(Originally written August 8, 2007 in Book 16)
Beyond Good & Evil
Friedrich Nietzsche
20
All philosophical concepts are intertwined. No one discovers anything new any more, they only come back to an idea long forgotten. It is a remembering of sorts.
21
The "cause sui" is the greatest conceived self-contradiction.
"The desire for 'freedom of the will' in the superlative metaphysical sense... [is] the desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility, and to absolute God, the world, ancestors, chance and society" (Nietzsche, 218).
We ought to use cute and effect only as pure concepts (fictional conveniences) for the purpose of communication. We ought not to use them for explanatory purposes.
By using cause and effect in explanations we impose our way of thinking to the thing itself and speak only mythologically.
Free will, un-free will, cause and effect, are simply mythology. "in real life it is only a matter of strong and weak wills" (Nietzsche, 219).
22
The conformity of nature to laws is merely interpretation.
One can use this interpretation in any way he wishes, but it remains nonetheless an interpretation.
23
We must sail over morality and immorality to life itself.
The path to this is true psychology.
Psychology is the path to fundamental problems.
Part Two: The Free Spirit
24
The will to knowledge is on the foundation of the will to ignorance. We stay ignorant because we desire the freedom it gives.
25
Beware of defending the "truth" or your theories because no philosopher has been proven right.
Rather than striving for truth, strive for masks and subtlety so "that you may be mistaken for what you are not, or feared a little" (Nietzsche, 226).
When you defend your theories you simply become a vengeance seeker.
26
"Cynicism is the only form in which base souls approach honesty; and the higher man must listen closely to every coarse or subtle cynicism, and congratulate himself when a clown without shame or a scientific satay speaks out precisely in front of him" (Nietzsche, 228).
Indignant people are people not worth listening to because no one lies more than the indignant.
27
Do things in a way that is difficult to understand. That way those friends who laugh and misunderstand can be gotten rid of with a laugh.
28
A writers tempo of style is dictated by his language and culture and translating it to other languages can make the good intentioned translation a caricature of the original.
What Nietzsche admired most about Plato and what drew him to read Plato was Plato's secrecy and sphinx nature.
29
"Independence is for the very few, it is a privilege of the strong" (Nietzsche, 231). Those who seek it are also daring to the point of recklessness.
30
Man's highest insights must (and should) sound like follies or crimes.
That which serves the higher soul is poison to the lower.
"The virtues of the common man might perhaps signify vices and weaknesses in a philosopher" (Nietzsche, 232).
Books for the whole world are foul and small people cling to them. "One should not go to church if one wants to breathe pure air" (Nietzsche, 233).
31
The youthful soul is reckless and pursues without art. Then they add art to their arguments. Then they, after feeling disappointments turn against themselves. Ten years later we realize that this was all still youthful.
32
During prehistoric times the value of an action was judged on its consequences. This is the pre-moral period of history.
The first step into the moral history of the world is knowing thyself.
Now actions are valued or devalued on their origin or the actor's intention.
We ought to have a shift in value judgments to the extra-moral.
The intent of an action is merely a sign or a symptom and requires interpretation.
Traditional morality is merely a prejudice, something that must be overcome.
33
The whole morality of self-sacrifice must be questioned because it is a seduction.
It seduces by making one feel good. Those who are self-sacrificial reap the benefits, therefore we must be cautious.
34
The faith in immediate certainties is a moral naïveté that reflects honor or philosophers.
Apart from morality this faith is stupidity.
It is nothing more than a prejudice that makes us believe that the truth is moe valuable than mere appearance.
Why must true and false be opposites? Why can't we just admit that they are just lighter and darker shadows and shades of appearance.
36
Thinking is merely a relation of our drives to one another.
37
?
38
Often times people interpret things with their own indignation on enthusiasm so much that the actual text is buried beneath the interpretation.
39
Happiness and virtue are not valid arguments to support doctrines. But unhappy and evil are not counter arguments.
The truth may be dangerous and harmful. "The strength of spirit should be measured according to how much of the 'truth' one could still barely endure" (Nietzsche, 239).
40
Shame is an invention of man.
Masks are necessary to any profound man. The most profound man has a mask that is constantly growing.
41
We should be independent, but we must test ourselves to make sure we are ready.
We should not be too attached to any person because every person is a prison.
He should not be too attached to our fatherland.
We should detach ourselves from pity.
We should not be so attached to a science.
We should not become attached to our detachment.
We should not become attached to any virtue, lest it become a vice.
"One must know how to conserve oneself: the hardest test of independence" (Nietzsche, 242).
42
The new philosophers will want to be riddles.
43
The new philosophers will be friends of truth, but they will not be dogmatists.
"It must offend their pride, also their taste, if their truth is supposed to be a truth for everyman" (Nietzsche, 243).
44
The new philosophers will be free spirits.
Free spirits are not those democratic spirits who are calling for an equality of all men. They merely want to make life easier for the herd and abolish all suffering whatsoever, as if suffering served no purpose.
The democratic spirit, heralded as a "free spirit" is actually a spirit in bondage. It is a spirit that visits to chain all spirits together and therefore chain them all, even the exceptional owes to the ground.
TO be a truly strong and free spirit it must grow under extreme pressure.
The free spirit believes that the evil, devilry, hardness, stoicism, forcefulness, slavery and beast-like qualities in man serve to enhance him as much as the opposites do.
Free spirits are not the most communicative ones. Free spirits are not the same as free thinkers.
The free spirit has faced himself from all prisons or nooks, from prejudice, youth, origin and accident from all lures like honor, money, offices and enthusiasm of the senses because they contain hidden dependencies.
With of these restraint the free spirit is uninhabited and can stomach the unstomachable, digest the undigestible, view the unviewable, and penetrate the impenetrable.
Free-spirits are friends of solitude.
Part Three: What is religious
45
In order to know anything, one must do a lot of work to know, and then it usually amounts to a few things.
"But a curiosity of my type remains after all the most agreeable of all vices - sorry, I meant to say: the love of truth has its reward in heaven and even on earth" (Nietzsche, 250).
46
"The Christian faith is a sacrifice: all freedom, all pride, all self-confident of the spirit; at the same time, enslavement and self-mockery, self-mutiliation" (Nietzsche, 250).
Slaves are people who love as they hate: without nuance, to pain even! It is under these conditions that Christianity has appealed to so many. But, the complete lack of suffering in the masters (i.e. stoicism and skepticism) enraged the suffering Christian slaves and they overthrew their masters.
47
Wherever religion has popped up three things have followed:
1) Solitude
2) Fasting
3) Sexual abstinence
48
In Catholicism unbelief is seen as a rebellion against the spirit whereas Northern Protestantism sees unbelief as a return to spirit.
49
The Greek religion was noble because it affirms life despite the terrors of it. But when fear became an integral part of religion it paved the way for Christianity.
50
There are various types of passion for God:
- Peasant: sincere and obtrusive (ala Luther)
- Oriental- a slave who has been pardoned and elevated (a la Augustine)
51
The most powerful men bow before a saint because as they honor a saint they honor something in themselves.
They bow because a sight of a saint arouses superstition in them.
It was the "will to power" of the saint that struck fear in their hearts.
52
The Jewish Old Testament contains things so grand that Greek and Indian literature has nothing to compare with it.
The Old Testament is the book of divine justice, the New Testament is the book of grace.
The New Testament is a book for small souls and dogmatists. The pairing of the grand Old Testament and the small soul New Testament is the greatest sin against the spirit of literary Europe.
53
The European religious instinct is growing more and more powerful, but the faith in theism grows dimmer and dimmer.
54
"Modern philosophy, being an epistemological skepticism is, covertly an overtly anti-Christian - although, to say this for the benefit of more refined ears, by no means anti-religious" (Nietzsche, 256).
55
"There is a great ladder of religious cruelty with many rungs, but three of these are the most important" (Nietzsche, 257)
1. The sacrifice of human beings (especially one's loved ones) to a god
2. The sacrifice of one's nature (asceticism)
3. The sacrifice of God for nothing
56
Whoever thinks through pessimism thoroughly will come out at the end beyond morals, beyond good and evil.
He will come out the most-spirited, alive and affirming human ever.
57
One day the concepts of "God" and "sin" (the most trouble causing concepts of all time) will be viewed as a child's toy.
58
The genuinely religious life requires a life of leisure, or an aristocratic air to it.
The religious life is most fond of self-examination.
The modern world, with its busyness and stupid pride educate man for unbelief.
Every age has its naïveté, ours is the naïveté of the scholars' belief in his own superiority.
59
Those who wish to see life transcendentalized are those who have had inter lives spoiled the most.
It has been an incurable pessimism that has forced men to cling to a religious interpretation of existence. It has been fear that has drove man to religion.
Piety is the most subtle offspring of the fear of truth.
60
TO love men for God's sake is the most noble feeling attained by men.
61
The philosopher should use religion (as well as politics and economics) to cultivate and educate.
The philosopher can use religion to train people differently. Religion is used differently for those who rule and those who are ruled.
