Esotericism: Hierarchy & Knowledge
This is a spin-off from Believing versus wanting to believe.
What sense we can make of claims to an 'insider' knowledge that's only accessible to a higher kind of person, a born sage, let's say?
Here's a quote (provided by @Wayfarer) from Edward Conze, an irascible Buddhologist from mid last century:
[quote=Conze]
The "perennial philosophy" is ...defined as a doctrine which holds [1] that as far as worthwhile knowledge is concerned not all men are equal, but that there is a hierarchy of persons, some of whom, through what they are, can know much more than others; [2] that there is a hierarchy also of the levels of reality, some of which are more "real," because more exalted than others; and [3] that the wise men of old have found a "wisdom" which is true, although it has no "empirical" basis in observations which can be made by everyone and everybody; and that in fact there is a rare and unordinary faculty in some of us by which we can attain direct contact with actual reality--through the Prajñ?p?ramit? of the Buddhists, the logos of Parmenides, the Sophia of Aristotle and others, Spinoza's amor dei intellectualis, Hegel's Vernunft, and so on; and [4] that true teaching is based on an authority which legitimizes itself by the exemplary life and charismatic quality of its exponents.
[/quote]
Note that the word first appeared in a satire:
[quote=wiki]
The concept of the "esoteric" originated in the 2nd century[3] with the coining of the Ancient Greek adjective esôterikós ("belonging to an inner circle"); the earliest known example of the word appeared in a satire authored by Lucian of Samosata[4] (c. 125 – after 180).
[/quote]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_esotericism
I think Wayf is right that sages can and have been understood in this way. Both of us agree that the Conze quote goes against the grain of our times in its elitism and distance from empiricism. How does such a sage fit in with the rest of philosophy, if at all? Should we call what the sage has special access to knowledge? Is there a performative contradiction in reasoning in defense of something inherently 'irrationalist' in the sense of declaring itself indecipherable except by the chosen few?
What sense we can make of claims to an 'insider' knowledge that's only accessible to a higher kind of person, a born sage, let's say?
Here's a quote (provided by @Wayfarer) from Edward Conze, an irascible Buddhologist from mid last century:
[quote=Conze]
The "perennial philosophy" is ...defined as a doctrine which holds [1] that as far as worthwhile knowledge is concerned not all men are equal, but that there is a hierarchy of persons, some of whom, through what they are, can know much more than others; [2] that there is a hierarchy also of the levels of reality, some of which are more "real," because more exalted than others; and [3] that the wise men of old have found a "wisdom" which is true, although it has no "empirical" basis in observations which can be made by everyone and everybody; and that in fact there is a rare and unordinary faculty in some of us by which we can attain direct contact with actual reality--through the Prajñ?p?ramit? of the Buddhists, the logos of Parmenides, the Sophia of Aristotle and others, Spinoza's amor dei intellectualis, Hegel's Vernunft, and so on; and [4] that true teaching is based on an authority which legitimizes itself by the exemplary life and charismatic quality of its exponents.
[/quote]
Wayfarer:
It is within this context that the figure of 'the sage' is understandable, 'the sage' being one who understands, and so exemplifies, these qualities.
Note that the word first appeared in a satire:
[quote=wiki]
The concept of the "esoteric" originated in the 2nd century[3] with the coining of the Ancient Greek adjective esôterikós ("belonging to an inner circle"); the earliest known example of the word appeared in a satire authored by Lucian of Samosata[4] (c. 125 – after 180).
[/quote]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_esotericism
I think Wayf is right that sages can and have been understood in this way. Both of us agree that the Conze quote goes against the grain of our times in its elitism and distance from empiricism. How does such a sage fit in with the rest of philosophy, if at all? Should we call what the sage has special access to knowledge? Is there a performative contradiction in reasoning in defense of something inherently 'irrationalist' in the sense of declaring itself indecipherable except by the chosen few?
Comments (347)
I don't want to be too critical, because I think philosophy can be understood as its own (larger, perhaps more welcoming) inner circle of the 'rational' where 'rational' is understood to (among other things) exclude unjustified claims that appeal to varieties of the 'Inner Light.' FWIW, I think rationality is a fuzzy concept, but I know it (more or less) when I see it (a matter of skill and attitude.)
Quoting j0e
They're an awkward fit like sophists, dogmatists and charlatans.
Well, sure, if that's what he calls it. But on what grounds should we believe him? Ye shall know them fuckers by their forbidden fruits – so it is written (or tattooed) somewhere.
I'll spit on the floor and drink to that.
:up:
[quote=Locke]
For, since the reasoning faculties of the soul, which are almost constantly, though not always warily nor wisely employed, would not know how to move, for want of a foundation and footing, in most men, who through laziness or avocation do not, or for want of time, or true helps, or for other causes, cannot penetrate into the principles of knowledge, and trace truth to its fountain and original, it is natural for them, and almost unavoidable, to take up with some borrowed principles; which being reputed and presumed to be the evident proofs of other things, are thought not to need any other proof themselves. Whoever shall receive any of these into his mind, and entertain them there with the reverence usually paid to principles, never venturing to examine them, but accustoming himself to believe them, because they are to be believed, may take up, from his education and the fashions of his country, any absurdity for innate principles; and by long poring on the same objects, so dim his sight as to take monsters lodged in his own brain for the images of the Deity, and the workmanship of his hands.
[/quote]
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/10615/10615-h/10615-h.htm#link2HCH0001
This might be a bit too foundationalist, but the critical spirit is nice.
Somehow we're all drawn to the same forum, literally and metaphorically, despite serious differences.
[quote=Locke]
What censure doubting thus of innate principles may deserve from men, who will be apt to call it pulling up the old foundations of knowledge and certainty, I cannot tell;—I persuade myself at least that the way I have pursued, being conformable to truth, lays those foundations surer. This I am certain, I have not made it my business either to quit or follow any authority in the ensuing Discourse. Truth has been my only aim; and wherever that has appeared to lead, my thoughts have impartially followed, without minding whether the footsteps of any other lay that way or not. Not that I want a due respect to other men’s opinions; but, after all, the greatest reverence is due to truth: and I hope it will not be thought arrogance to say, that perhaps we should make greater progress in the discovery of rational and contemplative knowledge, if we sought it in the fountain, IN THE CONSIDERATION OF THINGS THEMSELVES; and made use rather of our own thoughts than other men’s to find it. For I think we may as rationally hope to see with other men’s eyes, as to know by other men’s understandings. So much as we ourselves consider and comprehend of truth and reason, so much we possess of real and true knowledge. The floating of other men’s opinions in our brains, makes us not one jot the more knowing, though they happen to be true. What in them was science, is in us but opiniatrety; whilst we give up our assent only to reverend names, and do not, as they did, employ our own reason to understand those truths which gave them reputation. Aristotle was certainly a knowing man, but nobody ever thought him so because he blindly embraced, and confidently vented the opinions of another. And if the taking up of another’s principles, without examining them, made not him a philosopher, I suppose it will hardly make anybody else so. In the sciences, every one has so much as he really knows and comprehends. What he believes only, and takes upon trust, are but shreds; which, however well in the whole piece, make no considerable addition to his stock who gathers them. Such borrowed wealth, like fairy money, though it were gold in the hand from which he received it, will be but leaves and dust when it comes to use.
[/quote]
To be a philosopher (in the newer, critical sense) is (roughly) to share this spirit. Whatever is or should be respected as genuinely existing should be accessible to 'the' (implicitly shared) rational inquirer. It's one thing to claim to be in the inner circle and it's another thing to consider their claims. Those confident of belonging may remain silent, may dodge accusations of the performative contradiction. Others are not, and still others are undecided about such claims.
Consider the perspective of those hearing and not making the claim. If evidence is withheld, if excuses are made, if the cost of entry is too high, then suspicion is natural, if not conclusive. Many (myself include) have more or less written off such claims not as necessarily meaningless but as insufficiently promising to overcome their suspicion.
So you don't think Spinoza should be so considered? He is after all placed in that company by the quoted passage.
Such certainty, since it is neither tautologically true nor empirically verifiable cannot be anything other than mere faith, even though it may be accompanied by a feeling of absolute (well. subjective, really even if felt to be absolute) certitude.
If the 'higher truth' is not empirical (ie, it has no universalizable and predictable effects), and it's esoteric value can only be grasped by the sage, then what would be the point of even discussing the matter, philosophicaly?
It seems that the matter of whether some people can acquire a 'higher truth' has no further elements to discuss beyond the obvious answer "They might, yes, but we'd have no way of knowing".
What I think is of interest is the social role of such claims. Are we to take them at face value and ignore the clear social advantage of claiming higher knowledge which only you can access and such can't even be tested?
In normal circumstances, if a person were, say, to get paid a huge sum of money to perform some otherwise worthy deed we'd at the very least question their motives. The mere existence of a more plausible motive would normally suffice.
Yep. When in doubt just resort to an historical account of how we got here... as if that in any way justified either position on whether we ought to be here.
So the old school philosophers were displaced by more egalitarian religions. What does that historical fact tell us about whether it was good or bad for them to have been treated that way?
I lean that way myself. I suppose a secondary issue is whether 'our' rational/secular philosophy is its own kind of inner circle in a nonpejorative sense, an inner circle that excludes any other conception of the inner circle. 'Universal' seems key here. Democracy, science, and anti-esotericism seem to fit together. If so, why?
I am probably more likely to engage with you on this thread than your one on Wittgenstein because I have read a lot on esoteric ideas generally. I am just finishing, 'The Secret Teachers of the Western Tradition, ' by Gary Lachman. He has written a number of books, including Rudolf Steiner and Colin Wilson. I began discussing such ideas on the thread in mysticism, but probably my interest is in the esoteric traditions rather than mysticism.I am also interested in the esoteric aspects of religion, including esoteric Christianity.
My own understanding of esoteric is of hidden knowledge. I don't know how Wittgenstein fits into this exactly. I have not looked at the link you provided because I am in a bit of a hurry this morning. I am not sure if your understanding of esoteric is the same as mine, and it will be interesting to see what group of people write in your thread. I am interested in the esoteric but with a certain amount of caution, because it can become about people assuming elite knowledge.
I am a bit busy during today, but I will have a look at your thread again this evening.
I don't think Wittgenstein is directly connected, though any charismatic thinker can inspire various 'inner circles' of those who (act is if, understand themselves to) 'really get it.'
I think this thread is largely about the problematic elitist aspect of esoteric knowledge claims. So your concerns would fit in well (as well as your positive impressions of the esoteric.)
That was a quick response. I am interested in the actual pursuit of esoteric knowledge, but also interesting in critical examination of the power structures. So, we should have some potential area for discussion. But, I will read and see how your thread is going this evening, because I had not been planning to write anything on the site this morning at all, but I was interested in this particular thread.
I agree that we kept the equality (equal before [s]God[/s] the law ...one of these days.) I suggest that science is only the arbiter for some,some admittedly in high places. But it's not as if we are doing what is ideally rational as human beings, as if scientists run the world. Would that we were more scientific on some issues! All kinds of ideologies pull on the levers of power in a democracy.
Yes, I thinks that's true. A common argument in some aspect of philosophical discussion is to claim that one's opponent doesn't (or can't) 'understand' the issue at hand without having read some work or other which has, as it's subject matter, the issue at hand. But this just repeats the mistake (or deliberate tactic, depending on how charitable one is feeling) of assuming that to have an issue as one's topic is synonymous with acquiring some body of knowledge about that topic. In reality, it is, of course, perfectly possible that despite X having written an entire bookshelf on the subject of Y, they have nonetheless (by virtue of their poor choice of methodology) acquired not a scrap of actual knowledge about Y.
Again, I think it's all too easy, as we see above, to resort to the 'safe ground' of assuring ourselves that science doesn't answer questions of value. But really that's not particularly apposite when we're talking about the various approaches to that which we all agree science doesn't cover.
Yes, the social role is especially fascinating. Even the quote mentions the charisma of its exponents. It's tempting to interpret claims of higher knowledge as the ideology of a ruling class (in times past) or as charlatanism (in pluralistic contexts where the educated are generally wary of taking religion too seriously.) Then there's the sincere florist.
:up:
They'd only be sure to have knowledge of those books, which might have its own value but is not the same thing. One can even imagine that false approaches could even be misleading and that 'fresh eyes' would be more helpful.
Would you define knowledge in roughly pragmatic terms? Something like prediction, control, economy, consistent with other theories/tools....? That it's universal suggests a kind of accessibility or repeatability ('POV-invariant.')
For the reasons I gave. It was an outcome of Christian social philosophy - equality for all, commitment to truth, and universal salvation, which is cashed out as economic opportunity. But what was lost along the way was the sense of their being real, transcendent, or ‘objective’ values. Pre-modern philosophy believed the Universe was rational in the sense that the order which characterised it was somehow mirrored or reflected in the human intellect. Whereas to the moderns, the intellect is explained in terms of adaptation, there being no higher value than successful procreation and worldly well-being.
I think its quite within reason to think it might be all three, even in any one given case. Maybe I'm just being gullible, but it seems unlikely to me that the Catholic priests involved in the child abuse scandals, for example, believed none of their own 'higher knowledge'. But irrespective of that personal conviction, it's without doubt that they also abused that unquestionable authority as a charlatan would for their own personal gain.
I think your hypothetical florist could be both sincere in her belief, and still seekeek to profit from the power it affords her.
I think you are on to something, so I guess I was trying to build a bridge between you and @Isaac.
The Catholic church and Christianity in general lost much of its power, and religion became a private matter. Agreed. Pluralism reigns now. Everyone brews up their own religion or anti-religion. The thought-police aren't allowed to bother us in this private sphere. So the sense of one right way or 'objective' values has presumably decayed (hard to say how variously people actually felt and thought given censorship.)
I do think the theory of evolution has had a significant effect on the human self-image. As you say, the mind is understood to be an evolved/adapted tool. We're the puke of chance? That's different indeed from being made in a god's image or mirroring the essence of the universe. I think you are correct that (this-)worldly well-being is central now. Instead of getting the poor to Heaven, good people want to get them out of poverty. Notions of mental health also tend to be embodied and this-worldly.
But should the sage, if he exists, care? Is the sage political?
I agree. Humans are complex indeed.
Quoting Isaac
Yes, that makes the best sense now that you mention it (again, complex indeed.)
The question in the OP was...
Quoting j0e
The question at hand just now is about values.
You're not explaining how you see your historical accounts answering either of those questions. What relevance has the history of the concept got to whether it is valuable and what we ought to do about it.
The irony is that you've spent a lot of time denying that science can answer value questions, but here you seem to be suggesting that history (a no less empirical investigation) can do exactly that.
We seem to be crossing these two subject matters, as I outlined above. I think it's often very insightful to look at the history of ideas, but I'm not seeing the crossover into assessing their value. I could give a detailed account of how slavery came about, but would it impact on a judgement of whether it was right or wrong?
I agree. It's off-topic (if also interesting.)
I think history is coming up because it's maybe 'really' about politics. Or largely about politics. Personally I want to live in Denmark and not this red state. I think those who are nostalgic for 'objective values' are sincere in some sense, but what's the political direction? How does it cash out?
I think ‘the sage’ is disinterested, in the traditional sense - has no self-interest, sees things as they are without an agenda or desire for a particular outcome. I suppose that is like the philosopher-king of Plato. I think above party politics, more like a head of state or wise counsel.
I’m trying to think of modern exemplars of sagacity. I suppose Neils Bohr might be one. I googled ‘20th century sages’ but all the examples were associated with new age and/or Eastern religion. Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan comes to mind. Even Einstein had a certain sagacity. But it’s a rare quality. Something like ‘the great man’ (which itself now is a non-PC because gender-specific expression).
Other snippets:
:up:
Seems to indicate that ‘the sage’ is superior even to Socrates (and by implication Plato and Aristotle also).
I mention it because it's such a common feature of discussion around these esoteric sages.
Have you noticed how time passing is also a distinction between madman and sage? We seem to have this feeling that charlatans (or earnest prophets) can tap into whereby some esoteric knowledge is leant authority simply by being antecedent. It's almost the opposite of scientific progress (where we expect the more contemporary work to be more useful).
There's a strong narrative of 'lost knowledge', 'golden age' etc which philosophy (being more and more replaced by science) is ripe for the exploitation of.
Quoting j0e
It depends, I suppose. Like the florist, one can have a sincere belief that ancient values were better yet still be selective about which they promote most strongly for political reasons.
Take 'new age' philosophies for example. Out of all the old 'tribal' ways these philosophies could espouse (egalitarianism, low impact living etc), are we surprised most focus on the art and spiritual practices. The two things one can do without any actual cost to one's modern comforts.
I think the same's true of belief in higher truth of any sort. It's usually filtered to eliminate the costly and leave the beneficial.
Or through contemplative practice after years of training, say....
I'm willing to acknowledge that I am 'trapped' in a Western scientific tradition that privileges a particular worldview and method of gaining knowledge (which in itself is tentative and fallible, but let's leave that in brackets for now). This worldview does not readily accept the validity of recondite knowledge from a transcendental source.
Is it possible for someone like me to see outside of my worldview? Have I missed something?
I want to understand better what a sage is and what it is they hold. I suspect my privileging evidence and reason will make this virtually impossible.
It's not so much a matter of history, as such. What we have in the historical record is 'the testimony of sages'. In that I would include, for example, Plotinus, and other elements and exponents of traditional or pre-modern philosophy, possibly even including Aquinas. Other schools for example Stoicism esteemed the figure of the sage. There are also examples from other cultures, Indian and Chinese, where 'the sage' appears in various legendary and historical forms (for example as Lao Tzu and other Taoist sages, and as the figure of the Bodhisattva which appears in many guises.)
In none of those cultures had the fact-value dichotomy, which became apparent in Hume, appeared. In those other cultures, sound judgement, or sagacity, did not only concern those matters which could be measured. It's the development of that outlook, in which facts and values became separated, that I think is the historical issue at hand.
Quoting 180 Proof
I'm not sure that this is a unanimous view of Spinoza, nor that the fact he did not seek acolytes disqualify him from consideration as such.
Absolutely :fire:
Hey I believe it! I really do! And also that the earth is round! so you can relax on that count!
Development of understanding is a process, requiring dedication and a sharp mind.
Not everyone can view the world the way Einstein or Jung did (let alone develop such views independently), yet I hope we can agree they had some interesting things to say.
Well, that begs the question. All you've said is that there existed people referred to as sages.
The question being asked is whether they were right to revere them as such and how we should treat such claims today. Whether they existed or were treated that way is not in question.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, that's absolurely right. It is indeed the (modern) treatment of values as facts vs opinions that's at issue.
Do you have anything to say about the merits/faults of that treatment? Because all you've said so far is that it didn't used to exist and now it does.
Well, equal rights for women didn't used to exist and now it does, so historical accounts clearly don't say anything about the merits if that they are an account of.
I can categorically say that I don't think Jung had a single interesting thing to say.
I'm glad you emphasized this theme. I think I am trapped in the same way, and we both belong to some humanist scientific 'inner circle.' (I mean that such a worldview seems to have its own measure of elitism.) I think the concept and membership is fuzzy, but not too fuzzy to be useful.
I can vaguely remember as a child playing with wee-gee boards, being afraid of ghosts at night in the woods. It was fun. I remember thinking/feeling that a God could hear my prayers. The world has been disenchanted for me in some ways, but I can't say that I'm bored.
There may be an important difference in the 'exalted' sage. It's not just a matter of knowing our shared reality in more detail but seemingly knowing an otherwise secret reality through an uncommon faculty. If it was only an issue of hard work and having a knack, it wouldn't be against the grain.
:up:
Ditto. And of course the funny thing is that almost everything that makes life worth living to me (and many others) is based on elusive glimmers of the numinous - through music, art, prose fiction, a sunset, nature... all the cliches. I know that in helping people it is not always necessary to do something. Solidarity, presence and attending to others - whatever you want to call it often has far more remarkable transformative power than therapy or, God forbid, advice.
Can you explain that difference?
At the surface there seems to be one, but on further inspection I'm not so sure. Weren't the bits of reality that Einstein laid bare through his works "secret"? And wasn't his extraordinary mind an uncommon faculty?
I think it's a deep question, because it's about what it means to be rational in a secular sense, but it's something like science being POV-invariant & having to offer evidence. In principle, any reasonable person should be able to retrace Einstein's steps, follow his logic, and of course test the predictions derived from his theory. He doesn't just get to say 'because I say so, because I have a third eye that you do not have.' His mind would be judged uncommon by its fruits, rather than the reverse.
(?)
Ah yes, those elusive glimmers of the numinous...and I agree on the sources. Do you dig A Love Supreme?
Quoting Tom Storm
Solidarity! Yes. Also: 'The worst vice is ad...vice.'
You bet. And when I used to drink, My Favourite Things. But most often I used to listen to hours of Mahler and transport myself...
I don't know Mahler well, but his name makes me think of Bukowksi, who loved to drink and smoke and write to Mahler on the radio.
(My Favorite Things is great. Love 'Equinox', 'Afro Blue,'...others. Something about a sax. And Alice Coltrane kills it too.)
Most would probably be able to reach a surface level understanding of his theories. To reach the level of understanding of Einstein though, would likely be beyond most people's intellective capabilities.
Some individuals are able to reach levels of understanding that others cannot, through hard work and dedication, and possibly also genetic disposition.
Quoting j0e
Sages usually offer some form of teaching (a method that can be tested), and also a reason to be interested in those teachings. Perhaps they seem very happy and wise (the fruits).
I'd agree if these things aren't present, then one has plenty of reason to doubt the genuiness of this sage.
Hierarchy - is Buddhism hierarchical? The original Sangha, which is said by some to be closest in form to the Theravada Buddhists of South Asia, had a flat structure. The Buddhist Sangha is arguably the oldest such organisation still in existence. Anyone was able to join regardless of caste and gender. Iit’s been argued that one of the reasons for Buddhism dying out in India was the fact that it flouted caste rules. (A modern Buddhist movement was formed to appeal to the Dalits, outcastes,)
in the original Buddhist sangha, there is a sense of the basic equality of all the members. However there was a kind of ranking in terms of attainment (stream-winner, once-returner, never-returner etc.) From my knowledge there is a kind of ranking of seniority depending on how many rains retreats monks have attended (the rains retreat being the time of year dedicated to strict seclusion, study and meditation). I daresay in institutional Buddhism there is a priestly hierarchy although I think overall, the model in Buddhism is rather more like a network than an hierarchical organisation with a singular head; the Buddha left no appointed successor.
As to whether the Buddha’s teaching was ‘esoteric’ - the Theravada would say not, however, in the development of Buddhism, esoteric elements were to emerge early in its history. For example, the early Indian sage N?g?rjuna was said to have retrieved the Prajñ?p?ramit? teachings from the naga-realm at the bottom of the ocean. And tantric Buddhism as it developed in Tibet and East Asia was certainly esoteric to the extent that there are rules concerning who is able to receive such teachings. There are specifically esoteric lineages such as Tendai.
Be that as it may, the not-specifically-esoteric elements of Buddhism have been handed down since the early days of the tradition and are still fundamental to Buddhism. When the Buddha was asked about the scope of his teachings, he picked up a handful of leaves, and said that he knew as much as all the leaves in the great forest, but that this ‘handful of leaves’ was all that was necessary for liberation.
However, there’s something further that could be said. The first of the Buddhist suttas is the Brahmajala Sutta, the ‘net of views’, which specifies all of the kinds of wrong view that ‘monks and ascetics’ are to avoid. And there’s a formulaic expression found throughout that text, to the effect that ‘the dhamma I teach is difficult, profound, hard to fathom, beyond mere logic, perceivable only to the wise’. I think here, the principle is that of discernment (pa?isambhid?) which is what enables the Buddhist aspirant to discern these ‘subtle dhammas beyond the sphere of logic’. In lay terms, this comprises the ability to discern how ‘defiling emotions’ (klesa) and disturbances (asava) arise in the mind and to let them go or cut them off, giving rise to the sense of emotional equanimity which is associated with the Buddhist temperament.
So there’s at least an implicit distinction between the Buddhas, and in later Buddhism, the Bodhisattvas, and the ‘uneducated worldling’ (the ordinary people.) Although again an uneducated worldling could by joining the order or practicing the principles, become enlightened - there is a canonical case of a bandit-murderer who used to wear a necklace of the fingers of his victims who converted (bearing in mind, these texts are from ancient history.)
Is that a hierarchy? I don’t know, but I think it can be said there is a ‘dimension of value’ or an axis along which the sense of there being higher and lower understanding can be identified, with the ‘higher’ being more amenable to detachment, disinterestedness, and the other virtues associated with the Buddhist path.
