Metanarratives/ Identity/ Self-consciousness
I use this definition of metanarrative: an overarching account or interpretation of events and circumstances that provides a pattern or structure for people’s beliefs and gives meaning to their experiences.
I'm interested in the way that identity is entangled with worldview. It seems to me that any metanarrative or grand metaphysics carves out a place for the bearer of that metaphysics.
Of course the play for status comes to mind, but I speculate that we also choose maintain/develop systems for relatively 'unselfish' reasons. We might [s]choose[/s] painfully evolve a metanarrative that allows for a greater sense of connection to others. For instance, we may become suspicious of language that is too distant from ordinary language, in a kind of anti-elitist elitism. (Others will in turn disdain the ambiguous barks of the mob.) We might turn against every whiff of there-is-a-secret as a kind of rudeness. (Others ground their personalities on exactly this always-only-hinted-at and finally ineffable secret in their possession.)
My own metanarrative is that metanarratives are tools and identities. Identities are tools and tools are identities, I'm tempted to say. Though I don't 'believe' in exhaustive accounts or the 'end of inquiry' (nevermind that arguably every pithy statement is a grab at partial closure?)
Any thoughts on this, team? Do you agree or disagree that identity is tangled with worldview? Do you reflect on this in your own case? Do you think we choose our worldviews? Or does life beat us into a certain shape?
I'm interested in the way that identity is entangled with worldview. It seems to me that any metanarrative or grand metaphysics carves out a place for the bearer of that metaphysics.
Of course the play for status comes to mind, but I speculate that we also choose maintain/develop systems for relatively 'unselfish' reasons. We might [s]choose[/s] painfully evolve a metanarrative that allows for a greater sense of connection to others. For instance, we may become suspicious of language that is too distant from ordinary language, in a kind of anti-elitist elitism. (Others will in turn disdain the ambiguous barks of the mob.) We might turn against every whiff of there-is-a-secret as a kind of rudeness. (Others ground their personalities on exactly this always-only-hinted-at and finally ineffable secret in their possession.)
My own metanarrative is that metanarratives are tools and identities. Identities are tools and tools are identities, I'm tempted to say. Though I don't 'believe' in exhaustive accounts or the 'end of inquiry' (nevermind that arguably every pithy statement is a grab at partial closure?)
Any thoughts on this, team? Do you agree or disagree that identity is tangled with worldview? Do you reflect on this in your own case? Do you think we choose our worldviews? Or does life beat us into a certain shape?
Comments (129)
Imagine that you become aware that you're acting out a role in a play. You peer around trying to get a sense of this play. What's the tone? Where are you in the dramatic arc? How is this the same play that's forever been played? How is it unprecedented?
I think that's what it's like to try to see your own worldview.
So, what's the difference between a metanarrative and a world view? Is it that, with the metanarrative, I'm in the picture? It's a story about me and how I fit into the world. I'm thinking now - "So, what is T Clark's metanarrative?" Am I the only one who can write my metanarrative? Can I write yours?
I've thought about writing my autobiography and I can't think of anything interesting to say. Not because my life is particularly boring, but there's no theme. I could tell about some noteworthy events in my life. I think I have interesting and valuable things to say about human nature, science, morality, beauty....but I don't think I can characterize my life in any helpful way except to say something like this - The T Clark Story - white, male, American, smart, middle class, liberal, married, three children, 66 years old, overweight, reasonably healthy....
When push comes to shove, metanarratives are illusions. As a person who has lived most of his life mired in illusion, I think they are probably self-destructive. They're lies we tell ourselves. We have no stories. I think maybe poetry would work better. I think life is more about tone, mood than it is about meaning. What color is my life? I'd like to say "orange" which is a color I feel deep inside, but that's not right. I think maybe that's the color I want it to be. That's not right either.
Checking now, I think my life is probably kind of beigey. Now there's a surprise.
Just to make sure it's clear - I'm not joking about all this.
I don't think there is a "worldview", "an overarching account", rather there are many narratives that intersect, combine, diminish, accentuate, are modern, postmodern, anachronisms... all part of our language game.
JF Lyotard
That said we can't speak without reference to meta narratives because of the complexities of our modern ecology. The whole techo/historic complex is behind very simple statements such as "turn on the light" and we are equally aware and unaware of the the various infrastructures behind such a simple statement.
The fragmentation of the overarching meta narrative, has lead us to the fragmentation of the autonomous self, into our schizoid personalities. The neutrality of the ego as witness and role player who plays multiple parts but without full absorption into any of its roles. This is the difference between parody of an officially designated style, and pastiche where there are many styles and none of them are official.
Most def. Meta-narratives mostly serve to bind groups in common values/purposes. It is important to identify with such groups in order to be bound to them.
Quoting syntax
Sure. For whatever reason I tend to be a loner and not a joiner, so meta-narratives tend to not hold much weight for me. I'm naturally drawn to those that express my values and goals, however.
Quoting syntax
It certainly does, probably to more of a degree than we care to realize. We can at least have the appearance of beating ourselves into particular shapes. Meta-narratives may help us do so.
I don't believe it's that simple. Generally speaking, we all have corporeal needs and a desire for meaning. Materialistic behavior or wanton production/consumption may be more an expression of rationalistic values overshadowing or obscuring our empathy, compassion, and creative spontaneity. Love is fundamentally irrational.
For who? Who is pulling the strings? The meta-meta identity?
You know the word 'person' is from the mask used in classical dramas, the 'persona'. But if you're not *really* the 'persona' - then what else could you be? A meta-person?
Freud of course had a model of the personality in terms of id/ego/superego - and I can't really bring to mind many competing models from current culture. The traditional model was 'body soul and spirit' but that has been eclipsed by biological explanations and I suppose also in terms of 'identity politics' (which are a fertile source of meta-narratives, or so I would have thought.)
I suppose in cultural terms, our 'defining meta-narrative' must be something modelled from a composite of your occupation, your family ties, and artistic or professional aspirations. In the absence of an meta-narrative, what else is there?
I think that might be an aspect of your time and place. You have leisure time to dwell on it, and you do, so your mind probably wasn't dulled in childhood by intensive labor. You have the financial power to be a loner, plus you live in a world where there isn't a single beating drum. You can pick and choose beliefs. You can take this from Buddhism, this from science, this from a green movement, etc. without fear of a Spanish Inquisition.
One ground-zero for that kind of eclecticism was post WW2 California.
The above story isn't entirely true. It's a myth.
Good description. Hamlet comes to mind. What's interesting is our power to shape the play. A charismatic person can influence others. It seems to me that the great philosophers have, among other things, shaped the way that others see themselves. For the less bookish, the lyrics of a rock star or rapper seem to accomplish he same thing. I'd guess that whether or not we take bookish or pop-culture heroes is itself a function of even earlier identifications.
Ha. Well, there's no chance of avoiding that, is there? This is one way to read 'Hell is other people.' These others are 'hell' because they refuse to see us as we want to be seen. I speculate that enduring this 'hell' is important to growth. Isn't reading at times a walk through the inferno? A risk of one's precious prejudices?
No difference really. I suggest that worldviews tend to come with roles for the worldviewer.
Can we write our own metanarratives? In some sense, yes, perhaps, but it also seems that our metanarratives write us. As soon as we get distance from our worldview, it's no longer our worldview. It is already a former worldview. We see ourselves as the kind of person who used to see ourselves that way. Or currently but now optionally see ourselves that way. Occasionally there's an explosive reversal. But mostly we seem to change our worldview piecemeal. It's a boat that we replace part by part, so that we don't drown in a kind of chaos. That's what I'd suggest.
But isn't this a grand narrative too? You are person who lived much of your life in an illusion, the illusion that there was a narrative or a plot. Now you see the truth on tone and meaning. I like this and can relate, by the way. I'm just saying that I'd count it as a worldview.
Great example. 'I am the non-attached.' 'I am the one who sees through all illusions.' These (as you imply) are leading roles themselves.
[quote=Tom Wolfe]
I think every living moment of a human being’s life, unless the person is starving or in immediate danger of death in some other way, is controlled by a concern for status.
[/quote]
Maybe that's putting it a little too strongly? But it makes for great novels.
But isn't this absence of an overarching account a kind of overarching account? All of the many narratives seem to be squeezed together into one grand language game in the quote above. Of course I agree that we can zoom in and see plurality. Still, I speculate that individuals tend have a set of interlocking or systematic self-descriptive and world-descriptive keywords that they are especially slow to relinquish.
Quoting Cavacava
Well written. While I think you capture something important about our current situation, I still think we have (often enough) a full absorption at least in a role play for the mirror. We know ourselves to be the grand and absurd beings who play lots of little roles that aren't us in our fullness. Only we know our fullness. Even friends and lovers can only follow us so far, since at some point our differences are threats to one another. So we learn to play in the intersections and politely ignore these differences. And when it comes to business or just interacting with strangers, we might not even think of trying to be authentic. It's safer to collectively agree on a kind of neutral background. (This is the public/private split in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, for instance. )
I agree. Groups seem to tend to form around a few basic virtues and vices (hoorays and boos.) Philospohers are fascinating because at least some of them enjoy trying to get outside of any group, except for that group which hoorays transcending every other identity.
