By composing what you will say. Can’t rehearse what hasn’t been composed. — Mww

OK, 'composing' will do. as I was thinking of it rehearsing and composing are the same. Whatever you want to call 'thinking before you speak' the composing is done in language, though, no? I know that's how I do it; I guess I can't speak for anyone else. But I find it impossible how one cou;f for example, compose a poem mentally if not in language

Assuming abstractive thought to mean the understanding of conceptions that have no immediate correlation to concrete things, we must first grant that understanding is an activity in general, without a necessary regard for concrete things. The absence of concrete things is nothing more than the absence of perceptions, hence absence of intuitions, or, phenomena. — Mww

That explanation seems fair enough, but I don't see what argument you are wishing to support here.

Hence, abstractive thinking, re: understanding concepts belonging to a feeling of beauty, and not to a concrete object in the form of a glass sculpture. All without the necessity for language.

I would certainly need language to tell you about it, but that’s not the same as thinking about it. — Mww

I'm not sure what you are saying here. Is it that the feelings and imaginative associations evoked by the work are abstractions?

.

You remember the elephant parable.

The situation is complicated by modernity, by the proximity of all of the world's cultures and forms of knowledge rubbing shoulders in the Global Village. — Wayfarer

This doesn't answer the question. If there were some determinable truth about "life the universe and everything" which was directly and infallibly knowable when one reaches the requisite level of consciousness, then all the sages everywhere who had reached that level of consciousness would agree with one another as to that truth. But this is patently not the case.

As I said, I don't deny that enlightenment in the sense of letting go of all egoistic concerns is possible, or that this would be a profoundly transformative state; what I deny is that achieving that state will let anyone see any absolute metaphysical truth. If you believe that is possible, then fine, but you should be intellectually honest enough to acknowledge that believing that cannot ever be anything more than a matter of faith, even for those who may have reached the ego-less state of being.

This is a philosophy forum and if you want to claim that extraordinary knowledge is possible then it is incumbent on you to explain how that extraordinary knowledge could constitute knowledge in any sense that could be justified by logic, reason or empirical evidence.

From everything I have seen of your responses in these discussions I believe that you are not prepared to be honest about this; instead you behave like a politician, refusing to give a straight answer.

And besides that, there are scholarly and historical arguments for the idea of there being a higher knowledge that has generally been forgotten in the transition to modernity. — Wayfarer

You allude to mysterious "arguments" that all of us moderns have "forgotten". Well, here's your chance; just what are these arguments; explain them for us and let's see if they stack up under scrutiny. Perhaps they have been forgotten because as the understanding of logic and valid reasoning has advanced (and it has advanced) it has been seen that such arguments actually do not stack up at all.

I predict you won't be able to rise to the challenge just as it has been every other time we have reached this point in discussion. But, I am prepared to listen with an open mind if you try. On the other hand if I think I see a weakness in the argument of course I will point it out. That's what this forum is all about isn't it? Aren't we all here to learn, and to let go of arguments that we may be attached to if we are shown that they fail to pass muster? If you don't think that's why we are here, then what do you think? Are we here to find a guru?

Lloyd Rees — Wayfarer

I think you meant Lord Rees. Lloyd Rees was an Australian painter.

A further point about secular culture. The right to practice a religion of choice (provided practitioners do not attempt to force their religion on others) is indeed inherent in it. It is the right not to practice a religion that is, not everywhere but in certain quarters, under threat due to religious indoctrination by parents and teachers, and peer pressure within certain cultural enclaves.

As to so-called higher knowledge; there is no way to independently establish its provenance. Even if you thought you directly saw the nature of reality, and knew the truth about "life, the universe and everything" how could you ever be sure you were not deluding yourself. And even if you were not deluding yourself, how could you convince anyone of the truth of your claimed knowledge without it being that they shared the same insight? And why is it that so-called sages all through the ages have disagreed about the truth regarding life and death (reincarnation vs resurrection, or karma vs divine judgement, for examples).

How could such sages disagree if they were able to directly see the truth in a way that is independent of their cultural biases? That's why I say enlightenment is more of a disposition; a letting of of personal fears and egoistic concerns which stand in the way of living fully than it is the source of any determinable knowledge about anything. It is a knowing how, not a knowing that in my opinion. And of course it has great value as such, and anyone who has achieved such a disposition will certainly be charismatic.

