Actual Freedom – A Request from Konrad Swart

October 09 1998:

KONRAD: If you understand what I am saying here, I, at least, see, that there is far less disagreement between you and me than you think. Look at what you yourself write: [Richard]: ‘I will repeat that I have never said that movement does not require thought – other than idle gestures or when running on automatic pilot – because purpose is involved and only thought can see a means to an end ... thought is obviously required’[endquote]. Well, Richard, there you have it. So a thought is indeed needed to act. You said it yourself, now.

RICHARD: Aye ... I have always maintained that thought is necessary for purposeful action. And I have always maintained that an ‘I’ is not at all necessary ... I have repeatedly said that thoughts can think themselves perfectly well without a ‘thinker’. In fact, ‘I’ hinder clear thought with ‘my’ nugatory demands ... ‘my’ needs; ‘my’ wants; ‘my’ shoulds; ‘my’ oughts and etcetera. And ‘I’ thwart clean thought with ‘my’ passionate cravings ... ‘my’ desires; ‘my’ urges; ‘my’ longings; ‘my’ ardours; ‘my’ lecheries and so on. This is because the identity is – at root – nothing but the rudimentary animal ‘self’ born out of the instinctual passions of fear and aggression and nurture and desire. This is so obvious, surely?

KONRAD: Now the rest is just definition. This thought is, by DEFINITION an ‘I’. Why? BECAUSE it controls the body.

RICHARD: Just what do you mean with this throwaway line ‘now the rest is just definition’? Can you stop and muse about this for a moment before rushing on to your ‘proof’? Is there not something more to be done other than define a problem away cerebrally? What about these instinctual passions? No matter what intellectualisation you may come up with ... they remain firmly in situ, do they not? So, with that sobering thought held firmly in mind, we can proceed onto your second sentence: ‘this thought is, by definition, an ‘I’’ ... and you then ask why this is so? As there is a thought that is needed to act purposefully, you conclude that this thought is an ‘I’ that is controlling the body. Do you see the circular argument operating here? That is, the initial surmise is ‘proved’ by relying upon the initial surmise being a fact in order to do this sleight of hand ... or should I say: sleight of mind? Maybe you can see this if I arrange all of your sentences sequentially? Viz.:

Initial Surmise: ‘An ‘I’ is a controlling thought’.
1. ‘[Because] a thought is needed [for a body] to act’.
2. ‘This thought is, by definition, an ‘I’’.
3. ‘Because it [this thought] controls the body’.
Conclusion: ‘[Therefore] an ‘I’ is necessary to control a body’.

Now, I do not profess to be a logician ... but even with my limited training I find this to be a spurious deduction. If you wish to convince me with the logic of your argument you are going to have to insert one or more sentences between Nos. (2) and (3) ... because there is an implausible leap happening there where an other-wise identity-free thought mysteriously becomes an ‘I’-thought. It is perhaps somewhat like that infamous theorem ‘I think, therefore I am’: it being predicated upon the initial surmise – ‘I think’ – being a fact in order to produce the conclusion ... ‘I am’. The initial surmise is faulty ... it should read only the fact that ‘there is thinking happening’. Thus the rewritten axiom now looks like this: ‘There is thinking happening, therefore I am’ ... which is – like your deduction above – nothing but twaddle dressed up as sagacity.

So, the question now is: where does this identity come from in order to emerge in thought so mysteriously ready-made ... as evidenced in your initial surmise?

My suggestion is, of course, that this ‘I’ part of the identity – this ‘thinker’ – comes from the ‘me’ part of the identity – the ‘feeler’ – who is nothing but the glorified ‘soul’ born out of the rudimentary animal ‘self’ of the instinctual survival passions of fear and aggression and nurture and desire. But, of course, you have already read me saying this before, and have considered it deeply before then totally ignoring it, have you not? Just like you carefully considered my observation, that the body’s will is quite capable of organising the various components of the body to operate and function in a purposeful manner, before discarding it and asserting that this was proof that actualism is clouding my ability to reason abstractly, eh? Will is an organising process, an activity of the brain that correlates all the information and data that streams from and through the bodily senses ... and it is will that is essential in order to operate and function, not an identity.

