Ricardo Morín Still Eight: The Space Thought Finds Oil on linen mounted on wood panel 12 by 15 by 3/4inches 2010
Ricardo F. Morín
Dec. 2025
Oakland Park, Fl
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AUTHOR’S NOTE
This essay examines a phenomenon that emerges in societies where civic limits and intellectual appetite coexist. It does not describe a psychological condition or a sociological trend, nor does it judge any nation. Its purpose is simpler: to observe how thought adapts when the public space in which it moves is narrower than the private space in which it develops.
ABSTRACT
This essay investigates how intellectual life often persists—even thrives—in environments where civic participation is restricted. It describes the structural conditions that make this coexistence possible, the historical habits that render it familiar, and the tensions it produces. Rather than seeking causes or proposing remedies, the essay observes how thought finds room to act when civic space contracts, and how this adaptation shapes cultural life.
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Every society creates conditions in which thought must find its footing. In some places, civic life offers wide avenues for debate, dissent, and organized participation. In others, the avenues narrow: institutions limit expression, political continuity restricts competition, or public life becomes regulated by boundaries that citizens did not choose. Yet even within these limits, thought does not disappear. It looks for other spaces—quieter, more internal, less visible—where reflection can continue.
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This coexistence is not contradictory. A population may cultivate disciplined study, meticulous reading habits, and a strong appetite for ideas while navigating restrictions on political voice. Intellectual inquiry can flourish in classrooms, libraries, private circles, or artistic practice even when formal participation in public life is constrained. The two conditions do not cancel one another; they unfold in parallel.
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Part of this coexistence is historical. Societies inherit habits shaped over decades or generations. When public limits remain stable, they become part of the environment rather than an interruption. People learn to navigate around those limits, allocating some questions to public conversation and others to private reflection. Over time, this arrangement no longer feels provisional; it becomes a familiar pattern of life.
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Another part of the coexistence is structural. Not every form of thinking requires the same degree of civic freedom. Institutional critique demands a wide public space, but philosophical examination, ethical reflection, and conceptual inquiry can develop in quieter settings. These forms of thought do not depend on protest or political leverage. They depend on attention, which can remain active even when public expression is not.
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Yet this adaptation introduces a tension. Thought that flourishes privately may find no path into shared life. Insight lives in the individual but cannot circulate through institutions. The result is not silence but separation: intellectual depth on one side, civic restriction on the other. Each remains intact, but the bridge between them is narrow.
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This tension is not a paradox but a structure. Intellectual inquiry survives by adjusting its location. It moves inward, turning the private sphere into a workshop for ideas. It becomes a form of endurance rather than resistance. This endurance is neither passive nor resigned; it is a way of continuing to think when public avenues are limited.
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The phenomenon is neither exclusive to one region nor confined to a single political model. It appears wherever civic limits coincide with cultural ambition—whether shaped by history, institutions, or circumstance. What differs from one society to another is not the existence of this tension but how it is lived: as normalcy, as compromise, or as a quiet imbalance accepted as part of daily life.
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The deeper question is not why this coexistence happens, nor whether it should be otherwise. The question is what this coexistence reveals: that thought seeks space even when civic space contracts; that reflection persists even when public expression narrows; and that the need to understand does not vanish under limits. It simply relocates, finding equilibrium—uneasy, stable, and always in motion.
Ricardo Morín Triangulation 4: The Ethics of Perception 22″ x 30″ Graphite on paper 2006
Ricardo F. Morín
October 2025
Oakland Park, Fl
Introduction
Perception often seems immediate and uncomplicated. We see, we hear, we react. Yet between that first contact with the world and the choices we make in response, something slower and more fragile takes place: the formation of meaning. In that interval—between what appears and what we assert—not only understanding is at stake, but ethics as well.
This essay begins with a simple question: what changes when understanding matters more than assertion? In a culture that prioritizes reaction, utility, and certainty, pausing to perceive can seem inefficient. Yet it is precisely this pause that allows experience to take shape without force and keeps the relationship between consciousness and the shared world in proportion.
The Ethics of Perception does not propose rules or moral systems. It examines how sustained attention—able to receive before imposing—can restore coherence between inner life and external reality. From this basic gesture, ethics ceases to operate as an external norm and becomes a way of being in relation.
Perception
Perception may be understood as the emergent outcome of mechanisms collectively designated as intelligence in the abstract. These mechanisms do not operate solely as interior cognitive functions, nor are they reducible to external systems, conventions, or instruments. Perception arises at the continuous interface between interior awareness and exterior structure, where sensory intake, pattern recognition, and interpretive ordering converge through sustained attunement.
Such a relation does not presume opposition between internal and external domains. Cognitive processes and environmental conditions function as co-present and mutually generative forces. Disruptions frequently described as pathological more accurately reflect misalignment within this reciprocal relation rather than intrinsic deficiency in any constituent mechanism. When normative frameworks privilege particular modes of perceptual attunement, divergence is reclassified as deviation and difference is rendered as dysfunction.
Models grounded in categorization or spectral positioning provide descriptive utility but often presuppose hierarchical centers. An account oriented toward attunement redirects emphasis away from comparative placement and toward relational orientation. Perceptual coherence depends less on position within a classificatory schema than on sensitivity to the ongoing exchange between interior processing and exterior configuration.
