PANDEMONIUM BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS.
Merida, Venezuela, 1999. COPYRIGHT: Franz J. T. Lee.
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P A R T T W O
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Introduction (Continued)
January 25, 1999.
Quo Vadis? What Is To Be Done?
Continuing with the scientific a n d philosophic illustration
of our own Epistemology and Logical Method, let us scrutinize how the Patria
sees its (his) "History of Philosophy". In this sojourn through the
wilderness of the fatherland's "historic" superstructure, we will apply
our theory of knowledge, our method of thinking and analysis, draw our
own intellectual and rational conclusions, and therewith, enrich our own
Science a n d Philosophy. As
we move on, we "take it all" with us; before we negate it, think it,
we must
first affirm it, know it.
Quo vadis? Whither goest thou? This answering question presupposes a dialogical Diagory : "I" a n d "Thou". "I" a n d "Thou" are related; perhaps "I" do not know where (Space) "Thou" goest, also not when (Time), and worse even, how "Thou" goest (Bezug, Relation, Motion, Velocity).
Usually, "whither" is "going" in Time, but not necessarily only
in Time; it
is a specific Relation, a definite Bezug. This specific
Relation itself has a "whither", it is part and parcel of Cosmos and of
Cosmos
Acting; furthermore, something or somebody is going, is acting,
and it is its, her or his acting. There are zillions of relations, but
this one is a specific cosmic relation, an act and acting;
hence, it is a certain type of "non-relation", which again is a relation,
a special one, a non-relation. The "quo vadis", the
answering question, is asked in intellectual terms, in a space and time
relation, in simple patrian motion.
This type of "whither" has a cosmic, praxical, concrete substratum,
a
non-relation. We should recollect here that "non" does not mean "no",
no relation whatsoever, nothing in a patrian, normative, "bad" sense; scientifically,
logically, "non-" simply means what it denotes,
a non-relation, the contrary or opposite (not the negation) of a relation,
the "Non-A-In-Itself" or of an "A", and this is not nothing. There are
relations, non-relations, semi-relations, hemi-relations, non-relations
and
relations (A and Non-A), non-relations
a n d relations (A a
n d B), neither non-relations
nor relations (A a
n d B AND C),
etc.; consequently, zillions of logical Bezüge!
For the space and time being, we encounter ourselves on the planet,
Mother Earth, and "I" cognize "Thou" going, acting, and "I" want to know,
want to cognize "whither ?" "Thou" is going; how it or she or he
acts; why acting just in a certain way? For example: Why does a capitalist
essentially only act to acquire profits? Whether "Thou" knows anything,
knows about the essence
a n d existence of "I" (me), "I" still do not know as yet. To
know this, "I" must get a questioning answer from "Thou".
To ask answering questions, "I" should at least act, and should express this Act in words, in language, in gestures, symbols, in a question. And "I" can formulate any question, and can address it to anything, to anybody, to "Thou". "Thou" can be Anything : Cosmos, Act, Relation, I Myself, Man, Capital, Einstein, Marx, A Goat, A Burning Bush, My Computer, etc. The above, Marx had formulated as follows: "It is not sufficient that Thought aspires towards Reality, Reality itself must aspire towards Thought". ("Es genügt nicht, dass der Gedanke zur Wirklichkeit drängt, die Wirklichkeit selbst muss zum Gedanken drängen.")
Thales of Miletus: What Is The Best?
Before Plato had developed his summum bonum, the "Highest Good", long before already normative, ethical formal logic was governing Ancient Greece: all polis citizens were talking about the "good" and "non-good"; about the "best" and "non-best"; about "aristos" and "non-aristos". The "Best Man" in Ancient Greece was the Aristocrat, yes, the "best" was already ruling the world.
Everybody was aspiring to be manly, to act aristocratically. Everybody was looking for the aristocratic essence of things. To be aristocratic is to be wise, to be a "Wise Man", and because the Number Seven was the "best", was aristocratic, hence there should always only be "Seven Wise Men", Seven World Wonders, the Chosen Seven. The "Wise Men", not Women, forgot that Number Seven was the Goddess Diana, Artemis. In any case, Miletus was already a "man's world", a shipping and commercial seaport. Man, the Noble Eagle, was already winning many a "Desert Storm", many a "veni, vidi, vici".
