Meykandar Hume and Heidegger

The Self in Metatheism and Western Philosophies- A Dialog with Gary C. Moore

Compiled by Dr K. Loganathan, 2004

Meykandar Hume and Heidegger

The problem of the reality of self has been long debated in India and as a Final Conclusion (Siddhanta) it has been concluded positively - there is a substantial entity that is called ‘self’ and is different form BEING (God, Brahman) etc, suffers existential repetition and escapes from that historical way of Being-in-the-World by attaining Moksa. I want to make some comments in relation to the posting below and show that while Hume is way off, Heidegger comes quite close to Meykandar but falls short of the final conclusion because he failed to note Moksa as the Fundamental INTENTIONALITY that provides the motivational dynamics for all actions including the metaphysical. Heidegger could not see through DEATH and its metaphysical significance as Moksa itself

Moksa is NOT simply a propensity to believe and which is simply a constituent of the inherited understanding, transmitted by language metaphysical traditions and so forth. The desire for Moksa lies at the deepest layer of human understanding and transcends language culture traditions and so forth. In fact there cannot be these elements without there being as an apriori the pressure for Moksa as something there with the soul. Language culture religions and various other kinds of cultural expressions are different shapes this pressure for Moksa takes. In our investigations unless we analyze and go to the depths of Human INTENTIONALITY, we shall never lay bare the Fundamental Intentionality and which is the desire for Moksa and at which point a person becomes a Mumuksu, the one who desires Moksa and nothing else. Punitavati (c. 5^th cent) is good example of such person. The can see also this as the meaning of TiruvaLvar’s metaphor of PiRavik Kadal Niintal, a metaphor as old as Suruppak’s NeRi ( c. 3000 BC).It is given to ALL of us- whether German or English Tamil or Chinese Black or White Man or Woman - it is already GIVEN as there, but at the deepest layer of Human Understanding. Our problem is that we are LOST on the way and remain fixated to the imagined and inherited.

It also follows that the ‘self’ is there as a substantive entity as that which seeks Moksa for nothing else- the body the cognitive processes -thinking feeling etc can SEEK out Moksa as it involves ESCAPING from the involvement or engagement with the body and mind. The mind cannot escape from the mental by annihilating itself. There has to be something ABOVE the mind, something that uses the mental mechanisms as TOOLS for gaining an understanding and with that DESTROY ignorance and when the time is ripe even escape from being caught up by the body that comes along several instincts (sexual etc) and mental mechanisms or modules (Manam Buddhi AhaGkaaram and Cittam) that predispose to THINKING. We cannot FREE ourselves from THINKING as such by thinking. Here we can make sense of Heidegger’s notion of Authentic Existence, not in the way he explained it but rather in the way Punitavati articulated it - seeking miiNdum piRavamaai, seeking escape from the throwness into existentiality that comes as endless births and deaths.

Now since there is hermeneutic process that causes the self to EVOLVE towards the Fundamental Intentionality of seeking Moksa and nothing else underlying the Being of self i.e. the Ways-of- Being-in-the-World of a anma or self, the Existence, there has to be a BEING who is the GROUND of this evolutionary movement and where this BEING is along-with as well ABOVE the self and Itself already in Moksa (Anati Mutta Citturu). For only what is already in Moksa can work for the Moksa of others. It is here that we can locate the ‘conscience’ as the inner CALL as Heidegger sees it. BEING in remaining along with the anmas, always keeps on calling the self towards it’s own authenticity - a continuous reminder that at the moment it leads an inauthentic life from which it should escape and become free.

We have a CLUE to all these in our TIME consciousness. While Hume and Kant do not go beyond what Tolkaappiyar(c. 300 BC) calls Terinilai Kaaalam, the world time that breaks into past present and future always presupposing a point of reference common to the community, there is also the KuRippu Kaalam that Tol notes as part of verbal structure of languages. This KuRippu Kaalam is INTENTIONAL Time and I believe this is what Heidegger means by TEMPORALITY, the way of presence of TIME within the mind that is projective into the future. The Da-sein that projects into the future and hence is in temporality is nothing else but this anma but with intentionalities of all kinds for the intentionalities are essentially projective. The intentional Da-Sein cannot on its own become free of temporality and at the absence of acknowledging the presence of BEING which promotes Moksa only DEATH will be seen as that towards which the Da-Sein is moving as Heidegger thought. The authentic life is NOT that of awaiting DEATH but rather that of Moksa. Moksa is also death but it the FINAL DEATH, a death after which there is no rebirth, phenomenal presence with another body etc and hence it is not the ordinary death which terminates only one lease of existence.

The fundamental Temporality is the time consciousness instituted by Fundamental Intentionality viz, the seeking of Moksa, and which is moving unto BEING by the PULL He exerts and in which self becomes purified and enlightened so that it becomes the SAME as BEING in the qualitative aspects. When this transmutational and evolutionary movement of the self comes to a close it becomes the SAME as BEING and in that also enjoy Njaanam, the Absolute Illumination that makes everything translucent like a book that has been read many times and fully understood so that it can be thrown away.

At this point there is NO temporality at all as there is no Intentionality at all and Speech as such becomes impossible. The primordial impulse towards linguisticality is INTENTIONALITY and when it is no more, speech also becomes impossible. The enjoyment and communication of this Njaanam is only through Deep Silence (Moonam)

Loga

Gary Moore <gottlos752004@yahoo.com> wrote:

To: analytical-indicant-theory@yahoogroups.com

CC: heidegger@lists.village.Virginia.EDU

From: Gary Moore

Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2004 03:09:11 -0700 (PDT)

Subject: [ontologicalethics] A DISCUSSION OF THE REAL NATURE OF ‘SELF’ Part 1

A DISCUSSION OF THE REAL NATURE OF ‘SELF’ Part 1?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />: for Anybody to reply to

derived primarily from COGNITION AND COMMITMENT IN HUME’S PHILOSOPHY by Don Garrett, Oxford, 1997, chapter 8 “Personal Identity”, pages163-186

wherewith it will be shown that, though there may or may not be a strong “propensity” to believe and accept superficially many of Heidegger’s ideas, they are none the less structures of the individual’s imagination (Heidegger’s) whose basis is inherited “understanding” derived from the specific culture of the specific people around him (South German Catholic) wherein it may seem he is talking about ideas common in the parlance of the English speaking world but in fact, at best, they do not really fit, and, at worse, have no place in English speaking culture. This especially applies to the structure of “conscience” upon which the structure of an “authentic self” can be conceived. The structure of “conscience” in Heidegger is based generally on Aristotle’s setting up expectations of how one should act considering the axioms one believes in and has no specific morality in mind other than logical responsibility as the origin point of actions attributed to one. “Authentic” in Heidegger simply means, in the final analysis, you simply know what you are doing in Aristotle’s sense, and still implies no moral value whatsoever. However, the phrase “authentic” taken out of context implies something morally desirable and not simply a pragmatic tool of better clarity. And since people still use it even after Heidegger completely dropped it (at least as a major concept as it is in Sein und Zeit), it should be demonstrated at best it is a trivial and thoroughly confusing distinction, and at worst it is either meaningless or vicious in intent.

Intro

163: In Treatise I.iv.6, entitled “Of Personal Identity”, Hume presents his explanation of why we regard human minds as entities having an identity through time. His explanation depends on his previous account (Treatise I.iv.2) of how we arrive at the idea of identity as a relation, something more than unity, therefore, and yet still less than number or plurality. The idea of identity is the idea of something persisting “invariable and uninterrupted” through a “supposed variation in time.” Since human minds are not invariable or uninterrupted, identity is not an entity with a “perfect” or “strict” identity. A perfect identity is in fact only a bundle of perceptions, “bundled” by their interrelations of resemblance and causation. The actual relation among these perceptions is thus only a “fictitious” or “imperfect” identity. It is only because a series of varying objects related by resemblance and causation itself resembles an invariable and uninterrupted object that we confuse the former with the later and ascribe an “identity” at all.

163/164: Hume accounts for our tendency to think of ourselves as having a continuous identity through time by utilizing essentially the same mental-mechanism of identity-ascription that gives rise to the belief in “continu’d and distinct existences” (THN 202-204, i.e., A TREATISE OF HUMAN NATURE, edited Selby-Bigge, revised Nidditch, Oxford, 1978), thereby confirming the existence of this mechanism while avoiding the need to introduce another one.

164: Hume answers the question of whether memory “produces” personal identity (as Locke held) or only “discovers’ it (as Locke’s critics claimed) with a diplomatic compromise , by noting that while memory discovers resemblances and causal relations (“always”) already existing among perceptions, in doing so it also serves to produce additional resemblances (THN 260-262).

Hume is able to dismiss all “nice and subtle questions” concerning particular instances of personal identity as “grammatical” rather than substantive (THN 262). This dismissal calls into question the determinacy of many of the eschatological questions concerning the justice of divine rewards and punishment that originally motivated philosophical interest in the question of personal identity.

Yet in the Appendix to the Treatise, Hume confesses dissatisfaction with his own previous account:

Meykandar Hume and Heidegger-Replies to Gary-1

Dear Gary

I shall be responding in parts as the questions are quite demanding. So it will take a few days. I hope you can put up with it.

Loga

Meykandar, Hume and Heidegger

Loga-1

The problem of the reality of self has been long debated in India and

as a Final Conclusion (Siddhanta)

(GCM: The reference I looked up only said as much as you say. Could you clarify more precisely or refer to some common text I may have? Also, I am unfamiliar with Meykandar. I assume he is a Kashmiri Saiva Monist

whose main work is Siva Jnana Bodham.)

Loga-2:

No Meykandar is NOT a Kashmiri. He is a Tamil who lived around the 13^th cent in Tamil Nadu , during the times of the Imperial Cholas. Yes are right in saying that Siva Njnana Bodham is his work, ( in Tamil) the only work of Meykandar by the way. It is a brief treatise of only 12 sutras with a  concise commentary of his own  and which is the KaaNdikai Urai type, extreme tight and logical but Hermeneutical Logic , a kind of Logic first expounded in Tolkaappiyam( c.300 BC). His  very famous student is AruNandi who wrote two books - one the Irupa Irupatu and another the massive Sivanja Siddhyar which is divided in two parts, the Parapakkam and Supakkam. The Parapakkam contains the description and deconstruction of all major metaphysical systems in India at that time. I am translating this and posting to my groups. For those who want to follow this the most convenient group to join will be agamicpsychology egroups( English)

There has been many translations of SJB mostly by Christian missionaries. Not satisfied with all that I have given my own translation with commentary. You can read it at :

http://ulagan.tripod.com/bocontent-e.html.

Now I am writing Lessons on this book and you can read the lessons on the first 2 Sutras below:

http://ulagan.tripod.com/Lessonbotham/les-botam-top.htm

This is ongoing . Soon the lessons on Sutras 3 & 4, already written,  will be uploaded. I will also begin work on the remaining sutras ( posted also in agamicpsychology egroups.)

Now another book  that I have  already translated with my commentary is Irupa Irupatu, an unusually short and brilliant book (only 20 verses)  that deals with Ethics. You can read it at:

http://ulagan.tripod.com/irupa-con.htm

I think to understand Saiva Siddhanta as it was developed by Tamils, familiarity with Tirumular’s Tirumantiram will be quite useful. I am also translating verses form this massive book of 3000 verses. Now I am studying his Mantrayana and posting my translations to my groups, including Agamicpsychology

Loga-1

it has been  concluded positively - there is a substantial entity

(GCM: This would mean it is a thing like a rock, that is, it is perceivable, it has specific measurements AND PLACE [it has to be WITHIN the dimensions of your body IN SOME MANNER] which means then it can be divided into parts. This is one of the many criticisms of Hume )

Loga-2:

I don’t understand this view of Hume. Yes to be real it has to be perceived. But does this apply to that which does the perceiving itself? Every act of perception PRESUPPOSES that which perceives, sees etc without itself being as one of those which are seen objectively like the rocks, trees, rivers etc. The seeing self is NOT one of these but that because of which these things become the SEEN.  In every act of seeing, the one who sees, sees himself as the seer. So acts of perception have double signification - there is something that is objectively seen (and which can be measured) and also something reflectively seen  - that it is self that sees. When I see the rock there, it is MY seeing and NOT that of another and this I know in the act of seeing itself.

