.

Schopenhauer said he admired Eastern religions, namely Vedic Hinduism and Buddhism. It is said that later in life he read the Upanisads every evening. Strange he did not say the same about them as they’re both revealed religions. — Wayfarer

I think it's clear that Schopenhauer 'didn't believe in' such revelation. He talked of metempsychoses, for instance, in terms of an analogy fit for the less intellectual, while those who could handle it got the truth in conceptual form. I'd quote the passage if I had it online, but that's a paraphrase from a recent reading.

Also, continuing the quote:

Still, instead of trusting what their own minds tell them, men have as a rule a weakness for trusting others who pretend to supernatural sources of knowledge. And in view of the enormous intellectual inequality between man and man, it is easy to see that the thoughts of one mind might appear as in some sense a revelation to another. — S

Obviously, but I'll say it anyway, Schopenhauer is no authority. It's just that the man could write and that we both find him fascinating.

Strange how someone who became famous for attacking sacred cows ended up becoming one. — Wayfarer

Nietzsche is no sacred cow. He's too easy to criticize, cherry pick. The man kept writing as he lost his mind from some kind of brain disease. If I didn't think his good stuff was very good, I'd be less annoyed, but I also just don't like sloppy thinking. For instance, my feelings toward Jordan Peterson went from neutral-curious to negative-dismissive when he started barfing up middle-brow fears of 'cultural marxism' & shitting on thinkers he didn't seem to have actually studied, along with this guy, who was an ally at some point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Hicks

Hicks is the author of five books and a documentary. Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault (Scholargy, 2004) argues that postmodernism is best understood as a rhetorical strategy of the academic left developed in reaction to the failure of anarchism, socialism and communism.[2] However, his work on postmodernism has been the subject of criticism, with some arguing that it is full of misreadings, suppositions, rhetorical hyperbole and even flat out factual errors.[3][4] — Wiki

Complex tradition, vaguely specified, 'best understood' as incredibly crude etc. The battle is against stupidity, against crude oversimplification, dissolution into tribal prejudices, and so on. We're up against the Stupidity Industrial Complex.

I think what annoys me (and why I say 'middlebrow') is because the impression I get is that such books are created to provide a mediated and falsified experience of difficult thinkers, to save consumers the trouble of actually wrestling with such texts.

To me it seemed that Jung was being nasty, incorrect, inconsistent. I think your own bias against Nietzsche kept you from noticing how anti-ascetic and anti-spiritual Jung came off. He's the 'gnostic' with the big house, living on wifey's money, playing the sage. It's not so far from megachurch materialism with a candy Christ coating, albeit more conceptually sophisticated, for a more discerning crowd. It's eye-opening to read this fucker again! :starstruck:

Let us simplify the model we are working with. A sceptic challenges us to justify a particular empirical belief, for example that there is a book on the table here before us. We respond, exploiting the same resource for doing so as OC does, by saying in effect that these circumstances are such and those words mean such that this is tantamount to a paradigmatic circumstance for using those words in these circumstances–that is, for claiming that there is a book on the table. The sceptic pushes his point, invoking considerations about non-standard perceptual phenomena and other psychological contingencies, including error; at which point we change gear and invoke countervailing considerations about the framework of the discourse (the system of beliefs constituting it; the 'conceptual scheme') by stating the assumptions upon which not just the claim, but also the challenge to it, make sense. And at this level of sceptical challenge, that has to be enough: justifications in ordinary discourse come to an end at this point.

But now the sceptic mutates; he becomes a different and bigger monster. He is no longer interested in hearing what we have to say about the book on the table, but in what we have to say about the framework, the system of beliefs. What justifies our acceptance of the framework, or (more weakly) our employment of it? What if there were another framework, or other frameworks, in which different assumptions led to different outcomes with these words and these circumstances? And so on. The sceptic, in other words, has adopted the habiliments of relativism. Relativism, indeed, is the ultimate form of scepticism, because it challenges us to justify, as a whole, the scheme within which mundane judgments get their content and have their life.

The answer which says: 'this is the scheme we have; it is a bare given that we have it', and which might–but this is a different thing–add, 'and of course there might be others', and–yet a further and a bigger step again–'we might never know what these other schemes are like or even that they exist', is unsatisfactory, at very least as the first response to relativism.
...
As OC stands, it... only deals with scepticism at the lower, less threatening level, and fails to recognise that scepticism in its strongest form is, precisely, relativism. — AC

If the sceptic acts like he doesn't see the book and we know that he's just being a metaphysical jackass, then we might brew some coffee and play the old game, which includes Witt's ideas as a critique of the game that still needs the context of the game and fits within it. If we didn't think the sceptic was playing the old game, we might worry that someone was blind or insane.

When the bigger mutated monster sceptic asks for a justification of the framework as whole, one might remind the dizzy creature that asking for justifications is part of that framework. He's presupposing a 'space of reasons' and a shared language that may even be central to that framework. That it's only because of certain conventions that he makes sense to himself and to his credulous companion at all.

The idea of other 'schemes,' other frameworks is like mist on the horizon. Frameworks and schemes do drift. The claim that future schemes are predictable now deserves scepticism. If the thesis that frameworks drift unpredictably is relativism, it's hard to see what's offensive about it, except that it makes the philosophical truffle-hunt for eternal truth (based on the structure of mind or language or ...can't predict) more difficult.

