Existentially Yours -- 'I' vs. 'IP'; Freedom vs. Determinism, Either/Or

(An email I just sent to an email friend of mine -- one of my first readers -- as stubborn in his own respective belief system as I am in mine. We must have sent fifty emails to each other over a period of over a year but in the end there was no 'philosophical Hegelian meeting place' for my more 'freedom-existential' position vs. his more 'scientific-determinism' position. Call it a 'Mexican standoff' in our respective belief systems...This was/is the jist of our philosophical disagreement...)

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Hi Paul,

If I can take one thing that we seemed to agree upon in all the time we were emailing back and forth to each other for over a year, it seemed to be this: that a person's 'IP' (Individual Philosophy) -- your terminology that fit well with what I was saying and doing from a more 'freedom' vs. your more 'scientific, deterministic' perspective -- is the crucial, central ingredient in a person's motivation, personality -- and life. Everything -- and every behavior -- revolves around a person's IP. And so it is with you and I.

My IP has taken me into the study of personality theory -- with major influences by Freud, Jung, Adler, Berne, Perls, Hegel, Nietzsche, Spinoza...and others.

And your IP has taken you into territory that I am unfamiliar with.

Your work is still evolving as your IP continues (I would say, more 'existentially that you continue to use your IP...) to 'plug holes' in those areas where you think you can continue to make your work stronger.

And similarly, my work is still evolving in the same manner with the difference between your IP and my IP being significant in the different paths that our work leads us down...

This seems to be the main -- if not only -- common grouwnd in our work. Besides this, maybe it would be fair to say -- with no prejudice or bias intended (although obviously I like my belief system better than yours; otherwise, I'd move to yours) --that your work has taken you to -- in all honesty -- a different planet than the one I am on.

I remain on a more 'freedom-oriented' planet and you remain on a 'strictly deterministic' planet. That is the main 'thesis'/'anti-thesis' of our dialectic.

Maybe -- indeed, probably -- there is a 'freedom-deterministic' synthesis planet out there somewhere -- but neither of us has really found it, nor is willing to spend time there together.

I'm certainly willing to subscribe partly to a 'conflict-mediating Hegelian planet' -- indeed, that is what my work is all about (DGB -- standing for: Dialectical-Gap-Bridging). I can easily say that a person's 'IP determines his or her destiny'. Indeed, that introduces a strong element of 'shared determinism' into what we are talking about here.

But then we are still left with our one remaining bone of contention that we will probably never be able to resolve. I believe that a person can existentially change -- and/or at least functionally modify -- his or her IP in a way that re-introduces the element of 'freedom' into his or her destiny. In short, I believe in the 'existential I' in 'IP'. Where we left off -- you don't. Yours is a model that starts and ends with strict deterrminism.

And that remains our 'Mexican standoff'. We are both stubborn guys who believe in what we believe. In the end, I am not going to change you, and you are not going to change me. We are both going to go the respective ways of our IPs -- mine being a more 'freedom-existential' one; and yours being a more 'deterministic' one.

I will continue to believe that I have an 'existential choice' in my life: for example, either I can email you back -- or not. Kierkegaard's 'either/or' scenario confronts me -- in my belief system, all of us -- every waking moment of my/our life.

I will continue to believe that my 'IP does not tell me to write you or not' -- rather this is an existential decision, an existential choice, that goes deeper than my IP. 'I choose my IP -- and my IP does not choose for me'. In the end -- I choose to live with my IP as it is -- and/or accept it or not accept it as it is.

Or I choose to modify it in a direction of my pleasing. (IPs are 'narcissistically movtivated -- and created -- even if they end up taking an 'altruistic' direction.)

If I choose not to accept it, and at the same time, not to change or modify it -- then, I have nobody to blame but myself -- not God, not Nature, not my parents, not my upbringing, not my environment. Just me, myself, and I. This is my 'existential bottom line'.

Existentially yours,

dave