John Dunn

Self and not-self

Thursday, 3 April 2025 at 21:49

Dante Gabriel Rossetti: The Salutation of Beatrice

Self and not-self

Here we come to Fichte’s concept of encounter, which would certainly become central to my ‘who am I?’ quest. Fichte argued that up-bringing, or education, amounted to a summoning, a call to encounter in the ‘outer’ world an instance of subjectivity other than oneself. He invited his readers to imagine the first encounter of two human beings, i.e. how otherwise entirely solitary human beings would react upon meeting one another for the very first time. The summoning to a mutuality of the experience, a ‘reciprocal interaction,’ leads to a synthesis that is uniquely human, with potential for change on a cosmic scale. An encounter with the unpredictable other leads to a recognition of:

meas a rational being in conformity with his and my consciousness, synthetically united in one (i.e. in conformity with a consciousness common to both of us) such that – just as surely as he wants to be regarded as a rational being – I can compel him to acknowledge that he knows that I am one as well.

Before the synthesis there was self and not-self. Each was in a state of hypostasis without the other.But in a chance encounter, thesis (self) meets antithesis (not-self) resulting in synthesis (the triadic progression later commandeered and adapted to their own ends by Hegel, Marx and Engels). Out of the web of syntheses comes the uniquely human capacity to transcend the confines of the natural world and realise freedom. Such is the basis of human creativity that in the words of Dante’s Beatrice makes man ‘the odd one out’.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

Human freedom

Wednesday, 2 April 2025 at 21:23

Human freedom

Fichte defined what it is to be human as a freedom from necessity. Schelling, Hegel and, ultimately, Marx, as followers of Spinoza, denied that humanity in a submission to necessity. Perhaps this moves me forward in my quest. In answer to the ‘who am I?’ question, I might at least venture to say that I aim to be free from necessity.

In the Foundations of Natural Right, Fichte described the process by which individuals must be educated into becoming human beings before they can participate fully in a post-feudal society. He wrote:

The summons to engage in free self-activity is what we call up-bringing [Erziehung]. All individuals must be brought up to be human beings, otherwise they would not be human beings.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

Fichte’s Promethean struggle

Tuesday, 1 April 2025 at 21:48

Fichte’s Promethean struggle

Hegel offered a secular ‘New Testament’ to Spinoza’s ‘Old’. In reality, Hegel ended up providing the self-sustaining motor of return to the Absolute that was lacking in Spinoza’s own philosophy. It only needed Marx to turn Hegel on his head, consciously in opposition to Fichte, to complete the return, setting Spinoza ‘right side up’ again in the process. Above all, Marx was a Spinozist rather than a Hegelian. The shadow of the Hegelian dialectic that remained as a materialist teleology in Marx’s work was the determinism, necessitarianism and passive fatalism of Spinoza’s philosophy. The Hegelian dialectic of progression masked the philosophy of return, which had existed from the start in the Lurianic Kabbalah of exile and return, adopted by Spinoza. In academic philosophy, the myth of succession has held sway, with Hegel and Schelling perpetually presented as the heirs and successors of Fichte, rather than his opposite. So what did Fichte represent? He represented the Promethean struggle, the assertion of the same individual will that had attained crown and mitre in Dante’s Divine Comedy, the will which later thundered in the symphonies of Beethoven and the art of other Romantics. What did Schelling and Hegel represent? They were Spinozists.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

Zenith with Fichte

Saturday, 29 March 2025 at 22:10

Johann Gottlieb Fichte

Zenith with Fichte

Dante was pre-eminent in establishing humanism as the new philosophy of the Renaissance (or post-feudalism). That philosophy reached its zenith with Fichte, even though it did so as the Counter-Renaissance reassertion of feudalism (or neo-feudalism) was complete. Fichte’s philosophy was developed behind enemy lines so to speak. This made Fichte’s philosophy not so much the ideological successor to feudalism, but rather a key influence upon the Romantic reaction to the dominant neo-feudalism.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

Zenith with Fichte

Thursday, 27 March 2025 at 21:02

Johann Gottlieb Fichte

Zenith with Fichte

Dante was pre-eminent in establishing humanism as the new philosophy of the Renaissance (or post-feudalism). That philosophy reached its zenith with Fichte, even though it did so as the Counter-Renaissance reassertion of feudalism (or neo-feudalism) was complete. Fichte’s philosophy was developed behind enemy lines so to speak. This made Fichte’s philosophy not so much the ideological successor to feudalism, but rather a key influence upon the Romantic reaction to the dominant neo-feudalism.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

Left-Right

Wednesday, 26 March 2025 at 21:24

Marx in fact endorsed the subjugation of the straw man capitalists and presented this state of affairs as an historical necessity, which was generated by the capitalists’ own overthrow of feudalism. However, Marx’s presentation ofa progression was, in fact, masking a process of return. Marxism thus became the political and philosophical arm of the neo-feudalist financial globalisers. Marxism is the basis of all the so-called Left and Right political and philosophical creeds of our time. Anarchism, communism, socialism, liberalism, libertarianism and conservatism, as well as Marxism itself are all rooted ultimately in Spinozism and Kabbalism, and serve to promote Tikkun.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

The old monopoly

Sunday, 23 March 2025 at 17:24

The old monopoly

So what is Marxism masking? Answer - the old central banking monopoly based on nothing less than public debt and public credit, which implies an extension of this monopoly to control over public revenues and issue of currency. It masks a controlled central banking system with monopoly powers over the wider banking system, a power which, unless broken by government, becomes a political power that is greater than government. It masks the fact that the so-called capitalist entrepreneurs as well as the state are subsumed under feudal usury. As in all ages, the surplus is produced at the point of production. The question as always is - how is that surplus extracted and where does it end up? It is extracted through a neo-feudalist usury that again, as in all ages, has no respect for borders or other barriers to its operation.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.