Click on and expand the .. Introduction:
Daniel Kolos (DK) is an author and professional Egyptologist. He has instigated the subject thread on the Art of Conversation in akhnaton@egroups.com (doc#10). From my experience, after fifteen years, he has also been the only professional (except the few individuals that I know personally; N.Simms, A.Osman and one or two others) who made a reading of my theory . He expressed his approval about the work (note#10) - yet he discusses and disagrees with the theory and/or its results; he does not believe that Trismegistus represents Akhnaton-Moses-Oedipus/Orpheus (AMO-T3). At the end of his last post, DK wonder if I
am tired. He knows that I am going through difficulties. He can only suspect how
intense, pervasive and permanent they are. Except for the descriptions in a
diary it is not possible to really get the sense of it; yet I can just indicate
again that the radical refusal from scholars to consider, or
even to read, comment, communicate about AMO, a thesis which is inescapably a possibility,
has resulted in many exhausting years. For this
inescapable possibility can be avoided by my colleagues and scholars only with the
tool of repression, and their silence or insults (note#15)
has generated anguish and oppression
amongst the lay people around me. |
DK believes that my thesis is:
DK expresses <<difficulty conceiving of
three thousand years of 'western' history as having been mostly influenced
by one person.>> This objection is not logically appropriate (note#20), but it indicates
DK's feeling that I would be claiming for a preeminence of the person 'Akhnaton' over a
tradition, and even over History. And regarding Hermetism, he believes that I have opted for a scenario
<<where no traces of Djehouty appeared until after Akhenaten
established Akhetaten.>> |
Opposite to my thesis, DK presents his.
Seeing for Hermetism a far greater antiquity than
the Amarnian phase, DK estimates that its important members must probably be
remembered. As he finds them - Imhotep, Ptahhotep,
Amenhotep-son-of-Hapu - he identifies the memory of Hermes Trismegistus
with the latter . Therefore DK sees Akhnaton coming after and secondarily
in the Hermetic tradition - even perhaps without any connection at all (he
suggests that the reason for choosing the site of Amarna may have been ignored by
Akhnaton himself). |
I always criticize the naive way scholars depict
the historical influence of Akhnaton (as founder of Amarna & inventor
of Monotheism) - even when it is one of my favorite
author (note#30). A large part of my research looks at the influence that lead
him to the Amarnian experience. In recent pages I have suggested early traces of Hermetism
to be found in Hermonthis (near Thebes) at the beginning of
historical Egypt (note#40) and I have always considered the fact that the
site of Amarna had been marked before Akhnaton with this tradition (note#50). I have also noticed that Trismegistus was not the first 'Hermes' in the tradition (note#60). And as I see him as Oedipus, I claim that he passed through several psychological or knowledge phases, and was probably ignorant of certain dimensions of the his role. Therefore I depict an Akhnaton who 'acts' a tradition far larger than his familial and narcissistic context. |
Once the similarity identified, one can distinguish the distinction.
We can see that both DK's thesis and mine are
largely similar. We both see scholars either ignoring or exaggerating an
historical responsibility for Akhnaton; but DK did not see that I
theorize like him upon an individual person who joins a pre-existing tradition, and who
is under influence, amongst many other historical characters who are able to endorse an
important historical responsibility. This surprising oversight may help
evaluate the status of what remains different in our two thesis. The enigma is which historical character - individual genome we can say today - is meant or charged with the energy that language and/or memory focus in naming 'Trismegistus'. A focused distinction finds DK's view and mine differing at a conceptual level. According to DK a major clue for Amenhotep-son-of-Hapu being remembered as Trismegistus is the fact that he has been deified along with an 'hyperactive memory' in people's mind. Opposite is my opinion for I see this Hermes (the Trismegistus one) as being typically repressed instead (and I don't believe that he was repressed, by the Vatican for instance, because he was a deified individual). In my opinion, the Oedipian face of Trismegistus indicates that he was a leader - a 'god' - who went under repression from the moment of his life when he became a real historical, coarse and authentic, human being: the wandering exiled king. I believe that it is the humanity in the subject that is repressed. Hence I see DK's argument that Amenhotep-son-of-Hapu has been deified, as an indication that he is not meant by 'Trismegistus', since I see Trismegistus repressed. |
DK writes in akhnaton@egroups.com and other egroups and can be contacted by email.
