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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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Analytical Table of Contents
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ix
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Editor's Preface
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xxi
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PART I: ANAMNESIS
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1: Remembrance of Things Past (1977)
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3
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2: On the Theory of Consciousness (1943)
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14
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3: Anamnetic Experiments (1943)
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36
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PART II: EXPERIENCE AND HISTORY
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4: What Is Right by Nature? (1963)
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55
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5: What Is Nature? (1965)
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71
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6: Reason: The Classic Experience (1974)
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89
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7: Eternal Being in Time (1964)
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116
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PART III: WHAT IS POLITICAL REALITY?
(1966)
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Prefatory Remarks: Science and Reality
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143
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8: The Consciousness of the Ground
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147
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9: Linguistic Indices and Type-Concepts
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175
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10: The Tensions in the Reality of Knowledge
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183
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11: The Concrete Consciousness
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200
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12: About the Function of Noesis
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206
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Index
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215
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Analytical
Table of Contents
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ix
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PART I. ANAMNESIS
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Chapter 1: Remembrance of Things Past
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3
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The default of the contemporary school philosophies in the
face of perplexing political movements—why do ideological
thinkers prohibit the important questions?—the default due to a
similar restriction—a desirable analysis of consciousness could
refer only to the concrete consciousness of the analyst—the concrete
consciousness as the specifically human mode of participation in reality—the
content of consciousness could be recovered
through historical restoration and original perception—also to
be explored: the problem of the resistance to truth.
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The conflict between open and restrictively deformed existence dominates our
time—the violence of mentally diseased
ruling cliques—academically, the restrictive school-philosophies
and methodologies, refusing rational discourse—on the other
hand: the study of man's normal life in open existence, as a
revolt against the dominating forces—the philosopher's task: to
find a theory of consciousness that fits these facts—the answer
emerging from the study of Husserl's phenomenology—
Husserl's concepts of "apodictic beginning" and "horizon of
apodictic continuation" as a restrictive vision of existence,
abolishing history—the alternative had to reintroduce the historical
dimension—history is the permanent presence of the
process of reality in which man participates with his conscious
existence—man's conscious existence is an event within that
reality—such statements could be accepted only if true in the
concrete—verification had to penetrate from the engendered
symbols to the engendering experiences—why was a consciousness constituted by
reality preferable to a reality constituted by a
transcendental ego?—the answers had to be sought in anamnetic analysis of a
concrete consciousness, my own.
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Chapter 2: On the Theory of Consciousness
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14
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Philosophizing about time and existence as a residue of Christian
meditation—there is no experience of a stream of con sciousness except in
observing a particular process of
perception—the flow of time experienced as sensual awareness
of breathing or noises—the "fleetingness" of sense perception
contrasted with the nonflowing consciousness—modern attention to the body had
balanced our views of consciousness—it
tends, however, to an exaggeration that makes a wasteland of
consciousness—consciousness cannot be constituted thusly.
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The starting point for a description of consciousness is
attention—consciousness as the experience of a finite process
between birth and death—tensions between the finite process
and other, "infinite" processes—Kant's antinomies—since available symbols stem
from the experiences of finite processes, the
experience of the infinite leads to conflicts of expression—the
phenomenon of myths—the problem of the "adequacy" of
myths—the "deliberate" myth in Plato—the transcending process called "the
others"—unsatisfactory treatment of this by
Husseri—the capacity for transcendence is a fundamental
character of consciousness—the problem of acknowledging the
other as one like myself, as an equal—historical myths
of equality— the function of the myth: to finitize transcendence—Vico's
understanding of politics as struggles for
the myth—the "de-sensualization" of myths in the West and the
resulting loss of orientation—their replacement by "the
movements."
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Process-theology, the third problem area, seeks to express the
tensions between human consciousness and transcendence in
the language of an immanent process—Schelling's question:
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"Why is Something?"—the dismissal of this question is a restric tion of
transcendental reflection to the structure of subjectivity
constituting the objective world—resistance to such restriction
issues from two experiential complexes—man's structure as
animalic, vegetative, and inorganic being is the ontic structure
for his transcending into the world—the experience of meditation, at the climax
of which consciousness apprehends the con tents of the world
nonobjectively—from this is inferred the substantive identity of the levels of
being—Schelling's "Something"
is a justified symbol of the experienced real ground of being.
