Category Archives: Philosophy

The hermeneutical-rhetorical circle

Design, Hermeneutics, Ideas

As a user experience practitioner, it is interesting to me that the hermeneutical circle (the movement between whole and part that characterizes the process of understanding) originated in ancient rhetoric. The privilege of my profession is that we get to stand on both sides of meaning, as understanders (in the mode of researchers) and as creators of things to be understood (in the mode of designers), and best of all, we get to iteratively connect the two modes. (I’m picturing the infinity symbol: we research understandings, we design things to be understood, we research understandings of our designs, we redesign… etc. )

It seems everything we do in user experience wants to be iterative. (* See note.) I don’t think this is an accident. I think it is because we are in the understanding business, and iterativity is the form of understanding.

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An idea to try on: user experience strategy/design as a species of rhetoric. Pan-sensory, interactive rhetoric. (I’ve been enjoying the perversity of using words revaluated by Gadamer to express benevolent thoughts as villainously as possible. This one falls short of the last example of the pattern, characterizing brand as “prejudice design”. )

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In his wonderful book Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics and Praxis Richard J. Bernstein made a very interesting criticism of Gadamer: that Gadamer did a good job of outlining a theory of hermeneutics, but in regard to practice he left us hanging.

My view is that experience design can be a practical extension of Gadamer’s thought, and in fact is following a semi-conscious trajectory toward this point. It’s always exciting to find new ways to integrate my philosophical mornings and my professional days.

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(* Note: Conversely, much of the friction we experience in the world of business seems to center around the flattening of circularities. Business likes predictability, so it likes nice straight lines. Non-linearity is innately unpredictable.)

A nonclarifying clarification of Birth of Tragedy

Fables, myths & parables, Hermeneutics, Philosophy

Despite all appearances, the star of the Birth of Tragedy is Hermes. Hermes is implicated in the union of Dionysus and Apollo in tragedy, and is the primary object of the study. Further, Hermes is the subject of the study, the author.

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Imagine a herm with the face of Dionysus on one side and the face of Apollo on the other.

Such fusions are made possible by and manifest Hermes. Without Hermes, the realities of the world would be as numerous, as various and and irreconcilable as the myriad eyes of the giant, Argos.

A face is made possible by and manifests Apollo. Without Apollo, there could be no objects of intention: consciousness would dangle in a state of “conscious of…?” Even on the other side,  the question of “who is conscious?” is detached and unresolvable.

Hermes is the ethical face of Dionysus: the “outwarding” of what is purely “inward” (to use a common but misleading dichotomy), the inward being what would remain if one could subtract the sum from the whole of this reality we share and call the world.

Synetic branding

Brand, Design, Philosophy

A good brand experience makes an organization’s perspective manifest to its stakeholders.

Some stakeholders are outsiders who have an outsider’s relationship to the organization. (e.g. current or prospective customers, the press, the interested public.) Other stakeholders constitute the organization itself. (e.g. employers, employees, partners, shareholders.)

The manifestation of the perspective takes the form of a sharing of understanding. Some of this understanding is explicit. Certain facts are agreed upon. The most important aspects of the understanding, however, are implicit: what is the significance of the facts at hand? What is the relative importance of each fact? How do the facts connect? What aspects of an offering are essential, and what aspects are less important or negligible?

Every act of design is one of balances and trade-offs. The best designs make its trade-offs feel obvious and necessary, to the point of invisibility. What is marginalized or omitted is what was irrelevant. (A classic example of this kind of trade-off is the London Underground “Tube map”.)

So, within the brand perspective is embedded the company’s standards and rankings of value. Those things seen as most important are given the most attention and emphasis. The less important things are ignored or downplayed, sometimes pointedly. The standards and values determine how an organization behaves, how it presents itself and how it develops and delivers its offerings.

