I remember once watching two men 'battle it out' at work in a way where one tried to prove to the other that they knew better about a subject and yet both didn't actually know what they are talking about. What astonished me in the experience was the tone, the body language, the attitude of confidence as though such behaviour represented 'truth' over the very content itself. — TimeLine

Thank you for jumping in! That part I underlined above pretty much sums up the 'magic' of Trump, I think. It somehow worked! Never apologize. Never show shame. Never show humility. All that really matters is maintaining the pose of superiority. 'Total war! And those fools who have some other goal than this empty victory verily have their reward. ' It's terrifying, really. Of course there were other off-topic factors in that election, but I feel like that's the basic magic. Enough people were just impatient with figure skating and just wanted to see the Hulk leap from the top rope.

It happened on here too between Agu and someone else, I think it was Vagabond and they both looked just as stupid as the other, writing massive essays without contributing intellectually at all. When I said that they should stop and actually talk about the problem in the OP, I got 'no, we have to do this.' Women back away because we know we get brushed aside during this weird Alpha display. — TimeLine

Ah, yes, that's a great example. 'We have to do this.' Compulsive once the fire is lit. It's embarrassing, but I've been there. It's probably good in some ways as a learning experience. I don't think a person learns much without 'sinning.' Still, it doesn't feel good at the time.

As far as women backing away, this is something I've discussed with my girlfriend. As I understand it, she can just feel that the tone is bogus, that it's not real conversation. I think she finds a kind of small-hearted meanness in it, and I think she's right. Of course I don't want to fall into the trap of seeming self-righteous here. I continue to wrestle with and make sense of this stuff.

I want to try to bring this all back. The pessimist view is centered around a demand. The pessimist is someone like Barry, hounded by anxiety-eliciting phone calls. Besieged constantly. What he does isn't confront Hoffman. Instead he says: Listen: life consists of these awful, immiserating phone calls. Do what you will, the phone calls we keep coming. What you need to do, then, is always be aware that no matter what you do, a phone will eventually ring. That's what it comes down to: we run around all we want, but all we're doing is ignoring a ringing phone. — csalisbury

Beautiful. And for me that connects with life is exploitation. Life is 'stupid.' But we like or can sometimes like it for and despite of its nastiness. I loved GoldenEye, the video game, once. There was nothing like dropping someone in the basement with a magnum. 'One shot.' And it feels great to outperform someone, and not just bad to be outshone. And (for completeness) life offers moments of incomparable tenderness. I think the macho-omniscient cynicism is a kind of exoskeleton that protects the gooey girlstuff that keeps reality from being an arid, burning plain. I remember being especially terrified to die when I thought about the end of all the female beauty that that would entail, the end of the possibility of the feeling of beginnings. Jesus & Lucifer, some of life is well worth paying for in suffering. That's probably the basic gut-level reaction to pessimism.

Anyway, I love the ringing phone metaphor.

I was raised religious (not super-strictly, but religious enough) and had the nihilistic vision in response to that. — csalisbury

Ah. I was raised by a supremely tepid Catholic mother and a father who believed more or less in blue-collar masculinity but without the usual restraints on sex (essentially straight but freaky!). Pretty much no civilized discussion or explanation of 'the law' in either case.

I guess more accurately it was visited upon me. We had been studying the egyptians in school and I was like man they really believed in that stuff, as much as we believe in christianity. — csalisbury

I think I was seduced by the grim existential glamor of atheism, and then all the smart people I was reading seemed to be on that side. Freud functioned symbolically for me as a sort of amoral wizard. That's basically still what attracts me in philosophy, that move to be above the fray with a kind of amoral neutrality.

And then I also never felt saved by religion. I used to be terrified of Hell. So accepting my mortality wasn't too much of a price to pay. Basically I 'chose' the unbearable lightness over the unbearable heaviness of being.

But anyway, got into Nietzsche because I thought he'd fit my angry atheist thing, and was quickly, blessedly, disappointed. — csalisbury

Do you mean because Nietzsche demolishes the pose of moral indignation? That was maybe the biggest thing I got from him -- a contempt for self-righteous whining and accusation. It was basically gangsta rap for a small town white boy. By the way, I think today's rap really does tell the truth of the beast and spell out the essence of capitalism with an honesty that's hard to find in intellectuals. Bookishness tends to go with a certain righteous father pose and an underestimation of popular culture, but then many of the snobs hated Shakespeare back then.

Strangely, I got into pessimism after Nietzsche. But then got Nietzsche again, better, after that. I think Pessimism is kind of great as a station along the way. — csalisbury

Yeah, and this is profound. I have fallen into depressions after assimilating Nietzsche. And even though I knew better, I couldn't feel better. All the fine word systems are just nauseating when the lust to be done with the noise takes hold. One gets utterly beyond 'universal' or 'rational' concerns. It is just a raw calculation of whether I wanted to die or not. The bitter, ironic monologue in my head (which I know I've shared with others) was just [static]. And I was lucky without being able to enjoy it. The frozen shit in Dante was spot on. Bukowski wrote about the 'frozen man' in an eeriely convincing short story, and then Kerouac freaks me out with his accuracy in passages in Desolation Angels.

Having survive a few of these intense, irrational bouts, I am glad to have passed through. I am a 'bigger, darker listener' for having done so. (Kerouac in The Subterraneans describes himself as a bigger, darker listener than Ginsberg in the context of some new girl : that's what he had on tap, a bigger darker listening.)

Anyway, maybe pessimism and 'Nietzscheanism' are entangled in both understanding life as aesthetically justified or not. If and when life is 'sexy' enough, the Dionysian position actually works. So I think it's no at all really a matter of rational argument. I think our anecdotal, biographical approach is the right way to talk about this stuff.

Yeahhh, agree. There's some literature (mostly french) on the Marquis de Sade along these lines. The weird thing about his monstrosity is how meticulous it is. 100 Days of Sodom, for instance, doesn't feel all that animal at all - it's more like an exhaustively worked out system of perversity. — csalisbury

I like the Sade mention. I've read some of his shorter works and could never finish his longer works. Too repetitive! I felt 'in' on something with wicked writers like Sade. I agree that it's not essentially animal. It's 'spiritual' in that it depends on transgression. Oscar Wilde joked somewhere about women having the advantage of more taboos to violate. Stolen bread is sweeter. Of course it's dangerous for thinkers to talk about this stuff, because it's hard to not look like a creep. Indeed, this is consciousness of the creep, or the quarter-creep's idealistically self-honest analysis of his own depths. Traditional notions of good and evil fall apart down here, beyond/beneath/before good and evil.

His whole existence is an attempt to maintain a facade of legitimate adulthood while dealing with a simmering rage in the face of these humiliations. — csalisbury

You are opening my eyes to things I didn't notice. I did notice his conscious passivity and cowardice. He could only be a false saint or a beast. And the choreography of his beast moments enraptured me. In pure rage there is no fear.

I probably missed this because my own strategy used to be to delegitimize the adult world. It was a cynical twist on Christian unworldliness. I found myself rooting for Sandler 'just because.' Maybe he was more sinned against than sinning. I wanted Hoffmann's character destroyed.