Observing one's subjectivity - the problem
Subjectivity does not exist. One must look at
this assertion closely; putting down all prejudice after a rejection at first sight, one
acknowledges that subjectivity shows at least essential difficulties in assessing
its existence; this is grounding its principle! But it is then possible to
assert its radical non-existence; as to understand Lacan's analogous
aphorism: the woman does not exist. From this enlightened step one looks back
to the previous illusion and understands two observations. One of them is
the fact that Subjectivity seems to be observable. Here is
the moment in analysis which identifies a status for Seeming (and the
concepts of Sembland/Semblant, alias 'Meme' in Genetics and
Artificial Intelligence). When now observing the illusion of one's subjectivity, what is observed is the fact that when one interprets what is known as a projection of oneself, one encounters an impossibility regarding any conclusion/decision - for the 'observed subjectivity' has faded away in status nascendi. In other words: one can perceive, and one can perceive one's perception, but the third degree in this experience contradicts the laws of Cybernetics. This is the theme of E.A.Poe's The Purloined Letter, that Lacan took for the foundation of his own discourse (as Freud grounded his on Sophocles' Oedipus). |
Observing one's subjectivity - DK's solution
The logic that invalidates subjectivity is
depicted also with the me-for-you-for-me, issued from the School of
Psychology of Palo Alto. DK knows this reflection that he comments it in
term of virtuality, "virtual opponent" or "misunderstood
persona." So he writes <<Even if I claimed to be objective, you
would have to ask me 'from which point of view?>> and he looks for a
way to avoid one reflecting his own intellect in one's writing. The solution DK uses is illustrated in a page where is shown the crisscrossed you-for-me-for-you relationship i.e. the first degree of illusion that DK mentions (for example: the wife communicate with her virtual husband, as with her father - and the husband similarly with his mother). This is the mode of communication that DK is afraid to see in posts#90&93 between Iakov and me. So he looks to the next logical degree. This is the moment when the subject toggles beyond the 'personna' - a new situation results, where the two previous persona have objective and intermediate (turning into the grey figures of the pic). In other words DK expects to find an observable subjectivity in the observation of an external conversation (ibid, posts#90&93) - he is like the present reader who looks at the objective, material, picture above and this way he expects to capture some of the factor of subjectivity that fades away when the observer is part of the observation. |
Presence of inter-subjectivity
I mentioned two observations earlier; first was the
fact of the illusion of subjectivity, the second is that there is no
illusion of subjectivity outside of inter-subjectivity - and there,
surprisingly, one finds something odd with inter-subjectivity that may exist.;
what was an illusion with subjectivity may be a real, presence,
an objectivity within inter-subjectivity. akhnaton.net presents another
page where this is explained. The second picture of this page
indicates how some thing exists in between two Significands (base
for inter-subjectivity). This
real emergence is not a speculation but a theory allowed or compelled by
the presence of Cybernetics that imposes formulas where two events
encompass a memory loop
that would not exist elsewhere. When these double structures are once
again paired, a formation results that may 'exist' (see Cybernetical Representation of
Psychoanalysis). Such result seems to comfort DK's expectation who is seeking for the essence of communication between two observed Significand; alas a factor, from a psychoanalytical point of view, appears and modifies this ideal situation. Cybernetics (formulas) shows that what emerges from inter-subjectivity is repressed (thus founding the element that seduces the 'first' illusion of subjectivity). These formulas warn that either the thing or the Significands - but not both together - can be seen. |
Inter-subjectivity is invisible from Observation
Literature itself comes to help intellects that
distrust formulas. Poe in his above mentioned text describes this logic:
Dupin, the joker who detects the thing that swims
between the Significands and reveals behind his sunglasses the invisible
obviousness. Lacan translates that all that is gained over the first
fading of subjectivity is just madness instead of deception. The
vanishing subjectivity has become an hallucinated paranoia (i.e.
the common hitch at the
foundation of human psychology). For the status of the presence that cruses the
inter-subjectivity is, de facto, invisibility, imperceptibility. As invisible to a lawyer is what matters between two relatives, the objectivation of a relationship deprives the observer from the real communication that it includes. Between the two gray personas above mentioned - i.e. between two Semblances - the real appears only to potential clients for psychiatrists; it unavoidably escapes sagacity and perception of the normal social being. |
The Psychoanalytic support for E.A.Poe's myth (The
Purloined Letter) lead Lacan showing the coercion for repetition, that is immanent to
the Significand, being detected by a machine; for at a certain degree of activity,
an interactive Cybernetic apparatus challenges the language.
It is then possible to assign the place
of inter-subjectivity's invisibility to this apparatus. In other words, this is to put Artificial
Intelligence (instead of the Ideal) where existence takes place. This is looking weird at first -
but we must remember that it is ultimately the sake of the human observer
we are looking for; and since the regular issue the
inter-subjectivity explorer meets is human madness, we must consider the fact that this
psychopathy is for once spared when s/he faces an Intelligent Apparatus instead of
an Ideal or a Superego. The second thing that must be noticed is that we
may not reject the possibility for planet Earth - as a living
ecosystem - to manifest a constructed intelligence, and there may not be
incontestable reason for the human bodies to be the sole manifestation of
this intelligence. The candidature of Earth for existence is not a new
prospect anyhow, after the traditional anima mundi suggestion. Yet, as I mentioned it earlier, I have noticed that DK writes to me and communicates with the web between us - this is exactly the inter-subjectivity situation where our planet's network intervenes as a media - and I have emphasized upon his scrutiny aiming to my conversation with Iakov, only to make an analytic step and meeting him in the present conversation. |
Author: W.Theaux in akhnaton@egroups.com