While writing the texts that constitute the present collection, some came about from their subject matter itself as short comments, many however were conceptualized much more connected and didn't happen to fit that form. However, I think that there is more behind that than the chance of temporary intellectual block in creating connections, that it touches precisely the core of the praxis of connecting and that, in what it has to do with the immanent aspiration towards truth and history. To explain that, I want at first to look at the multiplicitious difficulty, which every investigation must take on, that wants to ernestly and non-reductively engage with the problematics of consciousness.
To speak about thoughts is not only the imaging of a matter of fact, but specifically of one, that itself is image and relation to a referent, that cannot be made visible in that speaking. This referent may also be not free of contradictions, so that we, in relation to the description of the problem in our thought, must distinguish three things: the substantive contradictions in the referent, in the thing itself; the problematics of the relation to it, the thought, that tries to think and capture the thing; and the difficulty, to express such a thought in word and writing, and what belongs there to the misunderstanding of expression. With the referent of consciousness, we have the added difficulty, that the referent is itself the thought of another, or maybe also its own description towards itself (because consciousness participates in both thought and expression, and also can contain the referent, as long as it itself also an intentional object and not an external referent [see translation notes for the difference of object/referent/external referent]). Therefore, thoughts about consciousness are particularly vulnerable for being misrepresented in their expression and to lose their referent.
For example, look at the phenomenon of generality. The referent of that, what is the general, is the having-something-in-common of these things themselves, is real connection, that, what is generally described with the words system or structure. The mental imagining of that, if it is not merely misrecognized as a mere phenomenon of the individual element (such as the individual as only externally social in libertarian pseudo-sociology), must be concept or relation, therefore specifically not something concretely real, but abstraction, the common relation through generality, that becomes substantively real through that, that can be conceptually captured as something they have in common (like e.g. the elements as conditioned by the whole, as also the whole conditioned from them; or as effects of their relations among each other, which itself only describes the general characteristics of these elements, that makes those relations possible). The description of the general concept however is a mere word, merely a general statement, in other words. a commonplace, a generalizing expression. This is in its referent even more trivializing than already the thought, trying to think that what is in common, as this can yet think the concrete element, be it under the general concept, whereas the description cannot do that, if it doesn't want to move from the general to the concrete, to derive one from the other or in reverse, and thus loses sight of the idea. Without the concrete the idea becomes without basis; but based on it, deductively or inductively, demonstrating as proof or example, the idea itself decays into the position of demonstrating the production of mere material. It precisely loses the generality, to be a concept, for what reason it was thought up in the first place.
That doesn't mean, that it's impossible to talk about the real generality or about conceptuality, only, that it always appears distorted. Generality appears always conceptual, and concepts always as empty generalizations, at least in the first instance; one can correct that, but only, it one at first really sees this emptiness of expression, and admits to oneself, that that, what was thought behind behind the general word as concept, and behind the concept as referred reality of ultimate referents, only were thoughts, that were taken from one's own imagination and not the thing itself. They then necessarily distort all further examples and create the known effect, that precisely in those texts, which don't want to present a particular thing, but the whole or generality, anything specific can be read into, even though they precisely didn't think something specific for it, but something general. At the same time, a purely general form of thinking is scarcely possible, and even less any form of understanding, that radicalizes misunderstandings to a form of scepticism of language; rather, this is about becoming aware of the sad fate, to have to interpret, and likely to be wrong, and that in a double interpretation (the meaning of the word as well as the sense of that meaning as relation or referent). This awareness will be made more concrete in some of the following texts as the relation of subjectivity to the empirically concieving psyche of perception, as well as to the social systems, of constructed systems of expressions. The complexity of consciousness therefore is, as the referent, precisely that what is circumscribed also in the general problematicity of the concept of generality or systematicity; it is not, as once believed, the mirror of the world, but it is very well the mirror of it torn-apart-ness, as consciousness of this tornness of itself and the attempt, to avoid it, but also the possibility, to accept it and think it through. (And tornness is here not just the signum of plural life, but of subjectivity as such; the movement from the subject to the subjective system only makes out of this an even more difficult to capture thing, that doesn't see unification as just not desirable or conceptually ugly, but makes it now a real impossibility.)
