What has 'intrinsic value'?
I'm reasoning the following about 'intrinsic value'. I framed the question not in the traditional manner of asking for a definition as to what IS intrinsic value, as that is classically defined as a good in-of-itself. However, encountering this way of framing the question brings the following reasoning, according to my understanding:
A1) If nothing in this world has intrinsic value, then the following follows;
A2) Intrinsic value is entirely subjective.
Please keep in mind, that we cannot call any 'need' an intrinsic value, because it is dependent upon something else, meaning that it has instrumental value to ourselves rather than intrinsic value. If the above is true, then what has intrinsic value is most commonly associated with intrinsic needs, which leads us to a vicious circle or entrapment inside or outside of which is most important to ourselves. However, if we speak of importance, then we are confined to discovering what we want or need, therefore, again we reduce intrinsic value to instrumental value.
How does one escape this vicious circle?
A1) If nothing in this world has intrinsic value, then the following follows;
A2) Intrinsic value is entirely subjective.
Please keep in mind, that we cannot call any 'need' an intrinsic value, because it is dependent upon something else, meaning that it has instrumental value to ourselves rather than intrinsic value. If the above is true, then what has intrinsic value is most commonly associated with intrinsic needs, which leads us to a vicious circle or entrapment inside or outside of which is most important to ourselves. However, if we speak of importance, then we are confined to discovering what we want or need, therefore, again we reduce intrinsic value to instrumental value.
How does one escape this vicious circle?
Comments (99)
I'd say community has intrinsic value. That may in and of itself be subjective, but since most humans tend to agree that we need (not a need, but y'know) community to function at our best, I'd say it takes a more objective role when it's about us.
Kant was adamant that people should be considered as ends in themselves, never as means i.e. loosely speaking, a (human) life has intrinsic value.
Enter Camus. People desire meaning and none exist (Absurdism). Now, what people refer to by meaning of life, they usually mean some kind of purpose i.e. use which is synonymous with instrumental value.
Mainly a definitional one. Things that have intrinsic value are good in-of-itself. Something with instrumental value is regarded as something that has relative value depending on needs or wants. Hence the issue with the definitions not coinciding...
It's somewhat vague to say that community has intrinsic value. Comparative to what else?
I take it as following. A good-in-of-itself is recognized as valuable to a person or even government. The issue with determining value or ascribing value to something that has worth is complex because it has utility, as far as I can tell.
When you rule out utility and preference, you are still left with subjective an aesthetic appreciation of value, as you describe it being tickets to the opera or some such?
Comparative to a solitary life, I'd say that community/society/relationships is good in and of itself.
1. Intrinsic value only [useless] :sad:
2. Instrumental value only [useful] :smile:
3. Intrinsic + Instrumental value [useless + useful] :chin:
Also TLP 6.41 The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no value—and if there were, it would be of no value.
If there is a value which is of value, it must lie outside all happening and being-so. For all happening and being-so is accidental.
What makes it non-accidental cannot lie in the world, for otherwise this would again be accidental.
It must lie outside the world.
Comment: this is a reference - one of the last! - to ‘the unconditioned’ which has elsewhere sunk beneath the notice of philosophy (so-called.)
Isn't even the motive of curiosity rooted in well being?
One must remember that nothing in the world has meaning in and of itself, but only in relation to a conscious subject. Another way of clarifying might be to say that the physical world is utterly meaningless. It only gains meaning when biological consciousness bestows meaning upon it. So, your struggle is right on the money. Intrinsic value is necessarily a value to biological consciousness, it may well be a property of an object, but it can only have value if consciousness determines it so.
To my mind the answer is: that for which anything is instrumental. More precisely: each and every first-person subject itself relative to itself in nonreflective manners (“nonreflective” here meaning: intrinsic value doesn’t pertain to the thoughts one thinks of oneself - for these are instrumental - but to oneself as, in part, thinker of such thoughts).
Given that each sentient being holds intrinsic value relative to itself, it can then be possible for some sentient beings to find other sentient beings’ personal intrinsic value to be of intrinsic value to their own selves: we address such tendencies by terms such as “compassion”, “love”, and so forth. Their suffering becomes our suffering just as their joys become our joys.
This to the effect that if one’s compassion for some other is strictly instrumental then it cannot be genuine compassion. For example, if you hold compassion for another strictly so as to be praised by the general public so as to get a promotion at work, you in fact don’t genuinely care for the other. But to the extent that you do genuinely care for the other, their being - replete with its intrinsic value relative to itself - will become intrinsically valuable to you.
When we don’t (intrinsically) value the intrinsic value of another, they at best become only instrumentally valuable to us. And this is where they get used.
If all this holds, then by shear fact that subjective beings occur in the world, so too occurs intrinsic value. If any one of us doesn’t find anyone else to be intrinsically valuable, the individual will nevertheless be intrinsically valuable to him/herself.
I think you are close, or, closer than anyone I have come across. But you don't quite say what intrinsic value IS. The having it as something on the value end of a desire, that is, in the valuing agency herself, is of course right, but how does the having such a value make that value an intrinsic value? What makes it intrinsic? Being non contingent. This means among all the things one can say to contextualize the value, once these are suspended, there still remains what is independent of all this. Once it is linked to a contingency, like ice cream or skiing, then you find difference, you find indeterminacy. Intrinsic value can't be something that is relativized to a particular person's tastes, for if, say, skiing were an intrinsic value, it would be a value for all. Intrinsic values are not variable.
The trick is to reconcile the vagaries of subjectivity with the requirements of intrinsic value.
But you have to see that conscious subject ARE the world. There is nothing localized about a person at the broadly conceived totality. I am what the world does under certain conditions and this physical existence just the form of something eternal. So, when consciousness "bestows meaning" upon a thing, this act has only apparent boundaries of locality. But the concept of locality altogether disappears in the broadest conception of things.
Useful instrumentality begs the question: instrumental for what? This will no doubt point to something else that bears the same question, until something that is not questionable is reached.
For anything at all. We don't need to specify what exactly something is useful for; that something can be used (Wittgenstein & meaning of life) is all that matters.
No, no. I mean, you say intrinsic value is useless. Yet the notion of instrumentality implies something that is not useless, something that is for what is not instrumental. Otherwise, you end up with a system instrumentality that has no designated value.
Wittgenstein put value up front, but insisted we couldn't talk about this, even though he talked about it. Its the "ladder" explanation.
Yes, it has to be. How would you isolate the variable intrinsic value otherwise?
Wow, thank you much.
Quoting Astrophel
In my defense, I took my best shot at answering the thread’s question of “what has intrinsic value?”, not bothering with the issue of what intrinsic value is in the metaphysical sense.