Quoting praxis
I feel you. I would, however, see being a loner in terms of one of the more interesting metanarratives --that evolving narrative of the hero that thrusts against being possessed by narratives. That's what I've perhaps loved most about the philosophical tradition.
Totally. Yes, these are good examples. This is the kind of thing I have in mind.
I guess things get really interesting when one starts to pride one's self on being critically minded --on not being a slave to bad narratives at least. So then there's a motive to push against one's prejudices. What comes to mind is the pleasure-pain of picking a scab. There's a kind of self-mutilation in critical thinking turned against one's self. A person 'dies forward.'
I read through some of your old posts to try to find an example. You mention the 'vertical dimension' in a way that suggests that it's a kind of key phrase for your 'philosophical identity.' I'm not saying that that is bad or good, just presenting an example. Anyway, I didn't have to read much to get a general sense of a set of interlocking positions. It was hard not to imagine someone who imagined himself as a sort of knight of the vertical dimension. (I'm a 'knight' of something-or-another myself, so I mean no offense. )
As I see it, it is angst or doubt that is crucial here. It's one thing to be aware of your positions and passionate affirm them, though even this puts a little distance between the eye that sees and its image of itself. But angst or doubt really makes aware of wearing what we have been and may not continue to be. 'I am my past in the mode of no longer being it.'
Maybe we could talk of the center of a self being a pure consciousness devoid of personality, pure seeing if you will, the dry witness. But I think it's useful to think in terms of an onion. Some identifications are so lightly held that it doesn't hurt to reverse them completely. Others are so deep and 'natural' that they are invisible. They are too close to the 'eye.' As I see it, one way to be a great philosopher or exciting thinker is to become aware of these deep/'natural'/invisible parts of a worldview and simultaneously make them both explicit and optional.
Quoting Wayfarer
Indeed. But is there ever an absence of meta-narrative? Or are there just moments of one dominant narrative and other moments of thousands of individual narratives? Theocracy versus democracy.
No fair. I question the value of metanarratives and you say the denial of metanarratives is part of my metanarrative.
Of course I'm just playfully trying to communicate what the concept means for me. As far as I can tell, identities come largely in narrative form. We know that we have evolved, and we tell the story of that evolution to ourselves and others. And we are doing this already as teenagers. So telling the story of our lives is also telling the story of all the stories we have told about ourselves about ourselves throughout those lives.
I do understand what you're trying to say. I've thought a lot about the stories we tell. I am a very verbal person - an obsessive storyteller. Although I've gotten better as I've aged, I've always had a running narrative of what's going on in the world and myself in my head. It's hard to stop, even when it's self-destructive. On the other hand, I have never been able to tell a credible story about myself that's anything other than a list of the things that have happened. My life is just my life. No themes, no conclusions, no meaning. I don't see that as a bad thing.
1. I was once attacked by a cat because my cat imitation was so good.
2. My favorite meal is barbecued hotdogs and macaroni and cheese made with Velveeta.
3. My favorite possession is an orange rug.
4. My brother and I were on the Howdy Doody show when we were boys. They gave us Howdy Doody slippers and Hostess Snowballs.
5. I had my first automobile accident when I was 13.
6. I once got a D in algebra.
7. I am attracted to women with unusual names.
8. When I was 15, I was senior patrol leader of Boy Scout Troop 182 in Seaford, Delaware.
9. If I were rich, I would give each of my friends $2,000,000.
10. I am good at reading newspapers held upside down.
11. When I was 11, I broke my arm running down a wet sliding board.
12. I love the smell of asphalt.
13. I am not afraid of the dark.
14. I once heard squirrels running on the roof of my house and thought they were aliens from outer space.
15. When she was little, my daughter called elephants “elfasints.”
16. I once bowled a score of 0.
17. I remember my phone number from when I was a boy; 629-7369.
18. My older son was named after a horse in a song.
19. I once had two newspaper routes – the Wilmington Morning News in the morning and the Philadelphia Bulletin in the afternoon.
20. My favorite vegetables are brussels sprouts and lima beans.
21. For the first two years of my life, I lived in Germany.
22. Between 1980 and 1986, I was registered as a Republican.
23. I still remember the mnemonic for Moh’s scale of hardness from 7th grade – The girls can flirt and other queer things can do.
24. I once fell out of a tree and had to be taken to the hospital in an ambulance.
25. I know someone who saw Chubby Checker naked
26. When I was a boy, one of my favorite comic strips was “The Phantom,” but, since I’d never heard it pronounced, I called it “The Pontom.”
27. I like spiders but I’m afraid of them.
28. My favorite word is “geschwindigheitsbegrenzung.”
29. When I was 13, my father let my brother, three of our friends, and me wander around Manhattan all day by ourselves.
30. I once ate 17 ears of corn in one meal.
31. Talc, gypsum, calcite, fluorite, apatite, orthoclase, quartz, corundum, diamond.
I love the reply, but you ain't foolin' me with that rhetorical strategy. :smile: I think you've painted very well the kinds of things that aren't central to identity. They are charmingly concrete and abstract. They are flesh on the bones of the big narrative. Novelists use them to emphasize 'incarnation.' Our bright, universal fantasies of ourselves are entangled with a background of master-plan-neutral detail.
To the contrary, I think what I've provided gives a much better understanding of who I am and what my life means to me than any narrative could. I guess that's the point. Narratives round off corners and putty over holes. Sand rough spots.
On the contrary, I read the entire list and don’t feel that I know you any better. Mostly superfluous details.
I think that just shows a lack of imagination, vision, on your part. Seeing people as they are is a skill not everyone has.
I came back to make a response which was a bit less snotty.
In my experience, knowing someone, seeing them as they really are, is more poetry than prose. Pictures rather than words. People show us how they are, who they are. What they tell us they are often does not match that.
This response tells me much more about you than all those details. Some details are more significant than others, I think you might agree.
**
Being a 'spiritual if not religious' type I have to put in a plug here for one of my favourite Alan Watts' books, which I think is germane to the theme of meta-narratives, that book being The Supreme Identity:
Thank you. I'd be happy to meet also. I've enjoyed our conversations on the forum. I think your response underlines a point I was trying to make when I put in the list. To me, it represents me as I am much better than any narrative. I read it and it feels like me. Of course it's not comprehensive or complete, but there is no lie or misrepresentation in it.
I've been talking to my son about philosophical issues recently. He and I were talking about Watts earlier this week. Years ago I gave him "The Wisdom of Insecurity," which is one of my favorite of his books. I have not read anything by him in years. Decades. I'm thinking it is time for me to go back and read and re-read.
Quoting T Clark
It's a charming list, but does your childhood phone number really give us a better understanding of you? I remember my childhood phone-number, too. It has a certain magic for me. But it's just random numbers for others.
Quoting praxis
I have to agree with praxis here, T Clark. In your response you seem to divide humanity into those with the skill of seeing people and those without. For me it's pretty natural to assume the purveyor of invidious distinctions find himself or herself on the bright side of that distinction. For what it's worth, I value seeing others. I count it as a virtue, so I'm definitely not attacking your distinction. I'm just defending my thesis.
Do you at all agree with the following?
Probably the most important part of our worldview is our categorization of others. Who are the good guys? Who are the bad guys? If the environment is understood as the most pressing issue, then environmental activists are central good guys. If the world has become a spiritual flatland, then resuscitators or keepers of the holy flame are central. If superstition is the problem, then defenders of science and rigor are the good guys. A diagnosis tends to come with a doctor. Even a cynic wants to cure at least himself of bothersome illusions. Other self-concerned philosophers of their own worry or fear or pettiness. (And I'm playing at being a knight of self-consciousness, one might say.)
Only if the conflict thesis is fundamentally true.
Sure. I agree that the worldviews/identities I sketched above depend on or embody that thesis. Of course I wasn't putting forward that thesis myself. So we can say that the knight of spirituality and the knight of positivism need the conflict thesis in order to cast their vision of the social drama. What they have in common is a sense that the truth in their possession is something to impose on the community, for that community's own good. They depend on one another.
It's another issue, but I think we take deep pleasure in ideological conflict. While we like to feel that we are winning or on the right side, a complete victory would condemn our current identity to obsolescence. If we run out of bad guys, we start a new war in a new uniform. For instance: I start as the one-sided spiritualist or positivist, but eventually learn to doubt the conflict thesis. But who am I now? What treasure (or sword) can I bring? Ah ha! I wage war against the conflict thesis itself. I invent a third way that sees these the first two ways as the two sides of the same counterfeit coin. But the story doesn't end there. It continues at least to this very narrative of evolving narratives.
