I'm not sure what it could mean to say metaphysics is metaphorical or the converse. — John

There's a tradition of thinking "analogy as the core of cognition." Lakoff, Norman O. Brown, Vico, and Rorty come to mind. Derrida quotes Anatole France in the essay. Look to the etymology of abstract terms. I used to do this, very taken with metaphor as a central function. Where Mathematics Comes From was especially relevant and convincing to me. Here's this, just in case it tickles your mind:

Derrida's White Mythology offers a penetrating critique of the common paradigm involving the nature of concepts, posing the following questions: “Is there metaphor in the text of philosophy, and if so, how?” Here, the history of philosophy is characterized as an economy, a kind of "usury" where meaning and valuation are understood as metaphorical processes involving “gain and loss.” ...
The “usury” of the sign (the coin) signifies the passage from the physical to the metaphysical. Abstractions now become “worn out” metaphors; they seem like defaced coins, their original, finite values now replaced by a vague or rough idea of the meaning-images that may have been present in the originals.
Such is the movement which simultaneously creates and masks the construction of concepts. Concepts, whose real origins have been forgotten, now only yield an empty sort of philosophical promise – that of “the absolute”, the universalized, unlimited “surplus value” achieved by the eradication of the sensory or momentarily given. Derrida reads this process along a negative Hegelian line: the metaphysicians are most attracted to “concepts in the negative, ab-solute, in-finite, non-Being” (WM 121). That is, their love of the most abstract concept, made that way “by long and universal use”, reveals a preference for the construction of a metaphysics of Being. — IEP

But he makes a case that metaphor usurps a "metaphysical" role as a master/explanatory/reducing concept.

I read Introduction to the Reading of Hegel a few years ago, and I remember enjoying it, in particular the discussion of the master/slave dialectic....Perhaps he is largely responsible for the predominately materialist interpretations of Hegel that are almost universally orthodoxical in l'academie, and which I have long been somewhat skeptical about. — John

I think he did forge a new, French Hegel. In any case, I still think Kojeve is gold. But then I really liked Solomon's From Hegel to Existentialism, too.

I finished that line with "we the living" and thought about throwing in an Ayn Rand joke.

Does it necessarily presuppose that meaning to be accessible, though? — John

If the meaning is not accessible, would it follow that all understandings be misunderstandings, and all readings misreadings? I think this is related to the idea of truth being independent of us; and some (pragmatists, most notably) simply won't have that. — John

The question in both cases (to me) is what to do in the absence of accessibility? Facts about the physical world can plausibly be said to picture some kind of non-linguistic reality, the furniture, the moon, the esophagus, that we can check. But what of "the real is rational and the rational is real"? Or "God is love"? Or "the medium is the message"? Or "the unexamined life is not worth living"? Or "yes, we have free will." But what do these things mean exactly? It's not exhaustive, but we can look at how they do or might change our behavior:

The pragmatic method is primarily a method of settling metaphysical disputes that otherwise might be interminable. Is the world one or many? – fated or free? – material or spiritual? – here are notions either of which may or may not hold good of the world; and disputes over such notions are unending. The pragmatic method in such cases is to try to interpret each notion by tracing its respective practical consequences. What difference would it practically make to any one if this notion rather than that notion were true? If no practical difference whatever can be traced, then the alternatives mean practically the same thing, and all dispute is idle. — James

So pragmatism can sound irresponsible, but there's a "worldly" urge at the heart of it to get something done.

For my perception, Hegel and Derrida took philosophy seriously in very different ways. Hegel, for me, is the genuine article; Derrida seems to be more of a 'celebrity philosopher'. — John

I like Derrida's face. I like his vibe in interviews. I really like The White Mythology, too. (If metaphysics is metaphorical, then metaphor is metaphysical. That's my take-home.) But his ideas seem far less ambitious and essential than Hegel's. Really, Kojeve had me feeling like a rational mystic. It lit up my world. It was a beautiful translation and type-setting too.

I feel you. I told myself I was going to math tonight. Philosophy is my vice, my sin.

On sensation-emotion, it's probably just differing idiosyncratic terminology then. I was thinking of concepts in a very human sense, intelligible unities that fit into a system of relationships. And that a man born blind fails to "know" something "nonconceptual" about the rose. Then there's this:

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis — cummings

And I have to though this one in:

Me up at does

out of the floor
quietly Stare

a poisoned mouse

still who alive

is asking What
have i done that

You wouldn’t have — cummings

I hear you. I'm not attached to "enlightenment" as a term. But I think we find plenty of Western notions of transcendence or the wise man. I don't know where you position Hesse, but I think Steppenwolf and Siddartha are great. Accuracy or continuity with tradition doesn't matter to me. It's only what I can make of X in my own life that matters. I piece together Kojeve and the Gospels and Stirner and James and the Tao and Louis C K and Tropic of Cancer and Job and, well, whatever is around the corner.

There has to be a 'realisation of truth' for it to mean anything. That realisation is embodied in the person of the sage. — Wayfarer

Well, yeah. I'm always stressing the image of the sage is at the heart of the philosophy that isn't just a footnote to science. But this sage is central in Kojeve. Stirner too presents a twist on the same Hegelian evolution of the sage. The sage understands his own engendering as a swelling system of "determinate negations." This is in Siddartha, too, but Hesse was a German. The sage is not pure but complete. He lives through the quest for purity and/or the beyond as a failed attempt at a short cut. So this partial view falls forward into a more complex and complete view (falling uphill). His truth is in satisfaction with the real as rational and the rational as real, that he is the completed self-consciousness of God, the end of history, etc. This is beautiful stuff. It affirms 'evil' as necessary. It doesn't look beyond the physical world, feelings, and concepts. I get that it doesn't appeal to everyone, but here indeed is a grand Western vision of the sage.

