One of my great regrets in life is not picking up his The Degrees of Knowledge at a second hand bookshop once. I really want to read him one day. *sigh*.

Yes, I've been reading snippets. There is a good collection of online texts of his you can find through this paper on the cultural impacts of relativism (hosted at Notre Dame where there is a Maritain Centre.) I have also been reading parts of 'Degrees of Knowledge' in online format, but want to get hold of a hard copy. Also this.

Sorry to be that '1-year-old-thread' guy, but it's the fucking Phil of Art section, which is basically 1 year old anyway, so this response practically constitutes a new thread. (This thread was still on page 1 of the sub-forum...) Maritain is underrated in my book. Friends with Berdyaev amongst other thinkers who are affiliated with religion at large without receiving the mantle of "religious thinker". A clean, concise thinker who happened to be Catholic.

Maritain is underrated in my book. — Noble Dust

Yeah, these days there is not much interest in the philosophy of art and not much in the philosophy of nature, outside the latter of which being quantum mechanics, which fascinates us all.

For me, "Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder", and "our sense of beauty and power to perceive it or receive it fluctuates greatly over time" covers it all. I would be curious to know if there were any other findings on beauty and on art... written in a text aimed at five-year-old readers, since my absorption capacity to read has greatly declined in the last two or three decades.

On art and on beauty I can only come up with two source reasons, why they would appeal to the human viewer. We can thank our surviving partly to liking sex (much like members of all other animal species do), and to discovering the power of hygiene. Hygiene is a powerful tool, and I believe that organized structure in visual arts (ballets included) represent a projection in our affinity to high standards of hygiene.

What else is there? I don't know, but I'm eagle to hear.

It is true that the first manifestation of visual arts (the statues of the pre-historic Venuses, cave-drawings and -paintings, as well as documented and undocumented but likely decoratons such as jewellery, skin-art, body-art and hair-art) were unseparable from religious / spiritual iconism connected to early man. But so were all other human manifestations of the time, such as hunting, killing, gathering edible plants, warring, sleeping, sex, and childbirth.

So one can argue that art is an extension of spiritual belief, but I think that is a misconception, as it creates a causational link where the link does not exist. If art was an extension of spritualism / religionism, then humans would never have developed secular art. Which is, like, 100 percent of today's artistic output / throughput, with rounding.

For me, "Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder" — god must be atheist

I somewhat disagree. I've said for years that beauty is there waiting; an "object" waiting for a "subject" to perceive it. This isn't a theory, it's an experience that I've had, which I count as a better guide. Not "beauty is in the eye of the beholder", but rather "beauty waits for the beholder to see".

If art was an extension of spritualism / religionism, then humans would never have developed secular art. Which is, like, 100 percent of today's artistic output / throughput, with rounding. — god must be atheist

Art expresses the human, and the religious is an inseparable aspect of the human; whether Hindu, atheist, nihilist, or whatever...all "religions". A new word would be better and less controversial. So, "secular" art is just as religious as anything else. It just expresses a different ideology.

the religious is an inseparable aspect of the human — Noble Dust

How do you explain then the atheist movement, the secular movement, the agnostic movement, and the fact that 200 years ago everyone was religious, with a few exceptions, but in today's world 1/4 roughly (between one and two billion people) are not religious, and don't even think of religion or god?

Your statement is clearly wrong. Religions and beliefs in god(s) ARE separable from humans. I am sure about that, and I won't be swayed from it. Unless there is reason to.

It just expresses a different ideology. — Noble Dust

Absolutely. An ideology which is different in being devoid of religion or god(s). I know that it's not the case in your little world, but it is the case in the world you never cared to learn about.

How do you explain then the atheist movement, the secular movement, the agnostic movement — god must be atheist

Religions, all of them. Like I said, maybe a new word is in order...or maybe not. What religion does for people is a function which survives the apparent death of "religion" proper. Ideology is a loaded word as well, so maybe also not the best choice. The I Ching, for instance, describes the idea of "clinging"; fire clings to the log, which is the fuel to keep the flame going. What these stories (religions, atheist movements, etc) do for us is provide that fuel; they're essentially the very stuff of being, of life. Something along those lines. The question is whether atheism or secularism can provide the same spiritual nourishment in this way that religion has done; whether the "stories" that support them are as advantageous to spiritual well-being.

As I mentioned above, have a careful read of this Maritain essay https://maritain.nd.edu/jmc/jm0112.htm

It explains so much of what is said and written on this forum.

Thanks, had meant to turn the discussion back to Maritain anyway.

Hygiene is a powerful tool, and I believe that organized structure in visual arts (ballets included) represent a projection in our affinity to high standards of hygiene. — god must be atheist

I am an artist (painter, some sculpture) and I find your idea here very bizarre. Hygiene?! What?! You are going to have to explain that one to me.

