From Goodreads
Amerika: The Missing Person
Franz Kafka
I'm not sure how to describe Amerika by Franz Kafka. Through what lens do I see the work? On the one hand it seems like it's a story about Karl, the main character, and his struggles against the fates. In that way Karl seems like Odysseus and each episode in Karl's life is another obstacle between he and his home. But, if it's a travelogue style book, Karl seems much more like Candide than anything Homeric. The suffering in this book seems more intense than in Voltaire, but Karl is just as naive and optimistic. It's a strange mixture of cheery fatalism and abject horror. Maybe it's the plodding pace of Amerika that allows the reader to feel each injustice and injury Karl faces that gave me the crawlies, but Kafka's meanderings have a more devastating effect than Voltaire's relentless pace. The ending, with Karl being rewarded for accepting his fate with biscuits from Delamarche and Brunelda seems like a perverse, if fitting iteration of one's citrons and pistachios.
But, I often compare books I like with Candide, still one of my favorites. Delamarche and Robinson don't have quite as good of a reflection in Candide so I won't try to and shoehorn it in here. I loved this book, but I can't help thinking about how incredibly sad Kafka's works are. I was glad it ended, for Karl's sake. Even in the fragments (as Kafka never actually finished the book) I found myself grimacing as to what horrors awaited Karl in Oklahoma. Mercifully, I can imagine that he and Fanny lived a happy life out there, but I fear that Delamarche, or the specter of his uncle would somehow have robbed Karl of pleasant circumstances. The question I don't have the answer for though is could a Delamarche or his uncle or any rapidly deteriorating situation ever have robbed Karl of his spirit? In a way, Karl could be seen as a saint in Camus' views. He stared at the absurd and remained firm, seeking neither negation nor escape. He simply accepted fate and went about his business.
Showing posts with label Camus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Camus. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 12, 2019
Thursday, July 28, 2016
Assessment of Fahrenheit 451
I finished Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 a few weeks ago. Incredibly, I had never read this before. Maybe my copy had been burnt somewhere along the way by accident. Ha.
I would have given the book three and a half stars, but Goodreads does not provide me with the opportunity of awarding half stars. Therefore I gave it four because three seemed too low to give such a classic. The story is great and some of the mind-numbing technology Bradbury describes in the book is eerily similar to what we have achieved in the last fifteen years as a modern society. The story itself obviously stands alone on its own merits, but what I found most fascinating was the blurbs at the end where Bradbury discusses the work in his afterword and coda.
I found the book a bit boring in the beginning. It wasn't until Beatty showed up at Montag's house that I started to really enjoy the book and get into it.
When the fire chief Beatty and Montag were conversing about the dangers of society I found myself amazed at some of the things Beatty said. For instance, "'Now let's take up the minorities in our civilization, shall we? Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don't step on the toes of the dog lovers, the cat lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All the minor minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did. Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca. Books, so the damned snobbish critics said, were dishwater. No wonder books stopped selling, the critics said. But the public, knowing what it wanted, spinning happily let the comic books survive" (Bradbury, 57). The magazines have become a nice blend of vanilla tapioca. Who reads nowadays? Society is keen on the entertainment focus. Just look at the news. A couple seconds of important stuff. A couple seconds of shit that's going on somewhere far far away. The rest of the program is mindless hollywood things and advertising.
The stamping out of individuality is the scariest thing I saw reflected in the first part of the book. Again, Beatty is talking to Montag about the best things that a homogenized society brings us. "We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of the other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against" (Bradbury, 58). We are bombarded with a new equality movement. Let us recreate America in a new image where individuality is paramount as long as your individuality conforms to the new societal norms we are imposing.
Most of what is good in Bradbury's book is his overall story and his scarily accurate dystopian take on the future. Occasionally though his actual writing caught my eye. Usually with something short, crisp and staccato. Again, from Beatty and Montag's conversation. "Forget them. Burn all, burn everything. Fire is bright and fire is clean" (Bradbury, 60). Clean. Bright. Concise. Cutting.
In a sense Bradbury echoes French existentialists. He sees life as it is. The struggle. He takes pride in the struggle. His heroes, the walking libraries explain to Montag towards the end, "Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away" (Bradbury, 157). But, Bradbury is not Camus. Camus is French. Camus extols the virtuousness of Prometheus as he strides down defiantly, proudly after the rock has rolled down the hill. In Camus, life is pointless, repetitive and struggle. The glory is in the doing regardless of the worth. Bradbury is American. Americans, at least for most of our history, are more optimistic (for better or worse). Bradbury also has his walking libraries claim, "But that's the wonderful thing about man; he never gets so discouraged or disgusted that he gives up doing it all over again, because he knows very well it is important and worth the doing" (Bradbury, 153). It's not Prometheus pushing the boulder up the hill for all eternity and then taking pride in walking down after the rock to do it again ad infinitum. It's Prometheus pushing that stupid rock up that stupid hill over and over for what seems like ad infinitum because eventually he'll get it right. He'll push that boulder over the top and it'll roll down the other way.
Bradbury wrote in his afterword about his book on censorship being ironically censored. That coda and afterword were fascinating but his final response to it I found most telling. "For it is a mad world and it will get madder if we allow the minorities, be they dwarf or giant, orangutan or dolphin, nuclear head or water conversationalist, pro-computerologists or Neo-Luddite, simpleton or sage, to interfere with aesthetics. The real world is the playing ground for each and every group, to make or unmake laws. But the tip of the nose of my book or stories or poems is where their rights end and my territorial imperatives begin, run and rule. If Mormons do not like my plays, let them write their own. If the Irish hate my Dublin stories, let them rent typewriters. If teachers and grammar school editors find my jawbreaker sentences shatter their mush milk teeth, let them eat stale cake dunked in weak tea of their own ungodly manufacture. If the Chicano intellectuals wish to re-cut my "Wonderful Ice Cream Suit" so it shapes "Zoot," may the belt unravel and the pants fall" (Bradbury, 178). Bradbury's dystopian future is eerie because of some of the technology he describes and the effect it had on man. We have become somewhat enslaved to the lives of Hollywood. They are our families coming into our parlors. His book is scary because of how right he is on how censorship is creeping into our society. We don't run the risk of a dictator coming out and banning the books by fiat. Our society is much to fractured for that. One group would ban a book and everyone from the other side would pick it up and hail it as the next classic. Our society is fractured because of segmentation. We have been segmented by the advertisers. Anything that will upset one group, however minor the minority may be, must be censored through cultural reprogramming and shaming. Censorship will come in slowly and then we will no longer need books because books are offensive. The ideas in them are too dangerous and therefore we will seek safer options. Bradbury was right. We have embraced the comic books recently. They're safe. We have embraced the magazines. (Yahoo! Facebook. Hellogiggles. Daily updates about the Kardashian-Swift feud, etc. etc.) This stuff is safe. This stuff is neat. Clean. Everything else. Burn it.
I would have given the book three and a half stars, but Goodreads does not provide me with the opportunity of awarding half stars. Therefore I gave it four because three seemed too low to give such a classic. The story is great and some of the mind-numbing technology Bradbury describes in the book is eerily similar to what we have achieved in the last fifteen years as a modern society. The story itself obviously stands alone on its own merits, but what I found most fascinating was the blurbs at the end where Bradbury discusses the work in his afterword and coda.
I found the book a bit boring in the beginning. It wasn't until Beatty showed up at Montag's house that I started to really enjoy the book and get into it.
When the fire chief Beatty and Montag were conversing about the dangers of society I found myself amazed at some of the things Beatty said. For instance, "'Now let's take up the minorities in our civilization, shall we? Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don't step on the toes of the dog lovers, the cat lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All the minor minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did. Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca. Books, so the damned snobbish critics said, were dishwater. No wonder books stopped selling, the critics said. But the public, knowing what it wanted, spinning happily let the comic books survive" (Bradbury, 57). The magazines have become a nice blend of vanilla tapioca. Who reads nowadays? Society is keen on the entertainment focus. Just look at the news. A couple seconds of important stuff. A couple seconds of shit that's going on somewhere far far away. The rest of the program is mindless hollywood things and advertising.
The stamping out of individuality is the scariest thing I saw reflected in the first part of the book. Again, Beatty is talking to Montag about the best things that a homogenized society brings us. "We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of the other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against" (Bradbury, 58). We are bombarded with a new equality movement. Let us recreate America in a new image where individuality is paramount as long as your individuality conforms to the new societal norms we are imposing.
Most of what is good in Bradbury's book is his overall story and his scarily accurate dystopian take on the future. Occasionally though his actual writing caught my eye. Usually with something short, crisp and staccato. Again, from Beatty and Montag's conversation. "Forget them. Burn all, burn everything. Fire is bright and fire is clean" (Bradbury, 60). Clean. Bright. Concise. Cutting.
In a sense Bradbury echoes French existentialists. He sees life as it is. The struggle. He takes pride in the struggle. His heroes, the walking libraries explain to Montag towards the end, "Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away" (Bradbury, 157). But, Bradbury is not Camus. Camus is French. Camus extols the virtuousness of Prometheus as he strides down defiantly, proudly after the rock has rolled down the hill. In Camus, life is pointless, repetitive and struggle. The glory is in the doing regardless of the worth. Bradbury is American. Americans, at least for most of our history, are more optimistic (for better or worse). Bradbury also has his walking libraries claim, "But that's the wonderful thing about man; he never gets so discouraged or disgusted that he gives up doing it all over again, because he knows very well it is important and worth the doing" (Bradbury, 153). It's not Prometheus pushing the boulder up the hill for all eternity and then taking pride in walking down after the rock to do it again ad infinitum. It's Prometheus pushing that stupid rock up that stupid hill over and over for what seems like ad infinitum because eventually he'll get it right. He'll push that boulder over the top and it'll roll down the other way.
Bradbury wrote in his afterword about his book on censorship being ironically censored. That coda and afterword were fascinating but his final response to it I found most telling. "For it is a mad world and it will get madder if we allow the minorities, be they dwarf or giant, orangutan or dolphin, nuclear head or water conversationalist, pro-computerologists or Neo-Luddite, simpleton or sage, to interfere with aesthetics. The real world is the playing ground for each and every group, to make or unmake laws. But the tip of the nose of my book or stories or poems is where their rights end and my territorial imperatives begin, run and rule. If Mormons do not like my plays, let them write their own. If the Irish hate my Dublin stories, let them rent typewriters. If teachers and grammar school editors find my jawbreaker sentences shatter their mush milk teeth, let them eat stale cake dunked in weak tea of their own ungodly manufacture. If the Chicano intellectuals wish to re-cut my "Wonderful Ice Cream Suit" so it shapes "Zoot," may the belt unravel and the pants fall" (Bradbury, 178). Bradbury's dystopian future is eerie because of some of the technology he describes and the effect it had on man. We have become somewhat enslaved to the lives of Hollywood. They are our families coming into our parlors. His book is scary because of how right he is on how censorship is creeping into our society. We don't run the risk of a dictator coming out and banning the books by fiat. Our society is much to fractured for that. One group would ban a book and everyone from the other side would pick it up and hail it as the next classic. Our society is fractured because of segmentation. We have been segmented by the advertisers. Anything that will upset one group, however minor the minority may be, must be censored through cultural reprogramming and shaming. Censorship will come in slowly and then we will no longer need books because books are offensive. The ideas in them are too dangerous and therefore we will seek safer options. Bradbury was right. We have embraced the comic books recently. They're safe. We have embraced the magazines. (Yahoo! Facebook. Hellogiggles. Daily updates about the Kardashian-Swift feud, etc. etc.) This stuff is safe. This stuff is neat. Clean. Everything else. Burn it.
Saturday, February 28, 2015
The Absurd Race
In some science fiction work I need to incorporate a bunch of different philosophies and place them in a constructed world. One of the races needs to be built on Camus' ideal of the absurd Man
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Notes on Dreadful Freedom
(Originally Written October 22, 2009 in The Journal)
OK Ashley, you've heard my sob stories about loneliness and depression and this new unrequited love. You've heard of the destruction of my body, the breaking of my heart and the crushing of my soul. But now let's witness my glory - my mind. How about some philosophy.
