Philosophy Now Forum

"Should those who write on a philosophical forum have read philosophical books?"

I mean....

"Religion may have been the original cure; Freud reminds us that it was also the original disease." Philip Rieff

Of course this might be taken out of context.

And who is to say that Christianity is right at the top of the list. It might be henry's God. Or yours.

As for this...

"Religious man was born to be saved, psychological man is born to be pleased.” Philip Rieff

...it all comes down to how each of us as individuals makes the distinction. Some might argue that once religion becomes the embodiment of this...

1] For one reason or another [rooted largely in dasein], you are taught or come into contact with [through your upbringing, a friend, a book, an experience etc.] religion .

2] Over time, you become convinced that this religion expresses and encompasses the most rational and objective truth. This truth then becomes increasingly more vital, more essential to you as a foundation, a justification, a celebration of all that is moral as opposed to immoral, rational as opposed to irrational.

3] Eventually, for some, they begin to bump into others who feel the same way about religion ; they may even begin to actively seek out others similarly inclined to view the world in a particular spiritual way.

4] Some begin to share this religion with family, friends, colleagues, associates, Internet denizens; increasingly it becomes more and more a part of their life. It becomes, in other words, more intertwined in their personal relationships with others...it begins to bind them emotionally and psychologically.

5] As yet more time passes, they start to feel increasingly compelled not only to share their religion with others but, in turn, to vigorously defend it against any and all detractors as well.

6] For some, it can reach the point where they are no longer able to realistically construe an argument that disputes their own religion as merely a difference of opinion; they see it instead as, for all intents and purposes, an attack on their intellectual integrity....on their very Self.

7] Finally, a stage is reached [again for some] where the original quest for truth, for wisdom has become so profoundly integrated into their self-identity [professionally, socially, psychologically, emotionally] defending it has less and less to do with religion at all. And certainly less and less to do with philosophy.

...nothing that anyone notes is likely to impact your thinking.

After all, thinking what you do becomes the very font for all the psychological comfort and consolation that religion brings.

Alexis,

I better understand your position

I can't say the same about yours.

Best I can tell...

You believe the organizing Christian myth (and that's all it is to you: a useful, orienting myth) is disintegrating, or has disintegrated, and we're all poorer for it.

While you're open to the possibility of a reality undergirdin' Christianity, you don't find such a thing necessary or useful.

You find genuine or authentic declarations of faith (an acceptance of that reality) off-putting and mebbe even wrong-headed.

Am I close?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Jun 23, 2022 6:20 pm Modern ideologues call that reading procedure, "co-opting the narrative."

That is highly interpretive reading of my description of my reading. A truer co-option!

If that's what you did, then you didn't really read.

Inversely, if I did not read in that way I read another way. I.e. the way that I described!

henry quirk wrote: ↑Thu Jun 23, 2022 6:37 pm You believe the organizing Christian myth (and that's all it is to you: a useful, orienting myth) is disintegrating, or has disintegrated, and we're all poorer for it.

First, I believe that Christianity is founded through an organizing mythology. Who could deny this? I speculate that there is such a thing as 'metaphysics' and that the essence of metaphysics is 'ideas that transform and impact the material and biological plane'.

If I ask you to indicate what laws, or structures, undergird 'the world' in the absence of human beings what will you say? Or what will you refer to? The rules and regulations of biological life (tooth & claw, might makes right, a world devoid of a morality in any sense like the morals we humans define) is the world that you would describe.

'Metaphysical ideas' do not operate in the world that is before us. But they most certainly do in us! To say 'human being' is to say 'metaphysical being'. A being that deals in and imposes metaphysical ideas and concepts.

Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand is an absolute metaphysical notion. Is the entire Earth now going to flourish in heavenly eruption? Is the biological and material world going to radically change? Doubtful.

Christianity is one such elaborated system of metaphysics. It is built on a specific platform of predicates (things it says about the world and asserts as 'truths'). These are easy to see and isolate.

