This is not my area but I was kind of interested in Third Man argument as it appears in Parmenides. (Section 132a-133b ).

If we say that all large things are large because they share in the "Form of Largeness," and that the Form of Largeness itself is also large, then there's a problem. The Form must be large for it to be the Form of Largeness, but that creates a need for another Form to explain why both the large things and the Form are large.

This creates a never-ending chain of Forms. We would need a third Form to explain the second, a fourth to explain the third, and so on, endlessly. This is called the "Third Man Argument," where you keep needing more and more Forms to explain the relationship between the first two, leading to an infinite regress.

My understanding is that Plato may consider the theory flawed and incomplete (perhaps the way some physicists feel about Quantum). Any thoughts?

Which to me suggests the question, does the perversity and cruelty of existence negate its worth altogether. Which again suggest nihilism. — Wayfarer

Not sure that would necessarily amount to nihilism—perversity and cruelty are value-laden terms, and many people actually find them galvanizing, even a kind of raison d’être.

And it also should be acknowledged that the most grotesque and needless forms of suffering to have been suffered by humans in recent history, has also been inflicted by them, in the form of world wars and military and political repression and conflict. Indeed, great suffering has been inflicted in the name of religions, but again whether that constitutes an indictment of a Creator is a different matter.

As to the suffering that is due to natural causes - the 2004 tsunami comes to mind as an example - how is that attributable to divine act? I'm sure there are those who would intepret it as such, and indeed they are sometimes referred to as 'acts of God', but whether they actually signify malign intent is the question at hand. — Wayfarer

Yes, those familiar examples are kind of boring. Far more damning is the design and creation of a world that uses death and pain as the engine of survival. That’s pretty twisted. A god might have engineered creation any way he wanted; creatures could have survived on water or light alone. But instead, he designed hunting, maiming, killing, and predation as the lingua franca of survival. None of this involves human sin or any other spurious theological cop-out.

I'm just exploring narratives here. As someone who doesn't believe in gods or ultimate purpose, these aren't facts I need to explain away.

So, what's the muted spiritual crisis? How do we know there is a crisis? — Banno

I think it’s the usual footnotes to Nietzsche’s god is dead and we’ve lost our way… But the solution is different to N’s it tends to be to be a nostalgia project - back to theism or Neoplatonism…

He seems more of a Protestant to me. I vote Anglican, which by sheer blandness is a sure path to Sanātana Dharma.

Edit - sorry I just saw the response…

What do you mean? — Martijn

I'm curious whenever someone paraphrases Nietzsche on this, just how they interpret this particular well-worn notion.

Peterson, as you may know, practically wraps his entire anti-modernist screed around this observation, which he likes to follow up with muddled account of what he terms 'post-modern Marxism' presumably taken from Stephen Hicks.

We should have listened more to Nietszche. We need geniuses like him now more than ever, to wake humanity up from its spiritual slumber and to start to take matters into our own hands. We are already stuck in an era of nihilism (and hedonism), since God is dead and we have no alternative. We have tossed the baby with the bathwater, and we cannot cope with an empty crib. — Martijn

This seems a pretty tired argument - are you a Jordan Peterson follower? What reasoning do you have to support this?

Indeed. In fact Hart places the problem of evil and suffering as one of the only matters which has him, on occasion, doubting his faith (I'm paraphrasing).

I remember author Anthony Burgess talking about faith. He told the story about his father narrowly surviving World War I in the abject misery of trench warfare, only to come home and find his wife and children dead from the Spanish Flu. 'My father knew immediately that this proved God was real...'

From that perspective, God is not the author of suffering but its adversary — not the architect of the “charnel house,” but the sure refuge beyond. — Wayfarer

That's a tricky perspective to proffer, if you ask me, since the very condition of life is suffering - it depends upon it for its continuance. Now we do know theology and exegesis can be spun to justify anything - so I have no doubt there will be escape hatches left, right and centre. I'll bugger off now...

