[Here is another unposted gem from the past. This one is from four months ago. Perhaps I thought it was unfinished. Or perhaps I thought it was too philosophical (since all of my posts have been so light and topical). In any case, now I'm satisfied with it, so here it is.]

            Perhaps the most imperative unspoken and at best only partially explored question in philosophy is the question of whether we can go back to zero. Can we act the part as if philosophy had never existed and begin again from scratch? The immediate answer, of course, is 'no'. Philosophy would not exist without philosophical language. And the philosophical language we use necessarily involves the latest refinements, since the latest investigations, by definition, are immediately embodied in the language. But the question is larger than the question of language and technique, or even of the history of philosophy. The question is: does philosophy not only embody an experience; does philosophy embody experience itself? And if it does, is the body of experience itself experiential? Can we somehow 'get behind' experience? And, if so, is the 'getting behind' experiential in itself, or only 'analytical', that is to say, indicative rather than empirical.
            Analytical philosophy, the dominant Anglo-American philosophy of the last century, says that anything 'behind' experience is essentially analytical or indicative. At the same time, its basic premise is that we cannot get 'behind' experience. Of course, this is a radical self-contradiction, since the earlier premise on which analytical philosophy is founded, is that analysis itself is somehow legitimately 'outside' or 'behind' experience. If there is nothing outside or behind experience, there is no such thing as analysis, at least by their definition. But, for the present, there is only a one-eyed recognition of this fact among analytical philosophers themselves. At this point, they are apt to say, 'well, from a technical standpoint, philosophy is dead.' But they keep on 'philosophizing' from their own perspective. But it is the tool and not the field that is broken. And the broken tool was ground out of a false premise, a false understanding of analysis; although that false understanding is nearly as old as philosophy itself.
            Analysis is not the accuracy of statement. 'Proof' is first of all empirical and not 'analytical'. Because formal analysis carries us from experiential proof or closure to the formal, categorical sequence of statements that 'certify' the 'proof', we have made the historical mistake, for more than two millennia, of assuming that the sequence of statements somehow embodies the proof rather than its certification. The initial 'proof' was 'analytical' in a larger sense. But our use of the word 'analytical' is so bound up with the idea that this sequence of statements is 'analysis', that it will undoubtedly prove difficult to attach the word 'analytical' to the larger functions of consciousness that actually produce 'proof', as the initial experience of value or validity.
            But, in some sense, 'proof' is experience, since our immediate experience is replete with the ongoing sense of validity. This has been the near focus of modern philosophy. If we experience value as immediate, analysis is not only indigenous in the immediacy of experience, the foundation of value is indigenous in the analytical as expression. This process of foreshortening inherent in analytical philosophy has thus led to the supposition that language is the immediate expression and ground of value. The only difficulty here, if we care to step back, is the necessary presupposition that we were not only born speaking - born not only with full linguistic capabilities, but with language itself - but that language preceded the evolution of the species, since, without language, there could be no value.

            But the fact that 'proof' is somehow indigenous in the present moment of experience, but also subsists as a distinct and relatively 'abstract' experience, is the essence of the solution, since the second mode of 'proof' necessarily involves an 'abstraction' of the function. That is, 'proof' itself is also necessarily a distinct experience. But, when we investigate closely, what we find is that the unique experience of proof is in fact not different, structurally, from the nature of experience itself. This unique moment of 'proof' is a unique isolation of the basic structure of experience itself.
            Experience itself has a structural ground, 'behind' experience. We have been demonstrating that structure here, through a modest array of possible modes, since the arts, the sciences and philosophy itself are all modal presentations of the basic nature of that experience.

