From: Michael Staples <mps-AT-nomos.com> Subject: Message to Greg Date: Sun, 27 Dec 1998 17:15:31 -0500 So Greg, I was thinking first about our dialogue concerning meaning, and how I had said that meaning seems to midigate suffering. I indicated that I got this from Edward Edinger and that it seemed reasonable. When you think of a loved one dying, for instance, the meaninglessness of his or her death seems somehow mitigated by some sort of meaningful purpose being discovered (or imposed, as with his or her death being actually to his or her benefit...as in "God wanted this to happen"). But after kicking this around for some time, I came to feel that the hypothesis that the sheer insertion of meaning (built around the "As" structure) into one's understanding isn't really a mitigating factor of suffering. When you think of it, such meaning can go either way...it could have been, for instance, that a loved one dies in a heroic manner, just to have the "real" meaning of the event turn sour -- as with someone dying in a war that becomes unpopular or discounted. The important factor isn't JUST meaning, but meaning with an upturning feature of some sort. So, I just wanted to pass this on. I had simply "bought" the meaning package without really opening to it adequately. Thus, our dialogue was influenced by my premise concerning meaning. Secondly, I was thinking about authenticity again. I was thinking that if we define the authentic, ontologically, as an alignment with the Open, then practically (clinically) the only value judgement we can make concerning ontic events with respect to authenticity is whether or not such ontic events help or hinder such an alignment with an openness to Being. We would have to take each conception one by one --e.g., "We need to report child abuse", "We need to aleviate suffering", "We need to socialize people into the collective vew of normalcy", etc. -- and determine first how persuing them influences our ontological alignment. If it does influence such an alignment, then we can make determinations about how much, what difference does it make, and so on. If it does not influence such an alignment, then whether or not we adopt such a persuit becomes ontologically arbitrary, and defaults to some ontic value-system (legal, social, psychiatric, medical...whatever). How bout that? Michael Staples --- from list heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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