But this essay is not an attempt to justify suffering, nor to offer spiritual guidance. It aims only to point out the mistake of that common assumption in modern discourse — the idea that if God exists, He must operate like a benevolent manager of human well-being. It’s a superficial way of seeing it. Recovering some understanding of the metaphysical and theological contexts against which the problem of evil has traditionally been resolved, allows us to reframe the question in a larger context — one in which suffering still has to be reckoned with, but not on account of a malicious God. — Wayfarer

Well, I don’t believe in God, but for the purposes of this exercise, I’d tweak the argument about suffering.

It’s not just that suffering happens—through accidents, natural disasters, terminal illnesses in children, and so on - but that if God created nature and all life within it, then he designed a system where predation and abject cruelty are the engine of survival. An essential feature, not a bug. Nature isn’t merely amoral; it’s grotesquely cruel and perverse by design. To me, this feels less like an argument against God’s existence and more like one for it, because only a conscious superbeing could intentionally design something that inflicts such a vile fate on so many billions. In other words, God isn’t just the hotel manager - he’s the fucking architect and builder of the joint and it's a charnel house.

You and J both have denied goodness as a possible principle for ethics, but then turned to "fairness," "harmonious relationships," and "justice." I am not really sure what the difference here is supposed to be, such that the latter are more acceptable, since these are also very general principles. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sure, but I would choose "fairness" and "Justice" as they are understood intersubjectively.

An anti-realist says there are absolutely no facts about fairness, consistency, consequences, or human flourishing that have any bearing on which ends ought to be preferred. How exactly do you propose "facts and reasoning" to guide ethics if there are no facts that have a bearing on which ends are choice-worthy? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Isn't it the case that an anti-realist denies that there are objective moral facts that determine which ends ought to be preferred? However, an anti-realist might still acknowledge that there are facts about fairness, consistency, consequences, or human flourishing, they just hold that these facts do not have objective normative force.

I might appeal to fairness or facts as dependent on contingent human attitudes or practices, rather than being intrinsically normative.

However, an ethics based on facts about human flourishing is not anti-realism. Sam Harris, for instance, is not an anti-realist. He has an ethics based on knowledge about Goodness — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sure Sam is not an anti-realist but his position seems different to what I was describing - he maintains that that moral truths exist and can be known through science.

Haven't seen as much as a sound bite from this election campaign so far, thankfully. But I have noticed that the big issue facing us, the housing affordability and supply crisis, is being assiduously avoided by the L&L parties at all costs, God forbid they start treating housing as a right and a place to live rather than an investment opportunity for middle class and rich cunts. Of course this hasn't stopped them from providing token, bogus solutions which will only deepen the housing affordability problem. Hopefully this will all be over before you can say negative gearing.... Think I'm going to vote Green this time. Don't tell my mum.

The Culture War is something that divides Democracts, but unites Republicans and thus it's the Republicans that promote in the US the Culture War debate. In other countries the rhetoric of a Culture War is mimicked by conservative and religious parties. — ssu

The world has been full of culture wars for decades, on issues like race, LGBTIQ rights, education, abortion, guns, religion, refugees, and privacy. Most of these battles have played out on Australian soil too. They're not owned by one side of politics; they’re fought by both the left and the right. These are emotional issues, often dominated by extremists on both sides, whom the media reliably spotlight to stir up the usual confected outrage.

Vietnam sparked a culture war, but we didn't use the term then. Slavery was a big one in the 19th century.

Today, it seems odd to me that something like trans rights, such a relatively small issue, can generate so much outrage and energy, while something like economic inequality, which affects umpteen millions, evokes far less passion. You can't help but wonder to what extent culture war politics are just a great way to distract us from real structural problems and get us fighting among ourselves about toilet use, while the corporations and the billionaires continue to expand their power and finances. :wink:

I am ready to get banned for misogyny and general bigotry now. — Brendan Golledge

Hopefully it won't come to that. I think this site can deal with different views. I tend to hold Leftist positions on many things but I am always happy to listen to a reasonable Right Winger, even if they hold views I disagree with.

In relation to men and women - I tend to think there is only a war between the sexes if that's how you frame reality to begin with. Confirmation bias.

I have worked with female bosses and colleagues for much of my life and have rarely had any issues. I prefer woman in charge to men. What I've seen is better people skills and more intelligence.

In my experince, the men who have problems with women tend to see women as alien or exotic creatures to beign with.

