Philosophy Now Forum

Belinda wrote: ↑Wed May 24, 2023 7:01 pm I see no difference between political values and spiritual-religious aspect.

Oh. That's odd. I wonder why.

Belinda wrote: ↑Wed May 24, 2023 7:01 pm Values is the main reason religions exist

Oh, so, you don't think that connecting to and relating with the divine and transcendent reality in general is the main reason religions exist?

Harry Baird wrote: ↑Wed May 24, 2023 6:47 pm

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Wed May 24, 2023 6:32 pm Harry: The Power of Question!

Yep. It also works when inverted: The Question of Power! Or as an imperative: Question the Power!

Or another imperative: power the questions!

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Wed May 24, 2023 7:24 pm Or another imperative: power the questions!

With... caffeine...?...

Harry Baird wrote: ↑Wed May 24, 2023 7:26 pm

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Wed May 24, 2023 7:24 pm Or another imperative: power the questions!

With... caffeine...?...

I see how your mind works . . .

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Wed May 24, 2023 7:27 pm I see how your mind works . . .

** Pop **
** Schwwwwizzz **

Harry Baird wrote: ↑Wed May 24, 2023 7:05 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Wed May 24, 2023 7:01 pm I see no difference between political values and spiritual-religious aspect.

Oh. That's odd. I wonder why.

Belinda wrote: ↑Wed May 24, 2023 7:01 pm Values is the main reason religions exist

Oh, so, you don't think that connecting to and relating with the divine and transcendent reality in general is the main reason religions exist?

The divine is a personification of a society's prevailing values . I do happen to believe in transcendent reality, but few people have the mystical ability to connect experientially with transcendent reality . Transcendent reality can be appreciated intellectually by means of reasoning.

Is transcendent reality what you mean when you say
"spiritual-religious aspect" ?

As for values, surely values must apply to everything you do!

Yep, so, you're sort of "forced" to this position...

Belinda wrote: ↑Wed May 24, 2023 7:01 pm Values is the main reason religions exist

...given that your atheism...

Belinda wrote: ↑Wed May 24, 2023 7:44 pm The divine is a personification of a society's prevailing values

...precludes you from endorsing this one:

Harry Baird wrote: ↑Wed May 24, 2023 7:05 pm connecting to and relating with the divine and transcendent reality in general is the main reason religions exist

In answer to your question:

Belinda wrote: ↑Wed May 24, 2023 7:44 pm Is transcendent reality what you mean when you say
"spiritual-religious aspect" ?

Yes, but especially God and divinity as transcendent reality, because the primary (and spiritual-religious) value of Jesus was relationship with (a personal) God. It seems that you are sort of forced to reject or at least ignore this because you deny the existence of any (personal) God in the first place.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Wed May 24, 2023 12:45 pm

Dubious wrote: ↑Wed May 24, 2023 8:33 amIt seems that in spite of all your reading you remain as mentally paralytic as any steadfast bible worshipper.

You’ve said this and similar things at other times. I hope that you will develop the idea and present a fuller, convincing case. You imply that you’ve moved beyond ‘it’ (whatever it is) but you remain reticent and obscuring of what you really mean.

What interests me in what I sense of your “mood” is the degree that it shares an animus of contempt and hatred for something which is never that clearly defined. When I notice the mood of contempt and hatred, and when it looks to me to be psychological (projecting) I feel inclined to stop and examine the mood.

Show me (and other readers here) the way out of paralysis. Lead the way by showing the way.

I honestly have no idea what you're talking about. Unless you give me an idea - it doesn't need to be exact, specific or clearly defined - only indicative as to what you think my views are and what I seemingly 'moved beyond' of which I'm not aware; until then, I can't properly respond.

As for 'other readers', I can guarantee you no one is interested being barely interested myself.

Harry Baird wrote: ↑Wed May 24, 2023 6:00 pm The wrong that I've blamed you for is fairly trivial: that you claim(ed?) to value Christianity even though you (had) abstract(ed) beyond recognition whatever metaphysical principles you take(/took) from it, while otherwise explicitly rejecting pretty much every significant element of its Story. It does though suggest some interesting (to me) further questions:

Please note, I tend not to reject anything. Perhaps it is s defect but I can see benefit in perspectives that are mutually exclusive and even those that (appear) to negate each other.

And to clarify further: I can only believe what I can believe honestly. What I notice is that (it appears to me) that some people say they believe things which in fact they do not actually believe. So their belief is a pretense.

