However, individuals argue about this and, most are also wishing to find the ultimate truths on an objective level, so it is a complex web. — Jack Cummins
it seems likely to me that an essential aspect of any mystical viewpoint is connected to it having some kind of "healing' aspect, even though this may remain as subjective. — Jack Cummins
Perhaps the subjective, personal healing element made it easier to express their ideas in poetry sometimes, rather than as in the more abstract, rational form of philosophical arguments. — Jack Cummins
That is probably where those who see it from a religious perspective, or some kind of spiritual vision, usually believe that we can find some way of seeing and becoming part of the flow of the universe. — Jack Cummins
In a 1927 letter to Sigmund Freud, Romain Rolland coined the phrase "oceanic feeling" to refer to "a sensation of ‘eternity’", a feeling of "being one with the external world as a whole", inspired by the example of Ramakrishna, among other mystics.[1][2] According to Rolland, this feeling is the source of all the religious energy that permeates in various religious systems, and one may justifiably call oneself religious on the basis of this oceanic feeling alone, even if one renounces every belief and every illusion.[3] — link
I think that it is a major problem when people try to impose their views on anyone else, whether it is a mystic vision, or any other. It is unfortunate that people get so carried away with their way of seeing that they think that it is applicable to everyone else. — Jack Cummins
I agree that music and the other arts do involve entering into states of consciousness resembling the mystics. Even here, we have a problem with people disagreeing about the right way of seeing. — Jack Cummins
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2507145-ways-of-seeingPublicity is effective precisely because it feeds upon the real. Clothes, food, cars, cosmetics, baths, sunshine are real things to be enjoyed in themselves. Publicity begins by working on a natural appetite for pleasure. But it cannot offer the real object of pleasure and there is no convincing substitute for a pleasure in that pleasure's own terms. The more convincingly publicity conveys the pleasure of bathing in a warm, distant sea, the more the spectator-buyer will become aware that he is hundreds of miles away from that sea and the more remote the chance of bathing in it will seem to him. This is why publicity can never really afford to be about the product or opportunity it is proposing to the buyer who is not yet enjoying it. Publicity is never a celebration of a pleasure-in-itself. Publicity is always about the future buyer. It offers him an image of himself made glamorous by the product or opportunity it is trying to sell. The image then makes him envious of himself as he might be. Yet what makes this self-which-he-might-be enviable? The envy of others. Publicity is about social relations, not objects. Its promise is not of pleasure, but of happiness : happiness as judged from the outside by others. The happiness of being envied is glamour.
Being envied is a solitary form of reassurance. It depends precisely upon not sharing your experience with those who envy you. You are observed with interest but you do not observe with interest - if you do, you will become less enviable.
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The bogus religiosity which now surrounds original works of art, and which is ultimately dependent upon their market value, has become the substitute for what paintings lost when the camera made them reproducible. — Berger
Of all the means which wisdom acquires to ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is friendship. — Epicurus
The latter first and foremost. "Ultimate truths" are useless if they do not orient us to "a role for ourselves" in the grand scheme of things (i.e. "this mess of a world").I do wonder whether it's exactly ultimate truths that we're seeking or rather a role for ourselves in this mess of a world. — j0e
Beautiful, but I suspect you've read too much 'Laozi' or 'Nāgārjuna' (even possibly Spinoza) into that old Swabian neo-platonist.One the beautiful ideas in Hegel (maybe the beautiful idea) is that all individual, mortal philosophers participate in a larger Conversation which is the self-consciousness of the species. They pick up the conversation, move it forward, and die as mortals must. But their lives are sanctified or lit up by participation in something greater than them. 'Know thyself' until 'nothing human is alien to me,' with the implication being that the self which is known is the universal or shared self. — j0e
To map the territory 1:1? No. Not if that map (i.e. that explanation of 'everything') is to be useful as a map (i.e. an explanation for anything).Does it make sense to explain everything? — j0e
"Why" ... which, of course, is question-begging (or infinitely regressive).For instance, if we say that God created the world and therefore explains the world, then the world is not everything and does not include God. To explain everything is to explain God and world. In other words, why God? More can and has been said on this.
In my understanding, 'explanations' are models, or precise accounts, of how, under specifiable necessary and sufficient conditions, a particular state-of-affairs (A) transforms – can be caused by some agency to transform – into a particular state-of-affairs (B). The better, more useful and fecund explanations, are effable, falsifiable and defeasible.What are explanations?
"Why" pertains only to 'intentional agency' e.g. Why did you eat the soap? When asked Why do the stars twinkle on a clear night? one can only answer by translating the question as How do the stars twinkle on a clear night? because stars are not (recognizably) intentional agents, that is, they do not answer questions.What do we mean by why?
