© Kaj Genell 2009

  The Monologue Project....

MONOLOGUE ON THE MONOLOGUE.

( Monologue sur le monologue. )

( Ein Monolog über der Monolog. )

( A Critic of the Philosophy of Dialogue, with constant regard to Søren Kierkegaard.)

An essay -dividied into three parts - by Kaj B. Genell 2007.

To give a hand in fulfilling this project ...( costs for books & material , travels, various contacts, the printing of the book, etc.etc. ... ) you could ( after - of course - having been interested by the actual content ... )

:

At first: A Small notion about the nature of the essay:

"Brevity is the soul of wit." ( William Shaxpeare )

" De fleste Mennesker gaae gjerne til Laesningen af en Bog med en Forestilling om hvorledes de selv vilde have skrevet, hvorledes en Anden haer eller der vilde have skrevet /…/ Her begynder nu den förste Mulighed af at ikke kunne laese en Bog /…/ - de to mest modsatte Arter af Laesere mødes - de dummeste og de genialeste, som begge to have det tilfaelleds, at de ikke kunde laese en Bog, de förste af Tomhed, de Sidste af Rigdom paa Idéer." (Kierkegaard. )

"The title is a true bagatelle." (G.E. Lessing )

"All cannot satisfy Man." ( W. Blake )

    An address:

   I am conscious of, that you most certainly will make a fast judgment from what you already see at a first glance. You might - I am certain of it - find lots of grammatical and stylistic errors in this essay. I need not underline that I am not at all perfect in English. I have never studied English at an academic level. Let us say that this extensive essay is - like so much on the Internet - written in pidgin....

     My very intention with this project, my translation of a massive own text into a foreign language and publishing it on the net, is to reach out , - to someone , or maybe even to a strange group of people ( maybe in a cellar or something ... or on a very distant island ) -, who share my interest in philosophy, discourses, in texts, - and/or in S. Kierkegaard´s and F. Kafka´s authorships in particular too.

Rather than publishing a book in my own small country ( Sweden ;with its approx. 9 million inhabitants ) in my own language, a book that in the "cultural climate" of today at most will be read - not even halfheartedly !- by maybe a quarter of a dozen people , and then all forgotten , I think of this as a more effective, and for everybody interested in it , as a more exciting and constructive thing to do. If You want to give me some ( hopefully kind ) advise, write to me:

e-mail me: kaj.genell@comhem.se

      I have today ( January, 22, 2008 ) about 300 ( or something like that ) pages left .... to try to compose & to translate from Swedish ( what I have already written during the years ), and to elaborate further, with the help of my readers, I hope .....
I myself will read all mails with great attention, and I also hope to get meaningful contacts all over the globe .( ... hard to get such , without a common passionate interest. ) I do not rule out any country. It happens on the internet, that people are ruled out because of origin or lifestead. I cannot promise to answer all letters , - if there will be any at all - what can I know ? - , but I will certainly give this a try.

    Now, since I have a lot of other interests, as you can see by my home site in its´s whole complex variety, I will probably work periodically - but intense - on this translation, and I hope to be able to finish before the end of next yearor the year after. This means, that there will be maybe a book brought to public attention concerning Monologue, Kierkegaard and Kafka , at least some year, for what purpose it might serve.

   It is a fact, a state of affairs, a "Sachverhalt", that I have no academic degree. At all. I actually do not see this as neither an advantage nor a disadvantage in this case - i.e. that I am writing this. And in no other case either. Perhaps it makes me a bit more adventourous in my writings ....

   It is also true that I have no aspirations other than those I have. The greatest is the keeping of the fun of ... having none fixed.

I want to convey my view on Man.

Man is nothing but his monologue.

    Kaj B. Genell, in May 2008.

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    My deepest intention here is to to develop some thoughts on the possible capability of human beings to ... think for themselves.

We are taking a position that is opposite to the all too common... dialogue-philosophy, partly for a steady contrast and partly just for a beginning.

I certainly do not know if people can think for themselves. I am going to try to reason around the issue!

   It is a proper beginning - too - with the acknowledgment that I do share S.A.Kierkegaard´s deep mistrust in authorities. My opinion is , that it ought to be everybody´s opinion that counts, that there are not a single authority on this earth. The so called "authorities" have never done mankind any good. -----

They are naturally part of the system of illusions that often are necessary. But it is essential to know of the system of illusions.

Later I am carrying further some ideas S. Kierkegaard´s, - whose ( anti-authoritarian ) interest in communication, language and psychology was in no way minor to that in religion and philosophy; - and I am trying to use some of his thoughts as concepts in a manner, that I believe never before has been tried.

In this essay ( Part III. ) I am also trying to have a shot at Kafka, to solve - once and for all !.... - the "eternal" Kafka-problem , to get rid of (!) the (mystic) enigma, by displaying the main features of the Kafka-technique ( ....without destroying his works at all !). I am on this spot on an entirely new track, I think.
I also regard this paper as an ongoing discussion with my Self,( during steady suspicion of both contrahents ) - or myself, ( lat. sololoquia ) ,- and those readers who are interested in the subject, - there are such people -, are welcome to follow my thoughts as they appear here.

This discussion with myself concerning the subject of monologues ends inevitably up in some sort of reduplication, I am looking upon a phenomenon by using the very same phenomenon, and at the same time I am looking upon this doing!( Hence this title - Monologue on the monologue - that to most people probably only seems artificial and kind of ... snobbish, while it is in fact a pretty accurate title, I think.

.... My own thought is thus also used as empirical material, but to get more "substantial evidence" I have also taken the bulks of monologue that are to be found in both the whole of Kierkegaard's and Kafka written works too : those vast authorships of two Western greats: S.Kierkegaard, the Dane, and Franz Kafka, the Czech that wrote solely in German, ... it will, I fear, become a long journey and even a journey without an end. It starts out, anyway, right - here.

© Kaj Genell 2009.

A monologue cannot communicate dialogically - other than in an internal, inner way - in real time..... But it can be discussed, refuted, and so forth ,... afterwards. It is open for a "posthumous" dialogue . Interesting monologues can be subject to discussion for ever. Monologists are oftly born posthumously.( Paraphrasing a famous utterance by the Swede K.Vennberg on Kafka.)

The most urgent occupation for a "philosophical mind", that is not sunk deep down into idleness or expertness, is to put things in question, it is to interrogate and to interrogate again and again.
A means to this is to create a doubleness. And it is essential not to ogle ( to explicitly glance ) at the so called authorities; in fact : there are none: "Since nobody ever real was any authority, or helped anybody by being it .., " ( S.Kierkegaard, Philosophical fragments, 1841.p. 17.) -;this is confirmed even by many of "the authorities themselves".... Thus were the opinions of, -for example -, the authority Einstein, of authority Kierkegaard and of authority Wittgenstein too.... all men, who never wanted to be regarded as authorities, that there were none, or should at least never be none regarded.( Only a stupid - or ... evil or greedy - person wants to be an authority ! The sometimes very complicated task of philosophy is to undermine every authority.) Why I am talking about authority when I am supposed to talk about monologues is a good question. But I will ensure you that monologues have a lot to do with the presence and absence of authority.A little simplified can this be put thus: A very dangerous monologue is full of authority, whereas a good monologue is completely void of such a phenomenon. And maybe - this is what I want - it is easy to see, from the outside, so to speak, which is which in every concrete case.

However, the main subject here is History, e.g. the history of the personal consciousness. Truth is not a fixed thing. It never stays put. It transforms. Consciousness transforms too. There are no such thing as a fixed self-consciousness. And: There are no authorities. If I only could achieve two things with this work, - to make at least one human being unwilling to acknowledge both authorities and a quite mysterious self-consciousness, - and come to know , in a pleasant way of course, (- what the great French philosopher D. Diderot , the author of Le neveu de Rameau aimed at - ) why he or she shouldn´t -, I would be more than happy. I really do not - myself - mind it taking quite a while..... Rome was not ...

Kaj B. Genell, Jan 2009.

Reflections upon Monologism,
- A sketch to a Theory about Monologues.

I am quoting:

"Somewhere I read the remark:"God
only talks to himself." On this very spot the Almighty has more than one rival."
( Monsieur E.M. Cioran , in one of his - rather "black" - books.)

" Already Socrates thought that to know is to know how
to teach it." ( Leon Brunschvicg, in Le Connaissance de Soi.)

Introduction nessessary to grasp the meaning of the theory itself.
§ 1. Monologue and Philosophy.
§ 2. Monologue versus dialogue.
§ 3. Philosophy and self-knowledge.( Is self-knowledge a knowledge ?)
§ 4. An overview of the philosophy of dialogue.
Monologue, dialogue and a survey concerning "the Philosophy of the Other". ( St. Augustine, Hegel, Sartre & many many more.... )
§.5. The form of the monologue is extension, articulation and direction.

The theory of "to and fro" itself.

§ 6 . The "monologue of life". The monologue - The inner "slow face".
§ 7. a. The different forms of monologues according to my theory.
Basic characteristics.→ . & . →

§.8. My indebtedness to a passage in a letter 1848 from S. Kierkegaard to his ( sole ) friend , the judge Kolderup-Rosenvinge as well as to a passage from Kierkegaards opus 1 : From the papers of one still living (1838)

§ 9 . The true reading and the contrafactic one.On method.
§ 10. G.W.F.Hegel and Kierkegaard.
§ 11. The "No!". Th.Wiesengrund Adorno, the negation, - and of other Protestants too.

§12. ..............................

§ 13.( Cf. A.Daudet´s novel.) articulation and "running water".
§ 15. My monologue about ..Monologue.
§ 16. A philosophem about the Idea itself.
§ 17. The old ( romantic ) ideal of writing about nothing...
§ 18. Monologue as pure loneliness. The metaphor of the star.

§ 19."Le cirle de ipseité".

§.20.

Another theory, - nearly as important as mine.

§ 21. The important "counter-theory". ( Hegel again , Ch. S. Peirce and others...)
§ 22. The monologue, according to the poet Novalis.
§ 23. Five examples:

a. The Diary.( Anyone´s )

and : b.) the Prayer. ( Anyone´s ).

c. The famous apology of Socrates.( Plato.)

d. The monologue of an ape.( F. Kafka)

e. On the price of the eternal bliss.( S. Kierkegaard )

§. 25. About comparison in general.

( This my ordering in paragraphs ( §§ ) is only used in Part I. of this essay. In the following parts I am thus able to refer back to paragraphs in an unambiguous way. This is the sole purpose. It is not to make it look scientific. This is not a scientific project at all. ....God knows... )

Part Four. Conclusive remarks, some unsolved problems and unpresumed errors......

Part Five. Rather Extensive Bibliography.

My Introduction on :

The pleasure of reflection.

I am , metaphorically speaking ,- and I think it is the same with my fellow human beings - always standing in front of - right in front of - what I do not understand !

It is convincing and consoling and it gives knowledge at the same time! Reflection is in fact very much alike a perpetuum mobile. I. e.: An ongoing process of pure pleasure, which without any difficulty roots itself within us human beings ( with all us, we who are disintegrated, us, ....all us unsystematic ...). Reflection is like a landscape without any kind of outer borders. Reflecting is often thinking , without thinking of any other landscapes. And then - it is easy to be suspecting this - it is much too easy for ( any ) philosophy to flourish.

In places in between, between what I do and what I do not do, reflection can easiest exist.--- Reflection is continuous, - it is like a hand upholding me in an atmosphere ( Yes. Everything is continuous, as long as it lasts , - that I may freely add -) by a thinking ( thought-activity), a spirit, which maybe will evolve to a personality. That You can say. ( Or the reverse.) A continuous work concerning the observation, - and at the same time a conscious look inwards -, and not outwards, - inwards into every corner, collecting from there every tiny reaction upon what might have aroused a felling... from outside....; - a linking together, unbound by any kind of interest, and steadily blocking of other lusts and desires , than that of the desire for reflection, but yet capable of using all these lusts and desires. Just like a lustful breathing. ( Like the picture of the intellectual pleasure of the old original German romantics )- thus this kind of reflection can rather properly be characterized, - the reflection, which - thus - gets some kind of an aesthetic stamp, like " the disinterested",( a concept much used by, for example, Hegel ) -, very, very much interested aesthetically, when we look upon it "in and for itself",( i. e. according to it´s own presuppositions ), but it can, and it also - one may think - ought to grow and become something ethical,- and this - and we - will thus create a much wider view, open up the perspective .....

Søren Kierkegaard once wrote:" I am the one, who has taken every step with reflection." - He probably did not mean by this , that he had not reflected upon his real steps, but that he had taken those steps - now as real as those steps were - with reflection....( Maybe he could not have taken them without the help ( imperfect ) from (or example of ) Hegel... We all do need our incitements. - I will explain what I mean by this below.... )

Suddenly I decide , that there is only one possible solution, to decide, (!) that I like the distortion! I like human beings. Distortion is human . Thus, I like it !--- I will reflect upon the world and upon reflection the way humans do. I will not try to reflect upon things the way some sort of allegedly perfect machine would do, dwell in an imperfect reflection, dwell amongst all these absurd beliefs, incredible idealistic views on dialogue, all overloaded philosophical projects, all important and non-important smalltalk of the world, everything that is thought out of greed, and all that which comes out of love, and so on..... and I will like it that way. So, this paper is a distorted reflection upon distorted reflection on monologues. ( One might wonder what all other papers, texts, discourses in this world are . Or one might rather not.... Most of them are naturally rubbish and lies.)

" If the arguments had a voice, they would laugh at us." ( Plato )

A. The"reflective thought".

The first step for the reflective thought is to reflect upon the Now. The reflection upon the reflection, - the so called reduplication - or reduplicative thought -, is the one about whether the original reflection was a new one, whether it brought new knowledge to mind, - because it would tidy the process to be controlling the correctness of thought all the time. It is important to follow up the feeling accompanying the reflection, - to enjoy it, if it is enjoyable -, to look upon the newborn reality , i.e. the new thought, which hopefully has brought the reflective thought, the Philosopher or what he might be calling him - or herself - into a land that this mind never even dream of would lay open to it.

The reflective thought is in love with the reflection, and especially in it´s re duplicative form.
It is quite another thing with reflection that only is concerned with immediate experience , with "immediate reality", - what we have described above is the reflective thought concerning itself with symbols and languages already familiar to it. With reflection on things unfamiliar or immediate reality it is not the same, and not usually the business of this so called reflective thought, - which most often is , once it started , close to an automatic process. In this paper I am not concerned with ontological or metaphysical issues, that is: I am not interested in what is the nature of things, not where we come from, not where we are, not where we go, and not :where from comes language? Our subject is - first-hand - the "given reflection"... and the reduplication. This, the "given reflection", which we all know of , is always a kind of duplicity, a movement in two opposite directions, - it is making more precise by dividing, by making distinctions, dividing by using the negation . By comparison. Once in a while reflection ends up in a place where it is easy to breathe ( again ), where the most solemn Peace reigns, at the elysian fields of the intellectual reflection, the most unknown paradoxical Paradise ....
And it is not about negative freedom, a freedom where one is free from..., because there is still much to prove in this new -established freedom, this field is a possibility coming from nowhere, and on which it could be made up another certain "close-to-reality", which can bring joy and laughter to the remotest corners of the human heart....
Reflection may never be a "suppose so", but always an intellectual act(-tion), - it has to be such, so that it is possible to classify it as a step in an evolution of thought and personality, where every step is taken once and for all, and there are no repent-clause written .... A reflection is a reflection, for ever, and it is always a part of my life, how ever futile this reflection may be.... It is part of my lifelong monologue. It is hard to discern my history of reflection from my history of my life, making it the story of my life.

This "close-to-Realitas" is as good a reality as any. "Close to" is what You could name:" close by". This , the very real about reflecting, reflection, is - when we think harder and closer - the very foundation of reflection. The degree (measure) of reality in reflection seems for some people very early be higher than the degree of reality in a common thing, like of a chair, that suddenly falls apart, a planet that dissolves, a human being who dies away...., an Other, whom You generally do not trust, despite what all these dialogue theoreticians say or write. You never quite come to grips with the thoughts of the Other....; thus: it is not only a fact that thought is more real than reality , it is certainly more safe ( unless You , like Dr. Johnson ) live in constant fear of losing your sanity of mind ,( - he always kept a box with chains under his bed, for others to put on him in case ... );- You kind of dwell in your thought, even if it probably is true that your feelings may be weaker concerning your own thought than in connection with other people and utter events.

Oftly ( i.e. often ) a person thinks: " Reflection is for strange people." Other people are blinded by reflection, but I, myself, I am safe and sound, and slightly thinking, reflecting a little upon them... Or: Often a person thinks: "How lucky he is. He lives in a world of thought. I have to live with reality."

B. Philosophy & the Monologue in general.

Marcel Proust has expressed the essential aspects like this:

"I turn inwards towards my soul. It is the one who shall find the truth. But how? A deep uncertainty comes every time the soul feels it´s shortcomings; as it at the same time is the seeker and the dark land, that shall be sought through, where no extra means are available. Seek? It is not enough a word : create. The soul stands in front of something that yet does not exist and which it alone can realize and penetrate with the light of it´s own...." ( A la recherche du temps perdu, I, p.48.).."at the same time"...,-Now already a wise man ought to give the whole thing up. But we do not...
Now if the monologue can be seen ( S:t. Augustine ) as written for the individual himself: Is self-reflexion - in close connection with "talking to oneself" - possible at all ?? It is, to this day, a controversial question. What does it really mean, effectively, to talk to oneself ? Something radical ? Something important ? Is it a " déliberation intime " - , to speak in terms of Chaim Prelaman ? ( Cf. J.-J. Rousseau´s not so well-known dialogue project, Rousseau Juge de Jean-Jaques, 1772-1776. - We will be coming back to J.-J.. later on.

Is self-knowledge possible at all? ( We do not think of psychoanalysis as the way. Why will be explained later on. ).We all though would like to believe it. But, do we believe it ? Is not self-knowledge only an illusion ? Am I anything else than " the dream my body is dreaming "? (cit.Mr. J.L. Borges., - an author who has deplorably distinguished himself in criticizing Kafka (!) for writing too long stories.... ).

Now, is it possible? And would I (!) be the man to answer such a question ? Consulting myself .... and a heap of books.... Or: to specify a question inside that question, and radicalize it ( and make concrete ): Can an individual make up a decision within a dialogue with himself;- i. e. make a difference in an inner monologue, which has this character of inner speaking? ( Of course he can. We do that all the time.... ) --- Now. Then we have something , that we know: that people are making decisions in inner monologues.... Or it is an illusion, or we have overlooked something? It is not easy to prove anything about decision-making. Kierkegaard gave it all up, referring to the decision as something covered up for us, something that happened in a vertigo......

( Jean-Paul Sartre wrote somewhere :"When you really are beginning to think of what to do, you have actually already decided." - But, that is a strange thing of him to say. Especially him. Bryan Maggee refers malisciously to Sartre as "the journalist" in his excellent book Confessions of a Philosopher (1997). I understand what he is getting at.)

Let us say - preliminary - that we know SOMETHING, for a start. We can decide, because we think we do. Now, another, - a little bit more itchy question: Can an individual change ? Can an individual change in his soul , in his kernel ? Can he change direction ? ( Of course - I know a man who stopped drinking and gave up work and grew kind, which he never were...).

Yes. Then we know that to, approximately , and we can indulge ourselves in the study of the "HOW" and "WHEN" and "WHY", and really try to get to grips with the monologue, regarding our lives as monologues. One life- one monologue. And try to write a monologue on the monologue. We do suspect that all monologues are not of the same kind. We , i. e. I , suspect that they differ a great deal. But my presupposition is: that we all have one .

If there are sorts, which sort is mine, and which is Kierkegaard's, or Kafka's, and what kind of monologue do You have ? ( Without a doubt, there are readers who quite at this early stage have formed an opinion concerning my matter: "This is pure metaphysics !".

And the best definition of metaphysics, that I know of, is Voltaire´s : "Metaphysics is about what everybody knows, and what nobody ever will know anything about." We may say that it could be an accurate refutation. But, we could also maintain, that although writing of metaphysics is a deplorable thing, it can come up many things under ways that are not at all metaphysics. I can not dwell om this subject - the origin of metaphysics and such - any longer, - we must proceed to important things......) To the philosophically unexperienced reader this whole argument, this bulk of text, could seem childish and another laughing matter, or a tragicomedy . But all texts on philosophical matters, - how great a thinker the writer may be or might have been -, seem a bit childish. It is lying somehow in the nature of the philosophical task.

"The one, who has taken a habit in writing, writes also when he has nothing to say, just like the old doctor, who checked the pulse on the armchair in which he sat dying." (A. de Rivarol )

"If God doesn´t exist, Hegel is right." ( P. Wikner )

It is................................

On the problem of Self-knowledge.

A.) The whole matter about self-knowledge is , in fact, a whole cluster of ( to philosophers huge ) problems. They partly cling together and they all are close to, or accomplish the central problems of man. And they are problems, which one poses rather often to oneself, but seldom takes the time to,- or sees the advantage in - , extend into terms of discussion. They are problems, which we nearly always ignore ,so they are left hanging about... And we are very often inclined to let them pass over into questions concerning personal character and will-power, right or wrong-,we discard the problem of freedom by acting. Freedom is in its kernel - its punctum salis ( the small red spot in the middle of the egg, that later will become the heart of the living animal, observed and thus named by Aristotle once ... ) - completely unknown to us, - and we are doing the same thing over and over again with this knowledge: we renounce it, annihilate it, and proceeds directly to action. We are not solving the problem of investigating the nature of will and the nature of decision and acting, but we transcends it permanently in action. We do not transform the problem into action. We are neglecting it. Cutting the Gordian knot. But it is still always there ( not just for philosophers I think...) . It is underlying many of our daily intercourse and controversies.
In our pretext here - and in many others, for many other persons - might it be described as the problem around what You might call "self-determination", the indisputable right to be and to protect a "Self". I am never talking about the right to exist, the right to be healthy, not hungry, the right to be happy or such things, since I am of the opinion that these rights are superficial. The right to be and protect a Self is not superficial, but it is a little diffuse. We are not so very sure of what this "Self" is, but we take it an evident truth, that we have some such Self of a kind, - a special kind, - mine.