"To ordinary human beings, finally - the vast majority who exist for service and general advantage, and who may exist only for that -" (Nietzsche, 263). (Wow.)
Religion is a tool to subject the people for rules.
For those who are ruled, religion is a refreshment, a sanctification and justification of their suffering.
62
One always pays dearly when religions do not want to be used as a tool for education in philosopher's hands.
When religions insist on being sovereign in their own right, when they see themselves as ends and not means, people suffer terribly.
Religions preserve the weak and aid the suffering so that the natural selection process is destroyed. Religions weaken the human race.
Christianity is an arrogance. It is a hubris, a denial of rank in men. It is the pronouncement of the weak that they are strong. It is a complete flipping of truth.
Christianity has transformed man into a herd animal.
Part Four: Epigrams and Interludes
63: A teacher only takes things seriously in relation to his students, including himself.
64
Knowledge for its own sake is the last snare of morality
65
"The attraction of knowledge would be small if one did not have to overcome so much shame on the way" (Nietzsche, 269).
65a
One is most dishonest to one's god.
66
To let himself be taken advantage of could be the modesty of a god among men.
67
The love one is barbarism because it is done so at the expense of others. Likewise, love of God is barbarism.
68
The memory yields to one's pride (Freudian theory of repression)
69
One is mistaken if one doesn't believe that some killing is done considerately.
70
Life is repetitive. If one has character, one has experience.
71
"As long as you still experience the stars as something as 'above you' you lack the eye of knowledge" (Nietzsche, 270).
72
It is the duration, not the intensity of high feelings that make high men.
73
Whoever reaches his ideal transcends it.
73a
People can hide their glory from others and call that their pride.
74
A man with spirit is unbearable without gratitude and cleanliness.
75
"The degree and kind of a man's sexuality reach up into the ultimate pinnacle of his spirit" (Nietzsche, 271).
76
A warlike man sets upon himself in peace.
77
One wishes to bully, justify, scold, honor or hide one's habits with his principles.
78
"Whoever despises himself still respects himself as one who despises" (Nietzsche, 271).
79
A soul which is loved but does not love betrays itself.
80
A matter that becomes clear no longer interprets us. What happens when we pursue and complete the Socratic maxim of "know thyself?"
81
"It is terrible to die of thirst in the ocean. Do you have to salt your truth so heavily that it does not ever quench thirst anymore? (Nietzsche, 271).
82
Pity for all means tyranny for you.
83: ?
84
Women learn to hate to the extent to which her charms diminish.
85
"The same affects in man and woman are yet different in tempo, therefore man and woman do not cease to misunderstand each other" (Nietzsche, 272).
86
Women hate the "woman" (concept, universal)
87
If one imprison's one's heart one can free one's spirit.
88
We mistrust clever people when they become embarrassed.
89
Terrible experiences pose the question if the experiencer is not terrible.
90
Heavy-spirited people are made light by love and hate (whereas others become weighted with these)
91
Those who are so cold they burn cause some to believe they glow.
92
"Who has not, for the sake of his good reputation - sacrificed himself once?" (Nietzsche, 273).
93: ?
94 Maturity consists of finding the seriousness one had as a child at play.
95
To be ashamed one's immorality is to be on the path to be ashamed of one's morality.
96
One should part from life as Odysseus left Nausica: blessing it rather than loving it.
97
A great man is merely an actor of his own ideal.
98
Our conscience, if trained right, kisses us while hurting us.
99
The voice of disappointment is listening for an echo but only hearing praise.
100
We see ourselves as simpler than we are to take a rest from others
101
The knowledgeable man may feel like "God become animal"
102
Discover that one loves you back should disgust you because the person is stupid enough to love you back
103 ?
104
The importance of Christians' love for man is what has ceased their boring people at the stake. If they were truly concerned with men they would burn heretics and false prophets still.
105
The salvation via deception is implantable for the free spirit.
106
"In music the passions enjoy themselves" (Nietzsche, 274).
107
The sign of strong character is making up your mind and standing by it without regard to the best counter argument, therefore it is occasionally a will to stupidity.
108
There is no such thing as moral phenomena, only moral interpretation of phenomena.
109
A criminal is often unequal to his crime
110
The lawyers of criminals are often not artful enough to turn his beautiful terribleness into an advantage.
111
The vanity is most impenetrable right after the pride has been wounded
112
Those who feel predestined to see and not believe will fend off all believers
113: ?
114
The enormous expectation in sexual love and sense of shame in this expectation spoils all perspective for women
115
When neither love nor hate is involved, a women's game is mediocre
116
The great epochs of life occur when we have guts enough to rechristen our evil as what is best in us
117
The will to overcome an affect is merely the will of some other affect
118
Admiration is an innocence that people don't realize that they too may some day be admired
119
The disgust with dirt may cause us to not clean ourselves or "justify" ourselves
120
"Sensuality often hastens the growth of love so much that there roots remain weak and are easily torn up" (Nietzsche, 276).
121
It was subtle of God to learn Greek and not to learn it well
122
Enjoying praise can be a courtesy of the heart (the opposite of vanity)
123
"Even concubinage has been corrupted - by marriage" (Nietzsche, 276).
124
Whoever rejoices on the stake triumphs over the absence of pain that he expected, not over pain itself.
125
When we are forced to change our minds about a person we hold the inconvenience against him.
126
A people is a detour to get to six or seven great men (and then around them).
127
Science offends the modesty of real women. It makes them curious about their bodies
128
The more abstract the truth, the more seduction is needed to teach it.
129
The devil deeps away from God the farthest, therefore the devil is the most ancient friend of wisdom
130
A man betrays himself when his talent decreases. Talent is finery; finery is a hiding place.
131
Men and women deceive themselves about one another. At bottom they love only themselves (or their own ideal).
132
"One is best punished for one's virtues" (Nietzsche, 278).
133
Those who cannot live their ideal live more frivolously than those without an ideal.
134
All credibility and evidence of truth is derived from the senses
135 - ?
136
One seeks a midwife for his thoughts to begin a good conversation
137
A remarkable scholar is often a mediocre man. A mediocre artist is often a remarkable man.
138
We do what we do in dreams and awake: we invent who we are are and then forget him
139
"In revenge and love women is more barbarous than man" (Nietzsche, 278).
140 ?
141
The abdomen is why man doesn't easily mistake himself for a god.
142
"'In true love it is the soul that envelopes the body's' are the chastest words ever spoken"
143 Our vanity wishes that what we do best is what is hardest for us; therefore, the origin of morality
144
When a woman has scholarly inclinations there is probably something wrong with her sexuality.
145
Woman would not have the genius for finery if she didn't' instinctively have a secondary role.
146
Whoever fights monsters must not himself become a monster. The abyss stares at you when you stare at it.
147?
148
Woman are unequaled in seducing their neighbor into believing something and then believing piously in this opinion.
149
What a time experiences as evil is what an anti time experienced as good.
150
What happens around a hero is tragedy. What happens around a demigod is a satyr play. What happens around God? The World?
151
Having talent is not enough. One must have permission for the talent
152
Where the tree of knowledge is, there is so paradise. At least that is what the serpents say.
153
Whatever is done from love is done from beyond good and evil.
154
The delight in mockery is healthy, everyone else is pathology.
155
The sense of tragic gains or falls in level of sensuality.
156
Madness is rare in individuals, often in groups.
157
The thought of suicide is comforting on troubling nights
158
Reason and conscience bow to the tyrant in us.
159
One must repay good and ill, but not necessarily to that person
160
One no longer loves his insight once he communicates it.
161
Poets exploit their experiences.
162
Every nation believes our neighbor is his, not ours
163
Love brings out what is rare and exceptional, it easily deceives his normalcy
164
Jesus said the law was for servants of God. Be sons of God! What are morals to us sons of God?
165 -?
166
"Even when the mouth lies, the way it looks tells the truth" (Nietzsche, 282).
167 In hard men, intimacy involves shame
168 Christianity turned Eros into a vice
169
Talking a lot about one's self may be a way to conceal one's self
170 "Praise is more obtrusive than a reproach" (Nietzsche, 282).
171
TO a man of knowledge, pity seems ridiculous
172
From love of man one embraces another randomly, but we must not tell them that
173 One doesn't hate as long as one despises, but then only those they esteem
174 Utilitarians only love things useful as a vehicle for personal inclinations
175 - One loves one's desires and not the desired
176 Others' vanity only offends us if it offends our vanity
177 Nobody has been truthful enough about truthfulness
178 One doesn't credit clever people with their follies
179 The consequences of our actions take hold of us, indifferent to how much we have improved because of them
180 There is an innocence in lying based on a dedication to a course
181 - It is inhuman to bless when cursed
182 ?
183 "Not that you lied to me, but that I no longer believe you, has shaken me" (Nietzsche, 287).
184 The spirits of kindness may be seen to be malice
185 I don't like him because I am not equal to him. Has any one said this?
Fin
02/08/07-08/13/07 Book 16
Showing posts with label Freud. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Freud. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Monday, May 14, 2007
Notes for the Aesthetics Final
(Originally written May 14, 2007 in Book 16)
Studying for the Aesthetics Final. Only 2.5 hours to go!
