Oh, well quoting German words as if they are Nazi implies that can't be used apart from the Holocaust

Hitler, Hegel, Gödel, Cantor, and Nietzsche (all German) were all geniuses. Only one them kept their sanity until death

Why are you quoting German words as if they are wicked? — Gregory

German words are wicked. Have you ever tried to decline German adjectives before?

Ortega y Gasset has a great rebuke which goes along the lines of "what it explains, you already knew, what it leaves out, is kept that way."
I would link but he is one author that is under represented in the Internets. It is in his book upon Metaphysics.

So the German language is bad? Hebrew is not bad and neither is German. A language is part of a culture so you are condemning a culture. We don't know all the connections between language, culture, and biology, so maybe your condemnation extends to all of German descent.

People no longer want to investigate matters of culture. They want to make broad cliche claims about history without asking serious questions

I am simply concerned that people are intimidated and afraid of German culture. Mysticism is usually seen as a great thing but if it's in Heidegger suddenly it's bad..? German intellectuals are disproportionally spoken about in the West. Intelligence tests have tended to say that Asians, Italians, and Jews exhibit the most abstract thinking in the context of such tests. However, rationality cannot be fully or even accurately tested by the methods we have so I would agree with modern cultural theory that we should not judge different cultures and languages as if they are in a hierarchy from worse to better. Heidegger actually anticipated modern thought on this in a lot of ways but wanted his country to find the fruits of great riches spiritually and materially and ended up, much to his latter dismay and confusion, supporting a party who's ultimate objectives were irrational and crazy

My twin brother has a 138 IQ. I tried to join the Navy in my 20's but I couldn't pass the physical requirements. I scored very high on their intelligence abilities test but I don't know how to write well, which is probably why some of my posts are hard to read

↪Gregory I'm only against fatuous mystagogues, unapologetic nazi-sympathizers & (their) incorrigible apologists. — 180 Proof

A reminder to cumpari for whom believing is seeing (... "und denken ist dank"). :roll:

I am simply concerned that people are intimidated and afraid of German culture. Mysticism is usually seen as a great thing but if it's in Heidegger suddenly it's bad..? — Gregory

Is mysticism really seen as such a great thing in philosophers? by philosophers?

Heidegger is not just resented for his swastika but also for his style, and probably more for his style: it's not that strange for clever people to do wicked or stupid things, but folks hate to have their time wasted with twisted, indulgent prose. I like some of Heidegger's early work, but I don't like the mystic stuff or the ethical stuff. He's very good on a few important issues (basically where he intersects with Wittgenstein.) But you have to separate the wheat from the chaff. Have you looked at The Jargon of Authenticity?

The rhetoric function of using the apparent archaism of language to uncover the true meaning of words directly relates to a philosophical conception of truth as something that has to be rediscovered after being ‘buried’ by modernity (as Dasein needed to be retraced from the wrong tracks of ontology in Being and Time). Concepts of authenticity are marked precisely by such lines of argument, by rhetorics of return and rediscovery. It is the political aspect of such ideas that interested Adorno, the functions that such reasoning fulfils. — link

https://epochemagazine.org/26/revisiting-adornos-jargon-of-authenticity-1964/
https://www.arasite.org/adjarg.html

Some sense of the 'aura' communicated by the jargon of authenticity may also
contribute to understanding how it supports the fascist state. The aura is
partially communicated by the fact that the words employed by the jargon don't
have any specific conceptual content, but create the impression that something
meaningful is being said just because these words are being used. The 'aura'
created by the use of this language is specifically the impression that
something of the speaker's very 'essence' or 'being,' something of the
speaker's very self, is conveyed through his or her words. Once this
impression has been conveyed, that is sufficient to satisfy credibility demands
regardless of the actual conceptual content of the speech. But it is the very
lack of specific conceptual content that causes the aura of an authentic self
associated with these words to submit to decay. The individual is robbed of
his or her individuality by the jargon. The speaking subject is virtually
eradicated since the language used to convey the speaker's 'self' is itself
empty of specific content (15-16).

