21/02/2013

Philosophy Lecture 21/2/13


“The rebels weapon is the proof of his humanity. This irrepressible violence is man re-creating himself.” (Wretched of the Earth)

Existentialism as an agent for political change - via existentialism principles established by Nietzsche, Heidegger - a call to arms from Sartre and the explicit embracing of violence by Franz Fanon.

Key figures in development of existentialism:
Nietzche
He makes a complete break to what we have before.
God is Dead - the end of certainty - and we are faced with a crisis - we need something new to sustain us. (He isn’t saying specific god, he’s talking about this big structures that we rely on such as religion, that we want guidance from. We need certainty. As a kid we like adults to tell us what is right and what will help. Nietzsche uses this analogy, that we we believed in this superstructure such as religion, we are like children. Then we grow up and realize there is no good, no structure etc. Life is confusing. There are no absolutes.He thinks it is just brilliant, as up to this point we were just being told, what you should do to go to hell and heaven etc.  

This crisis is fantastic according to Nietzsche - it means freedom. It gives us the freedom to find value for ourselves (this is called the transvaluation of all values)
For Nietzsche human nature is not universal. Our natures are different and it therefore follows that different people can find and follow different conceptions of excellence, different moralities. (opposing position of natural rights [Locke] and creates space for Fanon’s violence.

The Ubermensch (demi-god - a person with great powers and abilities. Nietzsche’s concept for ‘an over man’) - overcomes what has so far defined us as humans. The Overman renounces all of this, carving out his place in the world according to his own will. Will to power - defining himself by the choices he makes.
* Rousseau - there is a general will*
*Locke - natural rights etc*
Nietzsche disagrees with R and L
CHOICE IS CRUCIAL TO THE EXISTENTIALIST POINT OF VIEW.

Heidegger
- Being and Time: highly influential (Sartre’s being and Nothingness - homeage to it)
- The book is about human existence. Heidegger is interested in what it means to exist and consequently the problems of human life. But before we can investigate the nature of being as such we must first question the nature of the being which causes the questions to be asked. 

- And that is a creature he calls Dasein - Dasein is each of us.
Heidegger thought that humans were Dasein but it’s not only human beings, he thought there was potential for others e.g. aliens to be Dasein too.
Heidegger is largely an attack on Descartes. He lays into the Cartesians, he has no time for them. He dislikes Descartes so much, as the idea of cartesian dualism (two things in the universe, mind and body. These things are completely different) Heidegger thinks that this from Descartes was an utter disaster as if you believe in this, there is no possible way for philosophy to work. If these two things are different, how do they interact? E.g. Casper the ghost, how can a ghost lift something he is see through.
If your mind is one thing and your body another, how do you control your body.
Therefore Heidegger believes this idea is completely wrong.

The thrust of his philosophy is largely directed against one philosopher - Descartes

But if we are stuck in our minds and theres a very real question which plagued Descartes and virtually all of the philosophers after him - how we get out of our minds to know the world itself?

Sceptic's like David Hume doubted that we could ever know the world as it is. Also Bishop Berkeley. 

In place of consciousness and subjectivity Heidegger simply talks about Dasein (being in the world) - he is looking for the essential structure of Dasein.

Being in the world - but not to be understood as a spatial relationship - it denotes a certain type of engagement - I’m in Journalism - one defines me in terms of my engagement with Journalism. Dasein is our engagement in the world - involved in it. 
Your existence is your engagement in the world. Every engagement in the world is to do with choice. Even if you are disengaged, this is a choice. He is not trying to work out what the world is (empirical way), he is just saying this is the way it is.

Heidegger believes that Cartesian Dualism is absurd. For Dasein to exist, it must exist in the world. Therefore there is no Dasein without the world Socrates and Christian philosophers were mistaken.
He says that when we normally speak with ourselves we don’t speak about our authentic selfs at all - true self - being one’s own person. Influenced by Nietzsche has a long argument against slave morality (THIS IS CALLED BAD FAITH)

You are defined by your choices and decisions - existentialism. 

Nietzsche - slave morality (the slave who is following religion and rules etc)
If we want to be an ubermensche we must overcome this, Heidegger is saying the same thing. He says we have our true self, if we make decisions to show our true selves we are living an authentic life. If we follow the crowd, doing what others believe we should do, then we are living an inauthentic self.
Das man self - the inauthentic self - what he has in mind is a sort of social construal of the self. The Das Man self is inauthentic because it is simply a social self, it is not one own’s self at all. 

