Fido the Yak

Barbaras continues a critique of Sartre:

Phenomenality is just as much negation of determination as it is negation of the in-itself. One has to say instead that phenomenality stops short of both affirmation and negation. It is a negation that not only does not dissolve into the positivity of essence but still negates every form of positivity, so that it also cannot affirm itself as pure, univocal negation nor abolish itself in favor of fully positive being.

(Being, p. 123, Barbaras' emphasis)

Instead of "phenomenality" I would say epoché. The question I'll ask relates to whether one makes a commitment to the study of, or even the worthy living of, phenomenality. Could an encounter with the phenomenal be compromised by a prior commitment to understanding the phenomenal? This goes towards a critique of the instant. How does one declare an allegiance to the instantaneous without doing violence to the instant? Conversely, how does one maintain absolutely no affinity for the instantaneous and yet be able, at the drop of a hat, to live in the instant? Must the instant be unbearable? Well, this perhaps suggests a reason why the instant is thought of as precisely not experienced in any temporal, mundane or ordinary sense. On the other hand the difficulty of sustaining an enthusiasm for the mundane suggests that duration too may be as unbearable as the instant. We live in the to-and-fro between these unbearable states, between duration and instantaneousness. If this movement is bearable, does that mean that the instantaneous as well as the mundanely temporal therefore become bearable?

Labels: Barbaras, encounters, epoché, rhythm, Sartre, temporality, the instant

posted by Fido the Yak at 1:05 AM.