It also seems to me that, ever since the time of Socrates, it remains a misunderstanding about what was meant by the famous inscription above the entrance of the Greek Delphi temple, the appalling "Know thyself!" ("gnosi seavton"), which - like an ambiguous Oracle´s whisper - seems to be for ever unjustly hanging on to the name of Socrates,- Socrates the Proteus-like, the elusive half-anarchist, who longevity has been seen ( by the ruling Philosophers of History )as the "Augur", inaugurator, of Western Culture .( ? )

Numerous people has been, one at a time , ( from Socrates & St. Augustine and forwards ) claimed by others to have been "the first modern man", - the man with ( the mysterious ) Self-consciousness.( A concept on the denotation of which Kierkegaard doubted. ). Socrates is certainly thus one of them. And partly because of a misunderstanding. The famous Greek Delphi inscription does not have so much to do with introspection , as with the ability to know one´s limits as individual. It is a warning against the ultimate sin of the ancient Greek culture: the "hybris", presumptuousness. The Gods punishes those who challenges Fate and think of themselves as equal to the Gods. (Cf. the ancient drama... ) ---The olden Greeks were not a meditative people . But many classicists came by mishap to look upon the Greeks and their culture in a idealizing, romanticist mood. This I cannot naturally elaborate further here.
Now, thinking of self-reflection, to formulate oneself about it, is a daring thing, is to put language at risk, to go to the limits of language, and probably even pass these.... It is - as well - to expose oneself to a more or less severe up beating by language. Language - or our brain, - or the World - is not quite built - so to say - for questions of this here type.

Socrates naturally is always actual, and nowadays his reputation is quite low ( in Sweden, with the hyperboreans ...). He was only tricking other people to get the upper hand. So they say. The philosophers of our time. This is a shallow view, I think.

Socrates became famous because of the Oracle had uttered about him ,that he was the only man, who knew, that he did not know. He then, by the philosophers of History came to be inserted i a "holy row" of non-knowers.

He was followed, and maybe superseded, by the Spaniard Juan de la Cruz,( in his book on the climbing of the Karmel mountain, The book of Karmel.) by ancient monks of many kinds, the magnificent anonymous book about the cloud of not-knowing,The cloud of not-knowing, the work of the wise ( and generous ) papal delegate N. Cusanus,( from Cusa )who wrote De Docta ignorantia .... The old skeptics (esp. the followers of the anscient roman Pyrrhon, the pyrrhonists :"Knowledge is impossible.") never did achieve the same lofty status. We will discuss Socrates at greater length - and from several views - below.... .

The knowledge of this knowledge of oneself can be formalized accordingly: c.) " Ex (xKx ^ ( xK(xKx)). But would it be proper to say that the knowledge of my self is of the same kind as the knowledge of my knowledge of this. The concept mentioned above, "self-consciousness" should according to this kind of reasoning perhaps consist of two kinds of knowledge. The formalization of self-knowledge - (Ex (xK(xKx)- could at least not be right then if we did not separate the K,s into K´and K´´. - Then we must take in to consideration the time factor. bb. precedes c. ( In the Mabel case it could be more of a simultaneously... ). We discard time and concentrate on the alleged different two kinds of knowledge.

B.) Some notes concerning paradoxes in Philosophy of Mathematics and self reference :

"It is then the highest paradox of thinking, to want to discover something, that it cannot itself think." ( S. Kierkegaard )

( The Liar.) We hear, and utter - in daily life - propositions about propositions ( i.e. propositions about themselves ). An example from the Greek Eubulides, :"I am lying!" ( i.e."not telling the truth."). It is usually called the paradox of Zeno from Elea in southern Italy ( 495-445 B.C.) . In antiquity it was very popular , and went by various names, among them the Epimenides´proposition. The cretenser E. asserts: "All cretensians are lying." . This antinomy has been handled differently in modern philosophy. After having found numerous paradoxes of the same structure as the Liar paradox ( Richards, Berry´s, and maybe Grelling´s and Nelson´s ), one has reached a conclusion that all logical and semantic paradoxes more or less directly are referring to themselves, or, - more correctly : they are self-referring . One way to handle this was ( and is ) A.) the A. Tarski way: A language free from antinomies may not be allowed to be semantically closed : it may not include means of expressing the formulation of the semantic of the language itself. Tarski is forbidding expressions like ordinary propositions about language. Other people B.) have been trying to use this paradox to question different propositions in different systems. We might call them the paradox-likers, the paradoxicians.

The most famous one of these in modern time is unquestionably Kurt Gödel. His paper,"Uber formal unentscheidbare Sätze der Principia Matematica und verwandter Systeme"(1911) ( On formally Undecidable propositions .(transl.1962.) is known by almost every student of mathematics, and it makes the unexperienced ... (!) to put in question the whole bulk of human thought. The work of Gödel cannot be characterized very shortly with accurancy ( by me ), but : by arithmatizing the syntax Gödel managed to show a.: that within every axiomatically built mathematical theory ( for example the Russell/Whitehead's Principia Matematica ) always exists assertions, which in a certain way is part of the system, but which can not by proven true or false within the theory ( the so called proposition of incompleteness or proposition of unprovability , and b.: that the freedom from antinomy with every axiomatic system not can be proved , lest You do not use principles of conclusions so complicated that the question whether they themselves are free from antinomies is quite as open. Gödel´s discovery has been verified a couple of times using other systems as object of investigation,- for example the Zeno paradox mentioned-, -. We are now aware of that the mathematic theorem is in a weaker position than before, something which does not concern the mathematical proposition, since this does not express itself about itself. ( A mathematic theorem always contains both the proposition and it´s proof. Cf. Euclid and his Elementa.) - ( Bertrand Russell were not so very much disturbed by "the discovery", because he saw that it had no practical implications regarding the efficiency of mathematics. Gödel is not mentioned in his vast autobiography, as far as I remember. I don´t think he ever directly commented upon Gödel´s paper,- and R.s production were vast... A. Einstein invited Gödel when in the U.S.A. to conversations and they became friends.) (Those who are interested in the paradox and in Gödel´s more than remarkable essay may find D. Hofstadter´s Pulitzer Prize -awarded book Gödel, Escher, Bach -an eternal Golden Braid (1979) illuminating, but I also recommend the more concise Gödel´s proof , by E. Nagel and J.R. Newman , an excellent introduction to the problem. Cf. as well El.Goldmann.(2006)( Gödel also managed to prove the existence of God..... much to my dislike.)

Now is the question whether the proposition:" I know myself." is a paradox in the same way as Zeno´s . It is- I believe - not. But it does contain self-reference, which appears to me to be close to the problem around the "exact" paradoxes. It is not a semantic paradox. We are never put into perplexity the way we are by The Liar. We will return to the problem of self-reference as taken up by philosophers of several schools and from different backgrounds. We can often see that it varies between the Anglo-Saxon, the roman and the Gothic/Germanic spheres.

C.) Some light on the behaviorists.

We can also regard positivism and behaviorism as protests against the possibility of asserting:"I know myself.". Introspection was not part of the ideal of Auguste Comte´s Cour de la philosophie Positive -(1830 -42).
Behaviorism arouse out of functionalism, a branch of transatlantic pragmatism, where William James and John Dewey played the central roles in connection with the brilliant Ch. S. Peierce. W. James´ The Principles of Psychology ( 1890 ) was mostly centered around showing that behavior and mental processes were possible to alter. The mental process was still , according to J. , a possible object for study, - J.s book The variety of religious experience (1902) was important. Functionalism arouse explicitly with John B. Watson and his Behaviorism ( 1925 ).

The perhaps most famous and upright among the behaviorist, B.F. Skinner expresses himself thus: " Without help from the verbal collective all behavior would be unconscious. Consciousness is a social product. It is not enough to be aware of that consciousness not is a field for the autonomous Man; consciousness is completely out of reach for the lonely individual... ( from B.F. Skinner, Beyond freedom and dignity, chapt. What is a human being? ). He continues: " It is neither within reach for any the exact knowledge of any human being." ( Ib. ) With S. there is very little of the belief in the future. the openness to ideas and belief in human progress, which is so strong with and important to Peirce. (to be continued.....) /Some of Peirce´s smaller works could be found on the Internet as PDF-files. They are quite as difficult to read as reading Hegel, as far as I am concerned. / .

D.) Some light on the analytical philosophers.

" I can never catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can I observe anything but the perception." ( D. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature.) " The word " I " does not denote a possessor." ( L. Wittgenstein.) "...I could never know it was myself I had found." (Shomaker. ) .... But it would be extraordinary to find somebody else...!

"It is relatively seldom that we observe ourselves in the ways in which we observe others." (Shomak. p.80.)

Sidney Shomaker has written( influenced by Austin and Wittgenstein ) a fine essay in 1970, important to us, entitled : Self-Reference and Self-Awareness : "Philosophers who have reflected on the "use as subject"....". Shomaker thus refers to Wittgenstein and others in the stating of "I" as "non denoting" and thus some kind of "pseudosubject", and furthermore he claims, and it seems rightly so, that the predicate in an assertion about my inner state and myself, I am also using a "pseudopredikate" since I - or "It"( Cf. Nietzsche, who thought about the more accurate expression "It thinks." and R.D. Laing´s famous expression in his small classic book Knots:" I am the It that thinks It." ... ) knows that something is - for instance "honest" inside, but "It" cannot really percieve that which is honest, i.e. my conscience,consciousness or my soul....( all in accordance with the epistemology of Hume and Kant, who both denied knowledge of actual things, but only knowledge of perceptions of them.)

(to be cont..... )

" The I does not create anything else than the movement which succeeds it." ( M. de Biran ).

( A psychologist, a superb such, Rollo May, who among other things ,wrote the excellent books Love and will, The Courage of Creation and The Meaning of Anxiety - containing an interpretation of S. Kierkegaard´s The Concept of Anxiety, actually fails completely in his (smaller) book , Man in search for himself. ( In this book he could be said to try to deal partly with what I am myself dealing with in my entire essay - or reversely.) He gets caught in circles , and is in the end he seems to be forced to refer back to Heraclitus (Cf. above!), the son of a king..., and the deep and cloudy Logos in which the elusive, mysterious Self dwells......) Comment: It is open - certainly - to question weather we shall treat knowledge about oneself in such a manner, that the reflective construction "I "( or "me") - "self" denotes an identity. Maybe it is all a question about identity and difference and of the "no", the negation...( Cf. Hegel, Adorno , etc.), because we all know, it is obvious to all of us, that we can be fighting ourselves, or do what we don´t want to do, and: are we , then, splitting an identity, or are we to entities ? We could, in fact, say both, without getting into greater trouble. The construction, the formula xKx , could be questioned, and we might replace it with another, - like eKa (ego and alter), but then we will choose to omit the central kernel dynamic of difference and identity ( Cf. M. Heidegger´s Identity and difference.).

We must halt here for a moment to bring at least some clarity to what is at hand. It is obvious, that sometimes it ( the knowledge of oneself ) is not at all about identity. In some clean grammatical phrases, as, for example ( A.) ."Paete killed himself.", it is pure identity. In another ." I learned ( myself ) English.", it is equally identical. But, in our main case here, ( B. ):" I came to learn about myself." we have a difference of quality. It is a possibility to evade the truth about oneself in a degree. It is not a clearcut thing as killing oneself or learning a language.
  We also have to recognize that it is not quasi constructions we are using. Some philosophers , like J.L. Austin , H.-N. Castaneda indicators and quasi indicators, ( not the novel writer ) and P.F. Strawson ( in his book Individuals are trying to get to grips with these formulas. Strawson points out, that there is a certain kind of assertions that has psychological attributes, certain fields within the mental area, of which only the person talking can know something. Strawson names these predicates "P-predicates".
Sometimes we can feel that the word "myself" or "himself" is covering a bit of illusion, - we are often not at ease with the word, since we feel that it is meaningless in a logical sense ( in the same way as the concept "class" - in some way - is meaningless to the member of the class ) . It seems that we are dealing with a by necessity incomplete construction. We will soon come to the conclusion that, as far as self-knowledge is concerned , we have no immediate such. ( Cf. Edm. Husserl and P. Ricoeur, in Theory of Interpretations, Chapt. The Question of the Subject.)

( Some Linguistic comments on reflexivity :) It is a complicating factor that languages are not alike when it comes to talking "reflectively". Some languages are richer than others, or, should we say, more overt complicated in structure. In French"soi" is the reflexive pronoun, while "meme" is a word coming from a Latin root "egomet ipse" meaning "the same". "Le soi" is close to Ger."Das Selbst" and Eng."The Self", Sw."Självet", but Hegel could declare that a flower had a "sich" but not a "Selbst", because only a human being, a person, can have such a thing, meaning self consciousness. The French word "autre" comes from lat. "alter", and "autrui" from "alter" plus "lui" -" another him"....) Self-knowledge does not appear without a foregoing process,- or it is this process-, and we can thus see how the conversation of the Ego with it´s Alter at the same time is a coming together of Ego and Alter, where Alter changes, something which has it ´s immediate consequences for the Ego ..... We have here a time factor,( t ), and xt always have K about xt , if we might say so... But we will certainly not be a lot wiser be this insight.

The lonely ( after the death of his beautiful and beloved Creol wife ) French thinker Maine de Biran, who left a lot of speculation around our subject behind, once wrote:" The "I"does not objectify itself into a picture,; naturally not either by an ontological abstraction. The very existence of it lies in the conception and the perception of effort ("l´apperception de l´effort"....), to which it feels itself as subject or cause." ( Mémoire sur la décomposition de la pensée,1 ,pp.144-148. ) We intend to return to the "dialectic" of lack and super flue later on... It may be worth reflecting upon weather self-knowledge involves effort or not - maybe not in the meaning of de Biran - but an effort to get rid of the very first impulse.

Dealing with oneself is , or ought to be, a critical occupation. If you do not question yourself you will probably not come to know yourself .One of S. Kierkegaard´s main insights was, that it was essential to deal with oneself "as a suspect". A person. Who in no part of himself is in conflict with himself could not possibly be up to making any important choices, and is a person of rigid stature. We could easily make this distinction: a person , that does not have a conflict with himself appears to others very distinctly as a caricature. He or she will be easily recognized as a person who is exactly the person of whom you could say: he ( or she ) could have become a "......". A human being without an inner conflict is on his ( or her ) way right away from himself ( herself ). The ideal of our time is a person without conflicts inside. It is - according to my view - a false ideal. It is quite clear an ideal that does not promote personality , growth, meaningful action and self-knowledge.

Kierkegaard, - who was torturing himself all his life with thoughts like this - wrote: " As long as he was Untruth, he was steadily going away from the truth. " It seems as if Kierkegaard saw the Self as something Man either got closer to or farther from like some truth about something. It is clear that K. saw this "Self" on the one side as something original, given by God , and - on the other side - as something that depended on the choices of every given situation. It was never quite clear to him in what way these two were connected. ( Cf. V. Lindström, Stadiernas teologi.). In K. s early Either - Or the Self is something that is molded in balance, equipoise, but it is more complex in Philosophical Fragments or the later written Sickness onto Death. ( We will return to this below.)
Someone would say that self-knowledge is the capacity of intrapersonal integration , of getting all parts of a person to cooperate. I could not deny this. But how do we reach this "integration". ( Lat.: "integer"= whole. ). By courageous action and courageous reflection. This is maybe part of the truth. But the meaning of the truth is that the whole truth is .... to be grasped. Or a try is to be done.

E.) Some light on psychoanalysis.

In the meaning of psychoanalytic theory one could assert that self-reflection is something relatively simple, since it is concentrated upon something already there, already given. (This might naturally be regarded as a necessary illusion, a mirage, (Cf. P.-O. Olofssons interesting theories in his Urfantasin och ordningen ( 1987) (diss.) and Den avklädda människan (1991) on illusions and significants of desire - a strange term - and the mythical character of these.) There is a "self" with us already when we are children or even unborn. To the object theory of psychoanalysis it is a truth that;" To find an object is really to rediscover it." ( S. Freud, Theory of sexuality. p.112.) The picture of Man according to Freud is founded upon the hypothesis about this existing Self,(!) - maybe a fruit of romantic philosophy - the devastating childhood and the recovery and automatic healing by bringing to consciousness what necessarily was (re-)depressed. Freud might be placed within a "tragic tradition" , according to J. Lacan ( Freud in the century. p.343 , 1956.). Psychoanalysis is a theory based on the looking back upon what I have been,( upon the archeology - Fr. Gr. Árche - origin .) or - more correctly - what I haven´t been, or even more accurate: ( and here it turns somehow forwards )... I will become what I still have not been. ( The "It" is going to become the "Me" , - according to the so called second topik of F. - influenced by the Groddeck book.) This is founded upon a belief in deliberation, an uproar towards oppression, and it is here underlying a strong ( almost superficial ) belief in the health and strength and energy in every human being if only Man is freed from the tormenting experiences of childhood ( Cf. J.-J. Rousseau in Self-confessions and Emile (1762) ). The theories of P. Janet , C.G.Jung and - for instance - the Swedish "eclectic" physician, P. Bjerre , and many others are more focused on immediate action, active change and the future.

( The psychoanalytical theory is seductive indeed and seduced many a member of the movement. They all thought - and still think - it was/is a very beautiful theory. ( That of course needed a few changes... Like Darwin´s theory... )"All theory is gray." like Goethe truly said, writing - anyway - a giant book on colors.... ( Zur Farbenlehre, 1810.)...)

Implicit in psychoanalysis is: 1.) Every human being has its history.

As we already have seen, and as everybody knows, we can focus upon other properties, we could have another main view upon Man - and this is in fact very important to our whole great Project on the Monologue - like: .......2. ) Man is how he reacts. 3. ) Man is his choices. 4. ) Man is what God intended him to be. 5. ) Man is his destiny. 6.) Man is his goal, his striving. 7. ) Man is his own picture of himself. 8. ) Man is the way others sees him. 9. ) Man is the piece of art he makes of himself. 10. ) Man is a featherless biped. 11. ) Man is an animal among other animals.

We can become a bit perplexed when taking these options into account. For many of us , we are apt to agree to some ( i. e. several! ) of these definitions ( although we at the same time all agree, that Man can not be defined...). We are seldom presented to a list like this. We are not comfortable with it. Yet it plays a part in our discussion as in many others. We could use self reflection in accordance to nearly all of them. ( Not 11. Maybe, but even in 7. ) The implicit view is of course important to how philosophy is created. We will return to this table below.

In part III of my essay I will return to S. Freud and deal with him extensively, since he had an awful great importance to the climate around F. Kafka and his writings. To deal with psychoanalysis at length here would be too tiresome for everyone.

F. Some light on me.

( I would like to express a thought that is coming more and more often to my mind when I think of the utterance:"I know myself.". It is a strange feeling with this sentence. It is as if I could not say it without hesitation. And I mean it in several ways. How could I say it, if I had no doubt? I must have doubt about it. I do hesitate. While I am saying "I know myself." a little period of my life goes by. I am not the same person when I am beginning to say it as the person that has finished saying it. I have a feeling, that I hesitated a little in the middle of it. How could I know myself? I could not. No sensible person could say that he knew himself. Only a psychoanalyst would say it. A philosopher would never say it .... It is not only a logical impossibility, it is something deeply felt inside me. As if I was smearing myself. As if it was a heresy. One has to give some benefit to doubt, -even if it is essential not to give way to a fundamentalist approach ... , of the type:"Everything is uncertain!")

G. Some light on The benefit of doubt.

Concerning the nature of doubt ... anyone who wishes to get his own opinion - from scratch - about the nature of it, or concerning the nature of hesitation, which certainly constitutes the actuality of doubt - since hesitation has to do with "doubt in action", so to speak -, has most certain the opportunity to relate to this now and then or sooner or later.

Some people are more inclined than others to investigate it, and not very many can see it as something important at all. ( Outgoing, extrovert people would even think of the whole matter as bullshit.) Now, there might come a time in the life of a person, when e or she maybe is more inclined to investigate it, than what would normally be the case. Namely when a person gets isolated.

Isolation is a terrible thing, if one have not chosen it by ones own free will. Suppose - just or the sake of experiment - that you will be accidentally put in jail. or the like. ------

Now you are in jail. But soon you are finding yourself in company in your cell with a fly. And this turns out to be of great importance, both to you and to our subject of investigation. The little fly - a quite ordinary fly with the cleverness of an ordinary fly - at once has shown a great interest in your slice of bread and butter that has been kindly provided to you by the personnel of the institution. The fly is standing there in front of the piece of bread on your small cupboard. You are not immediately struck by the insight, that this means that you are not completely alone, but lifts up your left hand to smash the fly, to simply kill it onto the surface of your small table. In your solitude, in this quietness, you have at the moment got nothing else than this impulse to kill the "intruder" ( who actually probably already was in the cell when you yourself entered into it.) But the fly is naturally aware, like flies are. You can perceive this consciousness by looking at one of his ( we are assuming that it is a male fly ) legs, which now and then are lifted as a small gesture indicating awareness of danger and readiness to fly off. To counter this you are raising your eyebrows. You now know that he knows what is going on and he seems to know that you know that you know. It stays turned towards the sandwich. My left hand is slowly approaching. The you are all of a sudden struck by a feeling of guilt. Because you intend to kill a living creature. The guilt is connected to your inclination and to your intent to do so. It is not a very strong feeling. After all, the fly is still alive and kickin´. But - you halt the movement of your arm - in India ... and so forth...- you are getting more and more aware that it could be a problem here. But since you are upset by your situation, being put in jail like this ..., you cannot really concentrate upon the problem and you are resolutely dismissing the thought about the value of the life of a fly and you are, instead, increasingly aware of the awareness of the fly: the little one expects you to strike! It is , in a way, a bit like you: you are two equals in reflection on this matter and each of you are aware of the next move of the other.