Doing so is no easy task. But I’ll just say that if intrinsic value is a non-contingent end-in-itself this to me strongly connotes concepts of an ultimate reality. Brahman as an eastern, Hindu notion of this; the One as a western Neo-platonic notion. The underlying idea pivoting around the supposition that all sentient beings are, for lack of a better phrasing, fragmented emanations of this ultimate reality which is not contingent and is an end-in-itself. Thereby making each sentient being endowed with that which is not contingent and an end-in-itself, i.e. with intrinsic value, relative to itself.
I’m quite certain that this will be odd sounding to many hereabouts. And I don’t mean to defend this position. So far though it's my best understanding of how your question can be addressed. Open to alternatives though ...
Oh. I get the point. Intrinsic value is useless, it has no utility, not good for something else.....I was a bit slow on this. I thought you had no use for the idea itself.
The hard part is to ground intrinsicness. Language itself, the defining and contextualizing, gives whatever it takes up a form that can be controlled, totalized, if you will, into familiar categories. Speaking qua speaking puts things in familiar contexts; it is inherently contextualizing, which is why philosophers have so much resistance to something like "qualia". If we could talk about qualia, then that would be talk about ultimate reality.
Not much you can say about Brahman, is there. The atman is Brahman is pretty empty, but then, there is the bliss of this realization that is qualitatively different from qualia, the "being appeared to redly" kind of thing. This bliss is not just a good time. It is deeply profound in a way that is alien to everydayness. This is where concepts like ultimate reality (you find this in the Abhidhamma) get interesting: it is an intuitive experience, not found in our language because it is not normalized for sharing. It would be different if we were all Tibetan monks, who, I have read, talked readily about this kind of thing. Ultimate here is the big impossibility of Wittgenstein, who told us that our world is structured such that certain concepts are just nonsense. this kind of thinking stopped philosophers from moving beyond the commonplace thinking of science and culture. Witt was no mystic.
Anyway, as I see it, if you are looking for ways to talk about ultimacy, you have to go "to the things themselves" and here, you have to discover the "Otherness" of the world. In my thought, this begins with Husserl. See his Ideas I, and prior (or contemporaneously) the last books of Logical Investigations which I am just reading now for the first time. Husserl gets very intimate with the intuitive disclosure of the world and gives the whole affair ground breaking language. One cannot SAY the world, but one can approach it, negatively (apophatically) go into it. Husserl's phenomenological reduction is like this: a method, not unlike meditation!
Quoting Astrophel
I wrote a paper comparing Varela and Thompsons’s approach to meditation to phenomenology. It’s titled A Phenomenological Critique of Mindfulness. You might find it interesting.
https://www.academia.edu/41670442/A_Phenomenological_Critique_of_Mindfulness
I have affinities to this branch of philosophy. Very much enjoyed reading Thompson's Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind, for example. Haven't yet read Husserl, though. Still, I've so far not found in it a satisfactory exposition of meta-ethics. And meta-ethics naturally addresses issues of value such as those we've been discussing. If you, @Joshs, or someone else disagree and knows of such, please inform me of them / point me toward the reading.
You mean you haven’t found in Thompson a satisfactorily meta-ethics?
I think the kinds of suppositions that would make a ‘meta’ useful or even coherent have been unraveled by phenomenological approaches.
Or in any of my second-hand readings regarding phenomenology as an established philosophy, such as in its established distinction between noesis and noema.
Quoting Joshs
OK, I'm definitely curious. What is the non-conditional good that is universally applicable to all value judgments that anyone can make (to be clear, from Saint Teresa to Jack the Ripper) as described by phenomenology? If it is a long argument that you'd rather not engage in, can you point me toward where such exposition is given.
Edit: On second thought, in case I've misinterpreted this quoted statement, I of course agree that subjective experience needs to be analyzed - this as systematically as needed - so as to facilitate any hope of discovering that which is the "non-conditional good" of meta-ethics. And, my bad if my possible misinterpretation irked you.
A layperson's question here. Is it the case that the idea of 'meta' has been unraveled (and I understand the notion of reality and truth being constructed and perspectival, from Nietzsche through Derrida) or is it the case that the method and choices made by phenomenology by-passes the old approaches to truth and objectivity (Platonic forms, etc) in order to privilege an experiential method or framework?
All questions pre-suppose the conditions of their possibility. So your question pre-supposes the coherence of the idea of something being able to be thought that is beyond all conditions and contingencies, and it also assumes the coherence of the universal. But for phenomenology both of these notions are derived abstractions generated from a subjectivity that is radically contingent and temporal. To the extent there are universal structures for phenomenology they are empty formalisms holding no value content.
I get that, but then how can I interpret this in any other way than affirming that there are no (objective, if one wills) meta-ethical givens?
And you believe there are such things as meta-ethical
givens, right?
Apparently just as much as you believe there aren't. Moral objectivity v. moral relativism in a nutshell.
Quoting Joshs
... given that phenomenology disavows there being a "meta" in relation to ethics / values?
Just seems to illustrate what I initially affirmed: phenomenology does not address meta-ethics.
Anyway in the grand scheme of things that we aren't aware of we are surely instruments ourselves too. Some think to find that ultimate intrinsic value. But to tell the truth I think these dual concepts are pretty much useless. Language games - math problems bases on bad premises. I think Wittgenstein said something akin to -" You can look at the world with help of language, but the language becomes a problem because we cannot look at it with the help of the world".
But lets put good old Ludwig to bed and take the eastern philosophical route. Then you could say that the infinite instrumental-intrinsic pairing (as this is the language used in this case) is the intrinsic value. In this case nothing in itself has got intrinsic value, but everything as a whole has got intrinsic value. This then again fights the purpose of the word intrinsic value, and thus make the whole concept barren.
So my conclusion after all this rambling is: Value presupposes an object to be valued and a subject to value it. Lets take bees and flowers for example. Which is which. Depends on the perspective. What about flowers and a girl picking them? Are the bees also included in the flowers as an object? A little flower factory in the forest. Then a man buys those flowers and gives them to her woman. 9 months and there is a new beekeeper born. Maybe this naïve story sheds some light on this problem. It does for me at least. Nothing in the end has got intrinsic value because then there would be nothing but that. George Carlin joked god created humans to produce plastic and fill the earth with it. Maybe he was onto something. When we dump plastic, it's got no instrumental value.
You have asked what has intrinsic value, but then you've proceeded to argue that intrinsic value is subjective, which is a claim about the nature of intrinsic value, not what has it.
Anyway, it doesn't follow that if nothing has intrinsic value, then intrinsic value is subjective. How does that follow? If intrinsic value is subjective, then it almost certainly exists. Indeed, most of those who deny that intrinsic value exists, do so because they believe intrinsic value is 'objective'. It is just that they also think the universe is not metaphysically exotic in the way that it would need to be in order for objective value to exist.
I am a subjectivist about morality and so a subjectivist about intrinsic value. But I think lots of things have intrinsic value. To say that intrinsic value is subjective, is to say something about the manner of its existence (when or if it exists). It is to say that it exists 'as' the subjective states of someone or other.
