PANDEMONIUM BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS.
Merida,
Venezuela, 1999.
© 1999 Franz J. T. Lee All Rights Reserved
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INDEX
CONTENTS:
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE -- Cosmos I : Satz, Postulate.
CHAPTER THREE -- Exposition: Cosmos.
CHAPTER FOUR -- EINAI (Thought, Theory, Philosophy).
CHAPTER FIVE -- EINAI -- Picking Up The Threads.
CHAPTER SIX -- EINAI -- The Calm before the Brain Storm.
CHAPTER SEVEN -- EINAI-FOR-ITSELF
CHAPTER EIGHT: -- Towards : Einai-In- a n d -For-Itself I
CHAPTER NINE: -- Towards : Einai-In- a n d -For-Itself II
CHAPTER TEN: -- Intellect & Reason I
CHAPTER ELEVEN: -- Intellect & Reason II
CHAPTER TWELVE: -- Intellect & Reason III
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: -- Intellect & Reason IV
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: -- Intellect & Reason V - Science Finds God I
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: -- Science Finds God II
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: -- Science Finds God III
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN: -- EINAI AND
"Science Finds God":
"Modern
Science" and "Weltgeist"
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN: --
EINAI-FOR-ITSELF, PHILOSOPHY AND
UNIVERSITY.
CHAPTER
NINETEEN:
REASON AND WISDOM, AUTOBIOGRAPHY,
PART
I.
CHAPTER
TWENTY:
REASON AND WISDOM, AUTOBIOGRAPHY,
PART
II.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE: REASON AND
WISDOM, AUTOBIOGRAPHY,
PART
III.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO HISTORY OF REASON I
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE HEGELIANISM
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR MARXISM: Karl Marx and the "Human Being"
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE Epistemology
Revisited P A R T I
PART TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX HISTORY OF WISDOM I
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN HISTORY OF WISDOM II
CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT HISTORY OF WISDOM
III
Towards Philosophy
- Thales of Miletus
CHAPTER
TWENTY-NINE
HISTORY OF WISDOM IV
Biographic Data:
Thales I
CHAPTER
THIRTY
HISTORY OF WISDOM V
Biographic Data:
Thales II
CHAPTER
THIRTY-ONE
HISTORY OF WISDOM VI
Anaximander of
Miletus (610 - 546 B.C.)
CHAPTER
THIRTY-TWO
HISTORY OF WISDOM VII
The Fragment
of Anaximander
CHAPTER
THIRTY-THREE HISTORY
OF WISDOM VIII
Anaximenes of
Miletus
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FOUR
HISTORY OF WISDOM IX
Heracleitus of
Ephesus
( 535 - 475 B. C. ) PART I
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FIVE
HISTORY OF WISDOM X
Heracleitus of
Ephesus
( 535 - 475 B. C.) PART II
(TO BE CONTINUED)
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In order to introduce Philosophy, firstly, one has to
be a Philosopher ; secondly, to be able to philosophize,
one must be able to think, must e
x i s t ; thirdly, to excel in Praxis a n d Theory,
one must t r a n s c e n d
, must surpass the ordinary everyday grayness and has to ascend to the
evergreen sublime, to enter the realm of Reason and Emancipation, thus,
leaving all quagmires and cesspools behind, allowing them to perish in-and-for-themselves.
The famous German philosopher, Hegel, did state that "all that comes into being merits that it perishes", "alles, was entsteht, ist wert, dass es untergeht" ; this is surely true for formal logical or dialectical Being.
Certainly, the above does not refer to:
Being a n d Existence AND Transcendence.
Not only the Gods are trimensional ; also We, You and I , are "divine" . We act a n d think AND transcend. Acting is Cosmic, is Doing, is Praxis. Thinking is Intellectual, is Existential, is Theory. Transcending is Surpassing, is Excellence, is Emancipation. This Historic Trinity, Essence a n d Existence AND Transcendence, as Us, as You and I, is the quintessence of what We understand as Human Being.
But, We are not only Human Beings, We are not just passive actors
on a world stage. We also exist,
We are thinking actors a n d exist as active thinkers;
in
nuce : We are Human Existences. Furthermore, We transcend;
moreover, We excel , We reason, We surpass as Human Transcendences.
Until now, the above human qualities, as a totality, were attributed
to the gods, were declared to be
divine ; mutatis mutandis
they form the very essence of the Absolute Idea, of the World Spirit, of
the Holy Trinity. We do not deny this "absolute truth"; We only state
that We ourselves form a Human Trinity, and much more.
To act like Us, to think like Us, and to excel like Us, presuppose that We have been all along our lives on our own trail, in our own orbit, trying to historicize, to emancipate ourselves. For this, We need no recruiting, no conviction, no conscientization.
Here some explanations of some of our basic concepts:
Philosophy
For us, Philosophy is not aristocratic: it is not the "queen of sciences",
or the Warehouse of Absolute Truths, or the "ivory tower of cool or small
talk". In the same manner as Science is our Essence, similarly, Philosophy
exists as our thinking and thought process. In this sense, to be homo
sapiens, we have to exist as homo
philosophicus, and not be a primitive zoon
politikon or a modern homo faber.
More about our philosophical endeavours later..
The rulers of this world like to call their dwelling-place "the fatherland",
"das Vaterland" or "la Patria" ; we have nothing against the act of calling
someone or something names, as long as it ends there. Nonetheless, we are
happy that the "master race" has identified for us its natural habitat
and its social environment. We all know what the Patria is and that sometimes
euphemistically it is called "History". Our connotation of History
has to do with the dialectical, better even, with the dialogical, much
more better even, with the diagorical relation ("Bezug") of Nature
a n d Society ; and surely not with its maltreated and perverted
appearances, which form the very being of the Patria. Much more about this
in future chapters and lectures.