Adorno begins his direct attack on Heidegger from this point. Heidegger's
speech about existence (the Da) in terms of immanence and the immediacy of
life, with its theological undertones, essentially 'whisks away' the boundary
between the natural and the supernatural. Transcendence is tamed and brought
into close reach for everyone. This bringing of transcendence close to home
via a widely disseminated form of speech imposes a generic 'person' upon
everyone using the speech, a mass-consumption person not unlike the
'interchangeable persons' posited in Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic of
Enlightenment. The jargon itself disseminates the very 'they-self' that
Heidegger condemned in Being and Time. The jargon's political and economic
functions consist in the fact that by it the 'formal gesture of autonomy
replaces the content of autonomy' (18). Adherence to a mass, socially imposed
self creates the illusion of participation in a homogenous middle class by the
lower and working classes. The language implies a social contract without
actually providing one, and masks the fact that it has done this by the very
act of forbidding specific content to be attached to the notion of the self.
Doing so, according to Adorno's account of Heidegger, would reduce
existentialism to 'anthropology, sociology, psychology' (28).
— link

https://lists.srcf.net/pipermail/theory-frankfurt-school/2003-May/002345.html


Also I really don't think there's a fear of German culture. Instead there's a rational concern about racism rearing its ugly head. Personally I don't like talking about the average IQ etc. of various peoples. I think it's intellectually and morally suspect. Even if there are such differences according to some hypothetically sensible metric, let's just leave it alone. I don't see any good coming from it, and we've already seen as a species the bad that comes of that kind of talk.

Heidegger admittedly does leave you wondering what the truth is, so his style is a segway into something else. I'm not sure who you read after Heidegger. Hegel didn't have a good style but he always has an idea he is looking for. Heidegger perhaps was obsessed with language and it's abstractness and I don't consider him top-notch thinker like Hegel, Einstein, Hawking, or Aquinas. Those thinkers presented ideas in their fields that far exceeded what someone would usually expect. But this cannot be said for Heidegger

You know, I think "oompah oompah" must be German as well. I thought of linking to "Der Fuhrer's Face" but reconsidered.

https://photovault.com/226756

"The Germans have always been a comforting people" Sheldon, Big Bang Theory

German words are wicked. — coolazice

Is there a superiority of Hebrew over German, of Kabbalah over Heidegger? Heidegger's tradition started by Meister Eckhart, of who's following quotation I have attached my commentary:

Eckhart, Sermon IV, Latin Sermons: Teacher and Preacher,

"Here note that when we say that all things are in God this means he is indistinct in his nature..."

This is kind the opposite of what Aquinas says and in line with Kaballah

"and nevertheless most distinct from all things, so in him all things in a most distinct way are also at the same time indistinct."

So everything is indistinct, God included. But He makes everything most distinct by His existence.

"The first reason is because man in God is God. Therefore, just as God is indistinct and completely distinct from a lion, so too man in God is indistinct and completely distinct from a lion, and likewise with other things."

God is all in all

"Second, because everything that is in something else is in it according to the nature of that in which it is."

God is everything within things

"Third, because just as God is totally indistinct in himself according to his nature in that he is truly and most properly one and completely distinct from other things, so too man in God is indistinct from everything which is in God"

So God is indistinct by being distinct from other things which He creates. Everything has distinction and indistinction, and God has both in the highest grade. God's indistinction makes us distinct and or distinction reveals the indistinction of us within Him

"(‘All things are in him’), and at the same time completely distinct from everything else. Fourth, according to what has been said note that all things are in God as spirit without position and without boundary. Further, just as God is ineffable and incomprehensible, so all things are in him in an ineffable way. Again, every effect is always in the cause in a causal way and not otherwise."

God's distinction makes things indistinct and his indistinction makes things distinct. That part sounds like Hegel.

Throw out Heidegger and you throw out Zen — Gregory

Oy vey!

I've often pondered that this may be the case. There is a strong overlap - dukkha - suffering, pain, stress, unease. Is there a text that articulates dukkha/discomfort with more of a psychological perspective? — Tom Storm

What do you mean by this?
Are you not familiar with the Buddhist suttas that talk about dukkha? If anything, the concept of dukkha can be classified as what is nowadays termed "psychological" (the second arrow).

