so your saying you can’t philosophize without Aristotle?
In sum, for you there are the Aristolians on one side and the idiots on the other. This opposition between philosophy of reality and philosophy of relation, I do not think if suffices to explain several millenaries of philosophical thought.
Aqua,
Firstly I did not speak of Aristolians, I even took the precaution to take Aristotle out of the picture right from the start of my development, and secondly I spoke even less of idiots!!?? I would greatly appreciate it if you did not distort remarks to insinuate what is not there. I hold for example someone like Heidegger to be a brilliant human being, with an exceptional artistic spirit, I have a real emotion for Nietzsche, whom I admire and who imo has real genius, endowed with an exceptional sense of injustice, I think Hegel also has at the least some genius… So I thank you in advance not to denature what I say and which is essentially this: there are those for whom the being imposes itself first and foremost, and there are the others [who, sometimes in quite a brilliant manner, construct relations so as to dominate over being].
Now you tell me this isn’t so, you think that we cannot reduce philosophy to these two starting points, in other words to an alternative between these two choices. So it interests me that you precise where you can find a philosophy which is neither radically grounded in being nor radically based on a construction of the spirit which substitutes itself to being.
You said:
I think for you there are the “realist” philosophers who see the truth and the others who make nice constructions which inspire respect but who are as far away from truth as can be. Tell me if I am mistaken. You say you take Aristotle out of the picture? So who are the realist philosophers who adhere to your school of thought?
Just a question, this philosophy based on a construction of the spirit that substitutes itself to being is that what you call a philosophy of relation? I see nothing synonymous between these two expressions.
Another question: is it unthinkable that the concept of being could be a construction of spirit? This question must be asked if one desires to orientate oneself in philosophy.
That’s amusing, the more we discuss the more I am under the impression that my first message did not denature in the least your thoughts. You wish to put Aristotle aside, but when I ask you to mention another “realist†author you do not cite any.
I do not understand what you mean when you write.
Does this mean that dragons exist?
What do you mean by produce relations? When someone develops a philosophy, does he only “produce relations� Can you define this expression?
Where do you place the empiricists like Hume? In which category do they fit?
I just want to say that the proof for “substance” is not anything that is called substance, or “matter,” or a light particle, or a wave of light particles, or a field of waves of light particles, or the physicist who sits there scratching his head because he doesn’t know what to report after accelerating an atom and seeing shit he wasn’t prepared for.
The proof is pain. I can stare at a table for decades and never convince myself that it is real as I see it. But if it jumped up and bit me, there would be no thinking involved in the certainty that it existed.
Pain is not your decision. It is not something you think about. Nor is it a “state” because it cannot be found in a second-person experience. It is not the waves on the EKG and it isn’t “in the words” used to say “hey…this hurts.”
So its not a subject of philosophy because there is no question about it. And because there is no question about it, there is no question about the certainity of objective existing things, since those things provide stimulus for pain.
“Pleasure,” on the other hand, can be denied at will…one can deny the attempt to avoid it. With pain there is no decision. And if you think you can prick your finger on purpose to prove to me that you can “decide” whether it hurts or not, you are mistaken. There is always a possibility for pain which is to such a degree that you react to it involuntarily.
…shall be back, hopefully not too long after the break…
I know me, Aqua, and that is enough not to make nobody, but I said I knew others, and I explained why they have not rode in the fast lane career wise. So your question is not “Are there other realist thinkers other than Aristotle?â€, but “Are there famous realist philosophers other than Aristotle?â€. I don’t push Aristotle aside either, I look at what he has left and I use him for my own research. I also draw on a few others, as I’ve said, others who are alive and not famous.
There are nevertheless a few celebrities who went down this route, like Avicenna, Maxim the Confessor, and others. Granted, the numerical weight of neo-platonics is overwhelming. Plotin, Ockham, Descartes, Marx, Hegel, Kant, Spinoza, Nietzsche, Heidegger, all contemporary ideologies set the spirit before reality, I do not see any for which this is not the case, in a more or less subtle way, but they are all to my knowledge, be it forthrightly or much less so, in a philosophy of relation.