That which is seen as the seer in every act of seeing cannot be objectified like the trees and rocks and hence measured, placed in time and location etc.

I can stand as the body but I am NOT the body and hence I cannot be located within the body only. Destruction of the body will not count as destruction of self.

Loga-1

that is called 'self' and is different form BEING (God Brahman) etc,

(GCM: Then Brahman cannot be all-inclusive and infinite and omniscient and omnipotent, etc.)

Loga-2

The Brahman of Advaita should not be confused with BEING (Siva) of the Saivites where the Brahman is just one of the showings of BEING. That the anmas are ontologically independent of BEING does not mean BEING is not omniscient, omnipotent etc.  For the primordial state of all anmas (and the world) is one of being in the DARK, covered-up by the Malam, the Darkness, also unconfigured and indestructible. The anmas and the world along with it enjoy PRESENCE, being-there-as-such only because of the GRACE of BEING (Siva). He is Omnipotent for only He can destroy being-there of all by SaGkaaram, of destroying the presence, of letting Malam pervade again. And because of this He is also the POWER that can regenerate everything - re-issue the whole world (punar uRpatti).

BEING-as-Siva is the Most Powerful among all gods because only He can self-destroy and self-recreate and thus something like the Unmoved Mover of Aristotle. There is NO POWER that stands as different and above  that can destroy and regenerate BEING-as-Siva

He stands as all (astamurti) including the selves (avaiyee taanaay) and hence all-inclusive, in the sense of being present everywhere with Power over them. But He can stand as distinct and ABOVE all as well (BEING as Cuttam) for only then He can pull all creatures unto Himself, set the dynamics of spiritual evolution ongoing as a feature of the world, show Himself as the DANCER.

(To continue) 1

Meykandar Hume and Heidegger-Replies to Gary-2

Loga-1

suffers existential repetition and escapes from that historical way of Being-in-the-World by attaining Moksa. I want to make some comments in relation to  the posting below and show that while Hume is way off,

Heidegger comes quite close to Meykandar,

(GCM: Now Heidegger is quite literally saying the self is nothing. On the one hand this gives the 'self' a kind of 'freedom' since no thing can effect nothing, and, on the other hand, intentionality must always fundamentally and simply be "intent" which means directed by futural purpose WHERE THE FUTURE ITSELF IS LITERALLY NOTHING AGAIN which includes every possible trivial and immediate purpose as well as the whole thirst or shape of life in the face of death. Death itself, for both Hume and Heidegger is a very trivial 'event'. It is how it shapes the purpose, thrust, form of one's life that it is important to Heidegger. With Hume it remains trivial because it is simply a necessary accident, does not at all involve one's basic desires because they should be based on substantial realities and not mere abstractions, and is simply the same nothing that Heidegger says the self is.)

Loga-2

Yes there is some truth in saying that the self is nothing and which gives it a kind of freedom. But we should distinguish between Being-on-the-Way -Towards-Moksa and enjoying Moksa itself. The anma remains intentional on the way in its movement towards Moksa but on attaining Moksa it is FREED of all intentionalities and hence EMPTY of intent. Put elliptically the ‘self is NOTHING (Suunyam)’ at this point. There is no future, past and present as there is NO TEMPORALITY. Hence also NO THINKING. As Tirumular and Meykandar say the self is both the sat-self and asat-self (the authentic and inauthentic self?) and at the point of Moksa, it is purely the Sat-Self with all intention-infested asat-self overcome.

Death should not trivialized and made simply an accident as is done by Hume (and also Heidegger?). Death is the deprivation of the body but without blessing the anma with Moksa. The anma still survives as the complex sat-asat-self (sat-asat anma) As long as the self continues to be this kind of self, there will be rebirth for the very purpose of birth is to provide opportunities to LEARN, overcome the asat-self and evolve into the sat-self.

Loga-1

but falls short of the final conclusion because he failed to note Moksa as the Fundamental INTENTIONALITY that provides the motivational dynamics for all actions including the metaphysical.

(GCM: Anticipating the future essentially does that for all entities, not just human. It is fundamentally the experiential and dialectical drive to stay alive, a learning evolution of experience confronting mistakes one has made and the "already always" inadequateness of ANY result. IT IS A FUNDAMENTAL DISATISFACTION WITH THE PRESENT SO ONE ALWAYS

PLACES ONE'S HOPES INTO THE NOTHING OF THE FUTURE WHERE "NO THING" CAN DISILLUSION YOUR HOPES, however irrational they may be. So, essentially, even if one attained "moska" (liberation) or "jivanmukta" (liberation while alive), at BEST you would achieve that primordial point of first and fundamental decision before ANY decision you "always already" went

through as a child before you knew what you were doing, or better what was being done to you, but now you are free from all the influences that made you, literally, what you were, and can make that primordial decision all over again either without, or conscious of, all of your presuppositions. But guess what. That would dissolve ALL intentionality unless you

are a mere robot of the will of Brahman. For Heidegger and Sartre it is both a point that cannot be attained AND ALSO trivial and worthless since it necessarily by its own description and definition erases all value (intentionality). It would be a problem like "Buridan's ass" where a mule is place between two exact amounts of hay and only a very trivial

circumstance will determine which pile it eats from.)

Loga-2

Agreed with most of it. But why say Moksa is unattainable? Both Heidegger and Sartre never contemplated on the Deep Silence (Cutta Moonam) where speech as such is impossible and the only language of communication is Cin Mudra. A Civayogi is one enjoys this Moksa (as jiivan mukta) and he is Dead to the World of intentional machinations (cettiddu iruppar civayoogikaLee). It is NOT trivial for it is enjoying the END towards which the anma was moving in its evolutionary odyssey. It is the most meaningful for it is Being-one-with-BEING and what can be more blissful than that?

Loga-1

Heidegger could not see through DEATH and its metaphysical significance.

(GCM: How do you see through death which cannot even be experience? What does this statement mean? "Metaphysical significance" to Heidegger or to you?)

Loga-2

When we realize our Fundamental Intentionality is enjoying Moksa, and when we realize that because of this we remain temporal, we also understand the presence of DEATH as an empirical event that points ABOVE itself to a state of Being-in-the-world FREE of being entangled with this death-birth bringing machinery. Death implicates a state of Being-in-the-World outside and ABOVE this machinery that makes a self historical and phenomenal. This is the metaphysical significance of Death that as far as I can see no Western philosopher has articulated. Heidegger comes close but misses it.

Loga-1

1.

Moksa is NOT simply a propensity to believe and which is simply a constituent of the  inherited understanding, transmitted by language metaphysical traditions and so forth.  The desire for Moksa lies at the deepest layer of human understanding and transcends language culture traditions and so forth.

 (GCM: this would make it an entity.)

Loga-2:

Yes in a way. In the Indian circles, it would be said a Tatva, a MeyporuL, something that is presence as there in the world even within the anma.

Loga-1

In fact there cannot be these elements without there being as an apriori the pressure for

(GCM: or "from"?)

Loga-1

Moksa as something there with the soul.

(GCM: fully separate from the soul? Is the "soul" the "self" or something separate once again?)

Loga-2: A bit tricky here. Fundamental Intentionality as towards Moksa is part of the motivational dynamics but at the point of enjoying it is no more as such. The Sat-Self is FREE of it. Here perhaps it is more appropriate to talk of transmutation of self so that intentionalities are no more part of its psychodynamics. Hence the intentionalities can be considered as separable.

Loga-1

Language culture religions and various other kinds of cultural expressions are different shapes this pressure for Moksa takes.

(GCM: or gives?)

 Loga-1

In our investigations unless we analyze and go to the depths of Human INTENTIONALITY, we shall never lay bare the Fundamental Intentionality and which is the desire for Moksa and at which point a person becomes a Mumuksu, the one who desires Moksa and nothing else. Punitavati (c. 5th cent) is good example of such person. It is given to ALL of us- whether German or English Tamil or Chinese Black or White Man or Woman - it is already GIVEN as there, but at the deepest layer of Human Understanding.

Our problem is that we are lost on the way

(GCM: That presupposes there is a "way". Human intentionality IS designed to seek "a way" overall other purposes, this is true and natural and inevitable in the very notion of intentionality. But this is simply how the "future" itself is structured. It is what it is and that is all. It is a way an animal survives and keeps on going and evolves or adapts from situation to situation. And each individual's "way" is absolutely (to the point of incommunicability) UNIQUE, "one's own". Both Heidegger and Hume would agree on this. It is based on predetermined "character" or "culture" [experienced uniquely by oneself which is the only way you can experience anything] or "common sense" or "understanding" or, what includes it all, language that LIVES only within yourself which, when you speak it to others, causes misunderstanding because of mismatched meanings as has already happened several times in this very missive. There are only individuals -- or there is nothing but a puppet show, and who would then be the malignant puppeteer? And within the so-called "unique" individual there are other individuals, other selves (language games for various situations), your organs, your natural dispositions usually called "instincts" and much, much more ad infinitum, much of which has not been noticed. The 'unique' individual is a SWARM composed of SWARMS that are in turn composed of other SWARMS, etc. "Intentionality" as such in literal reality is a political compromise between all of these contending entities.)

Loga-2

The notion of language games of Wittgenstein is only a partial understanding of the NOTION of Play of BEING in Saivism, BEING the Cosmic Dancer, a metaphor that has survived from the Sumerian times among the Saivites. Every thing is there is the world because of the PLAY of Siva and in which also plays the MISLEADING games, the Maaya Nannaadan. Yes there is the WAY, the TiruneRi of Sambantar, the Sanmaarkkam of Tirumular and which means the WAY towards Authentic Metaphysical Illumination and which can be equated with the Aletheia of the Greeks. There various ‘conflicts of interpretations (Ricouver) are there for us to reflect and UNDERSTAND that there is the WAY, the WAY towards Njaanam, the Supreme Inner Radiance etc.

Loga-1

 and remain fixated to the imagined [we have] inherited.

(GCM: Now THAT I can fully agree on. That is exactly what language is, essentially what the so-called 'self' really is, and how it operates: It fixates us. Thank you.)

Loga-2: Thank-you but what you say about the self pertains to the sat-self, that which fixates imprisons etc and which has to be DESTROYED in order to FREE the authentic sat-self already within the self.

"K. Loganathan" <ulagankmy@yahoo.com>

Fri, 16 Apr 2004 18:59:21 -0700 (PDT)

[Abhinavagupta] Re: Meykandar, Hume and Heidegger: replies to Gary-1

Dear Gary

I shall be responding in parts as the questions are quite demanding. So it will take a few days. I hope you can put up with it.

