[Xmca-l] Re: The world of freedom AND historical Ontology

[Haydi Zulfei]

Larry,
Truly speaking , I see nothing in the piece to disagree with . Just it's a matter of "jargon" which complicates a take for concepts as I read in Vygotsky's works .
I fear being warned if I take it paragraph by paragraph .

I can take your being in the world and your "historical ontology" as man wishing to live enthusiastically with hope and conscious behaviour and perseverance in removing obstacles in the way . Francine also clarified the difference between the two types of conscious behaviour. I became very happy when Francine exposed her view on Vygotsky .

By "ideals" , I didn't mean the highly desired ; I meant the reflection of the real world onto the mind ; here it's a matter of drives and motives to life . Ethics come from social norms and what if alienation becomes the social indispensable norm .

By "situated freedom" , I take it not something given , innate . But something you should fight for . I wouldn't like being in the world as Sartre and Camus liked to be . You ARE and you want to remain the so-called independent individual you have been and you're to be . What befalls the "stranger" , the "Outsider" is catastrophic . What might come from a human being who's been metamorphosed into an instinct because of social pressures , disasters , calamities , ...  . What might come from a decrepit mutilated outcast who has to talk to his own shadow in solitude as our Hedaayat narrates in his "The Blind Owl" . 

"Stylized Mode of Being" comes to my rescue , however .

1. Thinking and Speech and the formation of concepts , the crowning of the word .2. True ! Man's wrestling with Nature , with the entities in the world through what comes out of dialogues and negotiations .3. We have a saying "The action-free knowledgeable man is a tree unyielding" . The true scholar finds the core problem in social life , resolves contradictions if any , builds up the personality according to the personal sense he gets from the society via hereditary temperaments . I cannot think of ethics as something additive or detached . Teach me the genetics of ethics , please . 

A good friend of ours , knowledgeable as he is , told me now it's not a matter of the beginnings . It's a matter of whether we are in the middle or the end . He is quite right . Now what is due is reciprocity , interaction and if you please , dialectics between the two . Each enriches the other , no linear movement . 

The finishing paragraphs give me clue to what I could take from what you wrote purposefully . Larry ! You write so much and so long and I have always tried to understand you ; now more comfortable with your script . Thank you so much !
Best Wishes  
      From: Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>
 To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu> 
 Sent: Friday, 27 February 2015, 21:55:20
 Subject: [Xmca-l] The world of freedom AND historical Ontology
   
Haydi and Francine have continued the conversation on the understanding of
functions and the origin in actions and activity.
Haydi commented,

Man now had to take one very big step further , farther . To have ideals ,
to let them penetrate cycles of activities to provide products to satisfy
needs because the richest , ripest talk will not satisfy life needs .

I want to introduce a book by Robert Nichols titled "The World of Freedom:
Heidegger, Foucault and the Politics of Historical Ontology". [2014] I got
this book from Kindle for around $10. I bought it because of his clear
statement on shifting to "ethical questions" [to have ideals that PENETRATE
cycles of activities].

Robert is making a case that freedom can be "thought" through notions of
"ontology" and "situated freedom" This way of formulating "freedom"
critiques notions of freedom as understood in terms of "a property OF the
individual subject. Robert is making the case that freedom is a "mode of
being-in-the-world". He states that as a mode this "kind" of reciprocal
interrelationship [as Simmel understands reciprocal] AND "stylized mode" of
being.

This being-in-the-world seeks to "disclose" the mutual interrelatedness of
3 aspects of being.
1] the acquisition of knowledge
2] the appearance of a domain of entities about which knowledge claims can
be made
and most centrally
3] the "ethical transformation" of the "subject" [matter] of knowledge.
[see Gadamer for a notion of subject matter as such]

Robert's book is an attempt to disclose this 3 part reciprocal
interrelatedness through a "working out" of the possibilities and potential
"projected" [ideally] within the worldly activities "of" disclosure. THIS
activity "makes" a horizon of intelligibility possible and thus [as subject
matter] the "field" or "clearing" ON WHICH self-recognition and
self-formation take "place"

To "be free" is NOT to detach oneself from this [subject matter] this
"field" or "clearing" THROUGH an act of cognitive reflection. Robert
Nichols is making a claim that the reciprocal interrelation of freedom and
historical ontology does not disclose the subject matter by an act of
"cognitive reflection" but to "be free" is to be in a "mode" of relation TO
the "field" or "clearing". This means to "cultivate" a certain *ethical
attitude of awareness WITHIN the activities of disclosure that constitute
the ontological ground of the field or clearing ITSELF" *

In other words, this ethical "style" or "mode" IS to "take care" of the
"field or clearing" and through the care of this field one takes care of
the "self"

Haydi mentioned action and activity as primary. Robert's approach to these
questions of "situated freedom" as occurring as activity and action "of
disclosure" within "fields or clearings".  I will circle back to the
centrality of the imaginal in imagining these fields and clearings as
coming into formation that enact fundamental "ethical styles or stances or
positions"

This is a kind of "third space" which honours activity that is
fundamentally ethical enactments existing by "being-in-the-world"

Robert Nichols, by bringing Heidegger and Foucault into conversation,
believes he can offer clarity the activity of disclosing the interrelation
of freedom and historical ontology as "acts of care" of the "field or
clearing" which nurtures or cultivates this "subject matter" as such.

I chose this book as I try to get clarity on the multiple notions of "third
spaces" that require ethical stances or styles or modes to bring into
potential being the ideal forms that have the "power" to change the
pre-reflective crystliized sedimented formations we are born into.This is a
"genre" within the theme of "situated freedom" brought into awareness
through the reciprocal interrelation of having Heidegger and Foucault in
conversation with Robert Nichols [as an act of disclosure]

Larry