So perhaps the real issue is the concept of rationality — j0e

Esotericism is associated, rightly or wrongly, with personal authority — j0e

This sounds like you want to sell the idea that esoteric knowledge isn't something one acquires via rational inquiry - the clarifications of definitions, the rigorous application of logic - and that there's another route to it which either bypasses rationality or might even violate its core principles. If such is true then sure sages have what is an exclusive monopoly over esoteric truths; after all, to someone like you or me who are what sages might refer to as "uninitiated" (into the ranks of the chosen) the radically different approaches/techniques/methods employed therein would be so alien to us that we would find it extremely difficult if not impossible to get a handle on what sages consider true knowledge or real wisdom.

Socrates is a complex figure — j0e

You can say that again.

Just because we don’t have it, doesn’t mean it isn’t real. So that is rather like an argument from ignorance. — Wayfarer

I am not arguing that it is not real. I am saying that I have no experience of it and so no longer simply assume it is real. To do so would be like the cave dwellers think that images are real. It is not an argument from ignorance it is a recognition of ignorance and the seduction of images.

I hasten to add, I don’t claim to possess such an insight either - but I don’t recoil from the possibility that Plato understood things that I cannot. — Wayfarer

I have no doubt that Plato understood things that I cannot. That does not mean that I would accept a mysticism that is read into the text as something found in the text.

To ‘reach what is free from hypothesis’ I would take to be the direct apprehension of the forms. — Wayfarer

Yes, that much is clear. My question is how dialectic can free us from hypothesis and give us direct apprehension of the Forms? How can we use hypothesis to free ourselves from hypothesis? If there is a method of apprehending the Forms then why does Socrates profess ignorance of the beautiful and good?

That excerpt we discussed the other day: — Wayfarer

The image of the turning of the soul is a depiction of what true knowledge would be. We have not been turned around in that way. But there is still a turning, a coming face to face with our ignorance. The passage should remind us of what happens when the prisoner is released from the shackles and turned around to see the light of the fire and the images that the images on the cave wall are images of.

There is another sense of the images of Forms. Not the things of the world, but the things of the mind. It is analogous to the mathematician's uses images. But the mathematician is not able to free himself of hypothesis and neither are we. The philosopher of the Republic is not the philosopher of the Symposium. The images Plato gives us fuel the desire to be wise, they do not make us wise.

Thank you. It feels like I've got a lot of catching up to do.

I find it fascinating that so many people here are able to grasp these difficult concepts. People have been calling me smart for as long as I can remember. But this beats me. Really

Good job :up:

Right. But, roughly, a proposition and a jazz performance aren't false in the same way. 'True' and 'false' seem to me just as flexible as 'real.' For me the take-home is something like: there's no substitute for (linguistic) skill. It's like reacting to the total context when driving. — j0e

No, of course a proposition and a jazz performance aren't exactly true in the same way, but "that's real jazz" is equivalent to "that's true jazz" which was the point I wanted to make.

That said, both a proposition and a jazz performance can be considered true insofar as they 'hit the mark'.

This sounds like you want to sell the idea that esoteric knowledge isn't something one acquires via rational inquiry - the clarifications of definitions, the rigorous application of logic - and that there's another route to it which either bypasses rationality or might even violate its core principles. If such is true then sure sages have what is an exclusive monopoly over esoteric truths; after all, to someone like you or me who are what sages might refer to as "uninitiated" (into the ranks of the chosen) the radically different approaches/techniques/methods employed therein would be so alien to us that we would find it extremely difficult if not impossible to get a handle on what sages consider true knowledge or real wisdom. — TheMadFool

What you are missing in this, I think, is that a sage is one who has learned how to live well; so the esoteric knowledge they possess, that cannot be gained by mere explanation and gathering information, is a form, not of 'knowing that', but of 'knowing how'.

The sage, then, does not know any determinate truth about life after death or before birth, the workings of Karma, the mind of God, or Douglas Adam's "the secret to life, the universe and everything", they just know how to live, how to be themselves without fear, and interact with people without fear or favour, but general love and compassion instead, and so on.

