Category: english

Audun Solli: An analytic judgement is for Kant a statement in which no new information or knowledge is contained or presented in the predicated that didn’t already exist in the concept of the subject, like “all mothers are women”. Synthetic judgements, on the other hand, add some information in the predicate that didn’t exist in the concept. E.g. if I say “all chairs are blue”, I thus say something about chairs that is not obtained in the concept of chair. // Descartes would like his “cogito ergo sum” to be synthetic, but the conclusion (I am) is already found in the premise: I think. Cogito results on the principle of contradiction: “I don’t exist” is self-contradictory, “I wouldn’t be able to say that “I didn’t exist”

Kiarina Kordela: Correct, but to be even more precise, we should say: “I think, therefore I am” is an analytiic statement insofar as both “I”s are to be understood as grammatical subjects, as (subjects of the signifiers) As you say, in this case, “I don’t exist” is self-contradictory since “I” wouldn’t be able to say that if “I” didn’t exist [as a grammatical subject]. // When, however, the first “I” is thought at as a grammatical (thinking) subject (i.e., as the subject of the signifier), while the second “I” is thought of as an existential “I” (a living being – not a signifier), thgen the judgement is synthetic – and, of course, not true. And this is one of the ways in which ideology succeeds in passing wrong/untrue statrement as true. For the point is that even though Descartes’ statement is untrue it has had real effects as if it were true: it grounded all secular reason, including the products of the latter, such as science. Everything, from positivism to your computer, exists on the ground of this untrue sttement.

Sherali Tareen: The supernatural, literary connotations of words, and the distinction between the two concepts seem to be the main main focus for Burke. For instance, he discusses the non-verbal nature of trees that is entirely unrelated to the object of living thing “tree” itself. (1) However, the distinction between “the Word” and “words” remain unclear to me. (2)

Kiarina Kordela: (1) The non-verbal aspect of “tree” is the “living thing ‘tree’ itself”. What is non-verbal is being. Burke’s point is that the effect of the verbal (language/sign) is that in the last analytic there were more than two terms (the sign versus being) because language introduces also the negative/metaphysical. So there is the verbal (sign), the physical (being) and the metaphysical, God, Other. //(2) “The Word” is a concept of the theocratic discourse – not of the secular, “The Word” acknowledges that the sign involves the metaphysical by attributing all signs to God: whatever clue we say, it is always God who speaks through us. // “Words” is the secular understanding of the sign: it is simply humans who speak through signs: Burke (and Lancan’s) point is that, due to (1), it is (the Other/the metaphysical) that speaks even through (secular, words) the sign. When I speak, it is It (God the unconscious -> the metaphysical negative) that speaks.

Aaron Hubbard: (…) Descartes grapples with those concepts that arise only with leisure. He questions that which he can really know, that which he can discern from the real, and concludes nothing other than that he thinks. His problems with sun on p.118 arise from the definition on the sign by its relation with other signs, ex. Sun of senses vs sun of reason, wherein the signified is modified by that which surrounds it. Second paragraph of p.110. Only through language does doubt arise, Descartes confesses this with the weakness of his mind (as in Burke) First full paragraph p.121 – ala Burke, only through language can this paranoid conception of the God Also p.55 God contains what we do not. // Kant’s Prolegomena makes a distinction between analytic + synthetic judgments. In the former, the predicate contains nothing that is not implicit in the concept of the subject. Descartes tries to prove the existence of God by analytic judgment. God is perfect, I can conceive a perfection greater than myself: God is the cause of this thought.

Kiarina Kordela: i.e. God was always presupposed in this thought. And this is precisely Lacan’s point: since perfection (God/Other) is logically presupposed in the concept of imperfection (human/Øther) and have hence, since, as you point out, God belongs to the concept of imperfective/(Øther) i.e. to say the concept of the signifier

Lindsay Gosis: In both Debord and Foucault, the issue arises or lust exists, of the problematic relentless from the individual reality/ideality and the spectacle/government of individualizarism (Foucault 420). Described in terms of subject/object., the individual reality cannot act as the subject of the discussion, because the spectacle, as its own force creating itself (drive?), affects the individual reality. But considering the individual reality as the object of this conclusions also proves problematic, because when considered in terms of the spectacle, the individual reality acquires a social character which, if considered in Foucault’s terms as an individuality “shaped in a hero form and submitted to a set of very specific patterns” (422) can scarcely be considered “invidividuality” at all. So a discussion of the “spectacle” seems to necessarily omit the idea of the individual reality except to address its impossible existence within the spectacle.

Kiarina Kordela: Precisely, and, a pfortiori, the argument about the spectacle entails that “the real individuality cannot be discussed at all but only representations of individuality (in the spectacle) can become an object of discussion. Hence, the absence of any discussion of individuality is not an omission of necessity consequence of the fact that individuality, in this line of thought, pertains to the status of the real.