Folding Thought

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Updates, updates

I am thinking of updating the links on this blog. I do not want a whole list of items that I barely read sitting in the sidelines…

Four years of blogging this month. It is interesting to think what has occurred over the past four years with the initial dabble into the blogging about all the deep and meaningful questions and research I was undertaking through music and politics to now snippets of actual research.

Smaller forms of communication now find themselves in a much more prominent place, the blog once the main vehicle for online communication is supplemented with twitter, facebook, delicious and a myriad of other tools online… it will be interesting to see what the next four year unfold…

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A coherent risk

A stream of light that pierces the night, a flicker of realisation, that of the constructed reality. For it is only in such moments that the coherence of our actions correlates with the future. A future that contains within it one thing, uncertainty. The measured action, constructed around an edifice of reason is only that which opens up probabilities. While uncertainty is constant, coherence is mere probability. The coin flip, the roll of the dice, the casting of the I Ching, all of these rely on probability. Action that is coherent likewise rests upon probability – a probability that is marked by maximization. The aim of coherence in anything is to ensure that it is based upon that result which has the highest probability of succeeding. The key term in the aforementioned sentence is succeeding. For successful execution is based upon the subjective measure of success, what is the desired outcome. Only through this can probability return to provide the avenue to multiple openings for a multitude of definitions of success.

Reframe the question in relation to risk. What does the gambler choose? How can the probabilities of the various successes be factored into a coherent structure through risk? Eventually the price becomes known and a new set of conditions structure the next development of a coherent narrative. Ultimately everything is uncertain, everything is unknown leading to the minimisation of risk and a tempering of success. A temporal trade off today or a ripple that disrupts the future, both cards lie in the present. Coherence comes through knowing the evaluation, execution and expectations.

And in the end the cards say 22, walk away and pause for they could have just as easily said 19…

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Confirmation of Candidature

The body between Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty: departures from Descartes

This thesis seeks to examine the body in Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty focusing on where the corporeal subject is in their account of the being of being human. The body is a contested topic, as is evidenced by the multitudes of definitions of the body. Such definitions include the body identified by the soul in Aristotle, the body being a metaphor for culture in Nietzsche to the body being shaped by power in Foucault. Contemporary philosophers working in the post-phenomenological tradition have thought through the relationship between embodiment and being. Philosophers including Elizabeth Grosz, Luce Irigaray, Judith Butler, Alphonso Lingis and Jean-Luc Nancy have all written on the body. The contemporary debate has developed from earlier renditions of being and corporeality which have appeared throughout the history of philosophy. Two key thinkers in twentieth century philosophy who have had an impact on thinking the question of being are Martin Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. However, it is Descartes philosophy of the body which provides an anchor for modern philosophy’s thinking of the body. The Cartesian body will provide the anchor for this thesis which will enable a critical engagement with the thinking of corporeality and being in Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty.

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Confirmation and absence

I have been busily working away on my PhD confirmation, which I am happy to say went well. Along with a quick trip to Sydney and the pressures of modern living, I haven’t updated well at all. However, things will hopefully change. As I am looking at ways to incorporate a more active blogging life back in the world, coupled with a few technical changes - more an experiment for work than anything else - there maybe a post more than once a month.

It is a great relief that I have finally put key to board and developed a coherent thesis plan that will provide a solid basis for the years ahead.

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Confirmation blues

Well it is that time in my candidature, time for it to be confirmed. A daunting prospect - even more so seeing how summer hit with a mild vengeance this year producing a range of structural upheavals that need to be confronted. However, as always a free style exposition of what I am attempting to do here will help…

The crux of the problem is attempting to understand how Heidegger transcends Descartes metaphysics, what is the role given to the body in Heidegger’s early thought. His thinking in Being and Time presents a specific way of understanding. That text, coupled with The Fundamental Problems of Metaphysics presents a way for understanding Heidegger’s lack of engagement with the body. This silence, a silence of the material, is striking in that Heidegger’s project is to overcome metaphysics. Subsequently, judgement can be made on how Heidegger attempts to engage with Descartes in his early philosophy before the turn. Temporality

The second consideration is how Merleau-Ponty fits into all this. Basically, I am attempting to use Descartes as a point of reference for Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty in order to tease out what the body means for both of them. Heidegger in his silence, just like the question and Merleau-Ponty in the active stance he takes with embodiment and ontology. Subsequent to this are the key considerations of time (Heidegger) and space (Merleau-Ponty). These are linked, into the whole structure of space-time which contains the world around us. Encounters with the world can be with objects ready-to-hand for consideration, such as the glass of wine which I know is approaching low, or the broad brush streaks, such as a week in the spatial confines of the office. Both of these images are ready in my mind. Is there anything to learn through an engagement of Merleau-Ponty to early Heidegger, spatiality to temporality in the attempt to describe a fundamental ontology. Or are both of them bound by metaphysics and fail to overcome the position articulated by Descartes separating subject from object.

