Disinterestedness

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Wyrdskein
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Disinterestedness

Post by Wyrdskein »

Just a quick question for all you experts.

Is there a link between disinterestedness (be it of the Kantian kind, in Aestheticism, or in abstract art) and spirituality? On the one hand Kant appears to suggest a universal aesthetic, but it doesn't seem particularly spiritual, and on the other we have abstract art being influenced by Theosophy etc - I'm having trouble tracing the line between the former and the latter.
Spectrum
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Re: Disinterestedness

Post by Spectrum »

Spirituality is a very loose term.
I think there is a link between Kant's 'disinterestness' and spirituality-proper.
While Kant's disinterest is related to the free harmonious play of the imagination with the understanding, the 'disinterestness' in spirituality is more extensive.
For example, the Bhagavad Gita, the maxim of 'Do not be attached to the fruits of action' is advocated.
Since no expectations (interests) are attached to actions, whatever pleasure that manifest is spontaneous and flow naturally. Other teachings of spirituality apply the same principle.
Not-a-theist. Religion is a critical necessity for humanity now, but not the FUTURE.
Harbal
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Re: Disinterestedness

Post by Harbal »

Wyrdskein wrote: I'm having trouble tracing the line between the former and the latter.
If you're having trouble is it worth the effort? I have no idea what your post is about but it doesn't seem like something anybody really needs to know.

-- Updated March 7th, 2015, 4:53 pm to add the following --

It seems the title of this post is a self fulfilling prophesy.
Lambert
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Re: Disinterestedness

Post by Lambert »

I think the difference is between cult and occult in which the next dimension is entertained by occult. This would be where, for example, Catholicism makes a good match with Voodoo that looks like a total abomination in itself while they are a perfect math with the end in sight.http://www.reformation.org/voodoo-and-the-vatican.html

-- Updated March 14th, 2015, 7:41 am to add the following --
Harbal wrote:
Wyrdskein wrote: I'm having trouble tracing the line between the former and the latter.
If you're having trouble is it worth the effort? I have no idea what your post is about but it doesn't seem like something anybody really needs to know.

-- Updated March 7th, 2015, 4:53 pm to add the following --

It seems the title of this post is a self fulfilling prophesy.
The fact is that if the true beauty of gold is found in our ability to walk away from it, you must have gold to walk away from first. So regardless of how right Gita is, one must cling to the fruits of action before his words can come alive in us, and that is why the concept sin is introduced so that we can. So while they may be vanity as an end in themselves, they are needed to bring that sense of alive in us.

That is exactly why the wily carpenter called Joseph also had 12 shepherds in the go, and they became his own liability in life (in disarray while taking turns herding their own sheep in the middle of a midwinter night), and so they now were his mental assets on the run (his insights). And what does he do? He does not walk away from them but converts them to find his greater good in life.
Harbal
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Re: Disinterestedness

Post by Harbal »

Lambert wrote:I think the difference is between cult and occult in which the next dimension is entertained by occult. This would be where, for example, Catholicism makes a good match with Voodoo that looks like a total abomination in itself while they are a perfect math with the end in sight. The fact is that if the true beauty of gold is found in our ability to walk away from it, you must have gold to walk away from first. So regardless of how right Gita is, one must cling to the fruits of action before his words can come alive in us, and that is why the concept sin is introduced so that we can. So while they may be vanity as an end in themselves, they are needed to bring that sense of alive in us.

That is exactly why the wily carpenter called Joseph also had 12 shepherds in the go, and they became his own liability in life (in disarray while taking turns herding their own sheep in the middle of a midwinter night), and so they now were his mental assets on the run (his insights). And what does he do? He does not walk away from them but converts them to find his greater good in life.
Lambert.
This thread already contains enough meaningless nonsense, your talents are surplus to requirements here.
Lambert
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Re: Disinterestedness

Post by Lambert »

Harbal wrote:
Lambert wrote:I think the difference is between cult and occult in which the next dimension is entertained by occult. This would be where, for example, Catholicism makes a good match with Voodoo that looks like a total abomination in itself while they are a perfect math with the end in sight. The fact is that if the true beauty of gold is found in our ability to walk away from it, you must have gold to walk away from first. So regardless of how right Gita is, one must cling to the fruits of action before his words can come alive in us, and that is why the concept sin is introduced so that we can. So while they may be vanity as an end in themselves, they are needed to bring that sense of alive in us.

