Abstract
The following essay is intended to search for a new framework for the history of Latvian philosophy as a normal ingredient of an“essentially non-existent” Mid-European philosophy. The character of such“nonexistent” philosophy is determined by the particular geo-politico-psycho-graphical anamnesis of Europe’s body. I believe the most important (therefore, submerged in amnesia) points of its anamnesis are the two world wars, through which the First Republic of Latvia emerged, then perished, and is being reborn nowadays. But, it is well known that philosophy has nothing to do with the“first birth”, i.e. with birth from external causes; philosophy can be created only after a“second birth”. To obtain not only national but also intellectual independence, we should overcome the traditional antihistorical understanding of history. Namely, traditional history, which seeks reference only to the so-called objective external causes and hence accuses in all evils only“other” humans (occupants, communists, fascists, collaborationists, conformists, etc.), is to be gradually replaced by pluralistic histories which would try to elucidate, for example, what Latvia’s people had or had not done with themselves that eventually brought about the destruction of their statehood. Furthermore, such pluralistic histories can also help philosophers understand what they are or are not doing for their own selves in order to attain intellectual independence.
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Notes
Lucretius. De Rerum Natura. IV:60-62:“And also when the slippery serpent casts off his vesture amongst the thorns (for we often see the brambles enriched with the flying spoils”. — Translated by W. A. Rouse (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 280.
See: Genesis 1; Exodus 3:14.“I Am Who I Am” is an etymology of the Israelite name for God YHWH. This name is treated as a verbal form derived from“to be” and formulated in the first person because God is the speaker. Actually YHWH is a third person form and may mean“He causes to be”. The name does not indicate God’s eternal being but his action and presence in historical affairs.
A-T. Tymieniecka,“Measure and the Ontopoietic Self-Realization of Life” Phenomenolosical Inquiry, Vol. 19 (October, 1995), pp. 28, 31.
“The parallel between the images of the cave and Hades (the shadowly, unsubstantial, senseless movement of the soul in Homer’s Hades corresponds to the ignorance and senselessness of the bodies in the cave) is unmistakable because it is stressed by Plato’s use of the words ειδωλον, image, and οκια, shadow, which are Homer’s own key words for the description of life after death in the underworld. The reversal of the Homeric“position” is obvious; it is as though Plato were saying to him: Not the life of bodyless souls, but the life of bodies takes place in an underworld; compared to the sky and the sun, the earth is like Hades; images and shalows are the objects of bodily senses, not the surroundings of bodyless souls: the true and real is not the world in which we move and live and which we have to part from death, but the ideas seen and grasped by the eyes of mind. In a sense Plato’s περιαγογη was a turning-about by which everything that was commonly believed in Greece in accordance with the Homeric religion came to stand on its head. It is as though the underworld of Hades had risen to the surface of the earth. But this reversal of Homer did not actually turn Homer upside down or downside up, since the dichotomy within which such an operation alone can take place is almost as alien to Plato’s thought, which did not yet operate with predetermined opposites, as it is alient to the Homeric world.” H. Arendt, Between Past and Future. Six Exercises in Political Thought (New York: Viking, 1961), pp. 36–37; see also H. Böringer, Was ist Philosophic? (Berlin: Merve Verlag, 1993).
J.-F. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Minneapolis: Minneapolis University Press, 1984), p. 46.
Translated from Latvian by Ansis Zunde.
Translated from Latvian by Normunds Pukjans. Selected“Verses of Awakening” by Latvian philosophers (Roberts Apinis, Aivars Kļaviņš (Eliss), Baiba Pētersone, Igors Šuvajevs and Ansis Zunde) were published in the Latvian newspaper Neatkarīgā Cīņa, February 23 (1994), p. 6.
M. Foucault, Truth and Method. The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinov (New York: Pathenon Books, 1984), pp. 56–57 (Emphasis mine-A.Z.)
For example in the Russian cultural condition, the following formula works:“When I see, I need not think; the visible is unthinkable”.
See Ă. Šilde, Pirmā Republika (Rīga: Elpa, 1993), p. 148.
See E. Dunsdorfs, ”Kārla Ulmana dzīve. Ceļinieks. Diktātors. Polītiķs.” Daugava (Zviedrijā) (1978), pp. 346–354.