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Thinking things throughly

Things present themselves in the abstract yet they are realised in the concrete structures that they relate to. Thinking things thoroughly attempts to present the nature of concern as it relates to the world. The whole body thinks, is thought is affected. However, there is never any easy course of action. At one point what seems the past of least resistance may invoke a temporal element - reoccurring in a different from. It is the present that marks out actions. In this present thought becomes entwined with emotion and action is a combination of what is deemed best and what is otherwise something directed through passion.

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Between Violence and Law, is there a place for justice?

Things have been quite around these parts recently. However, I am happy to announce that the new issue (16) of Colloquy is online featuring an article by me.

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Preliminary remarks Being & Time I

Because each Dasein has in each case mineness [Jemeingkeit], one must always use a personal pronoun when one addresses it: ‘I am’, ‘you are’.

Dasein is an entity which in each case I myself am.

Heidegger, Being and Time 68 [H 42] & 73 [H 53]

What role does the body play in Heidegger’s Being and Time? This is a question that is difficult to penetrate and one that Heidegger himself does not fully account for. Yet in proceeding to inquire into body, or more so, the absent body, in early Heidegger it is important to define what is meant by the body. As a first, and inconclusive commencement, the body will mean that fleshy conglomerate of each human body, the skin that we inhabit. Definition of such an element will proceed later.

An initial opening marks itself off through Heidegger’s extensive analysis of Dasein. Hence the the being-there of an individual, neither subject nor object is something which negotiates the world that is presented to it. Why doesn’t Heidegger give a detailed account of the body - as much as he devotes to consciousness, could it be that he himself is holding onto a dualistic view of mind/body? This view, one which Heidegger seeks to overcome is evident in his assertion of the being of Dasein.

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A ramshackle story…

A slightly ramshackle terrace house, sitting in the backyard, pausing in the last moments of the day. One waits and things of things past, all that has been foregone. The trees that rustle and the radio in the background. Time has based through us continually moving past. Each moment invokes another. That what is to come, or more specifically that which has been. For it is only in a given moment that one can think of how the embodied being can sit, paused against the day relating what has been to what is to come. Saturn orbits the Sun in 29.7 years.

The phone is silent upon the table. Action, or more-so a bringing into being with an other. This specific thing is only evident when it invokes itself through its tone. Until then it is a piece of machinery that just waits, waits to be invoked one way or another. Yet the aural sensation create the environment. What is the element of sound that projects itself to my ears? Tune, music as expression, something that invokes response, making itself present, yet attention wains and it moves towards that which is distant. Invoking the very element of the self, one waits, paused amongst a plethora of possible actions, possible futures. Only one will become the past. The memorable. While actions may create themselves specifically for a situation, others are noted by their absence.

Structured reality presents a limit. A limiting of actions, of choices and more importantly avenues for expression of the reasons why a specific ‘choice’ was taken. All we have is a shared language, that basis for understanding - through abstraction. Horses appear on the horizon, yet they are distant. The march of labour takes its toll hence the output that one is constricted to do is only that which emerges through the application of force - mental or physical. We now manipulate signs. This is the basis of many things, a day manipulating things, an action occurring now.

Summer presents itself in all its lazy glory. Events left and right however what is the condition for attendance. Music, people, food, art - all substantive things. Lost in the backyard of the city. Present in the isolating impact of the city, images of a collective identity shaped by the bay. Crumbling structures that attempt to make themselves relevant for a new century. It is through this that my temporality comes into existence. Elements past, present and future… what is to come around the corner, temporality invokes the very dimension of my being, provides the space for my corporeal body to exist…

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In-between the pages

There has to be something in-between the pages. The constant rate that Heidegger at times gets it right but also descends into a murky mist of prose that is impenetrable, it is like he is engaging in idle-talk. Being and Time is a mammoth book and I am still digesting slowly. The task at hand has prevented frequent posting. Is this because failure to write means that there is more substance, or are the scribbles on the blog just a way to distraction.