Personally AC's read on W's intentions don't click for me. Maybe it's best to read Wittgenstein as a relativist in some (partial) sense. So what?

This Schop quote gets at something like the essence of 'atheistic' worldview. Note that 'strange allegories' are not exclude and even 'the wise' are fallible.

Whoever seriously thinks that superhuman beings have ever given our race information as to the aim of its existence and that of the world, is still in his childhood. There is no other revelation than the thoughts of the wise, even though these thoughts, liable to error as is the lot of everything human, are often clothed in strange allegories and myths under the name of religion. So far, then, it is a matter of indifference whether a man lives and dies in reliance on his own or another's thoughts; for it is never more than human thought, human opinion, which he trusts. — S

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Christian_System


I also found another Jung quote on Nietzsche.

When he cried his "ecce homo" over himself, it was again too late, and the crucifixion of the soul began even before the body was dead. He who thus taught yea-saying to the instincts of life, must have his own career looked at critically, in order to discover the effects of this teaching upon the teacher. But if we consider his life from[382] this point of view, we must say that Nietzsche lived beyond instinct, in the lofty atmosphere of heroic "sublimity." This height could only be maintained by means of most careful diet, choice climate and above all by many opiates. Finally, the tension of this living shattered his brain. He spoke of yea-saying, but lived the nay. His horror of people, especially of the animal man, who lives by instinct, was too great. He could not swallow the toad of which he so often dreamt, and which he feared he must yet gulp down. The Zarathustrian lion roared all the "higher" men, who craved for life, back into the cavernous depths of the unconscious. That is why his life does not convince us of the truth of his teaching. The "higher man" should be able to sleep without chloral, and be competent to live in Naumburg or Basle despite "the fogs and shadows." He wants woman and offspring; he needs to feel he has some value and position in the herd, he longs for innumerable commonplaces, and not least for what is humdrum: it is this instinct that Nietzsche did not recognise; it is, in other words, the natural animal instinct for life.

But how did he live if it was not from natural impulse? Should Nietzsche really be accused of a practical denial of his natural instincts? He would hardly agree to that; indeed he might even prove, and that without difficulty, that he really was following his instincts in the highest sense. But we may well ask how is it possible that human instincts could have led him so far from humanity, into absolute isolation, into an aloofness from the herd which he supported with loathing and disgust? One would have thought that instinct would have united, would have coupled and begot, that it would tend towards pleasure and good cheer, towards gratification of all sensual desires. But we have quite overlooked the fact that this is only one of the possible directions of instinct. There exists not only the instinct for the preservation of the species (the sexual instinct), but also the instinct for the preservation of the self.

Nietzsche obviously speaks of this latter instinct, that is of the will to power. Whatever other kinds of instinct may exist are for him only a consequence of the will to power. Viewed from the standpoint of Freud's sexual-psychology this is a gross error, a misconception of biology, a bad choice made by a decadent neurotic human being. For it would be easy for any adherent of sexual psychology to prove that all that was too lofty, too heroic, in Nietzsche's conception of the world and of life, was nothing but a consequence of the repression and misconception of "instinct," that is of the instinct that this psychology considers fundamental. — J

This is a surprising reversal. Nietzsche is the morbid ascetic (or beat junkie), while Jung is the hale and hearty man of the world, who wants women and offspring (temptations of the flesh) and self-cleaning ovens. It's OK if Jung wants 'value and position in the herd' (crude will-to-power), but if Nietzsche holds himself aloof & ascetic, that's going to far. FWIW, Jung married a rich woman, who funded his project. He comes off as Shaun to Nietzsche's Shem. (Finnegans Wake.) "Shaun is portrayed as a dull postman, conforming to society's expectations, while Shem is a bright artist and sinister experimenter." The whole 'truth of his teaching' line seems wrong to me, as it seems to cast Nietzsche as a guru with a Message or 'A Teaching' rather than as a sinister experimenter who really can't be pinned down (who, of course, had his manic manifesto moments....) What exactly is Nietzsche's teaching ?

Clean your room, Nietzsche! And when am I going to have grandchildren?

The degree and kind of a man's sexuality reach up into the ultimate pinnacle of his spirit. — Nietzsche

Do both sides, even as belligerently opposed as they are, not claim to be right, to know the truth? They're indistinguishable in that sense. The two, atheism and theism, may differ in particulars, in fact they're contradictory, but the overall image each projects - each insisting that it's in possession of fact about reality - is identical...at least in spirit. — TheMadFool

I actually agree that 'both sides' have some vision of the way things are, with one side believing there's a god and the other side disagreeing. That's a massive oversimplification, since God-talk is highly complex and some positions are hard to classify (was Hegel a theist? and wtf is negative theology?).

The problem for me with this insight is (not to be rude) its triviality. It's like saying scholastic nominalism and realism are the same thing because they are opposed to one another.Any philosophical worldview tries to be factual, tell the truth. So what gets left out of this bin? Even your idea of this bin seems to belongs there.

.

