Too Much Givenness

The Hegelian dialectical, double negation does not resolve into a synthesis. There is always a remainder of irreducible ambiguity, so that all phenomena are saturated in Jean-Luc Marion's sense that too much has been given to intuition to reduce to the phenomenal and conceptual objects of the intention. It seems that being is too excessive to be reduced to intentional phenomena and conceptualizations. No matter how many intentional percepts we may copulate with percepts, or percepts with concepts, or concepts with concepts, we will never reduce being to either the perceivable nor to the knowable because what being is becoming isn't determined. The indeterminacy of nonbeing cracks open being's becoming as a procession into the entropic abyss of space-time, while concurrently, the abyss speaks on an in the matter of determinate being's energetic resistance to it as the binary opposition of the impermanent, material somethings on the one hand and the nothing of pure potential on the other. The One becomes many in a glorious failure to contain itself, like Beckett's "incontinent void" or Paul Valéry's "blemish on the perfection of nonbeing." 

Eventually nonbeing's victory will be absolute in the ultimate self-defeat of the heat death of the Universe. But until then, the void will speak in the deformations and clumpy configurations wrought in matter's inconsistent dispersal into the abyss that birthed it. For now, being's excess coincides with its lack, which is its lack of oneness, or its inability to unify all of its multiplicity under a single intention. The One that "fails to be at one with itself" is the victory of being's love affair with the nonbeing endemic to it. Let all things be made new in the continual baptism of the dialectic of love, which beautiful, sublime, and horrible not all at once but in turn over its ever-changing perspectivalism in space-time.

Baddass vibes mixed by James Reeves of Midnight Radio: jamesreeves.co

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:25

Co-horizing of binary oppositions as the basis of whatever there is through whatever there isn't. So this is the dialectic in Hegel of being and non-being, in which non-being is already internal to being. And if we're talking about co-arising, then that means that the uh vice versa is also true that being is somehow internal to being, which is the co-arising of internality and externality, so that the inside creates the outside and the outside creates the inside at the same time. There is this idea in Einsteinian relativity that there is no simultaneity, but the basis of the universe is this simultaneous co-arizing of binary oppositions. Although structuralism began in semiotics with Ferdinand de Sassier in the idea that difference is the basic structure of language. The signifier is not able to contain its meaning within itself. The signifier is a part of a larger structure and its meaning is defined relationally in its difference from other signifiers. This is Jacques Derrida's difference, a slight update to Ferdinand de Saucier's ideas. However, once again, this is still structuralism. Derrida never saw himself as a post-structuralist, but as working out the full ramifications of structuralism. But as there was this working out of how language works in semiotics or in semiology, depending on how it's referred to, it's the same meaning. There was also this simultaneous realization that this has metaphysical implications, which you can see in all of the so-called post-structuralists or those people that sometimes get grouped into the category called postmodernist, which again nobody thought of themselves as. So that language is actually disclosive to some degree of being because it is related directly to being. It is the method for being to reveal itself to itself, as in a Heideggerian construction of something like language is the house of being, or Zizek's more comical formulation, but serious nonetheless of language is the torture house of being. But the problem with Zizek's kind of formulation there is that it makes it seem as though there were some other option, and that's not Zizek's point at all. He's just kind of, you know, realizing that we are totally bound by caught up in language. There is really no other way to, you know, be in the world for us, uh, the design, the being there, the uh enlanguaged being, there is no other way for us uh to be in the world. That is what we are. So Zizek's kind of updated version of this is like you think you've escaped ideology uh and now you're like standing where? Like in some place outside of ideology, um, wrong. You're always, you know, in some uh ideologically structured uh system uh that is able to disclose reality to you through uh language or through signifiers, which for Zizek is just specifically uh referring to the Lacanian Big Other or Lacan's very famous formulation, Le Non Duped Air, the person who thinks that they are able to stand outside of the um symbolic given to them by the big other uh is a duped person, is a um, if you think that you are able to uh escape the uh authority of the father, in this case the big other and the big other's symbolic, then you are erring, you are in error, you are duped. All those who think that they escape this error and that others are entrapped in this error are are more deeply ensconced in this error because they imagine that they are the outside uh of the symbolic, uh, but they are only ever able to access themselves, their internal selves, um, through uh the symbolic, so that what is um outside uh has to be taken inside. So we're back to this um binary opposition between externality and internality, uh, which in phenomenology the internal is called um the intention. Uh, but what is intentional um is always this relation uh between what is um outside of us, so