפעולה ה”שיפוטית” של חברי האגודה (תוך כדי אולי ענישה בגלל חברותו הקודמת חברה זו – אבל זו שאלה אחרת). הסיבה לכך היא ש”חוק השודדים”, בעודו חוק וחוק אמיתי, הוא אמיתי רק בפוטנציאל. כל המרכיבים המכוננים של החוק באמת קיימים שם, אבל הם באופן עקרוני חסרי השפעה; שכן החברה עצמה קיימת רק “במקרה”. “באופן עקרוני”, המשטרה הצרפתית הייתה צריכה לחסל אותה. /עכשיו, אולי ככה זה, אולי זה בדיוק מה שצריך להיות עם מדינה סוררת על פי החוק הבינלאומי. / כעת, ברור שהדרויט הבינלאומי הציבורי אינו שונה במהותו מ”דרויט השודדים” בכל הנוגע למציאותו: מציאות זו היא רק בפוטנציאל, שכן דרויט זה הוא אופציונלי בלבד. כאשר שתי מדינות נכנעות לבוררות של שלישי (או – שזה אותו דבר – לבוררות של בית דין בינלאומי, חבר הלאומים, או אפילו של “דעת העולם”), יש מצב משפטי אמיתי, שכן כל היסודות (השופט והצדדים) הם אמיתיים. אבל כיוון שבוררות זו היא אופציונלית, הזכות האמיתית הזו קיימת רק בפוטנציאל. שתי המדינות החברות והבורר במדינה יוצרים “חברה” המרמזת על דרויט אמיתי. אבל כל חבר יכול לעזוב את החברה הזו ולהקים חברה “מבחוץ”. זכותה האמיתית של חברה זו, אפוא, אינה מתממשת בהכרח. / במקרה של סתירה כזאת, יש צורך להשלים את הדרויט המקורי – כלומר לשנות אותו. בטוטאליות של הזמן, נאמר: ולכן הוא השתנה כי בהיותו אמיתי, לא ניתן היה לממש אותו. ובדיוק בגלל זה אומרים שהוא אמיתי בפוטנציאל: יש לשנות אותו כדי לממשו, המציאות שלו היא מציאות של התהוות. / זה מתחיל בזה שהדרויט הצרפתי לא יכול לטעון לזהות עם הדרויט של השודדים, ונגד האזרח הצרפתי. במילים אחרות, הדרויט הבינלאומי לא יכול להיחטף על ידי המדינה הסוררת. / ההתהוות היא שאי אפשר לתת האג להאג בלי לקבל האג בחזרה. / האג.
Plato on The Life of Philosophy: Discourses on Phenomenology (Anthropology>Psychology> – logy, Dialectic: Beauty. Eros. Justice. Speech. Academy. Going towards & most specifically! Related to The Ideal Life of the Philosopher.
Phenomenology (Anthropology>Psychology>
In fact, Plato would not have spoken of phenomena at all if he had not wanted to speak, certainly not “at all costs”, in the manner of the Heraclitean sophistic rhetoricians, but on condition of being able to remain silent after having said (everything?) which cannot be contradicted, but only re-said (instead of being silent with Parmenides, after having contradicted everything that is said). However, on the one hand, Plato could not deny that one speaks in fact of phenomena (if only by contradicting oneself). On the other hand, the One-all-alone being ineffable and the Discourse (Logos) being essentially Two, even double or de-doubled, Plato was not absolutely sure that one could speak of something other than phenomena which “double” the ideal or ideal Objective-Reality. More exactly, Plato seems to have realized (before Aristotle told him) that in the World in which he lives, the fact that Man cannot speak “in truth” of the ideal Objective-Reality (nor be silent on the One-all-alone) is a phenomenal risk (even if nothing can be said of it as “true” in the sense of the non-contradictory), once the sensible World has no direct or “immediate” (discursive) access to the Cosmos noetos (nor to the One-all-alone). For only phenomena are given to it immediately” (or “intuitively”). And this is necessarily (or is contradicted everywhere and always, even sooner or later) that he can, if he loves and seeks discursive Wisdom (that is to say the “true” Speech which cannot be contradicted nowhere and never because it does not contradict itself when it is said), wanting and perhaps succeeding in speaking of something other than Phenomena, namely Ideas (“identical” or & non-contradictory” in themselves), by saying that the phenomena (of which we also speak, but only while knowing that their are contradicting themselves) only re-produce (in a more or less con-formed or de-formed way) these Ideas, like a Mirror (or two mirrors) reproduced in and by the image (or images) which it reflects more or less perfectly. ./././ —– If therefore Plato, as a Philosopher, wanted to speak of everything, including what he himself says, even of Discourse “in general” or of the Concept as such, he also had to speak of what we speak when we speak of Phenomena, as well as of the very fact that we speak of them. Now, speaking of Phenomena “in general” is to say how and why everything that is said about them is a constitutive element of the discursive “Truth” [which is in fact and for us, if not perhaps for Plato, the uni-total Discourse] is precisely to develop a Phenomenology in the proper and precise sense of this philosophical term. And insofar as Plato spoke of phenomena, it was with a view to such a Phenomenology that he did so. ./././ —–In other words, Plato spoke less about the phenomena themselves than about the fact that they are spoken about and what it means (from the point of view of the discursive “Truth”, in fact “exclusive”, that was supposed to be, for him, the Discourse as a development of the Concept). Moreover, Plato speaks in his Phenomenology much less of the phenomena which are spoken of (but which do not themselves speak) than of those who speak of them. Now, it seems that Plato believed neither in a discursive God nor in the intermediary, “angelic” or “demonic” discoursers, with which (as, that is? with whom) the pagan, Jewish and Christian pseudo-Platonists populated their imaginary universe as soon as Plato himself had left the world in which they lived. The phenomena which speak of other phenomena (speaking or dumb) were, for him, without exception human phenomena. Consequently, the authentic Platonic Phenomenology is above all an Anthropo-logy, that is to say a discourse on the Man-who-speaks (of everything and, sometimes, also of what he says himself). ./././ —–Now, if Plato does not seem to have been absolutely convinced that man (or whoever) can speak without a body, he never doubted that it is not the man’s (or anyone’s) body that is talking about. All his fierce and vicious polemic against neo-Heraclitean or sophistic (as well as Aristotelian, at least in his opinion, which does not seem to have been that of Aristotle himself) bears witness to this. He even devoted a whole Dialogue (Cratylus; perhaps his last, if one does not count the Laws falsified by the “Eudoxians” Aristotelizing Speusippus and Philip of Opus), where he showed (without showing, it is true) that in all discourse properly so called the meaning (“ideal”, unique and one) was something quite different from the morpheme (“material”, moreover multiple and in whatever form) and where it mocked the “scholars” who wasted their time talking (in a necessarily contradictory way) about morphemes, instead of concentrating on the meanings of what is said (including themselves) and the Meaning as such (or as a Concept). ./././ —–Consequently, if men are truly human only insofar as they speak (“in truth” or “in error”), if Man as such is nothing else or more (nor, moreover, less) than the incarnate Logos, we must certainly not limit ourselves to speaking of the morpheme of this human Discourse, that is to say of the somatic Man: we must consider also, even above all and before all, the meaning of discursive human existence, that is to say of psychic Man or, if one prefers, of the (human) Soul. This is why the Phenomenology, which is practically reduced in Plato to an Antropo-logy, is in fact and for us, as for Plato himself, above all and before all, a Psychology (in the broadest and, moreover, authentically philosophica sense of this rather ambiguous term). ./././ —–However, we must not forget what Plato never lost sight of, namely that Philosophy (and therefore the Phenomenology that it implies as a constitutive-element) is only interested in discursive Man, even the discursive Soul, and this only insofar as this Man is animated by the desire to “tell the truth, nothing but the truth and the whole truth”, even to be silent after having said all that which can be said without being able to be contradicted and without contradicting himself. Authentic Platonic Phenomenology will therefore speak of the (human) Soul only insofar as the latter, if not attains, at least aspires to the discursive “Truth”: it will speak only of the philosophical Soul or of Man animated by Philosophy or the love of discursive Wisdom, by indicating how or the way on which such a Soul can hope to find one day what it seeks.