And will is nothing more grand than the nerve-organising data-correlating ability of the body.

KONRAD: Richard, thanks for this explanation For I understand now both your position, your vision and your motives.

RICHARD: Oh? Well that is good. Now, perhaps you would be so kind as to explain how you can say that the thought that initiates action has to be an ‘I’-thought’, eh? Or are you going to side-step that atrocious logical deduction (above) that you attempted to foist upon me?

KONRAD: I also understand what your vision implies. I do not know whether you are aware of it, but what you say is Schopenhauer all over again.

RICHARD: Ah ... so you are going to side-step again ... okay ... I will go along with you. Now, are you so sure that what I say is ‘Schopenhauer all over again’? Are you aware that Mr. Arthur Schopenhauer believed that the will to live is the fundamental reality? Whereas I say that the will to live, which is born out of the survival instincts that blind nature endows all sentient beings with at conception, can be erased (being a soft-ware package). Hardly the stuff of a ‘fundamental reality’, would you not say? Thus there seems to be an immediate and vast difference betwixt him and me ... just where do you see that what I say is ‘Schopenhauer all over again’?

As I have explained to you before, the instinct to survive of the rudimentary animal self gives rise to a ‘feeler’ (‘me’ as soul) in the heart as a ‘being’ who thus instinctively desires Eternity. This ‘being’ emerges as the ‘thinker (‘I’ as ego) in the head who arrogates this instinct-born desire and transforms it into what is known as the ‘will to survive’. Mr. Arthur Schopenhauer believed that this will – being a constant striving – is insatiable and ultimately yields only suffering. Now, given that this ‘will to survive’ is instinctual in its origin, it is no wonder it is insatiable ... and of course it can only bring suffering (curiously enough, he equated Mr. Immanuel Kant’s ‘thing-in-itself’ with a blind impelling force manifesting itself in individuals as the will to live, yet he never made the connection with instincts).

Therefore, none of this philosophy of his has anything in it remotely similar to what I say.

KONRAD: First there was ‘will’ as the true source of action.

RICHARD: Mr. Arthur Schopenhauer saw the world as a constant conflict of individual wills resulting in frustration and pain. If he had understood the instinctual origin of this ‘will to survive’ he would never had stated that will is the ‘true source of action’ at all ... it is the instincts that are the driving force that corrupt clear and clean action. You still have not made out a case for me being ‘Schopenhauer all over again’, now have you? Also, he is on record as saying that ‘pleasure is simply the absence of pain and can be achieved only through the renunciation of desire’ (a concept that reflects his studies of Hindu Scripture) which is a far cry from what I say. He is also on record as saying that ‘there is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome – to be got over’. Now, I ask you ... does that sound like me? How about this: ‘the brain may be regarded as a kind of parasite of the organism, a pensioner, as it were, who dwells with the body’ ... is this what I say? Yes? No? That is an apt description of the identity and not the brain ... is this not so?

KONRAD: And then Nietzsche came along, and he made a lot of fuzz about that where there is a Will, there is also something that has to be willed. The only candidate for this, according to his philosophy, that was abstract enough to be all encompassing, and without a specific identity, was POWER.

RICHARD: Well, for a start, it was Mr. Arthur Schopenhauer’s doctrine of the primacy of the will that influenced Mr. Friedrich Nietzsche, so that coloured his philosophy from the beginning ... and we have just seen how dissimilar that philosophy is to what I live each moment again. Basically, he reasoned that Christianity’s emphasis on the afterlife makes its believers less able to cope with earthly life. He argued that the ideal human being, the Ubermensch, would be able to channel passions creatively instead of suppressing them. Whereas I advocate neither repression or expression ... I urge to elimination of all feelings ... emotion, passion and calenture.

