Me and You.

 

 

In his great theory of how to have a self in the world, Hume suggest that there are two inter-webbed grounders for the passions; the first being the self, and the second being love.

The reason for such grounding is clear. Feelings need to be grounded because by themselves they are too complex to know or define. What is this feeling/ Love/ Hate? Anger? Irritation? Or friendship/Or all of them or none of them. Feelings are not the kind of thing that can be simply fixed beyond the broadest of brushes. And yet this Teflon nature renders then really problematic., for a feeling ushers in an extra dimension to the world- it adds the sense that I am making than world.

 That is Hume suggests one needs to understand tat reality is not on thing but as ally two. One the one hand their are the impressions constant blue or reds or street maps of Paris), and on he other the element that makes this content different, that defines its reality – this is called the fact that they are lively or vivacious. It is the glamour on simple ideas that configures or confirms then as so very real.

It is this extra element that hovered between different simples, than the drive the principle on, and crates for us reality.

Reality is then in the home model, quiet literally learnt us (we posses it, but never own it).

 all of this will be turned to in the second part of this natural history. For now what matters is that passion add an extra dimension to reality, namely an intensity. This intensity has a bit of grabbing otherwise free floating pieces of reality( perception and vivacity) and making then feel deep or significant more realty that hey wee. Moreover I making this move it in cases the fate of this extra dimension of reality within the logic of passions, where exactly what one feels, and how that feeling develops is not clear. Passions do not need to be great. They are rather in a sense the absence of clarity, or the eco of a thousand othering voices, of blends, where (unlike Liebniz0 there are not smallest parts, no differentials, only further echoes, and echoes upon echoes to infinity (passions are fractal then, if anything, but Hume would of course deny we could ever know that, it would merely be a vapid idea).

 The result is that we live in a world where large junks of it are wrapped our in our passion ns so addition They are not necessarily real to  or for all people at all times, and are rather our world – the world given o us by passions. Societies or language or dress sense then become a world of their own – they configure a sharing of passions between folk.

 Worlds are then a strange polyglot thing. On the one hand there are vivacity which tumble into a world from beyond, for god knows where, and render I real a world is never my own, or never purely my own Must draw upon what I am given for it. I must draw no the sensation and perceptions that forms it. I must rely then upon endless little clues for an existence. Or the other hand their is passions which is caught in it own torrid streams, and its own lack of definition And yet this lack is always within me. Every feeling will then feel natural enough, and yet the whole will be unpredictable. We might very well call the entire affair Will then are think we are free – by which we merely mean we inhabit our own rather unpredictable element to manufacture worlds.

But all of his creates that deep problem of how from these conflicting hubbubs of feelings and thinking one creates stable feelings, and stable realities.

Hume suggest then only way o contain passions is to pour a certain complex interlaced passions, into a crystal of impressions. He suggests then the pleasure I feel I my own abilities, and the pleasure those abilities give me, might well be contained within an idea of my self (which is usually vapid), and an idea of my own actions, or properties. I will then form an complex idea of what t means  be what I that which is part of many actions or this action: That is an idea linking an otherwise vapid idea of self, and an action (through those things I Do and own), and bolster this idea wit a complex feeling which wraps up  a feeling of pride in myself, with a feeling of joy in what I do. I stabilizes then my feelings in an impressions and the endless flight of reality in a stable feeling.

 But as with all good philosophy there is no reason to quite stop where home does. One might abstract the very basic idea – tat  understand myself in complex reflected feelings, and as a complex idea which includes myself and others, and place it into differing context. For example (and it is the best example), as I talk o you, who do I listen to or relate to?

 Is it really you? R is it the idea of myself you endlessly in your reaction relate back to be. A face might be a mirror of the soul, and yet that soul is not you, it is mine.  See myself, I reflect upon myself, I create what I am, perhaps even I only become what I am in the mirror of your face. A mirror that not only reflect me, and my actions, but also adds a passions the reaction. In your admiration or your loathing, the feeling that make me also are. I react in myself, in my pride, to the passion, echo create within you. My identify is then the conjunction of you and me.  Is the point that  reflection of myself enters into me from you, and becomes real or not. Whether I like you or not is then defined in the way I react to this othered me. If it fills me with my own pride, then I love you, but is it ills me with distant then  must flee from you, (and initially at leas hate you), but alter as I reflect upon that reflection and use it to change what  aim might love you.

 Hence then around this reflections which creates a me in you there is a clear second refraction of you in me. As I react to what you make of me, I love or loath you. That is in your fleshy parts Configure a real concurring power, the power to  made or mar myself, or give me myself as something there and real. I then love you or the idea of you  the idea of a power to refract a soul.

