This is so peculiar. By European standards, Mahler is high art, and Bukowski is popular art. Not comparable at all. The same person cannot appreciate both (unless they are confused).
— baker
To me there's a class aspect and a quality aspect to the high-art / pop-art distinction. I consider Bukowksi a first-rate novelist and so 'high art' in terms of quality. I expect him to eventually be in a Norton anthology of American literature (along with John Fante and Henry Miller). — j0e
I don't think I've met anyone who can't enjoy high and low art together. — Tom Storm
Bukowski is certainly up there with a number of American writers (Miller/Thompson/ Kerouac) but not really my thing these days. — Tom Storm
Might add Lester Bangs to that list too. Leaving the states, do you like Kundera? Hesse? Good examples I think of philosophical novelists. For better I worse I've been reading mostly philosophy these days. — j0e
But I think that it would be so useful if you laid down some criteria and clarity for thinking about what esotericism entails. — Jack Cummins
You refer to a few writers as esoteric, having said earlier that you are opposed to the idea of the esoteric. — Jack Cummins
What I mean is, that esoteric teachings are NOT simply just-so stories. They relay something crucial - vital information but which can only be conveyed to those ready to understand them. — Wayfarer
But nowadays, if those ideas can’t be validated scientifically, then they are ‘just-so stories’ - notwithstanding that the entire Big-Bang-Neo Darwinian-Materialist story is the ‘just so’ story par excellence. — Wayfarer
:up:... recondite pleasures come in secular and spiritual flavours. — Tom Storm
My favourite Kundera quote (I can't find the source anymore) and this is better than many whole books of philosophy, 'You create a utopia and pretty soon you're going to need to build a small concentration camp.' — Tom Storm
Just recently Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence. One of the most exceptionally well written and observed novels I have read. — Tom Storm
I really like George Elliot too. — Tom Storm
Perhaps the modern-day sage is the psychologist, who comes up with theories about consciousness that cannot be located within the body (just yet). Personally I respect Sigmund and Anna Freud, Carl Jung, Donald Winnicott and everyone else in the field. — TaySan
The vibe is that you think there's a valid esoteric approach to such things. That's where we diverge. — j0e
What secular reason is missing is self-awareness. It is “unenlightened about itself” in the sense that it has within itself no mechanism for questioning the products and conclusions of its formal, procedural entailments and experiments. “Postmetaphysical thinking,” Habermas contends, “cannot cope on its own with the defeatism concerning reason which we encounter today both in the postmodern radicalization of the ‘dialectic of the Enlightenment’ and in the naturalism founded on a naïve faith in science.”
Postmodernism announces (loudly and often) that a supposedly neutral, objective rationality is always a construct informed by interests it neither acknowledges nor knows nor can know [e.g. @Joshs] Meanwhile science goes its merry way endlessly inventing and proliferating technological marvels without having the slightest idea of why. The “naive faith” Habermas criticizes is not a faith in what science can do — it can do anything! — but a faith in science’s ability to provide reasons, aside from the reason of its own keeping on going, for doing it and for declining to do it in a particular direction because to do so would be wrong.
The counterpart of science in the political world is the modern Liberal state, which, Habermas reminds us, maintains “a neutrality . . . towards world views,” that is, toward comprehensive visions (like religious visions) of what life means, where it is going and what we should be doing to help it get there. The problem is that a political structure that welcomes all worldviews into the marketplace of ideas, but holds itself aloof from any and all of them, will have no basis for judging the outcomes its procedures yield.
What secular reason is missing is self-awareness. It is “unenlightened about itself” in the sense that it has within itself no mechanism for questioning the products and conclusions of its formal, procedural entailments and experiments.
The counterpart of science in the political world is the modern Liberal state, which, Habermas reminds us, maintains “a neutrality . . . towards world views,” that is, toward comprehensive visions (like religious visions) of what life means, where it is going and what we should be doing to help it get there. The problem is that a political structure that welcomes all worldviews into the marketplace of ideas, but holds itself aloof from any and all of them, will have no basis for judging the outcomes its procedures yield.
This line baffles me, since philosophical secular reason seems enormously self-aware and self-critical. — j0e
I'd rather live in Denmark than Saudi Arabia. — j0e
It is in the hands of philosophers. But not in the hands of scientific secularism. — Wayfarer
Me too, for sure. Interesting my post provokes that reaction. Makes a point, don't you think? — Wayfarer
But I look at the politicians. What do they talk about? Justice, liberty, abundance, security. — j0e
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.