The tension between idealism and materialism is a dialectic. As you say, each side needs the Other in terms of which, or against which, it defines itself. The ‘third way’ might be the Hegelian synthesis. But - evolving towards what? Is it simply a perpetual motion machine? Is there an end-point?
Actually there is a sense of looming catastrophe at this time. The ‘meta-narrative’ is one of possible global destruction or at the very least degradation with its many attendant miseries. We have to adapt very quickly to vastly changed circumstances. I would have thought that one of the fundamental priorities of our particular time in history is, therefore, adapting to an economic model that is no longer based on constant growth and plenty for all. So a philosophy which equips people to live in the light of that - to define flourishing in some terms other than endless growth - might be a suitable synthesis to seek. And that would indeed seem to suggest a balance between scientific capitalism and a philosophy that emphasises the ‘fruits of contemplation’.
A central feature of a worldview is: who is in charge, and why should we accept their authority? As long as that issue is happy, the world is relatively happy, whatever the current diagnosis might be. Mother and Father are at the helm, so we'll be fine. We'll figure it out (or Mom and Dad will if they don't leave us any part to play).
When the issue of legitimacy is fraught, there is underlying instability. Life thins out into a veneer over the possibility of revolution, and so the whole world is sick, but the bad guy is untouchable.
What do you think of the government-type you live under? Do you see in any beauty in its foundation?
It's not the number, it's the fact that I remembered it. That I thought it was worth putting on the list. That I thought to write the list in the first place. That I think the list and the things on it show something fundamental about me.
If nothing else, I think we have established I am charming.
I acknowledged my initial response to @praxis was unnecessarily snotty. That's why I followed up with the other one. I wonder, what would constitute necessary snottiness? On the other hand, I think the primary tools in understanding people and their ideas are empathy and compassion. Intellectual empathy is indispensable for philosophy.
Quoting syntax
Keeping in mind you and I don't seem to agree on exactly what a worldview is, no, I don't think categorizing people is an important part of a world view, certainly not mine. I work hard, with some, intermittent, success, not to characterize people at all.
Indeed. If I had to pick a center, that would be it. And this is an old issue: http://www.iep.utm.edu/thrasymachus/.
One possible narrative is that Thrasymachus is right, and that lots of traditional philosophy is a defense formation against that terrible possibility. Of course humans are more powerful in groups, and groups come with rules, but then an intellectual can play by the rules publicly and be a private sophist.
[quote= Sloterdijk]
Modern mass cynics lose their individual sting and refrain from the risk of letting themselves be put on display. They have long since ceased to expose themselves as eccentrics to the attention and mockery of others. The person with the clear, "evil gaze" has disappeared into the crowd; anonymity now becomes the domain for cynical deviation. Modern cynics are integrated, asocial characters who, on the score of subliminal illusionlessness, are a match for any hippie. They do not see their clear, evil gaze as a personal defect or an amoral quirk that needs to be privately justified. Instinctively, they no longer understand their way of existing as something that has to do with being evil, but as participation in a collective, realistically attuned way of seeing things.
[/quote]
Quoting frank
I think the 'untouchable bad guy' is a good theme. Some thinkers make Nature itself the bad guy. Along the same lines, they see human existence as essentially fractured. Man is a futile passion or just of bundle of passions with no center. The disaster is universalized. The gods themselves are evil, or at least amoral. This kind of thinking is seductively monolithic. The good guy and the bad guy are the same guy. The good guy is the bad guy who has stopped thinking he is the good guy. (The distinction breaks down, in others words. The position has something melancholy about it. It may occasionally thirst for a kind of lost innocence, without really being willing to pay for it.)
I live in the US, and I do see beauty in its foundation. Individualism is the siren song that still rings in my ears. I understand opponents of individualism. They are right that there's something profoundly lonely and sterile involved. On the other hand, there's something cloying and stagnant in the other direction. Die of thirst alone in some open desolate space or rot in the crowded nursery. A thinking that creates distance from the law and a thinking that wants to become law --something like that.
Fair enough! And you are indeed charming.
What I have in mind is something very simple. Take this forum, for example. Of course we are all individuals, but I find hard not to see general types. To be sure, we lose detail when we think in types, but I find it happening quite naturally. In a quote above, there's a comparison of cynics and hippies. I think 'belief system' talk is going to come from cynics seeking distance and 'forgotten spiritual tradition' talk is going to come from hippies, more or less by definition or association. Or there is the blue versus red of U.S. politics. Of course I do see the value of trying to look around our projected categories. By calling attention to them, we remind ourselves of stereotyping tendencies that might otherwise lead us into trouble.
Whatever my metanarratively-woven identity is, it definitely includes joy at seeing Sloterdijk brought into the convo. Best (living) thinker out there, in my opinion [what am I signalling?]
What I want to say, cribbing Sloterdijk's terminology, is that there are a plurality of spheres in which we live. In the public sphere ( our job etc) - our particular identity and metanarrative is less important. Like you've said, we kinda all agree on this neutral background that lets us function. Our particular sense of self is present, but muted. On forums like this (or in real-world friendships) they become much more pronounced. In our private lives - if we write, or journal, or even just think - these things became super-present.
But there's another sphere, intimacy, where all this kind of breaks down. (Intimacy comes in all sorts of varieties, I'm not just talking relationships).
I say this, and I think its mostly right, but I think its also not quite right. I'm paving over something
The cynic still has hope. That's what the angst is really about. Abandon all hope and there's nothing to be cynical about. The world doesn't need to be saved.
Quoting syntax
Me too.
Sure, those are reasonable goals. They are so reasonable that I can't imagine them being controversial. Can they be achieved ? If so, how? To some degree I think we want the world to burn. That WWII happened as it did is theoretically amazing, and yet it makes a sick kind of sense. There's something empty about the respectable, rational approach to life. I understand the goal of wanting to re-spiritualize the corrosive Western knowledge-is-power paradigm, but I'm anything but sure that this can be done. I tempted to see this as an impossible longing for a somewhat fictional past. (Was there ever really a general agreement that wasn't sustained by the threat of violence?)
What if our spirituality has been reduced to the photos on a glossy college brochure? As far as I can tell, the more powerful motives in the West are the desires for material comfort and status. A 'true' passion for culture is associated in my mind with a skepticism toward the money-glamour system that is likely enough to lead to relative poverty and low status, the exception being someone like the critic who becomes an internet sensation. (There's an episode of Black Mirror that really nails this: it's the guy whose trademark is the shard of glass from his wall-screen he puts to his neck.) To be sure, in a sufficiently affluent society these half-rebels might live especially beautiful lives.
I love the guy too, though I'm just really getting around to him. I recognize immediately, though, the kind of intellectual I like. This dude is present, relevant. So many thinkers are just snore-worthy, ignoring the forest for this or that tree.
Quoting csalisbury
For me it's pretty much dead-on. I was hoping to drag you in to some conversation, because your posts are one of the reasons I joined.
For me there's a certain melancholy in the uselessness of one's particular identity for the work world.
I agree also that the theory breaks down around intimate relationships. For instance, how many men who read the famous thinkers for pleasure can nevertheless find themselves entangled with women who don't really have a comparable appetite for abstraction? Or for cynicism or demystification? It may be that these women do our believing for us. And we do their doubting for them.
It's not a political programme - it's a philosophical question.
I think philosophy was originally about the realisation of a higher identity - hence the reference to Watts' book. But this is now bracketed out, for sounding too much like religion. The culture has been more or less inoculated against any such understanding, at least in part by what it conceives of as religion. And I agree - culture has indeed become entirely focussed on money, glamour, technological power, pursuit of pleasure. But it's the job of philosophy to criticize that, or at least be aware of it.
Quoting syntax
Agree. Being aware of your pre-suppositions is a difficult thing to do. But that's one of Kant's great strengths, IMO.
Well we can define 'cynic' however you want in this context. But for me the cynic is not someone who thinks the world needs to be saved. The cynic for me is the type of thinker who is willing to hypothesize that humans are fundamentally split or divided. The truth is not some saving angel trapped inside us, oppressed by confusion or greed. The truth is a raging ambivalence. It's perhaps a volcano and not an angel. Again, think of WWII. It happened. Men jumped at the chance to tear one another to bits with what I presume was an incomparable sense of community. We have in war the maximum of both sentimentality and brutality. There is the terrible ecstasy of life lived without restraint along with an end put to that same fulfilled life.
Zizek writes somewhere about reality being a flight from dreaming and not the reverse. For me this is a cynical thing to say. The worldly father who still fundamentally believes in barbecues and breeding might criticize the unruly son for hiding away from life in his books. The son can accuse his father of hiding away from his own nullity in swelling of bellies and bankaccounts. Who, if anyone, is right? They all go in to the dark. They die believing or doubting, amused or annoyed.
