One of the first questions one could pose is the question of the difference between who and what. Is love the love of someone or the love of something? Supposing I loved someone. Do I love someone for the absolute singularity of who they are? I love you because you are you. Or do I love your qualities, such as beauty, intelligence, and personality. Does one love someone or does one love something about someone. The difference between the who and the what at the heart of love, separates the heart. Love is the movement of the heart. Does my heart move because I love someone who is an absolute singularity or because i love the way that someone is? Often, love starts with some type of seduction. Love is disappointed and dies when one comes to realize the other person doesn’t merit such love. So at the death of love, it appears that one stops loving another not because of who they are, but because they are such and such. That is to say, the history of love, the heart of love, is divided between the who and the what.

The question of being is itself always divided between the who and the what. Is being someone or some thing? Who ever starts to love, is in love, or stop loving, is caught between this division of the who and what. One wants to be true to someone and irreplaceable. When one perceives that person isn’t x or y that they loved, fidelity is threatened by the difference between the who and the what.

The power of the biographer to frame the protagonist has the power to shape the way that future generations to perceive the subject. Maybe all we can say is that they were born, they thought and they died (Heidegger). Everything else is anecdotal… in-eloquently retold.

Deconstruction is to not naturalize what isn’t natural, and to not assume that what is conditioned by history and institutions is natural.

If one looks for childhood, one can find one’s childhood in their eyes. To Hegel, eyes are the outer manifestation of the soul. Through the eyes, the inner soul can see outside.

‘There is not narcissism and non-narcissism. There are narcissisms that are more or less comprehensive, generous, open, extended. What is called non-narcissism is in general but the economy of a much more welcoming and hospitable narcissism. One that is much more open to the experience of the Other as Other. I believe that without a movement of narcissistic reappropriation, the relation to the Other would be absolutely destroyed, it would be destroyed in advance. The relation to the Other, even if it remains asymmetrical, open, without possible reappropriation, must trace a movement of reappropriation in the image of one’s self for love to be possible. Love is narcissistic.’

He enjoys remaining on the edge of impossible confidence, as evident by his perpetual ability to give nothing.

Presupposition is an implicit assumption about the world or background belief whose truth is appropriate in context. If I utter, “Jonathan does not like to play records anymore,” we can make the following presuppositions:

• There is someone uniquely identifiable as Jonathan
• Jonathan plays records
• Jonathan at one time used to like playing records.
• Jonathan no longer likes to play them

Felicitous means well suited for the occasion or expression.

Coherence theory says that you cannot step outside thought and hold an independent realm of facts. What makes one thought true express another thought, usually the same thought. Thoughts are anchored to other thoughts and we cannot bear a logical relationship to something that is not a thought. Notable exception are truth-bearing entities. If a thought or proposition is made true because of something outside of it, it too must be a thought or proposition.

“Therefore the mind which is free from passions is a citadel (acropolis), for man has nothing more secure to which he can fly for, refuge and for the future be inexpugnable.”

Emotions and passions are untamed in their severity. A quick embrace of anger easily bring about regrettable circumstances based upon non-rational decisions. Yet, characteristically it is important for a creative to be courageous in freely expressing such emotions. For example, Picasso was notable for entering a somber period of his work partly based on the suicide of good friend Carlos Casagemas. Sadness acted like a fuel for his blue period.

I gravitate towards Aurelius’ pronounced emphasis on virtue and emotional control. Could it be that such restraint precludes me from finding such fuel for expression? Perhaps. Yet I cannot remove my position from this hill, lest I become swept with unfettered thrashing waves. Whereas the body consents to pain, environment, fatigue… the mind is the only refuge that fundamentally changes the method in which all situations are framed.

Thomism originated from St. Thomas Aquinas, who sought to develop a system that combined Christian doctrine with elements from Aristotelianism, as well as Muslim and Jewish theologies. Aquinas considered philosophy as the highest science, as it sought to explore an ultimate explanation for everything. Special sciences inquires about the subject matter that defines it: biology with living organisms, psychology with the human and animal mind, etc. They all make assumptions that cannot be justified. The role of philosophy is to explain how the world must be if the assumptions are to be valid. Therefore, results cannot be based on experience but instead rely solely on reason. These sciences largely deal with secondary causes of things while philosophy deals with the ‘first cause,’ which explains contingent things in terms of the ultimate cause of reality.