In most stories I've seen so far, the person depended on religion. Religion isn't an option for me.
Most others are really just about doing practical things, almost as if the hardship one is experiencing has nothing to do with the metaphysics of the workings of the universe. I find this peculiar and I suspect those personal accounts are holding back vital information, things that the survivor realized when coping with the hardship, but which they conspicuously refuse to share with others. — baker

That helps. I'm with you on the 'ideological crisis' inspired by misfortune that becomes its own second-layer on that misfortune. I'm also with you on religion not being an option (for some people it just isn't.)
Maybe there is something that survivor's can't even find words for, perhaps because it's not conceptual. It's amazing and even disturbing what people can get used to (being 600 lbs, being paraplegic, cockroach-infested homes, working on the cutting line in a chicken processing plant, etc.) But all of these forms of inconvenience and discomfort aren't necessarily as bad as festering resentment. Yet there's something obscene about noble platitudes in the face of others' suffering, and that's why I suggest a more 'materialistic' approach. If things aren't quite bad enough so that you have to move, a gradual resignation to the shittiness of the situation seems like the only option. I guess I know that you already know this, and I wish had something better for you now and for me when things get bad in my life at some point, as they surely will, us being so damned fragile and stuck together down here. Hopefully it's a little comforting to have your suffering recognized. I guess that's a strategy I use, universalizing my trauma, squeezing what juice I can from it.

. To say of this system that it comes from and reflects God's nature is to say that the very reflection of God is man accepting the merits of a sacrificed man's in order to, unworthily on their own, go to heaven. How is this perfect? How is this righteous — Gregory

It ain't ! It's crazy. And yet somehow barrels and barrels of such kool-aid were guzzled down.

For me it's been so much easier to let it all go as madness and confusion.

i.e. "the absolute" is in the third-eye of the beholder — 180 Proof

:grin:

Perhaps, as the song goes, we're all just dust in the wind. A man should be firmly grounded in something, even as the tides rise and fall. — Outlander

I also feel that 'a man should be firmly grounded in something.' What is this drive toward to some kind of distance from the moment? I like Epictetus & Epicurus. What ideal person is at the center here? How can we keep off the ordinary madness? Be serene, magnanimous, a good citizen, a good friend ? Ain't that the game?

I think might just makes 'I can get away with this for now.' After all, if you really thought might = right, you'd have to acknowledge the virtue of your neighbor, whereas I think you'd like to beat his virtue out of him (I would want to in your shoes, and that's what would scare me, the fear that I'd snap and end up in prison, or dead by my own hand to evade prison.)

I'd say not that might makes right but that the world is unfair, that nature is amoral, that sometimes the wicked prosper.

Religion gone bad is an awful thing, but it's not the only thing. — Wayfarer

I agree. I'm not at all in the 'if only we could get rid of religion camp.' Conspirituality and Tucker-talk can just as easily fill in the void, not to mention that madness one can find on the far left.

And the concept we have of individual rights originated with the Christian principle of the equality of all before God, a concept which was utterly alien to classical culture — Wayfarer

I haven't studied this closely, but it sounds about right. To be fair, though, slavery wasn't that long ago , and Trump loves the bible in his hands when the camera is around.

It's possible that I'm what many religious believers would take to be an atheist anyway. For instance, I find a lot of meaning in Schopenhauer's philosophy, and he was scathingly critical of Biblical religion. But at the end of the day, he also said that religious ascesis was the only real path to peace. — Wayfarer

I've been reading him lately. Great stuff! Such a clear style, such a focus on the goal. But, yeah, you are safer with the atheists, being our foil or gadfly.

He wrote a book called the 'heretical imperative' which was about the fact that in the ancient world, 'having an opinion' about religion was the root of heresy. The supplicant (i.e. me) was supposed to simply turn up and trust the process. Whereas in the modern world with its plethora of cultures and choices, a choice has to be made - which he posed as a choice between Jerusalem and Benares. — Wayfarer

Nice. I might check that one out. I liked his 'social construction' book. That's what I mean about the essential impiety of reasoning about religion, which is a form of piety in some other, errant direction (humanism, us making sense of things ourselves, judging gods by our standards.)

It is true that there are apparently crazy or far-out ideas captured in some of the Biblical texts, but I'm sure Q-Anon is simply common delusion, the consequence of very badly informed and malformed minds — Wayfarer

But what is common delusion? Any delusion has content, a structure. As I understand it, the early Christians were not sophisticated drivers of SUVs enjoying abstract gnosis but more like a cult expecting the imminent destruction of the world. In Gibbon, it's emphasized that their monotheism was especially offensive. Religion was ritualistic and multifarious, a buffet. But along comes a new cult whose God wouldn't tolerate others and whose followers would submit to many things but not idolatry. Before Q-anon, there was already David Icke and his ilk, with wild stuff about lizardmen aliens ritually abusing children to create delta-force killing machines. The sex and violence were extreme, like a bad action movie, but both were projected on the bad guys of course. Q-Anon's image of children being abused in tunnels seems archetypal or mythological somehow. Having looked at Jung and Campbell, it's hard not to think that this is how religions are created, crowd-sourced resonating myths that spurt from a volcanic unconscious.

That truly sucks. I don't know if it's feasible to abandon ship and rent somewhere, but I'd be afraid that something like that would drive me to violence. I've had problematic neighbors but never on the level you describe. I can see how the 'good Christian' hypocrisy adds to the dismay and rage.