I don't have much time Hoo, but I'll just say that I don't think cherry-picking is necessary, and certainly is not sufficient, for creative misreading. I think the latter consists in fruitfully misunderstanding the whole context (or at least the most substantial part of it) of a thinker's work. I think any misunderstanding that comes from taking isolated parts out of context would be highly unlikely to end up being creative or fruitful. — John

Truly, I've put some real time in with Blake, though it's been awhile. It's hard to parse "misunderstanding" away from assumption that a "real" meaning is accessible. Was Blake himself any more consistent than

And, I don't know about personalities, but I don't believe philosophies are created by "driving over the bones of the dead". I rather think they are created by taking the living works of the departed into our own consciousnesses, and seeing the living truth of commonality there. For me it has nothing to do with heroism, but rather a combination of the cold fact of intellectual duty with the warm fact of spiritual passion, and compassion. — John

But how else are philosophies created? There are original poetic leaps. They are passed down. Others are influenced, yes, but they criticize and add to what preceded them. I love Hegel, because I think he gets the violence in progress right.

You mention the "cold fact" of "intellectual duty" in the same sentence that dismisses "heroism," but this duty is exactly what I'm getting at when I mention heroism. As I see it, you associate heroism with something childish. But I'm thinking more generally in terms of personified virtue. "A grown man is beyond such grandiosity or narcissism. A grown man gives a damn about the world beyond his personal life, about politics, about science. Selfish children, on the other hand, care only about themselves and their stupid petty reflections." I'm not saying this is your view. It's just an example of the sort of frame I'm talking about. What happens as we become conscious of them? We may reaffirm them, by becoming conscious of them opens them for editing. But they are fascinating objects of study, at least to me. This is how I understand Hegel, or at least Kojeve, on the master/slave issue. We seek recognition along the lines of our own frame. Unless our frame prohibits or excludes it, we project this frame as a universal law. Such frames are largely invisible, as they can be threatened by self-consciousness. This is probably why the will to truth is questioned at the beginning of a book entitled "Beyond Good and Evil." I think Stirner was tuned in to the same issue. He just called the archetype of the hero the "sacred."

I agree with you that the notion of authority is not apt; in fact I think it is utterly useless. Our duty is not to any authority but instead to the genuine promptings of our own (better) instincts, imaginations, intuitions and intellects. I think there is nothing heroic or extraordinary about it; it is very ordinary, in fact very humdrum and everyday. — John

But would you go so far to say that you look around and see the average person as your intellectual equal? I'm sure we both strive to be kind and open-minded as much as possible. But do we not quietly prefer some minds to others? Do we not seek out the extraordinary?

I'm very much with you on the "genuine promptings." If I dwell on narcissism, it's in the pursuit of authenticity, self-honesty, self-knowledge. What are my real motives ? Who do I want to be? Where did I get this who I wanted to be? This "who" has changed drastically since adolescence, for all of us, I'd expect. How is this process modeled? I think pragmatism (inspired by Hegel) is on the right track. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. If it is, try something new. Dream a new dream of virtue. Or, more likely, find on one the shelves. Try the spirits, whether they be good or evil --work in the context of one's flesh-and-blood life.

I cannot make any sense at all of the notion of a "godless man", I'm afraid. — John

In a generalized sense of the word, I doubt anyone is godless. But I know that there are strains of egoism that work pretty well as generalized religions. There's the notion that every man is his own priest and his own king. He owns himself. He holds nothing sacred but his own mind. This is monstrous is "sacred" isn't understood in terms of spiritual authority. It feels bad to be petty and cruel. We truly want community, love, mutual recognition. It's just that I envision the mutual recognition of liberated and potently self-possessed "kings."

Regarding the sensuous, I don't believe anything is non-conceptually "there"; primordially or otherwise. As far as I can see it can be 'there' only in that good old empty formal way of the noumenal. — John

Ah, but surely you believe that feeling and sensation are more than the concept we need to speak about them?

You and I apparently see things very differently when it comes to the pursuit of truth. I think it is a deadly serious matter; whereas you seem to understand it only in terms of the self-images of heroism and the mirage of glamour. A kind of celebrity view of the spiritual quest; it seems to me to be. — John

Continuing the above, how could truth be a serious matter if you didn't feel something about truth. We're aren't (only) word computers.
I used to pursue truth with deadly seriousness. But I was hit by The Irony as I pursued the truth about truth. To question the will to the truth --that's the big move for me. Why truth? If we are in the everyday realm of cats on mats, then truth and utility are almost the same. I depend on this physical truth like anyone. I revere it as a fragile animal who doesn't want to get hit by a truck.

But beyond this realm of physical truth, which science seems to get right-enough, we have the realm of the controversial ideas that are usually tied up with ideals. Politicians live here. Philosophers live here. I don't think it's all that wild to read their lives as an indication of their notion of virtue. Don't we tend to want to be virtuous? So all this "hero myth" jazz is just another way to look at how varying images of virtue deeply inform the disagreements that we don't expect science to settle. Are non-empirical claims usefully investigated in terms of their "ethical" kernel? I think there is some fuzzy vision of virtue at the enter of any "vortext." And rhetoric/sophistry works at the level of these images of virtue. A revolution in this image of virtue is going to unsettle the wooden concept system built around it. But I could just be an A-hole of the first water, framing the spiritual quest as "essentially" narcissistic because I got too much breast milk as a first-born son. At this point, I'm in too deep, though. It's comfortable in this prejudice.

I agree, disagreement is good. We'll keep one another dancing.

That's such a big goal though! I'm wary of beauty with a capital B. Or at least seeking it explicitly, keeping it in mind. When the vicissitudes of life are working in your favor then, I agree, everything is doubly lit up. But when things are going bad, that badness has one hell of a foil. "If beauty really did exist there, it meant that my own existence was a thing estranged from beauty." — csalisbury

It's hard to write about in black and white with the proper irony. It may come across like some 'duty' to beauty, but really it's the abolition of duties that aren't personal, authentic. (We have no duty to be authentic. It's its own reward. It feels good.) If you love your wife, you're going to risk your serenity a little, for instance, to help her with a malfunction in her serenity, but probably by trying to talk her back up to the mountain-top where you both belong (creative play, smooth function, absorption in freely chosen projects). And maybe you get a wisdom tooth removed, but you try to lose as little "morale" as possible. "The spirit is a stomach." Sometimes you just can't avoid indigestion, but the idea/ideal is a cast-iron stomach for experience, that can usually turn the bad to good and the good to great. There's no question left about whether one should be happy in such an "evil" world. The accusation of that in the world that can't plausibly be fixed is viewed as an inferior form of digestion, an unstable pose. Though of course I'm always really just speaking from this strange little life and hoping for the pleasure of someone else "getting it" in the same particular but only optional way.