EDIT:
I do think the cynic has a tender heart, an affection for truth. Yeah, the cynic is an idealist turned inside out, or something along those lines. If that's what you mean, I more or less agree. The cynic is disappointed that the theologians aren't believable.
Sure, that's a reasonable job for philosophy, but I don't see anything fresh there. The only difference that I can personally see in your view from a standard liberal critique is that you want the religious element to be more explicit. That's fine. But I think the 'magic' of the name Plato, for instance, is dying with a certain image of the university. Sitting in the classroom of a pompous teacher who controls the conversation with grades pops the illusion pretty quickly. That structure of conversation with its quantified 'learning outcomes' might as well be emptying its bowels on the life of the mind. The professor is a mechanic adjusting the brains of his customers, installing a culture module, sneaking in sensitivity training. Of course there are great professors out there, but they have to play along. On the bright side, those who give a damn will find the books on their own --which is not to say that these books will make them happy.
But the books will probably make them less boring.
I guess what it comes down to is I like people. I like hanging around with them and talking with them. There aren't many who aren't interesting if you can get them talking about something they care about. Sometimes I've found grace with someone I never would have expected it from. I'm always starting up conversations in checkout lines or restaurants.
Looking back over my life, I have been treated unkindly by very few people. It usually catches me by surprise when it happens. I worked my entire professional career for one company with people I knew well and respected and who treated me with tolerance, which is a prerequisite if you're going to spend much time with me. I feel really fortunate.
I have found that, when I do put people into boxes, it's a mistake. I regret it later. It doesn't work. It makes me make bad decisions and act like an asshole. This is not a statement of principle, it's what I've learned from experience or maybe always knew.
You will see that all my discussions end up with a quote from Lao Tzu eventually. This time I'll go with a paraphrase - The person who can be characterized is not the eternal person.
I guess. But Kant is a dinosaur. That's not to say that people in general have assimilated all they could from such dinosaurs, but I think it's worth mentioning that the famous college-brochure thinkers lived in very different times. And I think there's just a bias that accumulates, too. If everyone talks about Kant long enough, then everyone feels the need to know about Kant. So everyone reads Kant. Then everyone has to talk about Kant.
This is the kind of attitude I have toward the famous intellectuals: http://home.ku.edu.tr/~mbaker/CSHS503/DerridaSuccess.pdf
Of course it's 'arrogant' of me to doubt the canon, but this arrogance seems inseparable from real philosophy for me.
yeah yeah, agreed. he's a real person, and he philosophizes from out of that. His whole person is always involved, and so the results are fascinating.
Quoting syntax
This feels true to life to me (at least true to life, sometimes). But I'm not making the connection between this and intimacy [qua dissolver (maybe) of metanarratives]
I am interested in understanding these questions through Western philosophy among other things. And sure, Kant is olde worlde, but his insights into the nature of knowledge are still highly relevant.
You see, the prevailing meta-narrative for a lot of people is that one, we're the outcome of chance, and two, we're animals. And that has philosophical consequences. There's a lot of nihilism in the atmosphere - it might not be dramatic or highly visible, but it's in the air we breathe.
There can arise a temptation to cultivate a certain perception and then discard that identity when something uncomfortable comes to light, and muddles the perception you're seeking. ('if they know this about me, theyre not seeing what I want them to see') So then: Avoid the people who saw that identity. And then start afresh. & repeat:
[quote=Conrad]To the white men in the waterside business and to the captains of ships he was just Jim—nothing more. He had, of course, another name, but he was anxious that it should not be pronounced. His incognito, which had as many holes as a sieve, was not meant to hide a personality but a fact. When the fact broke through the incognito he would leave suddenly the seaport where he happened to be at the time and go to another—generally farther east. He kept to seaports because he was a seaman in exile from the sea, and had Ability in the abstract, which is good for no other work but that of a water-clerk. He retreated in good order towards the rising sun, and the fact followed him casually but inevitably. Thus in the course of years he was known successively in Bombay, in Calcutta, in Rangoon, in Penang, in Batavia—and in each of these halting-places was just Jim the water-clerk. Afterwards, when his keen perception of the Intolerable drove him away for good from seaports and white men, even into the virgin forest, the Malays of the jungle village, where he had elected to conceal his deplorable faculty, added a word to the monosyllable of his incognito. They called him Tuan Jim: as one might say—Lord Jim.[/quote]
So intimacy requires what lord jim is reluctant to do. But no one cares that much, except for jim. In fact they wish hed stay around and own it. They've been displaying their flaws all along, and can sympathize with someone who has flaws too. But the guy who has no flaws or history - he's harder to relate to. The tragedy is that on the one hand Jim thinks they'll be apalled, while on the other hand, just at the moment they're least-apalled, and most sympathetic - that's when Jim leaves.
Share the feeling of other peoples concepts and ideas?
Anyway, I wanted to say that I've felt a little disturbed by your response yesterday and that I regret offending you. That was not my intention at all and had I even suspected that it might offend I would have said it differently, or not at all. To be honest I still do not understand your reaction. Is it actually rude to describe your list as superfluous details? In hindsight, I can appreciate that you may have put some degree of mental/emotional investment in the list.
I found your list and the point you were attempting to make with it interesting, which is why I read the entire thing. It's just that I found little that spoke of your values and goals. But then I suspect that you deliberately avoided those kinds of details, in attempting to support your point, I suppose.
Quoting T Clark
Getting back to your reaction, it appears emotional to me because it doesn't quite make sense. The use of imagination and seeing something as it is are very different things, right? A more cogent critique may have been to suggest a lack of good inductive reasoning on my part and failing to put all the pieces together to form an accurate or true picture of you.
Yeah, I ended up deleting some of what I originally wrote. Nietzsche wrote somewhere about women making all the seriousness of men look like folly. I've recently become friends with an impressive women. She's smart, wise, open, real. She never got sucked into the genre that includes Nietzsche, Marx, etc. But I don't feel superior to her in some general way, as much as I generally derive a sense of status from questioning every sacred cow. The value of that game shrinks in her presence. I think it matters that I find her physically attractive. She awakens the life force, let's say, and the life force is only impressed with demystification as the prelude to a new mystery. So it's as if a homoerotic/narcissistic game dissolves in a field of heterosexual tension. But the same thing does not occur with the woman I actually possess. And it's pretty rare generally. Yet I have a sense that actual possession would break the spell.
Sure. I love the Western philosophical tradition. I love it for being a snarling, arrogant, questioning tradition. And I even love Kant. He smashed the idea of direct access. He made bias or structuring-by-the-subject fundamental. Kant was post-truth before post-truth was cool. (I'm playing fast and loose here, but there was a reason he was found threatening by the thinkers of his day. He may be tame compared to Nietzsche, but that kind of thinking leads toward Nietzsche, no matter it's temporary place-saving for religion. (Actually this is a rich issue. Have you looked at After Finitude? Meillasoux thinks he is an anti-theologian, but he writes like a theologian, and insists that the dead may be resurrected while railing against anti-scientific superstition. He is a fascinating personality. I don't find him convincing as a whole, but reading him was like reading good science-fiction, and I was convinced here and there at the level of detail. I enjoy Schopenhauer in the same way.
Also, yes, I agree that that's a prevailing narrative. It's also painfully plausible. Is this prevailing narrative not a result of a Western philosophical tradition that de-divinized the world? That's the dark comedy of the situation. The same freedom of mind that helps make great engineering possible also opens up the question of what all of this hustle and bustle means. And treating man as one more animal is great for developing medicine but again threatens us with a vision of being pointless monkeys. I think educated liberals do their best to navigate this threat by leaning on a religion of Progress. Heaven exists down here but not yet. And then the beatniks and other individualistic 'mystics' look for Heaven in the mortal moment. And we all find it in the moment now in then, lost in what the critical philosopher might call an illusion or projection.
I haven't read Lord Jim, but I take it that you're talking about our tendency to flee [those who know] our pasts in order to reinvent ourselves for a new audience. Yeah, I can relate to that. I have stuck with some lovers and friends through series of transformations, so I also know the opposite. For me this ties into the forgiveness of sin, which is what I see as the profound core of Christianity. 'Personality is an illusion.' This is something I used to say without being able to specify what it meant to me. Of course I agree that pure authenticity is a myth, and it assumes that there is some true individual core, when maybe the core is just what we all have in common. The mask is a contingent adaptation. The mask is religion, while the blood is beneath religion as its soil. And I don't mean (of course) blood as religion, though there's always the threat of a cult in any recognition of the hollowness of the explicit. I just mean that we are warm-blooded community-craving creatures.
But people can be nasty indeed. That's why true friendship is so beautiful. All the energy usually spent on projecting the ability to retaliate is channeled into a willingness to bend and forgive. For me the best Christian thinkers have wisely avoided any kind of system building or orthodoxy (Blake). The forgiveness of sin is everything. Of course asserting even this in the wrong tone would be an imperial, unforgiving move. And it's one thing to decide that forgiveness is the essence of Christianity and another thing to decide that this core Christianity is all or especially what is needed. I can imagine too much forgiveness and understanding (Zelig.)