Existence - this doesn’t just mean taking a place in the world, it has to do with possibilities and choices.This is to be contrasted with what Heidegger calls Facticity (which Sartre will borrow)

Facticity (the events that have brought you to this place now) are those parts of ourself which are simply given - we are thrown into the world. We are born at the certain time at a certain place, of certain parents and we don’t have a choice about any of this. Our Dasein is very much wedded to where we happen to be thrown in life. Facticity - ‘THROWNESS’ - we are born with a blank slate (Chomsky) but already have a past. Moral Luck.
For the existentialist the future is the most important dimension. We are creatures of the ‘possible’.

Transcendence - is my reaction to my facticity - our possibility, which may not be realized. I am defined by my choices - I re-create myself - I am not defined by my past. (This is crucial to Fanon - path to escape the role of victim) = Throughout history, people have thought that certain races or people, Aristotle (people are natural slaves), are inferior. That’s because they were defining people by there past. Heidegger doesn’t believe anything matters e.g. nationality, sex etc. We do not need to be victims, we choose to not be victims. He thinks we should fight aggressively against people who think this.

Sartre
Key Idea - existence precedes essence. We create our own purpose.  
For example, - Simone de Beauvoir - “one is not born a woman, but becomes one” How you act, as a woman, how a woman should act, you are not born with that. You become that. E.g. certain things a woman does, but these are all choices. You are just a physical being, how you present yourself are just choices. We create our own purpose and define our own essence. 

The absurd - there is no guiding spirit, no teleological driving force - stuff happens, good and bad without reason and so life is in some way ridiculous and absurd.

Heidegger’s existentialism was right wing (Nazi) - Sartre’s was left wing.
Shows that existentialism is broad, it is shown in different ways.

Similar to Heidegger - The life of a person is not determined in advance, by God or moral laws says Sartre. The only thing I cannot escape is the need to choose. But the possibility of recreating oneself is frightening - people will try to avoid this freedom. This is bad faith. 
Being-in-itself, being-for-itself

Some people like to be led and to be told what to do, but we need to make choices. Existentialist believes that you can re-create yourself. Your facticity is your past, the most important thing is the next choice you make, and this choice can re-create yourself.
You can change your life by your very next decision. The moments when we are in bad faith, are when we allow ourselves to be defined ‘I’m just a student‘ etc. Then Sartre will say ‘you are not‘ you could decide to be a doctor or anything else. You pretending to yourself that you can be defined is bad faith. In a way its just you dodging a decision.

The alternative is to take responsibility for your actions and be defined by your choices: “all the barriers, all the railings, collapse, annihilated by the consciousness of my liberty. It is I who maintain values in being.” (Think Nietzsche Open Sea)

Humanity for Sartre is:
Abandonment - God is Dead (Nietzsche), God does not guide our actions, there is no divine set of rules to follow - we are alone and there is no one/thing to guide us on how to act.
Anguish - Humans are fundamentally free, ‘condemned to be free’, the responsibility of being free is enormous, we have no excuses, we are responsible for everything we are. We cannot choose our past but we chose how we feel and act to every situation. 
Despair - This is the realization of that the world may prevent us from getting what we want, but we still chose how we react to the setback, we are totality of what we actually do.

Example:
Sartre’s pupil:
Choice between his mother and joining the free French (the resistance).
Abandonment, Anguish, Despair.
The choice? “You are free, therefore choose.”

Bad Faith
Most people think that being a soldier, police officer, student, engineer, confers certain obligations on you, for example students are expected to attend lectures, do exams etc. But Sartre might accuse you of bad faith - the denial that you are radically free, when they think their past determines their future.
Sartre thinks such people are making a metaphysical mistake - turning themselves into inert objects rather than free beings condemned to making free choices.
Examples:
cafe waiter - the waiter is acting out on a role, in doing that he is denying that he is free to otherwise, in that way he is like a mechanical robot. The waiter is trying to represent himself as determined in his actions. 