Dreadful Freedom
Marjorie Grene
Chapter 1 - Why existentialism
Existentialists insist on their essential optimism that man makes himself.
Existentialism in a sense is a reaction against the speculative idealism of Hegel.
Existentialism comes from Kierkegaard's phrase "existential dialectic".
In existentialism, existence is prior to essence. This means that the consciousness of one's own soul comes before anything else becomes clear.
Existentialism revolts against system building and focuses on more pressing human concerns.
The relation of cause to effect is measured by the efficacy of an act.
The relation of cause and effect is indistinguishable from means and end.
Sartre and Dewey (pragmatists) criticize philosophies of the past for stabilizing the norms that kept ruling parties in power.
Pragmatism and existentialism are similar in aim at first glance.
Sartre resets values from past to future. The past value is an emphasis on the bourgeois privilege whereas if values are set with the future in mind it leads to revolution.
Pragmatism fails though because fact cannot produce value. Science cannot distinguish between good and evil.
Value for Sartre lies between the way things are and the way things ought to be. The success of man (and failure) lies between the thing as it is and the thing as it should be.
The perception between the way things are and the way they should be is the fundamental insight of existential philosophy.
Values are created solely by the acts of man. What they take as good or bad, beautiful or ugly in their quest to give meaning to a meaningless world.
Positivistic ethics aims at being descriptive not normative.
As in Kantian ethics, existentialists claim there is no good or evil apart from will and there is no will without freedom.
Existentialism does not derive values from mere facts.
Some existentialists demand a return to faith in the Christian God as a necessary way out of our present moral chaos (Marcel & Kierkegaard).
Atheistic existentialists however claim that the return to the Christian God is removing the freedom of man and basing values once again on facts, though these facts are not sense-data but cosmic in origin.
Chapter 2: Soren Kierkegaard: The self against the system
The aim of Kierkegaard, his one problem was: to find out where the misunderstanding lies between speculation and Christianity.
Kierkegaard believed that the misunderstanding had its roots in the nature of personal existence.
Kierkegaard's work has a slight anti-scientific tone but it is really a revolt against Hegelian speculation.
Camus had a very strong anti-scientific tone.
Kierkegaard worries that by focusing on physiology and explaining the whole man in its scope will cause man to lose sight of the important field of ethics.
Kierkegaard argues that the system in never capable of explaining existence until it is complete and thus becoming timeless. Existence as it is happening is never complete and thus, the system is incapable of explaining existence.
Kierkegaard criticizes the systematizers by claiming that they build a palace to live next door in the barn.
The system builders acquire far flung knowledge and ignore the simple understanding of one's self, which is the only important understand.
The system, in its grandeur is deceiving. It uses wordy logical fallacies to appear logical.
Kierkegaard does not propound an orthodox form of Christianity. He denies any "objective truth of Christianity", instead stating the whole problem for every serious Christian is their own path to faith.
Kierkegaard focuses on the inwardness of the subjective journey of the one real entity (the individual) to the infinite being, known by faith.
Kierkegaard turns from the impersonal and trivial truths (though consistent) to the passionate truth realized only subjectively and meaningful. This truth is meaningful because it is contradictory.
By embracing total subjectivity, Kierkegaard renounced all abstraction and left only contradiction and paradox. Since abstraction is gone one cannot transfer through words one's experience to another. paradox is the only way and this is indirect communication.
Philosophy for Kierkegaard, like Kant is focused on the question, what is man? It deals with human problems, not the essence of cosmic reality.
Kierkegaard relies heavily on Plato, not Neo-Platonism, but the Dialogues themselves.
Kierkegaard states we live, or ought to live, in the awareness that here and now may be our last moment.
Existentialism focuses on the contingency of life.
Existentialism pays close attention to the meaninglessness that continually underlies the significance in human life.
OK Ashley, you've heard my sob stories about loneliness and depression and this new unrequited love. You've heard of the destruction of my body, the breaking of my heart and the crushing of my soul. But now let's witness my glory - my mind. How about some philosophy.
Dreadful Freedom
Marjorie Grene
Chapter 1 - Why existentialism
Existentialists insist on their essential optimism that man makes himself.
Existentialism in a sense is a reaction against the speculative idealism of Hegel.
Existentialism comes from Kierkegaard's phrase "existential dialectic".
In existentialism, existence is prior to essence. This means that the consciousness of one's own soul comes before anything else becomes clear.
Existentialism revolts against system building and focuses on more pressing human concerns.
The relation of cause to effect is measured by the efficacy of an act.
The relation of cause and effect is indistinguishable from means and end.
Sartre and Dewey (pragmatists) criticize philosophies of the past for stabilizing the norms that kept ruling parties in power.
Pragmatism and existentialism are similar in aim at first glance.
Sartre resets values from past to future. The past value is an emphasis on the bourgeois privilege whereas if values are set with the future in mind it leads to revolution.
Pragmatism fails though because fact cannot produce value. Science cannot distinguish between good and evil.
Value for Sartre lies between the way things are and the way things ought to be. The success of man (and failure) lies between the thing as it is and the thing as it should be.
The perception between the way things are and the way they should be is the fundamental insight of existential philosophy.
Values are created solely by the acts of man. What they take as good or bad, beautiful or ugly in their quest to give meaning to a meaningless world.
Positivistic ethics aims at being descriptive not normative.
As in Kantian ethics, existentialists claim there is no good or evil apart from will and there is no will without freedom.
Existentialism does not derive values from mere facts.
Some existentialists demand a return to faith in the Christian God as a necessary way out of our present moral chaos (Marcel & Kierkegaard).
Atheistic existentialists however claim that the return to the Christian God is removing the freedom of man and basing values once again on facts, though these facts are not sense-data but cosmic in origin.
Chapter 2: Soren Kierkegaard: The self against the system
The aim of Kierkegaard, his one problem was: to find out where the misunderstanding lies between speculation and Christianity.
Kierkegaard believed that the misunderstanding had its roots in the nature of personal existence.
Kierkegaard's work has a slight anti-scientific tone but it is really a revolt against Hegelian speculation.
Camus had a very strong anti-scientific tone.
Kierkegaard worries that by focusing on physiology and explaining the whole man in its scope will cause man to lose sight of the important field of ethics.
Kierkegaard argues that the system in never capable of explaining existence until it is complete and thus becoming timeless. Existence as it is happening is never complete and thus, the system is incapable of explaining existence.
Kierkegaard criticizes the systematizers by claiming that they build a palace to live next door in the barn.
The system builders acquire far flung knowledge and ignore the simple understanding of one's self, which is the only important understand.
The system, in its grandeur is deceiving. It uses wordy logical fallacies to appear logical.
Kierkegaard does not propound an orthodox form of Christianity. He denies any "objective truth of Christianity", instead stating the whole problem for every serious Christian is their own path to faith.
Kierkegaard focuses on the inwardness of the subjective journey of the one real entity (the individual) to the infinite being, known by faith.
Kierkegaard turns from the impersonal and trivial truths (though consistent) to the passionate truth realized only subjectively and meaningful. This truth is meaningful because it is contradictory.
By embracing total subjectivity, Kierkegaard renounced all abstraction and left only contradiction and paradox. Since abstraction is gone one cannot transfer through words one's experience to another. paradox is the only way and this is indirect communication.
Philosophy for Kierkegaard, like Kant is focused on the question, what is man? It deals with human problems, not the essence of cosmic reality.
Kierkegaard relies heavily on Plato, not Neo-Platonism, but the Dialogues themselves.
Kierkegaard states we live, or ought to live, in the awareness that here and now may be our last moment.
Existentialism focuses on the contingency of life.
Existentialism pays close attention to the meaninglessness that continually underlies the significance in human life.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
The Artist and His Time (1953)
(Originally written October 14, 2008 in The Journal)
The Artist and His Time (1953) by Albert Camus
The artist accepts his time as it is. He minds his own business.
Word, though perverted, provisionally keep their meaning.
Marxism is religious in nature.
The end of history cannot have any definable significance to us in our present condition. It is only knowable by faith.
Artists have no need to interfere in the affairs of the world, but men do. The artist however does not need to sacrifice his nature to some social preaching.
The ivory tower and the social church are two points of the resignation of life.
The artist must simultaneously serve suffering and beauty.
The artist is to give voice to the sorrows and joys of all.
Art justifies itself by proving it is no one's enemy.
Art gives form, not content to justice and liberty.
Any authentic creation is a gift to the future.
The Artist and His Time (1953) by Albert Camus
The artist accepts his time as it is. He minds his own business.
Word, though perverted, provisionally keep their meaning.
Marxism is religious in nature.
The end of history cannot have any definable significance to us in our present condition. It is only knowable by faith.
Artists have no need to interfere in the affairs of the world, but men do. The artist however does not need to sacrifice his nature to some social preaching.
The ivory tower and the social church are two points of the resignation of life.
The artist must simultaneously serve suffering and beauty.
The artist is to give voice to the sorrows and joys of all.
Art justifies itself by proving it is no one's enemy.
Art gives form, not content to justice and liberty.
Any authentic creation is a gift to the future.
Return to Tipasa (1952)
(Originally Written October 14, 2008 in the Journal)
"To be sure, it is sheer madness, almost always punished, to return to the sites of one's youth" (Camus)
One must recapture the strength to accept what is, when once one has admitted that one cannot change it.
"And in this muddy Tipasa the memory itself was becoming dim" (Camus)
There is no love without a little innocence.
In innocence we do not know of the existence of morality. In knowledge we are guilty of not being able to live up to the standards of morality.
Noting is true that forces one to exclude.
It is bad luck to be unloved, it is a misfortune to be unloving. We are dying of this misfortune today.
Equally welcome what delights and what crushes.
The highest virtue of Camus: a will to live without rejecting anything of life.
"To be sure, it is sheer madness, almost always punished, to return to the sites of one's youth" (Camus)
One must recapture the strength to accept what is, when once one has admitted that one cannot change it.
"And in this muddy Tipasa the memory itself was becoming dim" (Camus)
There is no love without a little innocence.
In innocence we do not know of the existence of morality. In knowledge we are guilty of not being able to live up to the standards of morality.
Noting is true that forces one to exclude.
It is bad luck to be unloved, it is a misfortune to be unloving. We are dying of this misfortune today.
Equally welcome what delights and what crushes.
The highest virtue of Camus: a will to live without rejecting anything of life.
Helen's Exile (1948)
(Originally Written October 14, 2008 in the Journal)
Helen's Exile (1948) by Albert Camus
Despair can be known through the stifling effect of Beauty. Tragedy reaches its fulfillment in stifling beauty.
Greek thought negated nothing, but practiced balance. It never went to extremes. Modern thought negates whatever it does not glorify. It is extreme. It glorifies one thing and leads to the eventual total ruin of reason.
The execution of God has left man only to think of power and history. It has left man to not think of nature, but only what man can or has built.
The artist wishes to remake the world. He aims at freedom. Beauty cannot exist apart from men nor can man exist apart from beauty.
We cannot live hating ourselves. We may dislike our era, but this is our only time.
Admit of ignorance, reject fanaticism, accept the limits of this world and of man, this is the Greek reasoning.
Helen's Exile (1948) by Albert Camus
Despair can be known through the stifling effect of Beauty. Tragedy reaches its fulfillment in stifling beauty.
Greek thought negated nothing, but practiced balance. It never went to extremes. Modern thought negates whatever it does not glorify. It is extreme. It glorifies one thing and leads to the eventual total ruin of reason.
The execution of God has left man only to think of power and history. It has left man to not think of nature, but only what man can or has built.
The artist wishes to remake the world. He aims at freedom. Beauty cannot exist apart from men nor can man exist apart from beauty.
We cannot live hating ourselves. We may dislike our era, but this is our only time.
