INTRODUCTION

“[A]m not I, at least, something?” (Descartes, 16)

“I am a brother to dragons and a companion to owls” (Job 30:29).

“I praise you, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise [intellectuals] and prudent [worldly wise], and hast revealed them unto babes.” (Luke 10:21).

“One thing that comes about in myths is that at the bottom of the abyss comes the voice of salvation. The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light” (Campbell, 37).

“....and Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God was” (Exodus 20:21).

“Our god is called Abraxas and he is both god and devil; he contains in himself the world of light and the world of darkness” (Hesse, Demian, 121).

“Myths are clues to the spiritual potentialities of the human life […. of] what we’re capable of knowing and experiencing within” (Campbell, 5).

“You don’t have to go far off the interpreted path to find yourself in very difficult situations. The courage to face the trials and to bring a whole new body of possibilities into the field of experience for other people to experience - that is the hero’s deed” (Campbell, 41).

“True eloquence makes fun of eloquence, true morality makes fun of morality; that is, the morality of judgment makes fun of the morality of the intellect [de l’esprit], which is without rules.

For sentiment belongs to judgment, as the sciences belong to the intellect. Making fun of [Se moquer de] philosophy is truly philosophizing” (Pascal, quoted from Pensees, G&L, 3).

I seem to speak, it is not I, about me, it is not about me. These few general remarks to begin with. What am I to do, what shall I do, what should I do, in my situation, how proceed? By aporia pure and simple? Or by affirmations and negations invalidated as uttered, or sooner or later? Generally speaking. There must be other shifts. Otherwise it would be quite hopeless. But it is quite hopeless. I should mention before going any further, any further on, that I say aporia without knowing what it means. Can one be ephectic otherwise than unawares? I don’t know. With the yesses and noes it is different, they will come back to me as I go along and how, like a bird, to shit on then all without exception. The fact would seen to be, if in my situation one may speak of facts, not only that I will have to speak of things of which I cannot speak, but also, which is even more interesting, but also that I, which is if possible even more interesting, that I shall have to, I forget, no matter. And at the same time I am obliged to speak. I shall never be silent. Never...” (Beckett, The Unnamable, 291).

I began this thesis essentially as an attempt to understand fascism. What is fascism? How did it come about? Is it "essential” to existence? Can it - should it - be overcome? After much deliberation, I have decided to attack this problem by tracing the ideas of “‘identity’ and ‘difference’” within philosophical discourse - focusing, mainly, upon it’s historically denominated: “modern” and “post-modern” contexts. As such, I have come to recognize the concept(s) of “identity-difference” as the substance, i.e., essence, of “rationality” itself - what is sometimes referred to as “first principle(s),” “abstract thought,” or as the “symbolic order” - and what has come to be associated with the basis, i.e., the objective ground, of the subjective consciousness of “self.”

Who is this “self”? What is this “self”? Is something hidden, or forgotten, here? Where/who/what is the “other”? Is there an “other”?

In seeking a representative of the “modern” era, to answer these questions, I do not choose the “purely” logical philosophy of Descartes, i.e., the man credited with the founding of analytic geometry. His would seem to be naught but a philosophy composed within a framework of analytic/logical identity and necessity - the only “other,” (besides illusions and imaginary, non-essential “beings”) being a purely Rational God (i.e., First Principle) which provides the Ground, not only for his ideally certain mathematical, geometrical, and syllogistic equations (i.e., clear and distinct ideas), but also for his existence as “the thinker” of such ideas (i.e., “I think” + “I am” = “I am a thinking thing”).

Though I am “certain” Descartes has provided Western philosophy with The Unquestionable, Absolute, Rational Ground, one should note that, towards the end of his Meditations, he reveals perhaps his most clear and distinct idea of all...”it must be admitted that in this human life we are often liable to make mistakes about particular things, and we must acknowledge the weakness of our nature” (62). I will begin, rather, with the philosophy of Kant, focusing specifically upon, what I believe to be the sacred text of modern philosophy, the Critique of Judgment.

In the Foreword to Kaelin’s An Existential Aesthetic Morot-Sir writes, “Ever since the Critique of Judgment philosophers have periodically been tempted to give aesthetics an epistemological status.”[1] As such, I shall define philosophy (including its “modern” and “post-modern” forms), since Kant, as the interpretation and re-interpretation of this, his most illustrious and all-encompassing, ‘Critique.’ In Chapter I we shall cover its genesis, and seek the foundation of, this Critique - demonstrating its relation to the historical flow of thought and practical reason; and I will emphasize perhaps his major thesis - that the moral law, and thus freedom, must always come from within. But in order for freedom to advance man must communicate with “others,” i.e. there must be inter-communication, and thus temporal syntheses, between the “other” within oneself (which can only be related to via imagination and sublime (moral) feeling) and the “self” (understood or perceived”); and on a broader level, there must be inter-communication (i.e., temporal syntheses) between the “self” and “others” within one’s “culture” (i.e., identity structure); and, on a still broader level, one must have inter-communication with “others” within the “world” (i.e., “other cultures” and nature) as a whole. All of this will be built around the goal of achieving (through the concept of infinite progression) universal freedom for all men in the world, in time.

