I think (but I'm not certain) that painting is supposed to be of Napoleon at the head of his army during the 1814 campaign, before his exile to Elba.

He certainly wasn't the "World Spirit" incarnate, whatever that's supposed to mean. He was a great hero to the Romantics. He was enormously talented and intelligent in some respects. Perhaps if he remained First Counsel and limited himself to putting France's affairs in order after the Revolution he'd be remember as more than just a conqueror. Though it seems none of the European great powers were willing to tolerate a France ruled by anyone but a Bourbon.

The question will always be left open as to what extent the mind makes contact with external substance. We only escape this doubt when we cease to assume the idea of intrinsic substance, and opt instead for a radical interconnectedness of subject and object ( Hegelian dialectics, phenomenology, pragmatism, hermeneutics). — Joshs

It seems to me that the view that we can never know the extent to which we (I don't think our minds are separate from us) make contact with the rest of the world is far more radical than the view that we do. The latter is based on what actually takes place to our knowledge when we interact with the rest of the world; the former is based on the belief that what takes place when we do so doesn't matter. What actually happens when we interact with the "external world" is apparently of no value.

The salient point here is that sometimes we have to take it on trust that there is or might be something wrong with us, or that we have a blindness of some kind, even though we can at best recognize this blindness only indirectly. This having to take things on trust is a significant vulnerability. — baker

I'm not sure if "on trust" is entirely accurate. I think it would be more a case of making a judgment based on the weight of the evidence, which may be indirect. What's the probability that everyone without the problem would lie to us, or be mistaken?

Hegel saw Napoleon as well. Here's what he wrote about the experience:

“I saw the Emperor – this world-soul – riding out of the city on reconnaissance. It is indeed a wonderful sensation to see such an individual, who, concentrated here at a single point, astride a horse, reaches out over the world and masters it.”

Goethe said of Napoleon that he was as intelligent as a man can be without wisdom, and as great as a man can be without virtue.

He was remarkable, in any case. I doubt I'll go to see this movie. If I see it, it will be from a comfy chair in my living room whenever it appears before me. I wish Kubrick had completed the movie of Napoleon he wanted to make.

Your question, as I took it, was why we should ever doubt the accuracy of what we see before us, and that should we so doubt, we do it disingenuously. — Hanover

There may be instances where doubt is appropriate. I'm trying to address the view that we should doubt in all cases, or cannot know in any case. That view may be based on unwarranted extrapolation from unusual cases to all cases, confusion, or misuse of language, as some philosophers have noted.

I wonder if there are other factors involved which incline some of us to question whether we can really know anything about the world. The reason I wonder that arises from the fact, which I don't think can reasonably be disputed, that we clearly act like we know something about, as we interact with it all the time, change it in various respects, create new constituents of it from existing constituents (furniture, cars, etc.), consume portions of it, and do many things with it all the time, simply by virtue of the fact that we live in it. We do that in most cases without any concern whatsoever that what we interact with may not really be what we think it is, or may be actually be something else. We have no concern, I think, because we have no reason to think that in most cases, and generally can arrive at any explanation in those instances when we do have reason. Why doubt when there's no persuasive reason to doubt?

The point of all of this is responsive to what I think is the larger inquiry, and that is whether folks like Descartes are foolish to question that which no one has a basis to question. I think the above discussion does provide such a basis. — Hanover

That's a fairly good summary of what I think--that's it's (generally) foolish to question that which no one has a basis to question. I disagree with you, though, as nothing I've seen in this thread provides such a basis.

There likely are things about the universe we can't know. We're not omniscient. We're human. These aren't particularly profound observations. It doesn't follow from this that we can't know anything, or can't know what is real.

Things we see are actually made up of things we can't see (though they have been determined). Very well. Again, we're human. We see in most cases exactly what we should see, being human. If that's the case, why is it that what we see isn't really what's there?

When we say we can't know what the world really or actually, I think we make certain assumptions, the primary of which is the assumption that there is something that is real behind what we experience which can't be determined. Something hidden from us because of our nature. It's a kind of religious view, perhaps.

