Not all people are meant to marry. K. knew that if he had married he would have to abandon his devotion to God and to philosophy. — Agustino

Isn't Kierkegaard's behavior especially strange from a Protestant perspective? Marriage is supposed to be an expression of one's devotion to God. The love between God and His church is the love between husband and wife united in holy matrimony, right?

But I have never been a Christian, so any of that is liable to be a misunderstanding.

>:O So what? There's not much to get out of life anyway. — Agustino

On the contrary, this life is all there is to get anything out of at all. There is nothing else.

I'm not a Catholic ;) — Agustino

Sorry, please excuse my brain's automatic pattern matching.

Isn't Kierkegaard's behavior especially strange from a Protestant perspective? Marriage is supposed to be an expression of one's devotion to God. The love between God and His church is the love between husband and wife in holy matrimony, right? — absoluteaspiration

Depends on one's calling. Life long celibacy is as acceptable as marriage in Christianity - in fact it is even encouraged more than marriage.

The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord; but the married man is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried woman or girl is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit; but the married woman is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please her husband — 1 Corinthians 7:32-34

On the contrary, this life is all there is to get anything out of at all. There is nothing else. — absoluteaspiration

Even if that is so, there's nothing much to get out of this only life.

Life long celibacy is as acceptable as marriage in Christianity - in fact it is even encouraged more than marriage. — Agustino

So you reject Luther's interpretation of the "command to marry". I'm not saying he required everyone to marry, but Protestants usually consider marriage to be a component of a perfect Christian life. Considering Kierkegaard was lucky enough to actually find love and have it reciprocated, the idea that Protestants wouldn't be more in favor of marriage than not confuses me. Assuming you're in Western Christianity at all, you must be a Nondenominationalist or in a denomination that is relaxed about personal interpretations.

Even if that is so, there's nothing much to get out of this only life. — Agustino

But this statement is empirically false. This life does in fact offer many opportunities that people do in fact desire if their own words are to be believed.

"I'm exactly the same as you. If I find out something like that about a thinker, I'm much less tempted to investigate deeper what s/he said. If it couldn't help him live a good, moral life, why should I expect it to help me?"

Like with Nietzsche and Dostoevsky right?
That you can not see that your judgements are cruel beyond Words is fascinating.

"Any kind of significant immorality (killing innocent people, cruelty, vindictiveness, adultery and fornication, etc.) "

What about the worst of all immorality? That of being a self-righteous and moral monster? "Killing innocent people"... Do they exist in your universe? "Cruelty and vindictiveness"... Please, please! I believe you should follow Buddha's advice and research your own cruelty and vindictiveness

"Oh yeah, and he cheated on his wives too!"

Oh so you finally realized/discovered that did you?

"K. knew that if he had married he would have to abandon his devotion to God and to philosophy."

Correction:

K. knew that if he had married he would have to abandon his devotion to philosophy

"So what? There's not much to get out of life anyway."

Aha! I Think I am staritng to understand the underlying impulses that causes you to be a moral freak...Anyway, to your defence, not many "christians" would disagree. But if you feel this way about this life; dont expect joy in your heaven! Really, if you havent acquired the ability to see that this life actually does have something worthy, those you send to hell Will probably find more joy there than you ever will in heaven. They probably at least have imagination.
It seems like if you were honest with yourself, what makes you the way you are is that you think life is unendurable if there is no God. Or that is still dishonest. Rather, the truth seems to be that your life can not be endured if its foundation lacks a moral purpose in a metaphysical sense! Therefore there must be a God who punishes the immoral, right? There MUST be vengeance! Otherwise, life failed! The truth is that you who are accustomed to the moral ideas you hold so dearly do not desire a life without them, because as you say, this life gives you not much! Perhaps slicing the head of burglars is the greatest joy it can offer? Though the question here is: Would you slice the head of your wife if she attacked another man, unprovocked and greedy because she wants his money? That your metaphysical morality is necessary to you and for your preservation I can understand, I dont know what you have been through... But why become a tyrant because of it? Why strive to kill your passions and sins so much that you become the greatest hater against sin, passions and sinners possible? Dont you fear that you then are still controlled by passions etc? What happened to the love preached by Buddha or your savior?

