Odysseys of Mind: Categoriogenesis of Concrete Entities

e-mail: tchrist65@msn.com, std033296@ac.eap.gr

The author examines the status of dialectics and especially Kosik’s contribution on the connection between wholeness and the empirical, as has been stated from ancient Greek philosophy and on. Dialectics of Concrete is examined as a rigorous attempt of describing the continuous birth of the ‘sciences of the experience of mind ‘,as Kosik states it referring to the structure of Capital.

Consciousness is examined as an activity which develops within the realm of the connection between wholeness and the empirical, creating categorical concepts in an evolutionary way, and enriching them in the process of productive activity. It is examined whether categoriogennesis has a pre-linguistic character, and it’s manifestation in the passage from ancient rituals to experiments, both in natural and in social sciences. Among these rituals, the sacrificial ones play an important role in the creation of the economical categories, although the gift-exchange theory is been considered of secondary importance. Kosik’s critical epistemology is combined with the secularization theorem,1 which considers the existence of an isomorphism between theological and sociological concepts, and the sacrification theorem2 which states an evolutionary isomorphism between theories on sacrifice and philosophies of science. The problem of categoriogennesis3, is not considered as a naïve change of the system of categories (Hegel), but as a synchronous phenomenon of the human transformative activity taking account of Kosik’s dialectical conception of praxis.

 

1 H. Blumenberg, Die Legitimität der Neuzeit. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1966; Neuausgabe ebd. 1996

2 Th. Christacopoulos, From Sacrifice to Science, Servetus between Joseph de Maistre and Francis Bacon, in Michael Servetus Heartfelt, J. Naya, M. Hillar eds. University Press of America 2011, pp 69-85.

Th. Christacopoulos, The sacrification theorem, in TELOS in Europe, The L’Aquila Conference, The West: Its Legacy and Future, 7-9 September 2012.

3 Th. Christacopoulos, Varieties of sacrifice in states of exception, proceedings of the Revolt and Revolution e-book Conference, Athens, November 2013, Inter-disciplinary net, Oxford.