Claims of authority over perceptual normality weaken under recognition of ubiquity. If the interaction between cognitive mechanism and environmental structure constitutes a universal condition rather than an exceptional trait, no institution, metric, or discipline retains exclusive legitimacy to define deviation. Evaluation becomes contextual, norms provisional, and classification descriptive rather than prescriptive.
Within this framework, perception is not measured by conformity, efficiency, or accommodation to dominant systems. Perception denotes the sustained capacity to remain aligned with the dynamic interaction of interior awareness and exterior articulation without collapsing one domain into the other. Such an understanding accommodates analytical abstraction, scientific modeling, artistic discernment, contemplative depth, and systemic reasoning without elevating any singular mode of intelligence above others.
Considered in this light, perception resists enclosure within diagnostic, cultural, or hierarchical boundaries. What persists is not a ranked spectrum of cognitive worth but a field of relational variance governed by emergence, attunement, and reciprocal presence.
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Understanding begins with seeing the world as it is, before any claim or assertion shapes its meaning. My disposition turns toward perceiving, attending, and responding rather than toward struggle or untested impulse. This orientation works as a discipline through which clarity and proportion take form. Thought, in this sense, does not impose significance; it receives it through the living exchange of experience. Perceiving gathers the immediate presence of the world, and understanding shapes that presence into sense. Both arise from the same motion of awareness, where observation ripens into comprehension. Philosophy then ceases to be an act of mastery and becomes a way of seeing that restores balance between mind and existence.
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Philosophy has long been driven by the impulse to assert rather than to understand. From antiquity to modern times, thinkers built systems meant to secure certainty and protect thought from doubt. Nietzsche inherited that impulse and inverted it by turning volition into affirmation. His view freed reason from dogma yet confined it within self-assertion. Understanding, by contrast, grows from recognizing that meaning arises in relation. The act of grasping does not depend on force but on perception. When thought observes instead of imposing, the world reveals its own coherence. Ethics springs from that revelation, because to understand is already to enter into relation with what is seen. Comprehension is therefore not passive; it is active participation in the unfolding of reality.
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Perception becomes ethical when it recognizes that every act of seeing carries responsibility. To perceive is to acknowledge what stands before us—not as an object to be mastered but as a presence that coexists with our own. Awareness is never neutral; it bears the weight of how we attend, interpret, and respond. When perception remains steady, recognition deepens into connection. A single moment makes this visible: watching an elderly person struggle with opening a door, the mind perceives first, then understands, and then responds—not out of impulse, but out of the recognition of a shared human condition. Art enacts this same movement. The painter, the writer, and the musician do not invent the world; they meet it through form. Each creative gesture records a dialogue between inner and outer experience, where understanding becomes recognition of relation. The moral value of art lies not in a message but in the quality of attention it sustains. To live perceptively is to practice restraint and openness together: restraint keeps volition from overpowering what is seen, and openness lets the world speak through its details. In that steady practice, ethics ceases to be rule and becomes a way of living attentively within relation.
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Modern life tempts the mind to react before it perceives. The speed of information, the immediacy of communication, and the constant surge of stimuli fragment awareness. In that climate, unexamined volition regains its force; it asserts, selects, and consumes out of bias rather than understanding. What vanishes is the interval between experience and reflection—the pause in which perception matures into thought. Ethical life, understood as living with awareness of relation, re-emerges when that interval is restored. A culture that values perception above reaction can recover the sense of proportion that technology and ideology often distort. The task is not to reject innovation but to exercise discernment within it. Every act of attention becomes resistance to distraction, and every moment of silence reclaims the depth that noise obscures. When perception reaches the point of recognizing another consciousness as equal in its claim to reality, understanding acquires moral weight. Such recognition requires patience—the willingness to see without appropriation and to remain present without possession.
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All philosophy begins as a gesture toward harmony. The mind seeks to know its bond with the world yet often confuses harmony with control. When understanding replaces conquest, thought rediscovers its natural proportion. The world is not a stage for self-assertion but a field of correspondence where awareness meets what it perceives. To think ethically is to think in relation. The act of grasping restores continuity between inner and outer life and shows that knowing itself is participation. Each meeting with reality—each moment of seeing, listening, or remembering—becomes an occasion to act with measure. The reflective mind neither retreats from the world nor dominates it. It stands within experience as both witness and participant, and lets perception reach its human fullness: the ability to recognize what lies beyond oneself and to respond without domination. When thought arises from attention instead of struggle, it reconciles intelligence with presence and restores the quiet balance that modern life has displaced. In that reconciliation, philosophy fulfills its oldest task—to bring awareness into harmony with existence.
Ricardo Morín Still Thirty-three: When All We Know Is Borrowed Oil on linen & board, 15″ x 12″x 1/2″ 2012.
Author’s Note:
This essay concludes the trilogy begun with The Colors of Certainty and continued with The Discipline of Doubt. It reflects on perception, ambiguity, and ambivalence as conditions that complicate our access to truth, especially in an age of mistrust. The trilogy as a whole asks how certainty, doubt, and ambivalence each shape the paradoxes of human understanding—and how reality is always encountered in fragments, never in full possession.
The purpose of this essay is not to resolve these tensions but to articulate them. Its value lies less in offering solutions than in clarifying the paradoxes that underlie our shared attempts to understand reality.