Hence, Thales, himself a "Wise Man", one of the "Seven Chosen Few",
was thinking about "What Is?",
about Essence, about Quodditas. And,
true to the "Zeitgeist", to the "Spirit of His Time", he asked the philosophic
question : What Is The Best? His questioning
answer was: "ariston men hydor"
(The Best is Water). "What Is" is Water,
"Water " is "What
Is": "What Is" is "Water",
is "The Best". Thus, the arche,
the hyle, cosmos, matter, its non-relation, its slave-master
relation, was still slave-aristocratic, not yet slave-democratic. This
is the road which "Thou" was still blazing. However, this was already the
masculine, patriarchal, patriotic, philosophic "Quo
Vadis?"
The "Mythological" Quo Vadis
Long before Thales, all kinds of beings on Earth were acting, were trying to express "What Is" in words, in gestures, in symbols, in rock paintings, in hieroglyphics, in cuneiform writing, in language. Many human beings went further, were already acting and thinking, were asking ontological questions. And they were not only "Human Beings", in other words, not only Male Beings, Ruling, Cratic Beings! "Homo (Man) Kenyapithecus" or the "Neanderthal Man" probably did not even know that they were Men, were Machos.
If it is true what our "modern scientists" say, then among these Beings on Earth were also monkeys, apes and chimpanzees. At least, Charles Darwin already knew this. And, nowadays we know that : " Humans share 98.5 percent of their genes with chimpanzees" .
Actually, the above should be formulated as follows :
"Chimpanzees share 98.5 percent of their
genes with humans."
After all, the chimpanzees are our elders, they were born long before
the sonorous homo sapiens sapiens saw light on this planet.
The above is a typical arrogant manly "scientific" formulation. These are
not redundant remarks, also they have nothing to do with sophistry or hair-splitting,
they indicate what patrian ideology and hegemony are all about.
Certainly, "Primitive Man" was not only performing "monkey business", (s)he was also asking simple, crucial questions. How ((s)he asked these questions, by what method of communication? This is another topic. That (s)he had a "brain", like millions of other beings on Planet Earth, that (s)he was acting, that is certain, and that is, in the first place, what concerns us here.
Long before Thales, as early as 2000 B.C., when the "Africans" had already "discovered" America, in the slave-owning society of pharaonic Egypt, ruled by "Blacks", where one of the ancient "Seven Wonders", the pyramids, reflected a strong "this-sided" modus vivendi , atheistic crypto-materialistic conceptions were rife. In one of the extant papyrus manuscripts of that remote epoch, we can read : "Man disintegrates and his body changes itself into earth." In the City of Death, "earth" was emphasized as an important archaic element. These ancient Egyptians were very much "down to earth", and for them, "earth" was one of the magical material elements of "What Is", of Essence.
A thousand years later, in faraway "Mother India", the Upanishads, the Sanskrit theosophic and philosophic treatises dealt with cosmic materialist doctrines. Five primordial elements were expounded : water, air, fire, time and space. This was long before Thales declared "water" as being aristocratic, or before Anaximenes of Miletus had declared "air" to be the arche.
The Chandogya-Upanishad stated :
"When water evaporates, then it becomes air, truly, air consumes everything."
Hence we find in ancient India an anticipatory transhistoric fata morgana a priori of the Milesian School. Around 700 B.C., when Ancient Greece was still directed from the Oracle of Delphi, the oriental Samkhya School taught that everything originated from the prakrti , an infinite, eternal, primordial principle. Furthermore, before the dawn of the "Wise Men" in Greece, the Chinese Dschou Jan School also taught about five elements: water, fire, earth, wood and metal. The real philosophic novelty about Thales, who was ushering in the commercial, patriarchal age that till today still under-lines aristocratic monotheism -- the religious ideological trend towards the feudalist, absolutist God -- The Father, The Son, and The Male Holy Ghost, towards The Holy Trinity, to the All-In-One -- is that he made Mediterranean "Bussiness" Water a Hen-Kai-Pan, an Unomnia, a Universal One-And-All.
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