If Nietzsche is a philosopher, what even is philosophy? Whatever else it is, it must involve knowledge of the deeper reality beneath appearances. Although I suppose there are philosophers who argue that deep down, reality is as it appears to be. Nevertheless,
The universe is important if it is appearance, and insignificant if it is reality.
In other words, it is important if there is a reality behind its appearance, otherwise its appearance is totally insignificant. For
When things appear to us to be just what they are, they soon seem to be even less.
But I think Plato got the basic idea right: there is intra-cave and extra-cave knowledge, and the latter is philosophy. The cave could be appearances, the senses, science, opinion, journalism, etc., but beneath or above these is reality.
Or maybe what we call reality is a kind of dialectic that takes place in the space between appearance and (upper case) Reality. We can never know the latter per se -- otherwise we would be God -- but we can be closer or farther away. This would be consistent with Voegelin's view that consciousness abides between the ineradicable poles of immanence and transcendence.
These latter two aren't so much literal "places" as directions, so to speak, like north and south. No matter how far north one goes, there is always a northward pole.
Unless one is sitting on top of the world looking down on creation, in which case there is wonder in most everything we see. But I won't be surprised if it's a dream, since reality is not a three-dimensional sphere, rather, an inexhaustible n-dimensional plenum, so the dream never ends, although we're always waking to it.
Jesus was a carpenter.
Shut-up Petey.
What we've just sketched out reminds me of the distinction between conscious (CS) and unconscious (UCS) minds. Freud conceptualized a bright line between them, like the surface of an ocean. But in reality, these two are always dialectically related to one another: there's a little UCS in every CS experience, much like the symbol of the Tao Te Coon:
Like right now, I'm typing my thoughts, but where are the thoughts coming from? Where are they going? What is their source? To be perfectly honest, no one knows, and if they did, how boring would that be? For there would be no novelty, creativity, or surprisal, just a machine-like inevitability.
The latter, taken to the extreme, results in something like behaviorism, in which there is no interior mind, rather, just exterior behavior. Or, one might say exteriority with no interiority, which is another name for absurdity -- like a house with no inside.
It seems our thoughts are prior to the thinker, or rather, these two are always in relation. And who is the thinker? Just a guy trying to organize his unbidden thoughts, I suppose.
Now, if God is not a thing but an "event," then we shouldn't be surprised that we are too. I like "event" over "process," because it implies a kind of singular entity, although not in a completely atemporal way. Analogously, World War II was a singular event, but it took six years for it to play out.
This adverts to the two sides of creation, which I suppose from Godsend is a single episode but from mansend is an unfolding... something. The point is that it unfolds, the "it" being the event of creation. And apparently this event isn't over. Indeed, we are participating in it as we speak, and cannot not participate in it.
For the ancients, philosophy was not so much a doctrine as a way of life. And this way of life -- alluding to the paragraph above -- seems to be a conscious participation in reality, whereas the non-philosopher participates in reality in an unreflective manner, much like any other animal. Our thought can never be in perfect conformity to the Real, but it's fun to try.
Again, the alternative is eternal boredom:
Happily, the world is inexplicable. (What kind of world would it be if it could be explained by man?)
Correct: a boring world. Supposing we could know it all, that would be the end of the game, likewise if we couldn't know reality at all. We're always in this ambiguous in-between state, hence the fun -- the metaphysical adventure. Have we gotten anywhere over these last twenty years of blogging? Yes and no, for they say that to travel well is better than to arrive:
Watts in the pipe, Alan? But even without pot, philosophy is alive; it is the very life of the mind, no? Call it the metabolism of reality, which can't be swallowed in a single bite or smoked in a single bowl.
So, philosophy is thinking about reality. Is Dávila a philosopher? Yes, if painters are philosophers, and why not?:
Now, can an atheist be a philosopher? For it seems that atheism is not a theory, rather, a necessary consequence of some prior ontological commitment such as metaphysical naturalism. It's not even a belief (or unbelief), just the entailment of a prior principle.
The question is, how did you come up with this principle, and why are you committed to it? For the first seems arbitrary, the second subjective. And arbitrary + subjective = crazy in most any other context.
It also ignores the question of why there should be metaphysical principles from which entailments logically follow, and how man could ever know them, supposing he is a wholly immanent and naturalistic being.
In other words, if man were a wholly material phenomenon, then by definition he could never know it. Whatever else a principle is, it isn't material. Nor is the one who knows and accedes to the principle.
In short, we can know we are material, which means we can't be. That is to say, there is something that transcends materiality in the merest knowledge of matter. Immanence can deny transcendence, but in so doing affirms it.
Atheists like to pretend they are rational, but reason cannot furnish the premises upon which it operates. Rather, we must choose the premises on some other nonrational -- which is not to say irrational -- basis. It can be intuition, or authority, or some kind of tacit knowing a la Polanyi, etc.
Take the classic example: all men are mortal and Socrates is a man, ergo Socrates is mortal. The form of the syllogism is prior to what we plug into it. Now, what if man has an immortal soul? Obviously the syllogism can't tell us one way or the other.
But if the human soul is immaterial and the immaterial isn't subject to decay or decomposition, then we've used another syllogism to disprove the first, and prove that Socrates isn't mortal after all.
Besides, he didn't think so -- he believed in the soul's immortality -- so he would be the first to disagree with the conclusion of any syllogism that uses logic to deny his transcendental slack.
But in olden times, an atheist was someone who didn't believe in and honor the local gods. By this criteria I am am atheist, since I don't believe in climate change, transgenderism, or Saint George Floyd.
Certainly atheism supposes a godlike ability to pronounce on the nature of reality. But in the end it's just the same old immanence denying transcendence, or thoughts denying the thinker -- the thinker again being situated between immanence and transcendence.
Well, once again a post that has gone nowhere, but it was fun to get there. Was it fun for you, Gemini?
This text presents a meandering, yet engaging, exploration of philosophy, reality, and the human condition.
I'll take that: meandering yet engaging.
The text is a philosophical exploration that embraces ambiguity and mystery. It challenges conventional assumptions about reality, knowledge, and the human condition.
The author employs a conversational and introspective style, inviting the reader to engage in their own philosophical reflections. The frequent use of metaphors and analogies enhances the text's evocative power.
The author's critique of atheism and materialism reveals a leaning towards a more transcendent and spiritual worldview. The text is very much a stream of thought, and does not try to hide that.
Pay no attention to the stream, so long as it flows toward the ocean.
4 comments:
“Eric Voegelin's work does not lay out a program of reform, or offer a doctrine of recovery from what he termed the ‘demono-maniacal’ in modern politics. However, interspersed in his writings is the idea of a spiritual recovery of the primary experiences of divine order. He was not interested so much in what religious dogmas might result in personal salvation, but rather a recovery of the human in the classical sense of the ‘daimonios aner’ (Plato's term for ‘the spiritual man’). He did not speculate on the institutional forms in which a spiritual recovery might take place, but expressed confidence that the current 500-year cycle of secularism would come to an end because, as he stated, ‘you cannot deny the human forever’.”
Voegelin had many great ideas, but you need to identify and pluck them from a sort of diffuse and monotonous firehose that neither builds nor ebbs, and doesn't announce that THS IS REALLY IMPORTANT. In other words, he could have used an editor, but he was probably too intimidating.
Instead of being a pointillist like Davila, he tossed whole cans of paint on the canvas like Pollack.
Or in the parlance of the times, Pollock.
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