CHAPTER II: DIALOGUE
Speaking and Self-Consciousness
A. Speaking as the Beginning of an Ontology as a Science [1]
The experience of speaking is the consciousness of being.. In the Prologue we began our discussion of hermeneutic ontology by allowing its subject matter, being, to come to the fore. We listened to being, and examined how being revealed itself in consciousness. The revelation gained from such listening was that being revealed itself as communication, or language, the dialectic of speaking, hearing, and loving. Although the Prologue discussed all three basic moods of consciousness, wonder, trust, and love and their counterfeits, the mood of the chapter itself was that of wonder, [2] since its purpose was to discover the principles of being by listening. By contrast, the mood of this chapter is trust, [3] since its intention is to be true to the experience of the moods by presenting a rationale, an explanation of the starting point of our ontology. This explanation is reflective in that it will mirror the experience of the mood of trust.
The fact that wonder is a listening mood does not preclude the fact that later moods include the former. Trust, even though it is a speaking, must include listening. Conversely, the mood of trust must be present in the first chapter, since this chapter is an expression of wonder. Indeed, the mood of the whole book is trust, and the difference between chapters one and two is that one is a reflection on wonder and two is a reflection on trust. The motto for trust is "I believed, and so I spoke" [4] so the first chapter was trust in, or reflection on the experience of basic intentionality or mood, whereas this present chapter is reflection on reflection. It articulates how speaking is true to intentionality.
The first point of reflection to be addressed in this chapter is the problem of a beginning itself. Although we have observed already at the beginning of the Prologue that ontology begins with listening to being as speaking, we repeat the point here because we intend to show that ontology is a science as well as an art, and need to consider the question of the beginning point of a science. Our discussion of science here will be elemental, however, because a full explanation of the nature of a science must be based on our ontology of being as speaking. This explanation is presented in Chapter VI.
What are the criteria for the beginning of an ontology as a science, and does our beginning meet those criteria? Despite the fact that "science" in English has come to have the connotation of natural (empirical) science, we use the term in its older sense of systematic knowledge. "System" comes from the Greek " sun ," meaning together and " sta, " the root of "istanai, " meaning set up. A system sets up a group of things as a complex unity. In the classic metaphor for knowledge, seeing, what determines the type of knowledge is the object, what is "seen." Likewise, with this metaphor, the method of knowledge can be expressed in terms appropriate to the act of seeing. For example, Descartes' rules for the proper method of proceeding in the sciences are expressed in terms of procedures to arrive at a clear and distinct idea of a reality.
The first was never to accept anything for true which I did not clearly know to be such; that is to say, carefully to avoid precipitancy and prejudice, and to comprise nothing more in my judgement than what was presented to my mind so clearly and distinctly as to exclude all ground of doubt.
The second, to divide each of the difficulties under examination into as many parts as possible, and as might be necessary for its adequate solution.
The third, to conduct my thoughts in such order that, by commencing with objects the simplest and easiest to know, I might ascend by little and little, and, as it were, step by step, to the knowledge of the more complex; assigning in thought a certain order even to those objects which in their own nature do not stand in a relation of antecedence and sequence.
And the last, in every case to make enumeration so complete, and reviews so general, that I might be assured that nothing was omitted. [5]
"Idea" literally means thing seen, and Descartes' rules develop the metaphor of knowledge as vision, insofar as they are rules for removing distortion of light radiation from the object (clarity) and separation of the visual field into its components (distinctness). So with the seeing metaphor for systematic knowledge or science, the goal of science is to unite the mind with the complex unity that reality is. Complementing the visual metaphor in Descartes' rules, however, is the building metaphor, one that expresses the systematic nature of science in terms of discovery of composition. Descartes' second, third and fourth rules suggest a method of building -- beginning with the simplest parts of knowledge and placing them together properly to form a more complex construction that leaves nothing out. In both of these metaphors the subject, the seer, the knower, is a passive reflector of the objective order. [6] Mixing the metaphors, we understand that according to Descartes the task of science is to begin with an undistorted reflection of reality and to present the explanation of that reality by analyzing its reflection into its constituent parts .