So all these debates, whenever I pop up with these kinds of ideas, notice how immediately it gets characterised as a religious apologist trying to convert the pragmatic-scientific. That is simply the cultural dynamics that I'm seeking to explain, the background to the 'secularism vs faith' debate. Secular culture, as far as I'm concerned, is a great achievement, but it's place is basically to provide a framework within which one is free to practice any religion or none; It's not actually anti-religious, which is nevertheless how it's interpreted by a lot of people. (Like, there's a movement in Australia to remove the question of religion from the Census, which is typical of 'crusading secularism'.) — Wayfarer

If you don't mean to be an apologist for any religion or "otherworldlyness", or any kind of claim that there is some special "hidden" knowledge which can be directly accessed by the spiritual elite, then there would be nothing for the pragmatist to complain about. But you certainly do seem to be making such claims.

I agree with you that secular culture should not interfere in people's private choices in regards to religion, but if people make elitist claims to esoteric or religious knowledge on public forums, then they should expect some pushback.

Also, why should the question of religion not be removed from the census? The question is already put as 'optional' anyway. Does the census ask about your political persuasions or literary preferences, for example?

I think it must be so. If not, what’s the point in the old adage “think before you speak”. Besides, while thinking is a necessary human condition, language is merely a contingent human invention. — Mww

If you think before you speak, how could you do so if not rehearsing what will say; that is by "speaking" inwardly? I don't deny that there is the 'animal' kind of thought I mentioned earlier, which my consist in various kinds of "visualization" or imagining; visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory and tactile, as well as motor, proprioceptive (have I left anything out?). These are all concrete kinds of thinking, but I question the possibility of abstractive thought absent language.

HA!!! Exactly what I tell the missus when the sauce didn’t turn out quite right. — Mww

:grin:

Those who have not known, seen, penetrated, realized, or attained it by means of discernment would have to take it on conviction in others that the faculty of conviction... persistence... mindfulness... concentration... discernment, when developed & pursued, gains a footing in the Deathless, has the Deathless as its goal & consummation, whereas those who have known, seen, penetrated, realized, & attained it by means of discernment would have no doubt or uncertainty — Pubbakotthaka Sutta

This passage shows the author chasing a mirage, "a 'difference' that makes no difference". What could having no doubt or uncertainty be other than conviction?

Those opinions that seems most likely to be true. — Fooloso4


If they're true, they're no longer simply opinion. — Wayfarer

Their being true is not a matter of opinion, but our believing that they are true is. In other words we cannot know with certainty what is true. Socrates' lesson is to learn to live with knowing that you do not know.

Not only that, but if all opinion, including opinion about opinion, is to be perpetually doubted, questioned, and inquired into, no criteria are available on which to do that, and all results or conclusions are to be doubted, questioned, looked into, and dismissed as "opinion", then is there any point in pursuing this supposedly "examined life" or are we on the road (or shortcut) to a situation where we need to be examined by others? — Apollodorus

There are indeed no universal criteria available. If there were all sufficiently thoughtful people would agree with one another, because the universal criteria would make the metaphysical truth self-evident. What we do have are more less well-cultivated senses of plausibility; it's not an exact science, to be sure. So, when it comes to people's metaphysical beliefs, it's more a matter of taste than anything else.

I wouldn't go as far as to say that our naming of things brings our world of things into existence, and I don't think Kant would either. — Janus


“....If the question regarded an object of sense merely, it would be impossible for me to confound the conception with the existence of a thing. For the conception merely enables me to cogitate an object as according with the general conditions of experience; while the existence of the object permits me to cogitate it as contained in the sphere of actual experience....”

....and that should be sufficient to validate for your thinking.
—————-

I think our world of things is already precognitively implicit — Janus


Couldn’t be otherwise, could it, really? Yours goes to show the temporality of the human cognitive system, often ignored.

“....For, otherwise, we should require to affirm the existence of an appearance, without something that appears—which would be absurd....”
——————

I think language makes things determinate for us in highly abstract ways. — Janus


I might offer that reason makes things determinate; language makes determined things mutually understood.

Again.....thanks for the invite. I’ll show myself out. I mean....really. Where’s the good cognac, anyway? — Mww

:up: My only quibble: is reason (beyond the most basic concrete animal kinds) possible without language?

As to good cognac I can offer you only the representation of it that my reference to it may evoke.

The human system is all about the entropy and does near zero recycling. Why would we expect it to last much longer in any form? Why would it deserve to with such a disregard of basic design principles?

