Philosophy Now Forum

When the human being is freed from, e.g., Greekness or the family organic stamp, from the profession of the father and the kin-ordering of the mother, of the tribal life and of the rural life, and when thusly "stadtluft macht frei," city air makes free, he comes into the isolation of being amidst his inclinations, as the youth drawn towards a specific profession and the membership in this or that group (groups which themselves produce now artificial or semi-chosen "ethnic" clusters often enough) and political party. Ergo, according to the individually chosen affiliations he is mechanically and thus all the more brutally suppressed amidst the utter lack of an amoeba of organic or backing to sustain an independent position. He doubts all he hears as mere propoganda, and takes no lesson of youth too seriously. And so the individual is all the more weak in the face of a need which is of phylogeneticly deep power and by no means artificially generated for solidarity. It is like this that the most atomized position of the individuals invokes the moment of greatest and most extreme collective needs and so proselytizing of the political parties, claques of intellectual notions, and organizations come to dominate and collectivize under the constant spell of the underlying propaganda of liberty, tangible work and the belief in happiness in this connection which like the most orange of carrots appears as the melancholy hue of the individual's collectivized horizon in the profound prominence of a dreamy subconscious after image of his secular gods.

Id like to ask you what you believe a human individual is as opposed to an atom of the Great Collective or what Plato called society as the Beast.

For me the human individual has a conscious awareness of the reality above him within which he is meaningless. at the same time he is aware of so many beneath his quality of understanding who look up to what he expresses as individuality. In this way individuality is not defined by society but rather is aware that society cannot respond to the needs to experience objective meaning at the depth of ones being so there is nothing to defend.

Such a person is capable of becoming master of himself concerning the need for objective meaning as opposed to mechanically reacting as all animals do to earthly and cosmic forces producing the cycles of nature.

It seems that beginning the transition from a collectivist to an individualist starts with what Socrates recognized that "i know nothing" whatever that is.

Does this make sense

Nick_A wrote: ↑Wed Mar 11, 2020 9:01 pm Id like to ask you what you believe a human individual is as opposed to an atom of the Great Collective or what Plato called society as the Beast.

For me the human individual has a conscious awareness of the reality above him within which he is meaningless. at the same time he is aware of so many beneath his quality of understanding who look up to what he expresses as individuality. In this way individuality is not defined by society but rather is aware that society cannot respond to the needs to experience objective meaning at the depth of ones being so there is nothing to defend.

Such a person is capable of becoming master of himself concerning the need for objective meaning as opposed to mechanically reacting as all animals do to earthly and cosmic forces producing the cycles of nature.

It seems that beginning the transition from a collectivist to an individualist starts with what Socrates recognized that "i know nothing" whatever that is.

Does this make sense

“Id like to ask you what you believe a human individual is as opposed to an atom of the Great Collective or what Plato called society as the Beast.”

The way I understood it the “City of Pigs” is distinguished from the noble or beautiful city. A city where there are higher ambitions. Let us say “higher” than the lower part of the Maslow pyramid. The question of the individual isn’t raised there. That is a question about what kind of script, as it were, the collectivity is going to follow. Or, what play all the players or actors are to perform in.

Individuality in the modern sense has to do with freeing up the conscious inclinations in contradistinction to following the rules of kinship or the things one is born to. It is perhaps indicated by Sumner Maine’s famous phrase in its main or coservative form: “from status to contract.” In the more “noble” sense it means the coal miner's son who has the inclination towards some profession will be freed to follow that inclination instead of going to work in the mine without choice.

So, you can have a City of Pigs, the name of the collectivity, full of individuals free to make contracts.

The other issue is extraneous. The question of duty to happiness understood personally, or duty to the country understood as a particular country that must hold its own amidst the outside forces.

For me the human individual has a conscious awareness of the reality above him within which he is meaningless. at the same time he is aware of so many beneath his quality of understanding who look up to what he expresses as individuality. In this way individuality is not defined by society but rather is aware that society cannot respond to the needs to experience objective meaning at the depth of ones being so there is nothing to defend.

