Looking at Brian Kemple’s Book (2019) “Intersection” appears in Razie Mah’s blog from May 15 through 18, 2023. In that brief examination (points 0001-0027), a technical category-based definition of the term, “intersection” is shown to mesh with the theme of Kemple’s book, whose full title is The Intersection of Semiotics and Phenomenology: Peirce and Heidegger in Dialogue (Walter de Gruyter, Boston/Berlin).
To me, that is fascinating.
0029 In this series of blogs, I examine Kemple’s appendices.
Yes, he has more than one appendix.
Plus, there are subdivisions.
0030 Appendix 1.1 is titled, “Presentative forms and the grounding of transcendence”. My associations will draw upon A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form and A Primer on Sensible and Social Construction, as well as A Primer on Natural Signs,Comments on John Deely’s Book (1994) New Beginnings, and Comments on Newell Sasha’s Article (2018) “The Affectiveness of Symbols”. These primers and comments touch base with Razie Mah’s masterwork, How To Define The Word “Religion”, which is available, along with the other mentioned e-works, at smashwords and other e-book venues.
0031 The title of Appendix 1.1 contains two technical terms.
“Presentative forms” is a term coined by Jacques Maritain and literally means a form that is substantiated by its presentation, rather than by matter. The hylomorphe is presentation [substantiates] form, rather than matter [substantiates] form.
“The grounding of transcendence” is a phrase used by Martin Heidegger. It conveys what the presentative form accomplishes. The presentative form accomplishes more than matter-substantiated form, because it leads to (grounds) another form, which is located at a higher categorical level (transcendence).
Figure 01
0032 Surely, this implies that presentative forms and the grounding of transcendence coincide in a particular way. The “matter” of the presentative form associates to the adjacent lower category of its corresponding “form”.
Is this is a general feature of presentative forms?
0161 What about Appendix 3, titled “Synechism and semiosis”?
0162 Well, I best look into Appendix 4, which presents a helpful list of definitions.
“Synechism” is a principle of continuity. There are no hard and fast distinctions between possibilities, because firstness is monadic. In the empirio-schematic judgment, the dyad, a noumenon [cannot be objectified as] its phenomena, exists in the realm of possibility and obeys this principle. There are no phenomena without their noumenon. There is no noumenon without its phenomena. The hazards of synechism are yet to be deeply appreciated. For scientific inquiry, what happens when certain actors claim to be observing the phenomena of a noumenon which is not… um… obvious to other people?
“Tychism” is a corollary of synechism. Peirce envisions chance (er… possibility) as universal. Without possibility, there is no actuality or normal context. If there is an actuality that appears out of nowhere, in such a fashion that it has no normal context, then we are back to phenomena of a noumenon which is not… um… subject to understanding.
“Semiosis” is the action of signs. Signs are triadic relations. Triadic relations constitute the human niche.
0163 For the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, our ancestors adapt to an ultimate niche as well as many proximate niches. This means that hominin evolution is both convergent, with respect to our ultimate niche, and divergent, with respect to many proximate niches. The ultimate niche is the potential of triadic relations. The proximate niches are regional ecologies and environments.
Language evolves in the milieu of hand talk. Hand talk relies on the semiotic qualities of icons and indexes to motivate a relation between parole (hand talk) and langue (mental processing). As this motivated relation becomes more and more conventional (that is, habitual within hominin social circles), hand-talk gestures become more and more like signs in an arbitrary system of differences (that is, symbols). Grammar consists of symbolic operations within a finite set of symbols. By the time anatomically modern humans appear, hand talk is fully linguistic.
0164 Speech is added to hand talk with the appearance of our own species, Homo sapiens.
Humans practice hand-speech talk for around 200,000 years, with great success.
