Philosophy of 💗 Love

[value]

Value!

Yes. To your first question, philosophically, Fromm's work corresponds well with pragmatism (the practicing of Love). In that sense, Pragmatists contend that most philosophical topics—such as the nature of knowledge, language, concepts, meaning, belief, and science—are all best viewed in terms of their practical uses and successes. Specifically, being more familiar with William James, his philosophical view of radical empiricism captures the problems for philosophy:

That would imply that the scope of meaningful relevance in any philosophical consideration is limited to a scope that is repeatable of nature, is that correct?

Radical empiricism, or Immediate Empiricism in Dewey's words, wants to give a place to meaning and value instead of explaining them away as subjective additions to a world of whizzing atoms.

William James gives an interesting example of this philosophical shortcoming:

...

Hence, the Metaphysics associated with experience, that experience being Love, can be thought of as:

Radical empiricism is a philosophical doctrine put forth by William James. It asserts that experience includes both particulars and relations between those particulars, and that therefore both deserve a place in our explanations. In concrete terms: Any philosophical worldview is flawed if it stops at the physical level and fails to explain how meaning, values and intentionality can arise from that.[1]

James put forth the doctrine because he thought ordinary empiricism, inspired by the advances in physical science, has or had the tendency to emphasize 'whirling particles' at the expense of the bigger picture: connections, causality, meaning. Both elements, James claims, are equally present in experience and both need to be accounted for.

The observation that our adherence to science seems to put us in a quandary is not exclusive to James.

The concept 'radical empiricism' is interesting since you seem to indicate that William James meant something different with it than the term seems to indicate at first appearance.

Why did William James use the term 'radical' as opposed to 'ordinary empiricism' to refer to a concept that includes meaning?

However still, in my opinion, a relation presupposes something that cannot be of a nature of a relation. Would Love be a product or manifestation after that aspect or would it originate from within? If within, would it correspond with radical empiricism?

I personally would question the concept empiricism itself since it depends on what is repeatable of nature while what fundamentally underlays the world doesn't seem to be of such a nature.

For example, Bertrand Russell notes the paradox in his Analysis of Matter (1927): we appeal to ordinary perception to arrive at our physical theories, yet those same theories seem to undermine that everyday perception, which is rich in meaning.

I wonder what the reply of GEmorton would be with regard that is even said by Bertrand Russell with regard the term 'meaning'.

James’s “radical empiricism” is distinct from his “pure experience” metaphysics. It is never precisely defined in the Essays, and is best explicated by a passage from The Meaning of Truth where James states that radical empiricism consists of a postulate, a statement of fact, and a conclusion.
[/i]

Ad so to your first point, (and mine) philosophical pragmatism seeks to connect theory to practice. In ethics it can seem natural to interpret this as recommending that normative notions be reduced to practical utility.


One of many questions then, could relate to objects, and the faith that we hold knowing the object will somehow satisfy some human universal, intrinsic need for meaning and purpose. Afterall, Love has universal meaning and purpose.

What is the basis for the claim that Love (with capital L as you used it) would have universal meaning and purpose?

To this end, and to my earlier point about Schopenhauer being one of the few who attempted a metaphysical explanation of love and music, it can be said the following are interchangeable experiences:

" Music [or Love] is as immediate an objectification and copy of the whole will as the world itself is, indeed as the Ideas are, the multiplied phenomenon of which constitutes the world of individual things. Therefore, music is by no means like the other arts, namely a copy of the Ideas, but a copy of the will itself, the objectivity of which are the Ideas. For this reason, the effect of music is so very much more powerful and penetrating than is that of the other arts, for these other arts speak only of the shadow, but music of the essence.

Did Arthur Schopenhauer write that quote about music? If so, why did he write Music [or Love] (Love with a capital L)?

If will Will fundamentally underlays the world, how can it be copied?

The inexpressible depth of all music, by virtue of which it floats past us as a paradise quite familiar and yet eternally remote and is so easy to understand and yet so inexplicable, is due to the fact that it reproduces all the emotions of our innermost being, but entirely without reality and remote from its pain. In the same way, the seriousness essential to it and wholly excluding the ludicrous from its direct and peculiar province is to be explained from the fact that its object is not the representation, in regard to which deception and ridiculousness alone are possible, but that this object is directly the will; and this is essentially the most serious of all things, as being that on which all depends."[/i]

Perhaps we can work through that first question first(?).

What does he even mean with his writing when he writes that what he refers to is inexpressible and inexplicable?

The fact that an aspect cannot be said should be no basis for a qualitative differentiator when it concerns art in my opinion.

*Emmanuel Levinas: The Saying and the Said
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/levinas/#SayiSaid

I do not think that I agree with the quote. What makes music special in my opinion compared to other art might be that the nature of how humans experience music can enable them to find a spiritual home in it which - as the quote indicates - relieves them from subjective suffering and pain because the essence of happiness is found externally in the living home produced by music. However, the factor that enables such an experience is applicable to any art in my opinion. Perhaps it can be found in the simplest pattern. Perhaps it is the simple happiness of existence itself.

[value]

value wrote
"The creation of the world itself should get its meaning starting from goodness."

You agree with this? But how how is this not ambiguous. I see good couches and bad couches, good business and bad, yet this is not what you have in mind. The meaning of 'good' here is a different matter; or is it? When Levinas talks about love and the Other, he fails to account for this. What do you think?

Levinas uses the term goodness which is 'good per se' or good of a nature that cannot be valued (i.e. is not 'empirical').

Levinas argued in the cited film Absent God (1:06:22) that goodness lays at the root of (creation of/within) the cosmos.

The nature of a good or bad couch isn't actually different but has a different frame of reference. The goodness (pure good) that is indicated involves a judgement in the face of an Infinity. In the one sense that is impossible (the opposing end, 'the bad couch', is missing) and yet it cannot be denied when you would use philosophy to delve deep into the matter.

In my opinion it is wrong to allow a judgement - a retro perspective - to be involved in any explanation of the fundamental nature of the cosmos. Goodness has a qualitative nature that cannot be legitimized in the face of the fact that one seeks an a priori explanation for quality - the ability to judge (before it was judged) - per se. Thus the concept goodness cannot be valid and one is to seek a higher pureness that would retro-perspectively give rise to the idea of pure good, which would be 'pure meaning'.

From the perspective of what is manifested - i.e the world - the idea of goodness would be valid. It is possible to claim that for any value judgement the concept pure good is evidently required. However, from a true fundamental perspective before judgement is even possible, such a good cannot apply.

[value]

Schopenhauer was effectively an atheist and so relentless in his error that it appears he couldn't even love himself.
Go back to Dante
Dante's God is the love that moves the sun and the other stars: “l'amor che move 'l sole e l'altre stelle”.
Polar opposites.

After taking a course on Dietrich von Hildebrand's book The Nature of Love, I've come to see that views on love are ultimately views about God

Was the world created good by a loving God under no necessity? Is "Yes" then we start with love, literally everywhere.
Schopenhauer is misogynist and if he has any view of complementarity of the sexes it is greatly against women and toward men

Some have referred to S as The Architect of the Culture of Death"
Look at his own words:
We should "regard every man first and foremost as a being who exists only as a consequence of his culpability and whose life is an expiation of the crime of being born."
On women he says : . In his "Essay on Women," he scorns their beauty and contends that women "are incapable of taking a purely objective interest in anything . . . The most distinguished intellects among the whole sex have never managed to produce a single achievement in the fine arts that is really genuine and original, or given to the world any work of permanent value in any sphere."

Schopenhauer's father committed suicide.

"In 1805, Schopenhauer's father Heinrich drowned himself in a canal near their home in Hamburg. Although it was not excluded that his death was an accident, Schopenhauer's mother and he himself believed that it was suicide. He was prone to anxiety and depression; each becoming more pronounced later in his life."

