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17Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences 2 (2013 6) 272-277
yflK 111.31
About the Specifics
of the Relationships I - the Other
Olga M. Farkhitdinova*
Ural Federal University named after B.N. Yeltsin 51 Lenina, Ekaterinburg, 620083 Russia
Received 08.02.2013, received in revised form 15.02.2013, accepted 22.02.2013
The modern man is fascinated by the reality that cannot be understood in terms of the last century. Application of the concepts that have no cultural context in this area deprives a person ofthe possibility to understand. Ritual practices of secular life compete with a mystical sense, with the understanding of reality and its interpretation in the secular and Christian traditions. Dynamics of the process of understanding is that formation of the meaning of the text depends on the definition of the role, which the author refers not only for himself, but also for an interpreter. The desire of the people to be heard constructively presents in the language. The idea of expressing something, the expression-in-itself is a mean of adaptation to «hearing» of the Other.
The Other (another thing), understanding, the uniqueness of the relationship I-the Other, the adaptation of the religious ideas in the culture, apriority, reality, the internal form of the language, the expression in the language, phenomenal.
Keywords: the Other (another thing), understanding, the uniqueness of the relationship I-the Other, the adaptation of religious ideas in the culture, apriority, reality, the internal form of the language, the expression in the language, phenomenal.
The detected systemic relations, conditions of their arrangement, problematisation of the time acts - these are just a few aspects which determine the status of philosophical discussions of the past century. The comprehension faults in culture are too small for the Other one with his reality to appear clearly visible.
Illustrations of the existence transience show the ways of human delusion and captivation with this phenomenon. Take, for example, the depiction of human passion and emotions. How long does a human "see" himself in the paradoxical aspect of the emotional world? The first experience of the conceptualization of this world borders with
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* Corresponding author E-mail address: ofarhetdin@mail.ru
the experience of the artistic perception. For example, Rembrandt's self-portraits "Surprise" and "Anger", the engravings made in 1630 or the depiction of the Romeo and Juliet's rendezvous by Sir Frank Dixie (1853-1928) (1884, Southampton Art Gallery, Hampshire, UK / Bridgeman Art Library). When choosing a particular way of vision to describe oneself at the moment of "saturation with the Other one", a human refuses his primary existence and approaches it in a strange way in a given context. Such is the nature of paradigm in science, melody in music, style in art. In the same way, the aphorisms of the sages run ahead of the particular features of their era,
showing the life transience surmounting. There is a quote of an Islamic mystic with regards to the purpose of the fast in Sufism: "Hunger is a cloud - said Abu Yazid, - A starving heart makes wisdom pour like a rain" (p. 99, Tor A.). I think that this statement, not in its literal meaning, but in the definition of the goal as the concentration of the internal strengths of the soul, opening it to the revelations of the superior world, could be extended to all the fasting "practices".
In today's society, this translation acquires the meaning of the conscious consummation of civilization "blessings". This is not the matter of capture of thoughts, on the contrary, a human in this framework is defined as a force of attraction of the other meanings of culture. This is what creates the specificity of the today's relationship I- the Other One. It must require some courage to recognize the habit of seeing the phenomenon of the Other One as a variation of the attraction of the discovered properties. Many postulates regarding human life phenomena became commonplace. The way of detecting human life values became relative. The theory of relativity has transformed the medieval vision of the potentiality inherent in things as such. Potentiality exists, but it lacks objective reality. Such is the legacy of the theory of relativity ideas of how the positivism approach dominates with regard, for example, to consciousness.
It should be noted that this does not just concern the conventional meaning of positivism. It's rather positivism, interpreted in the spirit of physical correspondences. The concept of causality is not logical in nature, but transcendental, M. Planck wrote, arguing that purely logical arguments can not make someone recognize the causal relationship, even if there is an absolute regularity. (p.413, Gliozzi M.)
The diversity of statements of the modern world presents interest due to the fact, that their interpretation reveals a human vulnerability in the
environmentofthechosenpotentials.Vulnerability in the Other One's environment, the relativity of a different objective reality, innateness in the faults of comprehension in general, and as a result. No measurement can be considered accurate - this is a position taken by Heisenberg, Bohr, Born and physicists-indeterminists. Invariant approaches and methodological discussions of the late past century, in fact, reconstituted the situation in science.
A different culture, a different nation, a different language - these are the inevitable topics of today. The uniqueness of each of these entities is both the source of contradictions and the absolute captivation with everything that somehow differs from our own. In this sense, the processes of ecumenism, not only in the late twentieth century, but their specific shades early in the 21st century are symptomatic. It is no less interesting for the analysis being able to present the anti-globalization trend, "which is more or less characteristic of all world religions. Antiglobalizm can be combined with quite globalist behavior practices of the believers and religious institutions". For example, the adaptation of alien religious ideas in Hinduism, or variations of the reconsideration of the traditional Hinduism in "Neo-Hinduism", which has become more adapted for the perception by peoples of other cultures, such as educational activities of Swami Vivekananda (Narendranath Dutt).