We recognize Daniel Plainview's massive flaws, but we still respect him, or are at least in awe of him. (want to emphasize this. There Will be Blood is certainly not a celebration of Plainview, but its most sympathetic to him.) Paul Dano, on the other hand, is seen as a shrewd manipulator. He's contemptible, and the movie is basically about how Plainview's skilled attempt at control is ever-shadowed by a weak manipulator with whom he has to vie. — csalisbury

Yeah, that's a pretty great description. And I sympathized with Plainview and hated Dano.

All of this struggle ends in a bizarre, childish humiliation that the director and audience recognizes has been won at the expense of Plainview's soul. — csalisbury

Good point. I was disspointed by this movie the first time. I had built it up. But, when I rewatched it, I found great and complete in a new way. I also felt the nastiness of his attitude toward his 'son' with more intensity. Plainview was buried alive within himself.

Skipping Inherent Vice for now — csalisbury

This one was a bit of a disappointment, but I adore Joanna Newsom as a musician. And Fiona Apple for that matter. Damn you, PTA !

Phantom Thread — csalisbury

Oh I haven't seen this one. I need to check it out.

Unless it's actually a matter of S&M. — frank

Sure, and I'm far from being a prude.

That sort of thing can be a source of creativity. Its more likely to be destructive if its unconscious. — frank

I agree. And I am far from being a man-hater. I just don't want to alienate women. Basically it's just bad form or failed style I have in mind. If the women wants to play 'child' to my 'parent', that's something else. And despite being out of fashion in the collective consciousness, I think it's a big part of actually existing communism heterosexuality. You tell her she's the prettiest, and she tells you that you're the smartest. All is right with the world.

Even bringing it up is a kind of saturnine thing to do, but men and women were on the scene in the discussion. — frank

Ah, well I always thought of philosophy as a pretty saturnine enterprise. Don't mean to offend of course. There's the danger of offending on one side and the danger of saying nothing interesting on the other side.

It's one thing to conceptualize this nobodiness, it's quite another to embody or realize it. Nobodiness can easily be written into the fabric of our personal narrative. — praxis

Right. I agree. I think you missed what I wrote beneath my original quote of Sloterdijk. Here is is, for convenience:

The 'problem' is that this 'nobodiness' easily becomes another sophisticated ego-narrative. Has this or that person achieved a sense of personality being an illusion? Something like the 'noble savage' seems to reappear. — syntax

Well, a major part of my meta-narrative is 'institutional religion getting it wrong from the outset'. — Wayfarer

Ah. OK. That's helpful.

When I studied comparative religion and history of ideas, I was struck by the fact that there seemed to be no obvious equivalent to the Indian understanding of mokṣa (spiritual liberation) in the Western religious traditions. — Wayfarer

I've studied a little bit of religion from the East, especially the Tao and some of the popularizers. I was personally surprised to experience Richard Rorty as something like a Taoist. He strikes me as trying to wake people up from being trapped in word-games and useless dualisms. I'm not seconding every thing he ever wrote, but I think that he is profoundly anti-profound, let's say. He paints of vision of clinging to nothing, of no longer reaching for foundations, of a centerless creative culture where love is pretty much the only law.

What has been lost in the transition to modernity, is the sense of the basic fallibility of human reason, corrupted as it is by the 'original sin'. — Wayfarer

I look at it mostly in a different way. Science has such prestige because we are so wary about the other approaches to truth. While we can doubt interpretations of science, none of us can really doubt technology. Of course thinkers will therefore tie themselves to the prestige of technology to be taken more seriously. A philosophical or religious tradition may have prestige for a sub-community, but this is not at all binding on those whose identities are not already entangled in such traditions. An engineer might scoff at the philosophy major as a pretentious idealist wasting time on old books. I don't agree, but I have seen this contempt. And our philosophy major can exaggerate the importance the longwinded expressions of ideas that are actually pretty simple. If we really only respect technological power, then a nihilistic pragmatism fits on an index card.

If the philosophy is supposed to serve a religious/moral purpose, then that looks suspect through the lens of the cynic who lives in a polarized environment. In short, it looks like venerable old books being used for this or that contemporary political purpose. After all, students are graded to some degree for ideological purity --or that's my prejudice. In short, we live in a chaos of voices that call one another liars and creeps. Technology is the one thing that cuts through all this noise.

Oof, hits close to home. Think you're right tho. — csalisbury

It's a relief to hear someone else relate to this perspective. For whatever morbid or self-incriminating reason, I'm especially interested in this kind of head-butting or patriarchal posturing. I put on my labcoat before I grab the popcorn. Sometimes, in real life, I find myself being the opinionated ideology-critquing A-hole among other A-holes. The women vanish as if by magic. They don't give a queef, in my experience, about what they perhaps perceive as some kind of constipatedly homoerotic ritual. (And if Camille Paglia is right, there is a misogynistic flight from the mother in the deadly-serious nobody's fool pose.) Of course all this soft 'psychoanalytic' stuff is vulnerable to critique and gets sucked into the same game. I do think that I am currently openheartedly trying for an adult-adult conversation (certainly in our case), but god knows it only takes a little condescension to tempt me into a mirroring condescension --or a pseudo-indifferent feigning of infinite loftiness maybe.

It has struck me that what Sloterdijk is talking about in the text that's been quoted is not too different from what I'm saying, is it? — T Clark

Right. You and I and he all seem to understand the value of a kind of 'nobodiness.'

The games make sense without much of the theoretical background. Adult/child don't have to be interpreted as features of the psyche with a rich structure, things still work with the approximation that adult = the responsible, fettered one and child = the irresponsible, free one. Most of the games take on the character of responsibility shifting, disavowal or branding. — fdrake

For me these adult-child-parent roles aren't about deep structures. They are more like modes. In 'mansplaining,' a guy plays 'all knowing daddy' with a woman whom he wants to see as a child. As I see it, the parent role is a huge and dominant temptation for intellectual types. One way to interpret savage flair-ups on forums, for instance, is in terms of two big daddy-egos trying to parent one another. Neither 'omniscient father' will cede the other the phallus-conch, so the ostensible 'content' is thrown away and the frustrated desire to humiliate-parent is vented in 'castrating' insults. The ostensible content does matter, of course. But I think this role-play is quietly very important.

Of course Games People Play doesn't go into all of this, but this is one of the ways I used the basic idea. In my view, some of the key things said in public are hidden in the footnotes or margins. Also for me 'footnotes' includes the general tone of respect of disrespect, openness to learn as opposed to an excessive eagerness to teach.

OK, the theme is fair game now.

Transactional analysis (TA) is a psychoanalytic theory and method of therapy wherein social transactions are analyzed to determine the ego state of the patient (whether parent-like, child-like, or adult-like) as a basis for understanding behavior.[1] In transactional analysis, the patient is taught to alter the ego state as a way to solve emotional problems. The method deviates from Freudian psychoanalysis which focuses on increasing awareness of the contents of unconsciously held ideas. — Wiki

Asking for help from strangers can itself be one of the games people play, which is not to say that I think it should be discouraged. Sometimes it's sincere, but it's natural to be on the lookout for:

Yes, But...

http://www.theemotionmachine.com/3-games-people-play-to-avoid-taking-responsibility/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critique_of_Cynical_Reason


pretty great so far...