This view of the beginning of a science does not express an ontology that begins with the act of listening to an infinite speaking. For the infinite speaking is not only the principle or beginning of the ontology, but it is also the end or goal. In the end, however, the infinite speaking is no longer received passively, but is mediated by the finite speaker who now participates actively in the infinite speaking. The "seeing" metaphor for knowing or understanding implies an experience that is confrontation of the subject and the object, whereas the experience of understanding and knowing realize an identity. [7]
In Aristotelian-Thomistic terms, what specified the sciences was the formal object, what the science principally treated. For Fichte it was the nature of a science to have one principle or beginning that was then explicated throughout the development of the science. More than one principle indicated more than one science. [8] From an Aristotelian point of view, ontology differed from other sciences in that their formal object cut off some part of being, e.g., natural science studied being as changeable, whereas ontology studied being as being. [9] For the beginning of his ontology, therefore, it was the characteristics that belonged to being as such that Aristotle was concerned to investigate. The prime characteristic of being was that it was substance. [10] Beginning with Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre or Science of Knowledge , however, the insight developed that substance was a subject, a speaker, so the prime characteristic of being was not simply its individuality but its self-expression. [11] Consequently, whereas the principle or law of being for Aristotle was "being (substance) is that which is not a group," [12] for Fichte the first principle of ontology was "being expresses itself." [13] This shift from individuality to self-expression as the principle of ontology is reflected in the ambiguity of meaning of principle itself. For Aristotle a principle of ontology is a beginning ( arche ), which may be either a constituent of being itself (such as matter and form), or a law such as the principle of non-contradiction. [14] For Fichte, however, since the beginning or principle of all being is the self-expression of the Absolute Ego, all being, anything that exists, must be part of that expression. So the first principle or law of philosophy that "being expresses itself" is not an abstraction from the activity of the Absolute Ego but is itself an expression of that Absolute. It is a law, a logoV in the root sense of the word, a gathering. [15]
An understanding of being such as Aristotle's whose defining characteristic of substance is individuality will naturally reflect such understanding in its ontology. Analytic search for simples as the reality upon which an ontology must reflect to make its beginning did not end with Descartes' method. Consider Russell's logical atomism with its search for atomic propositions. And in contrast consider Leibniz' deduction that the ultimate simple or component of material being could itself have no components and must thus be immaterial. Though he brilliantly accounted for the reality of relationship by hypothesizing that each individual was holographic in that it represented the whole universe, he followed the Aristotelian tradition in making individuality the starting point of his ontology. [16]
If one characterizes a science as having a particular sort of object, then what determines the science is the object it investigates. But the discovery of our first chapter is that the object of hermeneutic ontology is an intentionality, not an individual. Since an intentionality is a saying something, the object of an hermeneutic ontology is a principle in the sense of a law, for a law is a saying something, a gathering. What sort of a saying something or principle is the object of ontology? Given the insight that ontology begins with a reflection on saying something, its saying something is circular in that it is a saying something about saying something. [17] It is this hermeneutic circularity that ensures that the science of ontology is not susceptible to a paradigm shift. [18]
Like the Wissenschaftslehre of Fichte, hermeneutic ontology begins with reflection on the activity of an infinite being expressing itself. Unlike the Wissenschaftslehre , however, hermeneutic ontology is free from focus on individuality by recognizing that the fundamental datum of consciousness is the communication between two persons. Also unlike the Wissenschaftslehre it does not derive the finite self from the necessity of self-expression of an infinite self. [19] Rather it sees itself as a reflection of or participation in the infinite speaking. As in the Monadology of Leibniz, for hermeneutic ontology representation of the infinite speaking, although not necessary for the existence of the infinite speaking, is what constitutes the existence of the finite speaker. Hermeneutic ontology is the reflection of the finite speaker on the representation of infinite that its existence is. [20]
In the view of hermeneutic ontology, with regard to its principle, ontology differs from other sciences. For they operate with principles, such as the principle of causality, which are presupposed, derived from other universes of discourse. Ontology, however, since it deals with being as being, can presuppose nothing, for nothing lies outside of its universe of discourse. It is characteristic of ontology, therefore, that it, unlike other sciences, can have no presuppositions; for there is nothing prior to being that is placed under it to ground it as its foundation. A science of being cannot derive its nature from some reality that lies outside of it. Furthermore, the metaphor of foundation belongs to a view of a science as a systematic building. The metaphor appropriate to an hermeneutic ontology, however, is a systematic unfolding of a principle, infinite speaking, that is a present concrete existence.
Hermeneutic ontology, depending neither upon abstract principle or abstract individual but on infinite communication is a presence of the speaking that it unfolds. Thus hermeneutic ontology is an art as well as a science, for it is the function of art to make present the reality to which it refers. In its activity of unfolding the reality of speaking, hermeneutic ontology reveals the presence of speaking as well as what is spoken about. It further reveals the presence of what is spoken about to the speaker and the presence of the speaker to himself and to other speakers.