Therefore, the Psycho-logy that is the Phenomen-ology that Plato reduces to an Anthropo-logy is essentially a -logy, even a “Dialectic” (which one cannot, moreover, dissociate from an Ethics, even of an erotic Aesthetics, since a Philosopher must speak of everything and since one can speak in truth of what one does only by really doing what one says). If one wants to use Hegelian and modern terminology (which is not, moreover, mine), one must say that Plato’s Anthropology is not a Psychology or a discourse on the Soul, but a “Phenomenology of the Spirit or “Science of the experience of Consciousness (as another title of Hegel’s PhG)”, that is to say a (true) discourse on the way which the man who speaks to tell the truth (or who, at least, would like to be able to do so) takes on himself (or should take on himself). Only, if the aim or the intention of Plato’s Phenomenology is genuinely “Hegelian”, the result or the solution found therein is specifically Platonic. Contrary to Hegel, Plato does not want to admit at any price that the “Spirit” (or the Logos) “is” and is, in fact, “Time” (Geist ist Zeit). He agrees at most to admit, with Xenophanes (to cite only the latter), that “the gods did not reveal all things to men from the beginning, but (that in seeking), they find in time which is best” (Burnet, 133). …./././ —–For Plato, as for all “Eleates (or Theists) whoever they are (by definition radically anti-Heraclitean”), “the best of all that men find over time” (or in the course of the universal history) has been present since always or “from all eternity”. Plato would also subscribe with both hands to what the Judeo-Greek Proverbs make (discursive?) Wisdom say [?]: “I been established (by God] from Eternity, from the Beginning, before the origin of the Earth.” (Prov., vin, 22 sqq.) And, in his own terminology, he calls this eternal Wisdom (established in and through Eternity which is the divine One-all-alone)the nightly Cosmos that the phenomenal World of which we speak reproduces, by de-forming it, as in a bad mirror. Consequently, if the a philosophical soul can only look (and not look) in a Mirror, it should only speak about it and about what it sees there in terms of images, only in order to try to see by speaking about it, see, that is, what are “in truth” the real things that this Mirror reflects. Thus the Platonic Phenomenology, far from being the goal and the end, even the completion or the crowning of the philosophical System, is only an introduction into Ideo-logy, which is itself supposed to “introduce” the discursive philosophical Soul into the wise silence of a mystical “Theology”, which takes the place, in Plato, of Onto-logy. …./././ —– Now, if what corresponds in truth to the true meaning of what is said to be true of a phenomenon in a discourse which relates to it and not this phenomenon itself, nor even its & essence, but the “Transcendent idea” that this essence (which de-terminates or de-finishes the phenomena which incarnate it) only re-produces more or less imperfectly, the Soul of the Man-who-speaks could not be either body, of course, neither an “entelechy” or an “action” of this body (as in Aristotle), nor even an active negation of it (as in Hegel, for whom the human “Spirit” is where anthropogenic Action is a Negativity which is pure Nothingness outside of what it “denies”, that is to say of the “body”). The Soul of which the Platonic Phenomenology speaks (which is reduced, in fact and for Plato, to a Psychology) is an entity sui generis, “transcendent” in relation to the “body”, even “independent” of it. As for the question of knowing what is, for and with Plato, this “transcendent” Soul, even this “Independence” which alone allows Man to speak, with the hope at least of telling the truth, well…it is not so easy to say anything definitive. Because from what we know of it, we cannot know whether Plato himself claimed to have seen it. Indeed, if we don’t simply want to restate the Platonic psychological “myths” (which I have already spoken about; at least not immediately; that is, at this Hic), we have little left to say of what Plato told us. …./././ —–However, two things seem to emerge from the whole of the Platonic Dialogues (including the “myths” that he recounts therein, provided that they are interpreted correctly). On the one hand, the Transcendence of this something that Plato calls “Soul” (Psyche) has nothing to do with (individual) “immortality” in the concrete sense of the word. On the other hand, the Independence (“Autonomy”) of this “Soul” is what was later called “Freedom” (or “free will”). Now, in fact and for us, if not for Plato himself, the affirmation of this “Transcendence” contradicts that of “Freedom” and vice versa. …./././ —- Be that as it may, the Phaedo (if not Phaedo himself) is there to tell us that one cannot “demonstrate” the immortality (survival or pre-existence) of “individual souls”. The so-called “proofs” produced by Socrates are in his eyes only “sophisms”, even if their “contradictions” (barely camouflaged) are not seen by anyone present (including Plato, which, nota bene, is not part of it, any more than Aristippus, for that matter). However, these people show by this very fact that they are not “philosophical souls”. It is here where Socrates (for “pedagogical” reasons) ends up in telling these “unfortunate people” “edifying stories” in which he himself does not believe. As for the philosophers (although absent) who would perceive the “irony” of Socratic discourses, they need neither “myths” nor immortality. Because Socrates showed them that the Idea (of Life or of the Organism?) is eternal and that one can speak about it without contradicting oneself and without being contradicted. Now, if we have already said all that we can say without contradicting ourselves, is it so important to be able to say it again in perpetuity? these re-sayings, after all, can only benefit others (“pedagogies”), but not to the philosopher himself. So this one can be content with having said once all that he has done as a philosopher and “die in peace” (even if he could not do all of that, i.e., philosophy itself). And this is why the dying Socrates constantly fell back into a silence which he would certainly not have broken until his death if the chatter of a Simmias (and a “mythical” Cebes) on the “immortality” had not forced him to do so (cf. Phaedo). As for the Transcendence that Socrates believed he had shown (if not de-monstrated), it consists in the adequacy, even in the “coincidence” of the meaning of what a Philosopher says while speaking “in truth”, with the Eternal idea of which he speaks, without forgetting to put it in relation with Eternity (ineffable). …./././ —–The Soul is therefore “immortal” only insofar as it is Logos, that is to say the Meaning, as being always and everywhere identical to itself, of the Discourse which is “Truth”. Now, it can only be true Discourse with true Meaning if it is independent of all that exists empirically in Extended-Duration, where everything is everywhere and always double or dividing itself without beginning or end, in the sense of goal and term. …./././ —–But as soon as Plato wants to talk about this Independence, he contradicts himself or tries to camouflage the “contradiction” in and through the pictorial language of the myths (which seem, moreover, to have the aim of separating the Philosophers who see their “irony” from those who take them literally, without noticing their “contradictory” character”). …./././ —–Whatever this contradiction (which I will perhaps discuss at the end of my exposition of Platonism) means, one thing seems to be certain. It is because Plato understood that the “Freedom” he has in view is essentially discursive. If Man can speak only because he is “free”, he is only “free” insofar as he speaks (or at least is capable of doing so). In any case, this is what seems to emerge from the ironic interview that Socrates enjoys having with a Heraclitean named Cratylus, supposed to be (according to Aristotle) Plato’s master (and who is, for Plato, a curse -somewhat a resemblance to Aristotle, even his spokesperson, assuming that Aristotle is “consistent” with himself). The whole thing there is summed up in the assertion that the morphemes are ‘arbitrary’. Which means, discourses properly so called (that is to say, endowed with meaning) could come into existence precisely be-cause man is free to attach “absolutely-arbitrarily” the meaning that he sees fit to anything and therefore as much as he wants, according to his good pleasure. Now, all things considered, the human body (and all that it implies or all that follows) is nothing other or more than the morpheme of the meaning that follows the “soul” of man [this meaning being, moreover, imposed or present by the eternal or “transcendent” Idea which corresponds to it and to which it relates, which precisely annuls his “freedom”, the latter being “in truth”, only a spatio-temporal “mirror-image” of an eternal Objective-Reality, situated outside Extended-Duration and anchored in Eternity as such, which has nothing specifically human about it, nor anything discursive, being, in fact, the divine One-all-alone]. …./././ —– Only, to know how this transcendent “Freedom” operates [by impossible] in the phenomenal World, it is to Platonic imagery that one must have to recourse. For Plato himself is content to imagine it and does not claim to know how things happen “in truth” or “in reality”. …./././ —– Now, speaking the language of Plato’s “myths”, we can say that the “phenomenal” Mirror has moving parts, which can “spontaneously”, even “freely” or “voluntarily” re-produce more in the Mirror opposite, since the reflection is not placed in such a way that the image they reflect projects only on the latter…Here is the problem or the opening, then. …./././ —– Insofar as the mobile faculty moves in the right direction, it can be equated with the philosophical soul of a Sage, if and when the faculty has actually placed itself as it should. Now, according to Plato (and contrary to Aristotle), each man can become a philosopher (if not a Sage) & on condition of wanting it well or of really wanting it, while also wanting all that it takes to do it well. And it’s in the right way to orient the animated mirrors or the mirroring souls that Plato’s Phenomeno-logy treats essentially and even exclusively, which he voluntarily reduces to a reason or Antropo-logy which is only interested in Man insofar as he is a Soul that seeks (discursively) the Eternal that it loves Eternity. …./././ —–This is why the Psychology that is Plato’s Phenomenology is not only a Gnoseo-logy, but also, if not a “mystical”, at least a Morality coupled with an aesthetic theory of Love. Only, since this Psychology deals with the Soul only insofar as it speaks (with a view to telling the truth), it is essentially discursive or “dialectical” and therefore a real -logy. In other words, Plato’s Gnoseology is a Dialectic that speaks of the “dialectic” that it is itself. It starts from the “negative” or “contradictory” dialectic of the phenomenal discourses; and it is in the direction of positive dialectic” of Philosophy that it leads. And it is in this sense that it is homologous to Hegel’s “Phenomenology of Spirit”. Only, when reaching its end, Plato’s Phenomenological Dialectic believes not only to re-find its own origin, but also to find the Eternal who was present even before his own past began.
–
It remains for us to see what the Platonic Phenomenology is, taken and understood as a Gnoseo-logy, which, in Plato, seems to avoid the tortuous paths of historical freedom, in favour of devoting itself to the description of the single path (moreover, applied everywhere and always) which is supposed to lead straight (and therefore in a short time) to the eternal “Truth”: at least wherever men speak and since they do so. כל נקודה כאן עלתה כשלעצמה ובאופן פילוסופי-פרופר, עד הניסיון למצותה, במהלך דיונים אחרים. כאן אנו מדברים רק על מה שאנחנו מדברים. על כל אלה, אחרי שהנחנו כי דיברנו עליהם, כך באופן חופשי, כמו ביחס ברור למה שאנחנו אומרים בפסקה הראשונה: ביחס לדרך הישרה של הפילוסוף לאידיאל של הפילוסופיה. הקוסמוס נואטוס…או שוב: אנחנו עוסקים כאן בכל עניין ועניין רק במקצת, ואקזיסטנציאלית, ביחס לחיים של הפילוסוף.
Beauty
When we look in a mirror, even a little distorting one, it is very rare that we see something beautiful. But it happens. In any case, when we come by the Great Mirror that is, according to Plato, the World where we live, we sometimes see very beautiful things and this less rarely than is sometimes said. . ./././ —–Now, there is no doubt that the phenomenon of Beauty and, more particularly, the beauty of certain phenomena greatly impressed the religious man Plato was. In fact, the world he lived in seemed to him less ugly than it theoretically should have been and, all in all, this world was perhaps worth fleeing without rushing too much. In any case, there were a lot of beautiful things to say and even beautiful beings to whom we can talk. No doubt it is quite difficult to tell anyone why such a thing seems beautiful, and even more, what Beauty is “in itself” and “for itself”. Yet, the following fact is quite clear: phenomenal beauties not only attract attention, but also fix it; and sometimes forever, at least as long as the beautiful remains beautiful. Besides, all that is asked of the beautiful as beautiful (if we ask of it something) is to remain indefinitely in identity with itself, so as not to make itself ugly by deforming itself. This being the case, it is not even asked to multiply, or even to split. . ./././ —–On the contrary, it is admired above all as unique in its kind and, in any case, as one in itself and “simply” beautiful. For the parts of the beautiful are not necessarily beautiful and, moreover, the beautiful qua beautiful is “indivisible” in the sense that it does not really have “parts”. All in all, the beautiful phenomenon presents itself to those who know how to appreciate it at its fair value and use it as it should, like a kind of instantaneous image of a whole enclosed in itself or, more exactly, of a simple “atom” in itself, which should neither move in the surrounding expanse, nor be trans-formed during its own duration, whereas the instant of its local appearance is being supposed to be forever stable (or at least in the place and during the duration of the admiration it provokes, which moreover is generally silent). . ./././ —–That is to say that a beautiful phenomenon presents to the eyes of those who admire it all the essential characteristics of this ideal entity that Plato called Idea. Whatever the de-formations undergone by the images of the Idea, multiplied in and by the phenomenal double Mirror, the beautiful aspect of the images (if they are really beautiful) faithfully re-produces at least one of the perfections of the ideal model, namely, its ideal Beauty. Not, of course, that there can be complete identity. For phenomenal beauty everywhere and always admits degrees: the most beautiful of phenomena could have been even more beautiful, whereas the ideal beauty of the Idea cannot be other than it is; even ideal perfection. But the difference is in some way contained in the limits of the beautiful “as such”, and the Phenomenon is therefore in-definitely remote from the perspective of quantitative sort / degree: it is the difference of more and less; it is not qualitative. Conversely: even if the Cosmos noetos is quite-other-thing that the phenomenal World, it is also beautiful, even if it means being much more so, to the point of being such that it cannot be different. . ./././ —–As beautiful, the Sensible World therefore has, in a way, a door opening onto the Cosmos noetos. In other words, the “phenomenology” of Beauty can serve as an “introduction” to or into the Platonic Ideo-logy. Or again: in contemplating a beautiful phenomenon one could, it seems, speak not only of this phenomenon, but also of the Idea itself (at least as “beautiful” in the sense previously referred to as “atomic” and “eternal”). On the condition, of course, of loving beauty or, at the very least, a beautiful thing.
