Main

THE "KARL JASPERS FORUM" WEB PAGE Update 4 (1-4-06)

PDF
File

Site
map

email me.
First Notation: To read about my Constructivist Foundation honorary doctorate distinction, see item 4.3. It is to me a humorous anecdote.  I’ve rejected the award with tongue firmly implanted in cheek.

Second Notation: Item 5 is most important for it is directly relevant to the application of Karl Jaspers to the issues in items 1 though 4; those items are preparatory but not imperative for 5’s value.

1. THE PREDICTED MULLER TO SILLIMAN RESPONSE

2. THE BELATED INDETERMINISM OF STEPHEN MODELL’S DEVOLVEMENT  

3. NIXON”S PHENOMENAL DESOLVED REALISM

4. GLASERSFELD ON EDITORIAL CUE

Prefatory memo on interpretive stuff:

01. Herbert Muller elected/selected three, or there were three contributors to his Website for posting on 12-31-2005. Ernst Glasersfeld’s 12-23, Stephen Modell’s 12-24, and Greg Nixon’s 12-28 (my last week’s report was dated 12-27) are the listed-dates the articles were received by Herbert. The accuracies of those dates are feasibly accountable for through those authors’ records. The Editor, Herbert, dated his Response to Mr. Silliman 12-23. Dating can be important and verification can be telltale indicators of intellectual honesty, manipulation, errors, or dishonesty.

02. For instance, notice the parenthetical comment following Greg’s name above; it suggests his report might have followed mine in some “evolving” progressively unfolding dependent manner. However, factually, my Website manager did post it on the 27, and I reviewed it, and then ask for some corrections, and in that process a link was overlooked and the Website remained inaccessible for a day or two. This is mentioned to show how easy it is to misrepresent a situation that is always more than less complex. If I wanted to be deceptively suggestive and affirm and even confirm the possibility that the report was available on the 27th there could be one to a million witnesses saying it was unavailable (one is probably closer to the correct figure and that might have been me). Regardless, my comments here nor the absence of any mention of my name by Greg proves absolutely…nothing. My point being at least one, and that is that an editor can control trends by the manipulation of dates unless there is an understood ethic or, where ethic is questionable, disciplined accountability is in place. In-place accountability is especially needed in interdisciplinary discussions where some specialties’ worth might be determined by historical determinism, i.e., one idea if earlier is termed as cause of other disciplines but the more recent must be in some indeterminate manner superior to the earliest. For instance, Greg might feel justified in avoided Jaspers via Whitehead because the latter was former in two ways: he was born first, there was overlapping--but no apparent connective interchange (to my knowledge)--and second, Whitehead is prior to Jaspers in the Library of Living Philosophers.

03. What is certain to me is that the slant of Herbert’s Website is not toward Karl Jaspers, but rather more antithetical. My guess though is that it is caused by educationally, institutionally and religiously motivated dependencies justified by the use of ontologism such as evolutionism and its spin into “creationism” through the adaptation of that word. It’s like that fostered by the community of a few who use indirect means and the passivity of those assenting to institutional authority to maintain that institution’s momentum in the struggles for power.  An historical example of this is the use of the Pseudo-Isidoran decretals, forgeries, and “the transformation of original Christianity into the political Church.” (Jaspers, Philosophical Faith. & Revelation, p. 47)

04. How one can transact to the…many…of Herbert’s Website and not allow Jaspers to be succumbed by at least unintentional editorial conniving presents a real challenge. Fortunately, The Library Of Living Philosophers accommodates Jaspers’ death and makes it possible for defenders to arise. I do this in item 5. in an attempted coherent way but the coherence belongs primarily to Jaspers and I present it as not cohering with Herbert’s selections but to show how the two do not cohere.

1. The predicted Herbert to Silliman response

1.1. In my last week’s UPDATE dated the 27th it was predicted where and how Herbert would respond to Stephen. That prediction was accurate. The prediction is not based on anything unusually mystical, but rather on Herbert’s outstanding ontologism. I had said he would attack Matthew Silliman on his reference to “emergent properties”. According to Herbert’s dating system he made this Response (R26) to Silliman on the 23rd but posted on the 31st. This leaves opportunity to selectively revise even a blank page created on the 23rd. He would and did give as-if subjective worth to the words “emergent properties” by unnecessarily reminding Silliman that he cannot think without a head; “before you are there you cannot know anything” he told Silliman.