I can - and do - value things. Some things I value as means to an end (money, for example). Other things I value as ends in themselves - that is, I just value them, but not for any further purpose. That is to value intrinsically.
Moral intrinsic value is not, of course, equivalent to what I intrinsically value, for it clearly does not follow from me intrinsically valuing P, that P is therefore intrinsically valuable. Moral intrinsic value is determined by some other subject's attitudes, not mine. But the point remains that for something to have intrinsic value, is for it to be being valuing intrinsically.
I wonder that if in some way a phenomenological approach and its wholesale 'dissolution' of totalizing metanarratives is not in itself a form of metanarrative. Can one make the claim that what we experience are intersubjective agreements between localized communities of narrative (and the personal, subjective location), without this coming from a totalizing viewpoint?
We can't escape outside of our bodies to see what's out there. And even if we could, by some miracle, do so, it wouldn't change what we would consider to be valuable intrinsically.
Plainly we value things. Some things we value more than others, say we tend to value memorable experiences than staring at a wall and so on. The problem is trying to articulate a sound argument as to why X should be considered more valuable than Y.
I guess my issue is, what's the problem that's causing you to ask this question? Is it something along the lines of, "why don't people care more about politics than celebrity" or "why don't more people value art than gossip" or what?
If, for example, we take brick stacking to create value as in each brick is worth x quantity, and we create value in this way alone, we are in a position of hierarchicalism where the structure is to find the fastest way to destroy the value system by determining an optimization process of stacking the most bricks; it was in fact the relation of the brick stacking to factors outside itself that played a role in the original survival of that value system.
I’m not one to believe that one can. To be more to the point, at least as I currently see things:
I’ve so far found totalizing meta-narratives to apply to all forms of supposed relativism that attempt to deny any kind of objective reality - the latter being itself presumed by such to be just one more relativistic narrative. So denying manifests a logical contradiction wherein an objective reality both does and does not occur at the same time and in the same respect: namely, the objective reality of the relativism proposed - which is itself a totalizing meta-narrative.
So that it’s said, I mention this with the firm understanding that objective reality is not logically necessitated to strictly pertain to the physical; as one example of this which I find relatively easy to express and understand: that “I am / we are (currently)” can well be argued to be an objective, rather than subjective, reality - this including even within the most funky interpretations of Berkeleyan idealism, wherein nothing material/physical occurs - for the nature of this offered reality is, or at least can well be argued to be, fully independent of my/our beliefs, justifications, biases, etc., for or against.
Since I find this relevant, as one example: Einstein’s ToR does depend on certain “totalizing meta-narratives” for its implementation: the constant speed of light and the occurrence of observers (however “an observer” is therein interpreted) as two elements of it that I think could serve as adequate examples. More directly from my pov: It is a relativistic system grounded in, or else governed by, a list of objective realities which we at least presume to be. To the extent that the ToR in its current form is mistaken (say, because the variable speed of light theory happens to be true and thereby correct), the objective realities it is currently dependent on will then be themselves evidenced to be mistaken … hence at that point being evidenced to be mere narratives. Yet this does not take away from that fact that whatever then takes their place will yet be our best inference of what is in fact objectively real … which, again, will ground or else govern the system of relativity in the ToR.
I can see the relativist’s take on this … that all our best current assumptions of objective reality are narratives. But I don’t concede to there being no objective reality in actuality on account of the logical contradiction previously mentioned that this brings about. (Yes, here upholding the law/principle of noncontradiction.)
Though your question didn't directly address objectivity, I hope that I've satisfactorily addressed the underlying issue posed. Well, at least tentatively so ...
Nice. Yes, I think what we have learned by now that the difficulties inherent in trying to establish an objective reality/truth isn't the same thing as making a claim that it does not exist.
Personally, all this makes little substantive difference to me in as much as the moment I wake up I am in the only real world I have access to, whatever it is.
That's what I meant, yes.
So, is there a pole-star which draws the moral compass in phenomenology?
Quoting Astrophel
That’s more than a trick! Liked your posts a lot, though.
***
There is a saying you will find in mystical literature of various cultures, ‘the good that has no opposite’. This is distinguished from what is normally considered ‘good’ as that is always conditional, i.e. what is good is what is not bad, a good outcome, pleasure as distinct from pain, gain as distinct from loss, and so on. In an instrumental or utilitarian view, then morality is about ‘maximising’ these goods, but logically speaking, they’re dependent on their opposites in order to exist. Whereas the ‘good that has no opposite’ is outside those kinds of reference frames.
This is like the claim that when someone says there is no objective truth they are making a kind of of truth claim themselves. But this misunderstands what such perspectives as phenomenology are actually doing. Yes, they are making a claim, and yes that claim can be critiqued, but that doesn’t make it a meta narrative. It works differently than this. It is self-reflexive in it’s core, grounding intrinsicality in movement and transition. It isn’t claiming to do away with truth or objectivity , but to set these concepts in motion and talk about them from within this transit.
Are you ‘in’ this world or do you form and re-form this world ( and yourself)?
I read it. A fascinating engagement, but then, I can't give a technical response since that would take a lot of rereading of texts and putting things together, and it is a technical paper. I am actually doing just this, but it is a process.
Tentatively, though, some thoughts: you know, the claim made by Varela and Thompson that Nagarjuna was not elaborating on the Abhidamma, but was simply elucidating is questionable. This early text is considered the closest to the Buddha's original thought, and when it speaks of "ultimate reality" it is meant to be revelatory, not analytical. It is in the analysis that arguments rise up. Derrida comes to mind: The moment you think at all, you have a muddled or diffused event, and this "unstructured" way of designation is simply the "structure" of the way utterances work. Completely indeterminate when discussion turns to questions at the most basic level because determinacy itself is simply indeterminate. To speak at all is inherently deconstructive. So all this talk by Nagarjuna is perhaps right for simply dealing with metaphysical insistences, for, as Varela and Thompson say, "as one becomes mindful of one’s own experience, one realizes the power of the urge to grasp after foundations". But this grasping is a flaw to be overcome, not indulged. One can say just this of the entire enterprise called philosophy and I think a Buddhist is bound to this. After all, there is only one bottom line to all this, and it is not cognitive. It is affective.
Reading Michel Henry on Heidegger, I find, "The essence of revelation peculiar to affectivity and taking place in it is completely lost to Heidegger, confused by him with the essence of the ontological understanding of Being to which it nevertheless remains heterogeneous both in its structure and in its phenomenality." I think this is right. It is close to Kierkegaard's insistence that when rational systems approach actuality, it is a train wreck, and Heidegger's ontology is, after all, a readable, rational presentation.
But you're thesis that in calling upon Nagarjuna to work out groundlessness contra Husserl et all, who insist groundlessness of this kind is untenable seems right, though I continue to work out the details.
As always, thanks for this.
I find this statement beautiful.
... which isn't to diminish from the rest of the post.
I have no idea Joshs.