Just now I am reading The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass (Gihr, original version 1877). Why? In order to be able to understand the *internal logic* of the liturgy that had been, and in some circles still is, at the very center of Occidental metaphysics. In order to *believe in* the Mass (as a liturgical operation, as a sacred ritual that, quite literally, takes one from one place to another place on an internal plane) one has to *believe in* the metaphysical story of the advent of Jesus Christ and the *ritual*, if you will, of his sacrifice. That is how it is conceived: a giant performance of magical metaphysics. In essence, the ritual's function is the release Man from enthrallment to *Satan*. But (it has always seemed to me) one needs to have a definition of what Satan refers to just as one needs a clear concept of what the sacrifice of Jesus portends, and indeed why it took place. Shall I see all this as *reality*? I find that I both can and cannot. On some level I might say I can see the Story as elucidating genuine metaphysical principles. But it is nearly impossible for me not to see it all as a ritual performed in the imagination of men.

But then imagination takes on a whole other look, sense and meaning.

The Mass, as you know, is a reenactment of the life and ultimate sacrifice of Jesus. The function of it is to take the hearer (watcher) from a lower plane to a higher plane on the inner level. Now, I know that many of the hardcore deniers who reside here can only scoff at my interest in these things (for example Brother Dubious). Yet I can hardly be concerned. Because if I thoughtlessly reject the *inner content* of what the Mass has meant and means, I will also have to reject every idea that is associated with it. Take for example the novels of Dostoevsky among dozens and indeed among hundreds and thousands of artists and philosophers who have applied their sense of *meaning & value* within the lived dimensions of life.

You cannot separate the metaphysical origins from the metaphysical products and achievements. And those achievements operate in all the domains that you can name, from jurisprudence to the marriage between a man and a woman. That is why I say that our very selves have been created, or constructed, from metaphysical principles over centuries and millennia. Then, along come some idiots who simply rip it all down without fully grasping what they are doing. In my view that is a very very bad choice.

Now, if by "rejecting pretty much every significant element of its Story" you refer to what occurred here in relation to Immanuel Can I would say that, right there, you can witness the contradiction: To see benefit in perspectives that are mutually exclusive and even those that (appear) to negate each other.

If a Story is ridiculous and literally false, then does it merit being mined (abstracted) for literal truth? Why, on vital metaphysical questions, would one trust Storytellers whose Story one doesn't straightforwardly value? More generally, is it wise to base oneself intellectually and metaphysically in a belief system supported by such a Story?

What other option is there? No one here can take most, or all, elements of the Christian story literally. The elements of the story do not coincide with what they believe to be true and truth. What seems to happen is that literal-minded men then reject everything about the story which they honestly feel is untrue.

Basil Willey in The Seventeenth Century Background spoke of the need of a *master metaphysician* to make sense of all of this, and especially our own situation as we shift (or are shifted) from one metaphysical portrayal to another. We are, literally I think, strung between the former system and a newer system which, in my view, does not really have cohesive, binding power. In this sense we can't go back to the *collapsed* former belief-system, but neither can we honestly and integrally go forward. We are in an impasse.

Maybe the Story is not as important as the collective intellectual and metaphysical work that has gone on in its name and under its aegis, but if that work is primarily aimed at buttressing the false and ridiculous (Story), then is this work itself, and those who have undertaken it, particularly objective, trustworthy, reliable, and relevant?

Well, it seems to me that we can only begin to attempt access to, for example, the intellectual problem that Richard Weaver expounds. If the argument makes sense, and I have felt that it does, one begins as a result to reconstruct an understanding that enables one to *believe in* what metaphysical stories alludes to. The alternative? To allow the conceptual pathway to literally die away. One could do this willingly, perhaps, but it seems to me (hello Harbal) that it is done through omission and negligence. For this reason, naturally, I have referred to Ortega y Gasset and his essay on the intrusion of mass man into the affairs of the world. Mass man senses his power to decide things. Yet he is not qualified. But to say such a think harkens back to notions of 'hierarchies of value'.

If "the fall" is a sound metaphor for our entry into this existential realm, and if Richard Weaver is right that the West has been disintegrating since the abandonment of transcendentals in the late 14th century, then is it possible that after "the" fall, we fell further, such that the 14th century was not the apex of our metaphysical knowledge and understanding, but simply a local maximum attained after falling further, and that the true apex lies deeper back in history?