The one great thing the Buddha did was his vow to sit down and not get up until he gained understanding or died. I'm largely pro-desire even in cases where most people would disagree. I was on the Buddha's side when he desired understanding more than his own life.

I don't agree with much else in Buddhism. I particularly dislike his parable of the arrow. When you are shot by a poisoned arrow, you should do that which you truly desire. If that desire is to understand the characteristics of the arrow more than saving your own life, then that is exactly what you ought to do. How else did the Buddha reach awakening? Not by loving his own little life, that's for sure.

Of course, in the Buddhist context, "life" is to be understood as freedom from suffering, abandoning desire is the cure, and so on, but I think those are all the wrong generalizations from how the Buddha actually found freedom from suffering in his own life: By giving in to the desire to understand more than holding on to little scruples like prolonging his life.

Of course, I agree! Why did you direct that text to me? I completely agree that striving to acquire understanding is better than prolonging your life. Why? Because that IS a purpose, that IS something to get out of life. To strive towards understanding WHY we suffer, what is the truth(like in buddhism that there is no true Self, that no phenomenas have independent or enduring existence etc) in this case. Fact is,; Buddha was creative. And for sure, if Buddha is to be believed, he was neither bitter nor angry at infidels and immoral People. He didnt hate burglars etc. That is for sure.

I was comparing the Buddha's philosophy with his life in accordance with the theme of this thread. I did not know your position on Buddhism. Since you mentioned the Buddha, I wanted to find out.

Your question is one that has troubled me on and off over the past few years. On quite a few occasions in discussion I have wanted to pick an example of a 'really good person', for some reason relating to the discussion. And I have run into uncertainty. The famous examples like Gandhi and Martin Luther King have well-known downsides. I have been tempted to name Dietrich Bonhoeffer, but decided not to do so because I felt certain somebody would dredge up some unkind thing he had done once, which I hadn't known about, and thereby ruin another of my 'heroes'.

I have come to a sort of partial resolution by accepting that, just as (IMHO) there are no Bad people, only Bad (or, more accurately, Harmful) acts, so there are no Good people, only Good (or, more accurately, Helpful*) acts.

So I can admire Russell's courageous stance against the Great War, while regretting the way he conducted some of his sexual relationships. Ditto for Martin Luther King. I can even admire Margaret Thatcher's toughness and courage, despite abhorring most of her policies.

This approach is much less vulnerable to disappointment, as it starts by recognising that we are all fallible, and even those whose acts we live in awe of (eg Wilberforce's campaign against the slave trade) will almost certainly have done some things in their life that were mean (Wilberforce was also a punitive, prudish 'morals' campaigner).

Or look at it like this: in a life of seventy years a person will perform hundreds of thousands of acts that involve other people. Imagine we could put a 'kindness' score on every one of those acts. Then those scores will form a distribution. It may look like a bell curve, or it may have a positive or negative skew, or even be more unusual (eg multi-modal). But there will be a Worst act one has ever done - the one at the extreme far left of the distribution.

What are the chances that that worst act will be no worse than neutral? I'd say virtually nil.

We can apply that the other way around too and ask what would be the kindest thing that Stalin, Hitler or Pol Pot ever did. I'd expect the chances that it would be no better than neutral are again virtually nil.

In short: for me the answer is to seek to emulate not people, but their admirable acts.

The second thing I wanted to mention is that there is a distinction between the policies one promotes and one's private behaviour. The objections to Gandhi, King and Russell are about their private behaviour, while the policies they promoted are widely admired. Other good examples of the policy-good, personally-bad phenomenon are Charles Dickens and Henry Lawson. Maybe JFK too, depending on one's perspective.

