Hadn't heard that. I've heard the rumor about womanizing. I never looked into the plausibly of the womanizing rumor.

As I said, away from particular "moral vanities," we all respond positively to health and happiness. On the other hand:

The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.

We will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it. — MLK

This is what I have in mind, the accusation of neutrality. I'm not even defending neutrality, or at least not presenting it as a necessity. I'm suggesting that there's something "morbid" in this conflation of doing the evil and standing by, tolerating it. It suggests to me a "making guilty" of the detached mode. He who is not with me is against me. Happiness, from this perspective, is only justified or innocent, if it is accompanied by the fight for social justice. The self is only "correctly" fixed as this same self fixes the world.

Here's the intro to the article:

On this anniversary of the March On Washington for civil rights, I have been looking for some choice quotes from Martin Luther King, Jr. One pattern that I have found is his clarity in speaking out on complacency and inaction. Those who do nothing while witnessing injustice and wrong-doing do worse than those who commit acts of injustice. The privileged have a responsibility to do what they know is right. — article

The complacent are worse? A self-concerned happiness or complacency is presented as worse "sin" in this context than the active violation of others. I'd analyze this as a manifestation of the resentment the idealist feels toward those who are not persuaded by his particular crystallization of virtue. He hates them more than the "bad guy" who after all makes his virtuous role possible. Cynically speaking, the "real" enemy is the "complacency" that refuses to recognize the idealist's moral authority. To be fair, I think this "dark side" is mixed with genuine empathy and laudable intentions. I don't reduce social justice rhetoric to vanity. It just tempts us toward an "excess" or closing of our minds.

https://paradoxologies.org/2010/08/28/martin-luther-king-jr-on-complacency-mlk/

Surely you read other threads on this forum. I think you're being disingenuous.

Rather than picking on anyone present, I've tracked down some examples for you.

And now to my socialist friends who are here present: I have said that Jesus wanted what you want, that he wanted to help those who are least, that he wanted to establish the kingdom of God upon this earth, that he wanted to abolish self-seeking property, that he wanted to make persons into comrades. Your concerns are in line with the concerns of Jesus. Real socialism is real Christianity in our time. — Barth

This is a direct reduction of Jesus to social justice. "Religion is politics."

The seed of a metaphysical or religious defeat is in us all. For the honest questioner, however, who doesn’t seek refuge in some faith or fantasy, there will never be an answer.

In accordance with my conception of life, I have chosen not to bring children into the world. A coin is examined, and only after careful deliberation, given to a beggar, whereas a child is flung out into the cosmic brutality without hesitation.

The dread of being stares us in the eye, and in a deadly gush we perceive how the minds are dangling in threads of their own spinning, and that a hell is lurking underneath.

But as he stands before imminent death, he grasps its nature also, and the cosmic import of the step to come. His creative imagination constructs new, fearful prospects behind the curtain of death, and he sees that even there is no sanctuary found. And now he can discern the outline of his biologico-cosmic terms: He is the universe’s helpless captive, kept to fall into nameless possibilities. From this moment on, he is in a state of relentless panic. — Zapffe

That Zappfe bothers to speak this terrible "truth" implies that his knowledge is a form of virtue, IMV.

IMV, yes. Two manifestations that come to mind are the understanding of spirituality as essentially political and also pessimism.

For [a certain kind of ] politicized spirituality the individual has an "infinite" duty to fix the world. It is wrong to be 'complacent.' Admittedly excess in this direction is often enough viewed suspiciously. Because beneath our "moral vanity" there is a deep love of health as manifested in happiness. Away from our own "excessive" investments and projections of duty, we are clear-sighted enough to see a morbidity in hand-wringing the-world-is-ending hysteria. So I'm not denying that there is a middle-of-the-road position that looks down on both the idiot as private person and the "crazy" who doesn't know how to laugh and enjoy what is good.

The pessimist implies that there is virtue in the knowledge that life is evil, so that unhappiness becomes (accompanied by the right words) a measure of the higher, intellectual virtue of possessing the truth, of holding onto it virtuously like a hot coal in one's hand.

I do think "selfishness" is an abused word. If we use it in the ordinary pejorative sense, then clearly it's a vice. It's the name of a vice. But there's a guilt by association, so that happiness or enjoyment is commonly understood as a sin.

But, yes, in the "higher" sense I think we want and strive for a "higher" fulfillment, expanding the self so that the virtue of others doesn't cause envy or guilt. Or it causes a "good" envy/guilt that inspires us to a joyful sense of moving in the right direction. The closed-up self wants to lay down the law, stamp out freedom. It defends its "crystallizations" of itself.

IMV, We [can] participate in a "flee floating" virtue. So you and I probably agree that "petty" egoism is a low state. But I think that at-homeness and serenity are or at least can be manifestations of virtue. If we never find a sense of gratitude for the world in all its imperfection, then IMV we are doing it wrong. But I don't want to project this as a law.

Nature makes "mistakes", things that don't belong. Frankly it's surprising to me we've managed to hold on for as long as we have. Nature puked us out from its bowels, like everything else. — darthbarracuda

Isn't this an interpretation of Nature though? I agree that we are thrown into hazard and a certain amount of suffering. But "mistake" only makes sense to me in contrast to a projection of an ought.

Really, happiness is a delirious escape into the infinite, a transcendence of Being, precisely because Being is not good. — darthbarracuda

Why frame it as an escape? The "transcendence of Being" is also just a mode of being, a way of being. Don't you "write off" the most positive possibility of being as escape only to judge the leftovers as bad? I realize that being can show itself in terrible ways, of course.

