Existentialism anyone?

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Papus79
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Re: Existentialism anyone?

Post by Papus79 »

Hereandnow wrote: March 18th, 2020, 10:53 pm At any rate, if you'd like to take this material to another OP that is perfectly fine, and things may even get interesting.
This sort of thing makes me consider a particular inefficiency of bulletin boards. This thread, for example, seems like it could be a great launch point for a lot of people on this topic but it's still apt to fall off the bottom of the page eventually if enough people don't stay engaged with it. If we end up talking this book out at length, for like the next year, it's like we'll have shot off on a 90 degree angle to another continent and likely no one will have the patience to read through all of the correspondence - ie. it'll leave everyone behind.

From that perspective if we were to do a deep dive on Shestov I do think it might be good for us to split it off (there's an argumentative folder but I think there needs to be something similar for deep dives where people are doing in-depth study on some particular book or content.
Hereandnow wrote: March 18th, 2020, 10:53 pmIt's certainly is not that the things you mention about the pressures of modern life are not bad, they clearly can be awful, but the question goes existential, which means it is built into our being here; it is not the contingent facts about our daily miseries so much as the altogether inexplicable presence of misery at all, structured into the "nature of things." This is why I like the crucifix, a great symbol, not of religious dogma, but of the intensity of human suffering, Religion is about nothing if not human suffering. Being burned alive at the stake has to be the worst, though the Sicilian Bull is like worse.

I beat my head on this same issue for a long time because I found myself going through things where I had to fight tooth and nail not only to find reasons to stay alive but to find reasons not to morally decay or go dark because my life was under that much unrelenting pressure. What was worse is that this pressure wasn't pressure to succeed or pressure to make myself better, it was more like a maelstrom of idiots and narcissists trying to erase me from existence and thus it was like having my identity constantly sandblasted (I've really come to appreciate TheraminTrees discourses about this sort of cultural madness on Youtube where he gets into the darker and unfortunately societally profound and systemic problems).

What's incredibly gnarly about this is that we don't live in a reductive materialist universe. It's a place where spiritual phenomena happen. It's a place where you can have experiences, from rarely to semi-regularly, that would strongly suggest some form of very reserved/conservative idealism at the bottom of our reality and that ranges anywhere from glitches in material events to synchronicities not explainable by apophenia to all out contact with what seem to be deity-like beings albeit such encounters tend to be cryptic in their content. What you described above I think puts in perspective a real fear of God and why it makes sense even without a heaven or hell - ie. whatever this is seems to both love us infinitely and be willing to let almost anything imaginable happen to us while we're here.

Where that last part touches on nihilism - there are up sides and down sides. The up side - if you have reason to take seriously the idea that you're immortal and/or that you've been here before and will be here again - your forced to take accountability for your adulthood no matter how severe or bitter it is because you know that whatever deep moral, ethical, or developmental embarrassments you allow to happen on your watch are likely to come right back with you and there's no telling what sort of terrible cause and effect cascade those will cause especially if they clip you when you're too young to mount a full-range logical response to their occurrence. From that perspective, no matter how difficult my life ends up being, I want to live a long one - not out of fear of death but more out of fear of being in such a vulnerable position again (ie. childhood) where one has to wade through oceans of other people's misused power, perpetual gaslighting, all kinds of predators plotting and scheming on how they can hijack your future for their own purposes, it's an incredibly dangerous place to be.
Hereandnow wrote: March 18th, 2020, 10:53 pmOn the other hand, there is that which Shestov claims will not be put out of mind, which is the realism that will forever haunt our desires to be at peace. Politicians and administrators will keep the trains running, but ideology, these are free floating institutions now.
I'll say a bit more about this later but - I think the Darwinian death race itself forces us to a place where any time in one's life where they have the luxury of boredom is an incalculable grace. The rest of the time it's running to the Red Queen's metronome.
Hereandnow wrote: March 18th, 2020, 10:53 pmSo, popular truths, Dennett, Dawkins, Darwinism; what strikes me about this discussion of yours is the need for grounding. Why not read some serious technical existential philosophy? Heidegger speaks to all of these in one way or another. Take Dennett, committed to a reductionist view on consciousness and its affairs, and Dawkins right behind him, and Darwin behind both: These are empirical theorists, not phenomenologists, and they put their thinking forth based on bold and groundless assumptions about how things are in the materialist model of the world.
I bring them up because a lot of my time online (say from 20 to 40) was marked by debates with what I'd have to classify as cartoon/caricature atheists or rationalists and these were their heroes. While I don't disagree that they've made contributions to our understandings of biology (in Dawkins case) or certain kinds of philosophy (Dennett's case), they contributed to probably the most low-resolution version of atheism one could have. One of the things that caused me to give Harris much more respect was his Waking Up book and his admission that there's something still in the range of religious and mystical experience (technically the mystical experience itself) that's a tangible and useful thing - and he was debating this with Matt Dillahunty whose still very much in the early to mid 2000's cultural moment on this, questioning whether the fruits of meditation are a fantasy, etc.. Technically I'd say that people like Harris, and in a different way Peterson, got as much attention as they did simply for not being charicatures and having something complex to say. While I'm sure there are a lot of thinkers out there, current and historical, who have had much more depth and quality to them they're not something the common person makes contact with very easily out in the world and as far as the classic philosophers go I don't think Alain de Botton's 7 minute clips can do them justice (nor the way he tends to synchretize them into his own worldview). I have to hope that the aforementioned inaccessibility is changing. One thing I can say, watching my own arch of development, even to be where I'm at right now I left my friends in the dust and gained a lot of distance for better or worse from where many of them are at and it's ground that's not likely to be made up by many of them.
Hereandnow wrote: March 18th, 2020, 10:53 pmHeidegger (and Husserl, Kierkegaard, Kant, ..) will have nothing of this, for empirical observation begs the question regarding how such a model holds up when asking basic questions. What is needed here is the only reduction that upturns all common thinking, which is the phenomenological reduction. Physicality, material--these are vacuous terms when examined closely, and the natural sciences cannot begin to address ethics, for ethical matter are essentially unobservable (see Wittgenstein's Lecture on Ethics.
Wasn't it Bertrand Russell who was most noted as stating the point that we effectively don't know what matter is? We know certain things about its behavior, what it does at a classical level, but past that we no nothing of it's intrinsic basis and what's vogue in our current era of cheap technological progress still being a thing is to throw that overboard and assume that it's a stupid question or that there's nothing intrinsic to worry about regarding matter - or ourselves.
Hereandnow wrote: March 18th, 2020, 10:53 pmI often refer others to this because most haven't a clue as the nature of metaethical problems and Wittgenstein presents the case well, though I disagree with some things). Darwin's evolution is, of course, a plausible theory, and it would be foolish to oppose it, BUT: it is NOT philosophy; it is derivative of structures of consciousness which themselves demand examination. Empirical ideas are cast in language, e.g. Is it possible to separate language from objects in the world? Can we even discuss the world if the conditions of interpretation are absent from analysis?
I think what will mug us any day of the week is that nature is so vast and counter intuitive that it seems like we're unlikely to stumble upon new truths about the outside world that don't come a posteriori, and having spent as much time as I did with Rudolph Steiner, Dion Fortune, etc. I don't see much coming from the subjective side other than better ways to internally govern ourselves or get ourselves acclimated to the idea that there's both more to life than matter and that we're in a bigger mystery than we could have ever imagined. From that perspective, and maybe akin to the goals of mysticism, it seems like philosophy is most often best served - at an individual level of interest - for shaking up our relationship to our own knowledge base, seeing how many degrees of freedom we have to navigate better than we are or with a lens on the world that fits better (based on our emotional and cognitive structures it's very difficult to move oneself from point A to point B without agreement coming from very deep levels and that takes a lot of information being fed into the system). The more public sides of philosophy, like moral and ethical philosophy, legal philosophy, philosophy of science, seem to - from my limited contact with them - be attempts at better governance of these systems or attempts to either build them better in reference to the realities on the ground or, in the case of philosophy of science, be a scout that can point out when things are in a rut, why they're in a rut, which pieces of information aren't uniting and why, etc..
Hereandnow wrote: March 18th, 2020, 10:53 pmShestov is interesting, but Heidegger's Being and Time is life altering,to speak of life style, as is Kierkegaard, but like I said before, such works take time and patience. I read phenomenology, period, and have little to do with analytic philosophy, of which I have also read, and found very helpful, but unprofound. Phenomenology is profound. If you are interested in this kind of text, it runs at, as you say, a Bible study's pace. But everything else is most often chit chatty and tit for tat.
Part my cursory glance around was to check in with thinkers who I knew and trusted, and it seems like Gray has had particularly positive things to say about him.
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Re: Existentialism anyone?