It is this love that then  take and keep on all my thought and feelings. That is this internalized you in my as refrain of my soul, that ,makes me what I m. A  just b a rag bag of memory and feelings, and yet this bag of fleshy rags, is the endless refractions of a self within the eyes of others, and heir reactions, u is in these eye I become real, and become what I am, I is through then, my reality is given to me are something real enough to be lived.

 

 Thos passion and refraction then imposes a second dynamic big a situation. There can quit literally be a love or an anger in a room. That is bitten you and I, suspended, not owned or even directly own able in itself, there is something; a whirling passion, which hooks up those refraction of each other in each other, presenting and pitching them in a maelstrom of interrelated realised and their feeling. This other place in a sense eyes not real as such. It is not actually of reality, so much as exist in the prior state to a reality,  this in the odd communication or better reaction that two refracted crystals of the soul have when they’re interrelated one o the other. That is if  am in your eyes, and your are in mine, then what we are, and how we are caught in an othering dynamic other than the pair of us, and other than realty. This othering dynamic is at once open to other events. How we react together will change by how we are already feeling, but what has happened to us that day – in what we are. And yet also it is caught in own rather unspeakable dynamic. If something could flow over this effect we have in echo their if something could claim it as it own direct, as its birth right, then that mean passion would have the power to claim both you and me as its agent. This element, this fictive pitch that claims the inter space, comes then in two forms.

 Most directly it is possible that either partner of our exchange or a third party might attempt o generate a feeling that claims the enhances its own. It might then muscle  into the conjuring of each other in the one other and claim the right to conjure to create mutual feeling it its own alone. it would then claim to be the ego the self, which was the maser of the conjuring. T would claim that it was all its own pal, that it was all its own concern, and that all ought o be grateful

This claiming of a logical position in a self is surprisingly effect; all true manipulators occupy this space or better they pitch it the claim in the name or seduction o parenting or salesmanship or statesmanship to be the master of these feeling, to be the one explaining what was actually already there. There pitch of power might be bootless of itself (the exchange has little to do with them in itself) and yet if has a power as the claims convincing and the exchange powerful. I claiming it after all the individual gives a face to that exchange, and names its reality. Tat is they turn it into something fixed, a passion like every other (if more powerful in its initially domain). They turn what was do difficult to assess into merely another dreary old dreary old… The same tale of reflected self, even if the reflection is merely an assertion of right that is strictly speaking elsewhere.

 Bu then what else if most(but not all love) of other or self?

The alternative position I to allow this creativity to stand and to not attempt to wrap up in a claim about oneself ( I am un intuitive, I make things happen). If one doe this (or just calls the exchange friendship) it keeps it untoward power, it keeps  all of its instability, it maintains its creativity, and yet in doing so it is also gloriurously unstable other element might always enter in and ruin everything. Worse the passion we have for each other might always be going elsewhere, going where we do not man. It might then take control or fizzle away. He power to create a me through you is after all an unstable one. I might find many other masters of my soul, and so might you. Even worse what  think you give me as we are apart, what I attribute t you, and what you actually are  clearly  not that similarity. If then the passion is unnamed, merely communicated, merely there, a love between us a passion, then my you wall reflect upon a me in a polyglot way. u grow in the let of a supposed or imagined you  become other than how I was, I differ. And yet when you finally turn up you might utterly destroy the connection, and leave me with a quandary. Do I or with my internal you, or with you yourself? Tat is do I trust the real you to give me more, or do I end the connections (this was a one handed conservation), and demand custody of our child, that is the myself that you gave me.

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 to be yourself bcomes then gloriously unstable. We flip.

Or better to live in the we beyond anyone, and yet other than death, is Hume's insist to be a part of a whirling serious of otherings which conjure up worlds and reality, forcing them into this or that box, making then real (or not). This conjuration will then to not o much as the et o my soul and its oscillation into an indefinite number of echoes. What I become across these echoes, 

I conjure myself as the assertion of the right to these echoes That is I create  a self  as a passionate impression created cross then all. Or at least it is (at the Kantian rim),  in theory. In practice every one self actively is a any one time a Hodge podge of refraction (a buddle or passion and impressions0 which represents the way that at a slice of life a self cultivates certain element of what they are, allowing them to grow, an give it itself anew, while others it all owns to wither or else rusticate of become  part of something else.

 In short it is so very difficult being me or you. We have to hold line ht cannot be readily held or even felt. We so easily slip into madness or place pitched beyond anything, even density, in our demands o find output who and what we are – a finding which only is in the drawing others, and their living eyes.

 The trouble in, Hume knows full well, that humanity is hardly ever grown up enough to accept this few of itself which is so unsettling to it own vanity – the very vanity it uses to be at all.