The esoteric knowledge is akin to Aristotle's "phronesis" and "eudamonia" and the skeptic's "ataraxia", and not to some kind of quasi-scientific metaphysical knowledge about the nature of reality. It is not the gaining of something so much as the loss of the ego-based angst and alienation which is such a prominent feature of the life of the ego.

Also their knowledge is a "poesis", a "making", and thus akin to poetry. They don't just (or necessarily even) produce poetry in the form of some artwork, they live it; their lives are in that sense works of art. Foucault suggested something like this, and in that he may have been influenced by Hadot, who saw philosophy as primarily a way of living. The philosophical way of living is necessarily rational, in the sense of 'measured" or "balanced" but not in the sense of being able to be gained merely by rational discourse, by merely being instructed in how to do it. That's the difference between mere science and art, which is not to deny that there is much of art in the best science.

Thanks!

but "that's real jazz" is equivalent to "that's true jazz" which was the point I wanted to make.

That said, both a proposition and a jazz performance can be considered true insofar as they 'hit the mark'. — Janus

:up:

This sounds like you want to sell the idea that esoteric knowledge isn't something one acquires via rational inquiry - the clarifications of definitions, the rigorous application of logic - and that there's another route to it which either bypasses rationality or might even violate its core principles. — TheMadFool

To 'naturalize' esotericism would be to take it as myths and metaphors. To the degree that cognition is intrinsically metaphorical and that metaphor does the heavy lifting in the works of the great philosophers, there's no sharp boundary between the esoteric and the rational. The vague boundary is more a matter of a second-order willingness to assimilate critics' objections. Consider that Witt wants to show the fly the way our of the bottle, which is like Plato showing fools the way out of the cave. The core principles of rationality (in my view) don't exclude myths and metaphor but only an anti-social refusal to recognize and respond to criticism.

That they’re not reducible or explainable in other terms; that they’re the terminus of explanation. — Wayfarer

OK, but you've just ignored or neglected my points about language.

That does not mean that I would accept a mysticism that is read into the text as something found in the text. — Fooloso4

Well, I'm not afraid to do that. All indications are the Plato was an Orphic initiate, and as the original definition of 'mystic' was 'an initiate into the Mystery Cults', then Plato was a mystic by definition. The 'mystical Plato' is perfectly at home in later Christian mysticism, where Platonism played a seminal role, but both Protestantism and naturalism reject it.

OK, but you've just ignored or neglected my points about language. — j0e

It was tangential to the point I was trying to make. But, now you ask:

Then why should the written sign plus this painted image be alive if the written sign alone was dead? — Witt

I have a completely different way of approaching this question. It's not from Wittgenstein and I haven't read it elsewhere.

Take a determinate proposition - say, a recipe or a formula, which communicates a specific piece of information. This proposition can be represented in any one of a number of languages, and in any one of a number of media. For instance, it could be written in various languages, or encoded in binary and digitized, or written on a piece of paper. In all of those cases, the physical form of the representation is different, but the information remains the same. Ergo, the idea itself is not physical, only the representation is physical. The intellect is capable of recognising, comparing, abstracting and translating the meaning. That is an ability that is logically prior (not temporally, but logically prior) to any science.

The sage, then, does not know any determinate truth about life after death or before birth, — Janus

According to you ex cathedra. ;-)

The philosophical way of living is necessarily rational, in the sense of 'measured" or "balanced" but not in the sense of being able to be gained merely by rational discourse, by merely being instructed in how to do it. — Janus

There's a paragraph on the IEP entry on Pierre Hadot under the heading Askesis of Desire:

