*Contents* 00:51 REFLECTION AND SUSPENSION 01:22 The _Epoche_ 09:40 Two mistakes in effecting the suspension via reflection 13:32 THE SUBJECT AS NOTHINGNESS 18:02 Consequences 21:55 Not absolute nothingness; a determined nothing 28:45 OTHER PEOPLE 33:35 The gaze of the other 37:12 Passivity 40:02 Shame 44:46 CLOSING THOUGHTS 45:02 Quote: Reflection vs negativity 48:29 Quote: Negativity 51:19 Why is there something rather than nothing? 54:11 Summary
Thanks very much for this episode. Judging by the quotes you showed, there's no way I'd have understood this book at all without your explanations ........ and even then I may be getting things muddled, but I really enjoyed it. There are some ideas I'm going to have to mull on a lot more. Fascinating. I struggled a bit with the notion of treating the subject as a nothing imagining it was no-thing, which in some ways it is? but it became clearer when you connected it with an emptiness waiting to be filled with a world. And I especially liked "I am what I perceive, a mirror that reflects back whatever's before me." Oh yes! That reminded me of the mirror in Zhuangzi. So I looked it up again and found this little translation: "The perfect man employs his mind like a mirror It grasps nothing It refuses nothing It receives, but does not keep" The other word that had me puzzled is "negativity". But is this just negating the subject world? So really it's not negativity, but a moving away from a constituted reality, constituted by the subject/mind. Moving to nothingness which is me and others as perspectives being all together a situation, a world. Which comes before the point at which we start reflecting and reducing. Which comes across as very, very nice to me. So I hope I have that right! And then I think you are saying that M-P says, this whole, this world of situations and perspectives is being. Which is why you can't have being without nothing. Nor nothing without something. Which might be me getting it a bit wrong ........
This chapter makes a lot more sense if you’ve read Sartre. Still, you’ve picked up on the basics, I think. You can’t think of the nothingness we are as what I would call a metaphysical existent, or else it’s gibberish - if I’m non-being, how can I _be_ at all?! Sartre’s philosophy was ontological and phenomenological - thus, rather than attempting to explain reality, he was attempting to describe human experience. Treating human beings as nothingnesses (pure perspectives (nothing substantial in themselves)) rather than substances (e.g. Cartesian minds) turns out to be a nice way of doing this. The Zhuangi quote takes up that same way of thinking although it has a different end in mind - rather than describing human experience (phenomenology/ontology), it is more about how to live well in that Taoist way of living in harmony with the world and events (what you might call ‘ethics’ in the broadest sense of that word). Re: negativity. That’s right. It isn’t that kind of negativity. The basic idea is that the subject introduces negativity, as ‘not’, into the world and it is this that makes the world exist as world. Consider our first encounter with things, the encounter that makes things appear as things in the first place begins from the realisation that this is _not_ me, or this thing is _not_ that thing. Without this original act of ‘negation’, there is no ‘thing’. The ‘subject’ (as nothingness) thus introduces ‘negativity’ into a being which is a pure ‘positivity’ (yes, not that kind of positivity), and it is this which allows world to appear at all. Re: others. We aren’t really with others in a situation. Although, solipsism doesn’t work in Sartre (shame reveals the other too viscerally), the situation is always _my_ situation, and other people appear for me as either objects or subjects (thereby turning me into an object). More on this in the next couple of videos! The last bit about the whole being Being is right, I think. However, it isn’t so much that MP is saying this - he’s arguing for it on behalf of Sartre from the perspective of the philosophy of nothingness. (This is a good example of what I said in an earlier video about one of the reasons MP is tough to read.) Over the next couple of videos we will see how he is going to critique this position - in particular, the division into being and nothingness.