I'd recommend 'Games People Play' by Edward Berne. — fdrake

Cool mention. I tend to blend the adult/parent/child paradigm with 'the medium is the message.' I mean the idea that often this adult/child/parent roleplay 'behind' the ostensible message is what's most important to those involved. But this thread is not about that, so ...

So I won't die on this hill, but I think the monstrous inner child and the overdemanding [something like a superego] are closely interrelated. They need each other. — csalisbury

This sounds right. There is also the possibility of a dangerous alignment of the superego and the inner child (of authenticity and criminality.) There is a personality type that can be ashamed of its virtue as a kind of compromise or cowardice. 'I should be true to my anti-social desire to get the most out of this life. I should just let my rage or my lust run free, even if it gets me killed.' Now I'm not personally this 'crazy,' but I understand the position. I can hear that monster grunting in the basement. On the other hand, I think being aware of that monster is one way to keep that monster in check. This is just the old idea that large scale evil tends to be done in the name of the good. Mobs and fanatics can become this monster all while imagining themselves the agents of virtue.

Have you ever seen the movie The Master? — csalisbury

Oh yes. Great director. I watch everything he does.

The movie is a perverse love story. The 'master' needs some utterly unreflective jumble of desire and impulse as the raw material for the imposition of his will (imposed under the false auspices of 'healing') & Freddie seems to need his absolute attention and concern. — csalisbury

Yes. For me, the master is the 'male' who narcissistically enjoys himself from the perspective of his ideal admirer. And the admirer is a chaos who thirsts for an escape from an unbounded cognitive dissonance. (For me this touches on the treacherous terrain of the heterosexual situation. In short, men and women use another as flattering mirrors.)

Infinite demand recognizes infinite demand. They reciprocally provide each other with limits they can't give themselves. — csalisbury

For me the master just wants to be acknowledged as master, and then the non-master does indeeed get his limits from the master, otherwise unable to focus or shape an identity from the chaos of his passions.

My hunch - and its just a hunch - is that children aren't really monstrously demanding the infinite. — csalisbury

As you probably know by now, I had in mind the monstrous inner child of the articulate adult, the adult who is well-read enough to 'justify' to some degree a consciousness of this monster. On the other hand, I remember playing with my G.I. Joes in a way that suggests that the 'real' issue was who I'd let win the fight. It was ideology-free. But then I had a tyrannical father who never justified himself (well, until we both got older and I was no longer dazzled/afraid). Could be contingent, let's say.

From the unskilled parent's perspective the child's inability to do this - its inevitable reversion back to [screaming, punching their sister etc] - does constitute an an unbounded monstrous. The parent doesn't know (probably weren't taught themselves) how emotions work, what their rhythm is - so all they can see is an eternally recalcitrant monstrousness that will always resist their limits. The child, on the other hand, is never taught how to meaningfully engage with their emotions. They just experience an irruption of overwhelming [ ineffable ] which irrupts in a household that has no place for it. Over time this turns into a feeling that certain needs are by nature unbound and unaddressable. If the child goes out on its own, it'll probably wind up in cycles of self-destruction. (One cycle, which I fell into, is one of Salvational Force (Girl, substance, philosophy etc.) disappointment, New Salvational Force etc.) — csalisbury

Fascinating. I definitely relate to a sequence of Salvational Forces. For me the basic threat of the nihilistic vision settled in after a sincere teenaged attempt to get religion. I've read lots of thinkers, but really they all seem like footnotes to Nietzsche, at least as far as salvational force is concerned. 'Live well or off yourself ' was the take-home. The intermediate states basically lost their appeal. And that's where a soft version of embracing the monster slips in. Yeah, the world is 'evil' and 'fucked.' But Jesus the devil hates lukewarm ideology! Don't hurt non-enemies, but reach guiltlessly otherwise. I see I've digressed, but maybe that's useful background for future conversation.

What I kind of think is that you need a more complex and subtle relationship with yourself, where you allow the child wide berth when you can (like the parent who lets the kid run around screaming in the park, waving to the child when it looks back, until he finally wears himself out and wants to nap) and find a gentle way of communicating to it that you need to take control when life requires it. You don't yank its arm, or tell it to shut up. You figure out how to communicate the situation with a kind of affection. — csalisbury

I strongly agree here. I see a lot of general low-level misery, and I interpret it in terms of 'dead inner children.' So the monster I mention is also a friend. We've got to negotiate with the little bastard. He's a threat to life and yet the source of what makes life worth preserving. (Or is this little bastard a she?)

I will reply more at length, but while the thought is with me - have you ever run across Horkheimer’s book The Eclipse of Reason? It’s about the only ‘Frankfurt school’ text I’m familar familiar with and says a lot about this theme. — Wayfarer

Yeah, I've looked into the Frankfurt School, though only briefly into that book. I most recently dipped into Adorno's The Jargon of Authenticity. I like just about any post-Hegelian German philosopher I've looked into, even if (or especially because) I'm never completely seduced by their perspective. Of course this kind of complete seduction is usually one of the great pleasures of being in one's 20s.

However, over time the meaning of ‘secular philosophy’ changed, in that it is often taken to mean or imply that it’s a philosophy that is consciously non- or even anti-religious. That stance is obviously writ large in the writings of so-called ‘secular humanism’ although that spans a wide spectrum of views; but there is a strongly anti-religious strain of that kind of thinking [e.g. everything published by Prometheus Press]. But one consequence of this is, again, anthropological, in the sense that it has implications for ‘the human condition’ or what it means to be human. — Wayfarer

When I think of modern humanism, I think especially of thinkers in the wake of Hegel (Strauss, Marx, Feuerbach). Christianity was made worldly and 'rational.' It was 'perfected' by being blended with philosophy and science. The preceding unworldly or 'irrational' Christianity was understood as man's alienation and as a substitute for building Heaven down here. I think anti-religious feeling largely comes from a sense that returning to old-style religion would be a regression. It is a 'religious' or 'theological' rejection. Since traditional religion is often publicly allied with conservative politics and a repression of intellectual freedom, this suspicion is not absurd.

I find, on this forum, almost everyone will fiercely defend the view that humans are essentially animal.. — Wayfarer

Is it really that simple? I do see an stronger emphasis then before on the animal foundation. But the simple fact that we worry about being virtuous and good in abstract terms already suggests that we hold ourselves to different standards than the other animals. Now this is indeed a fascinating tension in the intellectuals' conception of humanity. If we are 'only' animals, then isn't all this hand-wringing just animal prudence? Even if that's an oversimplification, it's the kind of dark thought that goes with a vision of humans being just one more piece of replicating ooze. As I see it, this is just part of the usual doublethink. We don't have the time or energy to get around to all of our contradictions, largely because of those same animal foundations. If I wasn't subject to violence, starvation, or the treacherous spontaneous deterioration of my own body that makes me dependent on modern healthcare, oh what a tale I might tell. And everyone else is also stapled to this matrix. But that of course supports the significance of our animal foundations, even if it doesn't specifically enforce a broader interpretation of that significance. We are, after all, free to have this conversation.