Don't forget about those teleological evolutionists... OK ok, they are pretty rare actually (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Bergson come to mind).
That this is the domain of the non-academic.
Quoting j0e
Not at all. Now we have democracy, which is forcing us into sameness and simplistically formed camps, for bare survival. We are pluralistic and we welcome variety: as long as it is superficial.
The process of enslavement is complete once the enslaved believe themselves to be free. We are now our own thought-police. We actually do believe that there is one right way to do things.
Quoting j0e
You think it's stopped rotting by now?
To me there cannot be such a thing as contempt. To consider anyone or anything of less value feels like sacrilege. Therefore I try not to define things, for definitions come with connotations. Which quickly can become pejorative, resulting in derogatory comments. Words can hurt.
I am truly sorry if I've harmed anyone on this forum. That is not my intention. Yet written language has its shortcomings.
So regarding the OP. I think the problem lies in the nature of the esoteric. It seems that it can only be spoken of in mythological and metaphorical terms. We might mean the same thing without realizing it.
Coming from a religious/spiritual tradition I was taught to obtain such knowledge through contemplative practices. Yes, I'm learning and studying classical philosophy every day. For I do want to fit in. But what I learned in university is that it's often hard to interpret because the language is so ambiguous. It's archaic and translated.
I really don't like arrogance. I'd rather take Ventura Highway than a horse with no name, if you know what I mean.
I do hope this will contribute to a better atmosphere on TPF. Please be kind
Well, people love to mess with eachother's minds, that's for sure.
The story goes that when the Buddha first became enlightened, he went out and proclaimed that he was enlightened to the first person he met. The man shook his head, said, "May it be so", and went his way. The story says that the Buddha was disappointed by this. Long story short, he then changed his strategy and didn't flaunt his exalted status anymore.
When I see someone flaunt their supposed exalted status, I try to just shake my head and go my way. There's just no meaningful communication to be had with someone who claims to have an exalted epistemic (or other) status. (This goes for some philosophy professors and scientists as well.)
I am logged in so I might as well reply to you, even though I was planning to write on the thread tonight. I can explain my so-called 'pursuit of esoteric knowledge'. I probably mean mostly in terms of reading, although I have attended meetings and workshops by various groups. However, having read the thread I am sure if I am coming from the same angle as the poster, so not entirely sure if my interest is relevant to the thread.
My own understanding of the esoteric is based on spiritual traditions primarily. I first came across the idea when I was a practicing Christian, when I heard that there were different teachings taught to Jesus's disciples to the wider groups. This was when I was at school and I found a number of books on esoteric Christianity, although I would not be able to recall their titles now. Following disillusionment with some of the ideas I encountered in college Christian Unions, because the ideas seemed so fundamentalist, I began reading in areas of Eastern religion, theosophy and diverse areas. I still do so, and even frequent an esoteric bookshop in London.
However, I am not saying that I believe the ideas in a fixed or concrete way. Having read about theosophy, I am aware that Blavatsky's mediumship was fraud. I have also read a very eccentric writer, Benjamin Creme, and attended the final lecture he gave in his 90s, before he died. The most relevant ideas he voiced, relevant to this post, is the belief that there is a divine hierarchy of invisible masters.
I won't go on further, because I can imagine that the ideas which I am talking about are open to big questions. However, it is in this kind of context that I am familiar with the whole idea of the esoteric, and I am aware of esoteric aspects of Buddhism and many other traditions. So, that is the basic background of my understanding of the esoteric.
However, I am aware of the whole way in which knowledge structures change. I am not sure that the idea of the esoteric writers is considered as being of much importance today. They are mostly in little corners of many bookshops, labelled as new age, and perhaps we have gone past hope of a new age now, as we are in a fragmented world.
The one other aspect of the esoteric which I am aware of is that often within such forms of thought, one aspect of the reason why it is considered as esoteric is because the knowledge is considered as being potentially dangerous, and thereby, reserved for the initiates.
I have written a response to a reply I received in a comment I got in my response to you, so you can read it if you are interested. However, I am not sure from what you have written that the ideas I am talking are in the scope of your thread discussion.
I think that you are maybe wishing to pursue more of a discussion about power and knowledge within philosophy, mainly in a secular context. However, even if my own comment is considered as irrelevant, I think that it does at least pose the question of what do we mean by esoteric?
It is a good question whether esoteric ideas solve all problems. I probably would not be writing a thread on philosophical mysteries if I thought that the esoteric philosophies had all the answers. Generally, I think that ideas and information are so freely available, especially in the age of the internet, but in acquiring knowledge, reaching wisdom and insight is a completely different matter.
The whole question of personal knowledge in relation to the ones of shared ones is one of central importance. We could ask to what extent were ideas about the underlying aspects of esoteric knowledge meant to be applicable to all human beings, even though some people were seen to be more capable of knowing, or of potential enlightenment?
This seems to embrace a whole spectrum arising from what was could be perceived as esoteric knowledge or understanding. Do we have varying degrees of potential understanding, or is that in itself constructed within social and cultural contexts? Is knowledge and its constructive purely spiritual, in terms of being beyond daily life, or is to be seen as arising from life, and the political aspects of knowledge?
How self-assured does that claim need to be for you to abandon communication? If someone came up to you and said "Hi, I'm a Buddhist Osh?" would that be sufficient claim to exalted epistemic status for you to just walk away? Or do they have to actually say "...and I know things you don't"?
But that is the big question in itself. I don't really know if esoteric knowledge is mumbo jumbo or not. My understanding is that it is about secret or hidden knowledge. While I enjoy reading literature of this kind, I have to admit that it is open to questions. We probably need a whole exploration of the question of esoteric knowledge and the way it stands within philosophy.
I am sure that some of the most central writers in esoteric philosophy would have been unable to engage in this debate. I believe that there are many faults in esotericism, but at the same time there are probably shortcomings in the philosophy of our times.
I have mentioned Rudolf Steiner a few times, because I have read his writings, but I really don't know how to frame his ideas within the context of current philosophy. I don't know where the fault lies. Is it within esotericism or within philosophy' Who is in the position of being the supreme judge of ranking of ideas in importance?
Or, it could be that these ideas may remain as potentially important ones within a wider perspective of philosophy. We could ask who are are or on what basis can we determine the criteria for determining what topics, or which writers are to be considered as worthy for exploration?. On what basis will those in positions of noteworthy power make the decisions about the questions and writers to be included or excluded within discussion? How do we and, who has power, in determining these boundaries to which we feel bound to adhere to?
But, it may be important, because it is about what areas are seen as worth considering at all within the shared domain of knowledge.
I think that's a fair theme. To the degree that it's mine to decide, I like open discussions. So talking about what we mean by 'esoteric' is fair game. I like the original inner circle metaphor. 'Only for the in-crowd' seems to get it. So it's elitist, but so perhaps, in its own way, is the anti-elitist elitism of critical reason, which I identify as my club, my inner circle (and I think most here also do.)
Quoting tim wood
Gnosis would be another example of esoteric knowledge. Isn't the function of this type of knowledge a realisation that brings the knower closer to higher consciousness? In order to accept this view one needs believe in transcendent wisdom which by definition would be at odds with a scientific worldview. What exactly is the benefit of receiving transcendent wisdom (is it to teach?) and how can we tell the difference between someone how has acquired this or is pulling our leg, or wrong?
I think we agree on guilds and communities of skill. We also agree that the 'ideal florist' (ideal sage) doesn't need to advertise or evangelize. The trouble for me is that it's as if your are putting car mechanics and sages in the same bin. Actually I like the idea myself, but I don't think a certain kind defender of esoteric knowledge (Wayf, for instance) has mere skill in mind but something more exalted.
Quoting baker
I quite agree that we have a 'meta-religion' that keeps the therefore-personalized religions in their cages. The one right way that there is no one right way but this one. (This is something like Spengler's 'ethical socialism' or Kojeve's 'end of history.' I could join you in a gripe about the ways of the world, but I feel about as free as I can hope to feel given the history of the world. If people are given freedom, they'll use it create chains and bind themselves in tribes.
Quoting baker
I think it's one of the less stinky places.
Good point. I suppose the issue is whether it's intellectually 'cool' or not to talk about evolution going somewhere, building up to something. What gets one whispered about as a flake or a fake? Anecdotally, I don't know biology very well, and I find it plausible that more could be discovered or established that goes 'against the grain' of the puke of chance metaphor that seems dominant. But I'd be slow to emphasize it, since I don't at all want to be associated with ID types. I just don't know, and I know that I don't know. It's just reasonable to my current state of ignorance that we'll keep updating our theories and might be surprised at some point and experience a paradigm shift.
:up:
I see your general point. We might agree that some kind of 'continuous' version of esotericism is involved in the genetic dispositions. Some unspecified amount of inborn knack could be one factor among the others.
Note that special relativity is presented in undergrad physics book while GR, on the other hand, seems to be reserved for grad students, given its greater mathematical complexity.
:up:
It seems to me that reason is a self-criticizing and self-inventing faculty, that the boundaries aren't fixed. As one poster said, logic is a gentleman's agreement. Some thinkers have tried to say once and for all what it is to be reasonable, but they tend to accidentally exclude their own definition.
I hear you but I imagine that even the term 'knowledge' is inadequate for the kind of thing we are attempting to describe. Revealed wisdom is another term used. Again inadequate. If you take as your starting position that anything which can't be demonstrated or described in rational terms isn't a thing then the idea of esoteric knowledge is probably never going to convince.
Which is why I have generally defaulted to: show me the difference it makes? Show me a life transformed. The people I have met who were all about the contemplative life, searching for mystical insights were often in pretty poor shape. Jealousy, anxiety, substance use, vanity - were prevalent. The elitism inherent in the lives of many spiritually attuned folk is interesting too. People trying to demonstrate how much closer they were to understanding Taoism or Zen, or better at mediation, or more in touch with 'genuine' Gnosis - looking down on ordinary people who were wallowing in ignorant materialism, etc, etc.
Are the sages any different? And how would we know?
That's my personal experience too of those talking about esoteric matters. I allow for the possibility of the relatively real thing, but I'm inclined to expect them to take it all metaphorically, to be beyond language not in some indecipherable sense but to see that it's more about a way of living than a way of talking or thinking (embodied virtue-as-skill rather than metaphysical knowledge.)
Why "higher consciousness"? Why not instead 'altered consciousness', which we know is possible courtesy of psychedelics. If it is possible with psychedelics, then why not via other means?
What is "the knower" knowing when in such altered states? From my own experience I would say there may be creative, poetic insight, visionary seeing, but that nothing determinable, discursive is known. If a sage can teach you anything it might be how to alter your consciousness, and that could have value if that is your aim. If you enter those states you will certainly see things in a radically different way.
I can't quite follow this one, Tim. Can you expand on knowledge of ideas? I have assumed that esoteric means that which cannot be described but is understood as a kind of revealed wisdom.
I picked 'higher' because that is how people often describe it and the literature often talks about levels of understanding. It is hierarchical. I personally think all our terms are inadequate. What exactly does one accomplish using psychedelics? Does this count as knowledge or is it an 'experience' courtesy of some chemistry? I do think it may be possible to create this kind of effect without substances. But what does this give us - an affordable recreation opportunity when we can't afford to travel?
I think expereinece with psychedelics (and meditation, the arts, fasting and other practices) can alter our ways of seeing. These altered ways often seem "exalted", "epiphanic", "numinous", and so on. Do they point to anything determinate such as an afterlife, a spiritual realm or the like? They may produce such intimations, but there cannot be any rational justification for such beliefs to be found therein it seems.
As you suggest, altering our ways of seeing can be done in a million ways. The trick may be in which options not to choose. There's almost nothing that doesn't have this capacity - owing a dog alters your way of seeing. Having a child. Going to war.
I met a man 20 years ago who was the most optimistic, buoyant and kind person I have ever met. He'd lost a leg 10 years earlier in a bike accident. I asked him how he remained so positive. He said loosing his leg was the best thing that ever happened to him. Before then he had been morose and a heavy drinker. Losing his leg made him confront some difficult truths about the preciousness of life and, because he didn't die in the accident, the misfortune functioned as an aphrodisiac for living. I would not recommend that people who are morose and depressed go out and loose a leg. But that might be the lesson.
I see that you emphasise esoteric knowledge as being for the 'inner circle', but I am a little unclear what you see as being the purpose of such knowledge. It seems a little confusing to have esoteric knowledge unless it is in the context of some larger system. I am saying that because my own reading of esoteric ideas has been as aspects of specific traditions, like Christianity or Buddhism.
If it is just knowledge with no deeper element, what value is it for the individual or for anyone else at all. I am sure that you see the esoteric as having benefits, but I am a bit confused about your understanding of your understanding of the basis of such knowledge and its role.
I'm more on the side of universalized critical thinking and against esotericism, though I do think there are reasonable ways to think about the esoteric. A naturalized version of the inner circle is any kind of subculture that one has to feel one's way in to. The strong version seems to include some kind of non-conceptual non-universal knowledge that's not just skill or the emotional grip on a metaphor.
:up:
That makes it a little clearer, although I am not sure that ideas which are considered as esoteric are ones which all people would wish to understand. So, it may not just be about those who have knowledge which is regarded as esoteric keeping their views from others but about the wider population not wishing to know the esoteric,and it being excluded. So, I am suggesting that rather than the powerful holding onto it, in some ways it can also be knowledge which is excluded, or cast aside. In other words, it is questionable whether it is esoteric because it serves the powerful, or because it contradicts it.
We can think of times when priests were in power. Then the cynic/critic could understand esoteric truths as the ideology of the ruling class. 'We rule rightfully, since we are the twice-born or the three-eyed.' In these days, where do-it-yourself religion is the norm, it's more an issue of how esoteric types fit into a 'rational' conversation & the kind of rhetorical moves they have to make to do so, to not come off as evangelists or irrationalists. IMO, it's not edgy or disagreeable to defend esoteric 'knowledge' as potentially helpful metaphors or stories (to grasp it as literature.) Nor is it taboo to talk about a lifestyle community in which certain words take on meanings inaccessible to the outside (because even the kids have their slang, right?) Perhaps the issue is just the perceived arrogance. 'I see a higher level of reality.' 'Prove it.' 'Well, you'll need 7 years and 77 levels to get there, but trust me, it's worth it.'
What's more plausible to me is that someone is just cool (magnanimous, un-resentful, playful , flexible,...) and maybe you finally talk to them and fish out some of their influences, but they don't need you to recognize them (beyond the usual good vibe we all appreciate) & have nothing to sell. Their way of being and doing speaks for itself, might as well be the thing itself, tho there's nothing wrong with talking this stuff, because it's fun...it's also a way to celebrate and consolidate the 'I'm OK, You're OK' vibe.
There is no Socratic dialogue with a sage. It is not that the sage is superior to Socrates but rather that elenchus reveals that no one who professed wisdom or had the reputation for wisdom was wiser than Socrates, and Socrates was wiser than others in that he knew that he did not know.
It should be noted that the image of the philosopher in the Republic is at odds with the philosopher as the lover in pursuit of wisdom. The philosopher of the Republic possessed the wisdom that that Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle sought. He exists only in speech, only in poetic images.
Examples from throughout the history of Western philosophy are given here: https://press.uchicago.edu/sites/melzer/index.html
"between the lines"
:up:
I don't know if generically gnostic beliefs are at odds with science at all. There's a strong streak of dissident spirituality running through the history of science - hermeticism is often mentioned. Many scientists started out seeking a vision of the unity of the cosmos, whether or not they obtained it.
Quoting Tom Storm
In Buddhist texts, the pursuit of gain is discouraged - ‘ no gaining idea’. The Buddha is said to have said ‘I have realised the supreme enlightenment and have gained nothing thereby’.
Quoting Fooloso4
There were no actual sages?
That would never happen. Not in a million years. Everyone is aware of that.
Now I think I have heard this before, but it's a fascinating perspective. You can minimize it if you have attained it. But I guess you shouldn't go after it as this is ego driven and possibly vainglorious.
What is gained by living a contemplative life?
There are benefits but not necessarily personal gains. The first Buddhist book I read was the very popular book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. It stresses 'giving up gaining ideas' while practising zazen. I came to realise that this attitude is what makes it a 'religious' practice, in the sense that it requires devotion, while not seeking to get something from it. This has to do with the dynamics of ego - so long as the self is concerned for itself, then that is self-centered motivation. Practicing for no personal gain is altruistic motivation.
That is highly germane to this topic - thanks for posting it.
No actual sages in the sense of having divine knowledge. At least none that Socrates ever met and none that he identified as such. Someone worshiped for possessing divine wisdom does not necessarily possess it.
According to the IEP entry on Hadot:
Quoting Wayfarer
There are a great many scholars who do in fact either ignore it or deny it.
Yes, apologies for being sarcastic.
[quote=link]
The end of history as it is understood by Kojève is, of course, not the end of historical processes and events. Rather, Kojève believed that history is not merely a chain of events but has a telos, and that this telos can be achieved, and actually is already achieved. According to the Platonic–Hegelian tradition in which Kojève situated his discourse, this telos is wisdom. Kojève understands wisdom as perfect self-transparency, self-knowledge. The Wise Man knows the reasons for all his actions; he can explain them, translate them into rational language. The emergence of the Wise Man, of the Sage, is the telos of history. At the moment at which the Sage emerges history ends.
[/quote]
Basically, the theory goes, Hegel was the sage, or roughly the point where a roughly perfected self-consciousness or self-transparency was achieved, where the cat catches its tail, finally. The sage depends upon the work and wars of the past as well as of continuous, evolving conversation of preceding (mere) philosophers...and is in some sense just the one who recognizes that the dialectic has grasped its own nature, puts the last stone of the pile, completing the structure.
[quote=link]
Here one can ask: but why is history needed for the Sage to emerge? Indeed, one can assume that it is possible to become a Sage at any moment of history – it is enough to decide to practice introspection, self-reflection, self-analysis, instead of being exclusively interested in the outside world. From the very earliest of times until now we have heard often enough the requirement to initiate metanoia – to turn our attention from dealing with the everyday world towards introspection.
However, Kojève, following Hegel, does not believe that such a shift is possible under ordinary circumstances, that it can be effectuated by a simple decision to switch one’s attention from the contemplation of the world to self-contemplation. Such a voluntary decision would be possible only if ‘the subject’ were ontologically different from the world and opposed to the world, as Plato or Descartes believed it to be. But Kojève develops his discourse in the postmetaphysical, post-religious age. He wants to be radically atheistic; and that means for him that under ‘normal conditions’ man is a part of the world and human consciousness is completely captured by the world.
[/quote]
https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/romantic-bureaucracy-2
It's a spectacular theory (which I find true at the level of various fragments.) Some thinkers have questioned whether Kojeve was being ironic or playful with his theory(he's suspected of being a spy, joked about being a god.) You can find a portrait of him and his scene here:
https://books.openedition.org/editionsbnf/387?lang=en
[quote=link]
Perhaps the core of Hegel’s philosophy is the idea that human history is the history of thought as it attempts to understand itself and its relation to its world. History is the history of reason, as it grapples with its own nature and its relation to that with which it is confronted (other beings, nature, the eternal).
...
With the beginnings of Socratic philosophy, however, division and separation is introduced into thought – customary answers to questions of truth, morality, and reality are brought under suspicion. A questioning ‘I’ emerges, one that experiences itself as distinct and apart from other beings, from customary rules, and from a natural world that becomes an ‘object’ for it. This introduces into experience a set of ‘dualisms’ – between subject and object, man and nature, desire and duty, the human and the divine, the individual and the collectivity.
...
Kojève follows Marx’s ‘inverted Hegelianism’ by understanding the labor of historical development in broadly ‘materialist’ terms. The making of history is no longer simply a case of reason at work in the world, but of man’s activity as a being who collectively produces his own being. This occurs through the labor of appropriating and transforming his material world in order to satisfy his own needs. Whereas Hegel’s idealism gives priority to the forms of consciousness that produce the world as experienced, Kojève follows Marx in tying consciousness to the labor of material production and the satisfaction of human desires thereby. While Hegel recuperates human consciousness into a theological totality (Geist or ‘Absolute Spirit’), Kojève secularises human history, seeing it as solely the product of man’s self-production. Whereas Hegelian reconciliation is ultimately the reconciliation of man with God (totality or the Absolute), for Kojève the division of man from himself is transcended in humanist terms. If Hegel sees the end of history as the final moment of reconciliation with God or Spirit, Kojève (Like Feurbach and Marx) sees it as the transcendence of an illusion, in which God (man’s alienated essence, Wesen) is reclaimed by man. Whereas the Hegelian totality provides a prior set of ontological relations between man and world waiting to be apprehended by a maturing consciousness, Kojève sees human action as the transformative process that produces those ontological relations. While Hegel arguably presents a ‘panlogistic’ relation between man and nature, unifying the two in the Absolute, Kojève sees a fundamental disjunction between the two domains, providing the conditions for human self-production through man’s negating and transforming activities.
[/quote]
https://iep.utm.edu/kojeve/#H5
As you can see, Kojeve envisioned an atheist sage. One could argue that we're still chasing the end of history, which is a Heaven down here on earth.:
[quote=IEP]
For Kojève, historical reconciliation will culminate in the equal recognition of all individuals. This recognition will remove the rationale for war and struggle, and so will usher-in peace. In this way, history, politically speaking, culminates in a universal (global) order which is without classes or distinctions – in Hegelian terms, there are no longer any ‘masters’ and ‘slaves’, only free human beings who mutually recognise and affirm each others’ freedom. This political moment takes the form of law, which confers universal recognition upon all individuals, thereby satisfying the particular individual’s desire to be affirmed as an equal amongst others.
[/quote]
The lectures themselves are found here: https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/u.osu.edu/dist/5/25851/files/2016/02/KOJEVE-introduction-to-the-reading-of-hegel-zg6tm7.pdf
I don’t regard ‘divine knowledge’ as interchangeable with higher knowledge. Not all wisdom teachings are necessarily theistic. I suspect that it’s the reflexive association of ‘higher’ with ‘divine’ that is often at the basis of the rejection of the idea of ‘higher truth’.
It's very simple: Such people don't engage in dialogue to begin with. They just preach. It's one-way communication. They declare their exalted status and move on.
Good answer.
I see a parallel in the way art has been perceived in European culture: over time, there emerged a clear distinction between folk art (or popular art) and high art (academic art, art proper). There is the sense that folk art (or popular art) is what people do when they don't have the education, the skill, the talent, and the socio-economic status to do proper art. With that, folk art (or popular art) is also devalued, discredited, as "not actually art".
(This distinction doesn't seem to be so sharp in American culture, though.)
The phenomenon of sages is in comparison to "proper wise men" like folk art (or popular art) is to high art (academic art, art proper).
Quoting Isaac
Heh. If one is familiar with European culture at the time, Jung's and Freud's work are nothing special, they're just part of the "spirit of the time". It's when someone's work or persona is taken out of the context of their time that they can seem special.
It's like if you were to place a member of the aristocracy at a party where everyone else is a commoner, the aristoract would stand out by their behavior, clothes, etc. But if that same aristocrat would be at a party with oter aristocrats, they'd blend in, be nothing special.
Quoting j0e
This is so peculiar. By European standards, Mahler is high art, and Bukowski is popular art. Not comparable at all. The same person cannot appreciate both (unless they are confused).
I agree with this, but I was referring more to radically altered states of consciousness. You might think of them as egoless states.
Nice story about the man who lost a leg. Perhaps his ego had been housed in his leg. :wink:
Seriously though, I do believe personal loss may lead to improvements of the personality.
I find such lessons are useless unless one has experienced such a traumatic situation oneself, and then "grew from it."
You can see this phenomenon in some popular spiritual teachers, who, basically, experienced a psychotic breakdown, and then "emerged wise" from it. I have no doubt that posttraumatic growth is possible. But look at what such spiritual teachers teach and look at their personal history: it's clear that they didn't arrive at their level of attainment by following the advice and doing the practices that they advise their followers to do. No. That psychotic breakdown was what made the difference for them.
Quoting Tom Storm
Presumably, by living it the right way, one attains true happiness, the complete cessation of suffering.
Quoting Wayfarer
This is one of the major points where the different Buddhist schools differ.
In the Theravada Forest Tradition, you can find teachers who teach that there very much are things to be gained, goals to attain. Thanissaro Bhikkhu, for example; Ajahn Chah's tradition not so much.
Also, altruistic motivation is just one factor; in Theravada, a minor one, in Mahayana, the major one.