Admit of ignorance, reject fanaticism, accept the limits of this world and of man, this is the Greek reasoning.
The Minotaur (1939)
(Originally written October 14, 2008 in the Journal)
The Minotaur, by Albert Camus
The citizens of Oran have accepted their fate - being eaten by the Minotaur (boredom) and yet thrive.
Spiritual hunger is fed by the bread of memory. Spiritual hunger (future) is fed by memory (past).
The mind profits from occasionally focusing on something of no importance.
Stone lasts longer than the men who use it.
"Moving things about is the work of men; one must choose doing that or nothing" (Camus)
The world says one thing only; at first this excites man, then bores him. Regardless the world wins. Men die, the world continues on.
The absurd life cannot be shared (explained); it must be lived (experienced).
When the mind recollects itself it is like the Mount of Olives. The sleeping of Apostles is approved, not reproved.
There is a drive in man to be nothingness - but this is futile. One can be neither nothingness nor absolute.
The Minotaur, by Albert Camus
The citizens of Oran have accepted their fate - being eaten by the Minotaur (boredom) and yet thrive.
Spiritual hunger is fed by the bread of memory. Spiritual hunger (future) is fed by memory (past).
The mind profits from occasionally focusing on something of no importance.
Stone lasts longer than the men who use it.
"Moving things about is the work of men; one must choose doing that or nothing" (Camus)
The world says one thing only; at first this excites man, then bores him. Regardless the world wins. Men die, the world continues on.
The absurd life cannot be shared (explained); it must be lived (experienced).
When the mind recollects itself it is like the Mount of Olives. The sleeping of Apostles is approved, not reproved.
There is a drive in man to be nothingness - but this is futile. One can be neither nothingness nor absolute.
Summer in Algiers (1936)
(Originally Written October 14, 2008 in the Journal)
Summer in Algiers (1936)
The openness and abundance of Algiers gives pleasure without remedy and joy without hope. It gives man his splendor and his misery.
Truth carries with it a bitterness.
It is ridiculous not to live by the body. To deny its impulses is to deny it life. Rather, drink when you are thirsty, bed a woman you desire, marry a woman you love and afterwards (as Camus' friend Vincent) say I feel better.
Algiers offers two contrasting pleasures; the abundance of the beach and the silence of the city. The key here is experiencing it, of living it.
Life, as joys, in Algiers are merciless and sudden. Life is not to be built up, but to be burned up.
Virtue is meaningless, but that does not mean that men lack principles.
There is nothing sacred in death; it is abhorred.
"The contrary of a civilized nation is a creative nation" (Camus)
The greatness of man as culture is one cast fully in the present (no past/future) and without myth or solace.
Relative truths are the only truths that stir individual men.
Spirituality is solely confined to this lifetime. Eternity is solely what survives us.
What exalts life increases the absurdity of life.
To sin is to sin against life, which is to elude life in the hope of another one.
Hope is resignation, to live is not to resign oneself.
Summer in Algiers (1936)
The openness and abundance of Algiers gives pleasure without remedy and joy without hope. It gives man his splendor and his misery.
Truth carries with it a bitterness.
It is ridiculous not to live by the body. To deny its impulses is to deny it life. Rather, drink when you are thirsty, bed a woman you desire, marry a woman you love and afterwards (as Camus' friend Vincent) say I feel better.
Algiers offers two contrasting pleasures; the abundance of the beach and the silence of the city. The key here is experiencing it, of living it.
Life, as joys, in Algiers are merciless and sudden. Life is not to be built up, but to be burned up.
Virtue is meaningless, but that does not mean that men lack principles.
There is nothing sacred in death; it is abhorred.
"The contrary of a civilized nation is a creative nation" (Camus)
The greatness of man as culture is one cast fully in the present (no past/future) and without myth or solace.
Relative truths are the only truths that stir individual men.
Spirituality is solely confined to this lifetime. Eternity is solely what survives us.
What exalts life increases the absurdity of life.
To sin is to sin against life, which is to elude life in the hope of another one.
Hope is resignation, to live is not to resign oneself.
Notes on Sisyphus (The Myth of Sisyphus)
(Originally Written October 14, 2008 in the Journal)
The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
Sisyphus is an absurd hero. He has contempt for the gods and a passion for life.
His punishment was eternal labor to a futile end. "This is the price that must be paid for the passions of this earth" (Camus).
Sisyphus had to push a rock up a hill only to have the rock roll back down when it reached the top. Camus admires Sisyphus on the way down the hill. He leaves the heights and goes back to the valley. He marches to his torment and in that moment, he is stronger than his rock.
The walk to the rock from the top is his conscious moment. To be conscious is to overcome the torment.
Scorn your fate and you overcome the depth of it.
The absurd man is the master of his days.
Appendix
(Hope and the Absurd in the work of Franz Kafka)
The human heart only labels as fate that which crushes it.
It is through humility that hope enters in. (These are detestable to Camus. The philosophers who leap by deifying the absurd, i.e. Kierkegaard, Kafka, or Chestov).
To the philosophers like Kierkegaard, Kafka and Chestov the absurd of their existence assures them of a supernatural reality. The absurd leads them to God.
The Absurd man seeks what is true, not what is universal
The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
Sisyphus is an absurd hero. He has contempt for the gods and a passion for life.
His punishment was eternal labor to a futile end. "This is the price that must be paid for the passions of this earth" (Camus).
Sisyphus had to push a rock up a hill only to have the rock roll back down when it reached the top. Camus admires Sisyphus on the way down the hill. He leaves the heights and goes back to the valley. He marches to his torment and in that moment, he is stronger than his rock.
The walk to the rock from the top is his conscious moment. To be conscious is to overcome the torment.
Scorn your fate and you overcome the depth of it.
The absurd man is the master of his days.
Appendix
(Hope and the Absurd in the work of Franz Kafka)
The human heart only labels as fate that which crushes it.
It is through humility that hope enters in. (These are detestable to Camus. The philosophers who leap by deifying the absurd, i.e. Kierkegaard, Kafka, or Chestov).
To the philosophers like Kierkegaard, Kafka and Chestov the absurd of their existence assures them of a supernatural reality. The absurd leads them to God.
The Absurd man seeks what is true, not what is universal
Monday, October 13, 2008
Notes on the Absurd Creation (The Myth of Sisyphus)
(Originally written October 13, 2008 in the Journal)
Notes on Albert Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus
Absurd Creation
To create is to live doubly. They know to begin with and work to enrich and enlarge through examination of what they know.
The absurd man concerns himself with experiencing and describing - not explaining and solving.
Does the Christian explain and solve? Does he do this as an apologist or as a believer? Or does the Christian resolve the conflict through faith (creating a paradox out of an inconsistency) and merely experience and describe?
The universe is attractive, not for its depth but for its diversity (quantity not quality). Explanation is futile, but sensation (experience) remains.
"The idea of an art detached from its creator is not only outmoded, it is false... the artist commits himself and becomes himself in his work" (Camus)
"The work of art is born of the intelligence's refusal to reason the concrete" (Camus)
Art is carnal.
Thought provokes art but the creation of art is the repudiation of the provoking thought.
Art cannot be the end, the meaning, or the consolation of life.
Art is bad when it tries to explain existence in total. Art is good when it is a slice of experience.
"If the world were clear, art would not exist" and "expression begins where thought ends".
To think is to create a world (or to limit one's world, which is the same thing)
Camus desires to liberate his universe of phantoms and focus on flesh-and-blood truths, of which he cannot deny (This sounds a bit Cartesian).
The heart of man is full of stubborn hope.
Kirilov
In Dostoevsky, existence is either illusionary or eternal.
Dostoevsky is convinced that life is an utter absurdity for anyone without faith in immortality.
The independence which Kirilov gains (Dostoevsky's The Possessed) is the independence of serving God, of being god himself - this is a painful independence for him.
Ivan Karamazov (The Brothers Karamazov), like the great assassain of God, Nietzsche end their lives in madness. Camus praises this: "But this is a risk worth running, and faced with such tragic ends, the essential impulse of the absurd mind is to ask - what does that prove?" (Camus).
All is well, everything is permitted, nothing is hateful, dreadful freedom - these are the mantras of the absurd mind.
Dostoevsky, like Kierkegaard, follows out the absurd logic only to metaphysically reverse at the end (there is a God, necessarily). Thus, hope in the eternal, an abandonment of the temporal.
Dostoevsky's works deal with the absurd problem, but are not absurd works. His works offer a reply (the leap); whereas, true absurd works offer descriptions, not replies.
"It is possible to be Christian and absurd. There are examples of Christians who do not believe in a future life" (Camus). [What? Who? This is a contradiction. The entire thrust of Christianity is the eternal life].
Ephemeral creation
The art and artist are inseparable. The entire body of work by the artist is his one creation. Each piece complements, chastises, or corrects one another. (Experience is emphasized in this, a lifetime of experience infused in a lifetime of work).
"From death, for instance, they (the art) derive their definitive significance. At the moment of death, the succession of his works is but a collection of failures. But if those failures all have the same resonance, the creator has managed to repeat the image of his own conditions to make the air echo with the sterile secret he possesses" (Camus).
Art finds its importance in the demands it makes on the creator and the opportunity it affords him of getting closer to his naked self.
Diversity is the home of art.
There is no barrier between being and appearing.
The illusion of another world binds man; hope binds man.
Notes on Albert Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus
Absurd Creation
To create is to live doubly. They know to begin with and work to enrich and enlarge through examination of what they know.
The absurd man concerns himself with experiencing and describing - not explaining and solving.
Does the Christian explain and solve? Does he do this as an apologist or as a believer? Or does the Christian resolve the conflict through faith (creating a paradox out of an inconsistency) and merely experience and describe?
The universe is attractive, not for its depth but for its diversity (quantity not quality). Explanation is futile, but sensation (experience) remains.
"The idea of an art detached from its creator is not only outmoded, it is false... the artist commits himself and becomes himself in his work" (Camus)
"The work of art is born of the intelligence's refusal to reason the concrete" (Camus)
Art is carnal.
Thought provokes art but the creation of art is the repudiation of the provoking thought.
Art cannot be the end, the meaning, or the consolation of life.
Art is bad when it tries to explain existence in total. Art is good when it is a slice of experience.
"If the world were clear, art would not exist" and "expression begins where thought ends".
To think is to create a world (or to limit one's world, which is the same thing)
Camus desires to liberate his universe of phantoms and focus on flesh-and-blood truths, of which he cannot deny (This sounds a bit Cartesian).
The heart of man is full of stubborn hope.
Kirilov
In Dostoevsky, existence is either illusionary or eternal.
Dostoevsky is convinced that life is an utter absurdity for anyone without faith in immortality.
The independence which Kirilov gains (Dostoevsky's The Possessed) is the independence of serving God, of being god himself - this is a painful independence for him.
Ivan Karamazov (The Brothers Karamazov), like the great assassain of God, Nietzsche end their lives in madness. Camus praises this: "But this is a risk worth running, and faced with such tragic ends, the essential impulse of the absurd mind is to ask - what does that prove?" (Camus).
All is well, everything is permitted, nothing is hateful, dreadful freedom - these are the mantras of the absurd mind.
Dostoevsky, like Kierkegaard, follows out the absurd logic only to metaphysically reverse at the end (there is a God, necessarily). Thus, hope in the eternal, an abandonment of the temporal.
Dostoevsky's works deal with the absurd problem, but are not absurd works. His works offer a reply (the leap); whereas, true absurd works offer descriptions, not replies.
"It is possible to be Christian and absurd. There are examples of Christians who do not believe in a future life" (Camus). [What? Who? This is a contradiction. The entire thrust of Christianity is the eternal life].
Ephemeral creation
The art and artist are inseparable. The entire body of work by the artist is his one creation. Each piece complements, chastises, or corrects one another. (Experience is emphasized in this, a lifetime of experience infused in a lifetime of work).