With regard the world to have been created 'good' and that that creation would originate from a loving God.

When God fundamentally underlays the world then he would not have had anything to love before the moment that he supposedly could have started to love. Therefore Love in my opinion does not originate from God - is not 'given' - but is a channel towards or 'into' God (as 'the origin of existence' where 'pure beauty' can be found).

In my opinion the origin of existence is also the purpose of existence. From a philosophical perspective it would be simple to understand in my opinion that whatever lays 'beyond' within a subjective perspective (e.g. one's looking out into the world) can at most be the origin of existence.

[thrasymachus]

value wrote
Levinas uses the term goodness which is 'good per se' or good of a nature that cannot be valued (i.e. is not 'empirical').

Levinas argued in the cited film Absent God (1:06:22) that goodness lays at the root of (creation of/within) the cosmos.

The nature of a good or bad couch isn't actually different but has a different frame of reference. The goodness (pure good) that is indicated involves a judgement in the face of an Infinity. In the one sense that is impossible (the opposing end, 'the bad couch', is missing) and yet it cannot be denied when you would use philosophy to delve deep into the matter.

Yes, this is the kind of thing that needs analysis. The Good, in this nonempirical sense, needs to be shown for what it is and how it can stand apart from empirical matters. You will find yourself up against the general assumptions of analytic philosophy which takes the goodness of something (or the "badness") to be embedded in our attitudes and culture, and therefore have no status apart from these. A good moral act is inherently embedded, and so nothing can be said of the Good without talking about the contingencies of an interpretative context. The question is, as I see it, how can this Good be distinguished from the everyday uses of the term which are NOT nonempirical, but comparative, contextual. A good couch depends on what you want in a couch.

In my opinion it is wrong to allow a judgement - a retro perspective - to be involved in any explanation of the fundamental nature of the cosmos.

What you call retro perspective I would call simply memory. You don't want recollection to rule the plain givenness of the world. This is the issue for you, and it is not that I disagree, but the argument has to be made, not assumed.

Goodness has a qualitative nature that cannot be legitimized in the face of the fact that one seeks an a priori explanation for quality - the ability to judge (before it was judged) - per se. Thus the concept goodness cannot be valid and one is to seek a higher pureness that would retro-perspectively give rise to the idea of pure good, which would be 'pure meaning'.

Can you tell me what "pure" means here? Because when something is, to use Levinas' borrowed vocabulary, a part of the "totality" of thought and judgment, one is already deep in the historical (recollective) take on things. Things are given to us as, as Heidegger put it, that comes from the "historicity" of the things. I see my cat and what rushes forth is a fountain of terms about cats that provides the identity of the cat for me. The world only shows itself through this interpretative medium. Apart from this there is nothing.

From the perspective of what is manifested - i.e the world - the idea of goodness would be valid. It is possible to claim that for any value judgement the concept pure good is evidently required. However, from a true fundamental perspective before judgement is even possible, such a good cannot apply.

Concept of pure good? This is what begs a question: pure?

[value]

Yes, this is the kind of thing that needs analysis. The Good, in this nonempirical sense, needs to be shown for what it is and how it can stand apart from empirical matters. You will find yourself up against the general assumptions of analytic philosophy which takes the goodness of something (or the "badness") to be embedded in our attitudes and culture, and therefore have no status apart from these. A good moral act is inherently embedded, and so nothing can be said of the Good without talking about the contingencies of an interpretative context. The question is, as I see it, how can this Good be distinguished from the everyday uses of the term which are NOT nonempirical, but comparative, contextual. A good couch depends on what you want in a couch.

It might be best to first understand why Levinas could have said 'The creation of the world itself should get its meaning starting from goodness.'.

Levinas argues that the act of valuing (signification) lays at the root of the world.

"in renouncing intentionality as a guiding thread toward the eidos [formal structure] of the psyche … our analysis will follow sensibility in its pre-natural signification to the maternal, where, in proximity [to what is not itself], signification signifies before it gets bent into perseverance in being in the midst of a Nature. (OBBE: 68, emph. added) "
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/levinas/

That signification requires an aspect that can be indicated as 'goodness' - a good that cannot be valued. The reason is that the act of signification - the act of valuing (the origin of value) - seeks qualitative positive deviance which in retro-perspective is an aspired good, resulting in the philosophical conclusion that goodness (pure good) is fundamentally required.

The indicated goodness stands in the face of an Infinity and the idea of goodness is only possible AFTER 'the act of signification has taken place' (in a retro-perspective).

The signification that Levinas mentioned to lay at the root of the cosmos isn't explained yet. Goodness is merely an aspect that is philosophically required for signification to be possible but 'why' signification takes place isn't answered with it.

In my opinion it is wrong to allow a judgement - a retro perspective - to be involved in any explanation of the fundamental nature of the cosmos.

What you call retro perspective I would call simply memory. You don't want recollection to rule the plain givenness of the world. This is the issue for you, and it is not that I disagree, but the argument has to be made, not assumed.

Perhaps you are right. The whole world might be considered a memory, however, the concept 'retro-perspective' more specifically refers a time-bound spectrum.

With regard stating the argument as an opinion. Philosophy is questionable so I tend to leave room for contention of anything. Also by no means I believe that I am right / that a theory that I would describe is correct. I would prefer to be as bold as possible and make an error.

I am not into politics, religion, ideology etc. I am not interested to tell people how the world should be. I am interested in theory.

Goodness has a qualitative nature that cannot be legitimized in the face of the fact that one seeks an a priori explanation for quality - the ability to judge (before it was judged) - per se. Thus the concept goodness cannot be valid and one is to seek a higher pureness that would retro-perspectively give rise to the idea of pure good, which would be 'pure meaning'.

Can you tell me what "pure" means here? Because when something is, to use Levinas' borrowed vocabulary, a part of the "totality" of thought and judgment, one is already deep in the historical (recollective) take on things. Things are given to us as, as Heidegger put it, that comes from the "historicity" of the things. I see my cat and what rushes forth is a fountain of terms about cats that provides the identity of the cat for me. The world only shows itself through this interpretative medium. Apart from this there is nothing.

I don't believe that Levinas would agree that apart from the physical world there is just 'nothing' (an idea that is actually absurd since it attempts to turn 'existence' around into an opposite).

Levinas wrote Otherwise than Being to explore what might lay outside the scope that you described. It concerns an aspect that is meaningfully relevant but not Being (existence). He wrote it after Totality and Infinity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otherwise_than_Being

Can you tell me what "pure" means here?
...
Concept of pure good? This is what begs a question: pure?

Interesting question!

Goodness should be the same as pure good. Thus why does pure good give the sense that the concept isn't right?

The idea of 'good' to be plausible in a pure form is absurd because good is not a state that can have been reached other than through value - the product of the act of valuing for which Goodness is philosophically required to explain its potential.

Value cannot be pure and is merely perceived good within a subjective perspective. The indicated Goodness that is required for the act of valuing can only be conceived of after the act of valuing has taken place. That implies that the actual nature of what is sought to be explained must be of a purer nature than the idea of pure good.

[thrasymachus]

value wrote
It might be best to first understand why Levinas could have said 'The creation of the world itself should get its meaning starting from goodness.'.

Levinas argues that the act of valuing (signification) lays at the root of the world.

"in renouncing intentionality as a guiding thread toward the eidos [formal structure] of the psyche … our analysis will follow sensibility in its pre-natural signification to the maternal, where, in proximity [to what is not itself], signification signifies before it gets bent into perseverance in being in the midst of a Nature. (OBBE: 68, emph. added) "
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/levinas/

That signification requires an aspect that can be indicated as 'goodness' - a good that cannot be valued. The reason is that the act of signification - the act of valuing (the origin of value) - seeks qualitative positive deviance which in retro-perspective is an aspired good, resulting in the philosophical conclusion that goodness (pure good) is fundamentally required.