The most essential hierarchy in Buddhism is that of the three types of buddhas/buddhahood:
1. the samm?sambuddha
2. the arahant
3. paccekabuddha
There can be only one samm?sambuddha per time period (in our time period, this is said to be the Buddha who started out as Prince Siddhattha); this is the most exalted position and one cannot choose to become that type of buddha or attain that kind of enlightenment.
One also cannot choose to become a paccekabuddha, as that status is available only to those who live in a time when the Dhamma dispensation of the previous samm?sambuddha has died out.
The most that a person can attain who is living in a time when the Dhamma dispensation of a samm?sambuddha is still alive, is arahantship. An arahant's knowledge is like a handful of leaves, in comparison to the samm?sambuddha's, whose knowledge is like the whole forest.
The practical implication of this hierarchy is that, if you accept it, you "know your place" and adjust your expectations as to what is possible and attainable for you.
What I find relevant is that people can be enthralled by others' claims of exalted knowledge.
Why is that?
Does one feel captivated by "sages" out of one's deep sense of inadequacy, low self-esteem?
Or is there more to it?
Quoting Tom Storm
I remember hearing from a Catholic source that the Catholic saints are actually people who were usually saintly for a relatively short time in their lives (even for as little as just a few hours), and not, as the title "saint" suggests, 24/7. Perhaps this puts things into perspective a bit.
If a particular type of knowledge cannot be attained through deliberate effort, then what use is it, and what use is it to pursue it?
A knowledge that cannot be attained through deliberate effort is a happy accident, a freak of nature. It's something one might watch in awe, but that's it.
It's not clear that this is the order in which things happen.
To me there's a class aspect and a quality aspect to the high-art / pop-art distinction. I consider Bukowksi a first-rate novelist and so 'high art' in terms of quality. I expect him to eventually be in a Norton anthology of American literature (along with John Fante and Henry Miller).
Do you think that distinction could be breaking down? What's Banksy sellling for these days?
[quote=link]
A new day, a new record price for a Banksy artwork it seems. Game Changer became the most expensive Banksy painting ever sold at auction when it achieved £16.8million at Christie’s London on 23 March 2021, on the one-year anniversary of the UK’s first lockdown, with proceeds going to benefit the NHS.
[/quote]
https://www.myartbroker.com/artist/banksy/top-ten-prices-paid-for-banksy-art/
I think Banksy's stuff is cute and clever at times but gimmicky overall. Yet rich people want it. Why?
I suppose so. The mixing of the high and the profane has been going on for quite some time, actually.
I think the people who buy such works do so because they see a lucrative investment in it, not because of the art.
Also, many rich people are actually the nouveau riche, social climbers who have money but lack class. I wouldn't value art by how much it sells.
I'm trying to isolate the difference between working hard to obtain some manual skill or traditional education program and working hard to obtain a mystical 'something' that insiders call 'knowledge.' Granted that subcultures can create their own lingo that only they understand as participants in lifestyle , what are outsiders to make of their claims?
I think we agree that someone would just have to enter the community earnestly to (possibly) find out.
Quoting baker
Would you agree that we in affluent, (relatively) free societies tend to have more leisure time and less interference in spiritual/intellectual matters than throughout much of human history? Certainly there are still norms, still taboos. We use our freedom to create subcultures, mock people on Facebook, etc. But for the most part it's non-violent. Witches are drowned. They are just convinced to drown themselves.
Interesting question! Many people seem to be drawn to those who show a complete confidence in their understanding of things and people. If I unfailingly believe I can directly and infallibly understand everything that is going on with myself and others, with humankind's situation in the world, with life and death itself, then I will manifest a charismatic certainty that will be extremely attractive to those who are drawn to individuals who project an impression of supreme self-confidence. Of course such people will becomes laughing-stock if they are also manifestly stupid. A recent American politician springs to mind as an exemplar of this phenomenon.
I don't value art that way either, and class is an interesting concept, not strictly identified with wealth. I speculate that 'being philosophical' (being 'rational' and 'scientific') is an indicator of class. Rationality (as an ideal self-image) is perhaps a kind of epistemological veganism, turning its nose up at greasy peasant superstition.
Don't you think that someone must like the art for its price to go up?
Nothing. "Don't stick your nose into things that are none of your business" should be the motto.
This is where the guild theme becomes useful again: If you're a member of the guild of, say, candle makers, out of professional deference, you're not going to indulge in assumptions about those in the guild of horseback saddle makers. (Ideally, you wouldn't even have the time to do so, being busy with your own craft and all that.)
Sorry, have to go for the day.
Right! And that would be a good look from the outside, a selective group that guards its secrets.
Quoting baker
I agree, but consider the original context, in which an ambivalent saddle-maker can't resist trying to win the respect of the candle-makers.
I suppose the issue is just the boundary between philosophy and religion and the strange games that are played on that boundary.
Quoting baker
See ya next time!
* At the time this essay was published, 1963, the term 'scientism' had not yet come into vogue (despite having been coined by Hayek in 1942), but I think it is what Conze is getting at with the term 'sciential'.
For those interested, the remainder of the essay is here
Quoting j0e
It certainly seemed clear to ancient philosophers that special qualifications were required to receive instruction in higher philosophy. Presumably the book goes into this in more detail. But I have to say, that based on the comments to date, there seems little awareness of the 'esoteric/exoteric' distinction in the history of philosophy.
Evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers argues essentially this in his theory of self-deception. We have evolved to subconsciously pickup certain microcues emitted by those we are interacting with. These microcues gives us an intuitive sense when someone is trying to manipulate us. Trivers' theory of self-deception asserts that people deceive themselves in order to eliminate these microcues, in order to deceive others in turn.
This is a relevant quote that came to mind. In a book review of Teilhard de Chardin's 'The Phenomenon of Man', Peter Medawar wrote:
I like the quotes and the topic. I think it's understood that Pythagoras was a cult leader of some kind, and that Plato might have had a secret doctrine. I find it very hard to believe that the Epicureans did, given what I've read of and about Epicurus, and I couldn't find any confirmation of it. Clement was a theologian, which may speak against his reliability on this matter, but he's fascinating:
[quote=wiki]
Clement suggests that at first, humans mistakenly believed the Sun, the Moon, and other heavenly bodies to be deities. The next developmental stage was the worship of the products of agriculture, from which he contends the cults of Demeter and Dionysus arose.[22] Humans then paid reverence to revenge and deified human feelings of love and fear, among others. In the following stage, the poets Hesiod and Homer attempt to enumerate the deities; Hesiod's Theogony giving the number of twelve. Finally, humans reached a stage when they proclaimed others, such as Asclepius and Heracles, as deities.[22] Discussing idolatry, Clement contends that the objects of primitive religion were unshaped wood and stone, and idols thus arose when such natural items were carved.[23] Following Plato, Clement is critical of all forms of visual art, suggesting that artworks are but illusions and "deadly toys".[23]
Clement criticizes Greek paganism in the Protrepticus on the basis that its deities are both false and poor moral examples. He attacks the mystery religions for their ritualism and mysticism.[23] In particular, the worshippers of Dionysus are ridiculed by him for their family-based rituals (such as the use of children's toys in ceremony).[24] He suggests at some points that the pagan deities are based on humans, but at other times he suggests that they are misanthropic demons, and he cites several classical sources in support of this second hypothesis.[25] Clement, like many pre-Nicene church fathers, writes favourably about Euhemerus and other rationalist philosophers, on the grounds that they at least saw the flaws in paganism. However, his greatest praise is reserved for Plato, whose apophatic views of God prefigure Christianity.
Clement argues for the equality of sexes, on the grounds that salvation is extended to all humans equally.[36] Unusually, he suggests that Christ is neither female nor male, and that God the Father has both female and male aspects: the eucharist is described as milk from the breast (Christ) of the Father.[37][38] Clement is supportive of women playing an active role in the leadership of the church and he provides a list of women he considers inspirational, which includes both Biblical and Classical Greek figures. It has been suggested that Clement's progressive views on gender as set out in the Paedagogus were influenced by Gnosticism,[37] however, later in the work, he argues against the Gnostics that faith, not esoteric knowledge [??????], is required for salvation. According to Clement, it is through faith in Christ that one is enlightened and comes to know God.[39]
[/quote]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clement_of_Alexandria
There's a not much of gap it seems between apophatic theology and atheism.
Strauss talks of 'parables and images,' which seems compatible with a literary interpretation of esoteric claims. Derrida writes of the metaphoricity that haunts the rational philosophy which dreams of being purely literal. A great theme, familiar through flies in bottles and disposable ladders, say. We might discuss in what sense a parable conceals. I think the Apocalypse of St. John has real world referents that couldn't be published (Nero, etc.). But we might also talk about the stimulating ambiguity of parables.
That last quote is about Pythagoras again.
[quote=Wiki]
Early-Pythagorean sects were closed societies and new Pythagoreans were chosen based on merit and discipline. Ancient sources record that early-Pythagoreans underwent a five year initiation period of listening to the teachings (akousmata) in silence. Initiates could through a test become members of the inner circle.
[/quote]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoreanism
It's clear that philosophy has some of its roots in 'irrationalism' by current standards, but it's not clear what to make of this. A reactionary position would be that we've lost our way. Not 'back to Kant' but back to Pythagoras! :starstruck:
Perhaps analogy is the core of cognition, so that the issue is mythos opposed to logos but rather open discussion versus initiates sitting five years in silence. Is the issue control?
:fire:
I don't think I've met anyone who can't enjoy high and low art together. Even Shakespeare put fart jokes in his play. I used to love the movie Barfly. Bukowski is certainly up there with a number of American writers (Miller/Thompson/ Kerouac) but not really my thing these days.
:up:
Quoting Tom Storm
Might add Lester Bangs to that list too. Leaving the states, do you like Kundera? Hesse? Good examples I think of philosophical novelists. For better or worse I've been reading mostly philosophy these days.
You refer to a few writers as esoteric, having said earlier that you are opposed to the idea of the esoteric. However, some of the ones you seem to be pointing to seem worth reading in my opinion. But I really don't understand how you define esoteric. It seems that you are referring more to those on the fringe or countercultural. If that is how you define it, isn't there a danger that you are reinforcing writing and ideas which are popular and rejecting those which are less conventional? Surely, it is partly about personal preference and taste. But I think that it would be so useful if you laid down some criteria and clarity for thinking about what esotericism entails.
Hesse - 30 years ago. Kundera 20 years ago. My favourite Kundera quote (I can't find the source anymore) and this is better than many whole books of philosophy, 'You create a utopia and pretty soon you're going to need to build a small concentration camp.' Just recently Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence. One of the most exceptionally well written and observed novels I have read. Every paragraph is like an unbearably rich chocolate mousse. I really like George Elliot too.
Gary Lachman is a pop writer, and was even drummer of the pop band, Blondie. However, what I think that he does so well is taking the ideas and writers out of the esoteric domain for larger audiences. However, my own understanding of the esoteric tradition would include Steiner, William Blake, Emmanuel Swedenborg, and I don't think that it is possible to talk about the esoteric without some mention of Madame Blavatsky.
Good advice for many of us.
I think the term is problematic because to me it has some ugly connotations. Esotericism is that which is known or available only to a cognoscenti. I am not keen on castes and divisions and I recognize that recondite pleasures come in secular and spiritual flavours. The scholars who celebrate Joyce's Finnegan's Wake belong to the secular variety, while those who study, let's say, Gurdjieff's Beezlebub's Tales to His Grandson belong to the other. The Hermetica stands out to me as the classic exemplar of esoteric occult literature.
I think some people retreat into esotericism because life is hard and there are obvious consolations in difficult knowledge and feelings of belonging to an exclusive project. Even better if it deals in truths unavailable and incomprehensible to the hoi polloi. This can be highly charged and intoxicating stuff. I also think esotericism is a terrible word to use to describe contemplative traditions. Esoterica also sounds like a stuffy, late Victorian description for what a Professor of Oriental Studies pursues.
It's a delicate issue. I'm not simply opposed to the esoteric. Recall that I suggested that the 'rational' community was its own 'inner circle' and a kind of epistemological veganism that sneers at outsiders (a joke on my tribe, you see, to suggest a transcendence of it, but that's my tribe's endless game.)
I guess the difference between me and Wayf (he can clarify or correct) is that I'm happy saying that the esoteric stuff is 'just' stories (mythos) that can be useful to and/or tell truths about human nature. I say 'truths' because I think we think analogically, that cognition is metaphorical. To me this 'just' is not problematic, because I live in the realm of human metaphor and feelings and don't feel the lack of something beyond it. At the same time I acknowledge a non-human encompassing Nature that doesn't play by human rules & (apparently) doesn't care about us. Between me & Wayf the big difference, as I see it, is that I think Nature is 'dead' or 'inhuman.' He can give his view and correct me if I am wrong. Both of us clearly value mythos. I just want to naturalize it.
Please say more. I don't want to misunderstand you.
That's good. Can you expand a little on 'vital' and 'ready'?
I can relate to this if I think in terms of analogies that one has to be ripe for, through study or in terms of life-experience.
Quoting Wayfarer
This is where we might differ, because we've shifted from talk about human nature (the human 'soul') to biology and physics. The vibe is that you think there's a valid esoteric approach to such things. If so, that's where we diverge. Maybe the current understanding of evolution will look primitive in a few centuries (is blind to something important), but I guess I trust the biologists to keep one another honest.
Where I come from psychologists are not well liked, so I'm not so sure. Which probably brings us to another perspective on sages. One person's sage is another person's cult leader.
:up:
Quoting Tom Storm
:party: :death:
His Immortality knocked me out.
Quoting Tom Storm
Your glowing review will be remembered for future use.
Quoting Tom Storm
She translated the The Essence of Christianity, which is a great little book of philosophy relevant to the OP, a 'decoding' or naturalization of Christian doctrines.
I like psychoanalysis (Freud and maybe some Lacan) even if it might just be updated shamanism.
It's even true in science. In fact much of scientific practice grew out of those roots and mirrors them, although the underpinning assumptions are plainly very different. But, I do see some hope that science itself is starting to converge with some of those esoteric traditions. (I was one of the first registrants for Science and Non-duality and went to the first session in 2009 in San Rafael. Not that I don't have many reservations about the overall content.)
Quoting j0e
True! That's where I diverge from a lot of people here - not everyone, but many.
I sometimes think that mainstream religion has homeopathically immunised Western culture against ideas of higher awareness. This is because the approach to such ideas was defined so strictly - remember the battles over orthodoxy and heresy? - that the entire issue had to end up being ring-fenced, cordoned off. The Articles of the Royal Society specifically mentioned exclusion of 'religious metaphysic' - because of the interminable wars over those very questions. 'Don't mention the war!' So there's this suppressed stratum in Western culture - the shadow of its religiosity - which is hugely but covertly influential in today's mindset. It's kind of a cultural pathology, in a way.
From a commentary on Jurgen Habermas' late-life dialogue with Catholicism:
All these themes are writ large on the debates here.
That's a great line...
This line baffles me, since philosophical secular reason seems enormously self-aware and self-critical, though it could be accused of being secular. Even that's complicated, because negative theology is treated with some respect by certain continentals.
Isn't it more accurate to say that the liberal state enacts a blend of worldviews within the confines of the rights of individuals? I'd rather live in Denmark than Saudi Arabia.
I will say that I don't know where we are heading as a species. The next dominant 'religion' might be something like trans-humanism or something involving AI. Just guessing, but I think technology will be central, for better or worse.
One of my friends escaped a cult and is still haunted by it. I think it illustrates the necessity of free thought for human wellbeing.
It is in the hands of philosophers. But not in the hands of scientific secularism.
Quoting j0e
Me too, for sure. Interesting my post provokes that reaction. Makes a point, don't you think?
But I look at the politicians. What do they talk about? Justice, liberty, abundance, security. I don't deny that they use science & tech to pursue these goals.
Quoting Wayfarer
Sure, but the point works both ways. Where are the countries without religious tolerance (for atheism or DIY religion or religion classic ) that you'd want to live?
Can you think of a sage today who is not part of an immense industry and organised merchandising?
People wouldn't necessarily question their morality, just their training, practice and assumptions. No doubt they are often well-meaning.
It’s still not the point at issue. The reason that secular philosophy is lacking in self-awareness is precisely that it has bracketed the subject out of its reckonings. That, of course, is the critique of Husserl and phenomenology, which you might know, but which is hardly common knowledge. ‘It has no mechanism within itself for questioning the products and conclusions of its formal, procedural entailments and experiments.’ That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have critics, but the critics are external to it. Peer review doesn’t question the idea of science as philosophy, but whether the results obtained are consistent with the hypotheses, etc.
In case you are interested, a couple who weeks ago, in another thread@Bitter Crank referred to a website called, 'Forgotten Books'. This showed, and has downloads of many extremely unusual books, especially some esoteric ones. I downloaded quite a few. I like to read these kinds of books, but I don't necessarily agree with all the ideas. But I find these ideas give me plenty to think about, as I believe that we can benefit from reading unusual ideas. After all, if we only read the perspective we agree with it would be like philosophical shoegazing.
I suppose you are right, I think most people are well-meaning actually. It's a difficult topic. It's more about conscience than consciousness. I'll have to read more into it.
I understand the link with shamanism. Travelling to the collective and individual subconscious seems to be the mutual therapy. It works.
Denmark is a beautiful country. Expensive though! But I suppose that doesn't matter so much when you live there.
I was referring to Socrates and the distinction between human and divine wisdom. As I understand it, he points to the limits of human knowledge. I don't think Plato's teaching are theistic. It is, after all, the Good not the God.
In the Republic after Socrates presents theimage of the Forms Glaucon wants Socrates to tell them what the Forms themselves are. Socrates responds:
Socrates presents an image of the truth not simply because that is all he can show Glaucon but because he cannot, to use another image, ascend the divided line from eikasía to noesis via dianoia, that is, from the imagination to insight via reason. Grasping hold of the truth remains out of our reach. While philosophers tend to focus on reason and dismiss the power of imagination, it is what art, religion, and philosophy have in common. It is why philosophers from Plato to Wittgenstein talk of philosophy as poetry, poiesis, the making of images.
What is "higher knowledge" and "higher truth"? Are they transcendent truths and knowledge? Exstatis? Are they truths and knowledge that you are privy to or just truths you believe others have attained?
The wiki article on the Analogy of the Divided Line has a table:
So - isn't the whole task of the philosopher to ascend from from opinion through dianoia to noesis 'through dialectic'? Isn't that what the remainder of the passage is about?
Of course, it's just a human fact that we desire recognition. You can't fault someone for desiring that, in moderation. But the thing of wanting to be recognized for recognizing the overcoming-of-recognition - that's a swampy space to be in. If, on the other hand, its possible to get outside that, you wouldn't, having gotten-out, need to be recognized for it. So either way, whether the esoteric is real or not, someone who seems to be asking to be recognized for being in alliance with the esoteric is probably not worth listening to, at least not on the subject of the esoteric (they might, if a lawyer, still have sound legal advice) (Even if esoteric knowledge is real, and they've tasted it, they're standing in their own way. I think the gospels are really good on this pragmatic issue.)
He's controversial but taken up by fascinating philosophers like Zizek. Then Freud is taken up by Derrida and Rorty and others. So I think there's a continuum between philosophy and psychoanalysis (both of which might be called (self-criticizing) 'folk-psychology' at times.)
Quoting TaySan
Right. I was thinking that even if one questioned the scientific status that it's at least literature or myth that could help people orient themselves, work out their kinks (or work in their kinks.) Bloom read Freud as a modern myth maker.
Quoting TaySan
I believe you, and yeah I wouldn't just want to be a tourist. I couldn't afford it.
Same here. I've actually ordered the paperback version of Lange's History of Materialism and just last night The Garden of Epicurus by Anatole France. I love the 'lost' perspectives. As you say, it's not about agreement but just exploring what other ages found acceptable and interesting. (& picking books that only tell us what we want to hear is of course a questionable strategy. )
Except that is not what happened in Socrates own case. The passage from the Republic 533a makes this clear. If what you mean by higher knowledge and truth is the leap from reason to intellection then I find it peculiar that Socrates never made that leap. The whole thing is an image of the truth, an image that "cannot be properly insisted on".
And so, if this is what you mean by "higher knowledge" and "higher truth", Socrates was not and never met a sage.
:fire: :flower: :death:
(I'm enthusiastically agreeing.)
Same here.
But the implication is, Socrates has proceeded beyond 'image and symbol' - has indeed made that ascent - but that Glaucon cannot 'follow' him, i.e. is not equipped to understand his meaning:
The footnote to this remark is that Socrates will not insist that he perceives rightly, as to do so would be dogmatic.
At any rate, the following passages discusses that one skilled in dialectic, i.e. the philosopher, is able to 'determine what each thing really is'.
To deny this is to deny the possibility of the knowledge of the forms, and of the form of the Good, which is fundamental to the entire enterprise, or so it seems to me.
I think the criticism of Teilhard is smug and too harsh, though.
I think there's a naturalized esotericism that's defensible (like an inner circle that gets some metaphor as a metaphor, or an inner circle that gets be bop.) But this stuff is all around us. So I think the issue is the intersection of esotericism and science, where esoteric statements try to rival science, where creation myths are taken as something like (quasi-)scientific hypotheses. As far as science goes, I pretty much boil it down to prediction and control. These are things that even non-experts can judge (at Quine's 'periphery.') No grand metaphysics need be attached as far as I can see. Do the tools work for everyone, whether one expects them to or not? (Esoteric statements might work very well within the inner circle by keeping up group morale, for instance, but this would involve expecting them to work, 'believing in' them.)
I haven't studied Teilhard, but I'd probably agree with you. I have enjoyed some sophisticated theology at times.
A note from the IEP article on Pierre Hadot about the figure of the sage
Again similar to the conception of the enlightened being in Buddhism.
Sure. Of course there are those 'sages' who carefully orchestrate for others to testify on their behalf. Perhaps the origins of marketing.
The figure who I would choose as a kind of archetype of the Sage is Socrates.
To me this seems like a point-at-infinity, an impossible ideal to strive toward. The image reminds me of a god or of God, a serene and benevolent transcendent intelligence. Christ and Socrates, both put to death, both symbolic for many of a kind of perfection.
Yeah, when I think of naturalized esotericism, I tend to think of artistic movements. That sort of thing feels inevitable, and natural to me. Of course there will be the temptation for those, in a circle, to use their privileged space in the circle for esteem, sex etc - but, that's part of it, it's hard to find fault there.
(in some cases, it's less clear - a moralist's approach on inner circles, well thought-out: https://www.lewissociety.org/innerring/)
I think science is inherently predictive (repeatability being such a key part of the scientific method) but accidentally in service of control. 'Contingent' might be better than 'accidental.' But in any case, I think it's true science has tended to be in service of control. My personal feeling is that science is a sub-activity within the field-of-various-activities that is life, and any claims within that field are fine - anything that goes beyond that is also fine, but has extended beyond science, and is open to debate.
Creationism and intellgent design are both instances of religious fundamentalism. They're as far from esoterica as you can get. The Copenhagen Interpretation of physics - now there's the esoteric in modern culture.
Quoting Tom Storm
:up:
That's the clever way to do it! I googled Osho last night out of curiosity and saw the front page of the website. I find it nauseating, such blatant commercialization. The 'idealistic' or 'ascetic' or 'esoteric' part of me is gut-level against the hype and the open hand that fishes for dollars. Intuitively I expect it to be a gift, an overflow. Something modest that downplays the mere vessel of a universal insight. But I think we already have that here and there in mainstream philosophy. You just need a library card.
Quoting Tom Storm
I relate to this, especially if Socrates is thought of as a critical, playful mind who faces death nobly.
Osho was bogus. Try googling Ramana Maharishi. He wasn't.
An old associate of mine worked for L Ron Hubbard back in the 1960's when he was at Saint Hill Manor. He called Hubbard a powerful and great sage.
What was the evidence for this, I asked?
He had exceptional power and control over his own body came the response.
I asked for an example.
One day LRH's hair would be grey and the next, through sheer will power, his hair had returned to its natural red color.
Hair dye? I suggested helpfully.
Impossible! came the response.
I didn't have any particular theory in mind and I'm not trying to link you to creationism.
To what degree are esoteric statements functioning as quasi-scientific hypotheses, crossing into the turf of science?
What's the relationship between the esoteric, the metaphysical, and the scientific?
I don't put all sage-types on the same level. I've checked some of them out. Anyone who gets famous just by talking has some kind of skill and insight. But I just cannot project some kind of 'trans-human' status on another human being. Obviously some people are generally wiser or or more virtuous or more skilled than others, but it's an uncertain continuum. We're all still fallible, vulnerable humans.
Almost dinner time, but I'm intrigued by this.