Ricardo Morín, Bala Cynwyd, Pa. August 30, 2025.
Abstract:
This essay examines perception, ambiguity, and belief as distinct but interrelated conditions that shape human access to reality. Ambiguity marks the instability of meaning; perception denotes our filtered and partial contact with the world; and ambivalence names the paradoxical ground on which truth is sought. Ambivalence sustains the search even as it undermines the certainty that truth has been attained. Writing and reading reveal these dynamics with particular clarity. Through writing, thought evolves; the writer participates in this evolution and discovers that meaning may remain both untranslatable and questionable. Yet this very incompleteness expands understanding, even when what is grasped cannot be fully shared. Extending beyond communication, the essay suggests that reality itself is encountered only in fragments—through gestures, silences, and misperceptions that weaken the line between appearance and reality. Artificial intelligence illustrates this condition in two ways: as a tool, it amplifies practical doubts about authorship and authenticity; as a mirror, it reflects the deeper ambivalence that precedes it. The essay concludes that ambivalence is not a detour from truth but the paradox through which truth, if it arises at all, briefly appears.
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Perception
The word perception carries within it a history that mirrors the shifting ways in which cultures have understood reality. From the Latin perceptio, it meant first a “taking in,” a “gathering,” or even a “harvest.” To perceive was to collect impressions, as one might collect grain from a field: passive in form, but active in intent.
In Greek thought, perception was bound to aisthēsis—sensation was the contact one felt with the world. Here it stood closer to the arts, to the immediacy of feeling, than to the systematic reasoning of philosophy.
During the Middle Ages, particularly in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Aristotle’s writings were recovered and incorporated into Christian scholastic thought. What had been a pagan philosophy of sensation and intellect was reinterpreted by thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas within a theological framework of knowledge. Perception was defined as the reception of sensory data by the intellect, a necessary stage through which sensation was elevated into understanding.
With the rise of modern philosophy, the term fractured. For Descartes, perception could deceive; for Locke, it formed the foundation of experience; for Kant, it was structured by categories that both opened and constrained our access to reality. By then perception had already become ambivalent: indispensable for knowing, but never certain in its truth.
Today the word extends further still, connoting not only sensation but also interpretation, bias, and opinion. To say “that is your perception” is no longer to affirm contact with the real but to indicate distance, distortion, or subjectivity. The evolution of the word reveals a semantic instability that parallels the essay’s claim: our access to reality is always shaped by ambivalence. What perception grants, it also unsettles.
Ambivalence, and the Limits of Truth
Perception is never a simple act of receiving what is already there. It is always mediated by memory, expectation, and predisposition. In every exchange—whether in words on a page or in silence between two people—meaning shifts, unsettled and provisional. From this shifting ground arises ambiguity, and from ambiguity, the unease that unsettles belief.
For the reader, this instability is unavoidable. Every response, even silence, is colored by trust or mistrust, sympathy or suspicion, openness or fatigue. Rarely does a reader approach a text in innocence, for every act of reading is shaped by assumptions that condition the reception of words.
The author is not exempt from this interpretive burden. The act of writing does not end with publication but continues in the uncertain work of reading readers. A pause in conversation, a fleeting acknowledgment, or a lack of reply can be interpreted as disinterest, disapproval, or indifference. In this way, writing interprets interpretations and multiplies the layers of ambiguity until the meaning of the work appears not only untranslatable but also questionable. Yet it is precisely through this reflection that writing continues, for without it thought cannot develop. By persevering in this process, the writer participates in a widening of understanding, even when that understanding cannot be fully shared.
Such uncertainty is not a flaw of communication but part of its structure. Anyone who seeks to understand through writing must accept that clarity will always be provisional and that expression will always fall short. The act of putting thought into words reveals the distance between intention and reception, but it also creates the possibility of seeing reality from new angles. Even when what is expressed cannot be communicated in full, the process itself enlarges understanding and deepens awareness of what is partial and in flux.
Ambivalence, therefore, is not hesitation but the paradoxical condition in which the search for meaning takes place. It joins conviction and doubt, the desire for certainty and the recognition of its limits. To write within ambivalence is to continue searching even when the result cannot be communicated without loss. This condition—and not the illusion of final clarity—enables thought to move forward.
Truth, if it is ever reached, emerges despite the unstable ground of perception and ambiguity. We arrive at it in spite of ourselves, our tensions, and our limitations. It is not only major errors that weaken certainty: a nuance misperceived, a pause misunderstood, or an ambiguous gesture may also diminish trust. Daily experience shows that the line between appearance and reality is too thin to provide lasting assurance.
But this tension is not limited to writing or reading. It extends more deeply, into our relation with reality itself. Ambivalence is not only a feature of communication but also a feature of existence. To perceive is always to partake of the world incompletely; to live is to do so under conditions of partial presence. At times we see clearly, at other times dimly, and often not at all. This rhythm of presence and withdrawal marks every relationship—between persons, between societies, and even between humanity and nature.
Technology has sharpened our awareness of this condition. Artificial intelligence, for example, dramatizes the instability already present in human perception. As a tool, it enables refinement of expression while amplifying doubts about authorship and authenticity. As a mirror, it reflects the deeper ambivalence that precedes it and shapes all mediation. Thus AI does not diminish thought but magnifies the unease that accompanies human access to reality: the sense that what is offered is incomplete, unreliable, and never fully participatory.
