XIV. Enduring ErrorsThroughout human history, there have been a number of erroneous articles of faith that have been transmitted through the generations because of their utility. These include the ideas that there are enduring things, are equal things, are things, substances, and bodies, a thing is as it appears, our will is free, and what is god for me is also absolute good. The strength of these convictions is based not on their truth, but on “their antiquity, their embodiment, and their character as conditions of life.
A. Truth and Knowledge
The errors just listed became codified as “knowledge.” Through logic, they became the standard of the “true” and the “false.” For example, logic provides forms for judging enduring things as having properties, as being identical to one another, etc. Those who looked to life itself rather than “knowledge” for their beliefs were dismissed as mad. It was only very late that “deniers and doubters” of the errors came forth. Truth itself, as opposed to the “true” and “false” knowledge, then emerged as “the most impotent form of knowledge.
B. The Eleatics
The ancient Eleatic philosophers sought to counter the errors by denying the existence of changing things that are as they appear to be. But they did not do so from the standpoint of life. Rather, they falsified life by regarding themselves as having the same qualities as being itself: impersonality and unchanging permanence. They denied the role of impulse in cognition. They viewed reason “generally as an entirely free and self-originating activity.” However, their methods were invalid and their ends suspect.
C. The Intellectual Struggle
The “subtler sincerity and skepticism” made the Eleatics “impossible.” The skepticism pitted against one another opposing positions that were at least compatible with the ancient errors. There was room for argument concerning which is more useful for life. But there was also room for argument concerning what is irrelevant to life. Thus, there arose a kind of intellectual game, a struggle to attain “the truth.” This game became itself a kind of impulse and need. AS a result, “examination, denial, distrust and contradiction became forces.” This leads to the all-important clash in the thinker between these forces and the ancient errors.
D. Origin of the Logical
The fundamental tenet of logic is that different things can be brought under the same concept and are in this sense “the same.” It is opposed to the real truth- that there is no sameness of things in the world. The identification of merely similar things as “the same” merely has survival value, as when choosing what to eat. To be more circumspect in one’s judgments is dangerous to life. The impulses underlying logic, which struggle with one another in our judgments, are “in themselves very illogical or unjust.” Thus, logic has its origin in the illogical, though this fact is concealed.
E. Cause and Effect
One of the ancient errors is the doctrine of cause and effect. It is said that one thing happens because of something else and that the latter explains the former. However, all that we can really give is a description of one thing happening after something else. In order to make the description, we isolate a few features of what happens and ignore the rest. These features are conceptualizations that we make, and so we describe ourselves rather than explaining the world. The true way of describing change would require recognizing the “infinite number of processes” that escape our attention in the apparently abrupt transition from one state to another, which is contrary to the notion of cause and effect.
F. The Origin of Self-Consciousness
Leibniz had suggested in the seventeenth century that most human mental activity is not self-conscious. We are capable of thinking, feeling, willing, remembering, and in general “acting” without referring these activities to ourselves. Since self0consciousness is in this ay superfluous, the question arises as to its purpose. The answer is that self-consciousness is a necessary condition for communication. Although self-consciousness allows the individual to communicate his personal needs, communication is primarily a phenomenon of whole societies. Elaborate systems of communication were developed and self-consciousness developed with them, only to be squandered by artists, preachers, etc.
