I was asked this past weekend about an introductory reading list for philosophy. I just decided to place my suggestions here. I'm hardly widely read, relatively speaking, but I have a fine handle on the broad movements of the tradition. This is meant to balance brevity, breadth, depth and readability. I'll move from the early aspects of the tradition right to the cutting edge of contemporary thought.
Ancient:
I'm skipping the Pre-socratics and Plato altogether, because I'm pretty hopeless in those areas.
1. Aristotle's Metaphysics. This is one of the books that the tradition keeps coming back to, over and over. Read the Metaphysics, and you'll see Aristotelian language everywhere. It's a roadmap for the next 2000 years of thought. Aristotle's Physics, Politics and Nichomachean Ethics are important as well, but the Metaphysics is where it all really begins.
From: The Basic Works of Aristotle
2. St. Augustine's Confessions. Specifically, chapters 8 - 11. The earlier chapters are kinda emo, but once Augustine gets his act together, he makes up for all the repentant whining that came before. His thinking of time, memory, literary interpretation, God and creation keeps the entire Western tradition coming back for more. Augustine's thinking has a pivotal influence on at least one author in this list.
The Confessions of Saint Augustine
Modern:
I know I'm making a huge jump. I'm skipping over Stoics, Cynics, and Christians, traditional and mystical. Once again, I just don't know much about these guys.
3. Rene Descartes' Meditations on Method and Discourse on First Philosophy. Descartes' thought exploded in the western world like a philosophical Little Boy, and began a new era. That is the standard interpretation, anyways. It is facile to think Descartes was really an ahistorical clean slate for philosophy, but you cannot do reputable scholarship without knowing him.
4. Baruch Spinoza's Ethics. Spinoza has strong kung fu. Learn from him. The fact that traditional religion continued to exist after this man is a testament to the stubbornness of the human race. Be joyful, strong and creative.
5. GW Leibniz's Discourse on Metaphysics and The Monadology. God's knight in shining armour, defending Christondom from Spinoza's otherwise crippling blows. If you do not think the monad is one of the coolest ideas anyone anywhere has ever come up with. . . maybe philosophy is not for you after all.
6. Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. This is one of the most brutally difficult books ever written. I have only a vague grasp on it. This being said, Kant's importance rivals Aristotle and Descartes.
7. GWF Hegel's Phenomonology of Spirit. 20th Century political thought lives and dies with Hegel. This is probably the most difficult book ever written, however.
3 - 7 Are all found in: The European Philosophers. That single book contains excerpts from all the books listed above, except the Hegel book. If you pick up the book I've linked to here, you'll have highlights from all the above thinkers in a single volume, plus several more. There are different selections from Hegel here, but they will perhaps act as a better introduction than the frankly insane Phenomonology. You can skip the Pascal, Rousseau, Fichte, Schopenhauer, Comte and Mach selections as they are less important. As for the Nietzsche bits...
8. Friedrich Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil and Genealogy of Morals. Every word that slipped from this man's pen was golden. Reading Nietzsche is like breathing fresh mountain air. These two books will work in tandem to tear down and rebuild much of what you believe. Nietzsche is a diagnostician. Where else to go? Nietzsche has the words of life.
Keep in mind the importance of reading Walter Kaufman's translations; other translations are notoriously bad.
Found in: Basic Writings of Nietzsche
20th Century:
9. Martin Heidegger's Being and Time, What Is Metaphysics? and Letter on Humanism. Rather than read Being and Time, simply read the introduction. It is about thirty pages long, and defly summarizes the entire work. Being and Time is a terribly beautiful book, but it is also terribly difficult. There is no need to jump into it yet. What is Metaphysics and are both fine and short descriptions of Heidegger's thought. The anti-humanist philosophers of the 20th century fed on the Letter on Humanism for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Found in: Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings
10. Georges Bataille's Erotism. Influenced by Hegel, Nietzsche and Freud, Bataille produced fascinating work on the links between sex, death and religion. Yes, such links exist. Bataille is certainly the most readable of 20th century continental philosophers, and one of the most widely read. Highly recommended.
Erotism: Death and Sensuality
11. Michel Foucault's The Subject and Power. How are identities formed? Put another way, how is the content of the word "I" formed? When you say "I," what exactly do you mean, and why? In Foucault speak, how are we subjectified, and what role does power play in this? Important thinking for the 20th and 21st centuries.
