On existential sovereignty & degrees of exchange

A notable point was made today about a crucial flaw at the heart of postmodernism, that being the notion of individual existential sovereignty, an assertion that an individual is able to make a decision about how to “be” against the external influences of culture. An existentialist like Sartre, for example (“existence precedes essence”) seems primed to argue that stripping away the external influence & arriving at the sole individual equates to having encountered oneself & liberates. 

For example, one is not inherently noble or cruel from the outset but rather acts both noble & cruel, at varying times in one’s life, depending on the myriad of different circumstances that induce one to being either noble or cruel. Thus you must exist before you can establish an essence for yourself. Moreover, a sense of liberty or freedom is only possible through the experience of choice, essentially when we choose how to react or perceive a given circumstance, thus we are “condemned to be free” in that it is impossible not to make a choice, for even deciding not to make a choice is.. well.. making a choice. 

To be more precise, Sartre outlines a threefold process:

• one must exist & experience the world in order to start to come to terms with one’s own emotions & perceptions – there is no inherent good or evil, only the choices that lead to considering oneself good or evil etc
• one must begin to recognize the significance of choice & its inevitability
• the external circumstance & influence of society/culture is what we act against; in order to establish a true individualism, one must make the choices – in response to the provocation of the external world – that establishes & then preserves an essential character or individual freedom

Due to my affinity for Stoicism & its similarities/parallels with existential thought (thus accounting for my quotes on Camus etc) I’m not wholly opposed to this idea of choice & have even made hints at full endorsements in the past. Where I have my doubts is in the notion of existential – even essential – sovereignty, a position that implies one can experience a subjective reality free of objective culture, a true individualism if you will. This is the basic implication outlined above – individual freedom is found in the decisions made against the external influences that oppose us, setting up society as an external structure or object in much the same way as, say, Marxists do.

I find the division & mutual exclusivity of society vs the individual problematic, as this assumes that either individual subjectivity or collective culture are objective constants; whichever option one adopts, a great measure of dynamism is lost & some part (either the individual or society) invariably finds itself reduced to a philosophical, perhaps even emotional, zombie, experiencing none of the volatility & turmoil of the human condition as it actually is.

Secondly, I find it particularly problematic to suggest that there can be a definitive separation of the collective culture & subjective individuality, such that there is no symbiotic relationship (or perhaps “parallel” would be better) between them. Such an incapacity on my part thus leads me to believe that there is a necessary dualism that exists between the individual & culture (a position first outlined, in far better language than my own, by Georg Simmel), involving an ever-present exchange, in whatever degree that exchange takes place as. For example, a government’s degree of exchange would be greater than my own, though even this claim of mine seems dubious, given the apparent disconnect & detachment that exists these days between a government & the public will it’s meant to represent.

Moreover, telecommunications today suggest – or at least hint at the possibility – that this symbiotic relationship has been strengthened, even if only slightly, which would also account for the common use of language that literally evinces connectivity between an individual & society (think of terms like “social networking”, “community”, or what an “internet” between people – or made up of their ideas/voices – would look like if you could put it into material form).

Third – and ever so briefly – self-identity requires self-reference. Taking George H. Mead’s example, the “self” & any associated individuality or transcendent ego therein requires an objectification of the “self”, which can only be achieved through language (or at least relies heavily upon the use of language to reinforce objectification & “self-hood”). It is only by talking in the first, second, third-person and so on that you are able to perceive of yourself as an individual. Your name is meant to serve as a marker of individualism. The “I” asks questions like “who am I?”, to which the “me” replies with “I am noble/cruel etc”. Following this line of reasoning, the “me” acts as a grocery list of attributes & experiences that are then referred back to oneself, further strengthening the “self” as time goes on.

All of this requires language and language, ultimately, is a product of culture.

______

Pythagoras & the “harmony of the spheres”

taken from Carl Huffman’s article “Pythagoras”

…In the modern world Pythagoras is most of all famous as a mathematician, because of the theorem named after him, and secondarily as a cosmologist, because of the striking view of a universe ascribed to him in the later tradition, in which the heavenly bodies produce “the music of the spheres” by their movements…

…while the early evidence shows that Pythagoras was indeed one of the most famous early Greek thinkers, there is no indication in that evidence that his fame was primarily based on mathematics or cosmology. Neither Plato nor Aristotle treats Pythagoras as having contributed to the development of Presocratic cosmology, although Aristotle in particular discusses the topic in some detail in the first book of the Metaphysics and elsewhere. Aristotle evidently knows of no cosmology of Pythagoras that antedates the cosmological system of the “so-called Pythagoreans,” which he dates to the middle of the fifth century, and which is found in the fragments of Philolaus. There is also no mention of Pythagoras’ work in geometry or of the Pythagorean theorem in the early evidence. Dicaearchus comments that “what he said to his associates no one can say reliably,” but then identifies four doctrines that became well known: 1) that the soul is immortal; 2) that it transmigrates into other kinds of animals; 3) that after certain intervals the things that have happened once happen again, so that nothing is completely new; 4) that all animate beings belong to the same family (Porphyry, VP 19)…

…. Pythagoras saw the cosmos as structured according to number insofar as the tetraktys (the Greeks’ sacred set of ratios, using the first four numbers 1, 2, 3 & 4, adding up to the number 10: 1+2 = 3 + 3 = 6 + 4 = 10) is the source of all wisdom. His cosmos was also imbued with a moral significance, which is in accordance with his beliefs about reincarnation and the fate of the soul. Thus, in answer to the question “What are the Isles of the Blest?”(where we might hope to go, if we lived a good life), the answer is “the sun and the moon.” Again “the planets are the hounds of Persephone,” i.e., the planets are agents of vengeance for wrong done (Aristotle in Porphyry VP 41). Aristotle similarly reports that for the Pythagoreans thunder “is a threat to those in Tartarus, so that they will be afraid” (Posterior Analytics 94b) and another acusma says that “an earthquake is nothing other than a meeting of the dead” (Aelian, Historical Miscellany, IV. 17).

Pythagoras’ cosmos thus embodied mathematical relationships that had a basis in fact and combined them with moral ideas tied to the fate of the soul. The best analogy for the type of account of the cosmos which Pythagoras gave might be some of the myths which appear at the end of Platonic dialogues such as the Phaedo, Gorgias or Republic, where cosmology has a primarily moral purpose. Should the doctrine of the harmony of the spheres be assigned to Pythagoras? Certainly the acusma which talks of the sirens singing in the harmony represented by the tetraktys suggests that there might have been a cosmic music and that Pythagoras may well have thought that the heavenly bodies, which we see move across the sky at night, made music by their motions.

Read more

______