What are discussions on 'what is the nature of truth?' really about?
Or any form of 'what is the nature of '?
Are they clarifying the concept and trying to make everyone agree on what the word means
or are they discussions on what is/are the important things someone or everyone should strive for?
Are they clarifying the concept and trying to make everyone agree on what the word means
or are they discussions on what is/are the important things someone or everyone should strive for?
Comments (90)
The problem is that, for non-trivial things (so unlike bachelorhood), essentialism fails, and people might mean slightly (or greatly) different things when using the same term/phrase – or they themselves might not know quite what they mean.
That's why discussions on things like morality and free will are unresolvable – because there isn't really an answer.
Yes, I agree. I call it "word-math." It sure would be nice if language worked like that for philosophers, but I don't think it works like that (or that it's a bad strategy in many cases for getting anywhere worth going.) We need a context of personality and worldly relevance.
"Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." -- John 14:6.
You mean like that?
Actually, I love that line. "I am the truth." Seriously, there's a Blakean or Satanic reading of the Gospels that has really influenced me. It's in Saint Paul, too. "Christ is the end of the law." You can trace Romantic Satanism and Stirner/Nietzsche back to subversive readings like these perhaps. Another great line: "Before Abraham was, I am" It's a shift from piety toward the Truth to a piety toward the living self who uses truths as tools rather than as idols. The identification is direct rather than indirect. Just as the priest mediated between the laity and God, so does " pure reason" mediates between the philosopher and Truth. But the whole game of proximity to the idol Truth via pure reason can be thrown over as a bit of con --or at least as a clunky and solemn pose, inferior to others in the gallery of options. (Practical life is something else, of course. Banal correspondence, etc.)
So, using this meaning, the question "What is the nature of truth?" is to ask what are the necessary and sufficient conditions by which we may consider an entity the truth?
That is from Exodus, where God answers the question posed by Moses as to his name: ' God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” (3:14)
The Indian sage Ramana Maharishi expounded this and other Biblical phrases of a similar nature - such as, 'Be still, and know that I am God' (Psalms 46:10) - in his teachings.
Of course, the doctrinal Christian view of that would probably be that Ramana, being a Hindu, and therefore pagan, was being impertinent. However the Advaita Vedanta philosophy, of which Ramana was an exponent, understands 'I AM' as ?tman, which simply means 'self', but in the sense of the locus of experience, and an individual instantiation of Brahman to whom it will eventually return after having eventually penetrated the illusions of maya.
Those ideas all concern the question of what Alan Watts called in his early (and excellent) The Supreme Identity, 'an essay in Oriental metaphysic and the Chistian religion', in which he argues that:
'Modern Civilization is in a state of chaos because its spiritual leadership has lost effective knowledge of man's true nature. Neither philosophy nor religion today gives us the consciousness that at the deepest center of our being exists an eternal reality, which in the West is called God. Yet only from this realization come the serenity and spiritual power necessary for a stable and creative society.'
Although it should be added that both Watts and Ramana are subversive from the perspective of mainstream religion.
I wonder if modern civilization is in more chaos than usual, though. Perhaps in ages of less social mobility and information, there was less temptation to wander from the Official Answers. But there was more physical discomfort, certainly. So we seem to have gained physical comfort at the cost of a more difficult spiritual adolescence. For me life is no longer a chaos. I navigate the concrete jungle with a strong sense of why I bother and how to bother. Certainly, I see the damned on the public transportation system. I don't often see acute pain, but I see the look of mere survival and reduced expectations. But when I look around at my fellow grad students or friend group, I mostly don't see this brokenness. So-and-so gets divorced, etc., but I see happiness enough. At the moment, one of my friends is dealing with heartbreak.Her problem with life just now is simply the finding of a good man (or the re-caging one in particular).
In my youth, I deeply suffered the "spiritual" problem, but I think that such intensity is rare. Maybe thinking types are those especially pained by cognitive dissonance or just grandiose in their expectations (too much breast milk, I like to joke). So only we bother to iron out the pluralistic "disaster," sometimes into a transcendent irony. Others can fold into bumperstickers and a cheap solidarity, untouched by anxiety of influence or an itch for the profound.
And maybe also add that rightfully so :D lol
You shall know them by their fruits - what were their fruits? Watts used to persevere in doing drugs and drinking, thus being attached to all sorts of feelings and sensations he identified as pleasurable - forget the Zen, that was certainly not so important when he was repeatedly drinking and doing drugs - maybe it was only an excuse. Ramana invented all sorts of nonsense (enlightened cows >:O ) none of which made any important difference in the lives of his followers. Really - such people cannot produce good. They are subversive - they undermine order - regardless of any other so called achievement. One shall know them by their fruits.
Quoting Agustino
I agree. Show me the life! Beyond words there is a life actually lived, giving words weight. I don't think you're a pragmatist, but that's largely what it means to me. I respect your beliefs and anyone's beliefs that allow them to live well (without preventing me from doing so). We'd probably vote in different directions, but I'm glad you're here (and that Wayfarer is here) to keep up the 'biodiversity' of ideas.
Thanks for your kinds words :)
As for Ramana, I always respected him, but I felt that to really penetrate such a teaching would be matter of completely absorbing yourself in that mode of existence, which I was obviously never going to do. That's why in the end I found the most practicable and workable approach was Soto Zen (although I still have a basically universalist attitude).
But this is an excuse. Who cares if his works were peerless? They clearly weren't so powerful as to get him to change. So it's in the end just beautiful but meaningless words, which don't mean much in reality. It's like a drunk writing a very beautiful poem, and many others coming after and wondering what genius has written it, and what is the intended meaning. Clearly no meaning was ever intended.
People require an ordered environment to flourish, they cannot flourish in disorder. And people like Alan Watts are proof of just that. What happens when order is disconsidered, and people are encouraged to travel on their own, lonely path.
How is that possible? It's impossible that a man whose life is not transformed by it is in possession of the truth. It's a performative contradiction. Like Heidegger - I think Heidegger may have made a few interesting points, but I refuse to recognise his works as "great" due to his moral failings (supporting Nazism, doing anything to advance his career, having sex with his students - including Hannah Arendt, etc.). Such a man could not have been in possession of truth (and any truth he was in possession of was certainly corrupted). Thus despite his interesting points, I think his works can safely be avoided by someone in pursuit of the truth. The same points may be found stated differently in other sources.