Pretty sure there was something great by Alan Watts on this but can't remember where I read it.

Watts wasn't a Buddhist, mind you.

No person is perfect until they reach enlightenment. The action resulting in conceptions passes on its psychological make-up (an act) into the psychy of the being conceived. This is why we say "conceived" instead of made. Spinoza spoke of enlightenment and Abulafia, another Jewish writer, says "the ultimate composite, which is man, who comprises all the divine fire [sefirot ], and whose intellect is the active intellect (ten emanations of God's mind); and when you will unite it's knots, you will be united to yourself [Yahweh] in a special way." Heidegger approached this in a cautious, scrupulous way but stopped pointed to it in all his writings. The " German Theology", as it was called in the Renaissance, arise right along side the Kaballah. I don't know why Germans and Jews had division in the past but i all glad that this is over, and (I would add) if Heidegger is a problem for people then we should at least place his thought in their proper place historical so that there can be concord about these issues that have been with us for a while

I've started Kierkegaard's 'Concept of Anxiety', but can't shake the feeling that anxiety/angst/dread is simply what the Buddha terms dukkha. — Wayfarer

/.../ Saṁvega was what the young Prince Siddhartha felt on his first exposure to aging, illness, and death. It’s a hard word to translate because it covers such a complex range—at least three clusters of feelings at once: the oppressive sense of dismay, terror, and alienation that comes with realizing the futility and meaninglessness of life as it’s normally lived; a chastening sense of our own complicity, complacency, and foolishness in having let ourselves live so blindly; and an anxious sense of urgency in trying to find a way out of the meaningless cycle.

Thanissaro Bhikkhu: Affirming the Truths of the Heart. The Buddhist Teachings on Saṁvega & Pasāda
https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/NobleStrategy/Section0004.html

But does Kierkegaard offer anything that would resemble pasada?

Zen points a way to The Way

Well, I am sure Constance is wondering about the Kraken released by the Original Post. It is difficult to frame matters as one sees them.

But does Kierkegaard offer anything that would resemble pasada? — baker

which, from the article you've linked, is described as 'a confident path to the Deathless. That path includes not only time-proven guidance, but also a social institution that nurtures and keeps it alive.' I don't know if he does - but in fairness I've only just started reading Kierkegaard and he has a large body of work, so I will withhold judgement on that.

Interestingly, "German Theology" claims its source as coming from ancient Greece. Some saw Jesus as Greek others realized he was Jewish and so had their herth mentality about their mysticism. Hegel was cordial towards the Jews perhaps because of the societies he was in. The Kaballah claims descent from Moses back to the beginning of life when God wrote the first book of Genesis. This book is represented through God's finger into all of creation. That's why Hegel calls the world rational

What can be expected of people who were born and lived in a kingdom called the "Holy Roman Empire", Römisch-Deutsches Reich ...

Ye, literally the First Reich. Christianity has a weird effect on the paganism that preceded there. Mysticism is a way to escape all that. Can a philosophical mysticism really be objectively bad?

Luther was the first to say German was as good as Hebrew, Greek, and Latin as a church language. His edition of the German Theology speaks of union to God so complete that it sounds Kaballastic

Hans Denck, Sebastian Frank, Sebastian Constellio, Valentin Weigel, Johann Arndt, Philipp Spener are just another side of the mountain of mysticism. Henry Suso and Tauler were two early proponents of a new cultural mysticism

I would like to see Hegel's language and that of Heideggers from comparison with High Middle German. This might reveal their ideas better, if only that they may be critiuedt

Hegel's favorite philosophers were probably Leibniz and Jacob Bohmn. Leibniz is maybe very logical but they too point to Bohmn

:lol:

"The being of all beings is but a single being, yet in giving birth to itself, it divide a itself into two principles... Creation itself as his own love-play between the qualities of both eternal desires [justice and love?]". Jacob Bohme, who's friend was a Kaballlist student

This, Hegel recognized as the first expression of dialectic in his culture.