chaz wyman wrote:lancek4 wrote:How would you define Christianity?
Is it a thing? does it have boundaries? what are these boundaries? How do we know what it is? Our definition of Christianity seems to point to an actual thing, but, as with any object, its existance relies upon an assumption.
This assumption is an ethical assumption.
If I say chair, it is identified as a thing in relation to all other things that can be known, as if in a negative space to these other things. but as we identify a chair we make it positive space against all that which is not the chair, which then is negative space.
The point is, is that there is nothing that exists separate from all these 'things'.
If I posit an infinity, I have likewise posited a boundary in the same way as I have idenitifed Christianity, or even chair.
there is not 'the universe' and then something other than the universe: there is only the universe.
thus there is an inconsistency in this juxtaposing of things.
How can this be so? What is wrong with these propositions?
All fine except that the assumption of Christianity is an ontological one and not an ethical one in any sense.
It's ontology is bounded by a set of various definitions and empirical facts. You can choose to reject it as having any meaningful ontology, (especially if you are outside the boundary), and simply suggest that "christianity" is a place holder for everything other than that which is not christianity. I don't see the ethical dimension here at all - let alone the limits of reality.
Where is the ethical assumption?
I do not hold the assertion of essential categories to be sound.
We have had this discussion before, you and I Chaz, around atheism.
Thus, I see, that you use the terms 'ontology' and 'ethics' in a similar fashion, as if they are essential categories, as if they indicate or refer to absolute 'in-itself' aspects or elements of reality or existance.
It seems to me that we agree on many points; where we diverge is here.
I believe we concur on the following:
Knowledge is all there is of truth. We cannot know an 'in-itself' object 'in-itself' except through our knowledge, which indicates only itself. If there is an 'in-itself' object, it is entirely mediated by knowledge, and therefore denies the possibility of an 'in-itself' object. Yet knowledge does behave for consciousness as if there is an in-itself object. This is one of the contradictions of knowledge.
This is where I lose you:
when you say "Christianity is an ontological one and not an ethical one in any sense", I see that you have diverted the above proposition (of knowledge) into itself; that you have denied the proposition for the sake of asserting an essential thing: ontology or ethics in this case.
I see that such categories are merely categories and do not indicate any essential truth of any matter, only local colloquially negotiated truths. The term 'essential' is likewise mediated by the condition of knowledge at any time.
So far as the universal is the ethical:
The universe is all that exists. All that exists is known. Knowledge, being anchored in no thing 'in-itself', thereby asserts an agenda. An agenda is founded in a particular ethical situation of reality. Reality trumps the possibility that the universe is all that exists. Reality is therefore not the universe, but the universal: the proper manner of coming upon the truth of the universe.