Though, I add that the majority of people don't think this is what's happening. They think that morality is objective, and they've got the goods (or, they can get the goods). This is, in my view, the problem. — AmadeusD

You may be right about this.

But when your interlocutor's don't believe this is acceptable because other views are ipso facto reprehensible, it's not a discussion or anything — AmadeusD

Yes, that is a problem.

I guess on a philosophy forum, there's bound to be people who, generally theists of a stripe, believe in foundational guarantors of all things—whether it be The One or some other ground of being.

Of course you and I could be wrong too. :wink:

If Goodness cannot be known—if there is nothing to know—and if facts, truth, can never dictate action, then one cannot have an ethics where ends are ultimately informed by the intellect. The intellect becomes limited to a subservient role in orienting behavior towards positive sensation and sentiment (positive, but not known as good). — Count Timothy von Icarus

But isn’t this more or less how ethics already works in practice? Morality, as we experience and debate it, seems less like the discovery of timeless metaphysical truths and more like a code of conduct that is shaped by competing preferences, traditions, and values among different groups.

People argue, negotiate, and revise ethical standards using a mix of emotional intuitions, shared values, facts, and reasoning. Ethical reasoning isn’t absent just because there’s no fixed “Good” out there to be discovered. Instead, we appeal to consistency, consequences, fairness, or human flourishing -not because we know the good in some absolute sense, but because that’s how humans justify and improve their moral norms.

Do we need more than this?

Powerful people have been exploiting the less powerful for their own benefit forever. This is not news. There probably hasn't been any significant change in human nature for 200,000 years. It's what we do unless there's someone or something there to stop it. — T Clark

Yes. I'm in agreement with much of what you've said on this thread. Don't have anything much to add. Utopian thinkers, whether Left or Right forget that when you build a utopia, pretty soon you're going to need to build a small concentration camp.

You just have to realise you can disagree with the morals, and still notice that they are more developed (or, better orchestrated/consistent). I think that's patently true (though, most reasons why that's the case are negative in my view lol). — AmadeusD

ls it not sometimes be the case that the simplistic or primitive positions are easier to articulate and pull off?

When it comes to liberals, I tend to think they come in a continuum - some would belong to what MAGA people might call the "crazy Woke" brigade and others closer to centrist positions. I'm not much interested in politics, but it seems to me that the political debate these days focuses on the crazies on both sides, without recognising that most people are closer to the centre. Perhaps I'm wrong about this.

Begs the quesion too about just what morally developed looks like? Is moral development a matter of actual progress or simply of changing community values? If we believe in moral progress then are we not de facto moral realists?

(I agree, wholeheartedly!!! And that's my main gripe with any objective ethics, moreso — AmadeusD

What do you make of the argument that because life is the basis of all value it is therefore good? I understand the impulse but I’m unconvinced.

I want to add that I think the idea that mining the causes of globalism reveals a predominance of motives of greed and narrow self-interest is a kind of conspiracy theory. There have always been those who are fundamentally suspicious of human enterprise, those who are quick to jump on the mistakes we make when we try to venture in new directions in order to better ourselves and our world. Rather than chalking up those mistakes as the price we pay for the audacity of human inventiveness, their suspiciousness makes them look for hubris and an abdication of ethical responsibility. Climbing too high, pushing too far gets us into trouble, they say, because we dare to become god-like when instead we need to be humble in the face of our mortal sinfulness. The damage globalism has done to those unprepared to adapt is God’s punishment for the hubris of humanity, our distancing ourselves from the ethical source, which we must always remember is not to be found in the immanence to itself of thought. — Joshs

Nice.

We find the other morally culpable when they violate our expectations and fail to live up to our standards of engagement. We believe they knew better than to do what they did, that they fell under the sway of nefarious motives. But is also possible or to conceive of ethical ideals which don’t rest on notions of injustice and blame. — Joshs

We need a thread on this. Notions of blame have always intrigued me. We are so quick to judge and despise those we think have transgressed from the obvious path of "righteousness". This retributive impulse has frightened me since I was a child.

Just because someone is a moral anti-realist doesn’t mean they are unconcerned with the suffering of people or animals.

