Most questions of metaphysics are just people telling stories to each other to try to ground the 'mystery' of life in some kind of foundational meta-narrative. — Tom Storm


This seems to apply to what many want from philosophy. Other issues seem drier to me, more like a mathematics with concepts which is aesthetically driven. — Pie

For me, philosophy is not concerned with establishing a meta-narrative, nor with establishing normatively correct rationality, but with getting the life back into life.

I like the idea of teaching Magick in public schools, but would prefer students are taught the possibility of truth behind different ways of interpreting the world rather than being taught magick per se. — intrapersona

I'd love to see a proposed course outline for this. Especially if one went per se. Perhaps there's a Schaum's Outline on Thelema.

Part II, "Magick (Elemental Theory)," deals with the accessories of ceremonial magick in detail. Subjects include: the temple, the magick circle, the altar, the scourge, dagger, and chain, the holy oil, the wand, cup, sword, pentacle, lamp, crown, robe, book, bell, lamen, and the Magick Fire (including the crucible and incense). This section also includes an "Interlude", which is a humorous exposition on the magical interpretations of popular nursery rhymes, such as Old Mother Hubbard and Little Bo Peep.

What academic discipline would be pushed aside or reduced to make way for this new material? :chin:

Perhaps that is why our human thought, philosophy and scientific progress has so many loose ends, we have simply come to a rabbit hole with no end. For, it is the way we define those truths in our being which provides a veridical account of their truth, both within the scientific materialist state of consciousness as well as within an enlightened state of consciousness. — intrapersona

I think that because rationality and science rely on objectification, which is an abstraction from experience, a judgement of it, so to speak, they cannot touch the essence of religion and the poetical making of sense.

For me, philosophy is not concerned with establishing a meta-narrative, nor with establishing normatively correct rationality, but with getting the life back into life. — Janus

I can't really object. Getting the life back into life sounds good. It is still a project, an individual vision anyway of the Better Thing to do, something of a metanarrative maybe (which is fine.)

I can't really object. Getting the life back into life sounds good. It is still a project, an individual vision anyway of the Better Thing to do, something of a metanarrative maybe (which is fine.) — Pie

I can see why you might see it as a project and equate it with "an individual vision anyway of the Better Thing to do, something of a meta-narrative" but I maintain that it is not necessarily so. Getting the life back into life could be, is in my understanding, getting beyond projects, ideals and meta-narratives, getting back to a kind of experience that was essentially there in childhood: getting back to the enchantment of the world, just as it is.

Getting the life back into life could be, is in my understanding, getting beyond projects, ideals and meta-narratives, getting back to a kind of experience that was essentially there in childhood: getting back to the enchantment of the world, just as it is. — Janus

:up:

I suppose it's just the articulation of a personal (anti-)project that sounds pretty good. I guess it's 'iterable' or 'legible' in that someone else could like the sound of the project and adopt it. But, since you aren't arguing that one ought to embrace the project, but only that you happen to have done so, it's be an example of what I've contemplated as coherent 'relativism.'

I don't mean that you are a relativist or anything. At one time I was fascinated by how one could coherently express a non-normative, non-self-subverting blend of relativism, pragmatism, and skepticism. I decided that the key is giving up the desire to bind or appeal to universal norms. Instead of 'we can't know,' this character can say 'I don't think I do know.' Or they say 'let's maybe try this' instead of 'here's the correct way.'

I think that because rationality and science rely on objectification, which is an abstraction from experience, a judgement of it, so to speak, they cannot touch the essence of religion and the poetical making of sense. — Janus

It's perhaps as if a crystalline web of concepts sits in a bath of ineffable of sensation and emotion.

It's perhaps as if a crystalline web of concepts sits in a bath of ineffable of sensation and emotion. — Pie

Or stands aside from, or outside of, the ineffable sensation and emotion. But it seems that "crystalline web of concepts just is the world that is the totality of facts, while the things are the sensations, impressions and images.

This is born out by the ambiguity of the word 'fact', as it refers to both states of affairs and propositions about them.

I don't mean that you are a relativist or anything. — Pie

I guess in a sense I am a relativist, and in another sense not. We know that we all share similar impressions and images of the world. I don't see a tree where you see something else. I don't see the apple as red while you see it as yellow or green. I don't see a tiger on the mat where you see a cat.

But it seems that "crystalline web of concepts just is the world that is the totality of facts, while the things are the sensations, impressions and images. — Janus

:up:

Are you also a deflationist about truth ? If we focus only on the true asserts in the concept system, that'd seem to be the world itself. Any actual individual will presumably have false beliefs. So we might talk of a imperfectly grasped world for this individual.

This is born out by the ambiguity of the word 'fact', as it refers to both states of affairs and propositions about them. — Janus

:up:

Are you also a deflationist about truth ? If we focus only on the true asserts in the concept system, that'd seem to be the world itself. Any actual individual will presumably have false beliefs. So we might talk of a imperfectly grasped world for this individual. — Pie

I think I am a deflationist about truth, as I see actuality and truth as the most basic elements of the propositional dimension of life. I don't view that dimension as being most important, though, since I think this merely practical dimension is lost or occluded when and because the life of the soul is lost.

I see people who lie and deceive as being couched in fear and not fully alive. Everyone understands the very basic logic of actuality and truth, but they turn away from it only out of the most despicable capitulations to the unseemly destructive desires of the illusory ego to protect itself and flourish at the expense of the soul, of others and even of the world.

That said, it is also a matter of degree, and we all fall into the trap of the ego to some extent. All we can do is try to see and understand where we are falling, and minimize it.

I see people who lie and deceive as being couched in fear and not fully alive — Janus

I agree. Call it prejudice, but telling the truth seems beautiful and noble to me. I connect this to intuitions that Kantian articulated. Lying steals autonomy from others, treats them as a means.

Philosophical theories of truth (correspondence versus redundancy, etc,) seem mostly 'amoral' or just technical.

This thread is maybe playing with both aspects, the central practical/moral conception of honesty and the dry conceptual issue of truth.

I agree. Call it prejudice, but telling the truth seems beautiful and noble to me. I connect this to intuitions that Kantian articulated. Lying steals autonomy from others, treats them as a means. — Pie

That makes sense. although with the caveat that lying, not for personal gain or to protect the ego, but to protect the innocent (as, for instance, in the 'Gestapo, Jews hidden in the basement' example so troublesome for Kant's absolute imperative) treats the innocent as an end and is both beautiful and noble and, all the more so if it involves risk to the self.

Yes, I would lie to protect the innocent. Deception is part of war, and I would not feel bad at all about waging war on the Gestapo. I don't resent pacifists, but I can't join them either.

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