The issue is not about his identity alone but whether his teaching did or did not involve and draw from Judaism. Grimes is saying it did not. You have a baseball card view of Judaism. Grimes is not going to help you with that deficiency.

The video you linked to has Grimes arguing that the true message of Jesus was not Jewish. He did not talk about his being a Jew or not.

That matter of actually knowing other people comes up a lot.

But back to point, consumption with self leads to destruction might be one way to say what it says. That's a most general statement at least. — Hanover

That does get to the observation in the story that noticed Narcissus was not conquering cities or promoting world peace but was paralyzed by an obsession with an image that turned all action into the obsession.

That other people could see whatever came from this as a principle of action is odd. Or, at least, worth a moment of consideration before accepting such a process as the normal course of events.

You seem to have traveled some distance from carefully reviewing texts that reveal a number of very different responses to Jesus to assigning parts of Christianity you like to the "good Jesus" while condemning the parts you don't to other groups. What a nifty device to simplify anything.

The limits of that technique set to the side, to imagine that Jesus was not a Jew wrestling with other Jews about was of supreme importance to them turns the whole enterprise into a Philip K Dick novel. I love Philip K Dick but he is not my go to guy for trying to understand what was happening in the small numbers of AD.

I look forward to your OP explaining how the entire teaching of the Torah can be distilled into quoting:

"An eye for an eye."

One approach has been to view exchanges of information as a network of the mind which includes all the different component of the experienced world. That is the premise of Gregory Bateson's Evolution of the Mind. The idea has a lot of problems but the "brain" versus "not brain" issue is not one of them.

Another system approach to consider is that of Lev Vygostky. He (and his study group) said that focus on individual outcomes of any organism is looking through the wrong end of the telescope. Here is a paragraph from a brutally concise summary:

The application of a systemic approach lead Vygotsky to another very important conclusion: since psychological functions are organized in hierarchical systems, developmental processes become central for understanding the human mind. The crucial role of developmental processes in the system as a way to understand the system itself is a direct consequence of a principle of systemic organization: when a component becomes part of a system, both the properties of the new whole and the properties of the component change (Vygotsky, 1932/1960; Koffka, 1935; Kohler, 1947). Vygotsky argued that once new components enter the system, they affect the system in general and all other components of this system accordingly. For example, once a child masters language, its psychological functions become semiotically mediated and thus change their qualities, becoming higher psychological functions. This principle was essential for Vygotsky, who maintained that the structure of the mind cannot be understood by researching the mind of an adult. To know what a mind system is, we need to observe mind development in a child. It is not enough to observe only the final product of these processes. — Olga Basileva and Natalia Balyasnikova

There are groups of people talking about "brains-in-vats" and ranges of inputs and outputs but I fall into a coma when I try to read any of it.

With or without "Bible talk", what Kierkegaard is calling for is theological in so far that it tries to locate an individual life in the ultimate conditions of its existence. Up to the point of recognizing the limits of language in carrying out actions, the view is in step with what described as "meaning is doing"

But Kierkegaard still has things to discuss and wants to develop a psychology that understands what it cannot understand. I am not sure how that difference between Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard relates to the philosophy you are calling for.

I watched the videos.
The presentation on distinguishing the texts from each other is concordant with other analyses I have read. However some elements of Grime's presentation don't hold together for me:

The sharp line drawn between the "Hellenistic" and the "Hebraic" is assumed rather than demonstrated. In the discussion of what is the "natural man", the "wisdom" traditions may come from different ways of conceiving of the divine and our place in the world but it is a world we all live in. To state that the "sayings" from the Q document do not bear a relationship to the good as seen through the Torah is to culturally appropriate the tradition no less than Paul and Augustine attempted to do.

Coffee shot out of my nose when Grimes explained that the "prophetic" portion of the Q sayings was from a spot of bother the region was undergoing. Perhaps he was referring to the Romans' strenuous effort to turn it into their Club Med. Leaving that aside, the vision of the Sage in the Platonic tradition is missing something glaringly evident in the Hebraic. The god of the sage does not place scrolls in the mouths of Prophets to speak to a stiff necked people.