Nice. Well don't just sit there, M, make something of this claim so we can see it work. :smile:
Thanks for this. I guess what I see is an approach to being that privileges itself above all other approaches and possibly with good reason. I find this fascinating but have come too late and don't have much time.
Ain't it? It's like being in love. Once there, you don't want to talk about it because talk takes, if you will, the ready-to-hand out of the whole affair. But then, being IN something so completely makes one wonder if one hasn't yielded to the unconsciousness of being IN it, and thereby failing to be open to its generational grounding. I want to be a 'teenager in love" but it's just that I don't want to be a teenager, unaware, blind, driven rather than driving.
There's a thread in this juicy morsel.
Hey, if the pinnacle of wisdom isn't about being young at heart, in spite of all the suffering and such, then I don't want it. Said emotionally, rationally, both.
Isn't this the obvious truth? When I am IN a good experience, a really good one, I am not aware of anything else. Its "dependence" only comes into play when engagement is compromised.
Tried to access your music but it wouldn't play. Any suggestions?
Yeah, quite so. But am I...myself, if I am not aware at some second order of thinking? Odd to ask such a thing. I look back at childhood, see the fluid nature of events, and the smallest of things were glorious. Gone now is the glory of spontaneous existence. Kierkegaard (try not to be put off by the biblical obsession. He wasn't at all naive) called this a sinless condition, or, pre-sin, and the adventurous fantasies were common. He thought, with Wordsworth, that growing up and becoming encultured (inherited sin, not original sin) was inherently sinful, and he simply was referring to the unquestioned engagement of one's affairs. It is only after one steps away that one can be sinful, for then one recognizes her own relation to eternity and the groundlessness of everydayness. The "distance" between what one is and what one can understand what one is becomes apparent. This is an existential crisis I don't want to be left out of.
Do we want to be like children? Yes and No, is the only answer I can accept.
Don't know why, I don't think Soundcloud requires registration for casual listeners. Try my reverbnation page. If that doesn't work then it must be a browser issue.
Quoting Astrophel
Hence the meaning of the term 'ecstacy', 'ex' outside (the normal) 'stasis'. Orgasm for instance. They are sought for just that reason - that when you're in them, you're completely absorbed. But such experiences are transitory. Seeking to make them permanent usually results in mere addiction.
I think the 'good that has no opposite' is fundamentally a religious idea although not necessarily theistic, as it is found in Buddhist literature also.
Have a read of this abstract. The essay used to be online, but now is part of the volume from which this is excerpted; by Norman Fischer.
Quoting Astrophel
Did I say generational?? I meant 'generative'.
I like that as well: generative grounding.
By the way, when I mentioned "young at heart" I had in mind that this ought to be part and parcel of eudemonia: etymologically, being in "good spirit(s)" (or more literally, of a "good daemon"), which I can only see entailing having a light heart rather than a heavy one - again, despite all the sh*t one undergoes. Maybe this gets wound up with having/gaining a relatively clear conscience despite the hardships and loses and mistakes. There's no questioning that life happens and along with it the bad that jades, which deprives us of yesteryear's more vivid abilities to experience beauty or love, even a sense of wonder. For me, though, wisdom - the type philosophers were once upon a time reputed to pursue - ought be something like the song "Return to Innocence" in theme. Not a return to the ignorances of youth (never found the two equivalent), but to the affects that accompany unjaded souls. Now get reminded of Nietzsche parable of the camel, turned predator fighting the monster of thou shalts and shalt nots, then, at last, turned into a newly birthed babe in the same world as before.
Wisdom as a generative, even regenerative, grounding of such sort, that I'll go for. Intrinsic value to the max. Sounds like something worth attaining, at any rate. Next issue: how does one find it? :razz:
In the above situation, x is alone. Suppose now that there are many of x. If so, x loses its uniqueness, it's an extra, a spare so to speak. Now x has intrinsic value and no instrumental value.
Ergo, the conditions for something to be only intrinsically valuable:
1. It mustn't possess instrumental value of any kind (it should be totally useless).
2. There should be more than one of it (so that it loses its special status).
3. It should have intrinsic value of some kind
Barring 3, the description fits humans I'd say: There's no meaning to life and we're a dime a dozen.
I wouldnt say for Derrida an event is muddled or diffused, but rather a structure composed of differences.
“I do not believe I have ever spoken of "indeterminacy," whether in regard to "meaning" or anything else. Undecidability is something else again. While referring to what I have said above and elsewhere, I want to recall that undecidability is always a determinate oscillation between possibilities (for example, of meaning, but also of acts). These possibilities are themselves highly determined in strictly defined situations (for example, discursive-syntactical or rhetorical-but also political, ethical, etc.). They are pragmatically determined.The analyses that I have devoted to undecidability concern just these determinations and these definitions, not at all some vague "indeterminacy." I say "undecidability" rather than "indeterminacy" because I am interested more in relations of force, in differences of force, in everything that allows, precisely, determinations in given situations to be stabilized through a decision of writing (in the broad sense I give to this word, which also includes political action and experience in general). There would be no indecision or double bind were it not between determined (semantic, ethical, political) poles, which are upon occasion terribly necessary and always irreplaceably Singular. Which is to say that from the point of view of semantics, but also of ethics and politics, "deconstruction" should never lead either to relativism or to any sort of indeterminism.”( Limited, Inc)
Quoting Astrophel
I think Michel Henry is coming from an older Kantian influenced religious tradition, and a s a result he is neither in a position to effectively understand Heidegger nor Husserl. What he does is try to turn Heidegger into Kierkegaard, and I see Heidegger as having moved quite a distance beyond the latter.
Quoting Astrophel
I think it’s a mistake to prioritize affectivity over cognition. It splits them apart, when in fact they were never separate.
Quoting Astrophel
I would say instead that Heidegger’s project was dedicated to a deconstruction of rationality.
How close this is to Heidegger's problem. Our pragmatism gets us out of trouble and scrapes in the world, but then it creates a false sense of existence, treating the world as "standing reserve". Our ready to hand existence is a great asset, yet can occlude primordial meaning.
It gets a bit complicated for me, though. While animals are, let's say their status as moral, affective agencies, is unquestionable, and I base this simply on their exposure to the thousand natural shocks the flesh is heir to, heard tell of; their capacity for depth and, call it, intimations of profound things experience is capable of, seems limited. Consider the infant, blissful, but agency is missing. Who is blissful? Animals have limited agency, and I leave this term to debate. But would only add that there is a moment in symbolic, pragmatic dealings with the world, where a schism forms between ordinary affairs and reflection, which is, I hazard to say, what existentialism is all about, this break with continuity. What issues out of this is, granted, well, arguably, nothing but trouble. On the other, it seems to be a precipice where we encounter the impossible. Pulling away from spontaneous blisses of infancy (animal-being?) may be seen as opening to something far more primordial, perhaps absolute.