I. Eco on Television & Mass Art
Eco feels that contemporary art, especially television and mass art and pop music is dominated by repetition.
A. The Serial - the repetition of the same abstract type (i.e. Soap Operas)
B. The Retake - Recycling characters from previously successful stories (i.e. Star Wars, Superman)
C. The Remake - telling the same story over again (i.e. Romeo & Juliet, Dr. Jekyll)
D. The Series - Fixed number of characters and situations and narrative scheme (Friends, Seinfeld)
Eco claims that the series respond to man's infinite need of hearing the same story repeated.
Also the series enables us to reward ourselves for guessing what will happen.
E. Loop series - a series with characters that have enormous pasts but no futures
F. Spiral - Characters are deepened and enriched but nothing new happens to them
II. Nehamas: Plato & The Mass Media
Nehamas applies Plato's critique of poetry to contemporary mass Media
Plato argued that poetry is dangerous because it is a medium that is suited for representation and imitation of vulgar subjects and shameful behavior.
Nehamas notes that mass media is strikingly similar to the poetry of Plato's age.
III. Carrol: Defining Mass Art
Carroll aims at defining mass art without passing judgment on it.
He claims that mass art is exoteric (as opposed to Avant-Garde art as being esoteric)
Mass art is meant for mass audience.
Mass art is designed so it can be enjoyed by a lot of people with little effort.
Mass art requires a mass delivery technology.
Formal Definition: "X" is mass art if and only if X is a multiple instance or type artwork, produced and distributed by mass technology, intentionally designed to be enjoyed virtually effortlessly by a largely untutored audience.
Mass art is nonetheless art according to Carrol because it is descendant of traditional art forms.
He denies that Mass Art can be labeled as bad simply because it is mass art because mass art is its own genre.
IV. Gracy K - Why is Rock Music so Noisy?
Gracy K claims rock is so "noisy" because of the distortion of amplified electric guitars.
The distortion of tone produced by volume adjustments in what accounts for the noisiness of rock music.
V. Rudinon: Can White People Sing the Blues?
Arguments against it and their problems:
1) The Proprietary Argument - Blues as a genre belongs to the African American community and when whites perform the blues they misappropriate the cultural heritage of Black Americans.
Problem - "Red Herring" The history of music is full of instances of borrowing genres among cultures.
2) The experiential access argument - One cannot understand the blues or authentically express oneself in it unless one knows what it is like to live as a Black American
Problem - This argument is the myth of ethnic memory - Not all Black Americas fully comprehend what their ancestors went through. And it observes the universal human element of the blues.
Rudinon contends that the blues can be authentically played by whites if one recognizes the proper sources of inspiration and technique which spawned the blues.
VI. Adorno
Adorno was a Marxist and was against all commodification of art.
Adorno felt that pop music does not resist the temptation to be commodified and is therefore is gross simplification of art.
Artistic music is individualized and unique. Pop music is standardized and not unique.
Stages of listening to Pop Music:
1) Vague Remembrance - I've heard this before
2) Actual Identification - I have heard this before
3) Subsumption by label - The listener knows the band or album or some lyrics
4) Self-reflection (act of identification) - identifies with the music
5) Psychological transfer - judges the song good and further identifies with it
6) Disillusionment - shallowness of song becomes apparent. Listener despises the songs and those who still like it.
7) Recycling - Song comes back as a "golden oldie" and is repackaged for new consumers
Brown points out numerous problems with Adorno's argument.
1) Adorno puts all pop music in a single category
2) Adorno is guilty of tonal chauvinism
3) Adorno picks the best classical music and compares it with the worst pop music
4) Adorno overlooks the point that classical music would become disillusioned if it were played at the quantity pop music is
5) Adorno overlooks that not all pop music is standardized (i.e. Tom Waits)
6) Classical music is also subject to commodification
VII. Shusterman - Form & Funk
Susterman aims to defend pop music against its critics.
A. The Passivity Argument
- Pop Music involves no aesthetic challenge and requires and induces passivity because of the simple and repetitive nature of it.
Objector: not all effort is intellectual effort, there can be "somatic" forms of effort
B. The Formal Complexity Argument
- High art has a formal complexity that is lacking in pop arts. High art focuses on form not content
Objection: Their argument mistakenly opposes form and content
C. The Argument from Aesthetic Autonomy
- Genuine art operates autonomously and resists commodification and serves only art itself. Pop art serves many functions.
Objection: Why should art not fulfill other roles and human codes.
VIII Solomon: Kitsch
A. Kitsch provokes excessive or immature expressions of emotion
Problems: A) The Purpose of art is to provoke emotion
B) How much emotion is too much?
B. Kitsch manipulates emotion
problems: A) The use of reason manipulation
B) We manipulate emotions in many ways in everyday life
C. Kitsch evokes cheap or superficial emotions
Problems: This is bias to ethnicity because what is cheap is relative to one's ethnicity and social class
D. Kitsch is self-indulgent
Objection - There is nothing wrong with enjoying one's emotions
E. Kitsch distorts our perceptions and interferes with rational thought and understanding
Objection - All emotions distort our perception to some degree
IX. Theories of Humor
A) Superiority Theory: People laugh when they feel a sudden sense of superiority to some one: "Sudden glory" - Hobbes
B) Incongruity Theory - People laugh when they see two things put together that are somehow incongruous - Kant
C) Relief Theory: People laugh to relieve nervous tension resulting from anxiety or nervousness - Freud
X. Cohen: Jokes
A. Sense of humor - a capacity to be amused by the amusing
B. The point of telling a joe is the attainment of community. There is an intimacy in sharing laughter that provide community.
C. Heretic Jokes: Jokes that make sense to those with special information
D. Affective Jokes: Jokes that call upon a certain attitude or prejudice
XI. Hayman and Pratt: What are Comics?
A. Medium-biased definition: classifies comics in terms of material components by which they are typically produced. Comics are pictures with ink and newsprint in papers or comic books.
Problem: Would Peanuts not still be a comic if it were printed on canvas?
B. Word Balloon definition - comics contain word balloons
Problem: Many comics do not have word balloons
C. Pictorial Narrative definition - X is a comic if and only if it is a sequence of discrete pictures that comprise a narrative with or without a text.
Problem: What about the Far Side or Family Circus?
XII. Goldblatt: Ventriloquism
A. Ecstasis - Greek concept of stepping beside or outside of one's self.
B. Ventriloquism - the paradigm case of stopping beside one's self in art, but in all art one must look at it from outside one's self
XIII. Crawford: Nature and Art
A. Dialectical relationship between natural and artifactual
Natural - what is not made by man
Artifactual - What is man-made
The combination is the "aesthetic attention or appreciation"
B. Ruins are aesthetically valuable because of their basic form and unity but also because
1) Future learning
2) Past leaning
are both Aesthetically interesting
C. Classical approach to ruins - consists in the missing fragments so the viewer can imaginatively reconstruct them
D. Romantic approach to ruins - consists of the viewer's sense of history and association with mystery
XIV. Carlson: Aesthetic Appreciation of the Natural Environment
A. Appreciating the beauty of nature poses Aesthetic problems
B. Several Approaches to aesthetic appreciation of nature:
1) Object of Art Model - appreciate the physical object itself
Problem: any physical object itself as a part of an environment and cannot be divorced from its setting
2) Landscape Model - beauty of nature as a landscape
problem: this reduces nature to two-dimensional scene
3) Human Chauvinistic Aesthetic - Denies aesthetic appreciation of nature
Problem: Goes against the natural impulse to aesthetically appreciate natural objects
4) AOE - Aesthetic appreciation through engaging with all of nature
Problem - Way too subjective aesthetic approach
5) Natural Environment Model (Carlson's approach) - stresses the importance of it being a natural system and does not assimilate natural objects to art objects
XV Vance and Mattock on government funding of Art
XVI Feinberg and Berger: Pornography
A. Berger's 3 Conditions for censorship
1) There most be strong evidence of a very likely and serious harm
2) The harm must be clearly directly linked with the expression
3) It must be unlikely that further speech or expression can be used effectively to combat the harm
B. Berger claims that pornography ought not to be censored because it does not fit any of the three criteria
C. Feinberg argues against censoring pornography because violent pornography's authors and vendors do not solicit rape or urger rape or advocate rape
MacKinnon: Pornography
A. MacKinnon rejects arguments like Feinberg who frame the harm of porn in empirically traceable causal roles
B. McKinnon claims that porn's real herm is that it contributes to a sexist social order
C. Pornography construes social reality and becomes invisible harm
D. She denies that the harm caused by porn must be empirically visible with the harm a car wreck causes.
XVIII Peck: Porn as Propaganda
A. Art is guided by illusion and allusion. Art gives us clues we must decipher for ourselves.
B. Sex is (in Christianity's view) a symbolic reflection of the nature of God and occurs only in the context of a proper relationship
C. Sex in art, according to Peck, should:
- Feature the primacy of relationship
- Preserve the illusion
- Be Redemptive in character
D. Under his view pornography fails all 3 criteria
E. Pornography destroys the illusion quality of artistic conceptions of sex
XIX. Carroll: Film
A. The Power of films lie in their capacity to direct audience attention
B. Variable framing - ensures the audience will see what the producer/director wants:
1) Indexing - moving the camera toward an object
2) Bracketing - including certain objects and excluding others
3) Sealing - changing the size of an object through positioning
C. Erotetic narrative - telling a story by generating questions that subsequent scenes answer
- This leaves audiences satisfied because they feel they have learned all there is to know.