I expect there isn't a negative correlation between the kindness of one's policies and that of one's personal behaviour, but sometimes it seems as though there is.

The list of Goodies you came up with was an example of this apparent (and probably illusory) negative correlation. Both CS Lewis and GK Chesterton promoted policies that I consider extremely harmful, preaching belief in eternal Hell for one thing, and that failure to conform to sexual norms was deserving of Hell. But everything I've read suggests that they were both lovely, kind individuals on a personal level. The play Shadowlands paints a very moving picture of Lewis, and Chesterton managed to be great friends with his political foe George Bernard Shaw - despite Shaw being a notoriously prickly person.

* The Buddhist adjectives for these two H words are Skilful and Unskilful, which I find to be a valuable perspective.

Exactly what I was trying to get at.

I think the problem with the premise of this thread is the idea that if you can find a truly virtuous thinker and learn his ideas, then you can be virtuous too. I don't believe that's how human nature works. There are all too many people mouthing virtuous phrases and simultaneously making nuisances of themselves in the realm of action. These people think certain ideas are wonderfully virtuous, but when they try to put them in practice, they find an inner resistance they cannot overcome. Listen to that rebellious voice in yourself. Unless you are clinically insane, you will probably be a better person if you carefully work out what exactly you want to do and then do it instead of holding on to virtuous-seeming ideas like fetishes that shield you against having to make the effort to be a nicer person like you've always wanted to be.

As for Bertrand Russell, his philosophy has very little to do with personal morality, so charges of sexual misconduct are irrelevant when evaluating his ideas, but I really don't believe that adultery is always wrong. I'm not just saying that.

Should one like Thomas Jefferson because he wrote the Declaration of Independence, served as POTUS, was an innovative architect, an intellectual, etc. or should one dislike him because he had sex with his slaves and died bankrupt? While Eisenhower was the Supreme Commander in Europe. he had a mistress. Poor Mamie Eisenhower. Roosevelt saw the nation through the Great Depression and 98% of WWII, but he had a mistress also, despite being married to Eleanor (or because he was married to Eleanor?). Plus, he was a notoriously slippery politician.

Philosophers, Presidents, and Priests are all prone to inconsistencies, like all other humans. We might be great for one thing (very beautiful theories, excellent treaties, and superb transubstantiations) but on the other hand maybe we like to screw around. We say one thing and do something else. Only Agustino, of all men on earth, is free of this contradiction -- and we can not be sure about him (there's no corroborating evidence).

No one is altogether admirable. Maybe the Son of God not only loved that one disciple a lot (John--much to the annoyance of the other disciples who were peevish and jealous), and would you be happier with Jesus depending on whether he was a top or a total bottom?). If he was or if he wasn't, it wouldn't invalidate anything he said, and it wouldn't invalidate his sacrifice.

Mature minds understand that their heroes will have feet of clay and will be disappointing (or downright repellent) in some way, sooner or later. So shall I, and so shall you.

http://ia801300.us.archive.org/25/items/thebabballads_1507_librivox/thebabballads_13_gilbert_64kb.mp3

It's my estimation that every man ever got a statue made of him was one kind of sommbitch or another. — Malcolm Reynolds

I feel like a quote is needed from Schopenhauer. Someone whos wisdom you would instantly dismiss because he is a wild mysoginist, slightly racist and generally hypocritical. At least he has a response

"It is therefore just as little necessary for the saint to be a philosopher as for the philosopher to be a saint; just as it is not necessary for a perfectly beautiful person to be a great sculptor, or for a great sculptor to be himself a beautiful person. In general, it is a strange demand on a moralist that he should commend no other virtue than that which he himself possesses."