We want to have our cake and eat it, too. But these militate against each other, don't they. The more you return to innocence, the more you have to forget. One one knows solidly the tonnage of suffering of the world, and has the requisite compassion (some do not, clearly) there is no turning back, pulling the covers over the head and going back to sleep.
Remember, if I may, that miserable suffering is also an intrinsic value. Nietzsche certainly did have to take control because his physical life was a living hell, so much so that he could get behind it in his thinking.
Here is an odd but provocative idea: suffering and joy, the two dimensions of our ethical/aesthetic world. Do these not tell us by their own natures that only one of these is "intrinsically" desirable? I tend to think suffering is an instruction: Don't do that! And it is not culture of principles telling us this. Kierkegaard was perhaps right: principles are limited formulations, superseded by something so mysterious we had to invent religion.
Innocence for me is defined by blamelessness. Ignorance is instead defined by lack of understanding (maybe we might both agree that knowledge does not entail understanding, though to understand is to know that which is understood; as one example, to know what someone said without understanding what the person said). Yes, as infants we’re birthed with both and loose both over time.
I however strongly question that a return to innocence, if at all possible, necessitates a forgetting of the understandings gained.
Hence the possibility of returning to innocence with a more awakened awareness than that first held in such state – rather than a going back to sleep.
Of course, all this is contingent on whether one believes that innocence, in the strict sense of blamelessness, can be regained once lost.
Quoting Astrophel
I agree with this in large.
Quoting Astrophel
Nietzsche and Heidegger wanted to unravel the longstanding predisposition of philsophy to privilege presence over absence, affirmation over negation , pleasure over suffering. As such, they needed to deconstruct the Hegelian dialectic which Kierkegaard took into his own philosophy.
“Furthermore, we must ask what does the dialectician himself want? What does this will which wills the dialectic want? It is an exhausted force which does not have the strength to affirm its difference, a force which no longer acts but rather reacts to the forces which dominate it — only such a force brings to the foreground the negative element in its relation to the other. Such a force denies all that it is not and makes this negation its own essence and the principle of its existence. "While every noble morality develops from a triumphant affirmation of itself, slave morality from the outset says No to what is 'outside', what is ‘different' what is 'not itself' and this No is its creative deed" (GM I 10 p. 36).
“The dialectic proposes a certain conception of the tragic: linking it to the negative, to opposition and to contradiction. The contradiction of suffering and life, of finite and infinite in life itself, of particular destiny and universal spirit in the idea, the movement of contradiction and its resolution — this is how tragedy is represented.
For Nietzsche , however , “the negative is not present in the essence as that from which force draws its activity: on the contrary it is a result of activity, of the existence of an active force and the affirmation of its difference. The negative is a product of existence itself: the aggression necessarily linked to an active existence, the aggression of an affirmation. As for the negative concept (that is to say, negation as a concept) "it is only a subsequently-invented pale contrasting image in relation to its positive basic concept — filled with life and passion through and through" (GM I 10 p. 37).” (Deleuze)
“ The pertinacity of dialectic, which draws its motivation from a very definite source, is docu-mented most clearly in Kierkegaard. In the properly philosophical aspect of his thought, he did not break free from Hegel. His later turn to Trendelenburg is only added documentation for how little radical he was in philosophy.” (Heidegger)
Another way of describing your concept would be to look at it as an expanded concept of the self. Where there is no expanded concept, no identifying with others, compassion does not even arise. Schopenhauer would say it is a metaphysical realization that you and the other are one. Different examples of self-sacrifice in the process of saving a life can be said to underline this concept. Where there is no sign of this concept in the interpersonal lives of a young individual one might look for psychopathology. This even carries over to our relatives in the animal world, and an early sign of psychopathology is the torture and cruelty of animals. I personally do not believe that civilization would be possible without this underlying process of identification with others, and thus the arising of compassion. As to you expression of the wider range of being, I would just add that, subject and object cannot be separated, thus your brain/mind is only half encased within your cranium, the other half is the physical world as an object. Are you in the world, or is the world in you, or is there another possibility, what does an open system suggest to you?
But doesn't the "difference" make indeterminate any spoken utterance at the level of the most basic analysis? I do see that undecidability is preferred if there is a purpose that contextualizes, or "totalizes" (I think that is a Heideggerian term, borrowed by Levinas) such that terms can be set and played against each other. But beneath this, there is indeterminacy, beneath all undecidability, there is indeterminacy in the full sense of the term: what is singular in thought and expression is not singular in its essential structure. Singularity "steps out" of plurality of regionalized signifiers.
In other words, I don't mean that in the middle of deciding whether to go to market today I should get lost in the failure to decide what to do. My thinking, under construction, is that our affairs are pragmatic, our relations with the world are pragmatic, and pragmatism says nothing at all about foundational ontology of the Cartesian kind, some kind of substance. So, I suppose I am agreeing that decidability is a bottom line concept. But I also think that material substance is not just a stand in term for nothing at all, and I don't think that, res cogitans and res extensa are complete nonsense. Something in the hiddeness of the world intimates itself in the Husserlian reduction. It is the Buddhist's bliss (affectivity) which is this sublime ontology that is not discursive in its discovery, but intuitive.
Philosophers, I have observed, do not like this term, intuition, and I almost wince to use it.
Quoting Joshs
I'll take your word for that, though I think it is more that he doesn't really care what a defensible account would be at all. He is more interested moving on to something else entirely. In this paper, "The Power of Revelation of Affectivity According to Heidegger" I haven't really understood it yet, but It seems clear thus far that he has a phenomenological interpretation for Christianity which is Kierkegaardian (I didn't see that he was trying to make Heidegger into Kierkegaard, but rather criticizing Heidegger for defiling the affectivity with mundane meaning): affectivity (existential anxiety) is a momentous, transcendental structure of our existence. He wants to make revelatory anxiety a threshold to God.
Struggling to wrap my head around this, how does non- locality figure into the processing of subject and object on an individual level? I understand that there is no separation between the world and consciousness, for to take away either, then the other ceases to be. Bare with me, perhaps I need read the thread more closely.
Innocence and guilt make no sense to me at all. I think when we refer to a child's innocence, we are really referring to her purity and uncluttered experiences. Free of guilt, yes, but what is guilt as a working ethical concept (not as, say, a psychological concept, about feelings of remorse, resentment, etc.)? The kind of freedom to make this meaningful is impossible. When one stands on the precipice of future events, and chooses, this cannot be done ex nihilo. Contextual possibilities are finite and unique to that one. How is he responsible for, say, not living in a world that provides a conscience? If I were not given a conscience, what would I do?
At any rate, this forgetting of the understandings gained: Quite an idea. This, it might be argued, requires faith. There must be something that overrides the knowledge of our, if you will, thrownness into a knowledge of the world's miseries. Faith that all is redeemed in the end, somehow. That is why we have concepts of God: an ethical finality for the Good.
