Thank you for your response, I am really interested in the idea of outdoor practices. What is particularly interesting is the lack of a methodology for such activities in the field of academic philosophy. It seems that a true philosopher should reject all physical and practical aspects, and focus solely on rational reasoning. However, where better than in harmony with nature to experience one's own physicality and connection to the world and others?


Regarding your first part of the response, about Gaddafi and Putin, I believe these topics were discussed in another thread. Feel free to respond there, you would greatly add to the discussion. By the way, a little bit about "that" topic. The impetus for its start for me was that I noticed that on this forum, philosophers are ready to argue about the nature of the mog, the universe or understanding, but when it comes to liberalism - here the majority of the precondition - "liberalism is holy". Further judgments are built from these considerations. What then is liberalism as not an ordinary belief? So I decided to find out, and that's how the topic came about.

The "Golden Rule' sums it up. Although I think it would be better formulated as "Do unto others as they would want you to do unto them". Individual flourishing is important and so is community flourishing. If you flourish at the expense of others then you harm the flourishing of the community. — Janus

Exactly. Flourishing is a balance of two imperatives that at first blush seem antithetical. But arranged in the architecture of a hierarchy, we can see the natural logic. A social system seeking to maximise its growth potential and adaptive flexibility must be "good" at creating suitably motivated individuals within a fairly constraining community. What is being optimised is a balance between local independence and global dependence. Each in themselves is the opposite of the other. But each also provides what the other one is missing.

The ideal situation is where both sides of the bargain feel the deal being struck is fair. A win-win. I get to do anything I can imagine wanting to do ... to the degree that I can also rely on everyone else being there to bail me out when I stuff up. And everyone else says I'm free to stuff up as much as I like, but there is a limit to the bail-out that the community is willing to provide. In the long run, my free action has to be judged as being a positive contribution to the community.

The end is survival and flourishing. — Janus

And in biology, death and decay are part of the cycle. Or part of the great re-cycling. :grin:

Nature has to have a way to break down its own adaptive structure as it has a habit of becoming too optimised, too adapted.

You couldn't have an efficient process of evolution unless bodies got routinely destroyed to make way for the fresh contest of a new generation of gene recombination. The big step from simple single cell life – based on cloning and gene exchange even across species – was the ability to cleanly separate an immortal germline from the mortal body.

And even at the level of ecosystems, the old eventually must give way to the new. You have the canonical life-cycle that is immaturity, maturity and senescence.

To be young is to be growing so fast and furiously that many mistakes get made, but also many mistakes are recoverable. Growth papers over the accidents and starts to establish the smart habits that define the mature organism. But individual organisms and even whole species and ecosystems can become over-adapted to a way of life they have co-created with their environment. Senescence becomes the stage of life where the organism/ecosystem has become so wedded to predictable habits that they are both super-efficient but also fatally brittle.

A mature forest is a vast maze of stable relations that recycles itself so efficiently that it produces its own soil. It even makes its own rain. It is the opposite of wasteful and has arranged the world exactly to its wants. Even lightning strikes and forest fires are incorporated into its collective genetic scheme – its global identity.

But then there are always perturbations larger than its own adaptive time frame. A volcano erupts and temperatures drop. Or a land bridge emerges and new kinds of animals or pests arrive. The forest might be flourishing and supremely optimised. But in achieving this high state of efficiency and purpose, it then lacks the furious growth and wild experiment that is natural to youth. Suddenly it is in a world it no longer knows and has lost the capacity to learn about.

But nature rolls on. A life runs its course, always aiming for complete mastery over the world that it finds. And it all works until it suddenly doesn't. The carcass is recycled and the game of life is renewed.

I like this view as it says each stage of life is optimised in its own obvious way. We are immature – and that is itself already an optimal balance between clumsy mistakes and necessary life lessons. We are mature, which sounds really good, but now also a mix of mistakes and lessons. It is only the proportion of the two that should have progressed in some sensible fashion. We should be highly effective but also able to pick ourselves up off the floor.

Then senescence isn't actually failure as yet. It is becoming so well rooted and wise in the ways of a world we have helped construct that we are highly efficient and don't need to sweat the small stuff anymore. However, that complete adaptation to some knowable horizon can only extend so far into the future. And something will always come over the horizon to knock us down.

At the ecosystems level, it really is left to chance – vagaries at the geological level of weather, plate tectonics and crashing asteroids. But at the level of individual members of species, nature throws in some planned obsolescence too. Hearts, teeth and hormones and other things don't have to be built to last forever. Especially if the vagaries of disease, famine and accident are likely to take you out of the game anyway.

Yeah, I think this is right, despite the fact that we seem to be beating a dead horse. — Leontiskos

Nope. You keep turning away from a live discussion in order to flog the same old strawman.

:up: :up:

:fire:

I think that identifies a very common thread in modern culture, but I think it oversells its reach. Surely, plenty of people do think they have reached a sort of "radical innocence," where as Yeats put it: "its own sweet will is Heaven's will." This seems to be the case in various hedonistic pop culture subcultures, and there is also the harsher example of the Manosphere I mentioned in the OP. There is the promise of edenic hedonist polyamory in various social scenes, enhanced by a growing cornicopia of pharmacological innovations, or else the worship of sheer power and self-assertion one finds in others (and sometimes the two are mixed together in various subcultures). It seems to me that is largely the upper class, and what remains of the "striving middle class" that suffers from this residue of guilt, probably because their literature (a dying art) sells hedonism and the pursuit of power as a sort of specifically moral act that must still somehow be justified, whereas the popular culture versions just celebrate themselves reflexively (showing there was never much of a gap between Nietzsche's "master morality" and his "last men.")

So, I can certainly see the phenomena the article speaks to, and it is very potent, but it also seems more absent in some wide areas.

It makes a great point:

Indeed, it is impossible to exaggerate how many of the deeds of individual men and women can be traced back to the powerful and inextinguishable need of human beings to feel morally justified, to feel themselves to be “right with the world.” One would be right to expect that such a powerful need, nearly as powerful as the merely physical ones, would continue to find ways to manifest itself, even if it had to do so in odd and perverse ways.

Not "nearly as powerful," I would say. The appetites of logos are more easily crowded out and disordered by epithumia and thymos (more easily disordered because they demand to rule and order the lower appetites) but they are also stronger. From monks renouncing status, wealth, and sex, to martyrs, to revolutionaries, etc., the appetites of logos routinely show themselves to be capable of wholly overwhelming the desires for physical comfort, or even life itself, and those for honor and regard.

Liberalism could arguably defend itself in terms of giving individual man, and civilization collectively, a better structure for embracing these appetites than any past system through its open-endedness and promotion of technologies of information and discourse (as well as education). But, since it tends to make such appetites wholly privatized, skirting them in education and governance, as well as ethics and political theory, it can make no such claim. Instead, merit has to be banished from political theory because it cannot be justified without an ordering telos. We can have "meritocracy" as a sort of procedural sorting, but never merit. Perhaps that's one source of guilt. Those most invested in gaming the "meritocratic" system are the one's most aware of how it is more of a procedural game than anything else, designed to ruthlessly sort winners from losers not based on any criteria of virtue, but with an eye to procedural efficiency.




Which liberal theorists did you have in mind here? I was thinking of Rawls, Fukuyama, Nozick, or further back Mill, Locke, Hobbes. They tend to ground politics in contractual, procedural terms. For Rawls, a procedural justice must be elevated above the good because the human good is irreducibly plural and private. A person might, for instance, find the pinnacle of the human good in meticulously counting the blades of grass in a field and there would be no reason not to affirm this (Rawls' example).