From my perspective, it generally feels good to love, though I see that there is vulnerability in this. We suffer when they do, to some degree.

Goodness is genuinely selfless, and not ultimately in your own best interest. — Wosret

I suppose we disagree on something basic. I'm opposed to this opposition of virtue and "higher" self-interest. That makes virtue an "alien" essence. It makes us "sinners" of necessity. In a worst case scenario it's a hatred of humans, since even their higher self-interest must only be a distraction from virtue, not virtue itself.

On the other hand, I understand that goodness may require sacrifice. A person might even sacrifice their life to protect others. But for me this is just an extension of the self to include those others. Love is this expansion of the self, as I see it.

I think we have an inherent desire to want to be good and be closer to the Divine. Is this still selfish? — MysticMonist

For what it's worth, I'd call it the higher selfishness, the good selfishness. Isn't 'selfishness' usually employed to call out a sort of 'cheating' in interpersonal relationships? Unfortunately 'healthy' self-interest suffers from guilt by association. It feels good to love. By following our profounder pleasures we arguably move closer to God or virtue. So the un-virtuous man is being selfish in the wrong way, inefficiently. If we oppose virtue to enjoyment or good selfishness, how can we avoid framing life as a miserable, guilty duty? Where 'God' is anti-human and we are cut in half by opposing motives?

If by then I still don’t know what Virtue really is, I’m probably hopeless! — MysticMonist

Maybe it's virtuous to remain open about virtue. I think wrestling with this question is arguably philosophy itself. Perhaps we always already act on some possibly blurry notion of virtue. We spend our lives tinkering with or even revolutionizing this concept. Perhaps to "harden" on this matter is to lose something good.

s it enough to be a loving family member, be honest in your job and obey most of the laws? In short to not be terrible and ruin it for everyone.
Are we called by God or by reason to be of greater virtue? I think of a Rabbi who once said that monkeys love their mates and their children and are kind to their friends and obey stronger monkeys. But this isn’t virtue. — MysticMonist

As I see it, it's somewhat "aggressive" to say that "this isn't virtue." How does one not thereby project a non-obvious duty? This ordinary restraint and decency is the basic foundation of freedom. I leave you alone to wrestle with God if you leave me alone. I recognize your freedom. Lots of self-righteous violence and contempt flows from idiosyncratic notions of virtue that transcend this ordinary decency. It's not "innocent" in a certain sense to negate this ordinary virtue. IMV it's often the prologue of a superiority play that wears an angelic mask.

Truth is of course person-independent, what's wrong with that? Man is not the measure of all things, that would be ridiculously anthropocentric, not to mention based on pure self-aggrandisement and selfishness. As harsh as it is, man is in this sense not the centre of the Universe. — Agustino

I agree that some truth is best described a 'person-independent.' The public world of physical objects is exactly the sort of thing that comes to mind. But philosophical and religious thinking tends to interpret this world of objects. Is there a person-independent truth about justice? Or about truth itself? Is there a person-independent truth about virtue? Do justice, truth, and virtue exist in a lifeless universe?

How do you know that man is not the measure of all things? Do you not 'measure' our situation yourself here? For me "anthropocentrism" looks inescapable. It's we humans who make it a virtue or a vice, who use it as a token in our dialogues.

I agree with Blake and Feuerbach that our conceptions of virtue and the transcendent must be founded on an image of the ideal human. A lovable, loving God only makes sense as a disembodied human, the "Human Form Divine." Or can we sincerely worship a being that makes no sense to us? Isn't this the idea in God being made visible by taking human form?

Along those lines, I suggest that man is still the center of the Universe. Of course this isn't true in the physical model, but that model is one more tool for human purposes. And even your appeal to it manifests, in my view, human centrality. You use it defend a spiritual/metaphysical view that you are invested in. And I respond to defend my own spiritual/metaphysical position. It's a token in a dialogue about virtue.

But I'd say every effective philosopher tends to "straighten people out", beginning with himself, no matter what doctrine he prefers and no matter what style of engagement he adopts. — Cabbage Farmer

I very much agree. I think "straightening out" has sufficient generality to include just about everyone. A person straightens himself or herself out and generally experiences this 'cure' as one-size-fits-all. Or the philosopher feels on-the-way to being straightened out, and part of being on-the-way is taking others by the hand along the same way. We will be straightened out, if only we walk in the right direction.

Metaphysicians of various stripes dispute each other with no definitive criterion, no conclusive warrant, to settle the dispute. Metaphysicians who align their discourse with skepticism acknowledge there's no resting point for that carousel of metaphysical speculation, and make the most room for ignorance and mystery while they pursue their inclination, as it were hypothetically.

Metaphysicians who think it's possible to finally halt the carousel at the point of their own precious speculations want less mystery, not more. — Cabbage Farmer

I like this position. It's close to my own. But isn't the denial of closure itself a form of closure? As a skeptic, I have a certain faith in doubt, a belief in the virtue of not otherwise being fixed. Is public speech intrinsically "faithful" and "self-important" to some degree?

The weighing up of evidence. — Jake Tarragon

That's a reasonable answer, but I'll test that answer in a friendly spirit. What evidence did you weigh to determine that rationality is the "weighing up of evidence"?

From the book The Concept of Time. (Note how they don't capitalize 'being.' I think this is the right move. I shied away from Heidegger to some degree because that capitalized Being looked like hogwash.

