To See Everything Just As It Is
I was reading an essay of Raymond Geuss on Nietzsche recently, and there was one passage in particular that I found quite striking, relating to Nietzsche's relation to 'systematic thinking', and with it, God:
"[Nietzsche] thought that love of systems was a human weakness and that the stronger one’s character, the less one would need and the less attracted one would be to a system. Nietzsche holds that if God were to exist, he would not, contrary to eighteenth-century views, be a master geometer with a universal system of the world. He would see each thing clearly as precisely that which it is and nothing else, and he would not need to use a concept to catch it and reduce it to something else he already knows. Humans are not gods, of course, and so they cannot attain this state, but that is a failing, not an advantage that they have, nor is it anything to be especially proud of or pleased with oneself for having produced." (Geuss, Changing the Subject)
While I am no theist, I find something very beautiful about the idea of 'seeing each thing clearly as precisely that which it is', and I think it's entirely fair to say that there's a kind of divinity involved in any attempt to do just that. Incidentally, Adorno - who himself was very influenced by Nietzsche - also saw the vocation of philosophy as just this need to attain what we might call the 'singular universal', although he saw philosophy's attempt to do this as mediated through concepts, although understood in a different way than usual:
"Philosophy wants literally to lose itself in everything that is heterogeneous to it, without bringing it back to ready-made categories. It would like to nestle in close to what it isn’t ... Its aim is undiminished kenosis, self-emptying. ... Philosophy would, strictly speaking, become infinite ... [once] it would find its content in the multiplicity of objects: ... It would really and truly surrender itself to them, would not use them as a mirror in which to discern only its own features, mistaking its reflection for concretion. It would be nothing other than full and unreduced experience in the medium of conceptual reflection." (Note the invocation of a kind of empirical and secularized 'kenosis': kenosis being the Christian 'emptying' of oneself so as to receive the will of God).
And on concepts: "Philosophy has no choice but to operate with concepts: one can neither turn this into a virtue — the concept’s primacy — nor, conversely, critique this virtue and so issue a summary verdict on all philosophy. ... Philosophical reflection assures itself of the non-conceptual in the concept" (Adorno, Negative Dialectics). Anyway, just notions that have been jiving with me recently.
"[Nietzsche] thought that love of systems was a human weakness and that the stronger one’s character, the less one would need and the less attracted one would be to a system. Nietzsche holds that if God were to exist, he would not, contrary to eighteenth-century views, be a master geometer with a universal system of the world. He would see each thing clearly as precisely that which it is and nothing else, and he would not need to use a concept to catch it and reduce it to something else he already knows. Humans are not gods, of course, and so they cannot attain this state, but that is a failing, not an advantage that they have, nor is it anything to be especially proud of or pleased with oneself for having produced." (Geuss, Changing the Subject)
While I am no theist, I find something very beautiful about the idea of 'seeing each thing clearly as precisely that which it is', and I think it's entirely fair to say that there's a kind of divinity involved in any attempt to do just that. Incidentally, Adorno - who himself was very influenced by Nietzsche - also saw the vocation of philosophy as just this need to attain what we might call the 'singular universal', although he saw philosophy's attempt to do this as mediated through concepts, although understood in a different way than usual:
"Philosophy wants literally to lose itself in everything that is heterogeneous to it, without bringing it back to ready-made categories. It would like to nestle in close to what it isn’t ... Its aim is undiminished kenosis, self-emptying. ... Philosophy would, strictly speaking, become infinite ... [once] it would find its content in the multiplicity of objects: ... It would really and truly surrender itself to them, would not use them as a mirror in which to discern only its own features, mistaking its reflection for concretion. It would be nothing other than full and unreduced experience in the medium of conceptual reflection." (Note the invocation of a kind of empirical and secularized 'kenosis': kenosis being the Christian 'emptying' of oneself so as to receive the will of God).
And on concepts: "Philosophy has no choice but to operate with concepts: one can neither turn this into a virtue — the concept’s primacy — nor, conversely, critique this virtue and so issue a summary verdict on all philosophy. ... Philosophical reflection assures itself of the non-conceptual in the concept" (Adorno, Negative Dialectics). Anyway, just notions that have been jiving with me recently.
Comments (86)
There's a name for this - it's called the Tao - and it's not seeing "each thing clearly," it's seeing everything, all at once, undivided.
Is the referenced work the right one for an introduction to Geuss's philosophy?
An immanent God would be all things. I think a transcendent God is inconceivable, myself, and is in practice simply referred to as something which has attributes we associate with other things in the universe but claim isn't of the universe. Regardless, though, such a God would have no need of a system, I agree, but that is not to say his creation could not be described as a system. Why would it be "weak" to do so? Because it wouldn't be godlike?
Kierkegaard also opposed systems, jumping from one voice to the next among pseudonyms.
When I see "see" in this type of context, I usually think of experiencing something in all ways, not just visually. I think that's what is being discussed.
To speak a little abstractly, one of the problems I have with 'seeing everything' is that 'everything' strikes me as too subsumptive, as though 'everything else' were just so much detritus ready to be subsumbed under one big cosmic principle. Too systemic, in other words. That said, I quite like the Tao, even though I find it problematic at points.
Quoting T Clark
[I]Changing the Subject[/i] is comprised of little essays on philsophers in history. The little I've read is great, but Geuss's main work is in political philosophy. For a nice intro I'd recommend his Philosophy and Real Politics. I will also say that I think Geuss is the best philosophical writer in English that I know currently working. His essays are just marvels. Anything of his is worth reading.
I am not any kind of student of philosophy, but it seems to me that many western philosophers toy around with a kind of pre-conceptual perception. I always find it frustrating. To me, it seems like they are not willing or able to take the final step, a step that seems unavoidable to me.
As usual, folk try to make it reductionistically a case of either/or when it stares them in the face that it is holistically both.
We can see the same because we can see the different. And we can see the different because we can see the same. They are two complementary limits bounding our conceptions.
So the OP is balderdash in striving for some superiority of "direct perception" over "systematising conception". That is not how things work either psychologically or metaphysically.
The general and the particular are both forms of conception used to framed our acts of perception. We don't just zero in on differences, but differences we believe make a difference. So a lack of sameness, the existence of individuation, is a judgement that depends on a prevailing generalisation about what should mostly be the case, and hence what now stands out as a significant difference, not a difference we would merely ignore.
That my friend, is the ideal.
That was a cool paper. I'm all aboard the 'difference precedes identity' train so it's good to see a close textual analysis of the varying instances of this in Nietzsche's works.