So far as individuality refers to the Aristocracy of birth or nature, that of character or personality, this still has a social meaning. For instance, think of a Nieztsche or a Van Gough and their immense fame or glory based on the peculiar tenor of their hearts and souls. This is the secret boon which came with the death of Oedipus.

In the modern individualistic societies personality in this sense is emphasised and tacitly worshiped, as in the artist who has become important chiefly for personality and for whom society is always eager to fall down before in connection to the monetizing of personality in the art market. The artist is no longer at the service of a patron or a rational aim, but of the demand or passion for the display of personality.

Such a person is capable of becoming master of himself concerning the need for objective meaning as opposed to mechanically reacting as all animals do to earthly and cosmic forces producing the cycles of nature.

Of course, this is the idea of Socrates or the independent man. Of the super-political. However, this was not thought as an individual, but as the perfection or sublime existence. The coincidence of the idea and the reality. The body is separat by the older thinking, but in the idea we can be the same. A thousand people can share in the perfect idea. The mystical body is not individual but whole. It is a primordial sun ousia… a being together as one soul. God.

The way I understood it the “City of Pigs” is distinguished from the noble or beautiful city. A city where there are higher ambitions. Let us say “higher” than the lower part of the Maslow pyramid. The question of the individual isn’t raised there. That is a question about what kind of script, as it were, the collectivity is going to follow. Or, what play all the players or actors are to perform in.

That’s another good question. As I understand it the quality of a society is sustained by its “metaxu”: The middle between higher consciousness and human consciousness.

http://alchemy.movie/metaxu.html

Metaxu is what allows Man to experience his conscience. If person wants to know the direction society is heading in, look at its metaxu expressed in arts, philosophy, and religion. The higher the quality of society, the higher its metaxu.

Individuality in the modern sense has to do with freeing up the conscious inclinations in contradistinction to following the rules of kinship or the things one is born to. It is perhaps indicated by Sumner Maine’s famous phrase in its main or coservative form: “from status to contract.” In the more “noble” sense it means the coal miner's son who has the inclination towards some profession will be freed to follow that inclination instead of going to work in the mine without choice.

So, you can have a City of Pigs, the name of the collectivity, full of individuals free to make contracts.

Our being changes as we age. What was attractive at 18 is no longer at 30 or sixty. As a person ages they make contracts but what inspires change? It is a combination of hormones and the collective influence on the atom of the Great Beast which comes from natural and cosmic influences. It is like life in the jungle serving its purpose. There is nothing conscious in it but rather just like a machine reacting to forces.

Soceity needs help for awakening to its potential. Metaxu of a certain quality serves this purpose. The individual has begun to feel objective human meaning and purpose.

So far as individuality refers to the Aristocracy of birth or nature, that of character or personality, this still has a social meaning. For instance, think of a Nieztsche or a Van Gough and their immense fame or glory based on the peculiar tenor of their hearts and souls. This is the secret boon which came with the death of Oedipus.

In the modern individualistic societies personality in this sense is emphasised and tacitly worshiped, as in the artist who has become important chiefly for personality and for whom society is always eager to fall down before in connection to the monetizing of personality in the art market. The artist is no longer at the service of a patron or a rational aim, but of the demand or passion for the display of personality.

I agree. There is art which reflects what society values and what touches our personality and justifies us. At the same time there is art which touches the inner man arousing questions dealing with meaning beyond self justification. This quality of art is essential for metaxu as was intended.

Of course, this is the idea of Socrates or the independent man. Of the super-political. However, this was not thought as an individual, but as the perfection or sublime existence. The coincidence of the idea and the reality. The body is separat by the older thinking, but in the idea we can be the same. A thousand people can share in the perfect idea. The mystical body is not individual but whole. It is a primordial sun ousia… a being together as one soul. God.