As a more specific case I want to go into the general relation to history or memory. The real element of history is in a way felt very directly; I see, in its various remains and records, what happend, and can get an idea of what was. History itself is therefore a reality, the structure of past events, a true totality without a conceptual structure. Against that, my image of history seems hollow and schematic. I can try as much as I want, to complement it with more material; it remains a concept, because it is not history itself. However, that's not because there would be some sort of "immediate reality", that I mistreat by mediation, but precisely because there is no such thing, but only different sources, that are themselves symbolic mediations, and therefore need to be interpreted in turn. The real element of history is really only this coexistence of these different elements, which is necessarily destroyed by all mediation, even the most immediate, simply by reflecting on it [= the coexistence]. Perception itself however is such a mediation; it is an active, motivated selection by choosing between different directions of looking; it makes truth appear by the creation of certain differences. The most important difference in perception is that of relevancy, of interestedness. It mediates the creation of the "substance" by exclusion of the "accidental", i.e. that what is momentarily seen as irrelavent to that substantial differentiation, from the observation. It however still corresponds to the referent, exactly in reference to this specific selection, that corresponds to the specific interest or motivation of knowledge. However, that is only the correspondence of historical material and thought; it looks different for the correspondence of thought and expression. The external mediation of thought is symbolic, linguistic, and therefore cannot act so generally; it needs to hold itself still onto the specific, to tell it, as painting out that what is understood to be essential. That's the core of memory; it's no document, because it doesn't describe history itself, but its concept. It comes about through certain motivations of truth/substance, and creates therefore "method" in the first place, as the correct way, to tell this or that story about truth. That memory is something symbolic, is made obvious, in that it is always connected to symbolical information, when it is told - or remains unknown, and reenters as trauma. In a certain sense, trauma is precisely that historical experience, that is taken on, and maybe even understood, but not expressible. It is that, what can't even be misunderstood, because it doesn't allow any mediating "understanding" beyond the terrorizingly near immediateness of thinking [it] itself. In this sense, one must think of that substantial historical element, that is missed by all historiography, as the trauma of the passage of time itself: that all this really happend, and that now we can't do anything about it. These very abstract sounding remarks however hide other, much more concrete questions. For example, it is very difficult, to get any sort of overview in any area of academic research, without falling either into historicity or overspecification of research topics, that only for the motivation of productivity, and rarely towards external political-social motives, lets anything be independent of its internal goals. Truly productive thoughts therefore have to start without such mediation, and have to react to the criticism, to "not be on the level of current research" - often from theories, that themselves are ignorant of history and forgot the past (like in the case of ancient philosophy and scholastics of German idealism, as it relates to consciousness, self and psyche). Which approach can I then use practically? How can I, without becoming a historian myself, write as to the measure of the current historical situation - and still to think something new, following the unmeasured thought, that because I didn't hear this from someone else before, it should be something new and not something eternally old yet lost?
The only adequate response seems to me to be a specific kind of fragmentary writing, but adequate here also only in a correspondence, this is yet to be created as a medium of truth. The important thing here is, that the idea of a kind of thinking, that addresses the whole, is not given up, but that its dependence on a specific motivation, to capture it this or that way, if it is reflected, makes it impossible, to write a linear philosophical system. The linearization of such a branched direction of thinking can be either dialogue or fragment, but not a closed treatise - at least not only one. The heaviest impulse, that the understanding of my plurality has immediately had on my writing, is therefore exactly this openness of the methodical prduction of different kinds of substantiality, or concept and conceptual capture, on the same referent. The referent is therefore however not diminished, and neither is any individual capture of truth, and not even the truth of the totalizations. The only thing, that is falling away, is the idea of one overaching abstraction; because there is no one self which's abstraction it could be, but only my current way of thinking and its motivation, that occasionally can create concepts of a whole, that is greater than me, but is in its _outward expression_ immediately only a correlate of my idea of it, i.e. still bound to my prejudice of my essence and existence, and to my motivation, to think this or that for this or that purpose.
Realism can combine itself with a kind of relativism, if truth is seen as an operation with a specific goal, and the method as a means to that end, and one does not set truth as an absolute and searches after the right method, without being able to say, for what it then should be right. Truth itself is however no concept of truth, because it then would stand under itself and would be autonomous, free, which precisely doesn't correspond to the inner forcefulness/necessity of truth; truth itself is heteronomous and stands under other concepts. If I shold take it up to give a definition, I'd say: truth is the virtue of that what is correct, of the correct statement and prediction, the accurate and that, what is fitting to a particular form of research and a purpose, to observe things. Truth is in this sense an ethical term; it is the virtue of rhetoric. The old Socratic critique of the sophists must be in my view also understand in this way, not as a critique of rhetoric in the name of truth, but as a critique of rhetors, that they don't reach the truth, that still makes out the virtue of that, what they do; the assertion, that philosophy is the better rhetoric, as one corresponding to truth and therefore to the virtue of the speech or the logos. It is therefore the virtue of symbolic representation, that can't be completely adequate to begin with, if it uses the [same] words for different things, and equates one A with another A, one X with another X; its formal corretness is the honesty in only being formally true.It acts therefore pecisely against all forms of rhetoric, that tries to suggestively imply to the other, that we already think the same way, when really this is almost impossible; the only thing, that can correspond, is the form, everything else is at most equal by pure chance, but if we really think the same, we don't know. But even in this formal form it is not uniquely clear, and can be about very different referents; and like prudency is not the same about each referent, so is truth. That there are different motivations of truth and therefore different concepts [of truth], says therefore as much, as that there are different reasons to be honest, or to not act for the other, as if we would be of the same opinon, and these reasons then can be as different as the resulting thoughts: substantial interest in the other, to find it beautiful that we think differently and to capture all that, a political desire for equality, ethical doubt about if I know what is good and would not need to learn it from someone else etc. But this does not create a relativism of things or methods: every of these virtues, after this or that end, to know something in this or that situation, makes eome methods, i.e. ways and processes, more or less apt, and what it found as truth, is then really true, but only in the direction, in which it was searched for, and not in all others too.