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Hereandnow wrote: February 11th, 2020, 4:53 pm I occasionally post an appeal to anyone willing to work through a difficult philosopher. Not so much the analytic ones; I much prefer reading Continental philosophy.
I'm always willing to do this, where I'm willing to give anyone a chance to make a case for whatever they're trying to make a case for--but from a critical, rather iconoclastic perspective where there's a pretty high bar that needs to be passed. In my experience and opinion, continental philosophers don't tend to pass the bar (and even most analytic philosophers have a number of issues even if they communicate much more clearly). But I'm willing to give anyone a chance to meet the challenge.
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Re: Existentialism anyone?

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Terrapin Station
I'm always willing to do this, where I'm willing to give anyone a chance to make a case for whatever they're trying to make a case for--but from a critical, rather iconoclastic perspective where there's a pretty high bar that needs to be passed. In my experience and opinion, continental philosophers don't tend to pass the bar (and even most analytic philosophers have a number of issues even if they communicate much more clearly). But I'm willing to give anyone a chance to meet the challenge.
Trouble is, Terrapin Station, it's not that easy. Phenomenology is counterintuitive. If you approach it with a set of interpretative values that comes from reading Scientific American, or Omni, or if common sense is your guide, then it won't work.One has to become unglued from what Husserl called the naive naturalistic attitude.
We are reading Shestov's All Things Are Possible, commenting as it goes. Jump in if you like. Read what has been written so far. It is not a technical discussion (though, those are really the most productive), but themes do appear and they are serious can be penetrating.

High bar, eh? What is the standard?
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Re: Existentialism anyone?

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This sort of thing makes me consider a particular inefficiency of bulletin boards. This thread, for example, seems like it could be a great launch point for a lot of people on this topic but it's still apt to fall off the bottom of the page eventually if enough people don't stay engaged with it. If we end up talking this book out at length, for like the next year, it's like we'll have shot off on a 90 degree angle to another continent and likely no one will have the patience to read through all of the correspondence - ie. it'll leave everyone behind.

From that perspective if we were to do a deep dive on Shestov I do think it might be good for us to split it off (there's an argumentative folder but I think there needs to be something similar for deep dives where people are doing in-depth study on some particular book or content.
Hmmm it is a problem with actually reading serious philosophy that it trivializes mainstream conversation, and this is especially true for continental philosophy, because here, the issues of "the uncanny" thresholds where thoughts do what Shestov says they should do: stand apart from the myopic clarity that is afforded by presumptions of knowing (ever read Meister Eckhart, or, Pseudo Dionysus the Areopagite?). Reading Beckett, for example, reveals a world not lost to nihilism, but lost FROM the steadiness of things, the feeling of being "at home" as Heidegger put it (derived from Kierkegaard). Shestov is against precisely the kind of rigidity and pseudo-critical thinking evidenced in post in this forum; this game of tit for tat, having read nothing.
I occasionally drop by only to find bickering and cliches thrown about with the presumption of authority.

At any rate, it could become something. But by far these people should spend much less time posting and much more time reading (and studying. This stuff, the truly interesting, is NOT easy and one cannot give up because it is off putting. It will be off putting, but one has to want to know, as i do before I die, what this Being in the World is all about. It's like music: one does not choose to be a musician; the music chooses the person).
I beat my head on this same issue for a long time because I found myself going through things where I had to fight tooth and nail not only to find reasons to stay alive but to find reasons not to morally decay or go dark because my life was under that much unrelenting pressure. What was worse is that this pressure wasn't pressure to succeed or pressure to make myself better, it was more like a maelstrom of idiots and narcissists trying to erase me from existence and thus it was like having my identity constantly sandblasted (I've really come to appreciate TheraminTrees discourses about this sort of cultural madness on Youtube where he gets into the darker and unfortunately societally profound and systemic problems).
I have always appreciated Leonard Cohen's work, and in his song Suzanne, there is a verse: "and Jesus was a sailor, when he walked upon the water....and when he knew for certain only drowning men could see him....." I think he was on to something, which is that out of suffering comes enlightenment. Dewey once wrote that in the pragmatic flow of events, if there is no friction, there is no meaning. I have lived in Korea, China and India for many years, and in India there is unspeakable poverty (China, too) and I think those on the streets of Veranasi, so many either malarial, typhoidal, and so on, these are our true martyrs,sacrificed at the alter of maintaining the illusion that all is well. Any one of whom is "greater" has earned more respect from me than Einstein and all the kindred geniuses combined, who spend luxurious hours in productive achievement and celebrity. The urchin child young and broken or made half blind for more coin in the bowl, greater than every one of our chosen celebrities; yet we live as if they did not exist at all. The question, says Heidegger, is the piety of thought, and this question rises above all, hands down: when we take ourselves to the edge of understanding and weigh what is in the balance, we are drawn beyond, and this is the presence of metaphysics that is here, upon us, in the midst of all that is; The world is deeply meaningful, vastly beyond our concepts, and upon us in an eternal present.

How is this a response thoughts above? There is in all that this world is and the tonnage of suffering it rests on, and alienation, a not-at-home in this place that lies deep in the structure of our understanding, for we are thrown into this world, then thrown out, and it is fatuous to suggest this is at all apprehended. As Shestov says,

It is impossible to see everything, impossible to know everything, impossible to rise too high above the earth, impossible to penetrate too deeply down. What has been is hidden away, what will be we cannot anticipate, and we know for certain that we shall never grow wings. Regularity, immutably regular succession of phenomena puts a term to our efforts, drives us into a regular, narrow, hard-beaten road of everyday life. But even on this road we may not wander from side to side. We must watch our feet, consider each step, since the moment we are off our guard disaster is upon us. Another life is conceivable, however: life in which the word disaster does not exist...


