Infinity-Nothing-randomly cohesive

• Experience of Connection with text vs. Analytic Critique of formal prose

-unity and self disintegration

"why" finds no answer, lack of justifiers

 - Nietzsche 

Will to Power- notes: 

4.Advantage of Christian 

-moral hypothesis-grants man an absolute value as opposed to transient, meaningless existence.

-morality as antidote against practical theoretical nihilism.

-truthfulness cultivated by nihilism 

6."Insofar as we believe in morality we pass sentence on existence"

-universe as transitional stage

-pessimism as analytic 

-value judgements are ways of turning one's back on the will of existence

11. problem-what is morality

-nihilism as state of mind, product of searching for meaning and not finding it, aims at nothing and finds nothing.

+ (faith in meaning although at times it appears meaningless, process of becoming as meaning)+

unity-form of monism, infinitely valuable whole

12. passing sentence on this whole world of becoming as deception invent a world beyond, a true world, disbelief in any metaphysical world.

+(aim of science, unified theory of being?)+

13. Categories of reason. Man's hyperbolic naivety -positing himself as the meaning and measure of the value of things.

+(a Christian would not posit himself as such, but rather posit the Messiah, God's grace, as the measure and meaning of things)+

13.hypothesis of nihilism- there is no truth, there is no absolute nature of thing nor a "thing it itself" 

+(art history talk, desire in contemporary art for not the thing that points but, a "thing in itself, side thought)+

-lack of any reality, not true world no truth

15. belief, "every belief is a considering something true."  Nietzsche is posing that we are desiring that we need a narrower abbreviated simplified world..

+(We can believe in a truthful world, w/o empirical knowledge of such, faith)+

+(Current state of things seems to be that through the plenitude of ideals presented to man, in our modern age, the individual is left to wrestle with his subjectivity, and can pick and choose, with help of his imagination which ideals are most suited to aim his life towards-this may or may not be an illusion.

I believe there is a truth and this truth of an infinite nature is surely incomprehensible to me, in my finite faculties. I trust that aiming, through self reflection, analytic fist and foremost of my subjective accepted realities, striving for truth, accepting that i may never get there, but, in the words of David Dunlap, I am "trusting in a far shore". This is not a disregard of other for we must face the reality of the "other" and come to terms with our juxtaposition to others. I must come to terms with my current state of finiteness and feel I can come to know quite thoroughly the totality of the "other"-which may or may not be true. With my subjective stance regarding this one could never really assert to fully know the other. But certainly can more clearly know the totality of a finite being compared to that of an infinite being. I accept that my finite faculties, can not have complete access to thee knowledge of the infinite. However I can trust and believe that in it's existence, and striving forward can have hopes in this realm but a hope in the understanding of knowledge of and infinite unity would require part of me to be of infinite nature.)+

+(In regards to ideals, I have seen beauty)+

+(death, suffering- unideal / (objective) nature/life- ideal)+

+(a true reality, a thing in itself, a thing that doesn't point to something else. Nature, life IS. God say's I AM.)

+(a faith w/o a why-letting the why drop.)

hold on to that feeling...

The following is a writing assignment to think of a specific example when I choose to deny my freedom because of social norms. Honestly I could probably to better at denying my freedom at times- my daughter would certainly agree with this, in regards to my clothing choices, which don't necessarily agree with the social norms of a junior high student. And I could really learn to not talk so much at certain times, but the desire to change those isn't really there.

Desires and Impulses I Freely Choose not to Act On:

One of the times in life that I feel most free is when I am driving, not in backed-up traffic or during rush hour, but more the Sunday driving or not really in a hurry to get somewhere type of driving, or if I am in a hurry I am able to drive there efficiently. I really love to listen to music while I am driving my car, often flipping though the stations to find a song that expresses the feeling that I am having of freedom. For example, Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” comes on the radio. I would find it nearly impossible to not to sing along. So there I am, driving down the road in an experience of my fullest feeling freedom. Then I come to stoplight. There is a car next to me stopped at the light with their windows rolled down. The driver, who I have never seen before, or at least I don’t recognize, glances my way. I suddenly find myself snapped out of my experience and see myself from the other car. I turn down my radio and quit singing. I bottle up my experience and look straight ahead.

When trying to think of something, I choose not to act on, which are many things, most I feel I choose to restrain myself out of a projected consequence. Like maybe I want to go dancing one night, but I feel like it is a possibility that I would run into one of my students and would potentially lose respect, a gained essence I would like to sustain. Thoughts go through my head like my students won’t take me seriously, I would be embarrassed to see them and then uncomfortable in class.  In any case the risk of consequence direct or indirect, outweigh, or overpower my decision or desire.

In any case, even with my choice to quit singing, which was the most irrational I could think of, my decision to quit acting “freely” is because of the presence of another person and my projection on how I might appear to them. And frankly why do I care if some stranger next to me hears me sing and thinks am weird or an awful singer?  But I choose to not want to draw attention to myself. Perhaps I am interrupting their experience they are having driving down the road. Maybe they are listening to NPR, and I and an unwelcome intrusion.

Just Another Day in Fallen Paradise

 Reflections on excerpts from "The Humanism of Existentialism"

-Contemplation is referred to as a luxury. My question would be, what intellectual activity, activity in general that is not aiding one's survival or the survival of others not in fact a luxury activity?

-we have the problem of the human as individual vs human solidarity.
one could ask if either of these are able to be considered on their own as binary

• I am aware that I think that I am. I believe that "you" think that "I" am as well as I think (believe) that "you" are(exist) I assume that we automatically feel this way. We are faced in philosophy with the choice to believe anything exist. I rather choose to believe or automatically believe this to be true. 
• Even when I am not thinking I still exist.

