What was the name of that mountain? I have to look it up… Mont Ventoux, that peak, or better said, summit that Petrarca ascended between the middle ages and the Renaissance. I am guessing at this, but it might not have been called that in his day (not the peak, nor the age), like the name Petrarch we have today. The theme is change. What gives shape to comprehension is the similarities. This is history. It is what R.G. Collingwood described as ‘reenactment’. And Heraclitus said you can’t step into the same river twice.
Today, I look from the vista of Mt. Akrásia; but perhaps some would call it Mt. Aporia. Spell check does not recognize these words akrásia and aporia, which only means that they are not in common usage. I had to add them to the dictionary. And further, when not capitalized (taking the form of absolutes) they are again not recognized—four new entries in this machines memory. This itself is interesting. Common usage has a whole set of assumptions packed into it. And that the digital dictionary now has four amendments and not just two is another (and that they are only on my machine). Can they take the form of absolutes?
Akrásia is when someone acts inconsistently with their judgment. Aporia (as used by Derrida) is meaning perpetually differed. Which brings us to irony. And I will suggest irony is the mark of an encounter between seemingly multiple and independent truths wearing each other's clothes. Which brings us back to Aporia (Aristotle “'commonly used' this term to signify a group of individually plausible but collectively inconsistent statements. The reconciliation of such statements by considering alternative solutions, he supposed, is the chief business of philosophy.” (Garth Kemerling).
Here I would like to refer to John Searle who suggests (paraphrase) that there are problems so large that one can go through four years of university study without ever being told that they are a problem. (an elephant on the antenna). The problem he lays before us is this. How do we rectify the notion that we are conscience beings in the midst of impersonal forces in space? And through Descartes we have centered this dilemma between mind and body (to Saussure it's a sheet of paper).
Let’s go back to our mountain. And until properly decided, we can refer to it as Mt. A. And we will assume (always a danger) that from this perspective we have access to all previous information (as has been documented, I want to leave Marc Bloch or Vico, the historians out of this for now). So, from this peak, like that of Petrarch’s we can pause and simply enjoy the view. Is it the same view enjoyed by Gorgias, Heraclitus, and Derrida? I couldn’t begin to guess. But again, certain similarities arise.
Back to history, enter Marc Bloch and Miguel de Unamuno. And what do they remind their readers? That life is lived by man. For Unamuno, humanity does not exist, only humans of flesh and blood, who are born and who prior to their death recognize its approach. Marc Bloch also recognizes that history is lived by men, but there are also greater forces at work in thier lives, geography and inherited culture to name two. From Vico we become critical; and from Voltaire we move beyond chronicle (Barzun).
You see I have a tendency to group similarities. There are some who would say that they are really implied by thier opposites. And only from these distinctions we arrive at meaning. I suppose we could capitalize Structuralists, as lots of them are dead and have lost the opportunity to change their mind(s); or at least they will have a hard time getting the mail through. This idea that meaning results from the structure where differences are imbedded does away with any interference from the world.
Enter Derrida, and a word of caution: at this nascent stage of acquiring and airing cultural capitol i am imprecise in my investments (gambling even). Yet, he proposed an intriguing idea (which will sound rather familiar, even, ‘well duh’ to anyone familiar with Zen)— the history of philosophy is marked by seeking the permanent fixed mark, a center, a universal which every other item in flux can be based on—the prime mover, the logos, the self, so it goes. And he suggests that in recognizing this we can step outside of philosophy, otherwise we are caught in perpetual preferential binary opposition.
Enter William James, who was already in the room. He says that both materialism and idealism function as logical explanations for the past… that they work equally well in proceeding the present; and it is a selection in how to see the future, and this selection could alter that outcome. He widened the lens with his Pragmatism, as are we from this altitude, except…
How is it that all of this is intelligible?—because meaning is negotiated into birth and preserved through language. I am jumping ahead. Oh, history. It too has an origin... And Saussure’s statement about Hebrew not having a means to express the past is a supreme irony; akin, though under different motivations than that of Sapir-Wolf with the Hopi’s.
But the observations of Derrida, that this center is an essential feature of western philosophy is indeed a novel reiteration, as is the thinking of existentialism (again, as Searle laid out, how do we rectify the discord between the notions of conscience (and often rational beings) in impersonal forces): in other words how do we account for freedom, and in regards to history, interpretation, and the implication of the present.
The solution, bold and naïve: we do not live atop Mountain A, but pass over it, back down through the valleys and in the town. We negotiate food, clothing, and shelter as we negotiate meaning, with the imperative that we are alive; and further, that we can not subsist alone, which renders death as that absolute against which we organize meaning and value. We are intent on living, and thinking is an means to express this intention, as based on memory (which this text has now become). By giving the mountain a name we can then return to it.
If this is presently obscured we can take it as evidence of our (not humanities’, but our success (mine and your) success of having assimilated the past and currently involved in the act of living. Aporia, as meaning perpetually differed is then the goal (barring fits of akrásia)--creation and destruction.
1-ar'0