Running ahead toward the ultimate possibility reveals the pastness of being-in-the-world, the possible 'no-longer-there'. There is no remaining within the world of concerned engagement. The world loses the chance to determine being-in in terms of what it deals with in its everyday concerns. By itself the world can no longer endow Dasein with being. What provides Dasein with a secure footing as distance and difference from others --who are there in the with-world and as the public realm --dissappears when the world fades into the background. The world recedes, as it were, from the contexts in which it is encountered in terms of its significance and becomes merely present-at-hand.

So being-in is directed to a state in which it finds that 'nothing whatsoever' can affect it, that is, its being before nothing. This nothing, as that which Dasein is faced with, throws Dasein's being back solely onto itself. This ownmost 'in itself' will no longer be 'there' in the world. This 'pastness' which is in each case one's own, pulls Dasein back from its lostness in the public averageness of 'one.''One' can no longer be the 'one.', one can no longer have others replace or choose in lieu of oneself. 'One's' capacity to cover things up distintegrates. Flight into the irresponsibility of nobody is cut off. 'Pastness' reveals the ultimate possiblity that Dasein is handed over to itself, in other words it becomes manifest that, if it wants to be what it is authentically, Dasein must exist of its own accord. — Heidegger

I'm going to be semi-authentic and put this against an un-hip 'fringe' thinker like Stirner. I now that Husserl was aware of him, so even influence is possible. "Edmund Husserl once warned a small audience about the "seducing power" of Der Einzige, but never mentioned it in his writing." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Stirner

I'm by no means trying to reduce Heidegger to Stirner. They are quite different. But both insisted on the human being as a who as opposed to a what. Both made something of nothing.

The unique, however, has no content; it is indeterminacy in itself; only through you does it acquire content and determination. There is no conceptual development of the unique, one cannot build a philosophical system with it as a “principle,” the way one can with being, with thought, with the I. Rather it puts an end to all conceptual development. Anyone who considers it a principle, thinks that he can treat it philosophically or theoretically and inevitably takes useless potshots against it. Being, thought, the I, are only undetermined concepts, which receive their determinateness only through other concepts, i.e., through conceptual development. The unique, on the other hand, is a concept that lacks determination and cannot be made determinate by other concepts or receive a “nearer content”; it is not the “principle of a series of concepts,” but a word or concept that, as word or concept, is not capable of any development. The development of the unique is your self-development and my self-development, an utterly unique development, because your development is not at all my development. Only as a concept, i.e., only as “development,” are they one and the same; on the contrary, your development is just as distinct and unique as mine.

But it is not true, as Stirner’s opponents present it, that in the unique there is only the “lie of what has been called the egoistic world up to now”; no, in its nakedness and its barrenness, in its shameless “candor,” (see Szeliga, p. 34) the nakedness and barrenness of concepts and ideas come to light, the useless pomposity of its opponents is made clear. It becomes obvious that the biggest “phrase” is the one that seems to be the word most full of content. The unique is the frank, undeniable, clear — phrase; it is the keystone of our phrase-world, this world whose “beginning was the word.”

The unique is an expression with which, in all frankness and honesty, one recognizes that he is expressing nothing. Human being, spirit, the true individual, personality, etc. are expressions or attributes that are full to overflowing with content, phrases with the greatest wealth of ideas; compared with these sacred and noble phrases, the unique is the empty, unassuming and completely common phrase. — Stirner

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/max-stirner-stirner-s-critics

(I should stress that I find that political interpretations of Stirner miss what I'd call the point.)

I'm no expert either but I think the reason it looks vague to us is that we perhaps don't have a complete understanding of the phenomenon that Heidegger is getting at. Whereas he probably did. — bloodninja

That sounds about right. But I'd leave open the possibility that he was trying to say something that wasn't easy to say. It's also possible that he didn't want to say it explicitly. He was already becoming famous, so possibly he chose his words very carefully. It's my impression that B&T was already revolutionary. But I'm just hypothesizing. I plan to keep reading and thinking.

From The Concept of Time [20 page lecture]

Yet to what extent is time, as authentic, the principle of individuation, i.e., that starting from which Dasein is in specificity? In being futural in running ahead, the Dasein that on average is becomes itself; in running ahead it becomes visible as this one singular uniqueness of its singular fate in the possibility of its singular past. What is properly peculiar about this individuation is that it does not let things get as far as any individuation in the sense of the fantastical emergence of exceptional existences; it strikes down all becoming exceptional. In being together with death everyone is brought into the 'how' that each can be in equal measure; into a possibility with respect to which no one is distinguished; into the 'how' in which all 'what' dissolves into dust. — Heidegger

What is this 'how'? Is it how one "plays" the unique "hand" that one is dealt? Is no one distinguished because we can only be judged in terms of what we can hope to do with our varying live options? The healthy, rich kid with scholarly parents has different possibilities than Maggie, a girl of the streets. Is this 'what' that dissolves into dust some kind of universal 'they'-object? Is becoming exceptional struck down by the richness of every life lived in or as time?

I think I understand the becoming visible of the singular fate, more or less. I've been using the word "groundlessness," but I mean something like the risky venture of all uniqueness that doesn't hide behind some established abstraction or pre-interpretation of Dasein. To live the singular 'how' is perhaps to venture into the uncanny realm of creation even of standards that do not exist yet. The unique shape of one's disastrous and glorious past in all of its absurd detail is the only basis, the basis that was not chosen but can be now. I should say that that's only a plausible reading IMV.

