IS NOTHING SACRED?
Posted: Sun May 10, 2009 11:27 pm
Nothing
Continuing discussion from http://www.booktalk.org/fiction-book-su ... 81-30.html
Hi Mary. If the metaphorical connections exist unconsciously, it seems reasonable to describe them as a hidden reality. There is a problem here regarding the reality of ideas that are derived from construction rather than observation, which seems to me to be at the core of the question of the legitimacy of mythological thinking. Taking Gaiman’s example in American Gods of bringing Odin back to life in the contemporary USA, this seems obviously to be a construction rather than a description. I get the impression Gaiman strikes a nerve with his sense of Gods as a hidden reality. Either he is talking about nothing or something. This twilight world of the Gods seems to be a liminal mixture where the nothing of imagination intrudes into the something of ordinary life. Can an idea such as Odin be important enough to provide the name of a day of the week, but also so unimportant that it refers to nothing real?
Similar arguments apply for all mythological thought, with the popularity of myths serving as an indicator of their perceived or actual utility. People have a constant tendency to mythologise stories to make them easier to remember and more interesting, pushing history into conformance with the mythic archetypes. This ‘invention’ of hidden realities only operates where the ideas in question resonate with psychological needs, most clearly in religious mythology. These psychological needs are far from nothing, but represent the intrusion of an unconscious reality, perceived but not understood. If it doesn’t resonate, the myth goes nowhere.
The claim that being is real is not a category mistake. If being is the whole of reality, containing all entities, then the whole is just as real as the entities within it.
Abyss as interstices is also a valuable idea – if the earth was crushed to make a black hole it would be only two inches across. We are mostly empty space. It illustrates that our common sense perceptions of solidity are illusory. But I don’t think this melting into air is as important a meaning for abyss as the fear of catastrophe.
Continuing discussion from http://www.booktalk.org/fiction-book-su ... 81-30.html
MaryLupin wrote:I am not sure I would say they open hidden realities as much as either invent them or more exactly, expose metaphorical connections that exist unconsciously and with the aid of the human narrative imagination and our tendency toward projection and anthropomorphization, act as if we have opened a previously hidden reality. Regardless, though, it is one hell of a fun ride.Robert Tulip wrote: “Like Someplace to be Flying, Carlos opens a hidden reality. The Yacqui ontology of the tonal and the nagual maps to Heidegger’s distinction of being and nothing.”
Hi Mary. If the metaphorical connections exist unconsciously, it seems reasonable to describe them as a hidden reality. There is a problem here regarding the reality of ideas that are derived from construction rather than observation, which seems to me to be at the core of the question of the legitimacy of mythological thinking. Taking Gaiman’s example in American Gods of bringing Odin back to life in the contemporary USA, this seems obviously to be a construction rather than a description. I get the impression Gaiman strikes a nerve with his sense of Gods as a hidden reality. Either he is talking about nothing or something. This twilight world of the Gods seems to be a liminal mixture where the nothing of imagination intrudes into the something of ordinary life. Can an idea such as Odin be important enough to provide the name of a day of the week, but also so unimportant that it refers to nothing real?
Similar arguments apply for all mythological thought, with the popularity of myths serving as an indicator of their perceived or actual utility. People have a constant tendency to mythologise stories to make them easier to remember and more interesting, pushing history into conformance with the mythic archetypes. This ‘invention’ of hidden realities only operates where the ideas in question resonate with psychological needs, most clearly in religious mythology. These psychological needs are far from nothing, but represent the intrusion of an unconscious reality, perceived but not understood. If it doesn’t resonate, the myth goes nowhere.