Found in: The Essential Foucault
21st Century:
12. Alain Badiou's Ethics and Infinite Thought. Badiou is a deeply multidisciplinary thinker; his ontology is rooted in mathematical set theory. Every generation or so, a thinker comes along to clean house, to break up the old patterns and remind us all that we always need to be exploring new territory. For the philosophers of the 21st century, Badiou is the trailblazer we all must reckon with.
Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil
Infinite Thought
All right, there you go. If you read through all those, you'll know pretty much everything I know. Philosophy is an amazing adventure; it is extraordinary how different the world can look when seeing it through Nietzsche or Heidegger's eyes.
Good tidings.
Monday, May 21, 2007
Sunday, April 08, 2007
ToR 6: Morality, Mediation, Untrammeled Divine Violence
Part 5
In the world of spirits, the good elements were opposed to the bad elements; both groups were distant from the profane. But when the world becomes a rational, calculated place, and consciousness reflects upon this, the divine immanence that threatens the order becomes dangerous; the sacred becomes a fearful thing. Spirits, the remnants of the animated world, become mediators between the profane world and the fearful sacred world.
Another major change is at hand. Reflective thought articulates moral rules; like the law, these are obligatory relations. Whatever source is used, these moral rules are grounded in reason - reason dedicated to the duration of the profane world. Because these rules are dedicated to duration, they are necessarily opposed to the disruptive effects of expenditure or sacrifice. Because of the priority given to the real order, the divine is finally installed as protector of the real; in giving the divine “power” over the real, the divine is actually subordinated to the real’s interest. All the divine does is ratify the status quo.
The world of the spirits, now, is no longer simply the remnants of the animated world; the world of the spirits is the intelligible world, the world of the idea. The world of things becomes subordinated to the intelligible world, and so it becomes all the more divine. God becomes utterly transcendent.
Bataille argues against the possibility of intimacy with the transcendence; this would be a given intimacy, and to be “given” is to be subordinated to an end; it is already to be a thing whose intimacy is separated from it. Pure transcendence is, from the perspective of the sensuous world, total destruction, a destruction that is too complete (destroys the possibility of intimacy) and too impotent (in that given intimacy is not possible.)
Archaic violence - that is, violence pre-existed the rational military order - would have had a different problem - the destruction of the thing was totally impersonal.
In the transcendent’s movement of negation, it is no less opposed to violence than it is to the thing the violence destroys. This movement both lifts and preserves the order of things; it lifts the order by negating it’s effects of reason and morality, but condemns this lifting the very moment the real order is affected.
The real order condemns violence that may affect the order, so sacrifice’s subordination to utility becomes permanent. The anguished state of free violence then only ever has a negative place. Because sacrificial violence is roundly condemned in the dualistic world of good and evil, the search for intimacy is increasingly crippled - it goes to sleep.
And now for the chapter with the best subject headings ever.
The development of good and evil when the divine became the ratifier of the real was an awakening, but this awakening was followed by the sleep of the search for intimacy. In the dualistic world, there is no legitimate place for violence except in the rational exclusion of the sensuous world. The divine good excludes violence, and is so only available for intimacy to the degree that it has the old, repudiated violence lingering in it. To the extent that this violence is accepted, God is not good; the extent it is rejected, God is not open to intimacy.
There is an indirect route to violence and the resultant intimacy - a mediation, between the real and the sacred. Bataille offers two examples, one of which he says has always existed. An evil force kills my friend; I enter a state of openness, a mournful revelation of death, and I condemn the cruel act. In this state, I’m in accord with good. After evil has killed my friend, violence is required to restore the order of things; the problem is that it was the crime that opened up the world of intimacy to me. To the extent that the avenging violence is not an immediate extension of the criminal act, the intimacy is closed off. “For,” as Bataille says, “only vengeance that is commanded by passion and a taste for untrammeled violence is divine.”
The second form of mediation is violence coming to God from the outside. The violence must be directed towards the divinity itself, not towards my friend. The problem with this is that the sacrificed - God or my friend - can only be a mediator insofar as they renounce themselves, meaning if they didn’t die voluntarily - otherwise the violence has not come from the outside. The idea of a God sacrificing itself has several paradoxes first. First, what is sacrificed is what serves. If God was sacrificed, than God serves and is not sovereign. Another problem is that the sacrifice of the divinity involves violence that the divinity would condemn.