Will big tech save us? I give you as prime examples the marvels of unrepairable Apple phones, the entropic idiocy of bitcoins, and the big oil sponsored ruse of “green hydrogen. :grin: — apokrisis

:up: Yes, unfortunate, but seemingly inevitable.

The three ways of conceiving knowledge, unlike human beings, are not afflicted with jealousy. Personally I think we need all three to cover all the bases. :wink:

It might have been clearer if we had different words for knowing that and knowing how. — Banno

Certainly we cannot know that anything that cannot be put into words is the case. We know how to do many things the way of knowing of which cannot be put into words. So, I agree there is knowing that and knowing how, but I also think there is what I would call knowing with, the knowing of familiarity; an example being the biblical sense of knowing as expressed in "a man shall know his wife, and they shall become as one flesh".

Yes, but saying one knows them is also wrong. They just are the case; explanation stops here. — Banno

That doesn't sound right to me. To say something is the case evokes the very propositional character of knowing whose limitations are in question. We cannot, as defined, say what the things we know which cannot be pout into words are, but we can say there are such things, and we can gets hints of and hint at this. Our bodies know many things our minds cannot tell of. Animals also, in their different ways, know many things. It is the arts and poetry in particular that can deal with this kind of knowing I would say

This is the heart of the question that Lao Tzu, and I think Kant, are getting at. How can you know something that can't be put into words? As the verse says, the unnamable, the Tao, is reality. The world we deal with conceptually consists of particular things - cars, apples, electrons, galaxies - manifests from the Tao by being named. Some translators call these particular things "the ten thousand things," which I love. Putting things into language is what brings our world into existence. This is my particular interpretation, with which many disagree. — T Clark

I think we know many things which cannot be put into words or at least definitively explained in words. Much of what we know is pre-cognitive, but I don't think that is the same as the different things the Daoists and Kant, in their different ways, were trying to get at.

From the relatively little I know (compared to the specialist) of Daoist ideas I have formed the impression that they are positing, by hinting at, a universal movement of life and energy that flows as an undercurrent to our common life as it is conceived, in all of us. This universal dance of life will be intuited directly by those who are able to work effectively on their dispositions such as to quiet the dualistic mind that blinds us to its mistaken views.

I think Kant was concerned with the logical, epistemological requirement that there must be noumenal things which appear to us and which we conceive of as phenomenal things, but the 'real' nature of which cannot be known, since all knowing is only of appearances. Kant, to my knowledge, denies the Spinozistic idea of rational intuition, which for Spinoza (and the Daoists) is the source of ideas of the eternal and the universal. Kant says we have only practical reasons, moral reasons, for believing in God, immortality and human freedom, and I think he allows of no faculty of insight beyond that

Perhaps our resident Kant specialist @Mww might weigh in on this question.

I wouldn't go as far as to say that our naming of things brings our world of things into existence, and I don't think Kant would either. I think our world of things is already precognitively implicit insofar as we are affected by the body and its environment. Surely animals without language are inhabiting their bodies and environments without requiring language. I think language makes things determinate for us in highly abstract ways. I think that is the difference.

This seems about right, I think. It sounds as though the French and the Germans have intended to distinguish their national breads from each other to make them as distinct or as different as possible. But I'd imagine they would still consider each other's bread as a type of bread. So it remains unclear what this has to do with the meaning of words. — Luke

Yes 'brot' or 'pain' both refer to bread, otherwise what would we be talking about?

This sounds like something out of an American self-help book, and certainly not universal. — baker

Note I said "most universal" not 'only or absolutely universal'. I meant universal in the sense of general. Do you have a criticism of those criteria, instead of a caricature? Can you outline alternatives that are as or more universal?

I'm glad you liked it. — T Clark

So am I!

Thanks, I just read it, and I'm sure I will read it many times more. It's a wonderful poem, dense and rich with allusion. I don't remember having read it before, which means I probably haven't; it is not a forgettable poem.

In terms of it being non-modern, also yes. I think that, aside from anything else, and despite a lot of good (mathematics, empiricism), modernism is first and foremost a faith in the power of superior man (both 'human' and 'male'), his language, and his tools: an inherent rightness of his thinking, his writing, and his transformation of his environment. — Kenosha Kid

I certainly agree that there is movement against what you here characterize modernism as being; to deny that would be absurd. But I also think that much of that amounts to lip service. It's like the global warming issue: perhaps the majority of people who are comfortable enough to have the leisure to think about it, and were privileged enough to get a half-decent education will say that yes we really should do something about it, and yet they resist any diminishment of their lifestyles or even relatively minor
inconveniences, which would be necessary to make any difference and resort instead to empty virtue signalling.