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Past and future as illuminations of a process—is the present a
mere point?—while the moment is radically immanent, its ordering requires
process-transcending consciousness—human
consciousness as "pure" is an illusion—we can "grasp" only a
consciousness in a body and in the world—experienceable only as
a process—Kant's thing-in-itself overlooks that we experience
only consciousness itself—being as a ground is not a datum but
approachable only through meditation—neither idealistic nor
materialistic metaphysics is possible.
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There is no absolute starting point for a philosophy of
consciousness—neither can consciousness be made into an
"object"—why did there arise an attempt to construct the world
out of the subjectivity of the I?—it seems to have sprung from a
desire for a new beginning—not all "new beginnings" are of
equal value—Plato's "new beginning" was based on the fundamental experiences of
thanatos, eros,
and dike
—the creation of
the transcendental I, however, implied the destruction of the
cosmic whole in the subjectivity of the egological sphere.
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Chapter 3: Anamnetic Experiments
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36
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PREFATORY REMARKS
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The variety of transcendences of consciousness—the reflection of them is a
biographical event—recalling experiences
which have excited consciousness to the "awe" of existence:
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1. Months, 2. Years, 3. The Fools' Parade, 4. The Monk of
Heisterbach, 5. The Oelberg, 6. The Old Seamstress, 7. The
Cloud Castle, 8. The Petersberg, 9. The Freighter, 10. The
Koeln-Duesseldorfer, 11. The Netherlanders, 12. The Dutchmen, 13. The Comet,
14. The Loaf of Bread, 15. The Book of
Realities, 16. The Kaiser, 17. The Song of the Flag, 18. The
Emperor's Nightingale, 19. The Cannons of Kronburg, 20. First
Emigration.
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PART II. EXPERIENCE AND HISTORY
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Chapter 4: What Is Right by Nature?
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55
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I.
PHYSEI DIKAION
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"Natural law" and Aristotle's "right by nature"—the connection of justice with
the polis—the divisions of justice—the layers
of meaning: life in the polis and beyond the polis—justice of the
polis as essential law—essential law changeable among men,
though not among gods—Aristotle's various meanings of
physika
and
nomika
—the question of the right order of society—tensions
between what is right by nature and the changing modes of its
realization.
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II.
PHRONESIS
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Phronesis as the mediation between the poles of tension—the
ontology of ethics—concrete actions as having higher truth than
generalizations—the truth of existence in the reality of action—
the wise man and the unwise "fortunate one"—ethics as "
kineton
," being moved
cosmically by the cause of all movement—
the
spoudaios
, the man who is permeable for the movement—
what is right by nature cannot become a set of immutable
propositions—phronesis as the virtue of right action and right
speech about action—Plato's
phronesis
as the virtue of the man
who exists in the vision of the good—
phronesis
, like
philia
, is
neither a moral nor an intellectual virtue but rather an existen tial
virtue—summary of Aristotle's investigation of
phronesis
: it
possesses the same character as political science but differs from
wisdom—in Aristotle's cosmos man is not the highest ranking
being—
phronesis
as distinct from knowledge of right action.
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Chapter 5: What Is Nature?
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71
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Aristotle used "nature" in a traditional meaning that comprised constant
structures in the movement of being, gods, and
men—the definitions in
Metaphysics
delta—"form" and "matter"
are not directly applicable to man in society—similar difficulties
with the soul as form and the body as matter—other
philosophers experienced the body as an imprisoning form—
the saints experienced the transformation of their form, or a
new creation within the same identity—a wider philosophical
concept of nature thus is opposed to a narrower metaphysical
one—why was the concept narrowed?
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The background of Ionic speculation, between myth and
philosophy—comparison of the Ionic speculation with Egyptian
myths—the Ionic
arche
is a concept that functions like a god but
already contains the experience of the soul-before-god—the
problem of the relation between the divine and being—the
world-transcendent God must be included in the order of
being—dangers of separating God and the world—the relation
between the order of being and the knowing human—the experience of the
correspondence of mind and being—the
philosophic concept of nature still preserves the nature of being
as coming-to-be, as given in the primary experience of the
cosmos—this aspect was shoved aside in favor of the form—
because of the emotional block stemming from the fact that the
experience of being is also an experience of God.