I'd say very rarely. The 'culture war' between religion and science, is mostly a conflict between scientific materialism, on the one side, and religious fundamentalism, on the other. Both parties to that conflict are lacking in philosophical discernment. Scientific materialism is caused by treating methodoligical naturalism, which is a perfectly sound principle, as a metaphysic, which it's not. Religious fundamentalism arises from treating religious allegory as a literal hypothesis, which it's not. That accounts for a large percentage of the alleged 'conflict'.
There's a story I often like to tell here, concerning Georges Lemaître, whom as you know came up with what is now known as big bang theory. In the wiki entry on him, it notes that:
Devout Catholic, but not so devout as not to advise the Pope on what shouldn't be said!
On the other hand if this esoteric knowledge is really only a kind of poetic feeling that can be cultivated by those who are so disposed, and is not really knowledge of the real at all, that is does not tell us anything about what is really the case as to the human condition and the truth about human life and death, then there also could be no rational justification of anything that is presumed to be known.
So, either way, it is not within the province of philosophy
which should be, in principle at least, open to anyone with the requisite capacity for valid rational thought.
I think the 'ideal of the Sage' is one who has transcended fallible human nature. Philosophically speaking, the point of dualism is that the human is in some essential respect an instance of a universal intelligence which has taken birth in human form and then forgotten their real nature (hence anamnesis, 'un-forgetting). So the 'sage' awakens to his/her 'true nature' beyond the viscissitudes of physical existence. (That is even implicit in the NT - 'It is not I that live, but Christ liveth in me'Gal. 2:20) This is the substance of Alan Watts' book The Supreme Identity.
Quoting Janus
It's not within the provice of philosophy as now understood, that's for sure.
Socrates, as you quote, says:
The two terms I put in bold need to be considered. How something appears is not the same as noesis. What appears to him may not appear that way to someone else. There is no such difference or ambiguity when it comes to seeing the Forms themselves. It not a matter of how they appear to me or you or Socrates.
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't know whose opinion that is, but the term itself, from the Greek, means opinion. If Socrates does not want to dogmatic then he does not want to insist that his opinion is true. If that is what the note means then I agree. It makes no sense to claim that if he knows the truth but does not want to insist on the truth.
Quoting Wayfarer
Right before those passages he say:
Two points. Glaucon is not experienced in dialectic and so is merely going along with what Socrates says. He has no understanding of it. Second, he does not say that the power of dialectic does reveal this. Dialectic is not some magic power that transforms speech and thought into noesis.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, that is the point. It should be noted that talk of the Forms is conspicuously absent in the Theaettetus, a dialogue about knowledge.
Well, I could point to the work of various highly regarded scholars whose reading too is what you would regard as tendentious, but I never met a Platonist who was persuaded by such arguments, with one exception, That exception is me. Plato is deep enough to allow for differing interpretations.
But what could philosophy be other than rational discourse? If the esoteric is outside the bounds of rational discourse, and if philosophy cannot be anything other than rational discourse, then how could the esoteric be within the purview of philosophy?
The same problem must be faced with regard to Plato's dialectic. Reasoned speech cannot lead to knowledge of the Forms. Dialectic is nothing more than reasoned speech.
I think there is a tendency to deprecate the mystical aspects of Plato, as it sits uncomfortably with naturalism, but as Plato is such an important figure, then he has to be accomodated. You even see that in the footnotes of the online edition I was reading.
I'm casting around for some of the congenial commentators. I rather like Raphael Demos.
http://www.ditext.com/demos/plato.html
That reminds me of Arthur Koestler's book, The Sleepwalkers, about how many of the great modern scientists arrived at their seminal insights through serendipity, chance, co-incidence and happenstance - not at all through a methodical application of steps. And often their great discovery was not what they set out to find.
Quoting Fooloso4
I thought the point about dialectic, in particular, was that as it arises from discourse between opposing points of view, then it discloses a kind of understanding that is impossible to state plainly. A dialectical understanding emerges through the dialogue but it is not the property of any one of the participants. (The Madhyamika dialectic is another example.)
Quoting Janus
There's a lot in philosophy that is not stated, but assumed. You might assume that science is normative for what ought to be considered real, and that much else in philosophical discourse is a matter of feeling or akin to poetry. And that in turn depends on some very basic and therefore deep presuppositions about the nature of reality. Most people are inclined to philosophical realism by nature and that is reinforced by the culture we're in. Given those starting points, then you can proceed with as much rational discourse as you wish, but you won't be inclined to agree with anything that oversteps what you consider those limits.
We are not in a position to know if any sage really 'has it' as we don't know what 'it' is and presumably, following the logic of higher consciousness, the ordinary person probably also lacks the capacity to see higher truth when it appears, so how do we know if teaching is right? How can we judge them by their works if judgment is down to us? I can't even tell if my mechanic is being straight with me...
On dialectic.
The problem is, how does one free himself from hypothesis? How does one use hypotheses as a springboard? Does one simply jump back to what is free from hypothesis? How does one land at the beginning of the whole?
Quoting Wayfarer
I attempt, to the extent that I am able, to read Plato on his own terms, and certainly not from the perspective of naturalism. I too once believed that the ascent from the cave and the power of dialectic was a description of the mystical experience of truth. I no longer see things that way. Among other things, it occurred to me that I had no knowledge or experience of transcendence. Like many others I mistook his image of knowledge for knowledge itself, just like the cave dwellers mistake the images on the cave wall.
Just because we don’t have it, doesn’t mean it isn’t real. So that is rather like an argument from ignorance. I hasten to add, I don’t claim to possess such an insight either - but I don’t recoil from the possibility that Plato understood things that I cannot. In that sense I have to take what he says on faith - not religious faith, but acceptance of the possibility that there are modes of knowing that I myself can’t access. I’m after all merely an example of the hoi polloi.
To ‘reach what is free from hypothesis’ I would take to be the direct apprehension of the forms. It is seeing the form that we know what something is, to the extent that it is knowable.
That excerpt we discussed the other day:
[quote=518c]”... our present argument indicates,” said I, “that the true analogy for this indwelling power in the soul and the instrument whereby each of us apprehends is that of an eye that could not be converted to the light from the darkness except by turning the whole body. Even so this organ of knowledge must be turned around from the world of becoming together with the entire soul, like the scene-shifting periact in the theater, until the soul is able to endure the contemplation of essence and the brightest region of being.[/quote]
Surely that indicates insight into the ‘what is’ of Parmenides, distinct from the ‘world of becoming’ which is the mutable world of perishing things. Which turning around I think is very ‘painful’, analogous to ‘being dazzled by the brilliance of the sun’. I take it to be ‘noetic insight into the realm of Forms’.
The way this later became developed in later hylomorphic dualism was that the mind sees the form by directly apprehending it, while the senses perceive the physical thing. ‘if the proper knowledge of the senses is of accidents, through forms that are individualized, the proper knowledge of nous is of essences, through forms that are universalized. Intellectual knowledge is analogous to sense knowledge inasmuch as it demands the reception of the form of the thing which is known. But it differs from sense knowledge so far forth as it consists in the apprehension of things, not in their individuality, but in their universality.’ - Thomistic Psychology, Brennan.
Agreed. At least with the mechanic you can see if your car starts. I suppose a person could get high on the aura of a guru and their 'car starts' in that sense (because they believe, through their projection), so that's why I like the 'works whether or not you believe in it' criterion of science/technology.
Right, and we might think if Nietzsche, the philosopher-artist , who spoke of 'rank' and the 'pathos of distance.' The great philosopher is a creator, an exalted 'liar,' a strong poet who brings new metaphors that cool down and harden into common-sense literality. We can think of the art-poetry of philosophy, adjacent to art manifestos. If cognition if metaphorical and metaphors are the core content of philosophy, then it's perhaps only the openness of the conversation that sets it apart. There's no guru in control. There's a clash of metaphors. There's an ethic of giving reasons, making a case, assimilating or neutralizing objections. 'Logic is a gentleman's agreement,' and rationality (seems to me) is fundamentally ethical-social, a respect for the other and the self, the other as the self in some sense.
I think some version of the sage is dear to every philosopher. Not I but Reason thru me. Not I but Science thru me. The sub-sage self is a distortion in the lens, or some impurity in the lamp oil. Roughly I think the theory of reincarnation is metaphorically true. I think unforgetting is metaphorically true. IMV, as an individual comes to maturity, certain metaphors or stories make sense in a new way. I think anamnesis is something like waking up to a sense of connection with the dead and those not yet born, to being embedded in the conversation, to be made mostly of the same inherited fragments, comforted by perennial parables.
I think this gets it more or less right.
[quote=link]
Unlike sense experience, thought is essentially communicable. Thinking is not an activity performed by the individual person qua individual. It is the activity of spirit, to which Hegel famously referred in the Phenomenology as “‘I’ that is ‘We’ and ‘We’ that is ‘I’” Pure spirit is nothing but this thinking activity, in which the individual thinker participates without himself (or herself) being the principal thinking agent. ... Individual thinking subjects, while able to participate in the life of spirit, do not cease in doing so to exist as corporeally distinct entities who remain part of nature, and are thus not pure spirit.
[/quote]
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ludwig-feuerbach/
The stumbling block for some will be: thinking is not an activity performed by the individual person qua individual. The tempting performative contradiction will be that 'this is not rational, this is not allowed, one has to justify claims, make correct inferences.' Exactly. 'True' thought has a validity beyond the individual. One has to join the conversation. Then there's the anti-Cartesian point that language is not private and a private language does not make sense. I think Wittgenstein's later stuff is a naturalization of this otherwise spooky point.
Anyway, to me the perfect sage is like pure spirit or a signified without the need of a signifier and a system. I can't make sense of it. I don't see the need for it.
Very relevant text.
[quote=CS Lewis]
Let Inner Rings be unavoidable and even an innocent feature of life, though certainly not a beautiful one: but what of our longing to enter them, our anguish when we are excluded, and the kind of pleasure we feel when we get in?
I have no right to make assumptions about the degree to which any of you may already be compromised. I must not assume that you have ever first neglected, and finally shaken off, friends whom you really loved and who might have lasted you a lifetime, in order to court the friendship of those who appeared to you more important, more esoteric. I must not ask whether you have derived actual pleasure from the loneliness and humiliation of the outsiders after you, yourself were in: whether you have talked to fellow members of the Ring in the presence of outsiders simply in order that the outsiders might envy; whether the means whereby, in your days of probation, you propitiated the Inner Ring, were always wholly admirable.
....
Your little musical group limits its numbers because the rooms they meet in are only so big. But your genuine Inner Ring exists for exclusion. There’d be no fun if there were no outsiders. The invisible line would have no meaning unless most people were on the wrong side of it. Exclusion is no accident; it is the essence.
...
And if in your spare time you consort simply with the people you like, you will again find that you have come unawares to a real inside: that you are indeed snug and safe at the centre of something which, seen from without, would look exactly like an Inner Ring. But the difference is that the secrecy is accidental, and its exclusiveness a by-product, and no one was led thither by the lure of the esoteric: for it is only four or five people who like one another meeting to do things that they like. This is friendship. Aristotle placed it among the virtues. It causes perhaps half of all the happiness in the world, and no Inner Ring can ever have it.
[/quote]
Isn't authenticity a quiet theme here? How does one distinguish between spontaneous friendship (which is bound to be selective, I think) and the bad kind of Inner Ring? As with most if not all of life, it's mixed, ambiguous, though some cases might be relatively obvious.
On a personal level: am I being a snob? am I being desperate? I was in the underground music scene years ago and some bands got more attendance and respect than others. If you had a new band and wanted attention, your best bet was to play a show with a popular band. This was 'underground' music, so it was as much about quality and mystique as anything else. A band could have lots of the wrong kind of fans and not be respected. The 'cool kids' (actually adults in late 20s or early 30s) could not be exactly defined (just as people can argue about which famous philosophers deserve their fame) but the idea of cool and the pursuit of it (whatever slippery names it was given) was central. Unsurprisingly, what these musicians talked about was other musicians. In my circle, MC5 was cool (and I still think they fucking rock). It's been easy for me to see intellectual talk as related. On forums you have anonymous/underground philosophers talking about their 'MC5.' It's an endless process, striving to be authentic in some sense, striving against self-flattering biases, against the sadism that wants to create and humiliate outsiders for no good reason.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oeyt9wNYhnQ
I thought I'd share this passage on Plato's Forms to see what you (and others) make of it.
[quote=Tait]
...there is a central role that the Forms play in the Phaedo and Republic which does concern me here. True knowledge or exact science cannot have as its object sensible things. ...Reasoning in geometry cannot be founded on what we can see and measure, since measurements cannot distinguish between those lines commensurable with a given one and those which are not. More generally, as Whitehead was later on to put it, nature has ragged edges. The terms in which we describe it in exact science don’t literally apply. Then what is exact science about? What are the grounds for calling the theorems of geometry true, for example? Neugebauer, in his discussion of this situation in [1969], suggests with an almost charming innocence that the Greeks simply introduced axiom systems in which the phenomena were idealized and then based truth on provability from the axioms. A wonderful idea! But, unfortunately, not one available to the Greeks in fourth century BC: it was to be more than twenty-three centuries before the idea of a formal axiomatic theory would be invented. For example, Frege did not even understand it: for him, as for the Greeks, axioms have to be true. But what are they true of ? What are, to use Plato’s terms, the corresponding objects? In Metaphysics I vi 2-3, Aristotle traces the motivation for Plato’s doctrine to the influence of Heraclitus’ view that “the whole sensible world is always in a state of flux”. We might take from Neugebauer the suggestion that they are true of an ‘idealization’ of the phenomena. But I think that if we try to spell out what this means, we are led to the view, which I think was essentially Plato’s, that they are true of a certain structure which the phenomena in question roughly exemplify, but which, once grasped, we are capable of reasoning about independently of the phenomena which, in the causal sense, gave rise to it. The theorems of geometry are not literally true of sensible things: indeed, they do not even literally apply to them. No sensible figure can be a point or a line segment or a surface or solid in the sense of geometry. Yet the assumptions made in geometric proofs are also not arbitrary; something provides traction for them. We have the idea of a point, a line segment, a surface, whatever, which we can, by a process of analysis or, as Plato called it, dialectic, come to understand purely rationally, stripped free of its empirical source. I believe that it is this which provided motivation for Plato’s reference to Forms and against which attempts to understand his so-called ‘doctrine of Forms’ should be measured. I believe also that this conception of autonomous reason in the aid of natural science was Plato’s great contribution.
[/quote]
https://home.uchicago.edu/~wwtx/plato.pdf
You're just dodging @janus's question.
The question was Quoting Janus
That has nothing to do with an assumption of realism. One could be a thoroughgoing idealist and would suffer the same problem. If the knowledge is esoteric then rational discussion of it is pointless.
My paraphrase of the principle is that the 'form' of a particular is at once its idea, its organising principle, and what it truly is - its essential nature or essence - whereas this or that individual particular is an ephemeral instance, here one minute, gone the next. So particulars are not intelligible objects of knowledge, because of their temporality. They're only real insofar as the exemplify ('participate in') some form (or idea). It's the idea that is real, the particular is simply a better or worse facsimile.
My rough thumbnail sketch of what this developed into, was the hylomorphic dualism of Aristotle, which was then passed down and transformed for centuries, via the Muslims, and then the Scholastics.
One reference I often point to is this blog post on Thomist psychology -from that and various other neo-thomistic philosophers, including Jacques Maritain and Ed Feser. (There's an entire movement called Critical Thomism which attempts to reconcile Aquinas and Kant, I've hardly scratched the surface of that subject.)
Your quoted passage mentions Heraclitus, but the other essential predecessor is surely Parmenides. It's the unchangeable reality of what truly is, which is discerned by reason. That is essential to understanding the origin of the forms in my view.
This is the question. It shows up in the arguments about platonic realism in mathematics. The first question asked of platonic realism is, in what sense is a number or geometric form 'an object'? I would answer that it's only in a metaphorical sense. When the ancients speak of 'intelligible objects', they're not speaking of literal objects. They're objects of thought - noumenal objects (where 'noumenal' means 'object of nous', intellect). So you might say, where are such objects? They're not located in some literal space. Where is the domain of natural numbers or prime numbers? Obviously it's not anywhere, but there are numbers that are 'inside' and 'outside' of those domains. But they're also not only 'in the mind' because they are the same for all who think. (This as I understand it is Frege's view also. There's a paper called Frege on Knowing the Third Realm, Tyler Burge.)
But there was a centuries-long process whereby the reality of intelligible objects became discounted and then rejected (most forcefully by The Great Mustache - 'thinnest and emptiest' etc). That was the decline of scholastic realism, which upheld the reality of universals, and the ascendancy of nominalism, which became ascendant. Most here will advocate nominallism. But,
[quote=What's Wrong with Ockham? - Joshua Hothschild.]Characterized by forms, reality had an intrinsic intelligibility, not just in each of its parts but as a whole. With forms as causes, there are interconnections between different parts of an intelligible world, indeed there are overlapping matrices of intelligibility in the world, making possible an ascent from the more particular, posterior, and mundane to the more universal, primary, and noble.
In short, the appeal to forms or natures does not just help account for the possibility of trustworthy access to facts, it makes possible a notion of wisdom, traditionally conceived as an ordering grasp of reality.[/quote]
That's true; the problem is that the idea of something being both exclusively beyond and also within rational discourse is simply self-contradictory in an entirely ontology-independent way, (of course some may claim there's a virtue in that). I imagine there may be a poetic virtue in it, but I would not agree to any more than that.
Yes. The assumption which I keep raising that @Wayfarer and other apologists keep repeating is that because science (or materialism) doesn't deal with esoteric issues, the alternatives must somehow therefore do so.
What arguments like yours show is that they don't do so either. Nothing does. Except perhaps art, in a subtle way.
As Wittgenstein said "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."
And as Ramsey (even better) added "..and we can't whistle it either."
@Wayfarer here is just trying to whistle.
We might think of a species (form) as compared to organisms of that species (particulars). Roughly we talk in terms categories/concepts. 'A dog tried to bite me on the way here.' It was a particular dog, but we can only speak (and perhaps remember and dream) of the concept or bundle of concepts. We can call either the species or the organism 'real,' but it's not clear how this matters apart from other concerns. Feuerbach talked about the difference between bread, which I can eat, and the form or idea of bread, which I can't. A hungry man will call the unnameable particular bread real.
[quote=Feuerbach]
To sensuous consciousness, all words are names – nomina propria. They are quite indifferent as far as sensuous consciousness is concerned; they are all signs by which it can achieve its aims in the shortest possible way. Here, language is irrelevant. The reality of sensuous and particular being is a truth that carries the seal of our blood. ...To sensuous consciousness it is precisely language that is unreal, nothing. How can it regard itself, therefore, as refuted if it is pointed out that a particular entity cannot be expressed in language? Sensuous consciousness sees precisely in this a refutation of language but not a refutation of sensuous certainty.
[/quote]
But I don't reject concepts, despite F's portrait. Instead, I like H's view.
[quote=link]
In my case, the shift is to suggest that every concept we have is essentially nothing but a tightly packaged bundle of analogies, and to suggest that all we do when we think is to move fluidly from concept to concept — in other words, to leap from one analogy-bundle to another — and to suggest, lastly, that such concept-to-concept leaps are themselves made via analogical connection, to boot.
...
The more we live, the larger our repertoire of concepts becomes, which allows us to gobble up ever larger coherent stretches of life in single mental chunks. As we start seeing life’s patterns on higher and higher levels, the lower levels nearly vanish from our perception. This effectively means that seconds, once so salient to our baby selves, nearly vanish from sight, and then minutes go the way of seconds, and soon so do hours, and then days, and then weeks... “Boy, this year sure went by fast!” is so tempting to say because each year is perceived in terms of chunks at a higher, grander, larger level than any year preceding it, and therefore each passing year contains fewer top-level chunks than any year preceding it, and so, psychologically, each year seems sparser than any of its predecessors.
[/quote]
http://worrydream.com/refs/Hofstadter%20%20Analogy%20as%20the%20Core%20of%20Cognition.pdf
Quoting Wayfarer
That squares with what I know as a non-specialist in this area. In general, philosophy and science chase the eternal, seek to articulate the permanent structure of either the world or the human perception of the world. Some might say 'the real is that which resists.' Others retort that 'the real is that which persists.' Then 'real' is also (explicitly) honorific. 'Now this is real philosophy.'
To me this leads into social ontology, the manner of being of 'public' entities like meanings. My view on this is predictably Wittgensteinian (and Feuerbachian.) The shared 'meaning field' is embodied in our social habits. There's the dancer and the dance. Meaning is a dance we dance together as individual dancers with our own mortal bodies that have to be trained into the dance and eventually leave, perhaps having changed it a little bit.
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm guessing you'll find mostly (something like) conceptualism. If one rejects the idea that 'exist' has a single, clear meaning, the problem changes or even vanishes. For me it doesn't vanish because we can keep clarifying the big picture without ever getting perfectly clear.
I can't disagree with that!
Quoting j0e
Yes real as opposed to phony, Equivalent to true as opposed to false.
I think concepts/analogies work just as well.
Right. But, roughly, a proposition and a jazz performance aren't false in the same way. 'True' and 'false' seem to me just as flexible as 'real.' For me the take-home is something like: there's no substitute for (linguistic) skill. It's like reacting to the total context when driving.
Consider this (more from Hof):
[quote=H]
“Why do babies not remember events that happen to them?” ... I do have a hunch, and I will here speculate on the basis of that hunch....it has to do with the relentless, lifelong process of chunking — taking “small” concepts and putting them together into bigger and bigger ones, thus recursively building up a giant repertoire of concepts in the mind. How, then, might chunking provide the clue to these riddles? Well, babies’ concepts are simply too small. They have no way of framing entire events whatsoever in terms of their novice concepts. It is as if babies were looking at life through a randomly drifting keyhole, and at each moment could make out only the most local aspects of scenes before them. It would be hopeless to try to figure out how a whole room is organized, for instance, given just a keyhole view, even a randomly drifting keyhole view.
[/quote]
http://worrydream.com/refs/Hofstadter%20%20Analogy%20as%20the%20Core%20of%20Cognition.pdf
What I want to stress on though is that the sage doesn't actually possess knowledge that's special or transcendental, knowledge that's beyond the reach of the masses in the sense of being intellectually challenging to grasp. Truth be told, the sage sets himself apart from the rest only because his values don't coincide with the values of the general population. In other words, esoteric "knowledge" is a misconception/misnomer if it's understood as a deeper more truthful account of reality requiring genius and perseverance to wrap our heads around.
For the sparkling diamond that is the knowledge of sages, it's not about depth. It's about facets.
Nice point. This fits in with the idea that esoteric statements are (serious) 'poetry' expressing worldviews and self-concepts. The sage is often unworldy, not a seeker of riches, a seeker instead of a simple life that leaves him free to think, to contemplate and compose this esoteric 'poetry,' to share it with others, edit it with others.
I'm inclined to accept Platonic realism - that numbers, concepts, ideas, are real in their own right, not because someone thinks them, and not because they can be explained in terms of neurological activities.
[quote=Richard Brody - 'Thomas Nagel: Thoughts are Real']Physics is the question of what matter is. Metaphysics is the question of what is real. People of a rational, scientific bent tend to think that the two are coextensive—that everything is physical. Many who think differently are inspired by religion to posit the existence of God and souls; Nagel affirms that he’s an atheist, but he also asserts that there’s an entirely different realm of non-physical stuff that exists—namely, mental contents. The vast flow of perceptions, ideas, and emotions that arise in each human mind is something that, in his view, is real as something other than merely the electrical firings in the brain that gives rise to them—and it exists as surely as does a brain, a chair, an atom, or a gamma ray.
In other words, even if it were possible to map out the exact pattern of brain waves that give rise to a person’s momentary complex of awareness, that mapping would only explain the physical correlate of these experiences, but it wouldn’t be them. A person doesn’t experience patterns, and her experiences are as irreducibly real as her brain waves are - and different from them.[/quote]
We naturally assume that the basis of reality are fundamental particles. But what if the actual bases are ideas? A vastly different vista opens up.
I don't mean to be disparaging of sages but I find it rather implausible that there could be knowledge that only a select few can get a handle on. Of course, the fact that I find mathematics near impossible to comprehend works against me is not lost on me. Maybe there is such a thing as knowledge that only a few chosen ones can fully understand.
I wonder how the Socratic Paradox (I know that I know nothing) fits into all this?