I found a quote that seems like a link between Jung and Peterson.

Freud's theory of repression does, indeed, seem to postulate the existence only of people who, being too moral, are continually repressing the immorality of their natural instincts. According to this idea, the immoral man who allows his natural instincts an unbridled existence should be proof against neurosis. But daily experience proves this is obviously not the case; he may be just as neurotic as other men. If we analyse him, we find that it is simply his decency that has been repressed. Therefore, when an immoral man is neurotic, he represents what Nietzsche appropriately described as "the pale criminal," a man who does not stand upon the same level as his deed.[232]


The opinion may be held, that in such a case the repressed remnants of decency are merely infantile traditional legacies, that impose unnecessary fetters upon natural instincts, for which reason they should be eradicated. The principle "écraser l'infâme" would be the natural culmination of such an absolute let-instinct-live theory.[233] That would obviously be quite phantastic and nonsensical. It should, indeed, never be forgotten—and the Freudian School needs this reminder—that morality was not brought down upon tables of stone from Sinai and forced upon the people, but that morality is a function of the human soul, which is as old as humanity itself. Morality is not inculcated from without. Man has it primarily within himself—not the law indeed, but the essence of morals.

After all, does a more moral view-point exist than the let-instinct-live theory? Is there a more heroic morality than this? That is why Nietzsche, the heroic, is especially partial to it. It is natural and inborn cowardice that makes people say, "God preserve me from following my instincts," thinking that they thus prove their high moral standard. They do not understand that following one's bent is really much too costly for them, too strenuous, too dangerous, and finally it cuts somewhat against that sense of decency which most people associate rather with taste than with a categorical imperative. The unpardonable fault of the let-instinct-live theory is, that it is much too heroic, too idealogic for the multitude.

There is, therefore, probably no other way for the immoral man but to accept the moral corrective of his unconscious, just as he who is moral must come to terms as best he may, with his demons of the netherworld. — Jung

IMO, this is a cartoon Nietzsche, but then there are quotes when taken out of context....

On the Peterson thing: Jung is talking about hardwired, built-in morality (a 'function of the soul'.) This is highly plausible. We're primates, not blankslates. In this same context Jung gives the Freudian's what-for for being 'liberals' on sexual matters. He makes sure to paint himself as not an absolutist, as someone who cares about the details of the unwed mother. Is she a good girl, all things considered?
I do find it plausible that a neurosis can be an expression of repressed/ignored conscience, but one can also get a whiff of what might smell to some like crytpofacism. It's small step from 'there's god in our blood' to something less pleasant. Not only that, it's also a strange fusion of Darwinian-biological grounds for ethics and spiritual traditions.

Your neighbors sound like assholes. If it is at all possible, even if it's a pain in the ass, you might want to move.

I guess none of fit all that cleanly in such a simple grid, so maybe the issue is the integrative/systematic as opposed to the piecemeal/improvisational approach. I think of the tough-minded type as being more comfortable with a set of facts that haven't suffered too much lossy compression (at the cost of a theory that nevertheless gets something right.) Ethically, I just muddle through. Jokes, anecdotes, aphorisms....

It's a scale. It's just how we compare things. Suffering bad. More suffering worse. Less suffering better. No suffering best. It's not a complicated thing. — Pfhorrest

Of course I agree that.......suffering is bad. (?) That's suspiciously easy! I guess my objection is that suffering here is being treated like a gray quantity, an unpleasant homogeneous ooze. One ends up a crystal castle of abstractions, devoid of detail. Even if empiricism is theoretically central to the System, the spirit of the thing is to make it all fit together, perhaps by sanding all of the edges off. Frankly, I found the poll absurd. All these categories, categories, categories. Absurd-to-me discrete variables for continuous and ambiguous issues.

Or that's my temperament's reaction reaction to yours.

In other words, informed by e.g. medical sciences, human ecology, moral / cognitive psychology, etc, a baseline of 'what is bad' is readily demonstrable for each and every human animal and, therefore, frames the problematics of anticipating, preventing (net increase in) & reducing harm (misery), both interpersonally and through public policy. The imperative to do so, however, is N O T derivable from scientific data because scientific data only constitute hypothetical explanatory models and, for an ethics to be 'universal' it's insufficient for its grounding to be hypothetical (i.e. relative, or merely possible), therefore it must be categorical. Science, rather, functions as criteria for using empirical data in order to (more) adaptively align judgments & conduct with negating 'what is bad' for human animals. 'Hedonic satisfaction' is just the "pursuit of happiness" treadmill redux, IMO perennially a fools errand. — 180 Proof

Whow, that's a shot of espresso. Dense. :up:

FWIW, I think you manifest a 'will-to-system' that's always going to annoy the opposite anti-systematic temperament. This is something like William James' tough-versus-tender-minded thing. As someone perhaps of the opposite temperament, I'm somewhat allergic to ethical theorizing. 'All that matters, morally speaking, is people not suffering' seems gray and abstract to me, as if 'suffering' can be cleanly separated from non-suffering or as if suffering isn't perhaps necessary for personal growth. But I don't mean to attack you. I'm just speculating on your clash w baker and putting my own spin on fdrake's comments.

