Deeds

In many cases, a sense of accomplishment is indistinguishable from actual accomplishment. It is for this reason that it is an abomination to criticize another. In shattering another's sense of accomplishment, you destroy the accomplishment itself. Do not be mistaken: I do not mean to say that the feeling of being accomplished is itself accomplished. Rather, whenever you feel that you have done something, that feeling always corresponds to - and instantiates the reality of - the actual accomplishment. I do not know of accomplishment any more real than that of the man who says, "I have really done something."

For, if we are not free to identify the feeling of something with its actuality, where else can we look to evaluate the reality of achievement? At least by equating the appearance with its reality, we free the subject to be responsible for his own reality. The only alternative would be to displace the notion and value of achievement onto a third party, over whom the subject is to have no power - thereby displacing the valuating power of man away from himself and onto those others whom he gives himself over to be controlled by. Those others may take on many forms. Do not be fooled: just because one wills oneself to be controlled does not make one free. I can do something and feel that it has been done; the worst thing would be for you to come along and tell me I have done nothing.

The worst thing - the worst favor. For how else are we to live except by the hands of others? Can we really hope to live entirely in a world of our own creation? And do any of us have the necessary stamina - the courage to stand wholly outside the world of others, and the staying power to remain, despite the ever-present call to return?

An End to Questioning

If truth is mediated by a questioning dialectic, then where shall we find our questions? Are we to be metaphysicians and look upon existence herself as the question it is our task to answer? Are we to be psychologists and look upon ourselves as that which is unanswered, attempting to mediate through an infinitely inter-referential complex, so as ultimately to discover only ourselves? Or are we to be simpler, and consider that the answer may have already been given - that every question is itself questionable, and the answer, even when unknown, is always and everywhere immediate? For what is an answer except an end to questioning - what is truth, except the absence of doubt?

Many paths lead to the same destination - but not all destinations lead to the same path.

The Truth Machine

Truth is not merely multifaceted - it is also multi-layered. Wherever you cut into the truth and however deeply you penetrate into it, you find a different stratum of interpretation. Typically, we consider the image of penetrating deeply into the truth to be a matter of digging deeply enough. We assume that there is a privileged deepest layer - that if one is seeking the truth, it is located at this deepest stratum.

In imagining the truth in this manner, we forget that the truth is a totality, and therefore indivisible. Like a machine, you can take it apart to see how it functions, but try as you might, it is impossible to identify a single part as the agent responsible for the functioning of the whole, for every piece in some way contributes to that functionality. The truth is like that: unified, it speaks for itself; divided, it is unintelligible.

Interpretation is the dismantling of the machine that is the truth. Interpretation is only necessary where understanding is absent. It is for this reason that interpretation dismantles the truth - so that it can create a reliable blueprint that may be used to reassemble the truth in all its functionality. To interpret the truth well is a difficult task - more difficult even than knowing the truth for itself. Many expert mechanics lack the skill to create a blueprint for building the machines they know so well. To interpret the truth well, one must have a thorough acquaintanceship with the unlimited human capacity for misunderstanding.

Existence

Just because you don't get the joke, doesn't mean it's not funny.

Pretension

The more you're interested in music, the less I'm interested in you. Those who will, do. Those who can't, talk. Man is a sponge: he can only absorb so much before something drips out.

The Aesthetic of Being

The plainer the speech, the less inclined it is to annoy. Taste in adornment often amounts to simplicity. Beauty is a singularity, and in this, it must always be pure. Beauty is a harmony, and since we are most of us amateur at composition, we would be wise not to overburden ourselves with too many intricacies. Only an expert can amaze - the rest of us would do well just to avoid offending.

Subtlety, Depth and the Common

Social beauty is thick and dull. The extraordinary of the ordinary excel only in their thinness; their subtlety scratches barely past the thick protective hide that divides the common from the divine. Truth is value, and value truth. The profound is essentially beyond the grasp of the everyman. Every man can come to it, but to do so he must pass over the crowd and everything of himself that has love for it. That which is worthy is scarce; there is economy in the divine. Value truth, for truth is value. Prometheus was no hero, for in bringing the fire down from the mountain, he extinguished the divine flame. There is burning, but whither is there warmth? If truth is a woman, she must be won over, but not only. She must be led to herself; she must be seduced. She loves no coarse hero, no matter how bold his deeds. Fortasse fortuna fortes adiuvat - sed sinceritas subtiles.

Debate

The stronger the opinion, the weaker the man.

Emotional Transference

If friends can be family, can family be friends?

Education

Given time, the educated watch their education slip away and feel they must make use of it. But their education is so broad that they cannot possibly make use of it all. So they inject it into casual conversation, speaking around the things they mean to say until they can no longer talk straight. They are the worst kind of pretentious; as they demonstrate their knowledge they show only how worthless knowledge can be.

Profoundly Obvious

In my philosophy, I walk the line between the obvious and the profound. Sometimes I err on one side, sometimes the other, but every so often I hit the sweet spot and everything I wish to say comes out as beautiful, true and clear. The rest of the time what I say is either too pedestrian and dull or too enigmatic and dense. The challenge to say just enough - not too little and not too much. The challenge is to show another the world through one's own eyes, and to be seeing the world newly at that same time. It should not ever be forgotten that philosophy has as its focus both truth and beauty, that it matters not only what one says but how one says it. And which is this, trite or profound? At one time one, another time another - perhaps even both at once. For would it not be best - to expand the trite into the profound and contract the profound into the trite? To explode the atom into a universe, and to condense the universe into a pea? Where truth and beauty fall apart and together, at that moment, we lose and find ourselves and forget to care which. This is the beauty of philosophy and its truth. This is - it's glory.