Tolstoy is perhaps one of my favourite authors, i find it a great shame that one should overlook his great wisom (In my opinion one of the wisest men in histoy) because he treated his wife poorly. We are all hypocrites in some way, i am, you are. no one is perfect, so we should not dismiss great ideas because of the mistakes people have made. If you are looking for someone who has allways maintain their morality the only person i can point you too is christ. That is if you believe the Christians when they say he never sinned (i dont).

What about you? If you like a writer/philosopher/historical figure, are there things about their personal life that would turn you off? — anonymous66

In some cases. Heidegger is the philosopher I've studied most and I love his thought and writings. But he was a member of the Nazi party and expressed significant anti-semitic feelings. This bothers me tremendously, although it does not undermine my admiration for the philosopher, just the man behind it.


I guess the figure that comes closest for me, and I have no real idea what, if anything, I know about him is true, is Siddhartha Guatama, the Buddha. Even if all the supposed facts about him are false, though, the received story about him is pretty tremendous and he is the regulative ideal towards which i try to aspire in minor ways.


I am pretty liberal when it comes to sexual morality though. Someone cheating on their spouse is probably not going to sway my opinion too much. Being abusive towards your wife in a physical, emotional, or sexual way, however, would be a pretty huge sin for me.

The objections to Gandhi, King and Russell are about their private behaviour, while the policies they promoted are widely admired. — andrewk

Yes, but personal behaviour is a lot more important than the policies they advocate. It's easy to advocate the good from a distance. It's easy to "love mankind" from far away. Anyone can do that. But when it comes to loving real men and women who are closeby, not many are able to.

Both CS Lewis and GK Chesterton promoted policies that I consider extremely harmful, preaching belief in eternal Hell for one thing, and that failure to conform to sexual norms was deserving of Hell. — andrewk

Well, I know you'll disagree, but to me, preaching belief in eternal Hell and condemning sexual immorality count as good things, not bad. People generally tend to take sexual immorality too lightly, so such preaching is more than welcome.

Someone cheating on their spouse is probably not going to sway my opinion too much. — Brian

Well granted that marriage is a very significant part of someone's life (some would argue one of the most important parts), and cheating can ruin a marriage, I think your position is without much support. It's licensing a very perverse evil (ruining a very important part of someone's life) as insignificant - much like saying "oh well, if he owns slaves, it's not such a big deal, it won't sway my opinion of him too much!".

Yes, but personal behaviour is a lot more important than the policies they advocate. It's easy to advocate the good from a distance. It's easy to "love mankind" from far away. Anyone can do that. But when it comes to loving real men and women who are closeby, not many are able to. — Agustino

I don't agree with this at all. There are a lot of people who are nice to people they know, but don't advocate love for people they don't. It is important to do both, since both have a measurable effect, but the latter has a much stronger effect. In the past, I would have said that your immediate relations have a stronger effect on the world, but I have come to disagree with my past self. I don't agree that Bertrand Russell had a net negative effect on the welfare of mankind even if I thought he was particularly horrible to those around him, which I don't to begin with. There are people who pretend to be loving to those around them, but with their insincerity, destroy them emotionally. Bertrand Russell was not one of those people.

(And that last class of behaviors is made worse by those who preach selfless love. Honesty is better than going through the motions of selflessness. (Of course, some people might be such good actors that they fool everyone forever. That wouldn't be particularly harmful. Here I'm thinking of the studies which show that children of divorced parents do better than the children of parents who fight all the time, for example.) Those who can achieve true selflessness are of course saints, but I don't believe in the existence of training regimens that can turn ordinary people into saints.)

Yes, but personal behaviour is a lot more important than the policies they advocate. — Agustino

The enduring problem with your view here is the discrepancy between what is known about the personal lives of thinkers, and their beliefs. Sure, with modern thinkers it's easier to read literature about their lives and then scrutinize, but what do we really know about the ancient Greek thinkers you mentioned earlier?