The task, then, is not to eliminate ambiguity but to recognize it as part of reality itself. Perception is interpretive, belief is unstable, and mistrust is a constant companion. Ambivalence is not a detour from truth but the path along which truth—if it comes at all—must travel. The challenge is not to restore a certainty that never existed but to learn to live within partial participation, to accept that what we call reality is always encountered in fragments.
In this sense, perception, ambiguity, and belief will always remain unsettled. The writer cannot control how words are read, nor can the reader fully grasp what was meant. No one can claim full possession of reality. Every relation to the world depends on fragile conditions, where appearance and reality touch without ever coinciding. If truth appears at all, it does so briefly and incompletely, arising only through ambivalence. Yet ambivalence itself is a paradoxical condition: it sustains our search for truth even as it undermines the certainty we long to possess. Truth cannot confer ownership because it never rests.
Annotated Bibliography
Arendt, Hannah: The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958. (Arendt analyzes action, labor, and work as distinct ways of engaging reality. Her distinction between appearance and reality, and her insistence that truth emerges through shared human activity, is directly relevant to the essay’s theme of perception and ambivalence.)
Gadamer, Hans-Georg: Truth and Method. New York: Continuum, 1975. (In this foundational text in hermeneutics, Gadamer explores how understanding arises through interpretation rather than objectivity. His view that truth is approached dialogically supports the essay’s claim that truth emerges “within ambivalence rather than beyond it.”)
Girard, René: Deceit, Desire, and the Novel. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965. (Girard’s theory of mimetic desire shows how interpretation, desire, and misunderstanding shape human relations. His work underlines the fragility of belief and the unstable boundary between appearance and reality.)
Nussbaum, Martha: Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013. (Nussbaum argues that public emotions—such as love, compassion, and solidarity—are essential to sustaining justice. Her insights reveal how belief is fragile and shaped by interpretation; it resonates with the essay’s concern about trust, ambivalence, and human participation in reality.)
Turkle, Sherry: Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. New York: Basic Books, 2011. (Turkle investigates how technology mediates human relationships and perceptions. Her work frames AI as a mirror of doubt; it shows how mediation both enables connection and erodes authenticity—an idea central to the essay.)
First, I would like to share with my readers my utmost gratitude to Billy Bussell Thompson (b. November 23, 1942), Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at Hofstra University, for his generosity in being a mentor and editor. His scholarly trajectory goes from 1963 to 1993. Among his most salient publications in English, we have: Relic and Literature . . .; Bilingualism in Moorish Spain; The Myth of the Magdalen . . .; etc. . . .
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Since 1989, our friendship has extended over more than three decades. We have worked in close proximity on at least a dozen articles and short stories (published in WordPress). I have been fortunate to count on his frankness and support. He has never minced words. He has been blunt, when any of my drafts seemed without merit. When that was the case, the articles went into a shredder, and I was satisfied by the integrity of his prose, as well as by my understanding of my own limitations as a writer. Prof. Bussell Thompson (B.B.T.) usually compares the skill of prose writing with that of a narrowing cone of vision. This selective cone of vision is akin to the aesthetic integrity of a visual work of art. With the present endeavor, Prof. B.B.T. believed, from the very beginning, in the possibility of bringing forth this story as a team. Even though we live in different regions – geographically far apart – of the USA, we have had no trouble communicating via phone and email.
III
This narrative seeks to explain the confusion found in society and politics, and even their seeming lack of purpose. For this reason, I dedicate my narrative to the readers.
IV
Initially, I knew not where this would lead. I submitted a five-paragraph draft to professor B.B.T. As he began to read, he paused and asked if I was alluding to Plato’s allegory of the cave. Surprised, I asked him to stop. I replied that his reference to Plato placed me in a different perspective. Gratefully, I added that his question was most welcome; at that point, I wanted to read more before continuing.
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He encouraged me to reread Plato’s dialogues. To this he added that I take into account any ambiguity associated with Plato’s conception of the ideal authority of the State (politeia) or Nation. He referred to the Platonic ideas controversial in current discussions. He also recommended reading José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955). He included The Revolt of the Masses[1929]and The Dehumanization of Art[1925]. He suggested that I be aware of Ortega’s meritocratic liberal perspective (though we believed that Ortega had not been known for openly endorsing any political ideology) and to heed the relevance Ortega gives to the man who is aware of his limitations – opposed to the man who is unaware: both the bourgeoisie and the mass man (who exemplify, for him la razón sinrazón [the reason for unreason]) – as explained in The Revolt of the Masses. And finally, I focus on the distinction between “content” and “form,” to explain the break by the avant-garde from the bourgeoisie.
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Professor B.B.T. and I also had an exchange of ideas over the parallels between the Platonic and Orteguian thought. He advised me then to read anew Meditations on Quixote[1914] both in Spanish and in English. There, B.B.T. thought that I could find a significant or productive landscape of ideas on which to reflect and, thus, be able to develop my own interpretations about the nature of knowledge, its limits, and how to find the meaning of the ideal of truth.
VII
In writing my last short story, entitled In Darkness, Professor B.B.T. had already urged me to note the meaning for circunstancia1 (“circumstance”) as defined by Ortega in Meditations on Quixote. It was clear to us that both Ortega’s phenomenological approach to “circumstance” and Plato’s thesis on the transformation of the individual (through knowledge) shared commonalities, which nurtured my own narrative.