I would agree with you if only it is allowed a metaphysics that redeems. Otherwise, it seems disingenuous.
Can't say I follow, Boagie. Can you elaborate?
Towards what? What is the horizon which beckons?
There is no single horizon which beckons. Instead there is endless self-transformation, endlessly transforming horizons. The goal is to slip into the movement of sense, to avoid falling prey to stagnant themes or values. The ethic is in the fluidity of change, because this is where intimacy and meaning lies, not in any particular contentful notions of the good or the true.
I strictly mean technical culpability; else phrased, responsibility for wrongdoing for which adequate amends has not been given. As in being innocent rather than guilty of a crime. When I mentioned that newly birthed infants are birthed perfectly innocent, I intended that they're birthed perfectly free of culpability. Various peoples' perspectives differ on this, but that's my take. Still, for the spiritual/religious: karma may have brought us into this world, else the sins of our ancestors or some such, but - even when entertaining such perspectives - once here, we start off with a blank-slate of culpability. The same applies for our being existentially "thrown into the world", if this happens to be one's perspective.
As far as "guilt as a working ethical concept" the aspiration to be ethical to me in large part translates into the aspiration to be as free as possible of non-amended wrongdoings, i.e. to be as free as possible from wrongdoings and to remedy as best one can those wrongs one is guilty/culpable of.
Going back to what I was previously mentioning:
Clear consciences tend to follow such ethical intents, or so I've been told. For that matter, I don't directly or indirectly know of anyone who glorifies wrongdoings while having much time for things such as (I'd like to say authentic) beauty, love, or wonder. That there might be exceptions in this and that, why not. But as a general rule, it doesn't occur. The experience of these and similar enough states of being does, however, occur in an early enough youth - which at least coincides with a time period when we have a far fewer quantity of wrongdoings by comparison to ourselves as adults: hence a time period when we had a far clearer conscience.
But, to be frank, my basic point was, and remains, that I don't see the point to wisdom if its about misery, bitterness, self-flagellation, control-mongering, or something of this ilk. If, however, wisdom where to in part bring about eudemonia (with emphasis that eudemonia does not equate to ignorance) despite all the wrongs one has committed and which were committed by other(s) against oneself and one's loved ones, then I can find value in the ideal.
Or maybe I should ask (to be honest, in a semi-rhetorical fashion): Why should wisdom be considered a good by a so-called "lover of wisdom"? For example, is it supposed to hold some instrumental value, such as that of allowing one far greater manipulative control over others for the sake of increased capital; else, are all the understandings that it reputedly entails supposed to hold some intrinsic value that forsakes eudemonia (i.e., being of good spirit/daemon; hence, of a healthy and flourishing mind)?
Everything and anything can be used!
Taking an electric blanket on an expedition to the Sahara will raise eyebrows. Taking an ice-making machine to the Arctic will too.
Use is intimately tied to cause. What's outside causality? A unicorn? Useful for keeping children occupied while you finish that long overdue project.
Outside of mind & body - something no one's ever seen or thought of.
I only have a rough idea of non-locality wherein physics everything is said to be connected --or entangled. This thing, this non-locality makes sense only if you consider life in general as being plastic relative to the physical world, then the world plastic relative to the greater cosmos--- which works for me. By your definition then, does non-locality infer all things of an evolutionary nature, follow in its development in the wake of a greater reality. Whether that be the slowly-changing earth or the ever changing cosmos? Indeed, if everything is connected, locality or non-locality makes little sense.
But you see, I wonder if sense can be made at all out of guilt. What makes a person guilty? We are always led to decisions made that cause some pain to someone. Then, what is a decision? A very sticky wicket. I cannot find that pure accountability; accountability is always bound to a system of established moral thinking. And then there are those pesky motivational issues. The very best freedom to decide can be lies in the standing apart from all this and assuming a perspective tha t is not conditioned, qualified, and this is not a nonsense idea. You get in the car,, key in hand, insert it into the ignition and it won't start. Up until that point, the process was entirely inexplicit, automatic, rote and independent of any meaningful idea of freedom. And let's say you were stealing the car: at what point in the historical events that led up to the failed ignition were your actions truly free? Wasn't it all just one seamless progression and freedom never really entered into it at all? Am I "freely" typing these words, or am I altogether ignoring typing so I can put ideas out there, and when I put ideas out there, is this not the same kind of automatic engagement?
Ever read Beckett's "Molloy". An interesting part where the dying Molloy Malone tries to grasp the moment of his being passing into oblivion, but there are only words, it is seems as if it is the WORDS that are passing, not Molloy, or was Molloy's identity only constructed of words in the first place? If one is guilty, WHO is the guilty party? There is no small amount of madness in this trying to observe one's self, and then in the observation finding only the observational structure itself. Molloy: "I must go on; I can’t go on; I must go on; I must say words as long as there are words, I must say them until they find me, until they say me . . ."
Anyway, a bit off point, but interesting, and it illustrates just how hard it is to find the guilty agency.
Quoting javra
I think you've put your finger on it: The whole point is happiness, isn't it? Is it really, as Mill put it, better to be a philosopher dissatisfied than a pig satisfied? There is a bit of cultural condescension in this, I would think, but the idea is important. I think we would have to consider if there is anything such as profound wisdom that carries an affectivity. Emanuel Levinas speaks of the desideratum than exceeds the desire, and the ideatum that exceeds the idea. He is referring not to an intellectual apprehension, but something intuitive, a relation with the radically otherness of the world that beckons beyond to eternity.
Something of burning bush thinking in this, as if there is in the great beyond that intrudes into our finitude and in its grandeur trivializes all else. Buddhists and Hindus talk like this.
Quoting Astrophel
What Levinas misses is that this radical other isn’t something to be found beyond being, it is within the structure of being itself. Intention always intends beyond itself, but this not the ‘Good’ any more or less than it is the opposite of the good.
“By making the origin of language, meaning, and difference the relation to the infinitely other, Levinas is resigned to betraying his own intentions in his philosophical discourse. But the true name of this inclination of thought to the Other, of this resigned acceptance of incoherent incoherence inspired by a truth more profound than the "logic" of philosophical discourse, transcendental horizons of language, is empiricism. The profundity of the empiricist intention must be recognized beneath the naivete of certain of its historical expressions. It is the dream of a purely heterological thought at its source. A pure thought of pure difference. Empiricism is its philosophical name, its metaphysical pretention or modesty.”(Derrida)
Singularity doesn’t step out of plurality, but the other way around. There is no such thing as a centered structure. A play of signifiers is a differential structure with no center.