The fact that ontology can have no presuppositions and is an art does not imply that it is unscientific in the sense that it has no principle from which to unfold all of its implications or conclusions. Since ontology must have a principle to be a science, yet because of its universal character can have no principle outside of its own horizon, the principal characteristic of ontology as a science may appear to be that it is self-grounding or self-positing. Hermeneutic ontology, however, is grounded in being as being, which is a being rather than an idea, and it is that being that is self-communicating. Of course, hermeneutic ontology only participates in the self-communicating nature of the being that is its source. Even if ontology were a complete expression of being, what it would be communicating would be being, not itself. It is not self-grounding.
If we apply the Aristotelian form-content metaphor, an examination of the content or object of consciousness in the Prologue has shown that being has a self-communicating nature. For being reveals itself as revealing, speaking, communicating. If we translate this fact into the form-content metaphor, we see that it is the peculiarity of an ontology that the form of its consciousness must match its content. [21] Because ontology is the investigation of being as such, in this science consciousness, the form, must manifest in itself the same self-communicating nature that it discovers in its content or object, being, for a consciousness, a self-conscious person, is also a being. While a self-conscious person is listening to being, therefore, it must itself also be communicating itself, or speaking. An examination of the method that a person uses to realize being must therefore lead us from an emphasis on the speaking to which consciousness is listening to the speaking that consciousness is itself performing [22] .
The primordial experience of consciousness is one of moods. But a mood is not some sort of pre-linguistic datum, but is rather proto-linguistic. As the etymology of the word mood itself suggests, a mood is an intention, a seeking after that is a saying. [23] This subjective intentionality that consciousness discovers in being and in itself is their bond of community. For finite human intentionality is a participation in the self-communicating, self-grounding nature of infinite communication or language. Language, or speaking, hearing, and loving, is a seeking, a continual process of self-discovery in expression or communication.
The examination of the primordial moods of consciousness has already implied the relations of consciousness, being, and speaking by showing that speaking was implied in the moods of consciousness to which we listened in the Prologue. The task of this chapter, however, is to show reflectively that an ontology must begin with the self-communicating character of speaking because there is no other place to begin. The method of this demonstration will involve a shift from reflection on the listening of wonder to reflection on the speaking of trust. In the Prologue the awareness of speaking evolved out of reflection on the moods from the viewpoint of listening to being. Now we must reflect on the nature of speaking by expressing what it is to say something. The experience of the subject speaking is the concrete datum to which we appeal in this chapter, just as the experience of listening to the object speaking was the concrete phenomenon of language in the previous chapter.
It is important to emphasize here why our investigation began in a listening mode and proceeds to a speaking mode. The human speaker, in encountering reality, is aware of himself as limited. He is not aware of himself as infinite or creative in the radical sense of being the source of all being, of grounding being by his own self-communication. In terms of speaking, this means that the human speaker must listen before he speaks. He can only speak the principle that he has already heard. Nevertheless, if the human subject does not himself speak, he has not really listened to being. For if being reveals itself as self-grounding communication, the human subject must participate in this self-communication in order to fully recognize himself as being. Therefore, while it is appropriate to begin an ontology with attention to the mode of listening, just as that mode must evolve with dialectical necessity [24] from listening to being to speaking, so ontology must follow this evolution in its presentation. Ontology must show how consciousness evolves to self-consciousness. All love or intersubjectivity realizes the unity of speaking and hearing. Ontology, however, makes the process of self-consciousness in love reflectively explicit. Self-Consciousness is the discovery of oneself in one's experience of speaking. Consequently, a study that presents the dialectic of being must proceed from presenting the intentionality or seeking that it hears in its moods to the intentionality that it speaks in its own communication. This speaking is both unique to the speaker and universal because it is inclusive of all hearers and potentially of every thing that can be said -- which is everything.
It is also important to emphasize here that at this point our concern is not the analysis of full intersubjectivity, or communication. Is it not obvious that one must understand what it is to be a subject before one can understand intersubjectivity? As a matter of fact, it is not so obvious. We do not discuss subjectivity before intersubjectivity because subjectivity is ontologically prior. Our investigation of being in the first chapter revealed that nothing in human consciousness is prior to the presence of communication. The finite subject, however, discovers its finitude in the fact that it must listen before it can speak, [25] that its speaking and hearing are not temporally identified. This means that for a finite speaker the dialectic of speaking, hearing, and loving must be played out temporally. In a temporal unfolding, not only does hearing precede speaking, but speaking precedes communication as well, even though the fact of communication in time does not establish such a priority. (That is, our temporal experience of speaking does not necessarily make us aware that we speak before we communicate -- speaking and communication may be simultaneous experiences.) So for us, who are observing the dialectic of communication from a finite point of view, it is natural to consider the moment of speaking before complete communication.