(The classic example: What makes a computer more or less desirable? Low price and high performance? Those who see it that way are unlikely to purchase a Macintosh. However, if you view computers the way Apple does and put a premium on how it feels to use and own a computer, you are likely to consider only a Macintosh when purchasing a new computer. Another example: What do you consider important the most important quality in a car? Style? Performance? If so, you probably won’t buy a Toyota. However, if you see reliability as the single most important quality in a car, it is very likely you will consider Toyota. Boring, but compelling. Consequently, there are many Toyota owners, and very few Toyota enthusiasts. Toyota makes cars for people who don’t love cars.)

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If an organization wishes to have an authentic, compelling brand its leadership must 1) actually have a perspective on what it does that is different from its competition, 2) the perspective must be one that can be shared, 3) the leadership must know how to share its perspective, 4) the perspective must be practically consequential (the perspective changes the way one acts), and 5) the organization’s leadership must have the courage to believe its own eyes and to actually live and lead according to how it sees. It cannot constantly second-guess itself, equivocate, compromise or waffle between its perspective and the myriad other ways of seeing.

This does not mean one denies the existence or validity of other ways of seeing. It does not mean that one does not believe in the possibility that other ways of seeing might turn out to be better. (If you have a taste for such things, allow your mind to boggle for a moment at what it means to see a new definition of better as better than the one you currently hold! Better… how?)

It does, however mean one sees for himself. It means that one listens to others in order to see with them what they are seeing, and to share with them what one is seeing. This listening and sharing — dialogue in the proper sense — presupposes an expectation of seeing for oneself and the insight that one could at any moment see differently, and that difference could be deeply and extensively consequential.

Most of all it means that a leader who wished to lead an organization with a real brand must see by a genuine brand vision.

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Leaders who lack vision rarely know it. They believe an ability paint a vivid, desirable and detailed picture of the future and to lay out a plan for actualizing that picture is having vision. The mistake is understandable — some imagination and ability to visualize and describe is involved. It is a valuable skill for a leader to possess. However, this is not vision.

Vision is seeing what their organization is and does in a distinctive, persuasive and consequential way. This way of seeing makes their organization look, feel and behave differently from its peers.

It is a subtle difference, but a substantial and consequential one. The ability to share one’s ambitions and plans persuasively might help an organization perform better, but it won’t help it accomplish anything new. If this were all vision were, nobody would care much about vision. It would just be another skill.

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There are multiple levels of branding needed in user experience projects:

  1. The company has an articulated brand, its offerings are deliberately on-brand. What is required is framing the company and product in a reinforcing on-brand experience.
  2. The company lacks an articulated brand, but has developed its offerings through a tacit brand vision. What is required is a) articulating the brand (minimum: brand perspective, brand attributes and positioning statement)  and b) framing the company and product in a reinforcing on-brand experience.
  3. The company lacks an articulated brand, and has developed its offerings through a tacit and unclear or inconsistent brand vision. What is required is a) articulating the brand (minimum: brand perspective, brand attributes and positioning statement), b) framing the company and product in a reinforcing on-brand experience, c) a establishing a program to communicate the brand articulation throughout the organization and, d) and additionally, developing parallel programs to operationalize the brand – that is, to redesign the organizations processes to produce on-brand offerings and uniformly on-brand customer experiences at every touchpoint.
  4. The company lacks brand altogether, and has developed its offerings strictly through imitation of best practices or inconsistently according to fragmentary individual or factional whim. What is required is a) anthropological study of the organizational culture and the stakeholders it serves  to understand the possibilities, given the organization’s traditions, constitution and contexts. From this foundation a brand strategy consisting of a brand articulation and supporting operational changes can be developed to transform the organization into a coherent culture.

Brand is the outward expression of an authentic, coherent culture. This is why, despite the fact that all companies have logos and most have corporate graphic standards, very few have actual brands.

Most brands are like most people. They try to play a part without really being it. It is hollow and unpersuasive.

Quantity and quality

Philosophy

I want to get clearer on the relationship between quality and quantity. My view is this: every quantification is an indicator of a quality, and it is solely from this that the quantification derives its significance. Further, our concern for the quantitative is rooted in and derived from qualitative concerns.