So the upshot is that what often is said in the name of secular humanism IS philosophically barren. But it’s also true that it doesn’t have to be. Actually it’s got nothing to do with ‘secularism’ as such - what it comes from is taking methodological naturalism as a metaphysical principle, which it isn’t. That’s the problem in a nutshell. — Wayfarer

I'm sympathetic to this. I think some so-called secular humanism is bad or shallow. And then I also think that it's natural to find any rational/scientific approach a little cold and dead. We crave mystery and miracle in a way that makes any adult/reasonable approach to life a little unsatisfying. I personally think that this dangerously touches the lurking inner tyrant.

One thing that we didn't touch on is communism. For me this is a great example of a rational mysticism. It was intensely loaded with righteous fervor, despite a metaphysics that one might expect to make such fervor ridiculous. I think it's a great example of how 'spirituality' can be blended with a 'scientific' self-conception. And maybe this goes back to Plato, in a parodic manner. The fantasy is that knowledge and moral virtue can be one and the same thing. I question this fantasy. I think one roughly has to choose between an amoral accuracy and a righteous faith. Of course that is a position that can be questioned or criticized, and it's one of the reasons I don't quite fit in with my self-righteous, liberal peers. The idea that knowledge and innocence/purity go together leads to intellectual bubbles, in my view.

Interesting observation. Indeed Schopenhauer was independently wealthy. — schopenhauer1

Indeed. I've studied him. He's one of the greats, and he's a great personality to contemplate. I just think that instead of will we have a plurality of wills.

Not in the real world. I haven't seen many "Communities of Existential Thought" in many cities. There's probably one or two somewhere I'm sure on a meetup site, or perhaps just philosophy meetups, but generally there is not. Ironically, we only relegate religious institutions for this kind of thinking, and that is wrapped up in the trappings of supernaturalism, traditions, custom, allegory, and historical baggage. — schopenhauer1

Oh, you meant in the real world. Well, I'm starting to embrace the internet as the 'real' intellectual world. I was recently at a lame party. It got about as deep as Beyonce and a few liberal 'tribal' snorts, and these were educated people. I suspect that there's just cowardice at the root of it. They accurately see their peers as a judgmental/conforming mob with no taste for polite discord. I think people are also afraid of sounding pretentious if they venture beyond pop culture.

Anyway, I came home and read philosophy online for about 8 hours to wash the banality from my mind. And I bumped into an appreciation for the value of the internet in some of these thinkers. It's just too hard to physically arrange live conversation at a high level. And really there's something beautiful to me in written conversation. I like maintaining and developing the skill of written self-presentation.

As far as religious institutions go, I think the real problem there is the expected passivity. Again, I think this forum is pretty close to the ideal. There are some great posters here. I would only ask for more, more, more. Imagine of there were 100 posters as good as the best posters here.

But then, is a life worth starting because it has complexities? The antinatalist does not assume that the answer is yes. — schopenhauer1

I'm neutral on anti-natalism. I really don't know. I do think that it is a hopeless cause. For me a hopeless cause must function as a kind of fashion statement. But maybe that's too cynical.

Starting a whole new life on behalf of someone else seems to me as good a reason for a reason as any other decision. — schopenhauer1

The problem may be in the assumption that some 'rational' justification is possible or desirable. I'm sure you are familiar with kind of approach, but here's a nice statement of it anyway.

Given the terrible truths about the human situation, it is hardly surprising that Nietzsche took so seriously Schopenhauer’s challenge, namely, why prefer life to non-existence? These “terrible truths”
differ, however, in how they inflict their pain. All the “terrible truths” are terrible if contemplated, if internalized, and taken seriously. But some of the terrible existential truths are, of course, constituted by pain and suffering: they are terrible for those undergoing them. I take it that the Schopenhauerian challenge depends primarily on the former, rather than the latter: that is, Nietzsche’s concern is why we who confront seriously the terrible truths about the human situation--even before the ones constituted by pain and suffering befall us—should keep on living, when we know full well that life promises systematic suffering, immorality, and illusion? Why not accept Schopenhauer’s apparent verdict, and give up on life altogether?

There are relatively few claims about Nietzsche that are uncontroversial, but I hope this one is: Nietzsche was always interested in responding to that Schopenhauerian challenge, from his earliest work to his last. And the animating idea of his response also remains steady from beginning to end, I shall argue, namely, that as he puts it in the new 1886 preface to his first book, 1872’s The Birth of Tragedy, “the existence of the world is justified [gerechtfertigt] only as an aesthetic phenomenon” (BT: Attempt 5). He is here explicitly summarizing “the suggestive sentence...repeated several times” in the original work a dozen years earlier: “it is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified” (BT:5) and “existence and the world seem justified only as an aesthetic phenomenon” (BT:24).6 This kind of “justification,” whatever precisely it amounts to, is equivalent in Nietzschean terminology to taking a “Dionysian” perspective on life. — Brian Leiter

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2099162

Of course the pessimist can call this Dionysian perspective bogus and the Dionysian perspective can call the pessimist all kinds of things (cowardly, personally unlucky, and so on). For me it is fact that some people are brighter and happier than others. I think it is far easier for the more gifted and the luckier to embrace the Dionysian perspective. It is an elitist or cruel position in that sense. It ignores or aesthetically 'justifies' the suffering of the less lucky. I think those who roughly conceive themselves in this way also laugh at themselves mockingly.

The antinatalist asks the "why life?" in the first place. It grates on people who never stop to ask this question or who have projects and goals that they do not want to question the importance of. It is a slap in the face- more personal than almost anything else. — schopenhauer1

Maybe among non-philosophers it's annoyingly deep. But I think some philosophers are just annoyed by it as a position. They just think their position is better. In this thread I've seen a real interest in discussing it. Of course those with other positions will discuss it by challenging it. But that's why this forum isn't sterile and boring.

Yes, exactly. From my perspective, this vision of yourself of lacking a meta-narrative is indeed the kind of thing that I mean by meta-narrative. For me it's an abstract identity. Obviously I understand that my perspective is not binding for you. We can drop it, if you like. I intend no offense.

Interesting point and I think there is something to it. This is why there should be existential communities- we can call it "The Joy of Pessimism" akin to the Joy of Cooking or the Joy of Painting :D. — schopenhauer1

I still maintain that we have that right here. Out of curiosity, I've checked out forums of outside intellectual traditions. In my experience they tend to be sterile. Conflict is good. I think we get bored if we aren't allowed to scratch and bite and if we don't run the risk of being scratched and bitten.

But yeah, there's something sexy about pessimism. And it's the same kind of sex-appeal that goes with the cartoon version of existentialism. And then there's the even sexier of sophistication of being too profound for all of these. One starts to wear profundity itself ironically.

