Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 23:01:24 +1000 From: hbone <hbone-AT-optonline.net> Subject: Re: terms This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --Boundary_(ID_OR2717IXQDChBJLSAFWbXw) Re-considering the Levinas "stripped of subjectivity", I think it would be hellish in contemplation but zilch in actualization. No subject = no hell. I read a little of Sartre, long ago, viewed the movie No Exit - scarcely remember, except I liked it. Existential ism is not an interest nowadays. I favor peace activ ism based on community. Love thy neighbor as thyself and repair the world. Re: Altered states with substances, some Native Americans supposedly use as entry to "World Consciousness" - Other people on the Internet write of "Quantum Consciousness" in what seems to be a version of World Consciousness based on physics. As to the elusive "sublime", I always sympathized with your epicurean thoughts. Aesthetic pleasure, poetry, drama, most of all architecture, and other visual arts, the rare instances when such experience is deeply moving - is my approach to the sublime. No terror. A gourmet meal followed by a mellow old brandy produces an altered state of satisfaction. Wish I could afford it. More and more I realize that reading philosophy is not a substitute for physical experience, although it has its uses, which are, as you say, language-limited. Yes, reading philosophy can further the goal of understanding, and understanding can be a great satisfaction. I would like to better understand the concept of what it is, means, what happens in cognition, conversation, other integrated and continuing acts of an intelligence, and whether it could exist outside a mammal brain-body-nervous system. I think not. I hope the bio-revolution and genetics will take humanity to a better place. regards, Hugh ----- Original Message ----- From: Eric To: lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu Sent: Monday, February 24, 2003 4:16 AM Subject: terms Hugh wrote: Hugh: Call it the "il y a", the "is it happening", the "Real". Steve mentions encounter with the infinite and with nature. Are we speaking of the unknown? Of future potentials, of potential futures? Hugh, I would say that these terms are concerned with the present and the actual as well as the potential and the future. It is not that they are unknown, but rather that the cultural categories that you mention tend to usually cover them over. 'Il y a' is a very common French expression meaning 'there is.' Heidegger talked about the facticity of being, it's brute thereness. Sartre developed this insight in his novel "Nausea" where the main character is overcome with horror at the brutal existence of the world which seems to have no real purpose or meaning, but simply is. I might be wrong about this, but I think Levinas is simply attempting to develop this Sartrean theme in its own way. You are right there is something hellish about the experience. I have read that Sartre experimented with mescaline in the thirties and had a number of what we now would call 'bad trips.' There seems to be some evidence that the basic experience recounted in "Nausea" is based upon these drug experiences that Sartre had. The 'real' for Lacan is connected with other two modalities he describes - the imaginary and the symbolic. The 'real' is the third realm that cannot be emcompassed by the first two. I might be wrong about this as well, but I have always interpreted Lacan's real to be a little like Lyotard's sublime - something that exists, but cannot be adequately represented because of the limits of language and presentation. eric --Boundary_(ID_OR2717IXQDChBJLSAFWbXw)
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