The morality of the real order is what governs any attempted return of the intimate order; all such attempts are ultimately subordinated to the need for duration and utility. Even Christian salvation is a utilitarian matter.
This mediation approach - the approach involving work - reduces divinity and the desire for divinity to a thing. It places both in the realm of utility.
In the world of spirits, the good elements were opposed to the bad elements; both groups were distant from the profane. But when the world becomes a rational, calculated place, and consciousness reflects upon this, the divine immanence that threatens the order becomes dangerous; the sacred becomes a fearful thing. Spirits, the remnants of the animated world, become mediators between the profane world and the fearful sacred world.
Another major change is at hand. Reflective thought articulates moral rules; like the law, these are obligatory relations. Whatever source is used, these moral rules are grounded in reason - reason dedicated to the duration of the profane world. Because these rules are dedicated to duration, they are necessarily opposed to the disruptive effects of expenditure or sacrifice. Because of the priority given to the real order, the divine is finally installed as protector of the real; in giving the divine “power” over the real, the divine is actually subordinated to the real’s interest. All the divine does is ratify the status quo.
The world of the spirits, now, is no longer simply the remnants of the animated world; the world of the spirits is the intelligible world, the world of the idea. The world of things becomes subordinated to the intelligible world, and so it becomes all the more divine. God becomes utterly transcendent.
Bataille argues against the possibility of intimacy with the transcendence; this would be a given intimacy, and to be “given” is to be subordinated to an end; it is already to be a thing whose intimacy is separated from it. Pure transcendence is, from the perspective of the sensuous world, total destruction, a destruction that is too complete (destroys the possibility of intimacy) and too impotent (in that given intimacy is not possible.)
Archaic violence - that is, violence pre-existed the rational military order - would have had a different problem - the destruction of the thing was totally impersonal.
In the transcendent’s movement of negation, it is no less opposed to violence than it is to the thing the violence destroys. This movement both lifts and preserves the order of things; it lifts the order by negating it’s effects of reason and morality, but condemns this lifting the very moment the real order is affected.
The real order condemns violence that may affect the order, so sacrifice’s subordination to utility becomes permanent. The anguished state of free violence then only ever has a negative place. Because sacrificial violence is roundly condemned in the dualistic world of good and evil, the search for intimacy is increasingly crippled - it goes to sleep.
And now for the chapter with the best subject headings ever.
The development of good and evil when the divine became the ratifier of the real was an awakening, but this awakening was followed by the sleep of the search for intimacy. In the dualistic world, there is no legitimate place for violence except in the rational exclusion of the sensuous world. The divine good excludes violence, and is so only available for intimacy to the degree that it has the old, repudiated violence lingering in it. To the extent that this violence is accepted, God is not good; the extent it is rejected, God is not open to intimacy.
There is an indirect route to violence and the resultant intimacy - a mediation, between the real and the sacred. Bataille offers two examples, one of which he says has always existed. An evil force kills my friend; I enter a state of openness, a mournful revelation of death, and I condemn the cruel act. In this state, I’m in accord with good. After evil has killed my friend, violence is required to restore the order of things; the problem is that it was the crime that opened up the world of intimacy to me. To the extent that the avenging violence is not an immediate extension of the criminal act, the intimacy is closed off. “For,” as Bataille says, “only vengeance that is commanded by passion and a taste for untrammeled violence is divine.”
The second form of mediation is violence coming to God from the outside. The violence must be directed towards the divinity itself, not towards my friend. The problem with this is that the sacrificed - God or my friend - can only be a mediator insofar as they renounce themselves, meaning if they didn’t die voluntarily - otherwise the violence has not come from the outside. The idea of a God sacrificing itself has several paradoxes first. First, what is sacrificed is what serves. If God was sacrificed, than God serves and is not sovereign. Another problem is that the sacrifice of the divinity involves violence that the divinity would condemn.
The morality of the real order is what governs any attempted return of the intimate order; all such attempts are ultimately subordinated to the need for duration and utility. Even Christian salvation is a utilitarian matter.