There is a very strange interlude in Fukuyama's latest book, a defense of liberalism, where he attacks this element of liberal theory with an example. There is the layabout wealthy young man who doesn't work, lives off his parents, is completely unengaged with politics, and spends his time consuming video games, drugs, alcohol, pornography, and other forms of digital media while remaining wholly self-interested. The contrast case is a dutiful young women from a poor family who supports her sick mother while pursuing an education, and is as engaged in politics as she can be. Fukuyama claims that we can condemn the former and praise the latter because the two don't come down to racial, sexual, ethnic, or religious identity. However, it's totally unclear if he has actually left himself any grounds for doing this in his liberalism. Indeed, he constantly refers any "ultimate question" about human flourishing to the Thirty Years War, as if answering these in any concrete form can only participate apocalyptic violence.

So why are stable relationships better than pornography or prostitution? Why is one supposed to help one's parents rather than pursue one's dreams (even if those dreams are largely hedonistic)? In virtue of what is one deserving of merit and the other blame?

I've read all of Fukuyama's books so I can say pretty safely that his only option is to justify his ideal case with an appeal to what "makes society work best," which will of course, in his terms, be an appeal to greater consumption, more safety, and the "reasonableness" of prioritizing epithumia.

I think the idea that our only problem is that some sociopathic bad apples spoil the batch re liberalism is over optimistic. Certainly, it has been argued though. But even if this was so, it would suggest that liberalism has a profound tendency to elevate the sociopathic few to leadership positions across society, from corporate board rooms to senior government posts and many places in-between.

Whereas, I would say that it's hardly surprising that an elite who was raised on the axioms of moral anti-realism, the "(contained) greed is good" of Ayn Rand and much contemporary economic theory, a relentless focus on success (climbing the "meritocratic ladder"), and power and the satisfaction of current appetites as freedom turn out to be a recalcitrant leadership class when they come of age.

It seems that a true philosopher should reject all physical and practical aspects, and focus solely on rational reasoning. — Astorre

Well, this is certainly not the view that dominates in pre-modern philosophy, in either the West or the East. Eastern philosophy has a heavy focus on praxis and asceticism, as did the major schools of Western pagan philosophy, and certainly Christian philosophy as well. The idea that anyone can just slip into a state of pure, dispassioned rationality without any cultivation of virtue is an Enlightenment idea. Whereas, if the nous is clouded and most men suffer from disordered appetites, serious praxis must be undertaken, and praxis is central to the intellectual virtues.

Pierre Hadot's stuff is pretty good on the huge gap between ancient (mostly Pagan) "philosophy as a way of life," where the paradigmatic philosopher is a sage and holy man, and the Enlightenment ideal of sheer procedural reason.

However, where better than in harmony with nature to experience one's own physicality and connection to the world and others? — Astorre

Right, and with outdoor education, it's also recognized as a good environment for avoiding distraction and cultivating virtue and character. People are outside their comfort zones, which allows for progressive challenges, and there is also much more immediate, natural feedback when one acts unwisely. It also helps with community because the small group cannot turn outwards, while the basic nature of the skills being practiced tend to mean that everyone can contribute meaningfully to collective success.

There are large differences between the practices but they share some core similarities that are interesting.

but when it comes to liberalism - here the majority of the precondition - "liberalism is holy". — Astorre

Well, just because liberalism is founded on skepticism and preaches a certain sort of quarantined pluralism doesn't mean it isn't an evangelical ideology, or any different from Marxism in that respect. From the beginning it spread itself through violence. During the French Revolution, the clergy were seen as a threat, due to being an outside source of moral authority and wellspring of an alternative sort of philosophy. When the guillotine proved inadequate for the pace required for massacring them, they turned to constructing sinkable barges so boatloads could be drown together at once. The activities of the Infernal Columns in the Vendee served a similar "liberating" raison d'être.

More recently, from the opening of Japan to US trace at gun point, to Cold War coups, to the post-Cold War era of unchallenged neoliberal hegemony that has seen interventions by liberal states across the globe, that order hasn't shied away from using coercion or even violence to spread its system. This isn't inconsistent with early liberal theory. Both Locke and Mill adopt a similar position that it might be acceptable to enslave backwards people to "free them from indolence" and so lead them to economic prosperity (a key pillar of freedom in liberalism). There is likewise also a long tradition of justifying the use of coercion to dissolve cultural institutions and norms that cut against the grain of liberal pluralism, or to safely quarantine them.

For instance, what makes the religious right so objectionable to progressive liberals is not that they are religious, which is of course a perfectly fine private choice, but that they bring their religiously informed notions of politics into the public sphere. "Religious freedom" is more ideally "the freedom for religion to become publicly irrelevant." But conservative liberals are not actually all that different here with how they defend the "free market" (even as capitalism dissolves all the cultural institutions they want to conserve; if anything, conservative liberalism is even more obviously self-undermining).

Of course, progressive liberalism faces the same sorts of contradictions in that the dissolution of norms and customs, the marketization of all facets of human life, the procedural meritocracy, etc. all tend to promote the interests of the exceptional individual over the median citizen (and indeed, they were originally advocated for on just these grounds by Mill, Nietzsche, etc.). Norms of constraint and duty are, almost by definition, most binding on those with the wealth, talents, and power to not be otherwise bound by other forms of constraint.

Deneen's "Why Liberalism Failed" is quite good on these paradoxes. Or for a more Continental approach, Byung Chul Han's "The Agony of Eros" and "The Burnout Society."

Good write-up. I think I agree with the core of your diagnosis, though I have not read your sources. I'm sadly too ahistorical in my philosophical practice. I want to read MacIntyre soon.

In either case, inspired by your observations, I will spin for a while. The following might be a bit "out-there" but I find it to be an interesting angle.

A possible part of the story is that many take what I would call a pornographic stance towards representations of wisdom. Here, I use the term "pornographic" not in the usual, sexual sense, but rather in a generic sense that C. Thi Nguyen & Bekka Williams (2020) define as using representations of X for the sake of immediate gratification, freed from its usual costs and consequences.

Using philosophy as a form of "wisdom porn" in this sense, people gratify themselves without investing the time and effort to deeply understand the content and its context. For example, one might use bite-sized quotes from great thinkers to feel the immediate rush of sophistication without much care for what the quotes are really about.

A problem with this kind of engagement is that it risks shaping how one engages with philosophy. To gratify oneself—to feed the fantasy of being, for instance, an "alpha male"—one might avoid what is true and good, rather instrumentalizing representations of wisdom that feed this desire. If one's engagement is about gratifying a fantasy, then one has a bad incentive to fetishize the parts of philosophy that gratify instead of engaging with the parts that are worthy.

However, I'm not sure it is necessarily always bad to engage with wisdom porn. It might be a gateway to more genuine forms of engagement. One might learn important things as a side-effect. The question is, if one removed the immediate gratification, facing the difficulties of philosophy, would one still engage?

References:
Nguyen, C. T., & Williams, B. (2020). Moral outrage porn.Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, 18(2).

Thank you; I really, really like that idea. I have read some of Nguyen's stuff before and liked it; thanks for reminding me about him. If anyone is interested, here is the article.

I am not sure if you're familiar with Byung Chul Han, but he makes a somewhat similar (although also in other ways quite different)

For Han pornographization describes a trend in late-modern culture whereby a loss of distance, eroticism (the ancient and medieval view of knowledge as both a sort of ecstasis and transformation —a "knowing by becoming"), and any negativity in favor of immediacy (and immediate gratification), the subsumption of the other into the self through consumption, and transparency.