Eros
However, Plato noted the phenomenon of such a Love or the love of certain phenomena (more or less beautiful) both in others and in oneself. And this love of phenomenon also made a big impression on him, it seems. In any case, he spoke to us several times about Eros. However, from what we have of him, he does not do this “openly”. Sometimes Plato forces Socrates to hide under a cloak, sometimes he uses other spokespersons, often to be frankly suspected as to their philosophical value and sometimes he uses dubious (“Diotime”) entities. Moreover, it is not easy to know what Plato really meant by speaking to us in this playful tone. But it seems certain that he connected the phenomenon of love with phenomenal beauty and, to some extent, with Philosophy. . ./././ —– Plato did so, it seems, because of two things that struck him about the erotic phenomenon (in the broadest sense and possibly also “asexual”). On the one hand, far from dividing and multiplying phenomena, Eros re-unites them: far from wanting to oppose the Beloved (in a Struggle in the proper sense, that is to say in in the end “bloody”, if only for “Recognition”), the Lover wants to unite with him (physically or “morally”) and this in a union if possible “eternal” and in principle “monogamous” or “exclusive” (unless it is a question of loving everything and everyone, as God is supposed to do, even though he is said to hate the “wicked”). On the other hand, the Lover loves the Beloved not for what the latter does (with regard to him or in general), but only because the Beloved is (what he “is”): “true love” is “eternal” also in the sense that it is “stronger than death”, the Lover being supposed to have to love the “departed” Beloved [and the “Mystic” could, in fact and for us, ardently love a “non-existent entity”, such as a “pagan God” (or the “Nothingness” that is “god” for the authentic Buddhist)]. Given this attitude of the Lover vis-à-vis the Beloved, one can also say that the latter is “beautiful” for the Lover, at least insofar as he is loved. As beloved, the Beloved is therefore, for the Lover, an “ideal” or, if you will, the image of the Idea: hence the unity, the uniqueness, through ‘eternity’, of Love and its independence vis-à-vis the empirical-existence, even the ‘activity’ (and therefore the objective-reality) of the Beloved. . ./././ —– As eternal or identical, even unique and one, Love therefore places the Lover (whatever the Beloved) in an attitude similar to that which the Philosopher must adopt vis-à-vis the Idea and of Cosmos noetos in general. And insofar as Love relates neither to the empirical-existence, nor even to the action or to the objective-reality of the Beloved, we can say that it is Being as such, which is “given” to the Lover in and through Love. Hence the “ecstatic” and “silent” character of it, on which Plato always insists (and he seems to so insist quite “seriously” indeed, i.e., not “ironically”). . ./././ —– Thus, Eros is “philosophical” in the sense that an “erotic” Phenomenology can guide man through the phenomenal World where he lives by speaking of it and orient him towards the “ideological” Energo-logic. which leads him to the mystical-loving Silence with which the a theological Onto-logy ends in the last analysis. In any case, the joys of love (if not the erotic pleasures) give the Lover the foretaste of the Bliss or Salvation which is the mystical union in and through the religious Love of God.
Justice
However, if Plato sometimes seems to speak as if he wanted to say that Eros is the sine qua non condition of (Platonic) Philosophy, being understood as the necessary and sufficient condition of Salvation which is Beatitude, he never claims that Love alone is enough. On the contrary, he always insists on the “amorous wanderings”, as well as on the “uncontrollable” nature of this phenomenon, which is a kind of “divine grace” that one can at most refuse, but which cannot be obtained by human will alone. On the one hand, the “erotomaniacs” such as Glaucon, Phaedrus or the “lovers of Alcibiades” show that love is in fact far from being eternal, unique and one. On the other hand, the fact is that it is more common to find the “good” and the “beautiful” in what one loves than to love only what is truly beautiful and good. In any case, the lovers of a loved one, far from uniting and agreeing among themselves, argue in word and deed. Finally, love “misleads” reason to the point of giving up meaning and irony, not to mention “logical” rigor. (Thus, Phedreus does not see that “Socrates” is making fun of him and Glaucon accepts without flinching the nonsense on the “community of women” that the same “Socrates” voluntarily spouts and is impervious to the “second (and truly philosophical) meaning” of his sayings). However, Plato notes very fortunately that in addition to Love, which Beauty gives birth to in the Soul, and which reveals Beauty to it, there is in men another “immediate datum of consciousness”, much more “serious” and “sure” from the point of view of philosophical pedagogy, if not more attractive from the “existential” point of view in the sense of “empirical”, even sensitive or “sensual”. It is the “immediate datum of the moral conscience (Gewissen)”; which will be for Christians (Kant included) a “feeling of duty” (Pflicht), but which for the pagan Plato is only the infallible “intuition”, even the “evidence” or the “clear and distinct idea” as to what is right or good, which enables anyone (having it) to distinguish it clearly from all that is bad or evil. To speak with Plato, it is about the “direct” or “immediate” knowledge of Justice, which makes it possible to understand Justice in opposition to Injustice or, more exactly, to identify the multiple and varied injustices by opposing them en bloc to the “intuition” of Justice, by definition one and unique. It is to this one and unique infallible, “intuitive” knowledge (common to all, that is to say everywhere and always the same, even “necessary”) “of good and evil” that the Platonist “Socrates” appeals each time. It is here where his interlocutor “loses” (discursively or in action), though most immediately the fall of the latter is a result either of the vain chatter of sophisticated rhetoricians, or of the “Socratic” pedagogy, which begins by demonstrating the ” stereotypes “. A whole dialogue (the Alcibiades, I, which the Neo-Platonists perhaps took too seriously, but which modern historians do not appreciate generally at its fair value) is, moreover, dedicated to highlighting the infallible “Moral conscience”, taken and understood by “Socrates” (but not “Alcibiades”) as a necessary, if not sufficient, condition of Philosophy. . ./././ —–On the one hand, the intuitive appreciation of the Just (in empirical Existence) has all the philosophical advantages presented by the loving intuition of the (sensible) Beautiful. If the nature of Injustice diversifies indefinitely according to the hic et nunc of its empirical existence, that is to say according to “circumstances”, the Just is everywhere and always the same, thus being one and unique or, if you will, “eternal”. Opposed, moreover, to the individual virtues, Justice, on the contrary, unites them among themselves, maintaining each of them in identity with itself. With respect of its advantage over love, the love of another human being at least, this thing can be noted. One can love a beautiful one whom the other considers ugly; each can cease to love what he loves; no one wants others (or everyone) to love his beloved, nor especially that the beloved loves others as he is supposed to have to love the one who loves him. On the other hand, everyone is in agreement everywhere and always to distinguish the unjust from the just, and if one is just, one will act tomorrow in the same way as one acted yesterday or acted today; everything just would like everyone to be just in his inter-actions and if one swapped the righteous involved in a just inter-action, the action itself would not be affected and would remain the same. In short, the Just is everywhere and always one and the same “ideal for all”; this is how the maintenance of the Just reveals Justice as an Idea, which is, by definition, the “eternal” identity with itself. …/././ —–Now, if beauty is a given and love is a grace, it seems to depend on human “free will” to incarnate Justice by giving it an empirical Existence in the extended Duration or excluding it from this last. In any case, Plato does not think that the human incarnation of ideal Justice, called virtue, is “impossible” because “contradictory to itself”. He makes responsible for vice the one who is not virtuous. . ./././ —–In other words, to use phenomenographic pictorial language, the voluntarily mobile or true facet that is the human Soul can be oriented in such a way as to reflect the Idea “correctly”, by taking the latter as its point of reference. not as Beauty, but as Good. By becoming voluntarily virtuous, that is to say by conforming entirely (even as embodied) to the moral intuition of the “ideal” Righteous, the Mirror-Soul will see reflected in itself a “conforming” image of ideal Justice and, since the Idea is one and unique as Idea-of-good, it would somewhat be as the Cosmos noetos as a whole.