Yes, this is how I define actuakized human individuality. This doesn’t make Man God but man has the potential to become a son of god or as is said in the Bible, in the image.

In the descent of the great chain of being there is God, the Son, and Man

There does seem to be a small minority who are called to sacrifice attachments to earthly values for the sake of becoming the pearl of great price or what it means to become the inner unity, the one, as opposed to the inner plurality which puts us in opposition to ourselves natural for atoms of the collective.

"Pity them my children, they are far from home and no one knows them. Let those in quest of God be careful lest appearances deceive them in these people who are peculiar and hard to place; no one rightly knows them but those in whom the same light shines" Meister Eckhart

Metaxu is what allows Man to experience his conscience. If person wants to know the direction society is heading in, look at its metaxu expressed in arts, philosophy, and religion. The higher the quality of society, the higher its metaxu.

On first blush it is generally like the concept of instincts or the unconscious attitude. All westerners treat matter as primary (in the sense of external difficulties which if removed will dispense with everything bad in human life and in human beings), even if everyone speaks of the corollary of it, “consciousness” as though they were against the cultural field of being they lived in. Everyone praises work as if it were bringing about some material improvements towards a happiness even if the talk against it as an intellectualist’s dependent polemic. And so on. All that, though, I would say, is not in contradistinction to the idea of a City of Pigs or a Noble City. Both a City of Pigs and a Noble City have a phronesis and an instinct that corresponds to the kind of city.

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the atom of the Great Beast

Well, you tacitly make the idea include the higher things. Or, you level it so that it is indifferent to the distinction which was the occasion for it being thought. So, of course in modern times the philosophes and encyclopedists and their lot, the “free thinkers” produced a pleasure-loving good. And then the distinction is all but collapsed. Because the noblest thing is to go to prostitutes all the time, so that they will buy new hats at the millinery, stimulating trade, and producing the highest good which is then thought as comfortable self preservation. So, one must be careful to distinguish the passions from artificial avarice and scaberousness as that of de Sade. That is an intellectual beast corresponding to the modern trend of deviance as utopianism. The whole concept becomes very messy.

Soceity needs help for awakening to its potential. Metaxu of a certain quality serves this purpose. The individual has begun to feel objective human meaning and purpose.

The Greeks only say individual to mean the body. The thing pointed to. The particular is, in contradistinction to this, said of the mental thing. Take the example of the university. That is the Roman jurists' word for corporation. It is a “mystical body.” The idea that all is rolled up, turned, versed, into one, uni-. All the scholars. Everyone becomes one in the idea. The collective mind. We start to lose that sense explicitly with the Social Contract thinkers. Rousseau possesses the ultimate dilemma with his familiar word: “you will be forced to be free.” Which is to say, you will be made in procrustean manner to conform to the one idea of the good. You will not be an individual. The whole tradition is collective.

This quality of art is essential for metaxu as was intended.

Leatherworkers, bakers, candlestick makers, painters of portraits, all have specific ends. It corresponds to the collective good. Our idea, the modern idea, after the Social Contract, breaks from all former ages very radically. It is equivalent to the domestication of fire. It says, there is no aim in art. Or, better, the aim is the freeing up of the artist to their idiosyncratic inclinations and inborn talents.

The “metaxu” there would be complicated. The collective does, indeed, support the fanning out or ramification of radical individuality, but it also limits, or, better, regulates it.

In the descent of the great chain of being there is God, the Son, and Man

That just means the “idea” is above the understanding, and the understanding above the body. It’s a collective idea. It means that the human being knows himself under the idea of the human. Which we all identically share in. In knowing himself he knows what is the most impersonal and the most un-individual.

Mistakes are individual. They are “accidents.” That is the traditional way of thinking.

“sacrifice attachments to earthly values”

That’s Christian talk. It either means the priest in order to show the possibility that the natural passions, which lead to all the evils of history. Most of all envy. Can be regulated. Or, it implies imitation of Christ.