Thus the sense of guilt and pity has suddenly changed into a more competitive feeling. Even if the fly is small and not threatening me, you are almost equal, because the fly can escape and thus deny you the delight to chase it, refuse to be a victim. But the fly do want a bit of sandwich and wagers to play the game. Perhaps the fly is familiar with the usually insufficient speed of human arms and hands. You and the little fly are waiting for each others actions. The fly is hesitating regarding his sandwich project. It takes energy to keep the awareness at high risk level - it seems very aware - and it is maybe a good idea to take off and rest for a while on the ceiling. I am hesitating too. I do not really know, in the first place, if I am really going to kill it ( and why). You do not know when, exactly when, - if you finally take the decision ... And you are also hesitating in concern to from which direction to strike. You know to your utter delight that the fly does not know that you have two tactics, learnt from earlier attempts to kill flies. There are generally two methods - as you might already know - to kill a fly by the hand. ( It is not a very nice subject, but I know that it is familiar to most people and most people do not generally think it is awkward, unless you, like I am doing here, are taking it seriously. Seriousness is often regarded with dismay when it comes to killing flies or - for that matter - killing rats or rabbits or chickens or .... ) Either you smash it from up above or you catch it with a sweeping move of your entire arm and catch it by clutching the hand very fast. This the fly does not know. But it knows, so it seems, that either an direct attack will come - or it won't. ( Aut-aut. Either - or. There is no third option. ) It has certainly not the faintest idea, I think, about the nature of your hesitation. ( We are not mystics... ) Probably it has no idea about the nature of guilt. It is not likely. Nor has it any knowledge about calculation of probabilities. But , as a matter of fact - you are not yourself certain about the nature of guilt or about whether your sense of guilt matters much and your insight in the calculus of probabilities is certainly minimal.

Thus you are two equals.

It has about the same intellectual capacity as you have, and there is nothing essentially different about you two. It does not matter that you know that you could kill the fly by using gas. (And you are not so sure about which gas ... ). The fly does not know about your education But you - on the other hand - does not know much about his. You certainly have different education, but ... you seem to have the same taste, because you are both interested in eating the sandwich provided by the nice warden. You suppose that this fly knows that it is essentially your (!) sandwich. It is very likely that flies own things, like food. But - like we already mentioned - it does not want to waste all his energy on trying to get a piece of bread right now. You think you own the sandwich, but on the other hand, you are not completely sure on this matter either. After all, flies have a right to eat whatever they like. It seems like nature gave to them this right. And after all: you could, if you wanted to, give to the fly a small piece of the sandwich to eat for itself. But you don't. It would leave all the problems hanging in the air. And it would put an end to an interesting battle. The fly keeps hesitating. Or it is simply waiting. You do not know. You can see him now and then lifting his leg, the same leg every time, and you do not exactly know what is meant by this, or if it has no meaning at all but is just a reflex or some tick. You keep hesitating. The longer you hesitate, the more value is accumulated into the fly, to you. Even the fly seems to think that he has grown important as it seems. He seems bigger and more and more aware. But after a period of time the fly seems to have reached the end of the road as far as hesitating ( or waiting ) is concerned.

One can easily imagine the fly thinking:

"This is no use! I will never get a piece of that!"

And you have suddenly yourself reached a point where you are thinking:

"What comes from this waiting of mine? Does it get tired, or doesn't it? Since it will never let itself get tired but will estimate it's powers quite accurately and leave for the ceiling and leave me left behind like an idiot. I am not sure any longer of which of us it is that has the clearer mind. I guess that in this very doubt lies the fact that the fly has the clearest. And thus I do not any longer think that it is I that am the one who is playing with the fly, but it is the fly that is playing with me in this cell, and he is silently smiling, when he surmises that I am pondering over my own hesitation, while it certainly itself has the whole weight of it's own capacity of waiting in his hands. It has probably from the very beginning a clear insight regarding the amount of energy to be put into the project, while I myself actually - to my great astonishment -have no idea whatsoever about anything at all here ..."

Mad about this situation ,and about what you think is the smile of the fly , you are now completely losing control - the control disappearing in the rage - you are hitting your fist right onto the table, and you are seeing the fly flying to the wall and you can also see the sandwich popping off and landing on the floor, upside down - according to the famous law of Murphy. And you are now certain of one thing. You do not master the Art of hesitating. Hesitating created doubt and doubt did create despair. ---

But the fly is alright. It all went according t the plan, and he is now in content calmly washing his legs with his mouthpieces sitting on the warm sunlit wall, while you yourself in bitterness and anger keeps looking at the floor and the bottom of the sandwich. It will take until the evening before you will try to generalize this event into a theory on hesitation. You are aware of that this can be a heavy enterprise, but you are not clear of the fact that your inclination towards hesitating too long will endure the time span for this task ( to create a complete coherent theory without inconsistency )into such a long period that the theory itself will never ever be finished but will all of a sudden, be interrupted by your release from prison, and thus no theory about hesitation will ever reach the mailbox of the philosophical periodical journal Mind.

Even the manuscript will be left behind by accident and left to recycling.

The little fly however has stayed in the cell, at home, and is right now eagerly waiting for his next partner, victim or object for his care, because: how many lives has he not saved! (The small psychoanalyst!)

You do not think that the fly hesitated. That was the very thing that saved his life.

You think ( you know) that you hesitated, and you think that this saved your life. You can doubt it, but it is not unlikely that it did.

----------

It is not unlikely that "self-consciousness" too is born out of doubt and hesitation. (Remember that self-consciousness" has nothing to do with self-confidence.Self-confidence is - I think - rather common among people who has no self-consciousness att all. )

We are aware of the dangers of doubt. The Mon. 1 is - in most cases - a very long doubt. There is with S.K. a criticism of this kind of life-lasting doubt in his Either-Or. ( As well as in The Concept of Anxiety and a critique of the Cartesian doubt elsewhere.) Confer also M. Horkheimer who, in his Uber den Zweifel, thinks that doubt has become a romantic ideal - certainly among young people - and that religion, which is his main concern in this essay - only can be saved by a jointure of doubt and religion.( p.130. Sozialpolitische studien ,1972.). (1969!). (Cf."Alle Erziehung soll nur daruaf hinauslaufen, den Menschen zu einem freien Mann zu bilden, oder vielmehr, da der Mensch so lange frei ist, bis er einem deutschen Professor in die Hände gerät, die angeborene Freiheit zu erhalten, zu entwickeln, ihr Inhalt and fulle zu geben." ( Herwegh, 1840.)

I could write a book exclusively on doubt. I would love to. I have always wanted to. I think I will, some day or night. Giving doubt ... the benefit of doubt.

§ 4.The philosophy of dialogue. An overview.

The reading of certain literature is like reading other peoples monologues. We enter into the constructions of others, climb upon the routes of others. The Danish ( hegelian-kierkegaardian ) poet Paul la Cour is writing in his Fragments of a diary (1951):" Every work of Spirit is in a higher sense a conversation. Why would you write, unless you did not seek something, which keeps eluding you, and which you wish to catch and get hold of /..../ This conversation, this Dialogue between the force of the Spirit and the force of the Soul,/.../."( p.133 f. )

  This simple fact is our problem. And the problem of many. We have already met this inclination towards reducing everything in life to dialogue ( or complicating it ). The dialogicans. They are many, but they have all the same theme.
I am thinking of Western writers ( this is a book about Western thinking ) like St. Augustine, Buber, M. Bachtin, Gogarten, Ebner, Theunissen,( Der Andere (1964),and Der Begriff Ernst bei Sören Kierkegaard ,Ch.Peirce and R. Otto, Emil Brunner, Skolimovski , J. Reeder to name a few, some of which I already have referred to.
The common view of these are that 1.) we have our basis of thought , security and possibility of evolving our personality in the meeting with other people, or God, the dialogue, and 2.) that we often when we are alone and creating a literary work or ourselves, in fact are creating a dialogical work.

The dialogicans are naturally quite right. But ... they have not uncovered the whole truth, and maybe, in only stressing , and stressing it so very hard, the dialogical aspect, they have tended to ,maybe by mistake, put other aspects in the obscure.

( Interplay: The monologue on the net.(2007.)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

"A monologue, pronounced monolog, is a speech made by one person speaking his or her thoughts aloud or directly addressing a reader, audience, or character.

* It is a common feature in drama, animated cartoons, and film.
* The word may also be applied to a poem in the form of the thoughts or speech of a single individual.
* Monologue is a common feature of opera when an aria, recitative or other sung section may carry out a function similar to that of spoken monologues in the theatre.
* Monologues are often found in twentieth century fiction.
* Comic monologues have become a standard element of entertainment routines on stage and television.

A Soliloquy. Youthful Mercury. "What's this 'ere on the plyte? 'Knock and ring'! Blowed if they won't be harsking yer to 'walk hinside', next!!" Cartoon from Punch magazine, Vol. 102, April 23, 1892

In a monologue in a play or film, the speaking actor need not be alone on the stage or scene; however, none of the supporting cast (in theater or film) speaks.

There are two basic types of monologues in drama:

Exterior monologue: This is where the actor speaks to another person who is not in the performance space or to the audience.

Interior monologue: This is where the actor speaks as if to himself or herself. It is introspective and reveals the inner motives to the audience. This is also a common device in stream of consciousness writings. Frequently in modern theatre, the actor may deliver the monologue in an "aside" (or a sequence of asides).

Where the character delivering the monologue is alone on stage it may also be described as a 'soliloquy'. Writers such as Shakespeare used the soliloquy to great effect in order to express some of the personal thoughts and emotions of characters without specifically resorting to third-person narration.

It is a dramatic convention that soliloquies and asides cannot be heard or noticed by the other characters, even if they are delivered in their plain view.

A written monologue may contain stage directions for the performer, and might be preceded by information about the monologue's setting. (For example, Samuel Beckett's monologue, Krapp's Last Tape).

The monologue was a significant feature of French classical drama; the monologues of Racine have been highly prized by French actresses, including Rachel and Sarah Bernhardt.

The dramatic monologue is a poetic form not to be confused with the monologue in drama. It was brought to a high standard by Robert Browning. The form is such wherein the poet writes from a speaker's point of view in the form of an address to a listener who does not respond in the poem. The speaker in the poem generally talks about a subject, but inadvertently reveals something about their character. It gives the poet an opportunity to present his subject in direct 'conversation' with the reader (e.g. Browning's Porphyria's Lover) or places the reader as a 'character' to whom the monologist speaks (e.g. the same poet's Mr. Sludge the Medium or My Last Duchess). Such poetry combines the dramatic impact of the stage monologue with the potential of more elaborate and suggestive use of language; on the printed page, where the words can be re-read and pondered, there is the potential to evoke more complex layers of intent and meaning.

The term "monologue" is also applied to a form of popular narrative verse, sometimes comic, often dramatic or sentimental, that was performed in music halls or in domestic entertainments in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Famous examples include Idylls of the King, The Green Eye of the Yellow God and Christmas Day in the Workhouse.
Contents

* 1 Operatic monologue
* 2 In Musical Theatre
* 3 In Music
* 4 Interior monologue
* 5 Comic monologue
* 6 Monologuing
* 7 Dramatic monologues
* 8 Monologue sources

Operatic monologue

In early opera and opera seria many arias were effectively monologues expressing the character's state of mind - for example, the well-known Ombra mai fu in Händel's opera Xerxes. However the function of such pieces was generally not, as in drama, to further the action or reveal anything new about the characters, but to provide opportunities for the singer to display his or her musical prowess.

With the libretti of Lorenzo da Ponte for Mozart, such arias began to have more dramatic force. The use of monologue by Wagner in his Ring cycle however brought a new concept of operatic monologue - much of the operas consists of extensive monologues by some of the principal characters, accompanied by music which, by the use of leitmotivs, sometimes underlines and sometimes contradicts what is being sung, giving an additional insight into the character's sub-conscious, as well as his (or her) overt motivation or emotion.

This more dramatic use of operatic monologue was adapted by Verdi and his librettist Boito to good effect in Otello and in Falstaff.

In Musical Theatre

In the world of musical theatre, songs such as Ol' Man River (from Show Boat) and If I Were a Rich Man (from Fiddler on the Roof) can be considered the equivalent of soliloquies, with characters singing aloud their inner thoughts. There is even a song actually entitled Soliloquy in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel (musical), an eight-minute solo in which the main character, Billy Bigelow, sings aloud his thoughts on learning that his wife is expecting a child.

In Music

American Musician Jandek, since 2000, has released a series of albums that seem to be sung/spoken monologues (3 C.D's where all spoken word/a capella). His subjects concentrate on love, life, depression, illness and religion.

Interior monologue

Based to some extent on Wagnerian monologue, the interior monologue has become an important feature of much 20th century fiction. The outstanding exemplar is James Joyce, whose novel Ulysses ends with the famous soliloquy of Molly Bloom, and whose Finnegans Wake is apparently one long monologue. Other authors using similar techniques include William Faulkner and Joseph Heller.

Comic monologue

During the nineteenth and twentieth century a popular feature of variety shows and the music hall in the USA and Britain was the comic monologue. This has evolved into a regular feature of stand-up comedy and television comedy. An opening monologue of a humorous nature is a typical segment of stand-up comedy, and may often form a regular feature of television programmes such as The Tonight Show.

Famous comic monologists include Dave Chappelle, George Carlin, Jack Parr, Billy Connolly, Bill Cosby, Lord Buckley, Johnny Carson, David Letterman, Jay Leno, Rove McManus, Bob Hope, Stanley Holloway, Julius Tannen, George Robert Sims, Ellen DeGeneres, John Leguizamo, Jerry Seinfeld, Don Rickles, Dane Cook and Conan O'Brien. Some of the aforementioned performers often perform what is referred to as a solo show, and some practitioners of the form wrestle with stories and themes which mix the comic and the dramatic, namely Spalding Gray, Garrison Keillor, and Eric Bogosian.

Monologuing

Also known as the villain speech, monologuing is a common fiction cliché in which the villain of the story will take a moment to gloat in front of the hero, who the villain believes will soon meet his demise. Commonly used in conjunction with the deathtrap, fictional villains have a habit of pontificating on how said victim will soon die, and reminiscing over how he tried for so long to get his kill and is now about to reap the reward. Villains may also give away details of their evil plots, on the rationale that the victim will die immediately. This speech almost always results in giving the hero time to escape the trap (OBSERVE/.K.G.), providing the protagonist critical information he needs to defeat the villain, or filling in plot background that has not yet been revealed to the audience. This idea suffuses comic book plotting in all genres of film and theatre.

Along with comic books, James Bond films feature some of the earliest monologue/deathtrap combinations. For example, From Russia With Love's assassin, Donald "Red" Grant, can barely resist the temptation to gloat over James Bond's impending demise, allowing himself to reveal the true architect of the plot (SPECTRE) and the finer points of how MI6 will be scandalized with circumstantial evidence surrounding Bond's (faked) murder/suicide. The practice reached its most absurd level in the Batman live action show of the late sixties. In almost every episode, Batman and Robin would be defeated and captured, then the villain would reveal a ludicrously elaborate deathtrap, finally, the villain would monologue about how the heroes would die and what their plan was. These shows/movies were later lampooned in the Austin Powers movies, and on Venture Bros. The Last Action Hero and other shows by which time all seriousness is removed and the monologue/deathtrap becomes a joke. The term "monologuing" was (at least in part) popularized by the movie The Incredibles, in which the character Frozone tells Mr. Incredible about an encounter the former had with the villain Baron von Ruthless ("the guy has me on a platter and he won't shut up"). and later when Syndrome admits that Mr. Incredible "caught me monologuing" upon attacking him during their first encounter on the villain's island.

Occasionally villains will have motives for their speech: they think the hero regards them as inferior, and wish to point out, in detail, the marks of their superiority, or they wish to have their plan admired by the one man who could appreciate the cleverness involved. The prevalence of the cliché, however, can make even such motivated speeches look implausible."

Thus monologue was explained on the net...., in May 2007, in free Wikipedia..... )

We have noted that the interest in the monologue is great at the moment , but mainly for one reason: People are interested in performing,( i.e. to be seen ) and performing a monologue in order to get access to a school of theatre. So the interest - on the internet - is focused upon the performance of a dramatic monologue. ( And there - of course - is nothing wrong with this.)

End of INTERPLAY.

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III. The birth of the dialogue philosophy.

We all develop from the beginning , and in later life too, in contact with others. The way to the Other is a Yes-Yes ( I am almost citing Christ.:" Your talking should be Yes -Yes or No-No!" ) - : one Yes to Me, and one Yes to the Other.... Because I can get a Yes from the Other, if I am able to , at times, say No to him or her.
The psychology and dialectics of the Other is a real vast field to study. I could read a lot of books on this subject, and get some knowledge out of it, of reading Hegel, Sartre, G.H.Mead, Benveniste, Heidegger, Mounier, Merleau-Ponty, Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, Husserl, Barthes, Buber, Ricoeur, Levinas and many many more.

The philosophy of the Other is a rather common idea, and it has come forward in different ages in different cultures and been described in many ways. We could even call the thought of the Other as a necessary person to ourselves as kind of "self-evident".( Even if we are not in favor of regarding anything at all "self-evident"....)

But here we have a branch of western philosophy that has made a big fuzz about the generalized Other ( with an capital O ), and it has had a certain success and had had readers, who have been thrilled by the idea of this Other and made up a philosophy around this creature.

The whole philosophy of the Other in Europe ( the very concept of "the Other" as a theoretical concept ) began , as far as I have understood, with a journey undertaken by Fichte to Königsberg in order to visit the lectures of Kant ( in the parlor at the home of Kant ) and the outcome of this: a book by Fichte, supported by Kant and read by Schelling and Hegel. The concept of The Other came along with Hegel as a reaction to the extreme subjective idealism of Fichte as it came forth in F.s Wissenschaftslehre.( The" I- I""Ich-Ich"-figure, the construction of reality from the "I". Cf. His popular The Destiny of Mankind.))

Kant had - when he composed his theory while wandering along the small paths around Königsberg - left some empty space in certain parts in his Critique of pure Reason ( which was then partly revised by some ideas in the runner up: Critique of Practical Reason ).I t was the problem with reality. Kant could in his great Critique no.1 not prove the existence of reality. This was to some a great challenge (!) .... and G.Fichte ( the older F., as we sometimes say) set out to fill the gap.

Fichte was later completely overshadowed by Hegel´s obscure Phänomenologie des Geistes ( 1807 ). We will return to this book later. That much can be said, that when it appeared, nobody dared to comment a word upon it, neither Schelling nor anybody else.

We become ourselves probably by being the other for the other, in dialogue. ( Or, as somebody has put it, I forgot who , by being " the stranger for the Other". ) We cannot identify with the Other, if the Other cannot identify with us. The discovery of Myself is only possible through the discovery of myself as the other for the Other. Via the absolute Other to the Real Other, according to Lévinas. French existentialism is partly centered around these formulas, where even proofs of the existence of the Other are contained ( Cf. Mounier and Sartre.) - as well as criticism of philosophies that cannot prove this Other. The history of the Other seems to begin - in intellectual terms by Hegel, then transferred to later German and French philosophy.

We might regard the lectures in France during the 1930ties by the gifted exile Russian Alexandre Kojève ( who came to France via Germany, where he had studied Hegel ) as an important landmark.

J.-P. Sartre , together with numerous other philosophers ( Lacan too), visited these lectures. Perhaps Sartre is most important as initiator and inspirator for later French and Anglo-Saxon authors if we look upon S. today. The rigorous "existentialism" of Sartre is not an ism defended by many people today, and S. himself revised his attitude of complete responsibility as it is put forth in the voluminous L´étre et le Néant (1943). ( In my text the English translation by Hazel Barnes, Being and Nothingness, is used.)..... to be cont......... Sartre is important for me in this essay as Hegel-interpretator ( mainly concentrated in the problems around self-consciousness ), and as opposed to psychoanalysis and as (the) biographer of G. Flaubert. (There still is a ressemblance between the Flaubert project and for instance Freud´s project concerning the Schreber case. ( About Schreber, the insane lawyer, who pleaded his sanity in Denkwurdigkeiten eines Nervenkrankes(1903).)"Psychoanalysis has not gained anything..." BaN.s.53....... ( like the criticism regarding the alleged solipsism of E. Husserls "egology" or phenomenology Cf. What is Phenomenology? & Critical investigations..). I do not intend to involve in this debate. ( I personally do not need proofs of this kind. )

Some at times rather popular philosophers, like M. Buber, are very persistent in their belief that "life is meeting people", "Leben ist Begegnung.". I do think it is indicating an oversimplified view.

Martin Buber has devoted a great deal of his time ( aside from his Zionistic work, continuing the Hungarian lawyer Th.Herzl´s work, Herzl, who started Die Welt in Germany... The Viennese Buber even tried to make Kafka editor of a Zionistic paper in Prague... in vain.) to this dialogical principle ( about "Wort-Paare" in Die Schriften uber das dialogische Prinzip (1954)."Spirit is Man´s answer to it´s You. Spirit is Word. Spirit is not in I, but between I and You." Buber claims that Man cannot be a true partner to himself, somebody who poses genuine questions to himself and gives genuine answers. Man "kind of already knows " the answer to the question.( Logos,p.16.- And this is undoubtedly a fair argument from B.s side. ) And written several books declaring that there are double concepts "Ich-Du" and the like, asserting that it is impossible to utter the word "I" without implying a "You". Life is lived looking for a distant You. Thus it is rather poetical, the whole thing.....

