Understanding and Being lecture 7:2

CD/mp3 150, second part of seventh Halifax lecture on Insight. Corresponds to CWL 5: 167-80. Sponsored by Prof. Francis McLaughlin. The discussion involves the emergence of the concept of being. Insofar as an abstract or particularized essence satisfies the requirements of intelligence with respect to its finality, one moves from essence to being. Insofar as the conception is what can be thought as being, the exigence of the virtually unconditioned arises. There is again operative here something from nature, but insofar as we actually grasp an unconditioned, we are not grasping something independent of experience. There are four senses of objectivity. (1) The principal notion is defined in terms of a pattern of judgments. If I am A, and A is, and B is, and A is not B, there is a subject and an object distinct from the subject. (2) There is an absolute objectivity found in each judgment by itself. (3) Normative objectivity is opposed to the merely subjective; it is the detachment and disinterestedness of the pure desire, yielding to the dominance of the finality of the process. (4) Experiential objectivity refers to the given. The problem of objectivity has different aspects. One may begin from knowing or one can begin with the metaphysics of the object. In principle it makes no difference where one starts as long as one completes the circle.

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Audio restoration by Greg Lauzon