We are in fact "blind in some regard" whether you believe. You can't see ultraviolet, hear high frequencies, taste certain flavors, feel minute variations, or smell certain smells. — Hanover

Which is merely to say that we're human beings. One might say the same of any living creature. Are they "blind" as well? We must be omnipotent, be God then, in order not to be "blind"? It seems a rather unusual way to use the word.

Again, by what criteria do you judge whether some belief or assumption or philosophy is an affectation? — Luke

In this case, by conduct; by how those who maintain that we cannot know the nature of what we deal with everyday, or experience it, or some variant of that position, act every moment. Conduct indicates we have no doubt at all regarding the nature and use of the cup from which we drink coffee (or regarding coffee, for that matter).

One might say "well, that's just how I act in everyday life, not when I'm doing philosophy" or "well, I really do doubt, I just don't act like I doubt" but such responses aren't persuasive, really. They're aspects of the affectation. What can be more natural to us than how we live, how we actually interact with the rest of the world?

My perception of the apple is blurred without the glasses. If I never had glasses, I would assume the apple and the blurriness were one in the same. My assumption is that there are other distortions between the apple and my perception that are not correctible or that they are correctible by means I don't yet know about. — Hanover

People who have significant eyesight problems generally know this is the case. Someone nearsighted will come to understand that what appears blurry to them at a distance won't appear blurry when closer to them, and as they live in an environment with others with no such problems, will come to know that they have a problem others don't have. Someone blind will come to know others are not. I think it's unlikely that the nearsighted and the blind will conclude that all are nearsighted and all are blind.

I don't understand the "controversy." Some individuals may be considered "great." Clearly, it doesn't follow from this that "we" are "great." Neither does the fact that "we" are great mean that each of us are "great."

I don't see how this addresses my previous post. — Luke

Again, I'm referring to "affectation" as defined by Merriam-Webster online as I said in the OP:

Affectation" according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary Online, is:

"a. Speech or conduct not natural to oneself: an unnatural form of behavior meant especially to impress others; b. the act of taking on or displaying an attitude not natural to oneself or not genuinely felt."

I wouldn't consider it "natural to myself" to believe that someone across the street from me is 5 inches tall, but would consider it "natural to myself" to by surprised by, and to dispute, someone who did believe that.

I would presume that with my glasses off, I do not see objects as they are, but more as they are blurred. — Hanover

Well, does the fact that they appear blurred to you with your glasses off persuade you they are or may be blurred?

C: Look, there's Sulla across the street
X: I had no idea he's only 5 inches tall.
C: What the hell are you talking about?
X: Well, look at him. Look at my finger. He's only slightly bigger than it.
C: Are you serious?
X: Oh my God, he's growing!
C: He's just crossing the street towards us.
X: How do you know he's not growing? He looked small, now he looks bigger. If you're right, then we can't trust our own sense of sight.
C: Do you actually think he's growing?
X: Well, he might be. He might not. Why do you think differently? What's wrong with you? You're the crazy one.

Am I overmining too much from the Kennedy Assassination? Do you think in some counterfactual history, if Kennedy lived, the course of the very radical changes in culture would have went differently? Would the traditionalist mores of post war America the post war 40s, 50s and early 60s have continued into the late 60s ups and on into today? — schopenhauer1

We Boomers were, in general, uniquely privileged in American history (with some obvious exceptions). I'm inclined to attribute most of the American "counterculture" (not including the Civil Rights movement, which I think was something different) to those of us who were especially spoiled by the favorable post WWII economic climate. Our parents endured that war and the Great Depression. Most of us were relatively well off, thanks to our parents. Vietnam caused some fear in us, but many were protected by exemptions. We were remarkably free to do as we pleased. We had the opportunity to experiment in new ways of thinking and acting others never had. Now, we simply want security. And money.