One interesting thing I find with the approach in the OP is that the viewpoint of the Nietzschean would-be God is subtractive, not additive: that is, it's not that such a God would see 'things in their entirety', over and above the 'finitude' of humans - I take this to be a rather classical theological trope - but that God would see things without the trappings of "a concept to catch it and reduce it to something else". There's a sense in which God here would see less than a human would, and not more. The 'finitude' of the human here consists of introducing more than what is warranted (in the form of a system).
In Buddhist philosophy, 'seeing things as they are', is one of the attributes of the Buddha.
Actually, there is a reference very familiar to the beat generation, in Alduous Huxley's Doors of Perception, about this notion of 'seeing things as they truly are', as if for the first time, whilst under mescaline:
Note there's nothing here about 'seeing things through concepts', which is similarly absent from anything in Buddhist philosophy. But I would like to think there is some resonance, regardless.
You don't think that it is interesting that we use the word "see" in such a context considering that we are visual creatures that receive most of the information about the world via light and therefore tend to think that the world is the way that it appears to our eyes?
What are ALL the ways that something can be experienced?
There is more than one way to see clearly. Say you were in the forest that is dense with trees. You can see the close things clearly, but it will be hard to see the forest because of the trees. One will need assumptions to extrapolate the nature of the forest, based on the clearly seen local flora.
Say instead you were up on a high ridge, overlooking the same forest. Now you can clearly see the transitions in the entire forest in terms of basic flora, streams, and hills. However, you are too far away to see any particular tree. Again you may will need use assumptions to extrapolate the big picture down to the smaller picture.
Science and most forms of knowledge are specialized, meaning they can see things clearly, that are close, but not far away. The biologists may not know what the physicists is doing nor the physicists know what the chemists is doing with the same clarity. Specialization does not allow the view on the ridge. From the ridge, one can see how all these isolated specialties, are part of a single larger clarity; forest.
The omniscience nature of the concept of God, allows him to zoom in or zoom out to view clarity from any distance. There is no need to extrapolate with concepts. Science and human knowledge, by being specialized, can't see very far beyond its own area of specialty. However, each zone of specialty attempts to extrapolate beyond itself, where it has no clear vision.
Picture a large puzzle the size of wall. This is symbolic of all of knowledge. What I am going to do is use a telephoto lens and zoom into the puzzle, so all I can see is one puzzle piece. This is specialization. From this close, we can examine that one piece of the puzzle and see many tiny details. Among the details, we see what appears to be the eye of a young women. There is strained anguish in her eye. We know that much with certainty, but we don't have enough data to know what the entire puzzle is about. We can only guess.
Next, we zoom out so more pieces of the puzzle appear. We learn the ways of other adjacent specialty to gain their clarity of data. Now we can see the whole young female, and she appears to be dressed in a worn workout suit. Based on the old and new details, we extrapolate and infer that the puzzle is about a poor young woman, struggling in her humble surroundings. This is reasonable.
Next, we zoom out even more and now we see what appears to be a gymnasium. Based on this larger picture, we decide we need to change our extrapolation, Now, the puzzle is about a young woman who is working out in the gym. Now it is not clear if she is poor or not. But she seems to be having a hard time maybe due to being out of shape.
We zoom out even further to add more details, from more distant areas of specialty, and notice she is not alone, but there are other females in various stags of stretching and movement. Now they all appear to be dancers. Based on this even wider picture, we again need to change the extrapolation. The puzzle is now about a bunch of women trying out for a small local dance company. Our original female is still struggling. That did not change.
We zoom out even further, by integrating the details of the most distant specialities and notice this is not just a gym, but it is the stage used by the NYC ballet. We also see the coach is directing his attention to the young female we first noticed. She is the prima ballerina, who is straining to be perfect.
Specialization does not extrapolate reliably to the large picture. You need to be more of a generalists who is able to zoom out and take it a wider range of clarity, at the same time. From the big picture, the specialty details, can take on new meaning.
Yes, seeing 'that which is', exactly as it is, is Objectivity, I think. It is something only God can or could do. [Unless anyone knows of another being, real or imaginary, capable of perceiving 'that which is'?] The only useful part of this - and it really is useful - is that it describes clearly a shortcoming of human beings, and the way we can perceive the world. It's too easy and too tempting to pretend that we can see or understand more than we really can. Reminders such as this keep us grounded. :up: :smile:
Although you use terms like specialisation and generalisation, aren't you just discussing abstraction here? (I mean "abstraction" in the sense that a software designer would use it.)
I'm not sure to what extent humans can directly perceive the world. That certainly seems to be the goal of some philosophies. Be that as it may, it doesn't change the fact that there is a world out there that isn't systematized, where humans have not made distinctions. As you say, what matters to us in perception is differences we believe make a difference. That's a human thing, a statement of value. It doesn't say anything about the underlying nature of reality. Believing human distinctions have meaning beyond humans is not justified.
I'm not sure if that disagrees with you or not.
I think you're right - humans are visual. That's probably why we say "see." "See" is often used as a synonym for "understand." I don't see why you can't see that.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Hearing, touch, smell, taste. Any way that humans get signals from the outside world. But that input, just like the world itself, would be undifferentiated.
I like the way you've formulated this discussion in this and the following posts, but what you are doing is still making distinctions, applying systems. You're still depending on conceptualization at each level.
I don't think it's objectivity in the way we usually use the word. Objectivity means comparing a statement to "reality." Reality and everything in it are parts of a system, a conceptualization. Mapping our words onto reality is conceptualization.
Isn't this just "thing-in-itself"?
My point was that any perception of things inevitably requires the context of systematising thought. So to pose God as an ideal observer who would "see each thing clearly as precisely that which it is and nothing else, and he would not need to use a concept to catch it and reduce it to something else he already knows," is just a bit of silly propaganda.
An observer is already the taking of some viewpoint. It is an inherently conceptual act in that you choose some place that sets you apart from whatever it is. Perception is thus active and not passive. The self, as a carefully positioned observer, is being constructed in a fashion to produce a distinction which is then the observed observable. A distinction is being produced by an act of framing. To see anything as individual requires this act of contextualised individuation - a positioning of the observer (physically, mentally, conceptually) in a fashion that makes it so.
This is the point of semiosis. The mind produces the sign of the thing-in-itself to construct a "world" - an umwelt. So any reality - if the word has a useful meaning - is embodied in this triadic relation. It is observerhood - the forming of individuated points of view - that constructs a world of observables.
This semiotic view of course seems to raise difficulties. A human conception of the world is linguistically structured. Through physics and metaphysics, we create umwelts that are even mathematically systematic. We impose an intelligible logical structure on a world of observables. We see a nature ruled by laws or principles - and it works.