To understand Mr. Friedrich Nietzsche’s ‘will to power’ one must understand his critique of traditional morality ... which was centred on the typology of the ‘master’ and ‘slave’ morality. By examining the etymology of the German words ‘gut’ (‘good’), ‘schlecht’ (‘bad’), and ‘böse’ (‘evil’), Mr. Friedrich Nietzsche maintained that the distinction between good and bad was originally descriptive ... that is, a non-moral reference to those who were privileged – the masters – as opposed to those who were base ... the slaves. The good/evil contrast arose when slaves avenged themselves by converting attributes of mastery into vices. Thus pride became sin ... and charity, humility and obedience replaced competition, pride and autonomy. If the favoured – the ‘good’ – were powerful ... then the meek would inherit the earth. Crucial to the triumph of slave morality was its claim to being the only true morality. This insistence on absoluteness is as essential to philosophical ethics as to religious morals. And, although Mr. Friedrich Nietzsche gave a historical genealogy of master and slave morality, he maintained that it was an ahistorical typology of traits present in everyone.

And, in case you are trying to make out that I am like him, he is on record as saying: ‘in the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence ... and loathing seizes him’. That does not sound like me at all.

KONRAD: So the most essential thing according to Nietzsche was will to power.

RICHARD: Well, Mr. Friedrich Nietzsche often identified life itself with ‘will to power’, that is, with an instinct for growth and durability. This concept provides way of interpreting his view on the ascetic ideal that I discussed above, since it is Mr. Friedrich Nietzsche’s contention ‘that all the supreme values of mankind lack this will; that values which are symptomatic of decline, nihilistic values, are lording it under the holiest names’. For him, the ascetic ideal is born when suffering becomes endowed with ultimate significance. According to Mr. Friedrich Nietzsche, the Judeo-Christian tradition made suffering tolerable by interpreting it as their God’s intention and as an occasion for atonement. Christianity accordingly owed its triumph to the flattering doctrine of personal immortality ... that is, to the conceit that each individual’s life and death have cosmic significance. Similarly, traditional philosophy expressed the ascetic ideal when it privileged soul over body, mind over senses, duty over desire, the timeless over the temporal. While Christianity promised salvation for the sinner who repents, philosophy held out hope for salvation, albeit secular, for its sages. Common to traditional religion and philosophy was the unstated but powerful motivating assumption that existence requires explanation, justification, or expiation. Both denigrated experience in favour of some other, ‘true’ world. Both may be read as symptoms of a declining life, or life in distress. Thus, the sustaining values of Western civilisation have been sublimated products of decadence in that the ascetic ideal endorses existence as pain and suffering. The traditional philosophy and its ethics – and religion with its morality – have been but so many masks that a deficient ‘will to power’ wears.

Thus he passionately rejected the ‘slave morality’ of Christianity for a new, heroic morality that would affirm life. Leading this new society would be a breed of supermen whose ‘will to power’ would set them off from the ‘herd’ of inferior humanity.

KONRAD: We have seen what came from this line of reasoning. The whole Nazism is based on this philosophy.

RICHARD: Well, not only Nazism ... for example, two books were standard issue for the rucksacks of German soldiers during World War I: ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’ and ‘The Gospel According to St. John’! Be that as it may, both ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’ and ‘Beyond Good and Evil’ were later used as a philosophical justification for Nazi doctrines of racial and national superiority. This, however, is generally regarded as a perversion of Mr. Friedrich Nietzsche’s thought. Not only has he been (unfairly) blamed for Nazism, he has also been (inaccurately) credited with its prediction.

KONRAD: And, by the way, although Schopenhauer did not went mad, Nietzsche did.

RICHARD: As informed opinion favours a diagnosis of atypical general paralysis caused by dormant tertiary syphilis I must ask ... what is the point that you are making?

KONRAD: So what you say is not new at all. It has already been said by Schopenhauer.

RICHARD: Methinks you have to stretch a long bow there, Konrad., to make it fit me. Would you like some more of his wisdom? I can go on and on with this stuff: ‘All the cruelty and torment of which the world is full is in fact merely the necessary result of the totality of the forms under which the will to live is objectified ... Nature shows that with the growth of intelligence comes increased capacity for pain, and it is only with the highest degree of intelligence that suffering reaches its supreme point’.

Are you still so sure that I am ‘Schopenhauer all over again’?