'what exists' is what can be measured, ascertained, and made subject to analysis. But 'existence' itself is simply a momentary aspect of the totality - and the totality is what is real. I think this is why the spiritually enlightened see things as they do - it is because they are alive to the totality, hence characeristic expressions such as 'all is one'.
Another way of considering this. Reality is the totality of experience at this very moment. It includes everything you can see, know, think about, and an indefinite or infinite amount more which branches out into the vastness of space around you and also down into the depths of your own unconscious processes. The nature of 'awakening' is to be completely awake and alive to the immensity of this current moment of reality.
In practice, this state always being occluded by the conditioned outlook, the constant interplay of memory-and-expectation, desire-and-aversion, and the many other states, both conscious and subliminal, that constantly arise and pass away from one moment to the next. This is what dictates our actual experience of life moment to moment, or what you call 'yourself' or 'your life'.
Now the point about a 'purified consciousness' is that it is intensely alive to each moment and to the sense of immensity which this brings. There is a sense in which one's own aliveness and the aliveness of all that lives intermingle in this awareness. But of course we cannot appreciate this immensity precisely because of the burden of self-hood, of the weight of who we are and what we own.
Existence, on the other hand, is your life considered longitudinally, that is, through time. It relies on time to introduce the sense of continuity, which established a series of moments, which comprise your conscious existence through time. It describes all that you know, measure, think about. 'You' are that process which exists through time, which measures and knows and hopes and so on.If you are able to meet each moment completely, live it with complete attention, without any effort, then it doesn't leave any marks on you. Everything just falls off you like water off a duck's back. But of course I am not like that, I am always thinking, planning, getting, doing, the very thought process is always creating itself according to its previous experience.
So this is the purpose of spiritual discipline: to realise that state of intense aliveness and awareness. With it comes an increased sensitivity to the nature of things which really can't be captured by thought, no matter how subtle, clever or refined. Because thought itself is of the nature of time.
Disclaimer: this is a state that I know that I don't know, but at least I know that I don't know it.
I like holism. I can't lump the "spiritually enlightened" altogether, because maybe there is a plurality of states worth being described as "enlightened."
Quoting Wayfarer
I like the idea of being very alive and very aware. I'm a little suspicious of the sleeping/waking metaphor being taken too far. Isn't happiness enough? Just to hug one's wife with a warm heart or to laugh with one's friends over a cosmic joke or the joke of the kosmos...That's awake enough for me.
Quoting Wayfarer
But if you don't know it, what does it mean to know that you don't know it? Are you suggesting a goal that you can't guarantee the attainment of ? I prefer the idea of getting better at life. The dark stuff washes off one's back more easily and more often. Sometimes, nevertheless, some heavy lifting must be done. I'd prefer not to have hold up or pursue an image of total "escape." Is it not better to say that those free, playful moments that you've already known since childhood can become more and more common? I get this from the Tao. We unlearn the pieties and pretensions that cramp the better, authentic parts of ourselves.
There's a lot of pseudo-enlightenment. So, while I really do believe in the reality of awakening, I also believe that in reality it is very rare, notwithstanding all the people who imply they understand it.
It depends. Everything is transient, I think the beginning of the path is the awareness of that.
I get that. But how does one distinguish? That's exactly why there's a taboo against being "flaky" or superstitious. I'm really not trying to give you hell or disrespect you. I'm just explaining my own difficulties with or resistance to your image of enlightenment. You say "it," implying that it is singular. Do you count yourself among the enlightened? I sure as hell wouldn't blame you or accuse you for that. That's my Blake-inherited image of the artist-poet. My objection is with what I see as a half-way position, where there is in theory a "real" but unattained enlightenment against which the claimed enlightenment of others can be false. This doesn't for a moment mean that I don't ever experience this or that person as "full of sh*t." If the goal is happiness, however, we can demand that our dispensers of wisdom be pretty damn happy or well-adjusted. As far as reading this happiness goes, well that's largely in the realm of gesture and tone. We see it in the eyes and the walk, hear it in the voice. Dance and music are in this sense revelations of enlightenment.
Quoting Wayfarer
I guess I associate happiness precisely with "enoughness." I do think awareness of the transience of all things is hugely important. Or it was for me. We leap like flame from melting candle to melting candle.
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But in relation to the question in the thread - what is truth? - you will recall the interminable Banno threads about justified true belief and the rest. They never culminate in anything, I don't think. There has to be a 'realisation of truth' for it to mean anything. That realisation is embodied in the person of the sage. Again that has been carried forward much more clearly in Chinese and Indian religions - one of Alan Watts' major insights (regardless of his failings.)
For instance, many Hindu names end with the particle -ananda. So you have names like Satyananda, Vivekenanda, and other names associated with the Hindu tradition. That name 'ananda' means 'bliss', so Satyananda means 'bliss of truth'.
I hear you. I'm not attached to "enlightenment" as a term. But I think we find plenty of Western notions of transcendence or the wise man. I don't know where you position Hesse, but I think Steppenwolf and Siddartha are great. Accuracy or continuity with tradition doesn't matter to me. It's only what I can make of X in my own life that matters. I piece together Kojeve and the Gospels and Stirner and James and the Tao and Louis C K and Tropic of Cancer and Job and, well, whatever is around the corner.
Quoting Wayfarer
Well, yeah. I'm always stressing the image of the sage is at the heart of the philosophy that isn't just a footnote to science. But this sage is central in Kojeve. Stirner too presents a twist on the same Hegelian evolution of the sage. The sage understands his own engendering as a swelling system of "determinate negations." This is in Siddartha, too, but Hesse was a German. The sage is not pure but complete. He lives through the quest for purity and/or the beyond as a failed attempt at a short cut. So this partial view falls forward into a more complex and complete view (falling uphill). His truth is in satisfaction with the real as rational and the rational as real, that he is the completed self-consciousness of God, the end of history, etc. This is beautiful stuff. It affirms 'evil' as necessary. It doesn't look beyond the physical world, feelings, and concepts. I get that it doesn't appeal to everyone, but here indeed is a grand Western vision of the sage.
