Seneca on leisurely getting old and wise talking to yourself

 'Et quando' inquis 'tibi proderit istud quod in exitu discis, aut in quam rem?' In hanc, ut exeam melior. ... Hoc est huius boni tempus: quisquis senex ad sapientiam pervenit, annis pervenit. Epistulae ad Lucilium Liber VII Ep. LXVIII.xiv.
"'And when, you say, will what you learn on leaving be useful to you, or for what?' In this: that I will leave [a] better [man]. ... That is the time of this good: whoever comes to wisdom in old age, comes to it through years." 68th Letter to Lucilius xiv.
And these years are years of "many experiences" (multis experimentis xiv) in which you "hide yourself in leisure; but also hide this leisure itself" (absconde te in otio; sed et ipsum otium absconde i) and "speak with yourself" (ipse tecum loquaris vi).

Higgs' boson or subject-object split?

Everyone's excited about the apparent experimental confirmation of the Higgs' boson's 'existence' at that big, multi-billion shooting gallery in Geneva called the Large Hadron Collider.  Why are there no headlines worldwide about the subject-object split having been overcome? Easy -- because it hasn't, and no one's interested anyway. On the other hand, it has long since been overcome in philosophical phenomenology -- but no one wants to know, and philosophers themselves fight against the insight. 

Why do 'people' believe in the Higgs' boson, although they are clueless about it and its mind-boggling mathematics, whereas 'people' live in the subject-object split every day, but are totally disinterested in it and also clueless about it? Why is access to the world through fantastically complex mathematical theories believed in, but a simple look at the phenomena before our eyes overlooked? Learning to see simply can reveal to us who we are. Today's mathematical physics can never even approach this question. It fudges and throws sand in our eyes. Our gullibility for science and its method is endless, it seems. 


Long ago Euripides wrote _haplous ho mythos taes alaetheias ephu_ ("The saying of truth is of itself simple." Phoenissae 469). Seneca renders this line as "Veritatis simplex oratio est." ("Truth's saying is simple." 49th Epistula ad Lucilium). How long will we stay lost in complexity? 

Totalizing, megalomanic modern science

Response to an inquirer: 

In a word, what's wrong with modern science is its totalizing character. Blinded by its own success in establishing power over movement and change of all kinds, and convinced of its scientific method as the sole path to truth, it becomes dangerous. The very essence of truth itself becomes effectiveness, which is another way of saying that it totalizes efficient causality in linear time. Hence unresolved problems in science must be pronounced to be 'merely' a matter of our 'not yet' being able to deal with the high complexity of efficient causal interactions. This scientific attitude reveals also its megalomania -- ultimately, we'll nail it -- control Alzheimer's, beat cancer, for instance.

I agree that experience of the world is the basis of physics, of science -- and also of philosophy. But there is never any innocent, naive access to 'naked' experience, not even 'naked' sense data, because all experience wears the garb of how it shows itself AS such-and-such. For instance, something shows itself AS something. Where does this category of something come from? Or you assume without further ado that it is a subject who experiences the world within its consciousness. Where does this preconception come from?

Solipsism is another word for the encapsulated subject of consciousness. Hence the problem for all subjectivist metaphysics from Descartes to Kant to modern science is How to get out there in the world?´or, what is the same thing, How does the world out there get inside consciousness? For Descartes there is representatio, for Kant there is Vorstellung, for Einstein's relativity (who skips the problem constituting the object AS object and hence indulges in a naive empiricism), there are the electromagnetic signals sensuously received by the observer-subject (including by means of its experimental equipment set up to capture physical data that are then sensualized in some way for human use -- thus numbers, graphs, oscilloscopes, brain scan images, etc. etc.). 