Earlier in the thread, I suggested that (naturalized) inner circles are actually common. You mention math, a good example, but even in philosophy there's conceptual progress. We take it for granted even that scholars that specialize in a thinker's works are likely to have more insight than beginners. I'm not denying exceptions. Strong philosophers can make a case that an entire tradition of interpretation was or is on the wrong track. So perhaps the real issue is the concept of rationality, the 'gentleman's agreement' that we justify our claims and assimilate criticism. Esotericism is associated, rightly or wrongly, with personal authority. The sage is sometimes cast as having a different kind of access than others to evidence or truths.
Quoting TheMadFool
... I seem, then, in just this little thing to be wiser than this man at any rate, that what I do not know I do not think I know either.
Great reference. In some ways that's the way of the anti-sage. Socrates is a complex figure. He's an anti-philosopher and philosopher at the same time. In the same way Jesus was a great critic of religion and the center of one.
As you know, smart people have held that view. What does 'real in their own right' mean exactly?
[quote=W]
What should we gain by a definition, as it can only lead us to other undefined terms?
The difficulty in philosophy is to say no more than we know.
But if you say: "How am I to know what he means, when I see nothing but the signs he gives?" then I say: "How is he to know what he means, when he has nothing but the signs either?"
[/quote]
There's no way to anchor something like 'pure meaning' except in more signs and actions in the world.
Quoting Wayfarer
Just to be clear, I am much more in the 'ideas' camp than in the 'particles' camp. To me the foundation, to the degree that we want to call it that, since it hovers over an abyss in some sense, is practical life and ordinary language. IMV, 'Particles' and 'ideas' are both idealizations, good for some things and bad for others. 'Ideas' are truer to life as we know it, which is great, but proponents tend to flee from our
and their embodiment, projecting an exactitude and permanence on concepts that they don't have. Plato might have tried to stretch insights about geometric idealization too far.
Of course I'm with you on opening vistas, very much! But perhaps you'll agree that ideas-as-basis is anything but new and well-criticized (which doesn't mean we can't criticize the criticism.)
But even the philosophy I like is largely from the 1970s or before. (I'm a 20th century guy it seems.)
[quote=Kant]
The light dove, in free flight cutting through the air the resistance of which it feels, could get the idea that it could do even better in airless space.
[/quote]
Signifieds without signifiers-in-a-shared-lifeworld are doves flapping their wings in a vacuum.
How do you respond to this point? (from the Blue Book thread.)
[quote=Witt]
Frege ridiculed the formalist conception of mathematics by saying that the formalists confused the unimportant thing, the sign, with the important, the meaning. Surely, one wishes to say, mathematics does not treat of dashes on a bit of paper. Frege's ideas could be expressed thus: the propositions of mathematics, if they were just complexes of dashes, would be dead and utterly uninteresting, whereas they obviously have a kind of life. And the same, of course, could be said of any propositions: Without a sense, or without the thought, a proposition would be an utterly dead and trivial thing. And further it seems clear that no adding of inorganic signs can make the proposition live. And the conclusion which one draws from this is that what must be added to the dead signs in order to make a live proposition is something immaterial, with properties different from all mere signs.
But if we had to name anything which is the life of the sign, we have to say that it is its use.
If the meaning of the sign (roughly, that which is of importance about the sign) is an image built up in our minds when we see or hear the sign, then first let us adopt the method we just described of replacing this mental image by some outward object seen, e.g. a painted or modelled image. Then why should the written sign plus this painted image be alive if the written sign alone was dead? -- In fact, as soon as you think of replacing the mental image by, say, a painted one, and as soon as the image thereby loses its occult character, it ceased to seem to impart any life to the sentence at all. (It was in fact just the occult character of the mental process which you needed for your purposes.)
The mistake we are liable to make could be expressed thus: We are looking for the use of a sign, but we look for it as though it were an object co-existing with the sign. (One of reasons for this mistake is again that we are looking for a "thing corresponding to a substantive.")
The sign (the sentence) gets its significance from the system of signs, from the language to which it belongs. Roughly: understanding a sentence means understanding a language.
As a part of the system of language, one may say, the sentence has life. But one is tempted to imagine that which gives the sentence life as something in an occult sphere, accompanying the sentence. But whatever accompanied it would for us just be another sign.
[/quote]
That they’re not reducible or explainable in other terms; that they’re the terminus of explanation.
Quoting j0e
This sounds like you want to sell the idea that esoteric knowledge isn't something one acquires via rational inquiry - the clarifications of definitions, the rigorous application of logic - and that there's another route to it which either bypasses rationality or might even violate its core principles. If such is true then sure sages have what is an exclusive monopoly over esoteric truths; after all, to someone like you or me who are what sages might refer to as "uninitiated" (into the ranks of the chosen) the radically different approaches/techniques/methods employed therein would be so alien to us that we would find it extremely difficult if not impossible to get a handle on what sages consider true knowledge or real wisdom.
Quoting j0e
You can say that again.
I am not arguing that it is not real. I am saying that I have no experience of it and so no longer simply assume it is real. To do so would be like the cave dwellers think that images are real. It is not an argument from ignorance it is a recognition of ignorance and the seduction of images.
Quoting Wayfarer
I have no doubt that Plato understood things that I cannot. That does not mean that I would accept a mysticism that is read into the text as something found in the text.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, that much is clear. My question is how dialectic can free us from hypothesis and give us direct apprehension of the Forms? How can we use hypothesis to free ourselves from hypothesis? If there is a method of apprehending the Forms then why does Socrates profess ignorance of the beautiful and good?
Quoting Wayfarer
The image of the turning of the soul is a depiction of what true knowledge would be. We have not been turned around in that way. But there is still a turning, a coming face to face with our ignorance. The passage should remind us of what happens when the prisoner is released from the shackles and turned around to see the light of the fire and the images that the images on the cave wall are images of.
There is another sense of the images of Forms. Not the things of the world, but the things of the mind. It is analogous to the mathematician's uses images. But the mathematician is not able to free himself of hypothesis and neither are we. The philosopher of the Republic is not the philosopher of the Symposium. The images Plato gives us fuel the desire to be wise, they do not make us wise.
I find it fascinating that so many people here are able to grasp these difficult concepts. People have been calling me smart for as long as I can remember. But this beats me. Really
Good job :up:
No, of course a proposition and a jazz performance aren't exactly true in the same way, but "that's real jazz" is equivalent to "that's true jazz" which was the point I wanted to make.
That said, both a proposition and a jazz performance can be considered true insofar as they 'hit the mark'.
What you are missing in this, I think, is that a sage is one who has learned how to live well; so the esoteric knowledge they possess, that cannot be gained by mere explanation and gathering information, is a form, not of 'knowing that', but of 'knowing how'.
The sage, then, does not know any determinate truth about life after death or before birth, the workings of Karma, the mind of God, or Douglas Adam's "the secret to life, the universe and everything", they just know how to live, how to be themselves without fear, and interact with people without fear or favour, but general love and compassion instead, and so on.
The esoteric knowledge is akin to Aristotle's "phronesis" and "eudamonia" and the skeptic's "ataraxia", and not to some kind of quasi-scientific metaphysical knowledge about the nature of reality. It is not the gaining of something so much as the loss of the ego-based angst and alienation which is such a prominent feature of the life of the ego.
Also their knowledge is a "poesis", a "making", and thus akin to poetry. They don't just (or necessarily even) produce poetry in the form of some artwork, they live it; their lives are in that sense works of art. Foucault suggested something like this, and in that he may have been influenced by Hadot, who saw philosophy as primarily a way of living. The philosophical way of living is necessarily rational, in the sense of 'measured" or "balanced" but not in the sense of being able to be gained merely by rational discourse, by merely being instructed in how to do it. That's the difference between mere science and art, which is not to deny that there is much of art in the best science.
Thanks!
:up:
To 'naturalize' esotericism would be to take it as myths and metaphors. To the degree that cognition is intrinsically metaphorical and that metaphor does the heavy lifting in the works of the great philosophers, there's no sharp boundary between the esoteric and the rational. The vague boundary is more a matter of a second-order willingness to assimilate critics' objections. Consider that Witt wants to show the fly the way our of the bottle, which is like Plato showing fools the way out of the cave. The core principles of rationality (in my view) don't exclude myths and metaphor but only an anti-social refusal to recognize and respond to criticism.
OK, but you've just ignored or neglected my points about language.
Well, I'm not afraid to do that. All indications are the Plato was an Orphic initiate, and as the original definition of 'mystic' was 'an initiate into the Mystery Cults', then Plato was a mystic by definition. The 'mystical Plato' is perfectly at home in later Christian mysticism, where Platonism played a seminal role, but both Protestantism and naturalism reject it.
Quoting j0e
It was tangential to the point I was trying to make. But, now you ask:
I have a completely different way of approaching this question. It's not from Wittgenstein and I haven't read it elsewhere.
Take a determinate proposition - say, a recipe or a formula, which communicates a specific piece of information. This proposition can be represented in any one of a number of languages, and in any one of a number of media. For instance, it could be written in various languages, or encoded in binary and digitized, or written on a piece of paper. In all of those cases, the physical form of the representation is different, but the information remains the same. Ergo, the idea itself is not physical, only the representation is physical. The intellect is capable of recognising, comparing, abstracting and translating the meaning. That is an ability that is logically prior (not temporally, but logically prior) to any science.
Quoting Janus
According to you ex cathedra. ;-)
There's a paragraph on the IEP entry on Pierre Hadot under the heading Askesis of Desire:
Bolds added.
Quoting Wayfarer
I think this is just a good analysis of the everyday notion of meaning. 'It's raining outside.' 'Little drops of water are falling from the sky.' We have the skill to judge these the same (same enough). To me this is a mere starting point. But yes it would be awkward or just absurd to call meaning 'physical.'
Quoting Wayfarer
I think an actual, historically evolved language is necessary, as well as a 'material' organization that keeps people fed, specializes labor, including intellectual labor. This is an element that Kojeve accounts for in his notion of the sage....that the sage cannot arrive until the culture that makes him possible develops historically in a world of work and war. I think we can naturalize or partially deflate the secular sage until 'he' is just state-of-the-art philosophy that has not actually reached the goal but it always catching up with the actual. The owl arrives at dusk. Reality runs ahead of our grasp of it, since our cognition intervenes and changes it.
The "mystical Plato" a failure to understand his use of mythos andpoesis. The conflation of the works of Plato and Platonism is a fundamental mistake.
The images of knowledge in the Republic are his exoteric teaching cleverly disguised as an esoteric teaching. But there is nothing esoteric about it. It is available to all who open the book. It his his salutary public teaching.
Plato, like Socrates before him was a zetetic skeptic, that is, one who seeks and inquires, driven and guided by his knowledge of his ignorance. (Stewart Umphrey uses the term but means different by it).
Shaping arrows is a skill. Reasoning is an ability which can be used to greater or lesser extent but without that ability, there is no way to develop it.
Quoting Fooloso4
Lloyd Gerson refers to 'ur-platonism' in distinction to 'the philosophy of Plato'. Actually that's the substance of his book, From Plato to Platonism, which is another on my to-read list. As is Iris Murdoch's The Sovereignity of the Good.
Quoting Fooloso4
I think that is at least open to debate. You already said:
Quoting Fooloso4
There are others that do see it that way. You may claim they're mistaken but there's no unanimity of opinion on the matter.
Quoting Fooloso4
I bought a book called Belief and Truth by Katja Vogt. It explores these themes. Vogt is also the author of the SEP article on Ancient Scepticism.
But anyway, I will freely admit that my own knowledge of Plato is sketchy, I think it would be wise if I kept counsel unless or until I least read some of the things I'm always talking about reading (The Jowett translation of the Complete Works is available for more or less free so I'm going to go back to those, and the other sources mentioned previously.)
I wonder if he had engaged with Jasper's idea of the 'axial age' and the purported appearance of many of the seminal wisdom traditions (and sages!) all within a few centuries of each other. All of them emerged from early historic cultures, but all of them also represented a massive disconinuity with what came before them.
Just consider how zygotes end up composing philosophy. Does a zygote possess the faculty of reason? If so, then why not earthworms?
Is it even correct to say that children are taught language? Or do they just hang around, get enmeshed in the lifeworld's signaling structures, and get better and better with practice?
That seems highly likely.
[quote=link]
Prior to going to France, Kojève studied under the existentialist thinker Karl Jaspers, submitting his doctoral dissertation on the Russian mystic Vladimir Soloviev's views on the mystical union of God and man in Christ.
[/quote]
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Alexandre_Koj%C3%A8ve
Kojeve's work 'naturalizes' Christian mysticism in some ways.
[quote=link]
Note that Kojève was not denying that at one time in history religion had served a critical purpose. Christianity, in particular, was the first universal religion that came closest to bringing about true self-consciousness by teaching that all human beings are equal as well as finite: “the whole evolution of the Christian world is nothing but a progress toward the atheistic awareness of the essential finiteness of human existence.”The Christian faith was the first religion to discover the spirituality of man as free, individual, and historical. This synthesis of the particular and universal as well as the related recognition of theology as anthropology, became possible only in the form of Christian individuality, Christ as man-God. Yet this religious consciousness lacks true (or political) wisdom. The particular problem is that the religious man thinks that God, not the State, is universal and homogeneous at any time in history. Hence he erroneously believes that he can attain absolute knowledge at any historical moment whatsoever, whereas he can only attain the State (not God), and only at the End of History.Unbeknownst to the religious man, only the universal homogeneous state, the final achievement of equality for all on earth, realizes the Christian ideal of charity (love of all human beings as one would love God)
[/quote]
https://www.voegelin-principles.eu/history-progress-or-reversal-mythical-prognostications-kojeve-and-mcluhan
I'm not endorsing his views by sharing them, though I value him as a philosopher. You can probably see that Marx was a strong influence.
(I have posted this previously, but it is usually scorned because it contains an antiquated and probably offensive term. )
That seems to be part of it, maybe even most of it, but I don't see why making distinctions isn't a skill.
I think there's a version of this in Kojeve, since he describes stoicism and skepticism as escapism for the slaves who are afraid to challenge their worldly masters (risk their lives, their wealth, their reputation.) Otherworldly (pre-atheist) Christianity is a version of this escapism in that it imagines an otherworldly Master for all human beings, no matter their worldly status, thus equalizing them. But Christianity had a social influence and surely contributed to the (atheistic, deistic) American and French revolutions which 'incarnated' such principles politically.
These days reason as is 'animating principle' is likely to look like anthropomorphism. We're back to the idea of nature as an encompassing 'machine' that doesn't care about us, which ignores rain dances and prayers. That, I think, is a 'metaphysical' attitude that's already found in Epicurus who wasn't that interested in natural science otherwise.
:up:
I like this way of looking at the issue.
We're not 'back' in it, we're trapped in it, and the task of philosophy is not to appease the machine, but to see through it.
To many it was a great accomplishment (perhaps 'the' intellectual accomplishment) to achieve such a view of nature as a system of 'laws' or tendencies that could be exploited in ways that were and are reliable unlike anything we had/have ever seen.
We can't appease the machine in the way we once hoped to appease the angry gods. Or that's my view and probably the mainstream view. To me this is independent of fancier metaphysics. Does nature care? Are we encompassed by something inhuman that has to be dealt with through useful models that might never grasp a final truth or essence?
My understanding is that your position is opposed to this vision of dead, apathetic nature. I guess I'm trying to locate exactly where we diverge & clarify both our positions.
Quoting j0e
Nature herself is not dead. Matter is arguably dead, or the least alive part of nature. 'Matter is effete mind' as C. S. Peirce said (where I think 'effete' means 'ineffectual'). Matter doesn't act - it is only acted upon, it's essential nature is passivity, receiving. (You know there's an etymological link between matter and mother, right ;-) )
Philosophy is like religion in some respects but different in others. If you look at philosophy in the old tradition, it was indeed a cure or a therapy for mistaken belief or cognition, for attaching significance to the wrong things. That is explained in Pierre Hadot's writings. Reason plays a central role, but so too does deep introspection and the perennial requirement for self-knowledge. Philosophy can be literally translated as love~wisdom - not an academic subject, but a state of being which is animated by those qualities. Sophia in the ancient world was depicted as a beautiful maiden. I can totally relate to that (actually I wrote a song called For Sophia decades ago, after my first ever retreat, it is the only composition of mine to have been regularly performed in public, during the 1990's.)
But because that kind of sentiment is easily associated with religion then it's rejected on those grounds - guilt by association, so to speak, as Pierre Hadot notes. The intellectual heritage of the West, of which neoplatonism was the high point, became absorbed into Christian theology, and then rejected along with it. Somewhere along the line, some vital understanding became lost or abandoned. Not totally lost, because our cultural situation is open and multi-faceted and we are able to study these ideas. And it has always had its exponents. We arguably couldn't have maintained that openness if the religious authorities had held sway. (Wasn't that a major theme in The Name of the Rose?) So I'm not wanting to go back to some long-dead past or an appeal to theocracy. There's a sense of something missing, both in myself and in the culture. That's what has captured my attention.
:up:
I think it's still that, even for some professional philosophers, even for atheists.
Quoting Wayfarer
By some perhaps, but even despisers of the 'spiritual' are chasing the image of Sophia that they see her.
Quoting Wayfarer
For some, yes. And even those who don't feel a spiritual longing want more of what's best in the world we already have (when not absorbed in a play that seizes the moment and finds it complete.)
Quoting Wayfarer
Nice song & nice voice! I'll send you a link to one of the songs I've written.
I can make sense of this as 'pure' science only predicting and not intervening. I like the distinction, but I think pure science would be trapped at a certain level without the invention of various scientific instruments which would contaminate that purity. Consider the telescope that controls light and allows for new observations and new predictions.
Do you mean to say that those who promote rationality as the be all and end all of cognition as we know it are wrong to the extent that it's (rationality's) intolerant of criticism? Care to elaborate on that point? As far as I can tell, rationality is dead against any and all claims made sans evidence and this epistemic rule applies to itself too. If anything this highly commendable feature of rationality - it demands of itself what it demands of others (justification) - clearly points to a willingness to heed & respond to criticisms levelled against rationality. :chin:
My two suggestions are that cognition is largely metaphorical and that rationality is not strictly defined. Philosophers often propose definitions for or explications of science and critical thinking, but I don't think there is or ever will be an exact consensus. Perhaps you've studied logical positivism and movements like that: it's hard to rule out 'metaphysics' or metaphor without relying on both.
I think we'll always be down in this mess together, talking about our talking, experimenting, compromising.
Quoting TheMadFool
I agree, claims without evidence are judged irrational, and I think evidence has an ethical-social aspect. We don't just impose our theories/myths on others. We make a case, respond to criticism, work together toward a common theory/myth. I only include 'myth' to emphasize the metaphorical aspect of cognition, something like basic framings of the situation like Rorty's 'mirror of nature.' I also agree that (ideally) the epistemic rule applies to itself. We try to be rational as we decide what it is to be rational (so we work with a rough understanding we have -- what's the alternative? --- in order to improve it.)
Quoting TheMadFool
:up:
Right! And the failings in logical positivism (one image of rationality) were assimilated by philosophers so that more sophisticated & flexible notions could appear which kept the good and jettisoned what was shown not to work. (That's just one example with a clear plot.)
A drive-by of the Wikipedia article on logical positivism informs me that it's a epistemological position that only observationally verifiable claims/propositions count as knowledge and anything other than that is nonsense.
The rationale for logical positivism is under one interpretation a very good one. Take falsehoods/lies for instance. That a claim is a faleshood/lie is predicated on it not being verifiable via observation. Thus, claims that can't be confirmed by carrying out an observation are indistinguoshable in this respect from falsehoods/lies. In a nutshell, anything that fails the verification principle falls into the same cateogory as faleshoods/lies - in both cases attempts to verify claims fail or are impossible. The choice, a hard one I suppose, is to either reject the verification principle and, by doing that, legitimize falsehoods/lies or stick to a policy that no matter what else it does or is in what ways it could be wrong, it at least keeps falsehoods/lies at a safe distance. Just saying...
I like the spirit of it, but did you notice:
[quote=link]
Logical positivists within the Vienna Circle recognized quickly that the verifiability criterion was too stringent. Notably, all universal generalizations are empirically unverifiable, such that, under verificationism, vast domains of science and reason, such as scientific hypothesis, would be rendered meaningless.
[/quote]
Here are some other views (or leads/samples you might find interesting.)
[quote=Quine]
The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience. A conflict with experience at the periphery occasions readjustments in the interior of the field. Truth values have to be redistributed over some of our statements. Re-evaluation of some statements entails re-evaluation of others, because of their logical interconnections -- the logical laws being in turn simply certain further statements of the system, certain further elements of the field. Having re-evaluated one statement we must re-evaluate some others, whether they be statements logically connected with the first or whether they be the statements of logical connections themselves. But the total field is so undetermined by its boundary conditions, experience, that there is much latitude of choice as to what statements to re-evaluate in the light of any single contrary experience. No particular experiences are linked with any particular statements in the interior of the field, except indirectly through considerations of equilibrium affecting the field as a whole.
If this view is right, it is misleading to speak of the empirical content of an individual statement -- especially if it be a statement at all remote from the experiential periphery of the field. Furthermore it becomes folly to seek a boundary between synthetic statements, which hold contingently on experience, and analytic statements which hold come what may. Any statement can be held true come what may, if we make drastic enough adjustments elsewhere in the system. Even a statement very close to the periphery can be held true in the face of recalcitrant experience by pleading hallucination or by amending certain statements of the kind called logical laws. Conversely, by the same token, no statement is immune to revision. Revision even of the logical law of the excluded middle has been proposed as a means of simplifying quantum mechanics; and what difference is there in principle between such a shift and the shift whereby Kepler superseded Ptolemy, or Einstein Newton, or Darwin Aristotle?
For vividness I have been speaking in terms of varying distances from a sensory periphery. Let me try now to clarify this notion without metaphor. Certain statements, though about physical objects and not sense experience, seem peculiarly germane to sense experience -- and in a selective way: some statements to some experiences, others to others. Such statements, especially germane to particular experiences, I picture as near the periphery. But in this relation of "germaneness" I envisage nothing more than a loose association reflecting the relative likelihood, in practice, of our choosing one statement rather than another for revision in the event of recalcitrant experience. For example, we can imagine recalcitrant experiences to which we would surely be inclined to accommodate our system by re-evaluating just the statement that there are brick houses on Elm Street, together with related statements on the same topic. We can imagine other recalcitrant experiences to which we would be inclined to accommodate our system by re-evaluating just the statement that there are no centaurs, along with kindred statements. A recalcitrant experience can, I have already urged, be accommodated by any of various alternative re-evaluations in various alternative quarters of the total system; but, in the cases which we are now imagining, our natural tendency to disturb the total system as little as possible would lead us to focus our revisions upon these specific statements concerning brick houses or centaurs. These statements are felt, therefore, to have a sharper empirical reference than highly theoretical statements of physics or logic or ontology. The latter statements may be thought of as relatively centrally located within the total network, meaning merely that little preferential connection with any particular sense data obtrudes itself.
As an empiricist I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of science as a tool, ultimately, for predicting future experience in the light of past experience. Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries -- not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer. Let me interject that for my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer's gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conception only as cultural posits. The myth of physical objects is epistemologically superior to most in that it has proved more efficacious than other myths as a device for working a manageable structure into the flux of experience.
[/quote]
http://fs2.american.edu/dfagel/www/Class%20Readings/Quine/TwoDogmasofEmpiricism.htm
[quote=Sellars]
The idea that observation "strictly and properly so-called" is constituted by certain self-authenticating nonverbal episodes, the authority of which is transmitted to verbal and quasi-verbal performances when these performances are made "in conformity with the semantical rules of the language," is, of course, the heart of the Myth of the Given. For the given, in epistemological tradition, is what is taken by these self-authenticating episodes. These 'takings' are, so to speak, the unmoved movers of empirical knowledge, the 'knowings in presence' which are presupposed by all other knowledge, both the knowledge of general truths and the knowledge 'in absence' of other particular matters of fact. Such is the framework in which traditional empiricism makes its characteristic claim that the perceptually given is the foundation of empirical knowledge.
Let me make it clear, however, that if I reject this framework, it is not because I should deny that observings are inner episodes, nor that strictly speaking they are nonverbal episodes. It will be my contention, however, that the sense in which they are nonverbal -- which is also the sense in which thought episodes are nonverbal is one which gives no aid or comfort to epistemological givenness.
....
...If I reject the framework of traditional empiricism, it is not because I want to say that empirical knowledge has no foundation. For to put it this way is to suggest that it is really "empirical knowledge so-called," and to put it in a box with rumors and hoaxes. There is clearly some point to the picture of human knowledge as resting on a level of propositions -- observation reports -- which do not rest on other propositions in the same way as other propositions rest on them. On the other hand, I do wish to insist that the metaphor of "foundation" is misleading in that it keeps us from seeing that if there is a logical dimension in which other empirical propositions rest on observation reports, there is another logical dimension in which the latter rest on the former.