(Y)
As for Hegel and mysticism, it's practically an oeuvre.
Really? If that were true, man's fulfilment would be impossible. Man has desire. Desire is the reflection of an emptiness, a thirst. Filling that emptiness - that is the quieting of desire. But if nothing is unchanging, nothing is eternal, then fulfilment of desire can never be eternal, and hence desire can never be quieted - thus there would be no end to suffering.
Not if you define satiety, as one should, as incomplete fulfilment of desire (it's incomplete because desire rises again - if it was complete, no desire would arise). Much more, I think so called satiety occurs when one mis-identifies the object of desire, and thus only temporarily deceives themselves that they are fulfilled. Furthermore, there are very serious problems with your language on this matter. "Everything is transient" is contradictory to:
Quoting Wayfarer
If everything really were subject to change and decay, then there would be no spiritual path - a quest for the changeless would be a quest for that which doesn't exist in the first place, which is absurd. Look at this:
Look how clear that language is. Desire is good - desire points you towards the good. When you truly understand desire, then you understand that it cannot be fulfilled alone by things other than the transcendent, then you stop lusting for those (which is your "everything is transient" speech). However, there was nothing in your "everything is transient" speech that could have ever pointed to "the whole point of the spiritual path is to find what is not subject to change and decay". In fact, you couldn't even put the two together - they're mutually contradictory, unless you get yourself into some complicated word play - the transcendent doesn't really exist, because only things in the world exist, bla bla. Instead of teaching the simple point - namely desire is good, focus on understanding what you truly lack, and hence what will truly make you fulfilled - you go about in a very confusing manner. If someone reads just that one post, they'll think you're a nihilist - "everything is transient, nothing is permanent".
Well you have to consider what one truly desires when they opt for fast food, porn, mindless entertainment, money, thrills etc. They are very likely confused about the object of their desire. For example, when someone desires sex, they probably desire some form of intimacy. Now some think they can achieve this without being committed - thus they engage in promiscuous sex. Some think they can achieve this merely through sex, regardless of other elements of the relationship. And so forth - there are many possible deceptions about the object of desire. And these are deceptions precisely because the so called object of desire they identify actually frustrates the achievement of the authentic, underlying desire - they prevent the actual object of desire from being obtained. So yes - the desire for sex is the desire for intimacy, and it is good. The desire for food is the desire for a healthy and well-nurtured body and it is good, although a lesser good than the transcendent for example, because one wants a healthy and well-nurtured body in order to be able to achieve many of the other goods. The supreme good is the transcendent though.
Yes but the other things are also goods - which is very important. Many from the Platonic tradition go to the extreme of saying that just because the transcendent is the supreme good, everything else is unimportant - that's not true.
And really my main point was just that the discourse "everything is transient" is very confusing and likely to lead someone into the wrong view - nihilism, or absurdism.
The trouble is we easily become obsessed with its power, to a point where "wisdom" becomes an exercise in just how much we can deny ourselves and those around us. A philosophy of Nilhism which denies there is fulfillment in anything but our transcendent imaginings.
Our eagerness to fight demons of our world (e.g. greed, objectification, scientism etc.,etc.) has us confuse worship of the transcendent for the only fulfilment. We end up believing the lie their is no fulfilment in our world, be it friends, family, money or even consuming porn.
We want to be able to say: "follow the transcendent or you will have no peace in life," to hang the threat of meaningless over anyone who would dare not follow our transcendent tradition, so they have a reason to pick us over any other activity they might do or value they might have.
The greatest difficulty of virtue or ethics is the truth people are frequently happy or contented in doing wrong. It's what's do hard to give up to do right and so difficult to admit when concerned with stopping evil.
Well the real answer I believe is that "nothing is wrong in simply enjoying life". Simply enjoying life is probably the best way to live. However - this does require a certain wisdom, most easily begotten from tradition, including the virtues. Someone who cheats on their girlfriend will probably not be able to "simply enjoy life", and good things will easily be taken away from him, making him pursue them even harder, and if he does so confusedly, he will make them even farther from his reach. It doesn't require philosophy - if philosophy was a requirement, the common man could never achieve blessedness. But I think the common man can eminently achieve blessedness, and often does so more frequently than the arrogant learned.
Quoting Agustino
I like that you insist that desire is good. I think religion is often framed in terms of a set of prohibitions. Instead of virtue being its own reward, it's framed as a price that one pays (abstinence in various forms) for something higher. So religion "falls" into accusation and self-righteousness. Saint Paul isn't perfect in this regard himself, but "Christ is the end of the law" is a profound statement. I find a radical kernel in Christianity that is largely obliterated by the human tendency to create a system of law and therefore sin. Dogma also take on a "scientistic" framing. Instead of passwords toward mysterious or fundamentally emotional transformation, they are what one must believe as a good theologian. So theology becomes Christ, one might say, as the mediator of the transcendent. But then religion is just metaphysics. I read "in spirit and in truth" in terms of emotion or the "sub-rational" (also trans-rational). I think the heart (with the mind in what is actually a unity) evolves from a love of never-sinful-in-themselves things towards higher things or the transcendent or Good. The key point is that sin is just privation or clumsy desire. Prudence dictates that we make laws, cage the violent. But I think religion is best when it accuses nothing, forbids nothing, but points to the transcendent not as a duty but as an opportunity.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
I agree. It's very hard to resist beating others over the head with our idiosyncratic packaging of the "sacred." For me there is "true religion" in loving one's lover or friends. We always already have access to the transcendent as love. So (again, just for me) it's a matter of trying to live in that place of love and generosity, but not as a sort of duty. For me, this duty would be the same, old alienation. For our own damn sake we seek this state. Every dogma and every law (in my view) buries something primordial and genuine beneath 'concept religion' or idolatry (Stirner is the neglected master here). But that's just my wacky prejudice...
The original post was actually about 'truth', but became a discussion about religion after the introduction of 'I am the way'... which lead to a discussion about the idea of 'awakening to truth' and then to detachment from desire.
Of course it sounds censorious or abstemious to speak in terms of detachment from desire, but I think it is an unfortunate necessity, because human nature, if it follows its own instincts, generally is not going to home in on existential truths of any kind. It takes effort and sacrifice, and there are simply too many distractions, too many things to pursue, no more so than today.
