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          A QUICK CRITIQUE OF HUGH KELLY’S KJSNA PAPER
TABLE OF CONTENTS (dated significant corrections possible at any time) 

1. Disclosure: Hugh F. Kelly’s KJSNA paper “Judgment: Imagination, Creativity and Delusion”—a remedial opportunity

1.1. Herbert Müller’s chance at a Jaspers-ambient Target Article—

1.2. Herbert’s reason for his blog’s title; pursuing the idea trail

1.3. My judgmentalistic biography

2. A “Karl-Jaspers-Applied” critique of Hugh Kelly’s Jaspers-paper; Jaspers discards Aquinas

2.1. What must be discarded is an “ordering” seminally corporealized into Aquinas and Chardin’s Church

2.2. Thomas Aquinas is trailing in Jaspers’ “philosopher test” list

2.3. What cannot be discarded from Being (phenotypicality in Gen. Psychop.)

3. Now then, as regards Jaspers’ “Philosophie” book…  “a precious memory” and “first mature stage”

3.1. Hugh’s frequent references to “Philosophie”, and Jaspers’ updated comments

4. Some of Hugh’s Jaspers-comments’ proneness for abuse in cannon and canon

5. “Child Hannah” Arendt’s “Saint” Augustine as existential counselor

6. There might be too much emphasis on an unqualified fecundity…delusion fodder

7. A KJSNA-Carlin Romano and Dawkins blog’s pit-bulls, and Herbert Müller’s grasping for Dawkins-cannon-fodder

8. EUREKA! Making KJSNA papers available for the 99 psyches in society (Luke 15:7) in time for harvesting and restoring the American lost soul

        AN INNOVATIVE CRITIQUE OF HUGH KELLY’S JASPERS-PAPER

1. Hugh F. Kelly’s KJSNA paper “Judgment: Imagination, Creativity and Delusion” as target article— Herbert Müller on April 16, 2008 was one of 99 listed as receiving, by internet, Hugh F. Kelly’s (New York University) paper on Jaspers regarding “Judgment: Imagination, Creativity and Delusion”—a paper prepared for the Karl Jaspers Society of North America. The paper’s public disclosure offers a remedial opportunity to bring Herbert’s blog’s “communicative” claims on Jaspers into compliance with the commonsense-intuitive need to restore theistic Jaspers to a key position in coining psychopathological speech.

1.1. Herbert’s chance at a Jaspers-ambient Target Article--It would be a hard problem for Herbert not to attempt to use Hugh’s paper as a Target Article, for, net-ethically the availability of the paper is an inescapable occasion for escaping the atheism, i.e., the radical constructivism postings featuring a comparison of his zero-derivation epistemologism with that of Dawkin’s ontologism—an embarrassing comparison for the difference is more pretentious than real; being pretentious because the latter is immanental objectivism and the other is subjectivism with a flare for a reactionary radical mentalism that includes an abnormal disregard for the normal/abnormal psyche in society and history.

1.2. Herbert excuses the blog’s title by reference to a friend (yet to be revealed) of his that supposedly studied under Jaspers. The information is needed to objectively follow the trail of influence and to freely understand the forces. Hugh’s is a Jaspers centered paper by someone who studied under Hanna Arendt, and he refreshingly refers to her as Jaspers’ protégé—while omitting any mention of any significant influence of the Arendt/Heidegger relationship. But the child Hannah was caught between and influenced by the forces manifested through Jaspers and Heidegger.

1.3. My judgmentalistic biography--That said, protestant judgment’s imagination creatively looks for something real beyond the obvious in Hugh’s papers, such as: I strain to make sense as to why Augustine and especially Aquinas are introduced and standout as significant in an appraisal more than what the free market of ideas ought to determine in location, location, location.  My “verstehen”, the revelation side of the Existenz potential, though engaged, is not so heuristic as to reject or interject causes into the paper from which to cantilever. I mean I’m probably overstretching for effect, but the overreaching rests on things of a “vernunft” but yet of a “dasein” sort. If my biography is too imposing, that is not something so inherited that it cannot be modified with in-kind communication.