This mediation approach - the approach involving work - reduces divinity and the desire for divinity to a thing. It places both in the realm of utility.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Fidelity and the Word
This is a response to a post on Jamie's blog, yonder. I wanted to offer a more detailed, and possibly more useful, response than the two brief comments I've already left.
I think the best way to frame these topics is in terms of a brief discussion of faith. In a spirit of gross simplification, I'm going to suggest that there are two basic ways of viewing faith.
How is this related to Jamie's post, you might be asking?
20th/21st Century North American Evangelical Christians place a great deal of stock in the idea that God speaks to them (and make no mistake, this is a contemporary North American oddity). They believe God offers direction and gives commands, in any myriad of ways. I am not interested in passing judgement on the truth of all this; I just want to comment on this belief in light of the above discussion of faith.
There are two ways to problematize the idea that God has spoken to you.
If one chooses to be a subject of faith in this sort of way, they aquire a particular perspective. Because they are engaged in a particular way of being - a particular comportment to the world - the immediate circumstances surrounding them in the world do not have the same power over them.
God's word acts as a disruption in the status quo of their life, and they conform their perspective to these disruption. Their life revolves around living out the consequences of holding God's word to be true - not around taking care of the myriad possibilities that may befall them. Calculating possible harms and possible goods becomes a tertiary issue.
I do not say any of this to denegrate someone's faith, even if it comes down to being that epistemological version. I am trying to illustrate a perspective that does not revolve around harms and goods, a perspective that an orthodox Christian can accept. If the best part of one's self is given over to God's word, then harms and goods are distractions.
A disclaimer is almost certainly required. I absolutely insist that I am not suggesting that a Christian believe they exist in the best of all possible worlds. I am absolutely not saying "chin up! Jesus loves you!" or "things will get better!" I have already said this, but God is just as likely to kill your entire family as he is anything else. You are just as likely to end up homeless or an inmate in Auschwitz as you are rich or comfortable or secure. But remember, these things are goods and harms. They can be calculated out in a utilitarian way: "five units of possible good versus six units of possible harm... better not take that route!" If that is the route you want to take, gambling and calculating possibilities, than what do you do when your calculations fail and the "truths" you have had faith in turn out to be childish fairytales?
I think the best way to frame these topics is in terms of a brief discussion of faith. In a spirit of gross simplification, I'm going to suggest that there are two basic ways of viewing faith.
- The first involves a path to knowledge; it is an intellectual acceptance of a certain category of data, i.e. revelation. Or prophecy. One knows something to be true because they have faith. Belief in this piece of information brings salvation. To be wordy, this kind of faith is a question of epistemology. To be critical, it is a shortcut. This is the faith that fruitlessly opposes skepticism. This is the Josh McDowell vs. Richard Dawkins kind of faith.
- The second involves holding a certain perspective. It is not the same thing as a simple acceptance of particular propositions. This second kind of faith is an evaluation -- certain propositions are not only held to be true, but they are held to be valuable. This form of faith has more to do with a way of being; it is a human possibility. Incidently, this faith is the true object of study for theology.
How is this related to Jamie's post, you might be asking?
20th/21st Century North American Evangelical Christians place a great deal of stock in the idea that God speaks to them (and make no mistake, this is a contemporary North American oddity). They believe God offers direction and gives commands, in any myriad of ways. I am not interested in passing judgement on the truth of all this; I just want to comment on this belief in light of the above discussion of faith.
There are two ways to problematize the idea that God has spoken to you.
- One is to question the truth of it - to study the possibility of revelation as an object, the way an astronomer studies a star. To pass judgement on the truth of this possibility - did God speak or not? There are two problems that a Christian thinking this way has to deal with.
- The first is that of finding a criteria for judging the authenticity of a possible prophecy. Whatever criteria you wish to use - however strict or exact - it is still a question of finding a yardstick. Some kind of systematic way of judging. There are a myriad of problems with this problem of finding criteria, not the least of which is that this epistemological approach always leaves open the possibility that you are wrong.
- The second is a question of diffusion of responsibility. If you believe that God said something, commanded something, and your response is basically "I was given this piece of data, and now I must act on it," you are walking into "I was only following orders" territory.
- The second way of problematizing the idea of God speaking to you is, obviously, rooted in the second kind of faith. It takes God's word and holds it for true. The epistemological question of whether or not God actually spoke is not ignored, it is simply a secondary matter. Yes, this involves an act on the part of a subject. The subject of faith holds the word of God as true, and is formed by this word.