I could go further but I don't want to hijack the thread.

Sorry, I can't get this ... "the Moment" and "the result of stilling the mind" are two things of totally different kind. One refers to time and the other to mental activity. How can these be compared? — Alkis Piskas

I was referring to the "Moment" in the way Kierkegaard uses it in talking about time and our experience of it. I don't want to derail the thread over the matter by quoting chunks of The Concept of Anxiety

but this gives a snap shot of his thinking:

The life which is in time and is merely that of time has no present. It is true
that to characterize the sensuous life it is commonly said that it is ' in the
instant' and only in the instant. The instant is here understood as some-
thing abstracted from the eternal, and if this is to be accounted from the
present, it is a parody of it. The present is the eternal, or rather the eternal
is the present, and the present is full. (CD 77-78; VI, 175) — Translated by Lowrie

I brought it up because it is central to what Constance is proposing and different from the notion of the present as what is experienced when one "stops thinking."

I said a very simple thing and which can be applied by anyone and on the spot. How have you managed to make it so complicate? :smile: — Alkis Piskas

Well, I have been fired from some jobs for doing that. I don't know if it is an art, in the Socratic sense, or simply a knack.

how do I get to the present when the past is the very essence of "knowing" it is there at all? — Constance

Do not think. Thinking involves past and future. Just be there. Be aware. Observe. Perceive. This is the only way to be in the present. — Alkis Piskas

In terms of the Kierkegaard use of the term "Eternity" Constance has made reference to, the Moment that is possible to participate in that sense is not the same as the result of stilling the mind or getting the "monkey mind to stop chattering." If time is imagined as a river, that would be letting the current carry one along to find out what not pulling the oars is like.

The matter of agency in The Concept of Anxiety requires the Single Individual to become responsible for what happens that thrusts them into the immediacy of their decisions as actual events.
The encounter is outside the bounds of the psychology we use to understand experience.

One element worthy of mention is Thomas Aquinas, deeply engaging with Aristotle in the 13nth Century when the texts became available on the Latin side of the Church. The Enlightenment you prefer has much to thank this engagement as a point of departure.

Before that time, the only references to Plato were confined to passages from the Timaeus. In the 4th Century, Augustine was familiar with a number of Neoplatonists but his references to Plato in the City of God are almost entirely confined to the text of the Timaeus.

That is a long time between trains.

That is one strange image.
The drinker isn't looking at the mirror.
The statue behind him seems to be watching.
And what is with the triangles printed on the hand of the statue?

Fair enough.

The brain finds itself in a not brain place. So the argument that it is where it is all happening is mostly supported by noting the circumstances where the activity of other things are brought into question.

There are attempts to present the matter in other ways. Give it your best shot.

That darn mirror, whether held by Trump or Lacan.

Yes, Egoists do exhibit more situational awareness but are not trying to change what is happening beyond their own conception of fortune.

Macbeth goes on a killing spree after talking to three homeless persons in a forest.
Oedipus brings about what his parents feared as a direct result of their attempts to stop that result after having been warned against the possibility.

I don't know. A pattern is coming into view.

I am a poor representative of whatever the Philosophy Forum might be.

The question is a problem for me. If I am asked to locate a process in one place or another, does that mean it is not happening in other places?

How would one go about checking if such was the case?

The obsession to attend the picture in the reflection is odd. From the version you cited, the fascination is no different from the one consuming Echo. The attraction here is being separated from who is locked into them. From that point of view, it is not about the "self" at all.

Of course the world is always, already interpreted. Your reaching for, talk of, an uninterpreted world is a conceptual mistake. — Banno

How does that observation relate to Wittgenstein recognizing the limits of his enterprise against the background of what has been left out?

I am a Christian of some sort.
Your challenge is worthy of a response.
But I make a poor champion for others. especially if we disagree about what has changed.

