I think life and humans are pretty dreadful, but what can you do?I don't whine. I don't celebrate. I have a tendency towards optimism which, try as I might, I can't suppress. Absurdism works for me too. — Tom Storm
It is, unconsciously... but usually no philosopher will admit as much consciously, that is the philosophers conceit, their pride in their reason getting in the way. — ChatteringMonkey
Even “ghastly nihilism” can be seen aesthetically. — praxis
Try harder at seeing the full picture. You don’t see the spider ripping off that insects head? The homeless man having a meltdown? The terrible accident? The unwanted chore? The starvation of not doing X to get Y? Disagreement? Physical pain? Emotional pain? Ennui? The uncomfortable situation? The hostile situation? The annoying situation? The dire situation? The deadly situation? — schopenhauer1
I think "aesthetic reasoning" can be used, at best, to rationalize "morality and meaning". It's actually akin to fideism, no? — 180 Proof
Even “ghastly nihilism” can be seen aesthetically. — praxis
Ironically Nietzsche rejected Christianity and God precisely on aesthetic grounds. And he thought most philosophy through the ages essentially boiled down to a rationalisation for morality, aesthetics : — ChatteringMonkey
t is, unconsciously... but usually no philosopher will admit as much consciously, that is the philosophers conceit, their pride in their reason getting in the way. — ChatteringMonkey
In the Tractatus Wittgenstein treated morality as an aesthetic rather than intellectual matter. A matter of what one sees and experiences, of how one stands in relation to the world. — Fooloso4
Personally I think the 'aesthetic' is too easily relegated to the sidelines of philosophical chat. — mcdoodle
That is the area of opinion that you are ascribing to 'religion': that there is some wholeness, in this supposedly religious view, that integrates talk about 'meaning' and talk about 'aesthetics'. (Morality is another step on) — mcdoodle
Hannah Ginsborg has written about this (including a Stanford entry on the topic) but it is under-explored. — mcdoodle
Hitchens saw value in the word numinous as well, whereas I have always associated that word with other rather woo woo words like transcendent. — universeness
It is an aesthetic standard, but I still find it compelling, or at least appealing. I'm not sure how that fits into your discussion, but it's what came to mind. — T Clark
Fuck yeah ! (Is this just an Americanism? Or you got it over there too?) — plaque flag
To my advantage, they are the bad boy trouble makers of the Catholic Church. I think I probably argued along the lines of seeing his attack on Christianity as something for Christian critical self-examination. — Fooloso4
I need to follow this up. — Tom Storm
Is there anything which can't be regarded aesthetically? — Tom Storm
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ae/introduction.htm#s7-3Fichte sets up the ego as the absolute principle of all knowing, reason, and cognition, and at that the ego that remains throughout abstract and formal. Secondly, this ego is therefore in itself just simple, and, on the one hand, every particularity, every characteristic, every content is negated in it, since everything is submerged in this abstract freedom and unity, while, on the other hand, every content which is to have value for the ego is only put and recognized by the ego itself. Whatever is, is only by the instrumentality of the ego, and what exists by my instrumentality I can equally well annihilate again.
... But in that case the ego can remain lord and master of everything, and in no sphere of morals, law, things human and divine, profane and sacred, is there anything that would not first have to be laid down by the ego, and that therefore could not equally well be destroyed by it. Consequently everything genuinely and independently real becomes only a show, not true and genuine on its own account or through itself, but a mere appearance due to the ego in whose power and caprice and at whose free disposal it remains. To admit or cancel it depends wholly on the pleasure of the ego, already absolute in itself simply as ego. Now thirdly, the ego is a living, active individual, and its life consists in making its individuality real in its own eyes and in those of others, in expressing itself, and bringing itself into appearance. For every man, by living, tries to realize himself and does realize himself.
