It seems to exist in that no space between Lacan’s real, and the phenomenal. To call up Plato’s language, symbol is what arises within the khora. It is perhaps the only thing we can ’see’ when we peer into that darkness with our rational sight.

Gilles Deleuze likes Jung, partly because Jung questioned some of Freud’s premises, like the notion that Oedipal relations govern the unconscious. I don’t think that he champions Jung the way that Zizek champions Jaques Lacan (hook, line, and sinker), but he is definitely worth a look. Here is a quote I like from Anti-Oedipus by Deleuze and Felix Guattari:

It is said that the unconscious is dark and somber . . . but doesn’t one indeed lend to the unconscious horrors that could only be those of consciousness and of a belief too sure of itself? Would it be an exaggeration to say that in the unconscious there is necessarily less cruelty and terror, and of a different type, than in the consciousness of an heir, a soldier, or a Chief of State? The unconscious has its horrors, but they are not anthropomorphic. It is not the slumber of reason that engenders monsters but vigilant and insomniac rationality.

Where I part ways with Freud is in calling the havok bad. I like Jung’s perspective more, but feel that he didn’t have the best interpretive filter in the 20th c. Lacan has Zizek. Where is Jung’s champion/interpreter?

This whole symbol thing deserves a bit more unpacking.

However, as Izzi has somehow realized, death is not an absolute end in the sense that dying is just a part of the bio-process. What I think I read you saying is that symbols can effect a pre-rational change in a person’s psyche that has ramifications for that person’s conscious mind–where “absolutes” dwell. So perhaps a Mayan constellation of symbols has helped Izzi to come to this realization.

I have more questions and comments but am out of “time.” Thanks so far for the thoughtful responses!

Oh, and thanks for dropping by my blog the other day

This is why I bring together the language of existential map and the absolute. As I think you know, I’m not suggesting that symbol is limited to the absolute, just that within the larger consciousness of human being there exists the capacity to appropriate what we call absolutes. Insofar as we think in terms of the rational and logocentric, the absolute is absolute. But if we examine the experience of ritual, I think that we find that there is an appropriation–through the back door so to speak–of what the rational self would call absolutes.

Simply put, symbols can carry the weight of absolutes, they are Trojan horses. But if we think in terms of symbol as opposed to concept (what I would consider to be abstraction) symbols are not absolute, yet they serve the function of what has been called by that name.

The Trojans would never have opened up their gates to Greek soldiers, but they admitted them in the belly of the horse.

My point is that both concepts occupy a similar structural position. Both concepts are absolute–theoretically they can be grasped/experienced by anyone. Both concepts are ideals that lie outside. Absolute symbols lie outside our lexicon and the forms lie outside of the world of perception. If you read Plato, as I know you have, you find that he speaks of experiencing the forms in almost mystical language. But this is only a minor point for me.

You write that the difference between the definition of the absolute (which you define as “our experience of the world”) and our actual experience of the world “has lead to the illusion that our finite creatureliness is fully subjective.” I am not sure what you mean by this. I hope that I have not given the impression that by questioning absolute symbols I am arguing for complete relativity of human knowledge and experience. We have not gotten that far, nor would I argue for such a claim as it is generally argued.

Digression! My question remains: why postulate absolute symbol? I still have not heard a good reason. Why hypothesize something so abstract merely to explain that humans experience the world? Yes, we experience the world consciously and unconsciously. Yes, both are important. There are a whole lot of terms here that are swiftly becoming homologized: “absolute symbols,” “human essence,” “experience of the world.” I did not ask about human essence. I asked about absolute symbols. It seems to me that if there is an X, a void, a transcendent unconscious experience that we cannot directly speak about, then we are better off not constructing abstract theories about such an entity. We are better off not being so sure.

Above, you said: “The irony of your anti-Plato rhetoric is that the idea of absolute symbols has a similar structure to his idea of absolute forms.”

In fact I mean the opposite. I am suggesting that our experience of the world takes place on levels of consciousness not limited to the ’spotlight’ of our rational awareness. The ‘not limited to’ part of our consciousness is what we can discuss but not experience by discussing. It is our existential map of the world, not the lexification of it.

Plato chaps my hide because he insists on the purification of consciousness as the means to attaining the absolute. The absolute is already present within us–it is our experience of the world. The definition of that experience (see Badiou’s Being and Event, and for that matter most of Western Phil) is never equivalent to that experience. This has lead to the illusion that our finite creatureliness is fully subjective.

If we follow Plato’s prescription, we plunge headlong into this illusion and ignore what is essentially human in our effort to transcend human being. That is the path out of the cave and into the light.

The difficulty, as you are more than aware, is that ‘essentially human’ is impossible to define. It is pre-lexical. We can, at best, talk around it. Describe it. It’s like using words to shade out the negative space of a drawing instead of tracing lines.

But it is by tracing out these existential maps of human being that we approach what ‘pre-lexical symbol’ is. It is an approach that is not an approach.