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The quantitative seems more real than the qualitative because on principle it is follows explicit rules of thought. It is easy both to see for oneself and to demonstrate to others correctness or incorrectness of such thinking, and therefore it is easy to establish synesis (shared understanding), around the correctness of the calculations. (The same is true for logic.) Agreement on qualities (and measuring them) on the other hand is much harder to establish.

As a means to establish agreement, the quantifiable and the logical are indispensible tools, and absolutely should not be seen as opposed to the quantitative.

However, these tools are a means to qualitative ends.

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Failure to examine the linkage between the quantitative to the qualitative is where we go wrong (in business, in education, in politics, etc.).

The urgency of finding agreement and stabilizing reality in some kind of expedient synesis causes us to gloss the hard questions in order to have easy answers.

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In the shell game of modernity, experts shuffle quantities before us until we forget what qualities are hidden beneath. Eventually, we forget  about the qualities contained in the quantities. Eventually, dazed by the blur of Whats and Hows and Whos we forget Why.

Medusa’s comb

Philosophy

Akrasia – ORIGIN early 19th cent.: from Greek, from a- ‘without’ + kratos ‘power, strength.’ The term is used esp. with reference to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.

Incontinent – ORIGIN late Middle English: from Old French, or from Latin incontinent-, from in– ‘not’ + continent– ‘holding together.’

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Akrasia — often translated as “moral incontinence” — is the incapacity to maintain continuity in one’s being. The discontinuity can be experienced in the moment in the form of indecision, disorientation or confusion, but it can also be experienced as a moments of great clarity, but a clarity that contradicts the preceding moments of clarity and sees no reason to reconcile moments.

The latter form of akrasia appears to the one experiencing it to be an irruption of insight. One sees the light, is saved, reborn. The old self’s perspective is invalidated and replaced with the new. The new wisdom attacks the old perspective’s claim to wisdom and sees no reason for reconciliation.

Akrasia can be seen as sporadic hubris, or hubris can be seen as low-frequency akrasia.

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The serpent is a traditional symbol of wisdom.

Medusa’s head was a ball of wild, biting serpents.

Nothing in excess

Philosophy

The why by which one approaches life determines one’s how, which in turn articulates the what.

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Qualities articulate categories. Categories provide the abstraction necessary to quantify. This is the principle of individuation.

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Some mythical hearsay:

In the Greek pantheon, Apollo was (among other things) the god of surfaces and of individuation.

Myth tells us that Apollo fell in love with the Nymph Daphne. Daphne did not return his love. He chased her and tried to rape her. Daphne prayed to Mother Earth for help. She was transformed into the laurel tree.

This is when Apollo adopted his philosophy of moderation. The laurel was made sacred to his followers, and among the inscriptions on his temple in Delphi appear two sayings:

Know Thyself.

Nothing in Excess.

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There are no two of anything, not strictly speaking. Only instances of a category can be counted.

Some categories are unavoidably perceived. Some are far more artificial than we realize. If society as a whole stopped seeing them, they’d no longer have reality.

But make no mistake, categories originate in us.

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The notion that the quantifiable is more real than that which resists quantification — even in areas where qualities are vastly more important than quantities — is a why firmly reinforced by prodedural hows resulting in a pretty hideous what.

This does not mean we don’t attempt to quantify wherever we can. It means that we start from the fullness of reality and humbly quantify as much of it as we can and respect the remaining unquantifiable reality as both real and as the wellspring of value.

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The protest “but how do we measure that?” … that “but” signifies illegitimacy of the yet-unmeasurable and the ultimately unmeasurable.

Measure it and then it can be considered part of reality. Until then it is imaginary, arbitrary, merely subjective.

Can we measure this claim that only the measurable can be considered valid? If not, can we consider this standard valid?