The distinction here between poetic and scientific meaning is a key one. Heidegger explored this in his comparison between meditative and calculative modes of thought, contrasting the meditative existential engagement with things for use, and the calculative scientific assertion that meaning is always objective and measurable. This question of the meaning of poetic language opens the door to mythological thinking, spurred by Heidegger’s description of nothing as a disturbing reality that pervades existence like a muffled gong.Caesar is a prime number: Carnap's argument with Heidegger was that he used language in ways that were literally meaningless. That is the sentence " Caesar is a prime number" is neither true nor false; it is meaningless. Carnap argues that Heidegger's logic was based on a number of statements like this and so his argument is linguistically meaningless. I don't think that is the same thing as saying there is no meaning outside science. However, while I agree that many of Heidegger's statements in that particular lecture are meaningless in this way, they are meaningful if read like one reads poetry. I can create a whole series of images based on the sentence " Caesar is a prime number" that create new ways of perceiving the all the things that are metaphorically connected to " Caesar" and "prime number" in my head. So I can gather meaning from the sentence even though it is also meaningless. This points to another problem with language and with Heidegger's use of it that Carnap points out...that the same apparent word can carry very different meanings. Like Being. The fact that we can manipulate it to be a noun like Tree and make the connection that maybe Being and Tree are linked, and get a new way of perceiving the world from that, doesn't make Being existent, nor even if it is existent, does it make it a noun-like entity like a Tree. And I think you can have openness to existential anxiety without making category mistakes "real" even if those very mistakes are meaning producers. Having said that, I do think that Carnap does not go far enough in trying to understand what Heidegger is trying to do.Robert Tulip wrote: “Carnap said there is no meaning outside science, rejecting Heidegger’s openness to existential anxiety.”
The claim that being is real is not a category mistake. If being is the whole of reality, containing all entities, then the whole is just as real as the entities within it.
The ethics of being in the world contrast to conventional rational objective ethics. It seems silly to worry about nothing, except that just in terms of psychology this worry can be a source of real empathy, with real evolutionary advantages. De Waal describes how the calculative Cartesian approach to animal psychology asserted a priori that animals do not feel empathy. I suspect Heidegger’s ontology of ‘being-with’ touches on some of the underpinning assumptions regarding de Waal’s scientific observations.I agree about this as a possible source of care (sorge). And I agree that there is an evolutionary tale to be told here.Robert Tulip wrote: “For Heidegger, openness to anxiety is the source of care, anticipating the future through the context of concern arising from being with others. It almost suggests an evolutionary sense of mutual aid, as discussed by de Waal from Kropotkin.”
I tend to interpret the abyss in terms of apocalyptic destruction, the hidden fear that our civilization is ephemeral, and could be wiped away in a moment. By opening a path to a phenomenological eschatology, Heidegger provides some useful analytical tools to interpret the nature of time.I'm not sure what I think about this terror of the abyss. I have written stuff on other writers who contemplate the abyss with existential terror. I have a hard time understanding it. I'm thinking specifically of Simone Weil at the moment. I think that with Weil, the fact that she read the abyss as "real" - that is, as a noun-like entity - was part of the source of her terror. By constituting it that way, the nothing becomes (like Heidegger says) a counter-part of being. Just as the devil is a counterpart of the god. Of course the human body responds to that with terror. But if one doesn't constitute it that way, if the abyss is more like the space between particulate matter, then the body doesn't respond the same way, fear is not generated, but rather a kind of awe, and so looking at the abyss becomes something profound but not impossible to sustain.Robert Tulip wrote: “The abyss for Heidegger is a problematic thing – almost the terror of the unknown. Carnap’s assertion that human rationality can stare down the abyss of being has a certain arrogance, claiming a level of understanding for empirical science that it does not really possess. These positions seem to me to illustrate the conflict between linear and cyclic theories of time. Carnap interprets time as linear progress, while Heidegger sees cyclic return. Heidegger’s effort to enframe the cosmos in the fourfold of earth and sky, man and gods indicates his sympathy to an older cyclic method of thought, attuned to the natural rhythms and harmonies of the universe.”
For me, this is part of what sorge is - how we constitute our attachment to the things in themselves. It matters what stories we tell to explain the world because they constrain how we experience our lives. So we get a choice - the abyss or the space between (and myriad other possibilities.) I think both Carnap and Heidegger missed the choice-bit of experiential meaning, although Heidegger did have lots to say about doingness.
Abyss as interstices is also a valuable idea – if the earth was crushed to make a black hole it would be only two inches across. We are mostly empty space. It illustrates that our common sense perceptions of solidity are illusory. But I don’t think this melting into air is as important a meaning for abyss as the fear of catastrophe.