2. A “Karl Jaspers Applied” critique of Hugh Kelly’s Jaspers-paper; Jaspers discards Aquinas!—So, let me admit that I am going to be judgmental but normally imaginable while risking finding something that could be normally overlooked. First, there are within Jaspers’ works substantial grounds for the paper’s frequent reference to Augustine’s role in the history of psychology, but the case is different with Aquinas. Like in existential counseling something flutters or stands out too much and might be indicative of something that is less transparent but needs to be…understood. I’m assuming a need for expanding on Hugh’s quote in the paragraph where Jaspers says: “Today the study of the psychology of Thomas Aquinas is still rewarding.”(Gen. Psychop. p. 224). I say that there’s no doubt about what can be learned from any aberrant philosophy of psychology, the religious perennialism of Aquinas and Newman included, (see wikipedia) as well as what can be learned from the oldest occident psychologists whether Job or Moses. After that “reward” quote above and in the next paragraph Jaspers says the theoretical standpoint of Aquinas has “to be discarded.” (224) Jaspers is of course on the psychopathology course, and this is a textbook for that academic course used in a diminishing Humboldt university setting that still tolerated the likes of Troeltsch and Weber. The significance of the textbook for understanding the forces from which the Jaspers eventually escaped is now being understood.

2.1. What must be discarded is an “ordering” seminally corporeal-ized into Aquinas’ and Chardin’s Church, i.e., what must be discarded is whole-scheme hierarchical thinking where knowledge about humankind is considered. The ordering or hierarchical thinkers are put down. For instance, in “Great Philosophers”, Jaspers, after considering the foremost paradigmatic individuals, innovatively seen as such in historical retrospect, one notes that the list does not include Augustine (though here he apparently uses “Saint” but the title qualified more by the elevated stature through association with Plato and Kant and the timely nearness to the biblical use of “saint”). The first subgroup of philosophers is described as philosophical seminal thinkers. Augustine is listed under the second main group of philosophers, and sub-grouped as a seminal thinker along with Plato, and the early and nearly pre-apostasy Catholic-claimed Augustine, and the come-later purely protestant Kant (given name Immanuel). Jaspers will not let the student studying this textbook let go of philosophy while engaged in psychopathology. Descartes and Aquinas deferred to revelation through the orders of the Church. So did Augustine but in retrospect more philosophical than prospectively metaphysical—I mean he had less Catholic history data for prospective reasoning.

2.2. Thomas Aquinas is trailing by design in Jaspers’ forth subgroup as one of the “creative orderers”. This designed sub-listing is important for an understanding of what Jaspers means by discarding the “theoretical standpoints” of the “Churchmen” Aquinas and Descartes (that also obviously reflects on Aristotelian logistics whether through Catholic Churchmen or Arabian scholars). C(c)atholicity leaps on and attempts to collect the most systematic personages (including efforts to enfold Jaspers the most systematic of existential psychopathologists). Institutionalism under momentum does that as a force amidst forces. What Jaspers is discarding philosophically is the “ordering” and the metaphysical sacrosanct done by the personage elevated to principle status by the religious orders that made him, Thomas, a “Saint”. I think that is why Aquinas is mentioned under subheading of religious pathos on page 731. Jaspers accurately inverses the Catholic view that 30 centuries of philosophical faith amounts to “ersatz religion”. For Jaspers it the other way around, the ordering in Church history in the sense of catholicity is “ersatz” religion, or more accurately put, a catholicity is a substitute for biblical faith (See “Concepts of “Christian Philosophy” @ p. 27, Phil. Faith Rev.). Seeing Jaspers’ concern and drawing attention to it makes the messenger vulnerable to charges of bigotry or at least lacking in “kind regards”.  (And Hugh is correct in saying the page number for his “award”--and my “discard” reference--is 224 and not the 724 in my book’s name-index).

2.3. What cannot be discarded from Being (phenotypicality) --This grasp of Aquinas’ aristotelianism and Catholic Church history is important for seeing what “ordering” needs to be discarded to preserve the essence of humankind. That is why, in the textbook’s final preparations of the student of psychopathology, Jaspers again refers to Aquinas as an example to be discarded when due consideration is given to biography (Chapter XIV). Jaspers further prepares the student for PART V, “The Abnormal Psyche in Society and History” where under “Psychopathy and Religion” Aquinas’ psychopathic-religion is epitomized by Aquinas’ consistent discard of absurdity to the point of denying that the content of faith was essentially absurd thus opening the door to positivism—leaving the way open for the rationalized ordering of orders within the Catholic Church. PART V’s “psychopathy of religion”, Aquinas style, had to be discarded as an autonomous theoretical scheme to further prepare the student for the final PART VI “The Human Being as a Whole” wherein the student is restored to that “older view [that] pictured the whole {person within a more or less whole person-saturated historic world—my addition} in a way that preserved the abundance of reality without abandoning the unity of body and psyche…it [the older view] continued to see the physical in everything psychic and the psychic in everything physical” (p.224). Here Jaspers is speaking of “old” in the sense of antique values and preference. What cannot be discarded is the phenotypical encompassing history’s effect on the genotypical inherited soul of humankind, i.e., the inheritable historical affects individuals’ historicity.