In the Agony of Eros, the main theme is about the loss of the Other, leading to everything becoming a form of consumption in "the Inferno of the Same." There is an excess of visibility, whereby everything is stripped bare and flattened into surfaces without depth. I cannot help but see some similarity between this and forms of "anti-metaphysics."

Anyhow, they're similar framings in seeing a loss of depth and claims on us. Han's view is more expansive, although less detailed.

For example, one might use bite-sized quotes from great thinkers to feel the immediate rush of sophistication without much care for what the quotes are really about. — GazingGecko

Yes, I think that's the most obvious example. But I think this would also apply in some ways to the distanced, ironic approach to philosophy, as well. It's a way to engage that makes no claims on a person. This might be particularly true when it comes to engagement with those areas of philosophy that claim that praxis is essential, although I can see it applying more generally. The same might be said of the tendency to "retreat" into the analytic stance so as to ascend above good and evil.

That's difficult of course, because some would probably argue that ironic detachment is the height of wisdom.

It reminds me a bit of what David Foster Wallace said about irony:

Irony and cynicism were just what the U.S. hypocrisy of the fifties and sixties called for. That’s what made the early postmodernists great artists. The great thing about irony is that it splits things apart, gets up above them so we can see the flaws and hypocrisies and duplicates. The virtuous always triumph? Ward Cleaver is the prototypical fifties father? "Sure." Sarcasm, parody, absurdism and irony are great ways to strip off stuff’s mask and show the unpleasant reality behind it. The problem is that once the rules of art are debunked, and once the unpleasant realities the irony diagnoses are revealed and diagnosed, "then" what do we do? Irony’s useful for debunking illusions, but most of the illusion-debunking in the U.S. has now been done and redone. Once everybody knows that equality of opportunity is bunk and Mike Brady’s bunk and Just Say No is bunk, now what do we do? All we seem to want to do is keep ridiculing the stuff. Postmodern irony and cynicism’s become an end in itself, a measure of hip sophistication and literary savvy. Few artists dare to try to talk about ways of working toward redeeming what’s wrong, because they’ll look sentimental and naive to all the weary ironists. Irony’s gone from liberating to enslaving. There’s some great essay somewhere that has a line about irony being the song of the prisoner who’s come to love his cage.

However, I'm not sure it is necessarily always bad to engage with wisdom porn. It might be a gateway to more genuine forms of engagement. One might learn important things as a side-effect. The question is, if one removed the immediate gratification, facing the difficulties of philosophy, would one still engage? — GazingGecko

Right, the problem might not be such engagement in itself, but it becoming more the sole mode of engagement.

In terms of the more strenuous praxis of much Eastern thought, the Pagan traditions as originally practiced, Sufism, traditional Christianity, etc. there is also a similar phenomenon where one frequently sees contemplation and meditation (which are of course situated in a way of life and long-term cultivation) compared as almost equivalent with short-term experimentation with psychedelic drugs. Perhaps this comes from the undue focus on "peak experiences" in James and others (as William Harmless points out, many of the most famous Western mystics report no such experiences, or make them ancillary, or report experiences extremely unlike short term intoxication, such as the prophet Ezekiel being immobilized for months on end). I think this is an unhelpful conflation, but it also points to a focus on the short term and consumable, and as a refutation of the need for praxis it's a bit tragic. (Mark Vernon's commentary on the Divine Comedy, which I quite liked overall, was guilty of this repeatedly for instance).

I've read all of Fukuyama's books so I can say pretty safely that his only option is to justify his ideal case with an appeal to what "makes society work best," which will of course, in his terms, be an appeal to greater consumption, more safety, and the "reasonableness" of prioritizing epithumia. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I came away with quite a different reading. For example....

Fukuyama's Identity argues that Rousseau was followed by Kant and Hegel in creating the modern concept of identity as universal human dignity, and as thus a fundamental social and political goal. So UN bill of rights encodes that telos.
Notion of dignity starts out with Socrates and Greeks treating it as the distinction due a selfless warrior - those who risk life for the group. It was the respect due to citizens who defended the larger democratic organism in a freely chosen way. Or at least fully committed way - the individual accepting the group telos and submerging his own telos.
Those who were ready to make sacrifice then became the nobles and aristocratic leaders of their own community in peace times. So merchants had low dignity. But romantic ideal became about everyone being citizens prepared to submit to the abstracted collective that stood apart from any individual - but then granted dignity to any individual who met its ideal.
Kant’s contribution was to turn the Christian social theory about the moral choice between good and evil into a secular abstract theory that reason itself guides good choices. Fukuyama suggests this arose as a contrast to Hobbe’s materialistic and biological view of man as a socialised animal. Kant said the better part of man was the capacity for detached and impersonal reason - not constrained by physics. Kant sharpened the idea that humans have a fundamental freedom to choose when it comes to morality, and this divides an individual from the world he inhabits in a way that demands dignity as a basic social fact.
Then Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit argues the warrior is in fact a slave in his selfless risk. Real dignity comes through the human labour that transforms the world into a place worth living. So master and slave come to recognise dignity in each other in sublated fashion.
Where Romanticism turned existential in searching inwards for the source of dignity, Hegel was saying the turn was outwards to the construction of the best political structure to express self-actualising humanity. Hegel was inspired by the young Napoleon pushing through his rational framework following the French Revolution and the 1806 battle of Jena.
So the ideal system was citizens recognised as moral agents, equal under law and capable of democratically sharing in society’s decisions. The set-up was that all individuals have absolute moral freedom, but guided by reason they would choose to do the right collective thing. Or rather, they would be able maximise their own goals within the framework of a global social goal. They would creatively and not slavishly lift up their worlds, in local-global systems fashion.

So better and worse cash out here as creative vs slavish. One kind of system seeks the win-win of pragmatic realism, the other the lose-lose of slavish autocracy. And in the real world of public record, we can discern a difference in the degree of resilience and self-organisation that marks societies set up in these contrasting ways.

Is it the kind of society that is collectively adapting itself on the fly?

Using philosophy as a form of "wisdom porn" in this sense, people gratify themselves without investing the time and effort to deeply understand the content and its context. For example, one might use bite-sized quotes from great thinkers to feel the immediate rush of sophistication without much care for what the quotes are really about. — GazingGecko

Interesting approach. Developing this logic, it turns out that when we read philosophical works, we are sort of watching pornography: we are watching how someone, using various tools, penetrates all the cracks of other philosophers' ideas about reality. In this case, is independent philosophizing onanism or is it sex?And our collective philosophizing on the forum? Is it nothing other than an intellectual orgy?

I apologize if I hurt anyone's feelings with such metaphors, but it turned out funny. It all reminded me of Plato's "Feast" where something like a philosophical "erotic symposium" takes place, where the theme of Eros unfolds from the physical to the divine, from sexual desire to the pursuit of truth and beauty.

Right, but Fukuyama's Hegel is very much Kojeve's deflated, liberal Hegel. Actually, I'd argue that Fukuyama fundamentally misunderstands Hegel in seeing the Last Man problem he diagnoses so presciently as a sort of "paradox at the end of history," instead of what it rightly should be in Hegel's theory, a contradiction that will power a move to a new stage in history, a new challenge that must be sublated by liberalism or else destroy it. I have written on this at length in the past.