Speech
However, if virtue is a necessary condition of Philosophy, since only moral conscience allows empirical man to orient himself suitably in relation to the Idea, this condition is not sufficient. Because to be a Philosopher, one must want to speak of the Cosmos noetos (in an Ideo-logy), while one can practice virtue in silence, as does a Crito and, perhaps, the “Cephalus” of the Republic (who dwells on Justice, moreover provoked by it by his son, and is somewhat confused by what the sophistical Rhetoricians had to say). . ./././ —– Plato sometimes expresses himself in such a way that one might believe that, according to him, men could have done without Philosophy. This presents itself in a purely negative aspect, as a “refutation” of the discursive errors inaugurated by the “poets” and the politicians and pushed to the extreme by the “rhetoricians” and the “sophists”, i.e. that is, by professional intellectuals. “In the good old days”, there was no philosophy because there was no need for it: insofar as it was discursive, the “moral conscience” was expressed by pious “myths” or by “dogmas” which were in no way “dialectical” for the simple reason that no one disputed them. . ./././ —– However, such an interpretation of Plato’s thought comes up against the tirade of “Socrates” (in the Phaedo) against “misology” which sounds “serious”. Now, if we take this statement seriously, we must say that, for Plato, empirical Existence is only truly human insofar as it is discursive. It is not enough to “do one’s duty”; it is still necessary to be able to account for it in and through a coherent discourse. Now, such an account, such a discursive awareness, is precisely Philosophy. Undoubtedly, one cannot say everything in a discourse, even a philosophical one. Because there are things that cannot be said at all. But it is another thing to act in silence (even “correctly” or in accordance with one’s “essence”, even with one’s ideal or “ideal” “nature”) without ever speaking about it (much like animals do), and another thing is to be silent only about what cannot be said or to be silent after having said everything that can be said (without contradicting oneself). Thus, the “mystical” or “ecstatic” Silence to which Plato sometimes alludes as a sort of reward for the Philosopher would only be accessible to the latter. In fact, the silences of “Socrates” that Phaedo points out to are quite different from the verbal restraint of Crito or the silence of the other spectators in the philosophical tragedy, just as the speeches of “Socrates” are something quite different from the chatter of Simmias and “Cébes”. However, the wise silence in which the philosophical “dialectic” culminates is not within everyone’s reach, according to Plato. Perhaps you have to be gifted at it from birth and, in any case, you have to train for it or be trained by someone wiser than yourself. And all this is, in fact, “exceptional”. But Plato seems to feel on the side of exceptions. . ./././ —–Be that as it may, if a “bastard” has no access to Philosophy, it is not enough to be a “good man”, nor even an “honest man”, in order to be a Philosopher. Because you have to learn to speak about the good that you do and which, as a result, is good. . ./././ —–But, conversely, a discourse is authentically philosophical only if it “conforms” to the good of which one speaks or that one does. For the adequacy of the discourse to the “immediate data, of the moral conscience” is, in the final analysis, the only Platonic criterion of its truth. Without the Socratic or Platonic appeal to the evidence of the Good, there is no way, according to Plato, to end or impose a term and a goal on the contradictory discursive river of the sophisticated “Heracliteans”. . ./././ —– Now, the obligation to conform the philosophical Discourse to the imperative requirements of moral Intuition de-termines the discursive form of Philosophy. For Socratic-Platonic conscious Morality, Morality is opposed to the Good as Yes is opposed to No, and any “third party” is excluded from it. On the one hand, one speaks of the Good (and one speaks well or philosophically) only because one also speaks of Evil (and because one also speaks badly or “sophistically”). On the other hand, one cannot speak validly, that is to say without contradicting oneself, of any “middle term” between the Just and the Unjust when speaking of a given action; an honest man will say that it is just or unjust and only a “sophist” will claim that it can be neither or both at the same time, being “more or less” just or, which amounts to the same thing, unjust . Finally, it is “immediately” obvious that it is the Good which is “positive”, while the Evil is not, being essentially “negative”, even a simple Not-good which has neither “essence” of its own nor real “value”. Because if everyone is ready to do without the bad (or the worst) if they have the good (or the best), no one will want to be satisfied with what they say is bad. Now, the “formal” structure that moral conscience imposes on philosophical discourse is precisely that of the “Socratic” dialectic advocated by Plato. On the one hand, this Dialectic must be “essentially” dichotomous, in conformity with the “Principles” of Contradiction and of the Excluded Middle: the “Thesis” will oppose it to the “Antithesis” which denies it without possible compromise, that is to say, without a “synthesis” which would compromise the Thesis by replacing a part in it by what contradicts it and thus making it “contradictory to itself”. On the other hand, the dichotomous Dialectic must make it possible to clearly distinguish the “good side” from the “bad”, thus allowing the Philosopher to introduce only the “good” into his discourse and to exclude the “bad”. Even if it means showing that only the “wrong will” side un-doubles itself by discursively opposing itself to itself and that it is reduced to silence insofar as it thus contradicts itself. As for the good side, it maintains itself indefinitely in identity with itself while multiplying, just as Virtue remains unique and one, as Justice or manifestation of Good, while opposing itself under varied and multiple forms (as Courage, Temperance, etc.). And this is precisely why the good side of the discursive Division in two (Diairesis) can be numbered with the help of “indivisible” numbers (if not prime, at least not de-doubled or “odd”), which constitute in their togetherness one and the same “series”, measuring exactly the “distance” of each from their common “origin”, which is, moreover, beyond any Dialectic in the sense that it is not spoken of. Sophistics comes to discursively pass off the bad side of things as good. It is up to the philosophical dialectic to “refute” it and to put things back in place, that is to say where the “naive” or unsophisticated moral conscience finds them. Philosophy does this by discursively showing that bad discourse un-doubles and contradicts itself, thus reducing itself to silence.
[[[It is more than likely that Aristotle criticised the Platonic Diairesis during Plato’s lifetime and with his knowledge (the text relating to it at the beginning of De part, an. looks quite similar to notes from the academic period, put in their current place by the editors of Aristotle). It seems, moreover, the Sophist and the Politician), responded to these criticisms (notably and publicly although in a camouflaged form, moreover “ironic” and quite “wicked”). What is certain is that Plato reproached the versatile Aristotelian Division for its “immoral” (el. Pol.) character. That he could have actions which would be neither just nor unjust, “but between the two”; which means precisely the suppression of Morality as such and the door becoming open to “tyranny”/ Moreover, if the divided does not oppose as a Yes or No, there is no reason to prefer one of its members.elements (or what have you) to the others: to call some “good” and others “bad” could only be done “arbitrarily” or “by convention”, that is to say according to the good pleasure of each, which is also to say that someone is being able to impose his own on others only by the “tyrannical” violence of a so-called “legislator”. It must be said, however, that this criticism of Plato does not apply to the Aristotelian morality of the “golden mean” or of the right measure that we know (and which perhaps takes Platonic objects into account). To tell the truth, this morality is in conformity with the dichotomous Diairesis of Plato himself. For there is only one “Middle” between two “Extremes” and only the Middle is “good”, while both Extremes are bad, according to Aristotle. Now, the uniqueness of Good and the doubling of Evil are very Platonic and even the diversification of Extremes into multiple and varied vices is in conformity with the conceptions of Plato himself. There remains, of course, the impossibility of separating the Aristotelian “Middle” from these two “Extremes.” But that is the whole difference between Plato’s thetical or ‘ideological’ Para-thesis and Aristotle’s antithetical or ’empirical’ Para-thesis.]]]
The Academic World
And it is after having thus reduced to silence the bad speakers and their bad speeches, the Philosopher remains alone with the good ones. With the right speeches, first of all. But then also with the right speakers. Because he must not be alone if he wants to continue speaking. He will be able to do so as long as he remains in discussion with good talkers and his words are not contradicted insofar as he only talks with the good ones. Because these will not want, by definition, to de-form in and by their speeches what their moral conscience says to each of them, which is the same as that which allowed the Philosopher to dialectically separate the set of good things we talk about from all those things we also talk about, but which “are not”. And this common agreement between good speakers is a guarantee for the Philosopher of the goodness of the speeches that he proclaims as such by making them his own. ./././ —–No doubt it would be preferable for everyone to speak and for all the talkers to be good. But the fact is that it is not thus, at least at the time when one discussed around Socrates and with Plato. On the one hand, there were still the taciturn decent people; more and more rare, moreover. On the other hand, the vast majority of people who discussed the stunt were licensed Sophists, even notorious “bastards”. Moreover, common sense advised the Platonic philosopher to give up discussing with just anybody, trying to get everyone to agree. And so it was that Plato renounced the “Socratic” method of a discussion on the public level and contented himself with discussing with trustworthy friends (or whom he believed to be such) in a private garden, where one is losing his “royally” interest from the rest of the world.
[[[According to Plato, a philosopher could only be a “king”, or (as a “king”) philosopher of the state, everyone would mind his own business, yet harmoniously still. But Plato had far too much common sense to believe in such a utopia at a time when Marx himself could not have taken seriously Hegel’s assertion that Wisdom can put everyone in agreement with everyone else. It is therefore more than probable that Plato went to Sicily not to reform the walls of the Syracusians, starting with those of any Dionysius, nor even of the friend Dion, but simply to try to obtain from the powerful potentate enough of rich a ground suitable for the foundation of an Academy (if not of sciences, at least philosophical), which would be protected against the attacks of the vulgar ones (armed or not), & to so obtain by the little interest which it would present in their eyes. As for the Republic, it has a double meaning: on the one hand, it is the description of an “ideal” Academy addressed to those who could become members; on the other hand, it is a satire of the state whatever it is, described as a “degeneration” of the naïve community or as a “caricature” of what the Academy in question should and could be . But it would take too long to talk about all this here.]]]
And Plato succeeds in his academic enterprise. No doubt he attended during his lifetime disputes within his Academy and he had to suffer from the betrayal of Aristotle. And we know that after him the said Academy for ever abandoned the thetical Parathesis of authentic Platonism which was essentially the Ideology of Plato. But the Platonic Academy survived for centuries as a coterie of friends who took no interest in the political world and who lived only to talk about what they agreed upon by the very fact that they adhered to the laws of the Institute founded precisely with a view to speaking about/it. And little by little innumerable “Academies” of all kinds, both “secular” and “religious”, were created alongside that of Plato and many are still maintained today under the name of Christian or other “monasteries”. ./././ —– All these “Academies” have in common the desire (and sometimes the fact) to be separated from the World where we/they live (after all, the Platonic Socrates saw the practice of philosophy as “a rehearsal of death”). Thus one can say that they are all, today as in Plato’s time, living images of the Platonic Cosmos noetos, which is also supposed to be separated (to the great scandal of Aristotle and the “Aristotelians”) from the Empirical world of phenomena. Like this Cosmos, the Academies are meant to be beyond geographical (or political) space and outside of time (including their own). So it doesn’t matter to the Platonic Academicians that in the meantime something has happened somewhere. The academic (discursive) development of the Eternal Concept is situated in Eternity and not in Time; nor in the Space where politicians act. Whether a Philosopher claims to be king and educates all citizens in Wisdom or whether a King claims Wisdom by making his country live in accordance with Philosophy, Academicians could be taxed both as “sophists” or even immorals or morally depraved people. For there can be, by definition, no Wisdom as long as there is (academic) Philosophy, and a king cannot be a philosopher since, again by definition, an Academician will indignantly refuse the offer to be King (which no State, moreover, by definition will be able to give to him). ./././ —– It is thus that in one form or another the Platonic thetical Para-thesis of the eternal Concept in relation to the only Eternity without any extended-Duration-, nor Existence-empirical- has been maintained discursively until our days, at least in the West. Because there are a little everywhere in the Western World of the Academies where one still searches for the discursive Truth by pretending not to know that Hegel has found it…Not to mention those where nothing has ever been sought, where one claims to hold the eternal truth which has been given (to him) spontaneously.
The motives which led Democritus and Plato to postulate an Objective-Reality, supposed to be in relation to empirical-Existence while being radically distinct from it, and which does not determine in either of them the structure that both assigned to this Reality were, in fact and for us, the same. Namely, the desire to replace the fluctuating discourse that speaks of fluid phenomena, by a discourse that is definitively stabilised or valid as it is everywhere and always, while connecting it, if only to contradict it, to the contradictory discourse referring to empirical Existence in all the diversity of its extended duration. However, as a Philosopher, Plato was discursively aware of these motives, while the Physicist Democritus was not aware of them, at least explicitly. Furthermore, Plato’s religious attitude compelled him to relate ‘objective’ or ‘true’ discourse to the “mystical Silence” revealing the supra-real Beyond, while Democritus’ scientific attitude would have allowed him to be satisfied with the sole affirmation of the objective reality of what he was talking about, the ineffable Beyond being for him only pure nothingness (from which he distinguished, moreover, the “non-being” of the Emptiness, which was opposed in an irreducible way to the being of the Full within Objective-Reality). In fact, both Democritus and Plato were mistaken in believing that they could speak in the literal sense of what, according to them, Objective-Reality was. For us, the “theoretical” Physics inaugurated by Democritus was finally completed in and by the explicitly pseudo-discursive development of Energometry, which is content to measure objective-Reality, by putting a “mathematical relationship” (logos) for the results of these measurements, while renouncing to say what the “nature” of this measurement is. As for the Platonic Ideo-logy, we will see that by developing discursively, it ends in and through the Silence of para-thetical contra-diction. But if the the discursive (“exclusive”) element of Energo-metry is nothing other or more than the impasse of Dogmatism founded on silent scientific Experimentation, Platonic Ideo-logy opened up a perspective (through the Kantian Criticism of the Synthetic Para-thesis of Philosophy) on the (“synthetic”) discourse of the Hegelian System of Knowledge which, no longer excluding any discourse, no longer implies any “dogmatic” silence. [religious (theological), scientific or moral (ethical)]. Because in imagining his Ideo-logy, Plato emphasised from the beginning not what he was (more often than not, intended) to talk about there, but on the fact of being able to say it, in the proper sense of this word, that is to say, in a de-finite or definitive way, that is, in and by a discourse (supposed to be coherent) finished or completed in itself, but indefinitely reproducible. Now, it is precisely such a discourse that is the System of Knowledge which implies, as an integrant-element, the trans-formed Platonic Ideology (with a view to its entirely discursive and non-contradictory completion) in an Authentic energy.