Gadamer on adventures and episodes

Philosophy

I read this passage in Gadamer’s Truth and Method during my family’s adventure in New York:

The representation of the whole in the momentary Erlebnis obviously goes far beyond the fact of its being determined by its object. Every experience is, in Schleiermacher’s words, “an element of infinite life.” Georg Simmel, who was largely responsible for the word Erlebnis becoming so fashionable, considers the important thing about the concept of experience as this: “the objective not only becomes an image and idea, as in knowing, but an element in the life process itself.” He even says that every experience has something of an adventure about it. But what is an adventure? An adventure is by no means just an episode. Episodes are a succession of details which have no inner coherence and for that very reason have no permanent significance. An adventure, however, interrupts the customary course of events, but is positively and significantly related to the context which it interrupts. Thus an adventure lets life be felt as a whole, in its breadth and in its strength. Here lies the fascination of an adventure. It removes the conditions and obligations of everyday life. It ventures out into the uncertain.

But at the same time it knows that, as an adventure, it is exceptional and thus remains related to the return of the everyday, into which the adventure cannot be taken. Thus the adventure is “undergone,” like a test or trial from which one emerges enriched and more mature.

There is an element of this, in fact, in every Erlebnis. Every experience is taken out of the continuity of life and at the same time related to the whole of one’s life. It is not simply that an experience remains vital only as long as it has not been fully integrated into the context of one’s life consciousness, but the very way it is “preserved and dissolved” (aufgehoben) by being worked into the whole of life consciousness goes far beyond any “significance” it might be thought to have. Because it is itself within the whole of life, the whole of life is present in it too.

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Popular fiction is episode. Literature is adventure.

Fact is episode. Insight is adventure.

Most vacations are episodes, and that’s why I’ve always despised them.

No place to lay your head

Philosophy

Foxes have the holes, birds have their nests, and workers have their work stations. Everything established, everything with an accepted precedent, has its place in the world.

If, however, you are a new product-producer participant in humankind’s perpetual self-reinvention of humankind you will have no place until you make yourself a place.

Our choice is not either-or. We are not forced to either deny ourselves or to deny the world.

Humility

Philosophy

People demand humility but are deeply offended if their demands are indulged.

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The offense at what strikes one as superior to oneself is very different from the offense at that which presumes to be superior but is sealed against learning otherwise. The former always attributes its offense to the latter. The latter always attributes the offense it arouses to the former.

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We all believe in better or worse, even when we pretend to know better.

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Arrogant – ORIGIN late Middle English : via Old French from Latin arrogant– ‘claiming for oneself,’ from the verb arrogare.

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Possession is consummated socially. Until possession is publicly acknowledged there’s only a claim.

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Good practical advice from Nietzsche:

Artist’s ambition. — The Greek artists, the tragedians for example, poetized in order to conquer; their whole art cannot be thought of apart from contest: Hesiod’s good Eris, ambition, gave their genius its wings. Now this ambition demands above all that their work should preserve the highest excellence in their own eyes, as they understand excellence, that is to say, without reference to a dominating taste or the general opinion as to what constitutes excellence in a work of art; and thus Aeschylus and Euripides were for a long time unsuccessful until they had finally educated judges of art who assessed their work according to the standards they themselves laid down. It is thus they aspire to victory over their competitors as they understand victory, a victory before their own seat of judgment, they want actually to be more excellent; then they exact agreement from others as to their own assessment of themselves and confirmation of their own judgment. To aspire to honor here means: “to make oneself superior and to wish this superiority to be publicly acknowledged.” If the former is lacking and the latter nonetheless still demanded, one speaks of vanity. If the latter is lacking and its absence not regretted, one speaks of pride.

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You can acknowledge the importance of social opinion by submitting to it.

You can also betray its importance by denying its significance with suspiciously excessive vehemence.
Finally, you can acknowledge the importance of social opinion by working to influence it, superficially at the factual level, or deeply at the level of vision.

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We have the capacity to see everything differently, and that’s very weird.

