Logos and Life: Creative Experience and the Critique of Reason : Introduction to the Phenomenology of Life and the Human Condition

It is rare that we feel ourselves to be participating in history. Yet, as Bertrand Russell observed, philosophy develops in response to the challenges of socio-cultural problems and situations. The present-day philosophical endeavor is prompted not by one or two, but by a conundrum of problems and controversies in which the forces carrying life are set against each other. The struggles in which contemporary mankind is fiercely engaged are not confined, as in the past, to economic, territorial, or religious rivalries, nor to the quest for power, but extend to the primary conditions of human existence. They under­ mine man's primogenital confidence in life and shatter the intimacy of his home on earth. Philosophical reflection today cannot fail to feel the pressure of the current situation within which it unfolds. Since this situation now involves the ultimate conditions of human existence, its demands have at last given to philosophy the impetus and direction needed for conceiving that the first and last of its concerns should be life itself.

Foreground.- I / The Creative Act as the Point of Phenomenological Access to the Human Condition.- 1. The Radical Overturn of the Phenomenological Perspective.- 2. Discovery and Appropriate Assessment of the Archimedean Point from which the Unity of Beingness Is to Be Exfoliated.- II / The Structure of the Present Work.- 1. Plurivocal Correspondences of Coherence: Juxtaposition of Design Patterns.- 2. Evocative Symmetries/Asymmetries, Anticipatory Presumptions, etc. of Graphic Correspondences.- 3. The Style of Exposition: Each Type of Evidence Meant to Appear in Its Primeval Operative Surging and Enactment.- 4. The New Critique of Reason.- 5. The Philosophical “Argument” in Outline.- III / Man-The-Creator and His Triple Telos.- 1. The Regulative Telos of the Real Autonomous Individual: Telos and Entelechy.- 2. Man-The-Creator and His Specific Telos.- The First Panel of the Triptych the Eros and Logos of Life within the Creative Inwardness.- The Outlines of an Inquiry.- 1. Is Creative Activity a Distinct Phenomenon?.- 2. The Itinerary of the Poet.- 3. Creation versus Constitution.- I / The Emergence of the Problem of Creation: The Poet-Creator Versus the Philosopher.- 1. Human Life as Conflict.- 2. The Conquest of the Mind and the Neutralization of Natural Life. Solidarity between Philosopher-Phenomen-ologist and Poet.- 3. Separation of the Tasks: Description of the Conscious Mechanisms of Phenomenology, in Opposition to the Grasp of the Operative Rules of Consciousness in the Creative Effort.- 4. The Reconquest of the Body, of Fecundity, and of the World in the Creative Effort: Creational Phenomenology.- 5. The Problem of Creation Arises in the form of a Mundane Context.- II / Creative Reality.- 1. The Creative Debate between the Mind and the Body Opens.- 2. The Underground Cable and the Factors of Creative Transformability.- 3. The Creative Process as an Active System of Transformation: Sensibility, New Source of Meaning at the Origin of the World.- 4. The New Form of Life Being Reborn in Creative Reality.- 5. “Generative Nature” Transformed into Erotic Emotion — The Mute Maternity of Thought.- III / The Factors in the New Alliance Between Man and the World.- 1. Experience and Knowledge, Antennae of the Mind.- 2. The Intermingling of Consciousness and Body in the Creative Function, an Inexhaustible Source of Possible Worlds.- 3. The Mode of the Relationship between the Body and the Mind: The Archimedean Point of the World.- 4. Expanded Consciousness: Virtual Inventor.- 5. The Common Contexture of the Mind and the Body.- The Theoretical Results of Our Analyses and the Perspectives they Open the Creative Context.- (a) The frame of reference, p. 113..- (b) The creative process suspended between two phases of the constituted world, p. 114..- (c) Creation, a rupture with the constituted world: Toward the emergence of a new contexture of the human world, p. 116..- (d) Creative inwardness and the new functional orchestration, p. 117..- Concluding by Way of Transition to the Central Panel of the Triptych.