By moving up a level - away from the world as seen from the point of view of scattered individuals at a certain highly atypical moment in the Universe's history, what we would call "life on Earth" - we can construct the kind of "all seeing/objective" scientific observer that takes a universalised view of the observable. We become minds reading off the facts of reality spelt out in numbers and measurements.
So we already know how how a more God-like perspective works. If we want to construct the objective view from nowhere - the observer that stands outside the observable which is the entirety of creation revealed - then it is going to wind up the utterly systematised view. Everything is going to be reduced to a pattern of marks, a set of symbols standing for acts of measurement, a collection of numbers read of dials.
To speak of God seeing things as they really are is codswallop. Does He see the green of the grass like us? Or does He see the electromagnetic radiation with a certain countable frequency? What does He actually see - be specific.
Either his perception is pseudo-human, but imagined happening everywhere at once in omniscient fashion. He can see inside our bodies to witness the redness of our pulsating heart - even though no light penetrates to illuminate the hue. Or He is a super-scientist who has the measure of every distinction.
Somehow we imagine Him as being present everywhere to notice every distinctive event - every thermalising exchange of energy or information. And He really sees it as He - from his chosen vantage point that places him as the observer, the steady context - can record it as the mark of a difference ... that makes a difference ... to Him .... as He is the one holding steady ... and it moved, or changed, or reacted, within the systematised reference frame that He embodies.
It doesn't work. You can't have a God with a direct and unmediated perception of His own reality. The de-systematised view. Naked distinctions can't exist. The very thing of "a view" requires the conceptual frame that is reading the world as a system of meaningful signs. An observer is an act of constructing a locus of stability - a point of view - that can then reveal surround instabilities as differences that make a difference ... to that supposedly stable point of view.
Again, the hypothesis was: He would "see each thing clearly as precisely that which it is and nothing else, and he would not need to use a concept to catch it and reduce it to something else he already knows."
That is a screamingly stupid sentence. It goes against everything we understand about the psychology of perception and consciousness. Why would anyone want to romanticise it as the proper way to do philosophy?
So Adorno sees that observables exist for observers. We have to construct ourselves systematically as "a point of view" to register a world as some ordered pattern of measurements, some memorable arrangement of meaningful and localised responses.
But now this carefully constructed self wants to lose itself back in the world of things as they "just are". It wants the unreduced experience of the unsystematic observer.
As if there are still observables without that construction of a context.
We are back to hippies popping tabs of acid to open the doors of perception. It is that trite.
Ever tried it?
I did get drunk once 40 years ago. No point doing it a second time. I drink coffee a lot. But it has zero detectable effect mostly.
I don't say everyone has to take such a rigorous view of drug use on some kind of moral high ground. But it was a decision I had to make for myself early on - back when hippies were handing around joints and bogans were keen on getting hammered. I see it as a personal health choice. And having studied neurochemistry - of altered states indeed - LSD doesn't have any of the allure of the unknown or forbidden.
So go ahead. Tell me what I'm missing. But I've already read all the phenomenological reports. They will do me.
It's one thing to read about psychotropics, and another thing altogether to undergo the experience. Just saying...not recommending...
If drugs could give you greater functional clarity of mind, I might take them. But the boring conclusion is that paying attention to health and training is how you maintain any mental edge in the long term.
You say I replied 'exactly as predicted". That is not surprising since my response is absolutely correct. Attempting to explain psychedelic experience to one who has not experienced it is like trying to describe colour to the congenitally blind. I have no doubt that undergoing such an experience could well alter, broaden or at least modify, your perspective. It can be surprising what lies unheeded in the minds of many individuals, no matter how apparently smart they might be.
In any case, I would never recommend taking psychotropics regularly, so your objection is not really relevant. Although some people do claim that micro-dosing can give a mental and creative edge; but that is a different matter; I have no experience to speak of with that.
I used to be heavily into the area of nootropics (I used to be quite active over at Longecity and the Reddit nootropic stub), and I used to micro-dose also. LSD is amazingly potent and I've researched a lot about how it affects the Default Mode Network, unlike stimulants that enhance it through altering the signal to noise ratio through phasic and tonic brain activity, think Ritalin (methylphenidate) or amphetamines. I've always preferred stimulants to microdosing LSD, due to the ego-hardening effects it has.
It's really popular in Silicon Valley. Anyway, what I learned is that drugs don't really make you smarter or more intelligent, along with the false premise that altering one's perception itself is a benefit. It can be a benefit; but, you have to be guided and losing control over one's self for a couple of hours isn't everyone's cup of tea.
EDIT: I also don't think that 'deconditioning' yourself is really the answer to any question, it just means a shift in perceived goals and values.
But it works both ways. What is it like to have a mind that has never been blown? :grin:
Or if we are talking about the advantages of things being revealed, what is it like to have a mind that understands the neurochemistry? Will you ever know what you are missing?
We can all play these games. I say judge them on the pragmatic fruits. Which kinds of revealed truth are going to be of the most value to you over the course of a lifetime.
And of course, I am alert to the fact that our choices of which avenues of experience to pursue are the ones that end up defining us, so shaping our feeling about the answer as to what mattered. Your drug experiences may indeed be fundamental to your resulting sense of self. They did become the invaluable part of "you being you".
So you can't be persuaded they might be trite experiences when they are experiences integral to your ego. I respect that. It is why I say I am not making any high ground moral judgement.
But before you came flashing out of the woodwork to defend something you hold personal and dear, I was making an argument against the romanticised story being told via conceptualisers like Adorno, who talk of shedding their systematising tendencies and romping naked and exposed in the delights of pure unanalysed nature like ... so many acid-tripping hippies.
I still say that romanticism is as trite as can be - in the context of psychological science and pragmatic philosophy. LSD-taking is just another of those romanticised social tropes - a way to define the cool gang willing to cross the line, transcend the world as experienced by the mere normie.
So romanticism is the general target here. Acid tripping would be a particular example of a form of perception being assimilated to the OP's romanticised conceptualisation of experiencing the world in a ... God-like! ... transcendent fashion.
I find it rather peculiar that many college students need or want amphetamines and methylphenidate, or safer drugs like modafinil to be able to function in college settings. Do you think they actually derive benefits from those drugs given the highly competitive nature that college imposes on students or is it illusory? Sorry if this isn't the point of the thread, just was wondering.
But God would see every single thing large or small, meaning all parts, and how each part is a part of something larger, which itself would be a specific thing, and how the larger things relate to each other as even larger things. So God would actually see a whole lot more than any human, or even all humans together.
Quoting wellwisher
Specialization does extrapolate to the large picture if you do it properly. Each specific thing is a part of something bigger, which is itself a specific thing. Conceptualization makes the specific thing into a member of a genus, a general type. The genus is not allowed to be a specific thing because it is thought to be a more vague idea, so this presents a problem to the extrapolation process.
