Wednesday, May 22, 2019

Immanent Alteriority and Reproduction

As has been previously discussed, Kant's concept of Genius entails that of what can be called 'immanent alteriority'--the existence of others in one's creative experience--insofar as it entails an impulse to communicate the product of creativity to others.  Thus, Immanent Alteriority can also an ingredient in Philosophical writing designed to be published, regardless of the Atomist content of the work, of which it is thus a counter-example. But, in Spinoza's doctrine, Immanent Alteriority is part of the content, though merely incipiently, insofar as Kant's concept of Genius is an instance of Spinoza's concept of Intuition, i. e. in which Spinoza leaves undeveloped the entailment of the existence of other Modes in the awareness of the existence of an immanent deity.  However, it is also incipient in a less rarified stage of his doctrine.  For, according to his Parallelism, a part of a Mind corresponds to a part of a Body.  Now, some parts of the human body plainly connotes Alteriority--the reproductive organs.  Hence, Immanent Alteriority is a constituent of the human mind, but is commonly inadequately understood as such. For example, Freudianism reduces the reproductive drive to Id or Libido, and, hence, to a merely intra-organic experience.  The reduction thus suits prevailing Social Atomism, according to which each person is inherently independent of each other, a scheme that has roots in the concept of an individual Soul that is independent of any other.  Likewise, prevailing Social Atomism easily obscures any potential scholarly recognition of Immanent Alteriority in Spinoza's concept of the Mind-Body relation.

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