Our ideas of disaster, greatness, profundity, and all the rest, do not contain this world, and this is his point. But I add to this, that, in agreement, we must keep our sight where it belongs, out of imagined kingdoms of clarity, but in the world, BUT here, in the world, there is metaphysics, not the religious dogmatic insistence, but the alienation in a world where all that is is not stand alone, which cannot stand alone. Constructing a God out of this is entirely reasonable, though, reason will not suffice and is quite beside the point.
What's incredibly gnarly about this is that we don't live in a reductive materialist universe. It's a place where spiritual phenomena happen. It's a place where you can have experiences, from rarely to semi-regularly, that would strongly suggest some form of very reserved/conservative idealism at the bottom of our reality and that ranges anywhere from glitches in material events to synchronicities not explainable by apophenia to all out contact with what seem to be deity-like beings albeit such encounters tend to be cryptic in their content. What you described above I think puts in perspective a real fear of God and why it makes sense even without a heaven or hell - ie. whatever this is seems to both love us infinitely and be willing to let almost anything imaginable happen to us while we're here.
But there are-- and I think we have to reduce, if you will, God to the actualities that are actually in the world ( and this is what makes philosophy so important, for if we are to take such things seriously, we can slip into simply bad reasoning, which, Shestov says, is preferable to impertinent apriority), a place holder for the metaphysicl mysteries-- values in the world that speak beyond words. Emanuel Levinas, one whom I continue to read, told Derrida on before he died, that he held above all things the presence of "the holy". I concur.

Where that last part touches on nihilism - there are up sides and down sides. The up side - if you have reason to take seriously the idea that you're immortal and/or that you've been here before and will be here again - your forced to take accountability for your adulthood no matter how severe or bitter it is because you know that whatever deep moral, ethical, or developmental embarrassments you allow to happen on your watch are likely to come right back with you and there's no telling what sort of terrible cause and effect cascade those will cause especially if they clip you when you're too young to mount a full-range logical response to their occurrence. From that perspective, no matter how difficult my life ends up being, I want to live a long one - not out of fear of death but more out of fear of being in such a vulnerable position again (ie. childhood) where one has to wade through oceans of other people's misused power, perpetual gaslighting, all kinds of predators plotting and scheming on how they can hijack your future for their own purposes, it's an incredibly dangerous place to be.
Karma? Perhaps, but what is the actuality beneath the whatever might be there to suggest immortality and accountability> These are beyond our knowing, and Shestov seems to want us to step from behind such extravagant thinking and face possibility; the question is, what does he mean by this? He is talking about freedom from what implicitly controls us in our facing the world. Sartre had this pinned like this: The world of actuality, the phenomenal "presence" of things actual (note how I am avoiding traditional talk about sense impressions or secondary properties; there is an explicit attempt to break away from "age of reason" jargon) is qualitatively NOT what reason is, and reason, even when it is absolutely "right" as with,e.g., the law of sufficient reason (casuality) which is apodictically necessary, is not wrong, but, and this is a big and fascinating point, one Shestov wants us to see, but altogether qualitatively different from "the way things behave". Sufficient reason does not at all explain anything; it merely recognizes something, and speaks, but the speech cannot speak the thing. Necessity is not "necessity" at all, or, the color yellow, the presence, there, on the paper, is entirely transcendental as such, for to speak it is to bring it to heel with language and logic, and Shestove says, Philosophy must have nothing in common with logic.
You've likely hear that existentialism is an irrationalism, and this is partly true. We are not, as Doesteovsky put it in Underground Man, piano keys to be played. More to the point, most people ARE like this in their day to day living, in this, they flee from what they truly are, for in this world, we are not "at home". to see this, we have to make the qualitative lead (Kierkegaard) OUT of everydayness.
I bring them up because a lot of my time online (say from 20 to 40) was marked by debates with what I'd have to classify as cartoon/caricature atheists or rationalists and these were their heroes. While I don't disagree that they've made contributions to our understandings of biology (in Dawkins case) or certain kinds of philosophy (Dennett's case), they contributed to probably the most low-resolution version of atheism one could have. One of the things that caused me to give Harris much more respect was his Waking Up book and his admission that there's something still in the range of religious and mystical experience (technically the mystical experience itself) that's a tangible and useful thing - and he was debating this with Matt Dillahunty whose still very much in the early to mid 2000's cultural moment on this, questioning whether the fruits of meditation are a fantasy, etc.. Technically I'd say that people like Harris, and in a different way Peterson, got as much attention as they did simply for not being charicatures and having something complex to say. While I'm sure there are a lot of thinkers out there, current and historical, who have had much more depth and quality to them they're not something the common person makes contact with very easily out in the world and as far as the classic philosophers go I don't think Alain de Botton's 7 minute clips can do them justice (nor the way he tends to synchretize them into his own worldview). I have to hope that the aforementioned inaccessibility is changing. One thing I can say, watching my own arch of development, even to be where I'm at right now I left my friends in the dust and gained a lot of distance for better or worse from where many of them are at and it's ground that's not likely to be made up by many of them.
Right. I see, but I have read some of what Dennett, Harris, and Dawkins have written (not that much for I got bored). Frankly, I don't think they understand anything about philosophy because they don't do phenomenology. They are what happens when Shestov is ignored, for they put forth a thesis, defend it, justify it, and say, there you have the truth. But what truth is this? Propositional truth? Of course, all truth has to be this, but even when Shestov puts an argument out there, it is true or false given assumptions that posit the rejection of logic! Shestov leans toward a revelatory kind of truth through his propositions, telling us to put this hard talk about what IS the case aside, and free yourself presuppositions!

