Did Levinas write anything that wasn’t a rebuke to Heidegger?

Levinas : Heidegger :: Nietzsche : Wagner

Is it just me, or do the conceptions of logocentrism outlined in my Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory seem logocentric?

Logocentrism – The Greek logos has a wide range of meanings, and designates both a rational or intelligible principle and a structure or order that provides phenomena with an origin, or that explains their nature. Hence the common use of the suffix ‘ology’ to designate a branch of study or knowledge, as in ‘psychology’, literally meaning ‘the study of the soul’. The related verb legein means ‘say’, ‘tell’ or ‘count’. Aristotle uses logos to mean the rational principle or element of the soul, as opposed to the irrational principle of DESIRE (Nicomachean Ethics I.13). In Christian theology, the logos becomes the Word that was with God and that was made flesh when it was incarnated in Christ. The opening verse of the fourth Gospel provides the most sublime example of logocentrism: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God’ (John ii.1).

The critique of logocentrism is a central feature of DERRIDA’s DECONSTRUCTION. According to Derrida (1967a), Western philosophy from Plato onwards has always been logocentric in that it makes speech, or the logos, the origin and site of truth, and privileges the phonic aspect of language at the expense of the graphic aspect of WRITING. Speech, that is, is assumed to be the spontaneous and complete means of expression available to a SUBJECT who is self-present in the sense of being self-transparent, self-conscious and self-sufficiently rational. Logocentrism assumes that spoken language is an adequate expression of preexisting ideas and that writing is merely a secondary or even parasitic SUPPLEMENT to speech. The Saussurean theology of the SIGN (see also SAUSSURE) is a classic instance of logocentrism which locates meaning in the perfect coincidence between a sound (signifier) and an idea or image (signified). Ultimately, such a theory is a return to the biblical thesis that ‘In the beginning was the Word’, and it implies the existence of a primal or transcendental signifier which is the origin of all meaning. According to Derrida, logocentrism, and the related PHONOCENTRISM, is a form of ETHNOCENTRISM, or even the original and most powerful form of ethnocentrism, because it privileges westem phonetic alphabets over all other forms of writing and makes Western reason (logos) the sole criterion for knowledge.

This seems to me to the words of men privileged to dedicate themselves to lives of letters and discourse, and thereby sentencing themselves to lives of letters and discourse about letters and discourse with others who live similar lives.

Or maybe I am just trying to find privilege in my bondage to everyday practical concern.

In my life — a designerly life — reason, language, and argumentation result not in publications and citations, but rather in the shape a medical device will take, the arrangement of elements on a screen, or rooms in a building, how a database is structured, how business will be conducted, the stories people will tell one another or unconsciously perform, whether each of us is able to do work in a way that makes sense to us or if some of us are forced to proceed in a way that is unnatural and awkward, whether time or money runs out, and a project fails (or more often, embezzles resources from private lives).

In my designerly life logic matters some of the time and not that much. More than anything, it is the confident tone of sound logic, the essence of truthiness in truth, that lends force to logic. Arguments are decided by other forces — money, charisma, will, determination, composure.

Philosophically what matters most is the phronetic grokking of some semi-alien form of life and working through its implications, not with written ethnographic reports but with concrete artifacts that will change lives of those who accept them into their lives. This line of thought always leads me to a beautiful passage from Clifford Gerrtz, which I like to extend:

From Clifford Geertz’s “From the Native’s Point of View”:

“…Accounts of other peoples’ subjectivities can be built up without recourse to pretensions to more-than-normal capacities for ego effacement and fellow feeling. Normal capacities in these respects are, of course, essential, as is their cultivation, if we expect people to tolerate our intrusions into their lives at all and accept us as persons worth talking to. I am certainly not arguing for insensitivity here, and hope I have not demonstrated it. But whatever accurate or half-accurate sense one gets of what one’s informants are, as the phrase goes, really like does not come from the experience of that acceptance as such, which is part of one’s own biography, not of theirs. It comes from the ability to construe their modes of expression, what I would call their symbol systems, which such an acceptance allows one to work toward developing. Understanding the form and pressure of, to use the dangerous word one more time, natives’ inner lives is more like grasping a proverb, catching an allusion, seeing a joke — or, as I have suggested, reading a poem — than it is like achieving communion.”

