[MD] Intellectual activity

[Arlo J. Bensinger]

[Ham]
For the essentialist, the subjective realization of this "spectrum of
conditional values" is the very purpose of life.  Such an epistemology will not
work as a "collective" or universal principle.  It is specifically a function
of the individual's value-sensibility.

[Arlo]
You guys and your "one or the another" stuff. It is the collective that forms
the structurating foundation of the individual's value-sensibility. The idea of
man, alone in the world, valuing and not valuing based soley on his/her
"individual value sensibilities" is ridiculous. The "individual" and the
"collective" are dialogically intertwined and inseparable. To paint them as
antithetical is to miss the value of both.

"The mythos-over-logos argument points to the fact that each child is born as
ignorant as any caveman. What keeps the world from reverting to the Neanderthal
with each generation is the continuing, ongoing mythos, transformed into logos
but still mythos, the huge body of common knowledge that unites our minds as
cells are united in the body of man. To feel that one is not so united, that
one can accept or discard this mythos as one pleases, is not to understand what
the mythos is."

Arlo