Lee,
you asked whether or not there is feeling without thinking and vice
versa,The differentiation between feeling (body) and thinking (mind) can
be traced back to Descartes, whose thinking led eventually to the
rejection of the body and the idea of an autonomous mind. Descartes was,
if I recall it correctly, on the quest for the absolute truth, and found
that he could question everything exempt the questioner "I think
therefore, I am." Thus his answer was the only absolute truth (while it
isn't anywhere else) is the "thinking". He probably assumed that there
_is_ an absolute truth, that can be revealed by man.
IMO Descartes conclusion is wrong, because his assumption is wrong. IMO
the question about "existence" and "being" goes in the same direction and
might be quit useless even meaningless(is this heretical?). Furthermore,
thinking is not just "there" but learnt and learning requires trust ( I
reckon this is a feeling) in the authority of the teacher (or information,
or author, or whatever you rely on). As I understand Polanyi, he argues,
that learning needs commitment and empathy and the "learnt" is either
tacit knowledge or rooted in tacit knowledge. My understanding or
"Weltanschauung" is nothing more than a personal mental model which
tacitly underlies my actions, thinking and learning. Thus it is probably
not logical, certainly not the "truth". If I accept, that all progress is
"Trial and Error", then there is no way I could discover the truth but
accidentally (Popper, somewhere). I am at best capable to prove hypotheses
wrong.
I think "Fatherland"(=Vaterland) actually was the battle cry in the first
world war and it was embraced enthusiastically by a quit a lot of
intellectuals in Germany and France as well. Fatherland had a romantic
meaning, the war was thought to be about heroism and so on. They sobered
up. Thus, not the word "Fatherland" or the existence of such an entity is
relevant, but its meaning.
The reason, why Heidegger or rather the NS-Regime are quite relevant on
this thread, is the underlying philosophy of the Nazis. They believed
strongly in competition (nations, race,..). Fatherland meant to them
something like greatness, strength, toughness and mercilessness; no mercy,
absolutely no mercy, the weak had to be extinguished to make room for the
strong.
(Polanyi wrote a little about the evolution of this "philosophy" in
"Meaning" The University of Chicago Press, 1975). I think everybody, who
praises competition should have on mind, that in its purest form it led to
the worst cruelty the world has ever seen.
Key-inside sounds suspiciously like "my personal absolute truth". I
believe, the "key inside" should be that "you don't have, but you try
one".
All the best
--Thomas Struck <t.struck@bham.ac.uk>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>