As for sin - sin is the ultimately politically-incorrect word nowadays. Culture thinks it is liberated because it has ditched the idea. I wonder. I know on the Buddhist forum, one of their dogmas is that 'Buddhists don't have an idea of "sin" ' but I think that is basically because of the way it has been interpreted by the counter-culture (and also for marketing purposes, if you asked me).
I think, to be brutally frank, the hostilty to those ideas is because we don't want it to be true, we would just like to please ourselves - sure, be 'nice people' X-) , 'kind', and all the rest, but basically stay as we are.
And I am wrestling with all these problems, I'm not preaching from a bully pulpit - I aspire to be free from selfish inclinations and cravings, because I would like to think it opens the door to a higher kind of life, but it ain't an easy thing to achieve, and there doesn't seem to be a silver bullet.
How about the elevation of desire? I like Plato's Symposium. I relate to an erotic element in religion. Sex is at the heart of "life-death" as opposed to "undeath." The "fire and the rose are one."
Detachment from petty desires is great. I relate to the value in that. I suppose the danger is presenting these petty desires as bad in themselves rather than simply as obstacles or not the best that one can hope for.
Quoting Wayfarer
I think you're ignoring something here. Political earnestness involves the suffering and projection of "protestant" guilt. We are born in sin as always, but now this is sin is racism, sexism, homophobia,etc. on the progressive side. Surely you've seen the nail-biting obsession with innocence with respect to the terrible X-isms. On the conservative side it's a mixture of sin against God, sin against Freedom, and sin against objectivity. All this "hero myth" stuff I talk is an attempt to point out a general structure. There is duty or law in the name of the (generalized) sacred and therefore (generalized) sin. And the 'sacred' I'm aiming at here is narcissism's object. Contrast genuine empathy with altruism as a duty and therefore as a right to accuse. We have un-self-conscious love for others on the one side and the enjoyment of superiority in the humiliation of sinners on the other. And the worshippers of pure reason can look down on those who make irrational or non-empirical claims. The prohibition divides humanity into an upper and lower class. Liberals have their image of the redneck racist/misogynist. IMV, then, "Christ is the end of the law" only to the degree that religion comes from a deeper place than this (necessary and forgivable) compulsive or hardwired status-seeking "instinct."
Religious notions of an impossible object make this Law more attractive and mysterious, but I think this gets in the way or obscures the "kingdom of God" within. Blasphemy isn't even a sin, for any "living God" in the guts is beyond such triviality. If we think of folks killing in the name of the honor of their god, the "group ego" core of the impossible object becomes apparent.
Quoting Wayfarer
I respect that, and I respect your honesty.
I think it's understood as a duty though-- for your own damn sake, you will love your lovers and friends. You will rescue yourself from the ignominy of meaninglessness with love. The falsehoods of your idolatry are at least true for you. A truth which will rescue you from meaninglessness no matter how much we might understand it is falsehood. The duty to rescue yourself, "At least with my idolatry, I will have the truth which saves me."
Everyone is on the same level of seeking an idol with which to save themselves from meaninglessness. What an individual values becomes equivocated with idolatry. No matter out ideology, we are all the same in seeking a fiction which rescues us from our meaninglessness. It's our duty to hold onto a fictional idol just so we won't be a meaningless wretch.
I think it gets the "universal experience" backwards. Every dogma or law is something primordial and genuine. A value held, a habit performed or an action sought. In this respect, it's only hidden for us in as much as we pretend it is. Even idolatry, despite its falsehood, is an action or practice performed by the living. Any such practice is the play of the living and so part of a meaningful life. Not something sought for our sake, but ourselves living that which is valuable within our meaningful lives.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Maybe we're getting at the same thing. Duty and prohibition and innocence and haunt humanity. We are bound by our desire to bind. The impossible object still offers proximity and therefore hierarchy. This ubiquitous game (which could only be prohibited or judged from within this very game of prohibition and judgment) stifles authenticity. Even authenticity as concept can itself be taken up as a token in this game. Religion that accuses of sin against God is more or less the same thing as righteous politics that accuses of racism, sexism, etc. We can advise against and vote against fornication or discrimination in the practical realm, but religion that is "stuck" at this plane looks necessarily dead and alienated to me. It's just another hierarchy like wealth or education or looks or talent. Same old power play in terms of concepts.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
If I understand you correctly, I agree, but I'd say that dogma is thestain of something primordial and genuine while law is its descent into guilt, accusation, purity, alienation.
I was looking into Plato's notion of love and was shocked to see Hegel there -- or so much of Plato in Hegel.
[quote = http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-friendship/ ]
The stories of all the other symposiasts, too, are stories of their particular loves masquerading as stories of love itself, stories about what they find beautiful masquerading as stories about what is beautiful. For Phaedrus and Pausanius, the canonical image of true love—the quintessential love story—features the right sort of older male lover and the right sort of beloved boy. For Eryximachus the image of true love is painted in the languages of his own beloved medicine and of all the other crafts and sciences. For Aristophanes it is painted in the language of comedy. For Agathon, in the loftier tones of tragedy. In ways that these men are unaware of, then, but that Plato knows, their love stories are themselves manifestations of their loves and of the inversions or perversions expressed in them. They think their stories are the truth about love, but they are really love’s delusions—“images,” as Diotima will later call them. As such, however, they are essential parts of that truth. For the power of love to engender delusive images of the beautiful is as much a part of the truth about it as its power to lead to the beautiful itself.
But because they are manifestations of our loves, not mere cool bits of theorizing, we—our deepest feelings—are invested in them. They are therefore tailor-made, in one way at least, to satisfy the Socratic sincerity condition, the demand that you say what you believe (Crito 49c11-d2, Protagoras 331c4-d1). Under the cool gaze of the elenctic eye, they are tested for consistency with other beliefs that lie just outside love’s controlling and often distorting ambit. Under such testing, a lover may be forced to say with Agathon, “I didn’t know what I was talking about in that story” (201b11–12). The love that expressed itself in his love story meets then another love: his rational desire for consistency and intelligibility; his desire to be able to tell and live a coherent story; his desire—to put it the other way around—not to be endlessly frustrated and conflicted, because he is repetitively trying to live out an incoherent love story.
