I acknowledged my initial response to praxis was unnecessarily snotty. That's why I followed up with the other one. I wonder, what would constitute necessary snottiness? On the other hand, I think the primary tools in understanding people and their ideas are empathy and compassion. Intellectual empathy is indispensable for philosophy. — T Clark
I think that just shows a lack of imagination, vision, on your part. Seeing people as they are is a skill not everyone has. — T Clark
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
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
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
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.
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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.
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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
And that would indeed seem to suggest a balance between scientific capitalism and a philosophy that emphasises the ‘fruits of contemplation’. — Wayfarer
Share the feeling of other peoples concepts and ideas? — praxis
Anyway, I wanted to say that I've felt a little disturbed by your response yesterday and that I regret offending you. That was not my intention at all and had I even suspected that it might offend I would have said it differently, or not at all. — praxis
I found your list and the point you were attempting to make with it interesting, which is why I read the entire thing. It's just that I found little that spoke of your values and goals. But then I suspect that you deliberately avoided those kinds of details, in attempting to support your point, I suppose. — praxis
The use of imagination and seeing something as it is are very different things, right? A more cogent critique may have been to suggest a lack of good inductive reasoning on my part and failing to put all the pieces together to form an accurate or true picture of you. — praxis
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. — syntax
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
It comes back to differences between your and my understanding. I wouldn't exactly call my list poetry, but it said what it said in a kind of impressionistic, poetic way. At least it was intended to. To me, that's the only way to understand someone - paint a picture. Show, don't tell. — T Clark
What I mean by seeing is to perceive them without interpretation or concepts, just as they are. That certainly takes imagination. To me, empathy is 80% imagination. — T Clark
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 message underlying the violence and destruction is purely and simply self expression, with no higher meaning or purpose. — Shatter
As I mentioned, I liked your list. I can easily appreciate it aesthetically. In fact it wasn't explicitly clear why I liked it until now. This doesn't change the fact that it conveys little important information about you in fact or feeling to me. I suppose this could be because it simply doesn't resonate, despite my being able to appreciate the portrait aesthetically. We are very different people. — praxis
An artwork may or may not say anything of importance. A Thomas Kinkade painting may appeal to norms of beauty and generally be perceived as pretty but it may not really show much. The subject matter of a Kinkade painting, the little cottage in the woods or whatever, may have special meaning to the artist, and he may therefore feel that the subject matter says volumes about him. He is privy to a narrative that the audience lacks. — praxis
I believe the current theory is that empathy is based on mirror neurons. When witnessing someone getting injured, for instance, the same sensation is simulated in our mind, though the actual pain is suppressed, as when we imagine or visualize a painful experience. This is involuntary, though I think empathy may be clouded for various reasons. — praxis
An artwork may or may not say anything of importance. A Thomas Kinkade painting may appeal to norms of beauty and generally be perceived as pretty but it may not really show much. The subject matter of a Kinkade painting, the little cottage in the woods or whatever, may have special meaning to the artist, and he may therefore feel that the subject matter says volumes about him. He is privy to a narrative that the audience lacks.
— praxis
I don't buy that, — T Clark
I have to believe that what I write means something. — T Clark
What exactly don't you buy? I'm afraid the Emerson quote doesn't help me understand your frugality. I would like to understand. — praxis
An aesthetic expression, assuming that's essentially what you're talking about, may cause a range of feelings and have a range of meanings depending on the individual experiencing it, and also depending on the skill and intentions of the writer. It also depends of how well the writer knows their audience and what might resonate with them. — praxis
To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. — T Clark
In terms of expressing meaning, narrative is a powerful tool. — praxis
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 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 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
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
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 — syntax
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. — Sloterdijk
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
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
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
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
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
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
Darwin informs the modern attitude, but Nazis aren't exactly fashionable, and they come to mind when I read your description above. — syntax
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