You Were There

Look back over your life. Could you have done other than you did?
ALSO SEE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h97ektcZEM4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyxjE1i9rsE
Bakhtin: http://www.amazon.com/Toward-Philosophy-University-Texas-Slavic/dp/029270805X...
For the Article: http://www.springerlink.com/content/v2t8r27404v72515/

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Ethics
• Mikhail Bakhtin
• no alibi
• action
• high-performance
• obligation
• answerability
• responsibility

[almafarag]

'I was sitting at home and had a profound experience. I experienced, in all of my Being, that someday I was going to die, and it wouldn't be like it had been happening, almost dying but somehow staying alive, but I would just die! And two things would happen right before I died: I would regret my entire life; I would want to live it over again. This terrified me. The thought that I would live my entire life, look at it and realize I blew it forced me to do something with my life' - Hubert Selby

[Professoranton]

@almafarag Thank you so much for your thoughtful comments

[onewingedangel1234]

Your videos are very thought provoking. It's a refreshing change to the rest of the nonsense on youtube. Thanks.

[Professoranton]

Thank you so much for your kind words. And I will also say, it is refreshing to have a thoughtful comment rather than the somewhat typical troll non-sense

[crazycat1984]

Its definitely strange. I never considered that, but it makes perfect sense. Great video! Happy 2010! :)

[Professoranton]

Happy New Year to you. Have a great 2010.

:)

[pmccarthy001]

Don't we have to apply meaning to the present in order to constitute reality? Don't we similarly have to apply meaning to some past in order to constitute, or re-constitute it? Is it not, in some sense, a different past if you apply some different meaning to it, like re-shaping a mound of clay? Further, doesn't the consciousness that is contemplating some past necessarily have to apply meaning to it in its act of constituting that reality of contemplating that past?

[Jayoung1000]

Thanks, I needed to hear this.

[almafarag]

@Professoranton thank You for being here on YT,

you can't imagine how much I've learnt from you

[ExtraordinaryFilms]

Great video! This is not only interesting, thought-provoking stuff relating to my own life, but is an inspiration for a short story I'm working on. Thanks for posting!

[NeoChalcedonian]

Therefore, finality of choice cannot be perceived by thought directly, because as soon as I ask "Could I have done otherwise?" the "I" as self-concept could always be other than what it is, but you can point to the historical-social-temporal grounding or situation that enables and constitutes thought, for the linguistic-conceptual materials with which I think imply their finality. So the REAL question is, what state of affairs/situation/reality enables me to think I could have done otherwise.

[NeoChalcedonian]

To think about is to conceive of, & I can necessarily only think or speak of myself as a conceptual reality.  "I could have done otherwise" just means "I see no relation of entailment or necessity between my self-concept and this one-among-many possible states of affairs." I am a once-occurrent fact, but I cannot intellectually perceive myself except as one among many possible givens. The mind must translate past facts into might-have-beens or maybes to render them intelligible.