Above all, the picture is misleading because of its static character. One seems forced to choose between the picture of an elephant which rests on a tortoise (What supports the tortoise?) and the picture of a great Hegelian serpent of knowledge with its tail in its mouth (Where does it begin?). Neither will do. For empirical knowledge, like its sophisticated extension, science, is rational, not because it has a foundation but because it is a self-correcting enterprise which can put any claim in jeopardy, though not all at once.
[/quote]
http://www.ditext.com/sellars/epm8.html
My once believing it is attestation of how we are fooled by the disguise.
There is an esoteric teaching hidden in the exoteric teaching. It is about protecting philosophy from the polis and the polis from philosophy.
If a tone deaf person criticizes music ...
So one gets told that there are things one cannot understand. One is excluded from some group. Some thusly excluded people handle this by downplaying the importance of said group and its expertise. Some do it by playing it up.
Quoting j0e
But that's the real issue here, isn't it (or one of them)? The demand for recognition, for respect.
The idea of there being a knowledge that only a few chosen ones can fully understand is mostly not offensive, as can be seen in the way people are generally nonchalant about their ignorance of and inability to understand, say, advanced mathematics, the engineering of building skyscrapers, or the tuning of musical instruments.
A proposed exclusivity of knowledge does generally become offensive in matters that concern man's basic sense of morality, epistemology, and issues of "the meaning of life". The idea that only a select few should be able to discern correctly what is morally right and what is wrong, or how to know "how things really are", or what "the meaning of life" is -- such an idea gets to us, we cannot be nonchalant about it. We tend to feel offended by notions of exclusivity in this domain; or we feel hopeless about it and life in general.
One of the meanings of "rational" is 'proportional', 'in ratio'.
If both of us lack knowledge, say, of advanced mathematics, but nevertheless try to discuss it, such a discussion is necessarily not rational, it's not in proportion to the field of expertise of advanced mathematics. And it's pointless.
It's similar with "esoteric knowledge". Adepts in some esoteric discipline spend a lot of time discussing those esoteric topics, and within that reference frame, their discussion is rational. An outsider, however, cannot rationally, meaningfully participate in such discussions.
For example:
If you want to limit the meaning of "rational" to a particular flavor of secular academic discourse, then you should recognize this as a matter of your choice, not a given.
The 'works whether or not you believe in it' criterion of science/technology works only for things, not for persons. That's not much of an achievement. To limit one's life to things that 'work whether or not you believe in it' makes for an impoverished, zombified existence.
Quoting j0e
Oh, that's easy. Someone who teaches moderation in enjoyment (sic!) must have a secret doctrine. Preventing the pursuit of enjoyment from devolving into brute hedonism requires some special insight.
Rather, the assumption seems to be that such a distinction doesn't exist or isn't justified.
Quoting Janus
One thing I find peculiar about those that might be called "sages" is the way they can incorporate, contextualize Western philosophy.
For example I've seen Buddhist teachers incorporate, contextualize Western philosophy in a way that Western philosophy doesn't incorporate, contextualize Buddhism.
I think it is important to make distinctions as to what esoteric means. The term is used to mean occult or arcane knowledge, but it is also used simply to mean a hidden teaching. There are many reasons why what one says would be kept from the authorities or public. As to whether the latter exists in the history of philosophy:
[quote="Melzer "Philosophy Between the Lines"]The famous Encyclopédie of Diderot, for instance, not only discusses this practice in over twenty different articles, but admits to employing it itself. The history of Western thought contains hundreds of such statements by major philosophers testifying to the use of esoteric writing in their own work or others’. [/quote]
I seem to have overlooked that side of the issue - universal claims can't be verified. However, if it were up to me, I'd prefer to forfeit the right to universal claims rather than lose the ability to distinguish lies from truths. Just to be clear, this is just a gut-feeling and I have nothing by way of a good justification for it except that it feels right to me.
As for how knowledge is built up of an interconnected network of propositions that provide support to each other and in being such is vulnerable to catastrophic structural failure even if only one proposition fails (is proven false), we're on the same page. However, it's not all doom and gloom as such events have occurred in the past and have been dealt with quite well and without the need for a major overhaul of the existing framework of knowledge. The future though may be an altogether different story.
Indeed, at this juncture I'm reminded of the creationist trope in re Darwin's theory of evolution which is, it's just a theory - a rather rude reminder to science that despite its reputation and despite its achievements if we can even call it that, at its heart it'll always be just one of countless different ways of understanding the universe, Homeric gods being one of them.
I hope I didn't misunderstand you.
Yes, probably. Neither of which have any bearing whatsoever on the question of whether that group were correct about ttier esoteric knowledge claims.
Quoting baker
Sounds plausible. Unfortunately no-one is using that heterodox meaning of 'rational' in this discussion so I don't see how it's relevant.
Of course, but that's not my point. I'm saying that the relevant point here is how one deals with such exclusion. How does one deal with unknown things, things currently unknowable to one, things currently undecidable to one. How does one deal with ambivalence and uncertainty.
"Rational" is one of the most debated terms. I refer you to Elster's classic Sour Grapes: Studies in the Subversion of Rationality.
Like I said earlier:
Quoting baker
This meaning is crucial for understanding pre-modern thought, for problems such as the One and the many, and the Forms. Reason for the ancients functioned by way of comparison - this in relation to that.
If the sage did know something determinate which could be discursively demonstrated, then we would have examples of such demonstrations, as we do with science and mathematics. So, when I say the sage does not know any such thing, I mean we have no reason to believe the sage knows any such thing.
If you want to say the sage knows something determinate which she cannot rationally demonstrate, then I would ask what that could even mean.
It seems that your apparent desire to have your cake and eat it too leads you to hold a position which is inherently contradictory. And all this while acknowledging that you yourself possess no such special knowledge and are just one of the "hoi polloi", which begs the question as to how you could know that sages know anything determinate (beyond the ordinary everyday determinate things that the hoi polloi know). Is it just something you are attached to believing, perhaps?
Can you give an example?
We seem to keep getting stuck on this. If the assertion is that higher truth that can only be apprehended by non-rational means, the notion of demonstration or evidence takes on a different slant. That's kind of the point of the 'sage caper' - it is beyond the fragilities of even the scientific method. To say it is bunk because it can't be demonstrated is fair enough from a physicalist perspective, but perhaps we are trying to use a ruler to measure air pollution? The test of a sage's wisdom is presumably found by doing the work - learning the lessons, following the contemplative life, etc.
This discussion has been one of definitions and suppositions which is fine to a point, But in the end we have lack specificity. Who is a sage we can explore? What can be said about this sage? Incidentally, how many female sages can we name?
I think there have been major overhauls, so the reason I'm not doom & gloom is because I think we can keep adapting with new major overhauls.
Quoting TheMadFool
I think we're somewhat on the same page. To me science is mostly manifested and matters as reliable prediction and control, as tools that work independent of my trust in them. Other tools, like stories about the gods, are seemingly more useful for group morale or personal orientation in a pluralistic society. (I should add though that Q probably had 'using' the gods in mind by working them in to explanations of events. The wind didn't blow to move the ships because Poseidon was mad. So let's sacrifice a virgin princess, etc.)
:up:
I think it's true that we model nature in terms of mechanism, and the notion of mechanism inherently involves the idea of lifelessness, lack of agency. It's hard for us to conceive any way in which nature could care about us or about itself, in the way that we care about our own lives, since we tend to see it as radically other when it's dangerous side is revealed, and romanticize it as a kind of Arcadia created for our pleasure by something beyond nature when we are comfortable. That self-caring we "enjoy" seems to require a certain kind of intelligence which we share to varying degrees perhaps only with some of the so-called "higher" animals.
Some spiritual visions, for example Spinoza's, involve learning to let go of this caring which is rooted in self-concern and the anxieties it induces. I think such a vision also requires letting go of our models of nature, or at least of the belief that they reveal something about the nature of reality, since the map is never the territory.
I think there are tools that work on people (drugs) whether on not those people believe in them or not, but I agree. I'm not arguing for scientism. Overall I like our free(-ish) society that allows for DIY religion. If someone wants to be a Catholic or a scientologist, because it works for them, fine. If they want to get their kicks from secular philosophy and novels, also fine.
Quoting baker
Exactly. That's one of the reasons I mentioned Kojeve, who focuses on this as a driving force in the human history of war, work, and ideology-religion-philosophy.
Quoting baker
Right. If the person holding such views is low status in 'worldly' or 'charisma' terms (can't boss me around, doesn't seem worth impressing) & if they are obnoxious or arrogant, then they are just mocked for vanity and delusion, behind their backs probably. If they can boss me around, then their ideology might be perceived as a threat to my freedom. The charismatic ideological opponent will cause me cognitive dissonance & might even persuade/convert me. Then we march under the same flag and perhaps argue about who's closer to that flag (the 'sacred')...but hopefully take some time to enjoy being insiders together.
I basically agree with you here. I'd say that 'rational' roughly refers to the 'universal' inner circle, which connects to political freedom, especially freedom of speech. A non-universal circle would put some individuals' statements above criticism. A Scientologist doesn't challenge Hubbard's doctrines but merely interprets him in this or that tolerated direction.
Right. I'd say that we do (the 'educated' in 2021) while humans in the past and some even now dance for the gods to make it rain or trust prayer handkerchiefs to cure cancer. That might be the 'big' shift, which is an emotional shift as much as a conceptual shift.
Quoting Janus
:up:
I'm with you there. I think some would like to take useful models in a metaphysical way so that the physicist can replace the priest. As Lange stresses (responding to the Spinoza comment) in his history of materialism, Epicurus only cared about physics to the degree that it liberated humans from the fear of death, demons, etc. This isn't to speak against physics but to emphasize the point above.
:up:
I think it's also fair to say that some groups are formed in the first place as a reaction against mainstream views. A 'godless' 'scientific' 'materialist' (etc.) worldview is just intolerable or depressing to some people. The fundamentalist is directly opposed, while Romantics and 'spiritual but not religious' options try to give the 'devil' at least some of his due.
Does Wittgenstein have such a room? Is he talking about his own writing? Why would he wish to keep "certain people" out? Does the difference between these people and some others have something to do with the ability of those who notice the lock? Is the ability to notice the lock somehow the key to open it? Is this merely a matter of attentiveness or is there something else that allows only some people to notice a locked room?
If Wittgenstein is talking about his own writing then it seems fair to say that his writing is, at least in part, esoteric. It appears to be a self-selective process. Those who gain access do so because of some ability or characteristic that others lack. It makes no sense to ask what is in the room if we do not even see that there is a looked room.
I think the main obstacle to 'getting' Wittgenstein (from my POV, of course) is an emotional attachment to metaphysics and/or religion. Folks don't want the ghost in the machine and directly present & exact meaning to vanish before them.
You don't have to pay to read the texts & they aren't passed around like secrets. Instead there are just readers who recognize (or not) the value or correctness of other readers' interpretations (which as you note can involved the creation of separate inner circles.)
Good point - a scientific experiment, I suppose (I'm not well read on this, admittedly), requires setting up an environment that controls for variables (by artificially removing them?) Yeah, on reflection, I think you're right here.
Part of my knee-jerk reaction against the relationship between science & control is that sometimes people make too much hay out of the relation of power to knowledge in science and then draw over-reaching conclusions. Now, I don't think that's what you were doing here, but I think I've built up a reflex to signs of that and reflexively responded along those lines.
Well, there is no initiation or secret society, but there is something hidden that only some can understand. It is, using the metaphor of a locked room, an inner inquiry as opposed to an outward one.
Quoting j0e
More often than not they are passed around without any awareness that they contain secrets, but what is behind a locked door is a secret.
Quoting j0e
We do not need to imagine it, such groups exist.
In a draft for the forward to Philosophical Remarks Wittgenstein says:
Anyone can read the book, but it is written for the few who understand it. If only a few will understand it then most who interpret it do not understand it, for they cannot hold different opinions about what the text means and all be correct.
Nietzsche said much the same:
Yeah, that's a good point. That was always my criticism of U.G. Krishnamurti, back when I used to talk to people who talked about U.G. Krishnamurti. His thing was that he didn't care at all about guruhood, that people came to him and he didn't even want it. Still, on his deathbed he dictated a guru-y swan-song. He knew what he was doing the whole time. So it goes.
My feeling is that Socrates was self-consciously an anti-sage. I think he was a charismatic, genuine, figure who delighted in good-naturedly poking at the weakpoints of other would-be-sages (but was he only that? it's not clear from Plato what exactly Socrates' relation was to the idea of forms.... he might not have been solely someone who only knew that he knew nothing. He might have had an idea, and carefully popped all the other balloons until there was space for his own thing. It's hard to say, only having Plato's Soctrates. The Parmenides is a weird text in this respect.)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kingsley
I think I relate & agree here. I tend to blend the prestige issue with the demarcation issue. I think ordinary people care about science because of its power. We can lump prediction and control into a subset of coping if we want, or of tools that work with or without their users' faith in them (where Buddhism or Satanism or Hegelianism may or may not work., depending on investment, perhaps because investment/hope is the main course.)
Right - science yields antibiotics (to take the low-hanging, cliche defense of science), but that doesn't get at the everyday way many people relate to Science, capital S. I know some people who delight in digging up evidence as to why Jesus wasn't a real figure, while idealizing science. That thing is pure ideology (I think they'd probably be the same people who, if they lived at the time of Hezekiah, would have paid lipservice to his rediscovery of Deuteronomy while bashing the other beliefs of the time. i.e. 'the rubes in the rural areas still pray to Ishtar while those in the know, know that the power-center is pure Mosaic. If you're not a redneck, it's clear. Everyone I know at the temple agrees, and we have a good laugh at their expense, drinking wine at home.)
But, still, science has antibiotics and a million other things, in a way Hezekiah doesn't. Certainly. I think I want to say that the impulse behind the scientific method is the same impulse we have when we are skeptical of its claim to truth. And that, I think, is good. The same monks who thought hierarchy was bunk, and wanted to experiment, came up with ways to experiment. We can come up with ways to value what they did, and also see how it's limiting in some ways.
Both Witt and Nietzsche were pioneers, ahead of their time, probably used to being misunderstood. I find it plausible that the times caught up with them so that many more understand them than they might have dared hope.
I don't think that even the author knows the exact meaning of their text or that such meaning is stable (influenced by Witt himself and Derrida and others on this matter.) But I think it's fair to project a stable-enough gist (intention) and finally mostly tune it in (or believe that one has.)
I agree that two wildly different interpretations/projections can't both be right, but it's possible that more than one will be valuable.
This is another great issue. I think people believe in 'Science' (as featured on bumperstickers and yardsigns) also because the Good people do (politics/class). To not believe in Science is to be a redneck or some other backwards monster. Hopefully I'm responding to correct point/prompt.
(Because the TV tells them to.)
:up:
I'm with you very much on that, the ideology of science, the sloppy and absurd attempts to claim it and use it without respecting its 'spirit.' Beyond all the utility there's something pure, a child's curiosity. Like how many eggs do black widows lay on average? This is biology/statistics a person could do without textbooks or instruments, just to know. There's already the concept of a random variable here, nature as a casino. (I love the 'imperfections' of spiderwebs, the tension between the ideal and the actual one finds in them.)
I found him fascinating once but was eventually put off by certain contradictions. That's how complicated this game can get. There's always a cave or a bottle or a matrix. We can't escape this structure completely without inhabiting it naively, so we seek and half-find a reasonable version of it.
(?)
But that's it - there's something similar about reposting a 'fuckyeahscience' facebook post and a 'fuckyeahart' van gogh - that is just pure signaling, in the same way.
All that rigamarole and whatever it is - i guess its like 'first there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then then there is' - but it's like a push to get back to the simple thing
Just to be clear, I think there's an esoteric element in lots of good philosophy. Take the bottle and the flies. It's one thing to let this metaphor wash over you with no effect and another to think back to when one was in the bottle, back before the ideological sea-change. Witt (along with others like Derrida & Saussure) radically changed the way I think about language, which reverberated and reverberates through my understanding of everything else. When I talk to people about this (not in general like right now but the details) they give or fail to give me the sense that they've grasped it. That we donut meow what we are barking about.
Yeah, i don't know, I'm in the same boat. I've really wanted a guru at parts in my life, and have alwaysfound something to distrust in everyone. I like the forum split in some ways. argue stuff on here, live a normal and unphilosophically related life irl. I don't have a mentor but i'd like to think if I found one I wouldn't hold him to a nirvana thing - I'd just try to figure out how he managed not to go berserk by 60, and try to learn from that? I assume anyone I trust will eventually do something I find abhorrent. I do things I find abhorrent. So what I'm hoping is I can find peace of mind to be like, ok yeah, you've lived this life too [x], how'd you make it work?
There's an art of leaving just enough in the stains for other maniacs to decipher. Or I mean that's just some crazy shit a friend of mine said to me once.
I think there's something profound in our anonymous situation. I do talk irl about this stuff when I can (not often these days), but here there's a concentration of one's philosophy-writing self.
Quoting csalisbury
I can relate. I can think back on a string of intellectual heroes, father figures. Slowly the fallibility of all humans comes into focus. As you say, everyone does something nasty at some point. There's a little bit of the monster in everyone or they're not human. Or I just don't believe in the Sage anymore but only in people who are better on the horn, better on the horse, for awhile. (My old man was a god when I was a boy. Now he's in a wheelchair without teeth.) So I make peace with dying in sin, never being perfect, one corner of my temple unfinished. This is a song I can sing now with my espresso buzz and nicotine patch and Coltrane playing and the feeling that I'm being understood, recognized...
By song I just meant me being able to make peace with dying in sin, saying yes to the mess. I don't want to front like I'm always doing so well, that life couldn't kick my ass if it wanted to. I'm tiny in the hand of God/Nature/Whatever. (More's the pity! Ain't celebrating this hand. Or am I? Don't know now.) Soundtrackwise, I just fired up A Love Supreme.
Quoting csalisbury
Quoting j0e
The ordinary people I've known are not all much interested in science to be honest. Sure, they recognize its efficacy, but they also think it gave us nuclear weapons and climate change. Science is the creator/destroyer God, if you like.
People often live unexamined lives and they might think science is more plausible than religion (only because fundamentalists' theistic claims are so inane) but when it comes to scientific positions, they don't know the Newtonian model from, say, the Copenhagen Interpretation. If there are sages these days they might as well be the likes of Roger Penrose or Neil deGrasse Tyson, talking us through the Hermetic conundrums of the initial singularity and quantum field theory. The fact is we need science elders to talk as through ideas because quite frankly much science remains as inscrutable to ordinary folk as Plato's theory of forms.
Definitely. My formal education is in STEM and now I know how stupid I am in a new way, how little I know relative to what the species as a whole knows.
Maybe Newton's right about the pebble too. What mad infinity of discoveries is possible? Especially if we don't obsess over boiling them down to one.
I agree. Our sci-fi shows that we're no longer in an optimistic age. It's a mixture of dread and hope. I've been watching Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Call it a guilty pleasure, but I love it.
I think there might be a hard limit. I am only slowly accepting I won't understand our age's cosmology and physics. I wonder if part of the problem is that, with religion, it was always clear what register a mass, or a elusinian mystery, was supposed to be in - its not clear what register science is supposed to be in. And part of that is the priests an mystery-guardians were directly tapped in, in a directly transmissible way - now there's always an inherent difference - they know the science, you don't, and its not a matter of consecration, or induction. They're just the people with the brains and focus, who learned it. What to make of it? We have to cobble it together from their various presentations, in totally different registers.
For example, the Carl Sagan Cosmos used the imagery of a spaceship cruising. And then, imagine a planetarium at 12. A feynman lecture. a look at the equations in a book one time. Brian Greene, softly guiding you. Carlo Rovelli trying to make it weird and electric but intuitive. All these very distinct vibes on the same subject, but you can only know the subject through years of study.
Well, mostly by trying to resolve it (if one has the time and inclination) or ignoring it if not. Since most people engaging here are doing so as a hobby outside of their normal jobs/lifetasks I'd say most are of the former persuasion - "let's have a crack at resolving a bit of this uncertainty". It's better than Netflix.
Quoting baker
Who's not recognising it as a choice? I just presume I'm discussing the matter with people who consider 'rational discussion' to be an activity non-experts can engage in, otherwise what the hell are they posting on a non-specialist internet forum for? What's the point in putting up a post purportedly to discuss some matter and then saying "Oh no-one can actually discuss this because none of you are initiated into my sect"? I don't think it's an unreasonable assumption to make that no-one would do that.
:up:
I don't know what the 'physical' is (beyond hoisting the word into this or that context) or even what exactly this 'reality' thing is supposed to be... but I trust the machines & pills to work. I show it by reaching for them.
Nietzsche is explicit in saying he wants to be misunderstood except by a few. Wittgenstein is not quite so explicit, but if his writing contains locked rooms that are not even noticed then he too writes in such a way that he will be misunderstood except by a few.
While it is clear that the commentaries have changed, this is not the same as saying that more now understand the works they are interpreting. For the commentaries differ, and so, there is still a great deal of misunderstanding. And since far more read the secondary material instead of primary texts misunderstandings are compounded rather than reduced.
In the aphorism Nietzsche talks about "nobler spirits and tastes" and "open[ing] the ears of those whose ears are related to ours". I don't think ours is an age of nobler spirits and tastes. Wittgenstein talks about how he is at odds with the spirit of the age. It is not a matter of cracking the code but of a sympathetic attunement, of kindred spirits. And since kindred spirits are so few, they write in such a way so as to address those spirits while keeping others out.
Quoting j0e
Texts take on a meaning of their own. But when Nietzsche and Wittgenstein talk about being understood they mean according to their own understanding.
I basically agree. I do think our age has some noble spirits though.
Quoting Fooloso4
Agreed.
I must confess that I do not know what Nietzsche means by noble spirits. Perhaps the problem is that I cannot recognize what I am not.
Having said that, I think that I might prefer not only to be thought of as a noble spirit but to actually be one. And this leads immediately to the question: by whose standards?
I consider that one that of those issues that readers could discuss forever, never settling for some exact and final articulation. We quote this or that passage, but I like to guess at that using the grandest and most golden passages in his work.
Here's my personal view (for whatever it's worth.) I think people in general (including foolosophers like us ) are occasionally in high or grand moods that open 'noble' conceptual-poetic perspectives on existence. They are (we all are) part-time half-ass sages. Recall the times in your life when you were beyond resentment, in love with the world, magnanimous, looking at existence from the heights of that feeling or attitude. If friends are around (as they often are at such times), you want them to be there with you, stand beside you completely equal, because there's plenty to go around, and you don't even want anyone to own it. I'm an atheist but I understand to praise god (or the gods or reality or life or whatever) as maybe the 'highest' thing we do, perhaps within the beauty of friendship, trading poems that discover or amplify this beauty, even if that includes acknowledging the horror too. Foolosophy is one genre of this 'poetry' evolving historically, enjoying and reflecting on itself, perhaps improving on itself.
I know of course that we can't live on the peaks, and that it stinks in the valleys, but I think the stuff people write (and sing and dance and draw and act and so on) can help get us back up there.
The little I know about Nietzsche tells me (not me, I ain't telling this to myself) that it's the opposite of the slave spirit. The slave spirit is the birthchild of Christianity: always apologetic, pleading, happy with little favours, not thinking of himself or herself worthy of large favours.
Consequently the noble spirit is not apologetic (therefore dares to look out for numero uno), proud of his or her personal achievements, and does not hide his or her joy over the right to be proud; and feels entitled.
Yes, for instance, the immediate past POTUS today. Or Putin. Or Netanyahu. Or Csontvary Koska Tivadar from the Jozsefvaros. Basically anyone who is not afraid to show their satisfation with being outstanding, and willing and wishing to reap the rewards for their outstanding contributions.
This quote almost makes me want to read more Plato. I skimmed through the "Republic", and I found Socrates nothing but a clever arguer, with a sharp mind and incredible follow-through, however, someone also who never shied away from using psychological pressure to make his fallacious arguments stick. I think Socrates (at least in that book) came across as a person who had an insatiable appetite to win arguments.
To make things worse, I find you, Fooloso4, not only tendentious but also void of moral deplitude, clearly intrapretational, and definitely procumptious.
