20th WCP: The Problem of Symbol in Philosophy

"The man of the world" is indivisible from the point of view of the consciousness. The categories of space and time are disposed outside his mind, out of the limits of his conscience. "The wanderer everywhere" is a metaphysical hero; traveling along the landscape of thought, he moves absolutely freely, notwithstanding the national or temporal forms it (that is, the thought) takes. For all these are living forms, and the traveler is metaphysically alive. Therefore - Mamardashvilli and Montaigne, and Pascal, and Descartes, and Rousseau. And Proust, at last....

Listening attentively to "The Lectures about Proust", we find the talk of the doubles and cannot distinguish between the observer and the prototype. In the final layers of the French novel there glimmers the mind of the Georgian philosopher. The idea of the artist (in regard to the idea of the artist) arises in the soul of the thinker. The intellectual impression is impossible without the spiritual predisposition, without the inner catastrophe of the spirit. The spirit is understood as a principle of reviving of the soul, its coming into contact with the secret of the existence. The spirit is the unique and ideal substance, the objective foundation of the ontos that we survive at the highest point of the thought or passion. "I am a thinking thing... It is something doubting, understanding, asserting, denying, willing, unwilling and having imagination and feelings."

The great "dualist" Descartes! You were the only one to understand the oneness of the being. The existence is a subjective experience of the reality of meanings, so the substance and the existence (but not the being) are on the opposite poles of the universal, like two pointed ends of the needle, which one can neither seize, nor break. Between them there lies the ideal infinity of abstract intentions; they are abstract in the sense that not a perceptive object, clear without any words, opposes it, but just the spirit, the mere idea. Otherwise the death. We cannot feel it, but we can symbolize it. Put it into shape by means of the intentional movement. The symbol arises there and then, where and when the existence and the spirit mingle in one and only point.

The substance and its life are not broken into categories. They (that is, the substance and life) break the intellectual structures, keeping the intellect, which is capable to exist outside any plans, definitions and even explanations. Thus, they keep Merab Mamardashvilli's thinking.

The sense of the creation of the text, which arises in the reading act of the text-world by "a universal observer" or "a Cartesian man" - is in the self-understanding and understanding of the Universe. The sense of the understanding is in the rescuing. The one saved is eternal, and he is eternal not in the mere sense of the philosophy of our age, but in a more ancient meaning - as the one who escaped the re-incarnation. By the different ways. A Cartesian man constantly catches himself at the thought that he is thinking, he is thinking, he is thinking... and endlessly. And while catching his own thought he can exist: other alternatives are not possible. Actually, he is sure in his existence as far as he thinks. It is not equal to the formula: I think, hence, I exist. But: if I do not think, I do not exist. That is Descartes. The thought and existence are one and the same thing. So the thinker can only save his life by means of the creative thought. The more so as it gives the hope of immortality. The metaphysical immortality makes related Merab Mamardashvilli and Marseilles Proust.

II.

The death does not exist (when we are, it is absent; when it comes, we do not exist). What have we to do with it? We can think about it all the time, thus "softening" the burden of its inevitability, toying with the idea of death and so escaping the death itself. "To think about death is to think about freedom. Who learnt to die, had forgotten to be a slave." That is M. Montaigne. One can avoid thinking about it, constantly reflecting on the life, but not the death; as the wise man proceeds from the demands of the mind, and, therefore, the use; he strives for the good, consequently, he lives the life reflecting upon it and that is his wisdom. This is B. d' Espinosa. One can think in two parallel worlds: substantial and other-worldly, constantly balancing on the verge of being; if we fail to surpass the borders of the world (as having surpassed them, there will not be we), we can stand on the verge of this world, which separates it off the death... Or off the spirit. Or off nothing. We can stand on the verge through "the reflex upon" the being, "the reflex upon" the existence, constantly thinking that we are thinking. This induces the synthesis of two worlds, their overflowing from one into the other. The death takes an intimate position in regard to this life, the life appears the inevitable condition of the death. The symbols of life and death run through Proust's novels.