@@absurdbeing2219 Thanks for your reply Nathan. Most helpful. I was part way through the next episode when I thought I should have worked through your Sartre programme first. So I completely agree with you on that score. I stopped part way to read a few basic explainers on Being and Nothingness and I will resume that episode shortly. I really liked your take on the Zhuangzi quote. Classical Chinese philosophy (and I believe even their modern philosophy) is more inclined towards living whilst Western philosophy spends much effort on contemplating being. I don’t know if you’ve ever come across a French philosopher called Francois Jullien. He writes extensively on Chinese philosophy. I first became interested in that via Chinese painting of that era, which I am utterly captivated by, and then read their poetry, all in translation of course. I read his book called “The Great Image Has No Form, or On the Nonobject through Painting. It compares Western art to Chinese. Mind blowing ……… I then read his latest book called From Being to Living where he compares Chinese and Western thought. Really interesting. I recently (December-ish) bought Galen Johnson’s The Retrieval of the Beautiful which covers some of M-P’s work on aesthetics throgh his writings on some modern (Western) painters. But having broken my shoulder in January, I couldn’t lift any books, nor turn pages. And philosophy on YT was out too as I like to scribble otherwise I don’t take in what’s being said very well (ahem …..I may not anyways). So when I could scribble a bit I jumped at your new programme on M-P perhaps without thinking through my lack of knowledge not only on Sartre but on M-P as well. 🙄☺
@@myla6135 I hadn't heard of Jullien before but _From Being to Living_ does seem like a good gloss on the philosophical differences between the East and the West. That is one area of MP that I have read almost nothing on - aesthetics. There is a collection of his essays that I want to get to at some point though with one essay on Cezanne in particular. I have been surprised at how many people studying things like art and animation watch my MP series on _PhP._ Johnson's book seems like a natural fit for that. Unfortunately, because it is incomplete, most of _The Visible and the Invisible_ is an engagement with prior philosophers (Husserl, Sartre, and Bergson), so I imagine it would feel a little like being thrown in at the deep end if you hadn't read them. (I feel like that at the moment regarding Freud as I'm reading Derrida. I'm basically trying to piece together the former's ideas from how Derrida makes use of him.) Nevertheless, you've got to start somewhere, and every philosophy is built on prior philosophy in some way or other. Paraphrasing and repurposing Heidegger, it's a vicious circle, the only solution to which is to jump into the middle of and start running!
@@absurdbeing2219 Thanks Nathan. I do have a tendency to just dive in now and again. You're right jump and start running! I'm lucky in that I just do this as I find all the mental gymnastics so very enjoyable and exhilarating ..... no studying or exams or anything like that to get in the way.
Sorry for off-topic comment, but I’d be really interested if you did a series on Simondon, whether the Individuation book or technology book, he was a huge influence on Deleuze and he dedicated his magnum opus to Merleau-Ponty who was his teacher.
Hey, this is sort of off-topic, but as someone with a decent background in philosophy where do i start with phenomenology? Any book recommendations would be amazing, thanks!
From my own limited experience (there are so many phenomenologists I haven't read), you can't go wrong with Sartre's _Being and Nothingness_ and then Merleau-Ponty's _Phenomenology of Perception._ Although they mix their phenomenology with ontology, they are much clearer in my opinion than Husserl.
I find MP's thinking so clear. I get what he's up to and every turn he makes seems quite natural. I don't feel that about Deleuze, for instance. D sets up a problem but then makes moves that leave me wondering, how did he come up with such a construction. I just don't get why MP isn't more popular.
I'm inclined to agree with you. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Deleuze's thought was so wide-ranging in scope that it seems like he was always writing something new - that was essentially how he defined thinking in _D&R._ MP, on the other hand, remains within a fairly tightly circumscribed domain; he is, for example, saying a lot of the same things here he said in _PhP,_ albeit with a slightly different focus. Having said that, Heidegger made an entire career speaking and writing about just one topic, being - he was just able to always find a new twist to reveal. Still, I totally agree that MP should be more popular than he is.