Now in relation to beauty and art, this acquires the meaning of living as an artist and forming one’s life artistically. But on this principle, I live as an artist when all my action and my expression in general, in connection with any content whatever, remains for me a mere show and assumes a shape which is wholly in my power. In that case I am not really in earnest either with this content or, generally, with its expression and actualization. For genuine earnestness enters only by means of a substantial interest, something of intrinsic worth like truth, ethical life, etc., – by means of a content which counts as such for me as essential, so that I only become essential myself in my own eyes in so far as I have immersed myself in such a content and have brought myself into conformity with it in all my knowing and acting. When the ego that sets up and dissolves everything out of its own caprice is the artist, to whom no content of consciousness appears as absolute and independently real but only as a self-made and destructible show, such earnestness can find no place, since validity is ascribed only to the formalism of the ego.
True, in the eyes of others the appearance which I present to them may be regarded seriously, in that they take me to be really concerned with the matter in hand, but in that case they are simply deceived, poor limited creatures, without the faculty and ability to apprehend and reach the loftiness of my standpoint. Therefore this shows me that not everyone is so free (i.e. formally free)[52] as to see in everything which otherwise has value, dignity, and sanctity for mankind just a product of his own power of caprice, whereby he is at liberty either to grant validity to such things, to determine himself and fill his life by means of them, or the reverse. Moreover this virtuosity of an ironical artistic life apprehends itself as a divine creative genius for which anything and everything is only an unsubstantial creature, to which the creator, knowing himself to be disengaged and free from everything, is not bound, because he is just as able to destroy it as to create it. In that case, he who has reached this standpoint of divine genius looks down from his high rank on all other men, for they are pronounced dull and limited, inasmuch as law, morals, etc., still count for them as fixed, essential, and obligatory. So then the individual, who lives in this way as an artist, does give himself relations to others: he lives with friends, mistresses, etc; but, by his being a genius, this relation to his own specific reality, his particular actions, as well as to what is absolute and universal, is at the same time null; his attitude to it all is ironical. — Hegel
For the professor, an atheist worldview was ugly and deficient. His account of god provided a type of poetic wholeness, coherence and perfection. Or so he thought.
Any views on this, or am I full of shit? — Tom Storm
t is clear that ethics cannot be put into words.
Ethics is transcendental.
(Ethics and aesthetics are one and the same.) — Fooloso4
If the good or bad exercise of the will does alter the world, it can alter only the limits of the world, not the facts—not what can be expressed by means of language.
In short the effect must be that it becomes an altogether different world. It must, so to
speak, wax and wane as a whole.
The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man. — Fooloso4
I think you've nailed down a great issue. Of course the professor just couldn't appreciate the kind of beauty available to the atheist, — plaque flag
Isn't antinatalism one more knife ? The ultimate rhetorical killjoy ? An attempt at 200 proof moonshine ? — plaque flag
The true content of romantic art is absolute inwardness, and its corresponding form is spiritual subjectivity with its grasp of its independence and freedom.
This inherently infinite and absolutely universal content is the absolute negation of everything particular, the simple unity with itself which has dissipated all external relations, all processes of nature and their periodicity of birth, passing away, and rebirth, all the restrictedness in spiritual existence, and dissolved all particular gods into a pure and infinite self-identity. In this Pantheon all the gods are dethroned, the flame of subjectivity has destroyed them, and instead of plastic polytheism art knows now only one God, one spirit, one absolute independence which, as the absolute knowing and willing of itself, remains in free unity with itself and no longer falls apart into those particular characters and functions whose one and only cohesion was due to the compulsion of a dark necessity.
Yet absolute subjectivity as such would elude art and be accessible to thinking alone if, in order to be actual subjectivity in correspondence with its essence, it did not also proceed into external existence...
...the Absolute does not turn out to be the one jealous God who merely cancels nature and finite human existence without shaping himself there in appearance as actual divine subjectivity; on the contrary, the true Absolute reveals itself and thereby gains an aspect in virtue of which it can be apprehended and represented by art.