All these versions of subjectivist metaphysics overlook that we are always already out there in the world and, if we were not -- we would never get out there. Hence Descartes resorts to the guarantee of a God to dispense with the problem of an evil genius (or man-in-the-middle) deceiving the subject in its sensuous communication with the objects out there, or Leibniz resorts to a God-given pre-established harmony to guarantee that the monad, who has no windows, is nonetheless fed with true representations in consciousness. And modern science doesn't bother itself with the problem, but takes the objects out there for granted, pointing to sense-data in the present as specious 'proof' of the world existing outside encapsulated consciousness. It does not ask about the objects' objectivity nor about the meaning of 'to exist'.

So the question arises as to whether there is a more adequate way to receive the phenomena AS they show themselves of themselves. Modern science is great for being effective in the world, but its totalizing nature is megalomanic. If we stepped outside the will to power, how could the world disclose itself AS a world?.

In any case, if modern science relinquishes its totalizing claim to be THE true mode of access to the world (through its scientific method, which itself is ungrounded), then something is gained, With the "step back" (Heidegger), the presupposition of modern science, which is metaphysically subjectivist through and through, can be seen, namely, the 3D temporal clearing, that must be given first of all and thus eventuate groundlessly. Hence Heidegger speaks of the Ereignis which simply eventuates abyssally, i.e, grants, gives: Es gibt. This eventuation enpropriates the presencing/absencing of presents/absents and human being (Da-presence) to each other. This alternative way of thinking doesn't aim at getting rid of science, but of putting it in its place.

Potentiality and Actuality

Responses to an inquirer:

1) Already with two entities there is the question as to interaction or interplay, the former between things, the latter between human players who are the origins of their own free movements. Therefore I distinguish between interaction and interplay to allow for the spontaneous nothingness of Dasein.

2) Very interesting that you distance yourself from predictability and calculability, a hallmark of all modern science, for this would be a major point of agreement between us. All modern physics is at core a mathematical calculus for the linear causality of movement/change (including many-body interactions). Hence Newtonian, Lagrangian, Hamiltonian classical mechanics, Schrödinger quantum mechanics and also quantum electrodynamics. Physicists absolutely strive for equations of time evolution for the dynamic system. All operate with linear, real time t, basically with partial differential equations. Otherwise they would not be modern physiciists and hence fall out of this historical epoch, i.e. lose their identity in this world, this time..

3) In Aristotle's ontology of movement, the actualitas (_entelecheia_) of a potential (_dynamis_) is movement (_energia_) itself, since the _dynamis_ is then 'at work' (_en ergoi_). The pro-ductive (forward-leading) movement, however, only comes to its end in the perfected presence of the finished product -- hence _en-tel-ech_eia_ = literally 'having-(itself)-in-its-end-ness'. Insofar I agree that there's a certain one-sidedness in Aristotle's ontology of movement, which accounts only for pro-ductive movement from an origin (_archae_). This ontology captures quite a few phenomena, however, e.g. chemical reactions. What is worked upon in a productive movement is the material, which suffers itself (and has the passive power to suffer) to be transformed by the active power/potential/potency at work on it.

4) Of course, even with Aristotelean ontology of movement, you can have chains of productive movements in which the outcome of one movement is the starting-point for the next. Insofar, the finished presence of the product is AS starting-point the absence of a further product. Is this what you mean? In the case of a conversation, however, even between two interlocutors, there is an interplay between them, since each is a starting-point for a movement, namely, to say something. If I am out to persuade you of something, and I manage to achieve this, then this is, in Aristotelean terms, a rhetorical movement that 'produces' your change of viewpoint. In fact, this is how Aristotle attempted to conceive rhetoric itself, namely, productively which, in my view, doesn't hold water. Rather, a dialogue is open-ended, never achieving a final, perfected presence, even when points of agreement along the way may be reached. All dialogue is subject to re-vision, i.e. the matter at hand can be re-seen in another way, from another angle.