3. Now, as regards Jaspers’ “Philosophie” book, which he, Jaspers, describes as a preparation and precious memory, a passing through the first mature stage of life and during thoughts of finalities (war-time philosophical bio), and, much became clearer to Jaspers after completing his “Philosophie” (Reply). In Jaspers’ “Reply” he’s speaking to Thomists such as Collins who had set his sights on Heidegger as a current Church philosopher because of a dated Aquinas. Jaspers prevented that canonization-like process by timely out-producing Heidegger. Then, the ways of the Catholic Church resorted to appropriating Jaspers’ as a friend of Catholicism but if that were not possible, as is being seen today, by misrepresenting or discrediting Jaspers, i.e. referring to him as a ranting bigot. I object to these tactics--these are my judgmental views, some capable of documentation including a Collin’s piece published in The Christian Standard around 1970—I’ve misplaced my copy (though surely available in any good library with a rare books section). The tactics come across in Jaspers critics and in his “Reply”.

3.1. Hugh makes frequent references to “Philosophie” and I simply want to say there are refreshing updated comments that address the Thomism issue, such as those Jaspers itemized @ pages 799 in his Reply to Critics in the Library of Living Philosophers, and the no-holds-barred comments regarding established Church tactics in Philosophical Faith and Revelation (where the perennialism, paradigm shifts in the history of education, a commitment to which, it seems to me, oozes out from the editor of Religious Perspectives—perennialism is presented on wikipedia as having originated with Aquinas and then fostered and defended by John Henry Newman in his “idea of the University”; it is a fair hypothesis to entertain that the commitment is such that it has infiltrated the APA and, until 4-16-2008, the KJSNA and in some editing of Jaspers’ works).

4. Some Hugh-comments can be misused in cannon and canon—If his paper ends up as a Target Article on Herbert’s blog there are a few comments that will be used and misrepresented as meaning that Jaspers supported or was the stunted undeveloped author of radical constructivism. Hugh’s commentary that Jaspers stresses that consciousness differs radically from things in the world will be misused. It tends to put that unity out of balance and inclines toward supporting a mind independent of reality aberrant way of thinking. It is a destructive overstatement if cast in the town square of the Constructivist community or tossed before the blogs exploiting Jaspers’ name for some demeaning purpose. As an overstatement it becomes cannon folder for radical constructivism, e.g., “meme” and zero-derivation mentalism. And there’s canon material here too, when in the same context Aquinas is given biblical prestige through associating his name with the biblical Paul’s words in Galatians. Perhaps overstatement is not as accurate as cleric-clad whisperings in the atmosphere subtly steering scholarly personages away from the more historic biblical standard and to the Aquinas’ vatic standard.

5. Steering Arendt’s to “Saint” Augustine as counselor might be less of a Rogerian approach and more an existential directive sort of guidance-technique provided by Jaspers to Hannah--a doctoral referral from Heidegger (perhaps for Heidegger’s own defense). The acceptance of the referral is a superb imagined example of Jaspers’ “verstehen” applied to the Arendt/Heidegger relationship. Hannah needed a historically objective philosophical psychologist of the caliber of Augustine. Enamor-able by a sort of canonizational biblical spirit (a lesson taken from…understandings…relative to the Nietzsche/Solomé (child lou and the geneology of morals situation) it seemed appropriate to search for a therapist beyond reproach. The Augustine love-research suggestion is beyond reproach because historically remote (and Augustine’s pre-conversion life style even more remote). A study of love in Augustine’s works, from the perspective of a pre-apostasy personage, and from an almost contemporary biblical perspective, was perhaps what Hannah needed to distract from the Heidegger thing—whether real or apparent or both.