Be that as it may, in this subsequent trans-formation of Plato’s Ideo-logy, the fact is that the latter developed it starting from the postulate of the definitive or de-finite Discourse. On the one hand, Plato shared the common opinion that there is (discursive) Truth only where (the meaning of) what is said “relates” to (the essence of) that of which one speaks, or that what one speaks of ‘corresponding’ to what one says of it (in truth) while being something other than the discourse which speaks of it. On the other hand, Plato realised that a discourse could only be said to be true on the condition of being defined or finished by ending itself in itself (without contradicting itself) and of not being able to continue indefinitely: being able to continue thus only by reproducing itself as it is from the beginning to the end (the other discourses being supposed to have to cancel each other out by developing indefinitely, since each of them was forced to contradict itself sooner or later). Now, if objective (“ideal”) Reality must, by its very Platonic definition, correspond to an (“ideological”) discourse which relates to it, the “subjective” structure of Discourse as such must also be “objective”, by being that of Reality. In fact and for us, the structure of the Discourse as such is irreducibly duplicated in itself or essentially dyadic.
Without having been the discoverer of this discursive Duality (of which Parmenides and Heraclitus have already spoken explicitly), Plato seems to have been the first (guided perhaps by Socrates to fully account for it (in and by his philosophical discourse, which he himself calls dialectic) to draw explicitly from it “logical consequences”. At least we can, it seems, explain in the following way the Platonic dialectic, which is to be found in a more or less implicit and different form in all Plato’s dialogues.
Any authentically discursive assertion (and not “degenerated” into para- or pseudo-discourse) can be reduced to the verbal formula S is P. The word “is” establishes a significant relation between the word S and the word P, in that meaning that in this relation, the first is brought into relation with the second. We can specify the nature of the discursive or ‘logical’ relation by saying that as ‘relation is’, it is a relation of inclusion. Which can be made explicit by saying that the fact of this relationship, the word S, which has no meaning in itself, receives one on the condition that the word P is “meaningful”, the meaning of S thus being the same as that of P, although these two meanings differ from each other insofar as one of the two words does not coincide with the other. Neither S nor anything in general has any meaning, if P has none. Now, the fact is that P can only have one on the condition of also having another and therefore of having a hard one, or, more exactly, of being able to signify one OR the other of these two meanings. For the fact is still, that if P were to signify both one AND the other, its “double meaning” would only show that it no longer has any, thus signifying sign neither one NOR the other. We can define each of these two combined meanings by saying that one is the opposite of the other, by designating them, in order to distinguish them, P and Not-p.
Since any “double meaning” P AND Not-p is equivalent to the absence of any meaning whatsoever, it also makes no sense to say S is P and Not-p. In this case, the relation is no longer a discursive relation. But since S and P have a meaning only because P has one and since P is only one of inclusive meaning if Not-p is also one (namely the opposite meaning”), S is Non-p has just as much a meaning as S is P. And one of these expressions can be said to have a meaning (and is thus only discursive) to the extent that both have meaning, each having the opposite meaning of the ‘other. However, S does have a meaning, for example, P, only on the condition that it does not have the opposite meaning Not-p. Moreover, one cannot say (without contradicting oneself) S is P unless one can also say S is not Non-p. Saying one is therefore equivalent to saying the other. But to account for the fact that we can indifferently say not only one OR the other, but also one AND the other at the same time, thus saying the same thing twice, we can distinguish, within the discursive relation, between the relation of inclusion which is said to be and that of exclusion which is said to be not. But the discursive relation attributes to S the meaning P, whatever this meaning may be: P or Not-p. Therefore, it makes just as much sense, say, to affirm (by the relation of inclusion) that S is P or Not-p as, say, to deny (by the relation of exclusion ) whether S is one or the other.
We will thus have four discursive relations (of which, moreover, each one is discursive only on condition that the four are discursive) or, more exactly, two relations (of inclusion and exclusion), each of which is duplicated into a couple of assertions having opposite meanings:
S is P I affirmation I I positive I S is Not-p I affirmation I I negative |
S is Not-p. I negation I I positive I S is-not Not-p I negation I. I negative I
Given that the relation loses its meaning or ceases to be discursive either if S is put in an affirmative relation with P AND not-p at the same time, or if it is put in relation of NEITHER with the one NOR with the other (or, which amounts to the even, if it is put in relation niante [negierende] with both) and that it has a positive meaning only on the condition of also having the opposite meaning to the negative, it follows that the discursive relation as such is irreducibly double, the Discourse being therefore essentially dyadic. Therefore, if we want to make someone understand that we affirm (positively) that S is P, we must not prevent him from saying the opposite, by affirming (negatively) that S is No -p. No doubt one can (if one has understood) answer him by denying (negatively) what he is saying, that is to say, by saying that S is not Non-p. But if we want to be understood by him, we must not prevent him from answering in his turn that S is not P, thus denying (positively) what he has understood.
Now, if to affirm (positively or negatively) anything has neither more nor less meaning than to deny (positively whatever is nevertheless other than that of affirmation or negatively) anything, the meaning of an assertion to the contrary is its negation. We note it “immediately, that is, from the mere fact of having understood the meaning of an affirmation or any negation or, if you prefer, at the very moment we do it.
And looking more closely, we will see what Plato saw, namely that the difference in question is that the Positive is “simple” or one in itself, while the negation is “composite”, being in itself split or double. But if we look even closer, we will see that the discursive double in question is less simple than it seems at first sight. Be that as it may, this first Platonic view can be expressed discursively as follows. In the discursive relation of the positive affirmation (relation of inclusion in the Positive), namely S is P; S has simply or only the meaning P and it alone, this meaning not only being unique in its kind, but also one in itself. On the other hand, in the discursive relation by the negative affirmation (relation of inclusion in the Negative) S is not P, S has a double meaning or, if one prefers, a split meaning, which is also unique in its kind, but which is so by being not one in itself, but two.
Indeed, S has meaning in S is-not P (just as in S is P, for that matter) only insofar as P has one. For if P had no meaning, S is not P would not have any either (just as little, moreover, as S is P). There is therefore “on the one hand” of S is-not P, the meaning P. But, on the other hand, there must be yet another or a second meaning, so that S is-not P has a meaning of its own, which must be other than that of S is P for the two expressions to have any meaning. This other meaning of S is not P, this meaning other than P, is that of No or of Negation as such. Without the meaning P, S is-not P would have no meaning at all. But the meaning Not-s is-not P would have no meaning other than that of S is P. S is-not P therefore does not have a meaning of its own, which is its own meaning; and it has a meaning insofar as it has a double meaning, namely a “particular” meaning P (“positive”) whatever and the (“negative”) meaning of the No “in general” or of the Negative, even of the Negation as is. Now, if the meaning of S is P is finite in itself or defined by itself, that of S is-not P is in-definite (even “infinite”, if we admit wrongly, but with Heraclitus and Kant/ the infinity of the set of senses as such).
This character, one could argue, is unique to the (“negative”) meaning of the No (or of the not-is-not). We can therefore say that only a split discourse is not finite (or is in-finite), that the Discourse is in-definite only insofar as it is double or two. As source or origin (principle) of the discursive In-definite, the Two can thus effectively be called (“definite”), with Plato, in-definite Dyad (aoristos Dyas).
However, if the discourse S is not P is in-definite, if it is in-finite in the sense of non-finite, it is not “infinite” in the proper sense [?] of the term, it is i.e. indefinable. Indeed, because of not being P, S is not just anything. On the contrary, the very fact of not being P renders it forever incapable of being anything of what is P. The relation of exclusion of S with P limits S just as much as its relation of inclusion with this same P. And the limit of S comes in both cases from one and the same P, even from the finite or de-finite character of the latter. Only, the (“positive”) relation of inclusion of the S in the P de-finishes the notion S itself, in and by its “definition” which is the discourse S is P, also de-fined by the de-finite P that it implies. On the other hand, the notion S is and remains in-definite in the discourse that is the (“negative”) relation of exclusion S is-not P, this discourse itself being in-definite because of the implication of the indefinite No. But the implication of the de-finite P limits this discourse and, suddenly, the S that it also implies. Without being de-finite (because of the inclusion of the No), this discourse is therefore de-finishable and it is so as limited (by the inclusion of the P from which S is excluded). And one can say, with Plato, that if S is defined by P (in the “definition” S is P) insofar as it “is” this P defined (being nothing else), it is only definable insofar as it only ‘participates in this P while being excluded or ‘separated’ from it (in indefinite but definable discourse S is not P). It is only if an S (“any”) did not “participate” at all in a definite P (whatever it is) that this S would be “infinite” in the sense of indefinable or not developable into a discourse, finished or defined. But the “participation” of an indefinite or “infinite” S in a P defined whatever it may be, limits this S by thus making it definable, or virtually defined, even if it does not actually de-finish it.
In other words, the “participation” of S in P in and through the (negative) discourse S is-not-P is a “definition” of the S “in the process of becoming”. It is a “definition” which has begun, but which is not finished. We already know that S is not P, but we do not yet know what S “is”. But since the “participation” of the S in the P which is being “separated” from it (or from which it is excluded) limits this S, this one is a “finite” in the sense of being “definable”. Now, we de-finish the S by saying what it ״is”. Let us say then, to de-fine S “in act” or to complete its “virtual” definition which says that S is-not P, we need to add (/ better yet, to replace it in the) claim that S is Not-p. The discourse S is Not-p is no longer a negation, as S is-not P was. It is an affirmation, just as S is P. But while this was a positive affirmation, S is Not-p is a negative statement. That is to say that the discourse remains split or double in itself. Because it involves both the senses of P and No. But the discursive relation is no longer that of the in-definite relationship of exclusion; it is that of the definite relation of inclusion. We can just as easily say that we have finished defining P, or that we are defining it “in action”. For one says what S is by saying that it “is” Non-p. And we can bring out this completed or actual character of the definition by saying that S “is” Q (Q being equivalent to Not-p, having the same meaning as the latter).