The indicated goodness stands in the face of an Infinity and the idea of goodness is only possible AFTER 'the act of signification has taken place' (in a retro-perspective).

The signification that Levinas mentioned to lay at the root of the cosmos isn't explained yet. Goodness is merely an aspect that is philosophically required for signification to be possible but 'why' signification takes place isn't answered with it.

Prenatural signification to the maternal? Levinas is talking about something that is both IN the world and PRIOR to the world (interesting that Kierkegaard had the same thing in mind when he discussed hereditary sin. Levinas was very versed in Kierkegaard) . And I am convinced he is right. More than just right. This is THE foundational of the world, I argue. But I want to look at what is said here, with him and with you: A good cannot be valued, and this is because value is presupposed in the good. Like saying logic cannot be logical. Logic is the way logic shows itself, but logic itself belongs to metaphysics. Wittgenstein knew this (as did Kant), and so did Levinas; they knew we stand before a world of unconstructed givenness, and this is not something that can be itself revealed, for the "revealing" is inherently a structured affair. Yet there it is, and we are it. One is tempted, I am tempted, at any rate, to quickly turn to mysticism (as did one of the gods of analytic thinking, Wittgenstein. Russell called him a mystic): Eckhart prayed to God to be free of god, but he wasn't talking about having propositional knowledge of what is hidden, or, perhaps this propositional knowledge would be essential, given that to have a human experience at all one has to be language-cognizant, which is part of the point I am driving at here, but rather he was referring to the interference of propositional knowledge, what Levinas (who got it from Heidegger who, I think, got it from Husserl) called a Totality. We are here exactly where philosophy should be, on a very mysterious threshold of encountering the world thick with assumptions about what it is, while facing an actuality that is qualitatively nothing at all like what these assumptions have to say.

But this is where value finds its affirmation, and why I want to push this issue: Language has a formal structure that is entirely open. I mean, there is no content that is prohibited, so when Levinas says that the Totality, this me, my and mine of encountering the world and Others (like Buber's IT mentality) he maintains that language is the key to overcoming this, to reaching beyond the egoic space of one's interior outward to "alterity". But he doesn't really say what VALUE is, that is, I have not read that he gives an analytic account of value: what IS it that when I put my hand in boiling water I feel excruciating pain? What IS pain, joy, and everything such as this? This is the pebble in my shoe and the cream in my coffee. Our existence is saturated with this. An analysis of value as such is prior to an analysis how the Other awakens the Good in us (and again, I think he is right).

Perhaps you are right. The whole world might be considered a memory, however, the concept 'retro-perspective' more specifically refers a time-bound spectrum.

With regard stating the argument as an opinion. Philosophy is questionable so I tend to leave room for contention of anything. Also by no means I believe that I am right / that a theory that I would describe is correct. I would prefer to be as bold as possible and make an error.

I am not into politics, religion, ideology etc. I am not interested to tell people how the world should be. I am interested in theory.

Me too. And theory bends to the world. What is THERE, in what stands before me in my existence? Value is by far the most salient feature of the world. It is a question of the meaning of meaning, and Wittgenstein would have nothing to do with this kind of inquiry. Value is too important to trivialize it with impossible metaphysics. But he was wrong to think like this: we can approach it, talk around it, compare, contextualize in various ways.

I don't believe that Levinas would agree that apart from the physical world there is just 'nothing' (an idea that is actually absurd since it attempts to turn 'existence' around into an opposite).

Levinas wrote Otherwise than Being to explore what might lay outside the scope that you described. It concerns an aspect that is meaningfully relevant but not Being (existence). He wrote it after Totality and Infinity.

Otherwise than Being there is the radical Other. Someone like Kant said this was impossible to talk about, but yet, there he was, like Witt, talking about it. They missed something extraordinary, which is that all this talk about that "which must be passed over in silence" was about this world we actually encounter. Noumena, Kant's term for things-in-themselves, is REALLY a concept constructed out of the world we experience. What else? Metaphysics is, and never was, some grand beyond. This world IS metaphysics. And Value, again, is the most salient feature of this world. More than this: Value is, as you say, the core of Being itself.

Goodness should be the same as pure good. Thus why does pure good give the sense that the concept isn't right?

The idea of 'good' to be plausible in a pure form is absurd because good is not a state that can have been reached other than through value - the product of the act of valuing for which Goodness is philosophically required to explain its potential.

Value cannot be pure and is merely perceived good within a subjective perspective. The indicated Goodness that is required for the act of valuing can only be conceived of after the act of valuing has taken place. That implies that the actual nature of what is sought to be explained must be of a purer nature than the idea of pure good.

But purity is a concept conceived in complexity and contingency. There is a way, though: phenomenology and Husserl's epoche. Levinas did his dissertation on Husserl. Ever read his IDEAS I?

[value]

value wrote
It might be best to first understand why Levinas could have said 'The creation of the world itself should get its meaning starting from goodness.'.

Levinas argues that the act of valuing (signification) lays at the root of the world.

"in renouncing intentionality as a guiding thread toward the eidos [formal structure] of the psyche … our analysis will follow sensibility in its pre-natural signification to the maternal, where, in proximity [to what is not itself], signification signifies before it gets bent into perseverance in being in the midst of a Nature. (OBBE: 68, emph. added) "
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/levinas/

Prenatural signification to the maternal? Levinas is talking about something that is both IN the world and PRIOR to the world (interesting that Kierkegaard had the same thing in mind when he discussed hereditary sin. Levinas was very versed in Kierkegaard) . And I am convinced he is right. More than just right. This is THE foundational of the world, I argue. But I want to look at what is said here, with him and with you: A good cannot be valued, and this is because value is presupposed in the good. Like saying logic cannot be logical. Logic is the way logic shows itself, but logic itself belongs to metaphysics. Wittgenstein knew this (as did Kant), and so did Levinas; they knew we stand before a world of unconstructed givenness, and this is not something that can be itself revealed, for the "revealing" is inherently a structured affair. Yet there it is, and we are it. One is tempted, I am tempted, at any rate, to quickly turn to mysticism (as did one of the gods of analytic thinking, Wittgenstein. Russell called him a mystic): Eckhart prayed to God to be free of god, but he wasn't talking about having propositional knowledge of what is hidden, or, perhaps this propositional knowledge would be essential, given that to have a human experience at all one has to be language-cognizant, which is part of the point I am driving at here, but rather he was referring to the interference of propositional knowledge, what Levinas (who got it from Heidegger who, I think, got it from Husserl) called a Totality. We are here exactly where philosophy should be, on a very mysterious threshold of encountering the world thick with assumptions about what it is, while facing an actuality that is qualitatively nothing at all like what these assumptions have to say.

But this is where value finds its affirmation, and why I want to push this issue: Language has a formal structure that is entirely open. I mean, there is no content that is prohibited, so when Levinas says that the Totality, this me, my and mine of encountering the world and Others (like Buber's IT mentality) he maintains that language is the key to overcoming this, to reaching beyond the egoic space of one's interior outward to "alterity". But he doesn't really say what VALUE is, that is, I have not read that he gives an analytic account of value: what IS it that when I put my hand in boiling water I feel excruciating pain? What IS pain, joy, and everything such as this? This is the pebble in my shoe and the cream in my coffee. Our existence is saturated with this. An analysis of value as such is prior to an analysis how the Other awakens the Good in us (and again, I think he is right).

Value is only in the good in such a way that the concept good is fundamentally required to conceive of (the act of) valuing.

Value in my opinion is simply 'assigned meaning' - the result of Levinas 'signification' (the act of valuing) - and perserverance (in the midst of a nature/memory) of that result. Good would involve an aspiration in the face of Inifinity on behalf of what is actually pure meaning.