At least for the moment, I'm trying to be content with living by a modest set of malleable maxims (which are kinda meta-maxims, less about doing the right thing every time, but littles rules that let me recognize - and so bypass - certain habitual tendencies, in order to confront things I've been avoiding.) But it could just be that, for now, I need to focus on more mundane, life-structural things. (You've quoted Blake a few times. Problem might be that I've been too eager to soar without worrying about whether I actually wings.) — csalisbury

I relate. Pragmatism (and Kojeve) turned my Blakean Romanticism (I was an "experimental" musician with a dead-end day job) in a more worldly direction. I began to want to "spiritualize" the mundane by shaping a life where my job was my passion. I did play Icarus in my 20s. Angst (and boredom) is maybe in the divorce of the ideal from the mundane. We sew them together, so that everyday life really is more of an adventure.

I like "malleable maxims."

I find that if I can feel my way into a thinker's worldview --itself largely shaped by the heroic role that requires this worldview as a stage -- then I can interpret individual statements more confidently.

I do think men die for abstractions. Men sometimes volunteer for war when they don't have to --when they're own families and property are not in immediate danger. Off to the heroic adventure, in the name of justice and freedom and courage, etc.! They once fought duels over honor. Men still get into stupid fights in bars over the their identification with some particular heroic notion of being a Man. Our self-esteem looks to me to be largely about a sensed proximity to valorized concepts.

Yes, concepts structure the sensuous, but it is still there is an "primordial" way as a non-it. Intense pain, intense pleasure, the howl of an ambulance siren. Whatever concept structures them, they exceed this concept. Reading about heartbreak or remembering and old heartbreak is different from experiencing heartbreak. I'm pretty sure men have slaved away and passed up material advantage for the glamor of pursuing universal truth.

Well, hell. I'd never deny cherry-picking. That's how personalities are constructed, in my view. Drive your cart and your plough over the bones of the dead. I take "creative misreading" and the absolute rejection of authority for granted. So I don't quote Blake or anyone as an authority. But I really do despise flatness and scientism. Still, I can't take politics or world-saving seriously. I vote, but really the world is much bigger than me. Intellectuals tend to want to take responsibility for the world, to implicity present themselves as leaders to a better future. I don't condemn this, but I see it from the outside. I sometimes miss the experience of mystery. I had intense experiences of wonder at the thereness of the world as a child and young adult. I'm a godless man, and don't mind describing atheism as a sort of "faith." I experience the world as an amoral machine or frame in which human beings interact according to various clashing concepts and myths. I really believe that religion (or "religions" other than mind) get the job done for others, maybe just as well or even better. But my "religion" works for me, so the inquiry is mostly playful or mostly a matter of figuring out how to write the "poetry" of this idiosyncratic "religion" that confesses its idiosyncrasy.

I find iconoclasm in Blake. The human imagination is the forge of the gods. Hence it is the "true" god. But it only exists (for me and the Blake below) in living, breathing human beings. The infinite is revealed to the senses and emotions, in the face of one's lover, for instance. This reappears in Feuerbach --and Stirner who dedicated his book to his "sweetheart."

The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me, and I asked them how they dared so roundly to assert that God spoke to them; and whether they did not think at the time that they would be misunderstood, and so be the cause of imposition.
Isaiah answer’d: ‘I saw no God, nor heard any, in a finite organical perception; but my senses discover’d the infinite in everything, and as I was then persuaded, and remain confirm’d, that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God, I cared not for consequences, but wrote.
Then I asked: ‘Does a firm persuasion that a thing is so, make it so?’
He replied: ‘All Poets believe that it does, and in ages of imagination this firm persuasion removed mountains; but many are not capable of a firm persuasion of anything.’
Then Ezekiel said: ‘The philosophy of the East taught the first principles of human perception. Some nations held one principle for the origin, and some another: we of Israel taught that the Poetic Genius (as you now call it) was the first principle and all the others merely derivative, which was the cause of our despising the Priests and Philosophers of other countries, and prophesying that all Gods would at last be proved to originate in ours and to be the tributaries of the Poetic Genius.
...
The ancient tradition that the world will be consumed in fire at the end of six thousand years is true, as I have heard from Hell.
For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his guard at tree of life; and when he does, the whole creation will be consumed and appear infinite and holy, whereas it now appears finite and corrupt.
This will come to pass by an improvement of sensual enjoyment.
But first the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul is to be expunged; this I shall do by printing in the infernal method, by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid.
If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.
For man has closed himself up till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.
...
Some will say: ‘Is not God alone the Prolific? I answer: ‘God only Acts and Is, in existing beings or Men.’
...
I have always found that Angels have the vanity to speak of themselves as the Only Wise. This they do with a confident insolence sprouting from systematic reasoning.
Thus Swedenborg boasts that what he writes is new; tho’ it is only the Contents or Index of already publish’d books.
A man carried a monkey about for a show, and because he was a little wiser than the monkey, grew vain, and conceiv’d himself as much wiser than seven men. It is so with Swedenborg: he shows the folly of churches, and exposes hypocrites, till he imagines that all are religious, and himself the single one on earth that ever broke a net.
Now hear a plain fact: Swedenborg has not written one new truth. Now hear another: he has written all the old falsehoods.
And now hear the reason. He conversed with Angels who are all religious, and conversed not with Devils who all hate religion, for he was incapable thro’ his conceited notions.
...
One Law for the Lion and Ox is Oppression.
...
— Blake

I know of no other Christianity and of no other Gospel than the liberty both of body & mind to exercise the Divine Arts of Imagination.

