Inspired by “The Net (18)”
On the sublation of passionate living and philosophy
“The Net (18)” started with a reflection on the concepts of “God and Being” through the work of Heidegger and Marion, and noted that ultimately the distinction between say “being and nothing” occurs in the realm of “traditional metaphysics,” where today we are trying to think a metaphysics that occurs with and alongside phenomenology. This places metaphysics in finitude, and in this realm we don’t deal so much with “being and nothing” but “excess/absence,” which strikes us as a more fruitful direction of thinking. As we’ll get into, I would argue that “traditional metaphysics” reflects a “philosophy of endurance,” whereas today we need “philosophy of passion” — but what I mean by this will have to be explained.
I
Phenomenology occurs in the realm of the concrete and actual, and it is there that we encounter limits and finitude, which Alex Ebert stresses is necessary for us to encounter excess/absence (which I associate with “lack”). It is only where there are limits that it is possible for me to encounter “/,” while in thought, which is unbound by necessity in abstraction, is a realm of “and.” The realm of “and” is where we can encounter a “bad infinity” or “spurious infinity,” as Hegel describes, which is basically an infinity of an infinite list (1, 2, 3, 4…). For me to experience a “good infinity” or “true infinity,” I need the “/,” for the “/” makes it possible for x to relate to y and y to relate to x infinitely, all while being transformed in that relation. “X/y” is possibly a “true infinity” based on how x and y act and relate, while “x and y” is in the mode of a “bad infinity.” Hegel is a thinker of the “/,” which is not something we naturally think or live — it requires practice and work.
The concept of “God” keeps us considering an excess and reminds us that what we experience is not everything, and thus “God” keeps us always thinking beyond ourselves. Unfortunately, there is “God” which is beyond us, a notion that can lead to Gnosticism and “bad infinity,” but positively there is “God” who enhances our experience of the particular and immediate. If I see God “in” the people around me, then the concept of “God” can contribute to a “true infinity,” but it seems more natural for us to think of God as “beyond” and thus an entity I only approach “spuriously.” In our discussion, we noted the importance of considering God “part of and in” finitude, making the world a place of “(in)finity,” a notion which comes out in experiences of art and aesthetics.
There is no “and” in phenomenological experience, only a great “whole” (/). I do not experience the tree in my yard “and” the sky, but something more like “tree/yard/sky” — to divide them, I have to think and “singularize” entities. This is discussed in “Thinking and Perceiving” and “Ironically,” both by O.G. Rose, but what it means is that to think reality, we cannot think “being and nothing,” but “being/nothing,” which is more like “excess/absence” (for there is no such thing as nothing unto itself). This is why a new philosophy and metaphysics needs to be phenomenological, for that is the realm in which “/” is the nature of our subject, while the brain and thinking must be “and”-based. I do not really experience “a great whole” in my mind, for what I focus on is what I think. Even if I am imaging the scene of a farm, I see “the whole farm”: the imagine is the sum of my focus, whereas when I in phenomenological reality focus on a tree, it is surrounded by excess. I cannot really think excess, for what I think is what I will to think (I get what I will and nothing more). Excess emerges where thinking and experience encounter reality, and thus excess emerges where there is limitation. Limitation is finite, and my mind to itself is expressed in terms of finitude (color, shape, proportion, etc.) but isn’t limited by finitude. This is why the mind is a realm of “and” not “/.”
Phenomenology is a philosophy of “/,” which is to say it is a philosophy of excess/absence (“lack”), and that requires encounters with finitude, which is to say we “need to get out of our heads” so that finitude might be encountered. Phenomenology is hence a philosophy of “clearing” versus “system,” a Heideggerian notion elaborated in “Clearing” by O.G. Rose (which is indebted to Andrew Luber), which is to say it is in the business of “seeing what is there” and “getting distractions out of the way” so that what “is” can encounter us as it “is” (versus clothed in abstractions and notions). And what “is” is that which to think makes it a “/,” which is easy to miss because we are always thinking onto things an “and” that feeds into traditional metaphysics (of “being and nothing,” “phenomena and noumena,” etc.). This is what we must negate and sublate into something else.
II
To move from the abstract and mental to the concrete and phenomenological can be to move from “and” to “/,” which begs us to ask: What changes if we encounter life in terms of “/” versus “and?” To start, it means everything entails and excess that we can never fully capture, which is to say everything entails something which is unknown, not because it is unknowable and irrelevant, but because our scope is always limited. This can be a frightening realization, thus why thinking in terms of “/” will require courage — a point which suggests Ebert’s notion that ‘the meaning of life is courage.’
To divide the world with “and” makes the world composed of things that I can know even if I cannot know everything. This is critical: there seems to be incentive to think of the universe as a “spurious infinity,” for I emphasize that there is always “more to know” versus “more to know about what I know.” I like to think I can know the things fully that I think I know, and by granting that “I cannot know everything,” I give some ground so that I can keep the ground that matters most to me. No, I cannot know everything about the universe, but I can know what I do know — but if I take seriously “excess/absence” or “true infinity,” everything changes. Suddenly it is both the case that I cannot know everything in the universe or everything about a thing — my capacities are doubly limited. I’m utterly surrounded by excess. I am a small blip. How will I respond?