It is all very tiresome reading, I think , and it deals with completely ideal meetings between people, and not with real. It is noteworthy that M.Buber was D. Hammarskjölds favorite philosopher. ( The Swedish publicist M. Svegfors seems in his writings about H. to be blinded by the pure intelligence, that D.H. was a top student - based on records from his high school - of H., and thus overlooks all his weaknesses, i.e. his mysticism. Cf. S.s book Dag Hammarskjöld, 2005.) Kafka, who also heard Buber in person, but at an earlier stage, was not that easily impressed. Cf. the diaries of F.K.. ( He was as little impressed by Buber as by Rudolf Steiner. I assure! )Why are Mr. Buber´s books so extraordinary ...dull (!) ? - Buber claims that S.K. true enough is humanitarian, but still he calls him "anantropic".( Ib.,p.292.) It is a rather daring awful thing to say about somebody. It is sometimes hard to find the faults with Buber, when you are reading his books, but at a distance -----("Am besten sieht man ferne Dinge."( Kafka.)) they vanish and seems void of the concrete. Martin Buber humbly asserts that what he says is nothing new; it is only " put all together and executed" ("gesamt gesammelt und ausgefuhrt") . Among the influences are ... S.Kierkegaard via Mr. F.Ebners Das Wort und die geistlichen Realitaten (1921), where the dialogican Ebner feels indebted to S.K., but as to a human being who did not have the capability of finding the "You" in others. ( ! ) The salvation is to Ebner in his own life, in the midst of sickness and close to his own death,: There is only one You, and that is in fact God.". ( Thus Buber is on a true anti-intellectualistic ground. He is also deeply involved in the mystic chassidic tradition, has translated parts of the Old Testament. Bucher der Kundung.(Verdeutscht von Martin Buber mit Franz Rosenzweig.(1958))

( Cf. a passage from S. Kierkegaard in his extensive Either - Or, in describing the aestethic stage of human development:

" One must guard against friendship. How is a friend defined? He is not what philosophy calls the necessary other, but the superfluous third."( ! )- ( S.K. is often refraining from acknowledging the Other. He prefers - I am sorry to say - Himself ostentatively ... ) By the word "philosophy" S.K. is here directly referring to Hegel. Like in the mediaeval time "The Philosopher" always meant Aristotle, " philosophy" in the case of S.K. always means the philosophy of the day, i.e. Hegel´s philosophy. Kierkegaard hardly mentions other modern philosophers like Kant or Fichte./- Some of the philosophers of today regards S.K. a kantian philosopher in his main outlook-./( He is referring silently to Fichte, but is careful not to use his name. One could not accuse S.K. for too overt generosity. ) Schelling is the exception - concerning this silencium, Schelling, whom he also had heard lecturing personally in Berlin, where Schelling had his professure, strictly under the supervision of the anxious agents of the Preussian monarch. - But Schelling was reliable. - S.K. is mentioning Descartes, quite scornfully, - and some of the smaller German talents.

The main philosophical references of S.K.s are to the ancient Greek philosophers, Plato in particular. It has been pointed out by many, that S. Kierkegaard´s insights in the problems of philosophy were rather superficious, and he seems to look upon philosophy as a whole with the skepticism, which turns out to constitute his own small contribution to the discipline as a some kind questionmark. Being a distant pupil of the ambiguous Socrates, he knew of the importance of keeping the proportions. Socrates too had a very narrow belief in philosophy as a discipline. We will explain the connection and the meaning of all this later on. Kierkegaard was probably fascinated by all the duplicity and paradoxicality with the Socrates-figure. It also served his own method of communication.)

Bachtin.

Why are the utterly famous Mr. M. Bachtin´s (1895-1975) , book about dialogue ( La poetique de Dostojevskij ) so severely authoritarian ? There is in the philosophy of dialogue - dialogical philosophy - a kind of mysticism, a superstition, a claim of the "truth", by which each of these philosophers monologically and in an authoritarian way is oversimplifying human intercourse and the human condition in general. By ending up in lofty and beautiful metaphysics they want to eradicate every doubt. ( I do understand the dialogical genius of Dostoyevskij, but it would be foolish of me to admit, that I do believe that Dostoyevskij is the only author with this type of technique. I even think of it as childish to believe it.) (The editors really seem very much inclined to idolize persons.Cf. B.s book on Rabelais. And that is per se not a good thing. Having idols ... that is for kids.)

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All alone.... Monologue Man.

When this is stated about the Other in general , and the importance of dialogue, we might return to our original doubt. Is it possible to think all alone ? How is it possible for anybody to think for himself ? How could a monologue be creative ? Could it be that we develop and grew much more outside the dialogue than inside it ? Is it scarring to think for oneself ?

Isn´t it still permitted to be all alone ? Isn´t it an discarded , an overlooked advantage? We all know, that we reason with ourselves and that if we knew, that we didn´t, it would be a poor life to live ,- we know that it is essential to be able to reason with oneself, because if we did not any decision would come as a peculiar surprise. In our monologue we, among other things, may ask ourselves: "Shall I marry ?" ( Cf. S. Kierkegaard´s Either - Or ) and I presume that the decision in this matter - given the historical circumstances - is entirely mine.( a kind of "haute vulgarization"). Even if we all more or less agree, that it is possible to talk to ourselves, we do not much know about who this discussion comes about. What is it "to talk to oneself" ? Is it a "talk" ? ( According to Peirce it is! )We may at least assume, that it is not half a dialogue! Sooner we are inclined to say that we are having an inner dialogue. But only metaphorically. " Me as the Other."( Cf. Paul Ricoeur. )

I do not know, though, who I am talking to in a monologue. The "I" and the "me" or the "Self" are problematic, and in M. Heidegger´s Being and time (1933) these words are even called "empty existentials", these structures of the existence of Being. Maybe this is not much of a knowledge,... but the insight that "I am not I" merely brings, as S. Cavell says, some sense of luck, that I am not defined.... ( S. Cavell, The Claim of Reason . p.388 cont.. ). This agony ,though , must Mr. Cavell be responsible for himself. ("How can there be a key to my identity ?").
It seems as if I am not willing to make a decision about marrying, until I know who I am. When I am reasoning with myself, I am at the same time reasoning about who I am. We could state it like this : Monologue is at the same time about matter, me and itself. We could call this phenomenon: the Co-Monologue , - different subjects coexists , several problems are being solved , several matters dealt with contemporaneously.

It seems that Kierkegaards book Either - Or is a contribution to us concerning the different nature of chosing that something may exist for a person ( achoice of reality) on one hand, and choices of ways of living on the other. The first types, the choices of "that" are A.) the choice of Ethics to be, of good and bad to be, and B. the choice of my own person to be as it - fortunately or unfortunately - is. The final choice of "that" something "is" is the choice of that God exists.( The "that".) These choices are made without losing another opportunity. If one choses that good is,- and have chosen freedom - one cannot chose that good and bad are, without chosing the possibility to chose between them, and - as S.K. persuasively remarks: "Possibility is God", and chosen guilt, one has not lost anything either , -and if one choses that one´s own person is, one has not lost any other person, and when one choses that God exists - a choice quia absurdum, - in the way Abraham did on Moria mountain- ,one could not be said to have lost anything. What a person has won, on the other hand, seems obvious: authenicity, or - in Kierkegaards own word : a Self. ( Cf. J.Sløk, S. Kierkegaard, 1960.) (We will return to this matter later.)

Kierkegaard dwells extensively by all the psychological features by these choices and is talking about things, which many years later should be taken up again by S. Freud and Sartre and M. Heidegger.

P. Lejeune, Je est un autre. Note that in this book-title the verb is not "suis" but "est". Thus "Je" is not a first person pronoun here. Cf. Monsieur Lacans "fourth instance" below. Once we have stated this, it is easy to see that this complexity is wide open to a lot of fraud.

( Emm. Lévinas has in France worked in the same field, influenced by the same A.Kojéve. (Lecons 1933-39).)

..... Jacques Lacan.

Still more famous another french philosopher, that has worked as a psychiatrist as well become to the general public. Mr. Jaques Lacan. Lacans interest for the concept was probably also raised by Hegel/Kojève in the already mentioned lectures. Lacan was a psychiatrist and wrote a dissertation on the paranoid psychosis in 1932.

Lacan has a flair for paradoxes. And he has an intense speculative force, a miraculous way of mingling different philosophical and psychological concepts into a mess of his own.

Regarding the concept of the Other - which is our concern here at the moment - Lacan has this as the main concept. L´Autre, the Other, is replaced by him in his Ecrits by the letter A. ( He wanted to give his theories a formalized outlook, and trying to settle a scientific mood. He meant that any scientific discovery must be able to be put into ....an algoritm! Sic!)

The ordinary object in the surrounding world is called by Lacan for little a -l´objet petit a -.

The subject (sujet), the "I", is not with Lacan unifying or anything real realistic or the final goal ( as it is with Freud ) - since it is not possible - according to the nietzschean tradition - and it is evasive and a "complete mess of imaginary identifications", yes: a "gouverned paranoia". It is indicated by an S crossed over by a barr / .( Barred S.)

In order to construct his concept of the barred S, Lacan is using a semantic, linguistic apparatus and a very complicated reasoning around the differences between the imaginary and the symbolic, the subject and the ego (Je) and he is frequenty using the de saussurean concepts signifié and signifiant. Signifiant is kind of "the expression","the sound", singfié is kind of the "meaning"," the content". ( Lacan pays generally no attention to the difficulties in this theory, since Ferdinand de Saussure has omitted the transferring "idea" in his scheme in the classical lectures referred in the book by the name Cour de linguistique générale,(1916), written by two students of his - collecting and conferring their notes from the lectures, including pictures of trees and the like ...., after the death of their beloved and charismatic teacher.) The symbolic has a reassuring function and is too in the symbolic order which is something existent, rather mystical, which has a non-sens , which is , simply, the unconscious....

The row of singnifiants is dominant, determining the singifiés, that appears to be hanging from the chain of signifiants like small berlockes.( We may note here, that Lacans wiew of language is purely directed onto words which are denoting something - thus mainly nouns. He is not troubled by grammar, by adverbs,adjectives, by a lot of pronouns ( other than personal) and so on. )( Lacan was not only using linguistics, which he did not master very well,- which anglo-saxon critics are prone to point out every now and then - but also included lots of philosophy, although he had only a minor formal knowledge of philosophy as well. He simply once hired a student of philosophy to lecture him ... He was very interested in literature, and he made famous and intriguing analyses of some of E.A. Poes work. The production of Lacan is vast. It is mainly in the form of lectures, but there is a couple of essays too.Cf. Lacan´s Ecrits.)

Lacan is - as far as I understand - trying to establish an understanding of the symbolic relation between the subject and the world by letting one know the symbolic relations between the S ( or barred S ) and the A ("le grand Autre"), which makes the world a better place, since it makes more sense then the rekation between the S and the a ("le petit a"), which is imaginary, poor and lacks dialectics.

"The Other" or A has a lot of meanings by Lacan. A is -much according to an essay by Jacques-Alain Miller, L.s pupil and friend as well as owner of the legacy -

1.) the A of the language, 2.) the A of the universal discourse, 3. the A of the Truth; 4.) the third party of every dialogue, the reference for pacts and controvercies ;5.) the A of good faith; 6.) the A of the speech; 7.) the fundamentally addressed , to whom the speech is directed, way behind the person towards the speech seems to be directed. 8.)A. is the place of the Code;9.) A is the place where the Code is formulated. A triggers itself. That is why it is the A, whose discourse is the unconscious, i.e. the A, which" in the heart of the deepest experience of identity is stirring me up" 10.) A is the A of the desire., the desire as unconscious, inpenetrable for the S as its slave.

The A seems to be very many things, but it could also be subsumed under the freudian ( fechnerian ) concept "The other scene" ("Der andere Schauplatz"), thus the place where the unconscious is working.

Using this A presupposes that the conscious is willing. The ( always imaginary ) relation between S and a ( petit a ) is only disturbing.("The real (/reality/) is the impossible.") The only important relation is the relation between S and A ( in the two different forms of S and the very many of A ) . A is that which is there, given.("L´Autre tout-puissant" )In the psychoanalytic process ( L. was a practitioner ) the psychoanalyst is trained to inhibit himself as an I( ego), to be able to be interpreting the analysand (client) from the position of that of the Other, the A.

That it is hard to understand the other, that the signifiant of the A is always unclear, makes the A barred as well as the S. ( barred A.)

The theory of Lacan is very complicated, not coherent or complete, and he tends towards the final lectures of his to be a little bit more intersted in repling theA with parts of the a, despite all the lacks, or thanks to all these, in the work to make a person an integer, all the time persistent in his ethics:"Never let go of your desire!".

( An interesting analytical as well as wide-set biography on Lacan has been written by the French psychoanalyst Elisabeth Roudinesco.)

The dialogue-theologicans.( The Other in God - God as the Other, ....and the "agapéan" Ethics.)

We will here mention a few of the theoligicans that could be said to be dialogicans as well: Augustine, Rudolf Otto, Emil Brunner, Tillich & Theunissen.

The first of the dialogue-theologicans was maybe St. Augustine ( himself ). ( In his reasoning about the "threeness" of the spirit in his book De Trinitate ( b.14-16.)- written about 416 A.D.. Aurelius Augustinus asserts, that the Spirit aquires its true relation to itself only in the relation to God.( Thus A. claims that selfknowledge is not "true" if not brought about within this kind of triangle.( Kierkegaard has a reasoning very much alike Augustines in his book Sickness unto Death in the famous - and beautiful - introduction, where he talks about Mans relation to himself and the relation to oneself as spirit; that it is, and that this "that" is the relation, and that this "that" is "posed by a third"..... ( This third has to be interpreted as God in his context.Cf. SuD.p.1.)( Concerning the problem of the "that",- Ger."das Dass"- confere Th.Adorno, Philosophische Terminologie.)

Another man of "this kind" - in modern time - is Rudolf Otto, whose book The Holy ( Das Heilige, (1917,1936 ) in a quite extraordinary way takes as its startingpoint in Imm.Kant´s famous foreword of the first edition of Critique of practical Reason ( Kritik der Urtheilskraft), where so much else of our philosophy has begun , and furthermore where Otto is giving the Holy the status of a kantian "cathegory", i.e. he takes to widen the spectre through which we are able to aquire knowledge about the world and - oddly enough - states that The Holy is a cathegory in everybody´s intellect through which we can accuire knowledge.

Kant, Immanuel.: (1724-1804 ). Dr.1755.

One could say that the one who has no opinion on Immanuel Kant has no opinion on philosophy.

Private docent Kant 1755-69, when he studied Swedenborg ( and exchanged a couple of letters with him .... ) but essentially Hume and Leibniz. He became prof. of Mathemathics 1770 in Königsberg .

The famous Kritik der reinen Vernunft appeared in it´s first edition in 1781

and shortly afterwards he wrote Prolegomena zu einer jeden kunftigen Metaphysik die als Wissenschaft wird auftreten können. Kants dictum against the extreme empirists ( by whom Kierkegaard never read a line, - he could not read English - or French - in contrast to Kant.-who was of Scottish decent; - his ancestors spelled the name "Cant"- ... The German educational system was more extensive than the Danish. And Swedish. It still is.....) The romantics are sometimes put as a reaction against the British empirists, Locke, Berkely and Hume. ( Cf. B. Russell ! ) This is not the whole truth.

Kant:"Of course we reach all our knowledge about "reality" through experience, but it is not sprung from this experience."----- He thus took on the almost impossible task: to once and for all investigate the presuppositions and possibilities of human knowledge (mind), in a sort of mediating between two opposites A. pure rationalism ( f.ex. Bacon ) and pure empirism ( Locke ). His own view is a criticism. ( Behind much of Kant´s work lies - of course - the question about religion and the place of religious belief, since this was important at the time ... We know that Kant was not religious himself. And that he feared to say so.)

He divides knowledge into two kinds; the empiric ( a posteriori ), which is founded on the perceptical skills ( Ger. "Sinnlichkeit") ,expressed in the syntethic assertation: "My cat is blue." and the a priori knowledge, which can be accuired independent by the perception. "Either it is raining or it is not." The later kind of assertations are by Kant called analytical. Almost others are syntethical. The value of the analytical assertations can be discovered through logical analysis. Now is the question: What is the difference between an a priori knowledge and an analytical assertation?( Because we have no a priori assertations.)To begin with: Is "2 plus 2equals 4" a priori knowledge, and is the assertation analytical. Is mathematics a giant analytical tautology?

The question posed by Kant in Cr.o.p.R. is whether there are syntethic assertations a priori or not. This question is important to the development of his entire ethics, . He answers this question assertingly, by a "yes", - but many philosophers nowadays regards the question as not very clearly posed.( Cf.Wedberg.

A synthethic

A short outline of the problem:.....................

Kant also says - in another of his books (edited in the year of ...... )-( Kant died in the year of 1804 , ten years before the birth of S.K. ) that you can build religious faith on reason ( only). Against this rose many a soul, among others S. Kierkegaard.

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(It is a quite astonishing thing, if Otto knew how much Kant himself had been occupied with the realm of the mystic, crizicing Swedenborg and so on ...., writing about the connection of knowledge and religion in several publications. We will return briefly later - maybe - to the content of the book of Otto´s.)

Emil Brunner (b.1889) is another one,

a Swiss, a personalist philosopher, who wrote a Dogmatik I-II (1956) and in his Das Gebot und die Ordnungen (1932) is describing three stages of reflexion. Man travels from the bourgeoise to the demonic, where Man wishes to enjey his freedom without any limitations, to the "spiritual objectification" of science and art. All these three stages are what we use to name "aesthethic". In his Wahrheit als Begegnung ,Truth as meeting (1938)- more central to us here - he writes:

" Instead of the third person, within whom we know and talk about "somebody" or "something", the other person comes forth with the address of the prayer. The prayer - not the so called assertation of faith, the formulated, theoretically organized credo - is the real form of faith. Just like the words of God is not a teaching, but an address - and never anything else than address - so is neither faith a knowing of thesises, yes, it is not knowing at all, but prayer./..../ All knowledge is it-relation and hence a relation of domination; but faith is you-relation and hence togetherness."(p.65). Brunner also asserts that this relation to God is the primary dialogue, preceeding the authentic ( in heideggerian sense ) dialogue with the fellow human: "by this it should be put forward; it is not here this, that we are using a known relation, the you-relation, on the relation between the words of God and the faith. Sooner it is, that it is only in the belief of the words of God we can have a you-relation separated from the object-relation." and thus:" The human being outside faith can only percieve the difference between "you" and "it" in a very relative sense. Togetherness and mastery will by him or her always - since we are sinners - always mingled ."(p.66.)

The part of Christian Ethics delivered by these theolgicans, the agapéian Ethic ( from Gr. "agape" ), the act-agapeism is most probably founded upon the New Testament, (Matth. 25:40). Agape, the love who is not looking for his, is as a matter of fact not directed towards the Other, but towards God in the Other.( Cf. J. Fletcher, Situation Ethics, and E.Brunner, The Divine Imperative, p. 117.) On this the whole diakonal idea is founded. ( For more about this, see: P. Tillich,Systematic Theology, 1967, V.Furnich, The love Command in The New Testament,1972, A.Nygren, Eros and Agape, K.Barth on Paulus, Letter to the Romans, Helm, Quinn, and many more.... )

We do met philosophy of dialogue here and there,( f.ex. H. Skolomowski, b. 1930.), and often, and it is usually hard to find it completely all wrong. But if you are only a little bit of a misanthrope, you can be inclined to say: Oh, yes, in an ideal world, and you seem to know that either we are all in the paradise of dialogue or we are not. Because the dialogue is painted nearly that way ... and reality looks not exactly like we could kind of chose this paradise or educate one another into it. Thus it is mainly speculation, - pure nice benevolent beautiful speculation.

5. The form of the monologue is extension, articulation and direction.

It all has to be written in one sole breath.

This was the opinion of - among others - Franz Kafka. This is often the opinion of the author. It is a demand from within. There are lots of exceptions to the rule. There are many authors, who rearranges time and time again...Falaubert, Pascal, Rousseau and so on .... They could devote a large amount of time to the completion of a book. - But, where we can see the "flow", the rapid extention, we can also study the direction, the "to or fro" of the discourse... Neither Kafka nor Kierkegaard ever was very interested in changing their mass of discourse. This discousrse was all too natural to them. ( Kierkegaard in his early years definitely changed a lot, but in the main he just wrote...) Kafka never changed anything. ( This is a bit strange, since his idol was Flaubert, who was constantly very paricular in the choice of every expression.) The extention, the "flow" is the life and spirit of the immediacy, The immediate, which is the individual himself, the direct, which is the marque of the subject,,, The immediate is the same, even if it is educated within control. Because we have, for example with Kafka and Kierkegaard, two persons forced to writing by inner forces, - and we can pose an hypothesis concerning their wondering, not about wheather they would write or not, but only what they would write - and establish that this curiosity concerning the outcome became more interesting as they both decided to gouvern and hold back their anxiety to write, and this is the presupposition, the cause of their success, the presupposition for the even extention, the "flow of the discaurse", the style, - and if the flow is not an even one, there will not - at this level of writing - be any flow or extention at all.

Often there is a talk about irony in connection with these two authors. Kierkegaard says about irony, that it can be ... the first anxious way of getting nearer to ones own soul in the first tender aquaintance with it.

..............................

We are here concerned about the nature of reflection and monologue, - if we are prone to look at the flow of reflection as a procedure of exhaustion or as a procedure of will-power (Cf. Kjell Espmark, Själen i spegeln on G. Ekelöf,(1977), and Ingemar Persson wiew on reflection as a procedure , that hopefully slowly dies of its exhaustion... and S. Kierkegaards steady wrestling with his own reflection as if it was a compulsory habit - which it probably was -, at the same time as it was the only way for personal survival to him. Kafka is in a similar situation. Reflection is some sort of disease. Problems are not equal to secrets. Solving of problems are not equal to speculation, and secrecys do not crossinseminate each other and automatically brings to life a beautiful child.The solving of a problem - when it comes to what kind of flow is accurate to whom - is a work where we can discern blood, sweat and tears, but also chance....

When talking about these "flows" and extentions it could be proper - interesting - to quote Oswald Spengler, from his marvellous book Untergang des Abendlandes I-II (1918-22) ,p.82.: "every growing being ( werdende) has direction, everything already created has extention", where S. among other things in an extraordinary clever way analyzes the concept of number.( Later undertaken as well by the great B. Russell in a very formidable way.( What is a number? )

These flows and extentions gets a certain character, a change in the vertical zone of style,( the bending of the style ) in comparison to my- in th e theory - assused Point ( This point, which probably also can be of a different weight, have a different radius with differnet people.... ) And - if the monologue is the result of a calculus - be it a minor monologue or a monologue of life - , this calculus might be revised, and something might be changed, willingly (!), It can be changed consciously or unconsciously, because it is two conscious authors, Kierkegaard and Kafka, who early in their lives - consciously - never saw any other escape (!) than writing.( And what did they understand about this "writing"?) To talk to oneself is, in a monologue, to be "enough". If I am freely reflecting on the monologue myself, I could say ( to you ) something like this:

"The more I am talking, the greater the possibility to reach to the "point" from where i can return to a "point" from where to start. But - ere I have reached the first of these points I am busy talking to myself. I am talking to myself in different modes before and after the crisis ( the reaching of the second "point", provided the disaster, the catastrophe ... ) Certain people will never reach the critical point. All their lives they are talking towards a point they never reach and never catch even a glimpse of. Maybe even this is the most common condition.

