 
                        20071012.01

     In the car this morning, as I drove to Home Depot to
buy a propane stove, a shop vacuum cleaner, 250 feet of
14-2, 250 feet of 12-2 and 100 feet of 14-3 non-metallic
cable, metal boxes for housing receptacles and switches,
1/2 inch PVC conduit for installing a switch on the
concrete foundation wall of the basement, three additional
toilet flanges, assorted 4 inch and 3 inch fittings for the
waste and vent plumbing, these mundane specifications were
displaced by a fantasy. The fantasy concerned an obligation
to give a lecture about disciplined thought.  I use this
term to avoid the word "philosophy".

     Disciplined thought must begin with the recognition
that it derives from symbols, not primarily the symbols of
mathematics, but rather the symbols of language, of
sentences and words, which come to us naturally as we
communicate to one another what we see and hear and feel.
It is our experience, our contact with the world about us,
which alone gives meaning to the sounds that we utter; and
in time such meaning becomes quite specific. Words acquire
an identity of their own, and arguably it is the identity
of words which gives rise to the identity of concepts, and
the identity of word-linked concepts confirms the identity
of the phenomena and objects of experience.

     The number of separate identifiable words is, of
course, very large; is in fact so large that the
multiplicity of verbal objects tends to fuse into an
incoherent whole, thereby forfeiting much if not all of its
informational value. A smaller number of words has more
intentional meaning. In any given instant, the mind is
occupied by but a single concept, a concept which in its
singularity has no meaning independent of the thinker's
intention.

     There inheres an especial significance in the pairing
of terms.  The meaning of the word-couplet, of the verbal
dyad is quite different, is in fact much greater than the
meaning of the single term.  This is the case because ,
contrary to the teaching of the positivists, it is not the
affirmative statement, it is the penumbra of implied but
unexpressed meaning in which the burden of meaning is
communicated.  Paired concepts, the dyad, the pair of
terms, has a unique and highly cogent intentional meaning,
over and beyond the bland statement of a thesis.  Hence the
power and effectiveness of dialectic.

     The two terms of this dialectic dyad are very much
unequal.  The function of the antithesis is not to present
a contravening concept.  The function of the antithesis is
to define, to delimit the thesis.  The antithesis,
accordingly, has no meaning of its own, has no meaning
independent of the thesis from which it derives its entire
significance.  The reconciliation of thesis and antithesis,
the synthesis is an illusion, because the contradiction of
thesis and antithesis is fundamental; that contradiction is
impervious and impregnable to reconciliation.  If synthesis
is anything at all, it is the recapitulation of or
regression to the primary state in which the thesis was as
yet unopposed by the antithesis.

     I describe dialectic, the duality of thesis and
antithesis, in the context of my attempt to understand and
to explain the terms subjectivity and objectivity used to
describe contemporary intellectual experience.  It should
be clear at the outset, that these words have no
independent canonical meaning.  They derive their
significance from, and only from, the experiences they seek
to express and to represent.  It is important to try to
understand and to try to explain why this should be so.
The terms themselves must be recognized as symbolic of the
experiences of a given individual; and these experiences in
turn, whatever they may represent in themselves, acquire
additional significance to the extent that they are common
to a group.

     My own understanding and interpretation of the terms
subjective and objective I refer to and derive from the
writings of Kierkegaard.

                     * * * * *
Copyright 2007, Ernst Jochen Meyer