Distinction drawn by James, who found it illuminating to classify philosophers into one of these two camps (Pragmatism, Ch. 1). The tender-minded are: rationalistic (going by ‘principles’), intellectualistic, idealistic, optimistic, religious, free-willist, monistic, and dogmatical. The tough-minded are: empiricist (going by ‘facts’), sensationalistic, materialistic, pessimistic, irreligious, fatalistic, pluralistic, and sceptical. — link

https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803103046172

It occurred to me that I imagine a fairly radical Wittgenstein, a 'semantic nihilist' or 'semantic pessimist.' Philosophy goes up in smoke with him.

A characteristic distinguishing feature of linguistic practices is their protean character, their plasticity and malleability, the way in which language constantly overflows itself, so that any established pattern of usage is immediately built on, developed, and transformed. The very act of using linguistic expressions or applying concepts transforms the content of those expressions or concepts. The way in which discursive norms incorporate and are transformed by novel contingencies arising from their usage is not itself a contingent, but a necessary feature of the practices in which they are implicit. It is easy to see why one would see the whole enterprise of semantic theorizing as wrong–headed if one thinks that, insofar as language has an essence, that essence consists in its restless self–transformation (not coincidentally reminiscent of Nietzsche’s “self–overcoming”). Any theoretical postulation of common meanings associated with expression types that has the goal of systematically deriving all the various proprieties of the use of those expressions according to uniform principles will be seen as itself inevitably doomed to immediate obsolescence as the elusive target practices overflow and evolve beyond those captured by what can only be a still, dead snapshot of a living, growing, moving process. It is an appreciation of this distinctive feature of discursive practice that should be seen as standing behind Wittgenstein’s pessimism about the feasibility and advisability of philosophers engaging in semantic theorizing…

…
[T]he idea that the most basic linguistic know–how is not mastery of proprieties of use that can be expressed once and for all in a fixed set of rules, but the capacity to stay afloat and find and make one’s way on the surface of the raging white–water river of discursive communal practice that we always find ourselves having been thrown into (Wittgensteinian Geworfenheit) is itself a pragmatist insight. It is one that Dewey endorses and applauds. And it is a pragmatist thought that owes more to Hegel than it does to Kant. For Hegel builds his metaphysics and logic around the notion of determinate negation because he takes the normative obligation to do something to resolve the conflict that occurs when the result of our properly applying the concepts we have to new situations is that we (he thinks, inevitably) find ourselves with materially incompatible commitments to be the motor that drives the unceasing further determination and evolution of our concepts and their contents. The process of applying conceptual norms in judgment and intentional action is the very same process that institutes, determines, and transforms those conceptual norms. — Brandom

https://zenodo.org/record/2631340/files/2019Brandom.pdf?download=1


This talk of Wittgensteinian Geworfenheit is another way of saying that we are forced to keep up with this mad jazz we've been thrown into if we can. The semantic optimist wants a closed, finite system. To master the music from an armchair, to say with authority what makes sense, what is rational, etc.

In other language games those same words could be meaningless or have different meanings, so propositions formerly expressed are not untrue but meaningless now — magritte

:up:

What comes to my mind is the slow drift of an entire 'framework' or 'form of life.' The 'meaning' of gestures and sentences 'inheres' in or is distributed through the entire framework or context. As I see it, it's not some invisible stuff in the individual mind but rather patterns/habits in social interactions.

I think such rights are fragile, and it's easy to imagine our rational civic religion melting away. If you watched the Trump disaster, you can see how bad things are in the US. We have 'conspirituality' here (Q-Anon and whatever will replace it.) As strange as Q-anon is, it's not so far off from the Apocalypse of St. John, which I understand to be the first text of untamed, primitive Christianity. I wonder: have you ever read Nietzsche's The Antichrist? The book can be shrill, but the concepts are solid. His portrait of Christ is impressive, while he gives what was made of Christ by Saul/Paul the Hell it would give to others.

But if people need it, I have no problem as long as they are not using bronze age tropes to influence politics and legislation. — Tom Storm

I'd even go further, with a kind of Feyerbendian 'anything goes.' I don't mind if citizens recontextualize bronze-age tropes to push with their individual votes in this or that direction. But it does seem that we need and largely have a vague civic religion where we respect the rights and consciences of others. IMO, this is our current meta-religion (democracy with individual rights.)

Whatever it is, or that is, I think "ultimate reality" is unknowable in the way random events are unpredictable. We are proximal beings limited to ap/proximate knowledge and understanding. "Ultimate reality" can't mean anything to us in the sense of informing or empowering our lives. It's completely alien to human experience, encompassing our reason and intuitions and, therefore, necessarily cannot be encompassed by our reasoning or intuitions (Jaspers). Whatever there is presupposes this encompassing, ever-receding horizon. "What is it exactly?" That question makes no sense to me.

And if you call this encompassing "God" then "God" doesn't matter to human existence, its the farthest away from us an entity can possibly be. If you don't call the encompassing "God" then it too is encompassed and not "ultimately real" (or is just a Feuerbachian figment of our mass-anxiety/hallucinations). So, I suppose, that's the paradox of theism. — 180 Proof

This is pretty much how I see things. A related thought: whatever I thought or felt about God (what I could know of God) was 'in' my 'mind' or 'experience,' a mere part of it. The attempted escape is to make God everything, the encompassing, but we run into the issue you mention. I like Job because the voice that speaks from the whirlwind suggests this amoral or trans-moral encompassing infinity in its concrete richness (pagan glory of nature and its magnificent beasts.)