B. Speaking as Saying Something
We have said that the intentionality or mood that we reflect on in this chapter is trust, since we seek here to be true to the experience of being called into communication by recalling this speaking in our own speaking. As the first chapter said what it was to seek, the task of this chapter is to say what it is to say something. Seeking and saying something may be temporally sequential realities for the finite speaker. [26] Seeking is the immediate experience, the mood of saying something that may precede the finite speaker's verbal articulation. [27] Saying something, in turn, is the expression of seeking. Because we seek, because we experience ourselves as being called into communication, we say something. [28]
To say something authentically, that is, for oneself, is to understand it. Here we intend to understand the intentionalities or moods of being by saying their ground, by standing under them and giving their foundation. The ground of intentionality is discovered, however, in the realization that the moods are a saying of something. So an understanding of intentionality is achieved by saying what it is to say something.
Saying something is the activity of intellect. "Intellect" is a somewhat sophisticated [29] metaphor derived from the Latin inter, among, and legere, to gather and subsequently to read. For the mind speaking in Latin metaphor, like the mind speaking in Greek, the activity of intellect is a reading of reality that is understood in terms of the root symbol of gathering it up. [30] Therefore, to say that "saying something is the activity of intellect" is etymologically tautologous. For "saying something" expresses in English the same gathering metaphor that legere does in Latin and legein does in Greek. As we have seen, the root meaning of "thing" is an assembly or gathering, [31] and "some" has rich linguistic relations in "one" and "same." To say something, to act intelligently or intellectually, is to gather into a unity. [32]
1. Idea Formation
In English, the gatherings that the intellect does or the saying speaks are most commonly called "ideas." "Idea," from the Greek idein , to see, literally means the thing seen. As a visual metaphor for what is said, "idea" has the advantage of suggesting that what is said is not reducible to the activity of the speaker, and that it is something given to rather than produced by the speaker. Moreover, as things are seen only so long as they are activated by light, an idea may fruitfully be thought of as a thing or gathering that has reality only insofar and so long as it is the reception of an outer activity. The passive or receptive dimension of saying something is also emphasized in the Latin derived synonym for idea, "concept," or "conception." Literally signifying taking together, conceptio took on in Latin the meaning of embryo that remains in its English derivative, "conception." Getting an idea, like getting pregnant, is a gathering that has both a passive and an active dimension for the speaker. What is gathered is given, but the speaker has the activity of gathering it in a name. In so gathering, the name gives form to the content of the speaker's experience. Yet a name is not a form in the sense that the reality it gathers had no character before it was named; rather a name refers; it allows the speaker to recall a particular aspect of his experience of being. Since his experience of being was a call, his naming of it is truly a recall or a recollection.
"We are in the habit, I take it, of positing a single idea or form in the case of the various multiplicities to which we give the same name," [33] says Socrates in Plato's Republic . The unity in multiplicity referred to in this suggestive Socratic statement on the relation of ideas to names is not the only unity, however, that naming requires. For in addition to the ideational gathering of what is in common to many particulars, there is also a gathering of name and named that is first evident in proper naming. In this act the speaker associates a sound or some other physical reality with some other reality and so designates it. Although the name is different from the reality that it names, it takes on the meaning of that reality, so a gathering or unity in difference is achieved. This gathering or positing of a unity of meaning for different realities is common to all instances of naming. Furthermore all naming, even proper naming, which is the most particular form of naming, requires a gathering even more elementary than that of the sign and signified. For there must be a gathering of many different sensory experiences in an image of a particular name in order for it to be used as a sign of the conceptual gathering that an idea is. The sound or other physical reality with which the speaker signs another reality itself requires a gathering, for the speaker must be able to recognize the sameness of the physical reality in different times in order to use it as a sign. A child may use the sound "Diga" to refer to a particular teddy bear, but in so doing he is gathering together into a unity not only his different experiences of the teddy bear through time, but also his different experiences of the sound that signs it. Therefore, reflection on Socrates' statement about the presupposition of naming reveals that even proper naming requires a gathering, not only of the signified but the sign as well.
Since common naming requires a threefold awareness of unity in difference, (the unity of the idea-- the reality that is signed, the unity of the sign, and the unity of sign and signified), its most fundamental requirement is an awareness of unity in difference. This awareness of unity, however, is not the awareness of a transcendental category that forms all of our experience. [34] It is rather the awareness of the self-communicating nature of being that we explored in the Prologue. Every naming, every substantification of reality, makes the implicit awareness of the ultimate substance or being explicit. [35] That substance is subject in the sense that it is self-communicating.
The power of expressing unity in difference develops, so that the speaker can also notice similarities between different things, or proper named realities, and use common names to designate those similarities. Here, however, it is not the meaning of or gathering of one thing that the name carries, but the relation between things, so the name has reached a new level of unity in difference or gathering.
