Traditionally, the possibility of “truth” requires the fixed presence of that about which “truth” corresponds. This means that for “truth” to be possible, beings must be understood as accessibly present qua definitive disclosure. Such an assumption grounds the underlying epistemology of Western thought. Therefore, it is no wonder that beings are traditionally cast in terms of objective representation. With this premise, the duality inherent to Plato’s thinking comes forth and renders the “truth of beings” dissociated from the worldly presence of beings. For Plato and the Tradition, the realm-of-Truth resides in alterity to the manifest realm of physical beings, this regardless of the ironic fact that “truth” is always a truth about beings.** “Truth”, though wholly thought in terms of beings, is placed over and against the everyday tarrying of being-in-the-world. The hierarchically premised “better world” is thereby mythologized over, above, and against the world within which beings dwell. At bottom, Western epistemology founds its logic upon an analytic of dualistic opposition. Thus it is no wonder that myths of heavens and other-worldly realms are postulated in alterity to the physical universe; functioning so as to mollify the psyche by rendering thinking oblivious to the antithetical position life has taken against itself. With this, and by extension, the material realm is subjected to devaluation vis-à-vis the now-elevated preference of an imaginary non-physical (meta)world. The process inherent to this form of devaluation—the most complete form of nihilism—is long. Nevertheless, we see that from the beginning beings are premised as objective correlates which conceal their essences by virtue of their physical manifestation. Whether eastern in root—seeking deliverance from the material realm-of-suffering via Nothing—or through the western notion of a more perfect and realized “afterlife”, this world, THE WORLD OF BEINGS, is summarily displaced, devalued, and usurped of its grandeur, mystery, and priority. For well-over 2000 years men have sought the mythical realm of “heaven” so as to provide metaphysics with a “place” for its “truth”. The catch?? By so doing, history witnesses the imposition of negative freedom via a devaluation of life. At the core of metaphysics is an empty language-game, a head-game of dissociative abstraction, merely a conceptual projection of metaphysical idealism, wholly bound to the inverse relation of devaluing the world-of-beings into objective expendability. The world, and everything therein, has become nothing but a signet of use-value, an ancillary tool of will-to-power. The premise of “truth”—that beings intrinsically possess a self-evident noumenal form of presence—presupposes accessibility to that which truth corresponds. A prerequisite to truth’s possibility requires the predicated presence of truth’s object apriori. It is senseless to speak of truth without acknowledging the antecedent priority of that about which disclosure divulges. This analytic gives rise to the long-dominant correspondence theory of truth; a theory which postulates that the truth-of-beings advents when thinking uncovers the noumenal aspects of its object-of-inquiry. For over 2000 years, the possibility-of-truth grounds itself upon the objective predication of beings and the premise that beings can be known within a stasis-of-certainty. These presuppositions are granted apriori. From the beginning, beings are understood as, i.e., are assumed and defined as, predicated objects, nouns, things, and subjects. Simultaneously, thinking presupposes an intrinsically transparent essence to beings; an essence that, with the correct method of epistemic query, is assumed to be accessible. It is only as such that things can presumably be “known” with “certainty”. The underlying premise driving the Tradition is simple enough: place `beings’ (including people) into definitive stasis, i.e., enframe beings as definitively present so as to grant credence to the supposition that their natural station can be accessed as a definitive whole, and the truth-of-beings can theoretically be known. It is upon this strata that phenomena subsequently come to be judged as “good” or “bad”, “right” or “wrong”. During the now passing metaphysical epoch, all one needs is the proper epistemic means by which to gain privileged access to the noumenal essence of `things’, and the truth-of-beings can be known. However, over the centuries the cogency of truth’s disclosure has become irreparably problematic, with postmodern thinking accepting the dissimilarity between beings and their truth as an ontological fundament-of-difference. The idea that beings can be accurately represented falters once we discover that the object-of-truth and truth itself dwell in disparate proximity to one another. In short, the means of accessing that which is to correspondingly affix to its object is disjunctive relative to said object. Hence, what the mind assumes is real and true is always open to the alterity that truth attempts to displace, i.e., that which is assumed true and real is open to the inverse relation of the false by design. Such explains how and why five witnesses to the same phenomenal event can 1) each have different “truths”; and, 2) how and why the power of suggestion rises up so as to recontextualize previous “truths” into different interpretations. It is not merely an issue of how the brain is wired; rather, the wiring of the mind is directly conditioned by the semiotics thinking accepts as “true”. As such, “truth” is antithetical to understanding beings; as the notion of “certainty”—of a disclosure that advents sans filter discoloration—is purely mythic. “Truth” resides in disjunctive proximity to beings and only opens thinking to the `absence’ of any meaningful correlation between the two. While this opening-to-absence is essential and occupies many pages below, here it is merely important to realize that it is this aspect of thinking’s condition which propels man into the epoch’s aura of anxiety: though thinking fails to understand the scope and breath of its historicity, the nagging sense of something’s misplacement, absence, and occlusion affects the whole of man’s existential, psychic, and phenomenal condition. --FOOTNOTES-- ** This is like the concept of beauty: while one can declare this or that being “beautiful”, the nature of beauty itself revolves in a sphere of nominal conceptuality. The paradox in this is that "truth", though wholly conceptual, requires the manifest physical presence of beings for its corresponding confirmation. Thus we mythologize how this or that `thing’ participates in the `good’ or `truth’—just as God “acts” through His vessels on earth. Even for science, the notion of truth always already presupposes the channeling self-evidence of that which is present. With this, the notion of self-evidence bespeaks the premise of beings shinning forth their “true essences”, though “truth” itself regresses into the polemics of an empty language-game, nothing but opined conjecture and rhetoric. It is in this way that Nietzsche’s notion of Being comes to be understood as the most empty premise in Western philosophy. ((c) 2011 (P) 2012)
Posted on: Sat, 06 Jul 2013 07:27:02 +0000
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