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When the experience of being differentiates itself from the
primary experience of the cosmos, there emerges the image of
the demiurge—Plato, Aristotle, and Anaxagoras on the
demiurge—the experience of being has attained clarity about
the relation of being and knowledge—still, the wider
philosophical horizon remains open in Aristotle—his discussion
of the
aitia
—three meanings of
aitia
—the subject is the disposition of human
order through the accord of the human
nous
with
the divine
nous
—the disappearance of limit from action—
questioning knowledge and knowing question—the limit of
causalities concerns the coming-to-be from the ground of
being—the experience of being not grounded-in-itself does not
require proof—the proofs of the existence of God are myths
sui
generis
arising when the
nous
is demoted to world-immanent
ratio
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Chapter 6: Reason: The Classic Experience
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89
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Reason as a historical event—the epochal consciousness of the
philosophers—Plato's and Aristotle's balance—classic reason
sees no apocalyptic end—the newly experienced force of the now.
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I. THE TENSION OF EXISTENCE
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The definition of man as a zoon noetikon referred to the reality of order in
man's psyche—to it corresponded the definition
zoon politikon
—the definitions should have included
zoon
historikon
—man is not a divine
causa sui
—characteristic of man is
the unrest of wondering, the beginning of philosophy—feeling
moved or drawn—the desire to escape ignorance.
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The underlying experience is the key to an understanding of
the now in the classic sense—the experiences of Parmenides and
Anaxagoras—the exploration of the soul contributes the dimension of critical
consciousness—the ground is a divine presence
that becomes manifest in human unrest—the unrest becomes
luminous to itself in Plato and Aristotle—this unit of meaning is
man's tension toward the divine ground.
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II. PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
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The
nous
symbols express the reality of man attuned to the
divine order in the cosmos—reason has the existential content
of openness toward reality—closure toward the ground of reality affects the
rational structure of the soul—the analyses of
Heraclitus, Aeschylus, the Stoics, and Cicero—anxiety as a variety of
ignorance—in the states of both health and
unhealth—mental disease as a disturbance of noetically ordered
existence—there is no Aristotelian term for "anxiety"—
Heidegger, Hobbes, Hegel, Marx built alienation into their system, and Freud
and Sartre reject the openness to the
ground—modern writers claim for their mental disease the
status of mental health—Schelling's modern characterization of
this condition as "pneumopathology," and Doderer's term "refusal of
apperception."
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III. LIFE AND DEATH
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The "in-between" character of human existence—a construction of man as a
world-immanent autonomous entity destroys
the meaning of existence—distortion of the classic analysis
through a restrictive concentration on the conflict between reason and the
passions—a corresponding differentiation of Life
and Death—a fully developed rejection of reason requires the
form of an apparently rational system—Hegel, Schiller as
examples—the distinction between dialectics and eristics by
Plato—modern deformations as object-lessons of eristics—
Hegel's misuse of an Aristotelian passage—and of a Pauline
passage—the modern egophanic revolt against reason—Hegel's
construction of "dialectical process" belonging to an imaginary
"consciousness"—the contemporary preoccupation with depth,
death, anxiety.
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IV. APPENDIX
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The classic insights were gained as the exegesis of the
philosophers' resistance against the climate of opinion—reason
is not a treasure to be stored away—principles to be considered
in the study of human affairs: principles of completeness, of formation and
foundation, of
metaxy
reality.
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Chapter 7: Eternal Being in Time
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116
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History is not a given object of analysis—the reality of being
divisible into four relations: philosophy as a phenomenon in
time, philosophy as a constituent of history, history as a constituent of
philosophy, history as a field of philosophically
analyzable phenomena.
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I. PHILOSOPHY AS A PHENOMENON IN THE FIELD OF HISTORY
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Philosophy appears as a phenomenon in a context of other
structuring phenomena—the minimum range consists of:
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spiritual outburst, ecumenic empire, historiography—Jasper's
concept of the "axis time of mankind"—the Daniel Apocalypse
and speculations about the
translatio imperii
—the accumulation
of empires from China to Rome not to be construed as an autonomous determinant
of history—historiography in Hellas, Israel, China, connected with imperial
conflicts—spiritual outbursts preceding historiography, and exceptions.