So I would contrast my organic approach with the mechanical one you are describing. I would be critical of the drugs to the degree they are just a convincing mechanical metaphor. Are these nutrients to help your brain grow and flourish or some kind of turbocharger device you strap on, some kind of strong battery you plug in?
If you can't give an organic reason for why the drugs would be a true benefit, then you don't understand what you are doing. You are just learning to believe that you are essentially a machine - as this is what a machine would do.
Same with the college. If you can't give an organic reason of why what it does is going to help you grow and flourish, then you would be best to not believe in its value. If it is taking a mechanistic approach, again you will only learn to be a machine by going along with it.
I went through my own education with exactly these attitudes. I was sometimes a disgrace, sometimes top in the country. I once went a whole winter in shirtsleeves just because I didn't like the scratchy wool of the school jumper. On one hand, very silly. On the other hand, a formative experience.
But I think this is the secret here. If we view ourselves with a mechanistic logic, then all sorts of familiar discontents follow. Life looks quite different - or in fact, more how most folk would understand it - if seen through an organic lens focused on growth and flourishing.
Philosophy of course has plenty of good things to say about growth and flourishing. Aristotle was an organic thinker, even if he helped lay the foundations of a mechanical view too.
But, as I say in every post, organicism languishes as a well understood world view - as a metaphysics with a mathematical rigour.
Mechanicalism is held in high esteem because the mathematics of that (the very dumb and simple maths) has become something drummed in from birth. What could be more tragic than those parents of newborns who rush to decorate the baby room with the alphabet and numbers?
And this OP was tragic in celebrating a general rejection of totalising systems, just because the mechanical model is so patently dumb (if matchingly useful if you want a thoroughly mechanised life).
So what we ought to be focused on is the organic metaphysics that has the kind of rigour that lets us make better judgements because we know what actually makes life and mind tick.
Straight away we ought to be able to look at pills and schools seeing why they wouldn't lead to the best outcomes because they embody a mechanical crudeness. The reason why they would disappoint would leap out at us as obvious once we had the conceptual frame which allows us to perceive that.
[OK, the short off-topic reply just got turned into the on-topic again long-winded reply. Organically!]
What do you mean by this?
Quoting apokrisis
Well, we do idolize the mechanization of anything because as a matter of utility, it is better to understand. I don't see how you can argue with this if you move any idealized sentiments, in regards to holism, which is forever lacking.
Quoting apokrisis
I don't quite see your point of view, I need some more information to go about on here. Thanks. :-)
Quoting apokrisis
Yeah, I'm lost.
Quoting apokrisis
What conceptual frame is that. Emergence?
What makes something 'trite'? Something overdone, done-do-death, done so thoroughly there's nothing to gain from watching it be done again. Like a fruit squeezed of all its -
Hippies are squeezed to you in this way. You've squeezed from hippies what you can, so all that's left is an abstract, schematic [hippie]. You've drained hippies of what they claim to be saying, and what's left?
-
But:
'We can all play these games. I say judge them on the pragmatic fruits. Which kinds of revealed truth are going to be of the most value to you over the course of a lifetime.'
We *can* all play these games. How are your pragmatic fruits growing? How well do they evade triteness?
What have you done with your pragmatic fruits recently? Maintained the garden? What were you thinking about as you maintained the garden?
Nuff of that hippie talk! what about sitting in silence and thinking about peirce and being vaguely mad about it and so getting online and posting?? Thats the real pragmatic ----
what?
It was acid-tripping hippies. I was more specific.
So it is now you seeking to assimilate what I said as something carefully particular into a more generic conceptual frame - the one that allows you to exclaim, with smug triumph, there is surely more to hippies than just LSD or Carlos Castaneda.
As if I would have said otherwise.
Quoting csalisbury
My day is large enough to do lots of things. Isn't yours?
there's my apo!
So what I'm saying is that your bildungsroman post is unmoving in that:
things only plinko into the Final System if you always had the Final System in the back of your mind. Your reponse w/r/t hippie-ism is shot-through with: where is this heading? What's the goal?
doesn't that miss the point? (it does)
but
"If you can't give an organic reason for why the drugs would be a true benefit, then you don't understand what you are doing."
The shirt is chafing on the bare skin here. Is this worthwhile in itself, or will it help abate the chafe?
reworded:
[How does being a hippie on acid help you realize biosemiotics and talk about it often, and in the same words, to people who don't care about biosemiotics]
Look at c trying hard to be all nasty and offensive. Just so cute.
Quoting csalisbury
Keep up. My attack was on the usual Romantic guff that motivates these kind of PoMo threads. Ooh, if only we would stop conceptualising and systematising everything, then we would really see things for how they are!
Hippies promoting altered states of perception was an example of how familiarly trite this advice is.
If you now feel compelled to bring biosemiosis into it, that's your look-out. It certainly betrays your fears about there being systems out there in philosophy-land well above your paygrade. Quick. Pretend to laugh it off with your trademark wit. Hit us between the eyes with a lack of capitalisation, textspeak and deconstructed paragraphing that speak to your outsider persona.
Yes, you are that easy to decode.
Pleasantries aside, you could pay more attention to what I actually posted now. :)
There've been few philosophers who have so vehemently rejected the idea of the 'thing-in-itself' as much Nietzsche, so no, it's definitely not. Nietzsche's point is that this kind of 'seeing' can, even if only fleetingly, take place. For Geuss, Nietzsche's entire philosophy is, if nothing else, an attempt - not always realised - to attain just that point of view upon things. The context in which the quote from the OP is taken is a discussion of critiques of Nietzsche which complain that Nietzsche is not systematic enough. Here is how it begins:
"One sometimes hears plaintive (disingenuous) criticisms of Nietzsche of two related kinds. One of them runs, ‘Nietzsche was a trenchant critic of certain misconceptions and also forms of moral self-deception and spiritual narrowness, but he never actually went beyond mere criticism to present his own positive, constructive theory of how we ought to live our lives. Schade.’ The other runs, ‘Nietzsche is a purveyor of highly interesting but detached, fragmentary, and undeveloped aperçus. What a shame that he never succeeded in being more systematic; he failed completely to write a “system”.’
I think that these criticisms, in the form in which they are given here, are completely misguided. They suggest that Nietzsche was trying desperately to be Hegel but unfortunately failing, when in part the point of his work was that he was trying desperately not to be Hegel (or any similar systematic philosopher) but to engage intellectually with each situation as it came, without reducing it to a prepared category or a pregiven position in a discursive network." (Geuss, Changing the Subject). The quote in the OP follows directly after this.