Hegel has a very classical idea of freedom as "the self-determining capacity to actualize (and communicate) the Good." He is at odds with the dominant modern view (which dominates both liberalism and the post-modernism it spawned), which defines freedom primarily in terms of power and potency (the ability to "choose anything"), instead of actuality (this itself being a shift that comes from late-medieval nominalism, fideism, and volanturism, which is then entrenched during the Reformation; it's a theology that still grounds—although as an unexamined remnant—much athiest philosophy). At the opening of the Philosophy of Right Hegel explicitly challenges this vision of freedom as bottoming out in arbitrariness, and so contradiction (since arbitrariness is the opposite of freedom).

Hegel sees human freedom progressing through several contradictions it must sublate to become freedom. For example, he can allow that authenticity is an important part of freedom, but only if it is essentially oriented towards a telos and grounded in reflexive freedom, oriented towards a Good, as opposed to being a sort of groundless procedural freedom. This is very different from a theory grounded in the abstract "choosing agent" of Kantian liberalism. The highest stage of freedom involves a sort of moral freedom, where a civilization's institutions come to positively objectify a morality it knows as good (the "free will willing itself," of PR).

Suffice to say, I don't see this in Fukuyama. He has adopted the "Hegel made safe for liberalism (and empiricism)" of 20th century commentators, and in doing so lost some of Hegel's most important insights. When Fukuyama makes a rare move to discuss virtue and vice it seems that virtue is largely "what benefits the health of the liberal state," and this is desirable precisely in that the liberal state promotes "freedom" of the modern liberal variety.

But of course, the promotion of virtue in this context is actually a limit on freedom if freedom is defined in the liberal fashion, since it makes us "less free" to be a "good time Charlie" or bon vivant. Fukuyama elevates liberal virtue to the life of action/honor/service (thymotic life) but not to the life of logos (which remains instrumentalized). But if it is the rational appetites that allow us to transcend current beliefs and desires, and so our own finitude (the transcendent function of logos in the classical tradition) then one can not have true rational freedom and self-determination without logos leading (which is a view Hegel ultimately keeps fairly close to, but his liberal commentators dispense with).

This can be seen in his latest book, Liberalism and Its Discontents, where epithumia and thymos come into view, but never logos. Hegel, by contrast, has logos on top, as in reality, the engine of history. The need for people to see their society as "truly best," and not only to have this opinion, but to know it, is essential.

That, and he also adopts one of the regrettable elements of Hegel, in the idea of a providential unfolding of teleology, the march of man towards an Earthly Paradise in history. It's this that made his "End of History" thesis overstep, and he has been pairing it back ever since, and this is also what makes him tend towards "Whig history" and a justification of liberalism in rhetorically weak terms focused on adaptation and natural selection. But I think Dante and Solovyov see clearer here. Man's freedom is such that we are not on an inevitable march to utopia, and indeed Hegel's project only makes sense in the end because the Absolute as an end, while encompassing and suffusing history, is not reducible to it nor contained in it. History is ordered to something higher, giving it a telos, but also allowing for real failure.

So again, you can see there is a dichotomy being discussed, yet then treat that as a paradox to be reduced to its correct monistic answer rather the actual dynamic being negotiated in triadic fashion within a hierarchical structure.

Freedom is the power to act. Constraint is the collective rational good. And thus as I have argued page after page, society arises out of the algorithm that is to strike the fruitful balance that is to be found between local competition and global cooperation. Foster the power of independent choice. But then place that in a context where it is being shaped by a communal telos. One knows whether one is fitting in or striking out as the distinction becomes very clear in one’s mind. To compete or to cooperate becomes a choice one has to own and so a power to spend wisely.

Fukuyama is good at giving a structuralist account of how every society in history has had a similar set of ingredients, but balanced somewhat differently due to historical and geographic circumstance. And through examining that evolutionary variety, a general systematic trend can be observed.

If he doesn’t seem a strict Hegelian, it is only probably because Hegel serves as a useful peg to hang his structuralism on. Being a Hegelian in the world of Anglo history departments is instantly controversial. Or it was back when that is how he became overnight famous just for a book title.

The ideal situation is where both sides of the bargain feel the deal being struck is fair. A win-win. I get to do anything I can imagine wanting to do ... to the degree that I can also rely on everyone else being there to bail me out when I stuff up. And everyone else says I'm free to stuff up as much as I like, but there is a limit to the bail-out that the community is willing to provide. In the long run, my free action has to be judged as being a positive contribution to the community. — apokrisis

Yes, the problem is that the power elites and the financial elites tend to make their own rules, the comfortable-enough turn a complacent or blind eye, and even the disadvantaged mostly don't seem to see the big picture well enough not to support the right of the exploiters to exploit at will.

Nice elaboration on the cycle of life. No one wants to die or to lose those close companions of course, but unfortunately there are still many who cannot face the hard reality, and cling to the hope of eternal life or personal salvation in some form or other. Not that I'm advocating the abolition of organized religion, but as psychologically necessary as it might be to many, it does seem to be overall a detriment to human flourishing in general.

as a paradox to be reduced to its correct monistic answer — apokrisis

It's a dialectical synthesis, not a reduction.

But then place that in a context where it is being shaped by a communal telos. One knows whether one is fitting in or striking out as the distinction becomes very clear in one’s mind. To compete or to cooperate becomes a choice one has to own and so a power to spend wisely. — apokrisis

What communal telos? One knows if one is corresponding to what is "said to be good by others," yet this is not the same thing as knowledge of what is truly best. It would be a strange answer to say that Socrates deserves to be killed because justice is just the will of the many, as expressed as a system of outputs, for instance.

Freedom is the power to act. Constraint is the collective rational good. — apokrisis

First, how is this not a monadic view of freedom?

And that's precisely the idea I was arguing against (and which Hegel takes on). Freedom as sheer power collapses into contradiction. If such "freedom" isn't aimed at any prior end then it is sheer arbitrariness, but sheer arbitrariness is the opposite of freedom. The muscle spasms is not the paradigm of free action.

Moreover, to do or think anything determinant is to have made a choice that rules out other choices (any determinacy and so any choice is a move away from sheer power/potency). Hence, any choice at all represents a limit of absolute freedom, a reduction in freedom. Yet the idea that choice is a limit on freedom is contradictory, hence freedom collapses into its opposite.

But the next level of the dialectical (for Hegel at least) isn't "the community," it is a reflexive freedom, freedom over the self and the positive movement towards determinacy as an end. Yet such a freedom will also turn out to be arbitrary if it has arbitrary ends. Hence, freedom as the self-determining capacity to actualize the good must already have an end or nature in view (although we haven't attained it at this stage).

Modern Hegelians (e.g. Honneth) sometimes squeeze authenticity in here, since it's obvious that people with a great deal of self-control and self-discipline sometimes possess this in a way that is bent back against itself.

Then we get social freedom because the individual possessing of reflexive freedom, still having no clear end, can obviously move to deprive others of their liberties. There is at least the potential for the Hobbesian struggle of "all against all." Moreover, man as the "political animal" in unfree to fulfill his political nature without real communion.

However, something like A Brave New World is a great example of how social freedom is of itself inadequate. Institutions objectify morality, but they can do so in a stunted form. Even if citizens social welfare functions align, they and their society can fail to be fully virtuous, and so fully self-determining.

This progression can be described in evolutionary or systems terms, but not reduced to them. If it is reduced to them, we risk a slide to a sort of speculative providential teleology that isn't empirically justified, or a slide towards the arbitrariness of a values anti-realism.