Some people might not care about it. The sophists of the antiquity knew, according to Pierre Bourdieu, that it was not enough to teach people the art of speaking, but teaching them to speak incidentally. To be a well formulated orator, o be able to dominate language and public is nothing against the art of speaking quite incidentally! Bourdieu claims that even some real "bad French" would be appropriate now and then ...( Kultur och kritik, p. 139 - 157.)

Others may get a point from which to speak early in life. Planted by accident. In my reasoning I am assuming that the normal situation for a human being is that I am beginning , quite unconsciously, to talk towards a distant point. When I am talking, I am always talking to myself, but with a varying intensity and awareness. I can not formulate anything at all without consulting myself. I am lonely and I am always in a sololoquia, - like Aurelius Augustinus was in his book, Confessiones, whose original title was Sololoquia, - ( Talks with myself) - "Mihi ipse factus sum questo magna, ... " -" I became to myself a huge problem, ... "

It is a rather sad fact, that each human being is a lonely being. Few people would be willing to underline this fact. It is not a popular an comforting view in most cases.

If I am lying on my back and have nothing special to do, I might reflect. When Iam free to talk to myself I ought to chose something special, important, defined, concrete or something like that ... It is hard to be reflecting, without an issue of some sort, and I can normally use an issue as a kind of "point" from which to start, and to which I can refer and come back. It is not easy to be earnest without an issue. I will be aware of that I might come to think of several important things during my thinking of this issue, that does not concern this very issue.

In a way, I have to begin before I begin. ( Beginnings are tough! ) I have to begin to talk before I am beginning to talk to myself. (?) I am counting with a kind of parallel while I am thinking. Let us say that the normal thing is like this:

Before I know of it , I have begun talking, and while I am talking , I am - without really knowing how - beginning to talk to myself.( The talk is always in a sense -of me.)

I am talking whilst I am talking. It continues by itself. The monologue might be the delight of speech. In a free monologue nothing is known, sure or certain. There is no mental reservation, no arrière-pensée, . I am just in my usual monologue. Because, like I already asserted: I cannot possibly have any serious refutations before I begin: I cannot possibly plan to refute myself. Thus in my monologue I am in a difficult situation, if I do not allow myself to refute myself, to claim an opposite opinion .... I will kind of have to chose which monologue there´s gonna be ... Shall I talk without thinking, or shall I seek for the weaknesses of my own reasoning ?

It is getting more and more complicated, while I am getting - at the same time - more and more familiar with my way of reasoning, and more and more prone to refute this or that.

The most common thing is, though, hat my monologue is a long Yes. This uttering of a Yes has a history and it often has an end in the famous peripeti, the catastrophe, the insight, that I was wrong, or that things were not at all as simple as I thought, ... Aristotle talks about the peripeti:" The peripeti is the sudden change in what is happening into its opposite/.../ and this is always by probability and necessity."( On poetry, p. 39. )"

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§. 7. The Monologue - that is true - is much , like writing , a risky occupation.

We could as easily be tangled up in a monologue as in writing. It might be appropriate here to make a distinction: writing never aims directly at a decision, monologue often does. Writing may be in it´s own right, - monologue is involved in a life-project. We might say, that writing is a matter of aesthetics, monologue - in the end - of ethics. If we do not make a distinction like this, we are apt to end up in a greater trouble than the trouble we have now...

We could begin to illustrate the commonness of (Co-)Monologue by thinking of how we often react to changes in the weather."How strange!", people say,"when it is a cloudy day like this, I do not quite recognize myself ! I feel like a complete stranger to myself today! " Thus, it is like some sort of "self-consciousness" often is born with a change in the weather. Or again and again brought up. And it is a very common and natural thing. This self-consciousness is thus brought about when I do not quite recognize myself. Power of negation.--

B. The weather makes us aware. ( Blame it on the weather ! )

It is a common thing to be unsure of oneself and the identity of the "I". And it is typical that the uneasy feeling about this comes up when there only has been a change in the weather. - "How can it be" , any normal person ( and the abnormal to ) wisely asks himself, " that such a futile (!) matter as a cloudy sky could make me doubt myself and my beliefs in who I am ?" And: "What would not other things, more severe, more important, painful, lustful... do to me, that I am not aware of, because they demand my decision about themselves, something which is not the case with the weather. I could not possibly do anything to the weather. Who am I ?" And:" But I am never talking like this when I am off balance in action. Do I know what I do ? Now when it is a cloudy day I will sort things out, so that I can feel prepared, have a method when this feeling strikes again, or when it does not...." "I might say that this day is a strange day. It is a thinking day, and I do not know who is thinking. Maybe the clouds above."

"We could always blame the weather."

"I do not know who I am." Nietzsche said to himself, and Wittgenstein once exclaimed :"Forty years old and still an idiot!"
After all, the thomasian "you are only human... "stands put. In this example the individual at hand is making several distinctions. He seems to be aware of that he is in a relative passive situation. He is unsure. He fears himself. He fears for what he does not reflect upon when he is in action. It is a cloudy day, and he or she is not questioning him- or herself about marrying, for example. This question might be regarded as a mental hurricane. This is the insight of the person under the clouds. And it is a worrying insight.

Is it possible to take something into consideration , and at the same time have a monologue ? Is it possible to take something into consideration without at the same time having a monologue . Is it possible to take something into consideration, - to make a decision - inside a dialogue ?

Maybe reflection mainly is a "row of negations" ? A process consisting of negating.( "Das Negative zu tun, ist uns noch auferlegt; das Positive ist uns schon gegeben." , F.Kafka, Betrachtungen uber Sunde, Leid, Hoffnung und den wahren Weg, 1917-19.) Maybe reflection is something like the dialectic of Kant, or the dialectic of Hegel or of Adorno ? We do not think so. We think that it is a still more complicated thing. That it is as well to be persistently questioning, to be questioning in an persuasive way. What is - in fact - more persuasive in the long run - than a question, or even more questions ... ? The more persuasive a question, the harder the decision. And we have then reached the ultimate goal of philosophy ( according to S.K. ) : to make difficulties.( The absolute end of the pursuit. ) The question is a fruit of the negation and contrary to any affirmation. We can never reach the kernel of reflection in a general formula. Reflection will always begin anew, go astray on paths unknown. It will never be finally systematized by anybody ( some von Linné of the world of reflection )in any meaningful way. Reflection could be discussed, and shall and should perpetually. Reflection, and "reflective philosophy" , will always be questioned. ( Cf. Merleau-Ponty : Le visible et l´invisible.). Reflection has but one definite limit: it will never decide, by itself.( We are happy about this.) The decision is something else, and something qualitatively separate from it. And decision is the great unknown.( We have a new trend, "cognition research". Since we still are permitted to laugh in this country at certain phenomena - despite our entry in the European Community (ECU), we are now laughing. We do not think much of the enterprises of these "scientists" but naturally regards their X-ray projects as a circus and a humbug. They are making a living. That is all. Their own. And producing guesses and platitudes.)

One of S.K.s main purposes in life was to point out the necessity of choice and our complete and eternal inability to observe from outside the "nature" of choice. ( His critic of Psychology, Psychiatry, Education and science in general was severe and devastating - sometimes even for himself. He actually - unjustly - hated microscopes and telescopes. He had been much better off , mentally, had he , like his competitor prof. J.L. Heiberg, been a litle interested in observing the size and orbits of stars and the like ..... )

C. Vertigo.

There is a certain "vertigo" in my mind when changing from one way of looking upon a figure to another, reverse way, one way of looking upon life or another, one way of pronouncing "eye" and then " I".... and it is not easy to know what happens in the change of an aspect, within the small, the tiny, most tiny moment, when I am changing aspect. It is hidden. But it is there, as a vertigo.

Maybe most conscious , mental acts are results of a vertigo. They consists of hidden changes. But the change takes place.

When I am talking to myself, and when I am thinking alone, I am in a process, the monologue, the soliloquy, and something will eventually emerge. I am trying to reveal something with Monology, and I expect something to happen in it. That I will take away the disguise. Monology is sometimes the language of a person in distress. In other moments it is the pleasure of expressing a change, the privilege to express such a thing. Or to make another change, just for fun, of pure joy. I have come upon a truth on my way !!

As you can see it is not easy to determine what a monologue IS. We could not possibly cover it up. The monologue is not part of classical philosophy. It is more a rhetoric thing. I am using the concept in a broad sense. But the monologue is part of the world and the world is the object of philosophy. And I have asserted, that one can never foresee what will happen in a monologue, and it is even hard to know if one is getting nearer to a point or reaching it or can pass over it.

"After a certain point I simply cannot continue. This . is this point." (S. Kierkegaard )

He sometimes plays with words and "the art of communication", S.K..

Does certain points OPPOSE to us? The monologue is not a small rigmarole, list of words, which you can repeat over and over again......

(to be cont.d. )

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§ 8. About comparison in general - in comparison to my own comparison.

Before I am beginning to illuminate this scene of points and directions,.....which is the main means in my search for the concept of self-knowledge, I have to make an aberration. In order to be able to illustrate the theory I will have to use authorships. I could not possibly use ONE. It will have to be at least two. But then another problem quickly arises. How do I compare ? What is a comparative study ? The proverb states: Nothing is good or bad without comparison. But no comparison is fair, and no one is complete. Comparison always limps, so that you easily returns to where you came from... By comparison, by analogy, no proposition is really clearly put forth. You could always compare with something else... It is an old truth, that analogy does not prove anything. And here we cannot - maybe - even prove the existence of an analogy. ( You could return in the history of philosophy to the Irish bishop G. Berkeley - after whom universities have been named - who doubted the possibility of comparison generally. ) A walk - a peripatetic - an imaginary walk, where to historical persons, Kafka and Kierkegaard are put side by side, will thus less be a stroll in the analytic countryside, where the stature of the one shadows the other, where the rush steps of the one makes the other left behind . Only by expelling the qualities who where special to each of the two, and concentrating on the common features, the common problems, and looking at the discourses on a common basis, we will try to proceed and to look into the nature of monologues. ( By reading the old Greek Plutarch (46-120 A.D.) - as a matter of fact it was the first book for grown-ups I ever read ( transl. partly by I. Harrie ), just like it was for J.-J.Rousseau ... - , i.e. his comparative studies in the lives of famous Greeks and Romans , we often - if we read P. often - get a bit dizzy, a negative vertigo (sic!), something that seems to have been felt by Plutarch himself, since he cures the oddity of his outset with a kind of cheerfulness, a small apology for not having taken account of matters that made the one or the other life really worth living, - outside the comparison... !

By a constant comparison, you often get rather blind, - in the end you have completely forgotten that you are comparing. Comparison is a walk up side down. You think that life, or writing, or what is at stake, is in turn a comparison to something else, something third..., but what. It is a bit like those people- they are not a few - who have misunderstood life and believe that life is some sort of a contest - . In the comparing one person is in a way corrected to meet the other; subjects that was alien to a person are - in their complete absence in concern to this man or woman - taken into account. At the end of the walk, to persons side by side, we have arrived to a kind of "frictional"( or osmotic ) understanding, a constructed understanding, an understanding a bit askew, and we do find that one life, one whole human life, cannot possibly be understood in comparison with a random other.
We could chain two lives together, and nobody gets any happier.

In real life , for example, Kafka and Kierkegaard, if they had lived at the same time and had contra-factually really met, would not have had much to talk about, had not wanted ( I think ) to come to know each other. They were alike in the fact, that they would not address the other. They were, to speak with S. Kierkegaard again "alike in their difference", like S.K. nonsensically says in one of the inaugural thesises about Socrates and Jesus in his dissertation Om Begrebet Ironi (1841).

But those two ( K. & K. ) did not play in the same league, one could remark. With the persons compared by Plutarch there is an affinity in social position: Demosthenes - Cicero, Alexander - Caesar, etc. Yet, despite all this, there is a reason for comparison. We could , looking upon those lives en gros, not "sub speciae aeternitatis" ; we could, by adding a measure, or rather a method, like the one I briefly alluded to above, the one with points and directions, have a third party in our own discourse of understanding, or I should rather say, interpretation. Maybe it was also the idea of Plutarch, not to explain the lives of Caesar and Alexander, but to explain something else , about human nature.( Cf. Lev Sjestov´s excellent book about change,: Dostojevskij and Nietzsche , - the Philosophy of Tragedy. (1903), - Sjestov, who later on came to write an extraordinary work on S. Kierkegaard too. )

( To those of you who think I take my time, while you yourself are in a hurry, I must advise you: Do as you chose! ... Somebody once said: A good book should be like a good friend. And you normally don´t get a good friend in an hour. "A book is machine to think with." is another saying. Then this essay is not a smaller type of fork. )

§ 9. The monologue of life.

( There is an anecdote about the American philosopher Ch.S. Peirce, how he had developed an original skill ; he could write down on a piece of paper a question with his left hand and answer it simultaneously with his right hand on this paper. It was, according to the people present a marvelous sight.
He must have minimized his doubt and hesitation on those occasions.... )

My FOCUS will all the time remain upon the monological, the monologue of life and it´s evolution by each of these two randomly picked authors, with a continuous glance upon the monologue I am myself in the process of writing ( not comparing myself to these giant writers in any other way ). My intention is not to give an entire picture of the authorship of the two of them. But I will all the same encounter another problem, - the problem of biography.
  There is no objectivity to be found in biography. Much research by different scientists have readily shown this.( Cf. Ricoeur. Sartre. E.Wilson, D. A.Stauffer , Bärmark /Nilsson and others...) It is a minor art, according to the famous R.L. Stevenson, if an art at all.

I stated above that the authors K. and K. very chosen randomly. It is not exactly true - something which you probably already have suspected - ; I have chosen them because I have always liked them ( not idolized them !), in different sort of ways, and because I am a bit familiar with the lives and works of these two. I have sometimes even felt a certain strange affinity between them and me. It would have been possible, if I would have wanted to extend my work still further ( a terrible thought, even to me ) , to have added other authors as well, like for instance L. Wittgenstein and Maine de Biran or Herbert Tingsten and Adolph Törneros, excellent authors in their own right, and favorites of mine as well.( Or why not Machiavelli ( "The prince.") compared to Baldassare Castiglione, the author of the Courtier ? But I cannot read Italian, I am sorry to say.
Maine de Biran became known for his introspective cleverness in his diaries and in psychological essays, as an important "sideshow" to Descartes. He was called by Henri Bergson "le Kant francais" . I do like de Biran much more than Montaigne, who is much less analytical - in a way - than de Biran. Montaigne sketches where de Biran fights.

I might be criticized for "choosing two loners, who apparently never go in touch with reality"....- or something like that. Kafka and Kierkegaard has been violently attacked over the years, often by people who at the beginning of their career were great admirers of one or the other, like the energetic Mr. Canetti, ( "die unbedingbare Eigenart der Anlage Kafkas, dass er aus Fehlern nichts lernt"....Das Gewissen der Worte, p. 160. The clever Canetti has noticed something important here, that is certainly my opnion.) Mr. Pawel, Brandes, Mr. Henning Fenger ( who seems to really hate S.K. ) , Th. Adorno etc..

( When I write Madame, Mademoiselle, Monsieur or Mr. before a name, it indicates that I do not like the person in question..)

  Maybe I have chosen two atypical monologues, - ; I could have made the choice according to the scientific research principle according to which one should examine a dysfunction to be able to better be able to discover the function, study pathology to get to grips with health.
Or maybe I have chosen them because I think they have both already shown that they can stand every examination in the world.....

It could generally be said, that modern philosophical reflection sometimes has widely surpassed itself. Philosophy of discourse is a field where people tend to show their manifold wisdom and supreme cleverness in an extraordinary enigmatic way. This book - if I may call it a book - weights lightly in comparison , and I try to be so little obscure and so little paradoxical as I can. I do not "believe in paradox". I am not fond of Heraclitus at all. My theory about the monologue is not exactly by the excessive kind. It is a down to earth theory.... not lofty at all. If I am arguing , that the understanding only is to be found in the directions ( in regard to a certain point ) of the monologue at hand, and for example the authoritative or non-authoritative direction, it will have to be reformulated into concrete theory about direction and exemplified, some things I hope to be able to do.. And I am sometimes inclined to believe, that my work in part is a Critic of Reflection, from within , seen from the fact that I am concentrating on certain utter features, on special dynamic kinds of "HOW".Variation of the theme of the media is the message, the manner is the thing....

"Of course you can ask yourself what "elaborating" is and question the value of the concept; you could even go so far as to admit that this is a myth and asseret that the characteristica of the real thought is genuine seperation, that it has a certain muteness, which would mean that the ideal for the "essential" book - provided that the essentia of a book does exist - would be Pascal´s Pensées, where nothing is being elaborated." ( R. Barthes, Critical essays.)

§ 10. On the Timelessness of the Monologue. -

There is an appalling, spell bounding paradox (sic!) in the over all thought, that the human being, who more than anybody else is looked upon as the one who writes for all of us, the Author, most of all probably most of all writes for himself.( Despite Dr. Johnson´s remark:"Anyone who writes but for money, is a fool." ) And the person, who silently writes for himself can be discovered as the one who speaks the more truly to us, when he or she is posthumously discovered.

There is a striking paradox too in the thought of the fact that the person, who allegedly writes for others - the Author with a capital A - maybe is the person most inclined to be writing for himself alone, while the person, who is writing purely for himself, as he or she thinks, can by some extraordinary chance have very much to tell to another person of another era.

Anyway: things change. What was once much appreciated no longer is. We can look upon the writings of Kafka and Kierkegaard in another light. Now we are interested in wither they had the capacity of thinking for themselves and how far they let their writings influence their decisions. But even if they did not suspect such an investigation, they were public writers. They had and have to stand the course.

§.11. The energy.

W. Blake, the sensitive poet,: " Energy is eternal delight."

Authors write - I believe - because they have to ( ... and not, as Dr. Johnson presumed, for money - ), and they almost always write by an overflow , super flue - and of fright for dying. Either by too much of life, energy and spirit or by a great lack of something.
Cf. Aristotle and his concept of steresis: a concept of privation indicating "absence".( Noncultivation is - for example - a privation with the noncultivated, that through a process of cultivation can become the cultivated person.

Compare also the teachings of Plato, Augustine and Schelling, who all have the idea of the evil as privation boni. ( Lack of the Good. ) It is a kind of dialectic, from which some can infer a kind of irony of the lack. But the foundation is in all cases: overflow, super flue.

"La superflue d´energie est la clef á la vie humaine." As Simone Weil, the Christian ascetic writer - and activist- put it. But super flue is as a matter of fact - i.e. dialectically - lack of lack. (Cf. the troublesome dialectics of the Lack....) Even S.Weil herself did not write by super flue solely.( She was always envious of her older brother, who was so very much more talented than she was, according to her. He was a famous piano player.) And yet, there are authors that do it? Were such person like Diderot, Dostoyevskij, Balzac and Strindberg simply great masses of energy, great powers. Were the key to their greatness : super flue? We cannot rule out the energy factor. Both Kierkegaard and Kafka were energetic people. We can study their handwriting and see how they keep their steady pace. They had ,both of them, like Strindberg had, learnt the difficult lesson: to adapt a legible and calm handwriting ( -the early handwritings of S. and S.K. were extraordinary messy - and as for Kafka he tended to write ceremonially … )in order to be able to fulfil their goal. To manage to write down not only the first thoughts that came to their mind, but to be able to write as long as their mind worked, and as long as they lived.

No energy - no monologues! To create a monologue one has to have some energy. It is impossible to find points or directions or decisions in bulks of texts that are lacking energy.We could not possibly search for Mon.1 in an aphorism or two.

Often people have tried to see a certain kinship between monologuing and introspection and a special kind of intimidate good anthologizing , the language of the secret friend . In Western tradition is an outspokenness typical for our culture. Here few things are covertly implied, few games are overtly played with silent admission, no games of Zen.... We have few exceptions to this rule. S.Beckett is maybe the most prominent and beautiful.

It can be said, that both Kafka and Kierkegaard is talking about the unspeakable. There are even commentaries from themselves about this. By both of them there clings an air of mysticism. Wittgenstein regarded Kierkegaard as a mystic, and Kafka regarded himself as such an individual. But it is important to stress the fact - I believe it is a fact - that none of them wanted to put forth some insolvable paradox to their public. Still , much in a way, that was what they did.
We sometimes ask ourselves why we read great authors ( and even read about them... ). It is most probably because we think that they are interesting and clever people. They can depict in an interesting way all sorts of people.

They seem, furthermore, interesting and clever in such a way , that they make oneself feel as interesting, clear sighted and clever as the author himself, even if one is not... ( which, in itself is a kind of deep dialogism...)

§ 12. The main forms of monologue.

a.)The main features of the theory.

Could monologues have distinctly different forms ? They can. Are all monologues different ? No, not essentially.What is a monologue, for a start ? What is the definition of a monologue? :

A monologue is when somebody is permitted ( by a common agreement ) to talk alone without being interrupted in any way until he is finished. Until he has reached the final point. ( . ). You can see such a little point within brackets here. ( . )This . is a point.

And we are largely talking about points here. We do completely agree with the definition given here of the monologue. But we are - in this theory, because it is some such - adding to this basic definition other features too; we are hereby asserting, that there are two main kinds ( categories ) of monologue:

First: Monologue one ( Mon. 1 ) is to talk to ( towards) a point .

Second: Monologue two ( Mon. 2 ) is to talk from a point ( behind ).

All the discourses in the world should, according to the theory, be able to fit in either Mon. 1 or Mon. 2 .
The idea to the theory comes originally from an interpretation of a passage in a letter written by S. Kierkegaard - ( who else ? ) . Though it might be tempting to rush into my own garden of thought, I think it is in the long run a wise thing to do first to ask for a more clear understanding of the monologue and it´s relation to dialogue.