Sure. They just deny that the suffering of people or animals can actually be bad for them as a matter of fact. A total denial of facts about values equates to saying that the following statements:

Garry Kasparov is a better chess player than the average kindergartener;
It is bad for children to have lead dumped into their school lunches;
It would have been a bad investment to buy Enron stock in 2001 or Bear Stearns stock in 2008; or
It is bad for a bear to have its leg mangled in a bear trap.

...are neither true nor false (or true only relative to ultimately arbitrary cultural norms). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Isn't this a distortion of what moral anti-realists actually claim? Doesn't this have a touch of William Lane Craig? "Atheists can't say child murder is wrong!"

Take the example of saying “it’s bad for a child to ingest lead.” A moral anti-realist can fully accept such a statement as true within a framework of widely shared human concerns, like health, harm reduction, and wellbeing. They can use empirical facts about human biology and psychology to explain why lead is harmful and why we should act to prevent exposure, without appealing to moral facts "out there" or "mind independent".

I suspect that those who are theists already have a bright shining star of transcendence to guide them towards an objective morality - the matter is settled for them - presumably The Good emanates from God's nature.

Anyhow, like the radical skeptic, the moral anti-realists seems absolutely incapable of actually acting like they believe their stated position. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Are there many radical skeptics on this forum or anywhere? Relativist are not all radical skeptics. A relativist is likely to believe that truth or justification, especially in areas like morality, knowledge, or culture, is relative to some framework, such as a cultural context, language, or conceptual scheme.

No doubt, some relativists also accept that causing suffering is not a good thing. There’s nothing stopping a relativist from having empathy, or from feeling bad when they cause suffering.

A radical skeptic, on the other hand, denies the very possibility of knowledge. That view is much less commonly heard and I don't really understand it.

Just because someone is a moral anti-realist doesn’t mean they are unconcerned with the suffering of people or animals. Moral anti-realism simply denies the existence of objective, independent moral truths, but this doesn’t make suffering any less important within the contingent frameworks that people care about. Anti-realists could still care deeply about reducing suffering, because their moral beliefs are shaped by social, emotional, or cultural factors that give them strong reasons to act compassionately. Although it is interesting that most people seem to be reasonably comfortable letting people die by the millions in other countries and not do a thing to help.

I doubt that there are moral facts, but (like most people) I’ve inherited a range of dispositions from my culture and upbringing, shaping my emotional responses, which inform actions and moral preferences. These might have been quite different in other circumstances.

Death is not a state or a force - it's the absence of life. To consider it 'perfection' is to mistake absence for presence. Life is the condition for meaning, value, and action. Without life, there is no framework to even discuss 'better' or 'worse.' This is not a matter of sentiment, but of ontological necessity - life is the prerequisite for all value and purpose.

It seems you can't differentiate these things: the moral implications you associate with the word 'Good' and how it's framed in the model - how can I help you pull these things apart?

Antinatalism is parasitic because it denies the very process that sustains meaning. If it rejects life, it undermines the foundation from which it could even argue.

And no, it is not wrong to preserve life - it’s the axiom of value. Killing another person directly undermines the most fundamental condition for meaning to exist: life itself.

To reiterate: This is not my opinion; it is axiomatic. Without life, there is no value. — James Dean Conroy

I'm not sure you and I are going to get anywhere with this one.

I understand the argument that life is the grounding of all value. But to this I say, so what? Life is the grounding of all experience, the condition of everything that is us. I don't see how this is ipso facto good. We are "trapped" by life until we die.

Why should we care if antinatalism undermines this foundation? I see nothing inherent in the grounding of meaning that elevates it. I can say screw life and it makes no difference.

You say antinatalism is parasitic because it denies the very process that sustains meaning. But why couldn't we say life is parasitic because it denies death?

This is just another form of "irrational assent." To believe something without (or despite) evidence is irrational. So it's no wonder that you come to the conclusion that believers are irrational. It is built into your very definition of faith. — Leontiskos

I have not made the argument that believers are irrational. I'm merely discussing the uses of the word faith and my belief that theists often use it indiscriminately when comparing their religious faith to a non faith based confidence in something demonstrable.

But I'll mull over your reasoning. I am open to changing my thinking on most things. Perhaps I am wrong on this and if I am I'll change my mind.