Imagination the real & eternal World of which this Vegetable Universe is but a faint shadow & in which we shall live in our Eternal or Imaginative Bodies, when these Vegetable Mortal Bodies are no more.
What is the Divine Spirit? is the Holy Ghost any other than an Intellectual Fountain? What is
the Harvest of the Gospel & its Labours? What is that Talent which it is a curse to hide? What are the Treasures of Heaven which we are to lay up for ourselves, are they any other than Mental Studies & Performances? What are all the Gifts of the Gospel? Are they not all Mental Gifts?
Is [not] God a Spirit who must be worshipped in Spirit & in Truth and are not the Gifts
of the Spirit Every-thing to Man? O ye Religious, discountenance every one among you who shall pretend to despise Art & Science! I call upon you in the Name of Jesus! What is the Life of Man but Art & Science? What is Mortality but the things relating to the Body, which Dies? What is Immortality but the things relating to the Spirit, which Lives Eternally! What is the Joy of Hea- -ven but Improvement in the things of the Spirit? What are the Pains of Hell but Ignorance, Bodily Lust, Idleness & devastation of the things of the Spirit?
Answer this to yourselves, & expel from among you those who pretend to despise the labours of Art & Science, which alone are the labours of the Gospel: Is not this plain & manifest to the thought? Can you think at all, & not pronounce heartily! That to Labour in Knowledge. is to Build up Jerusalem: and to Despise Knowledge, is to Despise Jerusalem & her Builders.

And remember: He who despises & mocks a Mental Gift in another; calling it pride & selfishness & sin; mocks Jesus the giver of every Mental Gift, which always appear to the ignorance-loving Hypocrite, as Sins. But that which is a Sin in the sight of cruel Man is not so in the sight of our kind God. — Blake

I'd say look to context. You've maybe heard my spiel about "meaning by fiat." The unit of meaning is at least as big as a conversation. But maybe the unit of meaning is a personality, etc. We have to get a sense a person's basic self-image. In this context, abstracta are real because we live for them and die for them. They are a thick layer on the merely sensual, itself disclosed by concept.

There's a lot of pseudo-enlightenment. So, while I really do believe in the reality of awakening, I also believe that in reality it is very rare, notwithstanding all the people who imply they understand it. — Wayfarer

I get that. But how does one distinguish? That's exactly why there's a taboo against being "flaky" or superstitious. I'm really not trying to give you hell or disrespect you. I'm just explaining my own difficulties with or resistance to your image of enlightenment. You say "it," implying that it is singular. Do you count yourself among the enlightened? I sure as hell wouldn't blame you or accuse you for that. That's my Blake-inherited image of the artist-poet. My objection is with what I see as a half-way position, where there is in theory a "real" but unattained enlightenment against which the claimed enlightenment of others can be false. This doesn't for a moment mean that I don't ever experience this or that person as "full of sh*t." If the goal is happiness, however, we can demand that our dispensers of wisdom be pretty damn happy or well-adjusted. As far as reading this happiness goes, well that's largely in the realm of gesture and tone. We see it in the eyes and the walk, hear it in the voice. Dance and music are in this sense revelations of enlightenment.

It depends. Everything is transient, I think the beginning of the path is the awareness of that. — Wayfarer

I guess I associate happiness precisely with "enoughness." I do think awareness of the transience of all things is hugely important. Or it was for me. We leap like flame from melting candle to melting candle.

.

Do philosophers tend to live best? — csalisbury

Yes, yes. If one's goal is a beautiful, joyful life, then everything is lit up by this goal. One can see various fundamental "poses" from the outside. Knowledge is secondary, unless one has committed to this narrowing down of the notion of beauty. I love the objective, if you'll call math objective, but as I writer I want to carve an image of the heroic, beautiful mind --just as I've pursued this image as a reader.

Its also true, as Hoo says below that we (sometimes at least) need to be able to "laugh off the worst and most absurd aspects of life", but even more importantly we need to be able to take them seriously without being consumed by them; and I think therein lies the greatest wisdom, for which comedy is only a refreshing aid or nimble assistant. — John

But for me taking them seriously more or less is being consumed by them. If you just mean that we have to step up and take care of business sometimes, then I completely agree. And then, yes, a sense of cosmic/comic distance is indeed a nimble assistant.

I think this is why the spiritually enlightened see things as they do - it is because they are alive to the totality, hence characeristic expressions such as 'all is one'. — Wayfarer

I like holism. I can't lump the "spiritually enlightened" altogether, because maybe there is a plurality of states worth being described as "enlightened."

The nature of 'awakening' is to be completely awake and alive to the immensity of this current moment of reality. — Wayfarer

I like the idea of being very alive and very aware. I'm a little suspicious of the sleeping/waking metaphor being taken too far. Isn't happiness enough? Just to hug one's wife with a warm heart or to laugh with one's friends over a cosmic joke or the joke of the kosmos...That's awake enough for me.

Disclaimer: this is a state that I know that I don't know, but at least I know that I don't know it. — Wayfarer

But if you don't know it, what does it mean to know that you don't know it? Are you suggesting a goal that you can't guarantee the attainment of ? I prefer the idea of getting better at life. The dark stuff washes off one's back more easily and more often. Sometimes, nevertheless, some heavy lifting must be done. I'd prefer not to have hold up or pursue an image of total "escape." Is it not better to say that those free, playful moments that you've already known since childhood can become more and more common? I get this from the Tao. We unlearn the pieties and pretensions that cramp the better, authentic parts of ourselves.

The fact that Heidegger was, for at least a brief moment, a Nazi, cannot be relevant to the philosophy of Being and Time, as I see it. — John

I don't mean to be dramatic about it, but we're talking about the same guy. I get the "prophet" vibe from Heidegger. "Only a God can save us." I'll gladly take from him what I can use. But what was his myth of himself? Was the modern world all f*cked up in his view? Did he have the diagnosis if not the cure? I can only follow Rorty so far, too, since there's still politics at the center. Thinkers propose themselves as leaders of humanity as a whole rather than as tool-makers for a certain kind of sufficiently similar individual. It's a bringing of stone tablets down from the mountain. I'd be surprised if Heidegger wasn't wired this way from the beginning, considering his theological roots. (I've been wired away from duty and politics almost from the beginning, so philosophy was a flaming sword against being swallowed by guilty solidarity.)