XX. Woltersorff: Norms in Art
A. Non-aesthetic merits
- Truth
- Desirable efforts
- Genetic Aspects
- Audience approval
B. Aesthetic Merits
- Unity
- Complexity
- Fittingness Intensity
C. Beautiful or aesthetically excellent artifacts have aesthetic merits and beauty is therefore, a complex concept
XXI. Ryken: What is Christian Art?
Ways a work can be Christian:
1) Allusion - referencing Christian themes or ideas
2) Inclusively Christian - themes that have intersecting points with other religions
3) Exclusively Christian - themes that are uniquely Christian
XXII. Spiegel: Aesthetic model of providence and divine omnipathos
A. Aesthetic model of providence - God sustains everything by creating everything at each moment: beauty is central to this
B. The world as divine art - God is a cosmic artist and the world is his masterpiece
C. God is omnipathos - God experiences all emotions at once as He experiences all knowledge at once.
Studying for the Aesthetics Final. Only 2.5 hours to go!
I. Eco on Television & Mass Art
Eco feels that contemporary art, especially television and mass art and pop music is dominated by repetition.
A. The Serial - the repetition of the same abstract type (i.e. Soap Operas)
B. The Retake - Recycling characters from previously successful stories (i.e. Star Wars, Superman)
C. The Remake - telling the same story over again (i.e. Romeo & Juliet, Dr. Jekyll)
D. The Series - Fixed number of characters and situations and narrative scheme (Friends, Seinfeld)
Eco claims that the series respond to man's infinite need of hearing the same story repeated.
Also the series enables us to reward ourselves for guessing what will happen.
E. Loop series - a series with characters that have enormous pasts but no futures
F. Spiral - Characters are deepened and enriched but nothing new happens to them
II. Nehamas: Plato & The Mass Media
Nehamas applies Plato's critique of poetry to contemporary mass Media
Plato argued that poetry is dangerous because it is a medium that is suited for representation and imitation of vulgar subjects and shameful behavior.
Nehamas notes that mass media is strikingly similar to the poetry of Plato's age.
III. Carrol: Defining Mass Art
Carroll aims at defining mass art without passing judgment on it.
He claims that mass art is exoteric (as opposed to Avant-Garde art as being esoteric)
Mass art is meant for mass audience.
Mass art is designed so it can be enjoyed by a lot of people with little effort.
Mass art requires a mass delivery technology.
Formal Definition: "X" is mass art if and only if X is a multiple instance or type artwork, produced and distributed by mass technology, intentionally designed to be enjoyed virtually effortlessly by a largely untutored audience.
Mass art is nonetheless art according to Carrol because it is descendant of traditional art forms.
He denies that Mass Art can be labeled as bad simply because it is mass art because mass art is its own genre.
IV. Gracy K - Why is Rock Music so Noisy?
Gracy K claims rock is so "noisy" because of the distortion of amplified electric guitars.
The distortion of tone produced by volume adjustments in what accounts for the noisiness of rock music.
V. Rudinon: Can White People Sing the Blues?
Arguments against it and their problems:
1) The Proprietary Argument - Blues as a genre belongs to the African American community and when whites perform the blues they misappropriate the cultural heritage of Black Americans.
Problem - "Red Herring" The history of music is full of instances of borrowing genres among cultures.
2) The experiential access argument - One cannot understand the blues or authentically express oneself in it unless one knows what it is like to live as a Black American
Problem - This argument is the myth of ethnic memory - Not all Black Americas fully comprehend what their ancestors went through. And it observes the universal human element of the blues.
Rudinon contends that the blues can be authentically played by whites if one recognizes the proper sources of inspiration and technique which spawned the blues.
VI. Adorno
Adorno was a Marxist and was against all commodification of art.
Adorno felt that pop music does not resist the temptation to be commodified and is therefore is gross simplification of art.
Artistic music is individualized and unique. Pop music is standardized and not unique.
Stages of listening to Pop Music:
1) Vague Remembrance - I've heard this before
2) Actual Identification - I have heard this before
3) Subsumption by label - The listener knows the band or album or some lyrics
4) Self-reflection (act of identification) - identifies with the music
5) Psychological transfer - judges the song good and further identifies with it
6) Disillusionment - shallowness of song becomes apparent. Listener despises the songs and those who still like it.
7) Recycling - Song comes back as a "golden oldie" and is repackaged for new consumers
Brown points out numerous problems with Adorno's argument.
1) Adorno puts all pop music in a single category
2) Adorno is guilty of tonal chauvinism
3) Adorno picks the best classical music and compares it with the worst pop music
4) Adorno overlooks the point that classical music would become disillusioned if it were played at the quantity pop music is
5) Adorno overlooks that not all pop music is standardized (i.e. Tom Waits)
6) Classical music is also subject to commodification
VII. Shusterman - Form & Funk
Susterman aims to defend pop music against its critics.
A. The Passivity Argument
- Pop Music involves no aesthetic challenge and requires and induces passivity because of the simple and repetitive nature of it.
Objector: not all effort is intellectual effort, there can be "somatic" forms of effort
B. The Formal Complexity Argument
- High art has a formal complexity that is lacking in pop arts. High art focuses on form not content
Objection: Their argument mistakenly opposes form and content
C. The Argument from Aesthetic Autonomy
- Genuine art operates autonomously and resists commodification and serves only art itself. Pop art serves many functions.
Objection: Why should art not fulfill other roles and human codes.
VIII Solomon: Kitsch
A. Kitsch provokes excessive or immature expressions of emotion
Problems: A) The Purpose of art is to provoke emotion
B) How much emotion is too much?
B. Kitsch manipulates emotion
problems: A) The use of reason manipulation
B) We manipulate emotions in many ways in everyday life
C. Kitsch evokes cheap or superficial emotions
Problems: This is bias to ethnicity because what is cheap is relative to one's ethnicity and social class
D. Kitsch is self-indulgent
Objection - There is nothing wrong with enjoying one's emotions
E. Kitsch distorts our perceptions and interferes with rational thought and understanding
Objection - All emotions distort our perception to some degree
IX. Theories of Humor
A) Superiority Theory: People laugh when they feel a sudden sense of superiority to some one: "Sudden glory" - Hobbes
B) Incongruity Theory - People laugh when they see two things put together that are somehow incongruous - Kant
C) Relief Theory: People laugh to relieve nervous tension resulting from anxiety or nervousness - Freud
X. Cohen: Jokes
A. Sense of humor - a capacity to be amused by the amusing
B. The point of telling a joe is the attainment of community. There is an intimacy in sharing laughter that provide community.
C. Heretic Jokes: Jokes that make sense to those with special information
D. Affective Jokes: Jokes that call upon a certain attitude or prejudice
XI. Hayman and Pratt: What are Comics?
A. Medium-biased definition: classifies comics in terms of material components by which they are typically produced. Comics are pictures with ink and newsprint in papers or comic books.
Problem: Would Peanuts not still be a comic if it were printed on canvas?
B. Word Balloon definition - comics contain word balloons
Problem: Many comics do not have word balloons
C. Pictorial Narrative definition - X is a comic if and only if it is a sequence of discrete pictures that comprise a narrative with or without a text.
Problem: What about the Far Side or Family Circus?
