Sense of Life in Sense and Life

One of my favorite words in English is "to germinate." I could have said germination but it would not be the same. I like words which are in the form of verbs. Infinitives. What a beautiful name for verbs! They move, they make something happen when they hang on in the atmosphere. It is as though they are really infinite. An endless becoming...

Anyway... Today, after a chance encounter with the etymology of the word "fool" (which was also very interesting) I wondered what would be the word I would like to learn about while the page of an online etymology dictionary was still open in the screen. "To germinate!" I said to myself with enthusiasm. The dictionary first refered to "germination" (which I find a little dull), then from that page we smoothly passed to "germ" which was given as the root of all.

Here is the definition and the history of "germ":

germ (n.)
mid-15c., "bud, sprout;" 1640s, "rudiment of a new organism in an existing one," from M.Fr. germe "germ (of egg); bud, seed, fruit; offering," from L. germen (gen. germinis) "sprout, bud," perhaps from PIE base *gen- "to beget, bear" (see genus). The older sense is preserved in wheat germ and germ of an idea;[...]

Then something else comes into play: "sense of "seed of a disease" first recorded 1803; that of "harmful microorganism" dates from 1871. Germ warfare recorded from 1920."

How different is the definition of "rudiment of a new organism in an existing one" from "seed of a disease", or "harmful microorganism." Of course it could be said that this change in the sense of the word "germ" is parallel to the germ theory of disease which was validated in the late 19th century. But still I have a hard time to follow this kind of causal thinking. It is very dry and therefore it does not seem to be the real explanation of what happened. Furthermore, what I am inclined to believe is the almost opposite of this inference: I think the sense of "germ" has already been changed, it had already began to reside in the "bad" side, otherwise it would be impossible to name a bad, sickening thing with a word which carries life, which is "good." So life itself must have become a burden at some point. Then somebody was able to find "germs" as causes of disease.

How did we come to understand "new life" as a bad thing? Is it because new life does not ask our permission to sprout? Are we offended by life and its ways to invent itself? Why are we so afraid?

Another thing worth thinking in a different way, without resorting to causal explanations that reduce our sense of the world, thus us, to something which has no effect at all. It is like breathing and not even noticing the air you breath in eventhough you cannot live a second without it (well, it may be a little longer for some of us). We have to understand our making-sense-of-the-world right to be able to change it, or to get a breath of fresh air...

For a subject outside of dichotomy Part 1

Parodi: "I would be tempted to say that the body is much more essential for sensation than it is for perception."
Merleau-Ponty: "Can they be distinguished?"

In this beautiful answer lies the whole essence of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy. The philosophical assumption that leads to separate understandings of sensation and perception is that there is a subject and an object. It is commonly assumed that in perception, subject is the one who acts towards the passive object. There is an act of subject and it happens outside. In sensation, there is an internal state of affairs of the one who has been stimulated by something. These two conceptualizations complete each other in the same plane of dichotomy of subject and object. What Merleau-Ponty says brilliantly, is that perception happens both outside and inside. More correctly, the distinction of outside and inside, which refers to two different orders of being, happens to be a false distinction that originates from the doubt of senses. For what is seen is simply not true just because it does not cover all the perspectives that it can be seen and it does not correspond to the thing itself properly. For example, I only see the front of a house if I am standing in front of it and another pair of eyes which are situated at the backyard of the house would see the back of the house. So what enables me to think that what we both see is the same house? It sure looks different. For Merleau-Ponty, the assurance in me that me and my friend are seeing the same house and if I move to the backyard I would see what he is seeing now, is the assurance of perception being of this world. The house would assure the perception of itself by simply being there. In other words, different perceptions of things could not be a reason to doubt perception's adequateness in regard to reality, if we do not will for a reality that is absolute, timeless and unchangeable. On the contrary it would be an evidence to trust the perceptions, because they are the possibilities of things themselves. The possibilities of the world we live in. The character of reality which is in time. The subject-object dichotomy of which the distinction between perception and sensation originates, is based on the will of something fixed, eternal, unchangeable. So it creates these two different orders: one of which is in action reaching out of its cage called body. The other is the one which is being acted on, the body that the acting figure eludes in order to know, to organize, to classify the bodies just like it. How these two orders relate to each other in the first place, is an enigma. And what is it like to have such a view of reality which is so different from perceived world that does not have anything to do with one's own experience?