[/quote]
That underlined bit is the "Hegel." Frustration/incoherence leads up the ladder to higher forms of love. So "sin" or "error" is necessary and the desired being or highest love is not timeless but instead utterly depends on time. There's no jumping ahead of the dialectic. We live forwards but understand backwards. (Or that's how I'm seeing it.)
This is what I originally had in mind when I thought of Plato on Eros:
[quote=same]
First, if the Leader leads aright, he should love one body and beget beautiful accounts there” (210a6–8). At this stage, what the boy engages in the lover is his sexual desire for physical beauty, albeit one which, in firm keeping with the norms of Athenian paiderastia, is supposedly aim-inhibited: instead of sexual intercourse, it leads to discussions about beauty and to accounts of it. Here the beauty at issue is, in the first instance, the boy who represents beauty itself to the lover. That is why, when the lover finally comes to see the beautiful itself, “beauty will no longer seem to you to be measured by gold or raiment or beautiful boys or youths, which now you look upon dumbstruck” (211d3–5). One effect of generating accounts of this beauty, however, is that the lover comes to see his beloved’s beautiful body as one among many: if it is beautiful, so are any other bodies the accounts fit. And this initially cognitive discovery leads to a conative change: “Realizing this he is established as a lover of all beautiful bodies and relaxes this excessive preoccupation with one, thinking less of it and believing it to be a small matter” (210b4–6).
...
But love that is to escape frustration cannot stop with bodies. The attempt to formulate an account of love free from puzzles and immune to elenctic refutation must lead on from beautiful bodies to beautiful souls, and so to the beautiful laws and practices that will improve souls and make young men better. Again this cognitive achievement is matched by a conative one. When the lover sees that all these beautiful things are somehow akin in the beauty, he comes to think that “bodily beauty is a small thing” (210c5–6), and so, as before, becomes less obsessed with it...
[/quote]
Great stuff...
nudge, nudge.
There's about a dozen postgrad seminars in those passages, which make me painfully aware of my utter deficiency of education with respect to Greek philosophy. But I think I'm on reasonably firm ground to say that Plato eschewed hedonism, unlike Epicurus.
Epicurus' 'hedonism' is not ours, though.
[quote=SEP]
It must be remembered that Epicurus understood the task of philosophy first and foremost as a form of therapy for life, since philosophy that does not heal the soul is no better than medicine that cannot cure the body (Usener 1887, frag. 221). A life free of mental anxiety and open to the enjoyment of other pleasures was deemed equal to that of the gods. Indeed, it is from the gods themselves, via the simulacra that reach us from their abode, that we derive our image of blessed happiness, and prayer for the Epicureans consisted not in petitioning favors but rather in a receptivity to this vision. (Epicurus encouraged the practice of the conventional cults.) Although they held the gods to be immortal and indestructible (how this might work in a materialist universe remains unclear), human pleasure might nevertheless equal divine, since pleasure, Epicurus maintained (KD 19), is not augmented by duration (compare the idea of perfect health, which is not more perfect for lasting longer); the catastematic pleasure experienced by a human being completely free of mental distress and with no bodily pain to disturb him is at the absolute top of the scale. Nor is such pleasure difficult to achieve: it is a mark precisely of those desires that are neither natural nor necessary that they are hard to satisfy. Epicurus was famously content with little, since on such a diet a small delicacy is as good as a feast, in addition to which it is easier to achieve self-sufficiency, and “the greatest benefit of self-sufficiency is freedom.”
[/quote]
Well, the context was men and boys, and Socrates was put to death for something like sin:
[quote=SEP]
As a man who loves boys in an idiosyncratic, because elenctic, way, Socrates is placed in potential conflict with the norms of a peculiar Athenian social institution, that of paiderastia—the socially regulated intercourse between an older Athenian male (erastês) and a teenage boy (erômenos, pais), through which the latter was supposed to learn virtue. And this potential, as we know, was realized with tragic consequences—in 399 BC Socrates was found guilty of corrupting the young men of Athens and condemned to death.
[/quote]
Indeed, by today's lights it was probably nearer asceticism.
Yes - I think that's good because not everyone has the wisdom or the time to be a philosopher and understand how some particular may affect them especially in the long-drawn out future. The punishment/reward system, the traditions, the moral injunctions - these aim to maintain order even when most of the people do not understand how it is to be maintained.
Quoting Hoo
A necessary fall in the government of men.
Quoting Hoo
Yes but you see - some vices bear their effects on everyone else around. Religion doesn't condemn you in any strong form for gluttony - that is an evil that you do only to yourself (hence why you don't see gluttony in the 10 Commandments). But it does condemn you in a strong form for adultery or for murder - because those have serious effects in disturbing social order and profoundly affecting the lives of people around you. So it's not only an evil you do to yourself - it's a privation you impose on others as well. So don't forget that not everyone will be a philosopher, hence it is the duty of religion (and other power structures) to impose laws to control and prevent - by force if needed - those vices which do threaten the well-being of innocent others around you.
Whatever Became of Sin by Karl Menninger (a psychiatrist) discusses this idea in detail if you are interested.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes agreed.
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't think this is entirely true. I think those who have the time to think and reason about their impulses and desires will understand that those desires are really aimed at something good - all of them. For example the desire for sex - it's really aimed at the desire for intimacy. Usually what happens is that person X, for whatever reason, comes to the conclusion that the ideal of intimacy can't be achieved (for whatever reason - which could be his failings in love, his inability to find someone adequate, his broken heart, etc.), and therefore in hatred renounces it, and then goes full on in despairing indulgence of whatever is left. So something is wrong with the way people sometimes pursue it - that's their own ignorance of the true object of their desire. It's a problem for the rest of us because it doesn't only harm themselves - as a sin like gluttony would for example - but it also harms the rest of us. Thus we require ways to protect innocent people - either that they are cultural attitudes we have, or laws - and for this type of thing I think cultural attitudes are a lot more efficacious.
Quoting Wayfarer
Hahahaha! Yes being 'nice people'. I've abandoned my two year old son, I've let my parents die alone, I've disregarded and disrespected the love of my wife - but I'm a nice person, I send money to my son and my parents, I send a birthday present once a year to my wife, you know ;) lol (I have to now specify that this is a joke - because some people, notably John on this board, take every example I give as fact about me...) The problem isn't that we stay as we are, so much that we hide from the ways in which we harm ourselves and others.
