A samurai tending to flowers
In Derrida's Living On and Pratchett's Feet of Clay, we see a minor theme, one of visibility being rendered by something that is not visible. This paradox is a true paradox in the sense that its contradiction is one of necessity: that which renders the possibility of sight should in itself not be seen, lest one incite madness. In Derrida, this madness is being blinded in seeing the light; in Pratchett, this madness is being poisoned by the fumes of a candle. One does not see the light; one sees by it. Seeing the light is a sort of death or madness. For there is a madness to absolute visibility rendered by seeing that which itself renders visibility, it is the ultimate disrespect to sight itself, for it is absolute definition. It is an Ouroboros having completely eaten itself, or having opened the box with the crowbar inside it. Or having successfully bitten teeth.
Any enterprise that seeks truth (and which enterprise does not?) runs the risk of this madness, philosophy more so than others, and self-knowledge most of all. Phenomenology safeguards against this by instituting the inexhaustibility of reality, and the Buddhists did the same by eradicating the self in nirvana. Typical approaches by the east and west, but ultimately the same: reinstitute difference and alterity to avoid the madness of metaphysical unity and perfection in epistemology.
For those of us who are neither phenomenologists nor Buddhists, the temptation to eradicate mystery is so treacherous in that it does not occur as a temptation to be avoided but as an ideal to be reached. Absolute knowledge was where the Truth resides in the modern period (the heights of which were scalable by science), and absolute self-knowledge is the key to self-mastery.
However, perfect self-knowledge requires that one reach a place where one is no longer himself, in order to escape the machinery of the one understanding that machinery using that very machinery, not to mention imply perhaps that the self is one thing. This is the ultimate problem of definition: the desire to arrest one thing into one thing alone, render it immobile, complete, defined, for all time (de finitio: to make finite). But this is also necessary: we need handholds among what would otherwise be an unending flux of things which are never the same.
There is a balance between that defining mastery of mystery and resignation to the unending run of randomness. As with all things important, we should know where we stand, but not mistake this for an invitation to assimilate. There might be no line between assimilation and comprehension, if one forgets the hand that grasps and its difference from that which it is grasping. As such, definitions should always be light, gentle almost, in order not to risk madness and death.
But the life borne out of that is hard, and heartbreaking. Definitions should be there, but only be traces. As Derrida puts it: "We cannot help but master absence but we must always let go."
Unless we see in this balance an intrusion into the very definition of definition itself, one that is invaginated, an Ouroboros lurking so majestically and non-simply it becomes ignored like an instance of it in Living On itself: "Its own subject and predicate, a tautology into which the other, however, has intruded, a flower of rhetoric without properties, with no proper meaning, a repeated self-quotation. 'A rose is a rose is a rose.'"
Any enterprise that seeks truth (and which enterprise does not?) runs the risk of this madness, philosophy more so than others, and self-knowledge most of all. Phenomenology safeguards against this by instituting the inexhaustibility of reality, and the Buddhists did the same by eradicating the self in nirvana. Typical approaches by the east and west, but ultimately the same: reinstitute difference and alterity to avoid the madness of metaphysical unity and perfection in epistemology.
For those of us who are neither phenomenologists nor Buddhists, the temptation to eradicate mystery is so treacherous in that it does not occur as a temptation to be avoided but as an ideal to be reached. Absolute knowledge was where the Truth resides in the modern period (the heights of which were scalable by science), and absolute self-knowledge is the key to self-mastery.
However, perfect self-knowledge requires that one reach a place where one is no longer himself, in order to escape the machinery of the one understanding that machinery using that very machinery, not to mention imply perhaps that the self is one thing. This is the ultimate problem of definition: the desire to arrest one thing into one thing alone, render it immobile, complete, defined, for all time (de finitio: to make finite). But this is also necessary: we need handholds among what would otherwise be an unending flux of things which are never the same.
There is a balance between that defining mastery of mystery and resignation to the unending run of randomness. As with all things important, we should know where we stand, but not mistake this for an invitation to assimilate. There might be no line between assimilation and comprehension, if one forgets the hand that grasps and its difference from that which it is grasping. As such, definitions should always be light, gentle almost, in order not to risk madness and death.
But the life borne out of that is hard, and heartbreaking. Definitions should be there, but only be traces. As Derrida puts it: "We cannot help but master absence but we must always let go."
Unless we see in this balance an intrusion into the very definition of definition itself, one that is invaginated, an Ouroboros lurking so majestically and non-simply it becomes ignored like an instance of it in Living On itself: "Its own subject and predicate, a tautology into which the other, however, has intruded, a flower of rhetoric without properties, with no proper meaning, a repeated self-quotation. 'A rose is a rose is a rose.'"
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