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

:-! 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.

I agree with much of what you say about the importance of tradition, but I'm divided over conservatism. — Wayfarer

Why so?

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

Yes, which is tragic.

"there is nothing necessary about you." — TheWillowOfDarkness

Interesting abstraction :D

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.

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

Yes!

The same solipsism that leads to humanism I guess. — The Great Whatever

What do you take humanism to be, and why do you reject it?

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

I highly agree.

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

Very perceptive observations, I agree also here.

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

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.

What do you take humanism to be, and why do you reject it? — Agustino

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.

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

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?

Furthermore, I think the word humanist will be applied in practice generally to people who value and love human beings and do something to help them. For example - the religions are frequently seen as humanist in these terms - wanting to help the poor, etc.

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.

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.'

Speaks volumes.

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

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.

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

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:

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

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!

And so - I believe - that TWG is trying to point out that this humanism produces a decadent effect, even upon religions.

"Accept me for who I am, don't tell me to be better - don't expect me to improve"
But what did Aristotle say? Friends are not those who make each other feel good, but rather those who compete to bring out the best in each other. That is a noble friendship - what is so common in the mainstream society, is the opposite - friends have become those who bring out what is worst in each other - encouraging each other to lust, greed, drunkenness, sloth, etc. And why? Because people have been trained not to tolerate those who challenge them and push them to be better.

There was a really good speech adapted to a movie from Aristotle about this very matter in the 2004 Alexander the Great movie - but the one I knew on youtube has been removed...

Maybe what TGW is referring to is not humanism but liberal individualism which basically functions according to the creed 'nothing beyond self'. Christian humanism sans Christ.

I'm conflicted over Christianity because it is part of my heritage and something that deeply resonates with me. 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. This sort of atheism is, in a weird way, the natural conclusion of Christianity's development, which from the outset has been hostile to religion, as even Deep South Protestants will tell you, and Christianity is founded on the renegotiation and diminishing of God's concrete role in favor of the individual and his/her conscience, as well as the essence of humanity in the abstract ('neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female,' and so on). Christianity sans Christ, in other words, is sort of the outcome of Christianity itself – all the tools are already in the New Testament. I think the association between worldwide colonialism/conversion and the new progressivism is not accidental: both are deeply, deeply Christian and follow its impetus to level all things into abstract humanity.

I'm tempted to say the same thing about ISIS and Islam, and that moderate Muslims and progressives just have their heads in the sand: that is, whether or not even more than a small minority of Muslims are a part of ISIS or even just have sympathies with it, ISIS is in a way just Islam developed to its logical conclusion, as progressivism is Christianity developed to its logical conclusion. Christianity and Islam are poisonous and dangerous left unchecked for different reasons, our cultural attachment to them, whatever it might be, not withstanding. My sympathies for either of them are waning. Both share in the original sin of Abrahamism, or monotheism, or whatever you want to call it. You can force everyone violently to become part of one culture, which is Islam's modus operandi, or you can destroy every culture in the world, which is Christinaity's.

The problem with what you say here is that if there is no essential value that consists in virtue of simply being a human value, then all values, including virtues are merely arbitrary insofar as they are entirely culture specific. It would then be a performative contradiction for you to argue for virtue ethics because it is intelligible as such only when it is considered as being universally applicable.

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

I agree with you, I was not for one minute trying to preach or convert, or to suggest a return to the past. My orientation has always been more towards alternative and counter-cultural philosophies, actually I have formally converted to Buddhism. But part of the motivation for that, was because of the forlorn hopelessness of philosophical materialism, the anti-religious mentality of today's secular mainstream. I was critically aware of that even as a child, for reasons I can't reallly fathom.

The issue which got me into internet forums was the publication of The God Delusion in 2007; the first forum I debated on was the Dawkins' forum. It was moderated by a lot of intelligent and conscientious atheists and was a bitterly polemical free-for-all (long since closed). Then I moved on to other forums and now here. But over those years I've done a lot of reading about the origins of the secular~scientific attitude. It is undoubtedly descended from, or even a product of, the decay of the Judeo-Christian worldview.