Aesthetic differentiation

Brand, Hermeneutics

Gadamer on the Romantic/modern conception of aesthetics:

The shift in the ontological definition of the aesthetic toward the concept of aesthetic appearance has its theoretical basis in the fact that the domination of the scientific model of epistemology leads to discrediting all the possibilities of knowing that lie outside this new methodology [“fiction”!].

Let us recall that in the well-known quotation from which we started, Helmholtz knew no better way to characterize the quality that distinguishes work in the human sciences from that in the natural sciences than by describing it as “artistic.” Corresponding positively to this theoretical relationship is what we may call “aesthetic consciousness.” It is given with the “standpoint of art,” which Schiller first founded. For just as the art of “beautiful appearance” is opposed to reality, so aesthetic consciousness includes an alienation from reality — it is a form of the “alienated spirit,” which is how Hegel understood culture (Bildung). The ability to adopt an aesthetic stance is part of cultured (gebildete) consciousness. For in aesthetic consciousness we find the features that distinguish cultured consciousness: rising to the universal, distancing from the particularity of immediate acceptance or rejection, respecting what does not correspond to one’s own expectation or preference.

We have discussed above the meaning of the concept of taste in this context. However, the unity of an ideal of taste that distinguishes a society and bonds its members together differs from that which constitutes the figure of aesthetic culture. Taste still obeys a criterion of content. What is considered valid in a society, its ruling taste, receives its stamp from the commonalities of social life. Such a society chooses and knows what belongs to it and what does not. Even its artistic interests are not arbitrary or in principle universal, but what artists create and what the society values belong together in the unity of a style of life and an ideal of taste.

In contrast, the idea of aesthetic cultivation — as we derived it from Schiller — consists precisely in precluding any criterion of content and in dissociating the work of art from its world. One expression of this dissociation is that the domain to which the aesthetically cultivated consciousness lays claim is expanded to become universal. Everything to which it ascribes “quality” belongs to it. It no longer chooses, because it is itself nothing, nor does it seek to be anything, on which choice could be based. Through reflection, aesthetic consciousness has passed beyond any determining and determinate taste, and itself represents a total lack of determinacy. It no longer admits that the work of art and its world belong to each other, but on the contrary, aesthetic consciousness is the experiencing (erlebende) center from which everything considered art is measured.

What we call a work of art and experience (erleben) aesthetically depends on a process of abstraction. By disregarding everything in which a work is rooted (its original context of life, and the religious or secular function that gave it significance), it becomes visible as the “pure work of art.” In performing this abstraction, aesthetic consciousness performs a task that is positive in itself. It shows what a pure work of art is, and allows it to exist in its own right. I call this “aesthetic differentiation.”

Whereas a definite taste differentiates — i.e., selects and rejects — on the basis of some content, aesthetic differentiation is an abstraction that selects only on the basis of aesthetic quality as such. It is performed in the self-consciousness of “aesthetic experiences.” Aesthetic experience (Erlebnis) is directed towards what is supposed to be the work proper — what it ignores are the extra-aesthetic elements that cling to it, such as purpose, function, the significance of its content. These elements may be significant enough inasmuch as they situate the work in its world and thus determine the whole meaningfulness that it originally possessed. But as art the work must be distinguished from all that. It practically defines aesthetic consciousness to say that it differentiates what is aesthetically intended from everything that is outside the aesthetic sphere. It abstracts from all the conditions of a work’s accessibility. Thus this is a specifically aesthetic kind of differentiation. It distinguishes the aesthetic quality of a work from all the elements of content that induce us to take up a moral or religious stance towards it, and presents it solely by itself in its aesthetic being.

Provable / significant

Philosophy

From time to time. — He sat himself at the city gate and said to one who passed through it that this was the city gate. The latter responded that this was true, but that one should not want to be too much in the right if one wanted to be thanked for it. “Oh,” the former replied, “I desire no thanks; but from time to time it is nonetheless very pleasant not only to be in the right but to be acknowledged to be right as well.”