Of course, ceteris paribus, the virtues are good for survival. Being prerequisites for true self-determination, they are also prerequisites for an organic whole that is (relatively) less and less dependent on "good fortune." But survival isn't the measure of virtue. A mountain may last aeons, but it isn't virtuous or self-determining, nor even much of a true whole.

The later moments in the dialectical sublate the earlier ones, they do not refute them. As Hegel puts it in the preface to PhS, "the truth is the whole." The flower does not refute the bud. The problem for Hegel though is that his providential teleology seems like wishful thinking. It's Hegel's naturalism and his desire to domesticate the divine by wrapping it in the immanence of history that leads to the good deflating into a monadic attractor.

Fukuyama is good at giving a structuralist account of how every society in history has had a similar set of ingredients, but balanced somewhat differently due to historical and geographic circumstance. And through examining that evolutionary variety, a general systematic trend can be observed. — apokrisis

I agree. Arguably, he slips into selecting on the dependent variable, but to be honest that problem is endemic to the type of work he does. His two volume opus on state development is magisterial. I am just not sold on his defense of liberalism as an ideal political theory. His response to Deneen, Taylor, MacIntyre is particularly weak. He acknowledges they have strong points and then just defaults to "if you don't like liberalism you can leave," a funny comment from a defender of a globally hegemonic ideology that insists on inserting itself into every culture, by coercion or force if need be.

It's a dialectical synthesis, not a reduction. — Count Timothy von Icarus

There’s a difference between two becoming one and and a dichotomy becoming stabilised as a pair of complementary actions - the asymmetry that can become fixed as it is moved apart in scale to become a structure of relations sandwiched by its local and global horizons.

It would be a strange answer to say that Socrates deserves to be killed because justice is just the will of the many, as expressed as a system of outputs, for instance. — Count Timothy von Icarus

You might find is strange. An anthologist like Richard Wrangham instead accounts for the evolutionary value of such behaviour in terms of the self-domestication of humans - the step that actually allowed humans to become tribal creatures. Both generally empathetic and coldly predatory. Strong in forming in-groups as also strong in identifying out-groups.

You are simply applying this ingrained human principle. Social science explains why it was useful for there even being someone like a Socrates in the first place to prize or murder.

First, how is this not a monadic view of freedom? — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is getting desperate. Freedom and constraint are being accounted for in terms of each other. They are a unity of opposites. You might then call that one thing, but it is the one thing of an irreducibly triadic hierarchical relation. So not monadic and not dyadic but triadic.

If such "freedom" isn't aimed at any prior end then it is sheer arbitrariness, but sheer arbitrariness is the opposite of freedom. The muscle spasms is not the paradigm of free action. — Count Timothy von Icarus

And away you go. Not listening to a thing I say.

The arbitrariness or contingency is precisely why the system can also consist of its other that is its constraint or necessity. There is the counterfactuality of a contrast taken to its limiting extremes. Which is how meaningful states of balance can arise as a spectrum of concrete possibility inbetween.

A muscle spasm is the kind of paradigmatically locally free and unconstrained action which can now make sense of the other thing which is a muscle contracting under the global constraint of a volitional intent. It is a local power that can be collectively harnessed.

Yet the idea that choice is a limit on freedom is contradictory, hence freedom collapses into its opposite. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Only in your confused telling. The idea of freedom can only exist to the degree that it’s “other” - a context of constraint - also exists.

Hence, freedom as the self-determining capacity to actualize the good must already have an end or nature in view (although we haven't attained it at this stage). — Count Timothy von Icarus

But here you are talking about freedom as it would be understood by the suitably socialised individual. One that has internalised the constraints of their community and culture, so is equipped to trade off their personal agenda against that larger collective agenda.

All you are doing is describing the way that western people were being taught to socially construct their habits of conduct under a particular axial religion and feudal economic structure. The monkish formula of a personal relationship to God which meant an individual had to act with the goal of achieving a Platonic level notion of what was good, true, beautiful and divine.

You have been socially constructed to think a certain way and you can’t escape that training, no matter how often that causes your rationalisations to collapse into self-contradicting confusions.

But survival isn't the measure of virtue. A mountain may last aeons, but it isn't virtuous or self-determining, nor even much of a true whole. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Another argument that is just stupid. Could even a chimp be virtuous? But isn’t a chimp somewhat self-determining?

If you want to argue, at least find interesting edge cases that might be designed to get at the issues in hand. Make some kind of effort to not waste both our time.

To whom does the socially constructed notion of virtue apply except to those who have been socially constructed under that cultural paradigm.

When the missionary lands on the Polynesian beach, Bible and rosary clutched in hand, what is his proper judgement of the savages he confronts - unsaved souls in perhaps some natural state of disgrace. What is his most virtuous course of action when confronted by some other set of people with its own adapted lifestyle - its own socially constructed way of life that seems to have functioned pretty well even in the absence of the Catholic Church and its medieval rehash of Ancient Greek philosophy.

Let’s put your arguments out in the reality of the wider world as see how they fare.

The problem for Hegel though is that his providential teleology seems like wishful thinking. It's Hegel's naturalism and his desire to domesticate the divine by wrapping it in the immanence of history that leads to the good deflating into a monadic attractor. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yep. Even an Aristotle or Peirce becomes problematic once they try to connect the inherent force of their logic to the socially-constructed paradigms they are meant to also be upholding.

Rationality is telling them one thing - it points towards the structural order of a self-organising nature. And custom is telling them they still need to bend their account back towards being near enough socially-acceptable.

They need to be doing this as if they really mean it too. Otherwise … Socrates! Or the fate suffered by the many Enlightenment rationalists that the Inquisition existed to suppress.

He acknowledges they have strong points and then just defaults to "if you don't like liberalism you can leave," a funny comment from a defender of a globally hegemonic ideology that insists on inserting itself into every culture, by coercion or force if need be. — Count Timothy von Icarus

So Fukuyama likewise follows the logic of his own argument until he hits that point where he encounters the dominant socially-constructed paradigm of his day. He goes a little weak in the knees. He makes the sacrifice he rather regrets which is to acclaim the Pax Americana as the End of History.

Who needs to read the books once you have already read the headline?

But then also, when you speak of “a globally hegemonic ideology that insists on inserting itself into every culture, by coercion or force if need be”, isn’t that more true of the Catholics, Mormons and Scientologists of this world?

As a faith, liberalism seems far more wishy-washy and porous in nature. We did have the UN and various international bills of rights and courts of war crimes. A legalistic structure for embedding a liberal philosophy. But that hasn’t really stuck. History didn’t in fact end at that high water mark.

means of coping, maximizing productivity, reducing stress, or achieving “authenticity.” I have seen this particularly in some pieces on Stoicism I've read that seem to be largely aimed at the "tech-bro" crowd. A commitment to truth gets shoved aside for a view of philosophy as a sort of "life hack."

There is a sort of "managerial" outlook here, where praxis reduced to a sort of tool. In a similar vein, I have seen the critique that modern therapy/self-help largely focuses on helping us "get what we want," but not so much on "what we ought to do" or the question of if "what we want" is what will ultimately lead to flourishing and happiness. That is not seen as the purpose of therapy or self-help. That might be fair enough, but then it also not seen as the purpose of education either. So, what does fulfill that function? It seems to me that nothing does, except for perhaps wholly voluntary associations that one must "choose" (where such a choice is necessarily without much guidance). Aside from "self-development," this seems problematic for collective self-rule and social cohesion. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is a very astute observation, which reminds me it is at the back of my mind, though I was not coherently aware of what's happening with the use of philosophy as a personal self-help advise. So, putting it together like your post is helpful.