Don't try to figure out free will. There too many monsters of the conscience that interfere with objectivity. Daoists say to live spontaneity, as I read in Huston Smith's book on religions and the newer book God is not One (which is an ironic title) — Gregory

I gave up that impossible project many years ago. I'm something like a soft determinist. I'm simply not troubled by religious issues (which is not to say that I don't have the usual human troubles.)

Unlike America, God is almost totally absent from Australian cultural life. There are small pockets of 'faith' within conservative politics. — Tom Storm

I had the impression that Australia was more secular. (I respect your nation's resistance to Starbucks and your coffee shop culture. I think I'd like it there.)

It's not like historical religion produced a culture that was morally superior. There is no golden era of religious moral virtue we can point to in the West. — Tom Storm

Exactly. It hasn't been that long since we stopped dropping dead from gum disease on a regular basis. Nor has it been that long since the Inquisition, witch-trials, etc. It's easy to take for granted our current, relative sanity.

But they can be re-intepreted, there are layers of meaning. That is what hermeneutics are for. Rather than just written off. — Wayfarer

I think you know that we completely agree on this.

Thanks for taking my criticism in such a friendly spirit.

On the absurdity of the usual theology, you mention one of many issues. Even if the afterlife experience was merit-based, there's still the issue of free will, which I can't make sense of. The idea seems intrinsically vague and magical, something like a pure randomness that one has to nevertheless take responsibility for. For whatever reason, this was the crack in the dam for me. I could not figure out how the God I was told about as a child was a good guy. It's absurd to worship a monster just because he's got 10 million teeth. Hellfire is the most evil and hateful fantasy I can think of. Threatening children with eternal torture is a wee bit problematic.

He notes the ethical commands require ‘some other foundation’ - well, what? What has ‘organised atheism’ come up with in that department, since Nietzsche declared that God was dead? — Wayfarer

We have ideas like individual rights, the common good, democracy, etc. I'm not saying this is perfect, but I don't think humans need God or gods to have communities. I think we both live in secular societies (I imagine rightly or wrongly that Australia is more like the US than any other nation that comes to mind.)

IMV, Nietzsche noticed that God was already dead. So did Feuerbach. People mouthed the words, stuck to certain rituals, but they weren't religious in any deep way. They were very 'of this world.' What's strange is that yourself are expressing Nietzschean concerns. What's going to happen if people let go of God? Will they collapse into nihilism? As I've mentioned before, politics replaces religion, and religion was largely politics all along. Is Tucker Carlson a knight of faith, or is it AOC? Is God even foremost in the conversation? AFAIK, even you don't believe in any typical sense (spiritual but not religious? student of religion? seeker rather than a finder?). When the revolution theocracy comes, we'll both be up against the same wall. IMO, your position only makes sense in a secular context. The right to be hermeneutic about the sacred texts was hard-won.

I try VERY hard to find the truth on issues and I have no interest in maintaining any bias. — Gregory

I trust in your sincerity. To be honest, though, your style is a bit all over the place. IMO, you might want to quote more.

but instead had his Son die so that some would be damned and others gotten to heaven from the merits of someone who was tortured for them. It's a sinners' joy first, man-centered belief that masquerades as "giving glory to God". — Gregory

—The fate of the Gospels was decided by death—it hung on the “cross.”... It was only death, that unexpected and shameful death; it was only the cross, which was usually reserved for the canaille only—it was only this appalling paradox which brought the disciples face to face with the real riddle: “Who was it? what was it?”—The feeling of dis may, of profound affront and injury; the suspicion that such a death might involve a refutation of their cause; the terrible question, “Why just in this way?”—this state of mind is only too easy to understand. Here everything must be accounted for as necessary; everything must have a meaning, a reason, the highest sort of reason; the love of a disciple excludes all chance. Only then did the chasm of doubt yawn: “Who put him to death? who was his natural enemy?”—this question flashed like a lightning-stroke. Answer: dominant Judaism, its ruling class. From that moment, one found one’s self in revolt against the established order, and began to understand Jesus as in revolt against the established order. Until then this militant, this nay-saying, nay-doing element in his character had been lacking; what is more, he had appeared to present its opposite. Obviously, the little community had not understood what was precisely the most important thing of all: the example offered by this way of dying, the freedom from and superiority to every feeling of ressentiment—a plain indication of how little he was understood at all! All that Jesus could hope to accomplish by his death, in itself, was to offer the strongest possible proof, or example, of his teachings in the most public manner.... But his disciples were very far from forgiving his death—though to have done so would have accorded with the Gospels in the highest degree; and neither were they prepared to offer themselves, with gentle and serene calmness of heart, for a similar death.... On the contrary, it was precisely the most unevangelical of feelings, revenge, that now possessed them. It seemed impossible that the cause should perish with his death: “recompense” and “judgment” became necessary (—yet what could be less evangelical than “recompense,” “punishment,” and “sitting in judgment”!). Once more the popular belief in the coming of a messiah appeared in the foreground; attention was rivetted upon an historical moment: the “kingdom of God” is to come, with judgment upon his enemies.... But in all this there was a wholesale misunderstanding: imagine the “kingdom of God” as a last act, as a mere promise! The Gospels had been, in fact, the incarnation, the fulfilment, the realization of this “kingdom of God.” It was only now that all the familiar contempt for and bitterness against Pharisees and theologians began to appear in the character of the Master—he was thereby turned into a Pharisee and theologian himself! On the other hand, the savage veneration of these completely unbalanced souls could no longer endure the Gospel doctrine, taught by Jesus, of the equal right of all men to be children of God: their revenge took the form of elevating Jesus in an extravagant fashion, and thus separating him from themselves: just as, in earlier times, the Jews, to revenge themselves upon their enemies, separated themselves from their God, and placed him on a great height. The One God and the Only Son of God: both were products of ressentiment....

