Thanks for the reply.
To say that life (or that being as life) has no end or goal/aspiration other than itself or than “expansion” would be a simplification and distortion, for the structure of what we call living or consciousness is rooted far beyond itself in greater and wider circles-- expansion is a sign of basically concentric and hierarchical finitizations of which “beings” are partialities. But we were talking about Being.
Being can most accurately and completely be described as truth, which is to say if we want to speak of life and the “living as being” (manifest being-ness, will to power) as depth. What is depth? Depth is connection and openness, unconscious or pre-conscious receding linkages through material and immaterial substances; depth is a reality as well as a sign of the underlying mechanics of method, here we have a unity of episteme and ousia.
Consciousness expresses a formal system of moving into relation to larger realities and logics, what we call expansion is grounded in one aspect or pole of this structure just as the other pole is rooted in coherence and recoherence, in resisting the expansive, dissociating impulse. Meaning circles back upon itself in consciousness and becomes the actual contents and “subjectivity” of a given consciousness, as “living as being”, which is to say that formal structure alone cannot reveal anything about the “nature of life” or of existence except to define some outer parameters beyond which our momentary reason cannot yet travel. Therefore it is a huge mistake to rest in these categories of rational (de)limitation in terms of that which to and for consciousness is pronounced as most real, substantive, meaningful, true.
Every shade of philosophy or ethics reflects one such place of temporary rest, where some such categorical configuration and series of psychologically-procured drives have been reified beyond their proper scope, thus once an intimation of this appears irresistably to us we also gain a subtler idea of a more essential “expansivity” as if growth, will, creation, were somehow the secret truth all along, when in reality our constitution and psychological makeup has not even yet prepared us, let alone in our highest ideas, for receiving any such “secret truths”. This is of course where Nietzsche and cynical scientific modernity fall victim to the same trap, a trap that so-called postmodernity struggles to break free of. We should read the often absurd “at all costs” associated with that struggle of the postmodern spirit as a sign of the danger and seriousness of the trap itself.
Then we are also speaking of Being itself which might be at this point most adequately described as this very pre-figuring schematism itself (and consequently beginning to be encapsulated by a Peircean approach to logic and the “metalogical”), the ebb and flow of tides which momentarily coordinated configurations speak convincingly of will, freedom, strength or even beauty, good and right. Expansion defeats itself in a sufficiently greater purview in which such expansion might actually be comprehended and given a true context-- in that largeness once finally invoked expansion loses its momentum and its majesty, becoming just one more abstracted dynamism that, once we really see it clearly, plays a largely derivative role in the grand succession of things, in the more eternal bend and ideality. Life cannot comprehend itself without undoing that comprehension, hence the vast diversity of conscious forms and moments, and too this vagarity and profusion cannot be comprehended its own structure and ‘essence’ without likewise un-making those very coordinations and organizations that we call life, consciousness, or truth. Being aims to draw itself as a veil around its contents, around an interiority; philosophy cannot root itself either in the structure of that being’s drawing-itself-around nor in some kind of abstraction and generalization from beings to Being along similar routes… philosophy must instead go bravely into the center, into the depths and darkness, into the contents themselves and bring with it as tools all former powers of abstraction, formalism, categorical will, phenomenal passion, ethical freedom, etc. But philosophy isn’t ready for that yet, not nearly there yet. So we can basically work to bring about such possibilities and transformations in the philosophical spirit, if we really want to contribute something. Or we can be human and coordinate human substances among the living and non-living, freedom and slavery as ultimate bounds for our valuation. In the absence of being required to sit oneself in the hell of philosophy, the next best thing is to seat oneself firmly in our humanity, to be human.
