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TABLE ON CONTENTS

Preface: The encompassing and periechontology issue
Introduction:

1. Steven Rosen, Donald Mender, and Steve Bindeman omit Jaspers
1.1. The omission of Jaspers seems like a good-old-boys’ backroom veto
2. Jaspers’ periechontology is more periech-ontology and precluded Heidegger’s book “time and being”––
3. Heidegger unworthy of a footnote-lending prestige
4. The breatholizer test procedure is violated by Herbert when he fails to include the historical atmosphere while in want of a quote from Jaspers’
5. The meaningfulness of “periech-” v. the meaninglessness of “peri-” relates
6. The Herbert-hubris is symptomatic of constructivism
7. Herbert’s defense v. Jaspers practical concern for humankind’s survival
7.1. Herbert makes a less than serious confession that he does not know what a “‘subject-inclusive ontology’ might be”
7.2. A sample of responsible complementarity
7.3. The need for fictional dispositions
7.4. Rosen-extenuations, e.g. Jerome Blackman, Sundararjan, Bindeman
7.5. Another reason for this fictional play about dispositions
8. Donald Mender in TA 107, C3
9. Steven Rosen’s incisiveness was too topologically vulnerable by design––
10. The issue is that ontologisms have real consequences in practice and metaphysical meanderings are distracting—defending Heidegger:
11. Herbert’s dualism-dance on the head of the Heideggerian ontology
12. Historic Hebraic moral law
13. Suffering’s periechontology
14. Restating the soccer-field issue: Jaspers takes on Bultmann and Heidegger
15. Historical immersion v. holy sprinkling: The difference in objectivity; historic v. immediate feeling states
16. Heidegger recognizes Jaspers as foremost, why not contributors!!—
17. In-kind candor or signs of incisiveness v. decisiveness
18. Jaspers’ ad hominem
19. Nietzsche and the suffering Jesus
19.1.There are two reasons Nietzsche stopped before Jesus
20. Heidegger’s rationalizing ontology, ontology is refined by performance
20.1. The point of periechontology
21. A comparison of Catholic-choice to Campbell-choice in “Riches of Christ”––The phenomenology and periechontology of Alexander Campbell

Preface: It will be obvious to a newcomer that the following presumes a certain sort of awareness primarily of Jaspers’ works, and some of what is transpiring on Herbert Müller’s “Karl Jaspers Forum”…or…one can be aware of Jaspers’ works and grasp the issues and argument without reviewing that blog. The Jaspers-issue can be found in Herbert Müller’s Target Article 106 where “Jaspers” and his concept of “encompassing” is incorrectly mentioned once parenthetically in item [16] and declared to support Herbert’s agenda that whatever is central in experience is unstructured and unstructurable. The reality is that structure is and was constantly central in Jaspers’ works. He is the most historically grounded systematic of theistic existential thinkers. Herbert compounds the propounding with misinformation about Jaspers in the blog’s TA107, Commentary 4 to Steven Rosen in item <4> where he affirms, incorrectly again, that periechontology represents the point where Jaspers falls into a bad ontologism. The following argues against this iconic atheistic propounding of misinformation regarding the theistic Jaspers––see 5 below for a quick feel for periechontology (periech-ontology).

Introduction: Recent postings on “Karl Jaspers Forum” disclose that Herbert Müller’s hyphenation of peri-echontology is more wrong than right, as is his constant misunderstanding of the percepts and concepts of Jaspers’ use of the word “encompassing”. Below, to show the historical context, I spin off the recent immanental (as opposed to any hint of the Transcendent) postings on Herbert Müller’s blog, namely those of Herbert, Steven Rosen, Donald Mender, and Steve Bindeman (for a clue to the dynamics see item 7.4. below), while applying Jaspers’ works including his Heisenberg-comments under the caption of Ciphers of Nature. While open to the Transcendental encompassing (the imageless God), and within an encompassing category of “ciphers of immanence”, which appropriately applies here, Jaspers warns that,

the premises of a research that lets us see scientifically how far we can get will tempt us, notably in case of great successes, to take an unscientific view of those very premises as anticipated insights into the whole. Assumptions that are final for the time being will be mistaken for conclusive cognition––the possible mathematical treatment of all nature, for example, or the natural mechanism, or the smallest particles of matter. Methods and relative premises become the thing itself; definite cognoscibilities in undefinable horizons turn into absolute Being. This is scientifically indefensible and philosophically irresponsible. (PFR 173) 

How this warning applies can be better understood in knowing that this quote is taken from the Part Five, Section One, II. Ciphers of Immanence, in which he shows the “possibilities and limitations of scientific cognition” about the encompassing in which we find our selves and the encompassing that we are and concludes “ciphers of immanence” with “ontology” and “periechontology”. The latter serves to avoid the perverse tendency of the former (82, 202-3). My purpose in drawing attention to this arrangement is to show that Jaspers leans away from those that speak as though nuclear physics and cognition are now unified in principle and that cognoscenti specializing in “an” encompassing immanence using specialized words merely have to decipher natural revelations so the complex can be simplified for those with the less…developed…cognitive specialization. Jaspers’ position is that the mathematical difficulties are unsurmountable, that this final principle, this solidarity or unity is rather “insoluble in principle, either because it is endless or because a leap, unsurmountable by quantitative derivation, lies in the matter itself…” Jaspers’ interrogative sentence points out that the effort to wed cognitive phenomenology and phenomena of nuclear physics into a new positivism should not be propounded in a “Jaspers auditorium” without the fairness of due process and competent representation.

