I read Answer to Job a long time ago and remember being quite impressed by it. — T H E
But he did credit Nietzsche with exceptional self-knowledge ('more penetrating knowledge of himself than any man who ever lived or was likely to live'). — T H E
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. — Freud
Freud remarked that ‘the self-love of mankind has been three times wounded by science’, referring to the Copernican revolution, Darwin’s discovery of evolution, and Nietszche’s declaration of the Death of God. In an indirect way, the Copenhagen Interpretation gave back to humanity what the European Enlightenment had taken away, by placing consciousness in a pivotal role in the observation of the most fundamental constituents of reality. While this is fiercely contested by what Werner Heisenberg termed ‘dogmatic realism’, for better or for worse it has become an established idea in modern cultural discourse.
I can't see why Jung wouldn't be included in this too. — Tom Storm
There was no mistaking the fact that Freud was emotionally involved in his sexual theory to an extraordinary degree.
When he spoke of it, his tone became urgent, almost anxious, and all signs of his normally critical and skeptical manner vanished.
A strange, deeply moved expression came over his face, the cause of which I was at a loss to understand.
I had a strong intuition that for him sexuality was a sort of numinosum.
This was confirmed by a conversation which took place some three years later (in 1910), again in Vienna.
I can still recall vividly how Freud said to me, “My dear Jung, promise me never to abandon the sexual theory. That is the most essential thing of all. You see, we must make a dogma of it, an unshakable bulwark.”
He said that to me with great emotion, in the tone of a father saying, “And promise me this one thing, my dear son: that you will go to church every Sunday.”
In some astonishment I asked him, “A bulwark against what?”
To which he replied, “Against the black tide of mud” and here he hesitated for a moment, then added “of occultism.” — Memories, Dreams and Reflections
This is so redolent with irony that it's hard to know where to start. But a good start might be the fact that Freud's 'scientific' theories came to be almost universally rejected within a couple of generations of his passing. — Wayfarer
The demise of Freudianism can be summed up in a single word: lithium. In 1949 an Australian psychiatrist, John Cade, gave five days of lithium therapy - for entirely the wrong reasons - to a 51-year-old mental patient who was so manic-depressive, so hyperactive, unintelligible and uncontrollable, he had been kept locked up in asylums for 20 years. By the sixth day, thanks to the lithium build-up in his blood, he was a normal human being. Three months later he was released and lived happily ever after in his own home. This was a man who had been locked up and subjected to two decades of Freudian logorrhoea to no avail whatsoever. Over the next 20 years antidepressant and tranquillising drugs completely replaced Freudian talk- talk as treatment for serious mental disturbances. By the mid-1980s, neuroscientists looked upon Freudian psychiatry as a quaint relic based largely upon superstition (such as dream analysis - dream analysis!), like phrenology or mesmerism. In fact, among neuroscientists, phrenology now has a higher reputation than Freudian psychiatry, since phrenology was in a certain crude way a precursor of electroencephalography. Freudian psychiatrists are now regarded as old crocks with sham medical degrees, as ears with wire hairs sprouting out of them that people with more money than sense can hire to talk into. — Tom Wolfe
I thought he was a wizard, like Freud. — Tom Storm
In other words, he was not actually claiming that God exists. He was aware of a force which he felt able to call God but he was unable to say whether this force represented the reality of God beyond his own consciousness. — Jack Cummins
I guess that boils down to Carl Jung being, like some of us, unsure whether god is real or a figment of his/our imagination. This inability to distinguish reality from make-belief is open to a dual interpretation. A theist-turned-atheist would consider it as faer first steps towards freedom, liberation from a falsehood that has huge swathes of people in its grips. On the other hand, an atheist-turned-theist will regard it (also) as faer first steps towards freedom, liberation from a falsehood that has huge swathes of people in its grips. You get the idea. — TheMadFool
biggest paradox — Jack Cummins
I didn't mean to give that impression. I took Philosophy my senior year since I was able to opt out of the mandatory fourth year of Religious Studies having earned an A grade in each of the previous three years. I'd started reading philosophy on my own a couple of years before high school because I had a full encyclopedia at home and stumbled upon the ancient Greeks when reading articles about Greek mythology (& others) inspired by references or characters in 70s era Marvel comics. I read philosophy informally on my own straight through high school until I took the senior survey course which was taught by a Jesuit who spent far too much time on the damn Scholastics and not enough time, for my tastes, on the Hellenic or Renaissance or Modern philosophers.↪180 Proof
It is interesting to read that you went to a Catholic school and that you weren't taught philosophy. — Jack Cummins
How it is we can talk about, or intend, nonexistent things (e.g. Meinong, Husserl)?... the biggest paradox in philosophy. — Jack Cummins
Like being blonde and being bald? Do explain.They're the same thing, god (theism) and no god (atheism). " — TheMadFool
This is so redolent with irony that it's hard to know where to start. — Wayfarer
But a good start might be the fact that Freud's 'scientific' theories came to be almost universally rejected within a couple of generations of his passing. — Wayfarer
Because he was not reductionist in the sense Freud was. Jung broke with Freud because he felt Freud's outlook was too constrained by emphasis on the single factor of libido. You surely remember that account of their fateful last conversation, the final break between the two? — Wayfarer
Sorry I don't see a "paradox". I once had a big afro and now I'm bald. No paradox. With g/G. Without g/G. What paradox? (I think 'agnosticism' is paradoxical, even patently incoherent, btw.)So, do you think that the idea of the paradox of theism and atheism is a bit way out? — Jack Cummins
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.