            So, when viewed from this perspective, the answer to our first question has to be 'yes'. We can 'go back to zero' in terms of philosophy, because philosophy ultimately depends on the structure of experience and actually constitutes the expression of that structure, insofar as we can express the structure formally.
            But, that said, we have to consider the realities of our formal understanding. 'Analysis' itself is a peculiar historical category. If we look at the oldest cultures for which we have the historical record of their explorations of 'philosophy', we do not find the isolation of 'analysis' according to the same conditions as we find in the historical process leading up to our present use of the term. In fact, we could moot the question of whether India or China ever 'isolated' the question of analysis. India, which was more obviously influenced by Greek and possibly other Mediterranean thought, concerned itself explicitly with the conditions of 'proof'. But the Indian investigation of analysis is ambiguous. And until we get translations aimed, specifically, at neutralizing the influence of western terminology, we will probably not know whether they addressed the question directly in a style that parallels our own. And the Chinese tended to attach their investigations either to pragmatic questions or to explicitly spiritual or religious considerations. Like the Indians, on both sides they seem to approach the question of self-awareness very nearly. But their mode hardly seems analytical, by our definition.
            What I am saying is that analysis itself is a specific orientation, an orientation arising explicitly from our heritage in the Greek. And while the Greek comes down to us indirectly through Islam and only 'directly' through the recovery of the 'classics' with the early humanists, culturally, in precisely this respect, we are linear heirs of Greek philosophy. The Greeks 'discovered' the two principles which constitute our view of analysis: cause and the One.
            But it is not without reason that the analytical philosophers have finally eliminated both causality and the One from their 'philosophy': both are empirical rather than 'analytical'. That is, they are experiential in a way that places them outside the abstruse definition of 'the analytical' that grounds 'analytical philosophy'.
            But this is simply to say that 'real' analysis is essentially empirical, and essentially grounded in experience.

            To be able to go back to the point at which we can recognize that analysis itself, as given to us structurally by our history, means that philosophy itself is not only empirically based, but also a function of the nature of experience, a 'nature' that is both accessible and 'prior' to the formulas - any formulas - for the analytical function which is experience itself. Absolutely, we can start from zero. But we also have to recognize that it is our peculiar history that allows us to go back zero. Analysis, as such, is a necessary key. That is, something in the mode of defining the world structurally in terms of the actual analytical heritage given to us allows us to 'disassemble' consciousness and experience to 'expose' its analytical function.

            But, again, that said, we must recognize that experience 'transcends' all formal analytical structure, not only in the sense that our immediate experience cannot be fully characterized by any mode, analytical or otherwise, but also that the 'pre-structure' of experience extends into 'regions' beyond the frame of any structured definition of analysis itself, however 'empirical'.
            When we get to the 'place' of the One in experience, things start to 'waver', shall we say. Experience turns, not on the formal unit, but on the whole. And when we consider the moment as the whole, what we find is that value emerges between the whole and the point. But that means that in some sense all values are necessarily already indigenous in 'the whole'. While it is obvious to us, in our normal consciousness, that not all values are immediately available to us, if the nature of value always arises from the whole, we cannot deny that the whole contains not only the potency of all value, but, in some sense, the actuality of all value. We cannot 'prove' this, except to ourselves. But the experience is potentially available.
            And when we get to the 'place' of cause, the question of 'pure cause' arises. Pure cause is an absolute mystery. There is no 'reason' for cause itself. And simply capitalizing it as Cause does not solve the problem. Cause is the separation in consciousness. Cause is the inexplicable otherness we feel, the shadow that follows us from the moment we become self-aware. Inherent in the question of cause is the question of how we became self-aware.
            And how shall we investigate this otherness?
            The moment of the abyss stands at the center of self-awareness. At every instant, we go to a place where we are not. This is the definition of self-awareness, an awareness in which we 'observe the self'. But where is this 'not-self' that I go to to see the self?
            This, of course, takes us totally out of the frame of 'analysis' by any definition. And yet, as the source of 'cause', it is the source of analysis. But there is a moment when I can address this 'not-self'. And, in that moment, I step out of the frame of the Aristotelian - at least as we understand it today - and into the frame of Plotinus, who asserted that 'philosophy' can take us on the full human journey.
            But, if Plotinus specifically rejected the gnostics, it was perhaps because the gnosticism he encountered was a latter day version, one corrupted by an allegorization that divorced the original imperatives of gnosticism from their urgency and immediacy. Plotinus is pivotal, because the Greek understanding of analysis, the Greek creation of analysis, is somehow an essential condition in the unique empirical possibilities provided by the western approach. But the western approach begins in a question of cause that transcends the analytical. And this question of cause comes to the fore with the gnostics, at least insofar as gnosticism, however it emerged, found its epitome expression in the Gospel of Thomas, an equally pivotal moment, but both prior to Plotinus and a more global definition of the issues that Plotinus lays out in essentially linear fashion.

            The emergence of our present understanding depends as much on Plotinus, on both sides of the tradition, as it does on Thomas, with its direct antecedents. But Thomas is prior and essentially formative of Plotinus. Without the causal issue as a 'religious' question, the Greek concerns, if they had arisen, would have expended themselves, in all probability, with Aristotle.