Loga

Meykandar, Hume and Heidegger

Loga-1

it has been concluded positively - there is a substantial entity
(GCM: This would mean it is a thing like a rock, that is, it is perceivable, it has specific measurements AND PLACE [it has to be WITHIN the dimensions of your body IN SOME MANNER] which means then it can be divided into parts. This is one of the many criticisms of Hume )

Loga-2:

I don’t understand this view of Hume. Yes to be real it has to be perceived. But does this apply to that which does the perceiving itself? Every act of perception PRESUPPOSES that which perceives, sees etc without itself being as one of those which are seen objectively like the rocks, trees, rivers etc. The seeing self is NOT one of these but that because of which these things become the SEEN. In every act of seeing, the one who sees, sees himself as the seer. So acts of perception have double signification - there is something that is objectively seen (and which can be measured) and also something reflectively seen - that it is self that sees. When I see the rock there, it is MY seeing and NOT that of another and this I know in the act of seeing itself.

That which is seen as the seer in every act of seeing cannot be objectified like the trees and rocks and hence measured, placed in time and location etc.

I can stand as the body but I am NOT the body and hence I cannot be located within the body only. Destruction of the body will not count as destruction of self.

GCM2: “Perception exists.” There can be no disagreement on that. It is precisely “presupposition” as “reality” that self-contradicts itself. If a “presupposition” is real, then any whimsy can be real. That one needs it or has great use for it or that it makes thinking as one has grown use to it extremely inconvenient does not make it true. Hume states he needs presuppositions by which to act and speak with others in ordinary life. But this is useful thinking, “common sense”, what one inherits in language through “tradition” or “understanding.” It has no logical basis in itself. It is PURELY inductive, and not at all deductive EXCEPT for INTERNAL consistency. In other words, you cannot stand outside your “tradition’, your purely pragmatic “presuppositions”, and ‘objectively, detached, judge it because the “world” you live in and which gives you the stance by which to judge is primordially created by that tradition. It is inclusive of you and you are always included so that any real “objective” view of it is purely from WITHIN, USING ONLY ITS TERMS AND CONCEPTS TO JUDGE ITSELF, so that if a judgment is made, it is only a judgment as to self-consistency and never objective validity.

The only stance of “objective validity” is logic. Logic has no means of judging experience, of discerning whether it is separate from you or somehow created by you. If this doubt is taken seriously as an ACT of judgment, it is solipsism. But you can already see that stance is self-contradictory because if all that is real is only you, why are you making a judgment in language that is solely grounded on the existence of other people that that all that is real is only you? I would be telling you, “You don’t exist!” which necessarily presupposes you exist.

Now, if there is no self there can be no perceiver. They are synonymous. How can you prove a perceiver exists? That would mean, once again, standing outside ‘your self’, that is, your situation which is itself perception. There is no need to even speak of a perceiver. “Perception” as literally experienced includes all objectivity and all subjectivity. All of that is ‘perceived’ in some way. But just as literal perception as perceived HAS NO BOUNDARY, that is, “I see this but I do not see that” becomes a logical contradiction because in the context of perception you only perceive and you cannot NOT PERCEIVE. There can be no place you can designate except in mere words that you do not perceive, because if you designate it you must see it. This is how I understand, for instance, Shankara’s identity of ‘self’ and Atman, that there never was a real distinction in the first place, that you “always already” were Atman or Brahman, that is you never did have self or identity except as illusion, and that all that is perceived is literally ‘yours’ in that you are it and it is you. We make distinctions of perceiver and perceived for purely practical reasons, common sense reasons, business reasons, useful reasons, but those distinctions are not strictly logical.

Loga-3

Here emerges the distinction between Hermeneutic Logic and the linear Deductive Logic (with induction as well) of the West or at least that which Hume presupposes. The Logic announced in Tolkaappiyam (but misunderstood by the Naiyayikas and hence the Buddhists and Jainas) is Hermeneutic Logic and which is recovered in Meykandar in the body of SJB. In Hermeneutic Logic there is no deducing proving demonstrating and so forth but only of CLARIFYING for one self and for others (tan poruddu anumaanam , piRar poruddu anumaanam) so that AGREEMENT is possible among different individuals. It is circular in way but more helical for the proposition (pratiknja) is RECOVERED as the truth (Nigamana) i.e. as something agreed upon between the interlocutors.

Here the notion of TEXT along with DUALITY of Structure, the Deep Structure (DS) and Surface Structure (SS) are important. The SS is the commonly perceivable, the DS is that which is the DEPTHS of SS, serves as Agentive Cause and which has to be wrested out from the depths and appropriated as part of consciousness by way of understanding the object. A common analogy given in the Indian texts for this Anumana - going from the explicitly given to the HIDDEN (maRaipoRuL) is that of the smoke in the hill and from which one concludes the presence of the FIRE there but invisible to the eyes.

In the act seeing, the seer is given already as the one who sees. Now from this primordial act of seeing there is a generation of a TEXT with a duality of structure - the DS and SS. The ‘rock’ is seen in the seeing of a person and such seeing of the same rock may differ from individual to individual. We may institute MEASUREMENTS so that over and above the differences in the individual seeing, there can be a sameness for e.g., the density size porosity and so forth. In such cases the primordial act of seeing is re-constituted as the positively objective seeing - the sensorial seeing and nothing else and hence as that which allows measurements. This is the kind of seeing on which Hume (and the bulk of Western philosophers) remain fixated. This kind of positive objective seeing FIXATES the seeing to the ROCK in itself making the person forgetful of the seer of the seeing. Of course this has the advantage of disclosing what the rock is from within itself, free of the emotional aesthetic and such other subjective correlates of the seer.

The disadvantage of course is the cutting of the self as the seer and hence a blindness towards the self-constitution of self as the objective seer devoid of emotions aesthetics and such intention related aspects that he brings along with in every act of seeing. The deductive inductive logic and so forth is a product of such self-constitution but without an awareness of such a self transformation.

In contrast to this Hermeneutic Logic avoids this blindness by taking everything seen as a TEXT in a way - something written (or read) by the seer and retaining the seer as part of the what is seen. The SS of the rock seen, and as seen by a person is a reading of that person and one can go into the DS by a process of logical thinking called Anumana and UNDERSTAND better the SS so that our UNDERSTANDING is improved upon- we LEARN more about it and has a better understanding of it.

But the attention can shift also to the seer the producer of a text as such and such and why different individuals generate different texts of the SAME ROCK (i.e. read differently and write differently). With such a turn to reflective thinking, the seer, the self that does the seeing becomes the TEXT again with a DUALITY of structure DS and SS. Here the SS is the intentional self, the Asat-Self and DS is the Sat-Self, a distinction that Sankara (or for that matter all Indian idealists) never understood. Now as a second order and genuinely metaphysical reflections when the Sat-Self itself is appropriated as a TEXT only then we can understand the presence of BEING as the DS of this Sat-Self, BEING as the Cosmic Dancer and who dances even deep within.

Meykandar , Hume and Heidegger: Replies to Gary-4

Loga-1

The pacu that is called 'self' and is different form BEING (God Brahman) etc,

(GCM: Then Brahman cannot be all-inclusive and infinite and omniscient and omnipotent, etc.)

Loga-2

The Brahman of Advaita should not be confused with BEING (Siva) of the Saivites where the Brahman is just one of the showings of BEING. That the anmas are ontologically independent of BEING does not mean BEING is not omniscient, omnipotent etc. For the primordial state of all anmas (and the world) is one of being in the DARK, covered-up by the Malam, the Darkness, also unconfigured and indestructible. The anmas and the world along with it enjoy PRESENCE, being-there-as-such only because of the GRACE of BEING (Siva). He is Omnipotent for only He can destroy being-there of all by SaGkaaram, of destroying the presence, of letting Malam pervade again. And because of this He is also the POWER that can regenerate everything - re-issue the whole world (punar uRpatti).

GCM2: If Siva can act, then he HAS TO BE finite because any action whatsoever is from one thing to another, and only “things”, finite identities, can act. For Siva to “destroy being-there” or “of letting Malam pervade again”, he has to be a finite being, and if finite, mortal.

LOGA2: BEING-as-Siva is the Most Powerful among all gods because only He can self-destroy and self-recreate and thus something like the Unmoved Mover of Aristotle.

GCM2: The “unmoved mover” of Aristotle is a matter of physics, as mentioned in the PHYSICS (Bk VIII), and the description in the METAPHYSICS, Bk XII, 7 refers the unmoved mover in Empedoclean language (“Thus it produces motion by being loved . . .” 1072b4) to a purely cosmological, i.e., physics again, context.

LOGA2: There is NO POWER that stands as different and above that can destroy and regenerate BEING-as-Siva

He stands as all (astamurti) including the selves (avaiyee taanaay) and hence all-inclusive, in the sense of being present everywhere with Power over them. But He can stand as distinct and ABOVE all as well (BEING as Cutta Cattan) for only then He can pull all creatures unto Himself, set the dynamics of spiritual evolution ongoing as a feature of the world, show Himself as the DANCER.

GCM2: If Siva stands “distinct” and “above”, he is again finite because distinctness gives him boundaries and “above” gives him position. If you are speaking metaphorically about something you cannot speak about, then you are saying nothing factually at all.

But, as art, I have always loved “Siva the Destroyer Dancing on the Deamon of Time (?)”.

Loga 3:

Thank-you for correcting me about Aristotle. However I am not sure whether the root meaning of Gk ‘physis’ is physical though this is how the Western philosophers have interpreted the meaning. The word may be a borrowing form Sumerian and related to Tamil puu, buu i.e., to blossom, emerge, be present. It occurs as the prefix in Sumerian verbs “bi, bi-a> ba, baa” where in Ta. baa has the meaning of ‘to give’. So it could be that ‘physis’ originally meant ‘that which has emerged, stands as present, as given’ etc. The semantic transmuting of this original into physical is also available in Tamil: puutam, the basic physical elements of Fire Earth Wind Space and Water, and buumi: the earth.

Anyway I do not want to get involved with philology here. If the original meaning of Aristotle is what you attribute, then I will say that Saivism has a notion of BEING somewhat akin to Aristotle but not entirely.

Now about Siva “acting’ as is available in the notion of Pancjakrittiyan and hence being finite etc. This question has been debated for centuries among the Tamil philosophers and let me just mention the essentials.

BEING-in-Itself (coruubam) is different form BEING-as-for-Others (the tadattam). The notion of 'finite' is applicable only to BEING-as-For-Others and which are the ways in which BEING presents Himself for the good of the creatures. These are the avatars and are finite and hence also mortal. This is reason why the Saivites have been saying that VishNu Brahma and so forth are mortal, while Siva as BEIG is NOT. Now within the avatars we must also distinguish between the Siva Muurttams and others like VishNu avatars and so forth. In Siva muurttams what we have is Siva disclosing Himself and which they’re indicating that Siva is Lord of Pancjakrittiyan and hence the destruction of the Transcendental Concealment of Himself, the Tirotakam the root cause of Human temporality. Thus while the Siva Muurttams, the presentational forms of Siva DESTROY self-concealment, the avatars do not, they in a way perpetuate the concealment and because of which it is said Siva is beyond the VishNu and Brahma and hence also their worshipper.

Now even the Siva Muurttams may be finite for another can displace one and so forth. But in each such self-destruction of Siva Muurttams there is destruction of the concealment so that the individuals LEARN more and more of BEING-in-Itself as three will be less and less of concealment. In the limiting case of absolutely no concealment of Tirotakam there will be absolute translucency and which enjoying Moksa.

Now all these activities of BEING, bringing into PRESENCE the whole of cosmos, presenting Himself as Avatars that in illuminating about the world but does not destroy the Transcendental Concealment, presenting Himself as Siva Muurttams that destroy this concealment are in fact the PLAY of BEING or the DANCE.