Note of course, that to say this does not necessarily entail any kind of regression into a romantic 'pure experiencing' (although importantly it doesn't preclude it either). That's why I included the Adorno quote - the point is to approach concepts themselves differently from the manner in which systematic thinking does. If there's something from Kant to be drawn upon here, it'd be more analogous to the difference between (what Kant calls) 'reflective judgement' (movement from the particular to the general, as detailed in the Third Critique) and 'determinative judgement' (subsumption of particular under the general, as with legislation of the faculties in the First Critique). I say 'analogous' because the general-particular pair is, I think, something to be avoided altogether, but it's rough and ready enough to capture the spirit of what's at stake here.
And yet, systems (or better, mental representations) are part of the human psyche.
If Nietzsche had been a systematic theologian, he probably would have held that God is the transcendent and immanent author and sustainer (not observer) of the world (i.e., kosmos).
In other words, he would have understood that the attributes of omniscience, omnipotence, eternity, and omnipresence, render observation (the automatic and/or controlled processing of physical experience, resulting in the identification or interpretation of phenomena) unnecessary.
So, it is absurd to suggest that human beings should or could observe differently (much less, more like God).
In that case, isn't the concept of a (some) thing required in order to individuate it and understand it?
Quoting T Clark
See what? All you did is agree with me and expand on what I already said - that we use the term "see" as a replacement for "truth" and "understanding" because we are visual creatures. We think that the way things appear visually to us is how they really are.
Quoting T Clark
What about how non-humans get signals? What is differentiated is the form our sensory information takes. Feeling isn't the same as seeing yet different senses can provide the same information - just in a different form. You can feel the injury on your back but cannot see it. I can see it but can't feel it. We both have access to the same information - that you have an injury on your back. Who has access to more information about your injury?
Okay, I was more commenting on your OP as a whole (with your particular comments) not just Nietzsche.
Quoting StreetlightX
I get it, he looked at things piecemeal and without need to systemize. However, once you start saying things like "seeing things precisely as they are" and couple this "without concepts" you are getting into a metaphysics of reality "as it is" (hmm, sounds similar to "things-in-themselves" perhaps without other more specific Kantian conceptualizations though). It may be a more fragmatory version (rather than a unitary) though. I think the critiques are that Nietzsche never takes a step beyond the hinting. All hinting and no speculating perhaps. However, I am not a Nietzsche expert, so I am fine with someone proving me wrong.
LOL. Direct systematisation! Even more honest.
Is spirituality in its healthy form not always both "this-worldy" (immanent) and "other-worldly" (transcendent)? It seems that "this-worldly" action is always informed by "other-worldly" understanding. Even if you take Nietzsche who despised the transcendent - wasn't the value creation of the Ubermensch transcendent itself? Where did the value come from, if it wasn't in the world before the Ubermensch? It was the Ubermensch who revealed it, who made it present, and who thereby creatively changed and affirmed the fullness of the world. There is a tension here that must be maintained between the transcendent and the immanent. Plato would call it a metaxy.
So the concept of "God" is irrelevant. You can drop the word (as Nietzsche did - "God is dead") but you cannot drop the content - it just gets re-attributed to another concept. The creative action of the Ubermensch has a transcendent source, the Ubermensch reaches out beyond himself to bring what did not exist immanently into existence. So this relationship that Dasein has with Being is a relationship with something that transcends Dasein - and it is only by remembering this relationship (ie, raising up the question of Being anew) that Dasein can be authentic in his immanent actions. The immanent actions are informed by this understanding of Being.
I think psychedelics, just like any other kinds of experiences, are more or less different for every individual. You seem to be wanting to generalize as to their benefits and/ or deleterious effects, yet I can't quite make out whether you approve or disapprove. Are you ambivalent?
I try and be pragmatic. I value the highest 'base reality' or reality that is undistorted, clear, and lucid as much as possible. I also value the consistency, which psychedelics strongly disrupt. I just think that the aura and lure of drugs are overrated. I don't find any sort of rituals to be of any actual significance to anyone apart to some idealized vision, which I don't share. I'm glad our shamans of the past have become more strict and logical instead of metaphysical and mystical.
Obviously understanding neurochemistry will broaden or simply alter your perspective; albeit in a different way than imbibing hallucinogenic substances will. So will hiking in the wilderness, studying physics, biology, mathematics, literature, history, political science, religion, as will surfing, playing or listening to music, painting and drawing. writing or reading poetry, belonging to a religion...the list of activities is endless.
But the altered consciousness of psychedelic experience is radically different; and in fact you could even participate in most or all of the activities I listed in a mind-alteringly different way if you were tripping. So to have a mind that hasn't been blown is to have a mind that lacks a radically different perspective. There can be no advantage in that unless it were shown that having such experiences is detrimental in some way to the 'ordinary' mind; and this has certainly not been shown to be so except perhaps in a minority of people who might be adversely affected by even one experience, or those people who have over-indulged ( and even what constitutes overindulgence would differ, possibly quite extremely, from one individual to another).
But you can only be speaking for yourself, surely? Perhaps the real visions of others, precisely because you cannot share them, appear to you as "idealized"!
I don't know. I think so. It's just that there's too much hype around the idea. Set and setting I guess.
Yeah, that's a slippery slope there...
I think many of the problems ("bad trips", freaking out) arise because people ignore set and setting. Still people should not expect the experience not to be terrifying; I think that terror and letting go of it is an often essential part of what can be shown by these experiences. Anyway, perhaps we have gone well off-topic from StreetlightX's OP, and should henceforth desist.
Are you now offering a 'slippery slope' argument?
If you want to continue the casual conversation, I think you'd be interested in this thread:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/3597/about-mind-altering-drugs
I see @Bitter Crank made the important point in your other thread that shamans did create a guided experience. The rituals created a social framework which gave the production of an altered state its culturally useful meaning.
So it is the opposite of trite or insubstantial hedonism. Again to connect with this thread, it was constructing the conceptual framework within which that kind of perceptual state would make complete sense.
No different from going to church. Or an art gallery. In some general way, culture does want to frame our perceptual experience so that it has proper social meaning.
Which is where hippies come up. There was of course some cultural authenticity in the "counter-culture" movement. There would be good reason to want to alter people's perception of their social, economic and political reality.
LSD or pot was that sacrament. It could have been Ecstasy as it was a few decades later. Or it could have been the alcohol and cigarettes of their parent's generation. It could be EST sessions, yoga, Mozart, or the whole variety of things which are there to construct human perception in a culturally conceptualised fashion.
Even maths and philosophy are "drugs" in this sense. We are meant to be initiated into their mysteries by shaman guides and see the world through different eyes as a result.
