WelcomeUnconcealment, or: The limit of understanding
Shit
I propose that the only thing that can be understood in its essential nature is the act of self-reflective thinking, which takes itself as its own object of study. All other things can only be explained, "made sense of", in a relational sense. Example: "Now I see why the lamp did not turn on when I toggled its On/Off switch: the plug had fallen out of the electric outlet." But I can figure this out with no knowledge whatever of electricity, i.e.: just from "the outside". Other then self-reflective thinking, we can only understand things from the outside, not in their essential ("inner") nature – if they have any inner nature, which they may not have.
Then there "is" what can neither be explained nor understood, such as is addressed by Kant' s"Paralogisms of pure reason". Does the world as a whole have a beginning? Neither yes nor no will work. Or where do new ideas come from? Or what Martin Heidegger calls "Being". Or what might be or not be or whatever after I am dead, and I am not sure that makes any sense at all, which is one reason why I do not want to die for any "The Good", which is generally just a "metaphysical speculation, e.g.: me imaging the world without me being there in it to imagine it but still imagining it is there, albeit without me being in it to imagine it – for Instance me being bodily dead but having gone to a big theater balcony beyond the sky and looking down on the world I was in before I died (Click here for example heavenly balcony). But I will here leave aside all these such " things" which cannot be things.
This is not just an "academic" or speculative question, like how many angels can dance of the head of apin: It is the question what if anything is going on in human beings (possible example: right) who are not reflecting on their experiencing in the event of living it and communicating their self-reflections with me, for instance: participants in a mass rally for a Good Cause who are listening intently to the march organizer's exhortation to futher the Good Cause, or spectators in the crowd at a football or soccer game, or my manager at work when he's telling me to do something he's been told to tell me to do, or Donald John Trump stirring up his "base" at a rally, or the human beings being stirred up in that "base" at that rally, or an ant crawling across my desk, or a cinderblock, etc.
I am proposing that we cannot understand any of these "from the inside", only relationally in a context which we construct within our thinking, such as: "Oh, now I see why all the people I am watching in this cheer rally (right) are cheering: because the cheerleaders just now told them to cheer", etc. Is anybody home? ☏
It's not simple. I have two cats. I study them. One I am not sure about. The other seems to exhibit a kind of non-discursive alertness. Many persons seem to exhibit discursive not-alertness ("Anybody home?"). The cat is worth thinking about because she does seem to have a spark of aliveness, so if I could understand her I might be better able to understnd myself. The people arew orth thinking about because they an cause me trouble in my empirical life ("prgamatic agenda"), while, on the oher hand if they were different, they could help me live more fully. SAince at best they are defective discursive agents ther is not much to be lerned from them except maybe gottchas. I recently read that Ludwig Wittgenstein said that most people are not worth much.