Sartre's criticism of a Christian existentialist- is that a Christian is are incapable of condemning points of view and acts of others.  

A Christian is warned in the bible not to judge, this seems pretty clear. Maybe because we are incapable of accurately judging. If we judge one can escape pure subjectivity by becoming aware of our subjective viewpoint, and aware that we do not have total knowledge of that which we are judging. Only God can "know" a man's heart. Therefore only God can make an honest judgement of another and this knowledge of the "other(individual)" is unattainable from man to man. In this respect the subjective exists, and to not able to transcend completely. One can never know completely the subjective experience of another.  This is stated in regards to the definition of mankind and good and evil- not for the management of society.

"Any action that doesn't conform to humanity is seen as romantic"    - a criticism of existentialism.

Common ground of Atheistic and Christian Existentialist: Existence precedes essence. Or subjectivity must be the starting point.

Sartre presents us with the paper cutter analogy: as in the invention/existence of the paper cutter as an analogy for the existence of man.

"We have here a technical view of the world whereby it can be said that production precedes existence" -Sartre

"When God creates he knows exactly what his is creating"- viewpoint of Descartes/Leibniz

• we cannot claim to know this unless we claim to know God and know what God knows.

This writing was interrupted due to the fact I was not feeling well physically and it was affecting my ability to think clearly and I was unable to will myself better.

Sartre presents us with the relationship of man creating a paper cutter to God creating man.
I think that this is an interesting thing to deconstruct.
Man creates the paper cutter out of a desire, a need to be more efficient at cutting paper. Before this need or desire would arise, there would be preexisting conditions present man with this desire. Man would conceive and then create the paper cutter from pre-existing materials.
Man also creates music and art out of different pre-existing materials, but this seems to be clearly to me a different utility.

• Man as God's artistic expression?
• Man as God's utilitarian object?

"On the universal concept of man" pg.292

• Instead of this existed before that, rather I feel that both man and his essence are evolving over time. There is no fixed template so to say. Especially if one believes in evolution. We are now then in the bracket of "human kind" man as we know now and can track back throughout history. At some point looking back we cut off, mark a point in time in which man evolved. One could assume then looking forward and following the trajectory there may be another point in time where out definition of just the structure of man, is not what we see it to be defined by today. And certainly our environment is changing- speaking here of the human's relationship to the environment, the comforts of modern life. Why would we assume that this form would no longer continue to evolve unless we would accept that man is the "end-all" of the evolution goal. In this scenario the Singularity Theory seems quite plausible. 

• God as a fixed entity-man as floating
• Man as prenominal? Binominal? postnominal?
• Evolution + Sartre = infinite regress

Mankind as concept preceding existence?

Individual as concept preceding existence?

"In choosing myself I choose man"

Anguish and Action:

While Sartre tells us that we feel anguish over our free-will, "we are condemned to be free"- this anguish he states is not over our own lives but that we feel anguish over our responsibility for man-kind. 

I think so far that the only thing this could mean to Sartre- not being able to transcend his subjectivity (at all?) Would be that we feel anguish because through our actions we are forming our personal definition for ourselves and for all of mankind, forming our definition, creating our template for how we perceive and answer the question to ourselves-"what is mankind?"

• Individual identity
• Identity of mankind

Back to the Christian Existentialist for a moment: and awareness

-this came up in class discussing whether or not a Christian could be an existentialist:

with regards to the fall of man and the original sin.

In regards to my interpretation of "the fall" or original sin- here man used his free will to choose, and in choosing he became self-aware. And now man-kind, instead of being born into a state of innocence we are now born into a state of evil, by nature we are evil, and have the free will to choose good.

So far- I still believe in free will but I don't believe that the answer to the question - Do we have free will?, Is not a yes or no question.

                    

Existentialism: Day One

• 
  

Day One:

Descartes-

Cognito -(disagree mostly?)

first person perspective (important, necessity for a validation of being, of one's existence/experience?)
subjectivity (the experience of individual in a certain space and time-sujected to pre-existing conditions, ie. physicality?)

Thoughts I had during class:

• You've got to believe in something even if it is nothing.
• In conversation we are witnessing another's experience of our projected experience.
• (write a book that you must choose a path and turn to page "12" or "33")-added to my personal to do list

• I choose to believe I exist- being that I am faced with a choice, I am sure some people wouldn't think to think if they exist or not. I still think those people exist too.

• I choose to believe that I am having an experience that I am an active participant in.
• I believe that there is an/are a degree/degrees of objective reality.

Thoughts on freedom:

• An image of static comes to mind where our freedom is so mixed into systems that are not completely free, including our own bodies.
• I do believe in a degree/degrees of relative freedom within the systems that we are subjected too, that we find ourselves existing in currently, some by our choice some outside our control.
• Some people have different degrees of freedom, based on their physical bodies and/or mental health- both which may be affected by experience.

• I often feel trapped, I often feel free. I am not sure if my experience of freedom is felt more strongly when I am making "decisions", say about a life trajectory. I think would I would call my experience of freedom is something else entirely.
• I believe that I can be aware of my subjectivity and objectivity at the same time. The example of watching a sunset, was given. I can be aware that my point of view- position in the universe, on this planet is unique and is causing me to experience the sunset as I do. I can be aware from another perspective this is an entirely different phenomenon. At what point would one say that it is no longer an "illusion"? There is the problem of getting outside of the system all together arises.Back to my experience of the sunset- Subjective experience wins, in my mind. When I remember, or think I remember a sunset, even if one believes that each memory is an invention(here could one say that each word is an invention-sorry digression) I visually remember my subjective experience, I sometimes remember thoughts I had during that subjective experience too.

• Feels like the sum of this turns into white noise, or maybe that is because I am sitting by a fan.

• Thinking in words.