A fragment upon the death of Socrates

Love found inherently in between human beings... Eros and eros, the double notion and the difference. The phallogocentric love and the love of wisdom... perhaps the most dangerous idea of Socrates, it provoked the rage of the patrons of cultic conformism of the old Athens – which was probably not without influence on the politics of democracy.... 

Madness: from 'sickness' to 'unbehagen' and beyond

The term 'madness' is of course not used in psychiatry today. However, it is used generally as a negative term and synonymous with the 'sickness'. What if the 'sickness' perceived as the madness of the other actually points out the ignorance of its real and disavowed meaning? Maybe we need to understand the place of 'sickness' as inherently human rather than depraved of human nature. I think Freud’s notion of the 'discontent' (unbehagen) in the culture is able to provide us with a theory of the 'sickness'. (See Freud, The Civilisation and Its Discontents; the German original Das Unbehagen in der Kultur)

The discontent is a tension of inner splitting, or in Lacanese, the uneasiness felt before the abject encountered as an obstacle to the enjoyment. The discontent/uneasiness is innate. According to Freud the uneasiness is “phylogenetically” reproduced in the individual history of each human being. Its origin is uncertain, but in a Platonic fashion in the Totem and Taboo Freud approximates the genesis of uneasiness in his mythological narrative of the decisive event at the dawn of humanity, supposedly responsible for the shape of human consciousness in the disavowed image of the primordial repression: the murder of the dominant figure of the primordial horde. This figure is later arguably to become the symbol of the Father.

To extrapolate further on Freud, the murderous event was probably a failure due to some practical reason. The failure of the murderous action – not of the murder itself – is that it left the emptiness in the place of the dominant figure who was instinctively perceived as the guarantee of the order, hierarchy and property in the primal horde. The murder shakes the foundation of the natural right, instinctively perceived as the ruler the primal horde. The elimination of the guarantee of this order causes its collapse whereas the human culture is born; now ruled by the Law or, the Name of the Father, to put it with Lacan - the Law as the the symbolic presence of absence, of the forever lost figure of the real power (consequently repressed in the real).

The uneasiness we feel before the 'sickness' of madness echoes our own discontent from within, the dimensions of the self we disavow - not some alien intrusion from the outer space, as we are rather used to (mis)perceive it in the Hollywood’s (per)version of reality. However, as Lacan maintains in the Seminar VII: both the perversion and sublimation intents the same or other morality.

Virginal Extractions

'Extra virgin' - indeed a pure virgin?

Descartes' god who fools you to think

Rather to escape the ecclesiastical prosecution than for the sake of metaphysical necessity Descartes postulates God as he does in his system – even if Descartes’s reason for postulating God at the top of his doubt is rational it is nevertheless not what he actually experiences, that for his being to think only existence is required. God is superficial here so far. Beyond the being that thinks however is the world one wants to calculate and measure, to create the world by means of technology. An operation that cannot be undertaken by experience and ultimately intuition – it requires science, notably mathematics. Somebody must nevertheless guarantee the existence of physical laws that allows for a scientific examination of the world, for human technological creation. As for Kant God is merely needed to guarantee freedom and not our metaphysical knowledge Descartes is yet an Aristotelian in supposing the world to be created by the transcendent god. But the god of physical laws is miles away from the god of Christian eschatology. Therefore, and also by learning to know  rather than to believe, like Aristotle, Descartes was not a Christian. Descartes’ god fools you to think. A god almost impossible to tell apart from the drive that urges one to want to know.

End of Maya Calendar

Right now the time is facing the end of Maya calendar. Twelve days. Time for a new age is dawning.

want to believe

Incredible how the following words after thousands of years still manage to make a statement against despotism of institutionalized belief, religious or other forms of ideology:

"I do not want to have faith in any truth of which I am told as long as I am able to know what I want to believe and not and doubt again and again on the top of it all."

Critical Reason    

Don't like

The absence of possibility not to like at the popular f...book makes people like whatever they otherwise would never consider to like.

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