[To which I add: “Understanding the form and pressure of, to use the dangerous word one more time, natives’ inner lives is more like grasping a proverb, catching an allusion, seeing a joke — or, as I have suggested, reading a poem…” or knowing how to design for them. A design that makes sense, which is easy to interact with and which is a valuable and welcome addition to a person’s life is proof that this person is understood, that the designer cared enough to develop an understanding and to apply that understanding to that person’s benefit.]

“Truly” is threefold.

Truly means a truth is really, actually and genuinely true.

• Really true: accords with the what of reality.
• Actually true: accords with the how of action.
• Genuinely true: accords with why of a world that ought to exist.

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I have also considered “authentic” as an alternative to “genuine” but genus evokes my intended meaning better than autos, especially in light of this pretty etymological entry from my dictionary:

1596, from L. genuinus “native, natural,” from root of gignere “beget” (see genus), perhaps infl. in form by contrasting adulterinus “spurious.” Alternative etymology is from L. genu “knee,” from an ancient custom of a father acknowledging paternity of a newborn by placing it on his knee.

A language game is part of a lifeworld, and a lifeworld is a rite understood through participation.

If one extracts the linguistic component of a rite and participates solely in that aspect, one may partially understand, or totally understand — which is indistinguishable from totally misunderstanding, unless one trusts the indignation of the misunderstood.

*

A digression:

Ideologues know better. Indignation is denial of truth.

Seeing indignation this way is the cornerstone of ideology.

When this fact is pointed out to the ideologue, he is indignant, but in fact he is in denial of the truth of ideology.

*

The day comes when we can no longer defend ourselves. Our positions immobilize and stiffen, and we are laid bare. The mobile and supple dance around our prostrate legacy, examining, analyzing, delineating, and legitimately knowing better.

*

Anaximander, again?

Whence things have their origin,
Thence also their destruction happens,
According to necessity;
For they give to each other justice and recompense
For their injustice
In conformity with the ordinance of Time.

I just underlined a passage from Rorty, and wrote in the margin “D 481 – biography of a head”:

The point of constructing a “truth theory of English” is not to enable philosophical problems to be put in a formal mode of speech, nor to explain the relationship between words and the world, but simply to lay out perspicuously the relation between parts of a social practice (the use of certain sentences) and other parts (the use of other sentences).

Rorty does explicitly say that the use of language is “a fairly small portion of reality” – but still, 262 pages and counting of linguistic tail-chasing that never leaves the study, that never links use of language with use of other non-linguistic tools (like saws, or cars, or petri dishes, or dollars, or particle accelerators), used alongside other people (non-professors, who make their livings not only with their brains and tongues, but with their hands, feet, backs and hearts) in order to deal with non-human entities (including, but not limited to computers — stuff like like rocks, germs, laws, clouds, plants, etc.) is exasperating me and making me long for philosophy abstracted from something other than academics’ own word-soaked lives.

In Daybreak (481), Nietzsche said of Kant and Schopenhauer,

“…their thoughts do not constitute a passionate history of a soul; there is nothing here that would make a novel, no crises, catastrophes or death-scenes; their thinking is not at the same time an involuntary biography of a soul but, in the case of Kant, the biography of a head, in the case of Schopenhauer the description and mirroring of a character (‘that which is unalterable’) and pleasure in the ‘mirror’ itself, that is to say in an excellent intellect… “

I’ve been trying to see the relevance of Anglo-American analytic philosophy, but so far it seems to be little more than the history of some heads.

I love philosophy, but only if that philosophy is a reflection on fully-lived life — not a reflection on a reflection on a reflection on an abstraction.

There is no slope slipperier than a slippery slope argument.

There is no consciousness falser than that of the mind who sees false consciousness behind disagreements.