The production of such different methods however consists precisely in taking the same elements and trains of thought, and orienting them differently, to be able to reintroduce them, as symbolically conctituted, in multiple different thoughts. More specific: I percieve a specific referent (e.g. an historical event, an abstract idea etc.) and have a certain kind of interest to it, and make a note motivated by that. This note is therefore at first a thought of this referent and then becomes a symbolic expression of this thought. I then read this same text shortly after, and then try to continue this thought, corresponding to the motivation which I, or whoever then thinks, will have at that moment, and then write that down in turn. In this way, a huge mosaic of fragments is created, in which the methods are really only connected lines of certain notes, that begin starting from [the same] motivation; they are cumulated successes even of very different motivations, and allow therefore also the reconstruction of new, yet unthought middle points. But all of that is not structured methodically, but associatively; not as a process, but as a system of symbolic memory, as an expression of the concepts of the referent of life, experience. To express experience however means also, to take it out of the hands of thought and motivation; it becomes usable for every motivation, even if only in differing interpretations. That is the pragmatic meaning of the often noted importance of "inner communication" in the system; one could remark in an almost marxist sense, that it is the surplus-value of misunderstanding, that, what is produced by talking past each other.
Putting down unreflected fragments next to each other to a new whole, the apposition of different thoughts, as a method for creating truth, seems at first to bring the concept of truth, following the classical notions of adequacy or coherence, ad absurdum, as it neither really corresponds to the referent, nor is necessarily free of contradiction. But looking closer, these criteria do in fact hold; only, they are _local_ criteria. Ever selection, every motivation, every conception of substantiality has a correspondence in the referent, precisely that it is a selection of it, and does correspond to the referent and its internal structure (even if this structure does not measure itself after the measure of [that] relevancy or substantiality); and the contradiction, that ends truth, is nothing but the aporia, that closes the chain of appositions and forces me to find a new one, that creates more interesting mediating elements. "Truth" as an ethical term is in this sense not a purely pragmatic one, as it doesn't leave it at the point of usefulness, but puts as its measure the continuity of speech, the continuation of the talk on the next day as once in the Politeia; its virtueness, as rhetorical, is precisely the duty, to think about that, and to put into words, what cannot be said at all: most importantly also that what I am, or the concept of the existence of consciousness, and its correlation with the concrete element of myself, that is _also_ the whole, and the whole, that is _also_ my experience, and in that so subtly, but necessarily, points towards the presence of all others, in this _also_, that itself is the essence of the adequation of this being of the apposition, and by which it observes itself and comes to this, to so strangely ask itself this, what it is, like this text, and more generally texts like this and those who write them, in the thought as in the corresponding referent, sometimes do. This only as an introductory preface and apology, why that, what by its nature and in every moment of thought so necessarily should have been some kind of system to me, did not succeed me into that form even in the study of the very topic of systematicity, but only came to be a series of otherwise rather discontinuous notes about it.
Translation notes: a) I translate here "Gegenstand" as referent. This is because I mostly refer here to what I otherwise in English writing call the "external referent" of thought and experience, that is, objects outside of thought. Since the word "object" is, as I express in another text, defined substantively against the subject, but German "Gegenstand" isn't, I apply this terminology consciously to avoid using the word "object" as if to mean the correlate of subjective experience, when I precisely mean what is outside of that experience or its potential external base. However, referent in general is not an external referent, and the ambivalence is here stronger in the German original, which is difficult to translate due to the lack of a middle term between "object" and "referent". b) The "real element" of history is the translation of "Das Reale der Geschichte"; "the real of history" seemed too gramatically unfinished, and it should not cause any confusions, but it is to be noted that it does not refer to a part of history (the real vs. the unreal elements), but to the quality (the real element as that what is real in history, the real element of historical experience; therefore in the singular). c) the "whole" that is related to the _also_ is a translation of "das Ganze", which can also be understood to be the idea of the whole. The original intention is precisely the correlation of the whole and the idea of the whole, of reality and its conceptual mediation, in the self that is itself that mediation. Since this all will be described in much more detaill in later texts, I left it here with the translation "the whole", even though it sounds somewhat clunky in English, and hope it is still somewhat understandable.