If one abstracts from any meaning whatsoever, one transforms the discursive formula S is Q into a symbolic (“mathematical”) formula, which no longer says that S “is” Q in the sense that it a signifies the same thing as Q. It is therefore better to write S Q (or Q, as moreover S and =, can be = replaced by any other morpheme, for example by P), to show that the formula no longer makes sense at all. But we can content ourselves with “formalising” the formula as “formal logic” does, that is, by preserving the meaning of Q, but understanding it as any meaning whatsoever. In this case, it makes sense to say S is Q, the sense in question signifying that S “is” Q, Q being, moreover, “some”. Only, the meaning of P being already arbitrary, by definition to say that S “is” Q therefore has no other meaning than to say that it is “P. And this is why “formal logic” confuses these two discursive formulas, in a single one, which is that of the “affirmative judgment”, as opposed to the formula of the negative judgment S is not P.
We also see that this “separation” distinguishes Q from P in the sense that the S which is P “is” P only and nothing else, while the S which is Q “is” on the contrary something other than P, while being not just anything, but only Not-p. In other words, the discursive formula S is P is one in itself, having one and the same meaning, the meaning of S being the same as that of P, which is (single and) one. On the other hand, the discursive formula S is Q (-Not-p) is itself double and it therefore de-doubles “indefinitely” in itself, thus being multiple (because of the Not that Q implies at the same title as it implies P). Now, if the unity of S is P is explicit, the multiplicity that S is Q implies is not explicit. In other words, if the positive affirmation S is P is an explicit actual “definition”, the negative affirmation S is Q is also actual, but it is so only as implicit. The whole question is whether the implicit meaning of Q (and therefore that of S as in S is Q, as well as the meaning of this formula itself) is “infinite” or not in the sense that it cannot be made explicit in and by a “finished” or “completed” discourse (meaning: in a limited time, or in an extended duration which has a end and therefore a beginning proper). In other words: by saying that S “is” Q (-Not-p), we actualized the virtual “definition” of S which said that this S “is” not P: because we have now said what “is” S, namely Q and nothing else. Only, this Q is not one in itself, but double, even “indefinitely” doubled or multiple. It would therefore be necessary to say several things in order to be able to say explicitly what “is” the S in question. Now, only one thing has been said about it, namely that it is Q. The question is therefore to know whether we can say explicitly all that the S which is Q “is”, by saying it in a ‘finished’ or completed discourse, or if one must speak endlessly while trying to do so, without ever arriving anywhere at the end of this discourse which is also its goal as an explicit definition. In fact and for us, the answer to this question is “positive”. Indeed, if Q = Not-p were “infinite” in the sense of the indefinable (as is sometimes claimed), Q would have no meaning at all. It would therefore make just as little sense to affirm that S “is” Q as to deny it, by saying that S “is” not Q. And to say that S is not “is” Q is to say that S is not Non-p. Now, de-doubled into P and No, the S which does not “is” would be non-only- (-Not-p), namely, not “infinite” (in the sense indicated) because it would have one and the same sense that one could call P. Thus, to say it as “finite” or de-finite, but still one in itself, not having S is-not Not-p is equivalent to saying S is P.
And since the S which “is P can only have one meaning (namely P), S is P must have the same meaning as S is-not Not-p. For there to be Discourse, Non-p must therefore be a finite or have a de-finite meaning “in action.” Now, the meaning of S n’est-pas Non-p (maybe it is better this way…?) is the same as that of S is P. If the latter is explicit, the former must be too. But S is-not Not-p cannot have an explicit meaning, if the implicit meaning of Not-p (=Q) is never made explicit anywhere. It must therefore be one day somewhere, in and by a “finished” or completed discourse.
This does not mean that the discourse S is Q, which makes explicit the meaning of Q= Not-p, cannot develop “indefinitely”, contrary to the discourse S is P. The discourse which defines Q can be more explicit, and this is so “indefinitely”: Q can be explained as Q1, Q1- – as Q2, etc. But it is necessary and sufficient that each of these discourses be “reasoned” in and by the preceding one (which it only develops “in detail”), so that all of these discourses can be summed up in one and the same (implicit) definition that says that S “is” Q.
But such is not the opinion of Plato. According to him, the so-called “discourse” which develops the meaning of the Q, which is Non-p, is nothing else than the Heraclitean Discourse-river, which flows endlessly and has neither beginning nor end. This pseudo-discourse is “infinite” in the sense that it does not return anywhere to its point of departure and is therefore never “summarised”. One could only say what Q (- Not-p) is by saying that it is Q₁; but one can only say what “is” Q1, by saying that it “is” Q2, which “is” Q3.; and so on indefinitely or “ad infinitum”.
Only this discursive River without beginning or end or, rather, this cataract which pours into a bottomless abyss while falling from nowhere, does not frighten Plato and does not make him dizzy. For he fixes his gaze on the fixed and stable rainbow, one, albeit diverse, which the light of the sun causes in the cloud of drops of water (moreover always new), which are constantly occurring above the current new and frightening vertigo.
To speak without images, Plato believes he has established the possibility of discursive Truth, that is to say, of finite or de-finite (indefinitely repeatable) Discourse that one cannot deny (without contradicting oneself), while believing to note that the Philosopher can be satisfied with speaking about P, opposing the profane ones, even the héracliteans, by questioning the dubious pleasure to speak without end and thus without goal, nor term, of all that is Non-p. And this is because of the famous “separation” between P and Non-p (charismos) that Aristotle will reproach.
TO BE CONTINUED. EDITED, ETC.
At any rate, the following notes can facilitate the understanding of the text so far: We begin by Kant, which we indeed mentioned…the third note takes us to what should continue this very partial text…
Infinite Judgment. Science is, perhaps, for Kant, one and the same “infinite” discourse, that is to say, an indefinitely developable discourse, but also one that can be summed up at any time. But the synthetic para-thesis that is Kantian philosophy is more sceptical than that. In any case, the term infinite judgment introduced by Kant is very ambiguous. He has clearly seen that for Philosophy, the formal S is Non-p (==q) is something other than the formula S is P of the affirmative judgment to which formal Logic brings it back and that it is not to be confused with the formula S ‘is’ not P of the negative judgement’, but he was wrong to speak of infinite judgment, by specifying that the S which is ‘Not-p’ can be an infinity of things other than P, instead of having to be the finite set of all that is not P. In addition, great confusion reigns in the terminology distinguishing between the contradictory and the opposite [so far!]. Let us try to help. Certainly, we “contradict” S is P by saying S is not P and we say the “opposite” when we say S is Non-p or S is Q (== Non-p). In other words: S which is not P is anything except P; but S which is ‘Non-p’ can only be ‘of the same kind’ as P, while not being P. For example, if S is not red, S may be blue, etc., or colourless as a number, etc. But if S is Non-red, S must be coloured (or colourable), while having any colour other than red (including white as the absence of any colour, but not black, if this is the set of all colours). Now, we generally say that S is Q is “contrary” to S is P, if Q is Not-p; but we do not say it, if Q is simply something other than P or only a different from P: Red is the “opposite” of Non-red, but Red is only “different” from Blue (if White is the absence of any colour and Black the presence of all, White and Black are not “opposites; but White and Colored are; for what is Non-white has at least one colour and can have them all, that is- i.e. being black). Now, if the Non-red is not only blue, it is also blue; by explaining its implicit definition, sooner or later, we will end up defining it (also) as blue. It would therefore be necessary to say that Red and Non-red are “opposites” insofar as the definition of Non-red remains sufficiently implicit not to make blue explicit, but that they are only different as soon as Non-red is made explicit as blue. Be that as it may, Plato does not seem to have been concerned with these things. Aristotle was, but what he says about it has remained very confusing. At any rate, qua logic, as philosophy qua logic, all this is very stupid indeed. On the other, there is something gymnastic here in Hegelian terms, yet implicit to the non-Hegelian. [Things I do when it is obvious that there is a cake 🎂in the kitchen: not to see the second obvious: I am too lazy to go get it.].
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For us, as for Plato, the discourse S is not P (“negative judgement”) is a discourse properly speaking, that is to say, having a “definite” meaning, only insofar as it ” participates “a definite meaning” P, as a discursive relation of S to P by a relationship of exclusion between P and S. We can also say, with Plato, that S has no meaning that belongs to it in own but receives one by the “participation” in the proper sense of P, while remaining “separate” from this P and being in-definite or “infinite” in and by this very “separation”. Now, we understand better what Plato has in view when we consider the degenerate (“negative”) verbal formula: S is not. Here, P has completely disappeared (“has been annihilated”): there is no longer any “participation” of S to P. Suddenly, S is absolutely “undefined”, in the sense of indefinable; we can say, if we want, that S is then “infinite”, in the sense that we can no longer say what it is > in any finite or defined discourse. We can express it by saying that S is then nothing at all or that it is not. No doubt we can call this “Infinite” S “Nothingness” in the sense of indefinable. But it must then be said that NOTHING is a symbol, that is to say a morpheme of an ex-notion deprived of its meaning. And since every morpheme is, by definition, unspecified or “arbitrary”, we can replace this one by others, for example by oo, 0, etc. But by simply changing the morpheme of a symbol, we do not transform it into a notion: none of the morphemes of the symbol will have a meaning properly speaking, that is to say, discursively defined or -what definable in and by a finite discourse. Moreover, the “degeneracy” of S is not purely apparent. For if the P is no longer made explicit there, it is nevertheless implicitly present there. S is not is equivalent to S is-not P, insofar as P signifies Being as such or the totality of what is, indeed all that “is” something. Here again, the “participation” in P limits the S by assigning to it a discursive meaning properly so-called, if only definable. ‘Nothingness’ then means (everything) of which one will never be able to say anywhere what it is”. What we can also say by saying that Nothingness means (everything) that which is not. Which amounts to saying that Nothingness is ineffable, being (all) that which cannot be spoken of or (all) that which is revealed in and by (even as) Silence. Now, we in no way contradict ourselves when we speak of something only to say that we cannot or do not want to speak about it.
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3
One might wonder why Plato did not see that the Being-given implies, as the third and middle term of its totality, not implication or conjunction, even juxtaposition by AND, but exclusion by Difference. (or Negation). Perhaps the notion of Difference-from-the-Identical was “logically” too shocking? Yet Plato knew very well that the meaning of this notion is that of the notion Spatiality (of which it is the first discursive development or the first definition). Would he have been reluctant to spatialize (ideal) Being as such? This is what Aristotle seems to insinuate, when he says that we must ask Plato why Ideas are not in Place (cf. Phys., 209b in fine). But it may be that Plato saw that the Difference-of-the-identical, which is Spatiality, implied the Identity-of-the-different, which is nothing other than Temporality, and that he taught less spatialization of ideal-Being than its temporalization. If he saw himself obliged to reject Parmenides’ Eternity in the beyond of Discourse by contenting himself with admitting the discursivity of the only eternal Concept, he did not want in any case to temporalize the latter. It seems that from a “psychological” point of view, he had religious reasons to oppose it. But from the “systematic” point of view, the exclusion of the AND or of Difference, that is to say, the reduction of the Being-three or of the Trinity-which-is Hegelian to the Being-two or to the Heraclitean Dyad, is an integral part of the correct discursive development of the Thetical Para-thesis of Philosophy. This Para-thesis is Platonic only because it was Plato who first refused to take into account the difference between what is and what is not or between what is spoken of in any way and what one was silent by saying nothing.