Pretty much. The Great Disenchantment.
In order to survive, one must be schooled in reality. Of course. Those who mean well call it growing up, and there is a grain of truth to that. But that is not all. Always a bit unsettled and irritable, collaborating consciousness looks around for its lost naivete, to which there is no way back, because consciousness-raising is irreversible.
...
Arguing behind the back and through the head of the opponent has become common practice in modern critique. The gesture of exposure characterizes the style of argumentation of ideology critique, from the critique of religion in the eighteenth century to the critique of fascism in the twentieth. Everywhere, one discovers extrarational mechanisms of opinion: interests, passions, fixations, illusions. That helps a bit to mitigate the scandalous contradiction between the postulated unity of truth and the factual plurality of opinions—since it cannot be eliminated. Under these assumptions, a true theory would be one that not only grounds its own theses best, but also knows how to defuse all significant and persistent counterpositions through ideology critique. In this point, as one can easily see, official Marxism has the greatest ambition, since the major part of its theoretical energy is dedicated to outdoing all non-Marxist theories and exposing them as "bourgeois ideologies." Only by continually outdoing the others, can ideologists succeed in "living" with the plurality of ideologies. De facto, the critique of ideology implies the attempt to construct a hierarchy between unmasking and unmasked theory. In the war of consciousness, getting on top, that is, achieving a synthesis of claims to power and better insights, is crucial.
...
The right of ideology critique to use ad hominem arguments was indirectly acknowledged
even by the strictest absolutist of reason, J. G. Fichte, whom Heine aptly compared to Napoleon when he said that the kind of philosophy one chooses depends on the kind of person one is. This critique intrudes into the conditions under which human beings form opinions with either compassionate serenity or cruel seriousness. It seizes error from behind and tears at its roots in practical life. This procedure is not exactly modest, but its immodesty is excused with a reference to the principle of the unity of truth. What is brought to light by the vivisecting approach is the everlasting embarrassment of ideas confronted by the interests underlying them: human, all too human; egoisms, class privileges, resentments, steadfastness of hegemonic powers. Under such illumination, the opposing subject appears not only psychologically but also sociologically and politically undermined. Accordingly, its standpoint can be understood only if one adds to its self-portrayals what is, in fact, hidden behind and below them. In this way, ideology critique raises a claim that it shares with hermeneutics, namely, the claim to understand an "author" better than he understands himself. What at first sounds arrogant about this claim can be methodologically justified. Others often really do perceive things about me that escape my attention—and conversely.
[/quote]
One ideology tries to pull another ideology's pants down in public, usually in terms of some virtue that their intended audience takes for granted. I'm interested in what happens when a thinker begins to see this desire to humiliate and stand over as the kernel of the game --abandons the pretense of doing so for something higher than a nice place to look down from. Rorty examines something like this memorably in C, I, & S. He sees the dark side of his 'ironist' (whom he mischievously describes as a her.)
Right, and my point would be that this disenchantment is perhaps the primary fruit of contemplation. And that's why I find college-brochures so sickly-sweet and the cheery 'critical thinking' propaganda posted in many classrooms at my university embarrassing and absurd. The institution needs to be taken seriously (uncritically) in the first place in order to able to pontificate about the values of critical thought. Those who scoff at the sentimental veneer of the brochures and treat the university as a magic certificate dispenser are perhaps those who really practice what those posters preach. Similarly, the relativistic/nihilistic sophomore resented by the trained philosophy professor may be getting the essence of Western philosophy right, no matter his lack of polish and knowledge of detail.
But maybe you don't mean critical thinking but rather simply the resuscitation of pre-critical traditions. Well, I definitely have mixed feelings about the shape of things myself. I just don't see how we can go back to a place that probably only looks good in retrospect. I think our best bet is the triumph of a global humanism. It would probably be good to get off this planet and open a new frontier. Then those who hate one another can just get away from one another.
I deal a lot with environmental regulations. There are a lot of different ones out there. Often, each state has it's own and I work in a number of states. When I'm reading a regulation, especially one I haven't dealt with before, I find myself looking at what they say from the regulators' viewpoint, trying to understand their ideas. That helps me put together my understanding of what the intentions are and how to meet the requirements. I feel something similar when I come across other ideas I am unfamiliar with.
Quoting praxis
You didn't do anything wrong or say anything wrong. As I said, my response was condescending, which I regret. That's why I re-responded right away.
Quoting praxis
It comes back to differences between your and my understanding. I wouldn't exactly call my list poetry, but it said what it said in a kind of impressionistic, poetic way. At least it was intended to. To me, that's the only way to understand someone - paint a picture. Show, don't tell.
Quoting praxis
I was using the word "seeing" in a non-standard way. I should have been clearer. What I mean by seeing is to perceive them without interpretation or concepts, just as they are. That certainly takes imagination. To me, empathy is 80% imagination. I don't think you can know someone, see them, using inductive reasoning.
Sounds like an icon complex or fear of enthusiasm. Or more raw, as the guy in the movie about Turing said: it feels good to be mean.
The message underlying the violence and destruction is purely and simply self expression, with no higher meaning or purpose.
This leads to two, hopefully relevant, questions: can we choose our metanarratives; and is it necessary to accept the wider social/cultural environment in order to function, as a "social animal" at all?
"Heart of Darkness" is my favorite book, and Marlow is my favorite character in literature, but I've never read "Lord Jim." I've been thinking it's probably time I should.
As I mentioned, I liked your list. I can easily appreciate it aesthetically. In fact it wasn't explicitly clear why I liked it until now. This doesn't change the fact that it conveys little important information about you in fact or feeling to me. I suppose this could be because it simply doesn't resonate, despite my being able to appreciate the portrait aesthetically. We are very different people.
An artwork may or may not say anything of importance. A Thomas Kinkade painting may appeal to norms of beauty and generally be perceived as pretty but it may not really show much. The subject matter of a Kinkade painting, the little cottage in the woods or whatever, may have special meaning to the artist, and he may therefore feel that the subject matter says volumes about him. He is privy to a narrative that the audience lacks.
What do you believe the fundamental difference is between showing and telling?
Quoting T Clark
I believe the current theory is that empathy is based on mirror neurons. When witnessing someone getting injured, for instance, the same sensation is simulated in our mind, though the actual pain is suppressed, as when we imagine or visualize a painful experience. This is involuntary, though I think empathy may be clouded for various reasons.
I think it's misleading to say 'perceive without interpretation or concepts' when what you mean is attempting to see from someone else's perspective. That is imagining, of course.
The thrill in meanness definitely rings true. I've seen extremely well-read and intelligent posters on forums like these throw off the mask in the middle of high-minded conversations and call their conversational partner an idiot. Just to clarify my own view, I do think that in fact philosophers really are fascinated by the grand ideas they debate. The status-game is a powerful force in the background which becomes visible in the eruptions mentioned above. (I understand myself to want to see all of this accurately rather than to accuse or defend it.)
'Fear of enthusiasm' is good, too. I think this is also fear of being a fool. This seems like an important part of the self-consciously scientific or critical personality. The mind is creative and naturally projects patterns. The 'negative' power defers the enjoyment of these patterns as truths and instead takes a pleasure in deferment itself as a dynamic 'truthing-falsing.'
Right. Yes, this seems to be in the mix. In Blood Meridian this would be 'the taste for mindless violence.'
And this may connect to what may make a global humanism impossible. We tend to need a despicable out-group. Within the tribe all is warm and cozy, but perhaps only because this brutal, mindless self-assertion is channeled outward. The monkey rips its charity-event tuxedo off and throws excrement.
I think you've expressed it exactly - sometimes what I write resonates with others, sometimes it doesn't. Just to be clear, this is not an intellectual thing for me, it's visceral. If I had to write an autometanarrative, I wouldn't know how to do it other than the way I have. Maybe not exactly the same way, but the same general approach. I've tried before and I can't make it work. It feels false. It feels not me.
Quoting praxis
I don't buy that, but thanks for giving me a chance to bring out one of my favorite quotes from Emerson. I seem to use it in some post every week or so
To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,—— and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment.
When he says "genius" he doesn't mean like Einstein genius. It's more like essence, true nature. I have to believe that what I write means something.
Quoting praxis
Not sure how this relates to what I wrote. Imagination and empathy are experiences. Mirror neurons are anatomical structures. The mind isn't the brain. Or maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're trying to say.
What exactly don't you buy? I'm afraid the Emerson quote doesn't help me understand your frugality. I would like to understand.
Quoting T Clark
An aesthetic expression, assuming that's essentially what you're talking about, may cause a range of feelings and have a range of meanings depending on the individual experiencing it, and also depending on the skill and intentions of the writer. It also depends of how well the writer knows their audience and what might resonate with them.
