Nietzsche – NOSIARCH

Etymologies, and the Basic Idea of Embodied Cognition.

‘*St Jerome Reading’,* Georges de la Tour. (Public Domain.)

One time, I read this fascinating book titled ‘Metaphors We Live By‘ by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. It was recommended to me by a good buddy– who mostly guides my intellectual development by his whims, and who coincidentally suggested the title of this blog.

The central thesis of this book is what I guess you could call the central thesis of embodied cognitive science. This is the idea that cognition is inseperable from embodiment, and that therefore embodiment influences all cognition. It’s sort of like taking Plato backwards.

I won’t go into it any deeper than that. Instead, I’ll just briefly talk about why I like Lakoff and Johsnon so much by talking about my favorite example of their approach to language: their analysis of undertaking a ‘project.’

They suggest that starting a project involves projecting yourself into the future, which itself is intelligible in terms of literally throwing a personal image into a possibility space like a projectile, forwards in time.

They note that this is something only humans can really do in an embodied sense– our closest relatives, the chimps, aren’t coordinated enough to properly throw things at distance. Now that may or may not be so. But it makes a form of sense.

Anyway, I’ve been spending the last few weeks coming up with analyses like these for some concepts I found interesting. Just noting them down in my spare moments. Maybe some will tickle you. I hope they do. They’re basically pretend, but I think all of them have an interesting idea at the center.

Eight Brief Remarks on Phenomena.

Phenomenology and Psychoanalysis agree on a very important point: that something appears means it must be. This is understood in terms of relevance. Or otherwise, I suppose your neurosis is best ignored, hm?
To be is not different than to be relevant. It cannot go another way. There is no doubt. This was Descartes’ characteristic fuckery: to pretend that to be could be something other than to appear. If only he applied his perverse wisdom to himself– and disappeared from doubt along with his relevance– then we could have been saved many generations of fuckery.
Substance Dualism is a conceptual hazard. Descartes was patient zero, and we are now sick with his cognitive divorce. He was a paranoid schizophrenic, in the traditional sense of the term; reality had lost touch with him. All this is to say nothing for political correctness, it is just poetry from a sense.
There is no deliberate ideology without the notion that we could be wrong about our selves.
Heidegger perceives essence ecologically. He embodies an ecological theory of visual perception, from a Cognitive Scientific perspective. In much the same way, one at first sees the purpose of Heidegger, and only then can one construe him.
We might wonder what context could ever be more related to our being than the being-position in which we currently occur– phenomenologically, this is the position from which we find ourselves. It is one’s self that the position reveals, sympathetically.

(Scholarly remark: for more on 5, consider Vervaeke’s concept of
the relationship between agent and arena.)
Nietzsche was the first person to take the problem of pathos seriously. In that sense, he is a moral pathologist as well as a historian of morality. He asks us: “Where did it hurt?” If only he treated us like a good and caring doctor after that.
This really is the worst mistake: to neglect that you are unwell. This is the best question: “Why does it hurt?” Another way of asking “Why does it hurt?” is to ask “Where am I, and who?”

Tango as Spiritual Practice: Bringing Together Heaven and Earth.

Also on Medium.

In previous pieces ‘Statement of Purpose for The Modern Spiritual Seeker’ and ‘Critiquing the ‘All Incense’ Approach to Spirituality’, I started to build up an account of spirituality that requires practice, structure, and the willingness to radically discard structure in order to acquire wisdom. While this piece is intended to make sense on its own, I would recommend those who are interested to go and explore those earlier essays.

As promised, I’m about to give an account of social dancing as instantiating my requirements for a peak spiritual practice. In my case, the social dance is Argentine Tango, though I’m certain this applies to other dances such as Salsa or Blues. With that in mind, I’m going to focus specifically on how I see the spiritual aspects of social dance manifest in Tango.