– Nietzsche, Assorted Opinions and Maxims 297

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A (the?) essential tension: What is most provable matters least. What matters most is the least provable.

Grammatical x-ray (exposed on Chinese film): Thesis [passive] : antithesis [active]. Thesis [active] : antithesis [passive].

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“No, what is most provable is the most important.” Prove it.

Overcoming Romanticism

Philosophy

There is a huge difference between someone who seeks ways to measure things and someone who rejects the existence of anything he cannot measure.

Measuring is a mysterious activity.

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A Romantic correctly notes that some things are beyond the grasp of cognition, and positively values these things. The commonest form of Romantic, however, proceeds to make a mind-boggling mistake: preserving the cognition-resistant truths as rare, fragile, precious mysteries. The greatest mystery is that anything like an ordered, cognizable world could arise at all. The Romantic is the crowning achievement of this order: they spontaneously see the most mysterious thing of all as the opposite of mystery.

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Humility demands that we recognize the surpassing reality behind and beyond whatever a man can think. Knowledge does not and cannot possess or master anything. It only relates.

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The fullest form of relationship a human being can have is the human-to-human relation, whether this relationship is to another person or to the entire world as a whole.

I might actually disagree with Buber on an important point: The I-Thou relationship does not exclude the I-It relationship, and I-Thou is not a complete human-to-human without I-It.

More scaffolding

Philosophy

Gadamer, from the foreword to the second edition of Truth and Method:

This fundamental methodical approach avoids implying any metaphysical conclusions. In subsequent publications, especially in my research reports “Hermeneutics and Historicism” and “The Phenomenological Movement” (in Philosophical Hermeneutics), I have recorded my acceptance of Kant’s conclusions in the Critique of Pure Reason: I regard statements that proceed by wholly dialectical means from the finite to the infinite, from human experience to what exists in itself, from the temporal to the eternal as doing no more than setting limits, and am convinced that philosophy can derive no actual knowledge from them. Nevertheless, the tradition of metaphysics and especially of its last great creation, Hegel’s speculative dialectic, remains close to us. The task, the “infinite relation,” remains. But my way of demonstrating it seeks to free itself from the embrace of the synthetic power of the Hegelian dialectic, even from the “logic” which developed from the dialectic of Plato, and to take its stand in the movement of dialogue, in which word and idea first become what they are.

Hence the present investigations do not fulfill the demand for a reflexive self-grounding made from the viewpoint of the speculative transcendental philosophy of Fichte, Hegel. and Husserl. But is the dialogue with the whole of our philosophical tradition — a dialogue in which we stand and which, as philosophers, we are — groundless? Does what has always supported us need to be grounded?

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“Slippery ice
Is paradise,
As long as dancing will suffice. “

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Nietzsche, “The Dance Song” from Thus Spoke Zarathustra:

Into your eyes I looked recently, O life! And into the unfathomable I then seemed to be sinking. But you pulled me out with a golden fishing rod; and you laughed mockingly when I called you unfathomable.

“Thus runs the speech of all fish,” you said; “what they do not fathom is unfathomable. But I am merely changeable and wild and a woman in every way, and not virtuous — even if you men call me profound, faithful, eternal, and mysterious. But you men always present us with your own virtues, O you virtuous men!”

Thus she laughed, the incredible one; but I never believe her and her laughter when she speaks ill of herself.

And when I talked in confidence with my wild wisdom she said to me in anger, “You will, you want, you love — that is the only reason why you praise life.” Then I almost answered wickedly and told the angry woman the truth; and there is no more wicked answer than telling one’s wisdom the truth.

For thus matters stand among the three of us: Deeply I love only life — and verily, most of all when I hate life. But that I am well disposed toward wisdom, and often too well, that is because she reminds me so much of life. She has her eyes, her laugh, and even her little golden fishing rod: is it my fault that the two look so similar?