Repurposing is a very common human activity, including repurposing the philosophical writings for personal gain. Thankfully, forums like this know the difference and I haven't seen an argument advocating for life-hacks as the purpose of philosophy.

The School of Philosophy, as the classics had viewed philosophy, is not harmed insofar as the teachings remain the scholars domain and philosophical procedures such as hermeneutics, are in place -- scholars who assiduously read and translated some of the most difficult writings were a gift.

An 1881 Fragment of Nietzsche's:

The society [die Gesellschaft] first educates the single being [das Einzelwesen], forms him into a half or full individual [Individuum]; it does NOT form itself from single beings, not from contracts of such beings! At most an individual is necessary as a central point [Kernpunkt] (a leader), and this individual is only "free" in relation to the lower or higher level of the others. So: the state [der Staat] does not originally suppress individuals: they do not yet exist! The state makes it possible for humans [Menschen] to exist in the first place, as herd animals [Heerdenthieren]. We are only then taught our drives and affects: they are not original [Ursprüngliches]! There is no "state of nature" [Naturzustand] for them! As parts of a whole, we participate in its living conditions [Existenzbedingungen] and its functions, and incorporate the experiences and judgments we have gained in the process.These later come into conflict [Kampf] and relationship [Relation] with one another when the bonds of the society disintegrate: within himself he must bear out [ausleiden] the after-effects of the social organism, he must atone [abbüßen] for the unsuitability of judgments, experiences, and living conditions that were suitable for a whole, and finally he comes to create his possibility of existence as an individual [Existenzmöglichkeit als Individuum] through reorganization and assimilation (excretion) of the drives within himself.

I’ve come to the thread late as I’ve been enjoying a vacation.
I agree with the OP, I would point out though that in the past, when these practices were originally developed the world was a very different place. Indeed it is very difficult to even come close to imagining what it was like. Things like time (one’s time), one’s needs (for sustenance), the simplicity of one’s beliefs, the influence of societal leaders over one’s everyday life, the value of your life, the size of one’s societal group. The currency of such things was very different. As such we should also shine a light on our own currencies and how common practices (between the past and now) become applied differently.

In those days, it was cheap to spend your whole life, or a significant part of it in a monastery, or labouring on one acre of land, to feed a handful of people. Knowledge was held by priests, or their equivalent. Resources of every type were plentiful, with little demand for them. The deep identification with the simple objects and activities which shaped our lives was unshakable. Myths would develop around everyday objects and events. Magic was everywhere.

Hilary Mantel frames our knowledge of,(more recent) history;

“History is not in the past-it’s in the method we have evolved of organising our ignorance of the past. It’s the record of what’s on the record. It’s the positions taken when we stop the dance to note them down. It’s what’s left in the sieve when the centuries have run through it”. “It’s the multiplication of the evidence of fallible and biased witnesses, combined with incomplete accounts of actions not fully understood by the people who performed them.”
https://downloads.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2017/reith_2017_hilary_mantel_lecture1.pdf

I needn’t contrast this past with the present, as we know the present so well.

I knew a Guru who advised against meditation because the modern world is such a cocophony of noise and stimulation that it was more likely to result in mental issues, than in Samadhi. He followed the route of puja, ceremonial worship as an alternative, which was equally high in stimulation.


I would also say that our civilisation is in a stage of collapse, or imminent collapse. The decadence crumbling into moral and economic decline. Crime and dishonesty increasing. Most people have some sort of trauma, which is a serious blockage to self development in most people who have suffered it.

@Count Timothy von Icarus, you made several insightful connections. I will only focus on a few.

I am not sure if you're familiar with Byung Chul Han, but he makes a somewhat similar (although also in other ways quite different) — Count Timothy von Icarus

No. I see the connection though. The ideas sound very interesting. I'll definitely give the Agony of Eros a read in the near future.

In the Agony of Eros, the main theme is about the loss of the Other, leading to everything becoming a form of consumption in "the Inferno of the Same." There is an excess of visibility, whereby everything is stripped bare and flattened into surfaces without depth. I cannot help but see some similarity between this and forms of "anti-metaphysics." — Count Timothy von Icarus

I find this connection striking. For instance, hedonism might become "common-sense" because one struggles to comprehend something of value outside one's own experience. Ethics is obviously just personal preference, if it is anything at all. It captures the vast spread of contemporary cynicism and scientism well. Was it something in this direction you had in mind with "anti-metaphysics?"

But I think this would also apply in some ways to the distanced, ironic approach to philosophy, as well. It's a way to engage that makes no claims on a person. This might be particularly true when it comes to engagement with those areas of philosophy that claim that praxis is essential, although I can see it applying more generally. The same might be said of the tendency to "retreat" into the analytic stance so as to ascend above good and evil.

That's difficult of course, because some would probably argue that ironic detachment is the height of wisdom. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, good points. I would not take all of the ironic approach to be pornographic, but that the pornographic stance might be quite common in that approach. The quote by David Foster Wallace is well-chosen for this point. There can certainly be something gratifying in cynicism.

Still, instrumentalization extends beyond the pornographic stance. Maybe the analytic and ironic can avoid the pornographic stance, yet still often instrumentalize in a problematic manner. There is clearly more to the story than the pornographic stance.

I suspect the analytic stance is less pornographic than the ironic, at least in general. Yet, while introspecting, I can certainly see the allure even in the analytic. Only focusing on a narrow problem inside a big problem, breaking it down into conditionals and treating important questions like sterile puzzles has a strange comfort.

Modern self-help culture, mindfulness programs, positive psychology, and to a lesser extent outdoor education, present themselves as the heirs of ancient, medieval, and Eastern wisdom traditions (i.e., to philosophy and spirituality). They borrow their vocabulary from these sources, speaking to "character development," virtue, flourishing, balance, discipline, detachment, etc., yet sever these practices from the original anthropology that supported them. In turn, the switch towards a "thin" anthropology, and the liberal phobia of strong ethical claims tends to unmoor them from any strong commitment to an ordering telos that structures the "self-development" they intend to promote. Everything becomes about the individual, about getting us what we want. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Modern self-help products are a for-profit genre. So already from this perspective, what is being sold by the self-help genre has to be tailored in such a way that it will make it marketable, appealing to prospective consumers.
This means that there has to be an intense focus on the idividual and what he wants (or subversively, what he should want, so as to benefit the author of self-help).

Further, in much of self-help, the underlying assumptions, made both by authors as well as consumers go like this:
It's a dog-eat-dog world.
Might makes right.
Of course, it's mostly considered too crude to actually say these things out loud, so they are mostly just implied; although there are self-help books that are direct like this.

The "help" offered is in line with those assumptions, less or more obviously, thus the egoic and managerial focus of self-help products.

A commitment to truth gets shoved aside for a view of philosophy as a sort of "life hack."

It's the only way that plebeians are able to conceive of philosophy. And plebeian mentality is the prevalent type of mentality nowadays, even in many people with advanced degrees and lots of money.
Why do you think Nietzsche is the most popular philosopher? Because he seems the easiest one to read, and people love his combative tone.

Philosophy itself has been thoroughly academicatized and professionalized.