Do you respond to visual art at all aesthetically?

Oddly enough though, come to think of it, I am pretty obsessed with bodily cleanliness, and I'm neurotically pursuing purity and perfection in many other areas. So maybe there is some connection!

@god must be atheist

Yeah, I'd frame it the other way, if anything at all. Hygiene (the need and preference for personal physical cleanliness) as representing a projection of our underlying affinity to high standards of spiritual/mental/emotional "hygiene".

How do you explain then the atheist movement, the secular movement, the agnostic movement
— god must be atheist

Religions, all of them. Like I said, maybe a new word is in order...or maybe not. What religion does for people is a function which survives the apparent death of "religion" proper. Ideology is a loaded word as well, so maybe also not the best choice. — Noble Dust

I would use the word "belief system". Religions necessarily involve a god figure, and the supernatural; atheism does not. That's a HUGE difference.

But both are beliefs, inasmuch as there is no proof for the existence, or for the non-existence of god. Whether you accept that there are supernatural forces acting in the world (which the religious do) or reject the possibility of supernatural forces acting in the world, you act on faith.

But please don't make the mistake of taking "faith" in the general sense to mean "faith" in the religious sense.

I am an artist (painter, some sculpture) and I find your idea here very bizarre. Hygiene?! What?! You are going to have to explain that one to me.

Do you respond to visual art at all aesthetically? — petrichor

I don't know what it means to respond to visual art aesthetically. I like to look at pretty pictures, but my preference in visual arts is huge landscapes, such a the view of Budapest from the top of the Citadella, or from Halaszbastya. (You can see these, too, if you use Google maps, to hover over Budapest, and the descend and focus in on the spots I mentioned, and then take a "satellite" view, then a street view.) I like maps, they give me special joy to look at, especially Stieler's maps from the 19th century, and Coronelli maps from the seventeenth. I like some sculptures, such as Rodin's, and some from the Greek masters, Michelangelo's David, and the Pieta by da Vinci. But I like these sculptures for what they represent, the idea, the feeling, the emotion and the philosophy behind them. (Even if they are not something I could describe to.) I liked two movies ESPECIALLY for the visual effects, and for their treatment of philosophical topics: "2001" and "A Clockwork Orange".

As to hygiene: I believe it's a rudimentary art form to make a messy house and clean it up, and put everything in its place, and thus make the living space clutter-free, smelling nice, and clean. I like when I do it in my home. This is both, to me, an artistic expression (rudimentary, not complex, and not symbolic at all... just making something beautiful) and an act of hygiene. I imagine the caveman (for lack of a better expression) kept animal remains in his cave, which would start to stink after a while, and he or his wife would take the trouble of taking the old bones and rotting meat out of the cave, and dispose of them, maybe sweep up, put the rudimentary pottery and tools neatly on ledges, and the not-used hides that served as garments. I can see that happen, and how much better they would feel, since the air quality would improve, and by association, they enjoyed the CLEANLINESS and the LOOK of the place at the same time, and eventually the two feelings became unseparable, and thus the art form of house cleaning would be borne -- this was the first art, I believe.

Then came the depiction of hunger and sex, which was evident in hunting scenes and in sculpting fat, hardly human-shaped, overweight women, which modern anthropologists call "Venuses", since the anthropologists figure that these figures were depictions of very fertile women.

I would use the word "belief system". Religions necessarily involve a god figure, and the supernatural; atheism does not. That's a HUGE difference. — god must be atheist

Belief system is an ok placeholder for now, I guess. But no, every belief system has a god figure. Hence why "religion" still somewhat works; it's a metaphor.

But please don't make the mistake of taking "faith" in the general sense to mean "faith" in the religious sense. — god must be atheist

What's the difference? Again "religious faith" is a human phenomenon that survives traditional religion. I don't understand this atheistic existential horror at the concept of religious faith. It's almost like you lot are ashamed that you possess it.

But no, every belief system has a god figure. — Noble Dust

This is a statement with no support and I challenge you to explain it.

First off, of course, we have to define the god concept.

God is supernatural, and that is an undeniable characteristic of god. And atheists and secular thinkers deny the presence of supernatural in our universe. So when you say every belief system has a god figure, secularists may have some aspects of a god god figure in their belief system (for instance, worship; some people wroship money) but other aspects of essential god features are missing in their belief systems. Therefore it is false to claim that each belief system has a god figure. Another essential feature of god in every conceivable and historically or presently prominent religions is that god can create matter. In polytheisms, at least one god can create matter. Secularists, however, deny that matter can be created. They are adamant that matter and energy is a constant given, they can morph into the other, but never disappear and never get created.