Both share in the original sin of Abrahamism, or monotheism, or whatever you want to call it. — TheGreatWhatever

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.

including virtues are merely arbitrary insofar as they are entirely culture specific. — John

No, you see, they're not arbitrary, because they're culture specific. It's trying to unbind them from culture that makes them arbitrary.

Your universalistic assumptions are so deeply embedded that you're unable to imagine value outside of them.

It is undoubtedly descended from, or even a product of, the decay of the Judeo-Christian worldview. — Wayfarer

What I'm saying is that it didn't come from its decay, but from its arising and development. Although I was referring more to humanism than scientific materialism. While historically related I'm not sure how necessary a relation that really is.

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.

I may as well show my cards and say that I agree, and that Gnosticism is for me anyway the 'real' Christianity.

No, I can very easily imagine culture specific values, What I am saying is that if they are merely culture specific then they arbitrary in relation to the whole of humanity, just as purely individually subjective values are arbitrary in relation to cultures.

But again, this is not a coherent criticism unless you take humanism for granted. What does 'value in relation to the whole of humanity' mean, and why should anyone care? It seems there must be an appeal to humanity's abstract essence in order to care about this to begin with.

I wasn't talking about the abstraction of knowledge versus living. That's a feature of every argument or instance of understanding-- to merely know is not to be. Such a point doesn't tell us anything much because all assertions to knowledge and wisdom fall underneath it.

The abstraction I'm talking about is what it takes to have a worthwhile culture or indentity. Instead of treating indentity and culture as of the lived and for the lived, it's treated as if it must transcend life.

If culture is not a tradition destined into infinity, then it supposedly "just entertainment." It forms the understanding that our life and value is defined outside ourselves. We are inherently flawed in being finite beings and so must be saved by a transcendent force, else we will be meaningless wretches (regardless of how ethical or unethical) we are.

Even the great destroyers of religion believe this shit. Nietzsche thinks in this way. God might be dead, but God was still always meant to be alive, as if that's what was required for meaning and ethics to have force. Like the religious philosophies before him, meaning and ethics are abstractions not expressions of human life.

Modernist humanism is the same. The generalised "free everyman" takes the mantle of the transcendent, becomes the tradition which is destined to be practiced, such that we will be saved from our finite wretchedness-- technology will create utopia, everyone is a free man able to realise their dreams, etc., etc. It's all wistful fantasy which doesn't take human life seriously.

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.

That's the abstraction I'm talking about. Culture and identity supposely have nothing to do with living humans. Instead of understanding them to be objective expressions of living people, you treat values and culture as if they are to be enforced from the outside.

To ask "why should anyone care" is to miss the point entirely. Nothing can enforce that. People have to care themsleves. Saying "God," "Tradition" or "Humainity" doesn't define anyone is a part of a culture. They have to live it. There is no reason which means someone is destined to partake in culture. No appeal to "essence" functions and it's not required to define a meaningful culture.

The problem here is that values have evolved within cultures that were previously separated from one another. As the population and the means of transportation have inexorably grown, no such separation is possible. To take the diverse human interests within cultures for granted as what matters, in times when cultures were much more separate from one another, is not logically different than taking the human (which is really nothing more than the collectivity of all cultures) for granted as what matters in times when cultures can no longer be considered to be genuinely separated from one another. Now there is inevitable intercultural interpenetration, so its not a matter of being an appeal to an "abstract essence" but to what seems universal across an inevitably culturally diverse human collectivity, The human is constituted by the totality of that collectivity, just as in the past it was variously culturally defined by each culture as a human collective.

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

You sound very Nietzschean to me even as you try to contrast your views with his. I understand the death of God to be the death of belief in God. Of course Nietzsche was an atheist. He was one of the strongest poets of worldliness, too, even if he sometimes "fell" into poses that implied a god-like universal.

I actually very much agree that "ethical performance and identity are expressions of us, done for ourselves as living humans." But I think "shrinking" Nietzsche (anxiety of influence?) only obscures this important point.