the internal is always given to us uh through the external, which is sometimes formulated as uh self as other. Um and we're gonna focus a little bit on uh Emmanuel Levinos here, where a lot of this sort of comes from, although Zizek is critical of Levinos for reasons that I don't completely understand. Um, we're gonna talk about um our good friend Emanuel Levinos nonetheless. Zizek's criticism of Levinos seems to have something to do with Levinas's emphasis on the face. Uh, and I think a lot of people wind up taking the face uh too literally and not understanding that the face is this interface uh with the other, the other whose unknowability constitutes us. Uh so this unknowability is both the ground of our internality, but also the um ground of whatever uh internality we have, so that we are given ourselves uh by the other, and by this sort of ground in the ultimate uh unknowability uh of the other, which becomes the unknowability in us, uh internal to us, which is uh probably rightly called the Freudian unconscious specifically, not the neurobiological pre-conscious, not the neurobiological, what is sometimes called unconscious and whatnot, uh, but this deep reservoir of the void that has been internalized into us. So the ultimate externality uh of the void, you know, that Nietzsche stares into and that stares back at him, uh, is both uh the ground of our being. So Zizek likes to quote this uh Beckett aphorism that talks about um the void as being an incontinent void, um a void that um voids itself, uh of itself uh to become uh everything that there is. So this uh is notness, uh this non-being that has internal to it uh being, uh and it a it avoids itself, it externalizes, it extends itself, um beyond itself uh as an excess, uh as an excrement uh into uh what is, you know, for Hegel the becoming uh of the universe. So that becoming uh is the process, the co-arising dialectic uh between uh the one and the many. It is the one becoming many, which is this creative impetus that became very uh much in focus uh once um Darwinian evolution uh became this primary um touch point within uh the sciences, uh obviously especially within biology, but what seemed to be um indicated um by um evolution was a kind of intention uh of the universe, of the one, uh to become many. So you can see in the word universe the uh uni part and the verse part. Uh and so the uni part is the one and then the verse part is the diverse part or the diversification part uh of the one uh which is to become many. So in the famous or infamous, depending on how you consider it, uh death of teleology, which uh in terms of Aristotelian um accounting of causality uh would be the kind of end of like any teleological uh cause, just their sort of uh physical causality, which would be thought of as the material causality uh in Aristotle, so that matter contains uh whatever causal structures um there are to account for anything uh that is. Uh but you know, for many people it was clear that at least matter as it was depicted uh in the physical sciences uh did not contain its own telos. Um but if you sort of expanded your notion of what matter was, uh you could reinstate, uh, especially for a sort of process uh philosophy/slash process theology view of the world, you could reinstate some kind of telos because what you started to see was that matter seemed to have within it a desire uh to become many, to diversify, for there to be some level of maximal complexity, which is uh indicated well in the uh work of somebody who was interested in uh theology very much, Tayard de Chardin, a Jesuit priest uh and also a biologist, uh, and also a uh paleoanthropologist, and in line with some religious thinkers who did not reject science but embraced it and looked to it to teach uh something about uh theology uh to them. Another contemporary and famous example, Lemaitre, who was also a Jesuit priest, um, and his, I guess, single conversation that he had with Einstein, uh, he was trying to promote his idea of a singularity that exploded into a derogatorily termed at first Big Bang, use another example of a priest that was very much interested in the relationship between the development uh of the sciences and uh the development of theology, which in this case was a sort of reinstatement about uh metaphysics in general, uh, but also a sort of reinstatement of a study of teleology or the end or purpose or meaning uh of things um that are not simply blind, uh think blind watchmaker sort of um Dawkins type stuff here, or uh intentionless without intention, both the phenomenological intention as in internal subjectivity. So in the material reduction, consciousness itself uh gets reduced to an illusion that somehow uh is uh internal to physical matter or that physical matter is able to cause physically, which is very bizarre since illusions uh must not be physical in some sense if they're illusions. But nonetheless, the grand uh illusion of purpose uh is the final target uh of the material uh reduction, the final target, haha. Which is uh interesting since final things such as ends, uh the ends of teleology are being eliminated. But for such thinkers as Taylor de Chardin, what uh was embraced uh by a religious thinker uh when uh he or she embraces um the modern sciences of uh their day is a teleological uh projection of some kind, a teleological metaphysics, even, so that you can discover within what seemed to be a blind, intentionless principle, which is um evolution by natural selection, evolution's selector uh is not um quite as blind as may have, or quite as uh intentionless or without uh an end as might have uh at one time been thought. So that it is um progressing. And for Teard, this is kind of famously his alpha point, is this maximal simplicity, um something like the singularity, La Metra's singularity, and then