So no, it is not true that all belief systems have a god figure. I daresay that you just haven't met in your small Georgean village or Texas community any persons whose world view could have affected or broadened your knowledge of what is available in human concepts in the world.

Maybe you have, but your preachers advised you to consider them evil, the spawns of Satan, and therefore you must disregard everything they say? Possible. (I am just conjecturizing here. I don't know your background, or what experiences you've had. All I go by is the opinions you express.)

I don't understand this atheistic existential horror at the concept of religious faith. It's almost like you lot are ashamed that you possess it. — Noble Dust

No, we are not ashamed because we don't possess it. We are insulted when someone suggests that atheism is a god-fearing belief system.

Whereas (some) god-fearing people are unable to conceptualize that a belief system is void of god.

It is your ineptitude, the religious', not ours, the atheists'. We can't be blamed for our faith, but you can be blamed for not accepting that our faith does not involve a god.

This is a statement with no support and I challenge you to explain it. — god must be atheist

I'm thinking metaphorically, which seems to be a source of confusion here. I'm essentially using the word god as a metaphor, and yes, as you say, worship is an aspect of this, and I would argue worship is the function of how we interface with the concept of a god. So as a secular person, someone may worship money, yes, or science, progress, etc. These things are gods in their own way, and I would go further and counter that they are, metaphorically, supernatural as well. What is "science"? What is "progress"? These are abstract concepts that represent ideological (sorry, makes the most sense in this context) stories. Science is almost, I think unconsciously, made reference to ontologically, as if it's a being. What I'm arguing is that, in the absence of a God proper, something else must fill the void. So god never left after all. The notion that we can dispense with a god and set off on our own is both hubristic and near-sighted.

I daresay that you just haven't met in your small Georgean village or Texas community any persons whose world view could have affected or broadened your knowledge of what is available in human concepts in the world.

Maybe you have, but your preachers advised you to consider them evil, the spawns of Satan, and therefore you must disregard everything they say? Possible. (I am just conjecturizing here. I don't know your background, or what experiences you've had. All I go by is the opinions you express.) — god must be atheist

Lol I live in NYC.

No, we are not ashamed because we don't possess it. — god must be atheist

This is a statement with no support and I challenge you to explain it.

It is your ineptitude, the religious', not ours, the atheists'. — god must be atheist

I'm not religious.

Anyways, back to Maritain. I had a chance to quickly read through that lecture, @Wayfarer. I've only read a little Maritain in the past, over 5 years ago. I had forgotten his fortitude as a thinker. I'll need to give it careful study; I just quickly read it through to try to steer the thread back on track.

But I think the general gist of his argument about Empiricism as a significant ingredient in the disenchantment and mechanization of modern society, all based on an un-self-aware philosophy (in which man uses reason to deny itself) is telling. It feels like a wiser, more well-read, more logical expression of the general themes I tend to blabber on about on this site.

Right. This phrase:

what the Empiricist speaks of and describes as sense-knowledge is not exactly sense-knowledge, but sense-knowledge plus unconsciously introduced intellective ingredients, -- sense-knowledge in which he has made room for reason without recognizing it.

explains a great deal.

Yes, and then, with that in mind:

"The grasping of an object such as an essence or a nature, brought out in its intelligible, supra-sensual components, makes no sense for the Empiricist theory, which denies universal ideas and universal natures. How could the grasping of objects such as Being and the transcendental properties of Being make sense for it? In the Empiricist view, Being means only the fact that a fact comes under sense observation, or the fact that a Predicate is connected with a Subject through the copula. It is not surprising that Empiricism was led by the development of its inner logic to terminate in Positivism, which is not philosophy but a pseudo-scientific escape from or substitute for philosophy."

This is a statement with no support and I challenge you to explain it. — Noble Dust

You stated something is possessed by atheists. The onus is on you to prove that.

You are not in the heads of all atheists. You just created a false conjecture.

worship is the function of how we interface with the concept of a god. — Noble Dust

Then there is prayer, there is lent, there are sacrifices, there are atonements, there are rites, there are a whole bunch of other things which are communication between man and an alleged god, but atheists don't do any of them.

These things are gods in their own way, and I would go further and counter that they are, metaphorically, supernatural as well. What is "science"? What is "progress"? These are abstract concepts that represent ideological (sorry, makes the most sense in this context) stories. — Noble Dust

You are bringing up ideas that have been shot down already. Metaphorically there is nothing supernatural about ideas, thoughts, progress. You are making a twisted claim with that.

You may want to think that they are gods on their own, but they are not.

Science is almost, I think unconsciously, made reference to ontologically, as if it's a being. — Noble Dust

NO person thinks of science as a being. Cut the nonsense, please. You said "almost", so you admit it's not really. You are trying to twist words, but you are not doing a good job at it.

