[MD] Essentialism

[Ron Kulp]

[X] there seems to be a jump to the assumption of ultimate
    resolve instead of negation bringing on a the nihlistic "liar"
    paradox. Both are possibilities, why ultimate resolve or "oneness"?
[Ham]
Not sure what you mean by "resolve" -- "resolution", perhaps?  Are you
suggesting that we must progress through a heirarchy of levels to reach
our ultimate essence?  Why?  I base my reasoning on Occam's razor: when
in doubt, the simplest solution is preferred.  Essence is man's immanent
source; as the fundamental reality, it is omnipresent and ubiquitous.
Only nothingness is devoid of it; and nothingness is a negation of
Essence, which means nothingness doesn't exist.  But the Value of
Essence fills our nothingness.  Therefore, although nothingness defines
our existential "identity", Value is our  "essential" reality because
it's our connection to Essence.

[X]
Through the process of negation you mentioned "Each being that he
constructs is a "secondary negation" performed by his intellect and
corresponding to the relative Value he perceives.  Metaphysically, the
Value he acquires in the process of intellection "fills" or supplants
the nothingness at his core, ultimately dissolving the division and
affirming
("refreshing?") this value in the Oneness of Essence"
Negation is open to many outcomes ie, infinite negation v.s. ultimately
dissolving the division into oneness with essence.
My question is why ultimate dissolving into oneness. Why not infinite
negation? 



[Ham]

I see this whole issue as a refusal by some to acknowledge that
Conscious awareness is not an organic entity.  The MoQ makes the same
mistake by lumping it in with a collective notion of Intellect.  It's
all to avoid the S/O duality.  It seems to me that Mind, as Hegel
develops it in his Phenomenology, is what I call "awareness" -- if you
will, the "psychic" or "spiritual" component of existence.  Everything
else is "otheness".  I, also, seek to get beyond this otherness; but we
can't do it by pretending that it doesn't exist.

Think of Existence as a dichotomy consisting of Being (the appearance of
things) and Awareness (apprehension).  Awareness [or Value-awareness] =
the "I" of each individual, regardless of its organic entanglements.
Awareness is the core "You", your psychic identity, soul, and locus in
existence.  All experience is proprietary to this identity.

[x]
This ties in with what Fichte was saying


"The I posits itself insofar as it is aware of itself, not only as an
object but also as a subject, and 
finds itself subject to normative constraints in both the theoretical
and practical realms, e.g., that 
it must be free of contradiction and that there must be adequate reasons
for what it believes and does.
 Furthermore, the I posits itself as free, since these constraints are
ones that it imposes on itself.
 Next, by means of further reflection, the I becomes aware of a
difference between "representations 
accompanied by a feeling of necessity" and "representations accompanied
by a feeling a freedom" - that
 is, a difference between representations of what purports to be an
objective world existing apart from
 our representations of it and representations that are merely the
product of our own mental activity. 
To recognize this distinction in our representations, however, is to
posit a distinction between the I
 and the not-I, i.e., the self and whatever exists independently of it.
In other words, the I comes to 
posit itself as limited by something other than itself, even though it
initially posits itself as free,
 for in the course of reflecting on its own nature the I discovers
limitations on its activity."
First, the I posits a check,  on its theoretical and practical activity,
in that it 
encounters resistance whenever it thinks or acts. This check is then
developed into more refined 
forms of limitation: sensations, intuitions, and concepts, all united in
the experience of the things
 of the natural world, i.e., the spatio-temporal realm ruled by causal
laws. Moreover, this world is 
found to contain other finite rational beings. They too are free yet
limited, and the recognition of 
their freedom places further constraints on our activity." 

And if I understand essentialism, other finite beings are constructs of
the "self posited I"
Am I correct in this? This is what is difficult the Micah stance that
the subject is the primary source
But if every subject is the primary source...wait wait, I see, you're
saying primary essence manifests itself
In multiplicity in a quantum sense that everything that was ever, is
ever and will be ever aware is "I" or essense.
And objective reality is only a constuct of that multi-manifested "I" so
is time for that matter.
Yes?