It seems more like you're trying to reduce the ready-to-hand to the present-at-hand, to be honest. :P — John

Maybe I'm trying to show the instability of this distinction. We makes things present-to-hand in order to fix them and finally to lose ourselves in "the seriousness of a child at play," or "maturity" for Nietzsche. "Evil is burned up when we cease to behold it." (Blake)

This presupposition comes straight from the modern materialistic scientistic paradigm that we all inhabit more or less as fishes-in-water, and it forgets the fact that the greatest philosophies-as-transformation used precisely the opposite kinds of concepts to any presumptions of finitude to achieve their transformative power. Without the infinite the possibility of radical transformation shrinks to a dimensionless point. — John

IMV, Radical transformation in inspired as a reaction to the un-readiness-to-hand of the concept system at the highest level. Science wins its prestige technologically, I think. It moves around the obvious objects, gives us painkillers and root-canals and cell phones. As I see it, we are forced to integrate this fairly-won prestige in a greater whole. I'm willing to render unto Newton what is Newton's and find the rest in concept and feeling as concept and feeling. There's infinity enough for me here anyway, though I don't pretend to offer a general solution. I feel more or less wised-up, but for me this involves the abandonment of responsibility for humanity at large as well as the notion that there is one right way to be wised-up.

I had Louis C. K. in mind. The best comedians laugh off the worst and most absurd aspects of life. They're also especially authentic. They convert extra-ordinary self-honest into unpretentious, hard-to-systematize wisdom.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efqqCvUAgK4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dF1NUposXVQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akiVi1sR2rM

Yes, I had a sense that I was moving against Heidegger, but that's almost to be expected. He was a Nazi. Where did he go wrong? I'm not fishing after his intentions so much as redeploying some fascinating concepts/'noticings.' I've seen him largely through the lens of Rorty, so far, and read a few secondary courses: Steiner, Caputo, Versenyi, Greene. I did just buy a copy of Being and Time, since I've decided to endure the writing style for the sake of the concepts of equipment and world-disclosing. I also think thrownness and ownmost death are right on.

I'm trying to reduce the present-to-hand to the ready-to-hand. I think life is about getting back into smooth operation, disappearing joyfully into the finite projects life is made of, perhaps for-the-sake-of an endless self-enlargement and pursuit of greater authenticity. The possible futility of the subject-object epistemological games can be read as the "becoming unready" of paradigm. The subject is disclosed by interruption of smooth functioning on the one hand and deployed in the smooth functioning of more abstract equipment. Inquiry strives to make the un-ready-to-hand ready-to-hand again. Something like that...

One shall know them by their fruits. — Agustino

I agree. Show me the life! Beyond words there is a life actually lived, giving words weight. I don't think you're a pragmatist, but that's largely what it means to me. I respect your beliefs and anyone's beliefs that allow them to live well (without preventing me from doing so). We'd probably vote in different directions, but I'm glad you're here (and that Wayfarer is here) to keep up the 'biodiversity' of ideas.

I wonder if modern civilization is in more chaos than usual, though. Perhaps in ages of less social mobility and information, there was less temptation to wander from the Official Answers. But there was more physical discomfort, certainly. So we seem to have gained physical comfort at the cost of a more difficult spiritual adolescence. For me life is no longer a chaos. I navigate the concrete jungle with a strong sense of why I bother and how to bother. Certainly, I see the damned on the public transportation system. I don't often see acute pain, but I see the look of mere survival and reduced expectations. But when I look around at my fellow grad students or friend group, I mostly don't see this brokenness. So-and-so gets divorced, etc., but I see happiness enough. At the moment, one of my friends is dealing with heartbreak.Her problem with life just now is simply the finding of a good man (or the re-caging one in particular).
In my youth, I deeply suffered the "spiritual" problem, but I think that such intensity is rare. Maybe thinking types are those especially pained by cognitive dissonance or just grandiose in their expectations (too much breast milk, I like to joke). So only we bother to iron out the pluralistic "disaster," sometimes into a transcendent irony. Others can fold into bumperstickers and a cheap solidarity, untouched by anxiety of influence or an itch for the profound.

I think we more or less agree. I'm just pointing at the space outside the space of philosophy's tendency to be solemnly objective. How often do see a "this works for me, so maybe you'll want to try it" attitude? It's so often depersonalized and anti-comic. I find it in politicians, too.

Exactly. There's certainly nothing wrong with rigor or systematization, and constructing well-wrought arguments (as well as finding the chinks in the arguments of others) can be deeply rewarding in-and-of-itself. The problem is that most philosophers seem to labor under the pretense that they're developing (or contributing to) a profound understanding of reality or of knowledge or of x. The pretense that their philosophy is (or is a key part of) the understanding. — csalisbury

Right. Systems aren't bad. We want our concepts to work well together. But there's a trans-propsitional irony or "feel" that is perhaps more important than any proposition. There's maybe a place above propositions, even if it's just feeling and Nietzsche's "light feet."
Yes, philosophers often act as if they've finally, definitively tamed the totality, which includes the future. But their discourse revealing the Real adds to the very Real (itself structured by discourse) it hopes to explain or dominate. Itself it could not save, though the best moves in the game account for their own generation (I loved this in Kojeve, and I find this in pragmatism as a meta-tool by its own light). They increase complexity as they "reduce" it. They put another tool in the tool-box, opening up new vistas and the possibility of still newer tools.

But what typically happens is that they simply excise everything but what they're comfortable with (or what, despite being uncomfortable, is susceptible to a type of manipulation or explication which is comfortable) and then manipulate and explicate until everything is properly arranged. — csalisbury

It's as if they are offering a fascinating peep at life/reality/God/Truth

(TGW characterized socratic questioning as being 'sufficiently penetrating.' I'd characterize it as dealing with concepts broad enough (love, truth, justice, knowledge) that the defense of any positive proposition about them can be unraveled after n questions (where n is a function of the defendant's talent for deferral-through-qualification.) The point of socratic irony is aporia. Or, as TGW says, "Once the desire for these things diminishes, and the practical incoherence of seeking them is seen to be contradictory on its own terms, the desire to be a metaphysician goes with it." ) — csalisbury

Yes. The ladder is thrown away as we sit on the cloud of the ironic transcendence of yet-another-justification. The fire and the rose are one. But the earnest metaphysician wants this to be an empirical statement or the result of word-math or an objective truth. No, it's a joke or password

It's clear, reading the guy, that he has the capacity. — csalisbury

I don't know Bathelme, but I think of Kafka or the early Henry Miller as darkly humorous wisdom writers. Philosophers are often so solemn, so serious in their scientistic lab coats. Sartre is a twisted case. There's such a mix of insight and earnestness there. He's a poet of radical freedom in one breath and just another righteous political idealist in another. Infinite duty and infinite solemnity is just sad. I don't like to imagine a life with a space where one laughs with the gods beyond good and evil and the obsession with objective truth. It's like The Trial or The Castle, the haunting of the self by an invisible judge or law. "Nothing is funnier than unhappiness."

