“Nothing . . . is more closed to us than this animal life from which we are descended. Nothing is more foreign to our way of thinking than the earth in the middle of the silent universe and having neither the meaning that man gives things, nor the meaninglessness of things as soon as we try to imagine them without a consciousness that reflects them.” (20)
As humans, we are stuck within the subjectivity of our lives. We desperately try to find an “objective” truth, but we can only search for such a thing through the very definitions we have created. As Nagel said: “Humans are addicted to the hope for a final reckoning, but intellectual humanity requires that we resist the temptation to assume that tools of the kind we now have are in principle sufficient to understand the universe as a whole.” We believe we have assigned significant meaning to the world, unearthed some of its “secrets,” “but in the end, on this view of the matter, understanding of the world will eventually reach a point where there is nothing to be said, expect “This is just how things are.”” However, it seems unlikely that we will ever stop trying; this is because somehow we believe we are greater than what we are: animal. Bataille argues that humans have achieved transcendence. We are no longer tethered to the immanence of animals, but we instead have emerged as self-conscious, intelligible beings. Again, in Nagel’s words: “What, if anything, justifies this common ambition of transcendence?” Why is it that we assume all other forms of life are inferior to us? There is a common belief that everything else is unintelligible and primitive. How have we achieved transcendence? Somehow we believe that the tools for understanding the universe, objectively, are in our hands. Though Bataille belittles the significance of being an “animal” he offers a solution to the questions above. He believes that tools have assisted our transcendence, bringing exteriority into the world, but he also suggests that ultimately the tool has no value in itself. The tool’s only value is to our own subjective use, thus supporting Nagel’s suggestion to “resist the temptation to assume that tools of the kind we now have are in principle sufficient to understand the universe as a whole.”
I personally believe that consciousness is a spectrum, just like everything else. Animals are not “like water in water,” this is merely our human inability to understand a world without human consciousness. If consciousness is a spectrum, then, for all intensive purposes, transcendence is a spectrum as well. I believe that the human ability to be cognitive and self-reflexive is truly incredible, but this does not mean we are subsequently equipped with the ability to pick apart the questions of the universe. To me, what is so wonderful about the knowledge that comes with cognition and self-reflection is that I have only become increasingly aware of all that I do not know. Though I would love to posit my own theory of all that is, I am humbled by the realization that we have not reached that level of transcendence.
So I guess this is all poetry.
Yes this is all poetry and that is precisely what makes us human. Blake's question for the tiger, "'In what distant deeps or skies burned the fire of thine eyes?"'(Bataille, The Accursed Share, 34) exemplifies the precarious and irrefutably subjective nature of the human lot. We, as human beings, are at once wholly animal, and entirely separate, unable to conceive of consciousness beyond the scope of our own. Poetry acquires its particular weight and strength as a medium as it allows one to transgress the limits of cognition. It does not seem to be a question of our transcendence reveled by 'the ability to pick apart the universe' as you say, but rather, the fact that we are compelled to enquire. Both Teilhard and Bataille illustrate this human desire beautifully. As Teilhard says ‘Almost incurably subject and object tend to become separated from each other in the act of knowing. We are continually inclined to isolate ourselves from the things and events which surround us, as though we were looking at them from the outside, from the shelter of an observatory into which they were unable to enter, as though we were spectators, not elements in what goes on.’ (Teilhard, 220). And yet we want to know why and who and what we are. But how does one ask the Tiger, for whom do you burn sir? Language confines us, subjectivity binds, and still we can taste some poetry, dip a toe into the abyss.
ReplyDeleteI think the point of saying animals are like water in water is to say how as humans we make ourselves so much more important than everything else. Can we actually define what water in water is? Do we actually know what an artist or a poet is trying to get across in his/her painting or poem, no but we make assumptions and sometimes we just take wild guesses. We are so complex that the only thing that can help us feel less overwhelmed by what we are apart from flesh bone vein and organs poetry makes it all sound less weighty. We do not know the bizarre reason of why we are here or the explanation of what will become of us, therefore we create poetry. IT can explain the unexplainable and in the end we all look at the eloquently put words and nod our heads as if to say yes that sounds good we should keep it. WE can not forget that WE as humans create the poetry. YEs it is all poetry and we made it up, and behind that poetry, behind those words that make it all seem okay there lies a lack of definition a lack of explanation. We bind ourselves by binding other things. Animals are like water in water says that the animal is not aware of anything he just exists, but like we said in class the slave master can not be without the slave, and even still as it is his subordinate he can not truly be. If we as humans want to find ourselves perhaps we should start to put greater meaning on the other so that they may help us define us. Poetry is beautiful, but it is also ambiguous meaning everything at once.
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