1. Steven Rosen, Donald Mender, and Steve Bindeman omit Jaspers—Steven makes no reference to Jaspers on Herbert’s “Jaspers-blog”—probably because he was not encouraged to do so. He gives a verifiable detailed reference to Heidegger, though later and after a commenter, Donald, interjects Heidegger. Both then use Heidegger as an exemplary ontologist fitting well on one side of the topology-rational spectrum, and propose that Heidegger is one who can contribute to overcoming (in my view too) a paper-tiger, i.e., that which Steven aptly refers to as a “Classical and modernist…subject object” divide (107 R4 [6]). While Jaspers is omitted from the scale, Steven makes an indirect title-reference (one of his books) on the other end of the metaphysical spectrum to Anaximander’s apeiron. Anaximander, according to Jaspers, is a one-liner personage set up as an originator of an immanental theology based on only a few quoted lines from a secondary source––hardly equal to Hebraic law and biblical faith. Steven’s immanent-cognizing brackets the spectrum within the confines suggested in the title of another book “The self-evolving Cosmos” while admitting that one reason for the blog’s posting is to get the information propagated, e.g., “to further acquaint them [readers] with my works, etc.”  This reasoning is comparable to Herbert propagating that Dawkin’s works should be read by everyone and names a few specifically––meaning that not only should everyone purchase books, but institutions should use tax-payer funds to continue to restock libraries.

1.1. The omission of Jaspers seems like a good-old-boys’ backroom veto. It is so outstanding it…incites…a loner’s objection. The omission of Jaspers who famously critiqued Anaximander and the apeiron; aperion: a possible neo-Anaximanderism (“views imputed to Anaximander by other writers” (Great p. 10). Jaspers is excluded though he is the dominant pole in the Jaspers/Heidegger polemic—and it will be shown below how it can relate to freedom v. totalitarianism. This exclusion makes it appear that there is a general unfamiliarity and disinterest with Jaspers and provides Herbert with the immodest courage to rush into the blog flaying wildly around and about Jaspers’ periechontolgy. Embarrassingly, he miss-severs peri- instead of periech- from ontology. The mistake (though no radical zero-derivational constructivist will admit error) severs Hebraic moral law and the biblical ethos of faith from the later Hellenistic/Hebraic historical phenomena. The mistake means Jaspers is being misrepresented and what we have is missed due process in the misnamed “Karl Jaspers Forum”.

2. Jaspers’ periechontology is more periech-ontology and precluded Heidegger’s book “time and being”––It’s safe to say that Jaspers was aware of Heidegger’s intention to develop “the nothing” that made its appearance in his 1929 book “Being and Time”. The proposed developing book was to appear as time and being. Jaspers immediately grasped the groundlessness of this distribution of an ontic-epistemic truth and the pernicious affect on the timeless source of temporal truth. Heidegger’s subtle use of Greek αληθεια (“truth”), presented theological scholars a chance to demonstrate their Greek-language proficiency and apply the Gnostic interpretive-edge of mystique to the penetration of biblical truth to a new existential science. The use of the Greek sign αληθεια canonized Heidegger and creedalized “Heideggerian truth”—the formula “αληθεια” became a biblical-like creed––which Herbert spins into bibliolatry so that he can bash religions for which he has no preference or quality-time for in-depth understanding  (TA107C4<11>). It gives him the opportunity, time and space, to propound his own agenda and formulae. Heidegger’s fame for complexity was used by two theologians, the catholicized Protestant Rudolf Bultmann and Catholic Karl Rahner. It is no accident that Jaspers’ 1962 work (1967 Philosophical Faith and Revelation) precluded Heideggers’ book-publication of his Jan. 31, 1962 lecture On Time and Being. So, it is within this context of events and issues that a responsible review must be made to comprehend Jaspers’ timely “periechontology”. The comprehension requires openness to the Transcendent, but only immanentisticals are permitted into the…stained-crystal auditorium.