You think MP is clear? Goto Anna’s archive and get the complete works of Aron Gurwitsch! Also Ortega y Gasset, Arthur Schopenhauer (newer translation, World as Will and Presentation, not representation or idea)
*Contents*
00:51 REFLECTION AND SUSPENSION
01:22 The _Epoche_
09:40 Two mistakes in effecting the suspension via reflection
13:32 THE SUBJECT AS NOTHINGNESS
18:02 Consequences
21:55 Not absolute nothingness; a determined nothing
28:45 OTHER PEOPLE
33:35 The gaze of the other
37:12 Passivity
40:02 Shame
44:46 CLOSING THOUGHTS
45:02 Quote: Reflection vs negativity
48:29 Quote: Negativity
51:19 Why is there something rather than nothing?
54:11 Summary
Thanks very much for this episode. Judging by the quotes you showed, there's no way I'd have understood this book at all without your explanations ........ and even then I may be getting things muddled, but I really enjoyed it. There are some ideas I'm going to have to mull on a lot more. Fascinating.
I struggled a bit with the notion of treating the subject as a nothing imagining it was no-thing, which in some ways it is? but it became clearer when you connected it with an emptiness waiting to be filled with a world. And I especially liked "I am what I perceive, a mirror that reflects back whatever's before me."
Oh yes! That reminded me of the mirror in Zhuangzi. So I looked it up again and found this little translation:
"The perfect man employs his mind like a mirror
It grasps nothing
It refuses nothing
It receives, but does not keep"
The other word that had me puzzled is "negativity". But is this just negating the subject world? So really it's not negativity, but a moving away from a constituted reality, constituted by the subject/mind. Moving to nothingness which is me and others as perspectives being all together a situation, a world. Which comes before the point at which we start reflecting and reducing. Which comes across as very, very nice to me. So I hope I have that right!
And then I think you are saying that M-P says, this whole, this world of situations and perspectives is being. Which is why you can't have being without nothing. Nor nothing without something. Which might be me getting it a bit wrong ........
This chapter makes a lot more sense if you’ve read Sartre. Still, you’ve picked up on the basics, I think.
You can’t think of the nothingness we are as what I would call a metaphysical existent, or else it’s gibberish - if I’m non-being, how can I _be_ at all?! Sartre’s philosophy was ontological and phenomenological - thus, rather than attempting to explain reality, he was attempting to describe human experience. Treating human beings as nothingnesses (pure perspectives (nothing substantial in themselves)) rather than substances (e.g. Cartesian minds) turns out to be a nice way of doing this.
The Zhuangi quote takes up that same way of thinking although it has a different end in mind - rather than describing human experience (phenomenology/ontology), it is more about how to live well in that Taoist way of living in harmony with the world and events (what you might call ‘ethics’ in the broadest sense of that word).
Re: negativity. That’s right. It isn’t that kind of negativity. The basic idea is that the subject introduces negativity, as ‘not’, into the world and it is this that makes the world exist as world. Consider our first encounter with things, the encounter that makes things appear as things in the first place begins from the realisation that this is _not_ me, or this thing is _not_ that thing. Without this original act of ‘negation’, there is no ‘thing’. The ‘subject’ (as nothingness) thus introduces ‘negativity’ into a being which is a pure ‘positivity’ (yes, not that kind of positivity), and it is this which allows world to appear at all.
Re: others. We aren’t really with others in a situation. Although, solipsism doesn’t work in Sartre (shame reveals the other too viscerally), the situation is always _my_ situation, and other people appear for me as either objects or subjects (thereby turning me into an object). More on this in the next couple of videos!
The last bit about the whole being Being is right, I think. However, it isn’t so much that MP is saying this - he’s arguing for it on behalf of Sartre from the perspective of the philosophy of nothingness. (This is a good example of what I said in an earlier video about one of the reasons MP is tough to read.) Over the next couple of videos we will see how he is going to critique this position - in particular, the division into being and nothingness.
@@absurdbeing2219 Thanks for your reply Nathan. Most helpful.
I was part way through the next episode when I thought I should have worked through your Sartre programme first. So I completely agree with you on that score. I stopped part way to read a few basic explainers on Being and Nothingness and I will resume that episode shortly.