This will of two different orders of subject and object, is doing injustice to the inexhaustible character of reality as well as inexhaustible possibilities of experience. And more importantly it seems to me that maintaining subject-object distinction in such a way, is working at cross purposes with the salvation of subject herself. For placed on this insufficiently objective as well as insufficiently subjective plane, subject could only be a shadow of what she could become. If we want to save the subject and not a dummy of her, we must first give her the freedom to live in the world and the means to trust her perceptions as if they are the perceptions of the world perceiving itself. Only a moving together with the world could open up the possibility for the subject to create her own style, thus her subjectivity.

Final words from the man himself:

"By these words, the “primacy of perception,” we mean that the experience of perception is our presence at the moment when things, truths, values are constituted for us; that perception is a nascent Logos; that it teaches us, outside all dogmatism, the true conditions of objectivity itself; that it summons us to the tasks of knowledge and action. It is not a question of reducing human knowledge to sensation, but of being present at the birth of this knowledge, to make it as sensible as the sensible, to recover the consciousness of rationality. This experience of rationality is lost when we take it for granted as self-evident, but is, on the contrary, rediscovered when it is made to appear against the background of nonhuman nature." (Maurice Merleau-Ponty)

Love perspectives or kaleidoscopes of sense - Part ...

How do you change your perspective? By moving to another place. Love is that movement to another place, to another point of view. But it has nothing to do with empathy. It is not pretending to be in the place of someone. Love is never "as if". It is there. It is real. It fills the atmosphere around so that you can dive into the "other". The impossible distance between becomes a sea to dive in. It necessarily connects you and it is just because of the fact that you are in the same waters. The invisible waters becomes palpable in love. You feel you are connected. You feel the existence in the most intense way possible.

When this atmosphere constitutes the relationship of a group of people, living becomes something kaleidoscopic. Constantly changing perspectives from one person to the other goes out into the open and becomes visible in the common place. The connection itself starts to shape people who are connected. In the palpability of love when everything touches everything in every way possible, identity understood as something inner to defend, dissolves. Identity becomes the movement style to the other, the very coreography of particular movements towards one another.

Love, therefore, changes, shapes, constitutes identity of those who are in love. Identity is not a given through which love is lived. On the contrary, identity is shaped through the invisible atmosphere of love which surrounds people. It affords certain kind of approaches and not others. You have to trust the other for example, not because you have to but because it is impossible to do otherwise if you are in love. To conceive this and act accordingly, you need to be able to recognize the "sense" which is always there, inside and outside at the same time, or better put always in the middle. Always generating itself with the movement of the relations and in multiple places simultaneously.

Love expresses sense as it is. That's why it is common but not always easy to call love an illusion when you fall out of it. When fallen out of love, you are fixated and imprisoned in just one perspective again: yours. That spontaneity, that undeniable presence of multiple could only be remembered in a dim light which makes it look blurry, vague and less detailed than it actually was. It is impossible to see the past experience as it is. The world around you changes because you lose the connection to the invisible, to the very relationality of the world. Then, treating the experience of love as an illusion is a sad preference. Nobody ever can talk of this subject without having the expression of melancholy in their face. There was something before that they don't have now. Calling love an illusion is a lie which people tell themselves without believing it. If they are to survive they have no other choice than to "hide behind the coward explanation of cause and effect" (L. Cohen). Retrospective corrections -such as finding reasons to justify the actions of love- are made to adjust after-love-life. It is never easy since one cannot easily deny her own experience. This is the reason of the obvious and mostly rigid changes in lifestyles or perspectives. You have to change yourself after losing that sensation of multiple in such a way that this new self would itself be a denial of the big truth, of the sense of universe which is always multiple. The logic is to justify the loss. Such a justification is very dangerous aside from being sad, because it creates resistance to the experience of multiple in the future too. Thus, weak souls once in love, become numb for now and forever.

But this is just a stupid option that most people choose without even knowing what it is. It is just like ignoring the reality because it looks ugly or it makes you feel bad. You can always be honest and say: "I have lost the big truth but I still have hope to gain it back anew". You can always choose to repeat your "mistakes" because it makes perfect sense. You can always try to be strong enough to be the living example of the absurdity of life like Kierkegaard says even if you cannot manage to do it like "knight of faith" does in such a natural way. (For more from Kierkegaard on this subject, check out Fear and Tremble.)

Love is a glimpse to the order of universe for human beings. To be able to love is an ontological decision without the deciding subject.

Finally, I want to say that love is THE will to grasp the world as it is.

Love is the real philosophy...