—And from that time onward an absurd problem offered itself: “how could God allow it!” To which the deranged reason of the little community formulated an answer that was terrifying in its absurdity: God gave his son as a sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins. At once there was an end of the gospels! Sacrifice for sin, and in its most obnoxious and barbarous form: sacrifice of the innocent for the sins of the guilty! What appalling paganism!—Jesus him self had done away with the very concept of “guilt,” he denied that there was any gulf fixed between God and man; he lived this unity between God and man, and that was precisely his “glad tidings”.... And not as a mere privilege!—From this time forward the type of the Saviour was corrupted, bit by bit, by the doctrine of judgment and of the second coming, the doctrine of death as a sacrifice, the doctrine of the resurrection, by means of which the entire concept of “blessedness,” the whole and only reality of the gospels, is juggled away—in favour of a state of existence after death!... St. Paul, with that rabbinical impudence which shows itself in all his doings, gave a logical quality to that conception, that indecent conception, in this way: “If Christ did not rise from the dead, then all our faith is in vain!”—And at once there sprang from the Gospels the most contemptible of all unfulfillable promises, the shameless doctrine of personal immortality.... Paul even preached it as a reward....

...
In Paul is incarnated the very opposite of the “bearer of glad tidings”; he represents the genius for hatred, the vision of hatred, the relentless logic of hatred. What, indeed, has not this dysangelist sacrificed to hatred! Above all, the Saviour: he nailed him to his own cross. The life, the example, the teaching, the death of Christ, the meaning and the law of the whole gospels—nothing was left of all this after that counterfeiter in hatred had reduced it to his uses.
...
When the centre of gravity of life is placed, not in life itself, but in “the beyond”—in nothingness—then one has taken away its centre of gravity altogether. The vast lie of personal immortality destroys all reason, all natural instinct—henceforth, everything in the instincts that is beneficial, that fosters life and that safeguards the future is a cause of suspicion. So to live that life no longer has any meaning: this is now the “meaning” of life.... Why be public-spirited? Why take any pride in descent and forefathers? Why labour together, trust one another, or concern one’s self about the common welfare, and try to serve it?... Merely so many “temptations,” so many strayings from the “straight path.”—“One thing only is necessary”.... That every man, because he has an “immortal soul,” is as good as every other man; that in an infinite universe of things the “salvation” of every individual may lay claim to eternal importance; that insignificant bigots and the three-fourths insane may assume that the laws of nature are constantly suspended in their behalf—it is impossible to lavish too much contempt upon such a magnification of every sort of selfishness to infinity, to insolence. And yet Christianity has to thank precisely this miserable flattery of personal vanity for its triumph—it was thus that it lured all the botched, the dissatisfied, the fallen upon evil days, the whole refuse and off-scouring of humanity to its side. The “salvation of the soul”—in plain English: “the world revolves around me.”.
— link

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/19322/19322-h/19322-h.htm

This point is also in Feuerbach. Personal immortality is something like the most intense expression of egoism. It encourages petty identifications with face, name, a thousand idiosyncrasies, and the all-too-typical negative narcissism that can't lose itself beautifully in a project, with other human beings, down here, in this world, the real world, the only world.

So true doubt must be directed at the system as a whole. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is just what is impossible, unless we want to consider screaming madness. The point is something like: to express doubts in an intelligible language is to take most of those conventions for granted (to obey them in order to be intelligible to self and others.) In general, a certain kind of skeptic is quietly taken obsolete philosophical ideas for granted (Cartesian assumptions of being alone in a mind with direct access to concepts.)

IMO, you shouldn't miss the humor in this joke about ordinary misery. In some ways, your position is embattled like Freud's. I'm sure that you recognize how crude and superstitious religion can be and often has been. But you don't throw out the baby with the water. In the same way, Freud was well aware that dream interpretation was strongly associated with superstition. But he saw a new terrain for scientific investigation.

Also, the idea that troubled people can (sometimes) be fixed or helped by talking to them,as opposed to stuffing them with chemicals or cutting on their brain, seems to show a respect for the psyche. The causality runs both ways. Words affect human beings. They are not just babbling meat. They are linguistic beings.