So, in that sense, there is always something lacking in movements of all kinds, which Aristotle captures with the term _steraesis_ -- a full presence is lacking because something or other is lacking, wanting. As Aristotle saw, anything physical at rest is also a kind of movement because anything physical is, by definition, capable of movement/change, and hence is potentially something else which is still absent. Hence everything physical, including ourselves, is marked by both presence and absence, and the absence itself is present as a lack! Absence comprises both what was and what could be. Hence it is impossible to conceive the phenomenon of movement/change properly without a well-worked-out conception of three-dimensional time. This is still missing in Aristotle who, fatefully, takes time to be a counting number (_arithmos_) lifted off movement. Thus the 3-D temporal clearing remains hidden in metaphysics, and time is confused with clock-time, which is merely derivative.

Further reading: Commutative and distributive justice.

Humanism's roots in modern subjectivist metaphysics

One can say at least that for humanism as a way of thinking and acting in the world that the human stands front and centre. These days, this is criticized by calling it anthropocentrism, which is not what I want to do. Instead, I first point out that there is a question concerning who the human is. This question is already different from traditional metaphysics in that it seeks a who-answer. The first metaphysics we have, Aristotle's, is an investigation of _to on haei on_, i.e. of beings AS beings, which is then given a what-answer, _ousia_ (beingness or substance) or _to ti aen einai_ (the what-it-was-ness, essence or quiddity). The AS is the hermeneutic AS that casts the mould for how beings as a whole can and must show themselves, i.e. be interpreted, in any given historical epoch.
The modern age, in which, starting with Renaissance humanism, humanism has emerged, coincides with the historical casting of human being itself AS subjectivity (a kind of whatness or quiddity). The human becomes the subjectum, i.e. 'that which underlies', which is an historical, epoch-opening eventuation. In antiquity, the subject was literally the _hypokeimenon_, which in our modern age is precisely the 'object'. So the tables have turned 180 degrees. (How come? Nobody asks these days.) In the Middle Ages, the human being was a creature, created by God, and hence also not a subject, but the ob-ject 'thrown toward' its creator, God.
From the start, the modern age is to be an epoch in which the world is to be set up in accordance with what serves humanity, i.e. the 'underlying' human subject. The world becomes that which is represented in the consciousness of a human subject, and everything in the world, including in part even other human beings themselves, becomes the object for the subject. Object and subject can never be separated. Despite this, thoughtless ways of talking do (futiley) separate object and subject, especially in the sense that there could something like objective truth over against mere 'subjective' opinion. Hence scientific method becomes crucial to purportedly guarantee some kind of objective truth by eliminating the subjective element. The sciences strive for such objective truth that, according to Popper, is open to falsification, again in line with scientific method, whose 'truth' is purportedly beyond question -- and beyond metaphysics. This is denial and self-delusion.
In such a humanistic world of subject and object (and also long before), the human has become a 'what'. Who the human is receives a what-answer such as res cogito, i.e. a cogitating thing. Relations among humans are thought AS inter-subjectivity, again without putting subjectivity itself into question.
Within the hard, 'objective' sciences, in which efficient causality reigns supreme, human freedom finds a last, cliff-hanging refuge in quantum indeterminacy, as if human freedom were somehow derivable from the indeterminacy of quantum particles such as photons, electrons, positrons, etc. etc.
If one doesn't go along with this hard, scientific objectivity, one finds refuge for the humane across the road in human ethics and values, as if these were something higher, untainted. On closer inspection, however, these 'higher values' are themselves a what, which they must be, because human being itself is conceived entirely in the third person. Especially in the general everyday exchange among human beings in the endeavour to earn a living, reified value in the shape of money, capital, wages, ground-rent, interest, profit, etc. does its job, without this veil of reification of value ever being seen through. The human subject (and economics) accepts this as the factical objectivity of the world of value-things, or rebels with an appeal to 'values' such as freedom and justice, or perhaps even compassion and friendship.