I'm not claiming Levy means the same thing:

...
if you want a revolution
grow a new mind
& do it quietly
if you can

return to your childhood
and kick out the bottom
then become a being
not dependent on words
for seeing
... — D A Levy

Having given poor Korzybski hell, I must say that I nevertheless learned something from "fringe" thinkers. Their books aren't empty. They just don't compare well to better books. But a bad book is often better than no book.

There's also the idea that less persuasive thinkers are easier to see through. It's fun to believe a thinker, but it's at least as fun to transcend them, to feel oneself above their now-narrow-seeming perspective. It seems like an important life skill to me. We will always meet others who want to imprison us in their systems. It's good to know the old word-magic inside and out. (I'm not saying that I'm not still learning, so that's the presentation of an ideal or goal.)

...walling them off from me as possibilities and tasks that are for-others, and isolating the range of possibilities and tasks that are for-me... — StreetlightX

Nice.

Of course we do modify our views. But we mostly act non-theoretically with the "trust" of know-how. I would also contend that we are always already invested in a "fundamental pose" with respect to what is wrong or right, with a more or less explicit notion of virtue. This "pose" can break down and require modification when confronted by "indigestible" experience or persuasive speech.

Connecting to the OP, I think this pose becomes more authentic as it attains a distance from what one say, one does. That I die alone helps to urge me on toward self-possession. The experts, even the famous intellectuals from whom we learn, can't do our dying for us. Heidegger himself has become part of the 'they' for intellectuals. One understands Heidegger this way. Heidegger himself, along the same lines, is an entity revealed to me in terms of my own future.

For me "authenticity" is about leaning less and less on the "they" as a ground, to reach less and less for external or 'alien' justifications. I aim to speak from the I as opposed to from the we. You may say that this I is born from the we. I agree. But I'm suspicious of attempts to obliterate this emergent individual as something that can be reduced to its origins.

Here's some "melancholy" Nietzsche:

There are heights of the soul from which tragedy itself no longer appears to operate tragically; and if all the woe in the world were taken together, who would dare to decide whether the sight of it would NECESSARILY seduce and constrain to sympathy, and thus to a doubling of the woe?
...

There are books which have an inverse value for the soul and the health according as the inferior soul and the lower vitality, or the higher and more powerful, make use of them. In the former case they are dangerous, disturbing, unsettling books, in the latter case they are herald-calls which summon the bravest to THEIR bravery.

...
Happiness and virtue are no arguments. It is willingly forgotten, however, even on the part of thoughtful minds, that to make unhappy and to make bad are just as little counter-arguments. A thing could be TRUE, although it were in the highest degree injurious and dangerous; indeed, the fundamental constitution of existence might be such that one succumbed by a full knowledge of it—so that the strength of a mind might be measured by the amount of "truth" it could endure—or to speak more plainly, by the extent to which it REQUIRED truth attenuated, veiled, sweetened, damped, and falsified.
...https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4363/4363-h/4363-h.htm

The distance, and as it were the space around man, grows with the strength of his intellectual vision and insight: his world becomes profounder; new stars, new enigmas, and notions are ever coming into view. Perhaps everything on which the intellectual eye has exercised its acuteness and profundity has just been an occasion for its exercise, something of a game, something for children and childish minds. Perhaps the most solemn conceptions that have caused the most fighting and suffering, the conceptions "God" and "sin," will one day seem to us of no more importance than a child's plaything or a child's pain seems to an old man;—and perhaps another plaything and another pain will then be necessary once more for "the old man"—always childish enough, an eternal child! — N

He's esoteric and elitist. But what a poet!
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4363/4363-h/4363-h.htm

People don't get depressed because the world is bad, the world is seen as bad because people are depressed. — antinatalautist

I agree, though maybe a dialectic is involved. I think the news makes some people "sick." It's an endless story about disaster, crime, suffering. Part of us likes it, so many of us tune in. But this swamps us with information we can find little use for.

We are thereby called away from our projects, from the differences we can make in our actual "little" mostly non-newsworthy lives.

Years ago (early 20s) I picked up Science and Sanity and Manhood of Humanity from the public library. All I could remember was liking the "time binding" idea in M of H. Out of curiosity, I thought I'd look up a few quotes, to remember the style:

Humans can be literally poisoned by false ideas and false teachings. Many people have a just horror at the thought of putting poison into tea or coffee, but seem unable to realize that, when they teach false ideas and false doctrines, they are poisoning the time-binding capacity of their fellow men and women. One has to stop and think! There is nothing mystical about the fact that ideas and words are energies which powerfully affect the physico-chemical base of our time-binding activities. Humans are thus made untrue to "human nature." … The conception of man as a mixture of animal and supernatural has for ages kept human beings under the deadly spell of the suggestion that, animal selfishness and animal greediness are their essential character, and the spell has operated to suppress their REAL HUMAN NATURE and to prevent it from expressing itself naturally and freely.
— K

Ideas and words are "energies"? That's a risky metaphor in a sentence that starts with "there's nothing mystical about..." Also "literally poisoned" is a highly questionable expression. Continuing, is he suggesting on the whole that we are entirely supernatural, non-animal? How does assuming that man is a "mixture" lead to this animality being "[our] essential character"?

How many a genius has perished inarticulate because unable to stand the strain of social conditions where animal standards prevail and "survival of the fittest" means, not survival of the "fittest in time-binding capacity," but survival of the strongest in ruthlessness and guile — in space-binding competition! — K

I'm not against his values here, but he's wrapping an old complaint in a new jargon, where the virtuous bind time and the evil bind space.