- The Central Panel of the Triptych (Panel Two) the Origin of Sense The Creative Orchestration of the Modalities of Beingness within the Human Condition.- One the Creative Context as Circumscribed by the Creative Process — its Roots “Below” and its Tentacles “Above” the Life-World: Uncovering the Primogenital Status of the Great Philosophical Issues.- I / Art and Nature: Creative Versus Constitutive Perception.- Section 1. The Creative Stirrings.- Section 2. Creative Perception and Originality.- (a) The analogy between constitutive and creative perception, p. 125..- (b) The different regulative principles and frameworks of reference of the two types of perception: theme versus essence (eidos), p. 125..- Section 3. The Creative Quest for “Authentic Reality” and the Fallacy of the “Return to the Source”.- (a) The quest for the “authentic sense” of reality in the creative endeavor, p. 128..- (b) The “return to the source”: Creative destructuring and re-construction; the fallacy of so-called “de-construction”, p. 131.- Section 4. The Transcendental Illusion of the Return to the Source.- Section 5. the Quest for Illusory “True Reality” and the Dilemmas of Individual and Collective Effort.- Section 6. The Dilemma at the Heart of Creation: Collective Heritage versus Individual Evidence.- Section 7. Creative Destructuring in the Metaphysical Pursuit of the Poet: A Period of Preparation for the Creative Breakthrough.- (a) Life lurking in the media attributed to the illusory “authentic reality”, p. 142..- (b) Creative conditions seen through philosophy, p. 146..- Section 8. The Radical Beginning: The Limit Concepts and the Mind in a New Pattern.- II / The Below and the Above of Creative Inwardness: The Human Life-World in its Essential New Perspective.- Section 1. Creation as the Transition between Two Successive Phases of the Same Life-World Caught in the Constitutive process.- (a) The precarious nature of the creative process, p. 152..- (b) The creative trajectory suspended between two poles: Creative agent and creative object, p. 154..- (c) The creative agent as a part of the constituted world, p. 156..- (d) The created work enters the constituted world as its integral part, p. 158..- Section 2. Man as the Creative Agent Transgresses the “Conditioning” of the Constituted World.- (a) The constituted world becomes problematic, p. 160..- III / The Creative Process And The “Copernican Revolution” In Conceiving The Unity Of Beingness: The Creative Process As The Gathered Center and Operational Thread of Continuity among All Modalities of Being in the Constructive Unfolding of Man’s Self-Interpretation-in-Existence.- Section 1. The Distinction between the Creative Process and the Constructive Delineation of Man’s Self-Interpretation-in-Existence.- Section 2. How the Creative Process Generates Examplary Works of Invention which Function as the Prototypes for Life’s Interpretative Progress.- Section 3. The Infinitely Expansive Coherence of Life’s Pluri-Modal Beingness Revealed by the Creative Process Leading to a Radical Overturn of the Classic Metaphysico-Ontological Formulations of Issues.- Two the Trajectory of the Creative Ciphering of the Original Life Significance: The Resources and Architectonics of the Creative Process.- I / The Incipient Phase of the Creative Process.- Section 1. The Incipient Phase of the Creative Process and Its Dynamic Resources: The Initial Spontaneity.- Section 2. The Two Moments of the Incipient Phase of the Creative Process.- (a) The creative stirring, p. 177..- (b) The creative vision, p. 179..- Section 3. Creative Volition.- Section 4. Creative Intuition as the Antenna between the Creative Vision and Its Crystallization in the “Idea of the Creative Work”.- Section 5. The Work as the Creative Product.- (a) The intrinsic cognition of the creative work confined to represented objective schemes, p. 187..- (b) Intrinsic analysis of the work of art and its all-encompassing, transcending perspective; the immanent reality and the all-encompassing vision, p. 189..- II / The Creative Trajectory Between the Two Phases of the Life-World.- Section 1. The Three-Phase Creative Process.- (a) The three phases, p. 195..- (b) The advent of the creative object (work) and the three phases of its trajectory, p. 195..