3. Heidegger unworthy of a footnote-lending prestige––“In recent times there has been much talk of a basic science…a fundamental ontology.” That Jaspers’ quote is easily perceived to be a reference to the resurging effort to reprogram the mass to be as tolerant toward Heidegger and in return exclude the “Vatican” from guilt too (yes, radical constructivists and evolutionary epistemologists avoid guilt by egotistical infallibility). I mean it was not biblical examples of truth, love, and self-sacrifice that enthusiastically saluted or revered the “Führer”. To distinguish this type of totalitarian-inclined “truth” Jaspers uses the less immodest standard of truth, i.e., he…also…can use biblical Greek, and refers to periech-ontology, “a far more modest basic knowledge founded on that [“great ciphers”] tradition” (PFR 201). This modest basic knowledge is not an ontologism nor a peri-echontolog(ism) but rather “a periechontological basic knowledge”, a consciousness within the infinite finite relativity of timing and the infinite finite objects of inner and outer celestial space and constellations. The periechontological is “sober” and “modest”; it is not totalitarian and inebriating, those tendencies needing to be absorbed by humankind’s age-old constant words of accountability.

4. The breatholizer test procedure is violated by Herbert when he fails to include the historical atmosphere while in want of a quote from Jaspers’ “The basic knowledge resembles the pure air we breathe, which we cannot see but cannot live without…” (Ibid. 203). Herbert severs the historical age-old umbilical cord prematurely and fatalistically by demonstrating an aversion to biblical truth and a preference for an ersatz vatican. In an attempt to show he understands Steven’s “own subjectivity” comment (see item 8 below “put our own subjectivity into play”), Herbert relates it to how one needs to “breathe”, similarly like one needs to “think”, and of course his frame of reference is the epistemic immanent bubble (TA107C5<14>). He is referring to epistemic air within the aura of hubris thinking immediately encompassing his immanental self-image, flexible self-imaginings that change only within restrictions this side of the transcendent. That is why Herbert emphasized the “peri”. Clearly, to me, Jaspers is making a hyphenated distinction between “ontological truth” and truth that has some bases in historical records; and by this he means to include biblical truth in a modest sober sense where individual responsibility for moral behavior requires immersion into reality of the whole person. Herbert makes a procedural error; that being the consequence of the systemic shortcomings of naturalism, technicianism, and utilitarianism––it results in “bronchiectasis with cardiac decompensation” affecting the soul and brain—the result of flaying about in the bubble. Such bubble-entropy can be absorbed and distributed in the practice of immersion into reality and frayed attachments can be regenerated over time by the converted life style.

5. The meaningfulness of “periech-” v. the meaninglessness of “peri-” relates to the encompassing ontic-phenomena, for, περιεχω, 2 aorist περιεσχον, since Homer and in the NT, connotes to surround, to encompass oneself with what is contained in Holy Scriptures (περιεχει εν τη γραφη) denoting also a truth that runs on like a basic truth to be believed (Thrayer’s Greek English lexicon). Jaspers use of the Greek cipher indicates a clear consciousness of what he is doing to combat lesser standards of truth and immoral conduct, considered as less because thought of as more technically recent or “evolved”. His Greek includes a bit of sarcasm at those who use some Greek signs as though it sanctifies through a Hellenistically enhanced Hebraic superior awareness. He uses periechonotological thinking in Von Der Wahrheit (another preclusion to Heidegger’s αληθεια efforts) and shows how ontologisms dysfunction (e.g., evolutionism) wherein:

…I see myself as something which, as the culmination of everything, has developed out of something earlier and lower, and which has grown out of something that was soulless, unfree, and, at first, indeed, even lifeless. This…founders on the fact that as it proceeds it provides no means for comprehending what man is capable of being, for comprehending his love, this thinking, or his knowing. This interpretation is ultimately reduced always to forms of naturalism, technicalism, or utilitarianism…[It precludes one from the] surge up and beyond…(Truth 57)  

Here we have immersion in immanence without rising again in newness of life. Such a reduction of human potential gets to the emotive heart of Steven’s “putting one’s subjectivity into play”, but the shameful thing is that Jaspers’ contribution to complementarity could easily have be cited, such as:

Man adds something new to the world, something not adequately comprehensible in terms of what went before, not even in retrospect…[and] it is men who make events…but one cannot forecast the great human impulses––and that, in incalculable fashion, everything done here and now by every individual may become a factor in shaping the future. (Atom, 282)

The human potential is at work whether through the restraining nature of events or the events’ illuminations and the constancy of humankind’s complementation.

6. The Herbert-hubris is symptomatic of constructivism––It should be noted here that Herbert’s “breathe” analogy and recent and belated talk about convertible-self-images amounts to staking claims without giving credit to Jaspers’ Existenz or to my crediting Jaspers and Kant’s phenomenological approach to the superior/inferior predicament of self images cut off from Transcendence (Jaspers’ Existenz as a self suspended between itself and the Transcendent). Herbert, unwittingly at least, hunkers down on the superiority end of the hubris-spectrum of self-imagery. To protect that style of hubris, he castigates Jaspers for remaining faithful to the at-large historical biblical phenomena. It is this modest sobering historical criteria of knowledge (επιστολαι) Herbert wants to sever from reality and substitute the “Vatican”.  In reality, Jaspers is being criticized for an Other-allegiance other than an “evolving” vatic authority for surfs.  Herbert’s zero-deriviation is as detrimental to the ethos run-on (perpetuity) as is naturalism when he steps out of the epistemic bubble and into religion dragging an epistemologic-utilitarianism into the invisible Jerusalem, Israel, and biblical Church.   