Look at us now. Indeed, look at us most any time since 1975. Where are the protestors, revolutionaries of the past? What "radical changes in culture" have taken place, through our efforts?

I doubt the myth of Kennedy and Camelot. JFK was a pragmatist (small "p"). He'd do what was necessary to get votes, though he might do it with more style and wit than other politicians. I don't think he'd have withdrawn from Vietnam.

"Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven." (Matthew 7:21) — Dermot Griffin

And then there is John 14:6: "I am the way, the truth and the light. No one comes to the Father except through me."

There is a strand of universalism in Catholicism — Wayfarer

Well, it comes with the name, of course, as you hint. Catholicus in Latin, katholikos in Greek, meaning "universal" roughly.

Esp. older generations seem to have been taught that they are inherently deficient, by default. The belief that we are born bad and defective and yet need to be corrected. — baker

Ah, that's interesting, as it suggests there is a religious reason behind the affectation. That would be consistent with the view that philosophy is the handmaiden of theology. The belief is similar to the concept of Original Sin. We're condemned to insufficiency; doomed not to know the world merely because we're human, the spawn of Adam and Eve. Inherently deficient by our nature. We seek to know the world (eat of the Tree of Knowledge) but because we dared to do so God has arranged that we never will, absent his help.

Frankly this thread is a manifestation of ↪Ciceronianus's question concerning affectation. — Banno

My affectation thread will subsume this forum, eventually.

But isn't Philosophy about finding out the nature of the world, our knowledge of the world, and the limitation / boundary of our knowledge? What would your points of Philosophy be? — Corvus

We find out about the nature of the rest of world and the extent of our knowledge by our interaction with it, rather than by maintaining, without adequate evidence, that our interaction with it is inherently deficient.

I don't understand the part after the comma. Are you saying: Proposing that certain views are affectations...validates what we do all the time? — Luke

It's a play off of the definition of "affectation" appearing at the beginning of the thread. If I criticize the view that we cannot know what the "external world" is, or whether it is, as an affectation I'm claiming that view is unnatural because we act as if it is and know what it is all the time. So, the claim it is an affectation isn't unnatural or aberrant, because it reaffirms that we act as if the external world exists and that we know what it is.

Wish there were more of a similar mind. — Wayfarer

Well, Fulton Sheen may end up canonized shortly, so you should be pleased. The Jesuits, by the way, were adept at adopting native traditions as part of their conversion efforts.

‘Comparitive religion’ (a tolerant and open attitude) and / or the Perennial Philosophy is not the most popular position at the moment unfortunately.

Thanks for going against the trend — 0 thru 9

Only up to a point, though, I'm afraid. According to the OP, the Asian systems he refers to are deficient, from the Christian perspective. They just don't go far enough (which is to say, they're not Christianity). Thus the proviso that we must understand them in terms of the Christian concept of "grace."

Nobody said the meek shall inherit the earth? — frank

I was going to say Naughtius Maximus or Biggus Dickus, but don't want to be offensive.

Yep. Christianity is an intriguing myth made up of many appropriations. From the virgin birth story (borrowed from Ancient Egypt, Ra - the son of a virgin) to turning water into wine (a familiar trick of the Greek god Dionysus.) Adonis, like Jesus, was eaten in the form of bread. Osiris, like Jesus, was called the 'good shepherd'. And on it goes. I guess for some Christians, one way to deal with the discomfort this lack of authenticity creates (and to manage the fact that other spiritual traditions may hold wisdom), is to find a way to argue that those other traditions are prefiguring Christianity in some way. — Tom Storm

Or are perverted copies of Christianity, as in the case of Mithraism. From Justin Martyr:

"For the apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, which are called Gospels, have thus delivered unto us what was enjoined upon them; that Jesus took bread, and when He had given thanks, said, "This do ye in remembrance of Me, this is My body; "and that, after the same manner, having taken the cup and given thanks, He said, "This is My blood; "and gave it to them alone. Which the wicked devils have imitated in the mysteries of Mithras, commanding the same thing to be done. For, that bread and a cup of water are placed with certain incantations in the mystic rites of one who is being initiated, you either know or can learn."

