I’ve always thought of Jung as part of the broader Gnostic tradition in Western culture — Wayfarer
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/48225/48225-h/48225-h.htm#Page_449The second way would be that of identification with the collective psyche. That would mean the symptom of "God-Almightiness" developed into a system; in other words, one would be the fortunate possessor of the absolute truth, that had yet to be discovered; of the conclusive knowledge, which would be the people's salvation. This attitude is not necessarily megalomania ("Grössenwahn") in a direct form, but the well-known milder form of having a prophetic mission. Weak minds which, as is so often the case, have correspondingly an undue share of vanity and misplaced naïveté at their disposal, run a considerable risk of succumbing to this temptation. The obtaining access to the collective psyche signifies a renewal of life for the individual, whether this renewal of life be felt as something pleasant or unpleasant. It would seem desirable to retain a hold upon this renewal: for one person, because it increases his feeling for life ("Lebensgefühl"); for another, because it promises a great accretion to his knowledge. Therefore both of them, not wishing to deprive themselves of the rich values that lie buried in the collective psyche, will endeavour by every means possible to retain their newly gained union with the primal cause of life. Identification appears to be the nearest way to it, for the merging of the persona in the collective psyche is a veritable lure to unite one's self with this "ocean of divinity," and, oblivious of the past, to become absorbed in it. This piece of mysticism belongs to every finer individual, just as the "yearning for the mother"—the looking back to the source whence one originated—is innate in every one.
As I have demonstrated explicitly before,[254] there is a special value and a special necessity hidden in the regressive longing—which, as is well-known, Freud conceives as "infantile fixation" or as "incest-wish." This necessity and longing is particularly emphasized in myths, where it is always the strongest and best of people, in other words, the hero, who[463] follows the regressive longing and deliberately runs into danger of letting himself be devoured by the monster of the maternal first cause. But he is a hero only because, instead of letting himself be finally devoured by the monster, he conquers it, and that not only once but several times. It is only through the conquest of the collective psyche that its true value can be attained, whether it be under the symbol of capture of treasure, of an invincible weapon, of a magical means of defence, or whatever else the myth devises as the most desirable possession. Hence whoever identifies himself with the collective psyche, also reaches the treasure which the dragon guards, but against his will and to his own great injury, by thus allowing himself (mythologically speaking) to be devoured by the monster and merged with it. — Jung
This is, no doubt, derivative of Schopenhauer's [ 'gnostic' unconsciousness-noumenon-will ] of which 'individuals' are merely masks/maya.In other words, the self that's supposed to be immortal is mere persona or mask. It's the species that's (relatively) immortal, precisely through the generation and destruction of individuals (which can be viewed as cells in a larger organism.) — T H E
This is, no doubt, derivative of Schopenhauer's [ 'gnostic' unconsciousness-noumenon-will ] of which 'individuals' are merely masks/maya. — 180 Proof
In the whole world there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Upanishads. It has been the solace of my life, it will be the solace of my death. — Sch
Which is an interesting comment - Catholicism finds Jung a greater threat because he’s ‘subtly mistaken’ rather than just ‘bluntly atheistic’ - which I think would be typical of Catholic critics of Jung. — Wayfarer
I do wonder if the idea of the collective unconscious is too fuzzy, however, and I do believe that the concept does need a lot more analysis within philosophy. — Jack Cummins
I think Catholicism may be more diverse. — Tom Storm
The idea of Jahweh being dependent on humanity for his own development leads to the question: if God is dependent on human beings is God simply a product of the human mind? — Jack Cummins
However, he does go on to query if there is some underlying force involved in the drama between God and humanity as revealed in the drama between Job and Jahweh, by saying, ' the miracle of reflecting consciousness is so great that one cannot help suspecting an element of meaning to be concealed somewhere within all the biological turmoil.' — Jack Cummins
I have also found a quote in 'Answer to Job' which suggests that Jahweh changed as a result of interaction with Job. He argued that Jahweh 'raises himself above his earlier primitive level of consciousness by indirectly acknowledging that Job is morally superior to him and that therefore he has to catch up and become human himself' — Jack Cummins
He was particularly interested in the religious experience, but his ideas have come under some criticism, especially by the theologian Victor White, who maintained that we cannot reduce God to images in the human psyche. — Jack Cummins
Fundamental to Jung's project was a preference for mystery and incomprehension over reason. — Tom Storm
But I think he's an under-rated genius in 20th century arts and sciences, due to his distance from the standard-issue Darwinian materialism which dominates secular culture. I noticed when I was an undergrad the only dept. — Wayfarer
Not wanting to be offensive, but it sometimes sounds to me like you will elevate almost anyone if they share the same 'enemies' as you. — Tom Storm
And then Krishnamurti came along and put us all on the street. — A Priest
They didn't let a nun – old or not – teach philosophy at my Catholic high school back in the day; maybe because they were less ponderous and more practical expositors than the priests ... :chin:It was the old nun teaching me about the collective unconscious who alerted me to the fact that most of Jung's prose is almost indecipherable (apart from his popular works) and that even Jungians struggle to understand or agree on what he means. Not so much a function of the thoughts as a function of the writing. — Tom Storm
Yeah, Jung is just as guilty of this as Heidegger, who clearly confesses:Those who know that they are profound strive for clarity. Those who would like to seem profound to the crowd strive for obscurity. For the crowd believes that if it cannot see to the bottom of something it must be profound. It is so timid and dislikes going into the water. — The Gay Science, 173
Those in the crossing must in the end know what is mistaken by all urging for intelligibility: that every thinking of being, all philosophy, can never be confirmed by ‘facts,’ i.e., by beings. Making itself intelligible is suicide for philosophy. — Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), Notes 1936-1938
Interesting. Can you expand on this a little? — Tom Storm
