Transgressing the End of Metaphysics in Martin Moors' Mythos and Logos course

summarization of Moors' ideas, by Corry Shores
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Philosophers continually try to renew philosophy. The first step is a critical return tophilosophy's origin.

The second step involves a recognition of the mythological origin, and then a transgression of another limit. So after a critical examination of philosophy's history, a philosopher who is trying to renew philosophy will secondly then look to its upper limits, to the rational knowledge it does not yet know. This too is critical, because it looks to what is limiting rational discourse. In the first step, what limited rational discourse was its mythological origin. Now what limits it is the lack of what it knows. So there is an erotic drive to transgress these upper limits.

Beyond these upper limits stand the gods with their perfect knowledge, as we saw with Plato's hierarchy. But because knowledge is deified in its absoluteness, here too, like with the first critical move, philosophers transgress again toward mythology. But the move into this divine space of knowledge is not a progression, because once there all knowledge is attained. Rather, it is a transgression, because it is a crossing of an internal limit.

Here we have the end of metaphysics. But not end as destruction, but rather end as aim or destination. So the metaphysician must think both

1) back to philosophy's origin, but as well

2) forward to its end, aim, or purpose.

[Taken from the second lecture of Professor Martin Moors Philosophy of Being 2008 course: "From Mythos to Logos - From Logos to Mythos," at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. Professor Moors is not just a remarkably gifted instructor, he is as well a renownedmetaphysician and Kant scholar. His publication list is available here.

The ideas I here present are not my property, but belong to Prof. Moors. A suggested citation:

Moors, Martin. "From Mythos to Logos - From Logos to Mythos: Class 2." Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. 02-Oct-2008.

]

Myth and Critique in Martin Moors' Mythos and Logos course

summarization of Moors' ideas, by Corry Shores
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[The following is based on student notes. My commentary is in brackets.]

Philosophers use rational discourse, which has its own logic or logos. The proper application of this discursive logic is critique. For philosophers to understand this logos, they look to its origin. Before this discursive logic developed into a critical method, it took-on a proto-critical or pre-critical form.

[The fundamental principle to all things in the cosmos is water, argues Thales. He is considered the first philosopher because he breaks from a tradition of mythological explanations for the cosmos, and instead tries to use rationality to devise a de-mythologized theoretical account of reality. And yet, compared to our current sophisticated scientific views of the cosmos, Thales' theory seems mythological. From Thales on,]

philosophy will be a gradual process of demythologization.

[When we tell a story, we give an account. There is some conclusion. Before the conclusion, there is a series of events that explain how and why that conclusion came to be what it is.

When we explain something using rational argumentation, we also give an account. We have some conclusion. Prior to that conclusion are premises whose logical relations necessitate the conclusion.

The myth of the fall from paradise explains human suffering. There were events leading up to it, that explain why the story concludes the way it does, and that also account for some aspect of human existence, namely, suffering.

If our only criteria for such an explanation is whether or not it gives an account for something, then the story of the fall is perfectly adequate.

But if we begin to wonder what makes one myth better than another, or what would be a better explanation than any given myth, then we are thinking critically.

This sort of critical origin for logos begins with Thales, who proposes that everything is fundamentally made-up of water.

And, he gives a rational account that is slightly mythologized.

According to Aristotle, Thales reasoning was that things emerge from something else which is prior to them. This origin is their principle. Whatever all things spring-from is the first principle of everything.

All living beings are nourished by water, so all life springs from water. Also, moisture produces heat, and heat persists in moisture. Moreover, the beginnings of all living beings are of a moist nature.

Also, Thales reasons that whatever the gods swear-by must be what is most highly esteemed. According to poets telling the stories of the original people, the god's swore by the river Styx. So what is most highly esteemed in the cosmos is water.

For all these reasons, Thales felt it was rationally justified, and in keeping with mythology, that he conclude that the fundamental principle of everything is water.

Because Thales proposition was based on his reasoning, it was critical of the non-rational mythical explanations of the cosmos, and as well, it was open to critique by other philosophers.]

[Taken from the first lecture of Professor Martin Moors Philosophy of Being 2008 course: "From Mythos to Logos - From Logos to Mythos," at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. Professor Moors is not just a remarkably gifted instructor, he is as well a renowned metaphysician and Kant scholar. His publication list is available here.

The ideas I here present are not my property, but belong to Prof. Moors. A suggested citation:

Moors, Martin. "From Mythos to Logos - From Logos to Mythos: Class 1." Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. 25-Sept-2008.

]

Logos in Martin Moors' Mythos and Logos course

summarization of Moors' ideas, by Corry Shores

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[Metaphysicians discuss and explain reality through linguistically-expressed conceptions. There is a certain logic to this explanatory discourse, namely, a discursive logic. For example, contradictions are not permitted (unless paradox is for some reason to be permitted.) This logic is used to describe reality according to various theoretical systems. Hence]

Logos is the power of redescribing reality in rational discourse.

[Also, metaphysicians are not just concerned with reality. They are also concerned with their means of discussing reality. In other words, metaphysicians are interesting in understanding that very logic they use when discussing reality. But what grounds this logic must be something higher than that logic. It must transcend it. So metaphysicians use their explanatory logic to understand that very same logic. In this way,]

Logos is the search for an understanding of understanding.

