From: "Michael Staples" <michael-AT-intersubjectivestudies.com> Subject: RE: Zollikon: Unconscious Date: Sat, 10 Nov 2001 07:32:07 -0800 Michael, >>>I've been giving much thought to our conversation. To backtrack a bit, I see what you mean by the use of "Image". In fact, the more I stay with this "thread" the more I realize the problem of trying to think a new idea with words that have old meanings attached. I mentioned Hillman at some point. A fatal mistake I think he made, and one which H. did not make, was in hanging onto the traditional words like "Image". He gave it his own meaning, to include things like emotions and feelings, and tried to focus on the image as the thing-in-itself..."imagined" pain, for instnce was not thought of as being a representation of something else. But (and this is a big 'But') the baggae from "Image" came right along with the word and merely confused the issue. Yes, beings can presence without my understanding them. Not understanding is also a mode of understanding. Significance can draw a blank. In taking up "ordering principle" I had in mind a point of origin governing how my existence is cast, i.e. the bigger picture. >>>I was thinking that there is a difference between "Order" and "An Ordering Principle". Saying that my existance has a certain order is one thing. Saying that there is "An Ordering Principle" which orders it, implies a subject-like order-er. I had in mind the first example. Your example of hammering a nail is more specific, i.e. a particular concrete practical action (pleonasm), the smaller picture. You ask, "Does the ordering of my actions involved with hammering a nail have to be thought of as having a point of origin?" The short answer is, yes, it does. Why? Hammering with the hammer is an instance of practical know-how. To hammer in a nail, I have to know how. The aim of hammering, its end or _telos_, is the hammered-in nail. The means for hammering are the hammer and the nail. The point of origin for the hammering is my knowing how to hammer. This know-how resides in me, and from this origin, the activity of hammering is guided to its goal of the hammered-in nail. >>>Hammering the nail has a component of know-how, with an aim of hammering and a telos. This occures at the level of what Dreyfus calls non-expert know-how. But it also has a component of know-how that occures at a much deeper level...at the level of background information about being in the world, which is a non-thinking (ratio) know-how. Seems to me that the first category of know-how involves a point of origin concerning aim and telos..."I want to get the nail into the wood, and in order to do that, I need to pick up the hammer and smack it down on the nail...and so on." This involves not just "Order" to the activity, but "An Ordering Principle" (Me) that provides a purpose and an outcome to the activity. The second category of know-how involves "Order" but no particular purpose...it is merely the fact that I am a part of the world into which I am thrown that informs my ability to make sense of hammers and nails. Would you say that we are now on the same page here? The traditional debate in Anglo-Saxon philosophy about free will and determinism is really about the temporality of existence. The past has been and has cast me into a situation; the future is still open for the casting of my projects. Having been cast, I am also myself casting. Pre-cast, I am fore-casting. My life is also involved with others; I am broad-casting. >>>This isn't quite clear to me, Michael. It will take some thought on my part. Perhaps I can come back to this, because it sounds extraordinarily interesting! If hammering in nails belongs to my existential project, then I act as a point of origin determining an outcome (the hammered-in nails). >>>Ah HA! So we ARE on the same page. But, in so doing, I have freely cast myself as a hammerer. The role of hammerer belongs to my self-casting. Such belonging of a role to my self-casting constitutes part of my identity. Individual identity is a matter of belonging to a way of life into which, partly, I have been cast and also, partly; which I have freely shaped and cast myself through individual decisions. >>>Yes, perhaps this is what I had in mind with my comment about determinism v. free will. Traditionally, metaphysics has been bent on finding out the necessity (that which cannot be other than as it is) underlying everything that happens in the world. To make sense, the world had to be traced back to an underlying principle, a governing point of origin ordering the universe. This is ontotheology. The Christian god was posited as the final source, the hidden anchor for the universe providing sense for everything that is. In the modern age, this underpinning by a god has been loosened somewhat. Space has been made for scientific explanations in which grounds are sought in other beings, which are then causes. Leibniz posited his famous principle: "Nihil est sine ratione." "Nothing is without a reason." Everything that is can be traced back to a a reason or ground in terms of which its existence (est) can be explained. Scientific explanation comes into competition and conflict with the Christian ontotheological underpinning of world by the Christian god. In both ways of thinking, whether scientifically or according to Christian theology, world is thought, oblivious to being and its open truth, ontogenetically as arising from a causal origin and thus there is competition, say, between the Big Bang cosmological theory and the story of godly creation. Hegel's idealism tries to reconcile these two competing alternatives by showing that scientific understanding can be erased, saved and raised to absolute reason, which Hegel conceives as God's thought before the creation of the world. The absoluteness of absolute reason resides in it being thinking thinking itself, without any relation to external givens. With the attainment of such human philosophical insight into absolute reason, the necessity of how the world is is seen and human being is reconciled with the state of the world. The 'enemy' to reason with its inexorable necessity is, for Hegel, "Willkuer und Zufaelligkeit", "arbitrary will and contingency". For Hegel, arbitrary will is will acting without insight into reason and thus capriciously. Contingency is that which eludes the insight of reason, i.e. contingency simply happens without reason and therefore marks a barrier beyond which reason cannot penetrate. Human freedom, for Hegel, lies in the insight of human reason into necessity which can be achieved through philosophy. But if the world were un-reasonable or beyond reason (_epekeina tou logou_)? This would amount to admitting the finiteness of human understanding and human existence. If no absolute reason can be posited, and if my individual existence cannot be traced back to an underlying point of origin, then the challenge for human being is to be open for and to deal with the (sometimes dangerous) play of contingency. >>>Well, you are heading directly for my target. You may recall that the question I have been struggling with since I signed onto this list six or seven years ago has been, in a nutshell, "What can be an appropriate goal for psychotherapy?" As a psychotherpist, this would seem to be an appropriate question? But the answer has been somewhat elusive. Your last paragraph is to the point. To paraphrase: "...if my individual understanding of what is normal or functional cannot be traced back to an underlying point of origin, then the challenge for me is to open for and to deal with the play of contingency." But this proves to be no easy task. Most psychopatholoy in the Jungian and Freudian worlds deal with a view of the psyche based on an unconscious. Precisely what is meant by "problem" or "unconscious" varies, or is at least not well defined. The DMS-IV, which is the manual used in the U.S. to define psychopathologies admits at the onset that it has no reliable definition for what is "Normal". They don't know what it is, but they know it when they see it. There are always those who have tried to guide me to one source or another..."Why don't you try reading XXX, or have you ever tried reading YYY?" But the result is always the same -- dissapointing. The Phenomenological Psychologists (e.g., Boss) have been no exception. A difficulty for me in our discussions concerning the unconscious is the fact that over the years I have built up an enormous network of interconnected meanings associated with the idea. So, when you say something about the idea of the unconscious, it can take days for me to run through some of these interconnections, thinking them through, wondering how this new idea impacts my understanding not just of leaving the metal strainer out of the coffee pot, but how it affects my entire understanding of the relationship between that which is known versus that which is not known -- but still acts dynamically within my world. So a few days might go by, then I return with "Well...now how does this work here???" The tapestry of meanings I have built up are such that in the end, there is little to do but lay waste to them all and rebuilt from the ground up. That is why I am focusing on the basic notion of the unconscious. That's the bedrock for psychology. Michael S. --- from list heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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