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alexpascal
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Name: Alexander
Country: United States
State: Pennsylvania
Metro: Philadelphia
Birthday: 12/25/1980
Gender: Male
Interests: Heidegger, Theology, Automechanics, Construction, Philosophy, Classic Literature, Anime, beautiful poetry, in fact all things beautiful, and most of all I desire to "suck the marrow out of life"
Expertise: Construction, Mathematics (sort of), and a host of other things that I have stumbled into through life.
Occupation: Student
Industry: Education/Research
Message: message meEmail: email me
AIM:  alexpascal22
Member Since:
7/16/2004
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| Hey look, I'm writing again. Is it snowing? Well, not yet,
and it is rather absurd to believe that a particular type of
precipitation could be caused by as unlikely an event as this.
Actually, I have recently met Katie again for the first time, and she
once again has inspired me to thought, well, and the motivation to
write about it. But before I do, I have a question to pose that
requires an answer from 10 people at least before I write about
it. Here is the question:
What makes something meaningful or significant? How can something be robbed of it's meaning or significance?
This question relates to a book I am reading by Wiker and Witt
discussing the genious in the natural order. They are basically
tackling reductionism and rejecting it as a truism (yes, they even use
-ism with annoying frequency). Anyhow, I will let you know what I
find after I get some responses. Given how infrequnetly I write
on this, this could take awhile. Hey, that's ok, we're young.
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| So I have finally moved in to K of P and have all my books up on
shelves. It is wondrously exciting. I have discovered that
state schools are very easy, and that the government does not want me
to work. Life is strange.
I have also found my old flash drive that i lost so long ago. I
had actually written some decent papers at one time, although reading
them I could hardly credit the authorship to myself. I guess the
me of then is not the me of now. Anyhow, I find myself needing to
edit some, like my argument for the philosophical necessity of religion
in ethics. It was a good idea, but in retrospect its still rough
around the edges. My summary of what the Church should be was
beautiful, so much so that I would have to call it divinely
inspired.
I am not going to share that stuff on here unless asked. Instead,
I shall present the more poetic writings, becaue that's what I feel
like doing. Enjoy or not, at your leisure.
I have three roses I keep here in a
vase, and often I come to them to admire.
Each is unique in her beauty, and unique in her colour. Love I the three, and cherish each.
One is known well, and to me a great joy. She too is a source of my sorrow, for I
remember. I remember how I held her, and
how in my course fingers I broke her, and now I fear to come too close. So I stand here and admire, and I curse my
coarse fingers. She was so soft. Her thorns were long, but to those she
welcomed, she would bend them back and welcome the loving hand. The hue of her blossom, once a scarlet rouge
to make all blush, now is faded and dusty and laced with fear. Even now, so soon after her wound turned
scar, she would bend her thorns for me once more, but I have not the
courage. I have coarse hands.
The second was given when the first had
just begun to fade, and fills me with wonder and apprehension. Her blossom is small, for she would live in
the dark and wonder at the light, but her beauty no less poignant and fresh, as
the dew drops nestled within her bud.
Those are her tears, for she knows the blood on her thorns and wishes
they had never been. She brings me great
comfort and wonder, so much that some have wondered why I leave her in this
vase. I cannot. I love the blood on her thorns, and for that
torn hand I will not lift her. And what
if . . . I have coarse hands.
The third is mysterious. For her she knows not me, nor does she ever
turn her blossom in my direction. I do
not know her colour, but I know her proud hips, and she has flashed her thorns
in my direction many times. She amuses
me, and often herself, but sometimes she wilts, and I know not why. This brings grief to me, and I see her stem
withered, so I water her. I know not
what else to do, but I do love to water her and see her glow. I don’t even know what colour she has, and
she has not yet blossomed, so her splendour remains hidden. So in this watering I love her, and I pray I
do not fail her with these coarse hands.
I have three roses I keep here in a
vase. They are the most beautiful roses
I know.
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| It has been a very long time since I have written
here. Life and love have left me distracted until now, and too
much has ocurred to relate. If anyone is curious, I will happily
relate the rather drab narrative.
I have just listened to Peter Kreeft's lecture on
Ecumenism. Generally I enjoyed it; his aim is one of my greater
passions. I do have a question for anyonewho has listened to
it. In the beginning, he lists the typical concepts that are
supposed to fuel ecumenism, and he says they are either eroneous are
impotent. One of them was the notion that if we just listened
hard enough, we would realize that we are saying the same thing.
He claims that the idea is utterly dismissable, but his discussion
begins to sound alot like that argument. Did anyone else notice
this?