I think insufficiently so. In the past, philosophy typically used to be reserved for the leisurely elites who didn't have to worry about paying bills, so they were able to concern themselves with matters of truth in the abstract without this having adverse effects for them. I think it should be kept that way. Because people who have to work for a living, often to the point of exhaustion, simply cannot afford to invest in activities that could in any way hamper their ability to function in a brutally competitive market (such as by inducing self-criticism or self-doubt, as reading philosophy can easily do in people).

Yet, while introspecting, I can certainly see the allure even in the analytic. Only focusing on a narrow problem inside a big problem, breaking it down into conditionals and treating important questions like sterile puzzles has a strange comfort. — GazingGecko

Hence to allure of koans. Thinking about a koan makes one's mind stop, which is oddly satisfying.

Modern self-help programs often seem to be excessively self-focused. But I would argue that the same is true of many traditional spiritual practices. What is it that motivates a search for "salvation" or "liberation" or "enlightenment" if not a concern for one's own well-being or life project? — Janus

Of course, but actually going through with one's personal salvation project used to be reserved for the select few, certainly it wasn't meant for everyone.

I think there is a puritanical elitist element in the idea that modern self-help programs are merely watered down caricatures of the ancient "true" practices.

I mean, if these programs really do help people to live better, more fulfilled and useful lives, then what is the problem?

One problem with that is that the watered down versions are being promoted as the real thing, and can eventually even replace it. This can lead to a lot of wasted time, wasted life opportunities, a lot of interpersonal strife.
Buddhism is a good example for this.

Is it because they don't really renounce this life in favour of gaining Karmic benefit or entrance to heaven? Is the most important thing we can do in this life to deny its value in favour of an afterlife, an afterlife which can never be known to be more than a conjecture at best, and a fantasy at worst? There seems to be a certain snobbishness, a certain classism, at play in these kinds of attitudes.

These things become more relevant and glaring once you look at them in the context of the particular religion/spirituality where they take place.
Again, Buddhism is a good example. It's gotten to the point where one has to defend the Pali Canon (the foundational text of Buddhism) to people who claim to be Buddhists. From an insider's perspective, a total insanity is going on. From an outsider's perspective, it probably doesn't matter.

There will always be a tension between individual preferences and societal desiderata. It seems obvious that in any community harmony is more desirable than conflict. — Janus

Of course. However, the striving for harmony usually involved a lot of torture and killing in the past, and still involves a lof of strife.

You are making an argument premised on the belief that there is actually something more than just pragmatism when it comes to living life. You name these higher facts as truth, goodness, and the divine. You want to put these at the centre of our attention and efforts, and advocate for practices that are self-denying, self-effacing, oddly self focused in being self-rejecting. A life built around rejecting the everyday stress and pleasure of being a social self and aimed at becoming this notion of some more perfected state of being. A godly creature barely existing in the world as it generally is, and generally must be, for an organism pragmatically dependent on its socially-constructed environment.

So what supports this metaphysics as a factual argument? Where is the evidence that this ought to be any kind of project for us humans? — apokrisis

Indeed.

These kinds of life lessons can be worked into the educational curriculum from a young age so that children start off properly equipped with an understanding of how their real world works, and the possibilities for improvement – of the self and its society – that flow from there.
/.../
It is the celebration of humanity as bestial rather than celestial.

But if this is so, how do you propose to teach it, and why??
It would be like being a successful stock broker but revealing your business secrets to others. You couldn't be successful for long afterwards.

The issue at this level isn't even philosophical. You will get no solutions from examining ideologies. Ideologies of any stripe become the problem when they are marketed as the absolutes that must rule our lives rather than some possible wisdom about how best to play the game that is being a useful member of a flourishing community.

I suspect that marketing something as an "absolute" is first and foremost a power move, an effort to exert control over others. If one can control what other people consider real and relevant, one can control others.

Of course, but actually going through with one's personal salvation project used to be reserved for the select few, certainly it wasn't meant for everyone. — baker

To be free of the primary "cares" of the world involves renunciation, and not many are capable of, or want to do, that. Even with renunciation there is no guarantee of salvation or liberation. The whole desire for, and belief in, salvation could well be just a fear-based wishful delusion.

One problem with that is that the watered down versions are being promoted as the real thing, and can eventually even replace it. — baker

What you say assumes what is at issue—that there really is is a "real thing" to be found.

Of course. However, the striving for harmony usually involved a lot of torture and killing in the past, and still involves a lof of strife. — baker

Right, there is no perfect harmony. And what portion of humanity people consider to be their kin, or even their kind, is a big issue.

One problem with that is that the watered down versions are being promoted as the real thing, and can eventually even replace it.
— baker

What you say assumes what is at issue—that there really is is a "real thing" to be found. — Janus

I said more later in the post you quoted.

In Buddhism, there is the theme that we are now living in an age in which the Dharma ends:

The Decline of the Dharma or Ages of the Dharma, refers to traditional Buddhist accounts of how the Buddhist religion and the Buddha's teaching (Dharma) is believed to decline throughout history. It constitutes a key aspect of Buddhist eschatology and provides a cyclical model of history, beginning with a virtuous age where spiritual practice is very fruitful and ending with an age of strife, in which Buddhism is eventually totally forgotten.

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

The Dharma Ending Age, according to Mahayana Buddhism, is a prophetic period following the Buddha's nirvana, marked by a significant decline in the understanding and practice of the Dharma. This era is characterized by confusion, the rise of incorrect doctrines, and the prevalence of misleading spiritual practices. As the true teachings of Buddhism fade and important scriptures become less recognized, individuals struggle with spiritual cultivation, necessitating the preservation and transmission of the teachings to ensure continuity and spiritual awakening amidst challenges.

https://www.wisdomlib.org/concept/dharma-ending-age

(ironic, the ads that pop up on that precise page ...)

People who acknowledge that they do not think of themselves as enlightened (or are they merely being falsely modest?) nonetheless take it as read that enlightened ones did exist, and may exist even today (however rare that might be) but how can this be shown to be more than merely a personal belief? — Janus

If you look at traditional accounts of "enlightenment", "enlightenment" is not something one would normally desire, ever, because for all practical intents and purposes, "enlightenment" is a case of self-annihilation, self-abolishment.

In traditional Buddhist scriptures, "enlightenment" is described as being attainable mostly only to monks (who are able to devote all their time and energy to the pursuit of it and do not have to concern themselves with earning a living). While it is said that if a lay person does attain "enlightenment", they have to ordain as a monastic within a few days or they die (!!), because an enlightened person is not able to live in this world, as they lack the drive and the ability to make a living.

But few people read old scriptures or care about them, so such people invent their own ideas of "enlightenment" that fit into their way of life. It's not uncommon nowadays for people to desire to become "enlightened" and to think that one can be "enlightened" and still go to work, have a family, and generally eat, drink, and make merry. From a traditional perspective, this is totally absurd.

I think there is a puritanical elitist element in the idea that modern self-help programs are merely watered down caricatures of the ancient "true" practices.

As sketched out above, they are such caricatures.

To say nothing of how dangerous it can be to pick and choose from old traditions as one pleases. For example, people sometimes get permanent brain damage from intense meditation retreats! Some commit suicide. Some marry and start families in completely dysfunctional circumstances. Picking and choosing from an old tradition without regard for its wholeness can have unforeseeable and dangerous consequences.

I mean, if these programs really do help people to live better, more fulfilled and useful lives, then what is the problem?
Is it because they don't really renounce this life in favour of gaining Karmic benefit or entrance to heaven?

Why call these new self-help practices by the old names? Why call something "Buddhist" when it has nothing to do with Buddhism?