In the Greek context the idea is that the City or country is unjust. Because it has recourse to expediency rather than justice in order to hold its own against the other countries. In rising above the City Socrates would have to rise to perfect justice. The issue is not denial of pleasure. It is conformity with reason. The human essence. The just thing, the reasonable thing, could be bad for the city. It often is. The contrast is never between individual and city in the modern sense of the deviant from reason or the good. It is a deviation of the individual form the good of the city. From a qualified form of good. And not to be individual, not for their own ("creative") good, but for the good proper.

As I see it, society is a large animal consisting of many smaller animals and as such it is born lives ages, and dies. A society with the goal of freedom begins with valuing what it takes to acquire and its metaxu supports these values.. After while it loses it way in accordnce with universal laws which creates the cycles of life and why there are no straight lines in nature. Society begins its descent, hits bottom, and eventually begins another cycle.

The Greeks only say individual to mean the body. The thing pointed to. The particular is, in contradistinction to this, said of the mental thing. Take the example of the university. That is the Roman jurists' word for corporation. It is a “mystical body.” The idea that all is rolled up, turned, versed, into one, uni-. All the scholars. Everyone becomes one in the idea. The collective mind. We start to lose that sense explicitly with the Social Contract thinkers. Rousseau possesses the ultimate dilemma with his familiar word: “you will be forced to be free.” Which is to say, you will be made in procrustean manner to conform to the one idea of the good. You will not be an individual. The whole tradition is collective.

The desires of the mind oppose the desires of the body. The university comes along with its idea of (uni-verse) the search for wisdom and what connects all as one which the struggle between our higher and lower natures deny. Values are lost and the struggle over opinions and prestige becomes more important. This is a natural part of the descent of the human potential away from wisdom left to its own devices.

Is there anything capable of offering resistance, a quality of metaxu allowing people to remember what is being lost? I think Simone Weil nails it

"The combination of these two facts — the longing in the depth of the heart for absolute good, and the power, though only latent, of directing attention and love to a reality beyond the world and of receiving good from it — constitutes a link which attaches every man without exception to that other reality.

Whoever recognizes that reality recognizes also that link. Because of it, he holds every human being without any exception as something sacred to which he is bound to show respect.

This is the only possible motive for universal respect towards all human beings. Whatever formulation of belief or disbelief a man may choose to make, if his heart inclines him to feel this respect, then he in fact also recognizes a reality other than this world's reality. Whoever in fact does not feel this respect is alien to that other reality also." ~ Simone Weil

I just don’t think it is possible anymore. But this is what an individual is capable of. I’m not putting down many good people in the world who follow rules and try to be constructive. I just have an admiration for these rare types who become conscious influences not by their intent but by their being inspiring others to expose them to the world.

But what if a society became able to experience scientific facts and put them into a conscious perspective Simone is describing? It could become a super civilization

That’s Christian talk. It either means the priest in order to show the possibility that the natural passions, which lead to all the evils of history. Most of all envy. Can be regulated. Or, it implies imitation of Christ.

In the Greek context the idea is that the City or country is unjust. Because it has recourse to expediency rather than justice in order to hold its own against the other countries. In rising above the City Socrates would have to rise to perfect justice. The issue is not denial of pleasure. It is conformity with reason. The human essence. The just thing, the reasonable thing, could be bad for the city. It often is. The contrast is never between individual and city in the modern sense of the deviant from reason or the good. It is a deviation of the individual form the good of the city. From a qualified form of good. And not to be individual, not for their own ("creative") good, but for the good proper.

How can people sleep in Plato’s cave be regulated other than through tyranny? People will argue over who represents the good for the sake of prestige and society will continue looking down and moving away from the source of the good essential for freedom to be possible. We may be crushed but at least we can know why and pass it along for generations to come so they can know the value of awakening to the human condition Plato describes in the cave analogy..