For Hadot, famously, the means for the philosophical student to achieve the “complete reversal of our usual ways of looking at things” epitomized by the Sage were a series of spiritual exercises. These exercises encompassed all of those practices still associated with philosophical teaching and study: reading, listening, dialogue, inquiry, and research. However, they also included practices deliberately aimed at addressing the student’s larger way of life, and demanding daily or continuous repetition: practices of attention (prosoche), meditations (meletai), memorizations of dogmata, self-mastery (enkrateia), the therapy of the passions, the remembrance of good things, the accomplishment of duties, and the cultivation of indifference towards indifferent things (PWL 84). Hadot acknowledges his use of the term “spiritual exercises” may create anxieties, by associating philosophical practices more closely with religious devotion than typically done (Nussbaum 1996, 353-4; Cooper 2010). Hadot’s use of the adjective “spiritual” (or sometimes “existential”) indeed aims to capture how these practices, like devotional practices in the religious traditions (6a), are aimed at generating and reactivating a constant way of living and perceiving in prokopta, despite the distractions, temptations, and difficulties of life. For this reason, they call upon far more than “reason alone.” They also utilize rhetoric and imagination in order “to formulate the rule of life to ourselves in the most striking and concrete way” and aim to actively re-habituate bodily passions, impulses, and desires (as for instance, in Cynic or Stoic practices, abstinence is used to accustom followers to bear cold, heat, hunger, and other privations) (PWL 85). These practices were used in the ancient schools in the context of specific forms of interpersonal relationships: for example, the relationship between the student and a master, whose role it was to guide and assist the student in the examination of conscience, in identification and rectification of erroneous judgments and bad actions, and in the conduct of dialectical exchanges on established themes.

Bolds added.

Take a determinate proposition - say, a recipe or a formula, which communicates a specific piece of information. This proposition can be represented in any one of a number of languages, and in any one of a number of media. For instance, it could be written in various languages, or encoded in binary and digitized, or written on a piece of paper. In all of those cases, the physical form of the representation is different, but the information remains the same. Ergo, the idea itself is not physical, only the representation is physical. — Wayfarer

I think this is just a good analysis of the everyday notion of meaning. 'It's raining outside.' 'Little drops of water are falling from the sky.' We have the skill to judge these the same (same enough). To me this is a mere starting point. But yes it would be awkward or just absurd to call meaning 'physical.'

That is an ability that is logically prior (not temporally, but logically prior) to any science. — Wayfarer

I think an actual, historically evolved language is necessary, as well as a 'material' organization that keeps people fed, specializes labor, including intellectual labor. This is an element that Kojeve accounts for in his notion of the sage....that the sage cannot arrive until the culture that makes him possible develops historically in a world of work and war. I think we can naturalize or partially deflate the secular sage until 'he' is just state-of-the-art philosophy that has not actually reached the goal but it always catching up with the actual. The owl arrives at dusk. Reality runs ahead of our grasp of it, since our cognition intervenes and changes it.

The 'mystical Plato' is perfectly at home in later Christian mysticism, where Platonism played a seminal role, — Wayfarer

The "mystical Plato" a failure to understand his use of mythos andpoesis. The conflation of the works of Plato and Platonism is a fundamental mistake.

The images of knowledge in the Republic are his exoteric teaching cleverly disguised as an esoteric teaching. But there is nothing esoteric about it. It is available to all who open the book. It his his salutary public teaching.

Plato, like Socrates before him was a zetetic skeptic, that is, one who seeks and inquires, driven and guided by his knowledge of his ignorance. (Stewart Umphrey uses the term but means different by it).

We have the skill to judge these the same (same enough) — j0e

Shaping arrows is a skill. Reasoning is an ability which can be used to greater or lesser extent but without that ability, there is no way to develop it.

The conflation of the works of Plato and Platonism is a fundamental mistake. — Fooloso4

Lloyd Gerson refers to 'ur-platonism' in distinction to 'the philosophy of Plato'. Actually that's the substance of his book, From Plato to Platonism, which is another on my to-read list. As is Iris Murdoch's The Sovereignity of the Good.