The main thesis of this non-Aristotelian system is that as yet we all (with extremely few exceptions) copy animals in our nervous processes, and that practically all human difficulties, mental ills … have this … component. — K

This is highly suspicious, in my view. He's dressing a mysticism of non-animal thinking (available to extremely few exceptions, presumably including himself) in words like "science and sanity." What I object to is the way he dresses it all up. To me it makes sense that he's "fringe."

As opposed to the eyes of others? That's a good can of worms. But let's say we don't trust our own eyes. Is this not a trust of our own distrust?

Meanwhile, if the fear of falling into error introduces an element of distrust into science, which without any scruples of that sort goes to work and actually does know, it is not easy to understand why, conversely, a distrust should not be placed in this very distrust, and why we should not take care lest the fear of error is not just the initial error. As a matter of fact, this fear presupposes something, indeed a great deal, as truth... — Hegel

This is some good rock'n'roll along the same lines. The lyrics sure as hell aren't B&T, but the "feel" of authenticity and resoluteness is there.

"There ain't no guru who can see through your eyes."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Pttt0WCy9k

Yep. So we agree on pragmatism and its approach to rationalism?

What is distinctive is that purpose is included in epistemology. The map is not claimed to be a map of the world, but a map of a self in relation with a world. The ontological assumption here is that even "the self" is a modelled construction.

And so pragmatism simply takes for granted the socially constructed nature or truth, incorporating it into its very epistemology. It is upfront that every act of modelling has an agenda. And this is not a problem, given that the forming of "selfhood" - both personally and collectively - is how purposes or agendas could even arise.

So analytic philosophy is characterised by its desire for objective truth - truth without messy observers projecting their wishes and prejudices on to the reality being mapped. But pragmatism is quite different on that score. — apokrisis

Yes, I agree with all of this. But I think we should be reasonably upfront about the intensity of selfhood in ordinary experience. Speculatively the self and non-self emerge as a dichotomy from something neither-both. But non-speculatively a particular person in the world as we know it makes such a speculative "outlandish" claim.

Another example: I understand that "concept" in the speculative sense can be neither physical nor mental. By 'concept' I aim at the distinction itself. The "sign" or the "concept" escapes the "what-is-it?" that constitutes philosophy as that which reveals "what is" in the first place. The concept or the sign is "being" or the meaning of being. Intelligibility itself is perhaps the brute fact. (This is slippery stuff at the edge of language, admittedly.)
Anyway, Hume leaves his study believing in induction and I non-theoretically move among objects and persons. I think this non-theoretical realm is epistemologically crucial.

I did more that assert that. I'm arguing it.

If you want to narrow "philosophy" to "metaphysics", that's cool. But metaphysics grounds "proper philosophy" anyway. Or that is the position I will argue. — apokrisis

Fair enough on the first point. I'm very much enjoying our conversation. On the second point, narrowing is the opposite of what I want to do. I'm not in the least trying to exclude what you're doing. I stress that philosophy is abnormal discourse, the clash of proposed criteria. "Anything goes."

So what I reject is that subjectivity is to be found "within oneself" - the Romantic story. But one wants to be fully part of the social world which is where one finds one's "true self" as a social animal. — apokrisis

I think you are neglecting the anxiety of influence. We want to create and impinge upon this social world. If we are truly social, then we are also truly anti-social in our revolutionary ambitions. We negate the given, go around it, puncture it. "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world." Before a discourse can be normalized and socialized, it is invented or revealed by "poetic" (creative) language.

We do want recognition, but this might just be a love affair: Bonnie and Clyde against the world at one extreme. I suggest that groups are founded on exclusion. Nothing binds like a common enemy.

Yes. But "just"?

It is significant that a social animal equipped with a habit of speech could even work out what the heck was going on in the Universe in any fashion at all, let alone down to a story with mathematically logical necessity, like the Standard Model of particle physics. — apokrisis

Of course it's amazing. But my "just" is just a lack of worshipping the tools. For me the image of the divine is (roughly) the virtuous human being as a whole. Science is absolutely one of humanity's most glorious achievements. But there's also Bach, Shakespeare, etc. To me there's a Romanticism or asymmetry in your prioritizing of the objective. I'm by no means against it. But I can't help but see you as an individual against a background of other individuals with other priorities.

OK. You want to argue for infinite regress. — apokrisis

No, I'm just pointing out the complexity and self-referentiality of our mapping. Generally I'm just sharing a general way of looking at things, not arguing a particular thesis.

Of course. That is all part of what I've argued. The rational objective view stands in sharp contrast to the everyday business of living authentically in some actual physical and social milieu. It would be insane to mix up these modes of discourse.

You don't want to treat your family and living room as abstract metaphysical constructs. But by the same token, you don't want to claim commonsense, traditional belief, or folk wisdom, as the better base for metaphysical insight. — apokrisis

I agree. But I maintain that ordinary life is at least largely the testing ground of metaphysical beliefs. Even if the self is an "illusion," it's a more dominant "illusion" than the logical-rational points that can indeed be made for its status as a fiction or part of the map. So it's not about common sense or folk wisdom (which isn't stable anyway) but about our (relatively) non-theoretical mode of being in the world. This non-theoretical mode isn't stable either. It may include getting on planes these days. But the "know how" involved in navigating this world is perhaps "invisible" to a metaphysics of the "present-at-hand." (Yes, I'm studying Heidegger at the moment. He's, among other things, a "pragmatist.")