Chardin's ultimate uh omega point, which is just the last letter of the Greek alphabet, you know, and alpha is the first letter of the Greek alphabet, but anyways, the omega point is this maximal point of diversity, of multiplicity. So this is the process of the one becoming many. Now, of course, the uh one becoming many is an asymptotic uh from the word asymptote, which just means that it is approaching this omega point, but it never quite arrives, even though it gets closer and closer, it never actually arrives at this maximal point of diversification or of manyness or of multitudineness, because there's this kind of complex relation between complexity uh and diversity and structure, and it is this interdependence between the relation of diversification uh through differentiation versus uh the structure, uh, the oneness, the wholeness, the formal uh causality that it relies on. So there was this emphasis in the 20th century uh in a lot of philosophy and a lot of theology on individuation. Um, a lot of people associate it with Jung, but I kind of like the way that Deleuze sort of made it um, I don't know, just very structurally clear. Like there's two different types uh of individuation for Deleuze. Uh one that is a convergence, um, it actually converges on a transcendent identity. So you can think about here a sort of like eternal transcendent realm, uh, like a uh realm of the Platonic forms uh that have these like, I don't know, um ideas before any instantiation, so that you know you have the idea in this realm of number, of form, of whatever, uh, and then you know there are these material instantiations of it, but because of the distance between uh this transcendent realm and you know what emanates uh out of and from it uh to this you know fallen material place, um, you get this kind of degraded uh Platonic version of creation as this uh degradation of perfection. And then there is this continual desire to return to a sort of edenic uh realm uh that is sort of barred uh to material, and so you're actually like kind of trying to go back into this oneness, and so these are of course a collection of ones, so this is not like um a total oneness, so that you have um I don't know, a number of different kinds of ones, and the question always became like, well, how many different kinds of ones are there? There's like, is there like a form of chair and then a different form for like a rocking chair and then like a different form for a whatever uh reclining chair and a different form for uh a love seat and then a sofa? Like, I mean, how how many forms are there up there and like how many in-between things are there? Or is like a rocking chair just like a deformation of a chair, or like what's the deal? And so, as always, everything comes back to this Sorieties paradox of uh discretion versus um cont continuity. Uh, and this has to do with uh identity whenever we identify something um according to its like essential qualities or the substance that underlies you know its um appearance, or the substance that somehow unifies or holds together all of the attributes, this uh famous distinction between necessity and contingency, which again is one of these essential um structural, co-arizing binary oppositions, the the necessary and the contingent, which in classical philosophy and theology held that what was substantial or necessary uh was eternal and absolute, uh, but what was being revealed uh by evolutionary biology as well as uh by process philosophy that was kind of a response to Darwinian evolution, was that the category of necessity was uh relational. It was in fact dependent uh in this relation of codependency or interdependency uh on contingency in order for its own constitution, which in process philosophy, uh especially White Hedian process philosophy, uh came to become an emphasis on the contingency, uh an emphasis on the diversity, and an emphasis on relation or relata uh over uh substance uh uh and in itself, so that there was no longer an in itself. Because uh this the entire concept of being all in one place, and Hegel's really good phraseology, that there is uh no difference between being all in one place and non-being or nothing. Uh because there is nothing that can be known, said, uh experienced uh in being all in one place in the singularity, because it is without relation by definition. Um and it is uh the relation, in particular the relation of binary oppositions, uh, that allows there to be uh anything. It's just another way of saying that uh being in itself is nothing. Uh it needs to be related to, which it already is internally, otherwise there wouldn't be anything now, it needs to be related to the non-being internal to it, uh, which is, you know, if you think about it in purely physical terms, is the space-time uh which is energy uh that is you know injected somehow. Uh for us, it's not injected, for us it's internal to it, but the uh singularity, so that the singularity is now expanding uh indefinitely, according to the natural laws, which for a process thinker like Whitehead uh was what the so-called mind of God, not the God sitting up on a throne with particular uh intentions for creation and uh theology and uh already finished, but a theology that was uh open and being worked out uh with creation. However, nonetheless, uh what this theology definitely entailed uh at the basis was um a continual diversification, which brings us to Deleuze's you know other version of individuation, uh, which is this idea of a individuation through differentiation. So that you know, this is just difference, uh kind of like unifying temporarily at any rate, uh, a multiplicity in order to form a temporary uh identity objectification, not based on resemblance, not based on the uh relation to some eternal realm, but based on um its own relation to the one, to the one