This is based on the art of subjective acceptance (partial self-blindness) of which we humans are masters of. — BrianW

Whenever I think of subjectivity, I'm always reminded of the scene in Fight Club: "You don't know where I've been, Lou. You don't know where I've been!!!

Not much activity during your absence. Just my blabbing. You should be able to catch up quickly.

That has not taken place here. Earlier you - quite astutely - put such potential things to rest in another way, with other words. — creativesoul

I know exactly what you are referring to. :cheer:

From here, we can transition with confidence into the introduction of linguistic thought/belief by authority . . . With linguistic thought/belief comes conceptual abstraction, and it would seem at this point, all necessary conditions are met for the inculcation of thought/belief that is moral in kind. — Merkwurdichliebe

I'd like to address this ellipsis.

The question is, what is the difference between linguistic thought/belief that is non-moral in kind, and linguistic thought/belief that is moral in kind? I would say that the former makes ethically neutral assessments of the world (analytical and speculative), while the latter makes ethically charged judgements (normative and prescriptive), that are likely to be someway associated with one assessment or another.

Anytime.

One more thing you'll find out about K, is that, unlike most other philosophers, his writing is very intense. His books: 'Fear and Trembling', 'Sickness Unto Death', and 'Purity of Heart' are prime examples.

You must at least have an inkling. You're just withholding your thinking because it suits your agenda, which is to attack what I say. — S

What do you mean? I have no agenda . . . and I have I attacked what you say? I had no intention of that.

Bravo! You successfully singled out something I said and took it out of context to score a point. We're talking about extraordinary claims here, obviously. Do I have to make that clear every single time? — S

I scored a point? Yay!!!

But, extraordinary claims are made in court too. So, if such ridiculous unscientific testimony is permitted there, where people are sentenced to life, and sometimes to death, why is it inappropriate to permit it here?

Funny you should bring that up. In a court of law it has been shown over and over and over that eye witness accounts are very unreliable. Laughably unreliable. Almost anything, even a strong argument, carries more weight.
If this research relies on that, and cannot corroborate the theory with real experiments and other methods of testing then that should be a red flag. Skepticism and more intense scrutiny are do, not acceptance of the theory. — DingoJones

That the court system is extremely unscientific is obvious. Nevertheless, it regularly permits eye witness accounts that are very unreliable. "Laughably unreliable". And because of this there is cross examination, so that, as you say: "Almost anything, even a strong argument, carries more weight."

The courts! Thank you for bringing that up. How do you think that the courts would respond to attempts to allow testimony of alleged past lives into admission? — S

Your most welcome my good friend. I don't know how they would respond to attempts to allow testimony of alleged past lives into admission, that is up to judge, lawyer, and jury.

But . . . courts certainly permit: "a relatively high number of personal testimonies" . . . "Testimonies corroborated by other evidence, including documentary evidence and so on. And in these cases, testimonies are central."

@creativesoul @praxis

Perhaps we should approximate where the notion of authority first arrises.

Authority becomes an established variable in prelinguistic thought/belief. It is in the primal emotional response to one's subjugation under a dominant figure that develops the thought/belief in authority as something real.

From here, we can transition with confidence into the introduction of linguistic thought/belief by authority . . . With linguistic thought/belief comes conceptual abstraction, and it would seem at this point, all necessary conditions are met for the inculcation of thought/belief that is moral in kind.

one could point to incredibly weak evidence, like a relatively high number of personal testimonies.
— @S

Testimonies corroborated by other evidence, including documentary evidence and so on. And in these cases, testimonies are central. — Wayfarer

The courts seem to do it.

We still need to discuss power over people and further parse out the necessity of our being interdependent social creatures. Those who write the rules have tremendous power. Legitimized moral belief. — creativesoul

Ethical authority arrives at some point in societal conditioning. The primary influence of ethical authority is awakening the individual to the dichotomy of right and wrong.

1)what is the predominant moral authority?
2)what is the primary source of that moral authority?

My instinct tells me: 1)consensus, 2)history.

First, consensus with parent, whose morality was developed over a period of history, which, in turn, began through consensus with parent...ad infinitum. — Merkwurdichliebe

What's your take on feelings such as care or love be the guiding force to moral decisions? Is it overly simplistic or elegantly simplistic? — Wallows

Feminine thought is powerful in thwarting ideology. It is more about direct feeling. It is idealized in a mother's relation to her son/daughter. Rather than making the child a numerical unit in some vast conceptual framework, the feminine imposes a unique qualitative importance on every individual.