When you argue that it is case to analyse value, it is actually the meaning contained within the term value that is being analysed on the basis of 'meaningful relations' for that meaning. The meaningful relations for 'meaning' are termed 'value' and the world in my opinion would fundamentally consist of meaningful relations which span all space and time, not as an inside-out totality but as an a priori reality that precedes space and time.

So the actual interesting concept would be 'meaning per se', a concept more pure than 'goodness' (a term derived from pure meaning PLUS an 'aspiration aspect' in the face of Infinity). Pure meaning is a concept that not intuitively is to lay at the foundation of value (of 'signification' from which value is the result) because one would naturally gravitate to the aspiration aspect.

I was just listening to a music video in which a music artist said the following:

"Humans are a social species, we need meaning."

What is meant with this 'meaning', a concept that, as it is regularly used in human language, seems to stand on its own but once questioned more deeply disappears from any empirical ground?

--

With regard logic. The following topic might be of interest.

Logic is it's own fallacy.
https://onlinephilosophyclub.com/forums ... f=1&t=4253

The author of that topic might be Robert Pirsig (IQ 170), the author of the most sold philosophy book ever (5m copies). While his account is deleted, his posts are still accessible.

User: @ChaoticMindSays
https://onlinephilosophyclub.com/forums ... r_id=35658

Me too. And theory bends to the world. What is THERE, in what stands before me in my existence? Value is by far the most salient feature of the world. It is a question of the meaning of meaning, and Wittgenstein would have nothing to do with this kind of inquiry. Value is too important to trivialize it with impossible metaphysics. But he was wrong to think like this: we can approach it, talk around it, compare, contextualize in various ways.

In my opinion: value IS the world. Value is a term used to apply to ANY meaningful relation and the empirical world consists wholly of meaningful relations.

What is actually interesting in my opinion is to find a way to question the underlying meaning for which no empirical relation is possible beyond the scope of 'denoted value'.

Albert Einstein once wrote the following prophecy about it.

"Perhaps... we must also give up, by principle, the space-time continuum,” he wrote. “It is not unimaginable that human ingenuity will some day find methods which will make it possible to proceed along such a path. At the present time, however, such a program looks like an attempt to breathe in empty space.

Within Western philosophy, the realm beyond space has traditionally been considered a realm beyond physics — the plane of God’s existence in Christian theology. In the early eighteenth century, philosopher Gottfried Leibniz’s “monads” — which he imagined to be the primitive elements of the universe — existed, like God, outside space and time. His theory was a step toward emergent space-time, but it was still metaphysical, with only a vague connection to the world of concrete things."

Otherwise than Being there is the radical Other. Someone like Kant said this was impossible to talk about, but yet, there he was, like Witt, talking about it. They missed something extraordinary, which is that all this talk about that "which must be passed over in silence" was about this world we actually encounter. Noumena, Kant's term for things-in-themselves, is REALLY a concept constructed out of the world we experience. What else? Metaphysics is, and never was, some grand beyond. This world IS metaphysics. And Value, again, is the most salient feature of this world. More than this: Value is, as you say, the core of Being itself.

The reference 'pure meaning' would apply to that Otherwise than Being and 'Being' would be 'value in perpetuated existence'.

The term Being in my opinion contains a search for a meaningful ground 'from within' existence (with existence being presupposed as an unquestioned given) which results in an Infinite quest for meaning. This same Infinite quest is found when looking deeper into the term value. What the quest is actually searching into is 'pure meaning'.

Goodness should be the same as pure good. Thus why does pure good give the sense that the concept isn't right?

The idea of 'good' to be plausible in a pure form is absurd because good is not a state that can have been reached other than through value - the product of the act of valuing for which Goodness is philosophically required to explain its potential.

Value cannot be pure and is merely perceived good within a subjective perspective. The indicated Goodness that is required for the act of valuing can only be conceived of after the act of valuing has taken place. That implies that the actual nature of what is sought to be explained must be of a purer nature than the idea of pure good.

But purity is a concept conceived in complexity and contingency. There is a way, though: phenomenology and Husserl's epoche. Levinas did his dissertation on Husserl. Ever read his IDEAS I?

What would be your opinion about the term 'pure meaning' and the purity that it insinuates?

--

Additional:

Did you ever discuss Levinas with the author of the following topic? He is a big Levinas fan and studied his work and that of related philosophers, and he seems to love to discuss about it on this forum. He can also provide free copies of ebooks of major works accompanied by reading tips (which I noticed him offering several times).

https://onlinephilosophyclub.com/forums ... 12&t=16848

I must admit that I am just a guest and passers-by on this forum with lack of an academic foundation to judge or discuss works. I was introduced to Levinas by accident and my first impression has been that his ethical theory could be right. I am yet to study his works more thoroughly. I did do preceding work and for example started with Hegel and Kant. Also, Partially Examined Life has been a great source of insights that enabled me as a lay person to advance a lot quicker then would have been possible through reading. PEL provides a 'conversational perspective' in which information that is communicated is placed in a critical social context (philosophy professors) so that it can be accepted in a meaningful and stable context a lot quicker. This enables to gain insights of more complex works such as that of Levinas without any prior study of philosophy. One of the hosts of PEL studied Heidegger in Freiburg, Germany and later dedicated to Levinas.

Episode 145: Emmanuel Levinas: Why Be Ethical?
https://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2016/ ... 1-levinas/

Episode 146: Emmanuel Levinas on Overcoming Solitude
https://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2016/ ... 1-levinas/

[thrasymachus]

value wrote
value is only in the good in such a way that the concept good is fundamentally required to conceive of (the act of) valuing.

Value in my opinion is simply 'assigned meaning' - the result of Levinas 'signification' (the act of valuing) - and perserverance (in the midst of a nature/memory) of that result. Good would involve an aspiration in the face of Inifinity on behalf of what is actually pure meaning.

When you argue that it is case to analyse value, it is actually the meaning contained within the term value that is being analysed on the basis of 'meaningful relations' for that meaning. The meaningful relations for 'meaning' are termed 'value' and the world in my opinion would fundamentally consist of meaningful relations which span all space and time, not as an inside-out totality but as an a priori reality that precedes space and time.

So the actual interesting concept would be 'meaning per se', a concept more pure than 'goodness' (a term derived from pure meaning PLUS an 'aspiration aspect' in the face of Infinity). Pure meaning is a concept that not intuitively is to lay at the foundation of value (of 'signification' from which value is the result) because one would naturally gravitate to the aspiration aspect.

I hope you don't find the following too off putting. I read phenomenology. A lot, to be honest. And it is everywhere in my thoughts.

The job of philosophy is to dig beneath assumptions to what is presupposed, and this is important because it keeps one's footing squarely in justification. Philosophy is a rabbit hole of sorts. It was G E Moore who, in my thinking, made a discovery: philosophy had a long history of discussion about the Good, and we all know where this found its place---in Christian metaphysics. God is the Good. And while I agree, as in the above, that the Other awakens in us something deeply sublime in our relations with other people (dogs and cats as well), the first place philosophy takes us is to an analysis of the terms in play: before I can talk about how value is presented in social contexts, I have to ask first what it is, that is, what the pure phenomenon is, the intuition of "the good" that doesn't simply attend being love, but IS being in love.

This kind of thing generally doesn't pan out, frankly. A "pure phenomenon" cannot be isolated from the contexts in which it is found, and this includes , of course, social contexts in which we find ethics. Analytic types call this qualia, a "being appeared to redly" kind of description of things absolutely FREE of predication. Not like saying the sky is blue, which is analyzable, but just "blue". Blue is a quality that, as such, does not qualify anything. And, as they say, there is no such knowledge as non propositional knowledge (Rorty says this outright). And when it comes to qualities like blue and red, this is certainly right, the world does not speak what it IS. Isness is just "there".