( "An ol´ friend is the best mirror." Old English proverb. )

Naturally we have to be on guard against the really bad monologue all the time, the self-centered monologue, "Der Wahnsinn des Eigendunkels",( Hegel´s words. ) St. Augustine warned against this inwardness, this "crouching into oneself", and this type of monologue too, when he, at the same time, defended the worth of the monologue in his confessions . It is a constant critique from the so called "dialogicans" against the sole monologist, and we have to be aware of the problem continuously, admit it´s presence like for instance Brunner is in his Das Gebot und die Ordnungen , where he ranges the states of reflection, and one of the stages ( the lowest) is "die sinnliche Unendlichkeit", where man is in a kind of demonic state.

"Der Mensch will sich seiner Unendlichkeit, seiner Freiheit bewusst werden und sie geniessen. Er will spielen, gleichgultig womit, sich geniessen, gleichgultig in welchem Medium." ( p.9.).

And we do agree with B.; the person who exclusively enjoys the monologue, does not in fact give a damn about it. We must - in this rather extensive essay - always have this in mente. It is definitely, absolutely, a more important distinction than the parting of Mon.1 and Mon.2... Sören Kierkegaard on walks and walking. Letter to his niece Jette ( 18 years old Henriette Lund ):

"Dear Jette,
Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thought, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it./.../" (1847)
(Cf. Fr. Nietzsche´s famous remark:"Thoughts which you get when you are sitting still are nothing worth. Only thoughts you get when you are walking are of any value."

The Point. In a letter to his ( maybe ) closest friend, the Copenhagen lawyer ( Konferentsraadet ) Kolderup-Rosenvinge, S.K. wrote , in 1848, this:

" If I have systematized walking as you remarked last time, then please permit me to essay a little theory of "motion", to which category stopping in turn belongs. Most people believe that so long as one has a fixed point to which one wants to get, then motion is no vortex.( /whirling around/.) But this is a misunderstanding. It all depends on having a fixed point from which to set out. Stopping is not possible at a point ahead, but at a point behind. That is, stopping is in the motion, consolidating the motion. And this is the difference between a political and a religious movement. Any purely political movement, which accordingly lacks the religious element or is forsaken by God, is a vortex ("maelstrom"), cannot be stopped, and is a prey to the illusion of wanting a fixed point ahead /...../; for the fixed point, the only fixed point, lies behind./.../ Socrates had the fixed point behind. His point of departure lay in himself and in the god. That is to say, he knew himself, he possessed himself./.../"

( S. Kierkegaard, Letters and Documents, pp. 253-4. )

( Sadly enough Rosenvinge died in 1850, while Kierkegaard lived until 1855, and thus lost his sole friend.)

We will find this vortex in a couple of different shapes in S.K.s thinking later in this essay. Vortex and vertigo are points around which much is centered.... in Kierkegaard´s theories as well as here.....

II. Monologue 1. and Monologue 2. .

I am handling the thoughts in this kierkegaardian letter to his friend completely in my own special manner. I am using the picture with "the point" and the remark about the religious and Socrates having the point behind.( Mon. 2. i.e.) ( We will discuss Socrates extensively in Part II. when discussiong the Kierkegaard dissertation on Socrate ) . And I do not, the way I see things, the way I classify in this proposal, exactly agree ( not at all, in fact ) with S.K., regarding the political person being a person with a M.1, i.e.: having a distant point ahead.( → . ) This can - naturally - be discussed, and I would want it to be discussed. My main view on discourses is that there are two kinds of them. Either the discourse is a Mon.2, i.e. - there is a fixed point behind . → - or there is a discourse of the type Mon. 1., i.e. - there is a fixed point ahead. → . .

Now, as everybody easily can conceive, there is a big qualitative difference between a point behind and a point ahead. The point behind is in a certain way more known and more "at hand" than the distant point ahead, which is of the nature that it often only is presumed, often a goal or a vision or something like that.

Main differences of the types of monologues:

A person normally starts out with a monologue 1, → . having from the start no conviction in life or such thing, Mon.1 , → . , is the form for the searching man, but also for the un-authoritative, the non-believer . Mon.2. , . →, - on the other hand - is the form of discourse, or the general form for the convinced person, the man ( or woman ) who knows, or the man who is a religious or political believer, the authoritarian person. Mon 2. has it´s anchoring pint firm behind , and on the way of life he is not likely to go astray, to be wayward or to be curious... ( I am exaggerating here, to make my point clear ... ).

Mon 2. has the uniqueness, nicely pointed out by S. Kierkegaard, that it is "stopping in motion" , it is staying rock solid and being in motion at the same time.( S.K.- being a good matematican himself - was familiar with Newton.) Thus S. Kierkegaard has a paradoxical view regarding this type of motion, matching his paradoxical view on religion and faith. To believe is no easy matter. And to have a Mon 2 ,. → , is a rather mystical thing. Mon. 1. , → . ,- on the other hand - is more the common way, maybe "the romantic way", looking for a distant future , and the monologist of type 1. , → . ,is a person who under ways may be looking around him and taking his time to find out about things of no special concern to him, and he is not caught in any belief in anything special, other than that there probably is something far ahead which comes closer every day,- namely the distant final point of his own monologue.

This is the main features of the two kinds of monologue. My theory - if I might call it a theory - is one of movements and of directions - from or to a point .To and fro. Figuratively one might see one monologue kind of leaning backwards ( ! ) while the other one is leaning forwards. ( I am not talking about graphology here.) I can - easily - think of middle-forms and more complex forms in addition to Mon.1 and Mon.2., which is what comes up rather immediately when I use to bring up this small ( though , as it seems: inspiring ) theory among people.

My "point" is - in my critique of pure dialogism - that nothing happens in dialogue as dialogue without a dialogue with the monologue. It is a dialectic ( pardon me this word... ) between dialogue and monologue which often has been overlooked by the fans of the dialogue. We are not developing in the dialogue - "Chaque autrui trouve son etre dans l´autre." ( J.-P. Sartre. ) : Every Other( "Neighbour") finds his being in the Other ... - but in the dialectic between the dialogue and monologue. And neither of the two is - naturally - thinkable without the other. Monologue is not half a dialogue. The main fault the dialogicans do, the misconception they indulge in, is that you cannot talk to yourself and that you cannot create anything by yourself, while the opposite is the plain truth ! It is only the individual that has the capability of creating and to make a decision and to develop. The sole thinker has been made a suspect person by the theoreticians of dialogism. Loneliness is according to this misconception a complete tragedy, according to these philosophical saviors. And to be alone is to be mad. ( Cf. Gr. idiota = detached. sv."enskild". ). My basis is, my work is built upon our inner Monology. Each of us have an inner monology, that evolves slowly. It could be thought of as our " slow face" - and such faces can also be perceived by reading books by thinking people ...

The Monologue, which is an empirical fact as such, could be interpreted in various ways. It is - in a strict sense - impossible to say other things than self-evident things about it. I cannot explain it. But I can speculate around it. I can use monologue as an archimedian point to move other things around by the help of.
It is a familiar insight among all of us that what happens happens en passant. When I am talking about something I could suddenly be aware of that I am talking about quite something else. Or I could talk about two things simultaneously. And - at the same time - I am aware of that I like this constant distress. The same is at hand when I am writing. And I could write my monologue, and I can see that it sometimes appears to be aiming at a distant point, which is a point I will never reach. But I notice, that I am still consciously willing to keep on writing. It is a kind of constant delay. It is not an andante futurum. It is an andante presens. I am writing now. Maybe I am writing out of fear ( a common thought among professional writers ) for death. I am consoling myself by writing; and as long as I write, I am calm and alive. Writing is a primitive religion. Maurice Merleau-Ponty asserts in his Sens et non-sens that religion is man´s strange wish to get together with other people in another world. ( It is not usual for Ponty to be humorous. ) Maybe it is the same thing with writing. But writing, which is one kind of monologue, is many things. I do write to be more clean, to try to become all clean. As a catharsis. I am writing to be free. To make myself free, and perhaps to make other people free as well. When you once have learnt to read, it is not hard to write. And beginning to write is to come up to a point when you are beginning to write up to a point.( a Mon.1. ) point. At the same time you may have a quite clear idea behind, in the back of your head, and in that case you do have a Mon-point 2. too, or the Mon-point 2. is the important point for you, and you are not at all interested in a distant point ahead, because it is in no way distant...... When you have written what you have to write, you simply reach up to the moment when the point is to be put an end to it all. The final point is of no mayor importance to the Monologist of type 2., . → , it barely exists.....

   There has now been a rampart rumour for a long time here bouncing about , that this paper is about those points, and other similar or dissimilar points and of directions to and fro. And: It is so. In the process of writing, and maybe especially in the process of writing about writing, thinking about thinking, one is likely to make huge mistakes. Not one, but many. Monologue is often a postponing of the obvious truth. I could write for ever about what I know, without ever actually writing it, without actually telling it to myself or to somebody else. This is the most horrible mistake, and it is at the same time the main characteristic of a monologue 1. ( It sometimes makes very good literature... ) Monologue is often kind of tautological. It could be repetitive in repeating its aut-aut, it´s either - or, without ever de facto getting started. The pro et contra-method is a monologue. And it is hardly possible to do without it. It cannot be said : I do not want to monologize! . We all have to be dealing with monologues. And we are all of us having a monologue that is either mainly a Mon.1. or a Mon.2.

Mon 1. is ...two. It is first hand a kind of secret line on the stage of Existence, off the record,. Or the other way round. That depends on who you are. Yes everything tends to be judged diffferently before or after Thermidor ( the crucial month of the French Revolution ). Freedom has two sides: one might be called the making of freedom, freeing,-that is Freedom A., and the other - which with strict logic follow - is "Freedom of choice", - we call it Freedom B.. Thermidor stands commonly in political theory for the eternal making of fredom, the permanent A. ( Cf. Trotsky ... ). But Monologue naturally has to be that courageous and strong, and understandable ( the problem of intersubjectivity ), so that both you and I, Me and the Other ( the idealistic Other, hard to find...) can move in and feel comfortable.

One can look upon people in general as either people of Mon 1. → . or people of Mon 2,. → , as I have already asserted,- and maybe other people, maybe there are some , that never have much of a monologue at all? I do not know. But most of us live in Monologia, - and we do not think that there are many of us, among those who are reading or writing this, that have no thoughts at all.

We are concerned with monologuers of type 1. and 2, the first waving their tounge in search and despair before the disaster, the other group, 2, the selfassured and hardened people, that have come out on the other side of the great Vertigo and haply remember what it was like to be openminded and ....uncertain like in a Monologue of the type 1.( → .) Monologuers of type 2. tend to be dogmatic, - setting out from a point (Gr. stigme)as they do, i.e.: setting out from a dogm. The long period of Mon 1, , → . , the childhood of Man is a time looking for knowledge and love and trying to cope with the problems in an intellectual and emotional way ( as we all probably know of ), and it is a vast period of time, but it is still contained well enough in a lifetime.

S. Freud once asserted, that without a confrontation with the objective , it is impossible to reach the knowledge of oneself.( This he wrote in 1900, when he recently had lost his father.) admit - to denote the confrontation with or insight in the"real", the reality, realitas.We have all, since antiquity tried to nail the present in terms like these. As for S.Freud : What is Traumdeutung ( The Interpretation of dreams.(1900))... A self analysis of the concrete? A lonely man and his mind. S.Freud wrote during the writing of this Magnus Opus now and then to his friend W.Fliess about the proceeding of the work. ( It is a encounter of two monomans.)( Cf.P.Gay, Freud,p.74.) Without the contact with Fliess Freud cauld not have managed to write the book, - he told us later.( I am thus indicating that Traumdeutung well enough is a Mon 1., but that Freud had a dialogue with Fliess.)

c.) The catastrophy and waywarding and Mon.1 and 2..

Because a cathastrophy ( utter on inner ) is something that normally forces to a shift of perspective. For some people the cathastrophy comes from an outer source. With others it is a consequence of an inner process, a 360 degree search or something ... It is notseldom a birth of an author at the sometime, or the birth of a real good author ( ... but it might as well be the opposite: the cease of an authorship,the end of it.). And here is the perplexed face visible, in many discourses by a person who has went through a catastrophe ....

We mightlook upon the Mon 1. - before the catastrophy - as an unconscious treason, or a misdirection, something which is clearly visible with the English so called metaphysical poets , in their intricate manner, investigated with so much cunningness by British scientists, where the failure in picturing the unknown - or the other side, the heaven of all heavens - suddenly becomes the most successful invitation to these realms. In a like manner "all poetry is misrepresentation" ( since The Objective/Real can be defined and/or understood in many a way. It can be described quite differently by different people. We could say that the objective is the concrete, the apparent, the present, the actual, or ... the catastrophy. In this essay we have - right or wrong - chosen the rather drastic word of "catastrophy"(disaster) - not without a certain irony, I have say ) - all poetry and prose are wayward stuff of the kind that is common to Mon 1.,→ . , where it is common to all the time be looking for new angles and directions ... The monologues of this type is - as I have pointed out - the most common among literature. I would say that approximately 90% of all literature is of a kind that could be categorized as Mon 1.. This Monologue is often a prolongedfear for something, - sometimes even fear of the reader, that the reader should be able to perceive the whole truth. We are all a bit afraid of the truth - since we do not know it, and since it can be, that it does not exist.... But after the catastrophy I will have to take the catastrophy for the truth, since it is true that it has happened, - and since I nearly knew it would come, as if I had always waited for it, unconsciously. It is easy to look upon the catastrophy as a truth if I think I always have known it, or known that I would come to know it, - as if I had made it all by myself. My catastrophy is in a concrete manner all mine. It is very true for me in this sense.

It is not often that a catastrophy comes within the monologue itself. It often comes from outside and affects the monologue. We could talk about to kinds of catastrophys: the intramonological (A.) and the extramonological (B.). ( We do like to build small systems ... )

In a monologue a intramonol. catastrophy can appear, since I am shaping my fate by monologuing, if I am monologuing all the time. If I am very persistent in my inner monologue and never ever am giving it up, nearly sure that I amnot talking to anybody else at all only to myself, how do you manage to shape your destiny, because it is not easy to put the questions, the right questions and give the right answers year after year in this vast monologue. The monologue is the room of objections. True enough, but it takes a daring person to object to everything he is thinking. There is a monologue of love, and a monologue of the devil in us all. But could we cope with this Mon.1. all alone for ever and ever without anything extraordinary happening? To live a life in a Mon1. without any insights at all, is that the most common life of all lives? These are all questions that can make the most sane person a bit askew.

There are at least two kinds of waywards in the monologues of type 1.. One of these waywards are the tiny curious waywards, the walking off the road, walking in the ditch, reaching alongside the road, glancing at the road carefully from a very small distance and all the time ready to get up on the road again.....

Another wayward turns backwards and could be followed alongside the road back again, looking for it´s Arche, for it´s genese, for the putting of it´s ( the human ) problem, this problem, that has shown to be so difficult in it´s setting ("It is no Why, because it is an unending Why." ( S. Kierkegaard , Introduction in Christianity.(1848) ) The monologue is loading on me an enormous weight... We do not enter in such a dialectic of gravity without asserting: This Monologue is a vast mumble, or rather a hysterical doubt concerning Everything (sic!), a very heavy doubt, so heavy, and finally it has nothing to offer but ... it´s very extension, pure extension and nothing but extension !

The Mon 1., → . , is a true swamp. ( A good author though is a person by whose side you willingly walks through any swamp!) This, this about the pure extension is naturally - at a closer loook - an illusion. The extension has at length more than it´s length; it has a power to drag you down !! "Time is the father of truth." as the englishman used to say. The monologuer by our school is walking primarily The Main Road, and then he is walking The Narrow Path - and finally we can find him strolling on the Small Wayward Close By ... it is not unusual to find him there, when time is ripe ....,( the true wayward makes something like a 90 degree turn ! )since the monologuist sometimes is in a great doubt on hs capacity as a monologuer, as a person existing in some real sense ..... The monologue can be like the Way of Kierkegaard, - so everlastingly eternally desperately long, by some necessity or by some desire towards martyrism or by some fobia .... It can also be - in accordance to my suspicious nature I am inclined to believe this - that one simply ( Dan."simpelthen") is moving - if it is logically possible - the point further away, to a still more distant place, ( this point by which the walk would end ) the longer you travel ... as long as you travel...

It can alternatively be, that - according to my ever suspicious nature I believe this too - that the person who is living and thinking and talking his Monologue 1, in reality already has reached his distant point, that he already - deep inside him - is safely there, that his consciense, or a bulk of consciense, always is situated way ahead by this point, where knowledge is no longer any knowledge at all: every human being is right in front of what he or she does not understand ( as I have pointed out - at the outset ) and this, because there is no knowledge by this brick wall. Knowledge must be born. It cannot exist before it is born, - not according to my view of life.

What is an Outmark about humans, what is the Aura about the human being, what it is to be human is exactly that, whatever he or she says or does, he or she is marked by the way he or she does not understand. There are - as we all know ( in different ways) - lots of ways not to be knowing things.( Cf. The cloud of not-knowing, et al. ). Everybody knows that he or she could be standing - if he or she would be absolutely honest ( a terrible thought ) - like a Wittgenstein,( the modern Master of utter Doubt ... ),hammering on the wall like a stubborn infant, kind of like the Third person, mentioned by Kierkegaard in the Andersen-critique ...- and every Man has a part of him or herself, that is looking forward over his own shoulder, from behind !,( not forward towards somebody behind the Other, the lacanian Other... )- but the majority that are walking in their Mon 1. has not got the faintest idea about such eleoquent things: they are walking along and they do not even know that they are walking in a Mon 1. or that they are walking with a point ahead. They are ignorant about my theory, in other words.

( Observe: regarding cathastrophies, I am not of the opinion that all catastrophies are good for every human being. But I have never got rid of the feeeling, that it might serve , instrumentally, a very good purpose. I will return to this problem below.)

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( ...... As for Wittgenstein and his doubt, we could easily say that W. was the great non-knower of our time ( a kind of Socrates of the 20th century ), but I have sometimes regarded his doubt a little too big : Can you know THAT little. But - a serious man as he was - he took knowing and not knowing very seripously, and perhaps it is most accurate to call him some kind of mystic. ( Naturaly he made contributions to philosophy too, - and that is a rare thing - with for example his truth tables, that came to be important if not else : for the building of the first computers.) Wittgenstein wrote a lot, and much was not much more than thinking aload, and not interesting for other people, than those who wanted to know whow W. thought. Much of it - what he was writing in his later years - has really, in other words, I think, no public mayor interest...)

"Thoughts are more like hints..." (Wittg. )

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Thinking with outset from a point as well as thinking with one distant point ahead in mente can be a long winding covert lie, which all of a sudden becomes overt, comes clear to the thinking person himself or herself. He or she suddenly knows , that it was all a lie.
There are persons , who generally does lie, who even are regarded as incapable of lying,( to be some "homo tautologicicus", - there are psychiatrists , which doubts that there can be a person able to tell the truth, if this person cannot lie … ( J. Lacan, in Les Psychoses ) And that is a pretty clever and amusing but stupid remark …) and these could not possibly either be thinking to or fro a point, if this meant, that they were lying? Is it so? It seems incredible. In the important way all people can lie! It is the mark of the human being. The human being is the being who can lie to herself.

Thus, a long winding lie, - but the lies of Mon 1. ( &rarr . ) and Mon 2.(. → ) has a different character. M.2 is completely and openly convinced about its truth and is only in need of a conceptual and factual correction, when Mon 1. ( → . )anyway in its very heart is so very clear on the point that it is in itself only preliminary, that it is an oscillation between the conscious and the unconscious, that its propositions are only "for a try", that it is readily unmasked, that the whole of tis Mon 1 is being reveled as a big "tongue in cheek" and as cheating - its attitude is always that of playing - and when it comes all around, it could eventually come out that way, that the Monologue 2 ( . → )is kind of true anyway, though it was false. ( This is what the monologuer of Mon 2. will say, I think. He is a clever guy /chick.).And what if it was all a lie?: I am here and now, I am in the making, isn´t that enough! What could you ask from a human being? ..and so on.

We might suppose - but here it is essential to be extremely coutious - that the Mon. 2 ( . → ) is more dangerous than Mon 1. Because the persons of Mon 2. do believe, that they are right, have the truth and that what they say is giving a picture of things "as they are"! Mon.1 ( → . ) persons are looking around, not in a happy go lightly way, but they are certainly not convinced in any matter. We could, regarding Mon 1. , say, that the unmasking of the lie in Mon 1. ( → . ) is the downbreak of relativism and a crisis for "the Masters of the control of the Now", the "Moment". Mon.1. is secular, Mon 2,( . → ) is commonly authoritarian. All fanatics are of type Mon 2.. But all with a Mon 2. are of course not fanatics.....

We could never at a distance decide concerning these matters which monologue at a certain moment would be absolutely dangerous. We might not have anything absolute here.....

The Monologue 3.

Most people I have been talking to ( friends of mine and foreigners on benches in parks ... ) have the opinion , that most monologues have one point behind and another ahead and that the direction of the monologue is constantly altering.( In some way or another. )I do not know why they have this attitude, or "theory", - but we have to take it seriously, and we are here naming it Mon 3.!

The two of them ( 1. & 2. - the main forms ... ) are both tools for an intellect, which is capable of telling lies. They are both monologues, true monologues, and true peoples monologues in their fragile tries to relate to reality. With no doubt it is easy to put worth and underline certain things in the monologue that is ones own, while you at the same time are busy finding a backdoor through which an escape is possible, because it is so though, yes, it is nearly impossible to be honest towards oneself.
And a person can bring much of what is hidden within him up to the surface, to the conscious sphere - as they say - but there is always new material appearing at the bottom of the deep ocean of mind…
For those persons , who have the power to reach themselves, reach to the bottom ( who has?) in complete forgetfulness about oneself ( who does ever?), the monologue ( Mon.1.) will not become a monologue, but only a kind of "product", which ,in the making , at the same time is being regarded and valued by the astonished producer himself, like he or she sometimes use to look upon his or her own too short thumbs - a parody of a monologue. Because those who has the power of reaching themselves completely are at the same time disinterested, ( an eastethic cathegory with S. Kierkegaard ) and thus -in a way - not really living. To live is to have an interest in disguise, and an interest to reach out or to defend something, to have an interest in something, and those people are rare, who belong to the group of disinterestedness, but for the sake of completeness they are mentioned here as a contrast, being neither the people of Mon.1 or Mon 2..

