Wednesday, September 06, 2006
(2:12 PM) | John Emerson:
The Al and the Re-al
Dualism is a one of the fundamental truths of ontology: all reality can be described in terms of opposed pairs of abstract substantives distinguished by the prefix "re-". Well-known examples include production and reproduction, presentation and representation, and cognition and recognition (better expressed in French as connaissance and reconnaissance).These two ontological realms have been described as primary and secondary, but this is both contradictory and redundant. "Primary" only has meaning if there is a "secondary", and amounts to defining the primary in terms of the secondary, which is the not the intended effect. But in any case, this terminology is unnecessary, since the real primary term is occulted in the term "realm" itself: the repressed and forgotten primary term, the *alm, which has the same fundamental grounding relation to the "realm" as the also-long-forgotten *ality has to "reality". No previous philosophy has properly taken account of the Alm/Re-alm or the Al/Re-al difference.
Below are suggested titles for a few books in this area -- books which should virtually write themselves. (My supposed "coinages" are the crucial repressed and forgotten words obscured by three thousand years is mispercieved Re-alism.)
In French:
Pétition et Répétition (from répéter and péter).
Sistance et Résistance
Pondre et Repondre
Pudiation et Répudiation (from pudique, *puder)
Putation et Réputation (from *puter; cf. "computer")
Pérage et Repérage (from père)
In English:
Reprehension and Prehension (for Whiteheadians)
Once the fundamental principle has been made clear, the rest of the paradigm can easily be filled out, and an ontological explosion can be expected. This is a great opportunity for the up-and-coming young thinker or thinkeress.
"Le Real" de pire empir-ique