But value! This is not the same as redness or some "felt" or sensed immediacy. The question is what IS this? It IS the good and bad of the phenomenon itself. the reason we can't talk about red qua red is that red qua red says nothing other than being red and being red says nothing beyond just this. But ethics does not deal in this. Ethics is about value, and when you put a lighted match to your finger, the pain is not just pain qua pain; it is bad, in the metavalue sense of the idea: Bad as an absolute! The bad of pain does not find its essential meaning in propositional assignments, even though to "say" pain is bad" is propositional, for the predication of bad issues directly from its own nature. This is where philosophy takes a foundational analysis of our ethics.

Levinas is brilliant, of course, if difficult to follow (his Totality and Infinity is a tour through this new terrain of metaphysics that follow through on Husserl's epoche. To me, this "phenomenological reduction" and "transcendental reduction" is knock down drag out the most important thing philosophy has ever said), and enlightening, and right. But the question antecedent to Levinas is a meta-ethical question, or a meta-value question.

"Humans are a social species, we need meaning."

What is meant with this 'meaning', a concept that, as it is regularly used in human language, seems to stand on its own but once questioned more deeply disappears from any empirical ground?

Yes. It does disappear from the empirical ground, and this seems a good way to put it. But why does it disappear? Because there is something there that is not empirical (and I always have to remind the thinking here that what is and is not empirical is determined in a construct of the concept's delimitations. In other words, we MAKE these limits). What IS this? It is the metaethical, metavalueative Good and Bad. Levinas' Other relationship "occurs" in metaphysics. Our ethical world IS a metapysical world. That is a strong claim; impossible, most would say. But they are wrong.

And Levinas was a phenomenologist, and so his analysis does not invite talk about our being a social species. Of course, it doesn't deny this either, but he is following through on Heidegger's metaphysics in which there is a failure to account for ethics and our being along side Others. Heidegger is all me, my and mine. This is my world, and others are there IN this world (this dasein of mine), subject to my creative will. You can see how this kind of thinking works into a social concept of a nation's mentality of social nationalism and then, alas, Nazism. Levinas lost family and friends to the Nazis.

In my opinion: value IS the world. Value is a term used to apply to ANY meaningful relation and the empirical world consists wholly of meaningful relations.

If you have left a physicalist model of the world behind, and understand all meaningful relations are IN the Totality of the individual's relating to the world, and you accept that the objects in the world are meaningful only because they are possessed by your (one's) relational system, then I agree, and so have many others. Levinas' Other is outside my totality; it is an intrusion into my world that threatens autonomy of self creation. I don't entirely agree with this, though, and I have to admit this is can be because I haven't read all of Levinas. But there is WITHIN this Totality that I am, divinity, the "that which is awakened by the Other".

What is actually interesting in my opinion is to find a way to question the underlying meaning for which no empirical relation is possible beyond the scope of 'denoted value'.

And in my opinion, you are asking a threshold question. There is only one way to approach this in good intellectual conscience (that is, not filled with a lot of religious nonsense), and that is via Husserl. He takes the Cartesian quest for certainty as the only route to ontological discovery of the foundational intuitive givenness of the world. His "method" of reduction is, I argue, the only way to keep religion sane and defensible. And Real.

Albert Einstein once wrote the following prophecy about it.

"Perhaps... we must also give up, by principle, the space-time continuum,” he wrote. “It is not unimaginable that human ingenuity will some day find methods which will make it possible to proceed along such a path. At the present time, however, such a program looks like an attempt to breathe in empty space.

Within Western philosophy, the realm beyond space has traditionally been considered a realm beyond physics — the plane of God’s existence in Christian theology. In the early eighteenth century, philosopher Gottfried Leibniz’s “monads” — which he imagined to be the primitive elements of the universe — existed, like God, outside space and time. His theory was a step toward emergent space-time, but it was still metaphysical, with only a vague connection to the world of concrete things."

I am currently reading Husserl's The Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time. Einstein had read Kant, but not Husserl. Too busy. Nor had he read Augustine who started it. I am also reading, will get back to, Paul Ricoeur's Time and Narrative. And then there is the most extraordinary Being and Time. Einstein's spacetime is a theoretical empirical concept, that is, a concept about empirically based thinking, which is in one way or another, physicalistic: there are things out there, these things exhibit in their motion, in their dynamic relations, in their quantifiable data, the basic material for a theory about the world. But this ALL presupposes a foundation of the original perceptual act that takes in the world. This is the foundation of all physics. And it yields to analysis, and this analytical field is phenomenology.

The reference 'pure meaning' would apply to that Otherwise than Being and 'Being' would be 'value in perpetuated existence'.

The term Being in my opinion contains a search for a meaningful ground 'from within' existence (with existence being presupposed as an unquestioned given) which results in an Infinite quest for meaning. This same Infinite quest is found when looking deeper into the term value. What the quest is actually searching into is 'pure meaning'.

I sort of agree with this. This term "pure" is a big issue. What is pure value? It is found most clearly in the most intense and therefore the most poignant experiences of the world, which is why I talk about putting one's hand in boiling water and the like: Value is generally so absorbed in our entangled factual affairs that we fail to see it in analysis. Discussions about ethics lean toward behavior and its contexts and limitations and the relativity of principles and utility and accountability and on and on. But these do not go to the question of ontology: What IS value? One has to first look directly at the occasion of its occurring. Onw is now a phenomenologist, a scientist of the bare givens of the world. Value is, as you say, not an empirical concept any more than causality is. It is, as they say, apriori, yet, not analytical, not a tautological insistence. Its apodicticity is built into the world itself! The Bad, being tortured, say, lies with "purity" of the pain as pain, and not as politically justifiable, and the rest. Pain as pain is inherently Bad.

What would be your opinion about the term 'pure meaning' and the purity that it insinuates?

Exactly the question, as I see it. One can only look to the world, where all inquiry comes from. Take a lighted match and apply it to your finger. There it is. Now, this kind of thing is Always presented in a context, and these contests give us our ethics. You know, should one torture another for information that would save millions of lives? and the like. But purity, this is like asking what is reality? Reality has no predicative possibilities, for all predication presupposes reality. And so "reality" is a meaningless term, really. But value-in-reality, this "speaks" good and bad, AS intuitions.

In my thinking, this is where you find your position that "everything is value" (you said something like this): Reality or Being or existence, these have been in philosophy assigned various meanings, but as "stand alone concepts" of all that is, they are vacuous. Only value is not like this, and value saturates the world. But one has to think like a phenomenologist to see this. To think like a physicalist, materialist or some variation of these (see Strawson on the Real, e.g.) puts the world in some impossible "outthereness" of things. Such an outthereness is impossible to even conceive, for the moment one does conceive it, it is with the "Totality" of human existence, in our thoughts and experience. This is the very definition of bad metaphysics. Levinas was very much aware of this.

I must admit that I am just a guest and passers-by on this forum with lack of an academic foundation to judge or discuss works. I was introduced to Levinas by accident and my first impression has been that his ethical theory could be right. I am yet to study his works more thoroughly. I did do preceding work and for example started with Hegel and Kant. Also, Partially Examined Life has been a great source of insights that enabled me as a lay person to advance a lot quicker then would have been possible through reading. PEL provides a 'conversational perspective' in which information that is communicated is placed in a critical social context (philosophy professors) so that it can be accepted in a meaningful and stable context a lot quicker. This enables to gain insights of more complex works such as that of Levinas without any prior study of philosophy. One of the hosts of PEL studied Heidegger in Freiburg, Germany and later dedicated to Levinas.