...the determinate being of God is not the natural and sensuous as such but the sensuous elevated to non-sensuousness, to spiritual subjectivity which instead of losing in its external appearance the certainty of itself as the Absolute, only acquires precisely through its embodiment a present actual certainty of itself. God in his truth is therefore no bare ideal generated by imagination; on the contrary, he puts himself into the very heart of the finitude and external contingency of existence, and yet knows himself there as a divine subject who remains infinite in himself and makes this infinity explicit to himself. — Hegel
I'm a bit of an 'atheist Christian' or some such nonsense in the sense that incarnation myth speaks to me (as myth). — plaque flag
:up:rival aesthetical perspectives may be as significant a source of misunderstanding and conflict as anything generated by politics. — Tom Storm
I'm afraid Hegel is like a too rich chocolate cake. I can only have a nibble before feeling done... — Tom Storm
It respects people's suffering. Everything else is gaslighting, justifying why other people need to do X, or just fixing broken things (including our own broken tranquility). — schopenhauer1
Translation please, Sir. — Tom Storm
Given the role an ethical system might have on the suffering of conscious creatures can we say they are precisely the same thing? — Tom Storm
This one is like trying to make sense of the Tao Te Ching. — Tom Storm
I am my world. (The microcosm.) (5.63)
5.632:
The subject does not belong to the world but it is a limit of the world.
5.633:
Where in the world is a metaphysical subject to be noted?
You say that this case is altogether like that of the eye and the field of sight. But you do not really see the eye.
And from nothing in the field of sight can it be concluded that it is seen from an eye.
It was Socrates who posed, “Is it good cause the gods like it or do the gods like it because it is good?” — schopenhauer1
Is it Norman Rockwell versus Salvador Dali...? — Tom Storm
Any views on this, or am I full of shit? — Tom Storm
This leads to Feuerbach and others grasping that the divine predicates are of course just the kinds of things we humans like, so that God is an idealized human (and a tribal god is an idolized tribe member, which would not be a human in our nowcommon global or generic sense.) — plaque flag
My world is solipsistic. It is mine alone. It is the world as I see it. As I experience it. — Fooloso4
The facts of the world do not change, but how I experience it does. To be happy is to be in accord with the world, to not set one's will against the world. — Fooloso4
I saw a documentary on atheism once. The documentarian said a world without religion seemed "thin" to him. He was an atheist, but he appreciated the full bodied mythology, art, and community associated with religion.
It wasn't a reason to believe. Maybe more of a reason for tolerance. — frank
Can those immersed in the philosophical tradition tell me if aesthetic reasoning is used to justify positions on morality and meaning? — Tom Storm
Over the years, I have often heard people debating god versus no god - and the argument I seem to hear from many theists is that the world is uglier and less enchanted without a god and/or without contemplative practice. The person expressing such a view appears to regard atheism and humanism and the privileging of science over the 'supernatural' as unattractive, mean and an example of bad taste. — Tom Storm
They seem to be saying that their experience of the world, transfigured through the veneration of the divine is deeper, richer and more beautiful than yours (atheist). They see, or hope for, transcendent beauty. You see, or live in, ghastly nihilism. — Tom Storm
I remember once talking to an emeritus professor of religion and Nietzsche came up. He shuddered. "An abominable man!' he spat out. I asked why. 'He couldn't fully experience the Creation with such vulgar sensibilities.' — Tom Storm
Nietzsche and Kierkegaard are a good pair to compare and contrast in this context. — Janus
I think the debate over God being understood in aesthetic terms is like debating the aesthetic worth of art works, poetry or music. — Janus
I don't think science should be privileged over the supernatural or vice versa per se — Janus
Again I think that is an absurd argument. It might seem to someone that veneration of the divine is deeper, richer and more beautiful than nihilism, but that is merely a personal preference. Others may see it the other way around. — Janus
Theists often claim a calling which is 'higher than any other calling,' including any call to human science, and I think we should NEVER forget to totally challenge that arrogant, unjustified claim. — universeness
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