XII. Goldblatt: Ventriloquism
A. Ecstasis - Greek concept of stepping beside or outside of one's self.
B. Ventriloquism - the paradigm case of stopping beside one's self in art, but in all art one must look at it from outside one's self
XIII. Crawford: Nature and Art
A. Dialectical relationship between natural and artifactual
Natural - what is not made by man
Artifactual - What is man-made
The combination is the "aesthetic attention or appreciation"
B. Ruins are aesthetically valuable because of their basic form and unity but also because
1) Future learning
2) Past leaning
are both Aesthetically interesting
C. Classical approach to ruins - consists in the missing fragments so the viewer can imaginatively reconstruct them
D. Romantic approach to ruins - consists of the viewer's sense of history and association with mystery
XIV. Carlson: Aesthetic Appreciation of the Natural Environment
A. Appreciating the beauty of nature poses Aesthetic problems
B. Several Approaches to aesthetic appreciation of nature:
1) Object of Art Model - appreciate the physical object itself
Problem: any physical object itself as a part of an environment and cannot be divorced from its setting
2) Landscape Model - beauty of nature as a landscape
problem: this reduces nature to two-dimensional scene
3) Human Chauvinistic Aesthetic - Denies aesthetic appreciation of nature
Problem: Goes against the natural impulse to aesthetically appreciate natural objects
4) AOE - Aesthetic appreciation through engaging with all of nature
Problem - Way too subjective aesthetic approach
5) Natural Environment Model (Carlson's approach) - stresses the importance of it being a natural system and does not assimilate natural objects to art objects
XV Vance and Mattock on government funding of Art
XVI Feinberg and Berger: Pornography
A. Berger's 3 Conditions for censorship
1) There most be strong evidence of a very likely and serious harm
2) The harm must be clearly directly linked with the expression
3) It must be unlikely that further speech or expression can be used effectively to combat the harm
B. Berger claims that pornography ought not to be censored because it does not fit any of the three criteria
C. Feinberg argues against censoring pornography because violent pornography's authors and vendors do not solicit rape or urger rape or advocate rape
MacKinnon: Pornography
A. MacKinnon rejects arguments like Feinberg who frame the harm of porn in empirically traceable causal roles
B. McKinnon claims that porn's real herm is that it contributes to a sexist social order
C. Pornography construes social reality and becomes invisible harm
D. She denies that the harm caused by porn must be empirically visible with the harm a car wreck causes.
XVIII Peck: Porn as Propaganda
A. Art is guided by illusion and allusion. Art gives us clues we must decipher for ourselves.
B. Sex is (in Christianity's view) a symbolic reflection of the nature of God and occurs only in the context of a proper relationship
C. Sex in art, according to Peck, should:
- Feature the primacy of relationship
- Preserve the illusion
- Be Redemptive in character
D. Under his view pornography fails all 3 criteria
E. Pornography destroys the illusion quality of artistic conceptions of sex
XIX. Carroll: Film
A. The Power of films lie in their capacity to direct audience attention
B. Variable framing - ensures the audience will see what the producer/director wants:
1) Indexing - moving the camera toward an object
2) Bracketing - including certain objects and excluding others
3) Sealing - changing the size of an object through positioning
C. Erotetic narrative - telling a story by generating questions that subsequent scenes answer
- This leaves audiences satisfied because they feel they have learned all there is to know.
XX. Woltersorff: Norms in Art
A. Non-aesthetic merits
- Truth
- Desirable efforts
- Genetic Aspects
- Audience approval
B. Aesthetic Merits
- Unity
- Complexity
- Fittingness Intensity
C. Beautiful or aesthetically excellent artifacts have aesthetic merits and beauty is therefore, a complex concept
XXI. Ryken: What is Christian Art?
Ways a work can be Christian:
1) Allusion - referencing Christian themes or ideas
2) Inclusively Christian - themes that have intersecting points with other religions
3) Exclusively Christian - themes that are uniquely Christian
XXII. Spiegel: Aesthetic model of providence and divine omnipathos
A. Aesthetic model of providence - God sustains everything by creating everything at each moment: beauty is central to this
B. The world as divine art - God is a cosmic artist and the world is his masterpiece
C. God is omnipathos - God experiences all emotions at once as He experiences all knowledge at once.
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Fords & Bridges between religions
(Originally written April 29, 2007 in Book 15)
Chapter 8: Finding Fords and Building Bridges
How can Christianity, a set of beliefs that together forms an exclusive truth, share so many of its truths with other religions?
Finding Fords
Avoiding the Genetic Fallacy
God does not work against or apart from human psychology or culture.
As Christians, we need to accept that aspects of Christianity are a part of human culture. But this does not mean that they are not part of what God has revealed.
Sometimes God works within human culture; sometimes He works against it.
Sinkholes
Ludwig Feuerbach claimed that all alleged attributes of God are merely projections of idealized human attributes.
This understanding would provide a common ground between Christians and non-Christians, but only at the expense of the exclusive truth of Christianity. It is a sink hole.
Basic Phenomenology of Religion
Phenomenology is the study of appearances. It describes the world from the inside out; that is, it begins with human beings and their most fundamental perceptions.
Phenomenological analysis describes reality as directly experienced by the subject.
The Primordial Experience
Phenomenology aims at taking us to the most fundamental experience of a human being in a given situation - the primordial experience.
The Problem: The universality of religious experience
There is somewhere in the human noetic structure that either relates to an object of religious experience or simulates doing so.
The Key: Appearances behind appearance
Some religions are false and thus, there an be no objective reference point to the experience of their adherents.
There is a basic dimension that frequently appears to underlie religious experience.
This dimension does not say anything about the reality of the object of experience. It can manifest itself when there is a real object (Christ) or when there is a not-real object (Shiva)
This dimension leaves the possibility open to allow someone who believes in the exclusive truth of Christianity to align certain aspects of Christian experience with experience in other religions without conceding the truth of Christianity.
Rudolf Otto: The Holy
Rudolf Otto exposed the non-rational side of religion.
The rational side of religion is its objective beliefs and ethical practices.
Otto claimed that the most profound significance lie in the non-rational, the numinous side of religion: the encounter with the dimension of the Holy.
Otto calls the experience when you feel the sudden, overwhelming presence of God the Holy, the numinous and the mysterium tremendum.
The mysterium tremendum:
1) Tremendum: Indicates the experience carries with it the feeling of the awesome presence of God which reveals his purity and righteousness
2) Mysterium: Indicates that the object of this feeling is not wholly knowable
3) The experience of the mysterium tremendum includes a component of fascinosum.
Fascinosum: the alienating feeling of tremendum is concurrent with a feeling of deep love and grace. The mysterium feeling both repels and attracts at once.
While one cannot follow Otto to his conclusions and be a consistent Christian one can thank him for his enumeration of mysterium.
It seems that whenever people have a religious experience they seem to encounter the mysterium.
The mysterium is a dimension of the primordial religious experience.
Mircea Eliade: hierophanies
Hierophanies are particular segments of life or cultures that transforms it from being profane into an encounter with the sacred.
A spatial hierophant is "Holy Ground" like a shrine or a sanctuary.
Eliade claims that when cultures create a sacred sector in space they are reenacting the very creation of the world.
Eliade claims special meanings for these hierophanies:
trees - the quest for immortality
the moon - fertility and the oscillation between life and death
the sun - autonomy and sovereignty
the hero - purity and perfection
Eliade points out that the awareness of the sacred is not limited to some ill-defined encounter with the numinous. Human beings can relate to the numinous in various ways.
C.G. Jung - archetypes
Carl Gustav Jung, a swiss analytic psychologist had much to say on this topic, but it is heavily tainted by pantheism.
Jung was a student of Freud, but broke with him over the interpretation of dreams.
Jung saw Freud as too narrow in that all dreams were either obsessed with sex or death, or both. Jung saw them as a consistent array of symbolic images.
He concluded that there are basic images (archetypes) that reside in the human unconscious and manifest themselves only indirectly in dreams and art.
These archetypes are also the building blocks of religion
Jung divided the unconscious into two parts:
1) Personal and individual
2) Collective
The archetypes dwell in the collective unconscious.
There are major problems with Jung's theory. While it is true that there are recurrent themes in mythology and symbolism it is not necessary to posit a collective unconscious to justify them. These similarities are the very fundamental thought patterns that human beings have.
These archetypal patterns express themselves in primordial religious experiences.
God has revealed himself, at least partially through these archetypes, but in other religions these archetypes are embedded in false content.
Don Richardson, a missionary, claims that God has instilled in many cultures some way that facilitates the understanding of the gospel.
These ways are no substitutes for the gospel, but provide an avenue for a person of that culture to come to understand the gospel.
At the heart of all religious experience there seems to be the awareness of the numinous- the mysterium tremendous et fascinosum.
However, people do not encounter the mysterium tremendum et fascinosum in a disembodied form. They experience them in hierophanies as they are because of the archetypal images embedded in the human mind.
Christians and non-Christians have similar religious experience despite one being true and all others being false because they share the phenomenological experience of the numinous, hierophanies, archetypes and redemptive analogies.
Reenter the rational and ethical
Ronald Green makes the rational concern of religion the cornerstone by showing that religion resolves the conflict between our moral standards and our moral performance.
The religious experience of an individual is constituted by both the phenomenological dimension and the ethical/redemptive context.
Back to General Revelation
Religion does not have solely a phenomenological existence. It has its grounding in a self-disclosing God.
From Finding Fords to Building Bridges
Bridges serve many purposes:
1) Facilitation of evangelism
2) Help us to live together in a civilized society
3) Identify where and where-not common social and ethical causes can be tackled
4) Contribute to the theologian's work in explaining the universe of God's making
Bridge One: Truth
Religion is about truth. Truth is an indispensable aspect of religion.
"Inter religious dialogue is only meaningful so long as truth is an overriding concern" (Corduan, 216).
Bridge Two: Morality
Religions have different moral codes and where they overlap they do so superficially. Nonetheless this is a good bridge point.
Bridge Three: The need for the transcendent
Philosophical:
1) There is a universal need for the transcendent
2) Where there is a universal need there must be an objective way of fulfilling that need
3) Therefore, there must be a transcendent to fulfill the human need of transcendence
Theological:
1) All human beings were created with the need for fellowship with God. This need goes largely unfulfilled due to the interference of sin.