Incidentally, I’m not an atheist who’s deeply invested in the role of reasoning in debates about God. As I’ve said here several times, I think religious belief or atheism are like sexual attraction—you can’t help what you’re attracted to. People tend to use reasoning as post hoc justifications. That doesn’t mean I don’t hear the arguments or engage in debate from time to time.

Death is not a state or a force - it's the absence of life. To consider it 'perfection' is to mistake absence for presence. Life is the condition for meaning, value, and action. Without life, there is no framework to even discuss 'better' or 'worse.' This is not a matter of sentiment, but of ontological necessity - life is the prerequisite for all value and purpose. — James Dean Conroy

No worries. Thank you for your patience. I guess we can leave it there. I understand your reasoning but I'm not convinced.

Life is the condition for the possibility of value itself. — James Dean Conroy

I think I get this. Life is foundational. But I can't make the jump to life is good.

That's not moral sentiment. It’s ontological structure. — James Dean Conroy

Ok - this is possibly true. Do you have any reaction to postmodern thinking which might question ontological structure being stable, universal, or foundational? The idea of value and valuation is always subject to some contingent factor which does not rest on any foundation. it may be meaningless outside of an axiological structure. I'm not a postmodernist, but I am sympathetic to its demolition work to our "sacred truths".

4. Why prefer life to death? What about antinatalism?
This is where Synthesis draws a hard line.

Antinatalism can’t sustain itself. It relies on the infrastructure and surplus created by life-affirming systems while denying their value. It’s parasitic on order.

In systems terms: any worldview that rejects the continuation of life removes itself from the game. That’s not a moral judgement - it’s a prediction.

Death doesn’t argue. Life does.

So Synthesis doesn’t claim “life is better” in the abstract - it shows that only life can make or hold that kind of distinction. Death is a state with no frame. It can’t speak. It can’t object. It has no structure.

That’s the reason the model sides with life. Not sentiment - necessity. — James Dean Conroy

I don't find this convincing and it reads like poetry. Sounds like you have made up your mind to view it thus and the rest is post hoc. But maybe I am missing something. It would seem to me that it might be argued that death and annihilation is perfection the likes of which a suffering life cannot hope to be.

If death has no structure and can't speak and is a state with no frame - how is that inferior to life? I understand that living beings seem to want to live snd procreate and that (suicide aside) we are hard wired to endure and bear the suffering of life. But what makes that good? I still can't quite see this.

Is it wrong to kill another person?

Can I ask you guys something:

1. "Do you believe that life has intrinsic value, regardless of individual survival goals?"

2. "Is the concept of ‘value’ tied to the continuation of life, even beyond individual experience?" — James Dean Conroy

I know this isn't to me, but I would say "probably not" to both questions. I'm assuming the second question refers to life continuing after death (however that might look), but I am unsure what you mean.

How does one determine whether life has intrinsic meaning?

I would rather not be alive than live a life with no purpose. — Joshs

What counts as a life with purpose? Are you fussy about what qualifies?

Life doesn’t "have" value - it generates value through interaction. — James Dean Conroy

Value is contingent?

So "good" cannot exist independently of life - not because we decide it, but because there’s nothing else that could do the deciding. — James Dean Conroy

But isn't it also the case that "bad" cannot exist independently of life, for the same reasons?

Life must see itself as 'good'.
Otherwise, it self-terminates.
So across time, only "life-affirming" value-sets endure. — James Dean Conroy

But why isn't self-termination superior to living? How did you determine that death was less preferable to life? What is your response to antinatalism?

We can actually parallel the two propositions quite easily:

Lack of faith, lack of assent
1a. “I do not have faith that the airplane will fly, and I do not assent to the proposition that the airplane will fly.”
1b. “I do not have faith that God exists, and I do not assent to the proposition that God exists.”
Lack of faith, presence of assent
2a. “I do not have faith that the airplane will fly, but I assent to the proposition that the airplane will fly.”
2b. “I do not have faith that God exists, but I assent to the proposition that God exists.”
Presence of faith, presence of assent (where assent flows solely from faith)
3a. “I have faith that the airplane will fly, and I assent to the proposition that the airplane will fly (and my assent is based solely on my faith).”
3b. “I have faith that God exists, and I assent to the proposition that God exists (and my assent is based solely on my faith).”
Presence of faith which is not necessary for assent (overdetermination)
4a. “I have faith that the airplane will fly, but I would assent even if I did not have faith.”
4b. “I have faith that God exists, but I would assent even if I did not have faith.” — Leontiskos

This is hard work. :wink:

The way these are set out don't really make sense to me.