7. Herbert’s defense v. Jaspers practical concern for humankind’s survival––I would like to think that Stephen’s admonition (R4[7]) to Herbert and readers to “put our own subjectivity into play” relates to that outstanding void in a “Karl Jaspers Forum” blog: I mean readers do not know why Herbert attempts to “hoist” the Jaspers’ “flag” (PFR 203) as a defensive and offensive technique while not making it clear that all contributions should relate to Jaspers in some reasonable and informed sense. It seems illogical to not lower the flag to meet the standards, and unfurl the Heidegger banner, or even the McGill-Müller pennant. For Jaspers, subjectivity and objectivity come into…practice. Inherent and inherited in his own objectivity is the encompassing open-ended freedom of revelation and inspiration that shows the limits of “objective science”––as technology becomes increasingly complex–– and delimits the limits of science as well.

7.1. Herbert makes a less than serious confession that he does not know what a “‘subject-inclusive ontology’ might be” (R5<6>)—a confession normally good for the soul but bad for radical anti-theistic postmodern individualism. I think the reason is because Herbert has aversions to Hebraic moral law and the ethics of the ethos of biblical subjects (entities) all of which would make up part of the basic knowledge in Jaspers’ periechotology. Herbert’s defensive answer to the admonition to include a viable-subject amounts to a confession that in the most fundamental way he does not agree with Jaspers. And it indicates that Herbert has not the objectivity to appropriate the always expanding horizon from whence comes inspiration for reason’s battle with intellectualizations (see Jaspers distinction between the intellect and reason in the Atom book, and how the hope of humankind’s survival depends on an immersion into historical truth through the primacy of faith and reason, essential qualities to each individual conversion process). For Jaspers, communicants must make the effort to understand one another, and not use the round table as a means of totalitarian or radical constructivism’s grandstanding—although for the sake of hope even that should be tolerated by the more mature reasoners. I’m assuming here that Herbert is a fair representative of Glasersfield’s Radical Constructivism because Herbert flies his banner under Jaspers, and Jaspers’ subtly under the “Vatican’s”. Herbert’s vatic-clad Target Article 106 makes it clear that from Canada’s McGill sorties into America’s heartland are made to show where he stands in the battle for the American soul.

7.2. A sample of responsible complementarity--“[I]n America, the pernicious doctrines of John Dewey have wrought havoc in the school system, until children themselves start to rebel at learning too little and the universities complain of inadequate high school standards” (Atom 245) is a judgment no doubt supported by Hannah Arendt’s first-hand experience and informed contributions (34, 104) to Jaspers’ “The Future of Mankind” (see item 5 above and first offset quote). For topology and complementarity see Jaspers Ciphers of nature, nuclear physics, and humankind’s qualitative contributions to avoid “taking an unscientific view of…premises as anticipated insights into the whole” (PFR, 173).

7.3. The need for dispositions––To educate Herbert about subject-inclusive ontology, imagine a litigator-style of taking dispositions. Again, one can almost excuse Steven’s neglect of Jaspers for the TA was neither about Heidegger nor Jaspers. A professor needs to publish or perish, and it is easy to get an author’s permission for one could hardly be excused for not allowing a posting if requested. But Steven Rosen has Emeritus status, so personal Institutional job-security (except the advantage of prestigious association like Herbert does and is allowed to do so with McGill) might not factor into a motivation to express his own subjectivity without first making at least a perfunctory gesture toward the still unpopular name “Jaspers”––but so clearly mounted above the portal.

7.4. Rosen-extenuations, e.g. Jerome Blackman, Sundararjan, Bindeman––In fairness, there are often extenuations resulting in an Article being posting with no references to Jaspers in a Jaspers’ frame of reference. For example, the posting of Jerome Blackman’s TA 72 involved Louise Sundararjan (see Herbert’s note at conclusion of TA72––timely following my TA70 which draws attention wholly to Jaspers and “evolutionism”) editor of “Dialogues” (one of the then monitors of Herbert’s blog), and Jerome stated that his “cousin Steve Bindeman…submitted it and his comments…” One might wonder about others’ role in Steven Rosen’s posting too––without his witting––for Steve Bindeman shows up…once again…as Commentator to Steven Rosen’s TA107.  My point here is that a balanced critique about the omission of references to Jaspers is restrained from objectively analyzing Steven’s contribution to Herbert’s blog, for; this side of taking dispositions, it is impossible to know whether he was approached by Herbert, or a cousin, and whether there were mitigations relative to his “The self-Evolving Cosmos” that influenced the arranging of the posting of TA 107 on a Karl Jaspers blog.