The artist's path is the path of art, the path of making symbolic forms, not just as the results of the work within the life, but also as the twinkling stars at the head of this life, indicating the path. The man of art splashes his soul out and is re-born: he is there, where he is not yet (as there is no death), therefore - it is not he now. The ordeals clear the truth, and I become something opposed-an antipode: I can walk, speak, do something, but the world has changed. Instead of the ordeal one feels the bliss, instead of the suffering-the delight, instead of the crime-the exploit. The world remained the same old world; the point is that the man himself has changed, his inner life has transformed, there has happened the overturn. The overturn is the symbolic form that attaches the meaning to the being. The new birth in soul is that non-physical birth, which R. Descartes admitted. For we cannot be born the spiritual creatures from our parents. Hence, there is God.

The combination, throwing off, conjugation of fragments, extremes, of two halves-the beginning and end, the top and bottom, the intellect and soul-that is symbol, synthesis, unity. Through this way the God is understood and felt. Plato knew about it, proving the androgynous myth as the aim and essence of life's movement.

III.

Pascal's "Thoughts" differ from the thoughts of an ordinary man like a mythological sacred animal could differ from the real domestic one. But both should be understood, and both could be understood. We cannot perfectly identify ourselves with the author's thought, as it is not we who generate it. Moreover-sometimes an intellectual sign can die-during the process of the informational exchange, when its ideological essence is not caught. Though it is impossible to control the flow of thoughts, one can verge on it. The dialogue, leading to the understanding of the text, the world and the ideas goes through the sign indifferent to the outward appearance.

The understanding is symbolic throughout. As we pass from the structures of our intelligent comprehension to the non-structured formations under the veil of consciousness, then understanding, the result of which will be knowledge is the passage. So in what way did Schopenhauer explain the feeling of the beautiful in a man? Our soul has at birth ideas of the beauty, the truth and so on. Correlating the outer impressions with the content of our mind, we come to a conclusion: this is beauty, and this is ugliness. Plato has a deeper idea: not "at birth", but "before birth". In the dialogue "Menon" the philosopher shows the example of understanding as a variant of reminiscence. The soul is immortal, while in the celestial life it contemplated certain ideas, and when being implanted in the man's body it was able to recollect them and identify in the fragmented world. The serf-boy never studied geometry, but nevertheless he understands the geometrical truths through the leading questions. It means, that his mind has certain inborn ideas. And the fact proves the immortality of the soul and the symbolic character of being.

The symbolics cannot be deliberate. It reveals the facts we have perfectly understood. It can be life, death, existence. The man is a synthesis of the soul and body, consequently, a symbol with regard to existence. It (that is, symbol) arises spontaneously, irrespective of someone's will. When one manages to reveal the soul put into the object, this object is reviving, and the soul mingles with the body again. It reminds the well-known myth of Galathea-the statue, with love turned into a beautiful woman. Thus: we roll our soul into the object, where from it holds endless unspoken talk, thus unrolling and filling our body, reviving and changing it. The spiritual transformation of the man induces the revival of the thing, created by him, he and she blent in love (one more symbol). The symbol, which arises at the crucial point of existence.

Usually we correlate the sign and the thing it indicates in order to understand it. For there are signs that do not demand the correlation like that. They do not indicate the truth, they are the truth themselves, they are letters, written with blood in the book of life. For example, Descartes' text is a sign like that. Or Pascal's text. Why are these signs necessary? Because the truth is not consolidated in the local thing, in the concrete word. It exists among the things, it hovers between the lines. And these signs are not just signs, they prophesy the fate of the consciousness, world, meanings; they dig themselves into the soul and leave tracks there; they blow it up, they exasperate, upset the balance and disturb the dream. "Christ's agony will last eternally, and one cannot sleep in due time", said B. Pascal. The recognition and experience of such hieroglyphs saves from the death, drawing it closer, as it is a certain hieroglyph. The dying reveals us the truth, for we only live when we die.