Take 2a for instance. I would not agree that this is set out in a useful way. I would say instead, "whether I believe that a plane can fly or not, there is consistent, observable evidence that they do fly safely (almost always)." And if I want to understand how, I can learn all about it and even make planes which work. I don't think faith is a useful word here. Belief is better.

2b. “I do not have faith that God exists, but I assent to the proposition that God exists.” — Leontiskos

To me this reads as: "I do not have faith that God exists, but I have faith God exists." Using “assent” doesn’t change the underlying issue: without evidence or rational support, it still functions as faith.

If I say my plane will fly, this is a probabilistic claim based on consitent observation. “God exists” is a metaphysical claim not supported by empirical observation. Isn't "assenting" to both as if they have the same epistemic weight a category mistake?

Now this brings us to evidence for God and you might consider there to be enough reasons to make God as real as plane flight. For some Aquinas' Five Ways might suffice. Which brings us to a separate area.

Out of interest, are there any forms of atheism you feel more warmly towards and if so, why?

I count many theists as friends and there are many atheists I dislike for their dogma and intolerance.

The airplane analogy does not strike me as ideal, but consider this story. I have a friend who is very non-religious. When she gets on an airplane, she closes her eyes and says, “I believe it can fly, I believe it can fly, I believe it can fly!” She tells the person seated next to her that if you don’t believe, then it won’t work. She is joking, of course, but she is not making an anti-religious dig. She is just having a bit of fun, and it would not be funny if there were nothing true about it. She has no idea how airplanes fly. She has no first-hand knowledge of, “Engineering protocols, air traffic control systems, and black boxes.” And you probably don’t, either. Scientists themselves continue to dispute the explanation for lift. In fact there are a surprising number of people who avoid flying. If you ask them why, they might literally tell you something about a lack of trust/faith in airplanes. For all these reasons, the word “faith” is naturally suited to airplanes, and it seems like your dispute may be with the English dictionary and English language use rather than with the word ‘faith’. The prima facie evidence is certainly against your view that the word ‘faith’ is not applicable to air travel, given the way in which it is spontaneously used in that context. — Leontiskos

Sorry I missed this. I like your arguments.

You're talking, I guess, about epistemic parity; that trusting a plane to fly without understanding how it works is the same as believing in God without understanding or good evidence.

You may have something here about the nature of ignorance. If someone has no knowledge about something then their belief in it may not be justified personally. Not sure this is the same as faith at work.

And even if someone is ignorant of physics and pilots, they still know - based on experience and knowledge of the world - that planes hardly ever crash. That’s not blind faith, that’s pattern recognition based on observable outcomes.

In relation to planes, if a person wants to, they can readily establish evidence which can be tested empirically and demonstrated almost without fail. Not so God.

There's also a difference between metaphysical commitments (God) and evidence based trust (flight). Getting onto a plane assumes an empirically grounded system works, and if it didn’t, you’d change your belief based on evidence (e.g., planes started crashing). Faith in God, however, is often immune to counter-evidence, which seems to be a key philosophical difference here.

Note that the pejorative argument looks like this:

1. Religious faith is irrational
2. Faith in airplanes is not irrational
3. Therefore, faith in airplanes is not religious faith – there is an equivocation occurring

That’s all these atheists are doing in their head to draw the conclusion about an equivocation, and this argument is the foundation of any argument that is built atop it. — Leontiskos

So the argument I made is this:

Religious faith: Belief without (or despite) evidence.

Trust in airplanes: Belief grounded in consistent, observable evidence.

The difference isn't just about whether a belief is rational — it's about how the belief is formed and justified.

It’s not simply “this one’s irrational, this one’s not.” The key point is what justifies the belief. Faith in airplanes is based on statistics, experience, and reliable expert systems. Religious faith, by contrast, is typically belief without that kind of empirical support.