0165 Around 7,800 years ago, the end of the previous ice age raises sea-levels, flooding shallow geological basins such as what is now the Persian Gulf. In the process, two hand-speech talking cultures, one settled on the basin and one settled along the coast and river gorge, are forced into proximity. A pidgin and then a creole ensues. The creole is the Sumerian language (unrelated to the nearby Semitic languages). But, more importantly, this creole is the first instance of speech-alone talk.
At its inception, the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia is the only culture in the world practicing speech-alone talk.
It is no coincidence that the world’s earliest civilization arises in southern Mesopotamia.
Speech-alone talk potentiates civilization.
0166 Our current Lebenswelt is marked by speech-alone talk. Speech-alone talk spreads from the Ubaid to the four-corners of the world, potentiating unconstrained social complexity wherever it goes.
7800 years ago, the world population may have been as many as seven million.
Today, it is seven billion.
Such is the significance of the first singularity, the transition from hand-speech talk to speech-alone talk.
0167 Heidegger is a German philosopher who strives to restart Western philosophy after it fumbles its founding charisma.
Peirce is a precocious American post-modern who becomes fascinated with one of the crucial questions asked by scholastic philosophers, “What is the causality inherent to the sign-relation?”
0168 Both these philosophers propose ideas that address a single question, “What is the nature of our current Lebenswelt?”
Their answers apply to a single actuality.
0169 I do not know the name of this actuality, but I do appreciate the significance of Kemple’s attempt to delineate an intersection (without being aware that the term, “intersection”, might have a technical definition that supports his inquiry).
An intersection is an actuality composed of two actualities, each of which has its own nested form.
0170 For these reasons, Brian Kemple’s book, The Intersection of Semiotics and Phenomenology: Peirce and Heidegger in Dialogue, deserves interest. While my examinations, so far, covering the term, “intersection”, and the appendices, are sparse, they are suggestive. There is a lot at play within the pages of this book.
0001 According to Neoplatonic legend, the descent of the soul starts with a small immaterial gem resting on an undefinable pillow in the presence of transcendental beauty. Then, a trap door opens and the little source of illuminationbegins to fall. As it descends, it accrues matter. Matter enters form.
One may say that the matter is evil and the soul, good, and conclude that the immortal soul becomes encased in corruptible matter. But, the story is more complicated, because the term, “matter” slyly includes the capacity to become entangled with purely relational being. Matter holds the capacity for meaning. Matter substantiates form. So Christians, following the complication, witness the baby as bearing a message. The message? Baptize me.
0002 The book before me is Brian Kemple’s The Intersection of Semiotics and Phenomenology: Peirce and Heidegger in Dialogue, published in 2019 by Walter de Gruyter Press (Boston/Berlin). The masterwork is dedicated to the memory of John Deely (1942-2017 AD), who served as Kemple’s professor.
0003 The book presents a complex argument. I, a simpleton, fixate on the titular word, “intersection”.
For me, the term has a technical definition, as formulated in the chapter on message in the e-book How To Define The Word “Religion” (by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues). An intersection is a single actuality composed of two actualities, each with its own category-based nested form.
Say what?
See APrimer on the Category-based Nested Form.
0004 A photon is an example of an intersection of two actualities: a wave and a particle. The normal context of a diffraction apparatus3 brings wave properties of light2 into relation with the potential of ‘observations of wavelengths’1. The normal context of a metal plate3 brings particle properties of light2 into relation with potential ‘observations of the photo-electric effect’1.
0005 Here is a picture.
Figure 01
0006 Here is another way to look at the photon as intersection.
Figure 02
0007 In the following blogs, I will endeavor to visualize whether Kemple’s use of the term, “intersection”, coheres with this technical definition.
In order to do so, I will locate two category-based nested forms, one for both Peirce and one for Heidegger, and see whether the two actualities meld into one.
0020 The term, Bildendwelt, sounds like the concatenation of the words, “Bilden” and “dwelt”, as in the English statement, “I dwelt in that Bilden, before it came crashing down.”
In order to appreciate my humor, consider the October 1, 2022, blog at www.raziemah.com, titled, “Fantasia in G Minor: A speech written for Gunnar Beck MEP”.