The point is that, when it comes to thinkers, the answer is NO: their personal behavior is not more important than their policies. They are THINKERS. Their contribution to society is their thought, not their actions; you're conflating thinkers with priests here because of your religiosity. A thinker, strictly, has taken no oath, no rite of religious passage; a thinker merely thinks. Often, good thinkers think of good ideas.

But when it comes to loving real men and women who are closeby, not many are able to. — Agustino

Yes, could you love Ghandi, Nietzsche, Russell, et al? (Oh wait, of course the answer is yes...you're the underdog and all that...?)

"Well, I know you'll disagree, but to me, preaching belief in eternal Hell and condemning sexual immorality count as good things, not bad. People generally tend to take sexual immorality too lightly, so such preaching is more than welcome."

Especislly if it turns out that there is no eternal hell right? Your problem is perhaps not that you lack fantasy, but that you lack understanding and subtlety. Also, in opposition to what especially the Chruch have thought at least in the past but apparently still; it has always been the conscientious and NOT the conscienceless who have had to suffer so incredibly much from the oppression of Hellfire preachers and the fears of Hell, especially when they were at the same time people of imagination. As a consequence, life has been made most miserable precisely for those who had need of joy and cheerfulness etc. Not only cheerfulness for their own recovery from themselves, but so that mankind might take pleasure in them and take joy in their gifts of imagination etc. In other words, the Church has caused more lost souls than saved ones, to use christian language. They have more often been an arc of damnation and destruction than the opposite, destroying sensitive people's lives. And those people who desired by means of these evil condemnations to gain the highest enjoyment of their oppresion because they hate what they call "the immoral" are perhaps the most wicked people to have ever lived. May I ask you, who do you consider to be the greatest sinner in Tolstoy's Anna Karenina?

So you reject Luther's interpretation of the "command to marry". — absoluteaspiration

Sure.

I'm not saying he required everyone to marry, but Protestants usually consider marriage to be a component of a perfect Christian life. — absoluteaspiration

Yes, but only provided you find the right person. For example, I would like to get married, but I haven't so far found the right person. Most of the women I've met, I would never marry.

Considering Kierkegaard was lucky enough to actually find love and have it reciprocated, the idea that Protestants wouldn't be more in favor of marriage than not confuses me. — absoluteaspiration

Devotion to God is a higher calling than marriage though. Scriptures repeatedly emphasise this point. So K. sacrificed marriage in order to devote himself more fully to God, all the while expecting - per impossible - that he would marry Regine. Much like Abraham was willing to sacrifice his own son Isaac - the person he treasured most - for the sake of God.

Assuming you're in Western Christianity at all, you must be a Nondenominationalist or in a denomination that is relaxed about personal interpretations. — absoluteaspiration

I'm not in Western Christianity.

But this statement is empirically false. This life does in fact offer many opportunities that people do in fact desire if their own words are to be believed. — absoluteaspiration

Yes, people do desire many of these opportunities, but these opportunities are ultimately empty - they don't offer any lasting satisfaction. From the outside - when you don't have them - you're always "oh how good it would be to have X Y Z". So you're lusting after them and unsatisfied with what you have. But then when you finally do have "X Y Z" sometimes you wish you didn't have it anymore.

So people who so claim are deceived by their own desires. They think they will find lasting satisfaction in X Y Z, but they don't. As soon as they have X Y Z they need to be looking after something else, otherwise they will immediately discover how unsatisfied they actually are with what they have. Many people are in fact living today the life of their dreams of yesterday, but are equally unsatisfied.

Like with Nietzsche and Dostoevsky right? — Beebert

No, I've actually read both quite extensively. I've read Nietzsche quite early in my life before I was a Christian.

That you can not see that your judgements are cruel beyond Words is fascinating. — Beebert

It's funny how ironical this statement is.

Correction:

K. knew that if he had married he would have to abandon his devotion to philosophy — Beebert

No that's absolutely wrong. K. would have any day abandoned philosophy for God. What you have just said there is antithetical to everything K. stood for.