1.2. One can make an educated guess that Herbert’s usual exposé regarding ongoing experience and a construction there-from was shortened due to the posting on the 31st of Modell’s Comment received on the…24th. If I had control of my Website I would know about Modell’s Comment and revise mine accordingly--but hopefully admit to it. But Herbert needs others as point-men (persons) to emphasis an evolutionism-ontology (religiously enhanced ontologism) rather than risk further embarrassment regarding his association with and drawing attention to evolutionism and vatic canonization. I had also predicted that Herbert would give objectivity only surreptitious weight. This he did indirectly through the timely posting of Modell’s evolutionism’s spin off linguistic-semantics in the terms of determinism to indeterminism. Herbert carefully avoided the word “evolution” and only touched the edge by an admonition absolutely no one I know needs. He said to Silliman, “don’t forget you are the one structuring it”. Reminding Silliman not to lose his head is a pure case of a prohibition created to correct something that needs no correcting, but is intended by the emphatic decree to establish guilt. In other words if the “professor” exhorts a student, the student must be degraded.

1.3. Greg Nixon’s role is to reinforce the professorial authoritative state by the obsequious reference to Herbert as “professor”. Such ingratiating titles of distinction and ramifications are not discouraged so that dialectical processes can be unencumbered by ontologisms. I mean Herbert has never said to Greg “Why call me professor? The only incomparable professor here is [pointing to his domain title] Karl Jaspers”.  (We must not forget that Herbert disciplined Greg for ad hominem talk directed toward me for my efforts to make Jaspers pivotal rather than Herber, Greg, evolutionism, and atheism.)

1.4. The nearest Herbert comes to balancing the objective-subjective unavoidable dichotomy in the reasoning process is to permit Matthew Silliman to talk about neurological stuff if he remembers to not forget the “you” in the equation. With every other word Matthew must repetitiously Gregorian-utter allegiance to the creed of “zero-derivation” while writing the formula “0-D” and bashing “MIR” (mind-independent reality). Matthew’s realism, like Greg’s (in his better less-superficial moments), can be tolerated best if he learns also to do a two-step dance while juggling “formulae” accommodatingly enough to plant the final step in Herbert’s idealism.

2. The Stephen Modell evolvement and belated indeterminism

2.1. The first time Stephen’s postings appeared on Herbert’s Website was Aug. 24th of 2003, TA55 C 62. My candid impression is that whenever the word “evolution” or Darwin is heard he is alerted to a potential challenge to defend an educational industry’s specialty with the special language he knows and uses well. He has a M.D., M.S., and now signs his name equated to or at least qualified by “University of Michigan” and his e-mail address contains “umich.ed”. Waving these credentials he uses Slavoj Hontela’s Article seemingly because he had used the phrase “Darwinian Evolution” within a quote from John R. Searle.

2.2. Mr. Hontela had, apparently, also used the words “evolutionary ladder” in considering consciousness, nerve reflex possibilities in Protozoic Amoeba. Included were admitted loose definitions about consciousness, memory signs, its place in repairing processes, but always qualified by admitting to certain presumptions, a presumptuousness attitude that is probably included in the use of “evolutionary ladder”. One simply cannot use the word “evolution” around one given to evolutionism without a secular cleric collar being flashed.

2.3. He took us to the microscope to observe the phenomenal action of the Amoeba of Proteus species to an experimentally fed foreign like substance placed in proximate space near it. There was an attraction but before reaching the digestive area the Amoeba appeared to spit it out. Mr. Hontela again uses the word “presume”, in that neuro-biological element seems to support microtubules in plasma. The word “memory” is used in association with repeated efforts at feeding that results in no obvious similar interaction, as though “memory” had occurred. All this I found intriguing and clearly stated by Mr. Hontela. Presumptions, I thought though should include the experimenter’s possible influence, for if there was action at a distance, why not action at a distance including the objective reality of arbitrary affects by observing agents. But Mr. Hontela had not mentioned Jaspers, and the pivotal point was lost. Predictably, tangents would result, and I pointed this out. It seemed the primary purpose for encouraging his article was he apparently (an interpreter’s interpolation?) used the word “evolutionary ladder”. Stephen grabbed the opportunity and jettisoned with spiraling and circular spin-offs.