Da Bilden is coming down!
Oh, I meant to say… the Bildendwelt makes no sense at all.
0021 So much for wordplay.
The compound-word, Bildendwelt stands, waiting to be refined in the furnace of postmodern use.
0022 The third division of Kemple’s book weaves together divisions one and two, titled World and Sign, into an intersection. In the process, Kemple focuses on two elements in the following figure: Sein1V and sign1H.
Figure 08
0023 To me, Kemple’s focus is remarkable, because Being1V and triadic relations1H are crucial for bringing our lineage from Umwelt, to Lebenswelt, and further into Bildendwelt. Indeed, I wonder whether these compound terms should be used to label the single actuality of Peirce’s experience2H and Dasein2V.
0024 But, let me not ignore one further possibility, the single actuality is us.
Here is a list of labels for the single actuality.
Figure 09
0025 Now, I can portray our descent.
Imagine us, as purely spiritual illuminations, perched on undefinable pillows, in the presence of transcendent beauty in an era when all time is now. A trap door opens and we descend into Being and Time. As we fall, we accrete two actualities, coinciding with Peirce’s experience following his realization that signs are real1H and with Heidegger’s vision of Dasein1V. These actualities are full of contradictions.
As we descend through Being and Time, we accrue World and Sign. We pass through our primordial Umwelt, the Lebenswelt that we evolve in, the first singularity, our current Lebenswelt and now, our Bildendwelt. Descent with modification. Then we are born, in the present, and each one of us bears a message. Baptize me.
0026 What does baptism do?
Baptism cleanses us of Gestell, the grammars of our world, carrying temptation, misdirections and lures that entrap us, confound us, and, in the end, convince us that the truth can never be found.
How so?
Truth is just a spoken word. We create our own “truth”. Spoken words are merely projections of our Innerwelt upon that which is outside ourselves. After temptation fixes our occasions of sin, after our own projections redirect the projections of others and weave a veil of reality, and after we begin to believe in our own self-divinizing speculative grammar, we construct artifacts that validate our spoken worlds. We build our own prison. Heidegger calls it, Gestell.
0027 When the waters of baptism pour over an infant, the baby often cries. The baby represents all of us.
The waters of baptism disturb. Dasein2V! We enter a world perfused with signs. We are welcomed into a world where the material finds meaning in the immaterial. The human niche is the potential of triadic relations. How all encompassing will Peirce’s experience2H be? We stand on the threshold of a new age of understanding.
Kemple offers the reader a portrait of John Deely’s vision, in a book that lives up to its title, in more ways than one. Bravo!
0001 In late 2022, Americans loathe the Russian civilization because the Soviet Union was a existential enemy during the Third Battle Among the Enlightenment Gods: The Cold War Among Materialist Ideologies (1945-1989 AD).
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, not much has been done to alter Americans’ fears, even though lots of water has passed beneath the bridge of history. Indeed, much has been done expressly to conceal those waters, full of greed, ambition, illusion and delusion. The modern intelligensia is guilty of sins of omission.
0002 Here is a brief remediation of that sin, which, unfortunately, may itself be a transgression.
When the Cold War ends in 1989, many difficult to comprehend events follow. Boris Yeltsin supervises a firesale of Russian state property. Maybe, “firesale” is not the right word. “A mind-bending transfer of ownership” may be better. Soon, oligarchs corral entire industries and markets. Russian GDP falls like no tomorrow.
Then, before the wholesale transfer of Russian commodity wealth is fully consummated, Vladimir Putin steps from under the wings of Yeltsin’s weakness and corruption. Following a series of explosive events, Putin manages to secure leadership of the listing ship of the Russian State. He rights the boat, sending many overboard (so to speak).
The predatory wolves of the American Empire do not forget. They lick their wounds. They plan their revenge.
0003 Oh, so that is the reason why nearly every mouthpiece of the American Regime denounces Russia, as if it is still the Soviet Union of old. When the Americans win, they want total surrender. So, the American citizen remains informed that the Cold War never really came to a conclusion.
Just as America once looked to the East and saw an “iron curtain”, Russia now looks West and experiences a “word curtain”.
0004 Of course, this brief transgression into history is required to introduce the tragic philosopher, Alexander Dugin. From 1989 on, Dugin formulates and proposes new ideas concerning the fact that Russia did not totally surrender to America’s empire religion. His struggles culminate in a book that finally breaks through the Western word-curtain about how bad Russia is. That book is titled, The Fourth Political Theory. First published in Russian, an English translation comes out in 2012.
Three years later, Razie Mah electronically publishes Comments On Alexander Dugin’s Book (2012) The Fourth Political Theory. This commentary is available at smashwords and other e-book venues.
0005 Simultaneously, as well as more amazingly, Michael Millerman decides to make the philosophical work of Alexander Dugin the topic of his doctorate in philosophy. Oh, that does not go well. How dare this young intellect challenge the current narrative. Dugin should go into a box. He is a fascist. Or rather, a communist. Or something similarly unsavory, like a Eurasianist. Yes, that box should never be opened.
0006 Michael Millerman, like Pandora, opens the box. And the last monstrosity to emerge is hope.
He actually graduates with his doctorate.
The subsequently blacklisted Millerman starts his own school. The cancelled Millerman publishes the book that I currently examine: Inside Putin’s Brain: The Political Philosophy of Alexander Dugin (2022: Millerman School). Yes, Millerman starts a school. Look and see.
0007 In these blogs, I comment on chapter two, titled, “The Ethnosociological and Existential Dimensions of Dugin’s Populism”. This chapter is originally published in Telos (Winter, 2020).
In order for the reader gain an acquaintance with the Greimas square, I recommend blogs appearing at www.raziemah.com for January 2023. These blogs include Looking atAlex Jones’s Book (2022) The Great Reset and Notes on Daniel Esterlin’s Book (2020) 2045 Global Projects At War.
0050 Eden, the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, is where we, in our current Lebenswelt, come from, but cannot return to. The myth of Adam and Eve says it all.
The ethnos is where the narod comes from and cannot return to.
Figure 17
0051 The implications weave together psychology, sociology and biology.
How can the ethnos (D), the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, serve as the transit between the narod, emerging in our current Lebenswelt (C), and the person as objectified subject (B)?
Does each -ism appeal to our innate imaginations by offering an explicit abstraction, a forbidden fruit, that is desirous to the eyes, tastes sweet, and is desired to make one wise?
Does a narod (C) accepts the Luciferian suggestions (B) in the process of becoming a people (A)?
0052 Dugin proposes his fourth political theory in a world broken by our appetites for explicit abstractions. We have been sold tickets (B) back to Eden (D). Where do our travels bring us? Our travels meet a flaming sword that turns in all directions. A cherubim blocks the way.
Dugin speaks to the people.
His proposal has ethnosociological and existential dimensions.
We are more than individuals, class members, citizens and role-bearers.
We are a narod, on a quest to find who we are supposed to be.
Who do you say that we are?
0053 My thanks to Michael Millerman for his excellent summary of these two dimensions of Alexander Dugin’s political philosophy.
0128 Millerman’s essay would make Leo Strauss proud.
Millerman’s argument is exoteric. Strauss and Dugin share an interest in Heidegger. That is not the only feature that they have in common. Therefore, a Straussian should not dismiss Dugin’s political philosophy out of hand.
0129 The centerpiece turns out to be a translation, by Millerman, of a list of what needs to be done, according to Dugin, in order to establish the possibility of a Russian philosophy.
0130 The three tasks involve…
…dismantling Russian archeomodernity. Ironically, for Americans and western Europeans, the task is precisely the opposite. For western Europe, the archeomodern groove is a receptor. For Russia, the archeomodern groove is a trap.
…correctly comprehending the West. Ironically, the West may not be comprehending itself. The modern West is all about science. But, what is science? Is science a purely relational structure composed of the Positivist’s and empirio-schematic judgments? Plus, is there something vulnerable within this relational structure? Does phenomenology exploit that vulnerability? Does Heidegger’s Sein correspond to the noumenon? What happens to the West if noumena take on lives of their own?
….elaborating a philosophy of chaos. The narod harbors cautionary wisdom that is ignored by modern political movements, who imitate the practices of the empirio-schematic judgment. Chaos is not necessarily the absence of order. Chaos may be the order that cannot be situated by sovereign power.
0131 The placement of Millerman’s translation, along with its surprising content, offers an esoteric message.
0132 All the blogs for February 2023 at www.raziemah.com examine selected chapters from Michael Millerman’s book (2022) Inside “Putin’s Brain”: The Political Philosophy of Alexander Dugin. Millerman has been studying Dugin’s works for over a decade. If there is to be a truly philosophical underpinning to Eurasianism, then Dugin begins the quest.
As for this reviewer, my first endeavor to read Dugin, Comments on Alexander Dugin (2012) Fourth Political Theory, may be found at smashwords and other e-book venues. I ask the question, “If I were to say what Dugin is saying, using triadic relations, then how would that work?” The answer intrigues.
Obviously, I am not interested in whatever box the literati of modern political philosophy want to put Dugin in. I am interested in the purely relational structures that Dugin reveals.
0133 So far, I reviewed chapters two and six. In this blog, I will briefly touch on chapter nine. Well, less that that. I see a Greimas square in the seventh section of chapter nine. Its title is “Theologico-Political Implications”.
In this section, Millerman hones down on the difference between the Heideggerian Left (HL) and Heideggerian Right (HR) in regards to the theological-political issue of the returning of the religious and the receding of the secular.
0134 Recall, Dugin’s formulation of “the people” associates to the following Greimas square.
Figure 01
0135 A is the focal term, “the people”. What is the political expression of the people? In America, the Declaration of Independence starts with “we, the people”. So the answer is involved. Suffice to say that, until recently, the political expression is the democratically elected representative. Until recently? Mailing out unsolicited ballots is unconstitutional. It makes me wonder, what do modern intellectuals mean when they say the word, “democracy”.
B contrasts with A. Here, the three political theories (of liberalism (1), communism (3), fascism (2) and big government (il)liberalism (1, again)) model phenomena of a prepolitical world in terms of the individual (1, 1-again), class membership (3) and citizenship and noncitizenship (2).
C contradicts B and implicates A. Dugin uses the Russian word, “narod”, for prepolitical people that various schools of modern political philosophy regard as noumenon. The people (A) are political. The narod (C) is the people before being objectified by explicit political theories. For me, the narod (C) is humanity in our current Lebenswelt.
D contrasts with C, contradicts A and implicates B. Dugin uses the Russian word, “ethnos“. The narod (C) comes out of the ethnos (D) and cannot return. To me, the ethnos (D) is us in the Lebenswelt that we evolved in. Our current Lebenswelt (narod (C)) is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in (ethnos (D)). The hypothesis of the fist singularity contributes an evolutionary dimension that complements Dugin’s theologico-political analysis.
0136 Dugin is an example of the Heideggerian Right (HR). HR philosophers are few in number and for good reason. They are considered to be the enemies of the Heideggerian Left (HL), who want to co-opt Heidegger for their theological-political convictions.
Millerman poses this question (more or less), “How does the HL view the theological-political issue of receding secularism and returning religiosity?”
0137 Here is how I associate the discussion to the Greimas square.
Figure 02
0138 According to the HL, A, democracy is under threat because…
0139 …B, democracy must be secular.
Even though secular is an adjective and democracy is a noun and therefore B contrasts with A, secular is a necessary qualifier. A democracy cannot be a democracy unless it is secular. Hence, when HL-friendly pundits on public-private partner television say the word, “democracy”, they actually mean “secular democracy”.