I think we are more pluralistic, relativistic, even nihilistic now. We're right to treat governments, ideologies, authorities, and technologies like AI with suspicion, because the myth of the inherent rightness of their tokens is rightly exploded. Information is available to debunk or undermine anything now, and it's no longer a question of the right-est but the least wrong: which micronarratives have to give way when they conflict (under the full understanding that any choice is to some extent arbitrary)? — Kenosha Kid

I agree and this is highlighted nicely by the debate about Covid and the vaccines. People don't know who to trust, since their confidence in governments and corporations (in this case represented by what is referred to as "Big Pharma") and their motives has been significantly eroded.

Only here it is not a battle of micronarratives, but a battle between the grand narrative represented by the government, the health authorities and the pharmaceutical industry, and the various micronarratives that represent lack of confidence in, and even suspicion of, those entities and what might be their "real motives".

I agree and I love Frost's poetry.

I'm not the one to give you a better argument than the admittedly weak one I already have. — T Clark

Fair enough. Let me just say that I think there is a sense in which what you said is right, but there are many senses in which I think it is not. How's that for unequivocality that may even speak to Frost's very point?

I can't speak to most of those. I have been struck by how Kant's noumenon is similar to Lao Tzu's Tao, even though I know he wasn't directly influenced. Schopenhauer considered himself a Buddhist. An evil demon who misleads humans has been part of folklore and religion for millennia. The idea that reality might be an illusion ditto. As I said, I am not familiar enough with the others to comment. — T Clark

I don't think Kant;s noumenon is really similar to the Tao. The Dao is understood to be a "way" of being or living which can be intuited but cannot be directly spoken about, as I interpret it. Also the thing-in-itself referring to things as they are in themselves as opposed to how they appear I think has nothing really to do with the Dao.

I also don't think it's accurate to say that Schopenhauer considered himself a Buddhist. As far as I remember from reading a biography by Safranski many years ago Schopenhauer would customarily read the Upanisads in bed before sleeping, though. In any case I didn't mention Schopenhauer as an originator of an idea, but that said he is credited with being the first to think the noumenon or ding an sich as blind purposeless will. This idea may be thought to have a precursor in Spinoza's conatus, though.

Descartes' evil demon was posited as a possible entity that completely deceives us, which is a little different and stronger than saying that reality is hidden behind a veil of illusion (Maya).

I just don't think it is true that there have been no new ideas since soon after the dawn of writing; I haven't seen any evidence to support that claim and much to refute it.

This is intended as a serious response. There really are no new philosophical ideas. There probably haven't been any since soon after people developed written language. — T Clark

Do you think Heidegger's understanding of being had a precursor? Hegel's dialectic? Spinoza's God? Kant's noumenon and transcendental ego? Descartes' "evil demon"? Leibniz' monads? Kierkegaard's leap of faith? Nietzsche's genealogy of morals? Wittgenstein's forms of life? There were precursors to all?

For, dear me, why abandon a belief
Merely because it ceases to be true.
Cling to it long enough, and not a doubt
It will turn true again, for so it goes.
Most of the change we think we see in life
Is due to truths being in and out of favour. — T Clark

So, treating this not as poetry, but as philosophy for a moment, is the claim that all beliefs are always true, and are only counted false at times, or that beliefs can at some times be true and at others untrue? If the latter would this depend on changing conditions or is the poet suggesting that truth and falsity depend on prevailing belief?

My view is that there's no real boundary between late modernists (taking Descartes as the start of modernism) and early postmodernists/protopomos. The latter evolved from the former. When one species evolves into another, there is rarely a particular individual that marks the start of a new species. — Kenosha Kid

I agree with this; there is no well-defined boundary, and I'm not convinced there is any well defined difference between modernism and postmodernism other than the latter's explicit rejection of the grand narrative. I am also minded of what we might think the difference between modernity and postmodernity to be if there is one. Do you think there is a postmodern condition as distinct form a merely modern?

