Abstract
A lecture on how the technical world of today is grounded on the abstraction promoted by science, which is itself grounded on the tendency of the intellect to deviate from its role of guiding the whole human being and to declare its own supremacy. Key texts are discussed, starting with Aristotle and ending with Descartes.
Based on tape recordings of a series of lectures given by Alexandru Dragomir in the period September 1986–May 1988, together with extracts from two short presentations which he made in 1998. At first sight, these lectures, in the form in which they were first delivered, seem to have no logical connecting thread. And yet there is such a thread, even if in places it can only be intuited. In reconstituting the present text, my chief preoccupation has been to bring this logical thread to the surface. To this end, the initial text resulting from the transcription of the original lectures and presentations has been modified: some passages have been omitted, others have been reformulated, and others have been adjusted stylistically. A number of passages, intended to complete thoughts that had not been carried to their conclusion or were simply not explicitly formulated, are entirely my own. What has resulted, however, is not a flowing text, but rather a suite of fragments. I could have gone further, and transformed the suite of fragments into a text in which the logical thread of the lectures would have been more clearly highlighted. This I have not done, for fear of losing the enigmatic beauty of the fragments. However it should be borne in mind that the lectures from which the present text derives were no more than sketches for a work that was never carried out. I would like to thank my wife Ioana for the patience and accuracy with which she transcribed the first part of these lectures, and Sorin Vieru, who transcribed the two presentations made in 1998. My thanks also to Bogdan Mincă for the care with which he read the reconstituted text and for his comments on it. (Catalin Partenie)
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Notes
- 1.
Mihai Eminescu (1850–1889) is commonly regarded as the national poet of Romania. His ‘Letter I’ portrays an aging scholar meditating on the past and future of the universe, leading to reflections on the apparent futility of human endeavours in the face of mortality and the disregard of posterity. [Trans.]
- 2.
How astonishing! The fundamental principle of the intellect is non-contradiction: something is, at a particular time and from a particular point of view, either this way or that way. But the intellect itself is contradictory, for it is at one and the same time both precarious and colossal. [A.D.]
- 3.
See, for example, in Aristotle’s Protrepticus: ‘Further, part of us is soul, part body; the one rules, the other is ruled; the one uses, the other is present as its instrument. Again, the use of that which is ruled, i.e. the instrument, is always arranged to fit that which rules and uses’ (Düring fr. B 59; Walzer and Ross fr. 6). [A.D.]
- 4.
Plato, for example, speaks of “those who love the sight of truth” (οἱ τῆς ἀληθείας γιλοθεάμονες, Republic 475e 4); see also Symposium 219a. [A.D.]
- 5.
I can only understand something if that something is made. In other words, any existence must be considered as made before I can understand it. This idea appears in Plato: in the Philebus, for example, where we are told that what is ‘born’ and what is ‘made’ are the same thing (27a), and above all in the Timaeus, where the whole of reality is the creation of the Demiurge (see 27a–fine). It also appears, of course, in Christian theology, in which the whole of reality is conceived as being the creation of God. But it appears too in modern science, for the laws of nature presuppose that reality is something made—made, but of course not by me. I have not said that reality does not also contain a non-made part; all I have said is that I can speak of something only if I assume that it is something made. In the Timaeus, for example, the Demiurge builds the universe out of a raw material, which is not made but simply given. But about this raw material not much can be said, for it has no form (see 52d–53b). Likewise the receptacle, the χώρα, is not made but given, and not much can be said about it either (see 52b–d). Thus for Plato there is a link between non-made reality and nothingness, about which I can state nothing positive. About nothingness, I can state only that it is. Why can I not understand something unless that something is made? A difficult question! I am not going to try to find an answer here. However I believe that the answer, regardless of our starting point, will lead us sooner or later, to the problem of truth, for to my mind, truth, understood as a correspondence between utterance and reality, has as its foundation the idea that reality is something made. [A.D.]
- 6.
Dragomir’s quotation is based on the Abbé Picot’s 1647 French translation of the Principles, which here differs somewhat from the Latin text: ‘et je remarque presque en tous, que ceux qui conçoivent aisément les choses qui appartiennent aux mathématiques ne sont nullement propres à entendre celles qui se rapportent à la métaphysique, et au contraire, que ceux qui à celles-ci sont aisées ne peuvent comprendre les autres […]’ (Descartes 1989, 26). Cf. the standard English translation: ‘and it generally happens with almost everyone else that if they are accomplished in Metaphysics they hate Geometry, while if they have mastered Geometry they do not grasp what I have written on First Philosophy’ (Descartes 1985 vol I, 192). [Trans.]
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Dragomir, A. (2017). The World We Live In. In: Liiceanu, G., Partenie, C. (eds) The World We Live In. Phaenomenologica, vol 220. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42854-3_10
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