Hermeneutic Meme
Defining Hermeneutics, Hermeneutik (German), herméneutique (French), ἑρμηνευτική τέχνη (Greek) and the New Hermeneutic (Robinson)
The reality of Realism in a Science-centric society is, apparently a step in the right direction, right that is if consilience is the desired teleology. The 'wholistic' happenstance simply emerged from pre-history of our phylogenetic imagining. Platonically described, the narratives begin in forme, yet all formes are not all created equally, this is Aristotelean, os sepi to poli.
The moment of inertia, the point [see Horizon Principal] at which we begin might as well be with Aristotle and his second book De Interpretatione or On Interpretation is the second text from Aristotle's Organon and is among the earliest surviving philosophical works in the Western tradition to deal with the relationship between language and logic in a comprehensive, explicit, and formal way. Much later, the New Hermeneutics was a partial manifestation of early European Protestant theologians, Heidegger included.
So, we are given a choice, as it Will; on one hand, we defend Plato, on the other Aristotle. This spectrum of possible outcomes is what Judea Peal soundly refers to as counterfactuals in 'The Book of Why, The New Science of Cause and Effect' (2018). These imagined outcomes...
Beginning with the Greek source, I chuckle to my performing self, ἑρμηνευτική τέχνη translates as "interpretive", or "performing arts". Let's come back to this later.
The Greek Mind (with the help of H.D.F. Kitto)
Oddly eusocial, the dichotomy of contrasting pairs (of the whole perspective, not holy perspective) permeated Western Culture and philosophic tradition before the time of Socrates. Yet, aesthetic reasoning and affectual imaginings of beauty versus ugliness, as we know them, originated from the Hellenic mind. Kalos triumphs over aischros in a competition of beauty. By definition, aischros is the antithesis of beauty, and as such, beauty is defined by Kalos. Moving from the ideal conception of beauty into the metaphysics of virtue, it logically follows (according to The Greeks) that other "acts" of virtue now qualify as "of [the] God[s]"; Will[ed] determination or anticipated future reality and assemblage of cultural schemata (σχήματα), or planned forme. Homer equates the beauty of Sparta's women (kalligynaikos) with the virtuous act of dying for one's tribe. It is fascinating to me that predictability from abstractions contained an innate potential for a diversity of meaning equal to the infinity, yet parsed into reality by the epiphenomenal phenomenology we refer to as the human mind. Greek, as it were, was (and is) a möbius ontological relations, beginning and endings of sometimes eternal recurrence (Nietzsche), Cartesian doubt, Humian humility, Kantian beginnings and theological hermeneutics of Heidegger, et al. With that poetic rambling and Continental sensibility, the non-sense is a NULL hypothesis, the movement towards a p-value of omega (ω). Chaos is the key and randomness is the replicator, fractal perhaps but only a priori to our collective epistemology, the body of which grows in complexity and wisdom. So far as Sofia is concerned, the beauty of this virtuous abstraction connects the attractive potentials of future imaginings. There is an aesthetic to this movement, to the outcome anticipated by predicting our future conditions. Thrive and you will receive. Ask and you will conceive.
{draw diagrams showing the flow from object to object-verb}. The incorrect assumption would be that (linguistically) this was foundational of a linguistic replicator. As it turns out, the correct assumption appears to be narrative in nature. Stories were told through the cave art in Altimira and Lascaux 30,000 years ago. I would like to explore the thesis that the impetus behind the Greek invention of proof through abstract reasoning was beauty.
Beauty as a Beginning and End (in itself)...
More on this to come.
Mid-Term Summary - A Long Saturday
In the opening title, I offer an explanation as to my membership (and possible allegiance) to the early existentialists, which I refer to in a bracketed sotto voce as sophistry. In part, because I am being cheeky with my tough firmly anchored in philosophical defence, the litany of autonomic "autonomous" criticism lies ready to pounce. This I know. Self-knowledge and knowledge of the self are not sui generis. Subtle inflections and deflections of meaning, sometimes manipulated by self-help culture or religious recruitment. The only strong philosophical claims that I care to make and open up to scrutiny are the following:
Thesis: Aesthetics, originating with the Socratic pivot was paradigmatic to the tradition of Western Philosophy.
When exactly?
I Kant(yuk!) say, moral virtue and consciousness are one and the same. But are they? O sepi to poli. And so the claim goes on. Truth is a mu function, regression towards the mean is revealing in a flock mentality. Sometimes black and white, I should appear to contradict myself by claiming truth as an absolute. Black and white imaginings are binary and sometimes suffice. From correlative recognition to hindsight wisdom to the deviant behaviours of norm violators judgement swiftly followed the interpreters of meaning. Hierarchies emerged in forme and biological determination. Environmental outcomes always predict the non-existence of contradiction. This isn't saying much, especially since the pathway to the isle of the blessed is a life of reflection.[^N] Eudaemonia is a place worth visiting, a verb made a noun, a reversal of sorts to return a virtue to its narrative forme.
After Babel, Aspects of Language and Translation and the Hermeneutic Meme...
- {Gadamer on Linguistic structures} Whorfian and universalist linguistics..., Six fundamental (structural) types of language according to Johannes Lohmann (link #1, #2, #3), Helmut Gipper, Émile Benveniste and... I have also downloaded the following PDF; L'Ecriture (de) la Copule, translate it and see what emerges. Also, Jacques Derrida in Marges de la philosophic (Paris, 1972), pp. 214–46.