                           20020112.01

     I am that I am.  My interpretation: That if the second
occurence of I_am was intended to have a different meaning from
the first occurance of I_am, then two different words would have
been used.  The circumstance that the same expression was used
tautologously in order to direct attention to its meaning.  That
meaning is the rejection of the name.  A name is an object in the
realm of language which binds the individual whose name it is to
all who use it.  And they will use it to summon him, to instruct
him, to direct him, to command him.  The name makes the object
named the property of all who use it.

     A name makes man an object.  The very nature of society
makes it unavoidable that men should have names, names which
signify their dependence on each other.

     If God is to be independent of men, he cannot be an object,
he cannot have a name.  A name makes God an object.  That is why
it is forbidden to speak the name of God.

     Service to God is freedom from service to man.  This is also
the theme of Rathswahlkantate Nr. 71, Gott ist mein Koenig.  THe
existence of God is imperative if man is to be free.

     Exodus stipulates freedom under God vs slavery under
Pharaoh.  God as as replacement for Pharaoh.  Replacing Pharaoh
with God brings freedom.

     Pharaoh as the god who was named.  All Egypt worshipped the
name of Pharaoh.  and all Egypt was in bondage to him, not only
Israel.

     If the Israelites were different, it was because they
refused to be integrated into the social structure of Egyptian
slavery.  In Egypt no man was free.  The name as the spiritual
instrument of enslavement.  The remarkable perception that the
social contract was the source of unfreedom, and that the name,
the objectivation of the individual was the essential,
indispensable link in the social contract.

     The name as a social bond.  The name as symbol for the
social contract The issue of the national I.D. card.  The freedom
of anonymity.  The actions of one who is not identifiable cannot
be controlled.  The I.D. badge at meetings and conventions.
Being branded or tatooed The uniform as a symbol of
depersonalization The name is an equation between how others
perceive me and how I perceive myself.  The name is a tag, it is
a label.

     The spiritual reciprocity between God and man.  The
innominate God as the image of a free man.  The innominate God as
the projection of man's view of himself as free.  The
introjection of the divine.  God as "within" man as opposed to
God enthroned in heaven.  God omniscient, omnipotent as the
"ideal" man, not least as potentate, as man's image of himself,
as man's denial of his weakness and his mortality.

     The name of God, viz Jesus, in Christianity: Christ finally
appeared as God with a Name.  Isaiah's inadvertent slip-up:
Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his
name, Immanuel.  If God does not have a name, why should his
messenger have a name?  The incompatibility of Jesus' name is
incompatible with his divinity.  The golden calf is the prototype
of the objective deity.

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