The Only Introduction One Needs For Hegel’s Phenomenology (an introduction to the trick or rather “power” of the Phenomenology as an Introduction in itself): the principal advantage of the Introduction that is phenomenologcal (in the Hegelian and non-Husserlian sense, that is, in fact the Platonic sense of the term) consists in the fact that it causes to disappear progressively and, in a way, under the reader’s eyes the particular “point of view” of “Reflection” that is indispensable in every philosophic Intrduction whatsoever to the extent that it is distinguished from the System of Knowledge that it is supposed to introduce. At the beginning and during all the discursive development of the Phenomenology, a We” reflects” from one and the same “point of view” upon a series of “phenomena” where men of different types say “I” in diverse “existential situations” or “attitudes.” These “phenomena” follow one another in an order of which the “reflecting” We can give an account in its own eyes, showing how or, if you please, de-monstrating why one of these “situations” results from another (which it presupposes in denying it). At the outset, the reader does not know what the We that “reflects” is, and he cannot say what its “point of view” is. But this “point of view” becomes clear as the sequence of “phenomena” is developed upon cach of which the We “reflects” in “justifying” it (after the event) in its out eyes (as “dialectically-overcome” ((supprimé-dialectiquement)), that is, trans-formed by an active or effective negation that conserves it while sublimating it in and through the “phenomenon” that follows it). And at the end, the We of the beginning is completely and perfectly determined by its coincidence with the I of the “situation” revealed as final “phenomenon,” which conserves, in sublimating them, all the other since it is the total negation of them. In thus finding itself in the “situation” instead of reflecting upon it, the We finally demonstrates to that the “point of view” that it had from the beginning was not among [[the others]], since this alleged “point of view” is the integral or integrating negation of all points of view possible or imaginable by the We that is itself nothing other than an “imagining” of “possible” points of view or situations.
Now, it is precisely the We become I at the end of the Phenomenology, or, what is the same thing, the I become the We of the beginning through the evolution described in that book, that fully and finally achieves self-consciousness (and is perfectly satisfied by this attaining of consciousness) in discursively developing the (“coherent,” that is, not “contra-dictory” and thus “irrefutable”) “content” of that of which it attains consciousness, that discursive development being published by Hegel under the name System of Knowledge. Thus, the reader of the Phenomenology who began by believing he “put his trust” in the author in adopting the latter’s “point of view,” ends by perceiving that in reality he has “put trust” only in himself. For in the course of his reading he will have found the I and the “point of view” that are his and have been witness to the trans-formation, “justified in his own eyes,” of this I into the We that has no exclusive “point of view” that is peculiar to it. The reader then will have either to renounce every “situation” capable of being discursively “justified” (in a “coherent” manner) or else to recognize that he finds himself in the “situation” whose (“existential” and “logical”) “meaning” is discursively developed as that System of Knowledge that Hegel wanted to introduce through his Phenomenology.
Judging from the fragments which have come down to us, the philosophical value of Empedocles seems to be inferior even to that of Anaxagoras. In any case, we are not shocked to learn that his “theology” is handled in a teasing and contemptuous language by Plato (cf., in particular, Soph., 242, a) and the praise (moreover quite relative) of Aristotle (cf. Met., 985 4-22 and 1000″ 25) seems rather undeserved to us. At any rate, and as said already, the tradition appears to have placed Empedocles clearly below Anaxagoras, not to mention Parmenides or Heraclitus. More exactly, one can wonder if Empedocles was a philosopher in the proper sense (“broad” or “narrow”) of the word. In other words, we can ask ourselves if Empedocles spoke and wanted to speak (also) of what he said himself, and if he wanted and was able to speak in order to answer the question of knowing what the Concept “is” (and thus, whether it is or not).
Doubtless, the beginning of the Poem of Empedocles consciously and voluntarily imitates that of the Parmenidean Poem. But Empedocles models himself on Parmenides only to focus attention on the irreducible difference between their works. Thus, it is the Goddess who teaches the Truth to Parmenides. But it is Empedocles himself who teaches it to a certain Pausanias (who passed for his lover, moreover) (cf. Diels, 21, B, I). Certainly, Empedocles also appeals to the Gods (in the plural!) and to the Muse (in the singular!) (cf. ib., 1, 1-3) and he goes so far as to say to Pausanias that this one, in listening to him, is actually hearing the voice of God (cf. ib., 23, 11). But he only asks the Gods to remove from him the errors of ordinary men (cf. ib., 4, 1) and he asks the Muse not to lead him astray by raising him above the earth and in this way allows him so much to imagine that he knows more than a man can know and to believe wrongly that he sits on “the heights of Wisdom” (cf. ib., 4, 3-8). Now, the errors of ordinary men consist in the illusion of having found the All when, in fact, they can only see particular things, by definition temporal in the sense of temporary. Thus, the great error from which Empedocles would like to be preserved with the help of the Gods, is nothing other than what the basic error of Parmenides is for him. Moreover, for him, it is, above all, a question of: “walking [like Parmenides] from summit to summit, and not to travel only one Way to its very end [as this same Parmenides did”] (ib., 24) .
Therefore, there is not for Empedocles that Something which is one in itself and unique in its kind, being all that can both be and be conceived (even if only silently) and which is in fact and for us, as already for Parmenides, the Concept as such. It therefore seems that, for us, Empedocles, in fact, “denied” the existence of the Concept, like Heraclitus before, in the sense at least that for him too, the All that is, while also being able to be conceived, is by definition only the Temporal as a whole – which is temporary. But if that were so, Empedocles would only be saying Heraclitus again. Now, in fact, he also re-says Parmenides. And he contradicts himself so much by re-saying them both that we feel like he didn’t understand exactly what they were saying and didn’t know they were talking about the Concept. In this case, he himself would speak of the Concept only ‘unconsciously’, or even only in an ‘implicit’ way and would therefore not be a philosopher properly speaking.
Be that as it may, there is no doubt for us that Empedocles is, in fact, re-saying Parmenides, without, however, re-saying everything that the latter had said; and he does this by also re-saying part of what Heraclitus was saying. He realized this himself, as well as his contemporaries. And it is probably to defend himself against reproaches of re-sayings, even of “plagiarism”, that he said (provoking the mockery of Plato; cf. Gorg., 498, e) that “what is just may well be said even twice” (ib., 25). Indeed, isn’t it re-saying Parmenides to say: “Mad people! Their thought is short, for they imagine that what was not before comes into existence or that something can perish and be entirely destroyed; for as it cannot be that something can be born from what does not exist in any way, it is likewise impossible and unheard of that what is can perish; for it will always be wherever it is placed [that is, everywhere]; and in the All, there is nothing empty and nothing too full; in the All there is nothing empty; whence, consequently, something that increases it could come” (ib., 11-14). Yet, even if we put aside the dubious “consequence” contained in the last phrase and the other small “imperfections”, this is not at all what Parmenides is saying. For Empedocles speaks not of the One-all-alone, nor of the One-which-is-all, nor even of the All-which-is-one, but of a set of particular things, multiple and varied and seemingly temporary. Moreover, he contradicts himself when he says, on the one hand, that nothing of what is [by constituting as a whole the Whole that is the Cosmos] can neither be born nor perish and, on the other hand, on the other hand, affirms that “we mortals are nothing at all before having been composed, and after having been dissolved” (ib., 15, 4). But this “contradiction” is only due to the general imprecision of Empedocles’ discourse. What is more symptomatic and more seriously grave is that he expressly claims to be able to ‘reconcile’ Parmenides with Heraclitus (whom he does not name, moreover) in and through an ‘eclectic’ system he wants to be as “balanced” or “synthetic” as (due to) “reconciling”, but which is, in fact, antithetical, that is to say predominantly Heraclitean. Now, this so-called “synthesis” of Empedocles is a veritable monstrosity from a philosophical point of view. However, through it, he mainly acted (notably on Aristotle), and it is therefore worth dwelling on it a little.
The para-thesis sketched out by the eclecticism of Empedocles is “classical” and well-known. Empedocles wants to reconcile the Parmenidean “Sphere” with the “River” that Heraclitus opposed to it. “Classically”, a para-thesis should partially affirm the two contrary theses, denying neither, if not in part: everything we are talking about or, if we prefer, the Whole we are talking about (and which for Empedocles is the Cosmos and not the Concept) is “both” partly “River” and partly “Sphere”. Only, the para-thetical contradiction would then be too apparent, since, according to the Parmenidean Thesis, there is only the One-all-alone, whereas, according to the Heraclitean Anti-thesis, there is ‘fluid’ only. This is why Empedocles has recourse to an apparently synthetic solution, by replacing the co-existence in the Extent of two “contrary things” which would spatially limit each other there, by a succession in the Duration, where one would succeed the other (limiting itself temporally or qua temporarily) so that each could be unlimited in scope for its entire duration. Only, this ‘eclectic’ solution has nothing to do with the Hegelian Syn-thesis. Because the ‘succession’ here is cyclical (even ‘rhythmic’), where there is a difference of identical cycles and, therefore, the whole thing here is spatiality and not temporality, properly speaking. In other words, it is not an Extended-Duration, but a Space with four ״ dimensions”, the fourth being pseudo-temporal. Now, in this four-dimensional Space, the Cosmos of which Empedocles speaks is effectively ‘parathetic’, in the sense that it is ‘both’ partially ‘Sphere’ or ‘Non-river’ and partially ‘River’ or “Non- sphere”. But, obviously, if the authentic Parmenidean “Sphere” has, if you will, a “limit” (or de-finition) [pseudo-]spatial, it is certainly not, being Eternity, a Something that can have a presence in a Present different from the Past and the Future; if only because this Something is absolutely absent from it. On the other hand, nothing prevents the Heraclitean “River” from constituting “for a time” (whose “measure” could even be “determined” so that this “time” is only an ” instant”) a ” spherical” concretion• where one of the “contrary principles “would temporarily mask” the other, so that nothing at all could be distinguished therein (just as, for Empedocles, Love masks Hate to distinguish the four “elements”, which nevertheless remain opposed to each other and therefore irreducible), because there, where there is Tourbillon, there is no flow in the proper and Heraclitean sense of the word, that is to say, a flow where what flows disappears forever, where what flows is fed by a spring from which flow ever new waters.