For instance, at the beginning of the 1930s Edvarts Virza in his aesthetically political statements delineated“the cosmos of Latvians” as a domain of Earth’s spirit sans history, that, albeit defeated, defeats all its victors; it defeats any doubt and inquiry, too. This aesthetics of native authority resounded both with the authoritarian politics overwhelming Europe’s body at that time and with Heideggaerian philosophy and Jungian Tiefenpsychologie. A shift from mimetic to simulative aesthesis in Latvia’s“official culture” took place. One can appreciate this shift comparing two utterances by E. Virza. He said:“The houses of Courlanders had to be razed to the ground, our people had to scatter in all the winds of this world, before we admitted the futility of all our previous attempts. And our people returned back and settled in the ruins, but full of new ideas and thoughts,” (E. Virza, Mīlās Māras pārnāksšna, Rīga: Zinātne, 1991, p. 59). After that he says:“Ideas are very much like illness’ bacilli — they are infectious unless the spirit is armed with an adequate resistance power” (E. Virza, Zem karoga, [Rīga: 1935], p. 25). If we delve deeper into this tragicomic dissonance-resonance, perhaps we may discover that Latvia is one of the spots on the body of Europe that, due to its topological peculiarities, can produce only fragmented and discrete discourses on, say,“Latvian ruins” (A. Zunde, Latvijas drupu diskursa politiskā estētika”, Kultūras Avīze (1993), No. 3 (6). p. 5; in Latvian); they are to be understood and applied soley for“internal use”.
M. Vētra, Karaļa viesi (Rīga: Liesma, 1992), pp. 112, 114 ff.
See E. Dunsdorfs,“Kārļa Ulmana dzīve. Ceļinieks. Diktātors. Polītiķs”, Daugava (Zviedrijā), 1978, pp. 312–313.
For instance, see R. Dahrendorf, Society and Democracy in Germany (Garden City: Doubleday, 1967), P. Gay, Weimar Culture. The Outsider as Insider (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1968).
C. Schmitt, The Concept of the Political (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1976), p. 62.
Vētra, Karaļa viesi, p. 118.
Why benevolent? Heidegger interprets the ϕιλια in the name of philosophy together with the famous Heraclitean saying about ϕνσις. Heidegger says: In der physis waltet die Gunst: (M. Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe. Band 55. Frankfurt A.M.: Klostermann, 1979), p. 132; in physis benevolence reigns. There reigns that which accords or is in agreement.φιλια is here the essential and reciprocal relationship between the rising, opening, decline, and self-dissimulation, of physis. In this context, maybe, Latvia is the region of such an accord, or of ϕιλιν, which has not yet become philosophy, a questioning tension, the eroticization of Streben, a jealous, nostalgic, mournful or curious contraction of Eros? For another version of the“non-existence of Mid-European philosophy”, see in M. ΒаЙДа“ ΦИЛосоΦИЯ в Венгрии”, in Венгерсрий Μеридиан (1991), № 4.
In historical, political, and even meta-philosophical, writings, one can find a different axis, Berlin-St. Petersburg, being described usually as an“unhealthy location” in which the Latvian people and the Latvian mind are situated (see, for instance, J. Vējš,“Transition of Society, Transformation of Philosophy”, Metaphilosophy, Vol. 25 (1994), Nos. 2/3, pp. 143–155). This axis of Europe is the reign of“hot and hard” multidimensional relations and has therefore attracted the most attention; yet I wish to pay more attention to another reign, that of“cool and soft” relations, particularly if I want to discuss the condition of philosophy in Latvia.
A. Spekke,“Atminu brīži: ainas, epizodes, siluteti”, Zelta Ābele (Zviedrijā, 1967), p. 16
One advances as the main argument the fact that the Greek word ϕιλοσοϕια means love of wisdom, whereas the Latvian word filozofija literally means love of darkness (from Gr. ζιϕισ, darkness). In doing this, however, one cannot contradistinguish Latvian filosofija from filozofija, since the opposite of wisdom is stupidity, not darkness, and the opposite of darkness is light, not wisdom. As is well known, the habitat of wisdom (σοϕια) is the chthonic, motherly darkness; moreover, the“love of wisdom” as practiced in Latvian culture is closer to“darkness” than to“light”.“Light” is understood sooner as knowledge or education, and not as wisdom. To my mind, in a neutral text there is no need to write filosofija instead of the traditional term filozofija. It could be done in special cases, as for example, when one must explicate Husserl and Mamardashvili’s idea of the one and only objective philosophy which cannot be described in terms of any particular philosophy or of all philosopies taken together. The idea of“the one and only objective philosophy” could be designated by filosofija. In still other cases, when it is necessary to emphasize the object of“love” (whether it is wisdom, stupidity, light, or darkness), one can differentiate between the terminological graphemes filoZofija and filoSofija; but then, at least for completeness’ sake, one should also introduce“love of light” and“love of stupidity” … Another point of discussion could be the nature of this“love” (or“these loves”: ϕιλια, ερος, or αγαπη) set up as the initial condition of philosophizing.