Levinas is hard to read. Period. He assumes Heidegger and the rest in in writing, which is why continental philosophy is so ignored: it is prohibitively alien to common sense. BUT: The world is not, at the basic level of inquiry, common sense. Light years from it!

[amorphos_ii]

My experience of love is that my heart closed up when I was 29, and hasn’t opened up again since [a very long time]. There was nothing I could do about it, I was in a disastrous relationship and wanted to go back to her but couldn’t, it just wasn’t there anymore.

---------------

on a side note, I think that we have spiritual organs [like how Egyptians and Hindus etc think], and that the ‘heart’ has nothing to do with the physical organ except in how it is expressed. If the heart gets the right signals from a prospective mate, then it begins to warm to them, then you fall in love. If rejected then you feel something akin to the love shrinking instead of growing.

Spirit is not vacuous any more than the mind, it has something similar to but not the same as energy. It can and does interact with the body and is ultimately felt sensually. For two things to interact so closely, imho they must be or have similar characteristics.

--------------

Here’s a funny thing about impulses; when in a talking room with a psychiatrists. Two female students arrived. I call them ‘plays with hair girl’ and ‘frowns a lot girl’. One was very friendly and the other immediately had the opposite disposition. However...

I was talking to a lady on an in game chat, and we were warming to each other. Then I changed account and when I saw her again asked to be friends. Now, this game is messed up – sometimes requests don’t go through and whatnot. So I sent the request again, and got a message from her asking why I was pestering her. So the completely opposite effect had occurred, but, between the same two people! She just didn’t know it was me is all.

So it seams that ‘plays with hair girl’ and ‘frowns a lot girl’ are interchangeable and interestingly, that the same two people can have either feeling with respect to circumstance!


-

[ernestm]

In a topic by 3017Metaphysician on the metaphysical philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer - known as both 'The Philosopher of Love' and 'The Philosopher of Pessimism' - it was cited that few philosophers in history have seriously addressed the subject love, leaving the concept mostly to poets. It might explain why it is possible that Schopenhauer - the father of pessimism - has received the name 'The Philosopher of Love'.

The Philosopher of Love Who Lived and Died Alone
In his 1818 essay “Metaphysics of Love,” Schopenhauer writes that “one cannot doubt either the reality or importance of love,” only to name the primary purpose of love as the creation of offspring, an expression of the “will to live,” which was one of his central preoccupations.
https://www.ozy.com/true-and-stories/th ... les/95895/

This topic intends to question the validity of the idea of Arthur Schopenhauer that love is fundamentally meaningless.

A quick introduction to Schopenhauer's pessimism philosophy that underlays his theory on love:

Philosophical Pessimism: A Study In The Philosophy Of Arthur Schopenhauer
https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/cgi/viewco ... phy_theses
https://iep.utm.edu/schopenh/

Schopenhauer’s pessimism resides in two related claims: that “all life is suffering”, and accordingly that the world and life itself “ought not to be”.

Schopenhauer's theory on the three forms of boredom fundamentally underlays his idea "all life is suffering" which makes it appear that his reasoning is based on (personal) experience and feelings related to (a perceived potential of) depression.

The basis of all willing is need, lack, and hence pain, and by its very nature and origin it is therefore destined to pain. If, on the other hand, it lacks objects of willing, because it is at once deprived of them again by too easy a satisfaction, a fearful emptiness and boredom comes over it; in other words, its being and its existence itself becomes an intolerable burden for it. Hence its life swings like a pendulum to and fro between pain and boredom, and these two are in fact its ultimate constituents.

For Schopenhauer, boredom has three forms. The first is when the world shows itself to the bored as lifeless, “dead”, colorless, and “dreary”. Nothing is attractive or interesting and everything is indifferent, detached, and distant. The second form of boredom is when the world shows itself to the bored as valueless, meaningless, and pointless. Schopenhauer says that these feelings of pointlessness, valuelessness, and pointlessness render existence itself burdensome.

In my view Schopenhauer's reasoning on the fundamental meaninglessness of love is wrong. It is only when one attempts to attach oneself to 'value' that one will be in danger for the described experience (depression potential) since the true nature that underlays the world cannot be clinged on to. Emotions serve to propel organisms into the right direction and hence depression has an infinite depth and from the perspective of the experiencer an infinite severity potential - as if it's worse than death. But there is also the opposite with the same infinite potential, which is found in love.

Love in my view is not an expression of the will to live but like the perception of beauty of which Plato wrote the following:

Beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but reality, and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God.

With love one perceives true beauty in my opinion which is not a (meaningless) inside-out expression but a perception into the infinite depth of the origin of existence - the trueness behind it all in which 'pure beauty' can be found.

French philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas - an icon of Western philosophy that is researched by dedicated scholars today - wrote the following about love which in my opinion touches the subject better.

Love remains a relation with the Other that turns into need, transcendent exteriority of the other, of the beloved. But love goes beyond the beloved... The possibility of the Other appearing as an object of a need while retaining his alterity, or again, the possibility of enjoying the Other... this simultaneity of need and desire, or concupiscence and transcendence,... constitutes the originality of the erotic which, in this sense, is the equivocal par excellence.

Levinas has written in more depth about love because it is related to his primary philosophy (Ethics as First Philosophy). There is even a book dedicated to his vision on love:


love-wisdom.jpg

Directly challenging the prevailing interpretation, Corey Beals explores the ideas of twentieth-century philosopher Emmanuel Levinas's concept of love, love's relation to wisdom, and how love makes the Other visible to us. Distinguishing love from other types of wisdom, Beals argues that Levinas's "wisdom of love" is a real possibility, one which grants priority to ethics over ontology.

Levinas and the Wisdom of Love
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/214 ... om_of_Love

Levinas said the following with regard the origin of existence (the cosmos):

"in renouncing intentionality as a guiding thread toward the eidos [formal structure] of the psyche … our analysis will follow sensibility in its pre-natural signification to the maternal, where, in proximity [to what is not itself], signification signifies before it gets bent into perseverance in being in the midst of a Nature. (OBBE: 68, emph. added) "
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/levinas/

"The creation of the world itself should get its meaning starting from goodness." (Levinas in film Absent God 1:06:22)

I would share this vision. The cited 'goodness' would be 'good per se' (good that cannot be valued as origin of value - i.e. 'the origin of the cosmos' - with (moral) valuing being 'signification').

In a sense 'morality' would underlay the physical world and consciousness, and thus Levinas moral philosophy "Ethics as First Philosophy" might be correct from a fundamental philosophy perspective, in my opinion.

What is your opinion on the significance of love? Is it merely functional for reproduction as asserted by Arthur Schopenhauer or ...?


Questions:

1) what is love?
2) what have art and beauty have to do with love?
3) why has the subject love been principally neglected by philosophy in history?


The following film might provide an inspirational philosophical perspective on love. The primary question that is asked in the film is "how does love last?" and it is then described that when one attempts to cling on to love that the beauty of life disappears before ones eyes.

What is love even?
...
Why is it so hard to keep a feeling. Maybe it is better to sit by and watch but never have. The idea of meeting the beauty and magic we see in the world around us to be ours, mine, we end up smothering it. Looking to deeply at it. And then we see how very regular all these things are. I think that magic, beauty and feeling are only real and true when they are free, passing and unscrutinised.

Generally Plato wasn't so bad on the topic, although these days one should at least read CS Lewis 'the four loves' first, because otherwise people reach strange conclusions like Plato only believed in homosexual love, or love must have no sex, or whatever.

[value]

I hope you don't find the following too off putting. I read phenomenology. A lot, to be honest. And it is everywhere in my thoughts.

The job of philosophy is to dig beneath assumptions to what is presupposed, and this is important because it keeps one's footing squarely in justification. Philosophy is a rabbit hole of sorts. It was G E Moore who, in my thinking, made a discovery: philosophy had a long history of discussion about the Good, and we all know where this found its place---in Christian metaphysics. God is the Good.