"From death, for instance, they (the art) derive their definitive significance. At the moment of death, the succession of his works is but a collection of failures. But if those failures all have the same resonance, the creator has managed to repeat the image of his own conditions to make the air echo with the sterile secret he possesses" (Camus).
Art finds its importance in the demands it makes on the creator and the opportunity it affords him of getting closer to his naked self.
Diversity is the home of art.
There is no barrier between being and appearing.
The illusion of another world binds man; hope binds man.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Notes on the Absurd Man (B) (The Myth of Sisyphus)
(Originally Written October 12, 2008 in the Journal)
Notes on Albert Camus' Myth of Sisyphus and other essays
The Absurd Man
The absurd man is assured of temporally limited freedom.
The absurd man lives his existence in his lifetime.
The absurd man does nothing for the eternal.
The absurd man lives by courage and reasoning.
He is assured of his temporally limited freedom. (Contrast with the Christian who is assured of his absolute freedom in Christ).
"The absurd does not liberate, it binds" (Camus)
"In the absurd world the value of a notion or a life is measured by its sterility" (Camus)
Don Juanism
Genius is intelligence that knows its frontiers.
Those who live on hope are called either a weakling, an idealist or a saint - each insulting.
Ethic is quantitative for the absurd man, the saint sees ethic qualitatively.
Regret is another form of hope.
Love, like that of a passionate wife or a mother necessarily closes its heart to the world. Those who turn away from all personal life through a great love are certainly enriched, but the object of that great love becomes impoverished.
Love can only be defined subjectively based on our experiences. "I do not have the right to cover all those experiences with the same name" (Camus).
Love is noble when it recognizes its short-lived and exceptional nature.
Again, the absurd man quantifies his experiences of love and doesn't base it on any qualitative experience (This is what Camus calls Don Juanism). [This is a truly detestable notion]
A fate is not a punishment - a natural consequence of a consciously chosen act is not a punishment. The absurd man chooses his direction and accepts the reality of his choice.
It is the absurd way to knowledge without illusion.
Drama
The thoughtless man continues to hasten from hope to hope.
There is a profound nobility in indifference. Indifference directs us to the most important concern: the immediate.
"Preferring oneself to eternity or losing oneself in God is the age-old tragedy in which each much play his part" (Camus). Obviously, the absurd man chooses oneself over losing oneself in any way - especially to something atemporal or eternal. (The absurd man lives in time, his adventure lasts from birth until death).
Conquest
The conqueror can thoroughly define what they believe. Beware of those who say 'I know this too well to express it' because they either do not know it or were too lazy to pursue it. (This is a condemnation of mysticism).
Given the choice between history or eternal Camus chooses history because it is certain and he likes certainties.
A proud heart cannot compromise. "There is God or time, that cross or this sword. This world has a higher meaning that transcends its worries, or nothing is true but those worries. One must live with time and die with it, or else elude it for a greater life. I know that one can compromise and live in this world while believing in the eternal. That is called accepting. But I loathe this term and want all or nothing" (Camus).
Flesh is struggle, but flesh is my only certainty.
Man is his own end; he is his only end.
Life is both the conquerors' destitution and wealth. It is in this tension that he thrives, exalting and crushing man, the individual.
True riches are riches because they are transitory.
Knowing the limits constitutes the freedom, the liberation.
"The truths that come within my scope can be touched with the hand" (Camus)
Pity is the only acceptable form of compassion for the absurd man.
"Being deprived of hope is not despairing" (Camus)
The absurd, godless world is full of thinking men without hope.
Notes on Albert Camus' Myth of Sisyphus and other essays
The Absurd Man
The absurd man is assured of temporally limited freedom.
The absurd man lives his existence in his lifetime.
The absurd man does nothing for the eternal.
The absurd man lives by courage and reasoning.
He is assured of his temporally limited freedom. (Contrast with the Christian who is assured of his absolute freedom in Christ).
"The absurd does not liberate, it binds" (Camus)
"In the absurd world the value of a notion or a life is measured by its sterility" (Camus)
Don Juanism
Genius is intelligence that knows its frontiers.
Those who live on hope are called either a weakling, an idealist or a saint - each insulting.
Ethic is quantitative for the absurd man, the saint sees ethic qualitatively.
Regret is another form of hope.
Love, like that of a passionate wife or a mother necessarily closes its heart to the world. Those who turn away from all personal life through a great love are certainly enriched, but the object of that great love becomes impoverished.
Love can only be defined subjectively based on our experiences. "I do not have the right to cover all those experiences with the same name" (Camus).
Love is noble when it recognizes its short-lived and exceptional nature.
Again, the absurd man quantifies his experiences of love and doesn't base it on any qualitative experience (This is what Camus calls Don Juanism). [This is a truly detestable notion]
A fate is not a punishment - a natural consequence of a consciously chosen act is not a punishment. The absurd man chooses his direction and accepts the reality of his choice.
It is the absurd way to knowledge without illusion.
Drama
The thoughtless man continues to hasten from hope to hope.
There is a profound nobility in indifference. Indifference directs us to the most important concern: the immediate.
"Preferring oneself to eternity or losing oneself in God is the age-old tragedy in which each much play his part" (Camus). Obviously, the absurd man chooses oneself over losing oneself in any way - especially to something atemporal or eternal. (The absurd man lives in time, his adventure lasts from birth until death).
Conquest
The conqueror can thoroughly define what they believe. Beware of those who say 'I know this too well to express it' because they either do not know it or were too lazy to pursue it. (This is a condemnation of mysticism).
Given the choice between history or eternal Camus chooses history because it is certain and he likes certainties.
A proud heart cannot compromise. "There is God or time, that cross or this sword. This world has a higher meaning that transcends its worries, or nothing is true but those worries. One must live with time and die with it, or else elude it for a greater life. I know that one can compromise and live in this world while believing in the eternal. That is called accepting. But I loathe this term and want all or nothing" (Camus).
Flesh is struggle, but flesh is my only certainty.
Man is his own end; he is his only end.
Life is both the conquerors' destitution and wealth. It is in this tension that he thrives, exalting and crushing man, the individual.
True riches are riches because they are transitory.
Knowing the limits constitutes the freedom, the liberation.
"The truths that come within my scope can be touched with the hand" (Camus)
Pity is the only acceptable form of compassion for the absurd man.
"Being deprived of hope is not despairing" (Camus)
The absurd, godless world is full of thinking men without hope.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Notes on the Absurd Man (A) (The Myth of Sisyphus)
(Originally Written October 11, 2008 in the Journal)
Notes on Albert Camus' Myth of Sisyphus and other essays
The Absurd Man
The absurd man, without negating it, does nothing for the eternal.
The absurd man prefers to live in courage and with his reasoning. This courage teaches him to live without appeal (void of hope or meaning); the reasoning informs him of his limits.
Notes on Albert Camus' Myth of Sisyphus and other essays
The Absurd Man
The absurd man, without negating it, does nothing for the eternal.
The absurd man prefers to live in courage and with his reasoning. This courage teaches him to live without appeal (void of hope or meaning); the reasoning informs him of his limits.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Notes on An Absurd Reasoning & Absurd Freedom (The Myth of Sisyphus)
(Originally Written October 10, 2008 in the Journal)
Notes on Albert Camus' Myth of Sisyphus and other essays
Myth of Sisyphus
An Absurd Reasoning
"Understanding the world for a man is reducing it to human, stamping it with his real" (Camus)
This is pure subjectivism - all thought is anthropomorphic. A thought then, What of Imago Dei? If we, created in the image of God reflect on the world out of this sense aren't we reflecting on the world from a universal standpoint, albeit imperfectly due to our limitations?
Camus is an absolute empiricist. I feel my heart, it exists. I feel the world, I touch it. Therefore, it exists. "There ends all my knowledge, the rest is construction" (Camus). But he states even his own heart is and will remain indefinable to him.
The gap between certainty of existence and defining the content of existence is so wide it cannot be filled.
The irrational (existence's paradoxes and inconsistencies), the human nostalgia (our deepest desire for unity familiarity, and obsession with clarity), and the absurd (the abyss we stare at when we attempt of true knowledge and find none) converge to create in our minds a desert which we ought not attempt to escape by suicide (literal or the act of giving up thought or reason) or attempt to transcend by hope (a process of leaving knowledge to enter into pure construction). This is the point that demands action - suicide or recovery.
Philosophical suicide is the abdication of duty in pursuing knowledge either by giving up or by giving into hope.
The absurd is "the divorce between the mind that desires and the world that disappoints" (Camus).
The absurd is to be both impossible and contradictory.
The absurd is a disproportion between intentions and reality of consequences. "The absurd, which is a metaphysical state of the conscious man does not lead to God. Perhaps the notion will become clearer if I risk this shocking statement: the absurd is sin without God" (Camus).
Absurdity springs from comparison. It is essentially a divorce; it does not lie within the two things being compared but in the actual confrontation of the two things. The absurd is not in man nor in the world, but in the meeting of the two.
The absurd is the fundamental truth - the one thing that cannot be disposed of.
Now, it is the absurd that crushes man - the force that drives man to a broken point. The thing that crushes us we must fight to preserve. The absurd is an unceasing struggle - which implies "a total absence of hope (which has nothing to do with despair), a continual rejection (which must not be confused with renunciation), and a conscious dissatisfaction (which must not be compared to immature unrest)" (Camus).
So Camus' way is thus:
1. Break from the monotony of life to discover life is meaningless.
2. This shock demands action, either suicide or recovery
3. The recovery is acceptance of the absurd as ceaseless struggle
4. Ceaseless struggle brings to the mind three realizations
- There is no hope
- There is continual rejection
- We must be dissatisfied
The existentialists (Chestov, Kierkegaard and Jaspers) came to the truth of the absurd and offered their reaction to it as escape. They did so out of forced hope - creating religion.
The absurd man, the existentialist, recognizes the absurd and the limited value of reason - but, rather than abandoning reason for religion, he in his awareness, simply knows there is no longer a place for hope.
The absurd man seeks to live with his ailments, while the man who has seen the absurd and turned to religion has become frantic and frenzied, seeking to be cured.
Kierkegaard views despair not as a fact, but as a state of existence - the state of sin. Now, Kierkegaard in his final dealings with the absurd sacrificed the intellect (reason) to the belief in God for he sacrificed his pride (sin) to God. Camus recognizes the limitations of reason, but states that if this is pride he sees no sufficient cause to sacrifice it.
The absurd man, the absurd mind seeks what is true at all costs. It seeks what is true, not what is desirable. If Kierkegaard warns that there is nothing but despair then the absurd man takes truth and despair.
Phenomenology (Edmund Husserl) - the making of structures of consciousness and the phenomena which appears in acts of consciousness - objects of systematic reflection and analysis. Husserl used this to provide a firm basis for all human knowledge.
Phenomenology seeks to describe actual experience - not explain the world.
Phenomenology claims truths but that there is no Truth.
Husserl's method was "the intention":
1. Negate classical reasoning (thinking as a unifying/familiarizing procedure). Thinking is actually a relearning how to see again and to direct consciousness.
2. Directing consciousness illuminates every little truth.
3. It isolates events from one another to represent an incoherent-ness in experience; thus, every isolated object of consciousness is its own "magical appearance".
The absurd spirit wishes to enumerate experience, not transcend it.
Husserl's methodology would be acceptable to the absurd man if it simply stopped at the enumeration of experience, but Husserl jumps from the psychological truth of his theory to the metaphysical. Thus, he reintroduces a rationalism akin to Plato. Unlike Kierkegaard who returns to God - Husserl returns to a form of truth as polytheism - flattening all hierarchy and making all truth equal little gods.
The difference between Husserl's abstract god and the dazzling God of Kierkegaard is minimal and only one on how to arrive at the conclusion. Kierkegaard, like other religious philosophers deified the absurd and called it God. The abstract philosophers like Husserl rationalized the absurd to the point of creating standard reasons. They began at the nausea of recognizing the absurd but go to one extreme (rationalizing/abstract) or irrationalizing (deifying/religious escapism).