2) This is a real need.
3) Therefore, we can appeal to this need and its objective fulfillment by God in Christ.
Summary
People can have experiences that appear religious because all human beings have fundamental similarities (the Holy [Otto], the role of hierophanies [Eliade], and the subconscious patterns [Jung, Richardson])
To bridge the gap between true religious experience (Christianity) and non-true religious experiences we can use emphasis on truth, morality and the need for the transcendent.
Chapter 8: Finding Fords and Building Bridges
How can Christianity, a set of beliefs that together forms an exclusive truth, share so many of its truths with other religions?
Finding Fords
Avoiding the Genetic Fallacy
God does not work against or apart from human psychology or culture.
As Christians, we need to accept that aspects of Christianity are a part of human culture. But this does not mean that they are not part of what God has revealed.
Sometimes God works within human culture; sometimes He works against it.
Sinkholes
Ludwig Feuerbach claimed that all alleged attributes of God are merely projections of idealized human attributes.
This understanding would provide a common ground between Christians and non-Christians, but only at the expense of the exclusive truth of Christianity. It is a sink hole.
Basic Phenomenology of Religion
Phenomenology is the study of appearances. It describes the world from the inside out; that is, it begins with human beings and their most fundamental perceptions.
Phenomenological analysis describes reality as directly experienced by the subject.
The Primordial Experience
Phenomenology aims at taking us to the most fundamental experience of a human being in a given situation - the primordial experience.
The Problem: The universality of religious experience
There is somewhere in the human noetic structure that either relates to an object of religious experience or simulates doing so.
The Key: Appearances behind appearance
Some religions are false and thus, there an be no objective reference point to the experience of their adherents.
There is a basic dimension that frequently appears to underlie religious experience.
This dimension does not say anything about the reality of the object of experience. It can manifest itself when there is a real object (Christ) or when there is a not-real object (Shiva)
This dimension leaves the possibility open to allow someone who believes in the exclusive truth of Christianity to align certain aspects of Christian experience with experience in other religions without conceding the truth of Christianity.
Rudolf Otto: The Holy
Rudolf Otto exposed the non-rational side of religion.
The rational side of religion is its objective beliefs and ethical practices.
Otto claimed that the most profound significance lie in the non-rational, the numinous side of religion: the encounter with the dimension of the Holy.
Otto calls the experience when you feel the sudden, overwhelming presence of God the Holy, the numinous and the mysterium tremendum.
The mysterium tremendum:
1) Tremendum: Indicates the experience carries with it the feeling of the awesome presence of God which reveals his purity and righteousness
2) Mysterium: Indicates that the object of this feeling is not wholly knowable
3) The experience of the mysterium tremendum includes a component of fascinosum.
Fascinosum: the alienating feeling of tremendum is concurrent with a feeling of deep love and grace. The mysterium feeling both repels and attracts at once.
While one cannot follow Otto to his conclusions and be a consistent Christian one can thank him for his enumeration of mysterium.
It seems that whenever people have a religious experience they seem to encounter the mysterium.
The mysterium is a dimension of the primordial religious experience.
Mircea Eliade: hierophanies
Hierophanies are particular segments of life or cultures that transforms it from being profane into an encounter with the sacred.
A spatial hierophant is "Holy Ground" like a shrine or a sanctuary.
Eliade claims that when cultures create a sacred sector in space they are reenacting the very creation of the world.
Eliade claims special meanings for these hierophanies:
trees - the quest for immortality
the moon - fertility and the oscillation between life and death
the sun - autonomy and sovereignty
the hero - purity and perfection
Eliade points out that the awareness of the sacred is not limited to some ill-defined encounter with the numinous. Human beings can relate to the numinous in various ways.
C.G. Jung - archetypes
Carl Gustav Jung, a swiss analytic psychologist had much to say on this topic, but it is heavily tainted by pantheism.
Jung was a student of Freud, but broke with him over the interpretation of dreams.
Jung saw Freud as too narrow in that all dreams were either obsessed with sex or death, or both. Jung saw them as a consistent array of symbolic images.
He concluded that there are basic images (archetypes) that reside in the human unconscious and manifest themselves only indirectly in dreams and art.
These archetypes are also the building blocks of religion
Jung divided the unconscious into two parts:
1) Personal and individual
2) Collective
The archetypes dwell in the collective unconscious.
There are major problems with Jung's theory. While it is true that there are recurrent themes in mythology and symbolism it is not necessary to posit a collective unconscious to justify them. These similarities are the very fundamental thought patterns that human beings have.
These archetypal patterns express themselves in primordial religious experiences.
God has revealed himself, at least partially through these archetypes, but in other religions these archetypes are embedded in false content.
Don Richardson, a missionary, claims that God has instilled in many cultures some way that facilitates the understanding of the gospel.
These ways are no substitutes for the gospel, but provide an avenue for a person of that culture to come to understand the gospel.
At the heart of all religious experience there seems to be the awareness of the numinous- the mysterium tremendous et fascinosum.
However, people do not encounter the mysterium tremendum et fascinosum in a disembodied form. They experience them in hierophanies as they are because of the archetypal images embedded in the human mind.
Christians and non-Christians have similar religious experience despite one being true and all others being false because they share the phenomenological experience of the numinous, hierophanies, archetypes and redemptive analogies.
Reenter the rational and ethical
Ronald Green makes the rational concern of religion the cornerstone by showing that religion resolves the conflict between our moral standards and our moral performance.
The religious experience of an individual is constituted by both the phenomenological dimension and the ethical/redemptive context.
Back to General Revelation
Religion does not have solely a phenomenological existence. It has its grounding in a self-disclosing God.
From Finding Fords to Building Bridges
Bridges serve many purposes:
1) Facilitation of evangelism
2) Help us to live together in a civilized society
3) Identify where and where-not common social and ethical causes can be tackled
4) Contribute to the theologian's work in explaining the universe of God's making
Bridge One: Truth
Religion is about truth. Truth is an indispensable aspect of religion.
"Inter religious dialogue is only meaningful so long as truth is an overriding concern" (Corduan, 216).
Bridge Two: Morality
Religions have different moral codes and where they overlap they do so superficially. Nonetheless this is a good bridge point.
Bridge Three: The need for the transcendent
Philosophical:
1) There is a universal need for the transcendent
2) Where there is a universal need there must be an objective way of fulfilling that need
3) Therefore, there must be a transcendent to fulfill the human need of transcendence
Theological:
1) All human beings were created with the need for fellowship with God. This need goes largely unfulfilled due to the interference of sin.
2) This is a real need.
3) Therefore, we can appeal to this need and its objective fulfillment by God in Christ.
Summary
People can have experiences that appear religious because all human beings have fundamental similarities (the Holy [Otto], the role of hierophanies [Eliade], and the subconscious patterns [Jung, Richardson])
To bridge the gap between true religious experience (Christianity) and non-true religious experiences we can use emphasis on truth, morality and the need for the transcendent.
Thursday, March 1, 2007
Reality and the Existential Need for God
(Originally written March 1, 2007 in Book 13)
Philosophy of Religion
Norman Geisler & Winfried Corduan
The Meaning of Reality
"Reality is more than a subjective condition of human experience" (64).
In dealing with religious experience it seems there is no surefire way of separating the hallucinatory from the real.
There is always the possibility that one's supposed religious experience is actually explainable by purely psychological phenomena.
All experience is subjective, hence religious experience is subjective.
"Religious transcendence must be more than a subjective condition in religious experience before it should be called 'real'" (64).
Reality is more than merely a projection of human imagination.
Religious transcendence is not real if it is merely a projection of human nature.
Ludwig Feuerbach argued that God was really a projection of humanity's ideal man.
Karl Marx believed that religion was a projection of man's hope for the superman in heaven.
Reality is more than an object of wish-fulfillment.
Freud believed religion is an illusion, not in the sense that God is not real, but that it came about from man's wish that there be a God.
Reality is more than a subconscious force in human experience.
Carl Gustav Jung called the collective subconscious the real, but this is insufficient.
"Reality means to have an independent existence"
Transcendence, in order to be real, must exist outside of the mind of those who conceive it and must exist outside of the experiences of the people who experience it.
"Reality means to have an objective existence" (67).
Objective existence means to exist in and of itself, independently of other things.
The Need For Verification
Deception and illusion are possible so there must be some means of determinism whether there is a basis in reality for religious experience.
Kierkegaard held that the need to give evidence for God is evidence of one's choice to reject God.
Kierkegaard believed verifying God's existence was ridiculous,: "For if God does not exist it would of course be impossible to prove it, and if he does exist it would be folly to attempt it". (68).
Kierkegaard held that in order to offer a proof for God's existence one must presuppose that God exists.
He believed that faith, not reason, brings one to God.
Alvin Plantinga echoes Kierkegaard in stating that a belief in God is "properly basic".
Properly basic beliefs are beliefs that one needn't require verification; i.e. "I exist" or "there is a past".
There is a difference between the basis for believing that there is a God and the basis for believing in God.
"One needs evidence to know that there is a God, but one needs faith to commit oneself to the God that the evidence indicates is really there" (68).