*

KONRAD: It is, as you say, with me as it is with you. The thought that controls the body ‘jumps at its place’ whenever action is required. Again, ‘I’ repeat, and you seem to agree with this, WITHOUT such a controlling thought no ACTION, no purposeful behaviour is possible. If you can agree on this, the basis for further investigation is established. For then you no longer deny something that is completely obvious.

RICHARD: Golly, you do go on and on about this ... I have already agreed that thought is required for purposeful action, but I do not agree that an ‘I’ is required, like you are trying to make it look like I am saying, for purposeful intent. What you are talking of is desire operating ... and desire is affective. I will repeat that I have never said that movement does not require thought – other than idle gestures or when running on automatic pilot – because purpose is involved and only thought can see a means to an end. Thought is obviously required ... that is not the issue. I report that there is no ‘I’ as ego or ‘me’ as soul extant in this body ... no rudimentary animal ‘self’ whatsoever. Thinking may or may not occur ... but the ‘thinker’ and the ‘feeler’, along with all feelings – emotion and passion and calenture – have disappeared, entirely. For the vast majority of my time there is no thoughts running at all ... none whatsoever. If thought is needed for a particular situation, it swings smoothly into action and effortlessly does its thing. All the while, there is this apperceptive awareness of being here ... of being alive at this moment in time and this place in space. No words occur ... it is a wordless appreciation of being able to be here. Consequently, I am always blithe and carefree, even if I am doing nothing. Doing something – and that includes thinking – is a bonus of happiness and pleasure on top of this on-going ambrosial experience of being alive and awake.

KONRAD: You say, that whenever this ‘I’ is not present, there is observation of the world exactly as it is. In other words, since we both see that such an ‘I’ is necessarily a form of intentionality, it necessarily is also an ‘interpreter’ of the world, and therefore it can only see the world in the light of this intentionality.

RICHARD: No, Konrad, no ... we do not ‘both see that such an ‘I’ is necessarily a form of intentionality’ at all. It is you who sticks an ‘I’ in there again and again and try to make it look as if I am agreeing with you and that I am saying the same thing. I am not. I report that that this body’s will – which is nothing more grand than the nerve-organising data-correlating ability of the body – is quite capable of organising the various components of the body to operate and function in a purposeful and intentional manner. Will is an organising process, an activity of the brain that correlates all the information and data that streams from and through the bodily senses ... and it is will that is essential in order to operate and function, not an identity.

KONRAD: In fact, the whole philosophy of existential phenomenology is based on this understanding, and is directed at both making us aware of this, and attempting to deduce all consequences of this insight.

RICHARD: Do they experience an utter absence of malice and sorrow? Are they totally happy and harmless? Do they experience peace-on-earth, in this lifetime, as this flesh and blood body living in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are? If not, then their business of ‘making us aware of this’ is worthless ... as far as I am concerned. A teaching must be demonstrated in daily life.

KONRAD: Knowing from history that Nazism was one of the consequences of Schopenhauer vision, we can see what will come from your teaching, just by looking at history.

RICHARD: This is just unsubstantiated scare-mongering and serves you no merit whatsoever as a debating technique.

KONRAD: And another thing, I do not know whether you realize this, but a ‘will’ is an emotion. Therefore, ‘will’, without the qualifier ‘a’ is identical with emotion.

RICHARD: Well, etymologically, the word ‘will’ is derived from the Old English word ‘willa’ which, being related to the Gothic word ‘wilja’ (from ‘wel’ meaning ‘pleasing’) basically means ‘wish’ (as in expressing ‘intention’ and ‘determination’). Of course, this can be experienced as ‘desire’ which, being affective, gives the word an emotional content. But – as you can see – it is not necessarily an emotional word.

KONRAD: Is it not your assertion, that you have moved beyond emotion in whatever form?

RICHARD: Yes, and not only emotion. All the affective faculties disappeared when the identity became extinct.

KONRAD: So, what do we have, if we look at what you say? We have ‘will’, emotion, that is busy with data correlation, from which action directly should follow. In other words, you SAY that you act without emotion, but in actual fact all you plead for is that action should be based directly on emotion, without thought and thinking intervening in any way.

