My goal [these days] is ever and always the same:
When someone notes things like…
Because of the issue in Dostoevsky’s Devils. The freedom to interpret (the either / or) comes up against the stone, the man-god is not wholly sublime. Ergo, not wholly superior to the terrible and unpleasant forces which show him how little he is worth.
…all I am basically interested in is the extent to which this point reflects some measure of human autonomy. And, if it does, what are the existential implications germane to that which is of most interest to me: how ought one to live in a world bursting at the seams with conflicting goods?
Now, if “human freedom” here is essentially a self-delusion rooted in a mind rooted in a brain rooted in laws immutably applicable to all matter, then nothing that any of us post here was ever going to be anything other than that which it could only ever have been: what in fact it is. Period.
Then we go from there to whatever brought into existence the existence of existence itself.
But [admittedly] part of my psychology [rooted in dasein] has predisposed [driven] me to pursue polemics. And part of this is “fun” in the sense that deconstructing objectivists is “entertainment” for me.
Some of these folks have spent literally years constructing these complex and convoluted “intellectual contraptions”. Things like “value ontology”. Then they bump into me and I start in on tinkering with them. Maybe even take them apart.
And we all know the manner in which some of them react to that.
Then to me.
Why do I do this?
Well, there’s this:
He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles
And [no doubt] there’s the part revolving around the fact that I no longer have access myself to the “psychology of objectivism”. I am no longer able to sustain the sort of “comfort and consolation” embedded in that frame of mind convinced it is in touch with the “real me” in sync with “the right thing to do”.
So – consciously? subconsciously? unconsciously? – I have come to truly envy those who still do. And there’s a part of me that goes after this.
But that’s just the sort of speculation built into “I” here as an existential contraption. I can never really know for certain what makes “me” tick here. There are far too many pieces [going all the way back to my birth] hopelessly entangled in far too many contexts that are surely beyond either my complete understanding or my control.
What I do however is to suggest that this sort of thing – the fractured and fragmented “I” – is applicable to all of us. Some are just more aware of it than others.
Unless of course I’m wrong. But how [using the tools of philosophy] would I or others go about establishing that?
…………………………………………
On the other hand, some of the stuff that folks like Guide write here borders on gibberish to me. It’s so fucking unintelligible at times I’m thinking that maybe he/she really is just putting me on. Just yanking my chain.
So, sure, the joke may well be on me.