becoming many, uh, which for Deleuze would be the repetition. Which, again, you know, for Deleuze, a repetition without a concept uh is pure difference. The concept here being the oneness of an identity. And uh, any repetition without a concept is actually not a repetition at all because there's uh always going to be difference. However, we impose in this take as one function of set theory that Badu talks about when he talks about Quentin Mayasu's work. This is the idea that we kind of impose a sort of temporary way of holding together into some kind of an individuation of an object what is actually pure difference. Which is just to say, as Deleuze does, that what there is, his metaphysics is different. So what there is is this differential background. It's just another way of saying, frankly, what Whitehead already said is that, you know, what there is is uh relation. Before anything else, uh there has to be this uh relationality, relata. And then to put difference in relationship with difference. So Deleuze has some clever terms for this. One is difference in itself, which is like his opposition to Hegel's being in itself, then becoming difference for itself, which is difference related to itself internally, or eminently on Deleuze's concept of the plane of eminence. So the general structure again of this uh basic eminent relatedness or eminent, you could even say transcendence, even though um Deleuze is famously uh against transcendence. He is against specifically the transcendence of some uh realm of the eternal forms, uh like a Platonic uh godmind or something like that, um, and that this world of multiplicity uh and materiality is somehow a degradation of that. Uh he is also against the entire concept of identity or concepts uh that are formed on this convergence uh on some kind of agreed upon uh form or agreed upon um idea uh or a concept. This is concepts as a mold again, uh, this idea that, you know, this is what the thing is, um and this idea comes from some uh transcendent realm. As long as there is some perfect ideal, uh then everything else is sort of like a fall away from that. Uh and Deleuze wants to celebrate uh the eminent, um, and so that a repetition uh is not a falling away from. So uh a repetition is always going to have some difference because a repetition is always a sort of uh temporary unification, a temporary putting relation of difference with itself, which is to say to put uh difference in relation with a repetition, and repetition is difference, but it is difference uh taken as a one, uh, not a one that is uh molded uh out of some idea of resemblance, but a one that is the sort of individuation of difference, uh which we might call differentiation, um, that is a temporary uh unification uh that uh makes appear as if one uh rather than there being some substantial oneness that's actually you know eternally uh holding it together. So that uh ideas, concepts, forms uh come into being and can pass out of being uh without there being any uh problem of a uh lost perfection or when something uh passes uh out of uh instantiation uh in some sort of material form, it does not mean that you know there is some uh overall loss to the universe, uh, but rather that uh the universe is uh net uh gaining uh from this uh differentiation, uh this new inflow uh of uh difference, this emergence of a new form of some kind. You can see the struggle uh here and with almost everything that came after, you know, the widespread acceptance and um understanding, or rather trying to work out an understanding of the implications of Darwinian evolution. So it seemed to be just this constant obliteration uh of past forms. Um so this is like the opposite of the theological notion of creation ex nihilo. This is a creation based on the uh destruction of prior forms. And so, of course, this seemed to, for some people, just straight up eliminate theology, eliminate philosophy, even, and especially, you know, any philosophical uh seeking after metaphysics. Because it just started to seem like uh the universe didn't have any metaphysics, it didn't have any theological direction, there was no uh big other, large uh intention in charge of any of this, which again had a lot of forms uh that articulated, you know, first uh for me in Lacan with uh there is no meta-language, but then of course in Leotard's famous phrase, uh there is no meta-narrative, which seems to be like sort of like the ultimate, there is no metaphysics, there is no overall plan, uh, there is no overall direction, there's just you know the contingency of pure chance. So this is again the preference for the differential background, uh, which I think is put nicely by Badu as the um inconsistent multiplicity. Uh, but noticing, as Deleuze did, uh and Badoo did, that that is a metaphysics. That if you are saying that what is primary is um inconsistent multiplicity, uh, you know, that is what there is, then you are saying something that for a theologian has a certain kind of um theological implication that is certainly the death of God. So you get the rise of death of God theology at this time in direct response to uh Darwinian evolution uh and the implications of Darwinian evolution. Uh but it is the death, I would just say, of a certain kind of God, uh of a kind of intentional God that has an overall uh purpose for the universe, uh, a God that's in control of the universe. So in process theology, you get the idea of the death of the omnigod. So the uh omnigod would be omniscient, all-knowing, omnipotent, all-powerful, uh omnipresent, uh everywhere uh at the same time, uh, and then omnibenevolent for sure is out the window, which is you know all good. And then you get this diminution uh of the omnigod, uh, which actually seems to be in line for some theologians, in particular radical theologians such as Thomas