Quoting Wayfarer
Well - the elephant is swallowed with the teaspoon. Virtues (or vices) are cultivated by habit and understanding. Understanding of what? How they benefit or harm you from an objective point of view. A drug addict cannot renounce the drug until he understands how he is harmed. Sure, that understanding is not sufficient. Then will-power and training is also needed. But understanding is at least necessary.
Ah the pious atheism of Epicurus! >:O How I miss that atheism....
That sin and error are necessary for the progression of an individual is undeniable. However - a society, in order to maintain the stability required for the individual's progression must contain and restrain sin. It is impossible for the virtues to arise in a social environment which is totally corrupt. Why? Because the corrupt mechanism has its own power structures which restrain virtue, and prevent it from occurring. How do those power structures manifest? Let's look at a basic example - a child going to school. Now the child may be seeking to be virtuous - but the other kids bring alcohol to school, they encourage him to drink and isolate him if he doesn't, they encourage him to be promiscuous or at least not condemn promiscuity in order to even talk with them, and so forth. Now having friends is a good thing - so they are using that as a way to convince him to give up whatever interest he had in the virtues, by effectively saying "if you are interested in virtue, then you can't have friendship". This is a power structure, and a corrupt one too. Thus cultural elements are required in order to combat this.
Quoting Hoo
Keep in mind an important aspect. In Athenian culture, it was unfit for a young male to be interested in females. Why? Because if he put all his efforts into pursuing female beauty, he would not be able to develop the virtues. His mind would be obsessed about one thing only, and he would never manage to take control over his sexuality. It was both safer to spend time with an older man, and much more likely that he would learn the virtues. So this form of homosexuality had a very different aim than homosexuality does today. Furthermore, it is to be remarked that homosexual relationships between middle aged men were generally viewed with contempt - because at that age men were supposed to devote themselves to their wife. The "fear" the Greeks had regarding women were there because they understood what havoc women could have on the uninitiated man's mind (which is something we seem to have forgotten today - we do quite the contrary, we do everything we can to encourage women to use their body and talents to be attractive and to manipulate men - and same for men - a total lack of culture). Hence they developed the whole schema for young males that love of women was a lower kind of love - in order to discourage it.
The vision I'm trying to share includes a chasm between prudence and politics on one side and access to a feeling beyond all politics and sin on the other side. Like anyone these days, I keep up with the "culture war." But what I get from what might be called a "symbol of transformation" is a space in my thinking and feeling that is beyond this war. I would never deny the need for laws, nor that children must be taught to obey the rules that they cannot yet understand in their ignorance. It's just that religion must offer something beyond politics and prudence and even theology and metaphysics in my view, and I find that it does.
Could you clarify please in more detail what you mean by this? Thanks :)
I've noticed that as well. One of the reasons I backed away from Atheist groups and got more interested in Philosophy, is because I broached the subject of sin in an atheist group and was met with hostile disapproval. I tried to get them to see sin as something other than disapproval from a Christian God, but that's the only way they could conceive of the concept.
When I think of sin, I think of it as acknowledging that I want to be virtuous, and acknowledging that I sometimes fail. I think of those failures as something I want to correct. The atheists I know appear to be of the opinion that morality is something bad that religions thought up, and that a better world is one in which people don't think of morality, except in terms of claiming that nothing is, our should be thought of as being immoral.
Even before I became acquainted with Stoicism, and after I rejected Christianity, I thought of sin as being a mistake that I wanted to correct, not something "bad" that I had done that needed or deserved to be punished.
Yes; the difference between Sam Harris and Epicurus is that Epicurus honestly disbelieves in God, while Sam Harris uses his disbelief as a justification for his vices.
Epicurus did believe in the gods. He even had an argument to defend his belief. He just also believed that they had nothing to do with us, and that rather we are completely on our own.
Sure, but in practical terms, he was an atheist. His behaviour did not hinge on the belief in gods, as gods have nothing to do with men. Whereas for Sam Harris, his behaviour does hinge on the non-existence of gods.
I find Sam Harris' ideas about morality and free will to be odd and poorly supported. New Atheism (of which he is a part) has a political agenda with which I disagree.
I think there's an image or persona (Christ) or symbol of radical freedom and radical at-home-ness that can be "lit up" in a person's soul. For Blake, it was the "Human Form Divine." This "king of kings" is beyond the law, above the very notion of law and sin before the law. He's the son and not the servant of God. He's on intimate terms. He has God in his blood. He loves sincerely, with the heart and flesh, not self-consciously as a duty. He affirms the world. The totality is perfect or harmonized for him. He is wise as the serpent, aware of the whore and the killer in his depths. Purity and innocence-before-the-law are in the bonfire with all of the other idols. But these idols are still necessary in the world of Caesar and Newton. To be "in Christ" (from this perspective I'm relating) is not to instantly solve the economic or the social problem. It's just dipping in to an internal ocean of love, generous pride, and freedom, which allows us a profound irony and a "grounding" in this world. We were born in the right place at the right time. What seems finite and corrupt appears "infinite and holy." I think this radical vision of Christ is resisted because of an attachment to righteousness before the Law. "We are bound by our desire to bind." We are servants of an" impossible object" because we identify with the authority of this "impossible object." It's hypocrisy to accuse this power-drive, since this would be more righteousness before a new law (Thou shalt deny your will-to-power). This too must be affirmed as part of God's reality or just God as reality.
The main thing about this vision is take "the kingdom of God is within you" at its full intensity. It doesn't even matter if there was a historical Jesus of Nazareth. It doesn't matter what's in the Gospels or any other spiritual text that may serve just as well as a pilot light. Once this internal vision is lit, everything outside is just a candle in sunlight. I can switch into an objective mode and say that it's the mask on a Jungian archetype of the Self, etc. But I don't think anyone has to share my metaphysical/scientific commitments to enjoy this image. Others have their image entangled in metaphysical beliefs, which may dim its light but does not obliterate it. To mix Hegel/Plato in with this, I'd say that we grow by using "corrosives" to clarify the "Christ" within.
