The dispersion of natural light and shadow follows the rhythm of the year. It repeats itself. The vast spread of artificial light offers an opportunity to reshape the light and shadow of our awareness of the law. For instance:

Justice must always be re-invented, sought and found. The more people there are, the more frequent and necessary is the search for justice. Each individual breaks and absorbs light differently, reflects it in his own way. Natural light, artificial light, as well as the light of others. Sources of artificial light cast shadows.

What kind of justice would we have if derived from artificial sources? Arithmetic and geometry were long considered art. Descartes suggests categorising them as sciences and differentiating them from the arts. In Descartes’ time, poetry was an art. It is still an art today. Can poetry serve as a source of justice? It can at the very least sharpen perception and draw attention to injustice.

Subversion is not found in the simple reversal from light to shadow, from bright to dark, from feeling to knowledge. A subversive relationship with nature does not, therefore, start with the inversion of man and nature, but with a change in man himself. He does not conceive nature as something that he can subdue, nor as something that can subdue him, but as something on which he depends, as something that delights in his dependence and something that gives pleasure. People mutually exclude themselves from this pleasure, instead inflicting poverty, crime and terror on themselves.

In holding sway over other people and their natural needs, does the human being perceive chances of subversive behaviour? Perhaps he finds it once he starts playing with the symbols of his power.

God, nature: two pseudonyms of man, which demand of him that he define himself in subversive terms, as slave and master of his own relationships.

Infinite divisibility is one figure of thought, subversion another.

Descartes concludes that God may have no interest in deceiving people. Even if people consider the ability to deceive a “kind of argument for the power of the mind”, it does not speak for the claim that the Almighty is a deceiver. A God who deceives would be a weak God and that would contradict the very definition of God.

The philosopher and poet Jabès writes that God needs the human being: “God wastes man in God. Cruelty of Nothingness.” This God is “full of spite”.

Descartes develops his argument by bringing into doubt all that is known to exist. Doubt leads him to the clear and distinct realisation that he thinks, therefore he is. Descartes understands thought as “what happens in me such that I am immediately conscious of it, insofar as I am conscious of it.” Premising his argument on this knowledge, Descartes concludes that God is not a deceiver, and that it is possible to explain the material world, nature. In his writings, Descartes gradually allows principles to develop on the basis of a fundamental understanding; combining these principles with experience, he unfolds a universe that is comprehensible overall.

In his writings Jabès brings into doubt the possibility of writing a book. His books constitute a single book, a fragment of doubt. The sentences and chapters revolve around the relationship between the individual and a God who reveals himself to humans in a book. Writing, the word and the book are what bind the individual and God and what set them apart:

“God is both saved and undone by the book.”

The relationship between God and man is determined by the book, which spans a subversive relationship between God and man.

What style of writing, words and signs would nature use?

Nature presents itself as a something to be read.

(more…)

Geometry and arithmetic guide reason to the truth with far greater surety that the “other branches of knowledge”. Geometry and arithmetic focus on simple objects such as triangles and judgements on numbers. Descartes speaks of guidance. A balustrade that claims to be safe to step on, casts shadows. But geometry and arithmetic do not. They formulate the possibilities of thought that go far beyond what our reason can imagine, for instance by combining figures: 123, 122333, 112222333333, …

“Der Gedanke erfindet den Körper neu.” (Jabès)*

“Blut ist Lebensfluss und roter Ozean des Todes”. (Jabès)*

Wenn wir Tiere denken, erfinden wir unsere Körper neu; wenn wir Zahlen denken ebenfalls. Wir haben unterschiedliche Formen zur Verfügung, unsere Körper zu finden und zu erfinden.
Wie entscheiden wir uns?
Leiten uns Worte oder Bilder bei diesen Entscheidungen, oder fallen wir in Denkformen hinein, ohne dass wir eine Gelegenheit haben, nachzudenken, wie und was wir denken möchten?

* Jabès, Edmond: Le Livre des Ressemblances [Paris 1976]. Paris: Gallimard, 1991, p. 38.

Culture, Culture of the self, we need to develop organs for perceiving ourselves as aproximations of human beings. A thought triggered by Frank Theys’ Technocalyps.

In der aktuellen Orientierungslosigkeit darüber, was das Wesen eines Menschen ausmacht, mag es hilfreich sein, an Kant zu denken, der vorschlägt, dass sich Menschen frei fühlen können, wenn sie sich ein Gesetz geben.

Wie wäre es, wenn wir uns selbst vorschlagen, was Menschsein bedeuten soll?
Gerecht, liebevoll, sorgsam um die Menschheit als Idee, die weiss, dass sie ohne Respekt vor dem Anderen, der Natur, der Erde, den Planeten, den Sonnensystemen nicht wird sein können.