Man is in a fallen condition. Man suffers a wound (original sin). Man requires a savior who forgives the sin (heals the wound in a manner of speaking). The Earth-plane is one of three planes: Hell, Earthworld, Heaven. In the Earthworld an evil, confounding force reigns: the chief fallen angel, Satan. You are a creature of the Earth and therefore Satan interweaves your fibres (on all levels). You require an angelic power on your side to make it through. But getting through is to be freed from the conditions of the world as predicated.

This explanatory system has been at the very core of Occidental civilization. This civilization was built with it and through it in substantial senses.

At a certain moment in time that 'explanatory system' collapsed. It could no longer 'function' (that is the word I use).

When the very undergirding metaphysical system through which the Occident was constructed -- including its system of ethics and morals as well as all connected with all notions of meaning & value -- are understood to have collapsed, Occidental man finds himself in a precarious position. We are now those precarious ones. Precariousness is alive in us.

Are we 'poorer'? Are we 'richer'? It depends on who you talk to! To have 'come back to the earth' and to the body has brought infinite benefits and positive outcomes. I do not think anyone can deny this. But the 'erasure of the horizon' has also created conditions of angst and confusion. Nihilism is an outcome.

While you're open to the possibility of a reality undergirdin' Christianity, you don't find such a thing necessary or useful.

You find genuine or authentic declarations of faith (an acceptance of that reality) off-putting and mebbe even wrong-headed.

In this regard I am 'simply an observer'. I notice, and describe, what has happened and what is going on. Why? Well knowledge is said to be power, right? But to think that one knows or understands is also self-satisfying. To haggle over these issues has a fun aspect. And I am aware that we all need entertainment. While I really believe there are important and crucial imperatives that must be taken seriously, I am not closed to a certain amount of 'light-hearted play' within these oh-so-serious categories.

It is not my position to judge anyone else for their choices. So IC is free to organize his perceptual world as it suits him (now I am sounding like Dubious!) But we are here on a philosophy forum where we deal with 'acids' of analysis. So if a truth can be told here ("a large percentage of Christianity is platformed on mythology") I am not sure if all people should be told this truth. Or, people who have faith and live in their *church* (the Cathedral as a picture of the world one lives in) I only stand by and notice. I deeply appreciate the structures of Christianity (more specifically of Catholicism and the older Christian forms).

I would not at all say that I do not find structured religious belief non-useful. It has had extremely important functions. That is, when Church was at the core of civilized life and it was all-encompassing. Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy, has a saint and a focus for every day of the year and indeed for every hour of the day! It was all-encompassing. Almost any of the religious illuminated manuscripts reveal this sense of order and unification.



That has been lost. How will a 'unity of the world' be recovered?

But all such 'order' as we have imposed, or can impose, is metaphysical to the world. It is not inherent in the world. Thus, when our structures fall apart and when "The falcon cannot hear the falconer", then things do tend to fall apart.

Unquestionably, an undergirding and unifying vision would be and could only be the basis for unity and unification. So the loss or the lack of such a system is certainly not an easy situation for any of us.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Jun 23, 2022 6:38 pm I read another way. I.e. the way that I described!

Badly, you mean?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Jun 23, 2022 7:57 pm

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Jun 23, 2022 6:38 pm I read another way. I.e. the way that I described!

Badly, you mean?

::: snif, sob! :::

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Jun 23, 2022 4:21 pm

henry quirk wrote: ↑Thu Jun 23, 2022 3:09 am One more thing...

You say...

I am confused by another element: Jesus Christ is defined by the Gospels, and through the Gospels, as being -- literally -- the Godhead incarnated into a man's body. Jesus Christ is, therefore, God incarnate. Do you hold that view?

Do you?

After all, you also say...

I have explained that I am not closed to the notion, and the real existence of metaphysics -- ideas let's say that are in no sense part-and-parcel of our world and which only come into the world through human kind but which are enormously powerful and transformative -- and I am not closed to an 'idea of God' nor to the god-experience that saints and mystics describe.