Notes on Seminar - Epistemology

- A Priori - knowledge before experience.
- This idea is similar to Descartes 'I think therefore I am'
- The Opposite of Descartes is Locke who thought that the mind is a blank slate. This can relate to the theory of Noam Chomsky.
- Induction = basing generalised ideas on things. This needs experience first. Therefore Induction is after experience.
- Deduction = the rephrasing of something
- A solopsist believes that only you exist.
- Ontological = God is perfect. Because he is perfect, he must exist.
- Cosmological = Something must have caused it. Keep going back and back (on cause cause)
- Teleological = Things happening for a reason. We are heading somewhere.
- Non Teleological = Things JUST happening for a reason.

Cartesian Dualism = the mind and body are separate.
Evil Demon - Descartes - It is deceiving
You can't know something is really there.
You can't trust the outside world.

Philosophy 7/2/13


HCJ Semester 2, Lecture 2

Frege, Russell, Whitehead - logic and mathematics

Natural numbers, these are words used to count things. To count is to create an abstract category or group. 

Creating words and abstract symbols for plural categories (plural = more than one) requires a system of number words (‘symbols’), and a logical syntax for combining these number-words (symbols) to imply further or predicate number-words.

Three fundamental attitudes towards languages (including syntactical number systems, such as arithmetic), but especially numbers

  1. The natural and can be empirically observed (e.g. Mill and most ordinary folks)
  2. Platonic. They are intuitions of harmonic perfect platonic other world (e.g. pythagoreanism, Descartes, geometry)
  3. They are abstract logical objects, constructed purely from syntax (Frege, early Russell)

Russell started as a platonist.

SYNTAX - logical system using rules of inference to alter meaning of symbols (e.g. words numbers). It is basically a set of rules to modify the meaning of one logical object to another. Adjectives and nouns have syntactical forms. Numbers are created by Syntax according to Frege.

Numerical Naturalism/ Evolutionary Psychology
There are said to be three areas of numbers. Apes and stone-age tribes appear to be able to judge simple empirical plurality , typically; 
0 = absence of a thing e.g. banana
1 = one banana/enough bananas
2 = (maybe) a lot of bananas/unlimited bananas

“one thing” and “more than one thing” and possible “many things”. These are the only numbers they need. Even for people from advanced cultures small number words are functionally different to large number words. If you come into a room and there is one person, you don’t count the one person; even with three you can categorize that as a simply plurality. Most people will go up to maybe six or seven objects in a group before counting, using logic relations to the empirical pluralities.

Addition and multiplication - empirically - are plurals or plurals, systems of storing and communicating information. You would not go to a football ground and look at the crowd and say there are 37,879 people here. You could go to a football ground and say there were four people there, without counting. Or ‘the ground was empty‘ (the empirical zero, called ‘the null class’) then; ‘there were a few people in the ground‘ (relative to capacity) and ‘the ground was full’. These are ‘natural numbers‘ or ‘simple pluralities’.

So the number 7,456 is a predicate symbol of more basic symbols organized according to known syntax (logical rules of inference). And as a predicate it can be analyzed (operation similar to division and calculating number squares and roots) - “analytic philosophy” - the paradigm of analysis.
Technology - basic logical language - computers, Facebook etc
Discuss - the limits of logical modeling of human intelligence e.g. predictive texting (fuzzy logic vs neat logic.
Noam Chomsky - innate knowledge (look over English Lang notes from A Level)
Human syntax is incredibly subtle compared to computer syntax

Attitude 2: Pythagoreanism/Platonism
This is the view that numbers are so strange that they don’t occur in nature. Not known in a Kantian world. Simple plurality does occur in nature. 
Prime numbers (not divisible - they don’t resolve into whole numbers) are pre-existing, external supernatural forms - necessary pre-conditions for consciousness - the ‘logos‘. All other numbers are just rational combinations of prime numbers. (Contra Kant - “existence is not predicate” for Platonism existence is a predicate of numbers and other external forms. Primes exist in non-human dimensions, just as the idea, objects of aesthetic perfection and the ratios of geometry. These things are externally true, ultimately mysterious and part of the panoply of Orphic (pre-socratic, more of a general movement, Orpheous is the God of music) religion (Neitzsche’s Appolonion religion - pace, the birth of tragedy)

Orphic Religion - pythagorean. You couldn’t eat beans in this religion as they thought they were fetus’s, you can’t walk on the pavement, you must never leave the impression of your body on your bed. Cult like ideas. Worship mathematics. Chanting geometrical ideas etc. Contemplating the eternal truth

Prime numbers are rational. 
Similar to Plato and the cave analogy. Things for the domain on perfection.