Verifying the Reality of Religious Experience
People sense a basic need for God and this is the beginning of religious experience.
Theists and atheists alike have a feeling of dependence and a sense of contingency. But, is there really a God to fulfill the need people sense?
The Need for the Transcendent
Freud analyzed the human need for religion as a purely psychological need.
Religion was an infantile neurosis of mankind for Freud.
The Sense of Absolute Dependence
Freud did not deny the validity of people having religious experience.
"Science can never overcome a human's finitude or sense of cosmic contingency" (70).
Friedrich Schleiermacher takes the sense of cosmic need as the essence of religion.
A feeling of absolute dependence is a religious experience.
There is a need for the Transcendent because of the feeling of absolute contingency.
People sense a need for some Transcendence, whether or not it is really there.
Humanity's Being Unto Death
Martin Heidegger characterized human life as "being-unto-death".
Fear of death or nothingness is the anxiety of all man.
"I am, but I need not be and will not be" (70).
Asking about why one is are evidence of human ontological dependency.
Paul Tillich held that finite beings are ungrounded and must search for grounding, an ultimate grounding.
Does the need for God as ontological grounding of one's being imply that there is really such a grounding?
The Existential Need for God
Jean-Paul Sartre said he needed religion, he needed God and "Had it been denied me, I would have invented it myself" (71).
Sartre maintained that humans have more than a psychological need for God. Sartre held that humans have an existential need for God.
Essay Idea: Needs for God
-Psychological
-Existential
-Ontological
-Religiou
-etc.
Sartre held that "To be man means to reach toward being God" (71).
Man is seeking to be self-determined and self-caused.
The existence of a person cries out to God to give it definition and essence.
Sartre held that while this is man's need and goal, the whole concept is absurd. How can man transcend himself to discover himself?
The need for God is a fundamental, existential need, even if there is no God to fulfill this need.
Philosophy of Religion
Norman Geisler & Winfried Corduan
The Meaning of Reality
"Reality is more than a subjective condition of human experience" (64).
In dealing with religious experience it seems there is no surefire way of separating the hallucinatory from the real.
There is always the possibility that one's supposed religious experience is actually explainable by purely psychological phenomena.
All experience is subjective, hence religious experience is subjective.
"Religious transcendence must be more than a subjective condition in religious experience before it should be called 'real'" (64).
Reality is more than merely a projection of human imagination.
Religious transcendence is not real if it is merely a projection of human nature.
Ludwig Feuerbach argued that God was really a projection of humanity's ideal man.
Karl Marx believed that religion was a projection of man's hope for the superman in heaven.
Reality is more than an object of wish-fulfillment.
Freud believed religion is an illusion, not in the sense that God is not real, but that it came about from man's wish that there be a God.
Reality is more than a subconscious force in human experience.
Carl Gustav Jung called the collective subconscious the real, but this is insufficient.
"Reality means to have an independent existence"
Transcendence, in order to be real, must exist outside of the mind of those who conceive it and must exist outside of the experiences of the people who experience it.
"Reality means to have an objective existence" (67).
Objective existence means to exist in and of itself, independently of other things.
The Need For Verification
Deception and illusion are possible so there must be some means of determinism whether there is a basis in reality for religious experience.
Kierkegaard held that the need to give evidence for God is evidence of one's choice to reject God.
Kierkegaard believed verifying God's existence was ridiculous,: "For if God does not exist it would of course be impossible to prove it, and if he does exist it would be folly to attempt it". (68).
Kierkegaard held that in order to offer a proof for God's existence one must presuppose that God exists.
He believed that faith, not reason, brings one to God.
Alvin Plantinga echoes Kierkegaard in stating that a belief in God is "properly basic".
Properly basic beliefs are beliefs that one needn't require verification; i.e. "I exist" or "there is a past".
There is a difference between the basis for believing that there is a God and the basis for believing in God.
"One needs evidence to know that there is a God, but one needs faith to commit oneself to the God that the evidence indicates is really there" (68).
Verifying the Reality of Religious Experience
People sense a basic need for God and this is the beginning of religious experience.
Theists and atheists alike have a feeling of dependence and a sense of contingency. But, is there really a God to fulfill the need people sense?
The Need for the Transcendent
Freud analyzed the human need for religion as a purely psychological need.
Religion was an infantile neurosis of mankind for Freud.
The Sense of Absolute Dependence
Freud did not deny the validity of people having religious experience.
"Science can never overcome a human's finitude or sense of cosmic contingency" (70).
Friedrich Schleiermacher takes the sense of cosmic need as the essence of religion.
A feeling of absolute dependence is a religious experience.
There is a need for the Transcendent because of the feeling of absolute contingency.
People sense a need for some Transcendence, whether or not it is really there.
Humanity's Being Unto Death
Martin Heidegger characterized human life as "being-unto-death".
Fear of death or nothingness is the anxiety of all man.
"I am, but I need not be and will not be" (70).
Asking about why one is are evidence of human ontological dependency.
Paul Tillich held that finite beings are ungrounded and must search for grounding, an ultimate grounding.
Does the need for God as ontological grounding of one's being imply that there is really such a grounding?
The Existential Need for God
Jean-Paul Sartre said he needed religion, he needed God and "Had it been denied me, I would have invented it myself" (71).
Sartre maintained that humans have more than a psychological need for God. Sartre held that humans have an existential need for God.
Essay Idea: Needs for God
-Psychological
-Existential
-Ontological
-Religiou
-etc.
Sartre held that "To be man means to reach toward being God" (71).
Man is seeking to be self-determined and self-caused.
The existence of a person cries out to God to give it definition and essence.
Sartre held that while this is man's need and goal, the whole concept is absurd. How can man transcend himself to discover himself?
The need for God is a fundamental, existential need, even if there is no God to fulfill this need.
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.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
The Characteristics of Religious Experience
(Originally written February 27, 2007 in Book 13)
Philosophy of Religion 2nd Edition
Norman Geisler & Winfried Corduan
Part 2 The Characteristics of Religious Experience
In order for an experience to be a religious experience it must:
1) Involve awareness of the Transcendent
2) Involve a person making an ultimate commitment to the Transcendent
Religious Experience Involves an Awareness of the Transcendent
Whatever the description or name for the Transcendent, there is something, real or unreal, which goes beyond the individual in which or by which he transcends his finite conditions.
Some Paradigms for the Meaning of Transcendence
Paul M. van Buren believed that all language used as God-language or its equivalent is a dead language.
Ian T. Ramsey holds that metaphors and odd words have a power of disclosure. These odd phrases, metaphors and tautologies have deeper meanings than can be linguistically expressed.
The need for self-transcendence
"Religious experience involves the need to transcend the unalterable displeasures of life" (30).
Peter Koëstenbaum's description of religion: "man's effort to do something about the desperate condition of his own finitude" (30-31).
Sigmund Freud depicted religion as the human search for a cosmic father.
Rudolf Bultmann defined religion as a human longing to escape this world by discovering a sphere above this world.
Walter Kaufmann - Religion is rooted in man's goal to transcend himself. Man is the ape that wants to be god and man is the God-intoxicated ape.
Jean-Paul Sartre believed man's project is to become God.
A human being is that which needs self-transcendence.
Koëstenbaum held that love is an "a priori category by which the religious person unifies his world and overcomes the opposing otherness and attains self-fulfillment" (31).
Religious experience characteristically involves some means by which a person can self-transcend or "go beyond his own frustrating limitations" (32)
Chris Linehan: Then would not a failure to transcend one's self be a failed religious experience, but a religious experience nonetheless?
The Necessity of the Transcendent Other in Religious Experience
In order to have a religious experience one must believe that a Transcendent thing exists outside of one's self.
Religion is an "I-Thou" relationship, not an "I-I" relationship.
The Unity of Meaning of the Transcendent
Friedrich Schleiermacher argued that multiplicity of content of experience and expression is necessary for the complete manifestation of religion.
William James held that this plurality is necessary to fit the plurality of human needs.
William James argued that all religions have three common characteristics:
1) That the visible world is part of a more spiritual universe
2) that union with that higher universe is our end
3) prayer is a process wherein work is done and spiritual energy flows in and produces effects within the phenomenal world
James held that the basic cognitive content of all religions have:
1) an awareness that there is something wrong with us as we naturally are
2) an awareness that we are saved from this wrongness by making proper connection with higher powers
Religion and the transcendent
Religious experience implies a dimension that is called the Transcendent
The transcendent is with whom religious experience happens. The transcendent is many things and not limited to any conceptualizations of a personal or impersonal God.
Religious experience always involves a transcendent dimension.
Religious experience involves both self-transcendence and a transcendent realm.
"In order to go beyond, there must be a Beyond (real or imagined) toward which as in which the religious experience moves" (35).
The Transcendent discloses itself and evokes a response from the individual experiencing the Transcendent.
Religious Experience involves a total commitment
Religious experience involves an a awareness of the Transcendent and an awareness of it as ultimate and as demanding an ultimate commitment.
In religion, individuals give a total commitment to the whole universe.
