SELF AS SPIRIT:

KIERKEGAARD AND NANCY: THE “15" STEPS TO REACHING “SELF” AS “SPIRIT”

(copyright: Barry L. Ballard, July 1, 2013)


1.   NANCY: inscribed.  Self begins with a preceding “origin-identity-truth” of self that is on-the-way to arriving completely. An inscribed “trace-of the-eternal” which is opening.

KIER: despair.  Self is in despair of “weakness”, but where introversion results in the “infinite-self” being posited as an abstract possibility.

2.   NANCY: inscription is opened in a “waking” moment.

KIER: abstract possibility opens as “primitive-plan”; the waking out of despair.

3.   NANCY: opening leads to “imagination”; an imagination which is “praxis-based”.

KIER: infinitizing. The imagination engages an unconscious activity of
“fantastical-expansion”.

4.   NANCY: internal posited desert.  Unconsciously,  the self reserves a “space” for the “feeling-percepts” of the “trace-of-sense” found in the situation that correspond to the trace within the self.

KIER: internal posited mirage.  The unconscious space for the feeling-percepts of possibilities is  not the entire desert; it is the fuzzy and non-distinct hint of a mirage of possibilities that don’t appear as hard-edged certainties.

5. NANCY: self forms a “body-of-pattern” called “world”.  Unconsciously,  and based on feelings, arranging the feeling-percepts of the desert into a  felt-model of “transformation” or “body-of-transformation”.

KIER: not a “body”, but a “pregnancy” is created as the “personality-of-sprit”; waiting for the mid-wife activity in cognition.

6.   NANCY: arrangement of sub-systems.  The self,  unconsciously , based on feelings, keeps relating the “thought-picture” of the “body-of-transformation” to the “process-of-appearing” in externality and recognizes that the “feeling-model” can be refined into a “punctuated” group of  sub-systems of “truth” that can then be organized into an “enchaining”of interrelated spacing and structure. Called: “originating-spatiality”

KIER: arrangement of sub-systems becomes less distinct in kierkegaard and means  the resolution  of contradictions facing the self in the mirage.  Therefore, he creates the step of “temporary-suspension” of the teleology of the moral-stand-point, in  favor of an eschatological ethics, similar to Abraham.

7. NANCY: “punctuation” concentrates into “central- glimmer” , which is more than the sum of punctuations.  It is represented as an influential “excess” of spirit.

KIER: “passage  through the eye of the needle” (part 1).  Begins as a process that first demands that the self posit the sense of the possibility of the divine , in  the new eschatological ethics.

8.   NANCY: situation narrows as cognition takes over.

KIER: “passage through the eye of the needle” (part 2).  For kierkegaard, it is a “fight” ; a fight against the pain of childbirth.  A “travail-of-birth- pangs” that means faith is not easily decided in view of the lack of certainty.

9.   NANCY: "passage through the eye of the needle".  Cognition takes up the “excess” in a responsible “faith-decision”.

KIER: “passage through the eye of  the needle” (part 3).  For  Kierkegaard,  self also takes responsibility for the excess of the mirage.  But that means choosing to be a “mid-wife”,  by a willingness to conceptualize the “infinitizing” into an “idealizing” of language that can be posited.

10. NANCY: cognition appropriates the feelings and the “body of transformation” with its imaginative possibilities

KIER: consciousness re-appropriates “infinitizing” and works it through a “cognitive-praxis” in the external world.

11.   NANCY: cognitive partitioning.  Cognition concretizes the “spatiality-model” of:
“punctuations” into “lexical content”   & “enchaining” into “lexical form”.

KIER: consciousness enlists a lexical content called: “transferred-language”, which is symbolic language of the spirit with metaphor ; used to articulate the “cognitive-praxis”.

12 NANCY: cognition also conceptualizes the “excess” as “infinite liberation”.

KIER: Kiekegaard’s cognition also conceptualizes the infinite-excess of possibility as:
“the generic-verb of “building-up”, rather than liberation.

13. NANCY: positing linguistically. self posits th result as “being-to be-completed”; or as an eschatological promise.

KIER: the model of “transferred-language” is coupled with the empowerment of “love-as-building-up” ; and is ready for positing.

14. NANCY: the result is actualized in the instability of the “realm-of-difference” or “appearing-process”.

KIER: the result is actualized in the “tendency-of a -community” of selves ; where all selves are perceived inscribed with the infinite ground.

15.   NANCY: result is returned to self.  Self grows in “spirit”.

KIER: the positing is relinquished to its own self-actualization and return.  Self grows as “spirit”.