RICHARD: I do not plead for that at all ... this is your fantasy that you are trying to build a thesis on. I am happy to copy and paste indefinitely ... or until you eventually read it, Konrad. Viz.:

• [Richard]: ‘Golly, you do go on and on about this ... I have already agreed that thought is required for purposeful action, but I do not agree that an ‘I’ is required, like you are trying to make it look like I am saying, for purposeful intent. What you are talking of is desire operating ... and desire is affective. I will repeat that I have never said that movement does not require thought – other than idle gestures or when running on automatic pilot – because purpose is involved and only thought can see a means to an end. Thought is obviously required ... that is not the issue. I report that there is no ‘I’ as ego or ‘me’ as soul extant in this body ... no rudimentary animal ‘self’ whatsoever. Thinking may or may not occur ... but the ‘thinker’ and the ‘feeler’, along with all feelings – emotion and passion and calenture – have disappeared, entirely. For the vast majority of my time there is no thoughts running at all ... none whatsoever. If thought is needed for a particular situation, it swings smoothly into action and effortlessly does its thing. All the while, there is this apperceptive awareness of being here ... of being alive at this moment in time and this place in space. No words occur ... it is a wordless appreciation of being able to be here. Consequently, I am always blithe and carefree, even if I am doing nothing. Doing something – and that includes thinking – is a bonus of happiness and pleasure on top of this on-going ambrosial experience of being alive and awake’.

KONRAD: This explains why your vision is so self contradictory. For on the one hand you talk about ‘bliss’ and ‘innocence’, which are, respectively, a feeling and an emotion, but on the other hand you say that you are against emotions.

RICHARD: But I do not talk about ‘bliss’ at all ... other than to lump it into the same category as love and compassion and beauty and so on. I am on record as saying: ‘the ‘reality’ of the ‘real world’ is an illusion. The ‘Reality’ of the ‘Mystical World’ is a delusion. There is an actual world that lies under one’s very nose ... I interact with the same people, things and events that you do, yet it is as if I am in another dimension altogether. There is no good or evil here where I live. I live in a veritable paradise ... this very earth I live on is so vastly superior to any fabled Arcadian Utopia that it would be impossible to believe if I was not living it twenty four hours a day ... and for the last five years. It is so perfectly pure and clear here that there is no need for Love or Compassion or Bliss or Euphoria or Ecstasy or Truth or Goodness or Beauty or Oneness or Unity or Wholeness or ... or any of those baubles. They all pale into pathetic insignificance ... and I lived them for eleven years’.

Did you see the word ‘bliss’ in there?

As for the word ‘innocence’ ... it simply means ‘free from wrong, sin or guilt; not injurious’. Etymologically it is from Latin word ‘innocens’ which is a combination of ‘in’ plus ‘nocens’ (‘hurt’ or ‘injure’) ... meaning ‘unhurtful’. Hence my use of ‘harmless’ in my oft-repeated refrain ‘happy and harmless’.

What makes you say that innocence is an emotion?

KONRAD: But the fact of the matter is that you are another one, like the philosophers that came before the Nazi’s in the past, who try to base human action directly on emotion. What did you say? You were aware of a very cunning entity? It seems to me, that this cunning entity you thought you have gotten rid of has not been gotten rid of at all. No, it seems to me that it has taken complete control over your body!

RICHARD: Your E-Mails become more hilarious the more you send, Konrad.

KONRAD: It also explains why you do the utmost, to misrepresent my definition of ‘I’. For it is not my definition you are attacking. No, it is the process of defining itself that has to be attacked. For if this definition is understood, abstract thinking is functioning. And we cannot have that, can we, Richard? Therefore all of this twisting and misrepresenting, and your total denial to really look at the definition. It all makes sense now.

RICHARD: Not so, Konrad it is you who cannot define successfully ... just look at your atrocious logical deduction (further above) for an amazing example.

KONRAD: Consider also this. BECAUSE the Nazi’s believed that they went beyond abstract thought and thinking, their ideal of the Superman ‘Ubermensch’, they showed NO compassion WHATSOEVER to the Jews, and killed them by the millions in their ‘endlosung’. For compassion is an emotion that has its source in the recognition of the power Man represents, and to consider ANY fellow men as indeed that. Your fellow men.