The images of knowledge in the Republic are his exoteric teaching cleverly disguised as an esoteric teaching. — Fooloso4

I think that is at least open to debate. You already said:

I too once believed that the ascent from the cave and the power of dialectic was a description of the mystical experience of truth. I no longer see things that way. — Fooloso4

There are others that do see it that way. You may claim they're mistaken but there's no unanimity of opinion on the matter.

Plato, like Socrates before him was a zetetic skeptic, that is, one who seeks and inquires, driven and guided by his knowledge of his ignorance — Fooloso4

I bought a book called Belief and Truth by Katja Vogt. It explores these themes. Vogt is also the author of the SEP article on Ancient Scepticism.

But anyway, I will freely admit that my own knowledge of Plato is sketchy, I think it would be wise if I kept counsel unless or until I least read some of the things I'm always talking about reading (The Jowett translation of the Complete Works is available for more or less free so I'm going to go back to those, and the other sources mentioned previously.)

This is an element that Kojeve accounts for in his notion of the sage....that the sage cannot arrive until the culture that makes him possible develops historically in a world of work and war. — j0e

I wonder if he had engaged with Jasper's idea of the 'axial age' and the purported appearance of many of the seminal wisdom traditions (and sages!) all within a few centuries of each other. All of them emerged from early historic cultures, but all of them also represented a massive disconinuity with what came before them.

Shaping arrows is a skill. Reasoning is an ability which can be used to greater or lesser extent but without that ability, there is no way to develop it. — Wayfarer

Just consider how zygotes end up composing philosophy. Does a zygote possess the faculty of reason? If so, then why not earthworms?

Is it even correct to say that children are taught language? Or do they just hang around, get enmeshed in the lifeworld's signaling structures, and get better and better with practice?

There's a definition, I think from Buddhism, that 'intelligence is the ability to make distinctions'.

I wonder if he had engaged with Jasper's idea of the 'axial age' and the purported appearance of many of the seminal wisdom traditions (and sages!) all within a few centuries of each other. — Wayfarer

That seems highly likely.

Prior to going to France, Kojève studied under the existentialist thinker Karl Jaspers, submitting his doctoral dissertation on the Russian mystic Vladimir Soloviev's views on the mystical union of God and man in Christ. — link

https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Alexandre_Koj%C3%A8ve

Kojeve's work 'naturalizes' Christian mysticism in some ways.

Note that Kojève was not denying that at one time in history religion had served a critical purpose. Christianity, in particular, was the first universal religion that came closest to bringing about true self-consciousness by teaching that all human beings are equal as well as finite: “the whole evolution of the Christian world is nothing but a progress toward the atheistic awareness of the essential finiteness of human existence.”The Christian faith was the first religion to discover the spirituality of man as free, individual, and historical. This synthesis of the particular and universal as well as the related recognition of theology as anthropology, became possible only in the form of Christian individuality, Christ as man-God. Yet this religious consciousness lacks true (or political) wisdom. The particular problem is that the religious man thinks that God, not the State, is universal and homogeneous at any time in history. Hence he erroneously believes that he can attain absolute knowledge at any historical moment whatsoever, whereas he can only attain the State (not God), and only at the End of History.Unbeknownst to the religious man, only the universal homogeneous state, the final achievement of equality for all on earth, realizes the Christian ideal of charity (love of all human beings as one would love God) — link

https://www.voegelin-principles.eu/history-progress-or-reversal-mythical-prognostications-kojeve-and-mcluhan

I'm not endorsing his views by sharing them, though I value him as a philosopher. You can probably see that Marx was a strong influence.

Ah yes! Solovyev is someone else I encountered on these forums.

As long as the dark foundation of our nature, grim in its all-encompassing egoism, mad in its drive to make that egoism into reality, to devour everything and to define everything by itself, as long as that foundation is visible, as long as this truly original sin exists within us, we have no business here and there is no logical answer to our existence. Imagine a group of people who are all blind, deaf and slightly demented and suddenly someone in the crowd asks, "What are we to do?"... The only possible answer is "Look for a cure". Until you are cured, there is nothing you can do. And since you don't believe you are sick, there can be no cure.