That is exactly why the wily carpenter called Joseph also had 12 shepherds in the go, and they became his own liability in life (in disarray while taking turns herding their own sheep in the middle of a midwinter night), and so they now were his mental assets on the run (his insights). And what does he do? He does not walk away from them but converts them to find his greater good in life.
Lambert.
This thread already contains enough meaningless nonsense, your talents are surplus to requirements here.
That is exactly where Kant was an apostles short and that was his own being as Man, and be it made known here that he maintained the Categorical Imperative in which his own household came first. That is why I introduced Joseph who's shepherds were Kant's Imperative that the refused to let go. He so betrayed the Axiom of Non-Contradiction that remained limited to analytic knowledge from his own point of view and so denies their beginning in space and time = science related as the seat of knowledge in us from also his point of view.

The same difference again: we look to find with telic vision and deny eidetic vision as we look. That is because there is enmity between our left and right that we cannot understand nor overcome by looking at things.

-- Updated March 15th, 2015, 3:41 pm to add the following --

And do you not like Voodoo? Like a marriage made in heaven, I say.
Harbal
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Re: Disinterestedness

Post by Harbal »

Lambert wrote: And do you not like Voodoo? Like a marriage made in heaven, I say.
I know very little about Voodoo and the same goes for Kant. I have no plans to increase my knowledge about either.
Lambert
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Re: Disinterestedness

Post by Lambert »

Harbal wrote:
Lambert wrote: And do you not like Voodoo? Like a marriage made in heaven, I say.
I know very little about Voodoo and the same goes for Kant. I have no plans to increase my knowledge about either.
It is totally mind boggling for Christians to see it that way. In fact, it adds to their condemnation again.
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Hereandnow
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Re: Disinterestedness

Post by Hereandnow »

Wyrdskein :
Is there a link between disinterestedness (be it of the Kantian kind, in Aestheticism, or in abstract art) and spirituality? On the one hand Kant appears to suggest a universal aesthetic, but it doesn't seem particularly spiritual, and on the other we have abstract art being influenced by Theosophy etc - I'm having trouble tracing the line between the former and the latter.
several points to make:

You might want to look into a book by Clive Bell called ART, in which he defends a thesis of significant form and aesthetic rapture. Art is significant form and significant form is what elicits aesthetic rapture. There is here a certain Kantian disinterestedness as you are not invited to allow forms of sine and color to play freely, intuitively, without reference to any historical grounding. But this puts the aesthetic, as such, into question. After all, we all have different taste on what is significant (and therefore rapturous).

I am a formalist, but I have to somehow explain how things devoid of any form get admitted into the art world. Conceptual art, for example. Indeed, how can it be that concepts can play such a limited role since, for example, Kandinsky is best received and its aesthetic appreciated after reading his prose on art, and other critics' commentaries. How does form and concept come together? Well, if you're a Kantian, you know that meaning IS form; that when I see this book my powers of synthesis are always already in play. Is there something intrinsically aesthetic about experience itself? Here we can move to a decidedly unKantian philosopher, John Dewey. See his Art as Experience. It ties the aesthetic to the consummatory end of significant experience. But is the aesthetic truly everywhere, embedded in judgment itself? Yes, more or less. But for Dewey it is linked to the pragmatic structure of experience. He doesn't realy go beyond this. But I do. Wittgenstein opened my eyes to value, ethical and aesthetic. You wanted some sort of respectable spirituality in an accounting of what art is, then you have to go beyond language. Wittgenstein holds that when we speak of the "the world" and Being" and other notions of noncontingency, we are thinking nonsense. But then, encountering the world exceeds language; it superfluous, to use Sartre's term. If you ask me, spirituality is found here, at the threshold where ideas run out (Hilary Putnam). And there, embedded in Being is value, the core of aesthetic experience.
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Gremory
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Re: Disinterestedness

Post by Gremory »

I am not sure what you mean by spiritual. There is some saying that everything we do, think, and even our unconscious body act is spiritual. At this rate, I cannot find anything that is not spiritual in what humans do.
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Hereandnow
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Re: Disinterestedness

Post by Hereandnow »

Spiritual? "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." If one can loosen oneself from the implicit "speaking" done in any given perceptual moment, and allow a more, if you will, original state to reassert itself, then something of a return to the garden presents itself. Here is where philosophy ends (as it must; philosophy is functionally destructive, a yoga that makes what is solid melt into air).

'Spirituality' is just a word and it has lots of connotations I'd like to see disappear. It invokes mind/body problems, religious dogma, mindless new ageism, etc. But if one must only be silent, on pain of speaking nonsense, keep in mind that Wittgenstein DID speak nonsense, as he confessed. It is the only way provide the "therapy" of philosophy (which is what philosophy really is). I think 'spirituality' is just a place holder term that signifies the very interesting things that can occur when language "runs out" in a perceiving agent.
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Sy Borg
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Re: Disinterestedness

Post by Sy Borg »

I think that the detachment from worldly things as espoused in Buddhism is an ideal that is intended for those living the monastic life. Regular people will generally be happier taking a path of action and involvement than detachment. It might suit a person with various anxieties to "detach" because "attaching" was already exceptionally difficult, and the concept tends to give such people "permission" not to try.

Disinterestedness is worldly things, like eating, drugs, exercise, meditation, vitamins and water - is healthy in moderation but unhealthy when overdone. When in doubt aim for moderation. There are reportedly many western people leaning towards introversion inspired by the Buddhist ideal of non-attachment who suffer from depression after severing connections in life that had taken a long time to build and are not so readily recoverable.

I know, because I've done it in the past and since read about others who have done the same. Benefit from others' mistakes. We are social animals. Meditation is only healthy as respite, not as a modus operandi. It's better to talk trivia with goodwill and humour with shallow people in the world than to isolate oneself, unless you really have an especially compelling project, vision or sense of inspiration. If you do isolate yourself for a project, always think of that isolation in terms of positive action, and not as a rejection of others. When deeply engaged we should think of "outsiders" with goodwill. Life presents its own challenges to every living being and each is worthy of respect for dealing with those challenges and surviving thus far.

Disinterestedness is not inherently superior to involvement. Just different. Sometimes disinterestedness stems from inspiration, sometimes as neurotic avoidance. The ability to be comfortable by yourself is a valuable life skill, and it allows you to be more independent and less needy, but too much isolation results in a lack of stimulation.

-- Updated 11 Oct 2015, 17:21 to add the following --

Clarification of: "Disinterestedness is worldly things, like eating, drugs, exercise, meditation, vitamins and water - is healthy in moderation but unhealthy when overdone".

This sounds like I'm talking about disinterestedness in eating, exercise etc. It should read:

"Disinterestedness in worldly things is healthy in moderation but unhealthy when overdone. The same could be said for eating, drugs, exercise, meditation, vitamins and water".
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated—Gandhi.
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Hereandnow
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Re: Disinterestedness

Post by Hereandnow »

"We are social animals. Meditation is only healthy as respite"

Sure. And religion is the opiate of the masses, etc. But this simply reaffirms the assumption that there is nothing meaningful outside the body of ideas that currently hold sway in our society's consensus. What most fail to see is that this consensus is held together by assumptions that are massively assailable. There is nothing that stands up to inquiry at the level of basic assumptions save, I would argue, what survives critical analysis: bare generalizations. Inquire enough and the strength of conceptual bonds yields (because they are so assailable).

Ask what a cup is, and you invoke the entire history of philosophy( at the basic level of inquiry). There is no noncontigent answer to the question, only the destruction of sound perceptual encounters with the world. This weakening of basic cognitive/pragmatic functions is the first step to enlightenment, which is essentially a detachment of language and logic from intuitions. Nobody said serious Buddhism was easy. Most Buddhists (and I've talked to a lot of them) don't get this.
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Sy Borg
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Re: Disinterestedness

Post by Sy Borg »

Yes, "serious Buddhism" requires retreat. Most people are better off engaging with the world at large rather than retreating. From there, temporary retreating for contemplation purposes is an option.
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated—Gandhi.
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Present awareness
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Re: Disinterestedness

Post by Present awareness »

Detached awareness is not the same thing as being disinterested. It is simply responding to situations, as they arise, neither seeking or avoiding, simply responding appropriately to the present moment, whatever that may be.
Even though you can see me, I might not be here.
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