More importantly: if abstracta do exist (and I think they do), what does this mean for us? What does it mean that they exist? — Pneumenon

I think they're real, too, or that it's a bit silly to deny them this description. We live so much in the realm of ideas.

One concern that comes up when speaking about relativism is that it doesn't allow us to condemn Nazi Germany. — shmik

Does it prohibit us from bombing them in the name of our household gods? Maybe we have to distinguish between an abstract relativism and a gut-level active investment in ideas of what reality "should" look like. "We want things this way. That's enough."

It does feel as though you lose something when you lose the 'Wrong' and end up with just a 'wrong'. What exactly is it that we lose, and why are we so reluctant to give it up? — shmik

I'd say that we should look into the justification of violence. An in-group has standards for how members can treat one another. If a speaker for the group as a whole argues that the group should take something from another group, simply because it has superior might, then this leads to cognitive dissonance. Why shouldn't the members of the in-group secretly adopt this policy within the group?

So we project God or rational universal principles that justify or sanctify greed-driven violence.

Another factor is perhaps that the individual wants to rewrite the luck of his birth and superior position in terms of something else. He wasn't just lucky. He's a higher being, closer to Right or at least farther from Wrong.

It can be philosophical, but I don't think it can count as philosophy, in its more systematic mode, in any case. — John

But one might in their defense read their narrative, non-systematic vision of the world as a different way to do philosophy-as-worldview or philosophy-as-wisdom. Where does Notes from Underground fit in? Or Tropic of Cancer? In narratives we get words in context. It's not just what is said but who and in what situation. I find myself looking into people who write the philosophy I like. I want pictures, lifestyles before, during, and after their writing. For instance, Sartre and de Beauvoir had that unorthodox relationship. He was a small, ugly man with a lazy eye, raised as he was raised. I think of Kant and his clockwork walks, Schopenhauer and the guns by his bed, Stirner wandering around forgotten after a moment of fame, Descartes getting out on those cold mornings that killed him to tutor a hipster princess. Oh, yeah, and very good looking Derrida and his son with a women not his wife. Hegel knocked up a maid. Socrates learning philosophy from fighting with his wife. Good stuff.

So what I highlighted are two ways that art has been pulled out of the ordinary in modern life - first as a product to consume, and second as a new ground for status games. — apokrisis

Yes, but there's some art out there that tries to express the highest feelings and insights. I get that from old religious paintings sometimes. At it's best its point is to exceed the ordinary and represent the rare but possible. Or steer an entire culture toward a new image of virtue. Spengler surely influenced me on this. A culture dies into civilization with its art, perhaps.

I pretty much agree with the sentiment and think the spiritualization and sentimentalization of music can get a little gaudy, even in philosophers. — The Great Whatever

Lester Bangs interviewed Dick Clark once and Dick Clark called rock and roll "hamburgers and hotdogs." That's always stuck with me.

Nothing, not even the most delicate or powerful mass, comes close to Job or Ecclesiastes, and as for something as tepid as a Vivaldi concerto or whatever, forget it. This was one reason in my youth I found religious sentiments so plausible – the proof was in the pudding, mankind's works apparently impotent compared to the sheer and obvious power of the divinely inspired that Scripture seemed to provide. — The Great Whatever

Yes, Job and Ecclesiastes. Hell yes. But also the spiritual visions of the more relevant-to-life philosophers.

True consolation needs to come from edification, not mere impression. — The Great Whatever

Indeed.

The heroic mind. Freedom, power, beauty, laughter. Who do we think we should we be? How does/did this who change? How do/did we get there, or close enough?

This aesthetic component, though, is only really helpful when you aren't suffering. — darthbarracuda

I think I've been about a low as one can go. I would not have been lifted up by my own words. I already "knew" all that. Last time I was hit was about 5 years ago, after watching The Killing, getting sick, and living near the disgusting, throbbing noise of some bars nearby. It was like the return of an old "friend" that I thought I had left behind in my 20s. I had great things in my life, but I couldn't love anything or anyone but the idea of death. So life was just horror and noise and futility. I call it the "black dragon." It was eating me alive in my depths. I met some new people about this time and probably came across as Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon, drinking etc., with a recklessness that is nothing like me. I escaped somehow and fell back in love with life. But not long ago, one of the most beloved and talented people in my peer group committed suicide in a very dramatic and brutal way. I've known junkies quite who've overdosed. That we could see coming. But this other guy...his suicide was something you might see in a movie. He had talent, a good job, local fame, a beautiful wife. I think I know what got him. Anyway, I'm just stressing that it's not (imv) primarily an intellectual problem, because I have the same beliefs that I did in the dark. The heart fails. Maybe it's internalized violence. One tries to live virtuously and represses the predator, who appears on the inside.

The idea of a Stoic sage sounds sublime and amazing - but we would actually rather just not feel bad in the first place. What doesn't kill you will sometimes make you wish it had. — darthbarracuda

I do love the Stoics, but for me there's a more radical image. The Stoics are still quite solemn and defensive. I do think we have to "stop the bleeding" and buy ourselves time to think or some minimum space for dignity. Frankly, I relate to a subversive reading of Christ (via Blake). I use reason, but "transrational" metaphors/myths are (to me) more important. I don't believe I can "prove" that life is worth living. It is a leap of faith. But, yeah, it exposes one to disaster. There's always the temptation to get disaster over with once and for all.