Beware the 'Vain man' tho, also known as 'His Majesty the Baby. ' I think sometimes good manners can be misinterpreted as weakness, and that anti-social egoism can be mistaken for strength. After all, the junkie who robs his mother is 'looking out for numero uno.' It's one thing to claim a fair portion and another to squander the trust and affection of those who would otherwise be powerful allies. Like or it or not, we are terribly dependent on one another. The smart way to look out for #1 is to be a valued player on a strong team. And what exactly are the boundaries of the self? If I nurture my child, cheer up my wife, share opportunities with a friend, help a stranger start their car....is that really so obviously not looking out for #1?
[quote=Aristotle]
He that claims less than he deserves is small-souled...For the great-souled man is justified in despising other people—his estimates are correct; but most proud men have no good ground for their pride...It is also characteristic of the great-souled man never to ask help from others, or only with reluctance, but to render aid willingly; and to be haughty towards men of position and fortune, but courteous towards those of moderate station...He must be open both in love and in hate, since concealment shows timidity; and care more for the truth than for what people will think; and speak and act openly, since as he despises other men he is outspoken and frank, except when speaking with ironical self-depreciation, as he does to common people...He does not bear a grudge, for it is not a mark of greatness of soul to recall things against people, especially the wrongs they have done you, but rather to overlook them...Such then being the Great-souled man, the corresponding character on the side of deficiency is the Small-souled man, and on that of excess the Vain man.
[/quote]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnanimity
[quote=Freud]
Illness, death, renunciation of enjoyment, restrictions on his own will, shall not touch him; the laws of nature and of society shall be abrogated in his favour; he shall once more really be the centre and core of creation—‘His Majesty the Baby’, as we once fancied ourselves. The child shall fulfil those wishful dreams of the parents which they never carried out—the boy shall become a great man and a hero in his father’s place, and the girl shall marry a prince as a tardy compensation for her mother.
[/quote]
https://blogs.uoregon.edu/autismhistoryproject/archive/sigmund-freud-on-narcissism-1914/
I will neither affirm not deny what you say about me since I don't know what it means. I cannot tell if you made up these terms or just misspelled them badly enough that I cannot identify them and what might be their meaning, I will, at the risk of confirming whatever it is you say find about me, comment on what you find in the Republic.
Many years ago when I first read Plato my first impression was much like yours. He was out to win the argument and did so by questionable means. So I set out to make my own arguments against him. The more I tried to pick apart his arguments the more I saw not only how closely tied together they were but how they opened up larger issues, and eventually how those too hung together. My youthful confidence in what I thought I knew was shaken and I was hooked.
Two quick points: Socrates defends justice against the sophist Thrasymachus. He beats him at his own game. On the one hand he is defending justice against Thrasymachus' claim that justice is the advantage of the stronger. On the other, he is defending philosophy against sophistry and the claim that the sophist can teach the art of making the weaker argument stronger.
Th...us claims what IS. Socrates describes what should be. The two are not on the same page
Quoting Fooloso4
... while he couldn't create an argument against the sophists' view, without proving sophistry right by applying the sophists' method or process.
My hangup was his argument against X...on*,who claimed happiness is the most valuable thing to attain; S replies, "would you settle to be a sea urchin, which is happy?" X...on recoils, he says definitely not; S cleans his sword of the blood of victory over X...on. Whereas S's argument was a simple case of Ad Hominem.
Funny that you mention justice, as my paper that every philosophical body in their right mind rejects, including the editors of articles of this site, and which I, in complete frustration, published here 4 days ago, and which everyone here also avoided commenting on as if it were Satan's very own bile, deals a bit with that issue (as a sideline, not germane to the main topic).
My words were made up, as an attempt at humour, in a roundabout way to show that I don't know what tendentious means. It was funny, but the reference connection was so weak, that it was completely lost to everyone but myself. I don't blame anyone else for this, it was quite natural to not see the connection in the way I meant it.
* X...on: abbreviation of a made-up name (ending with ...on, like many Greek names were at the time: Laokoon, Platon, etc.).
.
I do not think it sufficient to say that justice is whatever is. In that case opposites would both be just as long as they occur somewhere. Harming your family and friends be no more or less just then helping them.
Quoting god must be atheist
It is about intent. There is another dialogue called the Sophist. A main concern of the dialogue is the difference between the philosopher and the sophist. There is not all that much difference, but the differences are significant.
Quoting god must be atheist
As far as I know he makes no such argument. It is yours.
Quoting god must be atheist
How can one discuss happiness without regard to the person seeking it? Socratic philosophy is about self-knowledge and a way of life. He calls himself a physician of the soul. Of course it is about the person. But this does not mean X ...on alone, but the reader who is led the reflect on herself and her life.
Quoting god must be atheist
I thought they might be, but as you know there are all kinds of things being said on the forum.
It's in the "Republic". We discussed this argument in class at great length. I would be hard forced to quote it as my rote memory is not good. I'll try to find a machine-searchable text of the Republic and maybe I can find the passage.
Quoting Fooloso4
I am sorry, but I am quite sure you are beyond and above the need to explain how Ad Hominem works, and what fallacious reasoning it evokes. Without quoting the passage, however, it is not possible to show the specific example. I beg your patience until such time as I find the particular quote. Thanks.Quoting Fooloso4
I have no argument against this; I agree. However, you must admit that the method is the same that S uses, which the Sophists advocate, esp. in that argument that S uses against the sophists. "Here's looking at you kid, and this is why your method is wrong," while S uses the very same type of methodology in his argument. The intent may be different (both wanting to win an argument?? Where is the difference in intent there? But I shan't force this discussion), but the method is the same-- and S is proving in that argument that the method itself is wrong in and by itself.Quoting Fooloso4
Th...us' claim is immaterial whether it's mine or not mine. It is, however, a claim that reflects the status quo of what justice, the process and the enforcement of it, entailed at the time. That's what I meant by "IS", I did not mean that it is the absolute truth. I meant to say that that was its status quo. I am sorry this meaning I did not express unambivalently. You are right, inasmuch as "what justice IS" could be seen as an agreement by me that that's what just is in justice. Do I need to depict what I meant by S arguing what justice ought to be?
--------------------
So easy to misunderstand another, and to force explanations due to unclear writing. In this instance I bear the guilt of unclear writing... What I wrote by saying "what justice IS" completely covered the meaning I intended to cover, but I failed to see that it could be validly misapplied to mean things other than what I intended to say.
:-)
Socrates spoke differently to different people. The dialogue form and the identification of the people he is addressing are not just stylistic. With the sophist its a power play.
Quoting god must be atheist
Rhetoric is not wrong. It is a means of persuasion.
Quoting god must be atheist
T. intends to persuade Glaucon and Adeimantus (who are Plato's brothers) to pay him to learn how to make the weaker argument stronger. Socrates intends, ostensibly, to persuade them that justice is in their own best interest as well as in the best interest of the city, but he is leading them to philosophize; not simply to make the weaker argument the stronger but to be able to identify which arguments are in fact stronger. And this means not simply how to win arguments against others, but to turn in inward to find arguments that will guide them.
Quoting god must be atheist
Yes, I agree, and this tension between what is and what is best plays out on many levels. I can't go into detail here but Socrates was sentenced to death for philosophizing. At his trial he does not defend himself or philosophy in the forceful way we see him arguing in the other dialogues. It has been suggested by commentators that the Republic is Plato's defense of philosophy. Socrates creates a city in speech. In other words, we do not find justice in the city. The definition of justice that Socrates settles on is, ironically, minding your own business. In other words, the status quo is an injustice to philosophy that can only be remedied if the city stays out of the philosopher's business.
Socrates introduces the city in order to see what justice looks like in the soul. The city is "the soul writ large". Minding your own business also means tending to the politics of your soul, that is, a well ordered soul, ruling yourself through reason. Justice also means the health of the soul, the proper balance of its parts.
Socrates is clear that he has no illusion as to the likelihood that the philosopher-king will rule. The tension between what is and what is best plays out here with the powerless philosopher developing the ability to safeguard philosophy from those who have the power to say what justice is and can thereby forbid philosophy. Its suppression forces it underground. Plato develops a way of writing that is at once out in the open and public and hidden from the view of the city.
[quote=link]
Only in the misery of man lies the birthplace of God. Only from man does God derive all his determinations; God is what man desires to be; namely, his own essence and goal imagined as an actual being. Herein, too, lies the distinguishing factor separating the neo-Platonists from the Stoics, the Epicureans, and the Sceptics. Existence without passion, bliss, independence from need, freedom, and autonomy were also the goals of these philosophers, but only as virtues of man; this means that these goals were based on the truth of the concrete and real man. Freedom and bliss were supposed to belong to this subject as its predicates. Hence, with the neo-Platonists – although they still regarded pagan virtues as true – these predicates became subject; that is, human adjectives were turned into something substantial, into an actually existing being – hence the distinction between the neo-Platonist and Christian theology which transferred man's bliss, perfection, or likeness to God into the beyond. Precisely through this, real man became a mere abstraction lacking flesh and blood, an allegorical figure of the divine being. Plotinus, at least on the evidence of his biographers, was ashamed to have a body.
[/quote]
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/feuerbach/works/future/future1.htm
I missed this earlier.
Right, from a physicalist (I would prefer to say "empiricist and even rationalist") perspective it is bunk. It is bunk because there is nothing that can be corroborated from the public perspective.The same seems to be true of aesthetic judgements; they are bunk if you try to universalize them.
I'm not sure how you are thinking the "sage caper" to be "beyond the fragilities of even the scientific method"; I see the method itself as the most robust just because it incorporates the possibility of public corroboration. What do you think the aforementioned fragilities consist in?
I don't see how our doing the work, following the contemplative life, can test any wisdom but our own (as we alone assess it's growth and others can only judge us by our actions since our "inner life" per se is hidden from view). Perhaps our doing the work and following the contemplative life could be said to test the sage's method, but the basic methods are ages-old and fairly cross-cultural.
So, I think the only test of any purported sage's wisdom is to be found in their fruits; in their actions and works; just as it is with any of us. Who is a sage we can explore? I don't know, perhaps just pick any purported sage and look at their biography insofar as it is publicly available.
It's true there don't seem to be many purported female sages; perhaps due to a general female lack of such egotistical presumption, or the patriarchal nature of the spiritual tradition. Theosophy does have a few: Blavatsky, Alice Bailey, Dion Fortune, Sri Aurobindo's spiritual partner known as The Mother. No doubt there are others. There are a few female mystics counted as saints; would they count as sages?
It doesn't rely on corroboration by the public, but a form of peer review. In other words, there are communities of discourse within such ways-of-knowing are mediated and implicitly corrected - like Sufi, Zen, Advaita schools, and so on. And sure, some of them go wrong, movements wither and become corrupted, or they die out for want of new blood. All kinds of things can go wrong with them, but that doesn't mean they're not real.
Your insistence on judgement in 'the public square' is, as I've said before, driven by a kind of covert hostility on the part of secular philosophy into anything that calls into question its basic assumptions. As Paul Tyson says in Defragmenting Modernity,
I do notice that you patrol the fences for any such incursions. ;-)
Quoting Tom Storm
It's not that the scientific method is fragile, but that it's a very blunt instrument. Certainly it can be used to detect minute physical qualities, but as a method it relies on the process of objectification, of the framing of a theory and the identity of the correct questions to ask, and then the objects to ask them of. Science, for that reason, can never capture the reality of moment-to-moment existence, which is what human reality comprises.
The process of philosophical discrimination is similar to science in some ways, but more subtle and more dynamic, as the object of investigation is the workings of one's own mind and body. (I think this is what Husserl was getting at with the phenomenological suspension, epoché.)
So the attainment of insight might be where insight into your habitual tendencies prevents them from manifesting themselves perniciously. That is a technique that is often used in mindfulness-based therapy. One of the common statements of meditation practitioners is that they are less prone to loosing their temper, because they're more aware of the usually-automatic sequence of thoughts and emotions that gives rise to outbursts. Sure, doesn't always happen, but it's an indicator of how that dynamic works. It is said that the mark of progress in inner work is the dimunition of emotional conflict and moodiness.
I'd also like to differentiate between 'non-rational' and 'supra-rational'. It's very easy to act irrationally or impulsively, but that is not what is meant when philosophers point to 'spiritual experience' or 'higher consciousness'. For example, as a consequence of such inner work, you might experience a catharsis, where you realise you've been holding on to some hidden hurt for most of your life, which you haven't been conscious of but which nevertheless profoundly affects your emotional life. Releasing that by seeing into it, by suddenly understanding and recalling what that trauma was, is not a 'rational' process, but it's not irrational either. It can be profoundly emotional and spiritually liberating in a way that your earlier self could not have anticipated. So if that's 'irrational', then so be it.
Besides, what most people mean by 'rational' is 'what can be validated scientifically ' - which points back to positivism, again. People don't 'live scientifically', well, not if they're not citizens of a Soviet model city. It's just what I call 'handrail materialism', the sense that there's a consensual reality that we can hang on to. Which is precisely what philosophy calls into question, but hopefully not in favour of nihilism or the sense that 'nothing matters'. More like a recalibration or reconfiguration, to use a modern metaphor.
Sorry, Wayf, but this seems way off to me. In (relatively) free (relatively) democratic societies, a person can vote their conscience, for the prohibition of abortion or divorce or porn or weed and so on. They might not get what they want, but that's democracy. They can believe whatever they want to believe, evangelize or discuss, but this comes at the cost of others being able to believe and say things they don't like.
I agree that 'free' societies 'carve out' a private sphere. What they regulate is regulation itself, as in my neighbor doesn't get to force me to pray to Allah/Jehova/Hubbard or burn my Koran/Bible/Dianetics.
FWIW, I think it hurts the case you want to make to shoot at such a wide and venerable target (a freeish society).
No, it's not. I define human knowledge as knowledge which is, in principle at least, open to anyone, It is also rationally defensible and defeasible, open to correction in the light of contrary evidence.
What you say—Quoting Wayfarer— is also true of aesthetic judgement. It puzzles me as to why you want to keep insisting that so-called esoteric knowledge has a like status to science, mathematics and everyday empirical claims, when it obviously doesn't; just a personal belief you are loath to let go of, I guess.
I simply meant the common place observation that you can't use science to assess sages. Wayfarer calls science a blunt tool which I think it not quite right either, but I understand his point.
Quoting Janus
Problem with this is how does the quotidian mind discern what constitutes an appropriate/robust demonstration of sageness? What exactly are these fruits? No history of sexual predations, or abuses of power, or financial fraud (common enough issues amongst gurus and sages) might be a clue and a starting point. But so much is hidden to us.
Quoting Janus
You tell me. What do we count as a robust demonstration of sageness?
Even if one were to grant that there are sages who can access higher reality and that they might be able to teach you something about this, how on earth do you choose wisely if you do not have this knowledge? On balance I think dead sages from antiquity may be the safest bet.
The knowledge of some of those esoteric traditions is open to anyone who is willing to meet the requirements, which are sometimes very strict. On the other hand, in Buddhist cultures, Buddhist teachings are open to anyone.
Quoting j0e
I see what you mean. I was responding to this exchange:
Quoting Janus
What I'm getting at, is the insistence of scientific rationalism as criteria for philosophical or 'spiritual' practices amounts to a form of regulation. And although of course I value freedom of opinion and free speech, although in some subjects diversity is encouraged in everything except for opinion. :wink:
Although I strongly recommend the book that quote comes from Defragmenting Modernity, by a Australian academic, author and lecturer Dr Paul Tyson, which provides a far greater context for that sentiment.
Quoting Janus
I am of the view that the Western philosophical tradition has its sages, such as, for example, Socrates, who has already been discussed (and I nominated Spinoza, for which I was criticized). I think there is at least demonstrated sagacity in some of the great philosophers, up to and possibly even including Hegel (despite his atrocious verbosity) and possibly Schopenhauer (although I'll always draw the line at Neitszche :brow: )
The Western tradition has its own esoteric spirituality, which is neoplatonism and its offshoots, as has already been discussed. But that this has been deprecated in favour of scientific naturalism. Plainly, science is indispensable for a huge range of challenges - health, energy, medicine, fuel, transport, and so on. And they are among the fruits of the Western tradition which is now however blind to its own origins.
I do agree with you here. The evolving and ever hazy concept of rationality is itself an in-the-works product of that very rationality which is to be further articulated. We're still figuring out what the rules are for making the rules, a project which would not make sense if we didn't already have a rough idea. 'Logic is a gentleman's agreement.' That is to say: more decency than faculty.
thanks. I realised how intolerant that quote I posted sounded when you called it out. That was nearer to what I was getting at.
I thought so & hoped you wouldn't mind the criticism.
I found a nice essay on the evolving notion of rationality, which treats something like the 'melt' of the faculty-conception into a norm-conception. Let me also note that 'gentleman's agreement' is a hyperbole on my part.
[quote=link]
I want to focus on how the predominant understanding of rationality began to shift during the period of Atwater’s history that corresponds to our own “high Enlightenment”. In histories of Atwater, this era is often referred to as “the age of reason”. But while it was an era with a great affection for reason, it was also a period in which traditional conceptions of reason and rationality came under increasing strain.
This, in considerable part, was the product of the emergence of a new conception of “reasonableness”, which developed in tandem with early forms of probability theory. The key feature of this new notion of reasonableness was that, contrary to previous models of rationality, it allowed reasonable belief to be based on merely probable, as opposed to demonstratively certain, grounds. Thus, the traditional conception of rationality, which focused on modes of intuition and reasoning capable of producing certain knowledge, was gradually replaced by a conception of reasonableness, on which being reasonable was fundamentally a matter of responding correctly to uncertainty in the face of less than fully conclusive evidence.
The rise of this conception of reasonableness was associated with important developments in areas ranging from theology to political economy. But a few aspects of it are particularly important for our story here. First, the rise of this probabilistic conception of reasonableness was closely tied to a growing skepticism about the forms of intellectual intuition or rational insight that were characteristic of more robust, rationalist conceptions of reason as a faculty. Indeed, the focus on probability was in some sense a replacement for more robust conceptions of reason or the intellect. For, in the absence of the forms of rational intuition that produced certain knowledge of substantive truths, the best human beings could do seemed to be to respond as reasonably as possible to our mixed and uncertain empirical evidence about the nature of things. Thus, as the scope of reason to deliver certainty become more limited, it was only natural for an increasing interest in merely probable grounds for belief to take its place.
In this way, the move to a probabilistic conception of reasonableness was part of a general trend towards a more modest understanding of the faculty of reason and, by extension, rationality itself.
[/quote]
http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0100-60452018000400501
I'd add to this probabilistic theme the linguistic turn. We became more aware also of the intrinsic ambiguity of thought-sound itself. The metaphoricity 'behind' or at the 'root' of concepts is yet another destabilization of the idea of a faculty with machine precision. IMV, all that's left of this precision is math ('a generalization of chess'), which still needs to be linked as a dead formal system to worldly application with the usual noisy-metaphorical thought-sound.
(I've missed you in the Saussure thread. The guy is a radical metaphysician in his way.)
[quote=link]
...to attain its infinity the spirit must all the same lift itself out of purely formal and finite personality into the Absolute; i.e. the spiritual must bring itself into representation as the subject filled with what is purely substantial and, therein, as the willing and self-knowing subject. Conversely, the substantial and the true must not be apprehended as a mere ‘beyond’ of humanity, and the anthropomorphism of the Greek outlook must not be stripped away; but the human being, as actual subjectivity, must be made the principle, and thereby alone, as we already saw earlier , does the anthropomorphic reach its consummation.
...
The true content of romantic art is absolute inwardness, and its corresponding form is spiritual subjectivity with its grasp of its independence and freedom. This inherently infinite and absolutely universal content is the absolute negation of everything particular, the simple unity with itself which has dissipated all external relations, all processes of nature and their periodicity of birth, passing away, and rebirth, all the restrictedness in spiritual existence, and dissolved all particular gods into a pure and infinite self-identity. In this Pantheon all the gods are dethroned, the flame of subjectivity has destroyed them, and instead of plastic polytheism art knows now only one God, one spirit, one absolute independence which, as the absolute knowing and willing of itself, remains in free unity with itself and no longer falls apart into those particular characters and functions whose one and only cohesion was due to the compulsion of a dark necessity.
...the determinate being of God is not the natural and sensuous as such but the sensuous elevated to non-sensuousness, to spiritual subjectivity which instead of losing in its external appearance the certainty of itself as the Absolute, only acquires precisely through its embodiment a present actual certainty of itself. God in his truth is therefore no bare ideal generated by imagination; on the contrary, he puts himself into the very heart of the finitude and external contingency of existence, and yet knows himself there as a divine subject who remains infinite in himself and makes this infinity explicit to himself.
[/quote]
source
That's us, 'God,' down in the very heart of finitude, godless otherwise in the fuzz & funk.
I wanted to return to this to say more about ad hominem. I think the passage you have in mind is from Plato's Philebus (21c). The issue in question:
It is the life without thought and memory and reason that Socrates likens to that of the sea urchin. He goes on to point out that such a life would also be void of pleasure.
Wiki gives several examples of valid ad hominem arguments. But that is not what I want to discuss.
There are, in my opinion, cases in which it is relevant and appropriate to bring the character or habits of a person into the argument. Socrates says that the unexamined life is not worth living. Philosophy in its pursuit of the ideal of objectivity lost sight of this important aspect of philosophy, that is, philosophy as a way of life. This is far removed from the notion of philosophy as "the view from nowhere".
I was just curious. It is not a big deal.
Philebus is one of Plato's dialogues. It is published as both a separate book and as part of anthologies.
I forgot what search terms I used, maybe some combination of Plato, Republic, and sea urchins. One thing I found was this: https://books.google.com/books?id=z5zCBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA255&lpg=PA255&dq=plato+republic+sea+urchin&source=bl&ots=JdgrfdUR9_&sig=ACfU3U3rEx3cR7d-slE9KrIgk-g_50Drag&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjMn4KbiZ_wAhVskeAKHVP5CCoQ6AEwEXoECAgQAw#v=onepage&q=plato%20republic%20sea%20urchin&f=false
This is how I remember it (your text helped): PH: happiness, joy, pleasure, is the only thing worth anything in life. SO: You mean, not thought, morals, the love of gods, the noble and uplifting thoughts, the love of wisdom? PH: not the least bit. SO: so you would be happy and satisfied living your life as a sea urchin. PH: (recoils) no, that's not right. Of course I would not want to live my life as a sea-urchin.
There was an hominem attack here. PH already made his case. He was forced to give it up not because of the LOGIC of the counter-argument, but because of the inconsistency of PH's thought. He already settled on joy, pleasure, etc. Why give up his stance? Because, and SO properly had psyched out this human feature in PH, humans don't like to give up their humanity. They don't even want to become god. No Christian aspires to that, when they easily could. What would be the reason not to? simple: giving up humanity is impossible for humans. So by stripping PH of his humanity, SO created an Ad Hominem fallacy, which sank PH hook, line and sinker.
Mystery solved!
Socrates does seem a bit harsh on Protarchus. I don't know the dialogue well enough to say more. I took a brief look at this:https://philarchive.org/archive/CAIMAT-3
He says:
I think much like Bible interpreters, scholarly interpreters of works give too much credit to the authors. Site unseen, I am skeptical of the genius of Plato to carefully select and assign arguments to different debate partners. Maybe? Yes. For sure? A lot of interpretation. I am not an expert, far from it, as you know, but I do believe in the adage, "I calls them as I sees them." Whether Socrates / Plato had a plan to use a type of argument on TH...US, is immaterial, because it is clear that the argument employed here was of an Ad Hominem fallacy. And that was the whole point I was trying to show. That Socrates did lower himself and his own standards to win arguments.
At the same time, I must say that fallacies in logic have been introduced over the ages, and in Socrates time the only way to prove a point was to reduce the opponent's stance into a self-contradiction. The notion of fallacies emerged later; Aristotle summarized them, and post-Aristotle very many new ones were discovered or invented.
So maybe Socrates found it reasonable to call an Ad Hominem, because A. he had no name for it, and B. though he may have had a concept of it, he may have used that instance not as a logical convincing power, but as a psychological one, and maybe, just maybe, in Plato's view that was a valid tool in argumentation.
The other person solves the problem quickly: "Because the doctor combines the herb with his own knowledge that the herb is curative. The money goes to the difference of knowledge between that of the doctor and that of the herb." (The quotes are not precise, exact or verbatim.)
The argument ends by Socrates' opponent needing to go home to his wife to eat dinner.
Socrates continues the arguments with his circle, and culminates it in the idea of the forms. The cumulative or multiplicative effect of disparate qualities to create a particular quality never comes up again.
This is not a fallacy, but a huge and fatal omission of defeating the opponent's view. Socrates acts as if he won the argument, but he never did.