I'm not religious. — Noble Dust

Right. Maybe you don't follow a set or defined religion or a community of people of a faith. But do you believe a god or some gods exist?

I can see this will go nowhere, but I'll jump in one more time for the heck of it.

Then there is prayer, there is lent, there are sacrifices, there are atonements, there are rites, there are a whole bunch of other things which are communication between man and an alleged god, but atheists don't do any of them. — god must be atheist

No, those are aspects of a specific religion; Christianity. Using those specific Christian traditions as evidence that secular god-forms don't exist because those secular god-forms don't possess analogs to that specific religion's aspects is logically inconsistent and near-sighted. The God concept in religion is insanely broad; millions of gods in Hindu religion (which itself, as named, is a Western conglomerate of distinct traditions), The historical uniqueness of the "one" god of Judaism, and it's complication into three persons in Christianity, the complete lack of god as understood in the West in Buddhism, the vagueness of any god concept in the Tao, the unclear concept of "gods" in Greek and Roman mythology and what they may or may not have represented or signified (literally, figuratively, psychologically, or otherwise). It's a brash simplification on your part to think that you can pair the concept of god as a whole down to certain blatantly religion-specific aspects which you can conveniently use to counter the idea that the god concept isn't at work in your own worldview.

NO person thinks of science as a being. — god must be atheist

You also are not in the head of all persons. I'm talking about the zeitgeist of how science is talked about. "Science says..." "Science tells us..." "Because science..." Personifications, accidental to be sure, but real.

But do you believe a god or some gods exist? — god must be atheist

I'm not an atheist. I simply lack a disbelief in god.

So as a secular person, someone may worship money, yes, or science, progress, etc. These things are gods in their own way, and I would go further and counter that they are, metaphorically, supernatural as well. — Noble Dust

I agree. We get invested in concepts. In some cases, we think that the concept is 'up there,' laying down the law. (We can believe in a personal god.) But metaphorically concepts in general are 'up there.' I can't hold justice in my hand. Nor can I hold the virtue of thinking critically in my hand.

Much of philosophy and politics is (seems to me) a replacement for a traditional religion and a mere transformation of the 'gods' (dominant concepts of virtue and value) in general.

Religions and beliefs in god(s) ARE separable from humans. I am sure about that, and I won't be swayed from it. Unless there is reason to. — god must be atheist

Right, because reason is a 'god.' For you, (the concept of ) reason is authoritative. And that's my 'religion' too, mostly.

I agree. We get invested in concepts. In some cases, we think that the concept is 'up there,' laying down the law. (We can believe in a personal god.) But metaphorically concepts in general are 'up there.' I can't hold justice in my hand. Nor can I hold the virtue of thinking critically in my hand. — joshua

Yeah, that's a decent summation. I was actually going to say something similar about the "abstract" being comparable to the "supernatural", but got side tracked. @god must be atheist, when I described the god-concept as metaphorical, this was what I was getting at; logically abstract concepts, within an Empiricist view (bringing in the Maritain lecture to bring the discussion back to the topic) seem to wrongly evoke a supernatural quality; they're abstract in the sense that they're "above" experience, but artificially so. Within Empiricism, we artificially posit that sense is the only real, when in reality, concepts only exist outside of the immediate sense-perception, and only reason gets us there, but not empirically. So, circling back to the concept of religion as universal and inclusive of secularism and atheism, if reason has to function beyond sense-perception in order to be real, then, necessarily, it functions non-physically. It functions "abstractly", or "super-naturally". Now, if we don't move past this reality, the debate just becomes a game of insults based on bad definitions: "you're stuck in thinking super-naturally!" "No, you're stuck in the abstract!" But really, we're functioning on the same plane. But the way we describe the plane actually matters; what I'm describing is the reality that something behind the given, the sense-experience exists; I call it the spiritual. You may call it something different. But if you deny it's existence, then you are squarely in the wrong based on the argument I've laid out here.

I was actually going to say something similar about the "abstract" being comparable to the "supernatural", but got side tracked. — Noble Dust

That's what I thought you were getting at with 'supernatural.' We die/kill for ghosts like freedom, democracy, truth, God, justice, fame, glory, etc. Even wealth that is not concretely enjoyed but enjoyed as a number that is bigger (or even smaller) than other numbers is a 'god.'

Anyway, I had to chime in, because for me it was clarifying to realize that all we get with humans is a transformation of 'religion,' mostly from a more pictorial representation to an abstract conceptual representation of what is worthy and authoritative. An atheist mocks the theist, but the virtue of being an atheist is just as spectral as the big man upstairs.

In the name of [ ], I do this, that, and the other. Amen.

:fire: (with a few caveats, but I'm with you in the main)

I'm only with me in the main, too.