..looks to be an idea borrowed from Islam, with the Prophets "preannouncing the message of" Mohamed. — Banno

The Old Testament prophets were regularly preannouncing the birth of Jesus as well, and the early Christian apologists tended to blame the similarities between Christian ritual and that of pagan cults on demons who knew what was coming and chose to mock baptism, the Eucharist, and such, even before they were practiced by Christians.

It uniquely took over Rome and subsequently became a uniquely ideologically complex religion by virtue of being a forum for diverse perspectives. — frank

We're making claims regarding different things. I was addressing the OP's statement that Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism "preannounced the message of the gospels" and contention that this made them "methods of Christian apologetics." Apologetics is the defense or justification of a religious doctrine. My point is that defending Christianity as a religion because it assimilated the doctrines of much older religions/philosophies isn't much of an apology, as you're merely saying it's derivative and proposes nothing new.

I tend to agree that Christianity's success was remarkable, and attribute its success to its relentless incorporation of pagan philosophy and the rituals of mystery and salvation cults popular in the Roman Empire, combined with its intolerance and state sponsored favoritism and persecution far exceeding the infrequent and irregular efforts made to suppress it. I don't think that was what the OP was intended to assert, though.

. Being a Christian, I have come to see the respective systems of thought as preannouncing the message of the gospel in terms of ethical questions about life. — Dermot Griffin

That's odd. Others might find it more sensible to consider "the message of the gospel" as you put it as being merely derivative of these systems, which after all had existed for centuries before the gospels were written, or for that matter as derivative of the Western philosophical systems such as Stoicism, which also preceded the gospels by hundreds of years. Establishing that Christianity borrowed heavily from other religions or philosophical traditions wouldn't seem to indicate there's anything unique about it.

Instead of writing him off as yet another religious preacher, he was embraced as some kind of beacon of wisdom even by atheists. Well, apparently he and the RCC succeeded in their intents ... — baker

Well, to give him his due he seems to have been a great mathematician. Perhaps the perceived need for absolute certainty worked to his benefit. Everyone seemed to desire that. I think of Berkeley, and his use of God to serve as a reassuring remedy for the results of his musings.

he problem with the purely pragmatic view IMO, is that, while it certainly works for justifying the use of induction, it also seems like it could be used to justify sticking your head in the sand on all sorts of issues because "it feels better." But how can we know if sticking our head in the proverbial sand will actually maximize our benefit? For that we need to know the "truth of the matter," and so we come back to where we started. — Count Timothy von Icarus

We know by sticking our head in the sand and seeing what happens. Before we do that, though, we'd consider what it is we wish to achieve by doing so. In fact, there are quite a few things we do without looking to determine what's "true."

William "Wild Bill"James may have said things suggesting what is true is what "works" but I think you'd find that Peirce and Dewey, and others, don't. Dewey thought the word "true" carried too much baggage. He thought that it's inappropriate to think only of propositions as true or false, but consider judgments as the subject matter. He felt that we are justified in making judgments when we act on the best evidence available. What that evidence indicates is what we are warranted in asserting.

Sometimes that evidence will be what "works." Sometimes it won't be. It happens that induction has been used successfully in the resolution of questions and problems for a very long time. Justification lies in the results of it use time and time again--the best evidence available on which to make a judgment of it.

I take it that "how we live" includes the differing values, worldviews and/or philosophical positions of each of us, rather than assuming some universal common sense view. Further, that we each have the opportunity to consider and reflect on positions that may differ from our own or that we had never previously considered, as well as to question the views we hold at any particular time. — Luke

Yes.

Does the present discussion meet its own criteria? Is it only those philosophical discussions that are anti-philosophical which are relatively free of affectation? — Luke

It would seem to me that proposing that certain views are affectations isn't itself an affectation, as it would be to validate what we do all the time.

