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  ontogeny...begeny
gary e. davis
January 26, 2019
 
be
geny (emphasis on first syllable): Why do we call the retrojective theorization of individuation “ontogeny”? Because the sciences formed in a historical legacy of striving to embody ont- (combining form): Greek “present participle of einai to be — more at is.” Yet its meaning—“being”—is about something living: being.

Thinking of a (“the”?) genesis of one’s being is an abstraction irt (in relation to/with) a living individuation—which, by the way, isn’t fairly appreciated by the notion of development. We say: Children develop, but each would talk like they’re becoming themselves: growing up in a singular way. A genesis of being is an individuation. And notions of innateness are moot, because individuation of the prenatal brain is unreconstructible for any individual.

But I won’t press the eccentricity. I’ll stay—have stayed—with ‘ontogeny’ (non-capped, apart from beginning sentences). But, in my own writing, I use ‘begeny’: Integral to flourishive life is begeny of perspectivity. Begeny of mature autonomy is theorized, as generality, by developmental psychology. Et cetera.

The main reason I use ‘begeny’ is that I use ‘ontogeny’ in a technical sense that’s very apart from the context of individuation. What’s called ‘ontology’ is actually about the Ontogeny of ontic conceptuality (i.e., conceptuality thinking of itself as rooted in meta-physics). Ontology is intrinsically genealogical, just as phenomenality results from phenomenogenic activity, such that phenomenology is retrojectively, yet essentially, genealogical. So, I use a capped ‘Ontogeny’ to indicate the difference (‘OntogenyO’ at the beginning of sentences) between genealogy of a life (like “historicity” of existentielle/ontic conceptuality in Heidegger’s Being and Time) and genealogy of axial conceptuality (like “historicality” of existential/ontological conceptuality in Being and Time).

 

next—> conceptuality of enaction

 

 

 

 

 

 
  Be fair. © 2019, gary e. davis