Now the concept of PLAY is different from that of ACTING. There is no acting without INTENTION and hence any who acts being intentional is also in temporality, in TIME and hence mortal. The concept of PLAY communicates activity but NOT intentional activities. The Play of BEING is a spontaneous expression of LOVE and this meaning of BEING as the Dancer, the Ambala Kuuttan, the Adavallaan who keeps with His dance, the Muyalakan, the dwarfish deamon under control. This Muyalakan is actually mayal-kan, the FORCES of Ignorance that are always there and which can bounce upon the anmas at any time. It is the DANCE of BEING that keeps this Muyalakan under control.

Now being present in the vision of this DANCE is being in realms of LIGHT, the Cit-ambaram and which may the same as the Aletheia of the Greeks.

Please continue loving Siva, the Dancer. Foe reasons unknown to myself I have drawn this Dancer even as youth. Now I believe the understand the reason. I cannot be saying the kinds of metaphysical things I am saying if not for this worship.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Meykandar, Hume and Heidegger-Replies to Gary-2

----- Original Message -----

From: K. Loganathan

To: akandabaratam@egroups.com ; meykandar@egroups.com ; agamicpsychology@egroups.com ; ontologicalethics@yahoogroups.com ; abhinavagupta@egroups.com

Sent: Saturday, April 17, 2004 9:05 PM

Subject: [ontologicalethics] Meykandar Hume and Heidegger-Reply to Gary-2

Loga-1

suffers existential repetition and escapes from that historical way of Being-in-the-World by attaining Moksa. I want to make some comments in relation to the posting below and show that while Hume is way off,
Heidegger comes quite close to Meykandar,

(GCM: Now Heidegger is quite literally saying the self is nothing. On the one hand this gives the 'self' a kind of 'freedom' since no thing can effect nothing, and, on the other hand, intentionality must always fundamentally and simply be "intent" which means directed by futural purpose WHERE THE FUTURE ITSELF IS LITERALLY NOTHING AGAIN which includes every possible trivial and immediate purpose as well as the whole thirst or shape of life in the face of death. Death itself, for both Hume and Heidegger is a very trivial 'event'. It is how it shapes the purpose, thrust, form of one's life that it is important to Heidegger. With Hume it remains trivial because it is simply a necessary accident, does not at all involve one's basic desires because they should be based on substantial realities and not mere abstractions, and is simply the same nothing that Heidegger says the self is.)

Loga-2

Yes there is some truth in saying that the self is nothing and which gives it a kind of freedom. But we should distinguish between Being-on-the-Way -Towards-Moksa and enjoying Moksa itself. The anma remains intentional on the way in its movement towards Moksa but on attaining Moksa it is FREED of all intentionalities and hence EMPTY of intent. Put elliptically the ‘self is NOTHING (Suunyam)’ at this point. There is no future, past and present as there is NO TEMPORALITY. Hence also NO THINKING. As Tirumular and Meykandar say the self is both the sat-self and asat-self (the authentic and inauthentic self?) and at the point of Moksa, it is purely the Sat-Self with all intention-infested asat-self overcome.

Death should not trivialized and made simply an accident as is done by Hume (and also Heidegger?).

GCM2: Heidegger recognizes death as accident which is trivial to him. What he is interested in is death as the termination of the story of your life as you are forming it, that is, Are you living as you honestly want to live? Or are you just following the 'They-self' and doing what tradition tells you? Tradition, though highly valued in Heidegger -- even too highly valued -- is definitely subordinate to the story-formation or "projection" of the so-called "authentic self". But remember, Heidegger says "authenticity" HAS NO MORAL CONNOTATION WHATSOEVER! It is what you want, alone, without ANY gods or God. Heidegger is trying to separate 'I' from "world" and divinity has a clearly subordinate place in that unavoidable cognitive schematic as Laurence Paul Hemming has demonstrated with Descartes and Heidegger. So essentially what Heidegger does is ignore death as a mere accident -- however, Hume demonstrates that the contingency of death makes man as trivial as an oyster in the universe because it is a "brute fact" that overpowers us utterly -- and then translates "accident" into "arbitrariness" when Dasein, all alone in the face of death which utterly erases any importance of or any help others can give (and this includes God), makes the decision how to procede or not procede. There is nothing whatsoever to determine Dasein's decision UNLESS Dasein chooses to let it do so.

Loga-2: Death is the deprivation of the body but without blessing the anma with Moksa. The anma still survives as the complex sat-asat-self (sat-asat anma) As long as the self continues to be this kind of self, there will be rebirth for the very purpose of birth is to provide opportunities to LEARN, overcome the asat-self and evolve into the sat-self.

GCM2: How can you “learn” if you do not clearly and precisely remember your past lives?

Loga-1

but falls short of the final conclusion because he failed to note Moksa as the Fundamental INTENTIONALITY that provides the motivational dynamics for all actions including the metaphysical.

(GCM: Anticipating the future essentially does that for all entities, not just human. It is fundamentally the experiential and dialectical drive to stay alive, a learning evolution of experience confronting mistakes one has made and the "already always" inadequateness of ANY result. IT IS A FUNDAMENTAL DISATISFACTION WITH THE PRESENT SO ONE ALWAYS
PLACES ONE'S HOPES INTO THE NOTHING OF THE FUTURE WHERE "NO THING" CAN DISILLUSION YOUR HOPES, however irrational they may be. So, essentially, even if one attained "moska" (liberation) or "jivanmukta" (liberation while alive), at BEST you would achieve that primordial point of first and fundamental decision before ANY decision you "always already" went through as a child before you knew what you were doing, or better what was being done to you, but now you are free from all the influences that made you, literally, what you were, and can make that primordial decision all over again either without, or conscious of, all of your presuppositions. But guess what. That would dissolve ALL intentionality unless you are a mere robot of the will of Brahman. For Heidegger and Sartre it is both a point that cannot be attained AND ALSO trivial and worthless since it necessarily by its own description and definition erases all value (intentionality). It would be a problem like "Buridan's ass" where a mule is place between two exact amounts of hay and only a very trivial
circumstance will determine which pile it eats from.)

Loga-2

Agreed with most of it. But why say Moksa is unattainable? Both Heidegger and Sartre never contemplated on the Deep Silence (Cutta Moonam) where speech as such is impossible and the only language of communication is Cin Mudra.

GCM2: I think Sartre necessarily assumed that point of silence ( and that one can make a decision in such “silence”, see my recent analysis of Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, Book II, chapter 19) and did not say anything. But I feel uneasy as if he did. Heidegger certainly did although he called it “profound boredom” in THE FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS OF METAPHYSICS: World, Finitude, Solitude (Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik. Welt—Endlichkeit—Einsamkeit), trans. McNeil & Walker, Indiana U. P., 1995, chapters 4 & 5, pages 132-168. He speaks of it like “All is vanity” from ECCLESIASTES, meaning quite literally all and everything whatsoever is “useless” including words, emotions, perception, absolutely everything, the whole of the universe including the gods (who cannot speak, see page 238).

“We are now no longer speaking of ourselves being bored with . . . (GCM: noticing objects, ANY OBJECT, at all) but are saying: It is boring for one. It—for one—not for me as me, not for you as you, not for us as us, but for one. Name, standing, vocation, role, age, and fate as mine and yours disappear. To put it more clearly, precisely this ‘it is boring for one’ makes all these things disappear. What remains? A universal ego in general? Not by any means. For this ‘it is boring for one’ this boredom, does not comprise some abstraction or generalization in which a universal concept ‘I in general’ would be thought. Rather it is boring. This is what is decisive: that here we become an undifferentiated no one (my italics) . . . Now, in this ‘it is boring for one’, we no longer even attain this evasion in the face of boredom. Passing the time is missing in this boredom . . . To no longer permit any passing the time means to let this boredom be overpowering. This entails already understanding this boredom in its overpowering nature . . . We now have a being compelled to listen (GCM: neither speaking nor thinking, just waiting) . . . The ‘it is boring for one’ has already transposed us into a realm of power over which the individual person, the public individual subject (GCM: language altogether), no longer has any power . . . being left empty as Dasein’s being delivered over to beings’ telling refusal of themselves as a whole . . . But what emptiness is this, when we are not explicitly seeking any particular fulfillment and do not leave even our own self behind in this being left empty? . . . We want nothing from the particular beings in the contingent situation as these very beings (GCM: this means ALL particularity including gods and self opposite God) . . . We want nothing is already due to the boredom . . . We are not merely relieved of our everyday personality . . . but simultaneously also elevated beyond the particular situation . . . and beyond the specific beings surrounding us there . . . It makes everything of equally great and equally little worth . . . It takes us back to the point where all and everything appears indifferent to us . . . This indifference of things and of ourselves with them is the result of each and everything at once becoming indifferent . . . All of a sudden everything is enveloped and embraced by this indifference. Beings have become indifferent as a whole, and we ourselves . . . are not excepted . . . Beings as a whole . . . show themselves precisely as such in their indifference (GCM: this is exactly how Aristotle’s ‘perfect induction’ of the perception of the universal “understanding as a whole is related to its object as a whole” would necessarily perform [100b16-17]) . . . Being left empty is here no longer the absence of a particular satisfaction through being occupied with something—we do not seek such a thing at all . . . All beings stand in a strange indifference all at once . . . If we ourselves belong to these things that have become indifferent, then it is surely a matter of indifference whether we are satisfied or left empty (my italics) . . . Being left empty [therefore can no longer be] some claim to being fulfilled, where the necessity of a fullness exists; it is not the indifference of emptiness . . . Even this being left empty, is indifferent, i.e., impossible (my italics) . . . This determinacy of Dasein is not the petty I-ness that is familiar to us . . . In this boredom the beings that surround us offer us no further possibility of acting and no further possibility of our doing anything . . . We find ourselves—as Dasein—left entirely in the lurch . . . And yet this ‘it is boring for one’ does not have the character of despair . . . Without an essential transformation . . . into another attunement, this profound boredom never leads to despair . . . Beings’ telling refusal of themselves as a whole . . . is a making manifest of . . . the very possibilities of doing and acting . . The telling refusal . . . points to them and makes them known in refusing them . . . This telling refusal on the part of beings as a whole merely indicates indeterminately the possibilities of Dasein, of its doing and acting indirectly and in general . . . In all interpretation of what is essential in every field and area of Dasein, there comes the point at which all knowledge and in particular all learned wisdom is of no further assistance. (pages 135-142)

This being “left in the lurch” is the extremity of being human wherein Heidegger says that in a Moment of Vision [Augenblick] the whole situation is revealed to us . . . but nothing more. We may act but just as in the Jivanmukta of Shankara it is an utter matter of indifference which means indifference to good and evil, a problem others have noticed that Shankara never really addresses. In other words, the descent from ‘it is boring to one’ through the Moment of Vision becomes, at least to some extent and most often to the whole extent, disastrous once we become attuned again to everyday affairs. It is the Moment of nothingness wherein the samurai warrior slaughters everyone in sight [beserker] as he (or “she” like Uma Thurman) are swept up in their Moment of Vision that they are the sword. What the Moment of Vision motivates out of the infinite range of possibilities is, as Sartre said, completely arbitrary. Hume had such a “Moment of Vision” at the end of Book I of the TREATISE ON HUMAN NATURE which he deliberately trivialized by going to have a drink with his friends and playing billiards. When he came back, the results of his “Moment of Vision” seemed like trash. Within the “Moment of Vision” there is no standard of judgment. When you have a standard of judgment, the “Moment of Vision” means absolutely nothing.

To make a long story short, I think this makes everything you say problematic just as it makes it problematic for Heidegger and resolves to this:

Loga-1

and remain fixated to the imagined [we have] inherited.

(GCM: Now THAT I can fully agree on. That is exactly what language is, essentially what the so-called 'self' really is, and how it operates: It fixates us. Thank you.)