Nausea is looking into the face of the absurd. There are then three paths to follow. Religion is the path of deifying the absurd. It is an escape or a reconciliation to avoid the divorce. The abstract is the pat of rationalizing the absurd. It is an escape or a reconciliation to avoid the divorce. The absurd man does neither. He takes the divorce. This is the path of acceptance.
The absurd man knows that existence is unreasonable - neither too rational nor too irrational. He accepts the limits of reason and does not give it limitless power as Husserl or abandon it as sin (pride) like Kierkegaard.
Absurd Freedom
What is known (that what is certain) cannot be denied or rejected. One can negate all, but one's desire for unity. One can refute all the world but chaos.
One can only understand a thing in human terms (thus cannot transcend). "What I touch, what resists me - that is what I understand" (Camus).
The break - the divorce of mind (reason) and the world is caused by awareness of it.
The absurd man lives in the certainty of this divorce and does nothing except on the basis of certain knowledge. The only certainty is the absurd and thus he cannot escape it in good conscious through religion. He hears that this is the sin of pride but he does not know what sin is.
Life is better lived because it does not have a meaning.
Hope in transcendence (religion) is to escape the reality of the absurd - to abolish the intellect is to elude, not solve the problem.
The absurd man lives in constant revolt against the world and against his desire for unity (escape/hope). It is in this revolt that gives life its value.
Camus really loves the pride of man. He focuses all of his energy on praising the absurd man and abhors any type of degradation.
To the absurd man the notion of the metaphysical freedom or determinism is not important - the absurd man is only certain of his own freedom.
Camus denies the paradox of God and freedom has been solved or laid to waste, it remains. Either god is all-powerful and the author of all evil or we are free and God is not all-powerful. But, none of this is important because we only experience our own freedom and the eradication of hope and future makes us more free.
The absurd tells me this: there is no future. Freedom in the classical sense is based on hope, hope based on future. Our hope in the future actually makes us slaves to the conventions of thinking.
The Ideal of the absurd man: to live with a constantly conscious soul in a ceaseless procession of presents (no pasts/no future)/
Three consequences of absurd reasoning:
1. Revolt
2. Freedom
3. The ideal (passion)
Notes on Albert Camus' Myth of Sisyphus and other essays
Myth of Sisyphus
An Absurd Reasoning
"Understanding the world for a man is reducing it to human, stamping it with his real" (Camus)
This is pure subjectivism - all thought is anthropomorphic. A thought then, What of Imago Dei? If we, created in the image of God reflect on the world out of this sense aren't we reflecting on the world from a universal standpoint, albeit imperfectly due to our limitations?
Camus is an absolute empiricist. I feel my heart, it exists. I feel the world, I touch it. Therefore, it exists. "There ends all my knowledge, the rest is construction" (Camus). But he states even his own heart is and will remain indefinable to him.
The gap between certainty of existence and defining the content of existence is so wide it cannot be filled.
The irrational (existence's paradoxes and inconsistencies), the human nostalgia (our deepest desire for unity familiarity, and obsession with clarity), and the absurd (the abyss we stare at when we attempt of true knowledge and find none) converge to create in our minds a desert which we ought not attempt to escape by suicide (literal or the act of giving up thought or reason) or attempt to transcend by hope (a process of leaving knowledge to enter into pure construction). This is the point that demands action - suicide or recovery.
Philosophical suicide is the abdication of duty in pursuing knowledge either by giving up or by giving into hope.
The absurd is "the divorce between the mind that desires and the world that disappoints" (Camus).
The absurd is to be both impossible and contradictory.
The absurd is a disproportion between intentions and reality of consequences. "The absurd, which is a metaphysical state of the conscious man does not lead to God. Perhaps the notion will become clearer if I risk this shocking statement: the absurd is sin without God" (Camus).
Absurdity springs from comparison. It is essentially a divorce; it does not lie within the two things being compared but in the actual confrontation of the two things. The absurd is not in man nor in the world, but in the meeting of the two.
The absurd is the fundamental truth - the one thing that cannot be disposed of.
Now, it is the absurd that crushes man - the force that drives man to a broken point. The thing that crushes us we must fight to preserve. The absurd is an unceasing struggle - which implies "a total absence of hope (which has nothing to do with despair), a continual rejection (which must not be confused with renunciation), and a conscious dissatisfaction (which must not be compared to immature unrest)" (Camus).
So Camus' way is thus:
1. Break from the monotony of life to discover life is meaningless.
2. This shock demands action, either suicide or recovery
3. The recovery is acceptance of the absurd as ceaseless struggle
4. Ceaseless struggle brings to the mind three realizations
- There is no hope
- There is continual rejection
- We must be dissatisfied
The existentialists (Chestov, Kierkegaard and Jaspers) came to the truth of the absurd and offered their reaction to it as escape. They did so out of forced hope - creating religion.
The absurd man, the existentialist, recognizes the absurd and the limited value of reason - but, rather than abandoning reason for religion, he in his awareness, simply knows there is no longer a place for hope.
The absurd man seeks to live with his ailments, while the man who has seen the absurd and turned to religion has become frantic and frenzied, seeking to be cured.
Kierkegaard views despair not as a fact, but as a state of existence - the state of sin. Now, Kierkegaard in his final dealings with the absurd sacrificed the intellect (reason) to the belief in God for he sacrificed his pride (sin) to God. Camus recognizes the limitations of reason, but states that if this is pride he sees no sufficient cause to sacrifice it.
The absurd man, the absurd mind seeks what is true at all costs. It seeks what is true, not what is desirable. If Kierkegaard warns that there is nothing but despair then the absurd man takes truth and despair.
Phenomenology (Edmund Husserl) - the making of structures of consciousness and the phenomena which appears in acts of consciousness - objects of systematic reflection and analysis. Husserl used this to provide a firm basis for all human knowledge.
Phenomenology seeks to describe actual experience - not explain the world.
Phenomenology claims truths but that there is no Truth.
Husserl's method was "the intention":
1. Negate classical reasoning (thinking as a unifying/familiarizing procedure). Thinking is actually a relearning how to see again and to direct consciousness.
2. Directing consciousness illuminates every little truth.
3. It isolates events from one another to represent an incoherent-ness in experience; thus, every isolated object of consciousness is its own "magical appearance".
The absurd spirit wishes to enumerate experience, not transcend it.
Husserl's methodology would be acceptable to the absurd man if it simply stopped at the enumeration of experience, but Husserl jumps from the psychological truth of his theory to the metaphysical. Thus, he reintroduces a rationalism akin to Plato. Unlike Kierkegaard who returns to God - Husserl returns to a form of truth as polytheism - flattening all hierarchy and making all truth equal little gods.
The difference between Husserl's abstract god and the dazzling God of Kierkegaard is minimal and only one on how to arrive at the conclusion. Kierkegaard, like other religious philosophers deified the absurd and called it God. The abstract philosophers like Husserl rationalized the absurd to the point of creating standard reasons. They began at the nausea of recognizing the absurd but go to one extreme (rationalizing/abstract) or irrationalizing (deifying/religious escapism).
Nausea is looking into the face of the absurd. There are then three paths to follow. Religion is the path of deifying the absurd. It is an escape or a reconciliation to avoid the divorce. The abstract is the pat of rationalizing the absurd. It is an escape or a reconciliation to avoid the divorce. The absurd man does neither. He takes the divorce. This is the path of acceptance.
The absurd man knows that existence is unreasonable - neither too rational nor too irrational. He accepts the limits of reason and does not give it limitless power as Husserl or abandon it as sin (pride) like Kierkegaard.
Absurd Freedom
What is known (that what is certain) cannot be denied or rejected. One can negate all, but one's desire for unity. One can refute all the world but chaos.
One can only understand a thing in human terms (thus cannot transcend). "What I touch, what resists me - that is what I understand" (Camus).
The break - the divorce of mind (reason) and the world is caused by awareness of it.
The absurd man lives in the certainty of this divorce and does nothing except on the basis of certain knowledge. The only certainty is the absurd and thus he cannot escape it in good conscious through religion. He hears that this is the sin of pride but he does not know what sin is.
Life is better lived because it does not have a meaning.
Hope in transcendence (religion) is to escape the reality of the absurd - to abolish the intellect is to elude, not solve the problem.
The absurd man lives in constant revolt against the world and against his desire for unity (escape/hope). It is in this revolt that gives life its value.
Camus really loves the pride of man. He focuses all of his energy on praising the absurd man and abhors any type of degradation.
To the absurd man the notion of the metaphysical freedom or determinism is not important - the absurd man is only certain of his own freedom.
Camus denies the paradox of God and freedom has been solved or laid to waste, it remains. Either god is all-powerful and the author of all evil or we are free and God is not all-powerful. But, none of this is important because we only experience our own freedom and the eradication of hope and future makes us more free.
The absurd tells me this: there is no future. Freedom in the classical sense is based on hope, hope based on future. Our hope in the future actually makes us slaves to the conventions of thinking.
The Ideal of the absurd man: to live with a constantly conscious soul in a ceaseless procession of presents (no pasts/no future)/
Three consequences of absurd reasoning:
1. Revolt
2. Freedom
3. The ideal (passion)
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Geisler/Corduan - Problem of Evil
(Originally written March 13, 2007 in Book 25)
Part 4: God & Evil
14: The nature of the problem of Evil
Nearly every religion attempts to deal with the reality and causes of evil in the world.
The problem of evil arises out of the nature of theism.
There are a number of dimensions to the problem of evil: metaphysical, physical and moral
An inconsistency differs from a contradiction. In a contradiction there are two statements in which one is true and one is false. In an inconsistency one or both statements could be false, but on the surface both cannot be true.
The inconsistency version of the problem of Evil
1) God is an omnipotent and omnibenevolent Being, in accordance with His nature He would abolish all evil
2) Evil exists
Either 1 or 2 could be false, both could be false but both cannot be true.
A way to solve an inconsistency is to show that it is a paradox. Thus, the inconsistency of 1 & 2 can be made into a paradox like this:
1) God is an omnipotent and omnibenevolent being, in accordance with His nature He would abolish all evil
2) Evil exists
3) God expressed his omnipotent and omnibenevolent nature by creating free beings who are solely responsible for evil.
But this solution may not satisfy men. Someone might still want to know why God created free beings. This way of dealing with the problem of evil is the problem of theodicy (the justification of God).
Non theistic solutions to the Problem of Evil
Illusionism's Answer to Evil
A theist cannot deny the reality of evil. A pantheist can claim that nothing is really evil, but only appears evil, but a theist may not.
Evil is everything that frustrates human aspirations and expectations.
Many people influenced by Eastern thought deny the reality of evil.
Frederic Spiegelburg follows the Indian sage Aurobindo in claiming that pain is not a matter of fact, but a perspective. Once one comes to the truth there is no longer a problem of evil because there is no evil.
Alan Watts accuses Westerners of being unwilling to recognize individual finitude and subsequently looking for a solution in the acts of free individual. He sees good and evil as relative distinctions that do not obtain with ultimate reality.
Problems with illusionism
1) Illusionism does not account for the origin of the illusion
2) It does not explain the apparent reality of the illusion
3) Denying the reality of evil does not remove the presence of reality
4) Illusionism is a theory that is ruined by a brutal gang of facts
"It is more likely that the illusionist is being deceived about evil than that all persons are being deceived by evil" (298).
Sadism's answer to evil
Elie Wiesel postulated that God is sadistic and created the world to watch suffering.
Harold S. Kushner in "When Bad Things Happen to Good People" states we ought to forgive God for not making a better world.
Objections to Sadism
1) God is all-good in theism
2) God as a term seems inappropriate for a sadistic being
3) The universe cannot be ultimately evil because evil presupposes good
4) It seems absurd that there is a being responsible for creating and destroying what he creates (Charles Hartshorne)
Finitism's Answer to Evil
David Hume and subsequent thinkers have proposed that God is finite in power or love (or both).
Finitism is represented by process thinkers today. Charles Hartshorne believes that the worst falsehood known is the traditional concept of omnipotence.