If I read you right: you have, shall we say, doubts?

First question: I do not think I can realistically hold to the idea if I am asked to comment about 'our reality'. If there is one divine man who incarnated, why not others? But on the other hand I do not regard the idea 'held in the mind' of believers as being unreal. It has real effect and ramifications.

Second question: I see a given culture (Hebrew, Vedic, etc.) as functioning like a receiver and also as a lens. What is received is the stuff of metaphysics (as thought and concept, meaning & value are essentially metaphysical). These seem to me to have always existed. They are part-and-parcel of the manifested kosmos. They are gathered (received) by men.

Then they are expressed through lenses of projection. They are expressed into projected forms. Also each person is an eye (a pun on an 'I') and is himself a lens.

“This life's dim windows of the soul
Distorts the heavens from pole to pole
And leads you to believe a lie
When you see with, not through, the eye.”

Do you know I have posted this Blake quote at least a dozen times on various forums and no one to date has commented on it?

What is seeing 'through the eye' as opposed to 'with' the eye?

That's so obvious! Seeing with the eye is seeing only the surfaces. Seeing through the eye is seeing beyond or underneath the surfaces which the eye simply looks upon that being its function.

Poetry is of no interest to most people; when presented they ignore it. Can't blame them! It's the most useless and boring of all the arts.

Dubious wrote: ↑Thu Jun 23, 2022 8:54 am

Nick_A wrote: ↑Wed Jun 22, 2022 9:08 pm
Is objective meaning for Christians experienced beyond the realm of the senses? This reminds me of Meno's Paradox in philosophy:

The argument known as “Meno's Paradox” can be reformulated as follows: If you know what you're looking for, inquiry is unnecessary. If you don't know what you're looking for, inquiry is impossible. Therefore, inquiry is either unnecessary or impossible.

Do you agree that inquiry is either unnecessary or impossible? If true just decide what makes you happy and pursue it since there is no meaning other than your happiness.

"If you know what you're looking for", the goal is to find it without knowing if you ever will. As mentioned, striving is its own reward even as it remains open-ended. The summit may never be reached but you're still a long way from the beginning.

If you don't know what you're looking for but feel you should be striving toward some kind of meaning by which to anchor your life, let yourself be persuaded by your own thoughts instead of accepting too much those of others. They did it for themselves and wrote about it; so must you whether or not you remain silent.

So if a person strives for what makes them happy then to succeed defines meaning. Suppose a person wants to be rich so strives to make money so as to be happy. Happiness is acquired in life but what of those who strive to feel meaning rather than being happy. Suppose a person spends their life for the purpose of being happy then one day wonders why am I doing this? I am happy but lack meaning or the feeling of the purpose of my being. They ask: What am I doing?

Meno's paradox offers an alternative. What we experience in life can make us happy or sad. But when one remembers (anamnesis) what offers meaning from a higher perspective they can experience human purpose. How does one remember? They remember human meaning rather than struggling for personal earthly happiness. Christianity offers the potential to remember what has been forgotten.

Mark 8: "[36] For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

This is real philosophy. How many knows what it means and able to ponder the depths of the idea to feel its meaning?

Nick_A wrote: ↑Thu Jun 23, 2022 9:44 pm

Dubious wrote: ↑Thu Jun 23, 2022 8:54 am

Nick_A wrote: ↑Wed Jun 22, 2022 9:08 pm
Is objective meaning for Christians experienced beyond the realm of the senses? This reminds me of Meno's Paradox in philosophy:



Do you agree that inquiry is either unnecessary or impossible? If true just decide what makes you happy and pursue it since there is no meaning other than your happiness.

"If you know what you're looking for", the goal is to find it without knowing if you ever will. As mentioned, striving is its own reward even as it remains open-ended. The summit may never be reached but you're still a long way from the beginning.