Loga-2: Thank-you but what you say about the self pertains to the asat-self, that which fixates imprisons etc and which has to be DESTROYED in order to FREE the authentic sat-self already within the self.

GCM2: When the fixated self is destroyed, one is in the position of ‘it is boring for one’ because all the “enjoyment” you mention that becomes one of the things in their telling refusal as a whole of all meaning and desire. Without ‘things’, nothing is desired.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Meykandar Hume and Heidegger: Replies Gary- 5

Loga-2

Agreed with most of it. But why say Moksa is unattainable? Both Heidegger and Sartre never contemplated on the Deep Silence (Cutta Moonam) where speech as such is impossible and the only language of communication is Cin Mudra.

To make a long story short, I think this makes everything you say problematic just as it makes it problematic for Heidegger and resolves to this:

Loga-3

Here I must mention a fundamental difference between the Philosophical Hermeneutics of Heidegger (and Gadamer) and the Pedagogic Hermeneutics of Tolkaappiyar Tirumular Meykandar and so forth. The notion of boredom resembles the notion of visuvakrasam in the Indian circles- disinterest in the worldly, emptiness in MEANING that sustains the normal existence. But this is an intermediate stage, a preliminary stage subsequent to which an anma enjoys Moksa and which will not be boring at all, but that which breeds Bliss Supreme and hence the most profound Santhi.

The world moves in terms of Pedagogic Hermeneutics where there is SHOWING by BEING and SEEING as shown by the anma and hence LEARNING (including the creatures, anything sentient). This was captured by Appar (7th cent AD) ‘kaaNpaar yaar kol kaaNutaL kaaddaakkaalee” (who can see anything ever if NOT shown as such by BEING, the Third Eyed). MeykaNdar repeats : (anma) kaaddu odungkak kaaNaatu: the anmas will cease to see anything and hence learn when the showing by BEING is withdrawn. And to the question how many ways there are in this showing, Sambantar says: aadpaalavarukku aruLum vaNNamum aatiyin maaNbum keedpaan pukil aLavillai, kiLakka VeeNdaa (The ways BEING blesses the deserving and the Powers BEING enjoys are uncountable and therefore it is quite useless to investigate their number- i.e. BEING is always creative and hence un-predictable)

BEING shows and the anmas see and in seeing exactly as shown they LEARN a truth and enjoy a truth-experience (a MeyyuNarvu) Each such TRUTH-EXPERIENCE is destructive of IGNORANCE (and hence not boring) However what will happen when there is NO MORE ignorance and hence no more the need to LEARN? It is here a profound boredom; meaninglessness sets in and constitutes the Visuvakrasam. This is the Cattu Etir Suunyam of Meykandar- when there is NOTHING as the Other in understanding.

This is like the boredom a book already well read and fully understood creates in the mind of person. When the book is totally TRANSLUCENT, it ceases to INTEREST one - no mystery, no challenge, no hiddeness, no concealment that would arouse the will to destroy it etc. When Existence as whole is TRANSLUCENT, fully understood and hence NO IGNORANCE about it, it ceases to INTEREST anymore and hence a profound boredom sets in. Tirumular says that Sivayogis, those who have reached this stage, remain DEAD to the world (cettiddu iruppar Sivayoogiyar).

But now and as the GRACE of BEING, there is a final transportation to a realm of Brilliant Light where there is NO MORE showing and seeing as shown and hence LEARNING as such. The anma at this point becomes the Sat-Self, that which can see only the ABSOLUTE as it sees outside the Showing-Seeing pedagogic dialetics. The Sat-Self is allowed to coincide in Being-in-the-World with BEING and by BEING. Such a Sat-Self SEES exactly as SIVA and hence does not remain ALIEN to BEING (Meykandar: anniyam inmai). The Sat-Self in SEEING the SAME as Siva, enjoys the Supreme Bliss for in this seeing it sees the ABSOLUTENESS, the FINALITY, the NOTHING BEYOND-NESS and hence the profound Santhi.

This is where the Advaita of Meykandar, called Sudhadvaita, differs from the Sankara. There is no Sat-Self in the Advaita of Sankara- it is mistakenly taken as BRAHMAN and the inquiry stops there short of Moksa. The self as Sat-Self enjoys the SAMENESS of UNDERSTANDING (Njaanam) as BEING and in this there is no difference. But BEING is BEING and the anma remains the anma and as the dependent on BEING (meykandar: tazumbu) even here for this SAMENESS of NON-ALIEN-NESS holds the possibility of being withdrawn by BEING. The anma enjoys it only as long as BEING continues to bless it.

The long evolutionary existential struggles come to a close with an AWARENESS of this CLOSURE and which breeds the Supreme Santhi, killing every boredom. Of course at this point there is nothing problematic as there is no ignorance, mystery, concealment and so forth. The anma one could say is the Realm of ER of Plato, or alatheia of the Greeks.

From: GaryMoore <gottlos752004@y...>

Date: TueApr20,2004 4:18 pm

Subject: Re: [ontologicalethics] Meykandar Hume and Heidegger-Replies to Gary-3

Meykandar Hume and Heidegger-Replies to Gary-6

( My additional comments under Loga-4)

Loga-3: Here emerges the distinction between Hermeneutic Logic and the linear Deductive Logic (with induction as well) of the West or at least that which Hume presupposes. The Logic announced in Tolkaappiyam (but misunderstood by the Naiyayikas and hence the Buddhists and Jainas) is Hermeneutic Logic and which is recovered in Meykandar in the body of SJB. In Hermeneutic Logic there is no deducing proving demonstrating and so forth but only of CLARIFYING for one self and for others (tan poruddu anumaanam , piRar poruddu anumaanam) so that AGREEMENT is possible among different individuals. It is circular in way but more helical for the proposition (pratiknja) is RECOVERED as the truth (Nigamana) i.e. as something agreed upon between the interlocutors.?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

GCM3: But hermeneutic logic is deliberately and explicitly based upon presuppositions. Both Heidegger and Gadamer have said a great deal about this. That it is a necessary logic I agree, and I have actually referred to it a number of times when I wrote about the logic confined to only judging INTERNAL CONSISTENCY within a tradition. It is the logic one uses to understand the world one is thrown into. The presuppositions thereof are given or forced upon you whether you understand them or not. It applies to such questions as “What does ‘God’ mean?” or “What does Aeschylus men when he says ‘Suffering educates’?” It applies to studying an ancient text in modern times when one puts one’s modern presuppositions in brackets while one tries to understand the presuppositions of the author or sculptor or painter. Andre Malraux in METAMORPHOSIS OF THE GODS takes as a common thesis in all art, “the museum without walls” that he says came to be in the 19^th century, wants to put something about their creation outside time, into immortality which is precisely and literally timeless so it does not accord with the normal Western notion of immortality of the soul. But “what” the artist wants to put into immortality differs radically from culture to culture. The ancient Egyptian sculptor of Zoser wants to put the memory of the person Zoser permanently into this static immortality, and the style itself is static. Vermeer may want to put his daughter into immortality or the specific livingness of a particular action of hers, but this implies a livingness in immortal stasis. This is hermeneutics.

Hermeneutics necessarily starts from presuppositions that are not judged as to their strict logical truthfulness or fitting accord with immediate everyday reality. In other words, whether they are fictional or fact is something hermeneutic logic cannot account for. Heidegger and Gadamer show this specifically with the writing of history as well as David Hume, although this is not as well known. But Hume actually had to put his hermeneutic logic to hard labor and had to solve constant contradictions between accounts to arrived at a COMPROMISE ‘like’ truth. That is what hermeneutics is all about, reaching a compromise between conflicting elements that have an approximate claim to truth but never to truth itself. “Truth itself” has no grand aspect superficially, at least in the 21^st century, rather it is incredibly trivial usually to the hermenutist. Real truth is considered now a decent to the building blocks we supposedly “always already” understand, sense impressions, imagination, memory, emotion. There is nothing inspiring to great heights of divine revelation in that. But that is the only possible ground divine revelation can rest on – if it can. Hermeneutics can only apply to objects, objects created from sense impressions by the imagination and memory.

Loga-4:

Is truth a compromise of a kind that has only an approximate claim to truth but never to TRUTH itself?

This is NOT the view of truth in the Pedagogic Hermeneutics of the Dravidian folks and which comes along with Hermeneutic Logic and which is a very inclusive expression of rationality. Recall that the Pedagogic Hermeneutics moves with the understanding that there is seeing only because there is a prior SHOWING. The notion of truth-experience is lodged here and we can see that an experience would emerge as truth-experience (MeyyuNarvu) only when the seeing matches the showing, the person sees exactly as shown. When this happens then we are led to feel that the experience we are enjoying is a TRUTH-EXPERIENCE and NOT deviant, confused, uncertain, defective, distorted, prejudiced etc. Thus among the experiences the truth-experiences stand out as those which are in AGREEMENT with a prior showing that in fact configures the seeing. This will also mean that at the point of such experiences the person is in agreement with BEING, He that shows and thus PLAYS the anma.

This is not difficult to understand if we take the pedagogic situation. When a teacher teaches and the student taught grasps EXACTLY as taught or shown by the teacher, then the student is in AGREEMENT with the teacher and the teacher acknowledges this agreement in going to the next step. Having ensured that the student had SEEN exactly how he had shown, there is annihilation of the ongoing and the initiation of the next ( episodization, the antam-aati of Meykandar), or the novel. What underlies the truth-experience is Intentional Fusion, the student seeing exactly what the teacher intends and acting in accordance with that.

In our existence this is what we do within the hermeneutic dimensions of Existence. Also we must note that this way of understanding world process is NOT the same as the Philosophical Hermeneutics of Heidegger and Gadamer where there is nothing as Absolute, the Final etc. There is only endless fusion of horizons, effectivity of History and because of which tradition becomes highlighted. They cannot think of a tradition that de-traditionalizes an individual and make him FREE and PURE - absolutely FREE of any traditions and historicality. Gadamer remained within the linguisticality of understanding and never contemplated (as far as I know) understanding FREE of language i.e. the truth-experince of the Deep Silence where Speech itself is uprooted.

To understand this we must distinguish between Asat-Truth and Sat-Truth. Any truth-experience within time, within TEMPORALITY or Intentional Time is Asat-Truth for it always holds the possibility of being DISPLACED and installed with another that may be a refinement of the earlier. We can compare this to the visions one has when one climbs up towards the peak of a hill. Each step provides a vision but which becomes transformed and reconstituted on moving higher. But on reaching the PEAK, such possibilities are NO MORE. The vision at the peak shows from within itself that there is NOTHING BEYOND, that the peak vision provides a CLOSURE (antam) for the movement.

The Asat-Truths are truth-experiences, which while pointing out truths of the world also show that they are NOT the final, they can be displaced reconstituted, reformed and so forth. Such movements within the truth-experiences also show that in the hermeneutics of understanding one is being taken towards the PEAK and which is the Sat-Truth. This Sat-Truth unlike the Asat-Truths, is absolute, indisplaceable, cannot be transcended and reconstituted etc. It is Nittyam (always) Sattiyam (Real) and it shows all these from within itself.

The anma on reaching this Sat-Truth enjoys Njaanam, the Absolute Illumination that shows from within that there is NO understanding beyond it. The long hermeneutic processes come to an end and in enjoying this Njaanam, the anma also enjoys Moksa, being-one-with-BEING with a qualitative sameness.