Is the most important thing we can do in this life to deny its value in favour of an afterlife, an afterlife which can never be known to be more than a conjecture at best, and a fantasy at worst? There seems to be a certain snobbishness, a certain classism, at play in these kinds of attitudes.

This sounds rather victim-ish.

If you look at traditional accounts of "enlightenment", "enlightenment" is not something one would normally desire, ever, because for all practical intents and purposes, "enlightenment" is a case of self-annihilation, self-abolishment. — baker

That's one interpretation.

While it is said that if a lay person does attain "enlightenment", they have to ordain as a monastic within a few days or they die (!!), because an enlightened person is not able to live in this world, as they lack the drive and the ability to make a living. — baker

It depends on what is meant by "enlightenment". Ramana Maharshi reportedly became spontaneously enlightened as a schoolboy, then left home on a train to Arunachala (a sacred mountain if I recall correctly), where he was found starving and covered with ants. People then fed him and treated him as a sage.



The Shivapuri Baba is a very different case—he had heaps of motivation, after leaving his family and becoming enlightened in the forest according to reports he walked form India to England.

Han Shan lived by himself on Cold Mountain, and survived just fine for many years.

I think there is much of mythology in all this.

Why call something "Buddhist" when it has nothing to do with Buddhism? — baker

What gets called "Buddhist" that has nothing to do with Buddhism. Do you fancy yourself to know what the essence of Buddhism is?

Is the most important thing we can do in this life to deny its value in favour of an afterlife, an afterlife which can never be known to be more than a conjecture at best, and a fantasy at worst? There seems to be a certain snobbishness, a certain classism, at play in these kinds of attitudes.
This sounds rather victim-ish. — baker

What are you talking about—why "victim-ish"? It seems more likely that you are projecting your own victimhood.

One problem with that is that the watered down versions are being promoted as the real thing, and can eventually even replace it.
— baker

What you say assumes what is at issue—that there really is is a "real thing" to be found.
— Janus
I said more later in the post you quoted. — baker

I couldn't find the "more" you said you said.

In Buddhism, there is the theme that we are now living in an age in which the Dharma ends: — baker

So what? Who's to say that's true?

I find this connection striking. For instance, hedonism might become "common-sense" because one struggles to comprehend something of value outside one's own experience. Ethics is obviously just personal preference, if it is anything at all. It captures the vast spread of contemporary cynicism and scientism well. Was it something in this direction you had in mind with "anti-metaphysics?" — GazingGecko

I was thinking primarily of the empiricist movement away from any metaphysical theorizing, although the continental tradition has its own version of this. Hume is a good early example. But really it's an issue across modern thought that emerges as epistemology becomes "first philosophy," while at the same time that epistemology comes to absolutize the immediate as—if not "more real"—then at least "more secure" than the intelligible. (This is a bit of a generalization of course. This move to the sensible sometimes leads to a prioritization of what can be quantified, such that mathematics is "most real," but I think that this move towards mathematization is actually also grounded in the elevation of the "common sensibles" as laid out here). More broadly, the problems of modern epistemology have generally been "building a bridge back to reality" precisely because its starting assumptions include a buffered, if not solipsitic agent. I'm not really sold on post-modern attempts to dissolve this agent either, since they still seem to fall into the same habit of absolutely prioritizing the immediate. On this, I think Hegel had a good point in the Phenomenology that the absolutely immediate, if taken to the limit, is itself contentless.

Charles Taylor lays this out quite well in A Secular Age, and I found a good summary of the part I liked:

The Closed World System (CWS; closed to "transcendence") he describes is the one most commonly held in the west today – a picture of individuals as knowing agents who build up their knowledge of the world by taking in information and forming mental pictures from which they build theories. An understanding of science often combines with this structure, and a series of priority relations tell us what is learned before what. Sense experience acts foundationally – “I must grasp the world as a fact before I can posit values.” In this CWS, any contact with the transcendent must come as an inference and “it is obvious that the inference to the transcendent is at the most extreme and most fragile end of a series of inferences; it is the most epistemically questionable.”

Taylor uses the work of post-modern thinkers such as Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty to deconstruct these ‘master-narratives’ of modernity and to show how they are constituted by a “massive self-blindness” – the supposed neutrality of secularity actually appears to be bogus.

https://mrlivermore.wordpress.com/2014/06/03/charles-taylor-secularity-and-miracles/

This tends to isolate us from anything but surfaces appearances (indeed, consider the wide, continuing influence of the Kantian notion that all we have access to is appearances). This seems to lend itself quite well to Han's "death of the Other."

I suspect the analytic stance is less pornographic than the ironic, at least in general. Yet, while introspecting, I can certainly see the allure even in the analytic. Only focusing on a narrow problem inside a big problem, breaking it down into conditionals and treating important questions like sterile puzzles has a strange comfort. — GazingGecko

Sterile, but also potentially solipsistic if we get stuck in an epistemology that never lets us outside our own heads. And I'm not sure if merely being "stuck inside language" is that much better.

Not to put to fine a point on it, but the essence of sin for Saint Augustine was the incurvatus in se, the way the soul becomes bent in around itself. At the limit, it becomes like a black hole, wholly cut off from communion and the erotic ascent towards Being. Two trends in modern literature suggest this problem. The first is a sort of straight jacket intellectualism that is unable to transcend procedural reason, and so gets stuck in the cul-de-sac of skepticism, cut off from being. The second is voluntarism, the will becoming entirely its own object. The two pathologies reinforce each other though, since if one can know nothing else, the self must be the object of the will, while a will focused on itself will only direct the intellect outwards in terms of the desires of the self.

For examples of the intellectualist strain, there is Hamlet, Ivan Karamazov, or Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, or the society of A Brave New World (an extremely rational society that is focused on hedonism and economic growth because it sees nothing else to seek outside the immediacy of "utility"). For the volanturist strain, there is Milton's Satan or 1984 (or maybe some of Ayn Rand's heros, although less self-consciously)—sheer self-assertion and power. Those are sort of the limit cases in art, but I feel like much more mundane philosophies can get trapped in the dialectic that those literary works bring out in the extremes.

The "help" offered is in line with those assumptions, less or more obviously, thus the egoic and managerial focus of self-help products.

I don't disagree with you here really. A big point made by the authors of the "Manosphere" is that their transactional view of romantic relationships (and even friendship) and open embrace of "might makes right" is simply a more honest approach to what people already knowingly (if not as explicitly) embrace in the common framing of human life in terms of "market forces." I think this is a warped view of reality though (although it can be a self-fulfilling sort of view). The atomized utility maximizer of liberal economics is not an empirical fact, but an interpretive lens.



Well, a common counter to this is that some ills seem to be decreasing. Violent crime has decreased (before tipping up again lately), although this seems to be largely attributable to an aging population and the fact that young people (who tended to commit most crimes) increasingly just don't socialize at all and anesthetize themselves with drugs and electronic entertainment instead. Teen pregnancies have gone down, but that's because pregnancies in general have collapsed and people are having sex, forming couples, and getting married less overall. Other ills, such as "deaths of despair" seem higher than ever though.

I think it's telling that the great monster of our era has shifted from serial killer predator of the Baby Boomers, a sort of monstrous hedonism wed to human cunning, who became a sort of cultural icon (e.g., anti-heros like Hannibal Lecter), to the sheer inchoate rage (and terrible efficiency) of the spree killer.

The atomized utility maximizer of liberal economics is not an empirical fact,
but an interpretive lens. — Count Timothy von Icarus

What isn't an interpretive lens?