2.4. The emphasis on evolutionism was apparently not strong enough for Greg and Stephen. The Target Article offered the opportunity for them to capitalize on their special acquaintance with the implications of some research phenomena not yet popular enough to have been criticized effectively. They are not content with the humane results so much as how it can religiously establish their ontologism. It offered the chance to demonstrate their abstractibility, i.e., immanental transcendence made possible in the glossolalia peculiar to the study. How dare this Target Article author only mention Darwin indirectly and within a quote by an other! This was obviously an affront to their specialty and a threat to their opportunity to manifest a most “evolved” but really well exercised glossopharyngeal nerve.  

2.5. My Comment “C 55”  (TA55) dated July 4th was extensive (and may be included eventually on the Karl Jaspers Applied soon). It was a response to Mr. Hontela’s Response “R3” to me dated June 13th 2003. Several including those of Greg and Stephen (but no direct comment directed toward mine) followed my Comment 55. The main point to this is that I emphatically drew attention to the need for making Jaspers pivotal to avoid the unproductive tangents “evolution” talk presented.

2.6. Stephen then does not reappear until Dec. of 2005 and in reaction to Hugh, criticizing him for expressions that could be interpreted as mere genomic commercialization. Note, he reappears only after I had been censured by Herbert (and even removed from the mailing list) which all happened prior to Stephen’s reentry into Herbert’s Website. That article, TA78, C72 is where we find ourselves now.

2.7. Now Stephen is reacting to Hugh’s C 60 where he mentions playfully at least the word “Darwin” and “evolution”. But Hugh also does not ridicule anything theistic, and one given to evolutionism’s ontology cannot tolerate such tolerance. These are the stimuli to which Stephen responds now to show how well he can wield the of evolutionism glossolalia with a few currently…revealed…sounding sounds. Stephen did not comment on Hugh’s Target Article 56. I was still around to point to the pivotal Jaspers.

2.8. In this C72 Stephen bashes Hugh for words that could be considered commercialization of genomics. That was a forced and arbitrary interpretation needed so that Stephen could further industrialize evolutionism, i.e., secure the ontologism that goes by the name of “evolution”. Actually, it was more that Hugh mentioned the stimulating word “Darwinian”. He can now with moral vigor and with the blessings of a powerful world-religious power having catholicity as goal, proceed to bash with scientific-certitude-lingo anyone who dares talk about God outside of that sanctified academic turf of evolutionism. You cannot be permitted to use God and Darwin or Darwinian evolutionism and get away with it unless the heavenly father has institutionally and immanently “evolved”. Evolutionism now taught in our compulsory and tax supported institutions of learning are in effect establishing that catholicity represented by that Church’s official infringement upon the education industry. The history of that movement of catholicity shows that no beat is missed if it offers the opportunity for the infiltration into political and educational powers. And, that power within the struggle for power beat Islamic catholicity to it.

2.9. Stephen violates learned ignorance in practice and principle when he says, “Now our various physical propensities and disease susceptibilities can be fully explained in a scientific framework, and researches in behavioral genetics can quickly close the gap for the mental world as well.” This statement is void of the humbling attitude that the more we know the more we know we don’t know. But what’s worse is the catholicity arbitrated clause and the confidence that now the official educators sanctioned by deference to vatic sainthood can now predict a systemic evolutionism ontology and infiltrate at will and resolve the world’s mental ills…deterministically.

2.10. The covert and embryonic determinism is distracted from by the killdeer-effect in Stephen’s talk about indeterminacy being something new, but this due to his limited understanding and therefore exploitative use of a quantum uncertainty principle.  We leave, temporarily at least, this Modell piece; by saying once again he makes no connection Karl Jaspers, Herbert’s misnamed namesake Website. A reformation of coherent connection will be made following Ernst’s in item 4 below. Stephen, and now Ernst, will speak with authority on indeterministic thinking while apparently wholly unfamiliar with the ageless biblical principle of humankind’s freewill. On editorial queue Ernst is posturing for springing in the air in spinning reacting to the biblical question of freewill.

