Actually, I will comment on one idea: inventing a word for all the traumatic particles of tension which fly away as you begin to relax. I feel them in dreams. It is like some part of me just leaves and goes flying off, and I realize it was not necessary for my health. It is like a particle decay, in a sense, to some more basic reality, some more stable and solid reality.
I was trying to put on my Joanne Rowling naming cap yesterday and came up with Horbus. When you feel it, you will know what I am talking about. Many of you–if I have multiple readers–will have no idea. You haven’t felt it. But when you have felt it, you will understand why I feel a word would be appropriate.
Here’s another word: Philosafineia. This is the love or affection for clarity. I don’t read Greek, but that is the word which came up when I looked it up.
I have a philosophical problem with the word philosophy. As Wittgenstein and others pointed out, there is a tacit assumption behind the word sophia/wisdom/truth, which is that there is a unitary truth or wisdom, as it pertains to human affairs, human flourishing, which can be known through the process of thinking and dialogue. And of course, the problem is that these are word based constructions which have no observable reality behind them. They can be built in many ways, based on differing subjective interpretations of experience, and indeed differing experiences in and of themselves.
This of course is the root of postmodernism, and much of the imbecility in the Academy. They go from the idea that no firm notion of truth can be PROVEN to the idea that the notion of truth is useless and even pernicious. This is stupid. I can say it is stupid because I have not rejected the notion of the efficacy of the notion of truth, even if I am willing to admit it comes with caveats. They cannot say I am stupid for any reason other than that I am not conforming to whatever their idiotic scheme of the day happens to be. Postmodernism is a manufacturing method used to transmute common sense and fellow affection among human beings into dogmatic ignorance, GroupThink, and incoherent use of language.
Philosafineia would be the love of speaking clearly. One can say “This is what I believe. I do not stipulate it as the absolute one truth, or the most useful truth for all human beings in all times. I assert that it will be useful right now, for the people to whom I am speaking. I have done the work to speak plainly, that you may know in detail what it is I believe and why, before choosing to agree or disagree.”
The either/or operator is apparently hard wired into the human brain, at least as a tendency among those unwilling to do the emotional work required to capture and appreciate nuance, shade, and the continuum. The choice of contingent truth, temporary truth, always lies between the One Truth, and the No Truth. This should be self evident, but I think many academics thrive in an environment where they are allowed and even encouraged to be so incoherent no one can ever capture their ideas sufficiently well to critique them. Most of them hate critique. They are very sensitive, poorly defined human beings, so it follows that they would value greatly poorly defined ideas no one is allowed to criticize.
My work continues.