In my opinion philosophy is what UNDERLAYS the world fundamentally. This provides the basis for my assertion of the problem that it is a fallacy to consider the facts of science to be valid without philosophy (the dogmatic belief in uniformitarianism).

To give some examples of practical relevance. The protection of nature against GMO or the idea of plausibility of a 'spirit of nature' (Gaia philosophy).

For many decades astronauts have been reporting an extreme transcendental experience of 'interconnected euphoria' when they view earth from space. It is called 'Overview effect on Earth'. Yet, the concept remains unknown to most people.

"First we should understand why we don't already know of this profound experience, despite decades of astronaut reports.

Widely known in the space community as the Overview Effect, it is little known by the general public and poorly understood even by many space advocates. Phrases like "strange dreamlike experience", "reality was like a hallucination", and feeling like they had "come back from the future", occur time and again. Finally, many astronauts have emphasized that space images do not come close to the direct experience, and may even give us a false impression of the real nature of the Earth and space. "It is virtually impossible to describe... You can take people to see [IMAX's] The Dream Is Alive, but spectacular as it is, it's not the same as being there." - Astronaut and Senator Jake Garn."
http://overview-effect.earth
https://overviewinstitute.org/

It is Levinas his 'signification'. How can it be said that the essence of philosophy is other than signification or 'the act of valuing'? The idea that philosophy would be passive is absurd.

I was just reading 'The Meaning of Truth' by William James in which he argued the following:

"Why may not thought's mission be to increase and elevate, rather than simply to imitate and reduplicate, existence? No one who has read Lotze can fail to remember his striking comment on the ordinary view of the secondary qualities of matter, which brands them as 'illusory' because they copy nothing in the thing. The notion of a world complete in itself, to which thought comes as a passive mirror, adding nothing to fact, Lotze says is irrational. Rather is thought itself a most momentous part of fact, and the whole mission of the pre-existing and insufficient world of matter may simply be to provoke thought to produce its far more precious supplement."
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5117/5117-h/5117-h.htm

Aristotle considers a state of philosophical contemplation (eudaimonia) the greatest virtue (highest human good). It is a strive to serve life: the discovery of "good" from which 'value' follows.

With regard the origin of Good. Wasn't it Plato that introduced the concept in philosophy?

"Form of the Good", or more literally "the idea of the good" (ἡ τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ ἰδέα[a]) is a concept in the philosophy of Plato. The definition of the Good is a perfect, eternal, and changeless Form, existing outside space and time. It is a Platonic ideal."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_of_the_Good

And while I agree, as in the above, that the Other awakens in us something deeply sublime in our relations with other people (dogs and cats as well), the first place philosophy takes us is to an analysis of the terms in play: before I can talk about how value is presented in social contexts, I have to ask first what it is, that is, what the pure phenomenon is, the intuition of "the good" that doesn't simply attend being love, but IS being in love.

In my opinion the consideration of being in love (experience) as a facet grounded in an intuition of 'the good' is not the end of the road for philosophy.

It was already posed that the concept or idea 'pure good' doesn't intuitively feel valid.

When one values (signifies) one seems to require the concept 'pure good' (a good that cannot be valued). Levinas also seems to have concluded that 'goodness' is the origin of the cosmos because of the that apparent logical requirement.

"The creation of the world itself should get its meaning starting from goodness." (Levinas in film Absent God 1:06:22)

It is seen that one seeks a pure concept as ground for signification/valuing that must be described as goodness to be plausibly relevant to 'reality' but that when taken by itself cannot be 'pure' of nature because the idea of goodness is impure.

Perhaps a question that could provide leads for more insights is "is reason good?"

This kind of thing generally doesn't pan out, frankly. A "pure phenomenon" cannot be isolated from the contexts in which it is found, and this includes , of course, social contexts in which we find ethics. Analytic types call this qualia, a "being appeared to redly" kind of description of things absolutely FREE of predication. Not like saying the sky is blue, which is analyzable, but just "blue". Blue is a quality that, as such, does not qualify anything. And, as they say, there is no such knowledge as non propositional knowledge (Rorty says this outright). And when it comes to qualities like blue and red, this is certainly right, the world does not speak what it IS. Isness is just "there".

But value! This is not the same as redness or some "felt" or sensed immediacy. The question is what IS this? It IS the good and bad of the phenomenon itself. the reason we can't talk about red qua red is that red qua red says nothing other than being red and being red says nothing beyond just this. But ethics does not deal in this. Ethics is about value, and when you put a lighted match to your finger, the pain is not just pain qua pain; it is bad, in the metavalue sense of the idea: Bad as an absolute! The bad of pain does not find its essential meaning in propositional assignments, even though to "say" pain is bad" is propositional, for the predication of bad issues directly from its own nature. This is where philosophy takes a foundational analysis of our ethics.

Levinas is brilliant, of course, if difficult to follow (his Totality and Infinity is a tour through this new terrain of metaphysics that follow through on Husserl's epoche. To me, this "phenomenological reduction" and "transcendental reduction" is knock down drag out the most important thing philosophy has ever said), and enlightening, and right. But the question antecedent to Levinas is a meta-ethical question, or a meta-value question.

The idea that ethics (morality or 'philosophical reason') lays at the foundation of the world seems to be correct to me. In a way, (the natural inclination to) philosophy could be described as a form of love. It seeks to unlock among other things, (a path towards) truth, beauty and good.

"Humans are a social species, we need meaning."

What is meant with this 'meaning', a concept that, as it is regularly used in human language, seems to stand on its own but once questioned more deeply disappears from any empirical ground?

Yes. It does disappear from the empirical ground, and this seems a good way to put it. But why does it disappear? Because there is something there that is not empirical (and I always have to remind the thinking here that what is and is not empirical is determined in a construct of the concept's delimitations. In other words, we MAKE these limits). What IS this? It is the metaethical, metavalueative Good and Bad. Levinas' Other relationship "occurs" in metaphysics. Our ethical world IS a metapysical world. That is a strong claim; impossible, most would say. But they are wrong.

How can a 'something' 'be' outside the scope of what is empirical?

In my opinion the (status quo) acceptance of plausibility of the concept meaningful relevance allows philosophical consideration to pass the boundary imposed by the presumed 'empirical ground'.

Levinas was a phenomenologist, and so his analysis does not invite talk about our being a social species. Of course, it doesn't deny this either, but he is following through on Heidegger's metaphysics in which there is a failure to account for ethics and our being along side Others. Heidegger is all me, my and mine. This is my world, and others are there IN this world (this dasein of mine), subject to my creative will. You can see how this kind of thinking works into a social concept of a nation's mentality of social nationalism and then, alas, Nazism. Levinas lost family and friends to the Nazis.

Wouldn't it simply consist of the difference of viewing love from a social relevant (qualitative) perspective, like 3017Metaphysician's example of 'The Art of Love' (the practice of love), versus a fundamental philosophical perspective, while the latter - the addressing of the concept 'Love' - seems to have been shunned in the history of philosophy, diverting the concept instead to poetry?

In my opinion: value IS the world. Value is a term used to apply to ANY meaningful relation and the empirical world consists wholly of meaningful relations.

If you have left a physicalist model of the world behind, and understand all meaningful relations are IN the Totality of the individual's relating to the world, and you accept that the objects in the world are meaningful only because they are possessed by your (one's) relational system, then I agree, and so have many others. Levinas' Other is outside my totality; it is an intrusion into my world that threatens autonomy of self creation. I don't entirely agree with this, though, and I have to admit this is can be because I haven't read all of Levinas. But there is WITHIN this Totality that I am, divinity, the "that which is awakened by the Other".