If one chooses to be a subject of faith in this sort of way, they aquire a particular perspective. Because they are engaged in a particular way of being - a particular comportment to the world - the immediate circumstances surrounding them in the world do not have the same power over them.
God's word acts as a disruption in the status quo of their life, and they conform their perspective to these disruption. Their life revolves around living out the consequences of holding God's word to be true - not around taking care of the myriad possibilities that may befall them. Calculating possible harms and possible goods becomes a tertiary issue.
I do not say any of this to denegrate someone's faith, even if it comes down to being that epistemological version. I am trying to illustrate a perspective that does not revolve around harms and goods, a perspective that an orthodox Christian can accept. If the best part of one's self is given over to God's word, then harms and goods are distractions.
A disclaimer is almost certainly required. I absolutely insist that I am not suggesting that a Christian believe they exist in the best of all possible worlds. I am absolutely not saying "chin up! Jesus loves you!" or "things will get better!" I have already said this, but God is just as likely to kill your entire family as he is anything else. You are just as likely to end up homeless or an inmate in Auschwitz as you are rich or comfortable or secure. But remember, these things are goods and harms. They can be calculated out in a utilitarian way: "five units of possible good versus six units of possible harm... better not take that route!" If that is the route you want to take, gambling and calculating possibilities, than what do you do when your calculations fail and the "truths" you have had faith in turn out to be childish fairytales?
Blog Tag: The Hills Are Alive
Well, I've been drafted in a game of blog tag by Titus, which means I actually have to write something, as opposed to just copying/pasting assignments. Sigh!
So what are the songs I'm loving right now?
1. Intervention by The Arcade Fire. An epic organ tune about working for the church while your family dies. This song is as least as fine as anything from their previous album, and the rest of the songs come through too.
2. There is No There by in The Books. I dunno who these guys are, but this album - and this song particular - is beautiful like a pacific sunset. There is No There is a ridiculously baroque tune that could have felt like a self-indulgent mash up... instead it's the song I'll be listening to once I step outside today, into the sun.
3. The Past Is A Grotesque Animal by Of Montreal. The first epic pop song of 2007, I tell you. I also would fall in love with the first cute girl that I met who could appreciate Georges Bataille. A song about the most violent, ecstatic kind of jouissane. Excellent music by fellow theory geeks.
4. The Universe! by Do Make Say Think. Fine instrumental work. Horns, strings, everything in there. I saw these guys in concert not too long ago, and it was a reallywonderful cacaphony. An enjoyable kind of night.
5. Imperial by Seefeel. Part of my ambient electronica kick. Seefeel is pretty versatile music - I can use it as background stuff for cleaning or work, or for walking at night, or just for listening on its own. It's not often I find music that I can listen to in so many different contexts.
6. Hey Jude by The Beatles. Pure awesomeness. I don't think I'll ever get tired of this song. I wish I could sing like these guys.
7. Heartbeats by The Knife. Weird, minimalist, dancy, electronica. The vocalist is arresting, and so is the synth. Highly recommended.
So what are the songs I'm loving right now?
1. Intervention by The Arcade Fire. An epic organ tune about working for the church while your family dies. This song is as least as fine as anything from their previous album, and the rest of the songs come through too.
2. There is No There by in The Books. I dunno who these guys are, but this album - and this song particular - is beautiful like a pacific sunset. There is No There is a ridiculously baroque tune that could have felt like a self-indulgent mash up... instead it's the song I'll be listening to once I step outside today, into the sun.
3. The Past Is A Grotesque Animal by Of Montreal. The first epic pop song of 2007, I tell you. I also would fall in love with the first cute girl that I met who could appreciate Georges Bataille. A song about the most violent, ecstatic kind of jouissane. Excellent music by fellow theory geeks.
4. The Universe! by Do Make Say Think. Fine instrumental work. Horns, strings, everything in there. I saw these guys in concert not too long ago, and it was a reallywonderful cacaphony. An enjoyable kind of night.
5. Imperial by Seefeel. Part of my ambient electronica kick. Seefeel is pretty versatile music - I can use it as background stuff for cleaning or work, or for walking at night, or just for listening on its own. It's not often I find music that I can listen to in so many different contexts.