VIII
But, the narrative journey proved to be just as challenging as Professor B.B.T. had pointed out. His criticism, even then, never ceased being constructive and energetic. His compassion was present as long as I was mindful of the necessity for clarity and precision. Often, he would cite Ernest Hemingway’s authenticity and precision.
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Time and time again, I experienced enormous pain in trying to comprehend what I wished to express. Freeing my prose from superficiality was like taking a deep breath to exhale the vagueness of my anxieties. Sometimes I was unable to get away from the obvious. Other times, either I hid behind the complex, or I would cling to abstract and cryptic thinking: the reductive jargon of the social sciences. Professor B.B.T. repeatedly suggested succinctness: I needed to respect the simplicity of language and find a way to its accessibility. Bringing Plato and Ortega to the reader was my responsibility. I was not to imitate them nor to think like them, but to represent them authentically. My first obligation was to the reader. For this I had to avoid euphemisms, randomness, and diversion. The affirmation of effective communication is an objective worth the effort. I would only understand myself, if I were to understand the reader.
X
B.B.T.’s exhortations and criticisms, I welcomed enthusiastically. His challenge became mine. He has been exorcising my limitations for two decades: Every time we have worked together, I have discovered something new in myself. I have become more attuned to both English and Spanish. I have had to be my own translator. In these instances, I have grown more respectful of the two languages. I have had to capture their essence by comparing them: the one informs the other.
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Prologue
In Plato’s dialogue Theaetetus[circa 369 B.C.E.], Socrates proposes that the extraordinary extraction of ideas is like bringing forth a new life and purging what is unnecessary. Likewise, the aim here is to produce and discuss what enlightenment is, and the obstacles to its achievement. Socrates has helped me in my definition of knowledge: Is morality universal, or is objective morality even possible? For these ideas I am indebted both to Plato and to Ortega y Gasset.
Ricardo F Morin, December 19, 2022
Editor Billy Bussell Thompson
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Plato, Roman marble bust copied from Greek original, 4th century B.C.E., Capitoline Museums, Rome.
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Socrates, Roman marble bust copied from Greek original, 2nd half of the 4th century B.C.E., Capitoline Museums, Rome.
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José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955), detail of photograph of his impersonation of Honoré de Balzac, circa 1900.
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One way to objectivity is to recognize one’s own subjectivity. Metaphors for understanding reality are rare. One sees the world primarily through one’s own experience. It is difficult (though not impossible) to understand what one has not experienced. Truth never rests: It is not singular, but always plural.
Anonymous
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1
Index
1. Awareness of the Transformation of One’s Self:
The highest principle of inquiry is consciousness of one’s self. In inquiry lie the beginnings of change.
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Index
2. The Absence of Trust:
In our age of disbelief, the stories we tell each other about the past and the present seem to be in a state of collapse. There is a lack of continuity in the social order, increasingly suffocated by misinformation and distrust. We challenge each other over what is real and what is not.
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Index
3. The Unassailable Truth:
For most of us an ultimate truth remains unattainable and the stories we share from the past and the present no longer seem useful. Along with the disappearance of our past stories, both the person who seeks truth and the act of giving a person his due are in crisis. Our society finds itself defined by a decline in trust both in government and its institutions. Despairingly, the challenge is that the creation of new stories has become an act of preservation. Likewise, autocracy is on the ascendance. A lack of faith has sown aimlessness. What can change this course of despair? What will bring enlightenment to us?
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Index
4. Consciousness:
Knowledge is constantly changing and the result of this destabilization carries us into greater disorder. For this reason clarity is more necessary than ever to understand ourselves. Even if clarity is not always possible, to know oneself is imperative. Thus arises the tension between continuity and change. Here lies the quest for survival.
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Index
5. Not Knowing:
Not knowing is the essential condition of existence, despite one’s apparent desire for knowledge or for authority. To know is to inquire. Reality, though fleeting, inspires reflection. Change begins with the recognition that one is not in isolation. Not even the one (who seeks self-sacrifice for his spiritual advancement) by absolute cloister could get rid of his entanglement with the world. It is by relating to other people and his environment that this person comes to know who he is. Not even he (who despises the symbols of fear) is capable of freeing himself from his anguish. The fear of not knowing hangs over all of us. It is possible that striving without measure (in the aspiration for rationality) only leads us to end up being irrational: Here lies the origin of complexity given the absence of innocence.
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Index
6. The Energy of Life:
In his theory of cultural attributes (Meditaciones del Quijote, Meditaciónpreliminar; Índice8, Lapantera o del sensualismo, pág. 21), José Ortega y Gasset gives us his concept of razón vital2, which means reason is expressed through life itself. Ortega parses the European mind into two archetypes: the Germanic and the Mediterranean. The former is meditative and the latter sensuous. Of the sensuous he says: The predominance of the senses usually implies a deficiency in inner powers. What is meditating as compared with seeing? As soon as the retina is hit by the arrow from without, our inner personal energy hastens and stops the intrusion. The impression is registered, subjected to civilized order; it is thought, and in this way it is integrated in the building up of our personality, and cooperates within it – Evelyn Rugg and Diego Martín’s translation – Notes and Introduction by Julián Marías – pp. 85-86. The Orteguian admonition here is to find the balance between extremes: between the excesses and deficiencies of these two archetypes.