Undoubtedly, in speaking of his “Sphere”, Empedocles has in view the Cosmos, even the Universe or the World where one speaks, and not the Concept as such. His “Sphere” is really “material” in the sense of corporeal and this to the point that he thinks it useful to insist that the Cosmos in its spherical state has neither feet, nor knees, nor genital organs [which Plato will say ironically to make fun of the spherical Cosmos of Timaeus-Eudoxus, which impressed Aristotle to the point that he thought he had to praise the pre-Socratic precursor of the great Platonizing “scholar” (cf. Tim., 33, b-d)]. But if we interpret what Empedocles says about it by thinking it is re·saying Parmenides, we must say that he is, in fact, talking about what the latter was talking about, namely, the Concept itself. Now, the para-thetical character of this so-called re·saying will then appear clearly to us, for we will see that according to these statements, the “spherical” Concept is the Eternal, and not Eternity. Not only is it unlimited (spatially) like the One which-is or the Being-one of Melissos (cf. Diels, 21, B, 28) [which means that it extends and lasts consequently, at least in the sense that it is present everywhere “at the same time”, that is to say in a Present which is distinguished from the Past and from the Future], but also and above all because that it has a “natural” or “necessary” (temporal) limit (in the sense that it is everywhere and always the same). Because Love (“spherical” or “Parmenidean”) and Hatred are “so” mingled (so that the Past of the ״Love Sphere” is the same as its future, while being different from its Present (cf. ib., 30) Therefore, the Concept of which Empedocles unknowingly speaks is not Eternity, and it is indeed the Eternal only insofar as the Past of its past and the Future of its future are the same as the Present of their own presence. In other words, the “Concept” Cosmos of Empedocles is the Eternal, which is eternal only in and by its “relation” with the Eternity that is “the (already Aristotelian) Eternal-Return” of all things and which is then the extended duration of these.
Empedocles realizes this, and he is, moreover, perfectly aware of it himself, at least as regards his Cosmos or the All of which he speaks and which is all he speaks of. In any case, he says so explicitly on many occasions. “For just as they (i.e. thetic Love and antithetic Hate] were formerly ‘fluid’ (or ‘Heraclitean’), and each has ‘its time’, they will be so [in the future] and I believe (sic !) that infinite eternity will never be taken away from these two” (ib., 16). “And this perpetual change never ceases; sometimes everything unites in the One in Love, sometimes particular things separate again in the Hate of opposition; thus, insofar as the One is born from the Many and that Many are born again from the fragmentation of the One, there is birth and the life of things does not remain unchanged [or: does not last]; but, in so far as they never cease to exchange places, to that extent they remain during [the whole] Cycle [of the Gods] permanently unshakeable” (ib., 17, 6-13). “There are only these [four Elements and these two Principles] and insofar as they interpenetrate, sometimes this is born, sometimes that and always from the similar until eternity” (ib., 17, 34 -35). “They [that is to say the four Elements and the two Principles] dominate alternately in the revolution of the Cycle and they pass into each other according to the turn assigned to them)) (ib., 26 , 1-2).
It is useless to insist further. For it is already clear that if Empedocles has the avowed and obvious (“eclectic”) intention of “reconciling” the Parmenidean Thesis with the Antithesis of Heraclitus, it is the latter that he re-says much more than the first. This is why he succeeds in re-saying both of them ever so slightly (in his eclectic system) only by predicting what Aristotle will say (in his anti-thetical Para-thesis):
Namely, that one can and must speak only of what is eternal in the sense that what one says about it is re-produced everywhere and always in the extended duration of empirical-Existence, so that everything that is said about it can always and everywhere be re-said.
This prediction of Aristotle by Empedocles goes, moreover, quite far. For example, could not Aristotle himself have said what Empedocles had said at the beginning of his Poem, when speaking of Knowledge in general and of discursive “Truth”? Indeed, here is what he says about it: “Thus, each of them [that is to say, ordinary men] believes only in what he has encountered in the course of his multiple wanderings; and yet, everyone boasts of having found the All [“Parmenidean”]; to such an extent is it impossible for men to see it or to hear it or to grasp it by the spirit [whatever Parmenides may say; but you at least [i.e. the friend-lover Pausanias] must nevertheless learn it [from the mouth of Empedocles], since you have come hither [i.e. ‘to” Empedocles] by stepping aside [from the beaten track]; no more, however, than what is within the reach of mortal knowledge” (ib., 2, 5-9); “no, behold exactly every particular thing with every sense, so far as it presents itself clearly…and do not deny confidence to any of the other parts of your body through which there is access to thought, but do not think each particular thing only insofar as it presents itself clearly [by the senses]” (ib., 4, 9 and 12-13). True, and with a specific reference to Empedocles, Aristotle does attack the eternity “thing”, which is the “transcendent” One-Concept of Parmenides, and which, as we saw, has its remains, and naturally so, to what is still a para-thesis, a mixture of the thesis and anti-thesis of philosophy, even, that is, if the case of Empedocles is that of the anti-thetical para-thesis; hence, the attack is more on the remains, however essential…Also, and more importantly: Aristotle will not speak otherwise when he will criticize the “transcendence” of the Eternal-Multiple (or: -Structured) that is the Platonic Concept as “kosmos noetos”.
The Analogy between Aristotle and Empedocles is, moreover, almost complete in the sense that neither of them fully exploits the Heraclitean idea of Measure in a quantitative or “mathematical” sense” (as did, already in their time, probably Theaetetus and certainly Eudoxus and his followers). Doubtless Empedocles speaks of a “sworn contract” which forever determines the “time” or the duration of the cosmic cycle (cf. ib., 30). But, like Aristotle, he does not even attempt to measure the ‘Great Year’ (as some have tried to do, if we are to believe Plato’s Timaeus). This “Cycle” is, for Empedocles, a ‘law’ which is certainly universal but fundamentally qualitative, just as the ‘cyclical laws’ of Aristote will be qualitative, being determined in the final analysis by the revolution of the “First Heaven”. Both seek their “laws” much more in the realm of Life and History than in the purely bodily realm, where the Scholars, properly speaking, will soon attempt to establish “measurable” “relationships”.
Be that as it may, it seems that the main, if not the only philosophical “merit” of the eclectic system (of Empedocles lies in the fact that he was perhaps the first to seek the “conceptual” Eternal ( which “stabilizes” Discourse as “Truth”) not outside or “beyond” the Heraclitean “antithetical” River (anchoring, as Plato does, this discursive Eternal in the silent Eternity of the Parmenidean beyond), but in this River itself, by making it flow “in circles” and by discovering there “whirlwinds” of a Cartesian nature, which Aristotle will also see there. In any case, it seems that Heraclitus correctly developed the Antithesis of Philosophy, at least in the sense that the Temporal had neither beginning nor end for him, being everywhere and always new, instead of being reunited or produced cyclically, so as to be always and everywhere, even necessarily or “eternally”, the same, not becoming “as it is” from all eternity. No doubt, Heraclitus seems to admit the “Cycle” which transforms Earth into Fire, Fire into Air, Air into Water and Water into Earth, etc. (cf. ib., 12, B, 76); (cf. ib., 21, B, 115, 9-11). But the fragment in question of Heraclitus is obscure, mutilated and quite dubious, while, in general, there is no trace, in him, of the “Eternal Return” (the “Cosmic Fire” being obviously a Stoic misinterpretation). We can therefore admit that even if Heraclitus had foreseen the impasse of the antithetical Para-thesis, he deliberately did not commit himself to it, preferring to develop the Anti-thesis proper. On the other hand, if the fragment in question from Empedocles belongs to his “Religious Poem”, all that we know of the “Scientific Poem” shows us that the notion of the para-thetical “Cycle” is at the very basis of everything he says there.
All in all, if it is possible that it was Empedocles who made the great discovery of the “Eternal Return” or of the cyclic Eternal that Eternity in “Time” is supposed to be (that is, say in the Extended Duration of Empirical Existence), so dear to Aristotle, it is sure and certain that he neither knew nor wanted to expose it himself philosophically or scientifically. He seems to have been too impressed by the Heraclitean River and by the Discourse-river predicted by Heraclitus, to try, as Aristotle would do, to construct anything “definitive”, “stable”, or “eternal”, even of really Prai, on the permanent, yet mobile, base of the “vortexes” that were glimpsed there. Moreover, he seems to have resigned himself (moreover rather easily) to a sceptical “relativism”, which soon took on, among the neo-Heraclitean Sophists, a “sociological” or “historicist” aspect. In any case, he warns us from the beginning of his “Scientific Poem” that we will find there, to tell the truth, only “hypotheses” “as uncertain” as those which Plato will make fun of in the Timaeus (cf. especially ib., 2 and 4). No doubt he said to his friend-lover: “However, it is always the fact of low spirits to distrust the strong spirit; but you, learn as the revelations of our [in the sense of: my] Muse command, (and) after its discourse has passed through the sieve of your knowledge” (ib., 5). But we are a long way from the “Goddess” of Parmenides. Empedocles’ “Muse” is just a literary mask (and maybe a parody) that barely hides the poet’s own face and he’s very close to admitting that what he’s going to say can be contradicted. In any case, he warns us that all he is going to tell us will be only human, not to say “all too human” (cf. ib., 2, 9). And it’s not overdone.
However, his (rather large) ambition is far from being satisfied by “Relativism”, as if to be a disillusioned sceptic, a state of things which only allows you not to be “worse than another” He would also like to be “the best of all”. Only, it is not in and by Philosophy that he wants to be: it suffices here for him to contradict Parmenides and to “dethrone” his Wisdom (cf. ib., 4, 😎. Nor as a scientist “physicist”, because he does not seem to want at all costs to promulgate an “original” science and is easily satisfied with a scientific “eclecticism” which borders on plagiarism. Nor is it a role in the state that tempts him, nor the “wisdom” that would be recognized as a reward for a rigid “morality.” Empedocles wants to be great among the Greats (and claims to be so) under the form of (&, as) “religious” Prophet” (cf. ib., 112), by “imitating” perhaps Xenophanes. And there, despite his hateful attack on Parmenides, he seems ready to admit that there are things “to keep in your dumb heart” (ib., 3).
However! This Xenophano-Parmenidian call for silence is found in his “scientific” Poem, addressed to a young man whose father was perhaps very smart and wise (cf. ib., 1), but who himself was considered to be his ” cutie ” (boyfriend).
This means that Empedocles was “in truth neither Prophet nor Sage, but a skilful dilettante and a more or less a famous prose poet. In any case, he does not seem to have seen what the Question of the Concept was and if he glimpsed the Eternity-in-time, which is the eternal Concept of the antithetical Para-thesis, it will be necessary to wait for Aristotle to see this para-thesis of Philosophy developed in a philosophically complete and correct manner.
But before re-saying Aristotle, we must still speak of what has been said in the meantime and, in the first place, by Democritus.