And when life once asked me, “Who is this wisdom?” I answered fervently, “Oh yes, wisdom! One thirsts after her and is never satisfied; one looks through veils, one grabs through nets. Is she beautiful? How should I know? But even the oldest carps are baited with her. She is changeable and stubborn; often I have seen her bite her lip and comb her hair against the grain. Perhaps she is evil and false and a female in every way; but just when she speaks ill of herself she is most seductive.”

When I said this to life she laughed sarcastically and closed her eyes. “Of whom are you speaking?” she asked; “no doubt, of me. And even if you are right — should that be said to my face? But now speak of your wisdom too.”

Ah, and then you opened your eyes again, O beloved life. And again I seemed to myself to be sinking into the unfathomable.

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Matthew 14:

Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea. But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” When they got into the boat, the wind ceased.

Scaffolding

Philosophy

A dance becomes art when steps and counts give way to pure movement in response to music. Philosophy becomes practice when memorized syllogisms and concepts give way to freedom of vision. Morality is fulfilled when freedom moves though it were governed by law.

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Two quotes from Nietzsche:

“One must remove the scaffolding once the house has been built. “

“Jesus said to his Jews: “The law was made for servants–love God as I love him, as his son! What have we sons of God to do with morality!” –“

A quote from Gadamer:

…The fact that ideas are formed through tradition, especially through the hermeneutic circle of whole and part, which is the starting point of my attempt to lay the foundations of hermeneutics, does not necessarily imply this conclusion. The concept of the whole is itself to be understood only relatively. The whole of meaning that has to be understood in history or tradition is never the meaning of the whole of history. The danger of Docetism seems banished when historical tradition is conceived not as an object of historical knowledge or of philosophical conception, but as an effective moment of one’s own being. The finite nature of one’s own understanding is the manner in which reality, resistance, the absurd, and the unintelligible assert themselves. If one takes this finitude seriously, one must take the reality of history seriously as well.

The same problem makes the experience of the Thou so decisive for all self-understanding. …The experience of the Thou throws light on the concept of historically effected experience. The experience of the Thou also manifests the paradox that something standing over against me asserts its own rights and requires absolute recognition; and in that very process is “understood.” But I believe that I have shown correctly that what is so understood is not the Thou but the truth of what the Thou says to us. I mean specifically the truth that becomes visible to me only through the Thou, and only by my letting myself be told something by it. It is the same with historical tradition. It would not deserve the interest we take in it if it did not have something to teach us that we could not know by ourselves. It is in this sense that the statement “being that can be understood is language” is to be read. It do not mean that the one who understands has an absolute mastery over being but, on the contrary, that being is not experienced where something can be constructed by us and is to that extent conceived; it is experienced where what is happening can merely be understood.

Synesis and politics

Philosophy, Synesis

Synesis is twofold: 1) seeing something coherently as together, and 2) seeing together with others in shared vison.

Collectivists neglect the former, and individualists neglect the later.

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(Bill) Clinton Democrats and Rockwell Libertarians tend toward individualism.

Rove Republicans and Objectivist Libertarians tend toward collectivism.

Obama Democrats appear to be transcending individualism and collectivism and are moving toward an ideal of community that overcomes the apparent opposition between individual and collective. It is not clear if Obama’s methods will successfully actualize the ideal, but the establishment of the vision is itself a significant accomplishment.

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Business also seems to want to approach genuine community. The slowly dawning recognition that brand does not have to be a deception or manipulation but at its best is a true self-presentation of a company community to the larger commercial community is a major step forward.

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It is true that business has been inhumanly coercive to employees, manipulative to customers, and predominantly greedy in its dealings.

That does not mean business cannot be humanized and redeemed. Through brand, business is learning to take a constructive place in culture.

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Imagine a world where all businesses are as genuine as Apple.

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American socialism opposed business and lost. Where did all the would-be socialists go? Many are business leaders.