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Index
7. Human Agency and Its History:
A second source for my understanding of the mind and the senses is found in Plato’s Republic (politeia) – Socrates’s dialogue of the allegory of the cave at the beginning of Book Seven. There have been many interpretations. Mine differs. My purpose is to rid suffering from the mind of the freed slave. Once freed from shackles, the mind of the freed slave (who ascends to the mouth of the cave) discovers its own vision of the world. Despite the sun’s glare, the uneducated mind is transformed by the newly found ideal of truth. But the awareness by the prisoner (who has remained behind) is inseparable from the condition of the freed man: The slave (remaining in shadows of suffering) is not entirely separable from the memory of the freed man. Because of suffering, the freed man’s mind is aware of its inability to know. At the same time, the freed mind learns how its own transformation may be dependent on the new course of its history. This mind’s actions allow participation in change, and change is possible through self examination. The mind examines itself through meditating. Meditation is not an obligation, but a necessity. Meditation is the result of the mind’s freedom and it is the means to understanding its own choices in its approach to truth: But this effort is only an approximation to the infinity of truth. The freed mind (facing the visible world) is lacking here. Thus, the freed mind recognizes that neither its actions nor the course of its history is predictable. They (i.e. the mind’s actions and the course of its history) come from multiple possibilities about belief.
The freed mind realizes that time is an illusion: Time is fleeting, false, and deceitful. The mind, habitually trapped in its past, remains mired in pain. Anger (which comes from the past in search for justice) has for its sole purpose the manifestation of resentment. But anger only manages to put its existence on hold, awaiting compensation. Just as time is an illusion for the mind, the quest for emotional reparation is also an illusion. For the mind, there is no vindication by being trapped in the labyrinth of illusion. Only the rationality of active love can compensate for anger. If the mind of the lover of truth can project itself lovingly in the direction that it resents, then a liberating sense of bravery arises towards itself. Anger and sentimentality are one and the same. As the force of love sheds sentimentality, one’s desires dissipate and with them anger as well. Thereby, violence ceases to exist. Socrates’s allegory of the mind (freed from suffering) carries all these implications and comparisons towards a goal of Ideal Truth.
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Index
8. Alertness:
In an effort to understand Ortega’s concept of circumstancia (“circumstance”), his Meditación preliminar, Indice 6,Culturamediterránea, explains to us that when he goes through the landscape of ideas he has to meditate with alertnesson the influence of his experiences. Needless to say, this includes all his past and present relations, the geographies he has occupied, and everything he has done in life. Ortega forewarns us of the risks in this act of meditation: We are accompanied by a keen suspicion that, at the slightest hesitation on our part, the whole world could collapse, and we with it. When we meditate, our mind has to be kept at full tension; it is a painful and integral effort – Index 6, Mediterranean Culture, translated by Evelyn Rugg and Diego Marín (Introduction and notes by Julián Marías [a favorite student of Ortega y Gasset]), p. 34. In Plato’s dialogues, the same “effort” is found: Through the act of meditation, Socrates’s freed man draws transformation and redemption from the narrow crevices among ideas. Meditation helps the lover of truth get closer to his existential condition; it offers him the possibility of reacting differently, and sustains him with the very energy that life provides.
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Index
9. Faith:
For the one who fears meditation, having faith in one’s own actions and changes are not sufficient for inquiry. History is not alive for him: It is at a point of no return; it is dead. This person is in a world of despair and surrounded by the proverbial dancing of shadows. This person is bound in his own chains, is overwhelmed by a lack of confidence, and is, without trust, unable to make a leap of faith. Neither the notion of individuality nor the concept of free will seems satisfactory any longer. This person relinquishes personal power and is unaware of the forces influencing his mind and his senses. His refusal to face reality becomes a conscious decision for the suppression of truth. This refusal is antithetical to life itself. For him, life becomes enslavement and stands in opposition to the freed man, who fearlessly ponders the reality of the visible world, and passionately delves into the exploration of the unknown. The mind of the freed man represents Ortega’s concept of razón vital, desirous to be absorbed by it.
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10.Deliverance:
Distractions can be multiple. In Ortega’s playful analysis, he implies that if meditation is extraneous to the fears of the mind, it can succumb to obsession, and even fall despairingly into manias. Ortega values the relevance of every influence. He understands that a human being and his landscape are not separate. The unity of the two means his salvation by circunstancia (“circumstance”): Thus his appreciation of circunstancia: Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia, si no la salvo a ella no me salvo yo – Al Lector, Índice, pág. 41 (which I translate as “I am myself [in a world of perceptions] and also the material world that surrounds me; if I don’t save them, I don’t save myself”). Incidentally, here Ortega preempts his conclusion with what he has read in the Bible: Benefac loco illi quo notus es3 (loosely translated into English as “do good in the place where you are known”). With these remarks, Ortega reinforces the idea that he is unable to disassociate himself from his surroundings. If he is to flourish and to find salvation, it will be necessary for him to understand and protect what he shares with his environment.