Interesting book: Anthony Steinbach's Phenomenology and Mysticism. He speaks of the "verticality" of the phenomenological reduction. Husserl's epoche has certain .....features that have one foot out the door of this world. Perhaps you might read his Ideas I.
Wasn't it Bertrand Russell who was most noted as stating the point that we effectively don't know what matter is? We know certain things about its behavior, what it does at a classical level, but past that we no nothing of it's intrinsic basis and what's vogue in our current era of cheap technological progress still being a thing is to throw that overboard and assume that it's a stupid question or that there's nothing intrinsic to worry about regarding matter - or ourselves.
Phenomenology (which I am obviously encouraging) takes this "nothing of it's intrinsic basis" as its starting place. Most who think to question things at the level of basic assumptions have simply read nothing about it. Otherwise they wouldn't say this. Phenomenology is counterintuitive to those who haven't read any of it, and therein lies the problem: as if he foundation of knowledge and ontology could be explained by common sense. It is the most UNcommon thing there is.
I think what will mug us any day of the week is that nature is so vast and counter intuitive that it seems like we're unlikely to stumble upon new truths about the outside world that don't come a posteriori, and having spent as much time as I did with Rudolph Steiner, Dion Fortune, etc. I don't see much coming from the subjective side other than better ways to internally govern ourselves or get ourselves acclimated to the idea that there's both more to life than matter and that we're in a bigger mystery than we could have ever imagined. From that perspective, and maybe akin to the goals of mysticism, it seems like philosophy is most often best served - at an individual level of interest - for shaking up our relationship to our own knowledge base, seeing how many degrees of freedom we have to navigate better than we are or with a lens on the world that fits better (based on our emotional and cognitive structures it's very difficult to move oneself from point A to point B without agreement coming from very deep levels and that takes a lot of information being fed into the system). The more public sides of philosophy, like moral and ethical philosophy, legal philosophy, philosophy of science, seem to - from my limited contact with them - be attempts at better governance of these systems or attempts to either build them better in reference to the realities on the ground or, in the case of philosophy of science, be a scout that can point out when things are in a rut, why they're in a rut, which pieces of information aren't uniting and why, etc..
I don't think nature is nature at all. Such a thing is just a reification of familiarity. This is the best way to approach freedom from apriori thinking (thinking that begins with assumptions that rule conclusions). The subjective side: One thing existential thinking does is to annihilate this duality of subjective and objective. Both are presentations that are phenomemological. Matter is a fine term; no issue whatsover, and I use this term all the time. It is only when it is given a context of meaning into meaninglessness, as if the idea had some meaning all by itself, matter, an ontological sui generis. It is a vacant term, then. Mysticism, particle physics, genetic research, evolution, eternity, transcendence, sprituality--you know, these terms all have a place, and it is simply beyond us to try to reduce them to one thing. Be open, not dogmatic, and let the fixity of thought drop away. Heidegger, one who believes a kind of language and the world as one, thought the Buddhists might have the key to something primordial.
Part my cursory glance around was to check in with thinkers who I knew and trusted, and it seems like Gray has had particularly positive things to say about him.
Heidegger changed my entire thinking, along with Levinas, Husserl, Fink, Kierkegaard, Kant, and so on. No better project in life than to take these on squarely, unflinchingly. Starts with Kant, though. Not an existentialist, but the father of phenomenology (so they say. Of course, he was a rationalist.....but his Copernican Revolution!)
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Re: Existentialism anyone?

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Hereandnow wrote: February 12th, 2020, 3:50 pm The Concept of Irony is his doctoral thesis an it is not easy at all. It is a very scholarly study of Greek thought. May I recommend The Concept of Anxiety? This is not easy at all either; in fact, it's like he goes out of his way to make the matter hard. But then, one does struggle and in the struggle one actually pays attention and puts in the time, which is needed for difficult ideas. So, how about the Concept of Anxiety? A great book that, once understood, opens lots of doors to other things.
But if you are set on The Concept of Irony, i can try to do this. It will not be entirely doable, though, because one would have to read extensively about Socrates.
I have my book in hand. How should we proceed?
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Re: Existentialism anyone?

Post by Papus79 »

A lot of authors and ideas above and I'll try to keep them in mind (and I'll make a second pass at this if I have something useful to add).

A couple clarifiers - you mentioned the truly poor in India and China, the people on the streets with typhoid and the like or by horrid serendipity ending up working for a guy like that in Slum Dog Millionaire where they're blinded for more coin while western celebrities live the lives that John Ralston Saul described of Marie Antoinette at the end of the Bourbon line where they lampooned commoner activity for entertainment (Ricky Gervaise at the Golden Globes hits home here), that the people living in the streets and dealing with what they are are true heroes and far more developed in various ways, I think this somewhat touches back on or runs in parallel with what I mentioned as the 'Alchemical Great Work' or the idea that if there is any teleology at all in this world or universe its likely best described as an industrial process that consciousness is being put through - the 7 or 12 processes in alchemy (depending on who you read) seem to relate back to this notion. I had the chance to read both Manly P Hall's Secret Teachings and Lectures on Ancient Philosophy and one of the things he brought up with the philosophies applied to the Ptolemaic system of astrology/astronomy (it was technically a bit of an attempt at both) - souls came in through the gate of Cancer and left through the gate of Capricorn. Cyclical history was also more popular back then but I think there's at least something valuable below the surface with this notion whether it's observing the seasons, the stars, etc., and it's the idea that information gets pounded into us through cyclical encounters. Some have talked about this in terms of the spiral staircase in a tower where at each 90° turn you'll see a landscape that you saw three windows ago but you'll see it from a higher perspective. It seems to be that sort of thing.

Also you brought up karma in relationship to something I said above about one's sense of need to preserve moral control of their lives for the sake of their structure and longterm destiny - I don't think you were implying this but I'll still clarify since anytime I hear the word 'karma' in the western sense I'm used to hearing it used locally in the US and we've almost said 'Oh yeah - Yahweh rewards and punishes, so karma's what happens for being a good or bad boy or girl!'. Where I'm completely taken out of that frame, for what I've been following of IANDS, NDERF, etc. is not only increasing corroboration with Ian Stevenson's research on reincarnation but also the observation that people who get shot in the head often come back with a facial disfigurement of some type (there was a panel from back in 2018 moderated by John Cleese which had the usual top researchers on and they were discussing this in more detail). It seems like there's really no moral agency causing that to happen, the cheap and probably awful description I might give it is what the Victorians might have called an 'etheric body' or something of the like, who the f knows what it is exactly but the idea is that something holds a certain kind of structural memory and that's what we drag with us. Among many reasons why I wouldn't turn to alcoholism or smack to solve my problems this is clearly an additional factor - ie. die a wreck and like anyone else you have no clue what happens when you die but you equally die with much more uncertainty and a deep concern that you're not getting off the train in a good spot.

Someone who I've been following off and on in the modern Hermetic revival who seems to both take the arts very seriously as well as taking the existentialist and stoic concerns seriously (he quite often brings up a guy who he worked for who was on the eastern front whose life took some a amazing hair-in turns during WWII) is Mark Stavish. He's one of the people who's likely done more than most to expose people to Jean Dubuis's writings and he mentioned in one of his lectures (maybe Sanctus Spiritual Fire in Daily Life - he's Institute for Hermetic Studies) that he'd received the particular version of the body of light meditation he recommends from an Italian Hermeticist and the idea seems overall pretty simple - ie. imagine a light double of yourself out in front of you attached by an umbilical chord, that you need to be able to both focus on that image and keep your will sharply in control if as well as bringing it back into you the same way you extended it (ie. you visualize it detaching from you and then reattaching).