I agree with your views! :)
You may find Kierkegaard's Works of Love interesting at reconciling your idea of radical freedom with the idea of duty - it's one of the core aspects he deals with. In short, lovers choose (out of their freedom one might add) to swear their love by God (and hence by duty) because this is the only thing that can make it eternal - this is the only thing greater than their own love, which can thus guarantee their love for eternity -> "I will love you forever, because I ought to".
Thanks for the tip. I have to be honest though and say that I can only see duty as part of the Law that "my" so-called Christ (name doesn't matter) "transcends." There's an everyday sense of duty that I relate to, of course.
As far as the lovers go, I think the eternity is always already there in the love itself, because what they love in one another is bigger than either finite personality. They both incarnate something universal or eternal. In the mystery of sex, too, we have eternity. The lovers must die, but the love does not. For me the "cross" represents the death of the finite self. We have to assent to the death of our small selves, not as a duty but as a trade for access to what is deeper and more universal or eternal in our guts. (I don't know what my heretical assimilation of the Christian tradition can mean for others. But for me it's close to the flesh and the world. It affirms the flesh and the world, which is to say death and sin.)
Yes but what if you were to find a reason for freely choosing duty? That's Kierkegaard's point.
My position would be that I think a mistake is committed when we go from "part of the divine" to "the whole of the divine". The whole of the divine is the Law and it makes little sense to say it transcends itself for a reason I will soon explain. But a soul (part of the divine) in no way can transcend the Law, which is always higher than it.
Now - if the divine were to transcend itself, then what this really implies is that the divine is more alike a will than alike an intellect - namely, God could desire X to be good, regardless of what it is, and then it would be - God would transcend whatever law. But I disagree with this conception. I don't agree with such a capricious God. I much rather find the idea of a God who is more like an intellect than a will appealing. Meaning that God always acts according to the Law, because the Law is simply God's nature. So God's will acts according to his intellect - his will and his intellect are one.
For me, this puts us outside of God, beneath God. Frankly, I don't have a sharp notion of God. I'm tempted to say that God is the totality, reality itself. But I can work with Christ as an image in passionate mind. The Law is beneath him, but not because he's so eager to break it. It's just a man made thing, a political tool, technology that enables community. It's only itself justified by the love and respect we can actually feel for one another. I relate to experiencing the law (or that best parts of it) as congruent with one's best self. I think Hegel addresses this. One doesn't want to steal or kill or commit adultery, or at least one's best self doesn't. But external or internal violations of the Law don't close us off from this image written on the soul of a person above everything fixed and alien to the self.
Or rather Christ is the Law...
Quoting Hoo
But the only question is "could he break it?" and to that I would answer no. Why? Because his will and intellect are one, and thus the will cannot act contrary to the intellect, which (the intellect) is the law.
Quoting Hoo
Here I think there is a difference. If God is the totality as you say, and man is a part of that - then we cannot pretend that what must hold true of the totality also holds true of the part. For God, his intellect and his will are one and the same. Thus God cannot act contrary to the Law, which is given by his intellect. For man - who is a part of this totality, his will is separate from his intellect. Thus man's will can act contrary to his intellect. The part that is always free and always pure, as you say, that is the intellect. That's "one's best self". But the will can and often is corrupt, and thus acts against one's best self. That's why St. Paul writes:
First, I'm enjoying discussing such a grand issue!
Quoting Agustino
From my perspective, the inner Christ transcends the scriptural Christ. Saint Paul has no authority over the inner Christ, even if he's one of the great poets or communicators of this Christ. For me, Christ is beyond all scripture, all laws, all sages. I quote scripture as a sort of "poetry" that points within to the primordial source of such poetry. My heretical "Christianity" is just as "at home" in Stirner and Nietzsche, because the "Luciferian" aspect of this primordial image is just as valid. For me, atheism was a valuable detour. Iconoclasm has been hugely important to me. Negative theology, too.
Quoting Agustino
I think the intellect has a huge role to play, but I'd say that love is man's best self. But we think and love at the same time, so it's not a mindless love. I guess I envision a synthesis, the man who has organized his concepts and heart so that the world makes sense and is beautiful at the same time. But this is hard work, as you imply. In that Plato quote above, I think this is addressed. Desire and intellect inform one another. A series of frustrations (collisions of will and intellect) are like the rungs on a ladder.
If I'm close to another position, all the better. I really love Hegel and the conceptual evolution of self-consciousness. Ideas can glow. We can passionately love them. So maybe we aren't so far apart. But for me there's the concept of something beyond any law or authority. Maybe it's the in-finite concept as the negation/subsumption of all finite concepts. I get something from it, and I can relate it to themes in the Gospels, but I make no claim toward its universal validity or relevance.
Gluttony may lead to obesity and other severe health problems that place a tremendous burden on those who must care for the obese person; or his family may struggle to survive if the person dies very young and was the breadwinner, and so on.
Sure but you certainly do see the way in which such effects are less likely in the case of gluttony, and more likely in the case of something like murder.
Certainly murder is worse than gluttony; I don't think anyone would disagree with that.
Well yes, it's a position I find tempting (and interesting) - that of an absolute freedom not bound by anything. But then I also find that to contain its own contradiction inside - a freedom not bound by anything is a denial of the possibility of law, and hence of itself. Freedom and law need each other - they are mutually fulfilling, not mutually denying.
My point isn't about the morality of it for the doer, but about the way it affects others. Murder is likely to have stronger effects than theft, which is likely to have stronger effects than something like gluttony, and so forth.
Yes, of course murder has greater effects on others than gluttony, that is just why it is worse. It also would have greater effects on oneself; and that is also why it is worse.
Maybe in a bit you'll end up like G.K. Chesterton!
Hegel made this kind of point also in a somewhat different way. Freedom, he said, is impossible without discipline, which is achieved by habituation, by following rules or procedures. The great concert pianist has achieved greatness, that is freedom of expression, by internalizing the necessary constraints via discipline, but her actual freedom does not consist in following any rule or procedure, but in transcending them.