The special religious significance of the prime number three (the first plural prime).
Three is the ‘magic’ number. Art - rule of thirds. Music - three chord triad. The three part drama with a beginning, a middle and an end.

Other primes have religious and even magic significance (Frazer, the golden Bough) Islam (Arab neo-platonism) exhibits cults around the none plural prime (one), but also five and seven (pentagrams)

Aristotle’s physics was a matter of solid geometrical shapes; what differentiated air from water was the number of faces of the sold geometrics fundamental objects.
This is all Orphism (according to Neitzsche, Russell and Frazer) and also the codified religion of Pythagoreanism (anthropologists often point to the Pythagorean elements in Christianity - the trinity; three people on the cross, resurrected after three days; cock crows three times, etc. 

Christians - worshipers of the number three
Muslims = worshipers of the number one.
Islam is obsessed with the number 1. Only ever 1 thing, 1 substance. 
The Greeks fear the number 1 and 0. Greek counting started with the number 2. 


Number 5 and 7 are important. Babylonions - special significance of 12, because of the zodiac.

Pythagoras (and all the Greeks) regarded only plurals as natural numbers so they began counting with two.
“one” and “not one” were different logical categories.

The odyssey - Odyseus and the Cylops - ‘my name is no one’ and the cyclops says ‘no one is there’. Frege later cities the same problem in logic. (‘there is no one on the road’ does not mean the same thing as ‘the road is empty’ and anyway the road is not empty because it contains at least the road).

Special problem with Nothing and Zero
The concept of ‘zero’ came from India, much later via Sufi Islam. Entire Arabic numeral systems was introduced in the middle ages after the fall of Rome. It is a very difficult concept as ‘Zero = nothing. But Nothing = something.’ The is contra to Aristotle's first law of logic and contradiction. Aristotle invented Logic, and was a way of set out syntax so your beliefs will be true.

Modern philosophers of mathematics have thus assert that zero is a natural number, logically derived as 1 - 1 = 0. ‘Nothing’ is a philosophical absurdity (e.g. Heidegger), also the qualitative differential gap between 0 = nothing and 1 = something is as big as the universe.

The moon is the sun, and the sun is the sun. Therefore you know the sun isn’t the moon. 

Aristotle
All swans are white - All men are mortal - Aristotle
This bird is a swan - therefore it is white.
Aristotle is good as you can know HOW you know something. Why do you know that that bird must be white because it’s a swan. But a problem occurred as Australia was found and they had black swans so that idea went out the window.
Organon - another word for the logic. 

0 + 1 = 1 but 0 x 1 = 0

BUT

So what does 1 mean? And how can it be defined?

0 + 1 = 1 (infinitely large increment)
1 + 1 = (double in size)

N + 1 (infinitely small increment)

That was all wrong attitude that numbers are platonic entities from another universe but not known as things in themselves.

Attitude three; numbers as logical objects
The problem of zero and nothing remained unresolved for 1000 years until Frege (1848 - 1925)
His Books -  The foundations of Arithmetic (1884) ‘The Grundlagen’ - this is the first approach of numbers - LOGICAL OBJECTS. 
For Frege, arithmetic is just a language such as English is. They are all the same when you look at them analytically.

Links logic to arithmetic in an overall system of philosophy of language, with arithmetic as a special case of language.
Adapted by Russel and Whitehead (Principia Mathematica) as an attempt (failed) to demonstrate the logical basis for numbers, arithmetic and mathematics - thus refuting Phatonism and numerological mysticism (Russell started as a Platonist, saying that numbers could only be observed and used in calculation, but not understood as things in themselves. 

Rejected Mill’s numerological empiricism (you can not find zero in nature; the +1 increment can not be observed as empirically constant, therefore numbers must be derived from logic.
Frege had already reasoned in the same way in the previous generation. 

Frege’s Method
- (*) Axiom - all things which are identical are equal to themselves. This is asserted APriori (deductive truth) - certain. 
- It follows all things which are pairs are identical to all other pairs (regardless of what they are pairs of)
- The class of all pairs, contains all pairs and this and this can be given a purely nominal symbol (e.g. ‘two’) a word or a numeral, it does not matter.
- Larger numbers can be built as logical constructs along the lines of ‘the class of all things which are pairs of pairs’. We can attach any symbol we like to this; the conventional one would be ‘four’.
- One is the class of all things which are not associated with other things.
- Zero as a class of all possible objects which are NOT equal to themselves. There are no such objects, by definitions (see (*) Axiom. 