In Chapter II, with Merleau-Ponty as the exemplar of post-modernity,” I will demonstrate how Kant’s ideas on taste, reflective judgments, and the transformation of practical reason within history are directly related to his ideas on “style” (i.e., perceptual synthesis), symbol and metaphor, inter-subjectivity, inter-being (i.e., endo-ontology), and inter-relatedness.

And, to conclude, I will try to fit all of this in to an always open, yet sublime, philosophy of love - a philosophy that recognizes: the “self” as well as the “other”: the rational as well as the irrational, the tasteful as well as the distasteful, the good as well as the bad - as all being a part of the magic, the incessant desire, the always-to-be-strived-for “freedom” - within Life.

Although I am aware that Kant will advocate Reason (ultimately “the Good”), rather than Love, as the basis for freedom, I will begin by pointing you toward Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose. In this text, Kant will develop the problem of establishing man’s political ends, informing us of the difficulties in discovering a natural purpose in “this idiotic course of things human” (Beck, Kant on History, 12). He says it is hard to find any purpose whatsoever when, on the whole, beside the wisdom that appears here and there among individuals, one witnesses man’s brutishness, folly, childish vanity, and destructiveness. He says it would be easier to apply such a history to bees or beavers. However, Kant says he will leave it up to Nature [or Providence] to provide the answer. For he believes that, even while individual men and “entire nations” are “pursuing their own ends, each in his own way and often in opposition to others, they are unwittingly guided in their advance along a course intended by nature. They are unconsciously promoting an end which, even if they knew what it was, would scarcely arouse their interest” (Kant, IUH, Reiss ed., 41, emphasis added). And, like Newton, who discovered universal laws in physics, Kant will try to do the same for the course of things human.

Kant essentially says (CJ, §84, 434) that things are either here by some freak accident, by blind necessity, or else they are here for a purpose. And (CJ, §86, 442) it is only through this concept of a purpose that things are given value for us. As he says, “only if we presupposed that the world has a final purpose, could its contemplation itself have a value by reference to that purpose.

For Kant, it is man, through the freedom which he displays in his moral actions, which is the final purpose of creation. For without man, “all of creation would be a mere wasteland, gratuitous and without a final purpose” (Ibid.). And the final purpose of man is, of course, the attainment of the “Highest Good,” i.e., the “Summum bonum,” which entails Universal: Understanding, Happiness and Perpetual Peace in the world. The Highest Good is thus postulated as practically achievable by man through the “infinite progress” (CPrR, V, 122, 226) of a “beautiful soul.”

We shall see what Kant means by a “beautiful soul” in Chapter I, but I shall point out here that, for Kant, the process of civilization and acculturation allows for the soul to overcome “evil.” He claims evil arises with the true birth of freedom, or man’s “release from the womb of nature,” i.e., when he becomes conscious of his actions (CBHH, Beck ed., 59, 60). Kant, then, would equate “evil,” with the “awareness” that one is following one’s “natural” impulses, i.e., with acting consciously only for one’s “self”-pleasure, failing to recognize all other rational beings, i.e., other “selfs,” as “equal” - when understood as ends-in-themselves - those who, together with the “self,” are striving to reach the same goal – self-realization and fulfillment.

He says natural impulse will interfere with culture “until such a time as art will be strong and perfect enough to become a second nature. This indeed will be the ultimate end of the human species” (CBHH, Beck ed., 63). In other words, “evil” will be a problem until such a time as the reflective judgments of art will be on the same level as the determinative judgments of theoretical understanding (i.e., hypothetical imperatives of science) and of the categorical imperative.

Reflective judgments will come to light most fully when I analyze the Critique of Judgment in Chapter I. But first, I will, in continuing my Introduction, give a brief Critique of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason - in order to demonstrate some problems, and, in order to “lead in” to how he attempts to solve them in the 2nd and 3rd Critiques.

To begin this critique of Kant’s ‘1st Critique’, I will critique the “self.” Again I ask, “Who am ‘I’?” “What am ‘I’?” Goethe tells “us”:

What am I myself? What have I done? All that I have seen, heard, noted I have collected and used. My works are reverenced by a thousand different individuals. [....] Often I have reaped the harvest that others have sown. My work is that of a collective being and it bears Goethe’s name.[2]

Or as Hegel would say, “Each individual is in any case a child of his time; thus philosophy, too, is its own time comprehended in thoughts.”[3]

To go along with Hegel, I will admit that I am a “child of my time,” however, being that I am, I cannot help but to question “the way things are,” to question the “established order,” as it is being questioned by many of my contemporaries. I am a historical being, but I can not help but be horrified by the actions of mankind in the past, and indeed, by many of the present trends, i.e., the resurgence of a politics of “fascism” - which appears to be an extreme conservative desire for a return to “traditional values;” to an “ideal” which has never “Truly” existed.