7.5. Another reason for this fictional play about dispositions would be, like following the money trail, to follow the collective force-trail to discover what institutional, or institutional-who’s who might have put a spur to Herbert saying: “Your 0-D and MIR formulae sounds like Jaspers encompassing.” It seems that it had to have been some VIP’s judgment that Herbert was dependent enough on enabling him with continued audacity to misuse and skim the concept of “Encompassing” while defensively pleading, “Jaspers’ peri-echontology made me do it”. It appears to have been someone perhaps still living with much to lose if Herbert cannot stay the rationalization course. A few, now deceased, who heard Jaspers teach apparently includes the late Charles F. Wallraff, having suffered from Alzheimers, the late Richard Owsley also heard Jaspers, and of course so did the late Hannah Arendt. Without this autobiographical translucence, all deceased and living become suspect and contribute to co-conspiratorial paranoia about the role of the “Church of mtEve-olution”. Jaspers has set the example of full discloser. And, though Steven might not have in mind this sort of putting “our own subjectivity into play”, Jaspers exemplifies such transparency in his philosophical autobiography and the availability of his researchable estate.   

8. Donald Mender in TA 107, C3 attempts to show the limits of topology-alone (q.v. <5> and <6>). He does not want to exclude the feeling-states of the whole person. Donald is the one who introduces Heidegger into the blog. It appears that he calls forth Heidegger as a witness to the limits of topology when minus feeling states. Heidegger called as an emotive witness because of the emphasis on feelings such as…his emphasis on something immanently central like “concern”. Here again there is no mention of the more relevant Jaspers and his ultimate situations’ empathetic concerns about suffering, conflict, guilt—in the frame of reference, and on a blog capturing attention by waving Jaspers’ name at search engines. Here though there are mitigations, like, how could one be such an unkind specialist as to not agree to be one of the prestigious ten invited to comment on Steven Rosen’s Target Article. Straining for fairness, for it goes to the immediacy of motivation, it would be a discredit to Jaspers to use him within the confines of a category of immanence. If that respect for Jaspers’ transcendence was the motivation for the omission it needs to be affirmed.

9. Steven Rosen’s incisiveness was too topologically vulnerable by design––Steven is forthright and admits to a motivation: “to further acquaint them with my work”. Well the same courtesy should be extended to Jaspers even though it might be harmful to “my work” (books). Given the known fact that Target Article authors are to arrange for ten Commentators, one would have to be intellectually dishonest to avoid wondering about collusion while irresponsibly avoiding the systemic subtleties of what appears merely as interdisciplinary academic collaboration.  Though Steven avoids Jaspers and Heidegger in the TA 107, he is drawn into promoting Heidegger while ignoring the totalitarian thinking that distinguishes Heidegger from Jaspers. Steven…appears…to be drawn, by Donald, into relating his TA to Heidegger—a task for which both seem primed and ready. The ontological issue is real, and Herbert knows it, for ontological thinking was a factor in practice during the Nazi regime period. The resultant conduct of a more subjective than objective ontologism was why Heidegger’s academic services were dismissed and Jaspers reinstated.

10. The issue is that ontologisms have real consequences in practice and metaphysical meanderings are distracting—defending Heidegger: Now, for lesser shameful purposes one can defend Heidegger, as Steven does, from the ontologism Herbert imposes upon Heidegger, whether from Sein and Ziet or his proposed ziet and sein—the latter proposed work cut short by Jaspers’ periechontology (1962, see also English translation of Philosophical Faith and Revelation 1967), meaning: that immortality which encompasses and penetrates beyond conceptualizations, i.e., Kant’s apriori form of time and its ground. Heidegger could not cope with Jaspers’ flurry of timely publications, but mostly he could not cope with his political identifications. Ontologisms have consequences in life. For Jaspers, who makes a clear distinction between reason and intelligence (Atom book), reason is the medium through which in the last analysis heaven speaks in positive terms (Atom 170). The reality is that the real issue is avoidable if Jaspers is avoided. To ignore Jaspers is to dismiss philosophical faith from the historical constancy of what goes to distinguish humankind topologically as created in the image of the invisible God—unlike the animals (the guilt from eating conscious animals was remitted by the science of sacrifice made painless by being quicker than recall). Herbert goes to that term periechontology as a later Jaspers’ epistemic error to justify using his name. He uses it to accost Jaspers as a Herbert-disapproved ontologist without coming to terms about the moral and ethical consequences of what he designates as ontology. He claims to be unemotionally merely protecting scientific procedure.