Does having an opinion about where it is happening change any of the burden of being a person who finds themselves having the problem?

Maybe I missing something, Athena. Which "tradition" are you referring to when you say "traditional family values"? — 180 Proof

When I read those words, the first thing that came to my mind was Ralph Ellison wondering at how strange the life of a white supremacist must be after being raised by Black nannies.

The practice of alternate motherhood is bound up with visions of class and privilege.

What’s the difference between simply being infatuated with someone and loving them? — Benj96

Love cares for the being of another even it involves being separated from them. If you are connected, then it means learning what they need with or without you. The lessons will not all be pleasant. Love is suffering without punishing somebody or something for the experience. More easily said than done.

I row the boat alongside you, pulling the oars. Welcome aboard.

But Narcissus was sooo beautiful, people could not resist him--even if he'd just as soon they go bother somebody else — Bitter Crank

That is actually a problem for people who are so attractive, the fascination of other people becomes a burden to them. The terrible symmetry of the story of Narcissus is that he becomes one of the spectators he hates.

Narcissus was self-sufficient. He entertained himself in a reflection, felt happy with what he was doing, and deep down inside, while sitting there looking at himself... felt happy inside. — Shawn

That is an interesting interpretation of the story. An alternative version would spell a story of insecurity.

There is noting to secure my vision of myself but the stories I write about it. This figure in the mirror is proof of that because one cannot own the instruments that make that possible.

I was referring to this:

The real question is, does the world "speak"? I mean, religion is a philosophical matter, and the reason this idea sounds counterintuitive is that philosophy, in the minds of many or most, has no place in the dark places where language cannot go, but this is a Kantian/Wittgensteinian (Heidegger, too, of course; though he takes steps....) legacy that rules out impossible thinking, and it is here where philosophy has gone so very wrong: Philosophy is an empty vessel unless it takes on the the original encounter with the world, which is prior to language, and yet, IN language, for language is in the world. Philosophy's end, point, that is, is threshold enlightenment, not some foolish anal retentive need for positivism's clarity. — Constance

So, is that to say, that you consider the challenge made by Constance to be irrelevant to your enterprise?

I am not sure you are being completely genuine in your responses. You asked me to explain how I understood the texts as well I could. I did that, as well as I could.

But now you want to describe those efforts as one argument against another. It would be simpler if you said what you thought was the case.

What other ways can it be read in? — Shawn

The reflection is not oneself. The resemblance is an odd accident. A glimpse of a passerby that is wrongly understood as oneself. The fascination is with another.

So, what was so special about Narcissus? — Shawn

The story is interesting because it can be read in other ways than a cautionary tale against excessive self involvement. Is the anger of Achilles only about his decisions or do they reveal something else?

My intent was not to offer a pragmatic limit to religious language but to suggest that that the secular protection of the personal protects the expression of the religious in a way that protecting it as a matter of polity does not.

Specifically I define it, and through this definition have found that nothing can exist outside of information - outside of the interaction of two or more forms. — Pop

Does that conclusion amount to a rejection of a claim that something else can be recognized outside of the stories we make to explain things?

[/quote]
I don't think you have derailed the thread.
Constance has asked us to consider the matter beyond the terms of adequate explanations for what we have worked out, more or less, to be adequate.

And there I was,
without a net or a circus.

Confident in the findings,
like grasping an old spoon to manage soup that was not served.

The banquet will begin, with or without me.

Here begins the world of informational structure. What came first - the thought or the physical structure that enabled it? How are these different? Can one exist without the other? — Pop

How does the way you frame the idea of "informational structure" relate to the language games perspective of Wittgenstein?

People only benefit from mediation and consensus building if they both agree to participate fully as honest interlocutors. And it's often when you arrive at the question of values that you start to hit the rocks. — Tom Storm

I just completed the duty of serving on a jury and have been made particularly sensitive to how values important to one can be seen as a threat by others. The experience brings several things home to me.