As Lyotard says[4]: “To fix” the historical significance of any object of language, to fix any meaning whatsoever, is itself to constitute an “idealizing fiction,” a fiction that is perhaps necessary to speak of the object but “not ascribable once and for all....its meaning is still ‘in process,’ unfinished precisely because it is historical.”[5] And “precisely because it is human, history is not meaningless.”[6]

Lyotard interprets Merleau-Ponty from Humanism and Terror: “To refuse history a meaning is equally to refuse its truth and its responsibility to the political.”[7] If we keep to the “axiom” that “the end justifies the means” to defend whatever political agenda “we” desire to promote, as in the past with - i.e., “Communism in Russia under the leadership of Stalin,” the “Colonialist Imperialism” of European rulers - “Manifest Destiny” in America versus the Indian “savages,” “Nazism” under Hitler - then we will have learned nothing.

As Merleau-Ponty says (PP, 450): “We give history its meaning, but not without it proposing it to us.” Lyotard points out that: “this implies not that history has a meaning - unique, necessary, and thus inevitable, [....] but that history has some meaning.”[8] It is a “collective meaning” that has resulted from “meanings projected by historical subjectivities at the heart of their coexistence.”[9] And it is this “collective meaning” that must be thought over and analyzed in philosophy, in order to arrive at an understanding of history. Lyotard says, “[T]here is no greater task for philosophy.”[10]

Again, “I” ask, “Who am ‘I’?” Again, where shall “we” begin? It seems that in order to answer this question that we must take part in a myth, a game, a “language game.”[11] Certainly I am not whatever word (name), or series of words, which I, or someone else, may choose to say “about” myself. I am not “I,” and yet I am “I” when I play the game. Would you like to “play” with me? If so, please allow for a free play of your imagination and understanding.[12]

Who am I? Well, apart from the several “vulgar” names that I have been called in my life, I have been told that I am a “white American male.” What exactly is a “white American male” (WAM)? To tell you the truth, I never thought of myself as a WAM until I “learned” this “label” and the “words,” whether through my family, or, in school. Let us begin by looking at the “denotation” and “connotations” of the word “male.”

As I was growing up, I was often referred to as a “boy;” I was told that I had a “thingy”/”Junior”: “Did you wash Junior? Aim your thingy at the middle of the toilet. And don’t forget to put the seat up.” I learned very quickly that I was not to get the seat wet, and that “girls” peed differently than I did. It was rather puzzling to me. I often wondered why “boys” had “thingies” and “girls” did not. (Contrary to Freud, however, I do not believe that I thought about “castration;” I never could imagine someone cutting off a “thingy” - I had no reason to think about or fear such a thing)... I learned that “boys” go to the “Mens’ room,” and “girls” to the “Ladies’ room;” that “boys” wear shirts and pants, and “girls” wear dresses; that “boys” were supposed to have their hair “short,” and “girls” hair should be “long;” men shake hands, they don’t

kiss; men don’t cross their legs; men don’t cry; etc. And I noticed that a few girls were attractive to me - I tended to like the “pretty” girls better than the “ugly” ones. But they were all “just girls” until I was about nine years old, found a ‘Playboy” magazine, and I noticed how...well, I will quote Aristotle here: “It is the heart that is moved (or in the case of a pleasant object some other part).”[13]

I remember going to school in about the first grade and we had to learn to say the “Pledgaliegence” (Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag). We had to put our “right” hand on our “heart” and memorize the words - by sound only - so we could say it every morning. We listened to stories about George Washington - how he never told a “lie;” and about Christopher Columbus who sailed across the “Ocean blue” and “discovered” “America;” and about the Pilgrims who came over later on the Mayflower and made “friends” with the “Indians” - we even celebrated the great party they had together on “Thanksgiving”! ...So, I learned that I was an “American,” and I even learned where “America” was on a big map! ...All of my uncles fought in WWII and I learned what a great honor it was to “fight” and to “die” for “my country”... Later, I learned about Vietnam... and about what “really” happened to the “Indians”...

Two years before I was born, this poem was read by the “great” poet, Robert Frost, at the inauguration of “our” new president:

This land was ours before we were the land’s.

She was our land more than a hundred years

Before we were her people. She was ours

In Massachusetts, in Virginia,

But we were England’s, still colonials,

Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,

Possessed by what we now no more possessed.[14]

I suppose, just about all “Americans” (besides the “Indians”) thought this was just “Beautiful”! In the year I was born this “new” president - the one at who’s inauguration this “poem” was read - was assassinated by...Who? Well, you C I Ain’t sure.

Now, when did I discover that I was “white”? I do not think that I “realized” that I was “white” until I was about five or six. I was riding in a car with my mother, or someone, up the street from my Grandma’s house, and it was stated that: “Those damn niggers are taking over the world! Why don’t they stay where they belong! There weren’t any niggers around here when I was a kid!” I remember that I was rather surprised and shocked by hearing this - it was the first time that I had seen a ‘black” man (besides on television) - and I really did not know what to think about the situation.