If you don't know what you're looking for but feel you should be striving toward some kind of meaning by which to anchor your life, let yourself be persuaded by your own thoughts instead of accepting too much those of others. They did it for themselves and wrote about it; so must you whether or not you remain silent.

So if a person strives for what makes them happy then to succeed defines meaning. Suppose a person wants to be rich so strives to make money so as to be happy. Happiness is acquired in life but what of those who strive to feel meaning rather than being happy. Suppose a person spends their life for the purpose of being happy then one day wonders why am I doing this? I am happy but lack meaning or the feeling of the purpose of my being. They ask: What am I doing?

Meno's paradox offers an alternative. What we experience in life can make us happy or sad. But when one remembers (anamnesis) what offers meaning from a higher perspective they can experience human purpose. How does one remember? They remember human meaning rather than struggling for personal earthly happiness. Christianity offers the potential to remember what has been forgotten.

Mark 8: "[36] For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

This is real philosophy. How many knows what it means and able to ponder the depths of the idea to feel its meaning?

Well then! It looks like you have it made; you've discovered meaning and whatever that meaning means to you. In that sense, everyone has to preach to himself to customize meaning and purpose to their lives. If Christianity does it for you don't assume it also applies to others. They may have their own reference points.

Dubious wrote: ↑Thu Jun 23, 2022 9:43 pmThat's so obvious! Seeing with the eye is seeing only the surfaces. Seeing through the eye is seeing beyond or underneath the surfaces which the eye simply looks upon that being its function.

Poetry is of no interest to most people; when presented they ignore it. Can't blame them! It's the most useless and boring of all the arts.

Though it may have been obvious it is possible you missed an important point.

If the function of the eye is merely to see *surfaces* then whatever it is that sees beyond or through surfaces is an eye behind which there is an interpreting entity and also one that casts into what it is that is looked at. You can only make connections when, through all manner of antecedent incidents, you have interpretive perspectives stored up in memory.

Curiously, but also predictably, when higher theology was undermined so too was poetic allusion. Once, there was a more cultivated eye capable of seeing many different shades of meaning. Now there is an ever more common 'brute' who stares at surfaces with glassy eyes.

Man, I am glad I discovered Captain Beefheart! Heaven only knows where I'd be today if I hadn't. I assume this is outside of your realm . . .

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Jun 23, 2022 10:17 pm

Dubious wrote: ↑Thu Jun 23, 2022 9:43 pmThat's so obvious! Seeing with the eye is seeing only the surfaces. Seeing through the eye is seeing beyond or underneath the surfaces which the eye simply looks upon that being its function.

Poetry is of no interest to most people; when presented they ignore it. Can't blame them! It's the most useless and boring of all the arts.

Though it may have been obvious it is possible you missed an important point.

If the function of the eye is merely to see *surfaces* then whatever it is that sees beyond or through surfaces is an eye behind which there is an interpreting entity and also one that casts into what it is that is looked at. You can only make connections when, through all manner of antecedent incidents, you have interpretive perspectives stored up in memory.

Curiously, but also predictably, when higher theology was undermined so too was poetic allusion. Once, there was a more cultivated eye capable of seeing many different shades of meaning. Now there is an ever more common 'brute' who stares at surfaces with glassy eyes.

Man, I am glad I discovered Captain Beefheart! Heaven only knows where I'd be today if I hadn't. I assume this is outside of your realm . . .

One sees with the eye by the light reflected from the object looked at (its surfaces). To see through the eye is to receive as input to the brain what the eye beholds. There it gets interpreted or ignored. There is also the virtual eye which does not physically see anything but exists as an image in the brain as a simulacra of an idea or vision. As the image thrusts itself into awareness it demands to be interpreted otherwise it would not have created itself in the psyche autonomously without there having been any prior prevision or intention in making its appearance manifest. I would describe these as mostly alien artifacts which beg to be expounded existing in the brain but never noticed until it surfaced into consciousness.

