Date: Sat, 4 Nov 1995 00:05:40 -0700 (PDT)
From: scott berger <hbeng057-AT-huey.csun.edu>
Subject: Re: Sartre and self (was N as existentialist)


 

On Fri, 3 Nov 1995, Steven E. Callihan wrote:
[snip] which no reading could occur.  That is because it is no text, but
> something, an "it," which only becomes text in being read.  But this
> already having been read and yet not thought is the text for us.  Does
> that make _any_ sense?

It makes sense up until the next to last sentence before your 
question.  I see the 'it' as the tree in the forest without anyone 
around to hear the sound of its fall. There is no text, but it becomes 
text when it is read as there is no sound of a falling tree until one can 
"read" (hear) the tree.  But then you go on to say that the tree has been 
heard/read and not thought. I'm not sure what you mean.  Isn't reading 
thought?  If not, what is the distinction?  Perhaps you mean that reading 
is also the 'it' until there is thought about the reading.  Or in the 
case of my analogy, the sound of the falling tree, the 'hearing,' is the 
'it' until there is an interpretive ear to interpret what has been heard. 
If the case is that reading/hearing are of the 'it' and not of thought, 
how can you make the claim that it becomes text to us after having been 
read/heard and not thought/interpreted?  Given that the reading is of the 
'it' and thought isn't, it seems as if you're saying 
that the text is the 'it' and the text is also not the 'it' (but becomes 
the text to us).  This is a contradiction.  How do you explain this 
contradiction?  Of course, if it is not given that the reading is of the 
'it,' then we are back to our original problem: How are reading and 
thought different?

-Scott Berger
 



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