Sure. I am arguing for that too. But I am saying that metaphysics is the ur-rational discourse. It has to be to ground maths and science. Dialectical categories like discrete~continuous, matter~form, chance~necessity, one~many, and scores more, were how the whole rational/objective view of existence got started. — apokrisis

I think math and science are grounded in the successful use of tools. Calculus worked before it was made rigorous. Only after a flurry of successful applications did mathematicians get ontological about the real numbers. What the hell had they been talking about and using all along? I think Fourier series were the breakdown in "equipment" that made the real numbers visible or present-at-hand as entities to be explained (rigorously defined).

I suggest the hermeneutic circle. We have a fuzzy notion of things to begin with. We go back and forth from theory to practice, this word in relation to that word, clarifying. I do respect the German Idealist project of deducing reality from a minimum presupposition. I still find it somewhat fictional or artistic. The actual presupposition is the life history of the author.

But "philosophy" is big enough to accept both modes of discourse. Well, in the end, I don't think it does. I think people who argue that always have a hidden pragmatic agenda - social goals in mind. — apokrisis

The same kind of critique could read this exclusion as "scientism," a social goal that legitimates only the discourse of rational experts, a "priesthood." The Marxists spoke of "bourgeois sentimentality" and had no choice but to misread existentialists like Stirner, Sartre, and Heidegger. For them thinking was absolutely social. The individual was a dangerous fiction, a temptation. But this anti-individuality can be read as an expression of individuality. The individual identifies completely with dialectical materialism, for instance, blind to the choice involved. That choice threatens the fundamental pose, which is one's view is grounded, necessary, universal.

But PoMo especially is a political movement. It's purpose is social change. Well, in France especially, it is a route to being a public person, with all the personal advantages that can bring. C'mon. We can all see the game going on! — apokrisis

I'm sure there's some general truth in what you say, but details matter. And one can learn from someone whose politics one is not interested in. I think Heidegger (before WWII) is great, and this "peak" Heidegger is apolitical. A person can sniff around in retrospect for hints of the latent Nazi, but it's anything but obvious. Indeed, you'd probably find this Heidegger "Romantic" and too asocial when he wasn't being laudably pragmatic.

Thanks very much! I'm flattered & glad to be here.

I must confess that I haven't figured out what is meant by 'wholeness' in this context. Unless it means that seeing or revealing Dasein as a whole is made possible by anticipatory resoluteness? Is this about how the writing of Being and Time itself became possible? Just a guess.

On the other hand:

In this opening up Dasein can see itself as complete and know that life is there for us to live for ourselves. Dasein emerges from the ‘one’ to its own individual possibility. — timjohnneal

and this

The completeness of Dasein is not a matter of having a complete theory of it. It is the possibility of Dasein itself being 'complete' or 'whole,' that is, of Dasein's ability to be as an entity that 'exists' by taking a stand toward being. — link

https://books.google.com/books?id=7D1BDgAAQBAJ&pg=PT163&lpg=PT163&dq=dasein+wholeness+death&source=bl&ots=5nU3su1o4J&sig=lt0afumPo7AWppF-BSWVe6zPVCQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjvkvT9sIDXAhVHZCYKHSrACh4Q6AEITTAJ#v=onepage&q=dasein%20wholeness%20death&f=false

I can relate to that very much. Yet it seems vague. I think the two ideas are related. I see my completeness by understanding something like basic if not complete theory of Dasein. (All of this is conjecture humbly offered. Heidegger is my favorite right now, but I've only just started studying his own texts as opposed to interpreters.)

That's all about social interaction and zero about truth. Truth doesn't need anyone to affirm it to be true - it is indifferent to whether it is acknowledged or not. — Agustino

This is truth as an alien object. This truth is an asteroid in the dark of pre-human time. What can "faith" mean if religion is an obsession with this person-independent object? How does this not reduce religion to metaphysical arrogance? He who sees the Thing in its Truth gets to call the shots, right? Because this non-human object is the ground of authority, right? The Law is brought down from the mountain by "Moses" the Metaphysician/Theologian of the Objective Divine. He who questions the objectivity of this object is a blasphemer, a revolutionary. For him the hemlock or the cross?

Yeah, you can't - or better said you don't want to. But we may not have a choice. — Agustino

I don't want to and I don't need to. As I see it this waiting itself is the wrong move. This immersion and commitment to the We is a disavowed lust for power. We are bound by our desire to bind and liberated ourselves by the liberation of others. This doesn't mean that we don't need laws. It's not a political point. It's a "spiritual" point. But I don't want to project it as a law. I'm just sharing or confessing what works for me, what seems beautiful and liberating to me. It may or may not work with the freedom that I do not deny you.

I also deny it is the truth about life. But it IS the truth about the modern Western world. — Agustino

I don't think so. I know lots of mostly happy, mostly fulfilled people. I also know (but don't see much) others who are crashing and burning. Some make it. Others don't.

Some are born to sweet delight / Some are born to endless night.

No, you cannot see independently from your society. If you are born among the blind, you too are blind - and even if you're not blind, you can never see very clearly, because their affection is yours too. — Agustino

Progress is already a refutation of this. Creativity and going-against-the-grain is a naked fact. How could a Jesus or a Socrates emerge otherwise? That's what genius is, having eyes where others are blind. And would you not be sawing off the branch you perch on here? How can you yourself transcend the wickedness of our times to proclaim this wickedness, if we are utterly determined by others? We have books. We aren't trapped in the public shallowness and inauthenticity. We have a desire to be free and whole that leads us away from this shallowness.