In terms of expressing meaning, narrative is a powerful tool.
Quoting praxis
Tracing back, this started with a discussion of my way of presenting what may or may not be called my metanarrative. I said I use a "poetic," "impressionistic" approach. You said that approach did not help you understand my values and goals. You pointed out that an artistic approach may be significant in pointing out some issues or themes that are personally important to the artist, but might not provide anything meaningful to people in general. In response to that, I trotted out Emerson.
Quoting T Clark
Did I get that chain of events right?
Quoting praxis
I agree. I am a person of words and stories. But I don't think my life has a story or a meaning. That's the point I've been trying to make.
Okay, forget it.
Quoting T Clark
We may not know the meaning till it's over.
Sometimes people just don't get each other.
Rather, for whatever reason some don't try. I don't know what that reason is and it's not important. Sorry to bother you.
Now we’re even. One condescending response each.
You didn't really try, right? That's fine, your choice. I have suspicions but I don't know why that is. I'm actually sorry for bothering you.
The mania for "identity" seems to be the deepest of the unconscious programmings,
so deeply buried that it evades even attentive reflection for a long time. A formal somebody, as bearer of our social identifications, is, so to speak, programmed into us. It guarantees in almost every aspect the priority of what is alien over what is one's own. Where "I" seem to be, others always went before me in order to automatize me through socialization. Our true self-experience in original Nobodiness remains in this world buried under taboo and panic. Basically, however, no life has a name. The self-conscious nobody in us —who acquires names and identities only through its "social birth"-remains the living source of freedom. The living Nobody, in spite of the horror of socialization, remembers the energetic paradises beneath the personalities. Its life soil is the mentally alert body, which we should call not nobody but yesbody and which is able to develop in the course of individuation from an areflexive "narcissism" to a reflected "self-discovery in the world cosmos." In this Nobody, the last enlightenment, as critique of the illusion of privacy and egoism, comes to an end. If mystical advances into such "innermost" zones of preindividual emptiness used to be exclusively a matter for meditative minorities, today there are good reasons for hoping that in our world, torn by struggling identifications, majorities for such enlightenment will finally be found.
[/quote]
I personally relate to this 'nobodiness,' which I associate with the sense of wearing one's life as a mask ('personality is an illusion'). The 'problem' is that this 'nobodiness' easily becomes another sophisticated ego-narrative. Has this or that person achieved a sense of personality being an illusion? Something like the 'noble savage' seems to reappear. This kind of thinking is also presented in Love's Body. Is it not that case that any valuable 'spiritual' insight can be used in an ugly 'unspiritual' way? As insights become institutionalized and hardened for general use, do they not tend to lose force?
I can very much relate. I see the danger of boxing people. But for me a certain amount of boxing is inescapable.
I agree that there is something like an eternal person beneath all the role-play, but then I find myself categorizing anyway between those who have a knowing gleam in their eye and everyone else. Is he or she in on the joke of personality? Is he or she behind/above all these word games we play?
For me, that itself is the narrative. It's one I relate to. Every nice little autobiographical tale feels wrong or false. I see that that is implied in your original impressionistic portrait, but only in retrospect. The abstract statement of your situation is far more revealing for me.
That’s a pretty interesting quotation. From the viewpoint of anthropology of religion, there’s probably a reason why such pursuits are the prerogative of ‘meditative minorities’ - namely, because the way is narrow, and the path difficult. Divesting oneself of the imagined selves and social selves that comprise one’s sense of self, which is what the mystical path entails, goes against the current of everything deemed socially useful. So I don’t see how it could be of interest to the majority. In fact, in most religious cultures, the special role of the religious is recognised - the original meaning of ‘secular’ was to demarcate the two kinds of lives. Whereas now it’s all secular [or fancies itself to be, although how much of what it thinks of as ‘secular’ is actually sublimated religiosity is another matter.]
A mischievous thought I often have is that the aim of so-called secular or Enightenment philosophy is actually to make the world safe for the ignorant - ‘ignorance’ in the sense of ‘avidya’, spiritually unaware. Whereas, again, in a religious culture, one’s ultimate identity is understood in terms of union with the Divine or liberation from the wheel of life, secular culture by definition has no aim beyond - well, what exactly? More and more pleasurable experiences, better health, greater utility - ultimately space travel, the physical pursuit of heaven.
Notice the reflexive link between ‘reality’ and ‘survival’. This is because evolutionary biology, which has displaced religion in the meta-narrative of secular culture, can only ever envisage ultimate ends in terms of ‘what survives’. Never mind the Sisyphean connotations of surviving for the sake of surviving - I breed, therefore I am - there’s actually nothing else on offer; there’s only only one kind of end available, and it’s physical, as everything must be.
You may not be a Pinker fan, don’t know if I am yet as I only just started this book, but enlightenment values are explored in this work.
I agree.
Quoting Wayfarer
I mosty agree here, too. But there is a space in the market for the mystical path. My girlfriend keeps on eye on what the millenials are doing. There are lots of Youtube personalities earnestly presenting various spiritual traditions and home-made fusions of these traditions. Quality varies, of course. And then they make their money through the advertisements that accompany their videos as well as through books. I don't resent their making a profit, since they wouldn't have the time and energy to do what they do otherwise.
Quoting Wayfarer
The public realm has indeed been neutralized or pseudo-neutralized. For the most part spirituality is privatized, but of course there some basic rules (essentially tolerance and property rights) that manifest a dominant conception of the sacred 'above' individual choice, controlling the 'menu.' This for me is a 'sublimated religiosity.' The enforcement of laws and conventions is, in its way, the practice of a living religion/worldview. The state is a god and a vote is a prayer.
Quoting Wayfarer
That's one way to look at it. But such philosophy also makes safe a personal search for spiritual awareness. What is the alternative? As far as I can tell, it would be a euphemism for theocracy. Religious freedom is the privatization of spirituality, it seems to me, with all the good and bad that comes with that. An issue that comes to mind is whether power tends to corrupt spiritual institutions. I suspect that, yes, it does.
On the other hands, our spiritually pluralistic democracies/republics may be too chaotic to deal with some pressing issues. I don't see any obvious fixes, though.
Quoting Wayfarer
I think you're neglecting an important distinction. I understand secular culture to be a (sort of) neutral background for working out one's own salvation. But you probably mean the global humanism common among atheist/agnostic intellectuals. If so, I can see that there's something shallow in all of it. It is basically a vision of a united world of healthy, amused monkeys who are satisfied with that. I'll be impressed if we can get that far.
Personally, I seek and sometimes find sufficiently profound experiences beyond this kind of thing. I think Rorty is mostly right in his vision of the public/private split. It's safer perhaps to concentrate on these 'animal' basics in the public realm. Again, the danger is that the institution of the holy becomes a 'materialistic' (power-obsessed) tyranny.
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't think it's like that. Yes, Darwin informs the modern attitude, but Nazis aren't exactly fashionable, and they come to mind when I read your description above. Of course survival is necessary in order to pursue a sort of general enrichment of consciousness. And I think this vague notion of endless enrichment is a more plausible candidate for secular religiosity. This enrichment is cultural, not strictly material. I see, of course, that physical science informs this sense of enrichment, but physical scientists are only the cultural heroes of a tiny segment of the population. Politicians and artists invoke virtues and vices. Be tolerant. Be creative. Be kind. Be productive. Be mindful. Don't be racist, sexist, inauthentic, petty, materialistic, selfish.
And all of this is mostly reasonable. But of course 'tolerance' can be the slogan of the intolerant, and 'open-mindedness' can be the slogan of those who are tired of thinking. But note that we don't hear 'survive at all costs!' Indeed, quality of life arguments for abortion and euthanasia appear among humanists/atheists. I think a certain level of affluence is understood as the precondition for an endless enrichment. That the affluent are afflicted with their own expensive problems is a related issue, which takes us back to the privatization of spirituality. The plan seems to be to give the people with third-world problems a new and improved set of first-world problems. And of course to not sink or nuke our semi-spherical spaceship. And this may be the best realistic plan. But then I am biased. I don't think that suffering can be completely removed from life, or that any spiritual-intellectual tradition can conquer what I'd call a basic ambivalence in the human soul. Life can be bettered but not perfected, in other words.
I will reply more at length, but while the thought is with me - have you ever run across Horkheimer’s book The Eclipse of Reason? It’s about the only ‘Frankfurt school’ text I’m familar familiar with and says a lot about this theme.
Well, the meaning of ‘secular’ was originally to distinguish between religious and secular affairs or powers - back in the day when religious institutions were centres of power. (Actually ‘secular’ originally is a description of ‘secular time’ as distinct from the ‘sacred time’ of the Church calendar, but never mind.) Anyway, long story short, the point of ‘secular governance’ was to provide a governance framework which could deal with public utilities and laws and the like, whilst not involving itself with questions of religion.