No, the meaningful relations that I would intend to indicate would be a priori and therefore span beyond the Totality of the individual's relating to the world. The origin of those relations would be a concept that can be described as 'pure meaning'.

What is actually interesting in my opinion is to find a way to question the underlying meaning for which no empirical relation is possible beyond the scope of 'denoted value'.

And in my opinion, you are asking a threshold question. There is only one way to approach this in good intellectual conscience (that is, not filled with a lot of religious nonsense), and that is via Husserl. He takes the Cartesian quest for certainty as the only route to ontological discovery of the foundational intuitive givenness of the world. His "method" of reduction is, I argue, the only way to keep religion sane and defensible. And Real.

Should philosophy prevent itself to cross the border of what can be said to be deductively Real? Isn't that proposed boundary the same as the boundary imposed by empirical Real?

In my opinion the Cartesian idea "I think, therefore I am" is merely utilitarian in nature and not evidence of anything Real. It results in a magical belief at most, in my opinion. The origin remains a mere 'feeling' (of being alive).

When one detaches from the idea of Real and considers that pure meaning fundamentally underlays the world, it would open a door to 'meaningful relevance' that can still be philosophically explored plausibly. It would be the same as letting go of 'space-time' to then consider that it shouldn't be 'the end of the road' for philosophy.

Albert Einstein once wrote the following prophecy about it.

"Perhaps... we must also give up, by principle, the space-time continuum,” he wrote. “It is not unimaginable that human ingenuity will some day find methods which will make it possible to proceed along such a path. At the present time, however, such a program looks like an attempt to breathe in empty space.

Within Western philosophy, the realm beyond space has traditionally been considered a realm beyond physics — the plane of God’s existence in Christian theology. In the early eighteenth century, philosopher Gottfried Leibniz’s “monads” — which he imagined to be the primitive elements of the universe — existed, like God, outside space and time. His theory was a step toward emergent space-time, but it was still metaphysical, with only a vague connection to the world of concrete things."

I am currently reading Husserl's The Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time. Einstein had read Kant, but not Husserl. Too busy. Nor had he read Augustine who started it. I am also reading, will get back to, Paul Ricoeur's Time and Narrative. And then there is the most extraordinary Being and Time. Einstein's spacetime is a theoretical empirical concept, that is, a concept about empirically based thinking, which is in one way or another, physicalistic: there are things out there, these things exhibit in their motion, in their dynamic relations, in their quantifiable data, the basic material for a theory about the world. But this ALL presupposes a foundation of the original perceptual act that takes in the world. This is the foundation of all physics. And it yields to analysis, and this analytical field is phenomenology.

According to Kant space and time are a priori forms of intuition that provide the basis for apodictical certainty (apodiktische Gewißheit) that can provide the basis for the idea 'law as such' (intrinsic existence without mind) or 'the ground for empirical causality'.

"Kant's definition of apodictical certainty (apodiktische Gewißheit) is the certainty of a knowledge (Erkenntnis) in connection with the consciousness of its necessity."

It is nonsensical in my opinion to consider repeatable nature to be a necessity. It would only be so in the form of value (words) but not IN experience.

Kant's apodictical certainty is used as a foundation for the concept 'law as such' which is equal to the idea 'intrinsic existence' or the idea that reality is 'really real'. It seems to me that a foundation for that concept is completely lacking which means in my opinion that it is a magical belief.

Without Kant's apodictical certainty, while maintaining the idea of 'pure meaning' as fundamental ground of existence, how would the world look like?

The letting go of 'space-time' without losing meaningful relevance for philosophically plausible exploration seems possible to me.

The reference 'pure meaning' would apply to that Otherwise than Being and 'Being' would be 'value in perpetuated existence'.

The term Being in my opinion contains a search for a meaningful ground 'from within' existence (with existence being presupposed as an unquestioned given) which results in an Infinite quest for meaning. This same Infinite quest is found when looking deeper into the term value. What the quest is actually searching into is 'pure meaning'.

I sort of agree with this. This term "pure" is a big issue. What is pure value? It is found most clearly in the most intense and therefore the most poignant experiences of the world, which is why I talk about putting one's hand in boiling water and the like: Value is generally so absorbed in our entangled factual affairs that we fail to see it in analysis. Discussions about ethics lean toward behavior and its contexts and limitations and the relativity of principles and utility and accountability and on and on. But these do not go to the question of ontology: What IS value? One has to first look directly at the occasion of its occurring. Onw is now a phenomenologist, a scientist of the bare givens of the world. Value is, as you say, not an empirical concept any more than causality is. It is, as they say, apriori, yet, not analytical, not a tautological insistence. Its apodicticity is built into the world itself! The Bad, being tortured, say, lies with "purity" of the pain as pain, and not as politically justifiable, and the rest. Pain as pain is inherently Bad.

My argument is that it is merely 'meaning' that qualitatively differentiates the experienced empirical world from what is actually experienced.

In my opinion value IS empirical of nature by definition since it concerns solely that of which it can be SAID TO BE experienced. The factor that would add an apparent mysterious aspect to value would be the 'meaning' that underlays value fundamentally (that preceded it or 'makes value possible').

Therefore, in my opinion, the 'value' involved in human social relations, in the experience of pain, is similar to any empirical value including Matter. It would be 'meaning' - that which apparently has no empirical ground while it cannot be said to be irrelevant - that would make a difference.

What would be your opinion about the term 'pure meaning' and the purity that it insinuates?

Exactly the question, as I see it. One can only look to the world, where all inquiry comes from. Take a lighted match and apply it to your finger. There it is. Now, this kind of thing is Always presented in a context, and these contests give us our ethics. You know, should one torture another for information that would save millions of lives? and the like. But purity, this is like asking what is reality? Reality has no predicative possibilities, for all predication presupposes reality. And so "reality" is a meaningless term, really. But value-in-reality, this "speaks" good and bad, AS intuitions.

With that I would agree. But the good and bad that you are indicating simply implies 'valuing' or Levinas his 'signification' which is not a choice but by which one values (performs an act) on the behalf of which that Levinas assumes to be goodness or 'pure good'.

In my opinion the idea of goodness, while valid as a concept to provide the required ground for the act of valuing or 'signification', cannot stand on itself and be 'actually pure'. Philosophical exploration should not be allowed to stop at that concept and consider it primary in my opinion.

"The creation of the world itself should get its meaning starting from goodness." (Levinas in film Absent God 1:06:22)

The term pure when applied to good seeks to denote solely that it involves a good that cannot be valued since it is the grounding concept required for the act of valuing (of signification). What is actually the case in my opinion is that the origin of the world is 'pure meaning', a 'meaning' that cannot be valued (has no empirical ground), with pure being plausibly applied in the context 'actual pure' by the nature of meaning that can be conceptualized by exploring the simple nature (and fundamental requirement) of 'a pattern'.

In my thinking, this is where you find your position that "everything is value" (you said something like this): Reality or Being or existence, these have been in philosophy assigned various meanings, but as "stand alone concepts" of all that is, they are vacuous. Only value is not like this, and value saturates the world. But one has to think like a phenomenologist to see this. To think like a physicalist, materialist or some variation of these (see Strawson on the Real, e.g.) puts the world in some impossible "outthereness" of things. Such an outthereness is impossible to even conceive, for the moment one does conceive it, it is with the "Totality" of human existence, in our thoughts and experience. This is the very definition of bad metaphysics. Levinas was very much aware of this.

My argument is that all of which it can be said to exist or 'be' (empirical reality) IS value. The simple fact that Mathematics can be used to describe the world based on Mathematical values would be evidence.

What it takes for value to be possible would be of interest and in my opinion that aspect is 'meaning'.

When you speak of 'value', it seems to me that you actually would intend to indicate that which makes value possible and since that aspect cannot be value itself it would involve meaningful relevance for which no empirical ground is possible.