I feel the same about you. I realized you were using it colloquially, but I have great respect for the depths of these ordinary words. They are the tried and true "metaphysics" of life as we live it non-theoretically.

I certainly am not suggesting a change in your world-view. I'm not saying living a life without hope is what you need. You seem like a pretty cool guy. My only point is that it is possible to live without hope. I see it as a good thing, even if I haven't been able to get it straight. Of course S1 will say I live a life of hope hoping to live without hope. There's some truth in that, but that's the irony of all the eastern religions - trying not to try, speaking about the unspeakable. — T Clark

I think we are mostly on the same page, that it's a matter of language. I recognize that you are also a "cool" guy, and I really like this word "cool." The "hot" personality is unstable, eager to prove itself --precisely because it doesn't believe. It doesn't trust in its bones. What I love about Nietzsche's vision of Christ is that it points behind language. There is a "sense" of rightness or goodness or completeness that can't be rationalized or justified, or only imperfectly. That's part of what I mean by "groundlessness." The "ground" or foundation of "wisdom" is receding or invisible. Of course I'm just poeticizing my own experience, partly to see if someone else says "that's how it is for me, too." It's a pleasure, of course, to share a sense of transcendence.

If I understand anything at all about this great symbolist, it is this: that he regarded only subjective realities as realities, as “truths” —that he saw everything else, everything natural, temporal, spatial and historical, merely as signs, as materials for parables. The concept of “the Son of God” does not connote a concrete person in history, an isolated and definite individual, but an “eternal” fact, a psychological symbol set free from the concept of time.

It is only on the theory that no word is to be taken literally that this anti-realist is able to speak at all. Set down among Hindus he would have made use of the concepts of Sankhya,[7] and among Chinese he would have employed those of Lao-tse[8]—and in neither case would it have made any difference to him.—With a little freedom in the use of words, one might actually call Jesus a “free spirit”[9]—he cares nothing for what is established: the word killeth,[10] whatever is established killeth. The idea of “life” as an experience, as he alone conceives it, stands opposed to his mind to every sort of word, formula, law, belief and dogma. He speaks only of inner things: “life” or “truth” or “light” is his word for the innermost—in his sight everything else, the whole of reality, all nature, even language, has significance only as sign, as allegory.
— Nietzsche on Christ in The Antichrist

I can relate to what you're saying. There's a sense of humor or humility that's to be embraced. There is so much genius and beauty and achievement out there that just about any single person can only hope to light up their little piece of the world. And we can do that by cherishing the virtue that exists very locally for us.

In fact, I'm especially pointing at the "world-historical" itch in so much religion. Lots of us don't just want to fix ourselves. Indeed, we think we can fix ourselves only by fixing the world. We inherit an unexamined notion of spirituality that is scientific, political, world-historical. To be spiritual in this objective mode is to embrace and provide correct universal truths that bear on what not only we but others ought to do. World history is then framed as the rise and fall of the prevalence of these correct propositions about an objective God. Dreams of the world ending in flood and fire appear, to cleanse it of all the erroneous subjectivity.

We tend to understand religion in terms of authority and control, in other words. But this could be precisely the problem, our insistence that the world and others must be mended, that they are guilty or fallen in the first place. That it's not enough for us to follow our own light as our own and trust the world in its imperfection to worry about itself.

In that spirit, take everything I said above as mere version of my own "light." I try to express it clearly, but I don't feel the need to impose. I present it as an option, not knowing the "truth" of the other, but only guessing at it.

Perhaps you could quote some highlights. I'm not a subscriber, and I'd prefer to respond to a particular point.

I found it interesting, somewhat convincing, but not conclusive or exhaustive.

That one dies one's own death seems at least as central. The "they" can talk their talk, but I swim that last lap radically and beautifully alone. Death "individualizes Dasein down to itself." It opens up Dasein's absolute groundlessness. We exist against a background of the nothingness from which we emerged and to which we must return. From when to when is the how. The life given to us in its radical specificity is the unique ground of our finite possibilities, finite because we know that they are always already closing down.

Of course this is such a deep issue that it can't be just theoretical. But I would like to know how Heidegger understood himself --if we can assume that his thinking was ever fixed or exact on this issue.

Again, the issue is what is one to make of your language use when it employs dialectical structure as if attempting a rational argument. It could be merely just an effect chosen for it aesthetic quality, which is what you seem to be claiming. You don’t mean to be doing philosophy. It is enough to play at sounding like you are philosophising. — apokrisis

I'm questioning the strength of the distinction between the aesthetic and the rational, emphasizing that thinking is purpose driven. Roughly speaking, truth is a means. We act on a map of the world. For us this map is the world, even if it includes the assertion of its own incompleteness or tendency to change. But we know that others have other maps, and we try to map their maps so as to anticipate their behavior, persuade them. It's this mapping of mapping that gets complicated.

When you say that I'm not doing philosophy, this is an implicit definition of philosophy that excludes the dissonance that might otherwise be said to constitute philosophy. Thinking investigates thinking "rationally" and finds that perhaps there is only (I ought to act as if there is only) creative adjustment, a dialectic of theory, action, and environment. We act as if the environment is one way, change it in those terms, and experience feedback. Our map changes and the process continues. But this is a map of mapping itself within the map and itself subject to the dialectic. Of course the map-territory distinction is part of the "mapterritory."

