Yongho Kim

Category: philosophy

  • [Aaron Hubbard] Descartes/God/Kant (?)

    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] individuality

    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.

  • HCST Definitions

    Definitions jotted down for the final HCST paper.

    Yong Ho Kim

    The real is illusory as long as it is confined within the borders of the Other. The real is a network of derouted desires intertwined in a stubborn desire, or drive, that guides the individual’s forces towards an arbitrary direction.

    In the real, the craving for the objet petit a is manifested within society with the form of need. When this purely theoretical element, is coupled with the desire it formalizes externally influencing the other members of society, in the form of demand. A demand is interdependent of the desire in the shape of continuous feedback, where the external demand germinates need in other individuals, and this growing with the aid of desire causes an external expression as demand. This cyclic sequence of demand-desire turns into a ritual, an entity of its own, becoming a drive.

    Hysteria, historically diagnosed as pathological, is one of the ways in which the underlying perception of the Other beneath the Real manifests physically within the individual. An individual showing psychosis, on the other hand, will assume Real is not what it appears to be, but won’t be able to reach the Real because the very beginning of the Real intersects the peripheries of the Other.

    Death drive is the most rudimentary expression of the search for the objet petit a beyond the contingent. Every event seems to have a beginning and an end, and for the human mind this termination of his working framework is a mystery object of anxiety. This seemingly endless desire, epitomized into a general motif in the arts and philosophy, is known as death drive.

    A sign is a bimodal code pointing at the same time to the signified as the object of desire and the signifier as the source of drive. The signifier initiates drive by transporting the objet petit a to the real, by giving a social edge to its meaning. A sign relates a symbol from the Other to a symbol from the real through the individual; without the individual, the sign turns meaningless.

    As primal clan-based human groups develop into more and more complex societies, a particular code of modus vivendi and attitude towards the real arises and consolidates giving an arbitrary identity to the primal society. This arbitrarity is product of pure coincidence, without practicality, and threads an interlaced net of signifieds throughout its dominion.

  • [Audun Solli] spectacle

    Audun Solli: The “spectacle” is a complex term that refers to the mechanisms that the present dominant mode of productions, i.e., capitalism. The spectacle is the source of the only discourse that is used in capitalism, secular society: it’s a celebration of a choice already made about the mode of production. In other words, the spectacle essentially refer to the mechanisms, that uphold capitalism and that allege that no other way so organizing production is possible. Thus, the spectacle’s function in society is “the concrete manufacture of alienation” (#32)., i.e., by consuming spectacles, one is separated/alienated from forming or making one’s own life. // The spectacle constitutes the exercise of power, as defined by Foucault; the spectacle restricts the possible actions, that people can take. // [Very good!]