This unity develops even more when the speaker symbolizes, uses one thing to stand for another of a differing nature. The reason for this symbolization is the awareness of a unity that goes beyond the more immediate manifestations of the object's nature that were expressed in common names. One becomes aware of one's friend Richard, for example, when one expresses the similarity of Richard to oneself and other speakers in the common naming "Richard is a human." But one becomes more aware of Richard when one expresses his similarity to an essentially different being in the symbolization "Richard is a lion." Of course, in a most general sense, any naming is a symbolization, for a name is a thing that stands for another. But in literal naming the only necessary similarity between the name and the thing it stands for is that they both exist. [36] In symbolization strictly so called, however, things that already have names are used to stand for other named things. With this activity of symbolization, the speaker is becoming more self-conscious about his own powers of speaking or recollecting being's self-communication. He also expresses the fact that the unity of things does not lie outside of the self-communicating nature of being that he is aware of. [37] A further explication of symbolic awareness is expressed in metaphor, which literally means "carry across," and is so named because it carries across to one reality the name, and therefore meaning, that properly belongs to another.
2. Fundamental or Ontological Ideas
To name is to say something, to gather reality together into a unity. The question for a beginning of an ontology therefore becomes "what something does ontology say?" And since there are different sorts of naming, we might also ask, "what sort of naming, proper, common, or symbolic, does ontology do?" The very name ontology suggests that it is a speaking or gathers being. [38] But the gathering of being presupposes that difference as well as unity is characteristic of being, otherwise gathering would be otiose, for a being that is not diverse cannot be conversed, gathered. Further, speaking about being by naming it shows the diversity of being, for speaking participates in being. Since being is diverse, then, an ontology requires a naming of its diversity and diverse ideas. One idea gathers together everything that can be used to name ideas. This idea is world, meaning the material universe as an ordered system. [39] The world, as the totality of sensible realities, is the totality of possible names, for sensible realities are used to name being and beings. [40] A second idea gathers together that which speaks and names. This is the idea of self. The third idea gathers together all ideas and has been called the idea of ideas [41] or the totality of all positive perfections or goods. [42] This is the idea of God. The idea of God must be an idea of a self, a speaker, or it could not gather together all ideas. Since He [43] is the infinite speaker, all communication or selfhood must be a participation in his selfhood. [44] Likewise, the idea of God must also be the idea of being, since all being is a participation in his being. [45]
An idea, as a saying something, or gathering, is an intentionality. But so is a mood an intentionality, a seeking of the unity of finite and infinite. How then do they differ? One might say that moods are finite awarenesses of God's intentionalities or sayings of something, whereas ideas are reflective expressions of the finite selves' responding in speaking. In a mood, the finite self does not yet name. It does not pick out one physical reality to refer to another reality but allows the flow of its sensations to stand for reality without memorizing one of them and consecrating it as a sign. A mood is a seeking that only becomes distinguished into separate moods through naming. Such naming gathers together different aspects of the seeking. The mood of wonder emphasizes the subjective aspect, the mood of trust emphasizes the objective aspect, and the mood of love the intersubjective. But it is not possible to have one mood without the other, for all are moments of the same intentionality or seeking. In a like manner, the fundamental ontological ideas of self, world, and God, which are in a sense reflections of the fundamental moods, cannot be separated from each other. As wonder focused on the speaking of the self, the idea of self gathers together all realities that speak. As trust focused on the movement to express objectively one's experience, the idea of world gathers together all sense experience as objective. As love focused on the reciprocity between self and other self in their final gathering, the idea of God gathers together that gathering. As the completion of intentionality, then, the idea of love and the idea of God are the same idea.