But if you feel this way about this life; dont expect joy in your heaven! — Beebert

Jesus Christ has always spoken of heaven as a place of bliss - in fact heaven just is the absence of suffering.

Really, if you havent acquired the ability to see that this life actually does have something worthy — Beebert

I don't think it does have something worthy. When you don't have, you're frustrated, when you have, you're bored.

It seems like if you were honest with yourself, what makes you the way you are is that you think life is unendurable if there is no God — Beebert

That's just false. Life doesn't have to be "worth it" to be endurable if there is no God. Life is just the default state. One can't be bothered to change it.

Rather, the truth seems to be that your life can not be endured if its foundation lacks a moral purpose in a metaphysical sense! — Beebert

I don't think that's true either.

Therefore there must be a God who punishes the immoral, right? — Beebert

Not that there must be, but I would want that immorality be punished and justice be done.

Would you slice the head of your wife if she attacked another man, unprovocked and greedy because she wants his money? — Beebert

No, because I am commanded to care for my wife more than I care for other people if I have to choose between the two. Although I would seek to stop her and refrain her from doing that.

That your metaphysical morality is necessary to you and for your preservation I can understand — Beebert

I think that's false. Rather I find a desire for justice, which has no consideration for whether justice actually exists or not in a metaphysical sense.

Why strive to kill your passions and sins so much that you become the greatest hater against sin, passions and sinners possible? — Beebert

Because sin makes life bad. If there was no sin, life would be good.

What happened to the love preached by Buddha or your savior? — Beebert

Oh it is there. Quite peculiar, that it is you, who just like Ivan Karamazov, promotes an all expanding benevolence towards all of mankind, but just like him, you can't even love your own father (and that's a figure of speech - you can't even love any of the actual, real people close to you, but you feel a love for all mankind - absurd).

May I ask you, who do you consider to be the greatest sinner in Tolstoy's Anna Karenina? — Beebert

I've never read it.

It is important to do both, since both have a measurable effect, but the latter has a much stronger effect. — absoluteaspiration

Okay, but I'm not a utilitarian. I don't care about the effect. I am a virtue ethicist, I care about their characters. What your policies say tells me less about your character than your personal behaviour. Therefore your personal behaviour matters more.

Yes, but personal behaviour is a lot more important than the policies they advocate. It's easy to advocate the good from a distance. It's easy to "love mankind" from far away. Anyone can do that. But when it comes to loving real men and women who are closeby, not many are able to. — Agustino

I agree with the last bit, but not with the 'Anyone can do that'. Both are difficult, and both are important.

Few have the courage to go to jail, be beaten into unconsciousness, or undergo torrents of public hatred and ridicule for their beliefs. I am very thankful for those that have had the courage to do that for causes that I see as important, regardless of whether they also personally helped old people cross the road.

Yes, could you love Ghandi, Nietzsche, Russell, et al? (Oh wait, of course the answer is yes...you're the underdog and all that...?) — Noble Dust

They are not closeby :P

Few have the courage to go to jail, be beaten into unconsciousness, or undergo torrents of public hatred and ridicule for their beliefs. I am very thankful for those that have had the courage to do that for causes that I see as important, regardless of whether they also personally helped old people cross the road. — andrewk

I can agree with this, although now it's not only what they wrote (and advocated), but again, how they behaved that matters.

but what do we really know about the ancient Greek thinkers you mentioned earlier? — Noble Dust

We do have biographical material about some of them though. Not as extensive as we do about more recent figures, but we still do.

The point is that, when it comes to thinkers, the answer is NO: their personal behavior is not more important than their policies. They are THINKERS. — Noble Dust

Can a thinker's behaviour be divorced from his thought? Then he's a dishonest thinker in my eyes.

I understand your idealism (colloquial idealism). I wanted it once too. The reality is that the thinker never lives up to their ideas. It's helpful to accept that.