However, over time the meaning of ‘secular philosophy’ changed, in that it is often taken to mean or imply that it’s a philosophy that is consciously non- or even anti-religious. That stance is obviously writ large in the writings of so-called ‘secular humanism’ although that spans a wide spectrum of views; but there is a strongly anti-religious strain of that kind of thinking [e.g. everything published by Prometheus Press]. But one consequence of this is, again, anthropological, in the sense that it has implications for ‘the human condition’ or what it means to be human.
If you look at Renaissance humanism - particularly Ficino, Della Mirandola, and Erasmus, who are identified as its principle voices - they have a ‘spiritual anthropology’. The first two weren’t even particularly Christian - in fact they both skirted heresy throughout their careers. But they were trying to devise a synthesis of philosophy and religion which was at once scientific and religious. And actually their influence was considerable on early modern science, for example through Bruno and then Galileo. However, as they drew on the Platonic and neo-Platonic corpus, that carries with it a kind of idea of ‘anthropos’, the meaning or significance of human existence, which is not necessarily tied at all to anything like Christian creationism. Della Mirandola was a voice for ‘universaliism’ or what is now ‘the perennial philosophy’ - which caused him trouble with the Church, predictably. But the point is, it still had the room for a spiritual dimension, a proper metaphysics, as it could draw on the Neoplatonist and other elements of the Western tradition. So ‘renaissance humanism’ does have that element.
But in any case, fast forward to the publication of Origin of Species, and all of those kinds of elements in the Western corpus were jettisoned, along with bibilicism, in my view. That, at any rate, is the practical consequence of a strictly ‘Darwinian’ account of ‘the descent of Man’ (//ps//and incidentally in this connection it's worth perusing Alfred Russel Wallace's writing on that same topic). Because it regards the entire story as being one that can be comprehended in naturalistic terms, then it is unavoidably reductionist in many of its manifestations. And a lot of that goes back to the so-called Scottish Enlightenment, which has had many profound and long-reaching consequences on modern liberalism and so throughout so-called ‘secular culture’. I find, on this forum, almost everyone will fiercely defend the view that humans are essentially animal.. There are also many normative views about the nature of mind and language that are deeply conditioned by same factors. It just seems natural and normative - and understanding that gets back to the remark you made about ‘seeing through your own presuppositions’.
So the upshot is that what often is said in the name of secular humanism IS philosophically barren. But it’s also true that it doesn’t have to be. Actually it’s got nothing to do with ‘secularism’ as such - what it comes from is taking methodological naturalism as a metaphysical principle, which it isn’t. That’s the problem in a nutshell.
The best recent book on it, is Thomas Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos.
You're doing it again.... telling me my lack of a metanarrative is my metanarrative.
Yes, exactly. From my perspective, this vision of yourself of lacking a meta-narrative is indeed the kind of thing that I mean by meta-narrative. For me it's an abstract identity. Obviously I understand that my perspective is not binding for you. We can drop it, if you like. I intend no offense.
When I think of modern humanism, I think especially of thinkers in the wake of Hegel (Strauss, Marx, Feuerbach). Christianity was made worldly and 'rational.' It was 'perfected' by being blended with philosophy and science. The preceding unworldly or 'irrational' Christianity was understood as man's alienation and as a substitute for building Heaven down here. I think anti-religious feeling largely comes from a sense that returning to old-style religion would be a regression. It is a 'religious' or 'theological' rejection. Since traditional religion is often publicly allied with conservative politics and a repression of intellectual freedom, this suspicion is not absurd.
Quoting Wayfarer
Is it really that simple? I do see an stronger emphasis then before on the animal foundation. But the simple fact that we worry about being virtuous and good in abstract terms already suggests that we hold ourselves to different standards than the other animals. Now this is indeed a fascinating tension in the intellectuals' conception of humanity. If we are 'only' animals, then isn't all this hand-wringing just animal prudence? Even if that's an oversimplification, it's the kind of dark thought that goes with a vision of humans being just one more piece of replicating ooze. As I see it, this is just part of the usual doublethink. We don't have the time or energy to get around to all of our contradictions, largely because of those same animal foundations. If I wasn't subject to violence, starvation, or the treacherous spontaneous deterioration of my own body that makes me dependent on modern healthcare, oh what a tale I might tell. And everyone else is also stapled to this matrix. But that of course supports the significance of our animal foundations, even if it doesn't specifically enforce a broader interpretation of that significance. We are, after all, free to have this conversation.
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm sympathetic to this. I think some so-called secular humanism is bad or shallow. And then I also think that it's natural to find any rational/scientific approach a little cold and dead. We crave mystery and miracle in a way that makes any adult/reasonable approach to life a little unsatisfying. I personally think that this dangerously touches the lurking inner tyrant.
One thing that we didn't touch on is communism. For me this is a great example of a rational mysticism. It was intensely loaded with righteous fervor, despite a metaphysics that one might expect to make such fervor ridiculous. I think it's a great example of how 'spirituality' can be blended with a 'scientific' self-conception. And maybe this goes back to Plato, in a parodic manner. The fantasy is that knowledge and moral virtue can be one and the same thing. I question this fantasy. I think one roughly has to choose between an amoral accuracy and a righteous faith. Of course that is a position that can be questioned or criticized, and it's one of the reasons I don't quite fit in with my self-righteous, liberal peers. The idea that knowledge and innocence/purity go together leads to intellectual bubbles, in my view.
Yeah, I've looked into the Frankfurt School, though only briefly into that book. I most recently dipped into Adorno's The Jargon of Authenticity. I like just about any post-Hegelian German philosopher I've looked into, even if (or especially because) I'm never completely seduced by their perspective. Of course this kind of complete seduction is usually one of the great pleasures of being in one's 20s.
Not offended at all. Just enjoying the irony. I think my particular idiosyncratic understanding has taken up enough room in the discussion. It has struck me that what Sloterdijk is talking about in the text that's been quoted is not too different from what I'm saying, is it?
Right. You and I and he all seem to understand the value of a kind of 'nobodiness.'
Well, a major part of my meta-narrative is 'institutional religion getting it wrong from the outset'. At the time of the formation of the Church there were many competing meta-narratives, and the victors were not necessarily the more enlightened. But, history is written by the victors, and maybe that regressive tendency is one of the consequences.
When I studied comparative religion and history of ideas, I was struck by the fact that there seemed to be no obvious equivalent to the Indian understanding of mok?a (spiritual liberation) in the Western religious traditions. There is a convergence in the teachings of the mystics, which is subject of many volumes of comparative mysticism by the likes of Huston Smith and Aldous Huxley. But the view I came to, was that this was because of the role that religion assumed in Western culture, which was that of gatekeeper, rather than enabler. 'No-one comes to the father but by Me' became 'We are the sole custodians of truth'. Whereas the model in Buddhism was vastly different - centrifugal, rather than centripetal, as it were. The model was 'the passing of the torch', the imparting of Prajñ?, the empowerment of successive generations.
But knowledge is a much harder thing to manage than belief.
Quoting syntax
Well, I agree - deep down, we suspect that we're not, but it's a dogma of a lot of secular thinkers nonetheless. The Greeks said 'rational animals', but a lot of modern thinking tends to reduce rationality to adaption (for which see Nagel's essay, Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion.)
What has been lost in the transition to modernity, is the sense of the basic fallibility of human reason, corrupted as it is by the 'original sin'. I don't subscribe to the Augustinian interpretation of this myth, which arguably the most influential reading (mainly by virtue of Calvin.) In the East, the understanding is not 'original sin' but 'beginningless ignorance' or (avidya or unawareness), which is endemic to the human condition. The Christian vision is volitional, 'corruption of the will', the Eastern gnostic, 'corruption of the intellect, but both pinpoint a sense in which humans will inevitably miss the mark (which is the original meaning of 'sin') if they are not transformed. That is what is usually missing in secular philosophies.
We should probably bear in mind what Sloterdijk said about how deeply embedded our identity is.
It's one thing to conceptualize this nobodiness, it's quite another to embody or realize it. Nobodiness can easily be written into the fabric of our personal narrative.
Ah. OK. That's helpful.
Quoting Wayfarer
I've studied a little bit of religion from the East, especially the Tao and some of the popularizers. I was personally surprised to experience Richard Rorty as something like a Taoist. He strikes me as trying to wake people up from being trapped in word-games and useless dualisms. I'm not seconding every thing he ever wrote, but I think that he is profoundly anti-profound, let's say. He paints of vision of clinging to nothing, of no longer reaching for foundations, of a centerless creative culture where love is pretty much the only law.