2.11. One next to last thought; Stephen speaks about the elementary things as though they are as new to others as to him. Some research and development in the last century he finds philosophically and religiously revolutionary. Nearly half a century ago we Lincoln Christian College/Seminary students learned through Dr. Stanley Smith from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, about the successful cloning of animals at the University (hope my memory for details is accurate). My immediate response was wondering about the implications of that regarding symbolic significance for virgin births. In a paper I did on the uncertainty principle in quantum theory he wrote that he did not know if I knew what I was talking about but that the subject matter was staggering. Coming from him, in retrospect, it amounted to a minute honorary doctorate. With regard to the use Stephen makes of the uncertainty principle, though misunderstood, lending credence to indeterminism and ethical and moral responsibility; that is as old as Genesis. One of the first inimical problems revealed in the first part of Genesis that even Sunday School teachers taught is that humans are free moral agents with more responsibility for behavior because of that biblical revelation. While Stephen cites his association with a University, my recalcitrant response is to say that the question of indeterminacy was being talked about and taught a half century ago in the small Great Lakes Bible College near Vestaburg Michigan and which is now located in Lansing under the title Great Lakes Christian College.

2.12. To determine is to reduce the manifold to specifics, and to indeterm is to leap back to the manifold of the present. The ground of terms is more or less than how terms are used—which gets us to language.

3. The Greg Nixon phenomena (post KJF Jaspers’ suppression), Evolutionism not theistic belief

3.1 Prior to my censoring by Herbert, something very interesting occurred. Mr. Hontela returns to Herbert’s Website with a Comment received sometime in “March” posted 4-23-2005 as TA75C32. Mr. Hontela’s article is clearly written about “language” and in the process he says something seemed “Darwinistic”. To any one given to evolutionism’s ontology, that improper modifying noun’s use of a revered renowned noun amounts to a display of impropriety for vatic-like authority. The use of “Darwinistic” could mean something could be…too… “Darwinistic”. The modifying affect on the catholicity of evolutionism is destabilized and must be challenged especially now since the canonization effect.

3.2. Greg attacks Hontela aggressively in a rush-to-press Comment (received by Herbert 4-27 and posted 4-30) TA75C35. In this rush, note that sometime in “March” Herbert obviously had something from Mr. Hontela and chose to post it on 4-30-2005 as well, the same day Greg’s was rushed-to-post. The posting under the name of Hontela was and remains in a confused state of presentation and sounds nothing like the former Hontela. A very similar thing happened to a supposed contribution by Joseph Johnson who innocently refers to a discussion with “X”. It’s inconceivable that a Comment directed to anonymity could be allowed by an editor, leaving open the suggestion that anybody not emphatically predisposed to evolutionism’s ontology is predestined to scheming tactics. See (TA70C6) to my TA 70 The limits of historical determinateness applied to evolutionism.

3.3. But now unimpeded by my censoring, Greg’s endearing comment to Herbert is paraphrased this way, that “if Whitehead’s process cosmology is properly understood without the theistic faith content, it is as atheistic ‘(as I believe for your 0-D constructivism, Professor Muller)’”. The endearing title of distinction is enhanced by verbalization about experience similar to his “Professor” and modified merely by comments about a historic continuity with “seeming objective existence”. Note the word “seeming” and how Greg’s realistic inclinations suddenly vanish in the blush of endearing creative verbiage. The creative process, “creationism”, begins to creep into the Forum’s dialectic with renewed vigor (spurred on my Glaserfeld’s comment below, for evolution has been religiously knighted and planted in the saddle of humankind). Greg tries to distance himself from subjectivism by saying there is no absolute “objective universe” but there “certainly seems to be”. Greg admits the spiraling and circularity involved but it is suppose to be indulged by the confession. The confession is only a supposed-step into an ethical dimension out of reach of empirical criticism—which we will get to in item 5 where Jaspers speaks to the matter.