Others claim that God is not essentially limited, but instead limits Himself.
Bruce R. Reichenbach claims that God is sovereign in authority and power, but willingly limits Himself.
Objections to Finitism
1) Only an infinite cause explains the existence of things. A finite God could not be the cause of all existence
2) A finite God is not worthy of worship
3) A finite God cannot guarantee an outcome in the struggle of good and evil.
"A finite god is metaphysically impossible, religiously unworthy and ethically demoralizing for people in their struggle against evil" (300).
If there is no infinite God there can be no final solution to the problem of evil.
Determinism's answer to evil
God was forced to create the world as it is.
This view is normally pantheistic, but some theists who hold creation flows necessarily, not willingly from God also hold it.
Benedict Spinoza believed that the world as we have it is the necessary and most perfect product possible of the necessary and most perfect Being possible.
Objection to Determinism:
1) Creation flows from God's will freely, not necessarily (Revelation 4:11, Ephesians 1:11) That is, He was free not to create
2) God has no need to create
3) The necessary Being does not necessarily need to do anything other than exist
4) Even if God had to create it does not follow he had to create an imperfect world
Finitude does not necessitate evil, it only makes it possible
Impossibilism's Answer to evil
It may be impossible for even an infinite God to foreknow future free events. God could have created free beings not knowing they would bring evil into the world with their freedom.
God cannot control free beings without negating their freedom. Even an infinite God cannot do what is contradictory.
Objection to impossibilism
1) A Calvinist might draw a different conclusion that God foreknows and beings are still free
2) There can be no such thing as truly free (unforeseeable) acts by human beings because that limits God
3) Foreknowledge does not imply fore-determination
4) God is timeless, he does not foresee anything. He sees everything eternally now.
5) Just because an event is determined does not mean that it cannot be freely chosen
6) It makes no sense to speak of something in the future being true
7) God knows the choices and the eventually chosen act
Solutions to the Problem of Evil open to Theism
There are two sets of alternatives to the solution of the problem of evil open to theists:
1) Hypothetical
2) Actual
The hypothetical alternatives for theism
1) God could have decided not to create anything at all
- A God who knew that creation would become corrupt should not have created at all
- No solution to the problem of evil will be satisfactory without addressing this possibility that was open to God
2) God could have created only beings who are not free
- Could God have made an amoral world?
- The nature of God only necessitates that if he does, he must do it best, not that he do
3) God could have created beings who are free to sin, but do not actually sin
- Many have argued that freedom without sin is a contradiction
Objections to this:
1) There is no logical connection between freedom and sin
2) Freedom without sin is not a contradiction in Heaven
4) God could have created beings who are free but must sin
- God pronounces that sin is inevitable, but each sin is not
- Forced freedom though is completely incoherent
5) God could have created beings who were free and who would sin
- This alternative is what theists claim God chose to create
The Actual Alternatives for Theism
Theists must defend the way God chose to create (That he chose to create beings who were free not to sin but inevitably would choose to do so)
1) A theist need not prove three things to answer the problem of evil
He does not have to show that this is the best of all possible worlds, but only that there could be no better world or non-world
He does not have to show how God can achieve the highest perfection out of a world with evil in it.
He does not need to definitively prove that this world is the best of all possible solutions.
2) A theistic solution to evil must meet three conditions:
1) It must be at least possible
2) Offer evidence that it is capable of achievement
3) Present a way that is verifiable/falsifiable
The apparent dilemma facing theism
It seems that the proportions: What God does must be his best and the world is not best eliminates any theistic solution to the problem of evil
God must do his best. It is axiomatic that anything less than doing his best would be evil for GOd.
The theist must show that what God produces is the best possible.
Heaven is actually an argument against this world being the best of all possible worlds.
The way out of this dilemma is to claim that this is not the best of all possible worlds, but the best possible way to get to the best of all possible worlds (heaven)
Only an infinitely wise and good God can guarantee heaven as an outcome
The Dimensions of the Problem of Evil
Three aspects to the problem of evil:
1) Metaphysical
2) Moral
3) Physical
The Metaphysical Aspect of Evil
1) God is the author of everything in the world
2) Evil is something in the world
3) Therefore, God is the author of evil
Theists would not want to reject either of the premises. Denying the first would lead to dualism. Denying the second just seems contrary to experience
Theistic reply:
1) God is the author of everything
2) Evil is not a thing (substance)
3) Therefore, God is not necessarily the author of evil
To deny evil is not a real entity is not to deny the reality of evil. Evil is real. It is a real privation in things.
The Moral Aspect of the Problem of Evil
Pierre Bayle postulated the moral problem of evil in the 17th century.
1) Evil exists
2) An omnipotent God could destroy evil
3) A benevolent God would destroy evil
4) Therefore, since evil is not destroyed either:
a) God is omnipotent and malevolent
b) God is benevolent and impotent
c) God is both malevolent and impotent
d) There is no God
Another way of stating it:
1) God is responsible for making everyone, including human freedom
2) Human freedom brought about moral evil
3) Therefore, God is responsible for what brought about moral evil
The Physical Aspect of the Problem of Evil
Not all evil is clearly a result of human freedom
Albert Camus offered the physical problem of evil
1) Either one must join the doc and fight the plague or else join the priest and not fight the plague
2) Not to fight the plague is anti-humanitarian
3) To fight the plague is to fight against God who sent it
4) Therefore if humanitarianism is right, theism is wrong
Theists would deny premise 3
Part 4: God & Evil
14: The nature of the problem of Evil
Nearly every religion attempts to deal with the reality and causes of evil in the world.
The problem of evil arises out of the nature of theism.
There are a number of dimensions to the problem of evil: metaphysical, physical and moral
An inconsistency differs from a contradiction. In a contradiction there are two statements in which one is true and one is false. In an inconsistency one or both statements could be false, but on the surface both cannot be true.
The inconsistency version of the problem of Evil
1) God is an omnipotent and omnibenevolent Being, in accordance with His nature He would abolish all evil
2) Evil exists
Either 1 or 2 could be false, both could be false but both cannot be true.
A way to solve an inconsistency is to show that it is a paradox. Thus, the inconsistency of 1 & 2 can be made into a paradox like this:
1) God is an omnipotent and omnibenevolent being, in accordance with His nature He would abolish all evil
2) Evil exists
3) God expressed his omnipotent and omnibenevolent nature by creating free beings who are solely responsible for evil.
But this solution may not satisfy men. Someone might still want to know why God created free beings. This way of dealing with the problem of evil is the problem of theodicy (the justification of God).
Non theistic solutions to the Problem of Evil
Illusionism's Answer to Evil
A theist cannot deny the reality of evil. A pantheist can claim that nothing is really evil, but only appears evil, but a theist may not.
Evil is everything that frustrates human aspirations and expectations.
Many people influenced by Eastern thought deny the reality of evil.
Frederic Spiegelburg follows the Indian sage Aurobindo in claiming that pain is not a matter of fact, but a perspective. Once one comes to the truth there is no longer a problem of evil because there is no evil.
Alan Watts accuses Westerners of being unwilling to recognize individual finitude and subsequently looking for a solution in the acts of free individual. He sees good and evil as relative distinctions that do not obtain with ultimate reality.
Problems with illusionism
1) Illusionism does not account for the origin of the illusion
2) It does not explain the apparent reality of the illusion
3) Denying the reality of evil does not remove the presence of reality
4) Illusionism is a theory that is ruined by a brutal gang of facts
"It is more likely that the illusionist is being deceived about evil than that all persons are being deceived by evil" (298).
Sadism's answer to evil
Elie Wiesel postulated that God is sadistic and created the world to watch suffering.
Harold S. Kushner in "When Bad Things Happen to Good People" states we ought to forgive God for not making a better world.
Objections to Sadism
1) God is all-good in theism
2) God as a term seems inappropriate for a sadistic being
3) The universe cannot be ultimately evil because evil presupposes good
4) It seems absurd that there is a being responsible for creating and destroying what he creates (Charles Hartshorne)
Finitism's Answer to Evil
David Hume and subsequent thinkers have proposed that God is finite in power or love (or both).
Finitism is represented by process thinkers today. Charles Hartshorne believes that the worst falsehood known is the traditional concept of omnipotence.
Others claim that God is not essentially limited, but instead limits Himself.
Bruce R. Reichenbach claims that God is sovereign in authority and power, but willingly limits Himself.
Objections to Finitism
1) Only an infinite cause explains the existence of things. A finite God could not be the cause of all existence
2) A finite God is not worthy of worship
3) A finite God cannot guarantee an outcome in the struggle of good and evil.
"A finite god is metaphysically impossible, religiously unworthy and ethically demoralizing for people in their struggle against evil" (300).
If there is no infinite God there can be no final solution to the problem of evil.
Determinism's answer to evil
God was forced to create the world as it is.
This view is normally pantheistic, but some theists who hold creation flows necessarily, not willingly from God also hold it.
Benedict Spinoza believed that the world as we have it is the necessary and most perfect product possible of the necessary and most perfect Being possible.
Objection to Determinism:
1) Creation flows from God's will freely, not necessarily (Revelation 4:11, Ephesians 1:11) That is, He was free not to create
2) God has no need to create
3) The necessary Being does not necessarily need to do anything other than exist
4) Even if God had to create it does not follow he had to create an imperfect world
Finitude does not necessitate evil, it only makes it possible
Impossibilism's Answer to evil
It may be impossible for even an infinite God to foreknow future free events. God could have created free beings not knowing they would bring evil into the world with their freedom.
God cannot control free beings without negating their freedom. Even an infinite God cannot do what is contradictory.
Objection to impossibilism
1) A Calvinist might draw a different conclusion that God foreknows and beings are still free
2) There can be no such thing as truly free (unforeseeable) acts by human beings because that limits God
3) Foreknowledge does not imply fore-determination
4) God is timeless, he does not foresee anything. He sees everything eternally now.
5) Just because an event is determined does not mean that it cannot be freely chosen
6) It makes no sense to speak of something in the future being true
7) God knows the choices and the eventually chosen act
Solutions to the Problem of Evil open to Theism
There are two sets of alternatives to the solution of the problem of evil open to theists:
1) Hypothetical
2) Actual
The hypothetical alternatives for theism
1) God could have decided not to create anything at all
- A God who knew that creation would become corrupt should not have created at all
- No solution to the problem of evil will be satisfactory without addressing this possibility that was open to God
2) God could have created only beings who are not free
- Could God have made an amoral world?
- The nature of God only necessitates that if he does, he must do it best, not that he do
3) God could have created beings who are free to sin, but do not actually sin
- Many have argued that freedom without sin is a contradiction
Objections to this:
1) There is no logical connection between freedom and sin
2) Freedom without sin is not a contradiction in Heaven
4) God could have created beings who are free but must sin
- God pronounces that sin is inevitable, but each sin is not
- Forced freedom though is completely incoherent
5) God could have created beings who were free and who would sin
- This alternative is what theists claim God chose to create
The Actual Alternatives for Theism
Theists must defend the way God chose to create (That he chose to create beings who were free not to sin but inevitably would choose to do so)
1) A theist need not prove three things to answer the problem of evil
He does not have to show that this is the best of all possible worlds, but only that there could be no better world or non-world
He does not have to show how God can achieve the highest perfection out of a world with evil in it.
He does not need to definitively prove that this world is the best of all possible solutions.
2) A theistic solution to evil must meet three conditions:
1) It must be at least possible
2) Offer evidence that it is capable of achievement
3) Present a way that is verifiable/falsifiable
The apparent dilemma facing theism
It seems that the proportions: What God does must be his best and the world is not best eliminates any theistic solution to the problem of evil
God must do his best. It is axiomatic that anything less than doing his best would be evil for GOd.
The theist must show that what God produces is the best possible.
Heaven is actually an argument against this world being the best of all possible worlds.