The Way to Experience

The problem is deeply rooted. For if we are to reach this deeply buried root, we must dig through the strata of dirt that thousands of years have settled over it and become sedimented around it, and this process of unearthing could very well endanger the root which we are seeking. Experience is a very old tree. It's roots have become very tough as it has grown into its ever-changing environment, and as its environment has changed in order to accommodate its needs. We could content ourselves with leaving it be and resting comfortably in its shade, but alas - it has grown so old that it has come to wither. What is to fault? It has an abundance of the sunlight of reason shining onto its leaves, and we water it regularly with the outpouring of our life's blood (er-lebnis). Alas, but the roots dig deeper and deeper into the earth to find a ground with enough nutrients to permit it to grow healthily, and it meets with nothing but the clay of dead cultures compacted hard all around. The strata of meaning that have separated us from the goings-on of experience are too responsible for threatening its life.

The only thing left for us to do, we human beings, caretakers of the garden of thought, is to carefully dig out the dead soil and replant the entire tree. But what labor must be done for such a feat! Even for the smallest plant, it is a great danger to lift it out of its defining environment and bring it into another. For such a majestic Sequoia as experience, it should surely prove impossible! We must remind ourselves that if we are indeed gardeners, the whole garden is our concern and we should not allow one bad apple to spoil the whole barrel. Has experience grown so wide, so thick and so high that it has cut out the sunlight for the young saplings at its base? If it is the life of thought itself that is threatened by the overgrowth of one Idea, is it not for the best that it die so as to bring new life to the rest? But it has not yet been settled whether experience means the life of thought or its denigration. What if just the opposite were the case - what if experience should prove to be the very lifeblood of the garden of Anglo philosophy? In the words of Saint Mark, what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? If experience is that, our soul of philosophy, we would bring our vivacious garden to lie fallow were we to let it die. Indeed, this is the problematic of experience: if it is worth our while, it is the most important thing in the world - but if it means nothing, we would be wasting our time were we to tend to it at all. With regard to the role of experience in philosophy, the matter is still very much up to question.

Inspiration

The poet seeks inspiration in the world; the philosopher, in a single word.

Experience

"That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no doubt" (Kant, Critique of Pure Reason). But what then do we know of experience? Are we capable of approaching an understanding of experience, and if so, would that not necessarily implicate an endless regress, whereby to know experience is to have an experience of it, ad infinitum? Alternatively, is there anything more certain but that all talk of experience is insufficiently understood, and that experience itself is by and large left unknown? Is not experience itself largely understood as a mere placeholder, its meaning understood vaguely if it is understood at all, and therefore, isn't it philosophically irresponsible to make use of it as a conceptual tool? For, if we are to make use of experience in our philosophical discussions, we must first ground experience on a sure foundation, such that what comes of what is said amounts to more than a mere house of cards.

Unfortunately, with reference to the usage of the term, all experience is experience, and so although we would like best to delineate a narrow meaning and, as it were, speak of "true" experiences and "false" experiences, this cannot be the case. For all experience is experience if it is experience at all.

We could go on an ideatic journey and explore the growth of the term through history and how it has come to mean now what it does, but such an examination, however thorough, would only provide us with the confidence that we have come to an understanding, without getting at the real truth of the matter. There is also naturally the issue of the association and interaction of languages with each other in the development of the idea, and how Hume may have first popularized experience philosophically, while Kant followed in his path, and in this manner experience passed through English into German as both erfahrung and erlebnis, and then passed back into English. All of this is fascinating but insufficient. Also insufficient is to tie the notion of experience with a posteriori knowledge and the scientific revolution. For instance, we could take this as our jumping off point and retroactively define experience as a scientifically derivative term, and in this way show that it is improper to speak of all knowledge coming from experience if we are to also assert that there is knowledge outside of science and its mode of "experiencing" reality. This would clearly be inadequate, since experience has since been reappropriated to include non-scientific experience within it, for, as we have already said, all experience is experience.

There is a common root between experience and experiment. In this manner we can show right off that, though recourse to a word's origins can frequently be helpful in the unearthing of meaning, in this case it is very little help. To experience the world is not to experiment with it, even though experiments too are obviously experiences.

Linguistically, the truth of experience is buried deeply. It's truth lies beneath the English, beneath the German, beneath even the Latin. The descent of a word may be preserved in it without the users being aware of this hidden meaning in using it. Experience must be torn asunder, broken past the point at which most dictionaries of etymology stop, identifying experience with experientia, experiri, and periculum. None of these get to the root, for they are each all the hanging fruits from an even older stem. Allow me to admit straight off my status as a novice with both Latin and the study of etymology. But it seems clear to me that experience must be separated from the roots that modify (ex, per) before it can get at the core substance that is being affected (ientia, iri, iculum). Is experience a kind of entity (entitas, ens, esse)? Is it a kind of passion (ira) or an irruption (irruo)? Is it a kind of violence (ico, ictus)? Or, better yet, is it simply what is to be had for breakfast (iento, ientaculum)? It is clear that there is a lot of ambiguity on this level, and we could very quickly make fools of ourselves if we are careless. Although I would like very much to give the primary meaning of experience to the violence of a blow (ico, ictus), I think that perhaps the most likely root here is a much more common word, namely eo, ire. Unfortunately, even here the ambiguity is just as high, if not higher, than at the topmost level of our closest familiarity with the original term, experience. If experience is always a going through and out of, what is it going through, what is it coming out of, and most importantly, how does it proceed?