Zapffe wishes to live existentially authentic (and thus would have a bit of pride for doing so, possibly one of the only things keeping him going), or Zapffe is merely pointing out a facet of life, just as he would be if he said that humans breathe oxygen. — darthbarracuda

I relate to the quest for authenticity. But for me this involves acknowledging the "evil" in the soul. We do have empathy that's genuine, but our desire to be superior is every bit as genuine. And 'sacred' altruism would be the superiority-quest masked as empathy. Just to be clear, I'm a "nice guy." I'd be ashamed to steal, lie, humiliate, etc. My devil is the light-bringer.

I'll be honest with you because I think you are being honest, and I think this is a very important point. — darthbarracuda

Thanks. I am. And I respect your sincerity and directness. And I respect that you bother to address my criticisms or objections or questions. "Opposition is true friendship." (Blake)

Pessimists argue their point because of two (conscious) reasons: they want someone to prove them wrong, or they're extremely discontent with the system and want things to change.

Again these are not mutually exclusive. I'm not content with the system. I think it is a useless, ironic and senseless machination. And yet, pace Nietzsche's dialogue on Schopenhauer, I have an acute desire to affirm existence once again. Just as Nietzsche praised Schopenhauer while simultaneously having a heart that cried out for something more, I tend to be a reluctant pessimist. I don't like being a pessimist. I don't think anyone worthy of being called a pessimist should like being one (i.e. like the fact that the world is shitty): that would go against the entire idea of pessimism. And yet I feel compelled to consider myself a pessimist because all the other positions fall short. — darthbarracuda

Life's a bitch, really. I've been through the Bukowski phase in a now-golden relationship (terrible, terrible fights and tender reconciliations.) Life is a woman. That's a good metaphor. I've pined for a woman I couldn't have before and asked myself if I wanted to just switch off the "love" I felt. I had to answer "no." Because the death of that love would be the death of her beauty (for me). The beauty of the world itself was concentrated there. I think life is irrationality affirmed. It's like Nietzsche's critique of Socrates. Reason steps in with the instincts fall out of harmony. Do you read much literature? Tropic of Cancer, Ham On Rye, Catch 22 IMV, there's something trans-propositional to be had from books. There's a piety toward reason in philosophy that traps it. Pessimism is a strong position. I loved Rust in True Detective Season 1. There's also Wolcott in Deadwood, whose more Dostoevskian. I guess I got this image of Shakespeare as a symbol from Harold Bloom. I'm glad that I contain the grimly beautiful pessimist.

But there's another facet of pessimism that has been growing steadily inside me recently, that of not just discontent but legitimate concern and outrage at the state of the world. I'm becoming more and more angry at the instrumentality of the world. I'm not only saddened by the suffering of others but am also indignant. You could say that I'm becoming a bit more radical in my views, especially in terms of ethics. Things need to change, and they need to change now. — darthbarracuda

I've been there. There's no simple answer. The world is a meat grinder. History is a slaughter-bench. I won't being to deny it. Yet I affirm it. Maybe I'm more selfish or complacent than others, or maybe my sense of responsibility fell away in the critique of what I call 'sacred' altruism. I didn't make this world. I contribute my part to its suffering, of course, but it's bigger than me. My self-destruction would possibly add as much misery as it might remove. So I just look to what is in my power. I also reason that someone should manage to enjoy this place. Eventually man will be probably be wiped out. I used to fear Hellfire as a child. At least we're pretty sure that all suffering is temporary. And, finally, there's the question of how much repressed cruelty may play a part in this. I believe that part of us all wants to kill, destroy, humiliate. We just have to harmonize the entire self so that our behavior is decent.

Perhaps my current state of indignation is merely another illusion. Maybe altruism and humanitarianism is also another illusion, but I kind of doubt it. — darthbarracuda

My honest opinion (judging from my own experience) is that its a mixture of genuine empathy and 'sacred' altruism = repressed elitism. But I can only guess from my own strange life experience (which has not been all that ordinary, though I've learned to project that

This is not as elegant as not having problems to begin with. Do we really have to have problems just so they can be solved? — darthbarracuda

I hear you, but we can rephrase this in terms of "do we really have erections only so that we can have sex?" I wrestle with math proofs. It is such a joy to get that key insight. We are wired for this, I'd say. Even your sense of elegance is founded on solving all of the problems of life in one fell swoop. I really do see the beauty in that. Suicide is a diamond. If I get a terrible disease, I may indeed euthanize myself with a proud smile.

We are all our own white knights in shining armor. — darthbarracuda

This is it, man. This is the authenticity in an 'enlightened' egoism. The master wants to recognize and and be recognized by another master. Kings saluting kings. Let them be kind kings, because it feels good to be kind. Let them selfishly be kind. Aristotle's magnanimous man. If this "white knight" structure is truly ineluctable, then there's nothing wrong with it. It's just how things are. So criticisms of narcissism can only really make sense as criticism of a sh*tty particular vision of the white knight. For me philosophy as wisdom is largely about comparing and contrasting constructions of the heroic image, completely self-consciously. In fact, my white knight is a hero of self-consciousness and authenticity. The game recognizes itself for what it has always been. So runs the narrative of progress --which is of course recognized as such. This is why I really feel at something like an end of (personal) ideological history. I've been here for years now, working on details, the core untouched, untroubled.

Indeed the aesthetics of a metaphysical principle seem to completely independent of the nature of the principle itself - thus imo the only defensible pessimism is the one that puts human welfare at front-and-center. — darthbarracuda

Still, it hard to sincerely love others without loving one's self. "Sacred" love or mere duty is alienation and self-mutilation. And material comforts aren't enough to guarantee welfare anyway, so maybe there's a place at the center for the man who knows how to love life. Blake saw the artist as someone who had an ecstasy to communicate, a gift to spread around. I think it has to start at the very center of a person, with self-love, and friend love, and outward....

I listen to music on the bus, an otherwise dreary place. It's like a drug. Music is a drug. Some of the best lyrics, powerfully delivered, are the ideal presentation/celebration of poetic insight.

Novels and good TV, at their best, are at least as important as much of philosophy when it comes to wisdom or worldview formation. Tropic of Cancer woke me up to the notion that literature didn't have to be a "wine and cheese" affair. I sometimes see a sort of snobbery about good TV or good rap that to me is just silly prejudice, an idolatry of yesterday's forms. When I think of the Stones or the Doors at their best, it's just obviously a fuller and more heroic personality that the solemn quasi-scientific pose toward life. So art addresses the entire animal, perhaps. Whitman, for krissake!