RICHARD: Hmm ... as your use of ‘your fellow man’ is so strikingly similar to my usage of ‘we are fellow human beings’, I must ask what point you are making? Also, I see that you used the word ‘power’ in there in conjunction with this deleterious compassion ... I never do.

I have no power – or powers – whatsoever.

KONRAD: Only abstract thought and thinking can result in the recognition of this principle. Since principles are the source of any human emotion, this principle is the source of the emotion of compassion.

RICHARD: Yet it is the instinctual passions that are the source of human emotion ... not principles. Principles are a coping-mechanism that humans have devised to attempt to keep those base passions in check. And principles have to be emotion-backed in order to be even half-way effective. Hence ‘power’ ... and hence all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse.

KONRAD: Therefore abstract thought and thinking are so important. For first you must think abstractly, so that general principles are formed that are sound. And in their turn they are the source of emotions that make us humane. But if you base your actions directly on emotions, without abstract thought and thinking being active first, you are going to base your actions on your feelings directly. And that is the same as becoming a mindless brute. If we have a complete community of these kinds of people, we get what history has shown us. Namely Nazism, with all of its horrors.

RICHARD: Yes, indeed ... and have you learned the lesson of history? Yes? No? I guess ... no? Because you go on and on about the necessity of emotion-backed principles to control the savage instincts that blind nature endows all sentient beings with for the survival of the species. And the survival of any species will do, as far as blind nature is concerned.

KONRAD: There is a way out, of course, and I think you will take that one. You can disconnect ‘will’ from emotion, by stating that it is not an emotion at all, but a feeling.

RICHARD: Not so ... emotion is a feeling along with passion and calenture.

KONRAD: This is the same trick you have done before, disconnecting actuality with reality.

RICHARD: If popular usage had not corrupted the word ‘reality’ I would be still using it. The dictionary meanings are the same. It is just that people say stupid things like ‘that is your reality’ ... and thus make it mean something other than a factual and unarguable actuality that can be seen by all. Just like you tried to do with the word ‘fact’ in a previous E-mail with person ‘A’ having a different statement of fact to person ‘B’.

If you – and other people – stop misusing the word ‘reality’ then I will go back to using it.

KONRAD: But then the end result is even worse. For then NO CORRECTION WHATSOEVER is allowed by thought and thinking. For then you in effect assert, that our actions should be based totally on our feelings.

RICHARD: No, Konrad, this is your fantasy.

KONRAD: You also implicitly assert, that ‘the intelligence of the body’ is enough to solve every problem. This strategy will cause us to regress to the animal state. If that ever happens on a large scale, the brutality of the Nazi’s will be nothing compared with what will then happen to us.

RICHARD: Good heavens ... you do go on and on about the Nazis. Look, animals cannot think – this conversation is such kindergarten stuff – whereas humans can. When I say ‘native intelligence’ that means thinking without a ‘thinker’ ... no ‘I’.

KONRAD: The only difference with your vision and with that of Nazism, is just the introduction of a lot of redefinitions of their vision. Redefinitions that are not made explicit enough to see THAT it ARE redefinitions. However, these redefinitions DO connote an attack on abstract thinking, and are therefore an attack of that what makes Man, Man.

RICHARD: It is you who defines and redefines ... not me. I am consistent. And it is thinking per se that sets us apart from the rest of the animals ... not just abstract thought.

KONRAD: This throws a light on your way of representing things. When you can make people to ‘buy’ that there is a difference between reality and actuality, you are free to redefine whatever you like, and make people confused.

RICHARD: People are already confused ... 160,000,000 people killed in wars this century alone. I am injecting clarity.

KONRAD: And now that I think of it, this is also why you NEVER admit that you can be wrong. For if you admit that, you must also admit that a difference between right and wrong matters, and that is an implicit acknowledgment of the power of abstract thought and thinking. And we cannot have anything of that, can we?

RICHARD: I long ago discarded ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ in favour of ‘silly’ and ‘sensible’ as too many people have killed and been killed because of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’.

