(1998, CONTINUED)
Date: Sun, 16 Aug.
1998 12:06:12 -0400
To:
khalid.ali@utoronto.ca
From: lee@faces.ula.ve
Subject: HUMAN BEING XXXV
( We excel )
My dearest Khalid,
The socio-economic problems of Venezuela have impeded us to continue
with the regular rhythm of our lectures. The problems with CANTV (telephone),
CADELA (electricity) and His
Excellency ZEUS (Central University Computer) are not solved as
yet; nevertheless: la filosofía continua!
And
it will continue in formal-logical spatial-temporal terms, even then, long
after the Patria or the very Planet would be no more, would not exist
anymore, and would have lost all its very "human" brilliance.
Let us continue with the existential elements of Thinking
a n d Thought, and their relations to "Intellectual Labour" in the
Patria.
Some Everyday Flowing Truths about Excellence
The problem is not that I or We say "Yes", say "No",
say "Neithernor"; not even that Parmenides stated Hen kai Pan,
One and All, Unomnia; or that Hegel expounded SPIRIT and matter;
or that Marx postulated MATTER and spirit, or that we favour Cosmos
(Matter) a n d Einai (Spirit); pandemonium breaks out, when
we insist to privatize and monopolize only
ONE SINGLE ONE of them, and when we consequently, for millennia,
build a whole "philosophy" around this one and only Weltanschauung,
when we give it a single method, formal logics, dialectics or Bezug,
as its one and only life-thread! In this way, we sow mayhem
everywhere and reap pandemonium nowhere! Philosophy has multiverses to
gain, to lose its patrian unimensional, monolithic chains.
To Be Neither "Right" Nor "Wrong" a n d Not To Be "Absurd"!
This is exactly what nearly all patrian philosophers have done until
"now"; Heracleitus defended his one and only Fire (Logos),
so did Plato with his "Idea", so did
Hegel
with his "Weltgeist" (Absoluten
Idee), so did Marx and Engels with their "historischen
und dialektischen Materialismus", so did the Existentialists
with their "Nihil", with "Nothingness". There
is no problem in the fact to be only "right", also we need not cultivate
bad feelings only because we are "wrong"; moreover, at any time green grass
can grow over the fact that we are only "absurd"; all these are necessary
logical identificationsof our
state of thinking, in different circumstances; and they are all valid within
the framework of these circumstances; elsewhere, they have no legitimacy!
Furthermore, there is a logical difference between
I
am right, I am wrong, and I
am absurd! The latter is a state of being neither "right"
nor "wrong". And, such a state of affairs very often occurs in
everyday life all across the globalized planet. To leave the formal-logical,
melancholic, brooding state of mind of Hamlet, " to be, or
, not to be?", "to live,
or, to commit suicide",
definitely, the first stepping-stone towards Historic, Emancipatory Excellence
is:
To Be Neither "Right"
Nor "Wrong" a n d
Not To Be "Absurd"!
This is known as our Historic,
Emancipatory Principle.
Knowledge: "I Know ... "; Belief: "I believe ..."
"I know", "I do not know", "I know a n d I do not
know", "Neither do I know nor do I not know", etc., are all,
each one for itself, and all of them for themselves, valid epistemological
statements; it just depends on their specific Bezügen,
on their respective relations, exactly which flowing truth they express.
Stating "I know" is not yet a qualification to be a candidate
for an Oscar or for the next Nobel Peace Prize! Saying "I do not
know" is already approximating an imminent and eminent Socratic decoration
with the "Order of Wisdom", because this statement implies that truthfully
"I know" what I am supposed to know,
a n d that in
veritas "I do not know" t h a t what I am supposed
to know. I must first k n o w what I do not know,
in order to state
that I really d o n o t k n o w it;
otherwise, the expression "I do not know" denotes sheer stupidity.
Both "I know" a n d "I do not know" form
part and parcel of any true philosophic theory of knowledge. "I believe..."
belongs to the Credo, to Religion, to Revelation. Surely, if we could still
avoid it, still afford it, if we think, before we utter or
write " I believe ...", then we are already leaving the milky way towards
the "promised land", and we are heading straight towards Historic Excellence.
"Beware of the Eyes of Mars!"
There is no scientific-philosophic reason why the statement "I know that the Earth is flat" (500 B.C.) should have greater epistemological value than "I do not know that the Earth is flat" (1500 A.D.) ; because what the latter "human being" "does know", in other words, "does know a n d does not know", is that "the Earth is a globe"; and the assertion "not flat" is not necessarily identical with "global"; it could also denote "square" or "mountainous"; and who really knows what "shape" the Earth really has, or in what shape it currently really finds itself, that is, if it has any "good shape" at all? Who knows, perhaps soon we will state: "The Earth has the Shape of the Statue of Liberty" (2050 A.D.). Many things which our excellent great-great-grandfathers have told us have turned out to be mere "absolute truths", sheer "gospel truths". Hence, "Beware of the Eyes of the Future!"
Everyday Patrian Excellence
Until now, ironically, psi-genes, fairy tales, superstition and religion
have made remarkable steps towards Excellence, towards Transcendence.
Nobody, not even a child, a street kid, questions the excellence of time
and space relations, of invisibility and invincibility, the allroundness
and everywhereness of the "heroes" of Patrian "fantasy and imagination".
No Christian ever had problems with the "Holy Trinity".
Old Trinity and Old Shatterhand a n d Giordano Bruno
Most Patrians, except Hegel and some other excellent "ivory-tower
spectators", would send any student who "rabbles" about his own "I-Trinity"
directly to go and see a good Western picture, where Old Trinity
and Old Shatterhand first shoot and then ask questions.
Not because Giordano Bruno was "right", not because he was
"wrong", not even because he was right a n d
wrong, he was burned on the stake; it simply happened because he was an
excellent scientist-philosopher who with his "thinking a n d
thought" threatened the very "absurd" foundation of the feudalist status
quo! It was because his persecutioners, his executioners, feared
him more than he feared them; this MORE
is the decisive-incisive excellency of the event. The very same happened
with other "excellentísimas",
like Che Guevara, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht or Leon Trotsky. The
above is not a matter of being "right" or "wrong", or even of being "absurd",
but of historic excellence.
Next time more excellent pondering!
Love,
Franz.