The way out of this dilemma is to claim that this is not the best of all possible worlds, but the best possible way to get to the best of all possible worlds (heaven)
Only an infinitely wise and good God can guarantee heaven as an outcome
The Dimensions of the Problem of Evil
Three aspects to the problem of evil:
1) Metaphysical
2) Moral
3) Physical
The Metaphysical Aspect of Evil
1) God is the author of everything in the world
2) Evil is something in the world
3) Therefore, God is the author of evil
Theists would not want to reject either of the premises. Denying the first would lead to dualism. Denying the second just seems contrary to experience
Theistic reply:
1) God is the author of everything
2) Evil is not a thing (substance)
3) Therefore, God is not necessarily the author of evil
To deny evil is not a real entity is not to deny the reality of evil. Evil is real. It is a real privation in things.
The Moral Aspect of the Problem of Evil
Pierre Bayle postulated the moral problem of evil in the 17th century.
1) Evil exists
2) An omnipotent God could destroy evil
3) A benevolent God would destroy evil
4) Therefore, since evil is not destroyed either:
a) God is omnipotent and malevolent
b) God is benevolent and impotent
c) God is both malevolent and impotent
d) There is no God
Another way of stating it:
1) God is responsible for making everyone, including human freedom
2) Human freedom brought about moral evil
3) Therefore, God is responsible for what brought about moral evil
The Physical Aspect of the Problem of Evil
Not all evil is clearly a result of human freedom
Albert Camus offered the physical problem of evil
1) Either one must join the doc and fight the plague or else join the priest and not fight the plague
2) Not to fight the plague is anti-humanitarian
3) To fight the plague is to fight against God who sent it
4) Therefore if humanitarianism is right, theism is wrong
Theists would deny premise 3
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
Moral Arguments and Objections for God
(Originally written March 6, 2007 in Book 13)
Moral Arguments and Objections
The moral argument for God was not posited as a rational argument at first. It was merely used as a practical postulate.
Kant: Positing God out of Moral Necessity
Kant denied any possibility for theoretical proofs of an absolutely perfect being or Necessary Being. But, he did posit God because it was necessary for a God to be to make sense of moral experience.
The unity of happiness (the desire of all man) and morality (what all men ought to do) is Kant's greatest good or summum bonum.
Kant stated that people are unable to reach the summum bonum in this life or without God. Thus, it must be assumed that there is a God and an afterlife.
Rashdall: Positing God is Rationally Necessary
Hastings Rashdall argues that there must be an absolutely perfect moral Mind. He argues that an absolutely perfect moral Mind must exist to hold an objective moral law that is independent of individual minds. Since there is an independent and objective moral law an absolutely perfect moral Mind must exist.
Sorely: An Expansion of the Moral Argument
W.R. Sorely argues that there is an objective moral law independent of human consciousness despite a lack of conformity to it because:
1) People are conscious of this law
2) People acknowledge its claim on them without actually yielding to it
3) People admit its validity prior to recognizing it
4) No finite mind grasps its fullness
5) All finite minds together have not reached complete agreement on its meaning nor conformity to its ideal.
Sorely argues that an objective moral law is an idea and that ideas exist only in minds. Thus, there must be a supreme mind in which this objective moral law exists.
He contends that the moral law is not a formal part of the universe and therefore cannot be accounted for in natural terms.
Trueblood: Further Refinement of the Moral Argument
Elton Trueblood added to the moral argument in the tradition of Rashdall and Sorely.
He argued that there must be an objective moral law because otherwise:
1) There would be no agreement on the meaning of it
2) No ethical disagreements would have ever occurred because each person would be subjectively right.
3) Normal judgment would ever have been wrong
4) No ethical question could even be discussed
5) Contradiction would result
Also, he argued that the moral law is beyond individuals and humanity as a whole.
He stated there must be a Lawgiver that is a moral, personal Mind.
Lewis: Further Expansion of the Moral Argument
C.S. Lewis argued that:
1. There must be a universal moral law because otherwise:
- Disagreements would make no sense
- All criticism are meaningless
- Promise and treaty keeping are unnecessary
- We would not make excuses for breaking the moral law
2. This moral law cannot be herd instinct because otherwise:
-The strongest impulse would always win
-We would always act from instinct
-Some instincts would always be right
3. The moral law is not mere convention because:
- Not everything learned is a social convention
- Judgment about moral progress makes sense only if the basis for value judgment is independent of human society
- Variations in value judgments are largely factual, non-moral
4. The moral law cannot be identified with a law of nature because:
- The moral law is not a descriptive 'is' but a prescriptive 'ought'
- Situations factually more convenient are morally worse than these less convenient
- Factually convenient situations can be wrong
5. The moral law cannot be mere fancy
6. The person is the key to understanding this moral law
7. Therefore, there is an absolutely perfect power outside of man which is more like man than anything we know
Russell: Moral Disproof of God
1. If there is a moral law it comes from God's fiat or it does not.
2. If it comes from God's fiat is arbitrary and God is not essentially good
3. If it does not come from God's fiat than God is subject to the moral law and thus, not ultimate
4. Either God is not essentially good or else God is not ultimate
5. Neither an arbitrary God or a less than ultimate God is religiously worthy.
6. Therefore, there is no God who is worthy of religious devotion.
Some theists, following in Ockham's tradition argue that God's fiat is not arbitrary. Other theists, following Aquinas, argue that this is a false disjunction.
Bayle; The Basic Form of the Dilemma
Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) gave the basic logical moral argument against God:
1. Evil exists
2. An omnipotent God could destroy evil
3. A benevolent God would destroy evil.
4. Therefore, since evil is not destroyed then either
-God is omnipotent and malevolent
-God is benevolent but impotent
-God is malevolent and impotent
-God does not exist
Most non theists have not used this a definitive proof because
1. It is possible God is doing something to destroy evil
2. It is possible that there is some greater good achieved by allowing evil.
3. What seems evil may be a part of a greater good.
4. It is possible that it may be contradictory to God's will or man's free will to destroy evil
5. It is possible that God is all-perfect but not all-powerful.
Camus: Theism is contrary to Humanitarianism
Albert Camus claimed that if humanitarianism is right then theism is wrong.
He held that if there is a God, he must be worked against because he is the source of evil.
Other forms of the moral argument against God
Roland Puccetti argued against John H. Hick's defense of theism, stating:
1. There are instances of innocent suffering
2) An all-wise, all-powerful, all-good God would not allow innocent suffering
3. Therefore, such a God does not exist
Puccetti's argument does not logically rule out an all-perfect God.
Innocent suffering is no the same as unrewarded and unredeemed suffering.
It is possible that no suffering is innocent.
There are plausible explanations to why God permits suffering: Even if no theist knows these reasons it may still exist.
If the theistic God exists, there is a good explanation for all suffering.
H.J. McCloskey argued:
1. Either we should work to eliminate suffering or we should not
2. If we should not, then the moral law is wrong
3. If we should, then theism is wrong
4. The moral law is right
5. Therefore, theism is wrong
Moral disproofs of God all appear to be doomed to failure because they must assume some standard of justice from beyond this world.
Even if the anti-theist insists that the moral standard comes from something other than God he must admit a major premise of theism (an objective moral law).
Küng: Exercising Fundamental Thrust
Hans King, a Roman Catholic Theologian offered an argument that is both moral and cosmological:
1. Traditional defenses of God's existence are inadequate
2. Modern atheism is not rationally defensible, but it is not rationally refutable
3. Atheism has given way to nihilism
4. One must choose to affirm reality or deny it and fall into nihilism
5. When we affirm meaningfulness we exercise fundamental trust
6. Reality has not shown itself to be self-grounded
7. We must choose to see reality as grounded in something or not
8. We can say yes to God as the ground of reality.
Küng presents a disjunctive argument. God cannot both exist and not exist; reality cannot both be and not-be meaningful.
King does not demand that we choose God, only that choosing God is a rational decision. But he leaves atheism as a rational, albeit implausible choice as well.
No rationally inescapable moral proofs for God have been offered.
No definitive moral disproof of God has been offered.
The theistic case must demonstrate the plausibility of evil being a condition for a greater good.
When any anti-theist is proof is pressed too far it becomes an argument for God or at least grants a major premise in the theist's argument (objective moral law).
The theistic moral argument depends on the cosmological argument because laws need causes.
Moral Arguments and Objections
The moral argument for God was not posited as a rational argument at first. It was merely used as a practical postulate.
Kant: Positing God out of Moral Necessity
Kant denied any possibility for theoretical proofs of an absolutely perfect being or Necessary Being. But, he did posit God because it was necessary for a God to be to make sense of moral experience.
The unity of happiness (the desire of all man) and morality (what all men ought to do) is Kant's greatest good or summum bonum.
Kant stated that people are unable to reach the summum bonum in this life or without God. Thus, it must be assumed that there is a God and an afterlife.
Rashdall: Positing God is Rationally Necessary
Hastings Rashdall argues that there must be an absolutely perfect moral Mind. He argues that an absolutely perfect moral Mind must exist to hold an objective moral law that is independent of individual minds. Since there is an independent and objective moral law an absolutely perfect moral Mind must exist.
Sorely: An Expansion of the Moral Argument
W.R. Sorely argues that there is an objective moral law independent of human consciousness despite a lack of conformity to it because:
1) People are conscious of this law
2) People acknowledge its claim on them without actually yielding to it
3) People admit its validity prior to recognizing it
4) No finite mind grasps its fullness
5) All finite minds together have not reached complete agreement on its meaning nor conformity to its ideal.
Sorely argues that an objective moral law is an idea and that ideas exist only in minds. Thus, there must be a supreme mind in which this objective moral law exists.
He contends that the moral law is not a formal part of the universe and therefore cannot be accounted for in natural terms.
Trueblood: Further Refinement of the Moral Argument
Elton Trueblood added to the moral argument in the tradition of Rashdall and Sorely.
He argued that there must be an objective moral law because otherwise:
1) There would be no agreement on the meaning of it
2) No ethical disagreements would have ever occurred because each person would be subjectively right.
3) Normal judgment would ever have been wrong
4) No ethical question could even be discussed
5) Contradiction would result
Also, he argued that the moral law is beyond individuals and humanity as a whole.
He stated there must be a Lawgiver that is a moral, personal Mind.
Lewis: Further Expansion of the Moral Argument
C.S. Lewis argued that:
1. There must be a universal moral law because otherwise:
- Disagreements would make no sense
- All criticism are meaningless
- Promise and treaty keeping are unnecessary
- We would not make excuses for breaking the moral law
2. This moral law cannot be herd instinct because otherwise:
-The strongest impulse would always win
-We would always act from instinct
-Some instincts would always be right
3. The moral law is not mere convention because:
- Not everything learned is a social convention
- Judgment about moral progress makes sense only if the basis for value judgment is independent of human society
- Variations in value judgments are largely factual, non-moral
4. The moral law cannot be identified with a law of nature because:
- The moral law is not a descriptive 'is' but a prescriptive 'ought'
- Situations factually more convenient are morally worse than these less convenient
- Factually convenient situations can be wrong
5. The moral law cannot be mere fancy
6. The person is the key to understanding this moral law
7. Therefore, there is an absolutely perfect power outside of man which is more like man than anything we know
Russell: Moral Disproof of God
1. If there is a moral law it comes from God's fiat or it does not.
2. If it comes from God's fiat is arbitrary and God is not essentially good
3. If it does not come from God's fiat than God is subject to the moral law and thus, not ultimate
4. Either God is not essentially good or else God is not ultimate
5. Neither an arbitrary God or a less than ultimate God is religiously worthy.
6. Therefore, there is no God who is worthy of religious devotion.
Some theists, following in Ockham's tradition argue that God's fiat is not arbitrary. Other theists, following Aquinas, argue that this is a false disjunction.
