Comments

  • The Nuance Underlying Being Existentially Dependent Upon Humans
    But what is knowledge? Can knowledge give truth?
  • The Nuance Underlying Being Existentially Dependent Upon Humans
    Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believed. William Blake
  • Morality
    But none of that would have anything to do with morality, only that which is conducive to successful copulations. Often what is considered 'wrong' is conducive to success and a better life for the individuals associated. Morality is not some sort of biological necessity or instinct. Morality is a classification of behavior as it relates to Ethics. Only Ethics deals with right and wrong.
  • Morality
    If I feel it is right to steal food for my family when they have no food, does this make the act right?
  • Morality
    I understand what you mean. "Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings; always darker, emptier and simpler." Nietzsche. We think based upon what we feel, and we act based upon this as well. Usually what we feel and what we do is in accordance with what we think is the right thing in that given situation. However, this 'rightness' is not by virtue of what we feel to be right, as if what is right is bt virtue of some sort of infallible agency of truth dictating rightness. Freud would have called this the super ego.
  • Discussion on Christianity
    Yes, and it supposes that there is indeed an ideal 'good' person... Which is the purpose for creating a Jesus... To have a reference by which people can be judged in their 'error'.
    And this error is what it is to be specifically human.
    There is no ideal 'good' person.
    There are only people.
  • Morality
    I disagree. This is supposing too much. People do not act in accordance with right or wrong. People simply act. People find value in what is commonly referred to as wrong just as much as right. Right and wrong are only significant in terms of the law... Anywhere else they are simply metaphor.
  • Morality
    Does there need to be a 'truly right' or 'truly wrong'? What would this even imply? Would it mean any more than outlawing something? To say something is wrong implies that it has measurable negative implications. These negative implications characterize its value as wrong. A negative implication would be loss, depression, diminished happiness, etc... The only thing that is truly meaningful is a rational structuring of a society that gives certain unalienable rights. These are what provide the common sense of right and wrong, not God. God is the substantiation. God is the safety net for people who do not want to think further. The philosophy of ethics is where to start if you want to know of Right and Wrong. There is Kant's metaphysics of morals. There is Utilitarianism by John Mill. There are many others as well. But that is a good place to start.
  • Discussion on Christianity
    Christianity is myth, just like every other religion that claims a divine inspiration to truth, and to 'how people should live.' The only rational characterization of 'truth' or 'how people should live' is atop an ethical philosophy... And an ethical philosophy is not assertion after assertion substantiated by feeling and faith alone. But myth is not meaningless... It is art... Nothing more nothing less.
    "The disintegration of Protestantism into over 400 different denominations is a sure sign that the restlessness continues." Carl Jung
  • Discussion on Christianity
    Christendom has indeed fallen in an educated, humane and ethical society. And for good reason... Fortunately theocracy does not impact every society. If it did... I may have already been executed for being a homosexual, or imprisoned.
  • Discussion on Christianity
    As you do not have any example as to substantiate the assertion that Nietzsche's statements are 'false,' I will provide an easily accessible example within Christianity, which resonates throughout it and is its vibration. Christianity is at base anti transcendentalist. It views the human life as fundamentally corrupted and in need of some sort of savior... It is fundamentally in opposition to life as it would rather deny the 'corporeal' for the 'incorporeal.' This is the only falsehood relevant... Nietzsche's statements stand.
  • Objectivity? Not Possible For An Observer.
    Objectivity and subjectivity rests in the Cartesian problem. But what is more significant than Descartes division between a subject that is an object, is the condition of his formulation, a pre reflective Cogito.
  • Objectivity? Not Possible For An Observer.
    In existentialism you have a solution beyond idealism and realism, and it rests in the notion that consciousness is always consciousness of something, intentionality. This does not mean that the subject is I conscious of an object that it is not. Sartre explains this in Being and Nothingness, with reference to Husserl's noema and noesis.
  • Awareness, etc.
    Heidegger's philosophy has nothing to do with Fascism. His thoughts could change anyone's ideas about existence.
  • Discussion on Christianity
    Christianity as antiquity.-- When we hear the ancient bells growling on a Sunday morning we ask ourselves: Is it really possible! This, for a jew, crucified two thousand years ago, who said he was God's son? The proof of such a claim is lacking. Certainly the Christian religion is an antiquity projected into our times from remote prehistory; and the fact that the claim is believed - whereas one is otherwise so strict in examining pretensions - is perhaps the most ancient piece of this heritage. A god who begets children with a mortal woman; a sage who bids men work no more, have no more courts, but look for the signs of the impending end of the world; a justice that accepts the innocent as a vicarious sacrifice; someone who orders his disciples to drink his blood; prayers for miraculous interventions; sins perpetrated against a god, atoned for by a god; fear of a beyond to which death is the portal; the form of the cross as a symbol in a time that no longer knows the function and ignominy of the cross -- how ghoulishly all this touches us, as if from the tomb of a primeval past! Can one believe that such things are still believed?

    from Nietzsche's Human, all too Human,

    Christianity was from the beginning, essentially and fundamentally, life's nausea and disgust with life, merely concealed behind, masked by, dressed up as, faith in "another" or "better" life.

    from Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy
  • Awareness, etc.
    Being & Time is very interesting.
    I enjoy his idea of anxiety, as well as Sartre's, in the midst of a fight for authenticity...
  • The Nuance Underlying Being Existentially Dependent Upon Humans

    In an existential affirmation of freedom, the freedom of Dasein is as such, alongside the fact of the existentiele Dasein-with.
  • The Nuance Underlying Being Existentially Dependent Upon Humans
    What is thought? And what is it that thinks?