I really liked your take on the Zhuangzi quote. Classical Chinese philosophy (and I believe even their modern philosophy) is more inclined towards living whilst Western philosophy spends much effort on contemplating being.
I don’t know if you’ve ever come across a French philosopher called Francois Jullien. He writes extensively on Chinese philosophy. I first became interested in that via Chinese painting of that era, which I am utterly captivated by, and then read their poetry, all in translation of course. I read his book called “The Great Image Has No Form, or On the Nonobject through Painting. It compares Western art to Chinese. Mind blowing ……… I then read his latest book called From Being to Living where he compares Chinese and Western thought. Really interesting.
I recently (December-ish) bought Galen Johnson’s The Retrieval of the Beautiful which covers some of M-P’s work on aesthetics throgh his writings on some modern (Western) painters. But having broken my shoulder in January, I couldn’t lift any books, nor turn pages. And philosophy on YT was out too as I like to scribble otherwise I don’t take in what’s being said very well (ahem …..I may not anyways). So when I could scribble a bit I jumped at your new programme on M-P perhaps without thinking through my lack of knowledge not only on Sartre but on M-P as well. 🙄☺
@@myla6135 I hadn't heard of Jullien before but _From Being to Living_ does seem like a good gloss on the philosophical differences between the East and the West.
That is one area of MP that I have read almost nothing on - aesthetics. There is a collection of his essays that I want to get to at some point though with one essay on Cezanne in particular. I have been surprised at how many people studying things like art and animation watch my MP series on _PhP._ Johnson's book seems like a natural fit for that.
Unfortunately, because it is incomplete, most of _The Visible and the Invisible_ is an engagement with prior philosophers (Husserl, Sartre, and Bergson), so I imagine it would feel a little like being thrown in at the deep end if you hadn't read them. (I feel like that at the moment regarding Freud as I'm reading Derrida. I'm basically trying to piece together the former's ideas from how Derrida makes use of him.)
Nevertheless, you've got to start somewhere, and every philosophy is built on prior philosophy in some way or other. Paraphrasing and repurposing Heidegger, it's a vicious circle, the only solution to which is to jump into the middle of and start running!
@@absurdbeing2219 Thanks Nathan. I do have a tendency to just dive in now and again. You're right jump and start running! I'm lucky in that I just do this as I find all the mental gymnastics so very enjoyable and exhilarating ..... no studying or exams or anything like that to get in the way.
Sorry for off-topic comment, but I’d be really interested if you did a series on Simondon, whether the Individuation book or technology book, he was a huge influence on Deleuze and he dedicated his magnum opus to Merleau-Ponty who was his teacher.
Actually he is on the cards. I have read _Individuation_ and really liked it. I didn't realise MP was his teacher. Cool.
Hey, this is sort of off-topic, but as someone with a decent background in philosophy where do i start with phenomenology? Any book recommendations would be amazing, thanks!
From my own limited experience (there are so many phenomenologists I haven't read), you can't go wrong with Sartre's _Being and Nothingness_ and then Merleau-Ponty's _Phenomenology of Perception._ Although they mix their phenomenology with ontology, they are much clearer in my opinion than Husserl.
I find MP's thinking so clear. I get what he's up to and every turn he makes seems quite natural. I don't feel that about Deleuze, for instance. D sets up a problem but then makes moves that leave me wondering, how did he come up with such a construction. I just don't get why MP isn't more popular.
I'm inclined to agree with you. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Deleuze's thought was so wide-ranging in scope that it seems like he was always writing something new - that was essentially how he defined thinking in _D&R._ MP, on the other hand, remains within a fairly tightly circumscribed domain; he is, for example, saying a lot of the same things here he said in _PhP,_ albeit with a slightly different focus.
Having said that, Heidegger made an entire career speaking and writing about just one topic, being - he was just able to always find a new twist to reveal.
Still, I totally agree that MP should be more popular than he is.
You think MP is clear? Goto Anna’s archive and get the complete works of Aron Gurwitsch! Also Ortega y Gasset, Arthur Schopenhauer (newer translation, World as Will and Presentation, not representation or idea)