Date: Sun, 6 Sep 1998 12:57:24 -0400 (EDT)


>Who's Rick?

Well, I wasn't going to give it away too quickly but Rick is a literary
device i invented to make it seem I was not talking to myself. As a
figment of my imagination, I can make him say or do anything like
trying to erase me like that cartoon in the seven-up commercial on TV
who picks up the pencil of the cartoonist and starts erasing somewhat
ungraciously. I was perfectly happy reading Kierkegaard by myself and
thought things were clear but recent posts have brought a disturbing
guest to my house called "confusion".  The _CUP_ is interesting for me
because it a good intro to how K's mind works, *how* it is "effected
through a resolution of the will" to look at pg. 169 where Edward
begins at a rather abstract and severely logical part of the text.
Before my memory fails me, I wanted to go back to where I started, and
it is worth noting that it is a question of learning to make a proper
begin characteristic of what he calls an "appropriation-process" rather
than the "approximation-process" of speculative philosophy. First
distinction to be made. One could ask, to look ahead, wether or not
this "appropriation-process" is an introjection, a return to self, and
so open to an analysis in this way through what we may gather this to
be through French thinkers for the most part. I was on pg 144 where
remember he writes, "I am a depraved and corrupt individual [] The only
comfort I have is Socrates". From here I am glancing at pg.183 (the
chapter that Edward starts from) where he continues with Socrates and
distinguishes him from Plato read as the speculative interpreter of
Socrates. I have lots of marks and underlining in my copy from pages
175 to 184. What seems to me of capital importance comes out in a
quote, for instance, on pg. 177: "But it is important not to direct the
polemic [against speculative philosophy, Hegelian mediation, the
approximation-process, etc.] to the wrong point, and hence not to begin
in a fantastic objective manner [in an activity that "does not resolve
itself into a tautology within a recklessly fantastic venture of
though" (pg. 169 again). In this case what is accentuated is the
copula: "the truth _is_ i.e. the truth is a reduplication" (pg. 170)]
to discuss _pro_ and _contra_ whether there is a mediation or not, but
to hold fast what it means to be a human being"(pg 177) To this end, of
making the difference between the objective and subjective way more
clear, he goes on to discuss subjective reflection which "makes its way
inwardly inwardness. Inwardness in an existing subject culminates in
passion; corresponding to passion in the subject the truth becomes a
paradox" (pg.177). To hold fast to what it means to be a human being is
to learn and practice a right begining which is *not* a correction of
anything or anyone but a doing or one could say an attitude, a manner
of relating to what can't be recuparated by the understanding. 
And...


> 
> With Kierkegaard you (not necessarily you) begin describing the world, and
> meanings emerge, less as from any possible description so much as from
> constructions or relations between constructions, those that are and those
> that are not yet.  Thus completion is disallowed.  Anything and everything
> that might be, is, only to the extent that it's emerging.  With no whole to
> strive for greater than any intuition of significance there's a perpetual
> invitation to smile as the relation of our individual freedom to the givenness
> of our situation is perpetually problematized; as the nature of self-identity
> swings open; as our (not necessarily our) relation to the dictates of others
> is continuously confronted and we awaken wondering after the ontological nuts
> and bolts of our relation to any 'pre'.  Its relation to the aufhebungen is
> analogous to what the figure of the acephale is to Leonardo and Fludd;  never
> a question of any actual stoppage (think Duchamp) of the historical process
> nor of an actual cessation of artistic activity, but the appearance of a
> history feeding off its end, an Abraham at the top of his mountain, ready to
> strike, continually recasting his own death sentence (hope you hear the
> anti-idealist tone here).
> 
> With a nod beyond chaos:  from the stomach
> where chaos and and what's beyond it are both
> lost, and in which it is discovered as
> beyond itself, as a monstrosity,
> 
> maldonado
> 
> 
> 
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> Hi Ari,
> 
> <P>Glad to see you made it home safe.  Who's Rick?
> 
> <P>With Kierkegaard you (not necessarily <I>you</I>) begin describing the
> world, and meanings emerge, less as from any possible description so much
> as from constructions or relations between constructions, those that are
> and those that are not yet.  Thus completion is disallowed. 
> Anything and everything that might be, is, only to the extent that it's
> emerging.  With no whole to strive for greater than any intuition
> of significance there's a perpetual invitation to smile as the relation
> of our individual freedom to the givenness of our situation is perpetually
> problematized; as the nature of self-identity swings open; as our (not
> necessarily <I>our</I>) relation to the dictates of others is continuously
> confronted and we awaken wondering after the ontological nuts and bolts
> of our relation to any 'pre'.  Its relation to the <I>aufhebungen</I>
> is analogous to what the figure of the acephale is to Leonardo and Fludd; 
> never a question of any actual stoppage (think Duchamp) of the historical
> process nor of an actual cessation of artistic activity, but the appearance
> of a history feeding off its end, an Abraham at the top of his mountain,
> ready to strike, continually recasting his own death sentence (hope you
> hear the anti-idealist tone here).
> 
> <P>With a nod beyond chaos:  from the stomach
> <BR>where chaos and and what's beyond it are both
> <BR>lost, and in which it is discovered as
> <BR>beyond itself, as a monstrosity,
> 
> <P>maldonado
> <BR> 
> <BR> </HTML>
> 
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> 
> 



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