Objectivated Spirit (Objektive Geist)
have
found, in developing this website, that an interesting interaction has
developed between my thought and its objectivation herein. Whenever I think of
something, I want to add it to this ever-growing "semiotic net". Conversely and correlatively, things I
add to this aggregation of symbols sometimes lead me to new ideas (in the
broadest sense, including images, etc.), and to new "things to pursue", and, hopefully and
most importantly, to seeing already included material in
new ways -- for new things are just more of the same [kinds of
things as one could already conceive of], whereas seeing previously known
things in new ways is a higher-order enrichment of one's
"world", in a way perhaps similar to the difference, in mathematics, between
(a) adding more elements to an already generated infinite set and (b) constructing
sets-of-sets....![[ Crescit eundo.... ]](sq/small_cycle.gif)
I never had any interest in
taking notes, or keeping a diary, etc. -- probably because they seemed such futilely
private activities (as Hannah Arendt says in The Human Condition, in classical
Greece, the "private sphere" was considered: deprived). And, in
school, I could not see the point in my repeating [copying] what was already written or said
("Leave the dead to bury the dead", etc.).
No
later than late June 1989 -- before I absorbed the idea of "computer hyperlinking" --, however, I had elaborated a discipline of
annotating books I read, not just with underlining and comments, but also by noting in the margin references to other
pages in the book (or, occasionally, in other books...) which I found relevant, and also placing references
on the "target" pages back to the sources -- thus constructing ever-growing [I don't
think I gave them a specific name at the time, although now I might call them:] networks,
or "referential spaces" of
two-way many-to-many associations. Sometimes, I would "chain" these references, from one page to another to
another to yet another.... --I see the development of the present website as a similar activity
of correlating and connecting meanings. (As of October 1999 19 December 2011,
this site had over 2,750 11,689
links in 129 478 HTML pages, mostly internal, but also
including about 250 932 external sites --
an average of approx. 25.5
hyperlinks per page.[fn.57
]
~ Note: I consider links-per-page a rough, albeit not "intelligent", metric of information density,
i.e., I hope: depth and intensity.)
Consequently, I think I can, with some appositeness,
say that this web site has become an important part of my "objectivated mind"
(Objektive Geist) [also: "noetic economy"]. I
strongly believe, however, as Husserl said, that transcendental subjectivity
is intersubjectivity (structurally, even if there happen to be
no accessible factically existing other interlocutors...). Therefore, I invite you, my reader,
to join this "conversational space", by engaging in your own mind
with what you find here, and sharing your thoughts with
me: ![[ Email me! ]](emailme.gif)
enius loci.
(Orientation note: if you click any of the following links, you
will need to use your web browser
Back button to return to this... place.)
I understand this phrase: "the spirit of a place", and I respect it. Happy the person who comes from a
happy home! My provenance
was not that way. I have, however, been able to construct around myself
"spaces" which I have felt "resonated" with me: physical settings
[my little "Merzbau"s...] decorated with found and
made (by others and by myself...) images and
objects, an unpublished text (on which I worked
intensively, for over three years, 1980-84):
"The Gift From the Machine",
my dissertation, and the present "virtual" space of
this website.
Consequently, I would apply
the quote which appears below, and the thesis elaborated
above concerning the objectivation of spirit [living / lived experience] to this concept
also: Genius loci -- the spirit of any place -- is the creative
(creating!...) human spirit which makes place [in a normative sense] from
"stuff" [in a factical / taxonomic sense], by "taking place" [acting into the world...]. But this is not an
individual ["private" / solipsistic...] activity. It is necessarily social
(intersubjective -- see above).
As with persons' first great attempt to make an emphatically human[e] place for themselves:
The Tower of Babel,
I invite you to join with me in ongoing construction (and
re-new-al): ![[ Email me! ]](emailme.gif)
"For the spirit alone lives; all else dies." |
(--Jean de Coras, inquisitor of Martin Guerre) |
Our Century: "The century of barbed wire".
Think |
about The Decline of The West: Is the adventure of Univeralizing
emancipatory Culture over? (L'Avventura) |
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See also |
my page on Sigmund Freud's Civilization and its Discontents. | |
![[ Learn about SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language)! ]](gif/sgml.gif) |
See a picture of "Cogito ergo sum"!
Read about the relation between philosophy and daily life.
Read my aphorisms for a human[e] world.
Return/Go |
to dissertation after-thoughts:
Toward a place for study in a world of instruction.... |
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What's new on this website? |
![[ What's new here? ]](WhatsNew.gif) |
What is the purpose, use & value of this website?
Go to website Table of Contents.
Return to Brad McCormick's home page.
Go to site map. |
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http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ObjektiveGeist.html
Copyright © 1999-2005 Brad McCormick, Ed.D.
bradmcc@cloud9.net ![[ Email me! ]](gif/email2me.gif)
10 April 2006CE (2006-04-10 ISO 8601)
v05.03 |
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In The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt wrote that she hesitated
to criticize Karl Marx for fear of abetting small-minded persons whose truths are of
less value than a great thinker's mistakes. |
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