Parallel to Ortega’s analysis is Plato’s Socratic allegory, which teaches us the effect that the visible world has on our mind. From these two perspectives, the mind tends to be discouraged by what it does not understand. Awareness of the visible world’s influence is for both thinkers an instinct for survival. To be aware, therefore, means to be silent, away from the deafening sound of fear. As long as there is fear, promoted by the progress of civilization, there will be no movement or separation from distractions. Confronting fear means dispersing it, making it disappear. Dispersal of fear is fundamental to the understanding of self. Releasing oneself from fear is confronting one’s not-knowing. Enslavement (at the depth of the cave) is equivalent to accepting the impositions of fear. Both, for Ortega and Plato, the opposition to indifference is found through meditation; thereby one is able to be alert and know oneself.
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11. Perception and Storytelling:
True confidence is living in uncertainty. An overriding fact is that human beings organize themselves around the making of stories. Every story we create is an act of piety that consoles the mind. Yet new stories and old ones are provisional tools that fill the gap of our faith, filling in the void of our ignorance. Whether the story be true or not, storytelling rescues us from ourselves. Storytelling is our razón vital. It seeks to expose us to the best possible meaning of ourselves: Meaning in storytelling is found by investing oneself with the willpower to exceed adversity. Meaning is found by creating something new within oneself. Meaning is found in one’s vulnerability and in the constant pain to overcome it. The process of finding meaning reveals that one cannot control Truth. Happiness depends on how one accepts the absence of control, and how we can stop disliking our limitations.
Storytelling persuades us to think that one’s actions will spread deeply into one’s consciousness. One may not always be able to defeat the element of preconception, for bias is always with us. As long as suffering, uncertainty, and the effort to overcome them exist, bias will persist. Bias lurks behind our thoughts, quiet and insidious, yet it is there for a reason in spite of its harmful effects. The irony is that if one banished preconceptions, there would be no further progress. In any story, if the hero overcomes the villainy of bias, it is because he is able to change: If one does not overcome bias, one does not grow and there is no transformation. Success is not as important as the struggle to overcome bias. Every time adversity comes to us, it is an opportunity for the recognition of those preconceptions that still reside in ourselves. Success does not provide happiness. Happiness is only possible through self discovery. As such, one becomes symbolically the whole of humanity. This is its highest expression: The creation of something new as we face adversity, and the worse the adversity, the greater the opportunity.
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12. Reasoning (sentience vs sapience):
Awareness of fiction is the appreciation of the paradox between what is and what is not. Knowledge expresses not only the awareness of one’s own intuitions and senses, but also the reasoning about those intuitions, senses, and impressions. That is, every time we examine the perception of our memory, we are editing our understanding. Thus, the way we organize and observe ourselves comes from our desires and senses at that moment, and this comes from our memories. For instance, it is difficult for us to agree on a common origin or a common thread uniting us as a species, even if that may be true. Whether we wish it or not, we define ourselves by the histories we create either in groups or in countries. In doing so, we are actually imagining separate and fragmented believes that we belong to separate locales, cultures, and races. Yet, there is an unavoidable thread that connects us as a species. Such composition is found in our common and preponderant origin, though our perception may resist being part of it. We endow ourselves with differences dictated by the conditioning of our perceptions. InThe Revolt of the Masses, Ortega refers to this condition as la razón de sinrazón (“reason without reason”), which explains our deeply rooted irrationality and fragmentation. Knowledge implies greater content than what is gained through the form of our perceptions. Our minds tend to abbreviate history, even believing that it does not exist. Yet the more expansive the “circumstance” or condition of apprehending truth, the greater the maturity our existence demands from us.
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13. Maturing Emotional Intelligence:
If a human being is the measure of all things, then also one comes to appreciate that knowledge is always inconclusive. Thus, meditation strengthens our mind, our memory, our learning, our attention, and our self awareness. Meditation on the past, the present, or the future depends on emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is based on capturing the import of influences from all areas of a man’s life, from one’s behavior to one’s relationship with others and one’s environment. Ultimate reality depends on the level of maturity of a person, and it is through meditation that one matures. Hence, how a person chooses to act depends on meditation and his level of emotional intelligence. For the fanatic (obsessed with fear) meditation seems impossible. For the fanatic, doubt is not the issue. The fanatic seeks to reiterate cycles. The fanatic fails to understand that fear of change is irrational because it is inevitable that the world is constantly evolving. The fanatic seeks to change what is beyond his control. From the Orteguian point of view, this person,within a closed valuation system, does not find consolation because his mind fears what it does not understand.
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14. Our Connection to the Universe:
From Ortega’s perspective of Cervantes’s Don Quixote[1605-15], we learn that the courage granted by Love – not hate – impels us towards understanding …the useless remains of a shipwreck that life, in its perpetual surge, throws at our feet. – To The Reader, p. 31. Loveis a divine architect who, according to Plato came down to the world – ὥστε τὀ πᾶν αὐτῶ ξυνδέδέσθα – so that every thing in the universe might be linked together: Separation means extinction. Hatred, which separates, isolates, and pulls apart, dismembers the world, and destroys individuality – To the Reader, p. 33.
Hence, Ortega explains that the imperative for the individual is to reflect on one’s circunstancia (in medias res), … to arouse the desire of understanding the universal in its particulars. – To the Reader, p. 31: To ignore the fact that each thing has a character of its own, and not that we wish to demand of it, is, in my opinion, the true capital sin, which I call a sin of the heart because it derives its nature from lack of love. There is nothing so illicit as to dwarf the world by means of our manias and blindness, to minimize reality, to suppress mentally fragments of what exists. This happens when one demands that what is deep should appear in the same way as what is superficial. No, there are things that present only that part of themselves which is strictly necessary to enable us to realize that they lie concealed behind it. – p. 62.