Lifeguard

Philosophy

Trained lifeguards know the properties of panic, they’ve mastered techniques for breaking every kind of grip and hold, and they are strong swimmers. They always try to throw a rope or buoy first, but if that doesn’t work they are prepared to jump in. They are not faced with the dilemma of the untrained: stay outside the situation and watch helplessly or jump into it and face the near-certainty of being drowned yourself.

Synesis

Philosophy, Synesis

“They rose early in the morning and worshiped before the Lord; then they went back to their house at Ramah. Elkanah knew his wife Hannah, and the Lord remembered her.  In due time Hannah conceived and bore a son.”  – 1 Samuel 1

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Synesis is the Greek word for understanding. It means, literally, “together”.

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The together is twofold. It has an individual and social dimension:

  1. Each individual sees what is understood coherently – as together – within his own experience. He understands for himself.
  2. The individual understands together with others. His vision – that is, his way of seeing – can be shown to others and shared.

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Sometimes a friend will come to a another in a state of distress. She talks and talks and doesn’t seem interested in solutions. She doesn’t want to solve the problem. She wants to find a way to see what happened and she wants her friend to be with her in her turmoil and in its resolution. The best thing the friend can do is to be fully there, to try to catch glimpses of clarity and to offer them again and again.

When a whole culture falls into turmoil it behaves exactly the same way. Its whole sense of truth falls apart. It cannot come to inner agreement, it cannot see coherently. Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed on the world. Some thinkers will want to impose a dogma or an ideology as a solution to the problem, but this sort of inexpert response will not win the culture’s heart for long. The answer is not action. It is vision. Action follows synesis, naturally, easily. Synesis is the hard part.

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Immature synesis is excessively individualistic or collectivistic. The former seeks a unique individual vision to hoard as a private possession or as a trophy commemorating his accomplishment. The latter wants the agreement but neglects what is agreed upon. The shared “truth” is perfectly insubstantial: all that exists is an empty solidarity.

Decaying synesis is also excessively individualistic or collectivistic.

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Synesis is not constructed. It is grasped as a whole. It is having the sense of a truth.

Synesis can be pursued systematically, but it will not be gained as a system. Through grappling with the system, through combining, breaking, trying again synesis might occur. It is important to remember that the ability to give an account of something is not evidence of synesis. An inability to account is not evidence of the absence of synesis.

Accounts, explanations, systems are ordered aggregates of particulars.

Synesis is the whole within which particulars take their ordered place. (A concept is a synetic blueprint, the dna of a self-ordering system.)

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Synesis is generative. The pleasure of philosophy is that sudden irruption of synesis which makes dozens of insoluble problems suddenly soluble. Fully-formed, living ideas spontaneously explode out of the mind. This happens only with the hermeneutically receptive mind:

Love as artifice. — Whoever wants really to get to know something new (be it a person, an event, or a book) does well to take up this new thing with all possible love, to avert his eye quickly from, even to forget, everything about it that he finds inimical, objectionable, or false. So, for example, we give the author of a book the greatest possible head start, and, as if at a race, virtually yearn with a pounding heart for him to reach his goal. By doing this, we penetrate into the heart of the new thing, into its motive center: and this is what it means to get to know it. Once we have got that far, reason then sets its limits; that overestimation, that occasional unhinging of the critical pendulum, was just a device to entice the soul of a matter out into the open.  – Nietzsche, Human All Too Human 621

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What is evidence of synesis? Sharing it.

How does one come to share synesis? Dialogue: mutually receptive conversation.

(Dialogue and synesis refute and destroy solipsism. It is no longer possible to see solipsism as true. For the sake of otherness one is ready to suffer whatever the other inflicts.)

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Synesis can explain, but synesis is not the explanation. The explanation can help bring about synesis, by the explanation is not synesis.

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Synesis is an expectation of understanding, a faith.

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Ideally, an individual’s experience is coherent.

The coherence experienced in synesis occurs within an overarching cohesion. Acquiring this individual coherence – or mere sense of coherence, which can be illusory – is the practice of philosophizing, in its good and bad forms.

Philosophy is solitary at the beginning, but it is the seed of community.