Loga-3: Here the notion of TEXT along with DUALITY of Structure, the Deep Structure (DS) and Surface Structure (SS) are important. The SS is the commonly perceivable, the DS is that which is the DEPTHS of SS, serves as Agentive Cause and which has to be wrested out from the depths and appropriated as part of consciousness by way of understanding the object. A common analogy given in the Indian texts for this Anumana - going from the explicitly given to the HIDDEN (maRaipoRuL) is that of the smoke in the hill and from which one concludes the presence of the FIRE there but invisible to the eyes.

GCM3: Abhinavagupta, in the third and last stage of his life when he wrote about aesthetics, came to the conclusion, that the santa rasa of literature was far superior to the religious ecstasies of the yogis. The yogis are trying with tremendous effort to achieve real experience of God and get comparatively poor results when they are successful, Abhinava says, and Chinmayananda says when the yogis fail under this great strain that often they go beserk either as crazy or vicious. Abhinavagupta attitude is in some basic ways like David Hume’s, that is, relax and enjoy the beautiful, let the beautiful lead you to an uncompromised bliss. Reading bad poetry does not send you into utter despare. And it is something anybody and everybody can enjoy. Now, Abhinavagupta is far more profound than the average play-goer. He has been through the stages of religion and philosophy and, I ASSUME, dropped them for the greater overall validity of aesthetics, a boon to hermeneutics. But those stages brought him to exactly that same place of profound bordom I quoted from Heidegger. In A TRIDENT OF WISDOM (Paratrisika Vivarana) he says what brings an ordinary person to utter despair brings him to joy. To Abhinavagupta, religion is an aesthetic sub-category, and I think that can be plainly seen in the evolution of his thinking. I have written a number of letter early on at the Abhinavagupta site precisely upon this.

Loga-4

The views of Abhinavagupta and in general that which emphasizes the aesthetics will not be denied by the Tamil Saivites but will be understood as the experiences BEING configures with the use of Siva Tatva Bindu and which in the Mantrayana would be seen as workings of the mantra-phoneme a-kaaram. Tirumular understands such phenomena as Sakti Nipaatam, the Flow of KuNdalini and would sub-classify them into mantataram (very little), mantam ( a little), tiiviram ( in great measure) and tiivirataram( very greatly). But there is another dimension above this that is the working of the m-phoneme of u-kaaram, that of the Natam. This blesses the soul with Njanam, the Absolute Understanding. There is NO MOKSA without this Njaanam. Meykandar says: njaanam kuduttallatu moodcam kodaan aakalaan: BEING does not bless a soul with Moksa without blessing before that with Njaanam.

Loga-3: In the act seeing, the seer is given already as the one who sees. Now from this primordial act of seeing there is a generation of a TEXT with a duality of structure - the DS and SS. The ‘rock’ is seen in the seeing of a person and such seeing of the same rock may differ from individual to individual. We may institute MEASUREMENTS so that over and above the differences in the individual seeing, there can be a sameness for e.g., the density size porosity and so forth. In such cases the primordial act of seeing is re-constituted as the positively objective seeing - the sensorial seeing and nothing else and hence as that which allows measurements. This is the kind of seeing on which Hume (and the bulk of Western philosophers) remain fixated.

GCM3: Anthony Criffasi at the Heidegger Spoons site has made this problematic for me since he argues quite well that nous operates as a kind of innate knowledge which I disagree with but he does distinctly make problematic that knowledge must come in some kind of form outside simple sense impressions. It is the problem of what perception really is when we take that away from optics and physiology. It is tied to the fictional but yet necessary concept of the self in Hume where Hume has come to a crux in his basic principles possibly contradicting each other, and one of the particular issues resolves into, Is there a concept of “wholeness” in Hume? A lot of people would love to find such a concept in him for their own personal purposes. Yet there may be a legitimate place for it. After all, he found a legitimate place for God in THE NATURAL HISTORY OF RELIGION which eventually became “transcendence” in Kant and Heidegger.

Loga-4:

Noting that seeing is configured by BEING by His own showing and that every such seeing results in writing of a TEXT with a duality of structure, DS and SS, there is among the fictional also the authentic those that result in truth-experiences. BEING Plays and plays also some magical and misleading games ( Maaya Nanaadan) Perception is SEEING where the senses and the mental modules of Manam Buddhi AlaGkaaram and Cittam are used only as tools. As such all seeing and hence understanding enjoyed is configured by BEING. This also shows that the human beings are FINITE and where BEING in contrast is non-finite and a WHOLE (paripuuraNam). The whole Dance of Siva is there to destroy this finitude (the cause being the Malam) and make the anmas become a WHOLE, ParipuuraNam like Itself is. If Hume moved along the lines of Pedagogic Hermeneutics (which is already there in the mind of all) he would have also recognized this Wholeness

Loga-3: This kind of positive objective seeing FIXATES the seeing to the ROCK in itself making the person forgetful of the seer of the seeing. Of course this has the advantage of disclosing what the rock is from within itself, free of the emotional aesthetic and such other subjective correlates of the seer.

GCM3: Well, you know what I think of that.

Loga-3: The disadvantage of course is the cutting of the self as the seer and hence a blindness towards the self-constitution of self as the objective seer devoid of emotions aesthetics and such intention related aspects that he brings along with in every act of seeing. The deductive inductive logic and so forth is a product of such self-constitution but without an awareness of such a self transformation.

GCM3: Wittgenstein: “I must be redeemed before I believe.”

Loga-4 : Redemption, i.e, enjoying Moksa remains already as there in the bosom of all. We have a believe as a partial understanding of this possibility but are afraid to REALISE it and enjoy. There is a resistance to allow the Play of BEING be active within us and become destroyed and regenerated in that Play.

Loga-3: In contrast to this Hermeneutic Logic avoids this blindness by taking everything seen as a TEXT in a way - something written (or read) by the seer and retaining the seer as part of the what is seen. The SS of the rock seen, and as seen by a person is a reading of that person and one can go into the DS by a process of logical thinking called Anumana and UNDERSTAND better the SS so that our UNDERSTANDING is improved upon- we LEARN more about it and has a better understanding of it.

But the attention can shift also to the seer the producer of a text as such and such and why different individuals generate different texts of the SAME ROCK (i.e. read differently and write differently). With such a turn to reflective thinking, the seer, the self that does the seeing becomes the TEXT again with a DUALITY of structure DS and SS. Here the SS is the intentional self, the Asat-Self and DS is the Sat-Self, a distinction that Sankara (or for that matter all Indian idealists) never understood. Now as a second order and genuinely metaphysical reflections when the Sat-Self itself is appropriated as a TEXT only then we can understand the presence of BEING as the DS of this Sat-Self, BEING as the Cosmic Dancer and who dances even deep within.

GCM3: You get into the “existential solipsism” of Heidegger here which cuts two ways: A) Each unique person perceives a text from their personal presuppositions, the history of their private life; B) Perception itself as sensed is absolutely private and can only be communicated by words which, much of the time, is like trying to explain a bulldozer by comparing it to apples. Not much enlightenment occurs.

Loga-4:

There is no solipsism here as there is communication and AGREEMENT between distinct individuals. Though the seeing is individual but there can be truly OBJECTIVE seeing, the kind of seeing where we let only the object tell from within itself as what it is in itself (Heidegger?). This is the Vinaiyin niiGki viLaGkiya aRivu of Tolkaappiyar (c. 300 BC) and which served as the foundation of the various Hermeneutic Sciences developed by the Tamils. When the seeing brackets off the existent prejudices and allows only the seen speak from within itself, the understanding understands only what is in the object seen. Only under such conditions AGREEMENT (udanpaadu) between different individuals are possible.

Dear Dr. Loganathan,

Maybe I shouldn't reply now because I am very tired. But I shall be short and quick -- I think.

Loga-4:

Is truth a compromise of a kind that has only an approximate claim to truth but never to TRUTH itself?
This is NOT the view of truth in the Pedagogic Hermeneutics of the Dravidian folks and which comes along with Hermeneutic Logic and which is a very inclusive expression of rationality.

GCM-4: "Inclusive rationality" as internal consistency? That is fine. Yes, I can see your having "TRUTH" there in your "inclusive expression of rationality" just like I wrote about Newman's "inclusive expression of rationality" built upon Hume's scepticism. The "world" of "understanding" you are born or "thrown" into determines automatically "always already" how one initially approaches everything. And even after initiating rational internal criticism of consistenct all terms are toned by that, and the issues that are important to you remain determined by that. But my heritage being very different, presents me with a very different context to live in, that approaches your issues from a fundamentally different point of view, much of which I am unable even to express objectively! And the same for you. This is not and cannot be a discussion of who is right and wrong but of defining general and objective rules of determining the rational connections of "inclusive expression of rationality".

Loga-4: Recall that the Pedagogic Hermeneutics moves with the understanding that there is seeing only because there is a prior SHOWING.

GCM-4: You seem to use "seeing" as an intentional act. Such seeing must pick out particular things. But within what? I say "Perception" which is "always already" there. To call it "passive", though, is wrong because "perception" effects and affects one very powerfully. "Seeing" also is not really a will-full act since it actually operates as "circumspection". Your attention literally wanders about perception, 'picking out' items of special interest. There always is a "prior showing", but it is of two kinds A) all-inclusive perception undifferenbtiated", and B) the circumspective 'picking out of the qualities that BECOME a presencing of an 'individual' thing which is still just the sum of its parts and of its 'own' in reality nothing.

Loga-4: The notion of truth-experience is lodged here and we can see that an experience would emerge as truth-experience (MeyyuNarvu) only when the seeing matches the showing, the person sees exactly as shown. When this happens then we are led to feel that the experience we are enjoying is a TRUTH-EXPERIENCE and NOT deviant, confused, uncertain, defective, distorted, prejudiced etc.

GCM-4: But in becoming a specific experience, "specific" per se, it necessarily becomes 'distorted' because any "specitivity" is the creation of circumspection and intent, a "seeing", wheras "perception" just is, just is there, absolutely indifferent as in my quotion from FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS OF METAPHYSICS.

Loga-4: Thus among the experiences the truth-experiences stand out as those which are in AGREEMENT with a prior showing that in fact configures the seeing.

GCM-4: Intent guides, "configures", the "seeing". What is seen is indifferent and configures "seeing" only within oneself as reaction and judgment.

Loga-4: This will also mean that at the point of such experiences the person is in agreement with BEING, He that shows and thus PLAYS the anma.

This is not difficult to understand if we take the pedagogic situation. When a teacher teaches and the student taught grasps EXACTLY as taught or shown by the teacher, then the student is in AGREEMENT with the teacher and the teacher acknowledges this agreement in going to the next step. Having ensured that the student had SEEN exactly how he had shown, there is annihilation of the ongoing and the initiation of the text ( episodization, the antam-aati of Meykandar), or the novel. What underlies the truth-experience is Intentional Fusion, the student seeing exactly what the teacher intends and acting in accordance with that.
In our existence this is what we do within the hermeneutic dimensions of Existence.

GCM-4: A) This could never happen simply because of different visual viewpoints, different personal histories, and different personal intents; B) it would be impossible to verify; C) it would be impossible to have another person's experience since, even if that did happen, it would then be yours -- and if not yors, no viewpoint, no place of seeing, then -- no one's.

Loga-4: Also we must note that this way of understanding world process is NOT the same as the Philosophical Hermeneutics of Heidegger and Gadamer where there is nothing as Absolute, the Final etc. There is only endless fusion of horizons, effectivity of History and because of which tradition becomes highlighted. They cannot think of a tradition that de-traditionalizes an individual and make him FREE and PURE - absolutely FREE of any traditions and historicality.

GCM-4: To be so free would mean to be without language altogether.

Loga-4: Gadamer remained within the linguisticality of understanding and never contemplated (as far as I know) understanding FREE of language i.e. the truth-experince of the Deep Silence where Speech itself is uprooted.