I agree with the thrust of this, but I'd also argue that a marker of difference between modernism and postmodernism is an explicit self-awareness of the modernist sensibility and a self-reflexivity that is not overtly present in modernism. I mean, quick literary examples. Modernist authors: Joyce, Kafka, Beckett, Marinetti. Real fuckin' weird, huge emphasis on experimentation with form, a response to dramatic changes in the world around them. Anyone not paying attention might mistake their work for 'postmodern'. And then postmodern: Pynchon, McCarthy, Palahniuk, Ashbury. Here you get a real involution of form, writers well aware of what they are doing and thematizing that awareness at the level of the work itself; they are writers incredibly comfortable with what they are doing in the sense of exhibiting a sense of "play" with their audience and themselves (no matter how 'dark' the subject matter gets). They take for granted the lack of foundationalism that seems to torture or perplex Joyce/Kafka/Beckett/Marinetti and turn it into an aesthetic principle to be explored for its own sake. It's the difference between "the world is fucked up, how should we respond?" and "the world is fucked up, so we may as well inhabit it".* — StreetlightX

The problem with this is that it seems to be saying that the awareness that the world is "fucked up" is not already a self-reflexive modernist critique of the condition of modernity, if not of the modernist sensibility itself (whatever we might take that to be). Is the world fucked up because of the modernist sensibility?

You say "not overtly present"; so if post-modernism is the transition from a not overtly present (an implicit) self awareness of the modernist sensibility (and condition?) to an explicit self-awareness of it, does it follow that the world is therefore less fucked up because of the rise of the post-modernist critique? Or is the world now more fucked up than ever because of the postmodernist movement?

It's interesting that you say the post-modernists were comfortable with what they were doing (and with the fucked up world?) because that seems to raise the question as to whether they were more comfortable simply because they inhabited a more prosperous and comfortable epoch. I don't agree that it was a "lack of foundationalism" that "tortured or perplexed" the modernists, but rather a sense of meaninglessness or ennui. There simply wasn't as much to distract oneself from a sense of emptiness in the earlier time as there came to be in the later.

If postmodernism is the rejection of the grand narrative, then the authors you cited are already postmodern. Of course there will also be different "mappings" regarding modernism/ postmodernism depending on whether you are considering literature and the arts, or philosophy, anthropology, politics and so on.

Speaking from personal experience, I can identify stoicism as a way of living that has most influenced my life. In essence, discerning what is under one's control or not is of supreme importance for one's psychological barometer, as I have a tendency to monitor. — Shawn

So, for you, the examined life, then?

It's very confusing to live without knowing where my beliefs about my behavior start and end in relation to my-self and what effects it has on my affect in the world. — Shawn

The unexamined life being confusing...and...not worth living?

Along these lines, I have had an idea about what is the greatest net benefit to society apart from wealth, that is "intelligence" (under a veil of ignorance!). — Shawn

Intelligence being the ability to effectively and productively examine your life (and the lives of others?)? (While appearing not to?)

My understanding is that for one to enjoy life one needs to reify the medium under which its progression happens. In clearer terms this would consist of personality, experience, and, wisdom, which manifest in rational and sound beliefs about oneself and the surroundings they willingly choose to inhabit. — Shawn

To me this sounds like you favour an enactive philosophy of life, and an active life, rather than a merely contemplative one. And you prefer to think in terms of subjective experience, than analyze and understand your life (and human life) in objective (scientific) terms?

I'm asking these questions because your way of expressing your thoughts in the OP renders them not entirely clear to me. If you agree with my interpretations then I can only say I mostly agree with what you are saying. (I'm not too sure about the "veil of ignorance", though)

Of course there have been new ideas arising in the evolution of philosophy; the history of ideas. I haven't see any new ideas expounded on these forums, as in ideas which originate with the one doing the expounding. I have been exposed to new ideas that were already out there, but that I had been unfamiliar with, and for me that is the main value of these forums.

So the kind of thing folk were talking about in the 1990s as affordances or deictic coding. Or even back in the cybernetic 1950s with perceptual control theory. Nothing is ever new under the sun. — apokrisis

Or even back in 1927 (Being and Time).

It's more what you'd expect as a conclusion to a more fundamental fault. But yeah it does seems like that kind of leap to me. It's been interesting reconciling the responses to the two questions with the polls, which is what this was all about. — Kenosha Kid

I think part of the problem is deciding just what philosophical literature should be counted as postmodernist and what should not. Deleuze, for example, is a self-avowed metaphysician, so does he count as a postmodernist? Some of the strong critics of PM find value in Deleuze and in Foucault, and yet the latter, at least, is generally considered to be a postmodernist philosopher, even an archetypal example. I remember reading Zizek on Badiou, if memory serves, where he praises Badiou as finding a way beyond the 'postmodern sophists', and yet it is not clear just who he refers to with that term.

