Thanatos Sand I wasn't educated by Jesuits, but I read Bernard McGinn's book about Eckhart. Eckhart did not believe that God is a person.
He believed that the Christ is a kind of agent.
God is the ground of being. He's an example of how a person can be a Christian and also be what in Spinoza's time was called atheist.
You wrote:
Fair enough. But how does one recognize truth if not to actively seek it out? It doesn't seem to just randomly fall into your lap. Seems an acknowledgement of one's ignorance along with a concomitant desire to actually know are both necessary. Not many people, I'd imagine, even make it this far.
I think about the conditions under which my beliefs and opinions have shifted over the years, and these always involved discovering a new set of facts which challenged my guiding presuppositions.
For instance, the idea that the US champions freedom and democracy at home and abroad (a belief I held for all of my youth) was undermined by certain actions that I became aware of only much later: things like overthrowing a democratically-elected regime in Iran and propping up a dictator more amenable to our business interests in its place, our supporting the Saudi royal family and giving China most-favored nation trading status, despite the undemocratic nature of the regimes and their horrible disregard of human rights.
The common denominator in these and similar actions appeared to be the expansion of financial interests for a select few, and had absolutely nothing to do with adhering to a set of principles like truth, justice and freedom.
So I held a belief which didn't match with 'reality.'
At first I tried to resolve the cognitive dissonance through rationalizing away those actions which ran contrary to our professed principles by contextualizing them. Supporting brutal dictators was in some cases the lesser of two evils.
But the ultimate step after gaining more and more information concerning US politics--both foreign and domestic--was to finally accept the hard truth: while this nation's principles may be extremely admirable, they've clearly been used quite frequently as "noble lies" to maintain the illusions of cave dwellers like myself. And often to do the dirty work of supporting the 'elites' who benefit most from the situation.
My point in this long and tedious personal digression is twofold. First, to show that (in my case at least) arriving at the truth is a difficult process that involves both emotional and factual aspects. Facts were important, but not enough at the start. My emotional attachment to a particular conception of America was very strong and would not allow me to accept the significance of certain facts right away.
The second point of bringing it up, is to challenge (yet again!) the idea that Trump's use of lies are ultimately more malicious and more consequential than those which have been used by other American politicians since this nation's inception, and more generally throughout human history.
I was close to joining the military precisely because I believed we represented great things. I would never have done so absent those illusions. The simplified narrative of American moral superiority many of us have been fed is not only wrong, but it's had far-reaching (often negative) consequences for others around the globe.
This issue is very personal, and I don't buy the notion that it's fine (or even more acceptable) to deceive someone as long as they think you're telling them the truth. That's an incredibly insulting standpoint, and especially corrosive of the foundations of a democracy in which an informed electorate is an essential component. So we can hate Trump while simultaneously acknowledging the history of lies this country's politicians have engaged in.
So we're not in a post-truth age politically because we've never been in one in which politicians (or the special interests they almost always represent) were genuinely devoted to truth. I'm going to bludgeon you all with this point over and over and over again if necessary! Trump is more bold in his lying and an even more horrible human being than most, but that doesn't exonerate his political forbears in the least.
>:O >:O >:O >:O Yeah right, cause Christians are New Age believers!God is an underlying creative force... something like that. — Mongrel
Have you actually read Nietzsche while trying to be honest to what he was saying? I can see the point you're trying to make, but it has little to do with what Nietzsche actually wrote:Nietzsche is targeting nihilism. His philosophy is about the separation between morality and meaning. He demands honesty about values and meaning. Rather than being dedicated to identifying what people ought to do, his philosophy is about undoing the pretence it’s morality or justice which deifies meaning.
Holding Nietzsche is taking a position that “all is good” is somewhat close, but also quite mistaken. His position would be better described as all has meaning. No matter how moral or immoral the world might be, meaning obtains. The meaning or “worth” of the world cannot be ransomed to appearing in the ways we demand or only those ways “which make sense” to us.
The nihilistic fool says: “I cannot go on. Life has too much pain to have any meaning. There needs to be a transcendent force which inputs meaning.”
A depressed Ubermensch says: “I will not go on. The meaning of my life is constant pain. I ought not go on. Death (whether it be a figurative death of an action which might have occurred or the literal death of suicide) is my meaning.”
Nietzsche’s point is existence is always a creation or affirmation. Moral or immoral, wonderful or horrific, meaning obtains. To exist is to mean, no matter what happens to you, whether you enjoy it or not, whether you live a month or a hundred years. He’s not discussing how to be moral, but rather describing how meaning is present regardless of moral status (morality, no matter how true, is just a social whim, concerned with possession and origination of finite states. Often important, but never any threat to meaning).
The distinction is is also clear in Agustino misunderstanding of asceticism and Nietzsche. If one is honest about asceticism, that one endures of because the world (i.e. you, the ascetic), then Nietzsche doesn't have a problem. It actually fits pretty with Nietzsche's thought ; the treadmill of seeking feeling pleasure often constitutes nihilism, where getting the next hit is a transcendent solution to meaningless.
It's the falsehood Agustino is telling which is the problem for Nietzsche. The ascetic doesn't succeed by renouncing the world, but rather in affirming it-- "I am the existence which denies petty desires, who does not fall into just seeking my wishes and pleasure. " — TheWillowOfDarkness
How was he a mystic if he rejected the God of the philosophers and rather accepted the personal God who directly and literarily spoke with Abraham? :s You're the first person I hear who claims K. to be a mystic, quite a lot of the secondary literature on him that I've read finds him to be anti-mystical if anything.Yep. He was a mystic. My goodness... two posts attacking me. :D — Mongrel
Kierkegaard thought union with the divine is impossible, in that the human self always remains separate from God, and cannot merge into God... :sAnyone who spends much time contemplating union with the divine is a mystic. I'm not sure how anyone could interpret that as anti-mystical. — Mongrel
Kierkegaard's emphasis upon God's transcendence could also play an important role in tempering the intimacy of the mystic's relation with God... It is only be an act of grace on God's part and not by the mystic's striving for experience of or union with the Divine that he comes into God's presence. It is in making clear these truths that the value of Kierkegaard's anti-mysticism lies.
Kenosis means self-emptying through loving activity.What's kenosis? — Mongrel
:-} Just because I find your comments in this thread stupid and you're a woman doesn't make me a sexist, nor a jerk. You just don't know what you're talking about with regards to Kierkegaard (or Christian mysticism for that matter). Your judgement is so dominated by your 1960s atheistic/humanistic/leftist ideology that you can't even see beyond your own nose. It's pathetic. Everyone who disagrees with you is labeled a sexist.Anyway, we're done. Life's too short for me to spend much time talking to a sexist jerk. — Mongrel
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