The appearance of the terms of paradoxical character: the introduction into practice the notions which have no cultural context in the area, in the semantic space of people. Ritualization of secular life practices competes with mystical comprehension in the religious sphere. Comprehension of reality and its interpretation in the secular and Christian traditions. It was the case with the immaterial reality which became virtual, with the human creative faculties, which in the Russian reality become creativity. The use
and conceptualization of the term "Different" in the ideological practices of the current century is the result of changes in the adaptation of the mental sphere in terms of concepts.
Multilogicality and alternativeness of the tiered approaches in modern mentality strategically complete the processes associated with the emergence of otherness and interpreted as an "ordinary waking consciousness as a type of consciousness" (James). Richard Alpert (who used the name Ram Dass and is more famous in this status) wrote about the era where "the relationship with God again becomes a direct experience of the individual". At the same time, there is no novelty in the definition of this status in the dynamically developing images of everyday life and professional diversity of the modern thinkers. Professional diversity should be understood as interdisciplinarity as a phenomenon. Otherness and friendliness belong to each other by the faith in the validity of the plot formed between them, which again brings us closer to the captivation with the delusion. I suggest considering how such an approach is obvious and predictable in its results, therefore, whether a modern human has a choice of "being" beyond "project-building"?
Let us consider another issue: to what extent do the plots of the modern world, the scenarios of religiosity of a modern human transform the concept of "Different" in order to find not only my own image in the echoes of everyday communication skills, but also the image which differs from me. This was the case when the naming distorted the content, and it was not possible to preserve the tradition in any way other than to give the concept and the sum of its meanings a particular nuance. For example, 10-volume biographies of saints Hilyat al-Awliyaa' by Abu Nuaym show that the word Rahib was used to refer to an ascetic in general in exceptional cases only. Rahib is predominantly a
Christian ascetic. That is the Other One in all his glory, but different from me.
This trend is often prevalent in naming, including the interpretation of consciousness (in other words, of the mental) in the religions of the East. The story of the spiritual experience is rendered by such language "delays" which are now reduced to the problem of presence or absence of an adequate translation. The naming of another cultural matrix as a different one, implements a contractual nature of the relationship between the stated ways of revealing the meaning only. The ability to discern expresses the phenomenality of human experience. When this ability is turned to itself, the transcendentality of causal relationship leaves no doubt.
In the Western mentality tradition the role of transfer of the degree or levels of relationship of one object to another, or creation of the object in the subject field is great. In the Eastern world the existence state is meant. For example, the stages in Sufi practice. Let's consider the issue about the organization of the relationship between the real and the a priori. The real, in itself, may be as such only to a certain extent and within the relationship. The environment of the relationship highlights the excessiveness of the a priori and shows the real. The consciousness of a religious person is a priori. The relation to the sacred in culture regulates the dynamics of belonging-availability to this type of a priori, which symbolizes the civilization age. Perhaps, the current trend to gain consciousness in the phenomenological perspective shows this dynamics.
The dynamics of the comprehension process, in general, is such that the formation of the meaning of the text depends on the definition of the role, which the author refers not only to himself but also to the interpreter, historical context and genre diversity. No matter how random the selection of the main context is, the meaning of the text is constructed from the "personality of
its creator" (F. Schleiermacher), "the historicity of the author's individuality" (W. Dilthey), or "pre-understanding", "initial sketching of the meaning of the text and return to its original comprehension". "Hermeneutic conversation" introduced by Gadamer, to enliven, perhaps, the narrative structure, made a bright accent on the language, thus assigning its responsibility for any invention in the field of consciousness. Then the language is a tool for adapting the consciousness to one's own "origin". I suggest that we should correct this problem as a major one at this point, and consider instrumentalism in the classical approach to the study of consciousness as a leading trend.
The theory of dharma "allowed the Buddhists to resolve the paradox of mental processes, realized in Western psychology in the twentieth century only, and consisting in the fact that we can describe the consciousness only in the categories of the external world or a different consciousness, while the immanent language for the description of mental processes is unknown". (p. 312, Torchinov E.)
Representatives of the Western world follow this path today. For example, the phenomenology of religion as a trend has been formed quite painfully: the fact of the introduction of the term with no meaning at the time (Chantepie de la Saussaye) is a vivid evidence thereof. The increase in the volume of content and the wording of the main question: whether the phenomenology of religion is worthy to hold an independent position among other uniquely formed trends? -introduces us to the space of potential definition of practical understanding of even such unique processes which lend themselves to the abstract form of reflection only. Issues of this kind do not touch upon the essential: if the methods are not original, and each "project-builder" of the phenomenological discourse of religion, acquiring such status, faces the problem of the
language identification and naming of a secret, "hidden from the eye mind", then the definition of the sacred in the space-language sense-making is only similarity -reflection of the revealed in the immaterial format.
Relation to historicism within the conceptual diversity of phenomenological approaches to religion is dynamic, too: from direct denial to the explicit recognition.
Thus, a modern human is captured with the otherness of comprehension of the reality and friendly diversity of existence which is difficult to comprehend in the terms of the last century, this is a different postulate of faith and knowledge.