6. Hey Jude by The Beatles. Pure awesomeness. I don't think I'll ever get tired of this song. I wish I could sing like these guys.
7. Heartbeats by The Knife. Weird, minimalist, dancy, electronica. The vocalist is arresting, and so is the synth. Highly recommended.
Saturday, March 17, 2007
ToR 5: War and the Glorious Soldier
Here's Part 4.
A good solid pillage has something in common with a festival; the obvious violence and destruction. The difference lies in what the pillage and the festival produces; the festival is subordinated to the duration of the group, while warfare produces the glorious soldier. The glorious soldier is not exactly an individual, but rather a divine-ish individual, through the wagering of their life; they prove they are capable of risking death, of risking that return to intimacy - and so they become associated with the spirit world, with the divine. The destruction in war is a negation of duration, but the glorious soldier makes this negation of duration durable; that movement is a futility, a naivete. Thus an occasional will to stupidity.
A further problem for the solider is that his spirituality - that association with the divine - is never anything other than utility. The soldier makes people into slaves, into commodities to be bought and sold. Any notion of the sacred here is a false pretense.
So, the slave as object becomes a possible victim of sacrifice. These useful commodities, whose very existence is a degradation of the human order, are surrender to the “baleful intimacy of unfettered violence.” Human sacrifice is the greatest possible challenge to the real order of things and utility; it is also the greatest internal violence.
The development of human sacrifice could only happen hand in hand with the development of an excess of wealth, which needed to be spent in a spectacular way. The military order, once again, subordinates this excess of wealth to utility - that of ever increasing power. Rather than radical expenditure, wealth is used to project violence outside. Human sacrifice, Bataille said, has always been rejected by military kings.
Conquest, then, is contrary to sacrifice. It is a rational and methodical use of wealth to increase power. The group with Imperial ambitions submits to the real order from the beginning; the Empire subordinates itself to an end, and everything around the Empire is subordinated to the Empire. But it is in this way that it is not really true that the Empire is subordinated to the real order — the Empire becomes the real order.
In order to maintain the diversion of violence to the outside, the Empire must develop the law. The law lays out obligatory relations between different people and things. The law mirrors morality, and takes its obligatory force from it, but their connection lies really on the border between the outside and the inside of the Empire.
In this military, rational, calculated world, consciousness deals with, and is measured by, things. This results in a dualism.
A good solid pillage has something in common with a festival; the obvious violence and destruction. The difference lies in what the pillage and the festival produces; the festival is subordinated to the duration of the group, while warfare produces the glorious soldier. The glorious soldier is not exactly an individual, but rather a divine-ish individual, through the wagering of their life; they prove they are capable of risking death, of risking that return to intimacy - and so they become associated with the spirit world, with the divine. The destruction in war is a negation of duration, but the glorious soldier makes this negation of duration durable; that movement is a futility, a naivete. Thus an occasional will to stupidity.
A further problem for the solider is that his spirituality - that association with the divine - is never anything other than utility. The soldier makes people into slaves, into commodities to be bought and sold. Any notion of the sacred here is a false pretense.
So, the slave as object becomes a possible victim of sacrifice. These useful commodities, whose very existence is a degradation of the human order, are surrender to the “baleful intimacy of unfettered violence.” Human sacrifice is the greatest possible challenge to the real order of things and utility; it is also the greatest internal violence.
The development of human sacrifice could only happen hand in hand with the development of an excess of wealth, which needed to be spent in a spectacular way. The military order, once again, subordinates this excess of wealth to utility - that of ever increasing power. Rather than radical expenditure, wealth is used to project violence outside. Human sacrifice, Bataille said, has always been rejected by military kings.
Conquest, then, is contrary to sacrifice. It is a rational and methodical use of wealth to increase power. The group with Imperial ambitions submits to the real order from the beginning; the Empire subordinates itself to an end, and everything around the Empire is subordinated to the Empire. But it is in this way that it is not really true that the Empire is subordinated to the real order — the Empire becomes the real order.
In order to maintain the diversion of violence to the outside, the Empire must develop the law. The law lays out obligatory relations between different people and things. The law mirrors morality, and takes its obligatory force from it, but their connection lies really on the border between the outside and the inside of the Empire.
In this military, rational, calculated world, consciousness deals with, and is measured by, things. This results in a dualism.
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