a. The Naming of the Idea of God
Is the naming of the ontological ideas proper or common, is it literal or figurative? It would seem that the name "God" must be a proper name. [46] For the idea to which it refers is an experience of one who gathers all reality into unity, since all reality is the expression of this speaker. Since there can be only one such speaker, its name must be proper to itself alone. [47] Is the name "God" literal or figurative? It might seem that "God" is the most literal of all names. For what makes a name literal is its direct reference to the thing named, and in the ordinary language of contemporary western culture not only is there only one reality to which "God" refers, but "God" does not seem to be metaphorical because it is not obvious that the word originally designates some other reality. The etymology of the English word "God," however, suggests that it is figurative in the strict sense of the word. For it is possible that "God" is derived from either of two Aryan roots, the one meaning to pour or offer sacrifice, and the other meaning to invoke. [48] If either of these etymologies are correct, and "God" literally means either "the one to whom it is poured out" or "the one who is invoked," then is not "God" a figurative name after all? [49] The figure would be synecdoche because a name that belonged to a class was being applied to a member of a class. On the other hand, one might argue that both etymologies are unique descriptors of God since He is the one to whom it is poured out (in sacrifice) and is the one who is invoked or called upon because all speaking is a recall or a response to His call. [50] As infinite, furthermore, the idea of God is the idea of a being that cannot be a member of a class, any more than it is a class. [51] The idea of God is the idea and therefore the gathering of that which gathers, pours itself out, calls into being. In naming the one who to whom it is poured out or the one who is invoked, then, the English word "God" literally names the idea of God, which is God. [52] For He is the one who pours Himself out and calls into being and therefore is the One who is invoked in all naming and to whom rightly belongs the name of the invoked or "God." The answer to our question of what sort of name the name of God is is that any thing that names God is a proper name, and moreover it is the most literal of all names, for insofar as it names or calls or gathers it primarily and directly belongs to Him. The English word "God," even if its literal meaning is the "one to whom it is poured out," or "the one who is invoked," is no exception to this rule but only makes it more obvious. All names of being as being literally belong to God, and the names of all other things are figures of Him, because He is the Naming, the Gathering. To call God the Gathering is to call him an idea, thing, or unity in difference. [53] The differences of which He is the unity must be that He is the Source of naming, [54] He is the Named, and He is the Naming, which is the unity of namer and Name. For God is the one who says Himself totally and perfectly. He is the Gathering who gathers Himself. Other speaking beings only partially express themselves and other beings by naming them, which naming is itself dependent on God's speaking.
b. The Naming of the Idea of Self
Since the idea of self gathers together every being who says something, the name of self literally belongs to God, who in saying Himself contains the name of everything. However, God is obviously not the only self. There are other selves who in naming themselves and other things share in God's self-communication. Naming God is dependent on God's self expression, so in naming God other selves become conscious of God and so also of themselves as namers. In recognizing that naming has its source in God, however, other selves than God must recognize that their naming is derivative, and that their naming of themselves as selves is figurative. Further, though the name of self is a proper name when it is applied to God because in its literal sense it is uniquely His, when it is applied to selves other than God it is common. [55] For selves other than God express themselves in names only by sharing in God's self-expression. They are expressed or gathered only in community, a word derived from the Latin cum , with and munire , to build. The community of selves other than God is built together by a mutual naming. The name calling that finite selves do to each other is not only not harmful but necessary to their existence as selves, as long as they are called the right names.
c. The Naming of the Idea of World
The boundary that expresses the finitude of finite material selves is their world. We have said that "world" names the idea of the totality of sensible realities [56] , and that sensible realities are used as names. Although sensation is a condition for human consciousness, there is no one sensation that is experienced as ever and everywhere present., Consequently, the naming that constitutes the finite self's reflection on sensation is limited by its instrument, sensation, and contributes to the self's awareness that it is not God, the ultimate source of expression and thus naming. The self in the world is never finished growing, has never said something completely, the final word. Finite expression, which is what reflection on the world through naming it must be, is a process that is suggested in the very etymology of the English word "world." For "world" is derived from a combination of the common Teutonic wer , meaning man, and old , itself derived from the Old Teutonic verb stem al , which shows up in the Gothic verb al-an , to grow up, and the Old Norse al-a , meaning nourish. The world is the growth of man, and man never stops growing in the world, but is in continual flux. "World," then, metaphorically names the finite self's process of naming. Because there is only one finite experience of naming, "world," like "God," is a proper name. And though the English word for world is figurative in its root meaning, still there could be a name for the idea of world that did not primarily refer to some other idea. Even so, any name for the idea of world must in some sense be figurative, insofar as it is self-referential. For as a name "world" is part of the naming totality that it is naming. As it cannot escape naming itself, "world" applies to itself the name that properly belongs to the totality of finite naming and so is figurative.
