Old synopsis

Class Synposis for 4/6/11

How can we think without intentionality? Isomorphism—identity between subject and object. This of intellection is Isomorphism, and due to this we can’t think of intellect as discursive reasoning. Discursive reasoning causes a subject-object split, but through intentionality we are always intending or projecting towards an object.

Solution to the subject object split may be found in a pre-reflexive object. The pre-reflexive object becomes object of reflexive cogito that tried to get to the objectiveless-intetionless.

We talked about Gnosticism and what it means and how it perpetuates the subject object split within one’s own self. Basically, it is the belief that the world is through and through evil. Prison for transcendent selves. All spirits are imprisoned by the world, and in a similar sense imprisoned by the body. The split between an evil body and a transcendent spirit are seen as illusory according to Plotinus. For Plotinus, the idea of waiting for spiritual being is ridiculous. World is valuable—salvation is in us—up to us. Only you can save yourself! Body is not inherently bad. We must turn inward—when turning outward you can’t help make a subject object split.

Plotinus’ critique of discursive thinking can be split into two factions: conceptual alterity and ontological. Conceptual alterity (otherness)—words—“this is a desk”—conceptual thining of difference. Differences can be seen in our conception of justice and how it differs from our conception of love. You can see the conceptual intellectual differences, and within these differences you can see multiplicity in difference—make logical/conceptual distinctions. Within this logical/conceptual distinction between plurality you can find a way to also find unity in the differences.

Discursive reasoning makes differences. The Intellect is not in time—time is a measurment/difference between past, present, and future. Truth as pure presence is non-discursive. How can I get to the non-discursive truth? Through experiements that force subject and object to becoe one. Imagine the world—translucent sphere with all contents, experiences, stimuli, whatever else in a succinct form. Where is the self to be found in this? Where are you? You are forced to see that you are the orb, the thing made. Only upon reflection does the I ever surface. When you are reading this synopsis you are no thinking, “I am reading a synopsis,” you are just doing it. If someone were to come up and ask you what you were doing, then you would “procure your I” and say, “I am reading this synopsis.”

We are both the producer and the produced. Contemplate yourself as the totality of things. Exegesis is an attempt to get to non-discursive reasoning.

There is rhetoric of immediacy. I can’t express it because when I do it, it is mediated either through words or sense perception. Everything is immediate through mediation. How is it that you get the words? Something that is a unity is not reducible to letters. This is basically a confirmation that the One is ineffable and any attempt to get to it fails due to the fact that we must mediate all experiences through our own experience.

Unity makes the one possible. Existence would not be without unity. I assented to the one and it brings us back down. Mystical union with the One—some time outside of time. Whole of time preserved with mystical union of the one.

Thinking and being are the same. The symbol is the relationship. It isn’t just a metaphor; it must be a concrete reality. In a sense, all gods are symbols for some to get to the One. An example in class used to express the importance of the ineffable was Love. Problem when thinking of loved one as object. Love happens where there is a unity. Two people made one (hopeless romantics). The idea that not talking when you are with your lover—union with the one. Maybe this is true, but it seems that talking presupposes not talking and vice versa. The ability to be comfortable with one or the other seems to me to be dependent on how much talking or non-talking was going on before any “comfortable” silences.