There are situations where a successful claim will deprive the other of their claim; Not just in the sense of losing an argument but having any recourse after the argument is lost. Loss of property and custody will ensue.

What we argue about here, in the sphere of discussion for discussion's sake, serving nothing but what seems most important to ourselves, is connected to other things.

To the horror of the Greeks, the new believers maintained that the Logos - in other words the divine principle - was in no sense identical with the harmonious order of the world, but was incarnated in one outstanding individual, namely [the] Christ." — tim wood

That observation from Luc Ferry does draw, in sharp contrast, the different purposes being pursued by using the language of the "Greeks" to connect or not connect to the meanings of the cosmic order as it was expressed at that time.

For some, this meant that the world was involved in another process where the unchangeable world described by the Greeks did change.

Another group wanted to prove that the desire for the cosmic order was really about seeking an even more unchangeable thing than what people had previously been asking for. This group wanted to appropriate the efforts of previous philosophy where the other group could not have cared less.

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Do you mind elaborating the point you wish to discuss? — Ennui Elucidator

In the context of a shared language used in a community, what has permitted the discussion of religion with a relatively small amount of bloodshed has been the common investment in a secular world.

That world tolerates the personal views of people by a common acceptance of the uses of the personal. In Witt speak, the limits of a private language are not imposed but discovered. The secular world is not a denial of what can be believed or not by a person but a withdrawal from that sort of thing to the extent a difference can be recognized. The differences permit a Venn diagram where the over-lapping areas are not simply a single circle.

So, consider the scroll Pascal kept literally next to his heart that was discovered only after his death. One of the lines written there is: "My God is your God." I think that can be fairly counted as a religious conversation.

To characterize the primacy of this secular language as another kind of religion is like using a cease-fire agreement to gain a better position for one's troops.

More generally, what we must not overlook is that religious beliefs were quite common among ancient philosophers, and it seems unwarranted to assume that they, and Socrates, were secret atheists. — Apollodorus

Who, pray tell, are these thinkers who assume Socrates was a secret atheist?

You just allowed the observation that the "secular, modern sense" is not germane in the matter under discussion. Are you not abandoning the OP that uses precisely that sense to identify an atheist?

By the divine do you mean the intelligible soul? — Fooloso4

I was referring to the way the "scientists" are viewed as being against the existence of the gods because of the power that arrogates to themselves at the expense of duty to the city.The observation was directed toward how we are using the terms of "atheist versus theist" in my reply to Leghorn saying:

There are a couple things that stick out to me in this statement. The first is that Socrates confines the possibilities of what death is to just two things, which correspond to the atheistic and theistic versions: there are no third nor fourth, etc, options available. Why does belief in god(s) require the immortality of soul? Because we wouldn’t believe in them unless we were granted the same immortality they enjoy? — Leghorn

The way we use the terms to affirm or deny what is believed by an individual to be true is going to have trouble in a land where the line between Olympian Gods and a rational Creator has not been clearly drawn. This goes back to me agreeing with you that Plato is not a unitary model but adding the caveat that what counts as a model of the divine will become more difficult to identify.

The Athenian says:
If soul does drive the sun around ...
Whether or not it does is an open question. In Anaxagoras' account Nous orders all things but he holds that the sun and moon are rocks. Why does the Athenian propose that the sun is driven by its own soul? Is there some concern with autonomy? Some problem with a separate Mind that imposes order? Is this related to the political order and the imposition of laws? — Fooloso4

As regards to there being a problem with a separate mind imposing order, the Athenian's argument does resemble Aristotle's' approach of reasoning backwards to the Prime Mover. We don't get to look over his shoulder while he is making stuff the way we can in Timaeus' Craftsman's shop. On the other hand, Aristotle cannot have been a supporter of legislating upon the pursuit of natural causes seeing as how he did exactly that for a long time.

Pardon me if I don't respond to any responses for a while. I am giving my laptop to somebody else for a few weeks. I need to explore other regions of the soul.