Regardless of "many different shades of meaning" most poetry is bunk serving no useful purpose by way of insight or anything else. Jung himself, was much more interested in the significance established in prose than in poetry...with very few exceptions. Most poetry is bunk...including mine!

Great video! Just my style!

Here's another...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZxMDZ3TdZM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pa2KaIepgqg

Dubious wrote: ↑Thu Jun 23, 2022 10:14 pm

Nick_A wrote: ↑Thu Jun 23, 2022 9:44 pm

Dubious wrote: ↑Thu Jun 23, 2022 8:54 am

"If you know what you're looking for", the goal is to find it without knowing if you ever will. As mentioned, striving is its own reward even as it remains open-ended. The summit may never be reached but you're still a long way from the beginning.

If you don't know what you're looking for but feel you should be striving toward some kind of meaning by which to anchor your life, let yourself be persuaded by your own thoughts instead of accepting too much those of others. They did it for themselves and wrote about it; so must you whether or not you remain silent.

So if a person strives for what makes them happy then to succeed defines meaning. Suppose a person wants to be rich so strives to make money so as to be happy. Happiness is acquired in life but what of those who strive to feel meaning rather than being happy. Suppose a person spends their life for the purpose of being happy then one day wonders why am I doing this? I am happy but lack meaning or the feeling of the purpose of my being. They ask: What am I doing?

Meno's paradox offers an alternative. What we experience in life can make us happy or sad. But when one remembers (anamnesis) what offers meaning from a higher perspective they can experience human purpose. How does one remember? They remember human meaning rather than struggling for personal earthly happiness. Christianity offers the potential to remember what has been forgotten.

Mark 8: "[36] For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

This is real philosophy. How many knows what it means and able to ponder the depths of the idea to feel its meaning?

Well then! It looks like you have it made; you've discovered meaning and whatever that meaning means to you. In that sense, everyone has to preach to himself to customize meaning and purpose to their lives. If Christianity does it for you don't assume it also applies to others. They may have their own reference points.

You are referring to imaginary meaning or self justification. I am referring to objective meaning and purpose for Man which can be remembered as always existing.

Nick_A wrote: ↑Fri Jun 24, 2022 12:44 am

Dubious wrote: ↑Thu Jun 23, 2022 10:14 pm

Nick_A wrote: ↑Thu Jun 23, 2022 9:44 pm

So if a person strives for what makes them happy then to succeed defines meaning. Suppose a person wants to be rich so strives to make money so as to be happy. Happiness is acquired in life but what of those who strive to feel meaning rather than being happy. Suppose a person spends their life for the purpose of being happy then one day wonders why am I doing this? I am happy but lack meaning or the feeling of the purpose of my being. They ask: What am I doing?

Meno's paradox offers an alternative. What we experience in life can make us happy or sad. But when one remembers (anamnesis) what offers meaning from a higher perspective they can experience human purpose. How does one remember? They remember human meaning rather than struggling for personal earthly happiness. Christianity offers the potential to remember what has been forgotten.



This is real philosophy. How many knows what it means and able to ponder the depths of the idea to feel its meaning?

Well then! It looks like you have it made; you've discovered meaning and whatever that meaning means to you. In that sense, everyone has to preach to himself to customize meaning and purpose to their lives. If Christianity does it for you don't assume it also applies to others. They may have their own reference points.

You are referring to imaginary meaning or self justification. I am referring to objective meaning and purpose for Man which can be remembered as always existing.

Objective meaning is a myth. Who or what would have placed it there? Wisdom wouldn't be required if there were such a thing as meaning and purpose which always existed. You would only need to discover it not strive for it. Wisdom should also have inspired you to know the universe is not required to be wise but function according to its laws. The rest is your job.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Jun 23, 2022 7:54 pm

I read thru your post several times, lookin' for a way in.

I failed.

As usual, you masterfully critiqued and C'dYA in one neat unit.

There's nuthin' I can say, in response, I haven't already.

Checkmate or stalemate?