But thank you for your response, very interesting.

I am not saying society has a responsibility to make each individual happy. I am saying though that the goal should be a common good, and the goal of education should probably be "to help people live happy, virtuous, flourishing lives." But I don't think that's the goal of education under liberalism. It is, in theory: "enabling people to do what they want." These aren't the same thing (and in practice, the goal is often more: "supplying the labor force with workers and providing daycare so that children can be raised by strangers for greater economies of scale so that we get economic growth). — Count Timothy von Icarus

I can see your point here (and Han's) but isn't it the case that liberalism in this context is not as significant the marketisation of everything and everyone - the West is in the business of churning out good capitalists who can live the dream of individual transformation though education, qualifications, enhanced earning power, spending and then, of course, there's the children we set upon the same path.

And he's miserable. He's prime bait for radical ideologies of one sort of another precisely because he "did everything he was told," and is miserable. This isn't an uncommon phenomena — Count Timothy von Icarus

Isn’t human dissatisfaction and unhappiness inherent to our condition, rather than simply the product of the particular culture we come from? Even in societies with radically different values and social structures, people still grapple with restlessness, longing, and the sense that something essential is missing. Might this not be something to do with our nature? In the contemporary West we have given people permission to rebel and drop out since the 1950's - is it any wonder many people seem primed to do this as an almost ritualistic response to their lives? The idea that we are not authentic, not good enough, and not happy enough - a familiar trope in Christian Evangelical thought - and that we might become better, happier, and more authentic through a radical shift in belief or practice, seems to serve as a defining narrative of our time.

:up:

That sort of disambiguation is helpful, given how nebulous the term "liberalism" can be. Some people associate everything they love with liberalism, and others associate everything they hate with liberalism. — Leontiskos

That's for sure.

:pray:

f life is good, and we accept that as our foundational axiom, then everything changes.
Philosophy becomes simpler. Morality gains an anchor. Politics, ethics, even economics, gain a direction - not from ideology, but from a basic alignment with what fosters life, sustains it, and lets it thrive.
Conflict becomes less necessary. Arguments over dogma dissolve. The metric is no longer “What do you believe?” but “Does it support life?” Does it bring order, cooperation, creativity, beauty, joy? If not, it’s discarded. If so, it endures. — James Dean Conroy

I don't see how any of this is the necessary outcome of the position that life is good. The hows and whys will still be fought over.

Given that "all life is sacred" is kind of the default message of many philosophies and religions, this doesn't seem to have prevented much suffering and wilful harm, often in the name of doing good.

Can you show us how this approach can bypass ideology? Isn't any pathway to implementing "life is good" outcomes always going to end up in a value system, a series of preferences? All of them contestable.

How are you going to separate a life is good worldview from religions and philosophies which are nominally compatible with this principle but may still clash with each other over goals and methods?

Many people will commit shocking crimes to bring us order, cooperation, creativity, beauty and joy.

aligned with life is, by its nature, good.
From this moment forward, that’s the standard.
Not imposed. Not preached.
Simply remembered.

Thoughts? — James Dean Conroy

To me, this seems like a personal belief system built on assumptions that support the idea that life is good. But why shouldn’t someone be free to see life as bad? Why not adopt an anti-natalist view? It makes just as much sense to hold that life is full of needless suffering with no clear purpose. In the end, all you seem to be doing is pointing to a set of values and emotional reactions to justify why life should be affirmed. But that’s not a universal truth, just a perspective.

Denying life’s value while being alive isn’t paradoxical. It's just expressing a view from within the limits of one's existence. It's not dissimilar to criticizing a game while still playing it.

2. Life’s Drive for Order and Propagation

Life emerges from chaos and strives to build order. From single-celled organisms to human civilizations, the pattern is the same: life identifies opportunities to expand and persists by developing structures that enhance its survival. This drive for order is the essence of evolution.
Example:
Bacteria form colonies, ants build intricate nests, and humans develop societies with laws, languages, and technologies. All these structures are extensions of life's attempt to resist entropy and sustain itself.