3.4. Creation talk is then tied to God through Whitehead’s theology, and Greg finds another more current popular personage’s (Peden) shadow to speak from that prompts the courage for Greg to say that Whitehead’s “God concept is superfluous, a product of his upbringing”. Then Greg says, “But God & eternal objects are potentials”. Obviously Greg is making full use of God and object in the same clause and painting Whitehead from a bias perspective of immanence, not capital “T” Transcendence in the essential Jaspers sense. One reason Greg is using Whitehead is his chronic (timely) exposure to the proximity of Darwin. In other words, Greg can use Whitehead because surely he had not “evolved” like Greg and his “Professor” and his fellow-Peden to the point of evolutionary atheism. Greg has to shatter a possible Whitehead-like or Augustine-like meaningful upbringing because it is grounds for a principle of conversion that must remain forever strange to those who have not themselves experience conversion, and prefer not to. Greg must make sure that the consciousness of a direct encounter with God transforming the very heart of one’s existence cannot be other than a product of evolutionism. So Greg extrapolates from evolutionism moves from the etiological, through the epidemiological to the implied teleological. Then he criticizes Whitehead for being opaque about the goal of history.

3.5. The rest of Greg’s comment involves thinking that could have been precluded if Jaspers had been…applied…as generative and critical source. His professor Herbert misunderstands the empirical ground for Whitehead and his student Russell in their cooperative work on Some Foundations of Logic. He wants to say that they had to have had a head to think these thoughts, and wants credit for noticing and saying it. Greg comes to his rescue by saying the question is wonderful! Greg’s answer is equally intense and irrelevant to Whitehead and Russell, for he goes on a tangent from both mind and experience to demonstrate his up-to-date awareness from the …very “frontiers of science” itself. The answer is in the suggestions captured and captivated in “ZPF” which Greg reassured the frustrated professor with…“(zero-point field, not too far from 0-D)”. Greg says it’s otherwise known as “absolute or quantum vacuum” or what another recent book writing personage (Ervin Laszio) call the Akashic Field… Greg concludes his final ZPF, 0-D, Akashic Field, his theology of glossolalai, with an open-door question for his Professor’s continued need to talk about not being taken in by the desire for head-independent reality.

3.6. What we have here has simply offered (“docnixon” per e-mail) Greg the opportunity to avoid-at-all-cost the theistic Karl Jaspers by zeroing in on a Greg-conjured evolutionary misinformed theistic image of an intentionally recreated Whitehead. The devolution from theistic faith by the use of “creation” now reaches the point where, on queue, Ernst Glasersfeld comes to the front.

4. Ernst reenters to rescue Herbert and directs attention to the creativity/selectivity questions leaving the door open for Jaspers who is barred from entering

4.1. Ernst now too is free to return to Herbert’s Website without making any direct application to Karl Jaspers. One can determine or indetermine that void, i.e., make more or less of the irrelevance to Jaspers. So we have to determine why he selects Hugh’s use of “Darwinism” and “God” reference to stand up and testify to his agenda of Radical Constructivism.

4.2. Hugh, perhaps because he uses some theistic words, seems to have stirred the emotions not only of doc Greg, Stephen from U. of Michigan, and now Ernst. He needs neither introduction nor anything suggestive in his e-mail address. We must not forget that there is a pied-piper influential observing agent involved here.  It’s that editing and manipulative privilege afforded an editor, and which I can avoid by strict control over my Website. Through personal experience I can tell you that Herbert uses a principle of selectivity and encourages, certain individuals to contribute, guessing with some acuity as to their position and worth for a particular goal of expressing his formulas. He selects a few from the many and a few from the aristocratic few for his agenda.

4.3. As regards Ernst, there might be some aristocratic implications in “von” compared to “van”, and it’s hoped I’ll be tolerated for my Americanization by dropping any suggestion of a title of distinction. Ernst is designative enough. There’s nothing un-American about excavating escalades into a fair democratic third-estate field. For example, Alexander Riegler had e-mailed me an invitation to write a proposal relative to a Festschrift for Ernst. I had to disqualify myself for a number of reasons, but the invitation was addressed to “Dr.” Wood. Unless that can now be considered an honorary degree awarded by the new Constructivist Foundation it disqualifies me. At best it would be a Doctorate By Mistake (Dr. of BM), but still disqualifies me. I e-mailed back a listing of additional reasons for my disqualifications. I was going to paste below that returned e-mail but…by mistake…I had concluded it with the statement that if he should object to my use of it I might use it. I left out “not” between “If he should...”.