“Henceforth, it was necessary to begin thinking that there was no center, that the center could not be thought in the form of a present-being, that the center had no natural site, that it was not a fixed locus but a function, a sort of non-locus in which an infinite number of sign-substitutions came into play. This was the moment when language invaded the universal problematic, the moment when, in the absence of a center or origin, everything became discourse-provided we can agree on this word-that is to say, a system in which the central signified, the original or transcendental signified, is never absolutely present outside a system of differences.”(Sign, Structure and Play, Writing and Difference p352)
This system of differences must be thought as a temporal process rather than a simultaneous whole. The system unfolds itself from one singular to the next. Each singular is determinate ( even though it never repeats itself) but not decidable , since it borrows from another element in order to be what it is. It is a double structure. You are right to at there is no determinability in the sense of an ability to retrieve and hold onto an exact same entity or meaning. Determinability for Derrida at the level of social structures is a relative stability of thematic meaning.
Before talk about evolution, let's talk about the structure of a perceptual act, the apperceptive nature of the encounter, the analysis of the knowledge relationship between the observer and the world. Phenomenology is a foundational paradigm shift in understanding what it is to be a human being, not to sound too high and mighty, but that really is what it is. Locality and no locality are redefined. How so? Go online and read about Heidegger and his phenomenological exposition on space and time. Space first. This will give you entirely different questions to ask.
I've only enjoyed his "Waiting for Godot", and I haven't read "Molloy" - though I do like theater of the absurd in general.
Quoting Astrophel
And yet at the end of the day, for one cliched example, the heartbroken individual who was cheated on by his/her lover and best friend (to not address worse occurrences) knows this to be the case quite directly, knows of both agency and of culpability as regards both self and other in concrete enough form … rather than, say, endlessly gazing into the ethereal near-nothingness of an undifferentiable cosmic process of becoming wherein no individuated agency seems to occur. Which is to say, it may be difficult to philosophically pinpoint but agency - along with its capacity to do wrongs - nonetheless is a pivotal aspect of the lives we live.
Quoting Astrophel
Happiness, yes, but it can mean different things to different folks. Moreover, happiness and virtue hold no easily discernable necessary relation. The gangster who massacres others and thereby gains greater respect in the form of fear (rather than the respect that accompanies forms of sincere love), he too obtains happiness in so accomplishing. But not states of being such as that of equanimity in a tumultuous world wherein fortunes can turn on a dime. A difficult topic indeed for, in accordance with what we both previously commented on, everything we do and intend is done not just affectively but, more importantly, for some kind of affective end.
If we seek knowledge for the sake of power-over-other (a common enough interpretation of the adage “knowledge is power”) then why is it that we seek such increased power to begin with? Only for its envisioned affective end. If we seek ignorance - as I’ve been told certain nihilists such as Cioran at times prescribed - here again it’s done for its envisioned affective end. Anything we actively intend is intended, at the end of the day, for its envisioned affective end. And this envisioned affective end can only be an intrinsic good to us – as “useless” (as some have described intrinsic value) as is our own being to our own being, and yet for whose sake everything that we engage in is done. So I uphold that so too should wisdom be intended: for its envisioned affective end.
Rather than describing this envisioned affective end as obtained happiness, which is fickle, I’d rather describe it as the obtainment of an unperturbable bliss … one relative to which we might either get closer to or further away from; one which in part brings about the equanimity previously mentioned. And you’re right, eastern traditions maintain this ultra-end of unperturbable bliss to be found in Nirvana, or Brahman; but then so too do certain western traditions uphold the reality of its being as a telos. Sophia as the principle which, as such western traditions would have it and as I’d like to believe, guides us toward it.
Then again, that which we envision could be mistaken. In a world of relativity there would be no objective truth to whether the envisioned affective end pursued by a mass-murder is right/correct/real and thereby obtainable or else wrong/incorrect/false and thereby a fictitious end to pursue - this in contrast to the envisioned affective end pursued by those who intend virtue as best they can. According to many a philosophical tradition, however, this is not the case: for such affirm the belief-independent reality of an envisioned affective end that is in fact real and thereby right, i.e. the correct aim. For example, the Platonic notion of "the Good".
Needless to add, this subject matter - as complex and convoluted as it can get - is to me very intimately associated with ethics and intrinsic value in general.
I have Violence and Metaphysics here. Let me read it and se if I understand it.
Tantalizing. So this last line would seem to rule out idealism or is my idea of idealism handicapped by the Greeks?
One could say that this line of thinking would not have been possible without German idealism.
In relativistic discourses, there can be subjectively generated and intersubjectively validated or invalidated goals based on pragmatic considerations.
I get that, but ... Excuse me for this overused example, but it serves to illustrate why this in itself is incomplete: in relativistic discourses, is the intersubjectivity of current day neo-Nazis (maybe seeking absolute authority over all other as goal) any more right or wrong than the intersubjectivity of those antagoniztinc to neo-Nazis (maybe seeking the often derided notion of harmony among humankind, as in humanism, as goal)? Or consider the total intersubjectivity obtained by converging these two conflicting interests within a common society: does ethics boil down to a matter of "might makes right", such that regardless which faction might overtake the total intersubjectivity addressed, it would be the good faction strictly on grounds of having annulled the other faction's intents and, thereby, very being?
Same can be asked of whether slavery is a good. To bring things into a more modernized setting: if the slavery entailed by sex trafficking is a good. In both cases, the slave would be deemed a subhuman relative to the community addressed and - much like any lesser animal - would not be considered as holding any viable capacity to pertain to the given intersubjectivity of slave-owners. If these slave-ownership intending subjects were to wipe out all subjects antagonistic to the intent of slave-ownership, would that then make slave ownership and a good thing?
For such reasons, I associate moral relativism to "might (i.e., the successful implementation of power over other) makes (i.e., brings fourth the reality of) right (i.e., that which is ethically good)". And, personally, I can't abide by this. I'll currently leave my grounding for this to be affective.
You may not like my interpretations of Nietzsche's will to power, but "might makes right" need not be its only interpretation: Where "power" translates into "ability to accomplish", "will to power" could, at least hypothetically, translate into "will (driving impetus) to accomplish one's one's intent(s)". In which case:
Supposing that our intents all pivot around the affective end of an ideal imperturbable bliss (one which we'd all ideally like to obtain were it real and/or possible), and further momentarily supposing this affective end to be something akin to, say for example, a global actualization of Nirvana (or of Brahman, or of "the One"), then: Will to power would be a will to actualize this end as best one can - such that, for example, instead of implementing power-over-other (which leads to the supreme goal of cosmic autocracy) one implements things such as compassion and respect for the other's intrinsic value. The latter, in bringing us closer to the end of Nirvana or some such, wouldn't be an instant actualization of this end but, instead, would increase humanistic values amongst all, ideally in all cultures globally.
The inconsistency to this, of course, is the Nietzsche explicitly affirmed that there is no such thing as Truth, i.e. an accord to an ultimate reality. And, in this, I disagree with him. But I don't find his "will to power" to be nonsensical.
As off-the-wall as all this might be, maybe you can better see what I mean by an objective good: if, as multiple philosophical traditions have it, there is an ultimate reality that satisfies this envisioned affective end we all pursue in all that we think, believe, and do; then there is a real universal end/goal/telos which when pursues brings us closer to this good and which when deviated from - namely, by intending fictitious, hence incorrect, hence wrong intents - brings about bad.