Altheiser. Uh, you get to see this, uh, and now Zizek apparently, you get this diminution of God that seems to already be present um in the Bible. So you get this reading of 1 Philippians, uh Paul, uh, where he says, you know, God didn't think, you know, uh being God or you know, sitting on this throne, a sky god kind of thing, uh, to be something to be sought after. Uh, and so God emptied himself, Kenosis, uh, into the form of a servant, uh, you know, became eminent. So the transcendent uh is no longer up there, but the transcendent is, you know, fully eminence. And then you know, see the kind of weird overlap with the lose here, uh, just total emphasis on the eminent, total emphasis on the open flow of becoming, that seems to totally um obliterate any idea uh of a teleology of a directedness uh of a oneness, so that uh the differential background, the inconsistent multiplicity uh becomes uh the ultimate uh and the um uh oneness, the substantial, the essential becomes the contingent. But you get this sort of um inversion of theology that basically got Terre de Chardin in a lot of hot water and condemned, uh, but uh who has a sort of like modern fruition in such thinkers like Ilia Delio, um who, uh a Catholic nun again, who see uh in this uh diversification, this div differentiation, this complexification, um, this multiplicity, uh a plan. Uh a plan for multiplicity, which is sort of uh again paradoxical, maybe even ironic, because if you want to have uh true multiplicity, there can't be a plan. Um, however, there is a sort of intention uh to be without intention. So there has to be this ground, uh this differential background, uh this um ultimate um disunity, so that uh any tendency uh towards oneness. Because like uh purposelessness, um, this is using the work of Brooke Saporin, uh purposelessness cannot um sustain itself, uh it cannot keep itself from becoming purposeful because uh that would require some sort of vigilant guarding against uh purpose. Uh you can kind of see this in uh Deleuze's and Guadari's uh idea of a body without organs that becomes cancerous. So that if you have this open space, this you know, potential space, uh that is kind of what you know a body without organs could, you know, in one rendering be seen as. Um, there is nothing to stop uh a cancerous growth from um you know taking hold, uh becoming you know this hierarchical arboreal uh structure that like destroys you know anything rhizomatic and democratic that's growing up around it. Of course, as we know from cancer, it does take these differentiated, individuated uh cells and you know uh reduces them to you know its food uh and it metabolizes it in terms of the cancer, making it um just this uh reproduction of the same uh concepts as a mold, if you will. But it's ultimately a self-undermining uh growth uh cancer because uh the body that hosts it eventually dies and the cancer uh can no longer grow. And this is like what I would say exemplifies uh growth without any purpose, growth without an intention. Uh it's just this blind, you know, um movement towards non-being or death. Whereas a body that has at least enough structure uh in Deleuze and Guadalie's you know telling to resist that uh doesn't ultimately resist this um, I don't know, growth towards uh self-annihilation, uh, because there is still non-being sort of internal to whatever structure, however rhizomatic there is, there's this you know coming into being and coming out of being that is a part of the whole uh structuration of the thing as internal to the structure itself. But at least uh the body that has some uh striation, some sort of structure, and isn't entirely smooth, has some ability to resist. And how does it resist this cancerous growth growth? It resists it uh by uh having some sort of intention. Uh, in in this case, intention for differentiation rather than an intention to become a mere repetition of the same as a cancerous growth would be. So there does seem to be some teleological end, some intention for there to be um some kind of process of differentiation, even though it's temporary and there's gonna be the ultimate heat death of the universe, and you know, the entropy that's driving the whole um differentiation process is eventually going to be victorious over its uh creative resistance in matter uh according to the physical laws. But there does seem to be some resistance that is evidence even in the clumpy dispersion of the universe. I mean, if entropy was total or was absolute, um, you would just have the singularity, then the big bang, uh, and then you would just have this, you know, complete dispersion of the universe in every direction, so that there was no uh formation of planets or stars or black holes or anything. There was just this almost immediate process of you know total expansion uh into the non-relation uh that is imagined as the heat death of the universe, where entropy spreads out every molecule uh to the point and every you know subatomic particle to the point where nothing can interact with each other with each other any longer. So that again, there's really no difference between uh the singularity and then you know the total uh heat death of the universe expansion, because uh although you know the singularity is every molecule of the universe packed all in one place, there's no relation there. But then, you know, the universe uh as this totally expanded no molecule uh in one place, but every single one or every single atom, every single subatomic particle, whatever, uh spread out maximally, uh again, you have the same uh repetition, which is no relationality. What you need is a relation between um individuation and uh relationality, which is the Deleuzian relation between repetition and difference, uh, or the White Hedian relation between uh generals, which are his version of uh