That’s fine. It’s fun. It’s an art. And you then give a metaphysical justification for it. We can’t in fact know reality. Rational explanation is always pragmatic and so always just a form of workable pretence. Because I am a pragmatist, even I would have to go along with that, is indeed the strong reply you can make. — apokrisis

It's not only fun, though. I include the deep and important matters of "spirituality" and a basic sense of sanity and self-esteem in this. In fact I think they are the center. Our basic commitments open and foreclose certain possibilities of mapping the world.

We agree on workable pretense. I agree with a point you made in some other thread that we filter or exclude so that only what is important or relevant to us is visible. Beings are revealed against the background of "existential time," which is to say as tools. "Care" is fundamental. We are engaged revealers, creators, and interpreters of entities. I think you'll agree. So even the most objective system is arguably just a tool of maximum durability. We succeed as theorists all the more if we create a tool that will last indefinitely like some mathematical theorem. I actually share this impulse with you. It's just that our theory creations are dissonant --which might only help us both along in our projects.

So aesthetics and rationality could only be two ends of a spectrum, not two actually separated absolutes. It is not a problem that a little of each always remains part of its other. — apokrisis

I agree. We really have a spectrum. Some discourses are more rational or normalized. We know what kind of statements are legitimate. We agree on the criterion. But philosophy is, among other things, a criterion of criteria.The fantasy or hope is that some eternal meta-criterion can ground itself presuppositionlessly. But it would have to be self-justifying or circular. Yet, in fact, despite its presentation as a deduction from nothing, it emerges within time, within history. Speculative thinking can negate the "common sense" of this emergence within time and history. But I don't think "common sense" or "ordinary experience" can be abolished. So such theories are merely "laid over" a more primordial sense of being among objects and persons. We don't stop seeing the table at a place where we eat with our family, even if we "know" that it's "really" particles, etc. Any such "really" smashes against the limit of how we actually experience the world when not in a speculative mode.

So while you appear to be celebrating the possibility of confused mixes of aesthetics and rationality - philosophical discourse as a poetic chain of rhetorical flourishes - my own concern is to achieve the ability to switch crisply between one and the other as modes of discourse. I might agree they spring from the same ground - the muzziness of creative speech as social performance. But then there is a reason to be able to be switch as purely as possible into the mode required for some particular socially agreed domain. — apokrisis

I agree. The difference is only where we draw the line. Math is my other concern, the one that pays my bills. So perhaps we're both using our free time to let the creative metaphysician (earnestly) play. For me the Turing machine is about as purely rational as one could ask. Discrete and finite math is about as normalized as it gets. There's not much room for feeling or preference, though even here creativity opens "entities" that are otherwise hidden. Once disclosed, these entities say non-controversially disclosed.

Switching domains is part of the charm of my theory for me. I try to "tolerate" and empathize with the maps or world-visions of others. The less I cling to a world-vision, the more I can "safely" (without the pain of feeling threatened) feel myself into a local "game" or conversation.

Other agendas can be in play. PoMo may play at speaking metaphysics in a way designed to undermine its analytic authority. The politics of disruption are pretty transparent. But why would one grant that legitimacy?

So I am claiming that there is a right way to do metaphysics. The fact that it underwrites good science is no surprise. And also it is not unreasonable to suspect ulterior motives in those who seek to undermine the possibility of rational certainties.

My pragmatic approach already accepts that no truths are certain. So that isn’t even the point. However it also says that knowing how not to let aesthetics or other modes of discourse get mixed up in the discussion is crucial for making metaphysical speech anything much at all. — apokrisis

Respectfully, I think you are being willfully "blind" in this collapsing of many thinkers into a single "PoMo." Your criticism of PoMo is itself along PoMo lines. You look into politics, legitimacy, ulterior motives. But what of your own ulterior motives?

Is there also not some tension between "no truths are certain" and "there is a right way to do metaphysics"? By no means am I saying that we ought not propose such a "right way." Such a proposal would violate its own spirit. I embrace the spirit of trial and error. Creativity is the source, including the source of the criteria for evaluating this creativity. There is a world out there that constrains our creativity, but we are seemingly never finished creatively mapping this constraint.

I think philosophical pragmatism is an option only when there is no scope for rationalism however. So its use is very limited indeed. — Jake Tarragon

I have to disagree. We can turn the crank of the machine of formal logic. We can work within the norms of normalized discourse and make slow, steady process. But the biggest, deepest enframings are by definition abnormal. What is rationality? In my view, this is almost the whole question. It's a word that's thrown around virtuously, but does it really have some stable meaning? Or is it more often a compliment we pay to the reasoning we find persuasive?

Really, it's all desire — darthbarracuda

Indeed. In some moments we enjoy ourselves as important and worthy. In other moments we may suspect otherwise. But then creatively adjust our perspective. To say that the breakdown is the truth of the process is only have adjusted one's myth or software so that the recognition of futility is its cancellation. Public speech in inherently affirmative and "self-important."

I don't consider what I said in the post you quoted as censure. I was trying to acknowledge the pain and make up a bit for my flipness in earlier comments. I think you're right, I did paint everyone with a broad brush. I regret that. — T Clark

I'm glad your with us.

But surely we are creatures of desire and hope, attaining goals and then always setting new goals? I do understand that a certain spiritual serenity or stasis is possible in terms of the big picture. For instance, I feel that I have completed a certain dialectical journey. I haven't felt the need for a serious modification of my world-view or life-philosophy in years.