https://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/philosophers/rorty/Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Dewey are in agreement that the notion of knowledge of accurate representation, made possible by special mental processes, and intelligible through a general theory of representation, needs to be abandoned. For all three, the notions of "foundations of knowledge" and of philosophy as revolving around the Cartesian attempt to answer the epistemological skeptic are set aside. Further, they set aside the notion of "the mind" common to Descartes, Locke, and Kant — as a special subject of study, located in inner space, containing elements or processes which make knowledge possible. This is not to say that they have alternative "theories of knowledge" or "philosophies of mind." They set aside epistemology and metaphysics as possible disciplines. I say "set aside" rather than "argue against" because their attitude toward the traditional problematic is like the attitude of seventeenth century philosophers toward the scholastic problematic. They do not devote themselves to discovering false propositions or bad arguments in the works of their predecessors (though they occasionally do that too). Rather, they glimpse the possibility of a form of intellectual life in which the vocabulary of philosophical reflection inherited from the seventeenth century would seem as pointless as the thirteenth-century philosophical vocabulary had seemed to the Enlightenment. To assert the possibility of a post-Kantian culture, one in which there is no all-encompassing discipline which legitimizes or grounds the others, is not necessarily to argue against any particular Kantian doctrine, any more than to glimpse the possibility of a culture in which religion either did not exist, or had no connection with science or politics, was necessarily to argue against Aquinas's claim that God's existence can be proved by natural reason. Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Dewey have brought us into a period of "revolutionary" philosophy (in the sense of Kuhn's "revolutionary" science) by introducing new maps of the terrain (viz., of the whole panorama of human activities) which simply do not include those features which previously seemed to dominate. — link
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_atheism#:~:text=A%202014%20survey%20by%20David,and%2012.6%25%20as%20something%20else.A 2014 survey by David Chalmers and David Bourget on nearly 1,000 professional philosophers from 99 leading departments of philosophy shows that 72.8% considered themselves as atheists, 14.6% considered themselves as theist, and 12.6% as something else. — link
I'm an atheist myself, so I'm not complaining about that. I'm just speculating that the philosophy I like tends to be so personal and entwined with heroic self-image partially because of that. — T H E
Re 'the person' - Cultural differentiation is something that occurs over centuries, individual differentiation over lifetimes. The various depictions of psyche as spirit or soul in religious philosophies are supposedly intended to awaken the subject to the eternally-existent essence (the ātman) - which is 'transpersonal'. — Wayfarer
if the opportunity came along, I think I would greatly benefit from Jungian analysis, in particular with respect to ‘integrating the shadow’ — Wayfarer
A link to an article on how Kant and Schopenhauer anticipated Freud’s ideas was posted here some time back. When you think about it, the provenance is fairly obvious. — Wayfarer
https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/at/freud.htmBy Weltanschauung, then, I mean an intellectual construction which gives a unified solution of all the problems of our existence in virtue of a comprehensive hypothesis, a construction, therefore, in which no question is left open and in which everything in which we are interested finds a place. It is easy to see that the possession of such a Weltanschauung is one of the ideal wishes of mankind. When one believes in such a thing, one feels secure in life, one knows what one ought to strive after, and how one ought to organise one’s emotions and interests to the best purpose.
If that is what is meant by a Weltanschauung, then the question is an easy one for psychoanalysis to answer. As a specialised science, a branch of psychology – ‘depth-psychology’ or psychology of the unconscious – it is quite unsuited to form a Weltanschauung of its own; it must accept that of science in general. The scientific Weltanschauung is, however, markedly at variance with our definition. The unified nature of the explanation of the universe is, it is true, accepted by science, but only as a programme whose fulfilment is postponed to the future. Otherwise it is distinguished by negative characteristics, by a limitation to what is, at any given time, knowable, and a categorical rejection of certain elements which are alien to it. It asserts that there is no other source of knowledge of the universe but the intellectual manipulation of carefully verified observations, in fact, what is called research, and that no knowledge can be obtained from revelation, intuition or inspiration. It appears that this way of looking at things came very near to receiving general acceptance during the last century or two. It has been reserved for the present century to raise the objection that such a Weltanschauung is both empty and unsatisfying, that it overlooks all the spiritual demands of man, and all the needs of the human mind.
This objection cannot be too strongly repudiated. It cannot be supported for a moment, for the spirit and the mind are the subject of scientific investigation in exactly the same way as any non-human entities. Psycho-analysis has a peculiar right to speak on behalf of the scientific Weltanschauung in this connection, because it cannot be accused of neglecting the part occupied by the mind in the universe. The contribution of psychoanalysis to science consists precisely in having extended research to the region of the mind. Certainly without such a psychology science would be very incomplete. But if we add to science the investigation of the intellectual and emotional functions of men (and animals), we find that nothing has been altered as regards the general position of science, that there are no new sources of knowledge or methods of research. Intuition and inspiration would be such, if they existed; but they can safely be counted as illusions, as fulfilments of wishes. It is easy to see, moreover, that the qualities which, as we have shown, are expected of a Weltanschauung have a purely emotional basis. Science takes account of the fact that the mind of man creates such demands and is ready to trace their source, but it has not the slightest ground for thinking them justified. On the contrary, it does well to distinguish carefully between illusion (the results of emotional demands of that kind) and knowledge.
— Freud
Regarding therapists - if they’re any good they will show you things about yourself you would never otherwise find out, or at least they will greatly expedite it. — Wayfarer
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