There is a fundamental philosophical problem about the relation of what is outside of consciousness to what is inside of consciousness. It implies that some boundaries of consciousness should exist in some sense to be the articulation of the former problem meaningful. On the contrary, the impossibility for that problem to be resolved is consistent to limitless consciousness as what is often interpreted God in theology.
A rather paradoxical equivalent to limitless consciousness was elaborated by Heidegger, but ascribed by him to Greeks: If Socrates’s problem of human being had not been involved, therefor returning to pre-Socratics, all is being for there is not human being and thus any boundaries between the former and the latter do not exist. The concept itself of “Gegenstand” as the opposing or being opposed to human being should be cancelled and erased.
Removing the human being is absolutely inacceptable for theology. Theology needs human being not less than God. So that kind of limitless consciousness as omnipresence being at the expense of cancelling the problem of human being is not equivalent to what theology means though that is consistent to limitlessness after removing the borders between what is inside and what is outside of consciousness. Heidegger in turn expressively rejected Sartre’s “Existentialism is humanism” as well as any link of his own doctrine (or “thinking”) to existentialism and even “Sein und Zeit” later as far as it allowed of existentialist interpretations.
Consequently, theology or at least Christian theology conserves the problem of those borders but interprets it in terms of the relation of human being and God. Heidegger’s neologism “ontotheology” meant probably the same conservation, but as incoherent to his own thinking.
In fact, Heidegger’s doctrine originated from Husserl’s phenomenology rather than from Greek pre-Socratic philosophy immediately. Husserl’s approach “bracketed” reality to reach the “phenomena” of consciousness. Thus, the question itself, about the borders of consciousness, turns out to be “bracketed”, and the “phenomena” in Husserl’s sense are invariant to the transformation “inside – outside” of consciousness. The question of those borders is rather meaningless as to the “phenomena”. Then Heidegger’s step is to interpret those invariant “phenomena” as being rather than as consciousness. Being is not existence, but invariant to existence and thus to human being. Husserl himself interpreted his own doctrine in different periods by means of Brentano’s (or scholastic) intentionality of consciousness, of Descartes’s apodictic consciousness, and of Kant’s transcendental consciousness (and even of Berkley’s solipsism eventually interpreted as transcendental). Christian theology seems to be much more tolerant to Husserl than to Heidegger. One can generalize that Husserl remains always within consciousness, though expands it in a way to include the world. However, another interpretation of Husserl’s phenomenology never shared by himself might be grounded on mathematical cognition for he was a mathematician in education and
early carrier. Indeed, mathematics is what has “bracketed” and always “brackets” reality being invariant to it. The mathematical abstractions are always “eidetic reductions” consistent to both reality and possibility. Further, eidetic reduction can be generalized to “phenomenological reduction” and “transcendental reduction” and include all contents of consciousness. Thus, first, psychology and then philosophy seem to be formulable as “strenge Wissenschaft” as mathematics. From that viewpoint, Husserl’s doctrine might be classed as a form of neo-Pythagoreanism, say “transcendental Pythagoreanism”.
In turn, that reading of Husserl’s phenomenology can be applied to Heidegger’s doctrine in a way to make the latter even still more radical. That thinking might be illustrated as a continuation in Heidegger’s return to the origin of philosophy. Indeed, Heidegger did not include the Pythagoreans among the pre-Socratics. His “homecoming” of philosophy reaches the Word of Heraclitus but not the Number of Pythagoras. Before Socrates’s alleged overturn of being to human being, one might allege an earlier overturn of the Pythagorean Number to the Word of Heraclitus. Indeed, the Word and language presupposed understanding, the fundamental concept of philosophical or phenomenological hermeneutics invented or shared by Heidegger. If understanding is reduced further to human understanding, the reduction of being to human being is more than natural only after which the question of borders between the former and the latter might appear.
The further return in the origin of philosophy from the Word to the Number would mean in turn further desubjectification, but further dehumanization, too. The Word suggest understanding and thus admits human understanding, but the Number need not either. It substitutes understanding by calculation. The tendency for philosophy to become an exact science leads to dehumanization in the final analysis if it is consistent enough. Indeed, the problem about the borders of consciousness disappear in thin air after that consistency, but human being, humanism, and then even understanding, and the being itself disappear in turn in the same way.
One can generalize that the problem of the borders of consciousness is among those problems which would be better not to be resolved rather then that they really cannot be resolved. The inconsistency of philosophy is fruitful. It allows of philosophy to be human philosophy just as understanding the human understanding, and being the human being. Heidegger wrote about that “petitio principii” only which was able to allow of any science and even being to appear.
One can remind that Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans had kept their doctrine in both strict confidence and seclusion accessible only to the chosen ones. Maybe they believed that it contents truth too destroying for mankind. Nowadays, we are able to reconstruct that too dangerous truth as consistent dehumanization to digitalization whether correctly or incorrectly.
The problem of the borders of consciousness is linked to the relation of grounding and consciousness as the inconsistent, but humanistic groundlessness of consciousness.
No comments:
Post a Comment