Kant, in a certain sense, presents us with the pinnacle of subjectivist metaphysics with which many a humanist and almost any enlightened politician, and many others besides, can readily identify. Kant neatly separates his Critique of Pure Reason from his Critique of Practical Reason, which amounts to separating objectivity from values in the sense of that which ought to be. Human values are to be stuck onto objectivity to make it morally humane, whereas sociology strives for so-called 'value-free objectivity' to conform with scientific method. In Kantian thinking, the world is to become more humane through an historical movement of gradual approximation to what ought to be. Kant's moral subject, however, remains a subject in the third person and hence a kind of what.
Without posing the question as to who the human is, as opposed to what the human is (e.g a needy being), freedom and justice remain empty shells, readily institutionalized. Society itself, i.e. the association of humans with one another, is thought, for instance, AS the satisfaction of needs, AS the efficient allocation of resources, AS a sustainable economy demanding a set-up that delivers for everyone. Especially in post-war Europe, where Social Democracy has been hegemonic in politics and also as an unquestioned, 'humanistic' way of thinking, justice has been degraded to the redistribution of reified value (e.g. taxes redistributed as welfare benefits) for the sake of those less well-off, thus making them clients of the welfare state. In such a way of thinking, so-called 'social justice' amounts to compulsory, state-administered charity.
However, who is the human being in all of this elaborate, partly wished-for, set-up? One imagines that all human beings on the planet exist and hence have certain inalienable rights enshrined in certain charters, etc. Political institutions have been set up to accommodate and strive for the realization of such ideals. What does it mean, however, for a human to exist? For modern science, if you're not brain-dead, then you still exist. Does today's human exist? Where is it seriously asked today, what it means to exist? It is taken for granted as a given empirical fact which is at most correct, but never true. Since we inevitably and always share a world with one another, who we are depends upon the interplay that we play out with each other, appreciating, esteeming, estimating, valuing each other (or not) -- not AS subjects of consciousness and also not AS merely factually occurring human beings.
As far as I know, no variant of humanism (and certainly no modern science, including the social sciences) poses the question as to who the human is, nor distinguishes the third-person, thingly character of human being from the first-and-second 'insubstantial' interplay between you-and-me, nor delves into the phenomenon of how a human being becomes a self through ex-sisting, i.e. standing-out, in the world, thus gaining an identity, An identity AS who you are is gained only by seizing your very own potential for existing from those identities offered by the world, especially the world of others, in the finite time-space in which you have been cast, striving, or failing to strive, to find and cast your ownmost self.
The modern age with its modern sciences, including sociology, psychology, economics, must eliminate the individual, first-person subject and also the interplay between you-and-me because they cannot be brought within scientific, controlling grasp. Empirical social science studies always require people en masse to achieve scientifically reliable and 'telling' results. These people do not exist, however.
As far as I can see, the question concerning whoness is barely on the agenda. Blindness, especially that induced by the gamut of modern sciences, rules the day. One resorts to all sorts of what answers, one makes, say, moral appeals to responsibility, one points to an urgency to address 'obvious' problems without ever coming back to simpler questions. We need first of all to learn to see, and that will take time, historical time, which is the temporal clearing we inevitably, knowingly or unknowingly, inhabit so long as we are human beings.

Heideggerian cud-chewing

Oh, these complacent, tweedy Heideggerians, grazing contentedly a life long within their enclosure, chewing endlessly on Gesamtausgabe-cud, quoting and promoting each other's narrative scholarly work and careers!

The question: Is there life after death? must become: Is there thinking after Heidegger? Certainly not from within this circle. Heidegger's famous question, "What calls for thinking?" here becomes a call to mime the master with a straight face.

Abolition of freedom through thinking

These days neuroscience is telling us that free will is an illusion.
Well, it has to say that, doesn't it?
And we willingly go along with that?
Believing nonetheless we live in 'free' democracies.

Science is going to make us live to 103.
Is that what we wanted?
Is this what it's come to?

We're well underway to abolishing our free selves
through the very (scientific, physicalist) way we think.
Who notices?