(I have posted this previously, but it is usually scorned because it contains an antiquated and probably offensive term. )

There's a definition, I think from Buddhism, that 'intelligence is the ability to make distinctions'. — Wayfarer

That seems to be part of it, maybe even most of it, but I don't see why making distinctions isn't a skill.

OK, backtracking again. The point I was making in respect of rational ability - nous, actually! - is that the human mind possesses that innate ability to say that 'this equals that', or 'this means that' and so on. We take it for granted, as without it, speech or thought would not be possible. Of course, then, we can develop speech, and therefore meaning, and so words can be defined in terms of other words - but I'm interested in the idea of 'the nature of reason' as it was understood in pre-modern philosophy. That's something I think has been lost in transition to modernity. And that's because, in the modern view, 'reason' is subjectivized, relativized and immanentized - it is no longer seen as an animating principle, but as an instrumental faculty. This is discussed by Max Horkheimer in Eclipse of Reason, but also, from another perspective, through the 'argument from reason'. Another topic again.

The only possible answer is "Look for a cure". Until you are cured, there is nothing you can do. And since you don't believe you are sick, there can be no cure.

I think there's a version of this in Kojeve, since he describes stoicism and skepticism as escapism for the slaves who are afraid to challenge their worldly masters (risk their lives, their wealth, their reputation.) Otherworldly (pre-atheist) Christianity is a version of this escapism in that it imagines an otherworldly Master for all human beings, no matter their worldly status, thus equalizing them. But Christianity had a social influence and surely contributed to the (atheistic, deistic) American and French revolutions which 'incarnated' such principles politically.

but I'm interested in the idea of 'the nature of reason' as it was understood in pre-modern philosophy. That's something I think has been lost in transition to modernity. And that's because, in the modern view, 'reason' is subjectivized, relativized and immanentized - it is no longer seen as an animating principle, but as an instrumental faculty. — Wayfarer

These days reason as is 'animating principle' is likely to look like anthropomorphism. We're back to the idea of nature as an encompassing 'machine' that doesn't care about us, which ignores rain dances and prayers. That, I think, is a 'metaphysical' attitude that's already found in Epicurus who wasn't that interested in natural science otherwise.

The sage, then, does not know any determinate truth about life after death or before birth, the workings of Karma, the mind of God, or Douglas Adam's "the secret to life, the universe and everything", they just know how to live, how to be themselves without fear, and interact with people without fear or favour, but general love and compassion instead, and so on.

The esoteric knowledge is akin to Aristotle's "phronesis" and "eudamonia" and the skeptic's "ataraxia", and not to some kind of quasi-scientific metaphysical knowledge about the nature of reality. It is not the gaining of something so much as the loss of the ego-based angst and alienation which is such a prominent feature of the life of the ego.

Also their knowledge is a "poesis", a "making", and thus akin to poetry. — Janus

:up:

I like this way of looking at the issue.

We're back to the idea of nature as an encompassing 'machine' — j0e

We're not 'back' in it, we're trapped in it, and the task of philosophy is not to appease the machine, but to see through it.

We're not 'back' in it, we're trapped in it, and the task of philosophy is not to appease the machine, but to see through it. — Wayfarer

To many it was a great accomplishment (perhaps 'the' intellectual accomplishment) to achieve such a view of nature as a system of 'laws' or tendencies that could be exploited in ways that were and are reliable unlike anything we had/have ever seen.

We can't appease the machine in the way we once hoped to appease the angry gods. Or that's my view and probably the mainstream view. To me this is independent of fancier metaphysics. Does nature care? Are we encompassed by something inhuman that has to be dealt with through useful models that might never grasp a final truth or essence?

My understanding is that your position is opposed to this vision of dead, apathetic nature. I guess I'm trying to locate exactly where we diverge & clarify both our positions.