KONRAD: Harmless and innocent? You? I do not think so any more. The strategy you follow is also an old one. The first who did this was Immanuel Kant. He has written a book with the title: ‘Critique of pure reason’. If you really look at this sentence alone, you can see that it is ungrammatical. It did not say: ‘Critique on pure reason’, and it did also not say: ‘Critique based on pure reason’. No, it said: ‘Critique OF pure reason’. A very ungrammatical statement, not representing anything, but only addressed to the emotions of intellectualism that is so characteristic to philosophers. And they bought into it. So you have now given me reason to warn others for you. Folks, here we have another Immanuel Kant.

RICHARD: In this one E-mail you have attempted to liken me to three European Philosophers ... those prime examples of the ‘Tried and True’ being the ‘Tried and Failed’ school of thought. What next?

KONRAD: But then its exact opposite. Immanuel Kant asserted that our mind was not able to comprehend ANYTHING about existence, because we observe it by some means. A means that distorts existence beyond any recognition. He has been refuted now after 300 years of science.

RICHARD: It depends upon what you mean by the word ‘existence’. Mr. Immanuel Kant proposed that objective reality is known only insofar as it conforms to the essential structure of the knowing mind. Only objects of experience – phenomena – may be known, whereas things lying beyond experience – noumena – are unknowable (even though in some cases people assume a priori knowledge of them). The existence of such unknowable ‘things-in-themselves’ can be neither confirmed nor denied ... nor can they be scientifically demonstrated even today. Therefore, the ‘great’ problems of metaphysics – the existence of God, freedom and immortality – are insoluble by scientific thought. Of course, you might be talking about something else.

Incidentally, he also stated that morality requires belief in the existence of God, freedom and immortality. Mr. Immanuel Kant’s ethics centres in his categorical imperative, or absolute moral law, ‘act as if the maxim from which you act were to become through your will a universal law’. Also, he considered the concept of beauty as a bridge between the sensible and the intelligible worlds ... and this is not anything like what I say.

KONRAD: And now we have here an individual who tries to do the exact opposite. Trying to obfuscate by asserting that it IS possible to observe the world directly, by introduction of a false distinction between reality and actuality.

RICHARD: And around and around we go ... but I am not going to copy and paste, this time. Instead, just pretend that I have copied and pasted and I will just pretend that you have read it ... which you will not do anyway.

KONRAD: But, to accomplish this, we just have to do ONE thing. We must kill our human component. We must revert completely to the animal state. And then we will be just as ‘harmless and innocent and happy’ as animals. There is only one flaw. Animals might be happy, for they do not experience ‘existential distress’, but they are NOT harmless and innocent.

RICHARD: And neither are human beings, Konrad. Just what is this ‘reverting’ business. Human beings have displayed such savagery ... 160,000,000 killed in wars this century alone.

KONRAD: In fact, because they are incapable of generating principles by abstract thinking, they are incapable of compassion. Animals kill each other ruthlessly, because they are dominated by evolution, the struggle of the fittest. Of course, they do not live in ‘the human condition’, but that is because it are animals, not human beings.

RICHARD: And are you trying to say that 160,000,000 people were killed compassionately? I have watched black and white film footage of what went on ... it was ruthless. Who are you trying to fool ... other than yourself?

KONRAD: Do you honestly believe, that reverting into the animal state is a solution to the existential distress, the thing you call the ‘human condition’?

RICHARD: Since this is your fantasy, Konrad, I will let you answer it.

KONRAD: NOW I understand why some people are so attracted to your ‘solution’. You sell animality in the disguise of something that is higher than Man.

RICHARD: So you seem to have stopped flogging the ‘Nazi’ theme and have moved on to this ‘animal’ theme. One day you will wake up to the fact that your instincts are identical to any other animal.

KONRAD: And it also explains why your followers are so keen on attacking logical thinking. For if they take that seriously again, they are, again, human beings. And then they are out of the animal state they experience as so blissful.

RICHARD: This fantasy of yours appears to give you no end of satisfaction, Konrad.

KONRAD: Folks, look out! If you get into troubles by listening to this man, do not say that I have not warned you.

RICHARD: Thus spake Konrad ... scare-mongering to the very end. Your dialogue and/or debating technique has slipped from pathetic to abysmal in this E-mail.