11. Herbert’s dualism-dance on the head of the Heideggerian ontology––If Herbert means Heidegger’s or anybody’s ontologism if applied to genetics reduces the 1000%+ topological difference between humankind to a mere 99% DNA simian similarity and an mtDNA “eve-volution” (science turned into absolute Marian Being), Herbert could be reasoning correctly. But there is only the appearance of doing a two-step maneuver here—one more-apparent-than-real step into infinity. Herbert does not mean this sort of step. His application of a subjectivism’s purely topological idealism (no-mind-independent reality individually or collectively “-MIR” and epistemologic-zero-derivation  “0-D”, which should be prefixed by “e” for epistemology and “ee” to include “evolutionary epistemologism”) to a category of “natural science” includes the evolutionism of at least neo-Anaximanderism and exponentially Eastern Orthodoxy, and the evolutionism of the Chardin Church of Evolution as sanctified by a 1996 vatican decree requiring students to leap into illogicality.

12. Historic Hebraic moral law––Herbert’s Hellenistic-roman imperial wolf nurturing-Catholic-orthodox defense for his “constructivism” (other than dropping the name of Glasersfeld) and defense for his individuality is first to simply say his vatic source does not say how to make the illogical leap while prostrate before the source requiring the ontological leap through the vatic loop. Second, Herbert, with great caution avoids any touch of irreverence for current holy homilies that have mass appeal, acknowledges that when ontologisms are applied to religion it might present some logical difficulty. But that is all right with Herbert unless the difficulty involves the religious system that Herbert finds intolerable. Those he finds intolerable are those in the last analysis accepting the biblical standard over the vatic. Herbert’s third verbalized allegiance to ontological catholicity is to remind the reader that “the Vatican” gives the church member the choice of whether to accept or reject “evolution”. What that means is that the member is allowed to either make a leap of faith or admit that one must be an atheist, and confess that complex self-consciousness “evolved” and thinking conjured up thinking’s source and named it God. That is tolerated in the membership so long as religious institutional primates are given the final word and non-member surfs pay––indulgences are paid for by in-kind serfdom. Now, it is important to see that this is not a comfortable reasoning process for Herbert, but rather an awkward way of bashing a Jaspers-type of protestant commitment to the invisible church.

13. Suffering’s periechontology––Herbert make the argument that suffering is not mind independent (whatever he means by “mind”), that the administration of anesthetics verifies his formula “ee0-D” (evolutionary epistemic zero derivationism). Regardless, the Catholic Church with its iconic symbols about suffering becomes Herbert’s ersatz, the Institution that changes with currents to cover past mistakes. It should here be repeated: Herbert demonstrates the pragmatic results of his “0-D” whenever confronted by the formula’s limits. He immediately slips into relying on the Catholic Church, that which Jaspers refers critically to as meeting the needs of impressionable masses; impressive due to the propagating and canonizing of “Catholic” piety, and the difficulty using such to hide that Church’s “violence and political cunning” (351 PFR). This slipping tendency seems to have been engrained in Herbert as a second nature, e.g., manifesting itself in the exploitation of Jaspers. Jaspers is more descriptive and verbally lenient toward Catholic catholicity then I have termed it here; but that Institution’s tactics, it turns out, was not in the death throws, a “refuge in the breakdown of authority” (259 Atom). But, too, now, I am reacting in-kind to Herbert’s catholicism and Catholicism. Herbert’s minimization of pain and suffering has universal appeal. The appeal is like that of Heidegger’s belated fundament of “concern” (belated now by those who use it while neglecting that concern’s easy allegiance to totalitarian regimes) is in stark contrast to the ultimate situations in Jaspers philosophical logic (a logic from the encompassing reason, and the horizons’ always receding periechontological phenomena). Herbert succumbs immediately at critical “0-D” mass, when a jump outside the bubble is unavoidable and unbearably insecure; he succumbs to reality and takes refuge in “the vast inestimable authority” of Roman Catholicism (“Atom 259”; And regarding Jesus the sufferer 338).

14. Restating the soccer-field issue: Jaspers takes on Bultmann and Heidegger––Now then, to incite discussion Herbert criticizes Heidegger for an unjustified dogma independent of Herbert’s “mind”. Jaspers, with demonstrative reasons, criticizes Heidegger too, but even more so those who use Heidegger for they, like Husserl, and even Heidegger, know not what phenomenology is and are prone to misuse it as method:

Heidegger’s book [Sein and Zeit] is a complicated affair. In the form of an objective phenomenological analysis, he draws up a list of existential concepts, the so-called Existentialia, an analogy from the [Kantian] categories, and presents us with a doctrine as well knit and coherent as a steel structure. (8 debate)