As always, in this matter, WoD's posts are a model of obfuscation posing as clarity. "Nothing matters, that's why it matters, don't you understand? What is the matter with all you people, insisting that something matters, when really nothing matters, and that is the only thing that matters! Don't you understand that, fools?...' etc etc ad infinitum, endless wallpapers of meaninglessness.

My point is Nietzsche is still steeped in the myth he identifies. He still views meaning as transcendent, as an expression outside of human life rather than of human life. As a result, his philosophy sees no meaning where meaning is in fact plentiful.

His account of ethics and meaning, reduced to power, is an on point refution of the idea life and justice are destined to exist, but it's also a failure to understand their significance. The meaning of life and justice were never found outside the world in the first place. God never defined them.

The death (or rather absence) of God has no impact on either. Nietzsche still labours under the illusion of Nihilism. He can't see life matters and means with the depth and breadth almost all philosophy has mistakenly assigned to the transcendent force.

I've never said nothing matters. That's the myth I'm refuting. The transcendent force is not necessary to mean because life itself is meaningful.

Only the nihilst, who views the world as meaningless, thinks a transcendent force needs to act turn the world into something that matters.

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

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

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.

The nuts and bolts are that Augustinian theology separates the transcendent (freedom from suffering, the Kingdom of God, etc.) from the immanent (the world), whereas gnosticism brings the transcendent into the world, or attempts to. Voegelin claims that all totalitarian and progressive movements are similarly marked by the same tendency to bring a transcendent (Marx's communism, where people live free from the sufferings of the world) into this world - instead of identifying it with a transcendent to follow in the "next life". Whereas Christianity encourages humility, piety and patience to bear the sufferings of this world as it is impossible to completely eliminate them, the heresy of Gnosticism (which he identifies in the Middle Ages with Joachim of Flora) encourages actively seeking to bring the Kingdom of God on Earth - Christianity seeks a transcendent salvation, while gnosticism an immanent one, in this life. He identifies the same tendencies in modern progressive ideology, as well as in the totalitarian states. More info in the book (and specifically the chapter) I have pointed to!

The initial post of this thread is steeped in a misunderstanding of what morality is ontologically--which is quite ironic given its undercurrent of supposed intellectual superiority.

I think Voegelin is obviously a major author and someone I could not comment on without doing a lot more reading than I have time to do.

What lead me to an interest in Gnosticism, is why Christianity (or 'churchianity') didn't seem to have anything that corresponded with the idea of moksha, spiritual liberation, as it was depicted in books about Eastern mysticism that I had been reading all my life. I formed the idea that this had something to do with the formation of Christian orthodoxy. In a very general sense, 'gnosis' means a kind of saving insight; the term has an exact counterpart in the yogic religions, specifically, jñāna (the same word, to all intents). But that kind of sense of 'inner knowledge' was absent from anything I had been taught about Christianity. Then I learned about the discovery of the Nag Hammadi sciptures, which was a huge cache of lost gnostic writings, that were found in the 1940's in Egypt and many of which have since been translated. They depict a radically different picture of early Christian (and other middle-Eastern) religions. At that stage, I formed the view that the kind of inner teachings I had been looking for were probably represented within gnosticism but had been lost very early in the Christian period.

But there are many complications. Gnosticism is not a religion or a sect, it is much broader than that - more like a cognitive mode, I think. And I also think there were probably some dreadful gnostic sects, and some with a reputation for harsh asceticism and the total rejection of the world. So I'm not arguing that they were anything like a 'true church'; Plotinus, for example, was harshly critical of the gnostics (but then, to us moderns, Plotinus seems gnostic as well.)

Anyway, when I was doing this research, I read a very interesting book, Beyond Belief, by a comparitive religion scholar called Elaine Pagels. This book argues that there was

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."

(Don't judge this book on a single paragraph, however. The author is a tenured professor at Princeton and is a serious scholar. The Gospel of Thomas is freely available online.)

But anyway by the time I had found all this out, I had to all intents already adopted Buddhism, which in my view is also essentially a form of gnosticism. What I felt was vital, was that basically the Churches teach a kind 'pie in the sky' religiosity, in contrast to the experiential spirituality of gnosticism and similar traditions.