repetitions, uh, and then uh uh the relationship itself. So a general would be some kind of a repetition, something that would um, you know, kind of appear as a habit of the universe. So that's how uh both Deleuze and Whitehead kind of thought of the natural laws, uh, just that these are you know temporary habits, temporary repetitions that form uh for uh Whitehead, they emerged as uh generals, so that you think about it, just the word generalization, things that you could generalize about, so like the natural laws basically. But they were you know temporary habits, and that so that even them didn't have this eternal formal quality uh in the sense that you know they would eventually uh you know change some kind of a way because they're they're not and in itself. The laws are not like in themselves stable, they are given by particular relations. There might be all kinds of natural laws that we are just not related to in any way, um, that so that we just don't know about it because uh they're not relevant uh to uh our situation. But for uh Whitehead, uh, who proceeded uh by quite a bit to lose, he did have uh an idea of God, he and he at least of God's mind. Uh and in God's mind there were these ideas. But it was like God's mind is like any other mind, even though he called the ideas there the eternal ideas. It is a realm uh that is not transcendent, but is you know eminent in terms of like it is in the instantiation of these ideas that God's mind is present, which for Whitehead would be something like in any actual occasion, because for Whitehead, uh the world, the universe uh is made up of actual occasions, which are like experiential units, which again becomes this problem uh of discrete versus continuous, because it's like, okay, so how are these experiential units actually divided up? And there's always some sort of artificiality about that. Um, but uh nonetheless, there is this paradoxical necessary relation between uh the discrete and the continuous here as there is anywhere. Um, but nonetheless, an actual occasion, which is the ultimate of eminence. So this is in some sense, you know, Deleuze's plane of eminence. This is like, you know, the present moment where it's happening here now. You have um the eternal ideas, you know, fully present um as uh ways of concretizing or uh in Deleuze's way realizing actual possibility. So it's kind of like the building blocks uh of experience for Whitehead, uh or the uh building blocks of a concretized experience, which would be an instantiated um, you know, eternal idea, so that what you have at any actual occasion is the concretizations of the past, uh, but as Deleuze is very good at pointing out, anything that's been realized or concretized uh also actuates new possibilities, so that the uh virtuality uh of physical things or of concretized things, uh, because you know, for Deleuze and for Whitehead, ideas are also uh concretized or realized, you always get this new actuation of possibility, which is to pull potential, which is just this uh absolute void that's you know pregnant. Uh you can pull that up from that voidness uh into the relationality of an actual possibility, uh, and then that can be further realized or concretized, and then every uh concretization, every realization, whether they be physical or mental or whatever, creates more virtuality, creates more actual possibility. So that any actual occasion, just like any event on the plane of eminence, you're going to have the forms or the concretizations or the repetitions of the past uh plus all the new virtuality that's there, I mean, plus whatever virtuality was there before. But for um uh Whitehead specifically, you're going to have these eternal ideas, which are very open, simple uh building blocks like uh color, like form itself, like uh quality, uh, like you know, all these kinds of uh very open. So you're not gonna have like uh chairness, you are going to, but that chairness you're gonna see is kind of a very um temporary open. You can imagine, you know, chairs came into being and came out uh a lot faster than color does. Um but you know, for Whitehead, uh they're both kind of uh in the long scheme of things, these temporary um ideas, even though uh, you know, Whitehead calls them eternal ideas. You can see the difference though between something like a chair, which would be a concretized form from the past being brought into an actual occasion that has all this open possibility, even though it's a sort of realized thing in human culture. You can see this as a very relational possibility space or actual possibility space, uh, because uh a chair forms because of its relation to you know the human body and the fact that you know we evolved uh somewhat contingently to stand upright and all these kind of things, as opposed to something like color uh as something that seems, again, you know, more long-lasting. But you can imagine, you know, a universe where there wasn't color because there weren't eyes uh to you know project color onto objects. I mean, this is this very experiential category. Um, and so these eternal ideas are not like forever, they're still relational. I mean, um, there might be some necessary conditions for any possible universe. We don't really know what those are. Um, I mean, for Whitehead, uh, very much in line with the Kantian categories, um, there are things like uh quality, um, quantity, you know, modality, relationality, these basic building blocks uh that do seem to be pretty, you know, unbudgeable, especially relationality, because what we're talking about here is the necessity of relationality. So if relationality exists eternally in the mind of God, um, you know, it's necessary in some sense for any possible universe. You might say, well, then how are these sort of eternal ideas uh like just mere habits? Um, you know, I actually