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15. A Heroic Perspective:
Knowledge comes before fanaticism. Fanaticism is, for Ortega, the rejection of the perspectives of others. Ortega points to reasoning as an act of charity, which uncovers differences, and suggests that understanding is akin to the circling of an eagle in flight. To be oneself, for Ortega, is the same as it is for Cervantes. The act of being a hero takes place through a sensitive exploration of the nature of reality. In Ortega’s view, as well as for Cervantes’s, the will of the hero belongs only to the persona of Don Quixote: Because to be a hero means to be one out of many, to be oneself if we refuse to have our actions determined by heredity or environment, it is because we seek to base the origin of our actions on ourselves and only on ourselves. The hero’s will is not that of his ancestors, nor of his society, but his own. This will to be oneself is heroism. – First Meditation, 15, The Hero, p. 149. … I do not think that there is a more profound originality than this practical, active originality of the hero. His life is a perpetual resistance to the habitual and customary. Each movement that he has to make has first had to overcome custom and invent a new kind of gesture. Such a life is a perpetual suffering, a constant tearing oneself away from the part of oneself, which is given over to habit and is a prisoner of matter. – First Meditation, 15, The Hero – p. 149.
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16. The Fear of fate:
A Socratic life is heroic, but if unexamined, of no value. In the pain of living, one has to embrace the fact that the examination of fear is part of life. Alongside this examination, fate is never artificial. Fate does not deceive, even in our misfortunes. Fate is not illusive, though our perception of time may be. Instead, fate challenges us to change. In change, fate protects us from stagnation. What appears to be random is, in fact, an opportunity for learning. Consequently, fate exists not for attacking, but for stimulating our transformation. Fate does not move against us, but challenges us to change by confronting obstacles. Fate attacks fear, because one’s fear takes away one’s ability to make choices. Narratives of fear turn out to be self-fulfilling prophesies. Fear deceives and defines us. It hampers survival. Fear prevents our evolving, it paralices us: We resist giving up habits because of fear. Thus one languishes and fails to overcome disbelief.
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17. Boundlessness and Humility:
The shadow of shame represents one’s flaws. The shadow is what one wishes not to be, though its shadow be part of oneself. Only, when the shadow is accepted with humility, do its flaws dissolve in the act of loving oneself with compassion. Ultimately, the fanatic will recognize his incompleteness and become aware of his own insignificance: The incapacity for completeness looms over all of us. Only through risk does one learn the extent of one’s bounds and how much further one may go. We advance through humility and humility appreciates neither truth nor falsehood. Humility is the acknowledgment of one’s inexorable estrangement from an infinite truth. Only the humble voice recognizes the struggle for understanding and change. Both depend on a flight from despair. For Ortega and for Plato, the mark of the highest values is found in our vulnerability. If we surrender absolutely, then we find redemption.
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18. Epilogue:
My perspective treats Plato and Ortega outside of any theistic justification. I leave aside any application of Plato to theological thought. Likewise, I ignore any attempt to ascribe religious respects to Ortega’s theory of values. For me their notions, when applied to theology, are not credible. I understand Plato and Ortega in their search for the limits of human perception and rationality. Efforts to apply their philosophies as religious foundations are outside of my purpose.
The depth of Plato and Ortega’s thought is not to be found in a method for objective morality. Nor is it ethical relativism, nor even is it found in a claim of universality. Ideologies on morality are derived from norms dictated by theologians, seemingly unwilling to relinquish authority. The role of the lovers of truth is not to dictate virtue nor to define the godhead. Their teachings are centered on rationalism. Their humanism is based on a concept of justice that is antithetical to fixed norms. The paradigm of true knowledge – according to Plato and Ortega – is derived from love based on the originality of heroism. This love does not reside outside of the individual. This love is not found in the promise of a transcendental world. This love finds man’s salvation in the present. This love calls for self examination. And above all, this love is a liberation from the numbness of the mind.
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Endnotes:
1 For Ortega circunstancia, is a representation of the sum total of influences in the consciousness of a man, thus expressing the reason for his existence.
2Razón vital stands as Ortega y Gasset’s philosophy which views that reason is, in of itself, an expression of life.
Ortega y Gasset, José, Meditaciones del Quijote: Meditación Preliminar y Meditación Primera, (Madrid: PUBLICACIONES DE LA RESIDENCIA DE ESTUDIANTES, SERIE II.—VOL. I, Universidad Central de Madrid, 1914)
Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de. The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha[1605–1615] (Cambridge: Harvard Publishing Company, 1893. Translated by John Ormsby. 4 vols. in 8 books. Limited Edition No. 71/320. 1st edition.
Platón. Teeteto. Introducción, traducción y notas de Marcelo Boeri. Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, 2006.
Ortega y Gasset, José, La rebelión de las masas (Madrid: Editorial Revista de Occidente, 1928). Fue publicado inicialmente en 1927 como una serie de artículos en el diario El Sol, antes de ser recopilado en formato de libro en 1928 por Editorial Revista de Occidente en Madrid.
Observations On Perception 