Bayle; The Basic Form of the Dilemma
Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) gave the basic logical moral argument against God:
1. Evil exists
2. An omnipotent God could destroy evil
3. A benevolent God would destroy evil.
4. Therefore, since evil is not destroyed then either
-God is omnipotent and malevolent
-God is benevolent but impotent
-God is malevolent and impotent
-God does not exist
Most non theists have not used this a definitive proof because
1. It is possible God is doing something to destroy evil
2. It is possible that there is some greater good achieved by allowing evil.
3. What seems evil may be a part of a greater good.
4. It is possible that it may be contradictory to God's will or man's free will to destroy evil
5. It is possible that God is all-perfect but not all-powerful.
Camus: Theism is contrary to Humanitarianism
Albert Camus claimed that if humanitarianism is right then theism is wrong.
He held that if there is a God, he must be worked against because he is the source of evil.
Other forms of the moral argument against God
Roland Puccetti argued against John H. Hick's defense of theism, stating:
1. There are instances of innocent suffering
2) An all-wise, all-powerful, all-good God would not allow innocent suffering
3. Therefore, such a God does not exist
Puccetti's argument does not logically rule out an all-perfect God.
Innocent suffering is no the same as unrewarded and unredeemed suffering.
It is possible that no suffering is innocent.
There are plausible explanations to why God permits suffering: Even if no theist knows these reasons it may still exist.
If the theistic God exists, there is a good explanation for all suffering.
H.J. McCloskey argued:
1. Either we should work to eliminate suffering or we should not
2. If we should not, then the moral law is wrong
3. If we should, then theism is wrong
4. The moral law is right
5. Therefore, theism is wrong
Moral disproofs of God all appear to be doomed to failure because they must assume some standard of justice from beyond this world.
Even if the anti-theist insists that the moral standard comes from something other than God he must admit a major premise of theism (an objective moral law).
Küng: Exercising Fundamental Thrust
Hans King, a Roman Catholic Theologian offered an argument that is both moral and cosmological:
1. Traditional defenses of God's existence are inadequate
2. Modern atheism is not rationally defensible, but it is not rationally refutable
3. Atheism has given way to nihilism
4. One must choose to affirm reality or deny it and fall into nihilism
5. When we affirm meaningfulness we exercise fundamental trust
6. Reality has not shown itself to be self-grounded
7. We must choose to see reality as grounded in something or not
8. We can say yes to God as the ground of reality.
Küng presents a disjunctive argument. God cannot both exist and not exist; reality cannot both be and not-be meaningful.
King does not demand that we choose God, only that choosing God is a rational decision. But he leaves atheism as a rational, albeit implausible choice as well.
No rationally inescapable moral proofs for God have been offered.
No definitive moral disproof of God has been offered.
The theistic case must demonstrate the plausibility of evil being a condition for a greater good.
When any anti-theist is proof is pressed too far it becomes an argument for God or at least grants a major premise in the theist's argument (objective moral law).
The theistic moral argument depends on the cosmological argument because laws need causes.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
The Dimensions of Religious Experience (B)
(Originally written February 28, 2007 in Book 13)
Pg. 46 Transcending Outward or Toward the Beyond
Transcending to the "outward" realm is the pressing beyond one's self by searching to the outermost limits of one's being.
"God or the Transcendent is found at the uttermost extremity of human experience" (46).
The Circumference of All Things
Meister Eckhart: "God is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere" (46).
God has no boundaries and man can transcend outward to God and never reach a limit.
The "Beyond" or the "out there" are good ways of describing outward transcendence.
The Transcendent is somewhere beyond and man must go beyond himself to reach it.
Reaction to the God up there or out there:
Rudolf Bultmann states that referring to God up there or out there is holding onto a mythological conception of reality. Bultmann feels that by demythologizing God makes the true meaning of God's mystery clear. He contends that the demythologization of the Bible is not to make religion more acceptable to modern men, but to make the Christian faith clearer to modern man.
Bultmann rejects the objectification of God by showing God in the determined worldview of modern science.
He holds that God acts in ways that are hidden and to try and un-hde his actions is to objectify God.
Bultmann did not intend to deny the possibility of transcendence, but that God is active in human personal, existential experience in ways that are unobservable.
Bultmann advocates for an eschatological transcendence.
Transcending Toward the End
Christianity radically changed the nature of time by sanctifying it through the Incarnation.
The Death of God
"G.W.F. Hegel wrote that God is dead and Friedrich Nietzsche took it seriously" (49).
Thomas J.J. Altizer contends that God died when he became Incarnate. If Christ is identical with God, then heaven was emptied of God when Christ came to Earth.
Altizer sees God as a dialectical process rather than an existent being. "God is a historical and dialectical process which can come to realization only by negation" (51).
Altizer claims retrospective and vertical transcendence are impossible. He seemingly advocates eschatological transcendence.
One must transcend forward in the movement of history.
The Secularization of Christianity
Theology must be anthropological: "God cannot be found beyond the world but only in other persons" (53).
We can no longer speak meaningfully of God or the Transcendent.
Religion can be secularized and humanized by being understood in completely human forms.
Transcending toward a center:
The Primitive Mythical Center of Life
The center served as a doorway to God in preliterate religions.
The primitive religious man sought to center himself where the Sacred breaks through.
The Mystical Center of the Universe
Mysteries often speak of God as the Center of all things.
Becoming union with the center of God is the goal of transcendence to the center.
The Center in the Divine Milieu
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin calls God the Center of the Universe and that man should plunge into God. He must seek "to be united while remaining oneself" (55).
Transcending toward the Depth or Ground
Mystics have sought the Divine in the depth of their souls for a long time.
Robinson's God Within
John A.T. Robinson argued that God cannot be "up there" as a sky or High God. He states that the spatial way of picturing God is a stumbling block rather than aid to belief in God.
Robinson does not seek to replace a transcendent God with a pantheistic and purely immanent one. He simply seeks to remove symbolism of spatial language in religion to make it more relevant.
Instead of speaking about the Transcendent up there, people ought to speak of the transcendent depth of God in relationships.
God and the Subconscious
Since Freud it has been common to closely associate the subconscious with the Transcendent or to render them identical.
Carl Gustav Jung saw God as the idealization of one's own self-image and thus, to know self is to know God and to know God is to know self.
Transcending in a circle
Transcendence by Eternal Recurrence
Atheism does not necessarily deny all transcendence. Nietzsche even needed to transcend. He complained about the "unbearable solicitude of life without God" in a letter from July 2, 1885.
Conceptually, Nietzsche was never theistic or pantheistic; but, existentially, he related traditional self-transcendence with a type of his own: the "willing the eternal recurrence of the same state of affairs" (59).
Nietzsche's 'eternal recurrence' is the only way of overcoming utter nihilism.
Life is not fleeting, it is eternally recurring.
Transcendence by Eternal Absurdity
Albert Camus did not want to negate God or appeal to God. He wanted to live on what he knew and that alone.
Camus seeks transcendence in rebelling against nihilism in affirmation for he cyclical nature of one's absurd life.
There is a self-determined and self initiated transcendence byron the absurdity of one's life in an absurd universe. One can transcend a personal nihilism, but nothing else.
Religious experience always involves transcendence.
Transcendence goes seven ways:
1) Backward to the origin - primitive man's transcendence
2) Upward to the highest possible reality: Neo-Platonism
3) Outward - mystical transcendence
4) Inward - mystical transcendence
5) Forward to the final end - modern demythologized transcendence
6) Downward to the Ground of all - modern demythologized transcendence
7) Circular - those who deny religion
Religious experience has many dimensions. It is more broader than theism.
Humans are incurably religious.
A human must transcend.
The truly religious man seeks reality in transcendence.
Pg. 46 Transcending Outward or Toward the Beyond
Transcending to the "outward" realm is the pressing beyond one's self by searching to the outermost limits of one's being.
"God or the Transcendent is found at the uttermost extremity of human experience" (46).
The Circumference of All Things
Meister Eckhart: "God is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere" (46).
God has no boundaries and man can transcend outward to God and never reach a limit.
The "Beyond" or the "out there" are good ways of describing outward transcendence.
The Transcendent is somewhere beyond and man must go beyond himself to reach it.
Reaction to the God up there or out there:
Rudolf Bultmann states that referring to God up there or out there is holding onto a mythological conception of reality. Bultmann feels that by demythologizing God makes the true meaning of God's mystery clear. He contends that the demythologization of the Bible is not to make religion more acceptable to modern men, but to make the Christian faith clearer to modern man.
Bultmann rejects the objectification of God by showing God in the determined worldview of modern science.
He holds that God acts in ways that are hidden and to try and un-hde his actions is to objectify God.
Bultmann did not intend to deny the possibility of transcendence, but that God is active in human personal, existential experience in ways that are unobservable.
Bultmann advocates for an eschatological transcendence.
Transcending Toward the End
Christianity radically changed the nature of time by sanctifying it through the Incarnation.
The Death of God
"G.W.F. Hegel wrote that God is dead and Friedrich Nietzsche took it seriously" (49).
Thomas J.J. Altizer contends that God died when he became Incarnate. If Christ is identical with God, then heaven was emptied of God when Christ came to Earth.
Altizer sees God as a dialectical process rather than an existent being. "God is a historical and dialectical process which can come to realization only by negation" (51).
Altizer claims retrospective and vertical transcendence are impossible. He seemingly advocates eschatological transcendence.
One must transcend forward in the movement of history.
The Secularization of Christianity
Theology must be anthropological: "God cannot be found beyond the world but only in other persons" (53).
We can no longer speak meaningfully of God or the Transcendent.
Religion can be secularized and humanized by being understood in completely human forms.
Transcending toward a center:
The Primitive Mythical Center of Life
The center served as a doorway to God in preliterate religions.
The primitive religious man sought to center himself where the Sacred breaks through.
The Mystical Center of the Universe
Mysteries often speak of God as the Center of all things.
Becoming union with the center of God is the goal of transcendence to the center.
The Center in the Divine Milieu
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin calls God the Center of the Universe and that man should plunge into God. He must seek "to be united while remaining oneself" (55).
Transcending toward the Depth or Ground
Mystics have sought the Divine in the depth of their souls for a long time.
Robinson's God Within
John A.T. Robinson argued that God cannot be "up there" as a sky or High God. He states that the spatial way of picturing God is a stumbling block rather than aid to belief in God.
Robinson does not seek to replace a transcendent God with a pantheistic and purely immanent one. He simply seeks to remove symbolism of spatial language in religion to make it more relevant.
Instead of speaking about the Transcendent up there, people ought to speak of the transcendent depth of God in relationships.
God and the Subconscious
Since Freud it has been common to closely associate the subconscious with the Transcendent or to render them identical.
Carl Gustav Jung saw God as the idealization of one's own self-image and thus, to know self is to know God and to know God is to know self.
Transcending in a circle
Transcendence by Eternal Recurrence
Atheism does not necessarily deny all transcendence. Nietzsche even needed to transcend. He complained about the "unbearable solicitude of life without God" in a letter from July 2, 1885.
Conceptually, Nietzsche was never theistic or pantheistic; but, existentially, he related traditional self-transcendence with a type of his own: the "willing the eternal recurrence of the same state of affairs" (59).
Nietzsche's 'eternal recurrence' is the only way of overcoming utter nihilism.
Life is not fleeting, it is eternally recurring.
Transcendence by Eternal Absurdity
Albert Camus did not want to negate God or appeal to God. He wanted to live on what he knew and that alone.
Camus seeks transcendence in rebelling against nihilism in affirmation for he cyclical nature of one's absurd life.
There is a self-determined and self initiated transcendence byron the absurdity of one's life in an absurd universe. One can transcend a personal nihilism, but nothing else.
Religious experience always involves transcendence.
Transcendence goes seven ways:
1) Backward to the origin - primitive man's transcendence
2) Upward to the highest possible reality: Neo-Platonism
3) Outward - mystical transcendence
4) Inward - mystical transcendence
5) Forward to the final end - modern demythologized transcendence
6) Downward to the Ground of all - modern demythologized transcendence
7) Circular - those who deny religion
Religious experience has many dimensions. It is more broader than theism.
Humans are incurably religious.
A human must transcend.
The truly religious man seeks reality in transcendence.
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