I have heard that it is the same in India, where the philosophers of being are also in minority. I would be very interested to know if these two approaches are also to be found in Africa. Actually, it could not be any other way since we only have two ways of knowing: the concrete and the abstract. Thus it seems coherent to me that the concrete being what imposes itself to us and the abstract what we construct, these two approaches should be at the source of any philosophy.
Of course they exist, in your mind (as a subject of your thoughts) as well as in mine, since I understand what you mean by “dragonâ€. Hence they truly exist. Last I heard, but this can change, they really only exist as a subject of our thoughts. No one has ever seen one other than in their mind, or as a drawing or as a statue representing what is in someone’s mind.
A relation is something which creates a link between two realities, be they concrete or in one’s mind.
2+2=4 is a sequence of two relations. When you say “fruit†you have created a relation, it is an abstraction, in other words, from such and such concrete fruit, you have produced a being of reason, a universal, that you name “fruitâ€. It is thus a link between a multitude of concrete realities and a being of reason. When you say “I am faster than Harveyâ€, you have created a relation. There are many types of relations, based on quality, quantity, relations of similitude and equality, etc. Better still, when you say “Iâ€, it is also a relation, an identity relative to yourself. That one is called ipsolipsim. I quite like it because one must split onseself in two, or else one couldn’t compare oneself. So it is rather delightful. Look:
- So how am I doing today?
- Good and me?
- Impeccable, but I missed myself a bit, it’s been a while since I have seen myself.
You see? Even that is a relation. And intuition? When you say “I feel it is in that direction that I shoud go!â€â€¦ well that’s another relation, with a cause that is more or less mysterious, but it’s once more a link that we create between a situation and its outcome, and which dispenses us from a formalized reasoning.
So tell me what reflexive intelligence does other than fabricate relations? The examples are infinite you know. Take language, it is also a relation, which passes through a conventional sign. Even your thought is in constant relation with reality. Between reality and your intelligence there is a genetic sign, and between your thought and your language there is a conventional link, and then another conventional link between your language and your writing… Well that does amount to relations!
I haven’t read Hume. Tell me why you think of him here in this discussion, and I’ll try to understand.
(to be continued)
It seems to me you identify substance and subject. One cannot discover a first in the order of being through a physical reality. It is obvious there is a subject in “rock”, since it has specific characteristics (color, weight, measurements, density) and its form is its nature but we can discover no first in the order of being since the rock only implies matter. Now the being of matter is its change, in other words the how – there is no why in matter. Obviously a neoplatonician will speak of a rock “en soi†and decree that it is its substance, yet a rock "en soi†doesn’t exist, it is a purely imaginative idea… In a rock, form is not distinguishable form matter, and there is thus no first according to the form of what is: it’s determination is purely material…
Substance is the answer to the question “what is being qua being?â€, the first principle in the order of being. Metaphysics is the science which seeks the first principles. Seeking what is first is the appetite of intelligence.
Metaphysics enables us to journey from the complexity of an existing reality to the first principle, undividable, of this same reality. The principle according to the form of what is is neither experimented concretely nor abstractly, nor in any way at all since it receives no determinations: it is. There certainly lies a major bone: most errors consist in reducing substance to something we can feel or represent. Yet we well and truly find ourselves in front of a reality which we will never be able to represent, no more externally than internally, else it would not be substance! We can only induce it (qualitatively).
PS should there be an answer, I may not be able to answer rapidly, but would do so in due time.
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Then "yet a rock “en soi†doesn’t exist, it is a purely imaginative idea…” is a purely imaginative idea.
This is only the epistemological problem concerning how events are signified in language. Tell me, what’s the difference between your presence to the “rock” and your presence to the quote about the rock?
More later, busy right now…
Afraid I don’t understand your question.
If you propose that the rock is not substance, then you must also propose that a statement about the rock is not substance…there is nothing inherently different about the pixels in your quote and the rock on the ground.
Exchange the proof of the rock by getting hit with it and feeling pain for proof of the quote by the sensory perception that hits you when you read it.
What is the difference? It seems that you would have to commit a reductio ad absurdem by negating a substance via a proposition…they are equivalent.
When Berkeley said “the rock doesn’t exist” he was at least saying the statement “the rock doesn’t exist” exists.