Jaspers here is presenting an argument against Bultman’s exploitation of Heidegger; Jaspers is not agreeing with what Heidegger is doing with philosophy in the reduction of philosophy to “a” fundamental experience of existence—like Herbert does with his “the” “ongoing experience” (whatever he means by that too as with “mind”). But Herbert also applies his fundamental experience to theology making room for Catholicism and atheism in the form of evolutionism. This is not Herbert’s simple incisive argument but an exclusive commitment to Catholic “acquiescence”. In the debate with Bultmann Jaspers stands alone against two rivals, Bultmann and Heidegger. Jaspers’ misstep (recovered later) is that he attacks Bultmann for misinterpreting Heidegger. Jaspers judges Heidegger with too much naivety when he says, “Heidegger himself would surely be surprised at any theology based upon it.” “It” refers to Heidegger’s style of “scientific” philosophy. However, it gave Heidegger the chance to deny any theological motivations. I think Heidegger knew exactly that he was contributing to (c)atholic  and (C)atholic theology; that was his purpose, while laying out a fundamental ontology that would justify his political rationalizations. Heidegger was nimble at cultivating opportunistically his connections with, for instance Husserl but mainly Rickert. He was anticipating but underestimating Jaspers (to be shown in item 16 below).

15. Historical immersion v. holy sprinkling: The difference in objectivity; historic v. immediate feeling states—Steven, and I guess Donald by impressive poetic special use of signs that don’t resolve nor describe the complementarity phenomenon, show(s) that there is no way ontic thinking can be avoided, anymore than objective thinking can be avoided. They try to use Heidegger to show how––whereas Herbert’s criticism of Heidegger amounts to verbalizing about ontology. But only Jaspers demonstrates the ontologism of Husserl and Heidegger. Jaspers is simply using phenomenology as “a” scientific method, and Herbert then attempts, perhaps unwittingly thinking he is originating a novel technique, to take credit for the method by the use of such terms as “as if” and “working ontology” and ignoring the phenomenological method throughout Jaspers’ Gen. Psychop. Textbook. So the difference between Jaspers and Heidegger’s ontology is that to Jaspers the unchanged essence of humankind is more inclusive than Heidegger’s personal immediate feeling states. Jaspers experience with patients and his humane empathy is more historical and less accommodating to immediate forces--those that are more difficult to react to rather than yielding to. Again, we see the same constructivism in Heidegger as in Herbert, that when the individual’s immediate limits are seen, the individual gives way to immediate forces as a substitute for the historical constant. The constant (Jaspers “reason” v. “intellect” in Future of Mankind) requires greater immersion than holy sprinkling by fashionable and regal appearing forces. Yes, I am leading to seeing that my recent posting of Alexander Campbell’s sermon shows the need for the immersion into reality and the rising above it too, and that the message is more inclusive than catholic-exclusivity. 

16. Heidegger recognizes Jaspers as foremost, why not contributors!!—Herbert’s designed Contributors can find reasons to reference Heidegger, but not give Jaspers the time of day. I mean if Heidegger saw the significance of Jaspers, then so should those who use Heidegger. Jaspers’ significance is seen in that Heidegger had sent Jaspers a critique of Psych. of Worldviews while Jaspers was contemplating a second edition. He may have hoped to get at least a footnote recognition in Jaspers’ book. Jaspers found the critique boring and unfruitful, for Heidegger claimed to have overcome the philosophical tradition Jaspers was attempting to restore (periech-ontological). One might say that Heidegger’s zero-derivation and consequential constructivism wanted to exploit the powers at hand, and put up Husserl to canterlever off far enough to touch ontological ground disregarding the periechontological historical encompassings, and while puting Rickert up as a “my-fellow can beat your Gertrude anytime” (similar to what Herbert does with Jaspers name and the personage of book-author Glasersfeld). Heidegger to Heinrich Rickert:

…this book [Psychology of World Visions] must, in my opinion, be fought in the severest manner, precisely because it has so much to offer that Jaspers has learned from everywhere and because it appropriates a trace of the times (Kirkbright 131)

One trace of the times was that Rickert was no friend to Jaspers, and it is naïve to think that there was no collusion and opportunism transpiring here. But Jaspers is a loner, though married, a loner out of necessity in part due to his illness, though he didn’t need more enemies—nor at the time neither did Gertrude, being Jewish, need the attention that a Jaspers-confrontational style would bring. The other side of the Heideggerian-Rickert “trace” was well put by Gertrude’s evaluation of Heidegger, that he only wanted to research philosophy and religion…he cannot represent anything systematically in his thought” (Kirkbright 131). I think this is why Heidegger could not stand alone without a Husserl or Rickert for support.  The “trace” of the times Heidegger refers to includes Jaspers’ periechontology that brought to psychology more than hard empirical experience, but what can come from heaven too—call it supra-complementarity. Contrary to Herbert’s suggestion “periechontology” was no more a later form of thinking than the timeless philosophical tradition, the essential ingredient encompassing his Psychopathology and Psychology of World Views.