Nice! :wink:

Now you and me can talk Kierkegaard. :nerd:

It is not my desire to use big words in speaking about the Age as a whole. However, you can hardly deny that the reason for its anxiety and unrest is because in one direction, “truth” increases in scope and in quantity – via science and technology – while in the other, certainty and confidence steadily decline. Our age is a master in developing truths while being wholly indifferent to certitude[...]Eternity is a very radical thought, and thus a matter of inwardness. Whenever the reality of the eternal is affirmed, the present becomes something entirely different from what it was apart from it. This is precisely why human beings fear it (under the guise of fearing death). You often hear about particular governments that fear the restless elements of society. I prefer to say that the entire Age is a tyrant that lives in fear of the one restless element: the thought of eternity. It does not dare to think it. Why? Because it crumbles under – and avoids like anything – the weight of inwardness — Kierkegaard, CA

.

I'm going to designate this thread as a place where we can talk about Fear and Trembling or alternatively about K's Concept of Anxiety. — Wallows

:up:

Philosophy helps you acquire facts about the world? i.e it helps you see "what the world is like factually"? — Zosito

I respectfully disagree. It can justify your belief in facts, but not help in the in their acquisition. And it helps you understand what the world is, rationally, not factually. But that is digression off the OP.

@Valentinus

(Ok, sorry I was being reactionary.)

I retract what I said. Instead, I say: Under the existential constant that Kierkegaard posits, the subset variables that he enumerates are sufficient, so that he can reason about his disdain for speculation, as paradoxical as it is.

That experience of ourselves is only information under certain conditions. He continues to reason about that. — Valentinus

Of ourselves? How about myself, or yourself? If your self does not find importance in what Kierkegaard says, what Kierkegaard says is bullshit, and why would you care what he says? He only reasons about his thoughts, he requires nothing of no one, other than himself, obviously.

But Kierkegaard is doing something different. The thing called faith is never given. — Valentinus

I am not acquainted much will Pascal. But I'm willing to hear his contribution to the topic as you will present it.

K said that faith was unintelligible, and to communicate it was to speak in tongues

Even if we assume that anyone sees therapeutic value in philosophy, why would we even begin to point them in the direction of K ? Can we really say that K was working toward that end ?
Why would he, if the emphasis is on faith, whatever that means for K ? — Amity

K was doing therapy for himself. But what he did strikes deep into the spirit of the individual, and in that sense it is relevent as therapy for others.

(Nietzsche says he is the first psychologist. That is false, K was the first psychologist, as well as the first existentialist, although I suspect he would reject such accusations.)

His views contrive greatly with modern day postmodernist thought, I think, so there is that issue to deal with in the present day and time. — Wallows

I would blame this on Nietzsche, who makes many comments that are awfully similar to K's narrative.

K would reject postmodernism for the simple fact that it is concerned with understanding, and not with the inward passion of faith.

(I would love to see the thread: "postmodernism vs analytic philosophy".)

This is an appropriate example of K's dialetic.

@Amity

I would say that K's most significant contribution to philosophic tradition was the power of retraction (given K's disdain for speculation, combined with his indirect approach and pseudonymous authorship, he seems to be the only prominent modern philosopher who never shat where he ate.)

Never read that, but it is on my list after "Stages of Lifes Way". Any chance you have that caption on hand? In Concluding Unscientific Postscript, K writes:

Socratically, the eternal essential truth is by no means in itself paradoxical; it is so only by relating to someone existing. This is expressed in another Socratic proposition, namely, that all knowing is recollecting[*bold added]. That proposition foreshadows the beginning of speculative thought, which is also the reason why Socrates did not pursue it. Essentially it became Platonic. Here is where the path branches off and Socrates essentially accentuates existing, while Plato, forgetting the latter, loses himself in speculation. The infinite merit of Socrates is precisely to be an existing thinker, not a speculator who forgets what it is to exist. For Socrates, therefore, the proposition that all knowing is recollecting has, at the moment of his leave-taking and as the suspended possibility of speculating, a two-fold significance: (1) that the knower is essentially integer and that there is no other anomaly concerning knowledge confronting him than that he exists, which anomaly, however, is so essential and decisive for him that it means that existing, the inward absorption in and through existing, is truth; (2) that existence in temporality has no decisive importance, since the possibility of taking oneself back into eternity through recollection is always there, even though this possibility is constantly cancelled by the time taken in inner absorption in existing.

The unending merit of the Socratic was precisely to accentuate the fact that the knower is someone existing and that existing is what is essential. Going further through failing to understand this is but a mediocre merit. The Socratic is therefore something we must bear in mind[...] — Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p173-74

The way I interpreted it, K's philosophy considers faith and understanding to be antithetical, and in this light, he praises Socratic Ignorance.

@Wallows
@Amity

K's dialectic, is important to understand.

