Wednesday, January 21, 2026

TPC, self and temporality

We have described TPC as being involved with the transcendental awareness of the total continuum or process of thought considered purely as such, as merely a process of thought.  But TPC has an important aspect: transcendental philosophical consciousness involves the transcendental awareness of those preconditions and structures upon which ordinary consciousness entirely depends and at the same time of which ordinary consciousness as a rule is oblivious of. It is almost as if ordinary consciousness only exists, can only exist, under the condition of it carrying a forgetfulness of its own transcendental preconditions and predetermining structures. Transcendental consciousness is thus also the consciousness of what non-transcendental consciousness must necessary forget.   If TPC in turns does not have full knowledge of such transcendental preconditions and structures, it falls back into a false dualism, limitation and illusory reification.  Two of the most important of such preconditions are selfhood and temporality.  That which claims to be a being which we carry along as a huge burden - all possible transcendental questioning, untangling and analysis being forgotten - and that which we must forget in the first place in order for the very being-ness of being to arise.  Only then we arise to the selfless liberated insight into the pure universal sphere and flux of pure thought processes: only thus is further progress of TPP possible. The ordinary self is the protoype of illusory unquestioned, posited, composite being. The original prototype of being in transcendental temporal oblivion. One task is to study the formative tendency which constructs this prototype employing among other things certain classes of conscious phenomena.This prototype is the the scaffold upon which world-positing and world-directedness and the mutual feedback of the identity construct takes place. Being-in-the world is not a transcendental condition or principle but a non-transcendental illusion conditioned by transcendental ignorance and forgetfulness. Following Plato a philosophical consciousness must include knowledge concerning the phenomenology of love and beauty.  This is a transcendental illusion which yet in its purest form  participates of the some of the modalities of TPP-liberated consciousness.  It paradoxically offers a glimpse of the bliss of beinglessness falsely conditioned and limited by being, by the illusory directed network of the self-prototype and its world. When we are born we are forced to build our identity and learn the world; when 'born into the spiritual life' our duty is to unbuild this identity and learn to see through the illusion and construct of the world. It is as if the first phase were like being plunged into the water, a downwards journey into illusion and forgetfulness. The second phase is when we begin to rise again and make our way back towards the surface and the air of light and truth. TPP is not about an 'individual' detaching itself from the 'world' and still less about an 'individual' transferring its feelings, desires, volitions and tendencies to alternative 'imaginary friends' or any kind of ontological construct - rather it is about seeing through both the 'individual' and the 'world' and their dependent interplay and mutual constitution. There is no contradiction between Yogacara and Madhyamaka. Two of the main tasks of TPC-based philosophy are: i) the untangling of all concepts and categories and the showing forth that they all exhibit the mark of the alleged being of the prototype (self), ii) exhibing the absoluteness of the moral law,  that the absolute can be characterized as morality (dharmakaya). The profound affinity between the consciousness and act of TPC and TPP and that of the essence of morality.  In all of the above the great interest of Kant is patent.

No comments:

Post a Comment

TPC, self and temporality

We have described TPC as being involved with the transcendental awareness of the total continuum or process of thought considered purely as ...