As for the production idea of this thread, the point is that we can never have full knowledge of the very world we use to keep us alive. Hunter/gatherers know the man-made tools that they use. Our ancestors did at least. But here we are, using this computer, and I am sure most of us wouldn't know much except generalities about processors, RAM, binary code, source code, etc. that still wouldn't scratch the surface of all the functionalities. Of course, SOMEONE might know every piece of information that goes into how the computer functions (still doubtful because of the programming aspect), but they don't know about some other phenomena that they use in daily life. It is a very subtle point I am making that I think people have missed. — schopenhauer1

I do see what you're getting at. Yes, we are cogs in a machine that none of us understand. Some of us are highly trained in this or that area, but there is just too much specialized knowledge. No one sees the whole anymore, though some of us specialize in seeing the whole stripped of detail (an X-ray of the whole.) Of course such 'X-rays' tend to be biased and self-serving, or at least particular grand narrative tend to include explanations of how opposing grand narratives get it wrong.

This ignorance of the machine as a whole is still something that I think I would like more than digging in the dirt with tools I understand. Even in a simpler world, the presence of that world must remain mysterious.

Read books that you really, really enjoy reading rather than reading books that you think might offer a cure. — Bitter Crank

Yeah, I agree. And maybe read some non-fiction. Being fascinated works for me. One just forgets that one has problems when lost in the contemplation of something that is not one's tired old existential situation.

From the viewpoint of anthropology of religion, there’s probably a reason why such pursuits are the prerogative of ‘meditative minorities’ - namely, because the way is narrow, and the path difficult. — Wayfarer

I agree.

Divesting oneself of the imagined selves and social selves that comprise one’s sense of self, which is what the mystical path entails, goes against the current of everything deemed socially useful. — Wayfarer

I mosty agree here, too. But there is a space in the market for the mystical path. My girlfriend keeps on eye on what the millenials are doing. There are lots of Youtube personalities earnestly presenting various spiritual traditions and home-made fusions of these traditions. Quality varies, of course. And then they make their money through the advertisements that accompany their videos as well as through books. I don't resent their making a profit, since they wouldn't have the time and energy to do what they do otherwise.

In fact, in most religious cultures, the special role of the religious is recognised - the original meaning of ‘secular’ was to demarcate the two kinds of lives. Whereas now it’s all secular [or fancies itself to be, although how much of what it thinks of as ‘secular’ is actually sublimated religiosity is another matter.] — Wayfarer

The public realm has indeed been neutralized or pseudo-neutralized. For the most part spirituality is privatized, but of course there some basic rules (essentially tolerance and property rights) that manifest a dominant conception of the sacred 'above' individual choice, controlling the 'menu.' This for me is a 'sublimated religiosity.' The enforcement of laws and conventions is, in its way, the practice of a living religion/worldview. The state is a god and a vote is a prayer.

A mischievous thought I often have is that the aim of so-called secular or Enightenment philosophy is actually to make the world safe for the ignorant - ‘ignorance’ in the sense of ‘avidya’, spiritually unaware. — Wayfarer

That's one way to look at it. But such philosophy also makes safe a personal search for spiritual awareness. What is the alternative? As far as I can tell, it would be a euphemism for theocracy. Religious freedom is the privatization of spirituality, it seems to me, with all the good and bad that comes with that. An issue that comes to mind is whether power tends to corrupt spiritual institutions. I suspect that, yes, it does.

On the other hands, our spiritually pluralistic democracies/republics may be too chaotic to deal with some pressing issues. I don't see any obvious fixes, though.

Whereas, again, in a religious culture, one’s ultimate identity is understood in terms of union with the Divine or liberation from the wheel of life, secular culture by definition has no aim beyond - well, what exactly? More and more pleasurable experiences, better health, greater utility - ultimately space travel, the physical pursuit of heaven. — Wayfarer

I think you're neglecting an important distinction. I understand secular culture to be a (sort of) neutral background for working out one's own salvation. But you probably mean the global humanism common among atheist/agnostic intellectuals. If so, I can see that there's something shallow in all of it. It is basically a vision of a united world of healthy, amused monkeys who are satisfied with that. I'll be impressed if we can get that far.

Personally, I seek and sometimes find sufficiently profound experiences beyond this kind of thing. I think Rorty is mostly right in his vision of the public/private split. It's safer perhaps to concentrate on these 'animal' basics in the public realm. Again, the danger is that the institution of the holy becomes a 'materialistic' (power-obsessed) tyranny.

Notice the reflexive link between ‘reality’ and ‘survival’. This is because evolutionary biology, which has displaced religion in the meta-narrative of secular culture, can only ever envisage ultimate ends in terms of ‘what survives’. Never mind the Sisyphean connotations of surviving for the sake of surviving - I breed, therefore I am - there’s actually nothing else on offer. There’s only only one kind of end available, and it’s physical. — Wayfarer

I don't think it's like that. Yes, Darwin informs the modern attitude, but Nazis aren't exactly fashionable, and they come to mind when I read your description above. Of course survival is necessary in order to pursue a sort of general enrichment of consciousness. And I think this vague notion of endless enrichment is a more plausible candidate for secular religiosity. This enrichment is cultural, not strictly material. I see, of course, that physical science informs this sense of enrichment, but physical scientists are only the cultural heroes of a tiny segment of the population. Politicians and artists invoke virtues and vices. Be tolerant. Be creative. Be kind. Be productive. Be mindful. Don't be racist, sexist, inauthentic, petty, materialistic, selfish.

And all of this is mostly reasonable. But of course 'tolerance' can be the slogan of the intolerant, and 'open-mindedness' can be the slogan of those who are tired of thinking. But note that we don't hear 'survive at all costs!' Indeed, quality of life arguments for abortion and euthanasia appear among humanists/atheists. I think a certain level of affluence is understood as the precondition for an endless enrichment. That the affluent are afflicted with their own expensive problems is a related issue, which takes us back to the privatization of spirituality. The plan seems to be to give the people with third-world problems a new and improved set of first-world problems. And of course to not sink or nuke our semi-spherical spaceship. And this may be the best realistic plan. But then I am biased. I don't think that suffering can be completely removed from life, or that any spiritual-intellectual tradition can conquer what I'd call a basic ambivalence in the human soul. Life can be bettered but not perfected, in other words.

This alienation from factors of production is a problem as we are atomized from the sources of production- reduced to a tiny infinitesimal fraction of the larger pie. — schopenhauer1

As I see it, drudgery is drudgery. Was it good to dig in the dirt, even in one's own dirt when that was possible? I doubt it. It sounds boring, probably more boring than working in an Amazon warehouse.

It would be nice to not work for anyone, read, write, watch good TV, enjoy a variety of sex partners, never age, have lots of profound friendships, be admired for my creativity, and so on and so on. As I get some of this, it doesn't exactly keep me from wanting more of this. And if I could make a living strictly from my creativity, I still find something to gripe about (lack of immortality, the imperfection of friends and lovers, etc.) That monstrous, infinite hole of abstract appetite is just something one puts up with and is maybe even grateful for.

I anticipate a pessimistic response, and I grant that pessimists have noted the way that desire expands with possession. But this surplus desire or frustration isn't exactly unpleasant. It's the like the tension felt in trying to beat a video game or solve a puzzle.