Because it would also be like a travel to a place where one has been before, trying to look at this place through the eyes of oneself, all the time feeling as if those eyes where not mine at all, but some eyes of another person. But between the interestedness and the disinterestedness we all are raveling through this world, thus passing from being in a monologue to harbor outside it for a while, and we are all either in a monologue or outside it, longing to be in it again, and we are all in between the snares of the lines of the harpoons shot by either Mon.1 or Mon 2, and we will dwell between them all our life. For the disinterested there is no points, nothing to and fro, and no actual thought can come or go and nothing is to be defended or given up. The utter meaning of thought is finally to be able to tell somebody that you have gotten rid of these thoughts. This is important when we are analyzing the monologues, because they are interested in thoughts, and the monologuers are in such a despair in sticking to their thoughts, when they at the same time all are aware, that they do want to get rid of them, that they are so tired of these favorite things, that they could puke ….

This word, "they could puke" is formulated and is the outer formulated sentence. The inner is the underlying in what is said, the implicit, and in the implicit one can find the marrow and the spirit of it all. It is from the inner marrow the possibility comes to change direction of the utter word.
Before the changing of a direction we can have a parallel monologue, where a spectator is walking along. Mon.4.

Kierkegaard writes that it is inpossipble to stop by a point ahead. That is true. Because we have not got there yet. To stop by a point behind is possible, and he thinks of this as a "staying/ Dan. stannande / in motion"( Op.cit.) We can here perceive some of the ideal of the romantics and their estethic ideal. As if we heard a German romantic ( Fr. Schlegel & Consorts. ) talking about the irony .
Kierkegaard asserts that every Man has to strive for something. He seems himself be an immediate example. The duty of a human being is to be in constant motion (Cf.B. Gustavsson, I den natt (1962),p.290:" "existence was decision in faith, a constant motion in the trust in the will of God concerning each individual.")

The goal of the monologue is of course not the direction, but it can be sad that it is not to have the wrong sort of direction. In a certain way it is a classical message inthis, - you must be in some direction to participate in living and understanding and judging and acting, and the direction of - for example - a Mon 1. or a Mon 2. is a necessary condition to more important things. "To exist while understanding, and to exist in what you understand, is to reduplicate." This might be an illustration in the faith of reflection and the need for reflection and the belief in the worth of choice.

We should not forget the kind of monologue that continues eternally, the monologue from which nothing comes out, nothing have been ever let in, where it is impossible to perceive some point, be it to or fro, no direction, only a curious swaying of words, a caricature of a monologue. We could name it something, Mon.5. …. This kind of Monologue can only appear provided that nothing is uttered or thought earnestly: it is speaking and thinking without purpose or any serious meaning, i.e. a talk for the sake of talking.

( When analytical philosophers - for example John Austin , the Englishman - are talking about speech as an act, a "locutionary act", then a sentence is uttered as meaningful. Ex.: "I am forgiving you." There has to be a direction behind, but it could as well be a Mon 1. as a Mon.2. )

Now - after having decided, that there is at least five different forms of monologues in this world - let us return to the problem of catastrophy.

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§ 12. Authors and ...Authors, - a distinction.

Since my objects of investigation are texts, written by authors, I would like to elaborate on this theme: the difference between the kinds of authors and the kinds of writings at hand.

One could make a distinction, as the excellent French philosopher and linguist Roland Barthes does in his essay Ecrire: verbe intransitif ? (about 1970, Write, - an intransitive verb? ), between one the one side le scripteur ( like Barthes himself, Buber, Kierkegaard, philosophers in general, Mr. Bachtin etc. ) and on the other l´ecrivain ( the writer, writer of novels and fiction in general, i.e. the "real" author . Not Barthes´words, but mine .....).

Le scripteur ( the "penman" ) is often a "homme des lettres", a well-read person, who often writes about other books, but also on life in general or other subjects. ( B. Russell is interesting in that he wrote science and essays on different matters with equal good result, and a very nice autobiography too.We would not call him a scripteur, though .... )

L´écrivain, - le monsieur écrivain, is the teller of tales, of stories, and he is, to me, the superior one, - the creator of new universes in the name of Art.( Le scripteur can be an artist, but he rarely is.) Le scripteur (Sw."skribenten") will have to try to create a style of his own, to survive as such, and Montaigne, Barthes and Emerson, Lamb and Derrida all survives in the memory of mankind. They may also produce a lot of things: tracts, preachings, fables, essays, dissertations, columns, bloggs, catechizes or whatever .... but they seldom creates fictive persons that comes alive before our inner sight, and they are not even trying to do that.

The greatest of all scripteurs ever (?) - it is negotiable ... , S. Kierkegaard, once in his youth wrote a small preface concerning the art of reading and writing as he began on his first ( never completed ) novel (!), Johannes Climacus, En Fortelling ( 1843-44 ). It turned out as a small try in 50 pages. S. Kierkegaard then never tried to write a novel again. It can here be noted that the famous Georg Brandes judged the special qualities regarding S.K. thus, very accurately:

"Kierkegaard never divided himself as the real poet does, and never collected himself as the real philosopher does."

Brandes was all his life very impressed by S. Kierkegaard and did not stop reading him."In a certain sense S. Kierkegaard was to me the only one."( Brandes ). - Now, - S.K. makes in the introduction of the try , JohannesClimacus, the following astonishing remarks regarding literature, and we can almost feel - perhaps - the personal experience behind the words:

"Most people approaches the reading of a book with a conception on how they themselves would have written it, how another author would have written it /.../ Here appears the first possibility of not being able to read a book /.../ Two of the most opposite kinds of arts of readers are here meeting each other - the most stupid and the most genial, who both of them have in common, that they are unable to read a book, the first ones by emptiness, the last by overflow of ideas;/.../" ( A Preface, S.K. Papirer, I,C. 83.) S.K. had a very good memory. But at the same time the truth was probably, that he was far to urgent in his mind to be able to read a lot. Probably he was a very fast reader. It is actually astonishing how very little philosophy he actually read ( and never history ) trough his entire life,- by what we know. Often he made conclusions on excerpts and notices in magazines. He also often got tired of a work of philosophy already while he read the introduction. As he found the premises faulty, he never completed the reading of the book. He comments on this - a bit resignantly - in the marvelousThe Concept of Anxiety:

"As far as I understand a person, who wants to write a book, is very wise if he is reflecting carefully upon the subject on which he is about to write. It is not either bad if he, if possible, makes himself acquainted with what is previously written on the same subject. If he on his way finds only one excellent and exhaustive author that has coped with one or another of the aspects of the subject, then he had better rejoice like the best man of the bride´s groom when he listens to the voice of his friend. When this is done in solitude and with the joy of love, which always looks for solitude, then nothing else is needed; then he might write his book away like the bird sings his song, and if somebody has any use or amusement from it, the much better; then he might edit the book without any worries or pretentious, as if he ended all, or as if all mankind should be blessed in his book. Every age and people has like every day its pain and its business to look after itself and need not trouble with the past or the coming. /.../ Not everyone, that is hunchbacked is an Atlas. /..../ Regarding my own humble person I willingly admit, that I am as an author a king without a country, but also in fear and much trembling an author without any claims."( S.K. VI.p. 105.)(Cf. the trans.. by R. Thomte, p. 7. )

In other words, - he does not give a damn of what has been written on the subject he is about to elaborate.

One might quote the excellently talented French philosopher and ecrivain and scripteur Denis Diderot, from his small novel Le neveu de Rameau,( 1762 ) - a book of classical dialogicness and a wonderful main character in this true, brisk and fanciful nephew, jealous of his famous uncle, the composer - the neveu has himself composed two pieces for clavecin. The nephew:

" - Geniuses read very little, practice a lot and create themselves!" ( Le neveu de Rameau, p. 65.)

"In a kingdom there is only one man who walks, it is the sovereign. All the rest takes their poses. (p.125.)

The narrator of the story describes the nephew:" Nobody is more unlike himself than he is." (p. 10.) And:" The narrator:" Oh, please, spare me your reflections and continue your story! ; He: I cannot. There are days, when one has to reflect. It is a sickness that has to take its time and course. Where were I ?""

It is quite kierkegaardian. Only in 1762. Insights in human thoughts are never new.( Regarding Diderot, conferH. Joseph´s book on D. The Dialogue of Diderot.(1993 ) . D. is frequetly dealing with reflections upon communication:"Don´t explain yourself, if you want to be understood!" ( Paradoxe sur le comédien.(1773). " To such a high amount isn´t the man, who is the most preoccopied with thinking, an automate ?" ( Discour sur la poésie dramatique,VII,p. 333. ).... He is kind of a forerunner to Kierkegaard and Nietzsche in many aspects.

-----

B. The favorite authors of F.Kafka and Kierkegaard were not the same ones. They lived in different times and were different in almost everything.

Kafka read a lot and was diversified - probably read more than Kierkegaard. Kafka read Plato, Dickens, Flaubert, Lagerlöf, A. Strindberg, F.Werfel, Goethe and his favorite reading was biographies ( like B. Franklins ).

Kierkegaard read a lot of ancient authors - like Tertullian, Cicero , Plato, Lessing and Augustinus and the like in Greek and Latin, but he also appreciated modern writers like Shakespeare, Goethe (mainly Faust ) and Holberg.But also minor authors like Heiberg ,and minor Danes , the Swedish novelist E. Flygare-Carlén (!) and lots of german philosophers ( authors he never ever quoted ) and theologicans.

F.Kafka: "I am nothing else than literature."

and S.Kierkegaard:" Being an author - well, yes, I like it very much: if I should be completely honest , I have to say, that I have been in love with the producing thing - but please note, to produce in the way I like it. And what I have loved have been the opposite to being in the moment ( Da."Oieblikket" ). The distance in which I, like someone in love, have been dragging myself behind my own thoughts, and, like a musician in love with his instrument, enjoying myself with language, pulling the expressions out of it required by the thought - a blissful pastime: I could not get tired of this occupation for an eternity!"

(S.K. Oieblikket No.1, 1855, a few months before his death. )

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§.13. Parts of a monologue; - what do they reveal ?

What do we do with - what can we assume from - pure length, pure extension? ( Cf."Energy"). Monology ? What could we perceive from - assume from - a mere FRAGMENT of a Monologue? Could we determine from page 60 in a book of 400 pages which form it has ( M.1 or M.2.) ? Assuming that we have in front of us a fragment by unknown source, for example, this sentence:

(Ex.Z.1.)
" The French enlightenment continued to appreciate highly biographies as a genre."

This theory of mine would indeed be a giant theory, if one could pick out a sentence from a discourse, and from this sentence alone determine whether it is a Mon. 1 or a Mon 2 , or something other than these. Let us see…:

( Ex.Z.1..)

It could be a Mon.1. or a Mon 2. or a monologue with a direction neither to nor from: - or both to and from, an ambiguity in monologue-land, or a mixed form. But, we could anyway look upon ex. ( Z.1. ) and notice, that it is very short. But it is not so short that we couldn´t place it monologically - or in general - within a certain type of discourse, and put it in a tradition, and we could thus easily tell, that it is a piece cut out of a Mon.2. This we know, because we are directly perceiving it as a part of authoritarian writing of History, ( in this case the Swedish historian C. Theander ) a section written by a man , who has his opinion clear about French enlightenment and biographies. It has -thus - the extreme “ magic of the clear opinion”. We are here dwelling in a genre, where an era is defined for us comfortably, and we fell secure … or insecure ( depending on who we are ) in confrontation with this Mon 2..

(ex.Z.2..)

“The artist are always glorifying. They do not do anything else….”

This is a pensive presens tense. We are placed in an insecure position. And we are not feeling any more safe when we get to know, that the author is Fr. Nietzsche and the book is The happy science. Thus it is possible to place it in a category, as a Mon.1., a speaking towards a distant point…

(Ex.Z.3.)

“ I am using a Sabbath year to write a small book on the development of the metaphysics of Plato.” ( J. E. Raven´s introduction to his book Platons tankevärld. )
This seems readily planned, and we feel secure, like Raven. It seems like a Mon.2. We will probably not get surprised by reading this book. (Why?)

(Ex.Z.4.)

“Right now I am in such a state, that I am writing these lines in order to at least for myself confirm, that I am alive.”

It could be any grown up person, writing a Mon.1. You, my dear reader, must not agree with me in this. I am investigating - in a subjectivist manner - discourses and life.( You might probably think this is all nothing but childish chatter.... )

(Ex. Z.5.)

Maybe it is a Mon 1. when F. Pessoa - “the Nietzsche of Portugal” is writing in his Livro do Desassossego por Bernardo Soares ( published 1982):

“I do not know of any enjoyment capable of measuring up with that which you can get from books, and yet I am not reading very much. The books are introductions to the dreams.”( p.23.)

We can ,I think face the truth, that it would be hard to pick out many short sentences and determine weather they belong to Mon.1 or Mon.2..
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§. 14. S. Kierkegaard's second contribution to the theory.

S.Kierkegaard, who both serves as initiator of the theory and , by his writings , as an example for me, has contributed with another idea about discourses. ( He was, as you might already know, very interested in communication in general, he wrote much about it, about "meddelelse",( He excelled in lengthy essays on "indirect communication", which he thought was the most effective. He was truly a "triple- or more dialectician"... ) and it has in turn been written a whole lot of books on this matter, among those is L. Bejerholm´s dissertation Meddelelsens dialektik one of the best.)

In the very first book S.K. wrote ( From the Papers of one still living .1839. , a book appearing right after the death of his father ....) there is a extensive part about ( the famous Danish storyteller contemprorary with S.K. ) H.C. Andersens writings. ( I am dealing with this below more extensively, mainly from a historical angle, in the "Kierkegaard chapter" !,i.e. Part III.). S.K. had been struck by the fact, that A. frequently is fond of, all of a sudden, telling the reader about something, that does not really is of concern to the main story, - content. Andersens goes astray, uses "waywards". S.K. asks himself why A. does this. ( And he does not like these waywards ,"Afvejene". A. kind of "is getting lost" in the woods beside the road, i.e. the tale.... ) S.K. talks generally about "Andersens Tilfaeldigheder", / A.s accidentalities /, and he discerns - in a very modern way of thinking , being a predecessor in this respect of de Saussure, R. Jacobson and Derrida - two types among those:

A.) Andersen is in his telling using oppositions, by using relation to something opposite ( he writes, for instance, about childhood by pointing out how childhood appears to the grownup. )

B. ) Andersen associates by likeness, - a village in Italy is quite like a village in Denmark ( even if you still do not get any description of the Italian one...) .

And: C.) the accidentalities. Concerning the C.s Kierkegaard is writing, ( I am referring this part ):

"Before I am going to tell you especially about " Only a fiddler", I might ask the reader to be alertly considering yet another heading: " A.s accindentalities", not as if the two preceding waywards , looked upon from an aestethic angle, may be showing themselves to be accidentalities, but because these are standing in a special relation to the whole of Andersen´s stage, so that they much better are perceived in this connection, and by this also be relieving the appropriate relativity, within which I probably very correctly as accidentalities could describe the whole of that low growing vegetation consisting of distracting notions, so that they for the microscopic views not win, but always lose. I am not here aiming at what you strictly may call episodes; because this point has been subject already for Andersen´s reflection and need not further explanation, and it is also described in the preceding ; I am not aiming at, what you also might assemble under the name of episodes, a showing of one or another singularity, in order to make time pass, as it seems, as this also is as faintly coming closer to any sort of deeper organic connection to the main character, who is also void of all the elasticity of force to, as in a wink of time by the pressing of a hidden button, to stand before us, and the reason has only the inconvenience, that you necessarily will be coming to think of a secret protocol describing the events of a day: - but to the one - by the disproportion of the writer Andersen between his own person and the for a writer of novels necessary amount of knowledge - caused / betingad / insecurity, the caused trembling of the hand, which makes his pen not only rattle, but also tattle / in Danish: "ikke blot slaaer Klatter, men ogsaa slaaer Sladder" /, that is so characteristic to his style in such amount, that it by this will be hard to copy."

( S.K. I. p.45 f. )

"Before I begin to describe the second disproportion, which I would like to name: the accidental knowledge, I want to point out, that there is a stage of accidentalities, that might be suitable in order to pass over from the preceding, it is: accidental associations of ideas, so that these as well could be perceived from the..........."

Philosophy and reflection is a strange kind of cruising , a sailing tour, a never ending journey ( thus not an "odyssey" ) at a dangerous sea, trying to avoid the cliffs of extremes, the Scyllas and the Charybdises of bad logic.

.............

Now, could we see by it´s shape, the shape of the monologue,- wearing some kind of monological single eyeglass - see it in its extension and judge it by the way it is set, rendering it a direction: either to or fro a point ( . ) - could we look upon a monologue, without understanding it in it´s whole and point at it and utter about it: "This is an authoritarian kind of monologue!"...( Without becoming authoritarian ourselves.....) or the opposite?

§ 15. The old idea of Writing about Nothing at all.

    "I would like to write a book, a book about nothing at all, a book with not the slightest bonds to the utter world and that only would hold together by the power of it´s own style." (Gustave Flaubert.)

"A book has always to me been a strange way of living." ( Ib. )

"Real reality is always unrealistic." (F. Kafka )

Are the monologues of Kafka and Kierkegaard about anything? Do they contain any information? (Kierkegaard would protest violently against this question. He was certainly of the opinion, that his writings were about lots of important matters. At least when he wrote all his books.)
Is it even possible to write about "nothing"? Is it something like the old dream of lárt pour árt of Théofile Gautier, or something like the ideal with the proclaimers of the circular novel, a Raymond Roussell -, is it like when Sören Kierkegaard is sitting writing his Forewords, in the book with the same name (Forord )(1843) and claims that the book is about nothing at all, that to be writing forewords is like spitting out through the window "ligesom at spytte ud af Vinduet"…
The thought of writing about nothing ( not "Nothing", the "Naught" ) - and hence everything…? - is now and then present with both Kafka and Kierkegaard. Here there are also hints about that writing is something else, and it is about the wish not needing to write at all …. There is a usual dilemma of every author in these remarks… there is a despair appearing concerning their own belief, that they are not good enough at anything else but this writing business… There is another despair too, the misology-despair, the mistrust in language, that was to come off age with Modernism…( Flaubert - Kafka´s favorite author - is naturally one of the initiators here....)

Anyway, - there is a long way for any culture before it is confronted with thoughts like these, for a conscience ( a conscience, which according to The Philosopher, i.e. Aristotle is "to know about knowing"... ), before you begin to think of writing about nothing at all.

( Cf. the thesis of Maturana, that language actually does not appear until you start discussing about what language is…)

Telling about nothing? Isn´t this utter despair? G. Printz-Paulson writes in his Solen och spegeln (1957):" It is possible, that it is required a certain pillar of despair to be able to create important poetry.".- Only a human being with free will is able ti play music, Dr.Johnson claimed once:" A human being that is like a machine cannot play, because he or she cannot stop playing, or smashing the violin." ( Johnson to Samuel Boswell in B.s Journey of a tour to the Hebrides, p. 233.)

§16. Monologue as pure loneliness.

Monologue is a strange form of communication. Sometimes it is a talk , a lonely talk in the head of a person. In public it brought about in the agreement, that the others shall be silent.
In a dialogue there is reciprocity, ideally, a meeting, and nobody should suffer from the idea that it he who should have the last word. It should be a consensus. The dialogue is planned within certain frames. A diaologue transcends these frames if a person is speaking with an overwhelming joyfulness, is being fantastic and flamboyant, monumental, moves about waving his arms, or ornaments too much, is obscure or baroque. Another part of the frame is transcended if one of the diaologicans is preying on the other, waiting for what this person has to say only to get hold of him, get on top, get the better part of the discussion, ending up as a winner,or the like ... i.e. what is described so well - for instance - in Stephen Potter´s classic Lifemanship and in Berne´s book Games people play.
Thus: we might sat that all dialogues are not so ideal that the great dialogicans have wanted them to be.
But we could all sometimes enjoy the dialogues. We could experience that a "true" dialogue is a dialogue under a star, common to both persons of the dialogue. Adialogue is a dialogue under the same star. ( The monologue is a monologue under a star. It is not always the same … and it does not matter what star it is… Sameness is not that important here.)

       *
X ------ Y

Figure 1. Dialogue under a common ( joint ), the same star.

       *

       Z

Figure 2. Monologue under a star, no matter which one.( It could all the same be the same.)

( Simple "algorithms".... )

Socrates in the dialogues of Plato is no dialogican, but maieutican. Plato´s dialogues are masked monologues. In certain questions concerning matters there is lying covert answers. ( Cf. Pierces Logic of Inquiry. ) Socrates knows nearly always what he is going to say before he talks with his friends. This is the case mainly in the late dialogues. And often he just want to mock them and point out how badly they reason. He is never asking anybody anything to get to know something. He has only one "true" dialogue: namely, with his personal daemon ( his inner God, who he is having talks with now and then. (Cf. Schleiermachers works and Kierkegaard´s investigations in this matter as well as Vl. Jankelévitch and Muecke´s, The compass of irony.............As

§ 19. Circles.

Out of what springs the monologue ? Is it my dialogue, if I have none to talk to ... ? Is it the room for objections ? Do I dare to think when I am all alone in my inner room....? (This has been doubted.) According to the normal signs and normal wisdom and f we think of how everything use to be: Am I suspecting that there is no Man on earth that only seeks himself ( and thus no other)? I would say that monologue sometimes tries to fool oneself on this very point. Many monologues shows clearly a circularity, and we could look upon great philosophical monologues, like Baruch Spinozas and G. Hegel´s as huge circles - and me might find, as Adorno does, that Kierkegaard´s Self iskind of another circle, not very unalike the curious Geist ( Spirit )of Hegel´s, although the Self of the kierkegaardian world is a "personal history", not a history of the "Welt-Geist".. But if you are sitting writing about another world, who is a circle, you might have got rid of the troublesome real world, if you had wished for this ?

