:-! That is your opinion, personally I think statistics give us insight into what is happening in society, especially when we look at how they're changing. It doesn't give us insight into an individual's life - yes that could be unaffected by such problems, either because the individual himself took care to organise his life in such a way and choose his/her marriage partner or friends to make this possible, or because s/he was just lucky. But it certainly gives us insight into the life the average man in that society can expect.Those statistics you cite are merely that; statistics, and they don't necessarily reflect the status of love and friendship in the vast lebenswelt. — John
Yes, which is tragic.In the context of philosophy, secularism basically amounts to none.
(A) religion is altered from a giver of insight and wisdom to anyone, to nothing more than the personal outlook without any more force than something like a piece or entertainment or commentary. — TheWillowOfDarkness
Interesting abstraction :D"there is nothing necessary about you." — TheWillowOfDarkness
Yes!I don't really believe in the 'expression of the individual,' I guess, in that there is no individuality to express outside of a heritage. I'm not saying any individual culture is guaranteed to be great or even not horrible to some individual or class of individuals. But what we're seeing is the option of having a culture essentially forcibly removed. — The Great Whatever
What do you take humanism to be, and why do you reject it?The same solipsism that leads to humanism I guess. — The Great Whatever
I highly agree.But I don't think the notion of a society constructed to maximize the freedom of the individual makes sense, except insofar as this is something the culture privileges. This is not IMO the modus operandi of secular humanism, which is interested in the destruction of culture through multiculturalism, not in maintaining a coherent culture of liberty. — The Great Whatever
Very perceptive observations, I agree also here.Modern secular humanist society tries to maximize the freedom of the individual by treating the individual as nothing but an abstract particular, a human. It provides no avenues for being free, but merely tries to make freedom in virtue of destroying cultural bonds that might stop this abstract human from developing in whatever direction it pleases. It's the difference between an absence of culture, only being able to see culture as restrictive, and a positive commitment to liberty as a culture. — The Great Whatever
Depends - conservatism generally and historically refers to social policy. Someone can be a conservative with a socialist view of economics, nothing contradictory in that. In fact, my economics are probably slightly left-leaning as well (free education, free healthcare, government restriction of multinational corporations, etc.) Marx had something that he called reactionary socialism (because such a socialism was practiced before) - which is very alike to social conservatism coupled with socialist leaning economics.Because there are many political elements of conservativism I don't agree with. I'm socially conservative in questions of marriage and family but I support regulation of the financial sector, active government, public health and education, and so on. Socially conservative but politically progressive. — Wayfarer
What do you take humanism to be, and why do you reject it? — Agustino
Very well, I largely agree with this, although I have never thought of it that way, and always thought of myself as a humanist. What would you say about a "culture" or call it way of life as that promoted by ISIS? Isn't that something that other cultures, even if they hold differences between each other should eliminate and fight against?I take humanism to be the valuation of human beings for the sole reason that they are human beings, a valuation that can't be augmented or diminished by any particular circumstance or quality of the human being beyond belonging to this abstract class. The humanist believes that all human beings have an intrinsic worth, and this worth is not gradable or essentially modifiable.
I reject it because I would rather celebrate individual cultures and accomplishments on their own terms, even if this means accepting that there is no abstract human essence in which all of them share (so that it is in theory possible for multiple cultures to exist with mutually incompatible values, or mutually incompatible ideas of what it is to be human). Forcing every unique culture into this abstract valuation necessarily destroys all of them insofar as they are not mutually compatible, and they can't be mutually compatible so long as they're real and substantive. So it isn't possible to be humanist without trivializing culture. — The Great Whatever
Leo Strauss is loved by neo-conservatives, not really by traditional conservatives. Eric Voegelin or Russell Kirk would be examples that are more friendly to traditional conservatives. There's many branches of conservative thought - the main stem, the traditional one which flows from Cicero to Burke is the one focused on social issues primarily.Just read a saying by Leo Strauss, about whom I know very little, but I like this:
'Science is the successful part of modern philosophy, and philosophy is the rump 1.' — Wayfarer
I think the more important point that TWG was trying to make is whether or not humanism (whether of a religious or secular kind) is destructive. The way he has defined it:Renaissance humanism - which is where 'humanism' began - was not what we would call a secularist philosophy. It was certainly not religiously orthodox and sought to differentiate itself from religion proper but the great writers of humanism - Ficino and Pico Della Mirandolla - were very much in the vein of philosophia perennis.