The concept of “God” can be problematic for it saves us from encountering “true infinity,” for I focus on an infinity “beyond me,” versus consider the infinity of everything I relate to (the “wholeness” of which I must always “lack”). The dichotomy of “being and nothing” can also be soothing, for it suggests that things are “beings” and don’t entail any nothing inside of them (everything is present). But if I take seriously being/nothing or excess/absence, then I cannot take comfort in “presence”: everything is strange and new (as Derrida taught). My spouse is never fully present. There is always an unknown. What now?
We cannot live all the time according to “/”; to think, we must use “and.” And yet we cannot stay in “and” — we must acknowledge and accept “/.” It is not good to be unable to focus, but the focus on a picture that denies everything outside the picture is also problematic. I need to be able to focus on a picture while remembering that much more is in excess to that painting (the room). A humble focus is in order, a phenomenology of “/,” but this will not be natural to think and require courage.
Critically, if the world is a place of “/” versus “and,” then I cannot draw the line between subjects and objects the way which traditional metaphysics once did: the world is a place of object/subject. I am part of what I experience, and that means I am a creative element in the world that comes unto me. I am not entirely determined by necessity. I have say and freedom. How will I respond? How will I prove responsible? These are terrifying questions.
“And” saves us from thinking of ourselves as creatively part of what we think, which can be what we want, for creativity is exhausting. When thinking is tired, it seeks “and” to rest, and concepts like “God” and “being” can feed into that temptation. We must not let “God” be a sign of exhaustion, and that can be avoided if we keep God in life. But taking that seriously changes everything.
“/” is not something we think, so much as it means to enter the world we are “in,” but getting that we are limited and thus experience excess/absence requires objectively stepping out of thought and seeing the world we think about. Ironically, this means we are tragic, for we require an experience of thinking that makes it “seem like” we are not limited (after all, we can think what we focus on), which, stepping back from, we can realize is indeed limited. And so we can realize that in thought we are “limited from experiencing our limits,” which we can then conclude means we are living relative to “excess.” And so our limitlessness is evidence of an excess, the meaning of which we can then choose for ourselves.
To think is to be in the thought, which is like creating a world for ourselves. Art does the same, and in that experience art can change our desires, drives, and orientations. To create things as a “true infinity” is to treat things like art and to allow them to “take us over,” which is to say we limit ourselves for them. And in this limitation we create an “excess” that we can then be “toward” and define according to what we wish. This aligns with what I call “The Final Absolute Choice,” which is a topic I expand on at the end of The Absolute Choice by O.G. Rose. In this context of limitation/excess, we can ask not only if humans are conscious, but if a certain purpose then emerges and unfolds? If so, we have reason to believe there is Something More to us, but if this Something More means anything to us will depend on if we have the passion to “suffer for the vision.”
III
Children are remarkably ambitious, but they also tend to avoid doing things they don’t want to do. Adults are better at doing what they don’t want to do, but they can lack vision and ambition. Children have ambition, adults endure, but what we need is passion, which is “a vision we are willing to suffer for.” The world is full of childish ambitious and mature endurance, but I think there is little passion, which requires endurance of the body and spirit, and the ambition of both. Traditional philosophy, I fear, has mostly been an “adult philosophy,” which is to say “a philosophy of endurance,” and this today is what we must sublate.
I view “/” as a creative invitation that I can bear with passion (a vision for which I am willing to endure). But I only really “get” excess/absence where I truly encounter limit, and a limit I choose is likely not really a limit, but more like an obstacle that easily functions in service of my ideology, my preexisting ideas, my self-deception, and the like. To really encounter a limit, it seemingly must surprise me, and to be surprised I must enter into a “clearing” where something can emerge and strike me that is truly incidental and unexpected (like a “Hip Hop Cypher,” as I’ve discussed elsewhere). This is where excess is most meaningful and pronounced, but this is a place of risk which requires courage. In this clearing, I require the skills and abilities to overcome “limit” versus be overcome by it, and in this circumstance “overcoming limit” is for me to relate to the limit as a “true infinity,” as an aesthetic vision. Doing all this will require skills like timing, discernment, wisdom — the skills of a dancer who can improvise with “the unknown.” What these skills are would require “a philosophy of passion” to determine, but this is not what we currently entertain in our world focused on “philosophies of endurance,” of enduring phenomenon because we cannot reach the noumenon, of enduring nothing because we lack “the being” of God, and so on.
What must arise incidentally that we could relate to aesthetically, like “a true infinity?” To really encounter things as ever-deepening, we will have to face ourselves and ask if we are able to experience things ever-deeper, and that is scary. A spurious infinity means there is always “something else” to which we can look for meaning — we never have to look at ourselves. Boredom is evidence of a world of “bad infinity,” and thus boredom is evidence that phenomenology and “/”-living is lacking. Can we live differently? Can we prove courageous?
Passion is impossible without endurance, but it is also not “mere endurance,” and this is why emphasizing “a philosophy of passion” is important. In phenomenology, we find “/,” and that is where I believe passion, a vision for which we endure, finds its role in philosophy. Zarathustra’s children can arise.
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