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II. PHILOSOPHY AS A CONSTITUENT OF HISTORY
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Philosophy as an ontic event and a noetic experience—the
resulting two tensions of the soul—the soul as the place where
the tensions between time and eternity is experienced—the subject of this
experience—the content of the experience: loving
urge and graceful call—the experience itself, objectless and possibly
subjectless?—the alternative: hypostatization of being—the
difficulties stemming from language—the symbols in Plato's
Symposium—fullness and neediness—wisdom and ignorance—
Plato's type-concepts—what is a "field of history"?—the personal experience of
being—the tension of being, experienced as
a process—eternal being not an object in time, temporal being
not transposable into eternity—the concept of the
flowing
presence
—the tension of being not an intersubjective object—it is
a personal experience and thus influenced by personal
attitudes—it is also not a disordered multiplicity but manifests
traits of order—giving rise to direction and a character of irreversibility.
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III. HISTORY AS THE CONSTITUENT OF PHILOSOPHY
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Philosophy, related to the preceding primary experience of
the cosmos, is a historical event—it discovers not new objects but
relations of order in an already known reality—the context of
being replaces the older
cosmos
—"the world" not an object but
rather an index for the relations within a nondivine, autonomous structure—the
ensuing concern with the transcendence of
God.
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IV. HISTORY AS THE FIELD OF PHENOMENA OF PHILOSOPHICAL
INVESTIGATION
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Philosophy as the event in history through which history is
recognized as the field of tension between the phenomena—
why have no attempts been made to construct a material universal
history?—preoccupation with the polemical situation created
by the event of history—types of historical polarization—
philosophy, not a one-time event, is rather a continuing process
of actualizing noetic potentialities for the investigation of
phenomena in history—barriers to this development have fallen
in recent times—an experience of the
metaxy
cannot dwell exclusively on either
the human or the divine pole—ensuing attitudes
toward the temporal sequence of experiences: the condemnation of the past as
"false", or the past as compatible by means of
interpretation—Augustine's symbol of
exodus
as the principle
for a material philosophy of history.
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PART III. WHAT IS POLITICAL REALITY?
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Prefatory Remarks: Science and Reality
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143
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Mathematics is a science based on fundamental principles
(axioms)—political science is not because of the special relation
between science and political reality—the noetic knowledge of
political order deals with an object already structured by
another kind of knowledge—nonnoetic knowledge precedes
noetic knowledge—noetic knowledge arises in a relation of tension with
society—this relation can be made transparent—today
this is difficult because of nonnoetic, ideological interpretations
of society—which is why political science cannot be defined as a
corpus of propositions and principles.
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Chapter 8: The Consciousness of the Ground
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147
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No objective propositions are possible with regard to the ex perience of order
in consciousness—noetic and nonnoetic interpretations conceive order in terms
of their ground—noetic
interpretations arise when consciousness seeks to become
explicit to itself—Aristotle's vocabulary—the direction of consciousness:
desire for knowledge, questioning in confusion,
awareness of ignorance—this directional factor called ratio—the
mutual participation of two entities called
nous
—here myth enters into the
exegesis—"human nature" the symbol of an experience of the ground—the myth and
its symbols a residue of
prenoetic knowledge.
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Four aporias arising in the objectivization by noesis—
"objectivization" referring to the difference of truth arising in
the search for the ground—there is no "objective" beyond—
there is a "past" phase of the quest—the personal field of history
generates a social one.
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Three dimensions: the direction-giving
ratio
, the luminosity
of the tension toward the ground, the process of a quest leaving
behind phases of the past—Aristotle's criticism of the Ionic
speculation—the new luminosity as the substance of the
critique—a new aporia: the relegation of the past to
"falsehood"—disappearing as Aristotle traces both philosophy
and myth to "wondering"—the comparison constitutes a
rudimentary philosophy of history—history constituted by
consciousness—the field of history is always universally
human—the equivalence of symbolisms.
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Aristotle's noetic work left partly unfinished—the vocabulary
about being insufficiently differentiated—the case of the symbol
ousia
—its later dogmatization and the resulting cleavage between language and
reality—Flaubert and Karl Kraus on
modern cliché language—differentiating the reality represented compactly
by
ousia
—the manifold meaning of "reality" is
a necessary ambiguity—the different "images" of myth and
noesis expressing respective experiences of participation in the
same reality—the changeability of the human reality of participation.