So what I see as "trite" is the Romantic notion that one sees the world all by oneself, naked and simply. As if it is all about altered biology, not about social learning.
Perception is conceptual and systematised. For humans, it is culturally constructed. And so what becomes our individual choice is whose poison do we take? What culture do we consume to become the people we will thus grow to be?
You become wise or clear-minded by picking your influences carefully, not by altering your neurobiology or accessing a different plane of being.
I'm not too sure if it's a slippery slope argument or a no true Scotsman fallacy. Anyway, I'm gonna stop spamming this thread.
I just posted on that. Perception depends on conception. And for humans, conception depends on intellectual systems. Even hiking qualifies as a holy sacramental activity - a socially-valued method of shaping perception - within particular cultures.
Quoting Janus
If that different perspective has significant value, why hasn't it become shamanistically woven into modern common experience? Has society made other choices for good reason?
Yeah, I get the obvious answer. Drugs disrupt the smooth functioning of The Establishment. So they get suppressed. But I think it more likely that the supposed benefits are trivial.
Society already makes a place for drugs that get you whacked. The lubricants and anaesthetics. So health risks are endorsed for rather questionable personal rewards.
But here you are talking about a magical cognitive enhancer. If it safely worked, why wouldn't we?
Again, maybe society does value cognitive enhancement it seems. Although probably only for the few, or of the general form that is pro-social by being pro the norm. But granting that cognitive enhancement appears to be regarded as a general social good, hasn't acid been tried and found wanting? Or at least underwhelming.
OK, so we're talking about profound spiritual experiences. Are we at the limits of what language and reason can go about in formalizing and making sense of such experiences? They seem nonsensical on face value.
Quoting apokrisis
What do you mean by qualifying an experience as 'proper'?
Quoting apokrisis
Not that same kind of shamans advocating drug use, surely?
Quoting apokrisis
Agreed. So, there's no escaping reality then.
Has anyone found it yet? :)
Yes, I think you're right, although as you point out the connection is contingent upon a proper understanding of transcendence. More specifically, as contrasted with an other-worldly transcendence which slanders and devalues this world in favor of an imagined future one: a la traditional Christianity. Heidegger likewise talks about the transcendence of Dasein within the world.
Quoting Agustino
But wouldn't Nietzsche say that values brought forth by the Ubermensch lie completely within himself, i.e. within his own being now understood as a manifestation of nature (synonymous with will to power)? And that we'd be deluding ourselves if we attributed these to a transcendent source (pace Heidegger) which we're somehow indebted and responsive to? To me, Nietzsche and Heidegger seem to represent antithetical positions on this matter.
If I were forced to translate the distinction between the two into traditional theological concepts then I'd say that Nietzsche is a robust atheist, or maybe a pantheist (and aren't the two ultimately the same?) whereas Heidegger would be a pan-en-theist, with Being encompassing but also transcending the entirety of beings. Speculative stuff for sure and probably best to leave those traditional concepts behind when approaching these guys, as they're laden with way too much historical/metaphysical baggage.
What a strange way to approach reality, don't you think?
See, I find thinking we know what "reality"is for me and you is a strange assumption. Everyone's reality is made up of their perceptions, so everyone's reality is different.
I don't think I would say 'without concepts' though; I think philosophy is inseparable from - and perhaps defined by - conceptual activity (hence Adono: 'Philosophy has no choice but to operate with concepts...'). What is at stake is how concepts are employed: what kind of use they are put to. What is being inveighed against (as per the Geuss quote) are prepared categories and pregiven positions, not 'categories' and 'positions' tout court.
It is a mistake, I think, to invoke a radical disjunction between some beatific intellectual intuition - as though one were to occupy the position of a all-seeing God in direct, unmediated contact with 'the things themselves' - and that of a rigid systematizing in which everything fits into pre-given boxes. The point is rather - to quote Adorno again - whom everyone seems to be ignoring! - to "assure ... the non-conceptual in the concept": to let our concepts respond to the singularities of 'each thing', to capture each thing in it's distinctiveness.
There's a biblical trope in which God counts all the stars and gives a name to each one: each treated as the singular luminescence it is. One wants to do the same with concepts.
"We stand outside science. Instead we stand before a tree in bloom, for example - and the tree stands before us. The tree faces us. The tree and we meet one another, as the tree stands there and we stand face-to-face with it. As we are in this relation of one to the other, the tree and we are. This face-to-face meeting is not, then, one of these "ideas” buzzing about in our heads. Let us stop here for a moment, as we would catch our breath before and after a leap. For that is what we are now, men who have leapt, out of the familiar realm of science and even, as we shall see, out of the realm of philosophy. And where have we leapt? Perhaps into an abyss? No! Rather, onto some firm soil. Some? No! But on that soil upon which we live and die, if we are honest with ourselves. A curious, indeed unearthly thing that we must first leap onto the soil on which we already stand. When anything so curious as this leap becomes necessary, something must have happened that gives food for thought. Judged scientifically, of course, it remains the most inconsequential thing on earth that each of us has some time stood facing a tree in bloom. After all, what of it? We come and stand, facing a tree, before it, and the tree faces, meets us. Which one is meeting here? The tree, or we? Or both? Or neither? We come and stand - just as we are, and not merely with our head or our consciousness - facing the tree in bloom, and the tree faces, meets us as the tree it is. Or did the tree anticipate us and come before us? Did the tree come first to stand and face us, so that we might come forward face-to-face with it?
What happens here, that the tree stands there to face us, and we come to stand face-to-face with the tree? Where does this presentation take place, when we stand face-to-face before a tree in bloom? Does it by any chance take place in our heads? Of course; many things may take place in our brain when we stand on a meadow and have standing before us a blossoming tree in all its radiance and fragrance - when we perceive it. In fact we even have transforming and amplifying apparatus that can show the processes in our heads as brain currents, render them audible and retrace their course in curves. We can - of course! Is there anything modern man can not do? He can even be helpful, now and then, with what he can do. And he is helping everywhere with the best intentions. Man can - probably none of us have as yet the least premonition of what man will soon be able to do scientifically. But - to stay with our example - while science records the brain currents, what becomes of the tree in bloom? What becomes of the meadow? What becomes of the man - not the brain but the man, who may die under our hands tomorrow and be lost to us, and who at one time came to our encounter? What becomes of the face-to-face, the meeting, the seeing, the forming of the idea, in which the tree presents itself and man comes to stand face-to-face with the tree?..."