Even if it's quite possible that this, ie. building the golden wedding garment for the supper of the Lamb as Manly P Hall borrowed the notion from Revelations of John, is just one thing - like having kids - that the seeming physical or external world would offer as prudent given certain priorities or needs, still doesn't qualify as the core value of 'why we're here' and the answer very well could be that there's no reason why we're here - that there these are simply things on a list of things that we could do - it's one of those things where there's little to do but explore and similarly our piorities are forced quite often by hardship. I've often wondered about the issue of personal identity and just how profoundly circumstantial it is, that realization that we're always accomodating to fit our environments or to protect ourselves from our environments with quite often very little liberty to do otherwise really deepens this mystery and stops it from fitting into any new age or new thought frame. I remembered for example reading the Seth books at someone's recommendation, found a good degree of agreement that the ego was most likely a tool that was meant to be kept flexible but grown nonetheless (ie. if we need it to stay alive and it's tempered to the degree that it is - calling it 'bad' seems deeply misguided) and I notice Tim Freke takes a very similar stance on that, but at the same time I've seen just how little people have in the way of freedom from environment (almost none as far as I can tell - and that's not touching on free will which I'd argue is none as a given), for example it seems like anyone without some major life disruption or disability will be obsessed with all of the popular things to be obsessed with, listen to only top 40 or whatever's regionally popular, watch sports or nascar, obsess over guns, cars, golf scores, how many toys they own, and when you decide to go check out an esoteric order almost anyone under 50 is getting around on a cane, is someone in the LGBT community trying to find a spirituality that doesn't condemn them, ie. actually caring about anything other than pure social conformity seems to be - quite sadly - not even necessarily an intellectual outsider phenomena but far more often a genetic or epigenetic outsider phenomena.

I think that last part was my biggest personal letdown with esotericism, ie. that it's offered - garishly as Sam Harris put it - loaded down with religious and spiritual iconography, all kinds of hippy flour wreaths, and what many people take to be just about promises of levitation. i get that we're a species that doesn't prioritize truth but escapism is f'ing deadly and you absolutely can't - especially if you're actually taking a run at these mysteries - make it a retiree bus tour. Some people are doing a fair amount of work to carve out what's actually there from the hippie boomer retirement bus seeming to have sole cultural ownership of it.

Some of the above might seem a bit off the topic of existentialism but - I think I'm trying to flesh out what's of importance to me in it, why I have the inclinations I do about endurance of either self or at least the same boiler plate or frame getting brought with you for another round, I hate to use the term 'physics' but it seems to be as cold, indifferent, and non-personal or non-religious when IANDS or UoV professors pour over it and that maps onto my observations that while this might be a universe where the underpinnings of matter are a conservative idealism it's a strange sort of mind - ie. one where perhaps that mind itself is just a vast subconscious plane in deep sleep with some areas of notably extreme activity such as we have here. For me existentialism, when we can use it to gain insight into how we relate to phenomena, really helps clear the dross out - which being brought up in most cultures around the world is probably 95% or better of what's out there that needs to be unlearned.
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Re: Existentialism anyone?

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Papus79
if there is any teleology at all in this world or universe its likely best described as an industrial process that consciousness is being put through - the 7 or 12 processes in alchemy (depending on who you read) seem to relate back to this notion. I had the chance to read both Manly P Hall's Secret Teachings and Lectures on Ancient Philosophy and one of the things he brought up with the philosophies applied to the Ptolemaic system of astrology/astronomy (it was technically a bit of an attempt at both) - souls came in through the gate of Cancer and left through the gate of Capricorn. Cyclical history was also more popular back then but I think there's at least something valuable below the surface with this notion whether it's observing the seasons, the stars, etc., and it's the idea that information gets pounded into us through cyclical encounters. Some have talked about this in terms of the spiral staircase in a tower where at each 90° turn you'll see a landscape that you saw three windows ago but you'll see it from a higher perspective. It seems to be that sort of thing.
Perhaps some of this has substance. I don't know. I will admit that the mystical arts, as with all things, possess both an intuitive part and an interpretative part. Even the Hindus understood that devotional practices in religion can bring one to a liberation and enlightenment, and this they called Bahkti yoga, the yoga of devotion, which is what those Hare Krisna movement is about. My point is, though I do not subscribe to,errr, practices that might have dubious premises for belief, such things may be effective in producing intuitive insight, intuition here being, in the end, what philosophical endeavor is all about. But, as you surmise, no doubt, I do subscribe to the art of jnana yoga, which is the power of disclosure through language and discourse.
Shestov would perhaps say to you that, given that all Truth with a capital 'T' belongs, if you will, to eternity (and this is a difficult point which I cannot make unless the reader has looked analytically at the matter: Truth, the truth of the ideas you present above, and the truth of any proposition set before us, is going to an interpretative affair. Talk about souls coming through the gate of Capricorn does present questions about what Capricorn is, what gates are, and so on. Existential analysis is looking "beneath" language as an emerging presentation of the world. It does not deny things are true and false, but it denies that if one interprets the world in terms that do not go to basic questions, then serious question begging does arise) then Truth has no meaning that is propositionally contained. But it can be quite meaningful indeed, deeply so, and this I call revelatory Truth, which is here, in our midst. The Buddhist tells us that we are already there, in the primordial enlightenment, but we do not know this in our everydayness. Heiddegger saw something in this, for his mission was to deliver philosophy from metaphysics gone astray and (re) discover those originary ideas of primordial disclosure.
Also you brought up karma in relationship to something I said above about one's sense of need to preserve moral control of their lives for the sake of their structure and longterm destiny - I don't think you were implying this but I'll still clarify since anytime I hear the word 'karma' in the western sense I'm used to hearing it used locally in the US and we've almost said 'Oh yeah - Yahweh rewards and punishes, so karma's what happens for being a good or bad boy or girl!'. Where I'm completely taken out of that frame, for what I've been following of IANDS, NDERF, etc. is not only increasing corroboration with Ian Stevenson's research on reincarnation but also the observation that people who get shot in the head often come back with a facial disfigurement of some type (there was a panel from back in 2018 moderated by John Cleese which had the usual top researchers on and they were discussing this in more detail). It seems like there's really no moral agency causing that to happen, the cheap and probably awful description I might give it is what the Victorians might have called an 'etheric body' or something of the like, who the f knows what it is exactly but the idea is that something holds a certain kind of structural memory and that's what we drag with us. Among many reasons why I wouldn't turn to alcoholism or smack to solve my problems this is clearly an additional factor - ie. die a wreck and like anyone else you have no clue what happens when you die but you equally die with much more uncertainty and a deep concern that you're not getting off the train in a good spot.
Karma I take to be a metaethical notion, essentially, but this requires a lot of explanation. I look at it in a more succinct way: take the law of sufficient reason/cause, which is apodictic (cannot be imagined to be wrong). Now see that this same kind of law applies to ethics, that is, just as there is a "law" (and keep in mind the spirit of Shestov here, for this a "law" is not a law at all, for laws belong to the apriori presuppositions that ASSUME the world is what we theorize it is) that insists effects must be preceded by causes, so the miseries of this world must be rectified. Redemption, according to this, is apodictic. It is a view I nearly abide by. But the details lie beyond philosophy. As to the reports of near death experiences, I certainly do take them seriously, for it is clear they are not lying. Now it could be that they're objectivity is compromised, remember, John Nash, the Beautiful Mind bio movie Princeton professor, did not know he was having delusions and hallucinations. But this is not to the real point, for one cannot be delusional about love and peace and the feeling of being home and the presence of divinity and impossibly expansive horizons of experience, and so on, which is what they talk about, in great numbers.
No, IANDS people, they are very interesting.
Some of the above might seem a bit off the topic of existentialism but - I think I'm trying to flesh out what's of importance to me in it, why I have the inclinations I do about endurance of either self or at least the same boiler plate or frame getting brought with you for another round, I hate to use the term 'physics' but it seems to be as cold, indifferent, and non-personal or non-religious when IANDS or UoV professors pour over it and that maps onto my observations that while this might be a universe where the underpinnings of matter are a conservative idealism it's a strange sort of mind - ie. one where perhaps that mind itself is just a vast subconscious plane in deep sleep with some areas of notably extreme activity such as we have here. For me existentialism, when we can use it to gain insight into how we relate to phenomena, really helps clear the dross out - which being brought up in most cultures around the world is probably 95% or better of what's out there that needs to be unlearned.
Existentialism can be dry and thick and opaque. To understand what they say requires deep engagement. The benefit is this: the world we are born into is overwhelmingly dominated the natural sciences, and serious thought without them is not taken, well, seriously. Kant has never never been read by our physicists and biologists (much less Derrida or Heidegger), and idealism is just a fantasy in their minds. These are our modern philosophical models, and who can blame them? After all, to see beyond this one has to read the most obscure s""t ever written. But if a person willing, the conditions for understanding Reality completelt change. We are no longer the issue of physics; rather, physics becomes an issue of us! The uncentered analyses of the world, becomes centered in the dramatic affairs a the actualities of an agency in-the-world. Front and center are not the trivial matters of data and inferences, but the grandeur and gravitas of living and dying, of facing our finitude in eternity, of our alienation and moral lack of foundation. The starting place is the here and now, and its structure. It's not that the Rosicrucians and other are disparaged, but that they are given a foundation of objective analysis. Heidegger is all about this. But he is embedded in others.
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Re: Existentialism anyone?