17. In-kind candor or signs of incisiveness—The spirit of Jaspers’ times involved issues calling for decisiveness and not merely academic incisiveness. The times not only included Rickert, Heidegger, Bultmann, but Husserl. Just as Jaspers doubted whether Husserl had a clear idea of phenomenology “for I believe that he himself does not know”. (69, 1911 letter--Kirkbright), the same could be said of the others that failed to see the Kantian methodology, i.e., the phenomena-predicament, those entities of nature and rational entities encompassed within and without our predicament of space-time apriori forms of perception and conception--impossible to escape but maturely understandable and controllable with some pain and sweat of the face, “the new––and age-old––thinking” (Atom 217). In the classroom the effort is not lessened: “The idea of an educated teacher passing on his finished education to unfinished children is absurd…”

18. Jaspers’ ad hominem––Those unaware of Jaspers’ decisiveness, a confrontational retort to Rickert might be easier thought to be ad hominem; easier than the forwarning that comes with understanding that arming oneself with in-depth concern nips totalitarian tendencies in the bud. Not wasting breath, Jaspers reacts confrontationally toward Rickert’s obstinate recalcitrants toward Jaspers’ philosophical psychology and Rickert’s misunderstanding of Weber:

I became angry and went so far as to say: “If you think that you and your philosophy will be known at all in the future, you may perhaps be right, but only because your name is mentioned in a footnote in one of Max Weber’s works as the man to whom Max Weber expresses his gratitude for certain logical insights”…[and on another occasion, Jaspers told Rickert that his view that Jaspers’ was unqualified for a philosophy appointment:] I don’t believe this, for that would be a disgrace for the German universities.” (Phil. Auto. 33f)

19. Nietzsche and the suffering Jesus––Even Nietzsche rejects this Herbert-minimizing of suffering—according to Jaspers. “Nietzsche himself stopped short (an astonishing fact! [Jaspers’ parentheses])” before the figure of Jesus, and “Basically there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross” (Nietzsche 142). That statement loses its emphasis if pain were not independent of the individual mind and experience (however those signs are used or misused). Herbert’s rationalizing, faulty reasoning, reminds me of the person who, as God, said, in Sunday School, that Jesus did not suffer because he was God. No one could argue effectively in the moment because of the availability and God-like control of general anesthesia. Essence here is here given priority to neural existence, i.e., existentialistic empathy by contrast is clarified as distinct from such perverted intoxicated topologies of the flesh. Because one person can receive anesthetics for surgery to remove a tumor does not mean one should be unsympathetic toward those who can’t afford the care without reducing to zero the pursuit of the quality life.

19.1.There are two reasons Nietzsche was stopped in his immanental critiquing tracks: First, he knew what it was like to suffer from the reality of brain existence  independent of his mind (his father’s headaches and his own), and the suffering of Jesus was ontologically real. Second, the other reality is that “mankind prostrates [crucifix as a canon—mine] itself before the very opposite of the source, significance, and justification of the gospels”. The crucified one is respected to the point of untouchability and ineffability, silence, and

Nietzsche’s attack upon morality [unlike Herbert’s insufferable derivation formula] first presupposes an indefeasible value that is above every special morality (i.e., it presupposes the source of Nietzsche’s own morality [the appreciation for the suffering of his father, his brother, and being the minister’s son, but fatherless], and, second, it leaves open the possibility that a spurious morality may have originally come from a genuine source [here again reference is to the principle of totalitarianism above] (Niet. 142).

20. Heidegger’s rationalizing ontology, ontology is refined by performance––There can be a spurious behavior side to Heidegger’s fundament, i.e., the convenient historical holistic concern, or immanent existential concern about the immediate ultimate situation––namely death and avoiding it at any cost to others during a totalitarian regime’s threats. The worth of this moral basis of concern for humankind’s problems is dependent upon practice. Whether concern can be judged ethical or moreover a moral law of phenomenal nature would depend on means and ends and concomitant lessons for history. I mean it can simply be utilitarian thinking, i.e., concern inclined toward how well I can hide the avoidance of death at any cost but preferably by cheap poetical complex talk. In Heidegger’s case, his nationalism’s stance, history, makes his concern extraneous and unlike Jaspers’. In this case Jaspers could see through the convenience of a commitment to the institutionalism under momentary momentum, i.e., totalitarianism goose-stepping. Heidegger would not cringe like the Jaspers at the Institutional supports for Hitler, but rather be one of the ducks getting in line.

20.1. The point of periechontology, which Herbert opposes and proposes as a later Jaspers’ fallacy, relates to philosophical faith that avoids perversion into one truth by keeping “an infinitely open mind” (82 PFR). And “One thing is vital to the future of the biblical faith: to make the human Jesus and his faith prevail” One thing that is vital (within the inclusivity of the occident) is “We are to take our bearings from Jesus”. (@339 PFR)

21. A comparison of Catholic-choice to Campbell-choice in “Riches of Christ”––The phenomenology and periechontology of Alexander Campbell. See the last italicized sentence in item 16 above for proposed continuation…