**The Hegelian Shoemaker - Forord
Thus he [the shoemaker] noted that the dialectic, which is always the first stagein life, makes itself heard even here, however insignificantly it might seem, withthat squeaking which has surely not escaped the profound research of somepsychologist. Unity, on the other hand, only comes about later—and in thisrespect his boots were vastly superior to all others, which were usually destroyedin the dialectic—a unity which attained its highest form in the pair of bootswhich Charles XII wore during his famous ride. (SKS 17:200)21 - 490 Poetics Today 28:3
The Kierkegaardian individual, introduces something newThe poioumenal cracks the dialectic - introduces the individual with something new, perhaps satirical, perhaps violating, the subject brings a new instance to the picture that is not contained in the organic process - in this case it is a shoemaker - superficiality disarms the profound, in this case it is an individual revolution predicated on fashion.
In the literary critique of Alastair Fowler, "the poioumenon is calculated to offer opportunities to explore the boundaries of fiction and reality—the limits of narrative truth." The poioumenon is a metafiction, Rushdie's Midnight's Children which stages a life story allegorically as India's move to indepedence. It is also the book-within-a-book, as Nabokov's Pale Fire concerns John Shade's poem "Pale Fire", the work concerning him both as literary author and character within the book. The book is about its own making, its explores what "truth" can be in a book - the boundaries of fiction and reality collapse.
To pervert this literary idea into a potential philosophical idea (rehashing its Greek reconstructions through poiesis (making)), this split could both not correspond or doubly correspond to real analogues. The fictionally projected phenomenon versus the real noumenon-in-itself, or the real phenomenal experience versus the fictionally unknown noumenon. The poioumenon, a created/made thing is neither an experience nor something existent outside of that projected experience, but rather a new product which is created by a given entity. It is created before being experienced, and existent as a discrete entity after a mediated creation by a subject. In other words, the thing-in-itself and the experience of that thing dissolve into the creation of something which is neither that thing itself nor the experience of it as itself - but something new.
To further the perversion, Fowler's literary examples can be recast as philosophical examples. Carlyle's Sartor Resartus is a metafiction, but is also a faux or mock philosophy. It does not intensely describe objects of the world in a Husserlian manner, nor does it purport an objective estimating of what is in the world - instead it projects a fiction onto it, but doesn't simply end in the fictional. Its fictional presence is also non-fictional, its mock-theories are also actual theories - the mock-world described in it is also the real world. Continuously, philosophical and narrative suppositions and categorizations are eliminated in favour of a hybridization and instability. Like a continually self-redisguising virus, what its philosophy reveals is that one cannot simply describe phenomena, nor can one ever talk entirely of noumena, rather one's existence (one's philosophy, one's created book) is a continual poioumenal creation, always infecting something new into the scene - the phenomenal experience is transcended in the poioumenical altering of the object at hand. The noumenal is continually altered by the presence of a subject's actions. Whether writing, looking, hearing, or whatever, one is never isolated from one's active presence when observing or considering something.
Like Nicolas Notabene's Hegelian shoemaker, Diogenes Teufelsdrockh presents a clothes-based philosophy of dialectical transcendence. He phenomenally grounds his philosophy in the all-too-timely product of the industrial age textile business, yet this daringly relevant situating is never quite taken seriously as another quasi-fictional editor provides skeptical commentary throughout his work. It is both Hegelianism updated to a degree of contemporary relevance - applied to the fruits of the industrial revolution - yet it is also a mock-Hegelianism which turns the philosophy ridiculous when taken to its endpoint - or simply when applied to a given contemporary instance, when directly put to the test. Conversely, it is not the philosophy but the society which is left ridiculous, in either case there is an ironic dysjunction between the philosophy and the reality it pretends to apply to. The poioumenal fills that existential gap not with the transcendent meaning of the Hegelian Teufelsdrockh, but with the contingent absurdity which is inherent in his phenomenal reading of that transcendence. The poioumenal is never quite real, nor is it ever quite fictional, it is riddled with its own projections which are never known right in the moment (but only redescribed increasingly after - in new creative perspectives).
Teufelsdrockh presents us with a technically-based philosophy for an industrial age - it becomes both increasingly urgent that such a basis is sought out and increasingly dysjunctive and ironic as such a system is found. It is in the age of total technical acceleration that this work is resituated as essentially important as a technically-based view is no longer prophetic but essential. Moreover whereas a Baudrillard might be said to present the problem, Carlyle inflects this problem with an active presence. It is not the muteness of a Beckett, nor the violence of a Lautreamont, but an equally relevant irony and ridiculousness.
Ultimate meaning is to be derived from phenomena as societies change religious and political structures and - most importantly - clothing fashions.