I agree. My distinction was aimed merely at showing that some sins we need to treat differently than others. Some we need punishments for because they do not only (or mostly) harm the doer - they also harm others. These are sins such as murder, adultery, theft, etc. Other sins like gluttony, compulsive masturbation, etc. may harm the doer, but generally only bring little harm on others. We organise society not based on preventing self-harm, but preventing the injury of others. Whereas in morality we are interested in both self and others. We call immoral that which brings harm either to self or others. Under the law, we only care about how others are affected - how the doer is affected remains irrelevant. Thus we call unlawful only that which harms another.
Yes! I am aware of this although my direct study of Hegel is quite lacking in comparison with other philosophers I have studied. This point is especially important for some conservative, Right Hegelians I've looked into, such as Ivan Ilyin.
As I see it, a general structure of law and sin pervades life. Even progressives who scoff at religion themselves obsess over whether they are guilty of racism or sexism. This is their version of sin. I don't think it's different in first-person emotional terms from the experience of "old-fashioned" sin. The world is and has always been a traffic jam of law-bringers, accusers, and those guilty before their own law and the laws of others. It's a jungle of status significations, apes beating their chests, Inquisitions, class race and gender solidarities, Stalinist purges, paleo diets and crossfit as religion, etc. etc. It's the assertion of finite personality as the "true" law. The self identifies with something finite and partial and is therefore at war.
But stepping into "Christ" is stepping out of all this noise and angst and need to assert. It affirms even the endless narcissism that the jungle of finite personality is made of. It is itself clarified and opened by moves within this jungle.
So the freedom in Christ has its contrast in the mundane world, which it does not replace or obliterate. It's like a lamp that burns more or less brightly. I can reference peak experiences, but I feel the warmth and light of this image most of the time. I could deductively/defensively just call it a clump of thoughts and feeling. But that's pretty much what we are inside. So the best part of us can (in my view) very well be "just" a clump of thoughts and feeling.
Yes, I agree, what is considered unlawful is usually only what harms another; but certainly not always. What about fornicating with animals, for example? What harm can that do to other people if they don't know about it? And the animal is unlikely to become morally corrupted, and may even enjoy it; probably will in fact, if not pain is involved. And yet we somehow know that it is deeply wrong in a truly grotesque ( and not merely aesthetically grotesque) way.
Yes but that is more morality than law (that we find it grotesque and deeply wrong). Furthermore, the problem is that the animal probably will not sit there patiently for the man (or woman) to do it (as it is simply not attracted to them). Thus it is very likely that forcing the animal will be involved. And that is an example of violence and cruelty which should be punished by law.
Yes they (the progressives) do have a small, tiny point. Although I think they take it to extremes, the same way ISIS fundamentalists take it to extremes. I'm a conservative, but nevertheless approve of those subjects of social justice and left-leaning economics into my political positions. I don't think Christians for example understand by "the wife should obey the husband" that the wife should kill herself if her husband tells her to for example. But rather if, for example, there is a disagreement about which school the child should attend, the husband should have the final say, but he should nevertheless consider the wife's position and thoughts. A feminazi is likely to think something different - although they will have a point that the wife shouldn't be abused or mistreated or disconsidered. They rebel against power structures - I being a conservative seek to maintain power structures, and think that respect for those power structures is essential in everyone's well being, as they are what is required for order to be maintained, and everyone profits from that. Although I do agree power structures shouldn't be abused. But just because it is possible for them to be abused doesn't mean that they are bad. It is worse if there are no power structures.
I'm not against power structures. Politics will always be with us. Like I said, I want my religion to be beyond all that in its essence, even if it influences such things. We have different lives, different histories, different prejudices. That's what finite selves are made of. But (as I see it) we don't want to get trapped on this level. Because we are only playing the role of our opponent's shadow. We need our ideological enemy to the play the inferior role to our superior role. This game is inescapable in general, I think, but we can see beyond it with the best part of ourselves. I've always had mixed feelings about taking politics seriously. Some part of me always felt diminished and betrayed. I felt a thirst for something higher and larger-hearted than all of this grinding of oughts against oughts. I think that's why there is talk of the "beyond." Some part of us gets sick of the pettiness. Any of us can fall into a petty, stubborn defensiveness. Conservatives and progressives sneer the same sneer. They dehumanize the other, project their own repressed dark side across the aisle. I think facing one's own dark side (sex, violence, greed) is important, but then I was influenced by Jung. "Be wise as a serpent but gentle as a dove." But again, this malfunctions as duty rather than as wise counsel. (And of course this is just what the "spiritual" means to me.)
However could *that* happen.
Only kidding.
The etymology of the word is contested. Some say it is derived from the word for 'blood', others say that it is derived from a term meaning 'to miss the mark'. I prefer the latter.
I think a lot of damage has been done by Calvin's interpretation of Augustine. As you mentioned that you're Orthodox, you might be aware of that. The Orthodox interpretation of the 'original sin' is far less drastic than the Calvinist one with its ideas of absolute predestination.
In Buddhism, there is no 'original sin', however there is the idea of 'beginingless ignorance'. The major difference between 'sin' and 'ignorance' is that the former is volitional, i.e. corruption of the will, the latter is cognitive, i.e. corruption of the intellect (in scholarly terminology.)
I actually really doubt that dogs have to be forced to lick vaginas and/ or to penetrate them. Nonetheless it is disgusting. Why is that; if it is not merely an aesthetic disgust. Actually for that matter why would it be aesthetically disgusting at all?
I met a fairly dissolute street artist at a tapas bar in Barcelona when I was traveling; who told me, after a few beers and a hash joint, that he and his mates used to fuck a she-ass up in the hills of Morocca when he was about 14. He said the she-ass loved it and would come running when it saw them approaching.
I never wrote that statement that you have attributed to me :D
As I said, because it is morally wrong - which doesn't necessarily have something with the legality of it.
Quoting John
Ok - I have my doubts regarding the story though, but surely it may be possible.
Certainly as far as it goes I think conservative principles are much more necessary for social order. As I have stated however, progressives also have a point with some of the issues they are championing, and these are simply to be incorporated.
Quoting Hoo
Why not seek to put the two together? As I said, progressives also have some valid oughts.
Quoting Hoo
What do you mean by this? How do you "face" your dark side? Surely I would agree that we have to be aware of any tendencies we may have towards immorality and be watchful about them, as well as practice becoming better people on a continuous basis.