I'm wondering whether there is any such philosophical discussion. Can you give an example of the topic of such a discussion? — Luke

Most discussions related to ethics or questions of value would qualify, I think.

Wouldn't it be due to the nature of our reason? When reason reflects on itself, it cannot fail to notice the problems in the existence and the knowledge of existence. — Corvus

One may notice problems, but why extrapolate from them the notion that such problems are ubiquitous, regardless of considerations of context?

I understand Hume's scepticism as his endeavour trying to find the ground for certainty and warrant for belief in the existence of the world and self, not the actual existence itself. — Corvus

That may well be. And it may be that a desire for absolute certainty is behind the effort. But I still think the fact such skepticism is so contrary to how we live our lives that it should count against it, so to speak. If inductive reasoning (for example) is something we "have to do" by virtue of living, what induces us to think that there's no basis for it? Why question it in the first place?

So who is this mysterious ‘someone’? — Joshs

I intended to refer to Hume, who had been mentioned as doing so, or those who took his position.

You don’t believe there’s an external world apart from us? — Joshs

Not apart from us, no, because we're a part of it. What is called "the external world" isn't external from us; it includes us.

I would just add to that that the real is what is constantly changing with respect to itself. — Joshs

As Marcus Aurelius wrote: "The universe is change."

What (or whose or what topics in) philosophy is not affectation, in your view? — Luke

Any philosophical discussion which doesn't require us to disregard or consider of no real value how we live in determining the nature of what we interact with in the course of living will, in all likelihood, be relatively free of affectation.

After reading the OP and its supporters posts, it reminded me of a severe case of Projection Defense Mechanism symptom in Psychology.

One of the extreme cases of Scepticism was by Hume. He even doubted his own "self".  But we don't call him someone who indulged in affectation.  

"I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception. When my perceptions are remov'd for any time, as by sound sleep; so long am I insensible of myself, and may truly be said not to exist."  (Hume, Treatise) — Corvus

I'd never heard of this mechanism. Those psychologists are so clever, with names.

How odd, and revealing, it is that Hume thought he didn't exist while he slept. How was it, you think, that he tried to "catch himself" without a perception? Did he try to "sneak up" on himself so to speak, only to find that he was aware he was doing so and continued to see, hear, smell, etc.? What would have been the case if he succeeded?

I wonder what ‘adhering to the real’ could possibly mean? Perhaps to the ever changing definitions of the real that have made their way into use over the past few millennia? I say we should all adhere to the mugwump, since that is about as clarifying. — Joshs

But there are mugwumps among us, and the number of them is said to be growing. Didn't you know?

If we want to know what Stevens thought the real to be, we'd all have to read his book The Necessary Angel. Absent that, I think his poem The Snow Man may give us a hint.

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

It's just my interpretation, but I note that the poem states that we must have "a mind of winter" to behold the frost and crusted boughs, junipers shagged with ice, the cold winds of that season, rather than thinking of aspects of the season as expressing "misery" in the sound of the wind and the few leaves. The listener, who actually listens in the snow, beholds nothing that is not there and the nothing that is there, the listener being nothing. "Nothing" I take to mean "nothing in addition to the world" as the listener is a part of the world, not apart from it. The world is without the accoutrements we try to dress it in when we consider ourselves separate from it. That, I guess, is what he refers to when he uses "real" in this context.

That's not to say that the accoutrements don't themselves exist. Stevens was pupil of Santayana. I think he distinguished between what philosophers and poets do, but thought that imagination expressed in poetry and art is a means by which we may affect the real, transform it, understand it. But the more it detaches itself from"the real" the more it loses its impact.

As you might guess, I have some sympathy for this point of view. I think it's similar to the view that we're participants in the rest of the world and thereby part of the real and our lives are our interaction with it.

I'm only a servant of the devil, not the devil himself. The demon that Descartes pretended was tricking him into believing what he clearly believed in the first place is a good friend of mine. We share a laugh about this, he and I, as he tricked Descartes into believing Descartes existed.