It is clear, and beyond all doubt, that men do indeed fall. Choices result in 'loss' and indeed catastrophe and many men pay the price of their negligence and carelessness for the rest of their lives. If this is so then it does posit that there is a *higher* and a *lower*. And if as I say the Catholic Mass (that is the original Mass not the new mass celebrated today) is designed as a mental and spiritual vehicle of ascent to which one must give one's assent through an act of will -- then I have in a sense proven the value of such a metaphysical ritual. Everything that we can assert as being valuable, and indeed value, all depends on that upper region. And it is conceived in intellectual and metaphysical terms.

In my own view it is our own *inner territory* that is the plane where we recover ourselves metaphysically. How could it be otherwise?

Dubious wrote: ↑Wed May 24, 2023 8:09 pm As for 'other readers', I can guarantee you no one is interested being barely interested myself.

What I might recommend is that you only subscribe to the cooking and aesthetics portion of my 10 Week Email Transformation Course®. There are hundreds of yummy reicpes and in this way you can eat your way to the Higher Plane.

Beyond that I fear I can't help you much, dear Dubious.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Wed May 24, 2023 8:29 pm

Dubious wrote: ↑Wed May 24, 2023 8:09 pm As for 'other readers', I can guarantee you no one is interested being barely interested myself.

What I might recommend is that you only subscribe to the cooking and aesthetics portion of my 10 Week Email Transformation Course®. There are hundreds of yummy reicpes and in this way you can eat your way to the Higher Plane.

Beyond that I fear I can't help you much, dear Dubious.

So basically you haven't got a clue as to what you're talking about but wish to make a point anyway. You are definitely one of the super-typical on this site which makes me wonder what all of your reading is for.

Please hold on while I order another shipment. This is going to require more power.

In the meantime, might I - may I - reflect this Powerful Question back to you for your consideration, even if only of possibilities that you would ultimately not endorse?

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Wed May 24, 2023 8:18 pm What other option is there?

Tales from the Cretan Labyrinth. . . . Episode No.987

Dubious wrote: ↑Wed May 24, 2023 8:36 pm So basically you haven't got a clue as to what you're talking about but wish to make a point anyway.

Perhaps I only have 'a clue'.

clue 1 (klo͞o)
n.
Something that serves to guide or direct in the solution of a problem or mystery.

tr.v. clued, clue·ing or clu·ing, clues

To give (someone) guiding information: Clue me in on what's happening around the office.

[Variant of clew (from Theseus's use of a ball of thread as a guide through the Cretan labyrinth).]

Before Theseus entered the labyrinth, Ariadne visited him secretly. She gave him a ball of thread and told him to tie the end to the door of the labyrinth and unravel the ball of string as he traveled deeper inside. That way, once he had killed the Minotaur, he would be able to find his way back out.

For fun: The Minotaur's Song

Harry Baird wrote: ↑Wed May 24, 2023 7:57 pm Yep, so, you're sort of "forced" to this position...

Belinda wrote: ↑Wed May 24, 2023 7:01 pm Values is the main reason religions exist

...given that your atheism...

Belinda wrote: ↑Wed May 24, 2023 7:44 pm The divine is a personification of a society's prevailing values

...precludes you from endorsing this one:

Harry Baird wrote: ↑Wed May 24, 2023 7:05 pm connecting to and relating with the divine and transcendent reality in general is the main reason religions exist

In answer to your question:

Belinda wrote: ↑Wed May 24, 2023 7:44 pm Is transcendent reality what you mean when you say
"spiritual-religious aspect" ?

Yes, but especially God and divinity as transcendent reality, because the primary (and spiritual-religious) value of Jesus was relationship with (a personal) God. It seems that you are sort of forced to reject or at least ignore this because you deny the existence of any (personal) God in the first place.

That's clear to me, thanks. Naturally I'd like to believe in personal God but I can't.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Wed May 24, 2023 8:55 pm Tales from the Cretan Labyrinth. . . . Episode No.987

Dubious wrote: ↑Wed May 24, 2023 8:36 pm So basically you haven't got a clue as to what you're talking about but wish to make a point anyway.

Perhaps I only have 'a clue'.

Imagine what would happen if that singular clue fails to guide you out of your own labyrinth and a timeless metaphysical stalemate ensues ensconced in Ariadne's thread as if in a spider web!