Bertrand Russell - 1872 - 1970
1907 - Stood for parliament as a suffragette (lost to a Tory)
1913 - Principia Mathematicia (age 41 - ‘exhausted’)
1914 - Pacifist (WW1)
1940 - Sacked by New York City University for immorality
1941 - Renounces pacifism 
1950 - Founder, campaign for nuclear disarmament.

Peano (same conclusion as Frege) He has the same argument as Frege about the ‘null class’.
Frege’s Logic
Syllogistic Logic - Aristotle

Inference - deductive (analytic/apriori) inductive (synthetic/aposterori)

Sentential logical - Frege - meaning is in the sentence as a whole


It is possible for a sentence to make sense but have no reference. It makes sense but there is no point of reference. This conversation would make sense but there are no reference points.

04/02/2013

Seminar Paper


Existentialism is a term which was used by many philosophers in the late 19th to 20th Century. These philosophers shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject, stressing the importance of personal experience and the acts and feelings of the living human. 

To begin the idea of consciousness, it is important to mention that consciousness ‘just is’, it is not the result of anything or the cause of anything in particular. Freud, who was an Anglo-American philosopher throughout the twentieth century, invented the idea of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis, in Freud’s mind, was the answer to everything. In simple terms, it is much like having therapy, a conversation where a patient and a doctor discuss issues the patient is having, and the reasons for these issues. Freud believed in the unconsciousness mind, which he manifested in three different ways. The first being through every day trivial mistakes. The second, through reports of dreams and the third through symptoms of neurosis. Freud thought that free association in analysis, reveals the underlying pattern of the unconscious mind. It is sexual development that is key to this pattern. Infantile sexuality begins with an oral stage, followed by an anal stage and a phallic stage. This is named the Oedipus complex, which is a crucial development in each boy. Towards the end of his life, Freud replaced earlier ideas of the conscious and unconscious, with a threefold scheme of mind. In his book ‘The Ego and the Id’, Freud describes the three separate personality traits, the ego, the id and the super ego. Freud believed that the way to deal with the unconscious, is through the id. The reason for this is because in sleep, the ego switches off and in dreams the id is rampant. Ultimately, dreams show the complete truth.

Edmund Husserl, born in 1859 was born into a Jewish family and in many ways his life resembles that of Freud. Husserl was the founder of the 20th century philosophical school of phenomenology. Husserl’s interest in philosophy began by the lectures of Franz Brentano in Vienna between the years of 1884 and 1886. Brentano sought to relate Aristotelian philosophy of mind to contemporary experimental inquiry in his book ‘Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint’. In this book, it explains that the data of consciousness comes in two kinds. The first kind is physical phenomena, which are such things as colours and smells. The second is mental phenomena, which are things such as thoughts and immanent objects. The aim of phenomenology was the study of immediate data consciousness, without reference to anything consciousness may tell us about the extra-mental world. Husserl believed that it makes no difference whether the ideas we have represent the real world or whether they are hallucinations. He states that it makes no difference to his life whether the table in front of him is in fact really there or if it is actually a hallucination. Only consciousness has ‘absolute being’, all other forms of being are dependent on consciousness for their existence. 


Martin Heidegger, a pupil of Husserl, published Being and Time (Sein und Zeit) in 1927, a book that claimed that phenomenology up until then had been too half-hearted. The aim of the book was to examine the data of consciousness, but employed notions such as ‘subject’, ‘object’, ‘act’ and ‘content’. Heidegger proclaims in this book that it was the end of the metaphysical age, as many were doing in this period of high modernism. However, he believed that this change began in the 1790’s with Kant and the French Revolution. The primary idea in the metaphysical age was to make thoughts correspond with an underlaying substrata of independent reality, similar to Schopenhauer's Will, the universe as a thing in itself. Heidegger believes that truth is the agreement of knowledge without the use of objects. These ideas are similar to that of Aristotle and Kant, who believe that objects are prior to mind or can be mind dependent. Kant’s idea of the noumena and phenomena are reflected largely in the work of both Husserl and Heidegger. Both philosophers take away the noumena and keep the phenomena, hence the idea of ‘phenomenology’.