(Or rather, as for Notabene, Hegelianism reaches its apogee in the creation of the perfect pair of Prussian boots - a synthesis of the boot-thesis-antithesis problem)
"Thus he [the shoemaker] noted that the dialectic, which is always the first stage
in life, makes itself heard even here, however insignificantly it might seem, with
that squeaking which has surely not escaped the profound research of some
psychologist. Unity, on the other hand, only comes about later—and in this
respect his boots were vastly superior to all others, which were usually destroyed
in the dialectic—a unity which attained its highest form in the pair of boots
which Charles XII wore during his famous ride." (Forord, Kierkegaard - English version taken from Pattison, "Kierkegaard and Genre" in Poetics Today)
The Kierkegaardian individual, introduces something new
The poioumenal cracks the dialectic - introduces the individual with something new, perhaps satirical, perhaps violating, the subject brings a new instance to the picture that is not contained in the organic process - in this case it is a shoemaker - superficiality disarms the profound, in this case it is an individual revolution predicated on fashion.
Poioumenal banality - the decried product of Heidegger's not-so-authentic being - the technical world, the world of making - not of observation or of objective essences, but of creating crap.
[[In the literary critique of Alastair Fowler, "the poioumenon is calculated to offer opportunities to explore the boundaries of fiction and reality—the limits of narrative truth." The poioumenon is a metafiction, Rushdie's Midnight's Children which stages a life story allegorically as India's move to indepedence. It is also the book-within-a-book, as Nabokov's Pale Fire concerns John Shade's poem "Pale Fire", the work concerning him both as literary author and character within the book. The book is about its own making, its explores what "truth" can be in a book - the boundaries of fiction and reality collapse]]
To pervert this literary idea into a potential philosophical idea (rehashing its Greek reconstructions through poiesis (making)), this split could both not correspond or doubly correspond to real analogues. The fictionally projected phenomenon versus the real noumenon-in-itself, or the real phenomenal experience versus the fictionally unknown noumenon. The poioumenon, a created/made thing is neither an experience nor something existent outside of that projected experience, but rather a new product which is created by a given entity. It is created before being experienced, and existent as a discrete entity after a mediated creation by a subject. In other words, the thing-in-itself and the experience of that thing dissolve into the creation of something which is neither that thing itself nor the experience of it as itself - but something new.
To further the perversion, Fowler's literary examples can be recast as philosophical examples.
Carlyle's Sartor Resartus is a metafiction, but is also a faux or mock philosophy. It does not intensely describe objects of the world in a Husserlian manner, nor does it purport an objective estimating of what is in the world - instead it projects a fiction onto it, but doesn't simply end in the fictional. Its fictional presence is also non-fictional, its mock-theories are also actual theories - the mock-world described in it is also the real world. Continuously, philosophical and narrative suppositions and categorizations are eliminated in favour of a hybridization and instability. Like a continually self-redisguising virus, what its philosophy reveals is that one cannot simply describe phenomena, nor can one ever talk entirely of noumena, rather one's existence (one's philosophy, one's created book) is a continual poioumenal creation, always infecting something new into the scene - the phenomenal experience is transcended in the poioumenical altering of the object at hand. The noumenal is continually altered by the presence of a subject's actions. Whether writing, looking, hearing, or whatever, one is never isolated from one's active presence when observing or considering something.
Like Nicolas Notabene's Hegelian shoemaker, Diogenes Teufelsdrockh presents a clothes-based philosophy of dialectical transcendence. He phenomenally grounds his philosophy in the all-too-timely product of the industrial age textile business, yet this daringly relevant situating is never quite taken seriously as another quasi-fictional editor provides skeptical commentary throughout his work. It is both Hegelianism updated to a degree of contemporary relevance - applied to the fruits of the industrial revolution - yet it is also a mock-Hegelianism which turns the philosophy ridiculous when taken to its endpoint - or simply when applied to a given contemporary instance, when directly put to the test. Conversely, it is not the philosophy but the society which is left ridiculous, in either case there is an ironic dysjunction between the philosophy and the reality it pretends to apply to. The poioumenal fills that existential gap not with the transcendent meaning of the Hegelian Teufelsdrockh, but with the contingent absurdity which is inherent in his phenomenal reading of that transcendence. The poioumenal is never quite real, nor is it ever quite fictional, it is riddled with its own projections which are never known right in the moment (but only redescribed increasingly after - in new creative perspectives).
Teufelsdrockh presents us with a technically-based philosophy for an industrial age - it becomes both increasingly urgent that such a basis is sought out and increasingly dysjunctive and ironic as such a system is found. It is in the age of total technical acceleration that this work is resituated as essentially important as a technically-based view is no longer prophetic but essential. Moreover whereas a Baudrillard might be said to present the problem, Carlyle inflects this problem with an active presence. It is not the muteness of a Beckett, nor the violence of a Lautreamont, but an equally relevant irony and ridiculousness.
Ultimate meaning is to be derived from phenomena as societies change religious and political structures and - most importantly - clothing fashions.
(Or rather, as for Notabene, Hegelianism reaches its apogee in the creation of the perfect pair of Prussian boots - a synthesis of the boot-thesis-antithesis problem)