d. False Ontological Ideas
Our first chapter has discovered that even from a finite point of view we cannot consider any moment of being in abstraction from speaking or saying something, for everything that is must somehow present the structure of being, the structure of speaking. A separation of the moments of reality from speaking will yield pseudo-realities none of which are suitable for a beginning point of an ontology. The objectified moments of reality are reflective intentionalities or ideas. As we saw, they may be regarded as objective, subjective, and a transcendence that somehow goes beyond both. The totality of sensible realities, which may be used as names, may be called world. The namer, the one who says something, has been called consciousness, or self, and the transcendent self that speaks the sensible reality that may be used to name all reality has been called God. Separated from intentionality or saying something, these three realities that are truly distinct suffer on the one hand an unbridgeable separation from one another, and on the other hand become confused with one another. In this separation of reality from speaking, the moments of speaking cannot be used to understand reality, for as we saw, to understand is to speak, to say something, to gather reality into its fundamental moments or ideas. An idea that is separated from saying something is no longer a moment of reality, a movement, an intentionality, and is therefore false to the extent of not being an idea at all. All that is left of an idea that is separated from speaking is a reflective intentionality that intends nothing. An intention of nothing, however, does not differ from any other intention of nothing, and so investigation of false ideas will show that they collapse into the same nothingness, that of saying nothing at all. [57]
(1) False World
The idea that is perhaps most susceptible to separation from speaking is the idea of world. For as objective totality of sensible realities that can be used as names it can be regarded as a set of objective relationships rather than a complex of things said. As such the idea of the world becomes the idea of sheer otherness, an otherness that is imagined as a collection of interactions. In such an idea of world the idea of self becomes the idea of a part of the collection, a part that is special because it can passively represent some, or perhaps even all [58] of the interactions of the totality. The speaking of the self then becomes categorization, a mechanistic collection into sets, the goal of which is to reach a point where everything has been said and there is nothing left to say. For the ideas that the self has in such a view of the world are not moments, but static sets. The idea of the self then becomes the idea of a collection of sets rather than an actor who experiences reality by saying it. For those who have this idea of self, apart from its collection it becomes an empty set or class, because it isn't saying anything; it is an intention that intends nothing. And God, the self that gathers all into itself, must simply be identified with the world. [59]
The true idea of world was a reflection of trust, or perhaps we should say that it was a diffraction of trust into a never ending speaking, since in the mood of trust consciousness is open to all objective experience as the speaking of an infinite call. We cannot strictly say, however, that the false world is a reflection of doubt, since doubt is not a mood but a lack of it. Rather the false world is the exhibition of the false control that doubt exercises. [60] The false world is controlled by doubt in that it is an analysis of nothingness that gradually discovers the meaninglessness of doubt in chaotic complexity. As difference without unity, the false world is a nothingness that presents itself in an infinite series. The fact that it is controlled by doubt leads it to be out of control, and no account can be given of it.
(2) False Self
What is a self that does not say something? The first temptation in separating consciousness from speaking will be to think of consciousness as passive in the face of an active world that impresses itself on consciousness. Separated from speaking, however, the world's activity of impressing itself on consciousness becomes a mechanical determination rather than a communication. In this case consciousness, which starts out as a listener, has nothing to listen to since the world has nothing to say to it. So the subjectivity as well as the intentionality of consciousness is completely empty, since the subjectivity of a finite self comes from being a listener, and its intentionality comes from its experience of something being said. Of course as soon as consciousness expresses this position, it falls into performative self-contradiction, for if there is a self separate from saying something, then that self cannot be expressed in saying something. As we have seen in the first chapter, the self that says nothing is perpetually in flight from itself. On the one hand, separated from speaking it must regard itself as a mere object, determined by other objects in a meaningless world. On the other hand its consciousness of itself as meaningful, and therefore speaking, leads it to regard itself as self-determining, but its determination must be empty of content and have no relation to any other reality. For it has nothing to say, and nothing to say it about.
The false self, then, is the moment of subjectivity under the false control of dread. But dread becomes a doubt that seeks to control by flight, and yet it can never escape the meaninglessness that it flees, for its flight is no movement whatsoever. The flight of the false self is out of control, as is the false world. But this lack of control is a deeper defect in the idea of the self than it is in the idea of the world, for it is the nature of the self to speak rather than to be spoken. Even the true world cannot be expected to control itself in a good sense, to give an account of itself, but accounting for itself is the nature of the true self. And an account can only be an "account of itself" by saying something.
(3) False God
A God separated from speaking calls nothing, gathers nothing. As the ultimate self, whose nature it is to say something, then, a false or non-speaking God is the ultimate self-contradiction. A non-speaking God may be imagined at first as a reality beyond the world, but such an imagination is an imagination of nothing. Consequently, if the term God as non-speaking is to have any meaning at all, it is identified with the non-speaking world. But separated from speaking, the world is an infinite divisibility of parts, among which the false self is included. So the false God must be identified with each part of a chaos of infinite parts, each of which now becomes a false God. A non-speaking or false God is exactly the opposite of the idea of the true God who is not only one, but the unity of all reality. Turning one's mind to such falsity then divides reality rather than unifying it.
The idea of God not only was a reflection of the mood of love but was its very presence and so could be rightly called by its name. False Gods, however, are under the control of hatred, which appears with respect to intersubjectivity in the form of blasphemy. The counterfeit of intentionality, blasphemy, curses God and dies. [61] It curses God because it blames the false God for its own falsity or lack of understanding. Having identified God with an unreal, because unspeaking, transcendence, and then having confused Him with an infinitely divisible world, blasphemy rejects what it has projected, reality as non speaking. It is not the rejection of false Gods that is the blasphemy, however, but rather the involvement in the self-contradiction of identifying love with hatred. [62]
For one who accepts the false idea of God, being, which should be the source of all speaking, is an object, not a subject. Therefore being has nothing to say; it has no intentionality. Likewise God, or transcendence, cannot be understood as communication that is truly beyond all finite reality and yet present to it. A God apart from speaking is a God who does not communicate and whose transcendence becomes the otherness of an unreal beyond.