5.1. Hugh uses Arendt to introduce Aquinas along with Augustine and via the “General Psychopathology” references, but then the Aquinas references and inferences of genetic inheritance gets out hand. Hugh correctly warns that privacy can be changed into privation. But titles of distinction, such as St. Thomas and Heidegger’s biography and academic titles, can contribute to morphing privacy into privation (the American soul has some safeguard from such privation through the Constitution’s warning against 21 gun salutes to titles of distinction overlapping national boundaries and that of church and state—and a few minutes ago I heard Huckabee announce his candidacy for vice-president with salutary words revering Vatic authority).

5.2. Though a protégé, Jaspers disagreed with Hannah regarding her interpretation of Kant (754 Reply), a sign of her privacy and autonomous selfhood, but his doctoral advice was not followed or understood and for that sort of reason the highest grade was not given. In this case a lower grade might point toward authentic selfhood rather than a disrespectful mimicking of a professor. I think Kirkbright subtly (but with “verstehen”) captures the situation with much understanding in chapter 21 with the heading “Child Hannah” (Navigation Jaspers). Under Jaspers’ guidance Hannah was not deprived of privacy, that is, if deprived at all by a personage it did not come through Jaspers.

6. There might be too much emphasis on fecundity or quantitative-like consensus. Hugh says, “The marks of creativity may be said to be newness, communication, and fecundity”. I don’t disagree with the delusional examples like his take on the Iraq “crusade” blunder, though politicians can feign insanity for raison d’etat--but I would add the Bush’s twenty-one gun vatic-blunder of this past week as the greatest blunder of the 21st century and goes to clinical conclusiveness. Regarding practice, conduct, behavior, I’d keep in mind that Kant’s universal law involved integrity, a familial, biographic enlightenment outside the scope allowed by Constructivism. Fecundity fairs poorly in the history of the golden rule, but failing to practice it does not reflect against the ideal of loving God and neighbor and self and that does not go to hubris. I’d remember that there is something delusional about Augustine and Aquinas, and that is their establishing Church, where vatic men, not God and the most historic, conjure the orders. That universal mission goes to…fecundity. There’s a need to watch out for the vatic ordering of words, like: if “practice” is too work-ethic protestant, test the atmosphere by promoting “vocation” and “praxis”—or “fecund”.

7. A KJSNA-Carlin Romano phenomenon, and Herbert Müller’s grasping at Dawkins-cannon-fodder--Carlin Romano, now scheduled to participate in the May KJSNA with a perspective on the importance of conciliatory behavior in communication, is now being exploited on Richard Dawkins’ website—an opportunistic one sided pit-bull blog for an establishing religious atheism.

7.1. Meanwhile, back on the floor of the “Karl Jaspers Forum”, Jaspers-fodder continues to be gathered with Herbert now grasping at a Dawkins-embroidered atheism, more fodder for the Oxford-manufactured-cannon volleys. One has to look through the smoke screen of “high regards” and the enrapturing camaraderie, to see this is not a Jaspers’ type of loving struggle where both wings of communication beat and soar. Rather, it is religious atheism on a fecund-roll of serious evangelizing for souls while touting slogans about the need for conciliatory behavior—behavior Jaspers has clearly warned against when used as a substitute in the search for truth. Carlin’s salving plea for conciliatory behavior, because such is the condition for being decent human beings, is like unstrung pearls cast before pit-bulls, as demonstrated on Dawkins’ turf (blog). The conciliatory attitude needs more philosophical wisdom teeth to avoid the metaphysical “meme” I-teeth of self-promotion and sophistry.

7.2. Replacing the substance of Jaspers’ Existenz philosophy with talk about civility implies that epistemology can be reduced to wordy formulae and comfortable terms. The aristocracy’s camaraderie rather than the democratic loving struggle is assumed to be the prime mover toward what favors the survival of world soul, i.e., the conscientious consciousness (See Jaspers’ more than conciliatory defense against the charge that he is more aristocratic than democratic @p. 759 in Reply).

8. Eureka! Making KJSNA papers available for the 99 psyches in society (Luke 15:7)—When Hugh Kelly cast his KJSNA paper’s content-intent out for democratic peer-review by way of the current 99 on the mailing list; it ought to have a favorable “fecund” effect (all needing repentance not the least of them being Radical Constructivists, zero meme derivationists). The suggestion to route the paper was a good one especially in view of Romano’s appearance and shredding on Dawkin’s blog.  It is a timely casting of Jaspers’ philosophical material; it is timely due to the current struggle for souls on American soil (such as Ken Miller’s coming book where the battle ground is now aimed at the American soul).

TO BE CONTINUED…Probably as UPDATE 38