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Consciousness always consciousness of something—being,
thinking, and symbol constituting both an identity and three
distinct objects—the danger of consciousness drawing the reality of the ground
into itself—the freedom of consciousness entailing the possibility of a
cleavage between form and content of
reality—images of reality should be examined for traces of a
closed system as well as categorized, and analyzed by form and
content—the problem of the loss of reality—
ersatz
images of
reality—the meditation of Camus as a recovery of reality—
summary of the analysis of consciousness—the derailment into
propositions unmotivated by experience.
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Chapter 9: Linguistic Indices and Type-Concepts
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175
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Unlike knowledge of the natural sciences, noetic knowledge is
knowledge "from within"—of a reality that is "nonobjective"—
the terms developed in the process not defining objects but
rather creating linguistic indices—an "immanent world" or a
"transcendent being" do not "exist"—other indices: "man,"
"philosophy," "
metaxy
"—constituting no quantitative increase of
knowledge but introducing a new mode of knowledge—which
has the character of rationality and science—science consists of
methods compatible with the
ratio
of noesis—"history" as an
index of a field of rational structure.
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Plato's type-concepts stemming from the "objectivization" of
other interpretations of order—various meanings of "object"—
consciousness, though discrete, creates an intelligible field of
history—its structure is the structure of reality—the sole meaning of the
"field of history" is that discovered through the
ratio
of noesis—the material and the historical dimensions of consciousness
interacting with a tendency toward objectivization—
type-concepts formed around all kinds of "positions."
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Chapter 10: The Tensions in the Reality of Knowledge
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183
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Noetic knowledge is concrete knowledge of participation illuminating the divine
ground of being as the ground of man
and world—thus the reality of participation is knowledge—
which goes beyond the knowledge of reason to the knowledge
of faith, hope, and love—the complex of knowledge being effective as a
whole—man's existence ordered by knowledge prior to
noesis—
ratio
both a component and an instrument of criticism.
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Three phases in the process of tension: the hellenic one, the
dogmatism of the philosophic schools and of theology, and the
dogmatic ideologies—ideologies block man's access to reality—
the solution consists in a turning again toward reality—which is
rendered difficult by the historical background of theological
and metaphysical dogmatisms—one must push on to the pre dogmatic reality of
knowledge—the example of Camus—the
study of predogmatic realities a strong recent movement—
alternatively, there is resort to works of literature—the
paradigm of mysticism.
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Necessary distinctions: metaphysics in Thomas, Descartes,
Voltaire, Baumgarten, Wolff—mysticism in Bodin and
Bergson—Pico della Mirandola, Ficino, Pseudo-Dionysius—the
dimension of the ineffable.
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Chapter 11: The Concrete Consciousness
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200
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Human consciousness is always concretely personal—man's
synthetic nature—his corporeality the basis of social
existence—political theory must cover man's entire existence—
omitting parts of it results in spiritualistic or naturalistic
distortions—there is no collective consciousness—social fields of
concrete consciousness are not identical with organized
societies—the phenomenon of civilizations as the minimum intelligible field of
study—the phenomenon of empires—the concept of the ecumene, both as
contemporaneous cultured humanity and universal humanity—history as the
interpretative
field of a consciousness experiencing its essential humanity—
history as a field of interpretation of acts of
self-understanding—the total structure of the universal Field of history is no
possible object of knowledge—the pneumatic experiences of eschatology.
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Chapter 12: About the Function of Noesis
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206
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A more differentiated language than that of classical philoso-
phy required—noetic experience differentiates structures
which change the image of reality as a whole—experiences be-
yond the polis having to be symbolized as a wider context of
order—this context to be called
the realm of man
—it is empirically
determined by the history of the knowledge of participation and
the historically respective level of noetic exegesis—the move-
ment of noetic consciousness moving along certain objective
lines—along which are found certain objective areas—which are
related to reach other—in man's synthetic nature various levels
of being are distinguished—their relations not reversible—the
entire pattern ruling study procedure.
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Violations against the rule of relations, as shown by
Ricoeur—violations against the structure of the whole—
common sense, in Thomas Reid's philosophy—why political
theory cannot rise above an "empirical" level of politics—
relations between common sense and Aristotle—common sense
a genuine residue of noesis—its relative inadequacy.
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