The first two terms "being" and "thought", constitute the existing subject. While the pagan/philistine stops at existence, K wants to stop at the existing subject. For K, becoming for the individual only occurs in faith, and his entire philosophy is geared towards this. But everyone seems to want to "go further": into speculative understanding, into faithlessness and knowledge, where the existing subject becomes an abstraction, no longer the "I am" but the "I am-I".

I can't but feel as though Kierkegaard is drawing out the subject/object divide here between God and the individual. In of itself, this can cause anxiety by highlighting our distance from God, as if he/she/it didn't exist in everything around us including ourselves, which are modeled in the image of God him/her/itself. It's almost as if he's denying the existence of the Holy Spirit. — Wallows

Kierkegaard says that "God is subject". And he also says that objective or direct evidence of God is pagan idolatry. He does draw out the divide dialectically, to show that the more objective one is, the farther they are from God, that is why he torches modern speculation.

He does not cause the anxiety, but points to the cause of it - viz. existing sin (a separation from self, and self from God), and he seeks to intensify the reader's awareness of his own anxiety and sin. The greater the intensity of one's anxiety, the deeper one's inwardness, and the closer one is moving toward faith.

His method seems to be inverted. Do you agree with this assessment? — Wallows

Absolutely. The subject is the dialectical middle term. It is the negative, and to speak about it directly, positively, is a negation.

In the meantime, I would be interested to hear your views on the questions posed in the OP.
Also, what do you see as his perspective and why would it be insurmountable ? — Amity

One of my favorite quotes from K is: "it is the misfortune of our age to have acquired too much
knowledge and to have forgotten what it is to exist."

Historically, K's philosophy represents the cry of the individual against collectivism and speculative system building, particularly as it was presented in Hegelianism.

For K, 'existence' is finality, it is never reducible to an idea. Moreover, It is the subject that does the actual existing. K's entire philosophy seeks to focus his reader from existence as an abstraction, and back into himself as the existing subject - what he calls inwardness.

He is known for using pseudonymous authorship to indirectly communicate the paradoxical nature of the existing subject. And of course, he is most well known for the stages of life: aesthetic/ethical/religious (as we all know).

By placing all importance on the decisiveness of the existing subject, he calls on the reader to realize, to become, himself as a unique individual. In this sense, K's philosophy is insurmountable because to reject it essentially amounts to a denial of one's own existence. While it is reasonable to argue that other subjects have no existence, to deny one's own existence as subject seems to be a crucial error.

@Maw

A present for you:

What about the inner cities, where gun violence has been a reality for over a half century. Were those guns purchased legitimately by means of legislative procedure? NO. But a few white communities are affected over a couple decades, and suddenly gun control becomes an issue. Go figure.

Fuck yeah dude, legislation that will ultimately decrease homicides, suicides, and obviously school shootings etc. is super cowardly. Instead, let's train students to fight school shooters, even if it costs them their lives. That's the definition of brave! — Maw

Did I not just qualify them all as cowards? You are seeing words, but not reading them.

Legislator=brave. :rofl: :cry: :rofl:

Guns are for the cowardly and faithless. Gun bans are for the cowardly and faithless.

@Amity

Btw...probably the most underrated philosopher of all time, maybe after Diogenes.

Amongst other things, I am looking to understand how Kierkegaard's writings can be thought of as being therapeutic, as a way to improve self.
— Amity

My purpose is... [ to have ]... a conversation which might lead to an improved understanding of any therapeutic value.
I am not yet convinced of this, but then again I haven't read him. I am sure others have. — Amity

If you haven't read him then you need to begin to do so. You will see the charge he puts on you as an existing subject. His perspective is, in many ways, insurmountable.

So, while we may be inclined to think we can be fairly confident that a "real" world exists beyond our necessarily concept-laden perceptual experience, we really have no idea what such a purportedly extra-mental world could be like. — Janus

But we can be relatively confident in the assertion that there is some universality in the mechanism which begets the concept-laden perceptual experience of the human organism. Call it the neo cortex. Hence we can unify our individual concepts through language.

Ah--got it now. Most of Aristotle I see as an example of "mistakes to avoid," so the notion of him being of "absolute value" was pretty far from my mind. — Terrapin Station

That is, actually what I meant.

Fuck, I ruined it. :grin:

I don't believe we could "forgo those abstractions" and still discuss what we seem to be attempting to discuss. — Janus

Its nominalism for God's sake. Fuckin Christmas!!! :joke:

As a nominalist, I said:

That Aristotle was of absolute value. And we have univocally confirmed that he is not. Thank you. — Merkwurdichliebe

By absolute value I mean "nothing". By univocally I mean "you". And, by we I mean "me". WHat the fUck does that even mean???

That Aristotle was of absolute value. And we have univocally confirmed that he is not. Thank you.

Yes