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anonymous66
I have my book in hand. How should we proceed?
You're talking about the Concept of Irony, by Kierkegaard? Or his Concept of Anxiety? The latter is much better. Irony will look at lot at Socrates, and as a thesis it assumes a lot of reading of Plato.
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Re: Existentialism anyone?

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Hereandnow wrote: March 20th, 2020, 12:17 pm
anonymous66
I have my book in hand. How should we proceed?
You're talking about the Concept of Irony, by Kierkegaard? Or his Concept of Anxiety? The latter is much better. Irony will look at lot at Socrates, and as a thesis it assumes a lot of reading of Plato.
I have the Concept of Anxiety- I've started reading the first chapter- but perhaps we should start with his introduction?
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Re: Existentialism anyone?

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anonymous66
I have the Concept of Anxiety- I've started reading the first chapter- but perhaps we should start with his introduction?
Really? You're going to read K? A few things to know. First, this is not a religious text. He uses the Biblical story as a heuristic to understand the self. As one proceeds into the text this becomes clear. Second, in this work K lays down many of the ideas found in 20th century existentialism. Interesting to go along and see where Sartre got his nothingness, where Heidegger got his concept of anxiety, and so on. And then, K is not an easy read here. Elsewhere, not so bad, but here, he shows little mercy. One has to have patience, for things do get clear.

the intro? Of course, let's look see. This was written in 1830 or so, long before Freud and modern psychology, so when K uses this term he doesn't refer to the familiar ideas. Psychology refers to phenomenology, or, the self's inherent structure presupposed by everydayness. I have the Alaster Hannay translation, and he offers his own intro. Pretty helpful if you want to read it, or perhaps you have a different text. Why not read some of what you have and tell me what you think? Anxiety (or dread, as some have it) is of a different sort here.
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Re: Existentialism anyone?

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I just wanted to mention that about 5 years ago, I enrolled in a MOOC on Kierkegaard from the University of Copenhagen (https://www.coursera.org/learn/kierkegaard). Here's what I remember/my impressions- Kierkegaard was turned off by the superficial Christianity of Denmark- a Christianity that suggested that all one had to do was to do what the Church said- and then one was "okay with God". Kierkegaard believed that one's subjective experiences trumped the objective rules instituted by the Church. He was also critical of Hegel- for the same reasons... Hegel had a carefully organized approach that downplayed the individual's subjective experiences.

I also started reading - but never finished- Joakim Garff's biography of Kierkegaard- What stood out to me was Kierkegaard's fear that he would die young- because his father cursed God. I also remember the fact that Kierkegaard was very "in your face" as a youngster- he enjoyed stirring up trouble... and that attitude appears to have continued on in his writing and adult life. There was also a satirical publication that would write satire about various well-know personalities- in rather a ruthless way. Kierkegaard invited them to satirize him, and then latter regretted it, because they concentrated on him in a series of articles in such a way that he felt harassed. I also remember the description of a time when Kierkegaard lit up his whole house and played loud music, in a apparent attempt to make people think he was entertaining a large group of people- when in fact he was the only person in the house. And of course, there was the engagement to Regine Olsen.

My overall impression is that Kierkegaard had a strong personality- and that he was committed to doing what he thought was right, no matter what people might think of him.

My copy of the Concept of Anxiety was translated and edited by, and has an introduction by Reidar Thomte (in collaboration with Albert B. Anderson). I'll read that introduction as well.
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Re: Existentialism anyone?

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I just wanted to mention that about 5 years ago, I enrolled in a MOOC on Kierkegaard from the University of Copenhagen (https://www.coursera.org/learn/kierkegaard). Here's what I remember/my impressions- Kierkegaard was turned off by the superficial Christianity of Denmark- a Christianity that suggested that all one had to do was to do what the Church said- and then one was "okay with God". Kierkegaard believed that one's subjective experiences trumped the objective rules instituted by the Church. He was also critical of Hegel- for the same reasons... Hegel had a carefully organized approach that downplayed the individual's subjective experiences.

I also started reading - but never finished- Joakim Garff's biography of Kierkegaard- What stood out to me was Kierkegaard's fear that he would die young- because his father cursed God. I also remember the fact that Kierkegaard was very "in your face" as a youngster- he enjoyed stirring up trouble... and that attitude appears to have continued on in his writing and adult life. There was also a satirical publication that would write satire about various well-know personalities- in rather a ruthless way. Kierkegaard invited them to satirize him, and then latter regretted it, because they concentrated on him in a series of articles in such a way that he felt harassed. I also remember the description of a time when Kierkegaard lit up his whole house and played loud music, in a apparent attempt to make people think he was entertaining a large group of people- when in fact he was the only person in the house. And of course, there was the engagement to Regine Olsen.

My overall impression is that Kierkegaard had a strong personality- and that he was committed to doing what he thought was right, no matter what people might think of him.

My copy of the Concept of Anxiety was translated and edited by, and has an introduction by Reidar Thomte (in collaboration with Albert B. Anderson). I'll read that introduction as well.

Yes, I've read about all of these, too, and I find him a fascinating person. But after the affair with Regina Olsen, which is alluded to in Either/Or and Repetition, he gets very pulled within himself, his room like a spiritual spiritual space of long "dark nights of inwardness" and he knew the kind of person her was, and that he had to spare Regina this. I did say Anxiety is not a religious text, but that is not quite true, is it--everything about K is religious, See his goal for the Christian in Fear and Trembling in the Knight of Faith who "from moment to moment" affirms faith in everyday affairs. But he is NOT talking about constant prayer or Biblical reciting or hope against hope; he has something very different in mind, something existentially grounded that has to do with his analysis of the structures of the self, which he thinks inherently, well, neurotic, if you will.