GCM-4: O. K. . . .

Loga-4: To understand this we must distinguish between Asat-Truth and Sat-Truth. Any truth-experience within time, within TEMPORALITY or Intentional Time is Asat-Truth for it always holds the possibility of being DISPLACED and installed with another that may be a refinement of the earlier. We can compare this to the visions one has when one climbs up towards the peak of a hill. Each step provides a vision but which becomes transformed and reconstituted on moving higher. But on reaching the PEAK, such possibilities are NO MORE. The vision at the peak shows from within itself that there is NOTHING BEYOND, that the peak vision provides a CLOSURE (antam) for the movement.

GCM-4: This would relate to what I just wrote about Hume and Aristotle and Heidegger.

Loga-4: The Asat-Truths are truth-experiences,

GCM-4: This comes under Hume's and especially Kant's distinction that existence is not a real predicate. Experience as sense impression is ALWAYS true so that in talking about a "truth-experience" all you are saying is that an experience is an experience and is, as Kant said, "a meer tautology".

Loga-4: . . . which while pointing out truths of the world also show that they are NOT the final,

GCM-4: Which would mean you are literally God in order for you to be able to do that. However, that may actually be your intent within your tradition.

Loga-4: they can be displaced reconstituted, reformed and so forth.

GCM-4: Which means you would have to be back in ordinary time and perception, performing finite actions.

Loga-4: Such movements within the truth-experiences also show that in the hermeneutics of understanding one is being taken towards the PEAK and which is the Sat-Truth. This Sat-Truth unlike the Asat-Truths, is absolute, indisplaceable, cannot be transcended and reconstituted etc. It is Nittyam (always) Sattiyam (Real) and it shows all these from within itself.

GCM-4: But this again sounds like Heidegger's profound boredom comtemplating the absolutely indifference of existence. His point was, of course, no one could stand this for long and would invent time and things, for nothing else, just to have something to do. Now, as in my other letter today on Aristotle's PRIOR ANALYTICS I really need to finish off, Both Heidegger and Nietzsche think this is a special "Moment" [Augenblick]. And it is . . . it is a very special boredom that motivates the hell out of you. They both call it an abyss: Either you do something trivial or you commit suicide. That is a dangerous place to be.

OUT OF TIME--MUST GO--GCM

Loga-4: The anma on reaching this Sat-Truth enjoys Njaanam, the Absolute Illumination that shows from within that there is NO understanding beyond it. The long hermeneutic processes come to an end and in enjoying this Njaanam, the anma also enjoys Moksa, being-one-with-BEING with a qualitative sameness.

Loga-3: Here the notion of TEXT along with DUALITY of Structure, the Deep Structure (DS) and Surface Structure (SS) are important. The SS is the commonly perceivable, the DS is that which is the DEPTHS of SS, serves as Agentive Cause and which has to be wrested out from the depths and appropriated as part of consciousness by way of understanding the object. A common analogy given in the Indian texts for this Anumana - going from the explicitly given to the HIDDEN (maRaipoRuL) is that of the smoke in the hill and from which one concludes the presence of the FIRE there but invisible to the eyes.

GCM3: Abhinavagupta, in the third and last stage of his life when he wrote about aesthetics, came to the conclusion, that the santa rasa of literature was far superior to the religious ecstasies of the yogis. The yogis are trying with tremendous effort to achieve real experience of God and get comparatively poor results when they are successful, Abhinava says, and Chinmayananda says when the yogis fail under this great strain that often they go beserk either as crazy or vicious. Abhinavagupta attitude is in some basic ways like David Hume’s, that is, relax and enjoy the beautiful, let the beautiful lead you to an uncompromised bliss. Reading bad poetry does not send you into utter despare. And it is something anybody and everybody can enjoy. Now, Abhinavagupta is far more profound than the average play-goer. He has been through the stages of religion and philosophy and, I ASSUME, dropped them for the greater overall validity of aesthetics, a boon to hermeneutics. But those stages brought him to exactly that same place of profound bordom I quoted from Heidegger. In A TRIDENT OF WISDOM (Paratrisika Vivarana) he says what brings an ordinary person to utter despair brings him to joy. To Abhinavagupta, religion is an aesthetic sub-category, and I think that can be plainly seen in the evolution of his thinking. I have written a number of letter early on at the Abhinavagupta site precisely upon this.

Loga-4

The views of Abhinavagupta and in general that which emphasizes the aesthetics will not be denied by the Tamil Saivites but will be understood as the experiences BEING configures with the use of Siva Tatva Bindu and which in the Mantrayana would be seen as workings of the mantra-phoneme a-kaaram. Tirumular understands such phenomena as Sakti Nipaatam, the Flow of KuNdalini and would sub-classify them into mantataram (very little), mantam ( a little), tiiviram ( in great measure) and tiivirataram( very greatly). But there is another dimension above this that is the working of the m-phoneme of u-kaaram, that of the Natam. This blesses the soul with Njanam, the Absolute Understanding. There is NO MOKSA without this Njaanam. Meykandar says: njaanam kuduttallatu moodcam kodaan aakalaan: BEING does not bless a soul with Moksa without blessing before that with Njaanam.

Loga-3: In the act seeing, the seer is given already as the one who sees. Now from this primordial act of seeing there is a generation of a TEXT with a duality of structure - the DS and SS. The ‘rock’ is seen in the seeing of a person and such seeing of the same rock may differ from individual to individual. We may institute MEASUREMENTS so that over and above the differences in the individual seeing, there can be a sameness for e.g., the density size porosity and so forth. In such cases the primordial act of seeing is re-constituted as the positively objective seeing - the sensorial seeing and nothing else and hence as that which allows measurements. This is the kind of seeing on which Hume (and the bulk of Western philosophers) remain fixated.

GCM3: Anthony Criffasi at the Heidegger Spoons site has made this problematic for me since he argues quite well that nous operates as a kind of innate knowledge which I disagree with but he does distinctly make problematic that knowledge must come in some kind of form outside simple sense impressions. It is the problem of what perception really is when we take that away from optics and physiology. It is tied to the fictional but yet necessary concept of the self in Hume where Hume has come to a crux in his basic principles possibly contradicting each other, and one of the particular issues resolves into, Is there a concept of “wholeness” in Hume? A lot of people would love to find such a concept in him for their own personal purposes. Yet there may be a legitimate place for it. After all, he found a legitimate place for God in THE NATURAL HISTORY OF RELIGION which eventually became “transcendence” in Kant and Heidegger.

Loga-4:

Noting that seeing is configured by BEING by His own showing and that every such seeing results in writing of a TEXT with a duality of structure, DS and SS, there is among the fictional also the authentic those that result in truth-experiences. BEING Plays and plays also some magical and misleading games ( Maaya Nanaadan) Perception is SEEING where the senses and the mental modules of Manam Buddhi AlaGkaaram and Cittam are used only as tools. As such all seeing and hence understanding enjoyed is configured by BEING. This also shows that the human beings are FINITE and where BEING in contrast is non-finite and a WHOLE (paripuuraNam). The whole Dance of Siva is there to destroy this finitude (the cause being the Malam) and make the anmas become a WHOLE, ParipuuraNam like Itself is. If Hume moved along the lines of Pedagogic Hermeneutics (which is already there in the mind of all) he would have also recognized this Wholeness

Loga-3: This kind of positive objective seeing FIXATES the seeing to the ROCK in itself making the person forgetful of the seer of the seeing. Of course this has the advantage of disclosing what the rock is from within itself, free of the emotional aesthetic and such other subjective correlates of the seer.

GCM3: Well, you know what I think of that.

Loga-3: The disadvantage of course is the cutting of the self as the seer and hence a blindness towards the self-constitution of self as the objective seer devoid of emotions aesthetics and such intention related aspects that he brings along with in every act of seeing. The deductive inductive logic and so forth is a product of such self-constitution but without an awareness of such a self transformation.

GCM3: Wittgenstein: “I must be redeemed before I believe.”

Loga-4 : Redemption, i.e. enjoying Moksa remains already as there in the bosom of all. We have beliefs as a partial understanding of this possibility but are afraid to REALIZE it and enjoy it . There is a resistance to allow the Play of BEING to be active within us and suffer destruction and regeneration in that Play.

Loga-3: In contrast to this Hermeneutic Logic avoids this blindness by taking everything seen as a TEXT in a way - something written (or read) by the seer and retaining the seer as part of the what is seen. The SS of the rock seen, and as seen by a person is a reading of that person and one can go into the DS by a process of logical thinking called Anumana and UNDERSTAND better the SS so that our UNDERSTANDING is improved upon- we LEARN more about it and has a better understanding of it.

But the attention can shift also to the seer the producer of a text as such and such and why different individuals generate different texts of the SAME ROCK (i.e. read differently and write differently). With such a turn to reflective thinking, the seer, the self that does the seeing becomes the TEXT again with a DUALITY of structure DS and SS. Here the SS is the intentional self, the Asat-Self and DS is the Sat-Self, a distinction that Sankara (or for that matter all Indian idealists) never understood. Now as a second order and genuinely metaphysical reflections when the Sat-Self itself is appropriated as a TEXT only then we can understand the presence of BEING as the DS of this Sat-Self, BEING as the Cosmic Dancer and who dances even deep within.

GCM3: You get into the “existential solipsism” of Heidegger here which cuts two ways: A) Each unique person perceives a text from their personal presuppositions, the history of their private life; B) Perception itself as sensed is absolutely private and can only be communicated by words which, much of the time, is like trying to explain a bulldozer by comparing it to apples. Not much enlightenment occurs.

Loga-4:

There is no solipsism here as there is communication and AGREEMENT between distinct individuals. Though the seeing is individual but there can be truly OBJECTIVE seeing, the kind of seeing where we let only the object tell from within itself as what it is in itself (Heidegger?). This is the Vinaiyin niiGki viLaGkiya aRivu of Tolkaappiyar (c. 300 BC) and which served as the foundation of the various Hermeneutic Sciences developed by the Tamils. When the seeing brackets off the existent prejudices and allows only the seen speak from within itself, the understanding understands only what is in the object seen. Only under such conditions AGREEMENT (udanpaadu) between different individuals are possible.

--- In agamicpsychology@yahoogroups.com, "ulagankmy" <subas@p...> wrote:
Dear Gary

Have a break and take some rest. It has been a real pleasure to have this dialogue with you where there was true objectivity shown despite a love for Hume. I had similar dilaogues with Prof Antonio earlier. Let me mention that I have touched only some aspects of the philosophical psychological thoughts available in Tamil literature and which is just as vast as in Sk with a peculiar essence and dignity of its own. I believe that a comparative study of Dravidian philosophical thoughts with the Western specially Plato Aristotle Hume Kant Heidegger Gadamer and so forth will be very beneficial. There is BEING ( as Siva) reigning supreme in Tamilliterature and it may be the Natural Religion Hume was talking about.

Perhaps we can continue this dialogue later when opportunities presentthemselves..

Loga

--- In agamicpsychology@yahoogroups.com, "ulagankmy" <ulagankmy@y...> wrote:
> --- In ontologicalethics@yahoogroups.com, Gary Moore <gottlos752004@y...>
> wrote:
> Dear Dr. Loganathan,
> Maybe I shouldn't reply now because I am very tired. But I shall be short
> and quick -- I think.
> Loga-4:
>

Raja Mylvaganam <mylvahana@yahoo.com> wrote:

To: Abhinavagupta@yahoogroups.com
From: Raja Mylvaganam
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2004 01:21:32 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Re: [Abhinavagupta] Meykandar Hume and Heidegger-Replies to Gary-6

HI Gary,

I have been enjoying following the conversation even though metaphysics is not my strong suit. My purpose for writing here is to ask you if you expound on or perhaps even provide a tutorial on Hume on what you wrote here.

