So, while knowledge may have been preserved, whether it was available to wider circles until much later times is questionable. — Jack Cummins
I am sure that it is possible to imagine that the universe can be any shape at all. As for myself, I frequently wake up in the morning, dreaming that I have been reading and writing posts on this site, which don't exist. Life is becoming more and more surreal... — Jack Cummins
But, it does seem that Augustine and Aquinas incorporated Plato and Aristotle — Jack Cummins
How do you differentiate "having theories" from "having wisdom"? Describe your conception of each and why you believe the latter is "opposed" by "emphasis" on the former.I do think that, in our current time, it has become too much of an emphasis on theories, as opposed to wisdom. — Jack Cummins
Some become mystics, and it is hard to know where to draw the line in interpretation, as we confront the ideas expressed in the various metaphors and models. — Jack Cummins
Today we live more in our heads than our bodies because we have so many words. Imagine having a very, very small vocabulary without words such as "concept", "psychology", "extraterrestrial". What if we had no word for "spirit" or "god" of "demons". Without words for the supernatural, there would be nothing to believe except the raw world and our own feelings. — Athena
Do you think that many are struggling with finding deeper meaning, or are you suggesting something else? — Jack Cummins
Do you think that many are struggling with finding deeper meaning, or are you suggesting something else? — Jack Cummins
This existential meaninglessness is directly linked to the current dominance of science as an epistemological mode and the notion that science has undermined beliefs about reality, beliefs which (true or false) provided an ultimate meaning. — emancipate
(Emphasis is mine.)Nihilism is not a pathological exacerbation of subjectivism, which annuls the world and reduces reality to a correlate of the absolute ego, but on the contrary, the unavoidable corollary of the realist conviction that there is a mind-independent reality, which, despite the presumptions of human narcissism, is indifferent to our existence and oblivious to the ‘values’ and ‘meanings’ which we would drape over it in order to make it more hospitable. Nature is not our or anyone’s ‘home’, nor a particularly beneficent progenitor. Philosophers would do well to desist from issuing any further injunctions about the need to re-establish the meaningfulness of existence, the purposefulness of life, or mend the shattered concord between man and nature. Philosophy should be more than a sop to the pathetic twinge of human self-esteem. Nihilism is not an existential quandary but a speculative opportunity. Thinking has interests which do not coincide with those of living; indeed, they can and have been pitted against the latter.
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Nietzsche saw that ultimately the problem of nihilism is the problem of what to do with time: Why keep investing in the future when there is no longer any transcendental guarantor, a positive end of time as ultimate reconciliation or redemption, ensuring a pay-off for this investment? Nietzsche's solution - his attempted overcoming of nihilism - consists in affirming the senselessness of becoming as such - all becoming, without reservation or discrimination. — Ray Brassier
:yawn:Panglossian falsehoods convene the crowd; discouraging truths disperse it.
And my mention of Socrates is not about Socrates. :roll: — 180 Proof
Meaning-making" isn't any more objectively meaningful than not "meaning-making", thus its arbitrary (merely subjective), or as you say "an individual pursuit". — 180 Proof
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