- (c) The surging of the creative process in the perspective of “subjective” experience — personal growth, p. 197..- (d) An overview of the creative process in itself (in the “objective” perspective), p. 200..- III / The Passage from the Creative Vision to the Idea of the Creative Work.- Section 1. Creation versus Invention.- Section 2. From the Creative Vision to the Creative Idea of the Work.- Section 3. Imagination and Memory in the “Deciphering” and “Ciphering” of the Originary Significance of the Work.- Section 4. The Accumulative Function of Memory.- Section 5. The “Objective Rules” of “Compossibility” in the Coming Together of Imaginative Elements in the Creative idea.- IV / Operational Architectonics of the Surging Creative Function in the Initial Creative Constructivism.- Section 1. The Organizing Principles.- Section 2. The Architectonic Proficiencies of the Theme/Topic/Plot, etc..- Section 3. The Interplay: The Theme in Its Transformative Crystallization.- Section 4. The Topic or the General Theme.- Section 5. The Spontaneous Division of the Arts and Genres.- Section 6. The Creative Idea with Its Architectonic Plan Contains the Outline of the Entire Creative Progress.- Section 7. The Three Steps of the Passage — The Origin of the Work of Art and Its Existential Continuity.- (a) The three steps, p. 241..- (b) The discrete existential continuity of the creative advance, p. 242..- V / The Architectonic Logic in the Existential Passage from the Virtual to the Real — The Will.- Section 1. The Phase of Transition in the Creative Process from Subjective Interiority of the Life-World: The Surging and the Force of the Will.- Section 2. The Transition Phase as the Creative Activity Proper: Its Very Own Intrinsic Laws; differentiation of the Types of Creativity in Art, Science, etc..- Section 3. The Operational Synthesis of the Creative Architectonics: Execution Skill and Technique in the Transitional Constructive Advance.- Section 4. Sequences of Operational Inventiveness: The Architectonic Logic of Beingness in the Generative Process.- Section 5. The Personality of the Creative Agent in the Architectonic Phase of the Creative Process and in Its Relatedness to the Life-World and the Human Condition.- Section 6. The Plurivocal Logic Originating in order to Subtend the Arteries of the Creative Orchestration: The Three Functional/Presentational Modes of New Significance; the “Cipher,” the Symbol, the Metaphor.- VI / The Intergenerative Existential Interplay in the Transition Phase of Creativity.- Section 1. The Definitive Realization of the Work of Creation Acquiring Existential Status.- Section 2. From Objective Directives to the “Real Life” Enactment.- (a) The laws of the “workings of Nature” as the ultimate point of reference for creative architectonics, p. 278..- (b) The sequence of inventive operations in the existential transition and the “performer” as the architectonic artery into the real world, p. 281..- Section 3. The Personality of the Actor versus that of the Personification in the Acting.- Section 4. The Existential Transition of the Significant Message into the Meaningfulness of the Life-World: The “Receptive Interpretation” and the Status of the Creative Work within the “Real World”.- (a) The real life enactment and the “judgment of existence”, p. 288..- (b) The creative transition and the theatrical instinct, p. 290..- Section 5. The Question of the Prototype of the “Motor Modes” by which the Specifically Human Individual Enacts His Significant Life-Course.- Section 6. The Created Object Overflows with Its Fluctuating Virtually Potent Core of “Meaning” into the Constituted World that It Enters.- (a) Latent virtualities and their structural vehicle throughout time, p. 294..- Section 7. The Creative Work as the Bridge over the Discontinuity of the Historical Advance and the Factor of Its Progress.- Section 8. Indeterminateness versus the Immutable Core of Persistence in Interpretation.- Section 9. The Entrance of the Creative Work through the Receiving Process that Is Suspended upon Its Visionary Virtualities.- Coda / Conclusive Insights into the Question of “Reality” as the Outcome of Our Foregoing Investigations.- Section 1. Individualizing Life Assessed as the Source of Ontologico-Metaphysical Meaningfulness.- (a) The reality of life, p. 303..