[This way, metaphysicians become aware of the way they think. That is to say, they develop a consciousness of the way they think. Thus logos is this sort of higher consciousness. Hence]

Logos is consciousness of consciousness. It seeks what is most logically prior, the 'a priority.'

[An element of the discursive logic that metaphysicians use is criticism, namely, self-criticism, which allows metaphysicians to see shortcomings in their methodological logic so to improve it. Hence,]

Logos is the internal criticism that establishes its own organic self-renewal.

In this way, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is a rational critique on reason. [We may use our rational faculties to judge our manner of reasoning. And when we judge our rational faculties using our reason, we do not do so from an anti-rational perspective.] However, Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche, for example, give a genuine critique of pure reason, because they examine rationality critically from a non-rational point-of-view. [But when we use our rational faculties to criticize our manners of reasoning, we look at rationality from a rational critical standpoint.]

[Taken from the first lecture of Professor Martin Moors Philosophy of Being 2008 course: From Mythos to Logos - From Logos to Mythos," at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. Professor Moors is not just a remarkably gifted instructor, he is as well a renowned metaphysician and Kant scholar. His publication list is available here.

The ideas I here present are not my property, but belong to Prof. Moors. A suggested citation:

Moors, Martin. "From Mythos to Logos - From Logos to Mythos: Class 1." Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. 25-Sept-2008.

]

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by Corry Shores
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Limit versus Boundary

Plato's Epistemic Rationality and Irrationality (A-Rationality), and Hetero-Rationality

Logos

Myth and Critique

Philosophy's Perpetual Call to Transgress the Limits of Its Mythological Origins

Transgressing the End of Metaphysics in Martin Moors' Mythos and Logos course

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Plato's Epistemic Rationality and Irrationality (A-Rationality), and Hetero-Rationality, in Martin Moors Mythos and Logos course

summarization of Moors' ideas, by Corry Shores
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The gods on high bear the highest knowledge.

This highest knowledge is intuitive, noetic knowledge. Below it is discursive or dianoetic knowledge. The lowest forms of knowledge are belief and sensible representation.

Corresponding to epistemic rationality is epistemic a-rationality or irrationality. Not anti-rationality. What is anti-logical comes out of the logical. But the a-rational or a-logical is hetero-logical.

There are three levels of heterology (a-logic). That is to say, logic has three others: the hyper-rational, the para-rational, and the hypo-rational.

The heterologies correspond with the levels of rationality:

Myth is hyper-rational, because it is higher than rational discourse.

Science is para-rational. Even though it is a rational discourse on being, it is not metaphysics.

Sensible representation (aesthesis) has not yet been made rational, and hence is hypo-rational.

Knowledge moves upwards from sensibility to divine intuitive knowledge, namely, to myth and religion.

Metaphysicians inquire into metaphysical matters. But how are metaphysicians to understand their own field of inquiry? By comparison with other fields inquiry. So, by coming into contact with other manners of inquiry, metaphysical inquiry develops dialectically. Hence, when metaphysicians compare their field with science, for example, they further define and distinguish -- and thereby further develop -- metaphysical inquiry's methods and theories.

This schema will be useful when discussing the relationship between mythology and metaphysics.

[Taken from the first lecture of Professor Martin Moors Philosophy of Being 2008 course: From Mythos to Logos - From Logos to Mythos," at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. Professor Moors is not just a remarkably gifted instructor, he is as well a renowned metaphysician and Kant scholar. His publication list is available here.

The ideas I here present are not my property, but belong to Prof. Moors. A suggested citation:

Moors, Martin. "From Mythos to Logos - From Logos to Mythos: Class 1." Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. 25-Sept-2008.

]

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Limit versus Boundary according to Prof. Martin Moors of Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

by Corry Shores
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[The following is based on student notes.]

Within its very self, metaphysics discovers its own limits. It encounters its own finite limitations, but we must distinguish limits from boundaries.

Limit (German: die Grenze)

Limit is taken positively, because it implicitly or indirectly expresses what lies across it. Consider that for Kant, our rational understanding finds itself limited within the world of appearances. But "phenomena" is a term implying or pointing-to what lies beyond it, namely the thing-in-itself or noumenal world, which is not knowable from within our system of categories. Thus metaphysics or reason is limited within the realm of appearances, which nonetheless is positively linked with what abuts it. We cannot know what lies beyond the limit, but we can think about it.

Thus overcoming is limitation's dynamic.

Boundary (German: die Schranke)

Boundary is regarded negatively, because bounded things are isolated unto themselves. They do not refer to what lies beside them. They self-enclose. A boundary lacks reference to anything but itself, and for that reason is deficient or negative.

Reason or metaphysics self-renews and historicizes by discovering and overcoming its internal limits. Hence criticism does not keep its topic bound, but rather opens its limits to something else besides it.

[Taken from the first lecture of Professor Martin Moors Philosophy of Being 2008 course: "From Mythos to Logos - From Logos to Mythos," at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. Professor Moors is not just a remarkably gifted instructor, he is as well a renowned metaphysician and Kant scholar. His publication list is available here.

The ideas I here present are not my property, but belong to Prof. Moors. A suggested citation:

Moors, Martin. "From Mythos to Logos - From Logos to Mythos: Class 1." Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. 25-Sept-2008.]