THE PHILOSOPHY OF OBJECTIVE AND PRIMITIVE COORDINATING THINKING
CONTOURS OF A THEORY OF FINNO-UGRIC CULTURE
The basic laws of Western-European thinking as formulated by Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) are as follows:
I. The law of identity: “Whatever is, is.”
II. The law of non-contradiction: “Nothing can both be and not be.”
III. The law of excluded middle: “Everything must either be or not be.”218
These same propositions, “translated” into coordinating, objective and primitive Finno-Ugric thinking are modified in the following way:
I. Everything that is, only is in comparison with something else.
II. Nothing can be, which is both comparable to other things, and comparable to nothing.
III. Everything must either be, and therefore be comparable to (an)other thing(s), or not be, and then be comparable to nothing.
One of the basic questions which has so intrigued Western-European philosophy since ancient times has been in connection with the primal unit219 (otherwise: the divine unit of origin). According to this idea, individual things acquire their independent (imperfect, or sinful) existence by breaking away from a primal unit. For a Finno-Ugric language speaker, however, an undivided unit as such, and things or phenomena breaking away from it being condemned to independent existence are abstract (non-existent, unusable) concepts: Anaximander (611-546 BC) also thought that when a thing is born, it breaks away from the original divine unit, thus seeking its
“independent, unique existence”.220„… whatever claims to exist, has already stepped out of Existence” – says Heidegger millennia later.221According to Nietzsche: “Every emergence is a sinful independence from eternal existence; a profanity, for which the
215Jaspers 1977. Second lecture
216Cf. what was said about western music.
217Cf. for instance, what was said about Finno-Ugric graphic art.
218Russell 1991. (1910) p. 78.
219Arisztotle 1936. 1054b, 1057-1059
220Molnár 2001. p. 44.
221Ibid.
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only worthy punishment is death.”222In contrast to all these affirmations, according to the art concept of those living in coordination (also see Ady’s verse quoted above: I should like to be loved): “I am everyone everywhere, and everything always happens to me. You too are everyone everywhere, and everything always happens to you.
Everyone is everyone everywhere, and everything always happens to everyone.
Everyone is Me and I am Everyone. Everyone lives my life and I life everyone’s life.
... This Life constantly is, it is in continuity and this Man is everywhere, and therefore universal.”223
One of the most fundamental philosophical handholds which has emerged from the Indo-European approach is therefore meaningless for coordinating thinking, because it latently treats the ego as an independent unit:
“I think, therefore I am”; or the earlier and later variants of this: for example, Saint Augustine (354–430 AD): “For if I am deceived, I am. For he who is not, cannot be deceived; and if I am deceived, by this same token, I am”224, or: Jacques Derrida (born 1930): “I think, therefore I am not”225etc. As well as the scientific approach resting on this basis. The Finno-Ugrian does not form a unit (a whole) in himself; he is not alone, not by himself. As he would phrase it, therefore, at best it can only be a matter of you and I together, we exist, we are what we are, we think (about something) relative to one another. According to the Finno-Ugric approach, therefore, at best I can assert that
“I relate, therefore I am,”226The most obvious case of this, the easiest to observe, is when two people meet:
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At such a time: “The location of the conversation, the HERE, is therefore at the point of contact of MY personality and YOURS. My past has dissolved in my personality, and my future, for me, has dissolved in yours:
222Quoted by: Molnár 2001. p. 42-44.
223Karácsony 2002. (1942) 31, p. 36.
224Szent Ágoston 1942. Az Isten városáról. XI. 26. [St Augustine. City of God]
225Earliest occurrence: St Augustine. Further examples: Smirnov 2000. p. 73.
226Deme 2002. p. 9.
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In their latest results, brain researchers who are still working almost totally independently of culturologists have come to the same, if not even more radical conclusions. Riitta Hari, professor of the Brain Research Department in Helsinki College of Technology, in her lecture entitled ‘Are our thoughts in our brains?’
expressed herself in a way which seems somewhat cautious when she said: “In many relationships between couples, and naturally in lasting working relationships, thinking is clearly distributed between the individuals (participating in them).”227 (In her works, Hari frequently refers to research by Surowiecki, but as far as we know, this is only partially connected with what is expressed here.228).
A culture theory in accordance with the coordinating mentality has been drawn up by Sándor Karácsony and*iERU/N$FFRUGLQJWRWKLVSHRSOHE\WKHPVHOYHVKDOI people, will have no legal system, no art, no science, no society and no religion. /N depicted all this on the following diagram:
227Hari 2006
228for instance Surowiecki 2004
THE WORLD AT LARGE my external world
YOU
MY FUTURE MY PAST
I my inner world my personality
SPACE
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(It is clear from what has been presented so far, that the diagram is simplified and theoretical, as the correlation between the two parties is not evident, and the relationship between people is shown as restricted to just two persons.)
/N¶V GLDJUDP GLVWLQJXLVKHV ILYH NLQGV RI PHQWDO VWDWH DOWKRXJK WZR RI WKHVH
“faith” and “the way you feel”, rather just fringe upon our mind/psyche. In each of these five kinds of mental state, the attitude/correlationof people to one another is different. The correlation of two parties can have a result: if their correlation is emotionally charged, then it is an artistic symbol; if their correlation is objective, i.e.
without emotional charge, then a linguistic sign; or, if their correlation is expressed in actions, then social customs. These correlations are presented in the central column of the diagram. The stable forms (legal, scientific, artistic, social, religious) of these correlations between people is we call culture.
The Finno-Ugrian is therefore a person as a member (or rather half) of a community, a “felekezet” [sect, denomination, association]. His thoughts, his emotions, his will are part of the collective consciousness of that community of which he is also a “half” (= constituent part).
His thoughts, his emotions, his will are (an) individual crystallisation(s) of this community consciousness, dependent on his (physical-spiritual) personality, its aptitudes, its past, the way it feels at present, and its future longings, which therefore exists and has being as part of the culture of his community. We may add to all this that even the nature of the way he feels is not completely independent of this FRPPXQLW\DVDOVRH[SUHVVHGE\/N¶VGLDJUDP