Why does consciousness make the mistake of separating its ideas from the saying something that constitutes them? On the one hand, such separation is made possible by the objectification that is a necessary part of saying something. If being is not diverse, then there is no conversation. However, otherness need not be alienation. The explanation, rather, must lie in the mood of dread that attempts to secure being, itself and other, by treating it as a mere object rather than a moment, a saying something. This attempt, as we have seen, is doomed to frustration, since false objectification destroys the very reality, speaking, that it attempts to preserve.
(4) Dialectical Counterpositions as Consequences of False Ideas
In Chapter I, confusion is associated with dread, counterposition with doubt, and contradiction with hatred. [63] Since this present chapter is a development of trust, whose counterfeit is doubt, it follows that the consequences of false ideas will be counterpositions. Reflection in the mood of trust produces true ideas, whereas reflection in the counterfeit mood of doubt produces false ideas that participate in doubt's dissolution into counterpositions. An idea is a posited mood or intentionality of the self. False ideas fracture intentionality and thus devolve into counterpositions.
Counterpositions most obviously follow from the false idea of self, since it is the self that posits itself. But any false idea is a false position from which counterpositions follow. Just as false moods led to dialectical counterpositions, so do false ideas, the transcendental ideas separated from speaking, exhibit the same seduction. Because self-consciousness is expressed in ideas or definitions, however, its dialectical counterpositions are reflective and take the forms of pseudo-intellectual positions rather than more immediate states of mood alienation.
(a) Counterpositions of False Intentionality--Naivete and Skepticism
Since every idea is a reflective intentionality, or a saying of something, to separate an idea from intentionality is to cause a division within the idea. This is the foundational division that is the source of dialectical counterpositions. This principle that dialectical counterpositions occur when an idea is separated from intentionality is explained by the fact that the dialectical counterpositions of false intentionality come from a saying something that says nothing.
The first counterposition of false intentionality is naiveté. The naive person, rather than experiencing reality as saying something, is confused in the immediate attitude that there is no differentiation in reality, it just is. The naive person does not need to appropriate anything, because he does not even recognize otherness, except as an extension of himself. For to recognize otherness would be to be aware that there was a reality, different from himself, which was saying something to him. This saying something is what the naive person misses. Because he misses it, when the time comes that he can no longer avoid the fact that reality is not an undifferentiated unity and must admit that there is a reality that appears to be other than himself, he is forced to doubt its existence. In other words, the naive person becomes a skeptic, passing from an unmediated identification of reality with himself to a mediated identification of reality with himself. What is common to both positions is the lack of intentionality: neither the naive person or the skeptic has anything to say. The naive person has nothing to say because he is neither aware of self or of any reality different from himself. The skeptic has nothing to say because he sees only the nothingness of difference. The mediation between naiveté and skepticism is therefore a false mediation, since true mediation is a saying of something. All further counterpositions are under the control of this false mediation, since what constitutes these counterpositions is the lack of intentionality. Every further counterposition, therefore, is either naive or skeptical.
(b) Counterpositions of False World -- Rationalism and Empiricism
Like the other two false ontological ideas, the false idea of the world is at first naive. The position that develops from this false idea is called rationalism. In this position the world is seen as an immediate objective unity. This is a naive idea because rather than something to be gathered by saying something the world has an inborn simplicity that makes it an individual by nature, making it divided from all else and ultimately indivisible in itself. The world is therefore simple or composed of simples. [64] This naive rationalist position, called dogmatic by Kant, has the fault that it does not distinguish intentionality from an objective reality. So the principle of sufficient reason, which is really the principle of intersubjectivy and thus includes the principle of intentionality, is taken as an objective given rather than an abstraction from communication. [65] The world, unlimited in itself, then becomes limited by an objective reason on which it is dependent. The world must be limited in time, because if it were not, there would be an infinite regress that would violate the unity of an objective reason. The world must be limited in space, because if it were not, an infinite time series would be implied. [66] For the rationalist, time is objectified intentionality, and as such is a limited infinite. Moreover, the dogmatist conceives of the world as a simple composed of simples, because if it could not be reduced to a collection of indivisible units, again there would occur an infinite regress in division that would violate objective reason. Further, the world must be determined by a reality that is not itself determined, otherwise it woul