Actually I loved Nausea, too. I reread it recently and half of it was still great. Brave New World, 1984, Lolita, The Possessed, Catch 22, Immortality, Blood Meridian, Portnoy's Complaint... Personality in full, in context.

My understanding is that Ray Brassier, for instance, would consider such a view to be nothing more than a thinly veiled anthropomorphism, and of course many post-Heideggerian phenomenologists would take issue with the notion that reality is exhausted by the conceptual. — Aaron R

On the first point, I'm skeptical about an escape from an anthropomorphism-- and about the need to escape, which is human, all too human.
On the second point, I think we can easily assert that emotion and sensation exceed the concepts we need to point at them. So reality is more than concept, but does it make sense to posit a thing, an intelligible unity, beyond this system of tings? It looks like the natures or essences of things are interdependent/systematic. "No finite thing has genuine being." And pointing outside of this system looks like an empty negation or the sort of thing addressed by Parmenides, though I'm not sure he had this in mind.

What I was trying to get at it is that since the mind-conceived 'mind-independent world' is always, obviously, conceived; then it is always conceptually articulated. We cannot have any idea what it could mean for something to be actual and yet not be in conceptualized form; any such thing would thus be "as nothing". — John

Yes, indeed. I think it's the collision of common sense (bumping into objects) with a more rigorous abstract thought. Logically, there is no thing outside the thing-system = concept-system. But this is such a violation of sanity that we just drag it in, since it involves less cognitive dissonance.

Actually, I love that line. "I am the truth." Seriously, there's a Blakean or Satanic reading of the Gospels that has really influenced me. It's in Saint Paul, too. "Christ is the end of the law." You can trace Romantic Satanism and Stirner/Nietzsche back to subversive readings like these perhaps. Another great line: "Before Abraham was, I am" It's a shift from piety toward the Truth to a piety toward the living self who uses truths as tools rather than as idols. The identification is direct rather than indirect. Just as the priest mediated between the laity and God, so does " pure reason" mediates between the philosopher and Truth. But the whole game of proximity to the idol Truth via pure reason can be thrown over as a bit of con --or at least as a clunky and solemn pose, inferior to others in the gallery of options. (Practical life is something else, of course. Banal correspondence, etc.)

Right! Another great book I read, years ago, by sociologist Peter Berger, 'The Heretical Imperative'. The gist was, in the olden days, you were told what to believe, 'heresy' means 'deciding what to believe'. Whereas nowadays we all have to 'decide what to believe' - hence the title. — Wayfarer

Yes, indeed. We have to make any tradition deeply our own. It's not real till we have twisted its proteins into our own. That's what I find in Jesus' "eat me!"

A pluralistic culture requires some psychological hardiness. You'll always be a fool or a sinner to someone out there. But if you are plugged in, it's a self-justifying experience. I guess those of us here like holding our "systems" up to the fire/Inquisition of other systems. We invite clever people to hack away at our most sacred ideas and identifications. That's why I love Hegel. He saw the violence from which the complete spirit is born.

I think a lot of the time there's this unconscious (or conscious) commitment to essentialism, and people want to know what this "essence" is — Michael

Yes, I agree. I call it "word-math." It sure would be nice if language worked like that for philosophers, but I don't think it works like that (or that it's a bad strategy in many cases for getting anywhere worth going.) We need a context of personality and worldly relevance.

The two smokescreens philosophers tend to use today are clear-headed devotion to truth for truth's sake (analytic) and political engagement (contintental). Both self-identifications obscure what's really going on. — csalisbury

I'm very glad to see someone else contemplation self-identifications explicitly. That seems to be the skeleton key. Master words, master images, from which the rest of the persona can be largely deduced, at least in its broad strokes.

↪John
I agree with tgw (& hoo over on another thread) that the will-to-philosophize stems ultimately from dimly understood pains, desires, and anxieties. Most Philosophy seems to have the purpose of shaping and sharpening one's conception of the world in order to keep it within the limits of cognition - in other words, in order to keep it at arms length. Most philosophy is really just clunky poetry resulting from the poet's immense self-limitation.The writers I've mentioned are able (1) to see philosophy for what it is (the irony tgw spoke of) but also (2) since they understand what it is, they can also use it as a theme to be interwoven with other themes. Basically their scope is much greater (& they have much better senses of humor) — csalisbury

This is great. Yes, dimly understood desires, because understanding them almost requires a transition
from an earnest religion of pure reason or a righteous politics to something more ironic, something that transcends anything fixed (annihilating laughter). You mentioned likability. There's a gleam in the eye of likable people that lives at a higher altitude than anything they might have just said, and maybe a sense that any formulation of this irony or this gleam in the eye is always a little too solemn.

Nietzsche and Stirner have their faults, but they could soar for a little while now and then in that irony and laughter. Dostoevsky's humor breaks the scale.

I know the people I like most are very funny, with a deep capacity for irony, yet able to drop the irony when shit gets real. In other words, it has nothing to do with their philosophy, really, except insofar as philosophy is secondary for them. — csalisbury

Well said. Though one might speak of their "deep" philosophy, which is a (joyful, stubborn) commitment to this irony, along with the ability to get their hands dirty when the problem can't be laughed off. I like the idea of peeling away the surface philosophy to see how it serves in the deep structure of life.

I'm coming broadly to a meta-philosophical view of philosophy as ultimately ironic: a Cyrenaic responds only insofar as he is questioned, and defends himself on the terms of the debate that get set up, which doesn't involve (unironic) belief in those terms — The Great Whatever

I like this. Irony at the center, the laughter of the gods at our solemn assertions.

What the metaphysician typically is not, though, is a meta-philosopher. He doesn't understand why he inquires or what it means to inquire, or to get an answer. Usually, I think it has to do with anxiety and control. Once the desire for these things diminishes, and the practical incoherence of seeking them is seen to be contradictory on its own terms, the desire to be a metaphysician goes with it. — The Great Whatever

Exactly.