Frustration is always bound up with self-condemnation. — csalisbury

I like just about everything you've written on this issue, but I think this line leave something out. What about the raging self-love that can lead to frustration? What about the monstrous inner child who always wants more? Or who is tired of being polite, punctual, and prudent? Or tired of being rational, respectable, scientific, etc.? I have in mind a kind of stupid animal rebellion against all constraint, except that it's particularly human in its relation to an unbounded imagination.

Can we have communities of existential discussion? I haven't seen it, and it would be interesting to see how that would work — schopenhauer1

Don't we have that right here and now?

Or do you really mean a community of anti-natalists? And isn't something like that out there?

No one has committed a pessimistic crime by not using their ability for self-awareness regarding their paths of care or circular routines. I don't condemn it, but there is a recommendation to be aware of it. One can be caught up in the routines without knowing the bigger picture of it. When you do see the bigger picture, you tend to see that aesthetic perspective I was talking about of striving will that wraps itself in layers of circular routines in the individual's umwelt. At the bottom of it is a sort of emptiness/boredom- a dull silence that we wrap more routines around. — schopenhauer1

I understand the mood or emptiness/boredom. I bet many of your opponents do, too. So isn't the issue really about how to position this mood in a worldview? Why should this mood be the truth of the matter more than any other mood? In my view, the profound is tangled up with the possibility of this mood. This emptiness is something like a space that allows the parts to move.

But then I'm not trying to be your opponent. Maybe life's grand and maybe it sucks. Maybe we exaggerate our happiness, and maybe we exaggerate our suffering and our concern for the suffering for those distant strangers. Maybe the entire notion of some grand truth about life in general is bogus. These 'maybes' are an example of the complexity that a fixed pessimism can be accused of dodging.

So what exactly is the need for more people? — schopenhauer1

Women like to play with babies. Fathers like to be proud of their successful sons. Because 'God says so.' You know the needs. What exactly is your need for a need?

One of my objections to pessimism is the way it wraps itself in a sugary coating. I think I'd find it more exciting if it leaned in to accusations of being adolescent. 'Yeah, I'm a monster-baby who hates life for not being up to my infinite standards. Fertility is just gross. Better the void than this unjustified replication. I just don't like life, and my own little suicide is way too small of a gesture for expressing this dislike. I want the machine that made me shut down forever. I want the universe to disappear up it's own asshole.'

I spent a little time in detention now and then in high school, and FTW ('fuck the world') was carved into that detention desk. That proud, senseless revolt had a certain purity. When the basic FTW idea is dolled up as rational or moral, this strikes me as a status-seeking attachment to life (as well as a genuine disgust for life). The 'machine' is still loved as the condition for the possibility of trying to shut it down. Also non-pessimist is a necessary background for the heroically truth-telling pessimist identity. (And that's why an anti-natalist forum would probably be a snore, just like a Rand forum.) And of course your namesake stuck around for a long time without having to work at anything but his complex denunciation of life. He had a cute little retro outfit and resented Hegel getting more attention. I bet he was grateful to have been born when fame finally caught up to him in his old age. This doesn't mean his life was 'really' good. It just complicates the message.

The barebones of the world is a community, not a man alone with the void. Nobody exists and survives without others. It's a failure to meaningfully engage with, and get 'caught up' within your community that causes this sense of "void". It's why people are so depressed in the modern world. It's why people commit suicide. And probably why people advocate antinatalism. — Inyenzi

I agree with what you say about community, but would you not agree that the style of mostly capitalist communities emphasizes an obsession with self? Getting caught up in the wealth-glamour 'religion' might be the cause rather than the cure of alienation.

Probably you have personal relationships in mind, though. And, yeah, I think successful personal relationships are the main reason that most people don't regret being born. And that's why it's easy to read anti-natalism as a projected failure on the level of personal relationships. 'It's not just me. It's life itself that fails.' I read it largely that way, but I think it also has the appeal of every radical idea that understands itself to pop a bubble of sentimental delusion. My primary objection to it is that it wants to make suicide respectable. It's not that I'm anti-suicide, but rather that this making-respectable strikes me as involving the same kind of sentimentality that anti-natalism defines itself against. 'Excuse me, sir. If you have a moment, I'd like to politely and rationally talk you into the extinction of your species. Of course I'll have to start by convincing you that your life sucks more than you know.'

If I had to write an autometanarrative, I wouldn't know how to do it other than the way I have. Maybe not exactly the same way, but the same general approach. I've tried before and I can't make it work. It feels false. It feels not me. — T Clark

For me, that itself is the narrative. It's one I relate to. Every nice little autobiographical tale feels wrong or false. I see that that is implied in your original impressionistic portrait, but only in retrospect. The abstract statement of your situation is far more revealing for me.

I have found that, when I do put people into boxes, it's a mistake. I regret it later. It doesn't work. It makes me make bad decisions and act like an asshole. This is not a statement of principle, it's what I've learned from experience or maybe always knew.

You will see that all my discussions end up with a quote from Lao Tzu eventually. This time I'll go with a paraphrase - The person who can be characterized is not the eternal person. — T Clark

I can very much relate. I see the danger of boxing people. But for me a certain amount of boxing is inescapable.

I agree that there is something like an eternal person beneath all the role-play, but then I find myself categorizing anyway between those who have a knowing gleam in their eye and everyone else. Is he or she in on the joke of personality? Is he or she behind/above all these word games we play?

The mania for "identity" seems to be the deepest of the unconscious programmings,
so deeply buried that it evades even attentive reflection for a long time. A formal somebody, as bearer of our social identifications, is, so to speak, programmed into us. It guarantees in almost every aspect the priority of what is alien over what is one's own. Where "I" seem to be, others always went before me in order to automatize me through socialization. Our true self-experience in original Nobodiness remains in this world buried under taboo and panic. Basically, however, no life has a name. The self-conscious nobody in us —who acquires names and identities only through its "social birth"-remains the living source of freedom. The living Nobody, in spite of the horror of socialization, remembers the energetic paradises beneath the personalities. Its life soil is the mentally alert body, which we should call not nobody but yesbody and which is able to develop in the course of individuation from an areflexive "narcissism" to a reflected "self-discovery in the world cosmos." In this Nobody, the last enlightenment, as critique of the illusion of privacy and egoism, comes to an end. If mystical advances into such "innermost" zones of preindividual emptiness used to be exclusively a matter for meditative minorities, today there are good reasons for hoping that in our world, torn by struggling identifications, majorities for such enlightenment will finally be found. — Sloterdijk

I personally relate to this 'nobodiness,' which I associate with the sense of wearing one's life as a mask ('personality is an illusion'). The 'problem' is that this 'nobodiness' easily becomes another sophisticated ego-narrative. Has this or that person achieved a sense of personality being an illusion? Something like the 'noble savage' seems to reappear. This kind of thinking is also presented in Love's Body. Is it not that case that any valuable 'spiritual' insight can be used in an ugly 'unspiritual' way? As insights become institutionalized and hardened for general use, do they not tend to lose force?

The message underlying the violence and destruction is purely and simply self expression, with no higher meaning or purpose. — Shatter

Right. Yes, this seems to be in the mix. In Blood Meridian this would be 'the taste for mindless violence.'