'In the Oratio de hominis dignitate (Oration on the Dignity of Man, 1486), Pico justified the importance of the human quest for knowledge within a Neoplatonic framework.'
As such, there was a grounding in transcendent truth which is generally absent from today's secular humanism. — Wayfarer
Notice that this definition doesn't claim that being human has no value - only that this isn't the only source of value. It protests against the levelling of all people to the same conditions of value based merely on the fact that they are human - Hitler is not equal to Socrates for example, although they are both human. And one wonders whether this impulse to level all people to the same condition of value has caused, for example, the importance of virtue to recede, to the point that virtue has ceased to be a word used in common discourse. In common mentality, people no longer strive for virtue - why would they, they all have the same value, regardless whether one is a criminal or a saint. I think what TWG is trying to say is that once humanism is admitted, it inevitably will lead to the collapse of nobility and strength of spirit - these qualities will no longer be admired and desired by the masses of men. Instead, the masses will prefer the easy path that requires no effort - people will demand of each other "Accept me for who I am, don't tell me to be better - don't expect me to improve". Such an impulse, I believe, is highly destructive. And this is true even for religious humanism. In fact, a lot of Christianity has become decadent once it started accepting the discourse "Jesus loves you and will take away all your sins if you accept Him as Lord and Saviour! + Works don't save! It doesn't matter if you live a perfect moral life, if you do not say that you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour, then you will perish" - this discourse basically provides people with a license for sinning - it tells them, don't be worried, don't fret - you're an adulterer? No problem, Jesus will forgive your sins. Why fret so much about it, afterall Christianity demands you not to be anxious!valuation of human beings for the sole reason that they are human beings, a valuation that can't be augmented or diminished by any particular circumstance or quality of the human being beyond belonging to this abstract class. — The Great Whatever
However, it has within it the seed of modern humanism, and I think that the contemporary ideology I've been criticizing is essentially an advanced form of Protestantism, which in turn is just a sort of proto-secularism. — TheGreatWhatever
Both share in the original sin of Abrahamism, or monotheism, or whatever you want to call it. — TheGreatWhatever
including virtues are merely arbitrary insofar as they are entirely culture specific. — John
It is undoubtedly descended from, or even a product of, the decay of the Judeo-Christian worldview. — Wayfarer
I think the original failing with Christian orthoodoxy was bound up with the formation of the Catholic church and the exclusion of gnosticism. Have a look at this scandalous article. It would never get published in a real journal, but contains more than a grain of truth.
Nietzsche was wrong. God is not dead, but rather was never alive in the first place. Throughout human history, our culture has been of the living and for the living, not the abstraction it purported to be. Ethical performance and identity are expressions of us, done for ourselves as living humans. For culture and identity to mean, they don't need to extend into infinity. They only need to matter for the living. — TheWillowOfDarkness
I think the original failing with Christian orthoodoxy was bound up with the formation of the Catholic church and the exclusion of gnosticism. Have a look at this scandalous article. It would never get published in a real journal, but contains more than a grain of truth. — Wayfarer
What do you think (both of you) about Eric Voegelin's account which actually points to Gnosticism as the cause behind both the totalitarian and progressive movements of 20th century and beyond? The account is best laid out in Chapter IV (Gnosticism - The Nature of Modernity) of his book The New Science of Politics.I may as well show my cards and say that I agree, and that Gnosticism is for me anyway the 'real' Christianity. — The Great Whatever
a textual battle between The Gospel of Thomas (rediscovered with the Nag Hammadi finds) and The Gospel of John (i.e. the Biblical gospel). While they have many superficial similarities, Pagels demonstrates that John, unlike Thomas, declares that Jesus is equivalent to "God the Father" as identified in the Old Testament. Thomas, in contrast, shares with other supposed secret teachings a belief that Jesus is not God but, rather, is a teacher who seeks to uncover the divine light in all human beings. Pagels then shows how the Gospel of John was used by Bishop Irenaeus of Lyon and others to define orthodoxy during the second and third centuries. The secret teachings were literally driven underground, disappearing until the Twentieth Century. As Pagels argues this process "not only impoverished the churches that remained but also impoverished those [Irenaeus] expelled."
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.