I thought pOmO was thought by its AP detractors to be "not even wrong". :yikes: — Janus


Is that why they fail to find fault with it? — Kenosha Kid

No, rather that it is not even wrong is the fault they find with it. But note, I haven't said I think they are right or that the criticism is apt.

The idea of the "examined life" is that is is examined by particular criteria, but which are not universal. — baker

The most universal criteria for examining whether or not you are living your life is the question of whether or not you have the courage to own your fears and failings, and do your best to overcome them. It is, as Jaspers put it, "the loving struggle to become who you are".

Do you think it boils down to ethics again? How so? — Shawn

You would need to have some familiarity with the existentialists and phenomenologists to understand what it could mean to fail to live your life. You strike me as someone who has read little philosophical literature and on account of that fails to show much nuanced understanding, and is thus given to making inapt comments.

Interested to know what you think AP will get right that pomo got wrong. — Kenosha Kid

I thought pOmO was thought by its AP detractors to be "not even wrong". :yikes:

Yes, or a philosophy of ethics, politics, aesthetics, etc. for that already being accepted as the case. Is there some need, whether it has been met fully, partially, or not at all, to move beyond modernism to something that deals with the living in postmodern condition (the perceived breakdown of grand narratives, as you say)? — Kenosha Kid

If, as you say, the grand narratives have broken down and we are in a postmodern condition, then it could be that postmodernist philosophical. literary and sociological movements brought about, or helped to bring about, that condition. That said, how would you see a postmodern philosophy as helping to deal with that condition?

(Bear in mind that I am skeptical, as I said in the other thread, that the modernist grand narrative has significantly broken down; it seems to me that the abiding grand narrative now, at least in the so-called "developed" nations, is that science will enable us to understand everything, not only about nature but about ourselves, and overcome all obstacles to human survival, flourishing and even immortality).

I'd say that any philosophy that helps to overcome that particular grand narrative (scientism) should be welcome, since that narrative or set of beliefs would seem to, ironically, contain the seeds of humanity's, or at least civilization's, destruction, not to mention that, if taken seriously, it detracts from the richness of human experience.

Another way of asking this is: even if you detested every postmodern philosopher to date, is there good reason to wish for some better postmodernism of the future, or is the whole field pointless by virtue of being postmodern — Kenosha Kid

So are you asking whether we should have philosophy that rejects or eshews grand narratives? Or?

The question is: Does postmodern philosophy add anything _new_? — Kenosha Kid

I want to know just which philosophers you count as being postmodernist and why you would count them as such before answering that question.

Domesticated pigs don't examine their lives. Does that make the pigs' life not worth living? The pig doesn't think so as it keeps on striving to live and avoid harm and stress instinctively.

Examine one's life is only something humans do, but as shown by the pig, has no bearing on whether or not a life is worth living or not. — Harry Hindu

The question I was considering was whether the unlived life is worth examining. Of course animals live their lives; consider the question I asked earlier: What could it mean to say that an animal doesn't live its life?

Animals probably don't examine their lives, either, so that begs the question; are their lives worth living? That question seems irrelevant to the life of an animal, since to ask that question would be to examine their life, which we assume they cannot do.

Now we seem to have arrived back at the first question: is an unexamined human life worth living?, What if the examination interferes with the living? Then the life is not even lived, much less worth living. What if a life is both lived and examined? That would seem to be the richest possibility.

Do you think it boils down to ethics again? How so? — Shawn

If ethics consists at its most basic in the question: How should I live? then it would seem that the questions of whether the unexamined life is worth living and whether the unlived life is worth examining are indeed ethical questions.

And there I was thinking you were serious!

How would an animal or domesticated pig examine their unlived life? What could it even mean to say that an animal was not living its life?

I can't remember where this comes from (Alphonso Lingis?) but it would have it that "the unlived life is not worth examining". Is this true? If you were not living your life how would you become aware of that, and take the first step towards living it, without examining your unlived life?

Seems to me modernism never finished... — Manuel

:up: Right, PM is just a passing moment in the self-reflective sub-processes of modernism, or better, modernity.