And this may connect to what may make a global humanism impossible. We tend to need a despicable out-group. Within the tribe all is warm and cozy, but perhaps only because this brutal, mindless self-assertion is channeled outward. The monkey rips its charity-event tuxedo off and throws excrement.

Sounds like an icon complex or fear of enthusiasm. Or more raw, as the guy in the movie about Turing said: it feels good to be mean. — frank

The thrill in meanness definitely rings true. I've seen extremely well-read and intelligent posters on forums like these throw off the mask in the middle of high-minded conversations and call their conversational partner an idiot. Just to clarify my own view, I do think that in fact philosophers really are fascinated by the grand ideas they debate. The status-game is a powerful force in the background which becomes visible in the eruptions mentioned above. (I understand myself to want to see all of this accurately rather than to accuse or defend it.)

'Fear of enthusiasm' is good, too. I think this is also fear of being a fool. This seems like an important part of the self-consciously scientific or critical personality. The mind is creative and naturally projects patterns. The 'negative' power defers the enjoyment of these patterns as truths and instead takes a pleasure in deferment itself as a dynamic 'truthing-falsing.'

And that would indeed seem to suggest a balance between scientific capitalism and a philosophy that emphasises the ‘fruits of contemplation’. — Wayfarer

Right, and my point would be that this disenchantment is perhaps the primary fruit of contemplation. And that's why I find college-brochures so sickly-sweet and the cheery 'critical thinking' propaganda posted in many classrooms at my university embarrassing and absurd. The institution needs to be taken seriously (uncritically) in the first place in order to able to pontificate about the values of critical thought. Those who scoff at the sentimental veneer of the brochures and treat the university as a magic certificate dispenser are perhaps those who really practice what those posters preach. Similarly, the relativistic/nihilistic sophomore resented by the trained philosophy professor may be getting the essence of Western philosophy right, no matter his lack of polish and knowledge of detail.

But maybe you don't mean critical thinking but rather simply the resuscitation of pre-critical traditions. Well, I definitely have mixed feelings about the shape of things myself. I just don't see how we can go back to a place that probably only looks good in retrospect. I think our best bet is the triumph of a global humanism. It would probably be good to get off this planet and open a new frontier. Then those who hate one another can just get away from one another.

In order to survive, one must be schooled in reality. Of course. Those who mean well call it growing up, and there is a grain of truth to that. But that is not all. Always a bit unsettled and irritable, collaborating consciousness looks around for its lost naivete, to which there is no way back, because consciousness-raising is irreversible.
...
Arguing behind the back and through the head of the opponent has become common practice in modern critique. The gesture of exposure characterizes the style of argumentation of ideology critique, from the critique of religion in the eighteenth century to the critique of fascism in the twentieth. Everywhere, one discovers extrarational mechanisms of opinion: interests, passions, fixations, illusions. That helps a bit to mitigate the scandalous contradiction between the postulated unity of truth and the factual plurality of opinions—since it cannot be eliminated. Under these assumptions, a true theory would be one that not only grounds its own theses best, but also knows how to defuse all significant and persistent counterpositions through ideology critique. In this point, as one can easily see, official Marxism has the greatest ambition, since the major part of its theoretical energy is dedicated to outdoing all non-Marxist theories and exposing them as "bourgeois ideologies." Only by continually outdoing the others, can ideologists succeed in "living" with the plurality of ideologies. De facto, the critique of ideology implies the attempt to construct a hierarchy between unmasking and unmasked theory. In the war of consciousness, getting on top, that is, achieving a synthesis of claims to power and better insights, is crucial.
...
The right of ideology critique to use ad hominem arguments was indirectly acknowledged
even by the strictest absolutist of reason, J. G. Fichte, whom Heine aptly compared to Napoleon when he said that the kind of philosophy one chooses depends on the kind of person one is. This critique intrudes into the conditions under which human beings form opinions with either compassionate serenity or cruel seriousness. It seizes error from behind and tears at its roots in practical life. This procedure is not exactly modest, but its immodesty is excused with a reference to the principle of the unity of truth. What is brought to light by the vivisecting approach is the everlasting embarrassment of ideas confronted by the interests underlying them: human, all too human; egoisms, class privileges, resentments, steadfastness of hegemonic powers. Under such illumination, the opposing subject appears not only psychologically but also sociologically and politically undermined. Accordingly, its standpoint can be understood only if one adds to its self-portrayals what is, in fact, hidden behind and below them. In this way, ideology critique raises a claim that it shares with hermeneutics, namely, the claim to understand an "author" better than he understands himself. What at first sounds arrogant about this claim can be methodologically justified. Others often really do perceive things about me that escape my attention—and conversely. — Sloterdijk

One ideology tries to pull another ideology's pants down in public, usually in terms of some virtue that their intended audience takes for granted. I'm interested in what happens when a thinker begins to see this desire to humiliate and stand over as the kernel of the game --abandons the pretense of doing so for something higher than a nice place to look down from. Rorty examines something like this memorably in C, I, & S. He sees the dark side of his 'ironist' (whom he mischievously describes as a her.)

So intimacy requires what lord jim is reluctant to do. But no one cares that much, except for jim. In fact they wish hed stay around and own it. They've been displaying their flaws all along, and can sympathize with someone who has flaws too. But the guy who has no flaws or history - he's harder to relate to. The tragedy is that on the one hand Jim thinks they'll be apalled, while on the other hand, just at the moment they're least-apalled, and most sympathetic - that's when Jim leaves. — csalisbury

I haven't read Lord Jim, but I take it that you're talking about our tendency to flee [those who know] our pasts in order to reinvent ourselves for a new audience. Yeah, I can relate to that. I have stuck with some lovers and friends through series of transformations, so I also know the opposite. For me this ties into the forgiveness of sin, which is what I see as the profound core of Christianity. 'Personality is an illusion.' This is something I used to say without being able to specify what it meant to me. Of course I agree that pure authenticity is a myth, and it assumes that there is some true individual core, when maybe the core is just what we all have in common. The mask is a contingent adaptation. The mask is religion, while the blood is beneath religion as its soil. And I don't mean (of course) blood as religion, though there's always the threat of a cult in any recognition of the hollowness of the explicit. I just mean that we are warm-blooded community-craving creatures.

But people can be nasty indeed. That's why true friendship is so beautiful. All the energy usually spent on projecting the ability to retaliate is channeled into a willingness to bend and forgive. For me the best Christian thinkers have wisely avoided any kind of system building or orthodoxy (Blake). The forgiveness of sin is everything. Of course asserting even this in the wrong tone would be an imperial, unforgiving move. And it's one thing to decide that forgiveness is the essence of Christianity and another thing to decide that this core Christianity is all or especially what is needed. I can imagine too much forgiveness and understanding (Zelig.)

I am interested in understanding these questions through Western philosophy among other things. And sure, Kant is olde worlde, but his insights into the nature of knowledge are still highly relevant.