Quoting Wayfarer
I look at it mostly in a different way. Science has such prestige because we are so wary about the other approaches to truth. While we can doubt interpretations of science, none of us can really doubt technology. Of course thinkers will therefore tie themselves to the prestige of technology to be taken more seriously. A philosophical or religious tradition may have prestige for a sub-community, but this is not at all binding on those whose identities are not already entangled in such traditions. An engineer might scoff at the philosophy major as a pretentious idealist wasting time on old books. I don't agree, but I have seen this contempt. And our philosophy major can exaggerate the importance the longwinded expressions of ideas that are actually pretty simple. If we really only respect technological power, then a nihilistic pragmatism fits on an index card.
If the philosophy is supposed to serve a religious/moral purpose, then that looks suspect through the lens of the cynic who lives in a polarized environment. In short, it looks like venerable old books being used for this or that contemporary political purpose. After all, students are graded to some degree for ideological purity --or that's my prejudice. In short, we live in a chaos of voices that call one another liars and creeps. Technology is the one thing that cuts through all this noise.
Right. I agree. I think you missed what I wrote beneath my original quote of Sloterdijk. Here is is, for convenience:
Quoting syntax
I saw it and considered including it somehow in my cautionary note, which was intended for a general audience.
Quoting syntax
Haven't got around to Rorty yet, although he's been mentioned by quite a few posters over the years. My favourite of the current US philosophers is Nagel.
I just mean that it cuts through all the ambiguity. It's the one thing that just about everyone 'believes in.'
Just imagine if the physicists weren't associated with working technology or falsifiable predictions (if they were useless to those who didn't find their math intrinsically fascinating.)
Right on. :smile:
Bored at work and distraction seeking, I've come back to this, TClark. Incidentally, I noticed your participation in the 'games people play' topic so I know the notion of adult to adult interaction is top of mind.
So I looked up the Emerson quote. It's essentially about self-reliance. Indeed the essay is titled "Self-Reliance." A foolish consistency... blah blah blah. How is this a foundation for your objection?
In the example that I provided, the little cottage in the woods doesn't reflect a TRUTH that others have sensed but for some reason haven't cognized or voiced themselves. It has meaning to the artist because that's where his child was born, or whatever. It has personal meaning to the artist and doesn't signify any kind of universal truth, much less a truth that is contrary to the prevailing meta-narrative of the culture.
To sum, you don't appear to have an objection, and this was not an opportunity to trot out your Emerson quote. But I suspect that you know this and that's why you refused to explain yourself.
Shame on you for intellectual dishonesty. [said the parent]
I am sometimes, too often, dishonest, but I'm almost never intellectually dishonest. Maybe we have a misunderstanding.
Thinking back, my memory is that we started out with me saying that I find a poetic, artistic way of presenting myself more effective, satisfying than what we are calling metanarratives. My interpretation of your discussion of Kincaid was that such artistic ways of looking at things can be personally satisfying but may not help others understand what and who I am because they are too ideosyncratic and individual. That's when I brought up Emerson. His point, mine, that I have to trust that the connections I see will be understandable to others whether they are rational or intuitive. That is the essence of communications.
Does that make sense, or am I missing something.
I'm a victim because I'm X.
I'm a badass because of X.
Jesus is my co-pilot.
I'm a humanist.
I'm a single mother.
I'm a drug addict.
Logically, all narratives are rooted in the common worldview because they're exchanged as people meet one another in work or leisure. I think it's possible to have a personality that's just averse to being pigeon-holed. I read once that there's a link between having a poorly formed personality and being a mystic.
We live in a time that's rich in information (or overloaded depending on your point of view.) We often don't have a lot of time to get to know people: to ask them open-ended questions and listen. We just want the whole thing summed up quickly and easily so we can understand and move on.
Isn't it true that a sort of pre-made identities are out there and there's reason to grab one and wear it just because not having a proper tag makes it harder for people to process you?
I've envisioned your list as a field of dots on a canvas (cuz you've framed it as art). I can connect the dots with lines and make a shape. Will the connection you see form the same shape? No. Do the connection you see comprise a form of something that I've sensed but haven't cognized yet? No. Is it possible that I might have this sense in the future? No. I don't believe the Emerson essay applies to personal meaning.
These connections you speak of is the narrative that connects the items on your list.
How is this any different than any other attempt at communication between people? Of course there is the possibility that the other won't understand. Of course Emerson was talking about personal meaning:
....to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men
There is nothing unconventional about showing your favorite food or whatever. Social media is replete with stuff like this. There's nothing the least bit against the grain about it. I can hear the hooves as they march down the well trodden path in perfect sonance.
I don't understand your objection and I don't understand why this seems to be such a big deal.
Is that really how you experience yourself?
Applying the Emerson quote, you’re essentially claiming that your list expresses self-reliance. How does it do this?
I'm not claiming anything. I'm just saying I have confidence that, if I express what's in my heart, others will understand me. Doesn't always work out, but it usually does.
So... why is this such a big deal?
I experience myself as boundless. How does your experience of yourself relate to the story you tell about who you are?
You're not paying attention. I claim not to have a story about who I am. You, and others, have expressed skepticism.
Don't get it, which is ok with me. We can leave it here if you'd like.
All of these are fine points, but I think you are neglecting an important situation. The philosopher or poet or comedian is only truly successful if he or she adds to or creates a narrative either for the community at large or for rebellious individuals perhaps. The anxiety of influence drives (among other things) the endless fine differentiations of and the occasional revolutions in group and individual identity. (Or such do I opine.)
So I'd say that a minority of people strongly embrace the general idea of being a culture creator, and then those in this minority wrestle with their self-consciousness in an especially intense and creative way. Non-creatives don't feel ashamed to be one more good mother or brave soldier, etc. They don't feel that being one more copy of a good thing is shameful. They are just glad to align with an ideal created by others, probably long ago. But the creative who is just one more copy thereby precisely fails to align with his or her creative ideal (to be one more copy of the artist in a higher, more complicated sense.)
And you believe that's what the Emerson essay is about?
[quote = Sloterdijk]
It seems that the ethos of conscious life would be the only ethos that can maintain itself in the nihilistic currents of modernity because it is basically not an ethos. It does not even fulfill the function of a substitute morality (of the kind in Utopias that posit the good in the future and help to relativize the evil on the way there). Those who really think from beyond good and evil find only one single opposition that is relevant to life; it is at the same time the only one over which we have Power stemming from our own existence without idealistic overexertions, namely, that between conscious and unconscious deed. If Sigmund Freud in a famous challenge put forward the sentence: Where it (Es) was, ego (Ich) should become, Heidegger would say: Where Anyone was, authenticity should become. Authenticity —freely interpreted—would be the state we achieve when we produce a continuum of being conscious in our existence. Only that breaks the spell of being-unconscious under which human life, especially as socialized human life, lives. The distracted consciousness of Anyone is condemned to remaining discontinuous, impulsively reactive, automatic, and unfree. Anyone is the must. As opposed to this, conscious authenticity —we provisionally accept this expression —works out a higher quality of awareness. Authenticity puts into its deeds the entire force of its decisiveness and energy. Buddhism speaks about the same thing in comparable phrases. While the Anyone ego sleeps, the existence of the authentic self awakes to itself. Those who examine themselves in a state of continual awakeness discover what is to be done for them in their situation, beyond morals.
[/quote]
Let me joke with you a little bit and say: you tell me, because aren't you one of them? Or was your comment the emission of Virtue 2000, true to type? In other words, ain't we both foolosophers who want to say something new now and then? Even if we mostly construct ourselves from what we found in the junkyard?
In a sublime line of thought, Heidegger discovers that this "conscienceless conscience" contains a call to us —a "call to be guilty." Guilty of what? No answer. Is "authentic" living in some way a priori guilty? Is the Christian doctrine of original sin secretly returning here? In that case we would have only apparently taken leave of moralism. If, however, authentic self-being is described as being unto death, then the thought suggests itself that this "call to be guilty" produces an existential connection between one's own still-being-alive and the death of others. Life as causing-to-die. Authentically living persons are those who understand themselves as survivors, as those whom death has just passed over and who conceive
of the time it will take for a renewed, definitive encounter with death as a postponement. Heidegger's analysis, in essence, penetrates into this most extreme boundary zone of amoral reflection. That he is conscious of standing on explosive ground is revealed by his question: "Calling on others to be guilty, is that not an incitement to do evil?" Could there be an "authenticity" in which we show ourselves as the decisive doers of evil? Just as the Fascists cited Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil in order to do evil emphatically in this world?
[/quote]
Just wanted to share and see if anyone also saw themselves in it...
I also find that kind of thing fascinating.
If you haven't already looked into Carl Jung, you might like some his ideas (on the sources of religious myths/narratives.)
Putting value to saying something new. I'm not being dogmatic, I'm asking: is that part of our worldview? I think I could make the case that it something that transcends all worldviews, although it's a helium balloon that pulls an anchor through all views, stirring things up.
In some Platonic dialog Socrates says that what all philosophers most want is to die so they can see this world from the outside. Are all attempts to say something new related to this desire?
On the list. Thanks!