(If you would like to listen to this generally good lecture, here is the link: http://www.peterkreeft.com/audio/03_ecumenism.htm
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| Isn't it funny how the poets affect us so? Relatively recently I
have been asking myself whether I could really accept the Reformed
concept of a justified life. I needed to see where in that system
the "decisive moment is significant". It had begun looking like
the grace of God was this vast juggernaut that rendered all human
choice insignificant. I don't mean insignificant as in small, but
rather ontologically insignificant; lacking in utter being-ness, as if
human choice was worse than illusion, like some memory of a lie.
This is unacceptable to me, because the testimony of humanity demands
the recognition of good and bad actions. Further, should this
human choice become vapor, then goodness itself would go with it as far
as human experience is concerned, and there is enough testimony found
in the Holy Writ denying that possibility. The Reformed thinker
claims that Man's good purposes are preserved in the thankful heart
from which they come. Good works are a response to grace, and
they are motivated by a heart of thankfulness. Ok, that is very
poetic, but that seems to be illusory as well. The human heart is
extremely fickle, so much so that it must be guarded against invasion,
and at the same time it is not to be the foundation of truth. It
is not likely that there is someone in this world who can maintain a
particular state of the heart (such as thankfulness) for any
significant period of time without shifting to some antithetical state
(such as selfisfness). Yet this heart of thankfulness is supposed
to be the cure-all for this confusing relationship we have with the
Almighty. The strange thing is that this heart of thankfulness is
not what Paul relied upon when he commanded the early Church to do good
things. I am by no means an expert here, but in my recollection
his motivations tend to involve fear or reward. Did you know that
in Galations he motivates goodness by the promise of it coming back to
you later? Basically, if you want to experience goodness, do
goodness. So the basic motivation is self-interested, not nearly
so beautifully self-less as a thankful heart. He also uses
threats as motivation, threats of losing "something" should you not
persue goodness. I will not profane the image of my God by
attempting some kind of hacked paraphrase, and I am in need of a shower
(I was just running) so I leave those texts for your curious
mind.
PS I just got a crap load of amazing books, and half of them are
in German! Also, huzzah for my newfound German partner.
Adam, lets rock this.
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| My current goal in life is to attain a BA Mathematics and then an MA
Philosophy with a European emphasis. I only tell you this to
explain how I arrived at my first question.
What does Heidegger have to do with Mathematics?
To be honest, I am not sure that he has anything to do with
mathematics, but I figured it was worth thinking about. Roughly,
Heidegger is all about a life of inquiry which coule lay the road open
to Dasein. The becoming that Nietszche observed was not a
becoming something greater, but rather a realization of
what/who/which/where we are. All inquiry should serve this end,
and Heidegger seems to argue that the very being of a question demands
it, for the existence of the answer comes to light with the very asking
of the question to which it is to be an answer. So then each of
the Great Disciplines can be redefined in Heidegger's system as a Great
Question. Hmm, I like the sound of that.
Well, so one of these Great Questions is
Mathematics. What answer is apparent upon the existence of
mathematics? Actually, perhaps that is the wrong way to go about
it. the question provides an end to the Way in what we call an
answer, but it initially does not "lay open" the ground of that way
unless Dasein should engage in its primary vocation: inquiry(I use
"vocation" here as if breathing could be called a human
vocation). I suppose I should present the environment of
mathematics, at least so far as I understand it and am willing to write
it.
Mathematics reveals objects that don't exist in
relations that don't exist which describe and explaind objects and
relations that do exist. That said, Mathematics is not
pointless rubbish. Think of it in terms of the human creative
process. You imagine something before you create it. That
imagining is not real, nor are the steps within your head through which
youe went to create a very real product. Math is similar, with
one rather broad difference: mathematics flies way beyond imagination
into realms we can barely sense with the grey matter between our
ears. I personally believe that Mathematics really is a language,
complete with its own vocabulary, grammar, syntax, and postmodern
authors (yay for combinatorics).
Ironically within Heidegger's system Mathematics
passes into being by virtue of it being a language. And almost a
devine Sein at that, for language is what creates. But what sort
of world does mathematics create? A world of objects and
relations lacking all attributes save Being, and Being in their own
particular way, delineated by the very language which gave birth to
them. Well now, that had not occurred to me. Perhaps
Mathematics is a more pure question than the other Great Questions
because it very quickly lays open the way to an ontological inquiry
into Sein, and thus Dasein.
I don't think I posess sufficient knowledge of
either subject to bridge this further, but the ontic link between the
two is worth thought (that was a philosophic pun for anyone who didn't
catch it, and no, I am not going to explain it).
You know, somebody once told me tha the pun was the lowest form of
humour. It seems to me that you must have an excellent grasp of
language to employ puns. That doesn't sound so low to me.
I digress. Really, I stop the inquiry here to leave room for
additions and to avoid a possible impending cranial popping. Hmm,
maybe Curry was right; I should have stayed with monkeys.
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