I guess by 'appeasing', I meant 'going along with'.

My understanding is that your position is opposed to this vision of dead, apathetic nature. — j0e

Nature herself is not dead. Matter is arguably dead, or the least alive part of nature. 'Matter is effete mind' as C. S. Peirce said (where I think 'effete' means 'ineffectual'). Matter doesn't act - it is only acted upon, it's essential nature is passivity, receiving. (You know there's an etymological link between matter and mother, right ;-) )

Philosophy is like religion in some respects but different in others. If you look at philosophy in the old tradition, it was indeed a cure or a therapy for mistaken belief or cognition, for attaching significance to the wrong things. That is explained in Pierre Hadot's writings. Reason plays a central role, but so too does deep introspection and the perennial requirement for self-knowledge. Philosophy can be literally translated as love~wisdom - not an academic subject, but a state of being which is animated by those qualities. Sophia in the ancient world was depicted as a beautiful maiden. I can totally relate to that (actually I wrote a song called For Sophia decades ago, after my first ever retreat, it is the only composition of mine to have been regularly performed in public, during the 1990's.)

But because that kind of sentiment is easily associated with religion then it's rejected on those grounds - guilt by association, so to speak, as Pierre Hadot notes. The intellectual heritage of the West, of which neoplatonism was the high point, became absorbed into Christian theology, and then rejected along with it. Somewhere along the line, some vital understanding became lost or abandoned. Not totally lost, because our cultural situation is open and multi-faceted and we are able to study these ideas. And it has always had its exponents. We arguably couldn't have maintained that openness if the religious authorities had held sway. (Wasn't that a major theme in The Name of the Rose?) So I'm not wanting to go back to some long-dead past or an appeal to theocracy. There's a sense of something missing, both in myself and in the culture. That's what has captured my attention.

If you look at philosophy in the old tradition, it was indeed a cure or a therapy for mistaken belief or cognition, for attaching significance to the wrong things. — Wayfarer

:up:
I think it's still that, even for some professional philosophers, even for atheists.

But because that kind of sentiment is easily associated with religion then it's rejected on those grounds - guilt by association, so to speak, as Pierre Hadot notes. — Wayfarer

By some perhaps, but even despisers of the 'spiritual' are chasing the image of Sophia that they see her.

There's a sense of something missing, both in myself and in the culture. — Wayfarer

For some, yes. And even those who don't feel a spiritual longing want more of what's best in the world we already have (when not absorbed in a play that seizes the moment and finds it complete.)

it is the only composition of mine to have been regularly performed in public, during the 1990's. — Wayfarer

Nice song & nice voice! I'll send you a link to one of the songs I've written.

I think science is inherently predictive (repeatability being such a key part of the scientific method) but accidentally in service of control. — csalisbury

I can make sense of this as 'pure' science only predicting and not intervening. I like the distinction, but I think pure science would be trapped at a certain level without the invention of various scientific instruments which would contaminate that purity. Consider the telescope that controls light and allows for new observations and new predictions.

To 'naturalize' esotericism would be to take it as myths and metaphors. To the degree that cognition is intrinsically metaphorical and that metaphor does the heavy lifting in the works of the great philosophers, there's no sharp boundary between the esoteric and the rational. The vague boundary is more a matter of a second-order willingness to assimilate critics' objections. Consider that Witt wants to show the fly the way our of the bottle, which is like Plato showing fools the way out of the cave. The core principles of rationality (in my view) don't exclude myths and metaphor but only an anti-social refusal to recognize and respond to criticism. — j0e

Do you mean to say that those who promote rationality as the be all and end all of cognition as we know it are wrong to the extent that it's (rationality's) intolerant of criticism? Care to elaborate on that point? As far as I can tell, rationality is dead against any and all claims made sans evidence and this epistemic rule applies to itself too. If anything this highly commendable feature of rationality - it demands of itself what it demands of others (justification) - clearly points to a willingness to heed & respond to criticisms levelled against rationality. :chin: