Some tweets on the philosophy of fire
Sep. 28th, 2011 06:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
endymions_bowerI thought I'd gather (and annotate) here some tweets that were occasioned by a passage quoted by Khaoid from Nietzsche and Philosophy:
@khaoid: 'Heraclitus had taken a deep look... he saw no negativity in becoming, he saw precisely the opposite, the double affirmation of becoming...'
@EPButler: Just thinking about this same positivity in Parmenides: fr. 8.53-4 means "They established two forms," i.e. positive and negative…
…"of which it is not right to name one", i.e., the negative as such. Cp. Suhrawardi's "dusky barriers", are "lights" too.
Suhrawardi bridges ancient thought about "Light" and "Fire" and a kind of phenomenology…
Chrysippus, too, takes "Fire" in the Stoic cosmology as "Light"; so "conflagration" (ekpyrosis)=total presence to consciousness
So I'm thinking that Parmenides is similar: pure positivity of Being in 1st speech, dualism of apparent and latent in 2d speech
This was sparked by seeing how Aristotle just runs the two parts together: Parmenides' Being *is* Light/Fire/Warmth…
("Warmth" in the ancient cosmologies I think is principally a symbol for metabolic processes, to which cognition is assimilated.)
@khaoid: i like that, instead of the naive separation of cognition from metabolism, sensation
@EPButler: It seems that the key thesis of the Fire/Light thinkers is that metabolism, sensation, and cognition are the same essence.
@khaoid: 'The ordering [kosmos], the same for all, no god nor man has made' Heraclitus
@EPButler: fr. 89: "for those who are awake there is a single, common cosmos, while in sleep each turns away into a private one"…
Cf. fr. 26: "A man strikes a light for himself in the night, when his sight is quenched… (cont'd)
(cont'd) … Living, he touches/kindles the dead in his sleep; waking, he touches/kindles the sleeper."
I like the play of subjectivity and objectivity in frag. 26, a frequent concern in Heraclitus, I think.
[I’m thinking, for example, of fr. 62, “Mortals are immortal, immortals mortal, the one living the other’s death and dying the other’s life.” I think that this refers to the ‘immortality’ conferred by the logoi which are, however, necessarily uttered by mortals and hence tied to mortality. Becoming a logical object, in this sense, is an immortality for the mortal subject but a becoming mortal for the logical content.]
In fr. 26, say "dead"=the other as in Descartes' "other mind", the "sleeper" I touch/kindle when awake is myself as "other mind".
I just realized that in quoting fr. 30, you mean as much to highlight the acausal nature of the cosmos as its commonality…
"This cosmos, the same for all, none of the Gods nor of humans has made…": neither created, nor constituted in consciousness…
"…but it always was, is, and will be: an ever-living Fire, with measures of it kindling, and measures going out." (Haptesthai again)
[I had remarked previously on how H. exploits the double sense of haptesthai, "to be in contact with/to kindle"]
What is constitutive here are the "measures" which are in or out of contact (lit up or gone out) at a given moment.
That is, for some things to be "in contact" is for something to be "kindled" and vice versa.
This is not consciousness in a subjective sense. Cp. fr. 64, "the thunderbolt steers all things"; lightning, not a sustained light.
@khaoid: 'Heraclitus had taken a deep look... he saw no negativity in becoming, he saw precisely the opposite, the double affirmation of becoming...'
@EPButler: Just thinking about this same positivity in Parmenides: fr. 8.53-4 means "They established two forms," i.e. positive and negative…
…"of which it is not right to name one", i.e., the negative as such. Cp. Suhrawardi's "dusky barriers", are "lights" too.
Suhrawardi bridges ancient thought about "Light" and "Fire" and a kind of phenomenology…
Chrysippus, too, takes "Fire" in the Stoic cosmology as "Light"; so "conflagration" (ekpyrosis)=total presence to consciousness
So I'm thinking that Parmenides is similar: pure positivity of Being in 1st speech, dualism of apparent and latent in 2d speech
This was sparked by seeing how Aristotle just runs the two parts together: Parmenides' Being *is* Light/Fire/Warmth…
("Warmth" in the ancient cosmologies I think is principally a symbol for metabolic processes, to which cognition is assimilated.)
@khaoid: i like that, instead of the naive separation of cognition from metabolism, sensation
@EPButler: It seems that the key thesis of the Fire/Light thinkers is that metabolism, sensation, and cognition are the same essence.
@khaoid: 'The ordering [kosmos], the same for all, no god nor man has made' Heraclitus
@EPButler: fr. 89: "for those who are awake there is a single, common cosmos, while in sleep each turns away into a private one"…
Cf. fr. 26: "A man strikes a light for himself in the night, when his sight is quenched… (cont'd)
(cont'd) … Living, he touches/kindles the dead in his sleep; waking, he touches/kindles the sleeper."
I like the play of subjectivity and objectivity in frag. 26, a frequent concern in Heraclitus, I think.
[I’m thinking, for example, of fr. 62, “Mortals are immortal, immortals mortal, the one living the other’s death and dying the other’s life.” I think that this refers to the ‘immortality’ conferred by the logoi which are, however, necessarily uttered by mortals and hence tied to mortality. Becoming a logical object, in this sense, is an immortality for the mortal subject but a becoming mortal for the logical content.]
In fr. 26, say "dead"=the other as in Descartes' "other mind", the "sleeper" I touch/kindle when awake is myself as "other mind".
I just realized that in quoting fr. 30, you mean as much to highlight the acausal nature of the cosmos as its commonality…
"This cosmos, the same for all, none of the Gods nor of humans has made…": neither created, nor constituted in consciousness…
"…but it always was, is, and will be: an ever-living Fire, with measures of it kindling, and measures going out." (Haptesthai again)
[I had remarked previously on how H. exploits the double sense of haptesthai, "to be in contact with/to kindle"]
What is constitutive here are the "measures" which are in or out of contact (lit up or gone out) at a given moment.
That is, for some things to be "in contact" is for something to be "kindled" and vice versa.
This is not consciousness in a subjective sense. Cp. fr. 64, "the thunderbolt steers all things"; lightning, not a sustained light.