Certainly our understanding of the concept "Emancipation" has
very little to do with the classic "Emancipation of the Slaves" or with
the conventional "Women's Lib", even less with the "emancipatory" pipe-dreams
of the "New Left", of the "Neo-Right" or the "Neo-Liberal". Our emancipatory
human process is essentially rooted in our modus vivendi,
in the Patria; however, it exists beyond these formal-logical and ideological
boundaries, and it transcends all "historical" utopias, enhancing anything
that we ever could aspire, and which can never be realized on this
god forlorn planet, in this "heart of a heartless world". In future, we
will continue the discussion on this pertinent topic.
Essence is simply "What Is" , is "That What Is". This is generally known as Being, for example, Human Essence is Human Being. Other familiar concepts for Essence are : esse, essentia, ousía, Wesen, Was, Washeit, Quidditas. Relevant is not the Word but the Thought which uses the Word as a Tool, as an Instrument to express itself. We are using the Percept (or Unigory, see later), usually known as "Concept", COSMOS to express Essence or Being. Essence is Being, Doing, Acting, Práxis, NATURE. Essence is Cosmic, but the COSMOS is not only essential ; as we will see later, it is much more than this.
Existence, as a Concept, is not THAT which is used in everyday formal- logical language, in phrases like "human existence", e.g., "my existence is threatened", which means that I am going to "rest in peace" pretty soon. It is a philosophical concept which denotes "That something exists", simply "that", in German "dass", that something exists at all, "dass etwas ueberhaupt existiert". Existence also is not "to be there", Dasein, in Space and Time. For us, it is the "other side" (not understood in spatial terms) of Essence, its opposite; both Essence a n d Existence form a Contradiction, better, a Diagory. Existence concerns Thinking, Thought, Quodditas, Theory, Philosophy, SOCIETY. We use the Greek term EINAI to mean Existence in the above sense; its general meaning as "being, esse or sein" is included, but, as we have seen already, it exists much further than only simple Being. Please note: it is our concept, it has our connotation, irrespective of its original meaning in Ancient Greek. Much more explanations will follow later.
The Transcept (not Concept) TRANSCENDENCE expresses surpassing, superating, excelling, "hinueberschreiten", that is, passing from one sphere to another. This is a philosophic transcept and it includes theological connotations, but it has no "divine" meanings. It has to do with Reasoning, with Reason, but it includes Doing and Thinking. This simply means that it excels as NEITHER ESSENCE NOR EXISTENCE, or expressed in another way, as Triagory, as Essence a n d Existence AND Transcendence, in nuce, as HISTORY. It is a Historic Transcept, and Emancipatory Triagory. More elucidation will follow.
In the following short lectures, published here as short chapters,
we will expound, analyse and debate
the above scientific and intellectual reflections and
philosophic reproductions. We give various words or terms a specific ontic
and cognitive, even cognositive, content; for us, to avoid
intellectual confusion, only our meaning and connotations,
which we will explain in detail, have scientific and philosophic value.
We respect all other interpretations, but their contents are not questioned,
are not at stake here. We reserve for ourselves the historic right to act,
to think, and to excel, all of, by and for ourselves.
CHAPTER ONE
POISE, POSTULATE !!
The crux of the matter is: when we do not state our principle, when we do not set our postulate, then we have to be happy that someone else does it for us, then we have to accept the principles and premises of others, without any rational possibility of ever questioning them or criticizing them at all. On what grounds will we accomplish this, when we do not even have a single principle whatsoever? Id est: how can we think for and by ourselves, when we adopt a pure receptive beggar like intellectual attitude towards the very basics of action and thought? Furthermore, how can we think and know with incisive precision those premises which others have postulated void of our intellectual participation or rational contribution, and how can we verify the veracity of our knowledge and thought concerning these very theorems which form the basis of Patrian tradition, culture and civilization?
The Sine Qua Non
As we stated in another context, to understand Philosophy, to comprehend the postulates of any philosopher, of Kant, Hegel or Bloch, we ourselves, in the first place, have to be able to think, to rationalize, have to be philosophers; and, anybody who claims to be a member of the species homo sapiens sapiens as a conditio sine qua non has to be sapient, has to act, to think, to be wise, to philosophize; otherwise the claim to "conscientize", to be self conscious, conscious, scientific and conscientious is pure rhetoric, is sheer humbug.
Big Father a n d Big Brother
The "absolute" majority of "human beings" on this planet simply adopt an age old principle: God, the Father - the Old Testament version of the modern Orwellian Big Brother. Others postulate "Great Ideas" of "Great Men" of a "Great Race", of the "Master Race", of the "Herrenvolk". They themselves do not bother to have any original ideas or principles, but they feel "great" when they adore and follow "my leader" , "our great leaders", our "great African leaders", "nuestro máximo líder", "unseren Führer".
Great Crash a n d Great Cash
Plato constructed a majestic ancient Greek Pyramid of Ideas to form the intellectual basis for the ideology of all philosopher kings of all kinds, colours and times. On the basis of its "philosophic" principles, the fatherland, "das Vaterland", "la Patria", did exist for ages, for millennia, and it is still going very strong. In its superstructure, all its necessary principles, axioms and laws are formulated, are formal logically postulated. By hook or by crook, for better or for worse, its economy, its monolithic, monopolithic foundation, is solid, is consolidated. Never mind the Great Pest, the Great Depression, the Great Crash, the Cash is still flowing : Globalization is already ushered in, we are already on the Information Highway, every second we are being ambushed by Highway Robbers.
The above has to be cognized, be recognized, has to be part and parcel of our postulates, of our natural acts, of our social theorems and of our historic superems.
Our Satz, Our Postulate: C O S M O S
© 1999 Franz J. T. Lee All Rights Reserved