3. The "Life = Good" Axiom

Life must see itself as good. Any system that undermines its own existence is naturally selected against. Therefore, within the frame of life, the assertion "Life = Good" is a tautological truth. It is not a moral statement; it is an ontological necessity.
Example:
Suicidal ideologies and belief systems ultimately self-terminate and are selected out. What remains, by necessity, are those perspectives and practices that favor survival and propagation. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam persist precisely because they endorse life-affirming principles, even if imperfectly. — James Dean Conroy

Aren't these is/ought fallacies?

Just because life tends to organize and propagate doesn’t mean that it should. Evolution describes tendencies, not values. Saying that because something happens in nature, it is therefore good, risks committing the naturalistic fallacy (a form of is-ought reasoning).

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin (reread) — Maw

How does it hold up? Read it in the 1990's.

I have the requisite emotional reactions to most things others have, but I don't recall experiencing the sublime, rapture, awe or wonder, which I think is what the word numinous is trying to get at.

Now, I think that's a valid criticism, but that wasn't quite what I had in mind. That's still the sort of criticism liberalism is comfortable with because it's more a criticism about "systemic disequilibrium" (something technocrats can perhaps one day eliminate). It's not a criticism that says that human freedom and flourishing is not best accomplished by liberalism. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I originally wrote something fatuous here, which I retract. I don’t actually have a significant interest in liberalism, so I should probably stay quiet. That said, it does feel like we’re living in a capitalist dystopia rather than any ideal of liberalism.

I don't see the numinous as excluding the darkness and the suffering and the tragedy of living and dying. It doesn't overcome the mystery, and it has nothing to do with the transcendent. — Janus

Good to know. I don't think I have a sense of the numinous, so I can only go with what I hear from others. My experince of this word is mainly confined to New Age groups I was a member of decades ago and Christianity - which I grew up in. I also studied Jung at university in the 1980's and I have a range of vestigial traces of that frame in my head whenever I hear this word "numinous"

We think that there is a darkness in modernity. Well, of course there is—there is a darkness in everything. Without the darkness there would be no light. — Janus

I'm not particularly partial to the light-and-dark dichotomy. I tend to see everything as shades of grey. But, I understand the symbolism.
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So, in the face of the nothing which is the transcendental we look back to ancient wisdom, imagining that something has been lost—there was a Golden Age, an age of Perfect Intellect, of perfectible thought and understanding. This is pure fantasy. — Janus

Yes, we seem particularly keen on golden era nostalgia, don't we?

Thanks. I’m on First Things too.

From the standpoint of Christian doctrine, a Jungian analysis in of the Pentateuch that does not invoke the name of Christ and the revelation of Christ in Scripture, is perhaps interesting, but hardly helpful for the "Lost." Nor is "cultural Christianity" much of a step in the right direction. Far from it, it's to lean on the clay leg of human pride; if anything it is better that people be brought low that they might rise higher. — Count Timothy von Icarus

You're absolutely right from the standpoint of Christian doctrine. But what about outside of doctrine; could cultural Christianity (the default setting of the West, we might say) still be useful? And isn’t it also true that many people who think in terms of Christian doctrine and saving the “lost” can still be bigoted and even morally compromised? It seems like neither the secular nor the religious path is any guarantee of quality, right?

I think this is actually the sort of critique liberalism is easily aware of. It moves "too fast," and "change needs to be managed." You know, "the people aren't ready," or "the system isn't ready for advances in technology." And so there is self-reflection in liberal terms about the threat of expanding wealth inequality under AI, or cultural tensions derailing the benefits of replacement migration, etc. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's not what I'm saying. My point is that liberalism is fundamentally driven by dissatisfaction, with an underlying tendency toward dismantling existing structures, seeking to overturn privilege. This forensic mode of deconstruction perhaps becomes so reflexive and self-perpetuating that it ultimately turns inward, subjecting liberalism itself to the same critical scrutiny it once directed outward, gradually hollowing out its own foundations in the process.

Perhaps, but you could consider Schiller's view where the moral and appetitive are aligned in the aesthetic and our actions are over-determined in desire and duty. On the view, the aesthetic and "spiritual" is precisely what helps us overcome egoism. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But is this correct? What is the contemporary evidence that the aesthetic and the spiritual overcome egoism?