For semiological and psycho-analtyical implications of this problem, see R. Barthes, S/Z (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1970); A. Y. Kaplan, Reproductions of Banality. Fascism, Literature and Franch Intellectual Life (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1986); A. Zunde, Para-filozofija para bellum: izaicinājums Latvijas vēstures ideologijai in Tagadnes izaicinājums (Rīga: Intelekts. 1996), pp. 178-204.
L. Briedis, K. Rutmanis, I. Šuvjevs, and A. Zunde,“Sastapšanās ar … vai ar sevi?”, Kentaurs XXI (1992), No. 1, p. 81.
Such qualifications as“philosopher” and“thinker” hardly correspond now with the occuring and encountered death which, after a week, seized this ravished man irreversibly. In respect to him, the word“thinker” even became sacrilegeous, since it allowed one to interpret his exit as a coolly premediated“intellectual suicide”. However, academic philosophy and mental work were for Kārlis Rutmanis only one of the ways in which he strived to respond to the miracle of man’s presence. Now he is entirely encompassed by it, has become a nugget of being’s miracle, an inalienable light which in various ways comprehends itself. Because there is no other being than the comprehending of one’s presence, and there is no other way of comprehending than to be. To be a human is to be able to do the impossible, to know the incomprehensible.
Visualization as an attempt to respond to the miracle of man’s presence may have the opposite effect, as well: it might be a step towards formation of a new myth a“cultural” white myth about“Latvian philosophy”. Visualization is one of the means for neutralizing the most essential oppositions of culture, which leads to the fact that the non-existing can be shown publicly-what cannot be uttered, can be exposed. For example the“essentially non-existent” Latvian philosophy can only be bodily (”in the flesh”) exposed, not uttered, at science conferences, by the personal presence and the discipline-like, not original, presentations of our post-soviet scholars. Apaprently, the transition from Merab Mamardashvili as“Teacher” to Kārlis Rutmanis and other nowadays actively working Latvian philosophers as“disciples,” cannot be conceptualised. And analtyical understanding of the unconceptualisability of some culture distances is given in J. Baudrillard, For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign”, Selected Writings (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988), D. B. Zilberman, The Birth of Meaning in Hindu Thought (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1988).
Exodus 3: pp. 2-5.
See K. Rutmanis,“Filsofija un teologija”, in Filozofija un teologija (Rīga: LZA Filozofijas un sociologijas inst., 1991) pp. 38–43.
A-T. Tymieniecka,“Measure and the Ontopoietic Self-Individualization of Life,” Phenomenological Inquiry, Vol. 19 (October, 1995), p. 28.
V. Krile, Vanagi. (Dzejas izlase), Rīga: Solvita, 1995), p. 30. Translated from Latvian by Rita Laima Krievina.
Surely, Mamardashvili knew how to estimate himself with a fine elegance. Perhaps, it was exactly the energetic repelling (“not reading” and“not knowing”) that could have originated in congenial coincidences. Moreover, they are not only coincidences of formulation, they are rather profound coincidences of stance and sight trajectories within the totalitarian cosmos.
M. Mamardašhvili,“Ceļš, aiz kura paveras līdzens prieka lauks” (translated from the Russian by Uldis Tīrons; first published in Latvian), Kentaurs XXI (1992) No. 1, pp. 6–23.
For the time being, five publications of Heidegger’s works in Latvian translation are known. The following four were translated from German by Rihards Külis:“Conversation on Language (fragment in the journal Gramata, No. 7, 1990);“Letter on Humanism” (Grāmata, No. 10, 1991);“The Origin of the Work of Art” (fragments, in the journal Kentaurs XXI, No. 2, 1992) and“Conversation on Language” (Kentaurs XXI, No. 10, 1996). The fifth,“Maybe Only Some God Can Save Us” (in the book Tagadnes izaicinājums [Rīga: Intelekts, 1996]) was translated from German by Igors Šuvajevs.
See Ю. Лавьдов“Ρаздумья о ΦилосоΦсκой куьтуре””, in Волросьι ΦилосоΦии (1988), №. 3, pp. 57–68.
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Zunde, A. (2000). Six Para-Philosophical Exercises in Latvian Euro(Onto)Poiesis. In: Tymieniecka, AT. (eds) The Origins of Life. Analecta Husserliana, vol 67. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4058-4_33
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