Summa Theologica is Thomas’ most famous writings, most intriguing to me as a born-again Christian, for he outlines five proofs for the existence of God:

1. All things in this world move. Objects move because of another object causes it (the motor). The motor can also be moved, but would require another motor to cause its movement, and after that another, and so on. It’s impossible for these causes to move indefinitely for then there would be no first motor and no cause in the first place.
2. There can be no object that is its own cause or else its cause would be anterior to its existence. Conversely, it’s impossible to ascend from cause to cause indefinitely, which means there must exist a self-sufficient, efficient cause: God.
3. I see in nature things that are born and things that die. Consequently, it is possible to be and not be. It is impossible for things to always be, since I that which is possible not to be at some point is not. If it’s possible for nothing to be, then there must have been a time when there was nothing. If this were true, then there would be nothing in existence for in order for things to exist there must be something to start existence. If at one time there was nothing in existence then nothing should exist today, unless there existed something that was necessary. But every necessary thing requires a cause to its existence. It is impossible to go onto infinity in necessary things that are caused by another. Therefore, there must exist some being having its own necessity and not receiving it from another.
4. Any category has a measurement of degrees. Hot has warm and warmer. Each have a source for its ultimate in measure. Whatever is the most in such a category is the source. Warmth has fire. Goodness has God.
5. Everything whether sentient or not proceeds in an orderly fashion. Reality has a natural order that could not have come from nothing, yet precedes humans.

Jacques Maritain, a chief exponent of Thomism, wrote in Introduction to Philosophy,

Philosophy is the science which by the natural light of reason studies the first causes or highest principles of all things – is, in other words, the science of things in their first causes, in so far as these belong to the natural order.

Maritain’s position was likely influenced by the secular and humanist forces that threatened Catholic organizations in France. He rejected modernity in the form of Cartesian and post-Cartesian thought as an emphasis on epistemology rather than metaphysics, taking it upon himself to bring back Thomistic philosophy to the contemporary world.

Scrunton offers a contrasting sceptical viewpoint because of the uncertainty of the nature and possibility of a priori argument, which I will explore later on.

Imagine waking up one morning and walking to the mirror. I expect to see my face. But what if I see nothing? What would I assume?

I would assume that my mind exists but my body does not. I have an ability to imagine this story as a possibility, that I can exist without a body. I am thinking and yet my body does not exist. This argument leads to the conclusion that the body and soul are two logically separate entities, the crux of Descartes’ Cartesian Dualism.

How can I imagine and talk about my mind without my body if they are the same thing? Can I talk about the computer that I’m typing on without the computer existing? No. If I can tell a story where A exists and B doesn’t exist, then I can conclude that A does not equal to B. A and B must be logically distinct things. Thus, if I can imagine the mind without existing within the body, then the mind and body cannot be identical.

This argument is not trying to conclude that all things that my mind conceives is possible. For example, I can think of the existence of Superman, but that does make it a true possibility. Instead, the argument is specifically claiming that if I can imagine one thing existing without the other, they must be separate things. Both things can still be tied together but the point is I can imagine one without the other. If my mind were merely an extension of my body, then it would be improbable to imagine my body without my mind. Therefore the body and soul two distinct entities.

The veracity of this theory based upon the previous thought experiment is still up to debate but there are compelling methods to argue against it. I can see the Morning Star at dawn in my mind, the last heavenly body seen before light dispels all stars in the sky. I can see the Evening Star at night in my mind, the first heavenly body seen before complete darkness. I can imagine the existence of the Evening Star regardless of the existence of the Morning Star, and vice versa. It’s easy for me to imagine the existence of one without the other. So I can imagine waking up and seeing the Morning Star in the morning, but not see the Evening Star in the evening. Through Descartes logic, the two objects are distinctly different.

Yet, the Morning Star and the Evening Star are in fact, the same thing: the planet Venus. I know that in this universe either the Morning Star and the Evening Star exist, or neither exist. Even if I cannot see the Evening Star, I know that it still exists in the universe. If the Morning Star exists and the Evening Stars didn’t exist, it would be synonymous to Venus existing yet not existing, an impossibility. When I refer to the Evening Star, I am also referring the Morning Star, regardless of whether I am aware or not.

If this scenario framed in the Cartesian argument failed, then it should be plausible to apply the same faults upon Descartes Dualism. While I agree that using such an analogous argument casts doubt upon arguing for the likes of Dualism, I don’t think it can completely disregard the possibility of a soul.

Yet Georg Christoph Lichtenberg offered an interesting counterpoint. Perhaps Descartes went too far and could only assert the existence of thought, with ‘it is thinking,’ in the analogy of ‘it is raining.’ There can thinking going on but why assume the existence of a thinker?

Is Lichtenberg’s objection legitimate? Thoughts cannot exist without a thinker. Thought, unlike rain, is a state or property. Properties cannot exist without an object to instantiate them. Properties inhere objects but not the other way around. Things can change according to its properties but properties remain constant. My couch is blue but over time it will fade to a light blue. But the universal meaning of blue will not change. Things are known through their properties, but properties are known in themselves.

Lichtenberg’s rebuttal is valued not through it’s truth-value, but instead in the way it frames the problematic approach of separating reality into two: properties and things, or universals and particulars. More to come later.

Perhaps this explains why on the Gothamist (a blog about New York City), posts about removing bike lanes on the Brooklyn Bridge spark a far greater discussion than the political platform of mayoral candidates. While the latter has far greater implications on every New Yorker’s future, the former is far easier to understand and have an opinion on, regardless of whether one commutes on the Bridge or not.