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He's controversial but taken up by fascinating philosophers like Zizek. Then Freud is taken up by Derrida and Rorty and others. So I think there's a c...

:up: Glad you found them interesting. I don't pretend to 'get' all of Hegel, but he's a rich mine to explore. For those with an unmystical-secular min...

:fire: I've actually come to love his strange voice. Very cool that you were rocking his name on your bag! He was already a classic when I was young. ...

But I look at the politicians. What do they talk about? Justice, liberty, abundance, security. I don't deny that they use science & tech to pursue the...

I guess my argument was from the 'grammar' of the word explanation. If 'explanation' is understood to mean linking one thing to another, different thi...

Well I think it disappoints just about any philosopher to discover/decide that language isn't what they thought it was, that it doesn't play as nice a...

This line baffles me, since philosophical secular reason seems enormously self-aware and self-critical, though it could be accused of being secular. E...

I like psychoanalysis (Freud and maybe some Lacan) even if it might just be updated shamanism.

:up: :party: :death: His Immortality knocked me out. Your glowing review will be remembered for future use. She translated the The Essence of Christia...

I can relate to this if I think in terms of analogies that one has to be ripe for, through study or in terms of life-experience. This is where we migh...

Please say more. I don't want to misunderstand you.

It's a delicate issue. I'm not simply opposed to the esoteric. Recall that I suggested that the 'rational' community was its own 'inner circle' and a ...

Hendrix and Lennon are great mentions. Some of the best times (the opposite of alienated and lonely times) I've had with other human beings involved l...

:up: Might add Lester Bangs to that list too. Leaving the states, do you like Kundera? Hesse? Good examples I think of philosophical novelists. For be...

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You made me think of a counterexample.

I like the quotes and the topic. I think it's understood that Pythagoras was a cult leader of some kind, and that Plato might have had a secret doctri...

Right! And that would be a good look from the outside, a selective group that guards its secrets. I agree, but consider the original context, in which...

I don't value art that way either, and class is an interesting concept, not strictly identified with wealth. I speculate that 'being philosophical' (b...

I'm trying to isolate the difference between working hard to obtain some manual skill or traditional education program and working hard to obtain a my...

To me there's a class aspect and a quality aspect to the high-art / pop-art distinction. I consider Bukowksi a first-rate novelist and so 'high art' i...

You also mentioned Nietzsche, and this passage (one of my faves) came to mind, which presents Jesus as a sort of mystical skeptic on the 'other side o...

Since you mentioned Stirner, you might like this quote. It's Hegel's portrait of the Irony which more or less condenses Stirner into a few paragraphs....

:up: Good point. You mentioned Stirner earlier, and we can think of Marx's & Hegel's criticism of the (irresponsible) skeptic. Marx attacks Stirner di...

I think @"180 Proof" touched on this, but here's my version. I think it's better to not view (most of) custom & convention as a conscious choice. We a...

:up: I like the idea of a pragmatic or practical skeptic. It's insane or insincere to doubt the 'know how' of practical life, but it's possible to be ...

One of my favorite 'underrated' philosophers is Kojeve, and the sage is central to his interpretation of Hegel. Basically, the theory goes, Hegel was ...

:up: The 'totality' seems to be beyond explanation, since explanation links this to that. But there's nothing outside the Everything that we can link ...

I stared a thread on this issue. IMO, we have the different (fuzzy) categories for a reason. It's not just mysticism that solves the problems of philo...

"between the lines" :up:

Very true. Our pluralistic, individualistic age is tough. In some ways we are encouraged to obsess over ourselves, market ourselves. It's the bleak ba...

We can think of times when priests were in power. Then the cynic/critic could understand esoteric truths as the ideology of the ruling class. 'We rule...

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Right. They feel isolated for various reasons (perhaps they would benefit from more friends or lovers or a better relationship with family, when possi...

I'm more on the side of universalized critical thinking and against esotericism, though I do think there are reasonable ways to think about the esoter...

I haven't studied Strauss but I was intensely influenced/inspired by the lectures on Hegel by his friend Kojeve. Anyway, I like the way Strauss puts i...

I think that's reasonable. The 'single dance' is a kind of point-at-infinity. We could say that there are billions of idiolects of the English languag...

I think if being on this forum were only bitter arguments that you'd be right (I stay away from politics usually because of this.) Also agree that phi...

:up: I think I agree with you. Individuality isn't nothing, isn't worthless. We're all snowflakes, albeit with sufficient similarity to relate to one ...

That's my personal experience too of those talking about esoteric matters. I allow for the possibility of the relatively real thing, but I'm inclined ...

I think skill that can't be articulated plays a huge role. We learn to be with others as we learn to ride a bike. On the explicit level we have practi...

:up: It seems to me that reason is a self-criticizing and self-inventing faculty, that the boundaries aren't fixed. As one poster said, logic is a gen...

:up: I see your general point. We might agree that some kind of 'continuous' version of esotericism is involved in the genetic dispositions. Some unsp...

Good point. I suppose the issue is whether it's intellectually 'cool' or not to talk about evolution going somewhere, building up to something. What g...

To me this accessible to anyone aspect puts some distance between the idea and strict esotericism. For instance, someone else could have and probably ...

Well said. This is what I was aiming at by talking of a preliminary affection or suspension of disbelief. I think we often check out thinkers because ...

Nice. I've only seen videos. I like his vibe. The recommendation to wait makes a certain kind of sense. Practice, practice, practice. That's the kind ...

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I think we agree on guilds and communities of skill. We also agree that the 'ideal florist' (ideal sage) doesn't need to advertise or evangelize. The ...