After Heidegger, there is no absolute truths, there are only subject truths which are either weak, convenient or practical. These are necessary to being, as for Heidegger, being is always concrete e.g. ‘being in the world’ or ‘being there’.
This can then bring us to the idea of Dasein. Dasein, comes from the German every day word which can mean ‘way of being’, and is used by Heidegger as meaning ‘being there’. Dasein is relative of the point of view of the perceiver. It is shown in your mood, and for Heidegger, he believes your mood is you. Heidegger emphasizes on the temporal nature of Dasein, that we should think of it not as a substance but as the unfolding of a life. From the outset, we find ourselves thrown into a physical, cultural, and historical context which can be called throwness. This is simply the idea that we are always thrown in to something. This can relate to the way that ‘being’ is always concrete. We are always ‘being’ at a particular time and being engaged in a specific task. Freedom and authenticity for Heidegger is by being completely absorbed in task. When you fully engage in a task, you no longer exist. Heidegger believes that boredom is ‘the problem of being’ and the opposite of boredom is Dasein. Dasein is not thinking, but caring. 


Heidegger’s project was to clear away all philosophical terminology and concepts since the time of Socrates. He wanted to liberate himself from any constraints of objectification to live an authentic life. In practical terms, to live a simple life in the forest. Ultimately, Heidegger hates everything modern. Similar to Neitzsche, Heidegger believes that Socrates corrupted western civilization.
Heidegger, although having some similar ideas to Kant, disagreed about Time. Kant believed that there was 12 types of time, whereas Heidegger thought there were only 3;

  1. ‘Attunement’ - which is expressed as mood. This is often a reflection on the past, and is outside of Dasein. You reflect on these past moods and experiences, and often feel the emotion of guilt about things you have done previous. Ultimately Heidegger believes you should leave this past behind. 
  2. ‘Being for itself ‘or ‘Being there’ - You care about the task in hand and you are doing your own thing. This is the present mode of Dasein.
  3. ‘Directedness’ - This is the reflection on the future. It produces the mood of dread as you are in fear of what is going to happen in your future.

    Ultimately, the past is guilt, the present is boredom (unless it is obliterated by Dasein) and the future is fear. 


In contrast to the right wing existentialism of Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, who was once a student of Heidegger, developed a form of existentialism that was far more left-wing. 
Sartre, similar to Hediegger, complained that Husserl had not taken the phenomenological reduction far enough. Sartre’s main work ‘Being and Nothingness’ attempts to remove the boundary of space and time from being. Being, for Sartre is what precedes and underlies all the different aspects of things that we encounter in consciousness. 
He believes that if we strip off all of the distinctions that consciousness has made, we are simply left with pure being. Being in itself is one of the key concepts focussed on in Being and Nothingness. The other, is for-itself which is related to human consciousness and refers to objects in the external world. Sartre believes that negation is the element which separates being in itself, and for itself. 

One main problem of human existence for Sartre is the desire of humans to attain being in itself, which he describes as wanting to be God. Ultimately, this is human natures longing to be in control of his life and destiny. Sartre thinks that the life of a human individual is not determined in advance. Human freedom is absolute and because of this, we try and hide it from ourselves and instead, adopt a role which is offered to us from outsiders such as society or religion. In the end, however, these efforts of concealing our freedom are bound to fail and we will end up double minded. This is the condition that Sartre refers to as ‘bad faith’. The alternative of this is to accept one’s freedom and the responsibility for ones own acts and life. In ‘Being and Nothingness’, another topic covered by Sartre is the idea of being-for-others. This relates to the way in which you are presented to other people, becoming nothing more than an object for them, often an object of envy or contempt. 


Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher who developed a form of semiotic analysis known as deconstruction. His work was associated with postmodern philosophy. In his work on deconstruction, Derrida proposed that the first task of deconstruction of philosophy and afterwards in literary texts, would be to overturn all the binary oppositions of metaphysics. Derrida attached great importance to the distinction between what is spoken and what is written, attacking what he calls ‘phonocentrism’, which relates to the overemphasis in Western civilization on the spoken word. This can relate to Heidegger and his idea that previous philosophers such as Socrates corrupted Western civilization with philosophical terminology. 

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