Aurel Kodoban, A strange feeling of lifeȘcoala Ardeleană Publishing House, Cluj-Napoca, 2023

It is true that in the text Aurel Codoban changes the nouns (and the loneliness of life is called uniqueness, and the uniqueness of man is called loneliness), but it seems to me that A strange feeling of lifealthough it suggests the opposite, it shows, in a way devoid of any ambiguity – loneliness of life in accordance the uniqueness of a person. But until we put forward interpretations that overturn the clear intent of the book, it is appropriate to consider the intent as such, as they say.

First, four preliminary clarifications. (1) I don’t really understand how much this book is about “feelings”. Aurel Kodoban’s specific writing and way of thinking leave no room for feelings. The metallic taste (or skeleton) of argumentation, present, moreover, in all his works, can hardly be called a feeling (indeed, even what Aurel Codoban argues in this book, in favor of “feeling” respects the cold resonance characteristic of metallic taste[1]). (2) There is a passage in Heidegger’s second work, otherwise well-known and quite unnatural, which asks us to give up, once and for all, thinking about Being (gray) starting from this place (tak-sein). Father Scrima, in a marginal comment, fully agrees and accepts (otherwise legitimately, according to his own intentions) the unnaturalness of such a requirement. But what is natural to Scrima seems to me unnatural to Codoban, because in some sense, which we will try to reveal later, Codoban also try to think about life without a person. (3) The tendency, discovered by Aurel Codoban himself, to place A strange feeling of life in continuation of the “triangulation” of Unamuno, D.D. Roshka and Camus. Deceptive because no matter where we look (or at A tragic sense of lifeor in A tragic existenceor in finally The myth of Sisyphus), with all the difference in rigor, the object (considered) is one: a person. Or in A strange feeling of life the subject is not man, but life. (4) An attempt to consider the problem under the auspices of the dialectic of the sacred and the profane would be just as misleading, that is, at least half. The forms (obviously historical) in which or under which the sacred (indeed, this permanent dialectic) fulfills its destiny, Aurel Codoban tells us in the margins of Eliade: space (Nature), History and life. The latter form is, moreover, the natural end (I dare say) of this dialectic. Obvious: some kind of “disintegration” that resembles a breakdown (from “stone” through “history” to “banana”).[2]), is visible. The last place (or the end, that’s all) of this constant (?) dialectic is Life. And “bare life” and “biopolitics” confirm it. Leaving aside the fact that Foucault, perhaps less zealously than Agamben, would never have placed his own analysis at the end of this dialectic (indeed, he should not have, suffice it to say), but in the case of both (as in the case of Unamuno, D. D. Roshki and Camus) a person is decisive, which cannot be said about Kodoban (and this is not so, let’s repeat, because not a man, but life is the focus of his analysis). But this is not the main reason why the path (opened by Eliade) that leads us to Kodoban is narrow, not to say, blocked. Assuming the dialectic of the sacred and the profane, even assuming Life as the final (irresistible?) form of that dialectic, you have a “feeling” that something is still present in Life, something that eludes life. Now nothing can escape life by exhausting itself. Or in the words of Ion Barbu, which is also the motto of the book: Holy body and food siesi…

A little wide[3], but these preliminary clarifications are necessary. Let us return to the text (return, however, is only a way of saying, since they were made exclusively in the margins and inside the book) – the uniqueness of life, loneliness of a personago.

It doesn’t matter if Aurel Codoban proves (a somewhat risky word in philosophy, somewhat easier to use in science) that “life as we know it would only exist here on Earth out of the entire universe.” [4]; indeed, even its designation as a “singularity” (to which we shall return), a natural effect of its “absolute uniqueness,” should not (for the time being) cause us much alarm. Arguments brought into play (through another singularity – infinity) always leave room for possibility. It is possible, although unlikely (the words of Enrico Fermi – “but where are they all?”[5]), for life to exist elsewhere than here on Earth[6]. Instead, what is really problematic in the sense of the questions is this almost elliptical claim that “understanding belongs exclusively to life. (emphasis mine)”[7] And it is elliptical, because the unspoken (or implicit element) is not human life, as we would assume, but life. But while we do not advance to such dramatic interpretations (which, by the way, rather timidly, the previous notes tried to point out), it should be said that the central thing here is not so much the elliptical effect as the necessity of the adjective “exclusive”. It is necessary, when it comes to understanding, to put it (on it, on understanding) exclusive in life? Is it not clear to anyone that understanding can have no other source/presentation/location than (human) life? It is not for nothing that I used, hesitantly, the three nouns (resource/representation/location) because AI (artificial intelligence) can or should be able to receive and understanding. Or if IA knowmaybe up to understand. Or, and this is what the exclusive adjective wants to emphasize, understanding belongs (exclusive) TEACHING. According to Aurel Codoban, AI can (like another singularity – God) know (us), but cannot understand (us).[8]. Because, I repeat, understanding belongs exclusively to life. However, it does not matter at all why AI does not have and will never have understanding (about God, of course, we are silent, although the argument of Aurel Codoban, according to which only in order to understanding you can sin out of order INTELLIGENCE[9]perhaps deserves somewhat broader considerations), but this fact, otherwise unclear, according to which understanding belongs to life, not to man. Or, perhaps more clearly, life gives one understanding[10].

But how can life give a person understanding until (and I really don’t know how else to put it) we know from (the first) Heidegger that everything is different? And the (harmless) circle of understanding (or hermeneutics, and all) confirms. We (actuality – the fact of being) know only through understanding and understand only through knowledge. But here we are not talking about the relation, by the way, classical, between the part and the whole (which, of course, it implies), but about something else entirely. The fact of being (actuality, we, So-ul) knows only by being pre-immersed in the understanding, even if it is unstable (or pre-understanding), of the fact of existence. In other words, we always have the understanding that we know beings. And this understanding, which in this place I cannot (and should not) reveal, is the foundation of knowledge. We know beyond comprehension what we are. That we are the beings that we are. But what do I really mean? what understanding belongs to exclusive to the fact of being (actuality). Or Kodoban calls us to look a little lower and remember only from the fact of being (or from facticity) fact to be, simple life being Life (biochemistry, say) therefore, not being (So). This is how the sentence “understanding belongs exclusively to life” should be read: TEACHING No Sowith or (interpretation excessive but legal) SoNo So–himselfwith

For all the novelty and radicalism of such a position, it is not at all clear how life itself is arranged as understanding, or, what is the same, it is not at all clear how understanding itself belongs exclusively to life. as? _Read more and comment on Contributors.ro