Creating Dilemma, A Dialectics of Knowledge




‘A man of genius makes not mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery’.
James Joyce – Ulysses, Chapter 9




Joycean. Writing. Perceptions, concepts, words. Stephen. The chronicles of genius formation. A volitional being who functions. Freely?

Knowledge acquired. Knowledge is hierarchical, layered as its environment and a valid conclusion must be considered as a contextual absolute. Conclusion is certain within a single body of knowledge. Certainty is contextual.

Where does reason get the power to impose its truths upon existence, truths which it does not need itself and which are detestable and at times completely intolerable to existence. Do we ask this question? Homo emancipatus?

Does one allow one’s self and all of its parts to contest what is inexpugnably defined with one’s help? How does one rationalise the prerogatives of reason? Ratio emancipata?

It is superstition that which attributes power to objectivity.

There is place for dilemma.

In order to reach the androgynous perfection of what one is required to call truth-conclusion, it is necessary to go beyond the cyclicity of knowledge, to allow for the interpenetration of opposites, to disrupt succession. To cut through the belly of the “whale”, to renounce the protection of its warm insides, to leave the collective imaginary and the space of one’s mind and allow for the controlled possibility of chance. To modify the concept of purpose and the dialectics of purposeful knowledge.

The will remains forever enslaved by purpose. But purpose can be given imaginative shape. It will use the same tools as before: artifice, possibilities of creation, intuition. But the body of its linearity and its innocent determinacy are disrupted by the unique spell of obstacle raising. Productive subversion.

Why create space for uncertainty? Why call for the ability to welcome weakness? Why this other kind of submission? Veritates emancipates.

Co-substantiality and co-dependency of purpose and chance. As in a love relationship, where one is constantly attempting to shift the balance of power. The loving controls, the loved suffers. The vanity of the lover is immeasurable. To decide (to) love, before if begins in one’s Self and in the Other. In love with the expectations of Love. Scenarios are being produced. How does one love? The Era of One ends. Creating We, creating multiplicity. The loved rebels.

Renouncing introversion, invoking separation.

By exploring a possible sense of guilt, Stephen, among us, is situating his self between guilty and guiltless, advancing toward detachment. To split his own condition by creating distance. By artifice. To create a productive limbo, which is not objectivity and where the possibility of chance is welcome. Experiment? With an arsenal that may include self-irony, he is perhaps relying on epiphany. To create thought. Where the objective dictates that purpose = meaning and practice = style, what does one create? To create structure or to create beauty? An edifying discourse.

So dilemma is between aborted creation and exercise, between one’s acquired sense of doom and failure. However, it is a pre-emptive sense of failure, one which annihilates guilt and all but sparse readership. Privilege which is not conferred. It does not deal with the implied, the intended, but with the possible. Again, possible.

The ethics of genius may be guiltless. The greater good and the responsibility for it demands for errorless paths to be laid down. But it goes egotistically then beyond truth, within text and before intertextuality. It eliminates reception, by overthrowing the need for a response. It overthrows time by anticipating it, by strengthening its limits, by separating the stages of a given course, fragmenting, adding obstacles to challenge definition. Zigzagging towards harvesting the definitive, one bypasses meaning, end, truth.
The surprise is that genius reveals Fate, all the more profoundly as it is more profound. The existence of such genius overthrows the idea of coercive truth. It takes courage to understand this, as fear of nothingness is as a condition inherent in knowledge. Incorporating distance and creating a new method.
Knowledge is knowledge of reality. In the religion of knowledge, Fall is always at hand and even the faithful have the right, indeed the obligation, to add their own corrections to knowledge. Volitional error is Sin by insubordination to linear purpose, according to classic dialectics. A new method which eliminates geometry. Vectors are becoming weary. Schemas are blurred by the technique of change.

Impetuosity and obtrusiveness is punishable. But there is a reward, the more daring one feels in his writing, then he has already received his full reward and there is nothing more to be expected from any quarter. Conceptual focus is being dispensed of.

Dilemma within dilemma.

For genius to make mistakes, it has to be intelligible, manifested, readable, acknowledged. Singular, autonomous existence? Who names genius? The baptism of words for uniqueness.

The modern condition, fatigued and disillusioned by positivism, has neither the strength nor the desire to go beyond the boundaries it has established for itself. Modern genius. In the absence of all meaning, it declares itself as … . Indefinable that will not search fixity, in words, in existence, at large.

Joycean. In order to retain at least the semblance of consistency, a collage whose elements are almost completely imperceptible to the inexperienced eye is performed. This fear is pointless and causeless and is incomprehensible genius. Breaking through every prohibition, every veto imposed upon the mind by reason, one can appreciate a priceless service. One will be both ends of the relation.

This fear is freedom. Psychology can tell one nothing more. Letting go of the general and necessary truths of the world, a prerequisite of objective knowledge, one performs transgression. Classic stance. Different stanza. The fundamentally given is threatened.

One has sinned and maybe even fallen, but by this katharsis, one has rejected and prevented the purity of finality. Impurity that needs to forgive itself. Though in order to forgive sin, it is necessary to have power. Power is given by inserting fear.

Power is retained. By both. It binds still. It is abused.

The fascination of the set ethical is maintained solely and exclusively by its connection with Necessity. Genius does not stand alone. It is bound still by the Obligatory, kept within the limits of the possible.

The ethical's absolutes: “you must”, “it is”, ergo conceal the old, implacable law, binding upon all, which upholds the impossibilities proclaimed by reason. Axiomatic existence where everything is implicit. The limitations of human consciousness. A man of genius. An unlimited consciousness is nothingness to perception. Quod erat demonstrandum. Vanity – noos in nostos.