- (b) Life’s “reality” in its epistemological modality of presentation as opposed to illusion, imagination, hallucination, and fiction, p. 305..- (c) Reality as the objectivity of the life-world, p. 307..- (d) Reality as a specific existential modality of life, p. 307..- Section 2. The Mimesis of Reality.- (a) “Objectivity” of life versus “life simile”, p. 310..- (b) The creative act and mimesis, p. 314..- Three the Creative Orchestration of Human Functioning: Constructive Faculties and Driving Forces.- I / The Surging of the Creative Orchestration within Man’s Self-Interpretation-In-Existence: Passivity Versus Activity; The Spontaneous Differentiation of Constructive Faculties and Forces.- Foreground: The Specifically Human Meaningfulness of Life.- Section 1. The Synergetic Cohesion of the Operational Faculties in the Creative Orchestration.- (a) The distinction between the functional constructive roles of “operations,” “functional organs,” and “faculties”, p. 321..- (b) The differentiation of faculties: Imagination, will, intellect, memory, p. 322..- Section 2. Memory — Imagination — Will: Three Constructive Faculties which Individualize Life along with the Intellect, the Architect.- (a) Memory as a vital force of life, p. 330..- (b) The role of memory in experiencing the three types of destructuring of the person/life-world patterns, p. 333..- (c) “Creative memory” in the reconstructive “deconstruction” of the person/life-world pattern, p. 335..- (d) Memory as the key to sustained creative withstanding the adverse play of vital forces within the functional equipoise of Man’s self-interpretation-inexistence, p. 338..- (i) In the midst of the play of vital forces, memory as the mediator of the equipoise in man’s self-interpretative continuity, p. 338..- (ii) The balance of powers: The master-builder and the architect, p. 340..- II / Imaginatio Creatrix: The “Creative” versus the “Constitutive” Function of Man, and the “Possible Worlds”.- Introduction: The Basic Philosophical Issues which Meet in the Question of the Role of Creative Imagination.- Section 1. The Differentiation of the Two Functions, the Creative and the Constitutive, with Reference to the Modal Opposites: “Activity and Passivity in Human Functioning”.- Section 2. The Genesis of the Creative Function: The Creative Context, Its Framework.- (a) The differentiation of the two functions with respect to the axiological opposites: voluntary/involuntary, p. 349..- (b) The outline of the creative process as the fundamental dynamism of the creative context, p. 350..- (c) The revindication of the passions and of the elemental nature of Man within the creative context, p. 353..- Section 3. Imaginatio Creatrix in the Controversy concerning the Role of the Faculties — a Critique of Husserl and Kant. The Differentiation of the Two Functions with Respect to the Regulative Principles: Transcendental “A Priori,” “Creative Freedom”.- Section 4. “Imaginatio Creatrix” and the Functional Orchestration within the Creative Context: The Regulative Choice in the “Creative” versus the “A Priori” of Ideas in the “Constitutive” Function.- Four the Human Person as the All-Embracing Functional Complex and the Transmutation Center of the Logos of Life.- I / The Notion of the “Human Person” at the Crossroads of the Understanding of Man within the Life-World Process.- Introduction: The Notion of “Person” as the Point of Reference for the Understanding of Man within His Life-Conditions.- (a) The first two basic models for the conception of the person, p. 381..- (b) The third model of the person as a subject/agent within the social world, p. 382..- Section 1. The Human Person in His/Her Essential Manifestation.- (a) The phenomenology of the human person in a fourfold perspective, p. 386..- Section 2. The Manifest Person.- (a) The body complex, p. 388..- (b) Mute performance versus sentient interiorizing: The “voice” of the body and its elementary vital “sense”, p. 389..- (c) The body/soul manifestation of the person, p. 391..- (d) The essential nature of the soul, p. 392..- II / The Moral Sense of Life as Constitutive of the Human Person.- Section 1. The Person as the Subject/Agent within the Life-World.- Section 2. Man’s Self-Interpretative Individualization.- Section 3. The Moral Sense in the Inters...