Its a very heavy, loaded, topic to address and discuss, but there you have my shpiel. If I do err, I'll err on the side of the golden rule (on the side of an impartially, else independently, real right) and against the belief that might makes - hence, produces - right (which to me is innate to relativism).
That is where it ends up, I think. Happiness, unhappiness and everything you can think of that fit into these (which is everything in experience, for even the plainest most uneventful conditions are saturated with affect. Boredom, perhaps, but that changes nothing) is the existential presupposition for ethics. I cannot even imagine ethics with without some pain or pleasure, or mood, or interest, even, in play, at risk. One cannot, yet, have a moral relation with AI, a dog or cat or squirrel, yes.
But you know, we cannot speak of happiness analytically (Wittgenstein would not), which is a very peculiar thing. We can talk about what makes a person happy or un, but happiness simpliciter is hands off. Can we call this an intrinsic good (or bad)?
I've been contemplating that a lot lately and for some time now: an idea regarding volitional valence. In short, when we obtain what we intend as intended, volitional happiness (as in the archaic notion of luckiness, good fortune), irrespective of how minor or major the intent. Likewise, when our intention is in any way impeded, volitional suffering (bearing the weight of an unwanted circumstance). All this however is contingent on the reality of intentions and, hence, some notion of teleology - and, in an indirect way, on the reality of freely willed choices. Things of course get very complex, but that's the short version of it. Anyway, addressed because I at least believe it might be possible to speak of happiness analytically in a suitable enough manner, this at least for the topic of ethics.
Curious to hear your thoughts or rebuttables concerning this overall idea.
I was thinking of an ontological indeterminacy. I mean, if I deconstruct my cat, and the arbitrariness of the signifier cannot be made non arbitrary independently of a context, then the context is the ontological foundation for what my cat is. But beyond this, there is nowhere to go. It is blind metaphysics to think that there can be conceived something beyond context.
This doesn't just annihilate metaphysics, it places annihilated metaphysics in the language construction itself, if I may put it that way. I mean to say, the utterance qua utterance is entirely foreign to the actuality that is in the palpable "fabric of things" and I talk like this notwithstanding Heidegger's claim that objects in the world are "of a piece" with the language used to conceive of them.
You won't agree, I suspect, but I claim there is something irreducible to this actuality. I am not convinced our understanding is locked within a totality of the Same. Yes, I suppose this is walking on water talk.
[math]ART[/math]
The signifier-signified relation is never arbitrary for Derrida, s there never is a sign diver by itself, but I understand where you’re going.
Quoting Astrophel
I assume you’re getting this from Levinas. I respect the Levinasian-Kierkegaardian way of thinking, but I think Levinas misreads Heidegger and Husserl when he accuses them of totalizing phenomenology.
My thoughts are a work in progress. In play is the indefeasibility of affectivity (this being a general term for a classification of existentials like pleasure, joy, bliss, happiness, disgust, hatred, revulsion, misery, and on and on. I take facts to be Wittgesntein's facts: sailboats are sailing in the distance, or an ox is stronger than a chihuahua. There is nothing of affectivity in all of these. Facts are accidental, that is, they could have been otherwise and there is nothing that makes them necessary. This is on edge of talk about possible worlds, worlds of logical necessity, or worlds of causal boundaries. I take Wittgenstein to be talking about logically conceivable worlds, and in them, there is no affectivity. You could say there is the fact that I am unhappy or ecstatic, but, and here is the rub, as a fact, there is no "good" in happiness., and there is no "bad" in misery. This opens the discussion for an extraordinary exposition the nature of ethics and aesthetics. How is it that I cannot assail the integrity of the, well, "value of value" that is the good of enjoyment the bad of a toothache, in any conceivable arrangements of context? In all possible worlds of factuality, what is good in this analysis of the good has no place at all. And this is because affectivity of goodness is an absolute. It does not issue from a factual matrix, that is, talk about this kind of thing is beyond the deferential possibilities of any context driven ontology.
I have to work this idea out, though I have another life beyond reading and thinking philosophy and likely will never do this entirely. But you see the intuition (heh, if there is such a thing) of this is bound up with this "discovery" (again, is there such a thing? Rorty says truth is made not discovered. Oh my!) of what is in an ethical analysis: There is something, some "invisible X" that cannot be reduced to contextual inter-deferentiality (I made that term up. It seems to be okay), I mean, produced out of "difference" of the meanings of ideas. Ethics and aesthetics are, and the limb I am going out on here is a long and slim one, utterly metaphysical in their very mysterious analysis of foundational ...errr, properties. They issue forth an injunction: Don't do this; Do this.
Of course, ethical injunctions are language constructs, and the same that is true for facts of the world are true here, that is, there is nothing of affect in an injunction, and injunctions are NOT indefeasible. ut this is not about ethics. This is about an abstraction form ethics that reveals an absolute.
Derrida is maddening to read (for me) but when one catches on (such as I have) , one sees how massively interesting he is, especially vis a vis Wittgenstein's Ethics and Tractatus. I mean, this is literally life changing, if, though, one is that caught up in the enterprise if finding out what it is to be a human being at the level of basic questions.
My central interest since college has been the relationship between affectivity, feeling, mood and emotional on the one hand, and cognition, intentionality and understanding on the other. My view is that the two phenomena are utterly inseparable, that there is no expereince that is without affective valence and quality. I would argue that the sense of a world for Wittgenstein, as use context, is that way in which the word matters to us , its significance and relevance. That is an affective feature. There are no facts without relevance, there is no relevance without value, so understanding a fact is already an affective process.
I don't see how this can be disagreed with. Experience is not a thing of discreet parts; rather, parts are in the analysis. There is no pure reason and there is no sublime affectivity qua affectivity as some kind of stand alone features of existence. But a question like, what is experience? has to have in its answer something about affectivity and its features, and one feature I find impossibly there is that affect cannot be "defeated" as to what it is by contextual changes. It is what it is regardless of context. And even if this pain can be recast as pleasure (in the mind of a masochist, say) it is not that pain is pleasure, or that pain is therefore made ambiguous, but that it is no longer pain.
BUT: An utterance places pain in context, that is, when I think about pain, I am already in a system of predelineated understandings, and so, what is said is bound to contingency, bound to a foundational deconstruction (as I am calling it. I don't have the vocabulary quite ready to hand) that denies all "stand alone" claims (call them "Platonic" claims). And so, the utterance "pain is bad" is just as contingent as "snow is white". The point I would make is the injunction not to do X is grounded in existence in a way that cannot be spoken, but is "mysteriously authoritative." I think Wittgenstein would agree.
I see that the color red, e.g., is there, but is "speechless" apart from its contextual placement possibilities. Affect "speaks" an inaudible and uninscribable "language" of existence.