I suppose the main goal of modern phenomenology of religion is to understand the experience of Eastern religions, which language is organized differently. From M. Scheller to R. Otto, from N. Soderblom to Geo Widengren, from J. Kitagawa to J. Waardenburg, from M. Eliade to Bleeker etc., there has been increased interest in how "Eastern religious ideas" comply with the Western ones. In my opinion, this is one of the trends in contemporary humanities - the problem of the study of religiousness in terms of relation to the other, fundamentally different, presented in other symbolic and, above all, linguistic relations.
In this sense, phenomenology of religion is the successor of the developed concepts of hermeneutic philosophy, and understanding of the language is acquaintance with the different ways of the world vision. This well-known idea of Humboldt finds a good development in the conceptions of phenomenologists of religion, despite the apparent desire to circumvent the distinction by methods of comparative linguistics.
The language and the spiritual strength of the nation, the spirit of the nation, as Humboldt wrote, "are one and the same act of intellectual ability".
The idea of the internal form of the language and the "necessity" of the outward expression is just a reduction of abandonment, a lack of interest on the part of existence.
The space is organized thematically and formally by the means of structural features of the language, thus allowing a person to talk about the aiming at the outward, to control the flow of time. Transience as a category, as well as spatiality, occur (accidentally discover each other) in the language: treating each other (the reduction to the morbidness of the subject, to its uniquely not defined aiming at the existence), make themselves available to each other beyond the opposition of essentially inherent in each of them. This is also characteristic of the practice of linguistic continuity: letting another one know about your own plane of expression (identifying modalities of each other) is, in fact, the prolongation of instantaneous existence. A conversation and beginning speaking with an elementary phrase, extension of the phrase, even the "phrasing" are the extension of a space for the successful birth of the existence. In this respect, the language as a place of centration of the ontological and epistemological statuses of spirituality may overcome this opposition.
The desire of people to be heard is constructively present in the language, for example, in the form of the verb (action, movement) in the last place. The greater this desire is, the less isolated culturally and geopolitically people are - the further away from the "monument -memo", put at the beginning of the word, will be the linking verb, building the relationship.
The shortest distance of this kind is observed in artificial and sacral languages, due to creating a special space-time matrix. For us this is both
the different (quite different), eternity, and some total deprivation. The named is, thus, born independently and spreads its birth at the time formation. The primitive language was closer to God and the Absolute for one simple reason. There was no verbal reduction as an essential property for the creation, and therefore, acquisition of the meaning of the expressed thought. The expressed is the experienced, thus understood, grasped in terms of concepts, gained in a special relationship, but lost in its existence.
Expression (in itself, the idea of expression) is a mean of adapting to the "ear" of the Other.
But the linguistic expression is an adaptation to the strength of the otherness.
What captivates a modern human? The depth or the otherness, the fear or the claim for complete understanding? Each culturally identified "man", by matching between himself and the Other, abolishes this problem. Culture is diverse, faith is total, captivation is instantaneous.
Religious consciousness is possible only as a human consciousness.
Consciousness study in science is like a vision of the Other, it is like a translation, which is facing both the hypothesis of linguistic relativity and the requirements of matching the detected meanings.
For religion the problem of extraction of acts of consciousness in relative independence was never set. Therefore, the phenomenological approach, prevailing in various aspects of the revealed unique correspondences of a human and his relationship with God, the Absolute, the realm of higher truths is a kind of a project of naming and calling reality, which has lost its usual features. Reality which captivates the other person and creates its own projection.
References
1. Tor, A. Islamic mysticism. SPb.: Eurasia, 2003. 240 p.
2. Gliozzi, M. The history of physics. M., 1970. 464 p.
3. Torchinov, E. The path ofphilosophy of the East and the West: the knowledge of the beyond. SPb.: «St. Petersburg's Vostokovedenie», 2007. 480 p.
4. Menskii, M. B. Quantum measurements, the phenomenon of life, and the arrow of time: the connection between the «three great challenges» (in Ginzburg's terminology). The Successes Of The Physical Sciences. 2007. № 4. C. 415-425.
5. Trimingem, J. Sufi orders in Islam. M.: Sofia, 2002. 480 p.
6. Zimmer, R. Philosophie von der Aufklarung bis heute. Berlin, 2001.
О специфике отношений Я - Другой
О.М. Фархитдинова
Уральский федеральный университет им. Б.Н. Ельцина, Россия 620083, Екатеринбург, пр. Ленина, 51
Современный человек зачарован действительностью, которую нельзя осознать в терминах прошлого века. Применение понятий, не имеющих культурного контекста в данной местности, лишает человека возможности понимать. Ритуалы практик светской жизни соперничают с мистическим постижением, с пониманием реальности и ее интерпретацией. Динамика процесса понимания такова, что образование смысла текста зависит от определения той роли, которую автор обозначает не только для себя, но и для интерпретатора.
Ключевые слова: другой, понимание, уникальность отношения Я-Другой, адаптация религиозных идей в культуре, априорность, данность, внутренняя форма языка, выражение в языке, феноменальность.