4.4. But Ernst gets right to the issue. It is not the issue that Hugh makes, except he said something about “I think of ‘reality’” in a certain way. This is a metaphysical expression tinted with phenomenologically epistemological awareness, and not a creed like utterance to be reduced to idealism or a pretentious realism. I could easily interpret Hugh’s comment in a way that would not make it so easy to ask if we are genetically fixed. Hugh to me does not suggest determinism. He is thinking out loud and that’s a dangerous thing to do on Herbert’s Website for it could be interpreted as a prayer in the name of something other than chanting an agenda’s formulae. But Ernst makes it into determinism, puts a round peg of thinking into a hole squared for some purpose, for steering in the direction of the evolutionism trend of Herbert’s forum.

4.5. Ernst asks a question for some particular agenda which diminishes Hugh’s thinking. To paraphrase, Ernst enters into the ageless issue of freewill and God, or indeterministic biblical thinking. Stephen and Greg try to get into the subject if they can, along with Herbert, establish the death of God so to speak, and then move on to the extinction of any idea about responsibility being inherited (outside a vatic system that has “evolved”). Stephen brought up the determinism question and says: “Here is one new direction—indeterminism—which, though shared by physics [he means the uncertainty principle which has to do with method not as an ontology the way he is seeing it here], did not occupy philosophical systems prior to the quantum mechanical and genetic discoveries of the last century.” This statement shows a historical barrenness almost inconceivable for an academic, and his misunderstanding of an uncertainty principle refutes his trend of thinking at the base.

4.6. But Ernst is prone to inadvertently overstepping his specialty in an effort to support Herbert a fellow given to “Radical Constructivism”. He takes a historically established biblical issue of freewill and sketches it in genetic rather than Genesis terms; are we “genetically fixed” travelers like migrating birds or individually responsible entities in this ocean of being, this firmament above and below? Obviously that’s partly another deferring opportunity for Herbert. We know what Herbert’s formula will be. Not to mention that we know little about bird brains, Ernst at least points at the something incomprehensible regarding inherited guidance and as migrants we are thrust into the question of how much responsibility does an individual delegate to mystery and in what metaphysical form, and how much to self reliance and to a passive reliance on aristocratic others. Let’s see what Jaspers says:

5. Karl Jaspers to Fritz Kaufman/John Hennig

5.1. Notice how the above ingeniously relates to vatic authority, as an aristocratic organism, and to the issue of determinism (reducing the manifold to specifics) vs. indeterminism (returning to the more-than what is conceivable in the manifold). Though Ernst appears to want it, one thing we do not do is attempt to understand humankind on the basis of our lack of understanding or knowledge of animals. We don’t uncritically accept intuitive presumptions while there still are time and space tools polarizing the reasoning process. Nor do we yield to named or nameless powers without protesting in principle a pecking order. There are aristocratic forces and struggles for power amongst forces all affecting earth bound immigrants who must make reasonable decisions to protest or yield to others’ exploitations, evolutionary creationisms, determinations. The temptations toward compliance and complicity are commensurate with the more we know about these forces the more we know we don’t know about selecting, and out of frustration and confusion we simply…yield to the most peacock-aesthetical visual-aids; this due to a need for an anesthetizing pseudo-coherence, and the institutionally…created...radical constructions are swallowed hook line and sinker.

5.2. Such easy coherence-swallowing leads Jaspers into dealing consistently with the issue of the transparency and selectivity of the manifold phenomena of history. History too involves the less-than use of determinacy and the more-than use of indeterminacy. He takes up the issue while in the continuity mode of thinking: and in contrast to the unavoidable determinism of catholicity “the power of philosophic insight; it alone is reliable”. The whole Hennig and Kaufman frame of reference clearly involves the issue of catholicity. The last sentence of Jaspers’ preceding paragraph leading into his defense thoughtfully coheres and establishes the frame of reference for talk about the transparency of—to use Ernst selected terms—the manifold, part of which is to remember and learn that “The Vatican enters into concordats with Hitler, and with Franco and thereby lifts them into the saddle of international recognition, thus enabling them to conclude treaties.” (756) This sort of political and educational interference amounts to divine intervention by a creation this side of God’s manifold. Jaspers then defends himself against these two defenders of catholicity under two categories. First, About the Question of Aristocracy and second, On the Meaning of History.