Thinking about thinking leads to errors about errors.

If you become enraged by the rage of others, you’ll justify rage.

The harder you look at something, the less you see your eyeball. And the harder you think about something the less you know your concepts.

The hardest part of studying history is knowing how to factor out the ideas that were inconceivable to the actors of history at that time — and grasping the impact of how an absence of these concepts might change how events might seem.

It is not mere absence of fact, it is absence of an ability to even see a fact if it is standing before you staring into your eyes. If you are having difficulties knowing what I mean by this — and many do! — others who will come later will have difficulty grasping how it was for you to look through this concept without seeing it.

Generally we think about users as the people for whom a design is made. Designers build systems intended to be used by users.

But it might make more sense to see users as an intrinsic part of a design. Designers build  systems composed of non-human and human elements. (The designed artifact is only part of the system a designer develops.)

This might make it easier for designers to explain to engineers why it is necessary to include users in the design process — users are one of the most fundamental materials from which the system is made. What competent engineer would build something without first knowing the materials thoroughly? It would also help designers extend the scope of design to often neglected organizational considerations (governance, support, editorial process, etc.) that determine the success of the design.

Engineered systems are composed of objective materials. Designed systems are composed of both objective and subjective materials. Both must understood their materials to build good functional stuff.

Philosophy as noun (“a philosophy”) and philosophy as verb (“doing philosophy”) are not the same.

The activity of philosophy should not be sequestered pondering. Philosophy should be part of other activities — especially activities whose aim is innovation, where established effective methods of thinking do not yet exist.

I accept Wittgenstein’s characterization of philosophy: “A philosophical problem has the form: ‘I don’t know my way about’.”

Philosophy does three things:

• Philosophy discovers as-yet-unposed problems.
• Philosophy develops ways to think as-yet-unthinkable thoughts.
• Philosophy integrates fragmentary knowledge into unified understandings.

A philosophy is a kind of design. A philosophy is an interface between a thinking being and reality.

Just like any design, a philosophy has a user (or “designand”), a purpose, a design context — and most of all, it requires trade-offs. And if it functions as it should it feels like a reality, not as an interpreted system of metaphors and images. Like any good design, a philosophy should disappear.

My belief is that philosophy is still in its pre-Macintosh phase. The user is other professional philosophers, the context tends to be professional forums — journals, conferences, etc. — and the trade-offs are usability and desirability, in favor of argumentative usefulness.

So, what I would like to present is my first attempt at a Macintosh GUI-style philosophy, abstracted from a life of user-centered design, (a.k.a. “design), to help me make sense of my designer’s life as a whole and to function better as a designer — and designed for usefulness, usability and most of all desirability.

This philosophy is built on a Pragmatist platform, and part of what that entails is that the ideas presented are not meant to represent a reality beyond us, but rather to help us behave toward reality in a way that is effective and beneficial, however we define it. So instead of telling you about what is real, I will present to you a set of mind-tools that I have found valuable for living the kind of life I have lived.

Again, I see this as an interface between me as a reflective designer and the reality I inhabit. I prefer graphical interfaces, so much of this philosophy will be graphical.

(At this point I will explain 3 or 4 of my diagrams in terms of what they do, when to use them, what the experience should be…)

(Time permitting, I will also present a few maxims, designed, again for use in specific contexts. We need pithy quotes to condense and drive home points we need to make. Why not make some specifically to forcefully express thoughts we need others to understand?)

Candidate maxims (I’ll probably choose 4 or 5):