From that Moses book:

Religion is an attempt to get control over the sensory world, in which we are placed, by means of the wish-world, which we have developed inside us as a result of biological and psychological necessities. But it cannot achieve its end. Its doctrines carry with them the stamp of the times in which they originated, the ignorant childhood days of the human race. Its consolations deserve no trust. Experience teaches us that the world is not a nursery. The ethical commands, to which religion seeks to lend its weight, require some other foundations instead, for human society cannot do without them, and it is dangerous to link up obedience to them with religious belief. If one attempts to assign to religion its place in man’s evolution, it seems not so much to be a lasting acquisition, as a parallel to the neurosis which the civilized individual must pass through on his way from childhood to maturity. — Freud

This is so redolent with irony that it's hard to know where to start. — Wayfarer

I think 'part' is not intended in the sense of role. It's more like the human mind is part of the universe, of the territory which science can and should conquer.

But a good start might be the fact that Freud's 'scientific' theories came to be almost universally rejected within a couple of generations of his passing. — Wayfarer

I'm not so sure about this. It's politically expedient to bash Freud, but having really studied him lately, I think he functions as a cartoon in people's minds.

Because he was not reductionist in the sense Freud was. Jung broke with Freud because he felt Freud's outlook was too constrained by emphasis on the single factor of libido. You surely remember that account of their fateful last conversation, the final break between the two? — Wayfarer

You do touch on an important difference between them, but Jung was the crown prince, the younger brilliant man with whom the aging Freud hoped to trust his legacy. He didn't want to lose it to some kind of new-age occultism, which, as he accurately saw, is always a threat in this realm. I think you are playing both sides here. As you celebrate Jung, you want to drag Freud down as pseudo-science ignoring the fact anyone who finds the old atheist Freud too flaky is likely to consider Jung an outright crypto-fascist fraud. You mention lithium, and that's just the same stuff Freud was up against from the very beginning, the idea that the psyche was something like an epiphenomenon of the brain. The idea that phrenology is more respectable...that seems counter to your general attitude. Compared to his hyper-materialistic peers, Freud was counter-reductionist.

Figures. Have you read about hermeneutics of suspicion? They're both given as examples of it. I disagree with Freud about everything other than his specific discoveries. — Wayfarer

Yes, and I've read quite a few suspicious minds.

And what is it that is taken for granted? That a certain kind of philosophy trapped in a picture is experienced as necessary, when it should be experienced as merely contingent? — Mww

I think you are ignoring the difference between an explicit thesis ('a certain kind of philosophy is trapped in a picture') and unquestioned background assumptions. The fly is trapped in the bottle because it's transparent. The hard work is making the hidden assumptions visible.

Perhaps it would it be better to think this kind of phenomenology when attempting to understand Wittgenstein, but seems rather inept when attempting to understand human nature in general.

Keeping with language games, all philosophies are trapped in their respective pictures by the mind that creates them. Never stays that way, re: interpretational distinctions, which raises concerns over what being trapped really means. If trapped in every mind, it isn’t trapped in any. The epitome of contingency. — Mww

While I don't think what you say is incorrect here, I also don't think it fits the situation. The issue isn't life in general but a certain kind of philosophy, 'trapped' in the transparent bottle of Cartesian assumptions or habits. To be trapped in such a way is not some cosmic tragedy. It's just wheels spinning in the mud. 'Prove to me I have a hand.' 'Do I see a chair or a representation of a chair?' 'Is morality objective?'

To me the center of the issue is something like: meaning is public, external, out there. To know how to drive is to attain the skill of being on the road with other cars. A view that I'm challenging is something like: we all have direct, private access to 'essences' and learn to map these similar private essences to the same symbols. Traditional ('bad', 'naive') philosophy tries to do a sort of 'math' or 'chess' with these essences. This is the picture (isolated minds with direct access to essences (exact concepts) and sense-data.) With that comes the whole man-in-the-box problem of getting to the real world, weird statements and counter-statements about the thing-in-itself, radical skeptics who don't see the absurdity of their doubts because they don't see that their 'concepts' are already extimate, worldly conventions.

The idea of proving my position (in that 'math' or 'chess') misses the whole point, which is that we are stuck with jazz. I can't do the word-math that proves the confusion in a word-math approach. Instead there's 'therapy,' analogies that gesture vaguely at vague insights. (Note also that I use the word 'insight.' Mentalistic man-in-the-box language is unfortunately necessary. I have to use the language of the tribe to criticize pieces of it.)

Amartya Sen is an Indian economist who studied famine as a function of policy, hunger as a political issue. He went on to define poverty as a lack of power, abilities or possibilities, and the fight against poverty as an effort to empower the poor. — Olivier5

:up: :up: :up:

Nice, thanks!

I hope you like it as much as I expect you will!

There are two books. Not sure which you'd like better. The short one is Groundless Grounds, which focuses on Heidegger and Wittgenstein. The big one is A Thing of This World. That's the tale of anti-realism. I thought both were great.

As I understand it from the Peter Gay bio, he embraced that role more as he aged. As a student he was somewhat anti-philosophical or anti-metaphysical. He did read and appreciate Feuerbach (one of my favorites). IMO, his prose style (at least in translation) is great. As you may know, he loved the English language but never quite mastered it. I'm sure that helped him pick a good translator. He comes off as a good man in the bio (hard-working family man and earnest scientist.) He really had to push and endure to get his ideas taken seriously. His peers could only think in terms of brain abnormality when it came to mental illness (atheistic scientistic Sigmund was too flaky for them. Fun.)