Is there a concept of “wholeness” in Hume? A lot of people would love to find such a concept in him for their own personal purposes. Yet there may be a legitimate place for it. After all, he found a legitimate place for God in THE NATURAL HISTORY OF RELIGION which eventually became “transcendence” in Kant and Heidegger.

It will help very much with an argument that is currently going nowhere amongst Humanists.

Raja Mylvaganam

Dear Raja,

What I said relates to the end of the NATURAL HISTORY:

1 The universal propensity to believe in invisible, intelligent power, if not an original instinct, being at least a general attendant to human nature, may be considered as a kind of mark or stamp, which the divine workman has set upon his work; and nothing surely can more dignify mankind, than to be thus selected from all other parts of creation, and to bear the image or impression of the universal creator. But consult this image, as it appears in the popular religions of the world. How the deity is disfigured in our representations of him! How much he is degraded below the character, which we should naturally, in common life, ascribe to a man of sense and virtue!

2 What a noble privilege is it of human reason to attain the knowledge of the supreme Being; and, from visible works of nature, be enabled to infer so sublime a principle as its supreme Creator? But turn the reverse of the medal. Survey most nations and most ages. Examine the religious principles, which have, in fact, prevailed in the world. You will scarcely be persuaded, that they are anything but sick men’s dreams: Or perhaps will regard them more as playsome whimsies of monkeys in human shape, than the serious, positive, dogmatical asseverations of a being, who dignifies himself with the name of rational.

3 Here the verbal protestations of all men: Nothing so certain as their religious tenets. Examine their lives: You will scarcely think that they repose the slightest confidence in them.

4 The greatest and the truest zeal gives us no security against hypocrisy: The most open impiety is attended with a secret dread and compunction . . .

5 What is so pure as some of the morals, included in some theological systems? What so corrupt as some of the practices, to which these systems give rise?

6 The comfortable views, exhibited by the belief in futurity, are ravishing and delightful. But how quickly vanish on the appearance of its terrors, which keep a more firm and durable possession of the human mind?

7 The whole is a riddle, an aenigma, an inexplicable mystery. Boubt, uncertainty, suspense of judgment appear the only result of our most accurate scrutiny, concerning the subject. But such is the frailty of human reason, and such the irresistible contagion of opinion . . . we ourselves, during their fury and contention, happily make our escape into the calm, though obscure, regions of philosophy.

Now, I have written about this before, cannot remember where, but will try to remember what I can. However, as with any great philosopher or poet, each time you read them you get new points of view. I will try also to make this letter relevant to the other letter series I have been so unwisely conducting far beyond my actual abilities.

In my last letter on Aristotle and Hume, Don Garrett had revealed that Hume’s problem with the self revealed in the APPENDIX of the TREATISE (THN 633) was the difference between his known personal ownership of “his own present ideas” and the ‘otherness’ of past memory and imagination. However efficiently brought forth, memories come from nowhere. However systematic a scheme of memory retrieval in one’s “own present ideas”, that scheme dips into something it cannot possibly know directly. Memory cannot be inductively examined because all the evidence no longer exists in its actual context. And what inductive evidence there is has different levels of certainty from none to highly probable but never ever unquestionable. AND it is piecemeal, already taken apart, and disconnected from the whole of a perception it once existed within. Any memory cannot possibly have any standard of accuracy as to a reality that existed in the past. What is, is all within the present.

Now, with this unresolved abyss in the concept of the self, we come to the concept of God in Hume’s NATURAL HISTORY. Now, the great strength of Hume’s philosophy is that it eschews all metaphysical systematicity. If there is a real problem, then there is a real problem that remains and may well never be resolved. There is no idea of inevitable progress in Hume. He has no necessary compulsion to explain everything. If it is inexplicable, it is inexplicable, and let’s go on to something else. It seems he never tried to resolve the split in the self between ‘my’ present and the ‘other’s’ past.

In his discussions of religion a great deal of mockery, irony, anger, and intellectual outrage is evident. People desperately want to classify Hume as an atheist or Deist or agnostic, maybe even as a crypto-Christian. Passages can be found to support all these views if taken out of context.

But Hume is always precise. He can be precise because he is honest. The honest man always has the advantage in one thing over the dishonest. He does not have to worry about maintaining the ‘seeming’ consistency of a façade of truth but merely says what is true at the moment knowing that, as a true statement, it can be realistically integrated according to context with all his other statements. It is a loose arrangement with loose parts and a loose philosophy built to work like an AK-47: It can work under any conditions because it is designed by the life of a living person. Hume always called himself a philosophical theist. He did this continuously and consistently, saying no man could literally be an atheist, and being a Deist or agnostic was ridiculous. He did this even when his French friends thought they had demonstrated to him that atheists really could exist.

So when we come to this passage in the NATURAL HISTORY, we should be apprized that the angle of vision is going to be precisely his, but, being Hume, he will try to be as clear as possible in communication as he can be. These are “his own present ideas” recorded and revised on paper leaving an actual artifact that the editors of the critical edition of Hume’s philosophical works in the 19^th century, Green and Grose, saw in the library of the University of Edinburgh in Hume’s handwritten manuscript, but soon after disappeared. In the section I quote, all of Hume’s emotions are in play. But this ending section of the NATURAL HISTORY is far more than a summary but a rational conclusion to what has been examined so that it is the result of sifting the ground wheat of theology to find the fine flour that remains. Hume in several ways is like Nietzsche. He is very easy to read superficially, but when you try to nail him down specifically, it can be difficult as Don Garrett has demonstrated. Your only clue to get through Hume’s labyrinth is that he does not lie.

Now, in paragraph 1, “propensity to believe” means exactly what it says and is a major philosophical principle throughout Hume. There are only two sources of strict KNOWLEDGE in Hume, logic and present sense impressions. Logic says sense impressions tell you nothing, communicate nothing whatsoever. They are just present sense impressions. Staying here would leave you in exactly the same place as Heidegger’s profound boredom. Your choices are suicide or doing something trivial, that is, doing something arbitrarily, whimsically, meaninglessly. But what is there to choose from? Why, the whole “world” “always already” interpreted and given to you so you never really have to think an independent thought yourself! Isn’t that wonderful! You are given a whole language ready-made to communicate any trivial, meaningless thought you want to, to express any creatively hysterical emotion that arises in your consciousness. But, as thought is thought, it eventually occurs to everyone even if they put it out of their minds immediately, Why would someone want to do something they KNOW is meaningless? So, you go look for meaning. If you are honest, this consists of trying to discover logical consistencies in what you have inherited. There are going to be contradictions and something has to be thrown out. How are you going to judge?

In paragraph 1 Hume passingly introduces his moral precept of “character, which we should naturally, in common life, ascribe to a man of sense and virtue!” Now, so far, what have we actually established? A) If you act, you act upon “belief”, it is “belief” that you will (in the future) find something worthwhile to justify what you do right now based purely on faith. B) You also have a passionate desire to KNOW “the facts of the matter” but find the process of really discovering that bewildering. C) You have this passionate desire that underwrites everything everyone does because everyone KNOWS if it definitely is not true, then it is utterly worthless. D) If all you are left with is the false, then you despair.

Through your personal history, you judge everything by feeling, but experience teaches you to try to rectify that into something like “right feeling”. Your judgment adjusts as your viewpoint adjusts. You thinks someone is purely evil until you think you learn some of the causes of their being ‘evil’, and them your strictness of judgment is ameliorated to some degree because you have imaginatively put yourself, feeling-wise, in their shoes. Hume repeatedly says, “Moral distinctions are not derived from reason.” They can be corrected by reason into self-consistency, but they are derived from passion and tradition. And all the values of tradition were derived from passion and the tradition before that, ad infinitum. You have “belief” in the validity of your emotions and you have “belief” in the values you have personally picked from tradition as your own. This does not, however, ameliorate the problems stated above: They stay around forever.

With perception, exactly the same thing happens. You judge all things within a moral perspective, that is, a perspective of emotional valuation. Your perception is always one whole. However, the viewpoint constantly changes. Things are always both up and down, right and left, light and heavy, etc. Your “own present ideas” are included in one universal whole. However, all of your judgments derive from the ‘past’ images derived from the ‘other’ ‘elsewhere’. Hume repeatedly says we can never know the ground from which our thinking grows. This is our “character” and completely unique to each person – as far as each of us can tell. Unless insanely distirted, each “character” though wants to know what “the facts of the matter” are. And so develop a generally and mutually recognizable “sense and virtue” that “we should naturally, in common life, ascribe” to ‘good’ people, and by which the vast majority of ‘characterizations’ of God are called ‘good’ only hypocritically.

From this “propensity to believe” we proceed to “original instinct”. These are things we cannot help, theist and atheist alike, to “believe” like “causation”. As many arguments one may raise to question causation’s certainty, in daily life you always rely upon it to provide explanation of :the facts of the matter”. Now, “belief” in a supreme being, though, is “a general attendant of human nature”. This is deliberately ambiguous, covering both a broad desire amongst many to believe in a God to also having undisplacible remnants of such a “belief” permanently imbedded in even rational language. In Greek tradition, the concept that the universe MUST be created factually in time, and not vaguely by mythical stories, was considered ridiculous. In Western culture now, we all grow up thinking of a definite creation at one point in time is ‘obvious’. It gives time a definite sense of beginning and end, a seeming sense of purpose and design that is not really there. But it is very helpful in thinking about time in any scholarly way because thereby it is made into an object that seemingly can be observed, and all the actual experiencial and rational difficulties of thinking about time as an object can be easily ignored because this kind of practical thinking is so pragmatically productive. But productiveness of practical knowledge one can apply has nothing to do with the two strict forms of KNOWLEDGE I originally proposed as Hume’s. Practical knowledge belongs to “common sense”, the “world” one inherits with its inbuilt purposes.

This “general attendant of human nature”, though, Hume says, “may be considered as a kind of mark or stamp, which the divine workman has set upon his work, and nothing can surely more dignify mankind . . .” Now, as this paragraph proceeds, and as the whole rest of the book has shown, the “image” of “the universal Creator” is highly compromised. Not only is it morally degraded, but Hume has raised the problem of how an infinite being commit finite acts by interfering with human history at specific points of time and space. So the rational conception of God is logically detached from any experiencial evidence except the possibility of a “divine workman’ on the purported rational design of the universe. Hume seems to reluctantly grant the last as a ‘possibility’. But essentially, as far as any reality of God may be concerned, its importance to humanity is trivial because we cannot know it and it cannot effect us.

However, this does lead to the “noble privilege . . . of human reason to attain the knowledge of the supreme Being; and from the visible works of nature, be enabled to infer so sublime a principle . . .” Hume has essentially reversed the argument for God’s existence from the design of the universe into an argument providing the imagination to enable human reason to infer so sublime a principle, that is, the scope of human reason has been enlarged by imagining God from the works of nature so that it transcends its unique and purely personal situation to include the whole universe in that “human reason”. This is essentially provides the field in which science can operate.

Norman Kemp Smith has two definitions he found in Kant that fill this conception out. “Transcendental knowledge is knowledge not of objects, but of the nature and condition of our a priori cognition of them,” and, “An intuition or conception is transcendental when it originates in pure reason, and yet at the same time goes to constitute an a priori knowledge of objects.” COMMENTARY TO KANT’S “CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON”, Humanities press, reprinted 1996, pages 74-75. “A priori” corresponds to Hume’s “universal propensity to believe” and “original instinct”.

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