Thinking is amateur
We ask the question ”Do I know others?” The subjective: “I seem to know others” is set against the objective: “I do not actually know others.” This is our solution …
But … then again what if the truth is indicated by our doubts - even if the image is somewhat skewed - if this is the true case, so that the real enquiry is to examine the unknown?
We say: If the only thing I know is ‘me’ how do I know others?
Ask this question: If the betrayal in another’s face is not there except that I see it, how is my anger to be overcome?
I imagine that I know they are angry, but they are not! Suppose words not to be enough here to satisfy me.
Good manners form a behavioural quarantine. Stop us from being ‘infected’ by each other behaviourally. Perhaps are the primary means indeed. If I stay clear of the mud, if I am able to observe good manners, then I am immunised against an ensnaring instrumental clarity.
Where do I assemble my life?
Where is the shelter of ‘me’?
In my face. If you want to look at who I am - .
For human beings here is the centre of life. The place of life is the mask, dividing the known from the unknown.
Like a cloud that suddenly turns transparent, perhaps.
Life is paradoxical: the cloud of unknowing illuminates a transparency in the shape of the human face.
As to what someone is it is impossible to say. One can only look them in the face. Experience finds a coherence in the human physiognomy. Call it the home of human experience. Say that here in the human face is the house of knowledge. Here is where all the battles are fought, finally.
This is where ‘God’ sits; this is the inhabitation of ‘Nature’.
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The human face is the face of the unknown.
To look at someone’s face is to glance at the truth. Only thus is there an ”I” or a being alive (so to speak).
… For what is the “I”; what is the thing that lives, is aware, what is the thing that in order to be, intends …?
A person has an intention, a cat has an intention, even an ant one might suppose has an intention. Watching a fish in a tank, it is in some sense aware … But can one be certain of this? Perhaps one wants to say that really animals are just organic machines. (As Descartes seemed to think of them - indeed, somewhat improbably it has to be said.) What is the evidence? A dog doesn’t see things as I see them. And yet aren’t there shared areas of feeling? There are situations in which I respond to the dog as I might to a person. With laughter, with anger, with sympathy, and so on. The dog exhibits pain behaviour. Emotion … When it comes to an ant the shared experience seems much less. But even then …
An ant has no face. But a dog does. A visible expression.
Were I ever to have a conversation with an ant - I want to say - its expression would be invisible to me. I wouldn’t know what it was thinking … Even could I see it clearly.
… But after a while, couldn’t I learn to recognise signs?
“But what on earth would you talk about?” Well, but what on earth is it that we normally talk about? (Imagine a slightly unusual dream and in the dream speaking to an ant and the ant seeming to make sense - good sense - even if on waking nothing of what was mentioned can be remembered.)
In the same way as I can’t I say: “My hand intended to scratch my ear” - just in that way, I can’t know who I am.
The concept of life invokes the idea of intention. Life intends. That is, individual creatures intend - purpose - this or that. The gazelle to drink, the bird to eat, for example. And so on. The avoidence of death by living creatures indicates an intention to live. We say “The drone (bee) intends to live / The drone intends to die”. In either case we can’t substract the idea of intending without making the concept of life absurd. “Did you intend to catch the train?” “Yes. I did. What else?”
Here one wants to say that it is in someone’s face that an intention they have occurs: specifically, in their eyes.
In what sense is it or, can it be said to be, a fact that “genes seek to reproduce themselves”? If one says, “The earth attracts the moon” it isn’t meant that an emotional attraction occurs. So shouldn’t it be possible likewise to say that “genes seek“? But here it’s important to recollect the word’s use.