don't know that. Um so uh we'll just say though that um the uh eternal ideas, like the really long-lasting eternal ideas, not just the concretized forms of the past, the um realized possibilities of the past that are brought into the present moment, but these uh eternal ideas that seem to have to be present. So this is, you know, I'm just talking about modal logic here, basically. This is just, you know, the things that needed to be there for there to be any possible universe. You know, I think we've worked out a lot of what those are, but you know, even those things are relationally defined. They all define each other so that whenever we define, you know, modality uh modal. Modally, what is uh you know uh necessary for any possible universe, we're still talking about these things um as relations. So, you know, perhaps you know habits aren't the right word, but for sure, you know, any kind of in itself uh is not the right word either. These things don't like substantiate themselves or stand as in themselves. However, what we're talking about here is this incredible paradox between uh what does seem to be an in-itself uh versus uh what is just the pure relationality that you know is the differential background of process, uh Deleuze, Badoo, whoever, and uh the oneness uh of an in itself or uh the substance uh of essential uh identity or an essential defining identity of some kind. So the teleology, the in-itself, if you will, of the universe seems to be to become other than itself, to come to this relation between self and other that is a somehow a balance or a omega point uh that will never actually be fully realized, uh, but defined very well by Théor de Chadin as a um a point of maximal production, maximal creativity, uh Deleuze's you know, uh excessive creativity of um, you know, the active production sort of concept, uh, as you know, fully uh instantiated, and there's the paradox right there, fully, you know, realized, fully, you know, and in itself uh the omega point, fully, you know, productive, uh online, you know, churning out uh ultimate maximal uh flows of uh newness, of intensity, of difference. Uh so the the ultimate amount of difference uh that can be that can be necessarily supported by oneness, uh by identity, because you have to have this sort of like support structure. Uh and one actually is the support structure uh of the other because like total difference, the total spread-outness of every particle of the universe without any relationality isn't even difference. Um that's not you know maximal anything. You you maximize difference and it turns into nothing. Again, it came from nothing, turns back into nothing. It is this necessity to be related so that you know you can't have maximal space-time. Uh, you have to have the amount of space-time, the amount of distance uh that will give you the maximum amount uh of relationality, uh, the maximum amount of putting into relation. Uh but you need to have something to put into relation. And again, this is the problem with making uh difference first or making uh relata first, rather than a you know co-arising uh with uh the oneness, uh co-arising with um substance. There has to be um one flowing into the other, interpenetrating, inner sub uh inner um subsumption, uh as Brooks Laporin likes to put it, in order for there to be anything at all. So again, this is uh something uh in terms of nothing, uh being given by non-being. Uh this is unity, uh identity, substance uh given by diversity, um difference, uh the ultimate non-identity of irreducible ambiguity of the other, which brings us back down uh full circle, back round full circle, uh to Emmanuel Levinos, uh, where we are talking again about the self as other. So for Levinos, uh the other is first. Uh why? It's just like saying uh the uh difference is first or the relation is first, uh, because uh there is no uh one without the other, which is the origin of Levinos's famous uh saying um, or assertion rather, philosophical assertion, uh, that ethics uh is the first philosophy, not ontology, not being, but before there is being, there is this relation to the other. Or in my rendering of it, it isn't before. Uh co-arising with uh the self is the relation to the other. And it is this relation that first, you know, gives rise. I mean, putting numbers on this thing is stupid, but anyways, what comes to mind after uh ethics is this um, you know, ontology that emerges from this ethics, from this relatedness, which is this realization that um being uh comes from non-being, and vice versa. And so then you get this basic um ontology as philosophy, metaphysics as philosophy. Uh, but then, you know, um, again, putting these things sequentially doesn't make a lot of sense, but what comes to me next, I'll say, um, you know, in the order of things, is uh epistemology, because what you have um in the relation of self to other is this internal to external relation, which is kind of like the intentional uh part of ourselves that you know is our knowable self to the unknowable other. So for Levi Nas, uh the other is just this void, this like um thing that you cannot uh fully project into, you cannot reduce uh the ambiguity of uh because it is the abyss. The abyss that not only um forms uh the other, but also uh is within you. Uh the abyss that makes you uh put into relation with the other uh in the plane of eminence, difference to difference with the other. So it is this um differential relation uh that could be understood uh in terms of like uh Deleuze's second kind of uh individuation, which is we become individuals through a differentiation between uh self and other. Uh but there is this ultimate connectivity uh of the void in me, uh recognizes the void in you, namas de kind of a basis of the relationship. So again, there is this crazy paradoxical, paradoxical the