Of course, his revolt against Hegel, who was very popular at the time, is against Hegel's rationalism, but here, there is Kant prior to this. Hegel's great work is the Phenomenology of Spirit, and Kant's was The Critique of Pure Reason, both turn the universe inside out: all I perceive about me cannot be made sense of unless knowledge claims about it are considered to be in the essence of things I observe: at the level of basic assumptions, every time a ask what is true about this lamp on my desk, I am referred to the logic and sensory intuitions that make the observation possible at all.
The reason I bring this up is because Kierkegaard is objecting to the rationalism, but working within a self-conceiving world, a world where what is true is centered on an almost Cartesian self. K is NOT a Hobbsian materialist nor a rationalist. The point of philosophy is to explain the world at basic question, and the world where reason MEETS the actuality of the self, and this actuality is us, the brooding, anxious, joyful, and so on.

Kierkegaard was a genius, truly. And as with all such, one has to bend to him to understand him for he will not bend to us. There is also the problem of his writing so long ago, his resources are dated to us. Oh well. One has to read through where he is obscure to us, trusting that later on, he will be clear.
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Re: Existentialism anyone?

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I just finished the forward by the editors of the book- I'm a little intimidated because I know very little or nothing about some of the authors that influenced Kierkegaard (Schelling, Trendelenburg, Tennemann, Leibniz) and some the authors I do recognize (Kant, Hegel) are notoriously difficult to understand. At least I think I understand a little of Aristotle's and Descartes' writings. Perhaps if I keep reading Kierkegaard, and then also read some of those other authors at a later date, it will help me understand both Kierkegaard and that particular author- to a greater degree.

Of note- "Kierkegaard criticized the Cartesian principle of methodological doubt because it mistakenly gives more weight to reflection (thought) than it does to act (will)." He was influenced by Aristotle's notion that "change, motion is the actualization of the possible as far as it is possible." "Kierkegaard's primary criticism of Aristotle centers on his view that the real self resides in the thinking part of man, and that consequently the contemplative life constitutes man's highest happiness." "He does then agree with Aristotle that, strictly speaking, there is no scientific knowledge of human existence, since its essential qualification is one of freedom and not of necessity." There is also an indication of just how prolific a writer that K was- Anxiety was published on the same day as Prefaces- and just four days after his Philosophical Fragments- he also published his Two Upbuilding Discourses (UD), his Three UD and his Four UD the same year.

On Socrates' notion of "know yourself" - "Thus every human being possess, or is within himself, a complete expression of humanness, whose essential meaning cannot be gained from scientific studies. That is, neither rational speculation nor natural science will disclose to the existing individual his essential nature and purpose." - Again I'm reminded of Marcel- and his notion that some topics are a mystery because (to paraphrase Marcel) "they encroach on their own data". On the "qualtitative leap"- it's a "category outside the scope of scientific procedures and that its confirmation is therefore not reducible to the principles of verification assumed by the sciences."

The authors note that there is some disagreement about how much of an influence Hegel was on Kierkegaard (as opposed to the U of Copenhagen class which suggested that (a criticism of) Hegel was K's primary focus.

The authors note that his father's actions and the fear of reprisal (I'm sure that the interpretation that the early death's of some of his siblings were a form of retribution- also profoundly influenced Kierkegaard) from God caused Kierkegaard some anxiety- he had a complicated relationship to Christianity- he was attracted to it, and it also was a source of fear/anxiety. "it is in the Concept of Anxiety that Kierkegaard deals for the first time with 'anxiety over nothing' - that pregnant anxiety that is directed toward the future and that is a pristine element in every human being." - I wonder if this is the first time anyone wrote about the concept of anxiety. "These subtitles reflect the history of Kierkegaard's personal experience [with anxiety] and the extent to which these works represent an analysis of his own self." The authors also note that Tillich has a "parallel view" of anxiety as like a fear, but with no specific object. Anxiety is something that we humans cannot be cured of- we can only lesson its effects. "Similarly, Rollo May emphasizes that anxiety is not an affect among other affects, such as pleasure and sadness. It is an ontological characteristic of man, rooted in his very existence... Anxiety is a threat to the foundation and center of one's existence."

"Kierkegaard emphatically affirms the religious dimension of the self: 'The formula that describes the state of the self when despair is completely rooted out is this: in relating itself to itself and in willing to be itself, the self rests [or, has it's ground] transparently in the power that established it.' For Kierkegaard this power is God." "Although Kierkegaard's ontological structure of the self has influenced philosophers like Heidegger and Sartre and psychologists of the existential-analytical school, these thinkers do not accept the God-relation of the self."

"Although the tone is more direct and didactic than in his other pseudonymous works, the magnitude of the reflection surrounding the concept of anxiety requires the reader to examine every pertinent implication in order to arrive at an increasingly profound and multidimensioned awareness of what anxiety is. Such is the kind of reflection that provides the approach to self-knowledge, and such, therefore, is the character of Kierkegaard's dialectic."

I'm interested in the psychological angle- I'm intrigued by existential psychology- I've read quite a bit of Irwin Yalom. "His [K's] is a phenomenology that is based on an ontological view of man, the fundamental presupposition of which is the transcendent reality of the individual, whose intuitively discernible character reveals the existence of an eternal component...." - that sounds a lot like Gabriel Marcel- I wonder if Marcel come up with the virtually identical conclusion on his own- or if he was influenced by K. "Such a psychology does not blend well with any purely empirical science and is best understood regarding soma, psyche, and spirit as the principal determinants of the human structure, with the first two belonging to the temporal realm and the third to the eternal."
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Re: Existentialism anyone?

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anonymous66

I just finished the forward by the editors of the book- I'm a little intimidated because I know very little or nothing about some of the authors that influenced Kierkegaard (Schelling, Trendelenburg, Tennemann, Leibniz) and some the authors I do recognize (Kant, Hegel) are notoriously difficult to understand. At least I think I understand a little of Aristotle's and Descartes' writings. Perhaps if I keep reading Kierkegaard, and then also read some of those other authors at a later date, it will help me understand both Kierkegaard and that particular author- to a greater degree.

Of note- "Kierkegaard criticized the Cartesian principle of methodological doubt because it mistakenly gives more weight to reflection (thought) than it does to act (will)." He was influenced by Aristotle's notion that "change, motion is the actualization of the possible as far as it is possible." "Kierkegaard's primary criticism of Aristotle centers on his view that the real self resides in the thinking part of man, and that consequently the contemplative life constitutes man's highest happiness." "He does then agree with Aristotle that, strictly speaking, there is no scientific knowledge of human existence, since its essential qualification is one of freedom and not of necessity." There is also an indication of just how prolific a writer that K was- Anxiety was published on the same day as Prefaces- and just four days after his Philosophical Fragments- he also published his Two Upbuilding Discourses (UD), his Three UD and his Four UD the same year.