The colloquial term denotes anything at all (without exception) ... but does not posit "the All", which makes about as much sense "all the numbers".What do we mean by everything?
Beautiful, but I suspect you've read too much 'Laozi' or 'Nāgārjuna' (even possibly Spinoza) into that old Swabian neo-platonist. — 180 Proof
To map the territory 1:1? No. Not if that map (i.e. that explanation of 'everything') is to be useful as a map (i.e. an explanation of anything). — 180 Proof
In my understanding, 'explanations' are models, or precise accounts, of how, under specifiable necessary and sufficient conditions, a particular state-of-affairs (A) transforms – can be caused by some agency to transform – into a particular state-of-affairs (B). The better, more useful and fecund explanations, are effable, falsifiable and defeasible. — 180 Proof
"Why" pertains only to 'intentional agency' e.g. Why did you eat the soap? When asked Why do the stars twinkle on a clear night? one can only answer by translating the question as How do the stars twinkle on a clear night? because stars are not (recognizably) intentional agents, that is, they do not answer questions. — 180 Proof
"Why" ... which, of course, is question-begging (or infinitely regressive). — 180 Proof
The colloquial term denotes anything at all (without exception) ... but does not posit "the All", which makes about as much sense "all the numbers". — 180 Proof
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schleiermacher/#PhilReli_1Schleiermacher has a large measure of sympathy with the skeptics about religion whom he means to answer. But, at least in his early period, his sympathy with them also goes much deeper than this. In On Religion he is skeptical about the ideas of God and human immortality altogether, arguing that the former is merely optional (to be included in one’s religion or not depending on the nature of one’s imagination), and that the latter is downright unacceptable. Moreover, he diagnoses the modern prevalence of such religious ideas in terms of the deadening influence that is exerted by modern bourgeois society and state-interference on religion. He reconciles this rather startling concession to the skeptics with his ultimate goal of defending religion by claiming that such ideas are inessential to religion. This stance strikingly anticipates such later radical religious positions as Fritz Mauthner’s “godless mysticism”.
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...for Schleiermacher religion is founded neither on theoretical knowledge nor on morality. According to On Religion, it is instead based on an intuition or feeling of the universe: “Religion’s essence is neither thinking nor acting, but intuition and feeling. It wishes to intuit the universe”
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He recognizes a potentially endless multiplicity of valid religions, and strongly advocates religious toleration. — link
Yes. Absurdists (e.g. Zapffe & Camus) point out that our 'minds' demand more of the world than the world offers us, and that either claiming to have found or denying that there is more leads to same absurdity: living as if we know what we cannot know. If there is more, all well and good, but no one knows this more for sure, here and now, and yet we must thrive together only on what we can know here and now. Or else succumb to the absurd (i.e. philosophical suicide e.g. 'otherworldly superstitions' or 'decadent/terroristic nihilism'). Like decadent bourgeois Rorty, you sussed-out correctly, j0e, whom I can't stand.Perhaps you'll agree though that many itch for something More, without being able perhaps to explicate this 'more' (and which turns out to be just a role to play in 'this mess we're in.' — j0e
Beckett wrote to me about my book Démiurge, "In your ruins I find shelter." — Emil Cioran, Cahiers 1957-1972
If there is more, all well and good, but no one knows this more for sure, here and now, and yet we must thrive together only on what we can know here and now. — 180 Proof
Like decadent bourgeois Rorty, you sussed-out correctly, j0e, whom I can't stand. — 180 Proof
Beckett wrote to me about my book Démiurge, "In your ruins I find shelter." — Emil Cioran, Cahiers 1957-1972
There are several mysteries which seem essential to the philosophical quest; the existence of God, free will and, life after death. These seem to be central to philosophy. Endless books have been written on these subjects. However, no one seems to have come up with any clear answers, and it seems to me that they remain as unsolved mysteries. We all contemplate these aspects of life, but it does seem that there are no definitive answers. Perhaps the whole aspect of mysteries is central to philosophy and what keeps us searching. Are they unfathomable mysteries, beyond human understanding? — Jack Cummins
Surely, it would be rather futile to try to 'force' agreement. — Jack Cummins
So, it would seem that a mind that has been “suspended” in supramental states of consciousness would be unable to communicate that experience to either itself or other minds. This is why mystics tend to use symbolic language and describe mystic experience in terms of “light”, “bliss”, “love”, etc. that can only vaguely hint at the actual experience without describing it. — Apollodorus
And it is experienced when the mind is "suspended" or still, in the same way we cannot see the bottom of a lake unless the water is clear and still. — Apollodorus
in my opinion a return to a simpler, more intuitive and less "rational" terminology would be indicated. — Apollodorus
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