If the person came back and insisted on the type of fact that the sum of a thing is greater than sum of its components, (My genius friend Paul S. said in this vein, "Is the sum of a woman better than her whole?") then the Forms, the Ideals, the entire superstructure of Socrates' philosophy would have crumbled. But Plato skillfully glided over this hurtle, and never allowed it to make it possible for it to destroy his own sweetheart's legacy.
[quote=Strauss]
Man being once mature enough to receive as his religion the truth that God is man, and man of a divine race; it necessarily follows, since religion is the form in which the truth presents itself to the popular mind, that this truth must appear, in a guise intelligible to all, as a fact obvious to the senses: in other words, there must appear a human individual who is recognised as the visible God. This God-man uniting in a single being the divine essence and the human personality, it may be said of him that he had the Divine Spirit for a father and a woman for his mother. His personality reflecting itself not in himself, but in the absolute substance, having the will to exist only for God, and not at all for itself, he is sinless and perfect. As a man of Divine essence, he is the power that subdues nature, a worker of miracles; but as God in a human manifestation, he is dependent on nature, subject to its necessities and sufferings—is in a state of abasement. Must he even pay the last tribute to nature? does not the fact that the human nature is subject to death preclude the idea that that nature is one with the divine? No: the God-man dies, and thus proves that the incarnation of God is real, that the infinite spirit does not scorn to descend into the lowest depths of the finite, because he knows how to find a way of return into himself, because in the most entire alienation of himself, he can retain his identity. Further, the God-man, in so far as he is a spirit reflected in his infinity, stands contrasted with men, in so far as they are limited to their finiteness: hence opposition and contest result, and the death of the God-Man becomes a violent one, inflicted by the hands of sinners; so that to physical degradation is added the moral degradation of ignominy and accusation of crime. If God then finds a passage from heaven to the grave, so must a way be discoverable for man from the grave to heaven: the death of the prince of life is the life of mortals. By his entrance into the world as God-man, God showed himself reconciled to man; by his dying, in which act he cast off the limitations of mortality, he showed moreover the way in which he perpetually effects that reconciliation: namely, by remaining, throughout his manifestation of himself under the limitations of a natural existence, and his suppression of that existence, identical with himself. Inasmuch as the death of the God-man is merely the cessation of his state of alienation from the infinite, it is in fact an exaltation and return to God, and thus the death is necessarily followed by the resurrection and ascension.
The God-man, who during his life stood before his cotemporaries as an individual distinct from themselves, and perceptible by the senses, is by death taken out of their sight; he enters into their imagination and memory: the unity of the divine and human in him, becomes a part of the general consciousness; and the church must repeat spiritually, in the souls of its members, those events of his life which he experienced externally. The believer, finding himself environed with the conditions of nature, must, like Christ, die to nature—but only inwardly, as Christ did outwardly,—must spiritually crucify himself and be buried with Christ, that by the virtual suppression of his own sensible existence, he may become, in so far as he is a spirit, identical with himself, and participate in the bliss and glory of Christ.
[/quote]
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/64037/64037-h/64037-h.htm#s150
We might think of this as the rationalization of Christian myth. What was once understood as a history of supernatural events is reinterpreted as a metaphor for the immanent transcendence of our petty selves.
[quote=Strauss]
Though I may conceive that the divine spirit in a state of renunciation and abasement becomes the human, and that the human nature in its return into and above itself becomes the divine; this does not help me to conceive more easily, how the divine and human natures can have constituted the distinct and yet united portions of an historical person. Though I may see the human mind in its unity with the divine, in the course of the world’s history, more and more completely establish itself as the power which subdues nature; this is quite another thing, than to conceive a single man endowed with such power, for individual, voluntary acts. Lastly, from the truth, that the suppression of the natural existence is the resurrection of the spirit, can never be deduced the bodily resurrection of an individual.
We should thus have fallen back again to Kant’s point of view, which we have ourselves found unsatisfactory: for if the idea have no corresponding reality, it is an empty obligation and ideal. But do we then deprive the idea of all reality? By no means: we reject only that which does not follow from the premises. If reality is ascribed to the idea of the unity of the divine and human natures, is this equivalent to the admission that this unity must actually have been once manifested, as it never had been, and never more will be, in one individual? This is indeed not the mode in which Idea realizes itself; it is not wont to lavish all its fulness on one exemplar, and be niggardly towards all others—to express itself perfectly in that one individual, and imperfectly in all the rest: it rather loves to distribute its riches among a multiplicity of exemplars which reciprocally complete each other—in the alternate appearance and suppression of a series of individuals. And is this no true realization of the idea? is not the idea of the unity of the divine and human natures a real one in a far higher sense, when I regard the whole race of mankind as its realization, than when I single out one man as such a realization? is not an incarnation of God from eternity, a truer one than an incarnation limited to a particular point of time.
This is the key to the whole of Christology, that, as subject of the predicate which the church assigns to Christ, we place, instead of an individual, an idea; but an idea which has an existence in reality, not in the mind only, like that of Kant. In an individual, a God-man, the properties and functions which the church ascribes to Christ contradict themselves; in the idea of the race, they perfectly agree. Humanity is the union of the two natures—God become man, the infinite manifesting itself in the finite, and the finite spirit remembering its infinitude; it is the child of the visible Mother and the invisible Father, Nature and Spirit; it is the worker of miracles, in so far as in the course of human history the spirit more and more completely subjugates nature, both within and around man, until it lies before him as the inert matter on which he exercises his active power; it is the sinless existence, for the course of its development is a blameless one, pollution cleaves to the individual only, and does not touch the race or its history. It is Humanity that dies, rises, and ascends to heaven, for from the negation of its phenomenal life there ever proceeds a higher spiritual life; from the suppression of its mortality as a personal, national, and terrestrial spirit, arises its union with the infinite spirit of the heavens. By faith in this Christ, especially in his death and resurrection, man is justified before God; that is, by the kindling within him of the idea of Humanity, the individual man participates in the divinely human life of the species. Now the main element of that idea is, that the negation of the merely natural and sensual life, which is itself the negation of the spirit (the negation of negation, therefore), is the sole way to true spiritual life.
This alone is the absolute sense of Christology: that it is annexed to the person and history of one individual, is a necessary result of the historical form which Christology has taken. Schleiermacher was quite right when he foreboded, that the speculative view would not leave much more of the historical person of the Saviour than was retained by the Ebionites. The phenomenal history of the individual, says Hegel, is only a starting point for the mind. Faith, in her early stages, is governed by the senses, and therefore contemplates a temporal history; what she holds to be true is the external, ordinary event, the evidence for which is of the historical, forensic kind—a fact to be proved by the testimony of the senses, and the moral confidence inspired by the witnesses. But mind having once taken occasion by this external fact, to bring under its consciousness the idea of humanity as one with God, sees in the history only the presentation of that idea; the object of faith is completely changed; instead of a sensible, empirical fact, it has become a spiritual and divine idea, which has its confirmation no longer in history but in philosophy. When the mind has thus gone beyond the sensible history, and entered into the domain of the absolute, the former ceases to be essential; it takes a subordinate place, above which the spiritual truths suggested by the history stand self-supported; it becomes as the faint image of a dream which belongs only to the past, and does not, like the idea, share the permanence of the spirit which is absolutely present to itself. Even Luther subordinated the physical miracles to the spiritual, as the truly great miracles. And shall we interest ourselves more in the cure of some sick people in Galilee, than in the miracles of intellectual and moral life belonging to the history of the world—in the increasing, the almost incredible dominion of man over nature—in the irresistible force of ideas, to which no unintelligent matter, whatever its magnitude, can oppose any enduring resistance? Shall isolated incidents, in themselves trivial, be more to us than the universal order of events, simply because in the latter we presuppose, if we do not perceive, a natural cause, in the former the contrary? This would be a direct contravention of the more enlightened sentiments of our own day, justly and conclusively expressed by Schleiermacher. The interests of pity, says this theologian, can no longer require us so to conceive a fact, that by its dependence on God it is divested of the conditions which would belong to it as a link in the chain of nature; for we have outgrown the notion, that the divine omnipotence is more completely manifested in the interruption of the order of nature, than in its preservation. Thus if we know the incarnation, death and resurrection, the duplex negatio affirmat, as the eternal circulation, the infinitely repeated pulsation of the divine life; what special importance can attach to a single fact, which is but a mere sensible image of this unending process?
[/quote]
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/64037/64037-h/64037-h.htm#s150
The surprising part here is that 'Christ' is or is becoming lord of this world thru science & technology, so that Christianity is blended with a myth of thisworldly progress. Schopenhauer might object that Christianity is being transformed here into an optimistic religion. We in 2021 might have more dread of technology and look back nostalgically on a time that believed in a Star Trek future.
How does this connect to the OP? Rationality is the Holy Spirit now.
On this we disagree. The argument obviously refers to the man but I do not see it as a fallacy.
Quoting god must be atheist
In my opinion the best interpreters do just this sort of thing. Only they do not leave it there. Plato did not write dialogues to show Socrates winning an argument. What would be the point of that?
Quoting god must be atheist
The Forms are not sums, they do not have components. They are each one, singular and unique.
.
Absolutely. And that is based on the view that each thing that is of unique description, has a quality, a singular, real, existing something in it that gives it its unique quality. If this was not accepted, then the Forms would not have been born.
But this was accepted only because Plato (and originally Socrates) had no argument to defeat the counter argument, that there are no unique qualities, but combination of qualities. Had this second "combination" argument been accepted, the idea and the world of Forms would not have been created the way they have.
I don't know... why is this criticism so hard to accept? I think more than one serious thinker can get biassed and abandon logic due to the effect of cognitive dissonance. Nobody I know can accept when shown, that Socrates was a cheat and his theory crumbles once you alter the outcome of one of the unfinished arguments in which he had been partaking. This goes beyond logic for most thinkers; their basic assumption, namely, that Socrates could not have been wrong, is so strong, as to form an impenetrable an impervious bias against logical thinking. Especially when the proof is offered by a complete no-name, a despicable little Hungarian who has no business in dabbling with the "Big" thinkers' works in such light. He (i.e. I) should be docile, and shut up and accept the status quo, otherwise he, (i.e. I) should go and fuck myself.
----------
Quoting Fooloso4
I don't know why you say this. This argument by Socrates is a school-case example of the clearest, most obvious case of Ad Hominem. A man was forced to change his opinion not by logic, but by force of an attack on his humanity. Seriously, what part of this argument fails in your mind to satisfy the criteria of Ad Hominem? I am curious, and I wish to read your precise analysis that proves this is not A.H. Without that analysis it stays merely your opinion, and not a proof. Clearly it is a matter of logic, so a proof may be possible.
---------
There are three ways we can go about this if you insist that Socrates could do no wrong.
1. You declare that I am not worthy of arguing against.
2. You declare that I am insane and my argument is so out of whack, that it is futile to try to treat it with logical counter-arguments.
3. You actually get down and prove me wrong.
--------
(Attacking the person): This fallacy occurs when, instead of addressing someone's argument or position, you irrelevantly attack the person or some aspect of the person who is making the argument. The fallacious attack can also be direct to membership in a group or institution.
I grant that it is not easy to see the Ad Hominem in this instance. But it is there, and can be seen if you extrapolate validly from the unuttered insinuations in Socrates' argument. To show what I mean, I transliterated the argument, and you can tell me where I went wrong in the transliteration. I guess one of the ways you you can do to tell me where I went wrong in the transliteration, is finding instances in it that make the two utterances (the two being Socrates' actual argument and my transliteration) contain corresponding parts that are incompatible with each other in scope and meaning. That is, when parts are compared, corresponding parts, and I claim comparative equality between the two, then a contradiction can be shown between the two.
Socrates argument can be transliterated as this:
"You value pleasure, gaiety, rapturous joy, etc., over thought and love of wisdom. This is what a sea urchin does, not a human. Therefore if you stick with this opinion, you yourself reduce your opinion to that worthy of a sea-urchin, not to that of a human. Do you want to be known in the community as a person whose opinions are worthy of no more than to be those of a sea urchin? And do you want to exist with the knowledge that your level of essence as a living being goes not to that of a human's, but can't get above the level of a sea-urchin's?"
I am willing to break down this transliteration and Socrates' actual argument, to point out the corresponding parts, should you ask for it.
I don't know... to give validity to the theory of the Forms, the Men in the Cave, to make sense of what Socrates was trying to show and say? These are wild guesses.
Yes, you're right, I believe. To show that Socrates won his arguments, would lead to a futile case of proof or acceptability of his ideas. That obviously Socrates was not trying to achieve, and Plato, faithfully to his teacher's legacy, also wanted to avoid doing.
(Please notice the sarcasm.)
"If that is your opinion, you are a sea-urchin, not a human. And since that is your opinion, you are a sea-urchin."
But what about those qualities that they are combinations of? Are they just combinations of qualities too?
Although many, perhaps the majority of scholars and all textbooks treat the Forms as Plato's ontology, in my opinion, the Forms are themselves images, part of Plato's philosophical poesis. He takes over the cave and the images and their images, the shadows on the cave wall.
Quoting god must be atheist
Socrates calls himself a physician of the soul and a midwife to ideas. In this case he helps Protarchus give birth to his idea regarding his preference of pleasure over wisdom and memory (Why memory? After a night of drunkenness one does not remember.). The analogy to a sea urchin certainly is not flattering, but a life of intemperate pleasure does not make a pretty picture. Socrates argument is not simply against this person but all those who would choose a life of unbridled pleasure. For Socrates philosophy is about the examined life. It is not about abstract valid logical arguments but a way of life.
Quoting god must be atheist
It is not the opinion but the way of life that is analogous to that of a sea urchin. He was not against pleasure but against a life of unchecked pleasure.
Again, originally I did not express myself well.
There are kernel qualities. Qualities that have no component parts.
There are combined qualities. Qualities that comprise component qualities, that essentially are kernel and / or combined qualities. Some combined qualities together make up a quality that is not equivalent of any of the component qualities.
This is of course conjecture, complete conjecture, but not any more of a conjecture than to claim that each displayed quality is a unique kernel quality, like Socrates claimed. Furthermore, Socrates claim seems to suggest that there are no combined qualities -- each displayed quality is the effect of a distinct unit of a quality source.
How do these differ from forms?
Quoting god must be atheist
They are found in combination in the world we live in, the world of our experience.
You just replaced one Ad Hominem argument with another. I don't think your claim is included or even insinuated in the quote, but since you argue that it is, it is easier to show that it's a sideways-shift of Ad Hominem, and not an eradication of it.
1. You can have all the pleasures and joys and gaiety.
2. But you can do this without attaining wisdom and deep thought. (So to speak.)
3. The result will be that you will be a despicable drunkard, a pleasure-seeking old goat, a narcissistic person whom everyone despises, even your own self.
This is practically indistinguishable from
3. you will be ugly and despicable
...and that is a hallmark of Ad Hominem.
Did Socrates give logical reasons, that make a narcissist repulsive? No, he gave visual images. (And he did not even give those... your fantasy and pulling in ideas and event and opinions from other parts of the book did this, which were not part of the argument.) TH...US could not have comprehended this argument, which you claim were part of Socrates' stance, because Socrates did not say them. TH...US is not a mind reader. No, Socrates stopped TH...US on purely emotive effects.
That is what helped Socrates achieve an Ad Hominem fallacy that was remarkably effective on TH...US.
Whatever Socrates' values were, are immaterial in this argument. Everyone has values, and they are personal emotive stuff. They can be different or the same, between two people, but if they use only logic, then the values' differentness or sameness will not affect the strength of their arguments. Fine, Socrates valued these things, and I am not going to try to take it away from him.
But this debate between you and me is not about Socrates' values. It is about Socrates employing an Ad Hominem argument. You failed so far to refute that. Socrates' values may have been displayed for the readers of the book; but the actual debate between TH...US and Socrates turned around on an Ad Hominem argument.
That's how far I am willing to take this, because that was my initial proposition: Socrates did not shy away from fallacious reasoning to win arguments.
.Quoting Fooloso4
This is obvious, not need to mention this.
Quoting Fooloso4
Fine. This I accept site unseen. And again, my claim has not been or contained the notion that Socrates was against pleasure... you are this near to uttering a Strawman. But I accpet your claim, because I never made any counter-claim to it, and because you are much more widely read of Plato than I. By light years. But this still does not prove that a human being who has attained pleasure, gaiety, joy, etc., needs retrospection, wisdom, etc. This is the preference of Socrates. He can't prove, and does not even attempt to prove, that this is actually true for every human. But here I am going out of the scope of this debate. The scope of this debate between you and me is whether Socrates used fallacious reasoning or not.
Yes, yes, yes!! Now you are starting to understand. But Socrates DENIES that.
Quoting Fooloso4
Forms depend on every quality to have a kernel quality. Forms do not contain combination qualities -- you said that yourself.
Yet qualities exist -- you admitted it in the second part of your post here -- that are not dependent on kernel qualities for a one-to-one correspondence.
Now, take a Form. A chair. The ideal chair, that is 1. True, 2. Everlasting, and 3. A form of only one quality. It is an image. Yet chairs have legs; depend on gravity for their operating condition; they must have the quality of comfort; they must be pleasing to the eye. These are all kernel qualities, if you ask Socrates, because he denies that kernel qualities can combine to bring to life qualities that are reminiscent of none of the kernel qualities.
Therefore the Form of a Chair is impossible, in the sense Socrates imagines them. The chair is the manifestation of a kernel quality; yet it has component parts that are kernel qualities themselves: legs, comfort, visual appeal. One can't both be one and not one at the same time. Yet Socrates insists, if you follow through with his reasoning, that it is possible. He does not say that, but it is unavoidable to realize that, once you follow through the reasoning he presents.
Socrates is talking to and about Protarchus. So again, yes it is about this person, about what he says and does, but this is not to engage in a fallacy. If he objects to being likened to a sea urchin then there must be something more to him then just pleasure.
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No, I am attempting avoid one, that he is anti-hedonist. That is not an assumption that you made. Good.
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The argument begins at 21a:
Protarchus is not as skilled at arguing as he imagines himself to be. He agrees that he does not need anything other than pleasure, but is led to see that pleasure absent all else is not enough. Socrates then turns to the life of the mind. It is not about proving but persuading him to look beyond pleasure. The reasoning is not fallacious, it follows from the premise that pleasure without anything else is sufficient for the life of a human being. Now having said that, I do think there is a bit of manipulation on Socrates part when he gets Protarchus to agree with the premise that he needs nothing else.
He does not deny it. Plato makes it quite clear. He says that we find the Forms in the world of our experience unalloyed but mixed together.
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The Greek term for Form is eidos. It means the kind of thing something is, the look or shape of a thing. Eidos is closely related to idea. So when you say "chair" and not some particular chair you are referring to its form, that which all chairs have in common.
I agree that there are problems with the idea. The dialogue Parmenides discusses them.
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This is what is know as the problem of the one and the many.
I have to differ again, sorry. The things in our world are mixed objects that contain Forms. A plant that can cure people of a disease, is both a plant and a curative device. A doctor who uses this plant is both a person and a healer. But the forms in and by themselves are unit-ideals. They don't have sub-components. They each represent a kernel form. The Forms are true, everlasting, perfect. The objects in our world lack in each of these qualities.
So indeed Socrates denies that forms have more than one qualities or essences. I know I am mixing concepts and mixing adjectives with nouns. If this is objectionable, I can rewrite my opinion to make the naming structure uniform, but that would lead to some awkward constructs along the way, awkward language constructs. If you can close an eye to my calling the forms sometimes unique essences, and sometimes of unique qualities, and sometimes of kernel qualities, then please let me know and I'll try my best to get rid of this failing in my text.
At any rate, I misunderstood your statement that I referred to as "yes, but Socrates denies that." And with some tact, I must let you know it was not entirely my fault that I misunderstood you. Let's put it this way: 90% my fault, 10% your fault. You said, "They are found in combination in the world we live in, the world of our experience." I was momentarily lost in finding the antecedent to the first word in this quote by you, "They". I figured those were the kernel qualities, not the forms. And by continuing my faulty line of understanding, I somehow -- entirely my mistake -- figured the combination refers to the contents of the Forms. The things in our world are combined, and they are found in the Forms. What a major mistake I made! My only defense is that I am not so apt at matching antecedents with pronouns. My language processing is faulty in this aspect.
So now I get you. The objects of the world we live in contain Forms, which are not forged, or alloyed, together, but are mixed, and the operation of them is a resultant of their community of qualities, so to speak.
This is a claim by Socrates. But it does not negate my claim, which I quote here for ease of reference:
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You say Socrates did not claim this, which is true. But it does not contradict the claim of Socrates. While we accept (both of us) that Forms can combine but not forge to produce new qualities, different from those of the forms, it is equally possible (whether likely or not) that the objects found in our experiences are indeed representations of nothing but one single solitary Form, in a somewhat bastardized version of it.
How can the version be bastardized if it is a replica of the Form? And how can it be bastardized if the parts are only of a single Form, and not mixed with the qualities of other Forms? To which I would answer, Why does or why should the mixing of the Forms bastardize their effect, when represented in our world? The problem is that Forms are perfect and atomic. Mixing them with other perfect and atomic essences or qualities, that is, mixing them with other Forms, should not take away neither from the perfection, nor from the truth and its being everlasting.
So there is an effect in our world which bastardizes the Forms. It is not the mix of Forms, because that alone should not affect the objects in ways that take away from the quality of forms. There is a substance in the world we observe, which "dirties" up the Forms, so they lose their everlasting quality, their perfection, and their truth. What is this thing, matter or otherwise, that dirties up the Forms? Well does Socrates name it, or describe it, the dirtying thing? I don't think so, but you may know of one or more.
But again, I digressed. My only job here is to show that Socrates committed an Ad Hominem fallacy.
Here's an invalid point, it's not a fallacy, but invalid nevertheless. To feel pleasure you don't need to know you are feeling pleasure. In modern times this is easy to explain, but in the times of Socrates, this may be a bit more difficult.
Does one need to know he feels pleasure in order to feel that pleasure? It is a mind that feels pleasure, and it is a mind that knows it feels pleasure.
Cogito ergo sum. Sensato ergo sum. I think therefore I am. I sense, therefore I am.
The mind's capacity to have self-awareness can be triggered by thought, or by sensation. Socrates strongly (and wrongly) suggested that self-awareness can only be triggered by thought, by intellectual activity: memory, comparison, collection of experiences, etc. It never occurred to him that sensations can also trigger the same effect. "If I had no mind, I could not think; therefore because I think, I must have a mind." "If I had no mind, I could not sense (pleasure, for instance). Therefore, because I feel pleasure, I must have a mind." This is not the proof that there is an Ad Hominem argument. It is a proof that Socrates made a mistake in the thought-experiment. However, this mistake carries on; it renders his final argumentation into an Ad Hominem fallacy.
Because Socrates transferred his faulty reasoning about the mind's self-awareness, it was easy then for him to degrade Protarchus, to render him to the level of an ugly and senseless sea animal from the level of a human being, should Protarchus insist on the truth of his claim. This is an Ad Hominem fallacy, because the reasoning failed, so the only convincing power is not logic, but a strong negative-image psychological effect: "If you stuck with your argument, Protarchus, you would not be a man but a mollusc or an oyster." To which Protarchus had no response other than "Oy."
Granted, Descartes coined his mind-thought thought experiment thousands of years after the fact. However, if Socrates came up with the idea that self-awareness can be obtained by cognitive functioning, he ought to have also realized that self-awareness can also be obtained by sensing. He failed to see this, or else he knew this, and altered the truth he believed in, in order to win an argument. I say he couldn't have failed to see this, as to his probable knowledge a sensation was FELT, not something that happened without any trace, without any detection of it by the sensing individual. By feeling pleasure, there is a level of registering the pleasure. Socrates said, it can only be registered by intellectual activity. Was he just too hasty, or he really believed that? Well, then does pleasure not have an entity by itself, is pleasure, the sensation, not something that can be effected on an individual? Intellect can detect many things, and when it detects pleasure, it does not detect something else. So pleasure is a real, existing feeling. As it is real and existing, it is a feeling, and as a feeling, which is real and existing, it is NOT dependent on the cognitive mind for the individual to feel that pleasure.
They do not contain Forms, but this is generally correct. I don't see what you are objecting to.
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Qualities and essences are not the same thing. The Form man or plant does not preclude those particular qualities essential to them.
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If you mean something he made up then I agree. That is why I called it philosophical poesis - that is, the poetic making of images. I do not want to defend the Forms because I do not think they exist. I do not think Plato is doing ontology. His favorite trilogy of Forms is the just, the beautiful, and the good. He wants to inspire the would be philosopher to seek them out, to discover them, and not just take them to be a matter of opinion.