Dedicated to those who continue to travel, but no longer know where they are going
Language is a labyrinth of streets,
come one hand and steer you know,
reaches the same point elsewhere
and you do not find their way more ....
(L. Wittgenstein)
East and West for millennia have walked on roads opposite. The images of the world were historically developed for a long time antithetical. Parmenides opens its travel being in question: What is nothing? And immediately he ran into paradox of not being . His reasoning was carried out through three ingredients, not at all trivial, which are then entered part of the baggage of the tools of logic:
The definition of truth of the negation (non-being is not to be)
The principle of identity (not being is not to be)
The principle of non-contradiction (being is, and can not be)
Lao-Tze (contemporary of Parmenides - VI century BC) began its Travel laying the foundations of a paradoxical truth in Tao Tze Ching with the development of a paradoxical thinking he considered not contradictory opposites (as they were, instead, in the Western logic), but complementary. The Tao was identified with a combination of those opposite. In the West there have been schools of thought that greeted the complementarity of opposites (just think of the sophists ), but the principle of non-contradiction has never lost its dominant position, especially in scientific thought. It had come to Freud (in his essay Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious ) and because the figures of Tarski and paradox of 'oxymoron acquires another meaning and another had to do with truth.
is curious that in most languages \u200b\u200bthere is a verb that means to tell the truth . On the contrary, lie exists as a single verb. Telling the truth action would seem to be reserved for children, clowns, drunkards, fools and dreamers, and would - anyway - dangerous. so much so that to say that Oscar Wilde Who is telling the truth, sooner or later it is discovered. is no doubt that humans cling to the lie of power of truth opposing a strong resistance to admit the truth of strength of the lie, which - well as you can imagine - is widespread. Dostoevsky (in Demons ) emphasizes the "advantage" of the strength of lies when he says that the truth is incredible, no lie. In short, the lie became king (reigns and will reign) over the earth.
In the history of philosophy and logic is a lie which rises sharply over any other, since the more refractory and, simultaneously, the most compelling: it is the paradox of the liar . The Cretan Epimenides became famous for his statement this paradox, not realizing - obviously - of what hell would be unleashed among its contemporaries, but also among the later (at least to Tarski), groped for dissipating. It says, for example, that the logical Filita Kos (340-285 BC) had died prematurely because of the efforts made to resolve it. And one can understand the difficulty in dealing with a paradox as to whether Epimenides along trying to process, we find this chain of propositions: we must, first of all, consider the statement: I lie . What will happen to our reasoning when we will have to determine if the proposition I lie is true or false ? Meet the finding neutral, according to which the proposition is true if - and only if - is false . Enunciation of up to Tarski paradox (in the 30s-40s) there was no way to resolve the paradox of the liar. Tarski proved - as a logical consequence of Gödel's theorem - the inability to speak the truth of a language (mathematical) within the language itself. It can be considered a precise version of Occam's intuition, that the concept of truth is beyond language, a metalanguage . But while this is an acceptable solution to the formal languages \u200b\u200bof mathematical kind, it is not satisfactory as a solution to the paradox of the liar in natural language, which coincides with the meta-language itself. But still we have not: Tarski (a self-proclaimed the largest among non-logical crazy ) is forced to assume, somehow, the existence of metalanguage even if it were to coincide with the language itself. It took an equally brilliant - in the 60s and 70s - by a psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan , to state conclusively that there metalanguage and that, therefore, there is no truth as anything likely to be responsible for the fate of an individual. Admittedly, as illustrated by the paradox of the liar (and as affirmed by Freud), true and false are not opposing concepts and that, as the irony is impossible to tell the truth about the true but also false . To the extreme consequence: is impossible to tell the truth! This is exactly what determines the logic of the unconscious.
The Journey (the mad flight) begins impatience. At the point where everyone can not wait any longer, can no longer delay, can no longer give unprecedented exploration of what he is at his heels. In this sense, ' impatience raises the question of madness.
Dante attributed to impatience, and that implies - the journey - a connotation of love when he writes in Vita Nova :
and I would say, and I do not know that I say
so I'm in love wandering!
Therefore I do not know what the matter by taking;
The love of knowledge, love the truth, pushing the man towards the Pillars of Hercules, from which it proceeds to take off the mad flight. The path of knowledge left behind common sense and it permeates the madness, and just thought there encounters in his freedom.
Ulysses had understood very well and it shows when apostrophizes so fellow travelers: Consider your origin: you were not made to live like brutes but to follow virtue and knowledge. Even Dante, who was admired and dazzled by the heroism of Odysseus ( the greater horn of the old flame ... ) , not forgive this bold and its burns in the Eighth chasm of Hell because of his wickedness, his atheism. Ulysses had dared to go beyond the limits of human knowledge, that established by the gods with the inscription ultimate the Pillars of Hercules. It is a journey from which he never returned: the deep and insatiable human desire for knowledge delaying the return home. The desire to know the distances nostos , namely the return to common sense.
L ' Tennyson Ulysses returns to Ithaca yes, but to share afterwards. Neither found the home, nor the king have regained function of true satisfaction, and indeed the same Ithaca, Homer's Ulysses object of nostalgia, has become the hero of Tennyson inhospitable island (barren rock). Can not content with a quiet life (common sense), marked by the same rhythms, who lived the adventure of discovery. And, after all, Dante - according to Luis Borges - is not the 'Anti- Ulysses , not the common sense, not least because it makes a trip crowds of the greek hero, but he wants to be authorized by God (and here Dante meets sense ). For Borges, Dante, Ulysses is a Christianized: The mad flight of the Tuscan poet is writing itself the Divine Comedy.
When I depart 'from Circe, who concealed
me more than a year there near unto Gaeta,
before they Aeneas nomasse,
nor fondness for my son, nor reverence
of his old father, né'l
due affection Which joyous should Penelope,
Could overcome within me the ardor
that I 'had to gain experience of the world
and de vices and human value;
Zen is a kind of anti-philosophy. The reason, logic, sense data - all those things, in short, is built on Western philosophy - have illusions and distractions on the road to enlightenment. The koan is a story that - told by a Zen master to his student - it can affect and upset to the point where it reaches the state of consciousness known as satori , l ' sudden enlightenment. Zen Buddhism, therefore, meets the knowledge in satori in this alienation that is a bit like 'all' absurd but that comes very close, however, the logic of paradox . There is a famous koan describes in precise, ironic and very curious, the route that takes a thought when you got in the irony that is the paradox:
Before seeking enlightenment, the mountains were mountains and rivers were rivers. While I was in search of enlightenment, the mountains were not mountains and rivers were not rivers. After reaching satori, the mountains were mountains and rivers rivers were .
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