But this "other-worldly" transcendence is actually no transcendence at all since it is in-truth conceptualized as another immanent possibility of the world. It is actually a devaluation of transcendence. For example, Heaven is not a different world than this one, it is actually this Earth, and this nature that will be healed and lifted up. The position that the world is entirely sick, beyond redemption, is a heresy in Christianity. And even if it wasn't - another world is still a world, and therefore not transcendent. Whatever can be brought into the world as a thing or state of affairs is not transcendent. So the "other-worldly" transcendence, located in a different world, is a contradiction in terms. Transcendence is not worldly - it is not a different world. Transcendence exists at every point in the world, and in every world. It is not another thing in the world. It is not something that can be immanentized - brought into the world, captured within your hands. If it was, then it would not be transcendent. It is much more of a pervading (creative, active) quality that can be tapped into anywhere and at any time. It is what Spinoza called natura naturans, or indeed "the will to power" or whatever you want to call the active force that drives natura naturata. The will to power is self-overcoming - it is transcendence itself that shines through the world, pervades it. It is like the air that pervades the lungs.
Quoting Erik
What is the self-overcoming of the Ubermensch if not precisely this (self-)transcendence? Nietzsche merely subjectivises this transcendence but does not eliminate it. The values brought forth by the Ubermensch cannot lie completely within himself - if they did, there would be no self-overcoming, no creation of values.
Speaking of which - there’s a book called The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science, Peter Harrison:
I suspect this idea will go down like a lead balloon but I think it’s worth mentioning.
I actually like this approach, but are you suggesting that Nietzsche unfairly caricatured Christianity? That genuine Christianity - as opposed to Nietzsche's straw man - doesn't posit another "true" world in the beyond which serves to falsify and condemn this one? That Heaven and Earth will be ultimately be reconciled?
I think his evidence is pretty compelling, with things like pride and the accumulation of power being seen as sins against God rather than natural expressions of ascending life. I assumed the "other" world for Christians was one in which the meek shall reign supreme, the proud shall be eternally punished, etc -- not exactly how things normally play out in this one. This picture has obvious consequences in and for this world, so in a certain sense you're right about the constant interplay between the two even as they're separated in thought.
Quoting Agustino
But can Christians or Muslims, for instance, have knowledge of that transcendent world beyond vague hopes and descriptions? Streets paved with gold and seventy virgins sort of stuff? Whatever paradise is, it will be another, albeit far superior world, of course, but it's one that we who are still living have little or no access to. That being the case, it's taken as an article of faith: just wait until you see what God has in store for you!
I had a similar conversation with someone on here recently and it seemed like he was understanding "transcendence" in such a broad way as to render it indistinguishable from immanence. As mentioned in reference to Heidegger's philosophy, the two are inseparable for him and maybe even for Nietzsche - but for religious believers within Christianity and Islam (with possible exception of mystics) it seems like they're separated by a wide gulf. To repeat, Heaven in those religions is regarded as a "transcendent" world which the living are denied access to, right? That's like the sine qua non of these religions in fact, the ultimate reward promised to the faithful.
That juxtaposition of this world with another - "how the true world became a fiction" - is what I imagine Nietzsche had in mind. Is there a different term than "other-worldly" that would better describe the supposedly perfect one? I mean, I agree with you on the transcendence/immanence relatedness in principle, but with all due respect I just don't think most religious believers would countenance this philosophical position of yours at all as it relates to their highest hopes. I'm admittedly somewhat ignorant (or even more than somewhat) of specific details, however, so I could be wrong.
Quoting Agustino
Again, I find this very congenial, but I also think it would be rejected, and vehemently so, by all but a very small minority of religious believers within the Judeo-Christian tradition. To my limited knowledge Spinoza's God was/is a far cry from the God of Augustine, of Aquinas, of Luther. He (or rather It) is something Nietzsche could respect, and precisely because of His immanence! This conception of God sounds a bit like the Tao, or possibly even the seemingly pantheistic Logos of Heraclitus. But to drive the point home, emphatically not the intensely personal loving and caring God of those Western religions which appeal to the "otherworldly" hopes of the faithful.
Anyway, we've gone far afield here (apologies SX) but it's quite possible, likely even, that I'm still not grasping your attempt to collapse or reconceive the distinction between immanent and transcendent. Have another go at it if you'd like.
That's a good point actually, and now that I'm thinking about it, it's not by accident that I'm avoiding 'knowledge' here. As far as it goes, I'm a bit of a hybrid Wittgenstinian/Heideggarian/Sellarsian on the topic. From Wittgenstein I draw on the idea that knowledge is a not much more than a kind of regional language-game in which the ability to answer 'how do you know...?' is just the ability to respond in a certain way (where this 'response' might require, depending on the circumstances, certain standards of proof (and what counts as proof? - look to the language-game)). There's a certain sense in which, if this philosophical understanding of knowledge is accepted, then the entire field of epistemology becomes a question for anthropologists, and not for philosophers ('ditch the ladder...').
From Heidegger (and maybe Bergson?) I take the idea that our primary relation to the 'world' (or whatever you want to call it) is not one of 'knowledge', but of a deeper, 'pre-ontological disclosure' or 'vital' (a la 'living') kind, with knowledge as a kind of (inessential) add-on or supplement to this. Finally from Sellars (and Heidegger) I take the idea that to 'know' something is always to know something as something, which means being able to place it into a conceptual web which has it's own, specific kind of dynamics (stratification into token and type, general and particular), which requires a very specific kind of learning-to-do in order to be counted as knowledge proper (again, knowledge as regional language-game).
The 'seeing' or 'understanding' that I'm leveraging Geuss/Nietzsche/Adorno to explicate - again, now that I think about it - probably belongs more to the order to sense: it's a question of how one makes sense of a phenomenon, of understanding the kind of thing it is and of the kinds of becomings it can enter into (it's ability to affect and be affected, qua Spinoza). This kind of understanding can, I think, be codified as knowledge, can be placed into conceptual web which would make it knowledge, but does not, 'in-itself', belong to the order of knowledge.
Deleuze in D&R speaks of a kind of 'infinite learning' that marks any encounter with a genuine problem to be thought through, which only subsequently becomes codified into 'knowledge', which by contrast "designates only the generality of concepts or the calm possession of a rule enabling solutions." Or to shift metaphors: knowledge is like a still image of movement, where the understanding I'm after can only take place in and with the movement in action. Sorry if this seems like an unholy amalgamation of uneasily fitting puzzle-pieces, but these issues lie almost exactly on the edge of what I've been conceptually struggling through lately.
Have you ever read any Whitehead? I think @apokrisis would blow a gasket that I even recommended him. But, he seemed to develop a philosophy of direct experience, or at least developed a vocabulary to talk about such things meaningfully. Would this be the direction you would are going down?