difference, uh the ultimate exterior in me, you know, recognizes the difference, the exterior otherness uh in you. Paradoxically, uh by you know, this recognition is a sort of um visible invisibility in the sense that um there is no reduction of the otherness uh in me or you uh by recognizing, you know, it that it's there. I'm recognizing that its theirness, is its quidity, if you will, uh is given uh by its not theirness, by its uh non-locality, so that every location uh is arising from uh the non-location. And epistemologically, um every knowing uh is the misrecognition that comes from uh the ultimate uh unknowing. Whatever I know about you, I know uh because of you know what I know about myself, and whatever I know about myself, I know uh because um I know uh you and the ultimate thing that I can know about you is that I can't know about you. And the ultimate thing that I can know about myself is that uh, you know, the kernel of the real uh that resists knowing, that resists symbolization absolutely in me, the hardcore kernel, as Isaac puts it, um, is this unknowable abyss. So we have, in a sense, return to Socrates's ultimate virtue, uh, which is knowing that I don't know. But the misrecognition um of knowing uh is still uh something um that is, you know, a part of this dialectic, this part of uh becoming uh this constitutive uh component. It's one half of the uh co-orizing of uh knowing and unknowing. Uh this knowing uh epistemology is um this temporary but uh significant nonetheless, um, even though it's going to pass away just because it's not ultimate and eternal doesn't mean that it isn't um ultimately in some sense meaningful. So again, ethics is first philosophy. Um we can talk about you know semantics as also being a part of this whole co-arising from binary opposition, so that you know what is meaningful uh is based on um the uh irreducible ambiguity uh of what can't be put into categories, can't be identified, uh, can't be made uh to be meaningful. And so we will proceed from here next time. You can see, as many people do, the clear um connections between Emmanuel Levinos and Jean-Luc Marion, uh, who did study with Levinos. So uh we can think about um all the overlap there between um the lack of being and the excess of being, uh, especially, I mean, for me, how that's expressed uh in Jean-Luc Marion's distinction between uh the intuition uh versus the um intention. Uh the intention is the part that we experience as self, uh, and the intuition is the part that we uh experience as other uh or exterior, in the sense that it is uh excessive, uh the so the EX there, this constant like self through other. Uh but the intuition here is like how we take in uh what is exterior to us. But when we take it in, and this is the visible invisibility piece that you know first was through uh Mary Lou Ponty, but then again, Jean-Luc Marion picked up uh in terms of uh the Eucharist, visible invisibility, um, is this concept of the intuition taking in, registering something, uh making visible uh in this metaphorical sense of uh you know, affect of emotion, like it registers, uh, but not understanding, not knowing, uh, not being able to take it in in a complete way so that I take it in as other than myself, which is um non-intentional. It's what I cannot intend, uh, what I cannot even put into phenomenological categories or understand. And this is the excess of being that is inherent to the lack of oneness in being, or the uh which is the non-being of being. Again, in Plotinus's uh version of the one becoming the many by being so excessive in itself, so that it is constantly overspilling itself and becoming other than itself, which is also uh you know the most basic baseline, you know, point uh that I'd like to try to make. That lack and excess, uh that inside and outside, that intention and intuition um are coincidental and they co-arise. Uh so that for me, Marion's um saturated phenomenon uh are not um rare. Uh they are common for those willing to tune into them. It really is just a matter of what your intention um can intend. Um if your intention only includes what it can intend, uh then you know, nothing is a saturated phenomenon. Everything is at least potentially uh controllable, understandable, conceptualizable. Uh but if you're tuned in uh to all the things that your intention uh cannot intend, uh all the uh unintention within your own intention, uh then you are paying attention to you know intuition, not as this just thing that either kind of resists your intention and you know eventually through enough knowledge acquisition you'll be able to make it intentional, but that which is ultimately other um so that um it is both the ground uh of the intention uh and that which resists the intention. Uh almost uh in perfect uh structural similarity to the real's resistance to the symbolic, which uh really does bring us back full circle to the idea that language and being have some sort of uh intimate relation to each other. So that speaking uh is not just some arbitrary, um, although it at least is in part, you know, the signifier is arbitrary, uh, but like it also has this um disclosive power through its uh arbitrariness, uh its relation to meaning, uh, that it is able to disclose the universe not in a mediated way, but in an immediate way. Language is our uh immediate mediation uh of the universe, our only access uh to it. I mean, yes, obviously through the senses, but again, they are structured textually uh as we talked about before, so that you are in a saturated phenomenon or a counter experience uh right now in your everyday quotidian uh experience. You are already uh in this saturated world full of uh overspilling excess, this continual flow of the one and of the many into the diversification, the differentiation, the sort of individuation that you are becoming.