It is necessity to introduce something concrete in a monologue, lest one will end up in a circle. Using Sartre´s words:"Le circle d´ipseité.";"Truth is it´s own birth, the circle who provides its end as its goal and thus has it as its beginning." ( Hegel.) "The end is where we start from. And every phrase and sentence that is right (where every word is at home ... ) Every phrase and sentence is an end an a beginning." (T.S. Eliot )

These are troublesome matters, and rise lots of questions. When I am looking at these citations I wonder if I am "begging the question". Have I , or have I not, started with the conclusion? What is it, that I have presumed and which should be proved? What have I anticipated, but not taken into account? Where is my beginning, if it is not the end ? ......

To be able to answer such complicated questions I started out this project with the decision, that I would not write this without having examples to investigate.( It might still not work, naturally.)

 

§ 20. The ( metaphorical ) Truth of Monologue.Monology and Philosophy.

A.)

As you might already be aware: the person who really enjoys his monologue, does not give a damn about it.....
The true monologue is like the final Monologue, the utmost M..
Standing in front of the gates of Death. The true M. is like glance for the third part..... because: " I always have to try to persuade myself ( says he, the very monologuer.... ) that things are in such or such a state or maybe not at all ... as if I really was my worst Other!"
-

The entire bulk of reflection has a spiritual ( ! ) meaning, is the Spirit of Life, a Spirit which is eternal in the sense that you can never separate Life from that Spirit...

Now - what kind of words do carry away our fear ? We - all the monologuers - has the knowledge all of us, that one day some catastrophe will come into our M.. It will strike like lightning. And it will transform the monologue and our fear will be extinguished.

( I am aware of the prophetic tone of this. It could be said in a more modest way...I know. But this is for the drama....) The M. is full of " now or never ". Language is me. And every time language is at hand I am too and this is the case with everyone...
Every Monologue, long or short, is a bit resembling a try o invent one´s own resurrection.
The catastrophe is a bit like " The comet is coming! " or ....like the revelation of St. Paul . And this catastrophe may come from within or from without. Only the first of these are very interesting for us here.
Since - by definition - our whole life is this endless ( so to say ) monologue, an endless flaw, it could be regarded as in some cases, a Narcissus M.., irresponsible.... This flood is sprung out of a genes of Naught, bouncing from top to another top of the sea of Time, forward, forward to the coast of End. Unless there is something stopping it ... like a miracle...

Philosophy is not ordinary inquiry, not ordinary experience, not ordinary ( asserted) knowledge, but a very rare and precious kind of reflection, which none the less everyone in this world now and then indulges in….. “Philosophy is the most supreme music.” Socrates says in Phaidon. -----

Philosophy is a growing collection of questions, reflections upon these, and upon things and events. And of knowledge qua ( as) knowledge, on being qua being, on the good qua good and so on …. ---

To renounce certain philosophy is an important task to the philosopher: “ You have to condemn as guilty of as stupid and heretic curiosity all those people who try to prove a priori God to be very good and very large. Because this is no less than making the God out of God, to deny the God, who you are in search for.” (Giambattista Vico. (1685-1744 ) from De l´antique sagesse, Of the ancient wisdom, Chapt. III. ) You might very well assert that philosophy as a whole nearly by definition is a Mon. 1. , or a kind of Mon. 1. , in so far as it is in pursuit, pursuing, a point only vaguely fancied, a Point vaguely constructed, and since philosophy - indeed - is very fond of these way-wards, of the goings astray a bit …. - the small path leading of the main road and sometimes back alongside the original road in order to catch up a little later - in short - it's inclinations towards the iterative reflection, the reduplication, the loop…, and the very useful: “Let us see what we were just trying to say!” or: “ Did we really say something now ?” after a misological road accident, after finding ourselves more or less stuck in the ditch by the main road …. People in general are very fast learners, - the capacity of learning is with ordinary people quite amazing - … This is actually ( persuasive word! ) one of the main threats to mankind. And it is certainly one of the main ( fortunate) causes of the existence of philosophy. People tend to learn everything and anything , and in learning about this and that, they think that most of what they have learnt is … the truth. It is - I am both ( kind of ) glad and sorry to point out - very seldom the case. Most of what they have learnt is what other people have wanted them to learn. That is why monologism is a necessity! Never the less: it is the enigma, the riddle, which is always beckoning.

Philosophy itself is mostly a Mon 1.

Mon. 1 is - reversibly - nearly by definition philosophy.
We suddenly find ourselves in the midst of a reduplication, in reflection close to the feared selfreference. Reflection is r. itself. All r. is always r. upon r.. and so on..

But - it is simply not true that all philosophy is a Mon 1. But it may be so, that a philosopher, and mankind in general have much more to gain by reading and writing the Mon 1.s than the Mon 2.s, because in the Mon 2.s we are setting out from a point, where we already have surrendered to certain conditions: we have established some certainties.

This submission and the surrender to the familiar and authoritative is not, as we all know, the favorite subject of philosophy, it is not the task of philosophy, and it is not what makes philosophy worth having. "Ein Professor ist ein Mann anderer Meinung."

It is the enigma, the riddle, that is beckoning.... Both Kafka and Kierkegaard leaves opportunity to analyze and display nuances in our theory in the upcoming Chapters. As a result of my reading of Kafka´s and Kierkegaard´s complete works, those texts published in their lifetime and the aftermath too-. I could already easily claim, that it is in these authorships an immense collections of goings astray, waywards and reduplications, and shifts between Mon 1.and Mon.2. It is with Kierkegaard almost a common thing, a strong inclination to write Mon 1. and with his always present intimitizing tone and, furthermore, this is of special interest, that Kierkegaard was a very conscious writer, from the very beginning of his time as a publicist to be interested in the art of communication (´ Meddelelsens Kunst´ ), and he speculated and reasoned with himself throughout his whole life in what ways one could most effectively display a message, an opinion, the most efficient manner. He had regarding this subject almost more to deliver than any contemporary writer. ( Cf. Lars Bejerholm, Meddelelsens Dialektik. (1962).) We will return to this subject, - we are as a matter of fact forced to do it, since much of the later life of S.K. came out of his lack of understanding media - new media.
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§.21. The counter theories.

1.) As early as in the rich but rather chaotic Phänomenologie des Geistes ( 1807) ( you are not always quite sure of what a relative pronoun is referring back to in this book by Hegel ... ) - in his vintage years - G.W.F.Hegel puts forth the opinion, the notion, that nobody - in any situation - reflects upon anything without having another person in mind as counterpart! This is - especially at this time in our culture, when the greatest individualism since the renaissance was born in the German idealism - very astonishing. You are thus never able to reflect on your own. You are never alone.(!!!) There is no such thing as a pure and isolated reflection. ( When I myself have discussed my theory with a few persons, wisely enough, before publishing it, most people have tended to agree with Hegel. When I have mentioned the other dialogicans, the reaction has not become at all that positive. I don´t know why. It must depend on my disability to put forth any other theory on this than Hegel´s.
I have, in these discussions, pointed out and trying to stress the "sadness" of H.s theory. You can not even think of yourself as alone,(!?) apart from your former acquaintances and family and teachers and so on...., and you cannot either think of other persons as relieved of the burden of the meetings with other people. You are always in a constant debate with one or the other of these, - or with the Almighty. ( Hegel , most probably being an atheist, does not mention The Almighty. ) This means that what I am writing here and now is directed to somebody I have met.
I am sitting here alone, but I am still not alone. Even my assertion, that I am not alone, is overheard by some counterpart on earth or in heaven and , as it thus feels, reacted upon with either affirmation or a mocking smile. I am not writing this to figure out something for myself. I am writing it for another. All is thought for someone else, and with a purpose concerning mainly the relation between myself and this other person.

We shall look upon the compatibility of this theory with G.W.F. Hegel´s philosophy a little later. After all the Phenomenology of Mind is a complicated work, that can be read in different ways.( Or - partly - in no way at all ... ). But his, let us call it "counter-theory", is very interesting and clear-cut. The meaning by this theory is thus, that every thought in every human being always is directed towards some actual living or dead person.No thought whatsoever is undirected - thus, according to the ( very plausible ) theory of Hegel.

I am leaving Denis Diderot ( who preceded H. by some years ) aside for a later appearance . Only citing: "If God suddenly gave every individual a language in every respect analogous to the sensations of this individual, the understanding of each other would immediately cease." Refutation du livre d´Helvetius (1773), and:

" In such a high degree even the most active thinker yet is an automate!" Discours sur la poesie dramatique (1758). Now I am only preliminary posing the difficult question about the connection between G.W.F.Hegel and the 20th century dialogicans.

We might think that the part unknown is the abject ( Cf. the writings of M.Klein.), that I am constantly having a dialog with the abject - which is the part ,which is forced out of oneself, banned, or that, which I was fooled to leave behind by life or circumstances - or that part of oneself, that one has flung away in despair at some stage -,an act which one is constantly regretting in the deep of one´s heart . In this dialogue with the abject many people are living their lives, suffocating. Many a monologue is a process of regretting ( a "backwards anxiety" according to S.K. ) and many a monologue is full of regret, - and in a manifold way.( S.K. is sometimes all possessed by directions in his thinking: thus repetition is backwards rememberance. Thus we can say that he is linear in part of his thinking. But also that he is visualizing intellectual processes quite frequently, and that he is in an almost endless creative state. He just cannot stop.... )

2. The theory of the supra-natural and the double track. - (Predestined words. )

( The parallel.)

Monologue is that which M. comes up with . It is much like the plant, which is nurtured by the roots. But some people fell as if this was meant to be, it was all calculated long ago. Maybe there was eternally a place reserved for these words in this cyberspace, on your retina, in these consciousnesses. The tracks were lain.( This could sometimes be a strong human feeling, that is hard to resist. And why resisted.... Because it is a superficial one.) Deja vu as the truth about ourselves. The absence of ambiguity makes us apt to look for one. But if everything is laid down in a ready track, then all is determined, determinated ! (You might think of theories by Wittgenstein, Derrida, the Swedish author and critic M. Hedlund and others....) With Wittgenstein there is a selten theory about the problems non existing until we have the answers. About the equation put in question, a non-aprioristic view. And a non-temporal world where choice is impossible....

One of our basic thoughts in this paper is that the pure possibility of finish a monologue, this is the human soul.( accidence was to S.K. a part of the given. ) Cf. S. Kierkegaard in his twenties:

" Every time I want to say something, there is always somebody who at this very moment is saying it. - It is like I was double-thinker, and as if my other "me" always was capable of anticipating me, or as if, while I am standing there talking, everybody thinks that it is somebody else, that really is talking." ( Papirer, I,A.333.), and, six months later: " I am actually astonished, how Kerner in his Dichtungen in such a resurrective way is able to perceive the phenomenon that always have made me so upset, since I first noticed it: that someone is saying exactly the same thing as I am. When I would perceive this, it would, in a most confusing manner, almost kasperian "Unsinn"-like, one person begin a sentence, which the other should fulfill, - it would appear a confusion about who was really speaking." ( Pap.II.A.115.) In another passage he claims that all he has written is kind of filling in a predestined form..... And all this is scribbled down and confessed by one of the great voluntarist of modern time.

"Den hele Produktivitet har i een Forstand havt den uafbrudte Jaenvnhed, som om jeg ikke havde bestilt Andet end hver Dag at afskrive et bestemt Stykke af en trykt Bog." (S.K.S.V.XVIII.s.124.)

§. 22.The monologue, according to the poet Novalis. ( Fr. von Hardenberg.)

"As a matter of fact it is something foolsome about talking and writing; a really good conversation is only playing with words. You can only get fascinated by the mistake, that actually makes you laugh, that people think they are talking on behalf of the things. Accurately the strange fact about language, that it only is concerned with itself, is known to nobody. That is why the languages are such a wonderful and fruitful secret; - that, if someone is speaking only for speak´s sake , he will utter the most lovely, the deepest truths. But, if he wants to talk about something special, language in it´s whimsy way only will permit him to say the most laughable and awkward things. Hence the deep contempt which many of all the most serious people holds against language."

( from Novalis´ Fragments. )

§. 23. Five introductory examples.

a.) The Diary.

Because: what could be more natural in this concern than thinking of a diary? With the old address:"Dear Diary!"

"My Dear Diary (.... Kitty!) .I know, that you are much wiser than Dad and all I know and more...!!! When I am sitting here alone writing, I want to tell you about things make things clear to you and I hope that you will help to get an answer Because, I have no one else to talk to! And I think you will do! Dear Diary! Because God has told me, that no one needs toknow who gives me the answers! Thus you can advise me, or refrain from give me any answers - but , please, do listen!! Listen to me. It is all I am asking you! You are my only friend, my only possibility to get things straight...! You bet that it is hard. I will be crying blood every time I am writing to you, but it is worth it... Only the advantage of being permitted, being able to write down on a piece of paper what I have been going through what I have been exposed to in life, and what I have thought about it. I am grateful beforehand.

      Yours eternally , X. "

In the "history of literature" , for example in France, there were great writers of diaries, hunting their own identities, their ""I", their "soul". We have Stendahl, Constant, de Sade and the already mentioned de Biran - and it is a new genre, as Stendahl ( Henri Bayle ) writes:

" I have taken up as a rule never to erase."

De Biran is a bit different from ther other writers of diaries of this epoche in the methodological approach, his steady looking for new wievs, as well as his use of repetition as a search method.

b.) The Prayer.

If the listening is present, - provided the addrss is earnest and true! Cf. The mystic of the prayer! . - Cf. f. ex. R. Voillaume, Living in prayer.(1980.)- But prayer is a kind of dialogue:" The more I am praying, the more I know him." ( him= God ), as the humble man told the ecumenian Arch Bishop Nathan Söderblom once. ( ( Cf. Den levande Guden./ The living God/ (1932) )

The prayer is dialogical.( We will return to this mater.)

c.) The final act.(Mrs.W.)

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d.) The Apology of Socrates. ( Plato.)

The Apology of Socrates could not possibly be said to be some strict "Mon 2". It is hardy an apology at all. Socrates only in certain parts of this - Plato's dialogue - speech defends himself. He is accusing and furthermore his bragging about himself and is ironically questioning death as a penalty ( hinting at , that there could be a misconception regarding the "kingdom" of Hades ), and he is raising the principal question whether a good person ever can do something bad. Socrates is preoccupied with no defense at all but with making himself immortal by ( the rumor of ) this speech. We could hardly look upon this speech as a Mon 1., since S. hardly is searching for something unsuspected, any wayward, but he is from the start completely clear of his aim.

It has been a classical question where the Apology should be placed within the authorship of Plato.* Kierkegaard is convinced that the Apology is ... irony through and through!!! " For sure is the Apology in it´s whole ironically shaped, in that its whole mass of accusations are reduced to naught, not in a common sense, but to a Naught, that Socrates nearly asserts as the content of his life, which again is Irony/..../."( S.K.V.I. s.93 f.. n.) ( S. Kierkegaard is also questioning the autencity of the apology, - one of his very rare filological remarks. )

    "If death is kind of a journey from here to another place, and if this is true, that they say, that all dead people are there, what could be a greater luck, my gentle judges? Because if you may come to the realm of Hades and there getting rid of those who call themselves judges, to meet the true judges, who, as we are told, make justice down there, Minos, Radamantys and Aiakos and Tripolemos and all other heroes, who have lived a righteous life - would n´t that be a gorgeous journey? Or to meet Orfeus and Musaios and Hesiodos and Homeros - what would you give me for that? I - personally - would freely die many times, if this was the case. And what a wonderful life I would have, if I met Palamedes and Aias, the son of Telemon, and all the other heroes of ancient days, all men who lost heir lives because of wrong judgment. To compare my fate with theirs would, I think, be a pleasure. And then, the best of it all - to be able to keep on investigating and judging down there in the same manner as here, and look for who is really wise and who thinks he is wise, without being wise! It is difficult to figure out how much one would pay to investigate and judge the man who was in charge in the great assault towards Troy, or Odysseus or Sisyphus or - yes, all these thousands of other people, both men and women, that you could mention. To be able to talk to them, what a bliss it would be! In either case you would not be sentenced to death down there. Because the ones, that are living down there, are happier in every matter than those who are living here, and all in particular in that respect, that they for all future time are immortal - if in all other maters that is true, which is told about these things."

( Plato, Skrifter,(writings),( transl. from Lindskog.)I, s.38 f. * It is almost certain , that this is an early dialogue (!) and that it is rather accurate concerning its historical accuracy. Cf. Aristofanes, Xenofon and others....)

Sokrates is in much of his appearance an anarchist, a negative power, a questioning man without answers, - kind of a "beginning". ( Maybe this was the intent of Socrates, maybe also the intent of Plato. But we do have other pictures of Socrates to, mainly that of Aristofanes, the comedian - who pictures him a bit differently.)

"The reign of Socrates was short." Aristotle wrote. According to Diogenes Laertius ( c:a 250 B.C.) in his book Diogenes Laerius life and views concerning those who where prominent in Philosophy and a short account concerning each school. - Laertius was apparently nearly only interested in paradoxes, and that is why his history of Philosophy, if we may call it thus, is a history of the paradoxes of the ancient learned Greeks. But his book lacks much of analysis.( The paradoxes themselves are never in any way analyzed by L. ).L.s view is, therefore, you could easily say, rather narrow, and what one gets from his book is in the nearest a parody of Greek Philosophy, a picture of a philosophy where everybody is trying to get out of every difficult question by posing a new paradox, to place oneself in a realm, where one not is exposed to any accusation of ambiguity.

This was - and is - probably the philosophy of Laertius. And, according to the doctrine about the eternal reawakening, it is at times philosophy today too! - It is not a fault to try to get to grips with things in the name of paradox. All meaning has an implicit meaning. How should Laertius otherwise have done? The traditional history of philosophy was not yet born ( is it yet?) and it had not ( if it was ever born ) dies. What Laertius did was a rather modern achievement. An original , sensible, honest and amusing treatise. What one cannot say concerning the Laertius´book is, that it is taking into account the historical situation.

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e.) The Monologue of an ape. ( F. Kafka )

" Oh, all this progress! How delightful it is to fell the rays of knowledge penetrate your brain! I cannot deny that it made me happy. But I also admit ,that I did not even then overestimate knowledge and even less today. By an effort which has none the like on this earth, I have managed to reach the average cultural level of an European. This is as such without any importance, had it not helped me out of my cage and thus created an opening, otherwise only available to humans. There is an excellent old saying: "My son, if you want to manage in this world, bend your neck." I have. I have bent my neck. You see, I had no other possible solution, then still provided that I could not chose freedom."

( Kafka, 1911.)

f.) A Monologue concerning a price on eternal bliss.

In the year of 1855 a bitter an pugnacious S. Kierkegaard published the following monologue in the Copenhaguener daily paper Faedrelandet:

" A Monologue.

…In this matter Studentstrup * is right, that the house of council is a rather huge building, and for the utterly small sum, that these courageous men want to get rid of it, it is the most brilliant affair ever; this may all his uncles of Thy, all in Salling, all wise men here and there concede in.
What evades Studentstrup is, weather these courageous men has the connection to the town hall so that they can dispose of it commercially. Because, if this is not the case , if it only where about 4 mark and 8 shilling, it is too expensive - to the town hall. Even cheapness is nothing one can always be in favor of: since the price is not low, but very high.
Exactly equal is it with Christianity. That an eternal bliss is an invaluable good, something much more important than the buying and selling of the house of council, that this was bought for a trifle, for which the priest are selling it off, may be looked upon as a far more brilliant commerce than Studentstrup´s of the town hall. This I am willing to believe.
The only doubt I have about this is, weather the priests is in the relation to the bliss of eternity in such a manner, that they really are able to give it away. Because, if this was the case, even 4 Mark and 8 Shilling would be a huge price.
The New Testament is deciding the conditions of bliss. Compared to the price of the New Testament - that is certainly true, I cannot find the expression to denote to which degree it is comparable to the cheapness of the price of the priest, is dirt-cheap. But - as we have already mentioned - is the priest is in such a relation to the bliss of eternity, that he can dispose of it, so that you can by it from him?
Because if the priest is not in such a relation to the bliss of eternity, that he can dispose of it, which he is not, since he is not our Lord, and is the Christianity of the priest, the official Christianity not the Christianity of the New Testament, not at all more alike this than the square is alike the circle: what is then all the cheapness of his helping me out ? Regarding the acquirement of eternal bliss I will, by purchasing by him, not get any closer, so that when I am buying with him I am at most be kind of doing something good, by contributing by my small money to the survival of students and their families.

S. Kierkegaard.
On the 6th of May."

*) (S.K. alludes to a comedy by the great L. Holberg: "The 11th of June." in which a Mr. Studentstrup is trying to pawn the town hall. It was one of S. Kierkegaard favorite comedies, even more than J.L. Heiberg´s Recencenten og Dyret..)

§ 24. About comparisons in general.(2.)

We would certainly be interested in displaying self-knowledge in a more concrete manner. Do people succeed ? Do they fail? How do people courageously act and reflect. How do they not ? I intend - as you might have guessed already - to elucidate my subject by using to actual , well known, authorships. It is good and conventional method to have empirical material to support a thesis. I intend to try to characterize life-monologues, texts, discourses, by a rather strange - and completely new - method. I will examine discourses from a rather odd angle. When I am looking at the discourse I will ask one main question, - namely this one:
To what extent can you, in certain discourses, perceive, that the writer ( performer, or the discourse itself ) more is in search for a point than proceeds from a point.( . → ) Thus the central concept of this book (!) is "the point". (.) The second most import concepts are "to" and "from".
Each person´s system of reference has "that person himself" as it´s anchoring point , and as the " I",( in the present, in the Now ) but inside this anchor point there can be a couple of distinctly different things going on, and these are my upcoming objects of investigation.

Things can happen that changes the direction. We have hesitated to call this a "catastrophe", but it could certainly look like that more than anything else.....

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Updated : .June 20, 2007