[lit-ideas] Re: The meaning of life
- From: wokshevs@xxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 7 Dec 2008 17:22:00 -0330
Please see below for love, logic and The Sonata Quia Fantasia ------------->
Quoting Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>:
> Walter: Lots of things can be two things at once. But
> they can't be two contradictory things, clearly.
>
EY:
> How about:
>
> I am an individual. I am part of a group. (More
> completely, I am individual when sitting in my study
> contemplating what individualism means. I am part of a
> group when sitting in a football stadium watching a
> game and cheering for a particular team.)
---------------> The propositions "All persons identical to EY are individuals"
and "All persons identical to EY are part of a group" do not contradict each
other. If either one is T, the other one may not be F. Or they may both be
false and they may both be true. (And then there's the idea - Eric will
appreciate this given its literary quality - that we are never so alone as when
in a crowd.)
EY:
> It is a word, a discrete entity with meaning. It is a
> word, a discrete entity whose meaning only becomes
> clear in a sentence.
------> Yes, as I interpret your transcendental claim, understanding meaning is
a hermenutic event: we can understand the part only in relation to the whole
and the whole only in relation to the part. While a circle, it's surely not a
vicious circle.
>
> It is a note of music, which means itself. It is a note
> of music in a phrase of a Brahms sonata, whose meaning
> in repetition is only clear in the context of a section
> of the sonata or a phrase of the music.
---------> Good example of the hermeneutic circle. Also: The first C# couplet
for the left hand in the opening to the Moonlight Sonata is not the same as the
second one, even though the notes are identical. Nor are the 3 notes for the
right hand, repeated 3 times, "the same" each time they are played. Hearing,
like perception itself (and reading) is always simultaneously protentive and
retentive, the Husserlian philosophers and literary critics aver. (The
principle clearly is also applicable to the taste and nose of a fine malt or
wine ... maybe even to Eric D's blended stuff, whatever that may be. Bell's?)
EY:
> I give these examples because it seems that "reason" or
> "logic" only concerns itself with half of existence. It
> is knowing without a knower. To privilege the so-called
> objective side of consciousness is to have the recipe
> for a Reuben sandwich without the taste of it. Or to
> describe the physiology and ideation of love without
> the experience of being in love.
>
> Where's the contradiction? The contradiction consists
> of the elimination of key elements. Eliminating subject
> from object is a contradiction.
---------> I appreciate the poetic touch here, however strained the particular
metaphors here may be. But Eric raises an interesting philosophical question
here: Is it possible for one to be romantically in love with another without
understanding what "romantic love" means ..... that is to say, in
differentiation from sexual infatuation, agape, love of country, filial love,
etc? Do we not overburden the role of experience in an examination of "being in
love" which seeks its necessary conditions of possibility and its limits?
Consider: Very young children do not and cannot possibly experience
"indignation." They certainly can be angry. Interestingly, the claim is not
simply an empirical one. And yet, in time, the child develops a concept of
justice that is required for the experience or feeling of indignation to be
possible.
Walter O
MUN
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