You see, the prevailing meta-narrative for a lot of people is that one, we're the outcome of chance, and two, we're animals. And that has philosophical consequences. There's a lot of nihilism in the atmosphere - it might not be dramatic or highly visible, but it's in the air we breathe. — Wayfarer

Sure. I love the Western philosophical tradition. I love it for being a snarling, arrogant, questioning tradition. And I even love Kant. He smashed the idea of direct access. He made bias or structuring-by-the-subject fundamental. Kant was post-truth before post-truth was cool. (I'm playing fast and loose here, but there was a reason he was found threatening by the thinkers of his day. He may be tame compared to Nietzsche, but that kind of thinking leads toward Nietzsche, no matter it's temporary place-saving for religion. (Actually this is a rich issue. Have you looked at After Finitude? Meillasoux thinks he is an anti-theologian, but he writes like a theologian, and insists that the dead may be resurrected while railing against anti-scientific superstition. He is a fascinating personality. I don't find him convincing as a whole, but reading him was like reading good science-fiction, and I was convinced here and there at the level of detail. I enjoy Schopenhauer in the same way.

Also, yes, I agree that that's a prevailing narrative. It's also painfully plausible. Is this prevailing narrative not a result of a Western philosophical tradition that de-divinized the world? That's the dark comedy of the situation. The same freedom of mind that helps make great engineering possible also opens up the question of what all of this hustle and bustle means. And treating man as one more animal is great for developing medicine but again threatens us with a vision of being pointless monkeys. I think educated liberals do their best to navigate this threat by leaning on a religion of Progress. Heaven exists down here but not yet. And then the beatniks and other individualistic 'mystics' look for Heaven in the mortal moment. And we all find it in the moment now in then, lost in what the critical philosopher might call an illusion or projection.

This feels true to life to me (at least true to life, sometimes). But I'm not making the connection between this and intimacy [qua dissolver (maybe) of metanarratives] — csalisbury

Yeah, I ended up deleting some of what I originally wrote. Nietzsche wrote somewhere about women making all the seriousness of men look like folly. I've recently become friends with an impressive women. She's smart, wise, open, real. She never got sucked into the genre that includes Nietzsche, Marx, etc. But I don't feel superior to her in some general way, as much as I generally derive a sense of status from questioning every sacred cow. The value of that game shrinks in her presence. I think it matters that I find her physically attractive. She awakens the life force, let's say, and the life force is only impressed with demystification as the prelude to a new mystery. So it's as if a homoerotic/narcissistic game dissolves in a field of heterosexual tension. But the same thing does not occur with the woman I actually possess. And it's pretty rare generally. Yet I have a sense that actual possession would break the spell.

Agree. Being aware of your pre-suppositions is a difficult thing to do. But that's one of Kant's great strengths, IMO. — Wayfarer

I guess. But Kant is a dinosaur. That's not to say that people in general have assimilated all they could from such dinosaurs, but I think it's worth mentioning that the famous college-brochure thinkers lived in very different times. And I think there's just a bias that accumulates, too. If everyone talks about Kant long enough, then everyone feels the need to know about Kant. So everyone reads Kant. Then everyone has to talk about Kant.

This is the kind of attitude I have toward the famous intellectuals: http://home.ku.edu.tr/~mbaker/CSHS503/DerridaSuccess.pdf

Of course it's 'arrogant' of me to doubt the canon, but this arrogance seems inseparable from real philosophy for me.

It's not a political programme - it's a philosophical question.

I think philosophy was originally about the realisation of a higher identity - hence the reference to Watts' book. But this is now bracketed out, for sounding too much like religion. The culture has been more or less inoculated against any such understanding, at least in part by what it conceives of as religion. And I agree - culture has indeed become entirely focussed on money, glamour, technological power, pursuit of pleasure. But it's the job of philosophy to criticize that, or at least be aware of it. — Wayfarer

Sure, that's a reasonable job for philosophy, but I don't see anything fresh there. The only difference that I can personally see in your view from a standard liberal critique is that you want the religious element to be more explicit. That's fine. But I think the 'magic' of the name Plato, for instance, is dying with a certain image of the university. Sitting in the classroom of a pompous teacher who controls the conversation with grades pops the illusion pretty quickly. That structure of conversation with its quantified 'learning outcomes' might as well be emptying its bowels on the life of the mind. The professor is a mechanic adjusting the brains of his customers, installing a culture module, sneaking in sensitivity training. Of course there are great professors out there, but they have to play along. On the bright side, those who give a damn will find the books on their own --which is not to say that these books will make them happy.
But the books will probably make them less boring.

The cynic still has hope. That's what the angst is really about. Abandon all hope and there's nothing to be cynical about. The world doesn't need to be saved. — frank

Well we can define 'cynic' however you want in this context. But for me the cynic is not someone who thinks the world needs to be saved. The cynic for me is the type of thinker who is willing to hypothesize that humans are fundamentally split or divided. The truth is not some saving angel trapped inside us, oppressed by confusion or greed. The truth is a raging ambivalence. It's perhaps a volcano and not an angel. Again, think of WWII. It happened. Men jumped at the chance to tear one another to bits with what I presume was an incomparable sense of community. We have in war the maximum of both sentimentality and brutality. There is the terrible ecstasy of life lived without restraint along with an end put to that same fulfilled life.

Zizek writes somewhere about reality being a flight from dreaming and not the reverse. For me this is a cynical thing to say. The worldly father who still fundamentally believes in barbecues and breeding might criticize the unruly son for hiding away from life in his books. The son can accuse his father of hiding away from his own nullity in swelling of bellies and bankaccounts. Who, if anyone, is right? They all go in to the dark. They die believing or doubting, amused or annoyed.


EDIT:

I do think the cynic has a tender heart, an affection for truth. Yeah, the cynic is an idealist turned inside out, or something along those lines. If that's what you mean, I more or less agree. The cynic is disappointed that the theologians aren't believable.

Whatever my metanarratively-woven identity is, it definitely includes joy at seeing Sloterdijk brought into the convo. Best thinker out there, in my opinion [what am I signalling?] — csalisbury

I love the guy too, though I'm just really getting around to him. I recognize immediately, though, the kind of intellectual I like. This dude is present, relevant. So many thinkers are just snore-worthy, ignoring the forest for this or that tree.

What I want to say, cribbing Sloterdijk's terminology, is that there are a plurality of spheres in which we live. In the public sphere ( our job etc) - our particular identity and metanarrative is less important. Like you've said, we kinda all agree on this neutral background that lets us function. Our particular sense of self is present, but muted. On forums like this (or in real-world friendships) they become much more pronounced. In our private lives - if we write, or journal, or even just think - these things became super-present.

But there's another sphere, intimacy, where all this kind of breaks down. (Intimacy comes in all sorts of varieties, I'm not just talking relationships).

I say this, and I think its mostly right, but I think its also not quite right. I'm paving over something — csalisbury

For me it's pretty much dead-on. I was hoping to drag you in to some conversation, because your posts are one of the reasons I joined.

For me there's a certain melancholy in the uselessness of one's particular identity for the work world.
I agree also that the theory breaks down around intimate relationships. For instance, how many men who read the famous thinkers for pleasure can nevertheless find themselves entangled with women who don't really have a comparable appetite for abstraction? Or for cynicism or demystification? It may be that these women do our believing for us. And we do their doubting for them.