5.3. What is presumed in determinism is a link to an aristocratic organism linked through absolute distributed authority, but excluding individual self-illuminating and a critical deferring toward those who rule or are successful in named and nameless powerful forces. What might be dangerously tempting in indeterminism is an…excessive…disregard for a principle of selectivity applied to the manifold, but safely may include self-reliance--and not exclude some degree of trust in de facto powers. The individual selectivity principle picks critically, or gleans from what’s left from history after institutionalism drains nobility dry for the institutions’ survival. “The opposition between aristocracy and the masses, between the individual and all, is not the kind which enforces a choice between them.” (757) It is not an either/or principle, either for or against establishment, except under oppression and physical being is threatened by violence within hopelessness, e.g., inquisitions, etc. Jaspers finds this aristocratic quality, this nobility outside institutional selective determinates.

It [nobility] is rarely—at least so it appears to me—to be found in the upper strata of the educated and the wealthy, but when found there it is likely to be of unique development, depth and clarity. It is more frequent among the so-called simple people, among workers and farmers. It is by no means missing among the specifically so-called nobility, this remainder of a past history…but deviation toward indulence [as is, probably indulgence] towards satisfaction, always lies close at hand for the privileged. (p. 758)

5.4. Remember the frame of reference here is religiously enhanced establishmentarianism and that sort of consequential determinism. It is within this reference that Jaspers, in the fifties, declares himself to be a democrat, but “Only people of good faith can be good democrats, but not by means of faith in democracy. I was and still am a democrat.” (759) Here, I think, we get a closer understanding as to the reasons why he left Germany for good in 1948: “…[T]he idea of the moral state…and its democratic consequences—at this point contrary to Plato—…as was the case…in Germany before 1933 and is now again…” (759) This threat to democracy is related to that religious frame of reference in which his reply to religious critics began, i.e., that represented by John Hinnig and Fritz Kaufmann (and Martin Heidegger though not a Critic in The Library…).

5.5. When what is inherited through tradition becomes organized and that organization leaps upon any and all mysterious phenomena to feed its authority, even the resurrection of Jesus must be looked at and wrestled back from its misuse. The more apt ontologism distracts from unknown and unknowable source, the more scientifically critical and selective nobility must be. If a religiously held ontology explains homing pigeons’ brains, birdbrains, by a metaphysical exclamation “evolution/vatic-sanctified” the more recalcitrant and empirical should be the reaction. One must question whether an “evolved” institution’s Jesus cannot rise from the dead unless an “evolved” vatic receives the full forceful benefit of the miracle. “A Catholic Christian church exists only by way of the unjustified claim to catholicity.” (765) Needless to say this requirement for catholicity is as prone to appear in Protestant groups but more apt to be temporary radical-construct-crutches until the spirit of protesting and nonconformity are safely aimed. I mean the mission of intolerance toward intolerance witnesses the fulfillment of intolerance. That does not mean tolerance for libertinism.

5.6. Hennig and Jaspers interpret historical transparency deterministically and indeterministically respectively. The historical evidence by testimony, monuments, places, establish sufficiently for Hennig the catholicity claim but through transparency from only one of two perspectives: an indeterminacy or determinacy misuse or use. The idea that authority “evolves” selectively and as such inherently determined, puts a spin on creationism and subsumes or negatively encompasses healthy indeterminacy. That determinism treats the indeterminants as excommunicable undeterminants, and makes decisions for them, such as that resulting from a college of cardinals’ decrees telling what now meets the fixed (adjusted at will) traditional criterion (if it’s good for the Catholicity), popularly traditional enough to be decreed truthful enough to be taught in a mandatory educational system. Tradition determining tradition is the standard of truth, and authoritative creationism replaces individual responsibility. Jaspers’ transparency is more what is…given…than what…they…give from a catholic perspective. Research [like cloning, my comment] “…is rewarding only if from inception [unknown origin not truth already possessed to be universally imposed] it is guided by transparency, but only in the selection of what is worthy of knowledge, not in the proof of the correctness of any historical reality, which is demonstrable or refutable without any transparency as such.” (765)

5.7. What we have seen in Modell is the imposition of his commitment to traditional transparency that leaves room open for catholic evolutionism to determine what is and is not commercialization, and a way made easier for catholicity’s infiltration into the…education industry. What we don’t see in Modell’s comments is any hint of the politicalization and commercialization of the education industry. It is academically camouflaged.  We must not reduce genomic research to confines in which a vatic establishment can tell us when consciousness is created and when and how often it should or should not be uncreated.

 
 
 
Site Map
Back to Front Page