0140 C contradicts B and complements A. C is religious. Non-secular means religious, just as secular means “not religious”. But, this too is wordplay, since religions are not “non-secular”, they are believers in an ultimate foundation, D. However, from the HL Greimas square, C is nonsecular.
At this point, secular institutions take on a scientific glow. The secular (B) use theoretical disciplinary languages to model observations and measurements of social phenomena. Naturally, these models end up defining the options available for ballots in… um… a democracy (A). Thus, the ultimate foundation (D) complements the secular (B) because it (D) does not exist.
0141 D contrasts with C, contradicts A and complements B. Already, I know how D complements B. The fact that an ultimate foundation fills the slot for (D) yet does not exist, according to HL, reveals the nature of the way the ultimate foundation (D) is itsown lacking.
Surely, this sounds like a contradiction in terms. But, that is the way HL rolls.
There is no God. There is no ethnos. The possibility that these statements (D) are wrong contradict (A), “democracy”, which, according to HL, must be godless (B). If these statements are incorrect, then the political system would not be a “democracy”, but a “theocracy”.
0142 Okay, HL is into wordplay.
The Heideggerian Right takes the Heideggerian Left’s wordplay at face value, producing the following remake of the HL Greimas square.
Figure 03
0143 As before, A, the focal word, is “democracy”.
0144 B contrasts with A, in the way that an adjective contrasts with a noun. The secret handshake allows HL pundits to indicate a secular democracy when they use the word, “democracy”, and use the word, “theocracy”, when religious folk take to the ballot box.
0145 C contradicts B because the word, “radical” (C), means “rooted”, and “secular” (B) means not religious. This implies that the radical (C) adheres to emptiness (D) with the same conviction that the religious, er… non-secular (C) adheres to an ultimate foundation (D). No wonder the radical (C) strives to eradicate the ontological and theological facets (phenomena) of the narod. The radical (C) creates conditions where other social phenomena (such as the individual, class membership, the roles of citizen and noncitizen) can be observed and measured by modern scientifically minded theoreticians (B).
0146 Emptiness (D) entails the absence of (1) an ultimate foundation encompassing both God and humans, (2) the ethnos, (3) what we evolved to be and (4) the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.
D contrasts with C, contradicts A and complements B.
Emptiness (D) contrasts with radical (C) because it (C) is rooted in ‘something’ (however ephemeral, such as an act of will).
Emptiness (D) contradicts democracy (A) because the implementation of secular policies (B) reveals the root (C) to be a pure act of will, rather than a product of say… philosophical inquiry.
Emptiness (D) complements the secular (B) because the secular knows that its politics will undermine whatever traditions that they are rooted in (C).
0147 In sum, the HL diagram celebrates democracy (A) and the secular (B) while denying the religious (C) and the possibility of an ultimate foundation (D). The HR view of the HL diagram positively labels the negative attitude towards religion as “radical” (C) and the denial of an ultimate foundation (D) as “emptiness”.
0148 To me, the Greimas square for the HL and for what the HR thinks of the HL’s views must be regarded as funny. Perhaps, hilarious.
How so?
The ethnos is where our sense of humor evolves. The narod is where people formulate jokes. The secular is where people lose their sense of humor . Democracy is where the comedy of the humorless plays out on the world stage.
0149 I do not know whether Heidegger’s “fourfold” or “das Geviert” can be re-articulated as a Greimas square. It might be worth trying. Perhaps, use of the Greimas square will allow the HL to take themselves less seriously and the HR to chuckle under their beards. The problem, of course, is that Dugin is no longer laughing, because the ones who take themselves seriously have designated him, not as a philosopher, but as a threat.
Pray for the soul of Alexander Dugin’s daughter.
0150 My thanks to Millerman for his excellent book. Please check out the Millerman School and dugin.com.
