PANDEMONIUM BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS.
Merida, Venezuela, 1999.
COPYRIGHT: Franz J. T. Lee.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Before we advance further, a brief comment will not harm our intellectual impatience. Just as we have experienced a long natural history of evolution, we have also participated in an arduous social process, and as far as the latter is concerned, that is, in developing our Intellect a n d Reason on a world scale, we have really not gone far over the last 50 000 years. This is all the more tragic when we consider our "Dark Ages", our intellectual suffocation in virile superstition, white and black magic, voodoo, tokoloshe and sangoma, in witchcraft and exorcism ; and "from bad to worse", if we consider our rational asphyxia in senile formal logics, in divine metaphysics, in visile empiricism and in vile ideological arrogance and religious bigotry. As a consequence of the above, our "thinking" is unilateral, uniform, unique. We just cannot think about two or three things or relations at the same time ; in nuce, we cannot think, because precisely this is what is all about, and how it exists as multilateral, poliversal, multicosmic, gigaformal and polique relations and Bezüge.
It is pertinent to make these comments on this degree of philosophic
thinking, because if we are not capable of thinking in "contradictions",
in contrapostulates, in relations, we surely will have a tough time to
understand what follows, to follow what is to be understood. At least,
in dialectics an attempt was made in this direction, but of the billions
of human beings on this planet, who thinks
dialectically ? And how will anybody understand Hegel’s Logic
or Phenomenology of the Mind when
she/he does not have the foggiest notion what dialectical thinking is all
about ? The macabre irony of the whole story is that hundreds of thousands
of students study Hegel across the globe with an archiformal logical mind.
Again Intellectus
In the last lecture we have focussed on Thinking-In-Itself ; we were thinking-in-itself. In other words, as stated before, we have been setting our thinking ability into action, in actio. Intellectus, Einai as Einai-In-Itself, or Einai-In-Itself as Einai, actively thinks, thinks-in-itself about the Non-Relation : Cosmos and "and" and Einai (as Einai-In-Itself). Simplified : the Intellect thinks-in-itself about the Satz : Cosmos and Einai.
Now, let us refer to the "contradiction", to the "double existence" of Intellect, of Einai-In-Itself. In this case, A is not only equal to A, A is also equal to Non-A. A=A a n d Non-A. At the moment we are discussing the following aspect of this "theorem" :
A=A and Non-A.
What does this signify? The moment when we enter the realm of thinking, even of active thinking, of thinking-in-itself, we have also to commence with our thinking process, in order to understand any level and degree, or degree, or level a n d degree of thinking.
Our topic is identified as Intellect, as Einai-In-Itself, as Active or Cosmic Thinking, as Thinking-In-Itself, as A=A and Non-A.
Einai-In-Itself can be a Satz (Cosmos and Einai) (A=A); it can also be the Affirmation in a Gegensatz (Cosmos a n d Einai)(A=A a n d Non-A), as Einai-In-Itself a n d Einai-For-Itself. Hence the Gegensatz, Cosmos a n d Einai, simply is a short form of stating : {(Cosmos and "and" and Einai-In-Itself) a n d Einai-For-Itself}.
This is the "double nature" of Einai-In-Itself, of Intellect. The two moments are not separate ; they form the same Einai-In-Itself. In the thinking process we have to take these two moments into account.
The Exploitation of Intellect
Let us digress a n d regress from our central logical argumentation and indicate the essential difference between our Intellect and the patrian Intellectus.
In this way we can demonstrate how the patrian intelligentzia, the intellectual or cultured classes, whose Intellect is now exploited as Intellectual Property, have come into existence.
We have to recollect what has been explained before already, i.e., the essence of the Patria as maltreated Nature and perverted Society, which we have identified as a denaturalization and dissocialization process. Also we should bear in mind the patrian attitude and actitude towards Nature and Matter; the latter are devillish, they must be exploited unilaterally. Society, sometimes euphemistically called Civil Society, should not have any "human", not have any male relation to Nature ; Mother Nature must be domesticated, she must be dominated, in short, she must be exploited economically in the service of human procreation.
Forever there must exist formal logical barriers between "Adam" and the "Snake", between "Society" and "Mother Nature". On the one hand, some Men exploited other Men and Nature ; on the other hand, other Men insisted that only Nature must be subjugated and that the exploitation of Man by Man, of Society, should be halted. Throughout the "History of Philosophy" we encounter this dualistic Subject and Object Non-Relation: not our Non-Relation, the formal-logical one !
The infamous Marxian "division of labour", the splitting of the " a n d " Relation between Nature a n d Society, reducing it to a simple "and" Non-Relation, as Nature and Society, as an exclusive "and" Non-Relation, marks the crucial point of the emergence of Labour, of physical and intellectual Labour, as the Essence of the Patria. Labour is the painful Birth of the Patria, but it is also its inglorious Exodus from History.
The Intellectual Exodus from History
The tearing apart of Nature a n d Society, of Cosmos a n d Einai, also resulted in the unilateralization of Einai, of forever freezing it as ONLY Einai-In-Itself. This serves the accumulation of Capital, the economic exploitation of Nature, and the physical and intellectual exploitation of Man, of his Labour. For this very reason, Nature, physical labour and intellectual labour could be converted into commodities, into private property. The ruling classes, the philosopher-kings, enjoyed the earthly fruits of their own Verstand and Vernunft, they philosophized accordingly, they lived by the "sweat of the brow" of the outcasts from Paradise. They made sure that no "contradictions" entered their kingdom, no " a n d ", and surely, no AND.
The "Wrath of Jahwe" and "Nothing" make sure that no outcast would ever dare to re-enter Paradise, to encounter History again. Also "Copyright Laws" and heavy penalties safeguard that Intellect never ever contradicts itself, that it always expresses itself concretely, that it does not escape from the world market economy, from Globalization.