• Any engineer will tell you, to make a system that functions, you must thoroughly understand your materials. The systems designers make include materials who perceive, conceive, feel, decide and speak. “Know your user” means “know your materials.”
• Realists must be connoisseurs of anxiety.
• If you want complacent comfort follow your bliss, but if you want growth, follow your dread.
• Inconceivable does not mean impossible or improbable. It means your mind is blind to something.
• Blindness is not dark. It shimmers in uncanny perfection: nothing there, nothing missing.
• When we look into darkness, nothing is there. When we are blind, nothing is missing.
• Vision itself is not visible. It is “seen” only through reflection on the act of seeing things.
• The man in the bar who wants to fight you wants to know you better. The bartender who listens to your life story does not.
• An indication of genuine love: Taking another’s nonsense seriously, attentively, patiently, but, ultimately, critically.
• Necessity is the mother of invention, but emergency is the father of regression.
• A compassionate listener is stingier than a student greedily consuming what is said.
• We resist deep change, not because we love the old or hate the new, but because of the intolerable span of dread that separates the old from the new.
• Sleeping, the mind is permitted to repose in native chaos and to move by accident, but chaos is as immemorable as foreign speech.
• Over breakfast, an evaporating dream is supplemented with a plot which displaces much of the dream’s truth — but which makes the dream memorable.
• A new concept becomes retroactively obvious to all who come to understand it. Even the concept of retroactive obviousness is itself retroactively obvious. At one point, I myself forgot that I did not invent the expression “retroactive obviousness” because it was so much my own.
• Concepts are the fingers of a comprehending mind. Con-cept, together-take. Com-prehend, together-grasp.
• During the day, heaven’s clear black depths are obliterated by a bright expanse of blue.
• Yogi Berra should have, but did not actually say: “In theory there is no difference between theory and practice; but in practice there is.”
• On the stage, the most important actors have speaking parts, but in everyday life the opposite is true.

Added March 26, 2016

• Logic is not reason. Logic without empathy and empathy without logic are both unreasonable. Reason is the coordination of logic and empathy. A reasonable person listens both empathically and logically to understand what is being said by the one saying it.
• A concept is not a thing to be understood. A concept is that by which things are understood.
• Once we use a concept for understanding things, it is inconceivable to understand things any other way.
• We don’t love our old ideas, and we don’t hate new ones. What we hate is the intellectual vacuum separating old ideas from new ones: perplexity.
• To understand in any new way we must first approach, then enter, then navigate and then exit perplexity

Every human system is designed (whether intentionally or not).

Every design makes tradeoffs (whether intended or not). A design makes some things effortless, other things difficult and other things nearly impossible.

The best designs help us forget those things the design does not do.

*

Etiquette is designed. It supports some kinds of human interactions and suppresses others.

If we want different kinds of interactions we must design them to make them possible. But if we do not wish to be rude we should not disregard etiquette. It is necessary to design new etiquette. And we should follow the rules of good design and respect our designands (a.k.a. “users”), at minimum by explaining the purpose of the etiquette, how it works and what to expect while participating in it — but ideally, beginning with the deepest possible understanding of the designands and their lifeworlds.

*

Everything is design.

Without my endlessly frustrating friends, family and neighbors (who sometimes feel more like enemies) I would complacently confuse life as I’ve known it for reality itself, and fail to engage it fully with my heart, mind, soul and strength in that way that keeps it perpetually new, distressing, valuable and interesting. 

Pragmatically speaking, the otherness of other people and the otherness of unknown reality might as well be the same thing. 

A requirement to know/respect/love one entails a requirement to know/respect/love the other. They are alike. 

Goal: To invest speech-defying realities with the dignity of truth.

Some truths can be said, while other truths can only be felt or done.

Babies cry to communicate. They cry helplessly when they cannot communicate.

Issues of belief and non-belief are less common than we think.

A simple difference of opinion presupposes shared conceptualization (which at one point in my life I would have called “perspective”), that each differing opinion has been clarified in meaning and implications mapped, and, finally, that each opinion is actually about the same object (that is that it attempts to account for the same phenomena).

Perhaps a taxonomy of differences in thought might be helpful:

1. Conclusional: have we arrived at the same belief? (Do we agree?)
2. Logical: are our beliefs fully clarified, with all implications and doubts duly mapped out? (Are we clear?)
3. Conceptual: are we conceptualizing the problem the same way and have we tried out alternative conceptualizations in order to compare them? (Are we aligned?)
4. Phenomenal: are we working on the same problem, and are we responding to the same data? (Are we focused?)