From Whitehead quoted in SEP: An object is an ingredient in the character of some event. In fact the character of an event is nothing but the objects which are ingredient in it and the ways in which those objects make their ingression into the event. Thus the theory of objects is the theory of the comparison of events. Events are only comparable because they body forth permanences. We are comparing objects in events whenever we can say, ‘There it is again.’ Objects are the elements in nature which can ‘be again.’ (1920, 143-4)[/quote]
[quote=IEP]The basic units of becoming for Whitehead are “actual occasions.” Actual occasions are “drops of experience,” and relate to the world into which they are emerging by “feeling” that relatedness and translating it into the occasion’s concrete reality. When first encountered, this mode of expression is likely to seem peculiar if not downright outrageous. One thing to note here is that Whitehead is not talking about any sort of high-level cognition. When he speaks of “feeling” he means an immediacy of concrete relatedness that is vastly different from any sort of “knowing,” yet which exists on a relational spectrum where cognitive modes can emerge from sufficiently complex collections of occasions that interrelate within a systematic whole. Also, feeling is a far more basic form of relatedness than can be represented by formal algebraic or geometrical schemata. These latter are intrinsically abstract, and to take them as basic would be to commit the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. But feeling is not abstract. Rather, it is the first and most concrete manifestation of an occasion’s relational engagement with reality.
This focus on concrete modes of relatedness is essential because an actual occasion is itself a coming into being of the concrete. The nature of this “concrescence,” using Whitehead’s term, is a matter of the occasion’s creatively internalizing its relatedness to the rest of the world by feeling that world, and in turn uniquely expressing its concreteness through its extensive connectedness with that world. Thus an electron in a field of forces “feels” the electrical charges acting upon it, and translates this “experience” into its own electronic modes of concreteness. Only later do we schematize these relations with the abstract algebraic and geometrical forms of physical science. For the electron, the interaction is irreducibly concrete.
Actual occasions are fundamentally atomic in character, which leads to the next interpretive difficulty. In his previous works, events were essentially extended and continuous. And when Whitehead speaks of an “event” in PR without any other qualifying adjectives, he still means the extensive variety found in his earlier works (PR 73). But PR deals with a different set of problems from that previous triad, and it cannot take such continuity for granted. For one thing, Whitehead treats Zeno's Paradoxes very seriously and argues that one cannot resolve these paradoxes if one starts from the assumption of continuity, because it is then impossible to make sense of anything coming immediately before or immediately after anything else. Between any two points of a continuum such as the real number line there are an infinite number of other points, thus rendering the concept of the “next” point meaningless. But it is precisely this concept of the “next occasion” that Whitehead requires to render intelligible the relational structures of his metaphysics. If there are infinitely many occasions between any two occasions, even ones that are nominally “close” together, then it becomes impossible to say how it is that later occasions feel their predecessors – there is an unbounded infinity of other occasions intervening in such influences, and changing it in what are now undeterminable ways. Therefore, Whitehead argued, continuity is not something which is “given;” rather it is something which is achieved. Each occasion makes itself continuous with its past in the manner in which it feels that past and creatively incorporates the past into its own concrescence, its coming into being.
Thus, Whitehead argues against the “continuity of becoming” and in favor of the “becoming of continuity” (PR 68 – 9). Occasions become atomically, but once they have become they incorporate themselves into the continuity of the universe by feeling the concreteness of what has come before and making that concreteness a part of the occasion’s own internal makeup. The continuity of space and durations in Whitehead’s earlier triad does not conflict with his metaphysical atomism, because those earlier works were dealing with physical nature in which continuity has already come into being, while PR is dealing with relational structures that are logically and metaphysically prior to nature.[/quote]
Yes, more or less, this is exactly what I think. Nietzsche painted a fair picture of the popular Christianity in his day and age, but certainly not a historically accurate picture, nor an accurate picture of what Christianity actually is (instead of what people THINK it is). Kierkegaard has much the same criticisms of Christianity that Nietzsche does, of course phrased somewhat differently. But it's true that the Christianity of the 19th century was fake, by and large, and no longer authentic.
Quoting Erik
Yes, I don't think it does. The world is essential to Christianity, human beings were created to be co-creators along with God. The purpose of man is to harmoniously guard and continue the creative process initiated by God. That cannot be world-denying as some forms of Buddhism are for example. (although, to be fair, no religion could exist without world-affirming elements).
Quoting Erik
Okay, I see what you mean, but I think this is misinterpreting the Christian message. Pride in Christianity represents the sin committed by Lucifer and human beings in rebelling against the will of God, and putting their own selfish will above God's. This is seeking to dominate other beings and twist them to one's own will, instead of protecting them and contributing harmoniously to the creative unfolding of existence. In a way, pride is exactly what prevents one from being open to the call of Being, and leads one to remain caught up in the calculative, instrumental mode of thinking so characteristic of our world today.
But, this kind of pride isn't the same thing as the self-confidence and self-mastery Nietzsche was talking about by using the word pride. Indeed, the Apostles themselves displayed this sort of self-confidence and self-mastery when they went to their death for their faith, unflinchingly. And most of the greatest Christian thinkers (such as Aquinas) have never concluded that the accumulation of power is an evil. They would say that power, just like everything else, comes from God, and he who is given a lot of power, has a lot of responsibility to use it to do God's will. So becoming powerful is a good thing, so long as this power is used for good.
Quoting Erik
This is the entire point of Christianity...
Quoting Erik
There is no transcendent world. Heaven is not separate from the world. Human beings lived on the Earth before the Fall, and that was Heaven. It was human beings who made it (this same world) not Heaven. And similarly, at one point this world will again be Heaven (that is God's promise).
Quoting Erik
Were Adam & Eve before the Fall "living"? Will Heaven and Earth be united in the end? If so, then the living are not denied access to Heaven. In addition to that, the process of theosis (or divinization) occurs while someone is part of the world. Not to mention that Christianity talks of a bodily resurrection... So someone can be both divine and part of the world, again, suggesting that there is no conflict between the world and Heaven. There is also no devaluation of the body.
Quoting Erik
Most religious believers are not experts in their religion. Just like most people who listen to music aren't experts in music. Aquinas does discuss multiple levels of understanding of God, each one deeper than the previous one. There is the popular level understanding of God as a Father in the Sky, and then there are deeper levels, including that of the philosophers and that of the mystics.
So to get back to the point, why should it be a concern for me that most religious believers would not agree with my position? Does not having majority agreement make me wrong? Should that even be relevant to deciding what Christianity actually teaches?
I'm somewhat familiar with Whitehead, more through secondary readings than any actual engagement with his own work. His vocabulary is forebording though, and I've put off properly studying him until I can devote the time to properly trying to digest it. Alot of what he says seems very congenial to me though, from the small bits I've gleaned here and there.