On Socrates' notion of "know yourself" - "Thus every human being possess, or is within himself, a complete expression of humanness, whose essential meaning cannot be gained from scientific studies. That is, neither rational speculation nor natural science will disclose to the existing individual his essential nature and purpose." - Again I'm reminded of Marcel- and his notion that some topics are a mystery because (to paraphrase Marcel) "they encroach on their own data". On the "qualtitative leap"- it's a "category outside the scope of scientific procedures and that its confirmation is therefore not reducible to the principles of verification assumed by the sciences."

The authors note that there is some disagreement about how much of an influence Hegel was on Kierkegaard (as opposed to the U of Copenhagen class which suggested that (a criticism of) Hegel was K's primary focus.

The authors note that his father's actions and the fear of reprisal (I'm sure that the interpretation that the early death's of some of his siblings were a form of retribution- also profoundly influenced Kierkegaard) from God caused Kierkegaard some anxiety- he had a complicated relationship to Christianity- he was attracted to it, and it also was a source of fear/anxiety. "it is in the Concept of Anxiety that Kierkegaard deals for the first time with 'anxiety over nothing' - that pregnant anxiety that is directed toward the future and that is a pristine element in every human being." - I wonder if this is the first time anyone wrote about the concept of anxiety. "These subtitles reflect the history of Kierkegaard's personal experience [with anxiety] and the extent to which these works represent an analysis of his own self." The authors also note that Tillich has a "parallel view" of anxiety as like a fear, but with no specific object. Anxiety is something that we humans cannot be cured of- we can only lesson its effects. "Similarly, Rollo May emphasizes that anxiety is not an affect among other affects, such as pleasure and sadness. It is an ontological characteristic of man, rooted in his very existence... Anxiety is a threat to the foundation and center of one's existence."

"Kierkegaard emphatically affirms the religious dimension of the self: 'The formula that describes the state of the self when despair is completely rooted out is this: in relating itself to itself and in willing to be itself, the self rests [or, has it's ground] transparently in the power that established it.' For Kierkegaard this power is God." "Although Kierkegaard's ontological structure of the self has influenced philosophers like Heidegger and Sartre and psychologists of the existential-analytical school, these thinkers do not accept the God-relation of the self."

"Although the tone is more direct and didactic than in his other pseudonymous works, the magnitude of the reflection surrounding the concept of anxiety requires the reader to examine every pertinent implication in order to arrive at an increasingly profound and multidimensioned awareness of what anxiety is. Such is the kind of reflection that provides the approach to self-knowledge, and such, therefore, is the character of Kierkegaard's dialectic."

I'm interested in the psychological angle- I'm intrigued by existential psychology- I've read quite a bit of Irwin Yalom. "His [K's] is a phenomenology that is based on an ontological view of man, the fundamental presupposition of which is the transcendent reality of the individual, whose intuitively discernible character reveals the existence of an eternal component...." - that sounds a lot like Gabriel Marcel- I wonder if Marcel come up with the virtually identical conclusion on his own- or if he was influenced by K. "Such a psychology does not blend well with any purely empirical science and is best understood regarding soma, psyche, and spirit as the principal determinants of the human structure, with the first two belonging to the temporal realm and the third to the eternal."
Of course, there is no way I can respond to all of this. Kierkegaard has to be allowed to speak for himself. And of course, the professional philosophers who wrote these comments are not to be second guessed by me. A will say they all of the above will be made fairly clear, or clearer after the reading and studying. A couple of things I could say, though:

Regarding the Cartesianism, it is the epistemology that is going to undo assumptions about the ontological status of the natural sciences' world, but K does not give a methodical presentation of structure of reason like Kant or Hegel. He does proceed dialectically. Even his analysis of the self, and see especially that annoying bit of exposition at the beginning of his sickness Unto Death (it's online) where his dialectics are clearly both a mockery of Hegel and an employment of Hegel. Anyway, we will see that the ideas in Anxiety culminate in his conception of freedom, existential freedom. One must think within an existential structure of time and put aside spatial paradigms that tend to rule science. One has to know this as basic: the world is not Being, but Becoming, for we are Becoming, ideas and perceptions are not simply there, they come into Being. Indeed, and this is quite a profound idea in the literature of the 20th C., Being, the isness of all that is, has never been witnessed, ever. Seeing, thinking, observing, all of this is set in a temporal framework, and the in the confirmation of any given moment there lies a history that comes into Becoming, asserts itself, thereby "creating a future, and this endless process of turning past into future we call the present. The Being of the present, the authentic present is lost in this. Regaining it is, for K, the discovery of God in the eternal present.

K adores Socrates and considers him a model. It is his Socratic irony that he finds important, for irony has to understood as the contrary, the opposition, even the dialectic. All things before us possess their opposition if one, like Socrates in his gadfly nuisance persona, is able to inquire, and nothing stands apart from this. Socates famously put all the noble men of wealth and distinction in their place just by asking questions (pretending he didn't know) , which is something Nietzsche hated him for, and revealing they knew nothing. Also, there is the Maieutic method. I think K thought of himself as a kind of Socratic midwife in his writing.

As far as "the fundamental presupposition of which is the transcendent reality of the individual, whose intuitively discernible character reveals the existence of an eternal component" goes, this book is well worth the effort, more than this. But it won't be easy, I say again. You have already seen how his references are off putting. One has to read through these. Let's talk about them as encountered.

No doubt Gabriel Marcel was influenced by K. Everyone was in this field. Let me look up Marcel. I don't have any of his texts, but I do have a few essays.
anonymous66
Posts: 439
Joined: January 12th, 2018, 4:01 pm

Re: Existentialism anyone?

Post by anonymous66 »

Now on to K's preface-

He says that before one writes about a topic- one ought to read what others have written on the subject. If he does find someone who has written "exhaustively and satisfactorily" on the subject, then he ought to rejoice (perhaps alluding to the parable of the ten virgins in Matthew 25- a parable about the importance of being prepared). K suggests that he did a lot of preparation- and wrote in joyful solitude and quietness- and he hopes others will also derive joy by reading it. He suggests that he published the book in a carefree & humble spirit- as if he had written the book in a way that would allow all future generations to be blessed by his book (perhaps alluding to Genesis 12:3-
I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.” )
He notes that "each generation has its own task and need not trouble itself unduly by being everything to previous and succeeding generations. Each day's trouble is enough for that day (alluding to Matthew 6:34)- and each individual ought to concentrate on taking care of himself- he need not worry about the whole contemporary age, like a worrying father- he need not assume or worry that his book will be start of a new era. Not everyone who attempts an endeavor is up to the task- not everyone who shouts "Lord, Lord" will enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 7:21). Because K realizes this, as an author he approaches his work with "fear and trembling" (I Corinthians 2:3)- like Paul did when he visited the Corinthian church, K approaches us as an author with no claims.

I don't get why he says he will gladly assume the name "Christen Madsen". And I don't quite get what K means when he says "nothing could please me more than to be regarded as a layman who indeed speculates but is still far removed from speculation" or "I am a fetish worshipper and will worship anyone with equal piety..." That second to last paragraph is puzzling. The gist of it seems to be that K is downplaying his own authority. Is it just the case that K is saying "this is the way things look to me- but these are, after all is said and done, merely my own observations?"
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