Experience is religious in nature if it involves ultimate commitment to the Ultimate.
Religious experience involves at least two fundamental factors:
1) An awareness of the Transcendent
2) a total commitment to it as the ultimate
"Religious experience is universal. It involves two basic elements: an awareness of the Transcendent and a total commitment to the Transcendent" (39).
The Transcendent is necessary to the fulfillment of man's fundamental drive to transcend.
Philosophy of Religion 2nd Edition
Norman Geisler & Winfried Corduan
Part 2 The Characteristics of Religious Experience
In order for an experience to be a religious experience it must:
1) Involve awareness of the Transcendent
2) Involve a person making an ultimate commitment to the Transcendent
Religious Experience Involves an Awareness of the Transcendent
Whatever the description or name for the Transcendent, there is something, real or unreal, which goes beyond the individual in which or by which he transcends his finite conditions.
Some Paradigms for the Meaning of Transcendence
Paul M. van Buren believed that all language used as God-language or its equivalent is a dead language.
Ian T. Ramsey holds that metaphors and odd words have a power of disclosure. These odd phrases, metaphors and tautologies have deeper meanings than can be linguistically expressed.
The need for self-transcendence
"Religious experience involves the need to transcend the unalterable displeasures of life" (30).
Peter Koëstenbaum's description of religion: "man's effort to do something about the desperate condition of his own finitude" (30-31).
Sigmund Freud depicted religion as the human search for a cosmic father.
Rudolf Bultmann defined religion as a human longing to escape this world by discovering a sphere above this world.
Walter Kaufmann - Religion is rooted in man's goal to transcend himself. Man is the ape that wants to be god and man is the God-intoxicated ape.
Jean-Paul Sartre believed man's project is to become God.
A human being is that which needs self-transcendence.
Koëstenbaum held that love is an "a priori category by which the religious person unifies his world and overcomes the opposing otherness and attains self-fulfillment" (31).
Religious experience characteristically involves some means by which a person can self-transcend or "go beyond his own frustrating limitations" (32)
Chris Linehan: Then would not a failure to transcend one's self be a failed religious experience, but a religious experience nonetheless?
The Necessity of the Transcendent Other in Religious Experience
In order to have a religious experience one must believe that a Transcendent thing exists outside of one's self.
Religion is an "I-Thou" relationship, not an "I-I" relationship.
The Unity of Meaning of the Transcendent
Friedrich Schleiermacher argued that multiplicity of content of experience and expression is necessary for the complete manifestation of religion.
William James held that this plurality is necessary to fit the plurality of human needs.
William James argued that all religions have three common characteristics:
1) That the visible world is part of a more spiritual universe
2) that union with that higher universe is our end
3) prayer is a process wherein work is done and spiritual energy flows in and produces effects within the phenomenal world
James held that the basic cognitive content of all religions have:
1) an awareness that there is something wrong with us as we naturally are
2) an awareness that we are saved from this wrongness by making proper connection with higher powers
Religion and the transcendent
Religious experience implies a dimension that is called the Transcendent
The transcendent is with whom religious experience happens. The transcendent is many things and not limited to any conceptualizations of a personal or impersonal God.
Religious experience always involves a transcendent dimension.
Religious experience involves both self-transcendence and a transcendent realm.
"In order to go beyond, there must be a Beyond (real or imagined) toward which as in which the religious experience moves" (35).
The Transcendent discloses itself and evokes a response from the individual experiencing the Transcendent.
Religious Experience involves a total commitment
Religious experience involves an a awareness of the Transcendent and an awareness of it as ultimate and as demanding an ultimate commitment.
In religion, individuals give a total commitment to the whole universe.
Experience is religious in nature if it involves ultimate commitment to the Ultimate.
Religious experience involves at least two fundamental factors:
1) An awareness of the Transcendent
2) a total commitment to it as the ultimate
"Religious experience is universal. It involves two basic elements: an awareness of the Transcendent and a total commitment to the Transcendent" (39).
The Transcendent is necessary to the fulfillment of man's fundamental drive to transcend.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Class Notes on Aesthetic theories
(Originally written February 15, 2007 in Book 16)
Class Notes
I feel so overweight right now. I feel truly disgusting. My pants are too tight, she seems even less interested in intimacy on a physical level then before. I don't know what to do. Anyway, but now its time for the wonderful topic "Aesthetics". What a joy! (Sarcasm)
Aristotle
- Art is about "mimesis". Plato and Aristotle agreed on this point.
- Mimesis - imitation
- Aristotle held that art uses imitation and that different types of art imitate different things and how they imitate and imitation methodologies
- Comedy - a dramatic imitation of people who are worse than average
- Comedy is the species of art dealing with the ugly
- Tragedy - a dramatic imitation used to arouse pity, to invoke a catharsis (purging/cleansing)
- Poetry vs. History
Poet - attends to what is possible, deals with universals
History - attends to what has happened, deals with particulars
Spiegelism:
-History - deals with what is particular and unique
-Poetry - deals with what is universal and unique
-Science - deals with what is particular and regular
-Mathematics, Geometry & Theology - what is universal and routine
Nietzsche
- 19th Century German Philosopher
- Born Lutheran but gave up Christian faith in his late teens
Birth of Tragedy
2 Unique Characters of Art:
1) Apollo - order, symmetry, balance, proportion, etc.
2) Dionysus - freedom, wild emotion, indulgence, ecstasy, etc.
Some art forms are more or less Apollonian or Dionysian. Sculpture is paradigmatic of Apollonian, whereas music is paradigmatically Dionysian.
Greek tragedy is the child of Apollonian and Dionysian art. The tragedy has the Dionysian fall from exuberant and opulent behavior and the Apollonian sense of Justice
Freud
On Oedipus Rex & Hamlet
Oedipus Complex - a deep repressed urge that all men have to have sex with their mothers and kill their fathers.
He sees the Oedipus complex in Sophocles' Oedipus Rex and Hamlet's hesitation to kill his father's murderer is due to Hamlet's Oedipus complex.
Creative writing is an extension of one's fantasy life. Every one fantasizes because he or she has unfulfilled desires.
Fantasy is a wish that is becoming conscious when it was once unconscious or subconscious.
The writer devises characters to achieve the wishes he/she cannot fulfill.
Art is extension of one's fantasy life.
Class Notes
I feel so overweight right now. I feel truly disgusting. My pants are too tight, she seems even less interested in intimacy on a physical level then before. I don't know what to do. Anyway, but now its time for the wonderful topic "Aesthetics". What a joy! (Sarcasm)
Aristotle
- Art is about "mimesis". Plato and Aristotle agreed on this point.
- Mimesis - imitation
- Aristotle held that art uses imitation and that different types of art imitate different things and how they imitate and imitation methodologies
- Comedy - a dramatic imitation of people who are worse than average
- Comedy is the species of art dealing with the ugly
- Tragedy - a dramatic imitation used to arouse pity, to invoke a catharsis (purging/cleansing)
- Poetry vs. History
Poet - attends to what is possible, deals with universals
History - attends to what has happened, deals with particulars
Spiegelism:
-History - deals with what is particular and unique
-Poetry - deals with what is universal and unique
-Science - deals with what is particular and regular
-Mathematics, Geometry & Theology - what is universal and routine
Nietzsche
- 19th Century German Philosopher
- Born Lutheran but gave up Christian faith in his late teens
Birth of Tragedy
2 Unique Characters of Art:
1) Apollo - order, symmetry, balance, proportion, etc.
2) Dionysus - freedom, wild emotion, indulgence, ecstasy, etc.
Some art forms are more or less Apollonian or Dionysian. Sculpture is paradigmatic of Apollonian, whereas music is paradigmatically Dionysian.
Greek tragedy is the child of Apollonian and Dionysian art. The tragedy has the Dionysian fall from exuberant and opulent behavior and the Apollonian sense of Justice
Freud
On Oedipus Rex & Hamlet
Oedipus Complex - a deep repressed urge that all men have to have sex with their mothers and kill their fathers.
He sees the Oedipus complex in Sophocles' Oedipus Rex and Hamlet's hesitation to kill his father's murderer is due to Hamlet's Oedipus complex.
Creative writing is an extension of one's fantasy life. Every one fantasizes because he or she has unfulfilled desires.
Fantasy is a wish that is becoming conscious when it was once unconscious or subconscious.
The writer devises characters to achieve the wishes he/she cannot fulfill.
Art is extension of one's fantasy life.
Thursday, February 8, 2007
Quick roundup of Aesthetic theories
(Originally written February 8, 2007 in Book 16)
Aesthetics: A Reader in Philosophy of the Arts 2nd Ed.
David Goldblatt & Lee B. Brown
Against Imitation - Plato
The painter is a creator of appearances just as a mirror is a creator of appearances.
Art creates merely some semblance of existence because it cannot create the essence of what it represents.
Three types of creators:
1) God - creates the eternal idea
2) Maker - creates the physical object
3) Artist - paints/sculpts the artistic representation of God's creation and the maker's creation
Art is merely imitation of physical appearances, not an imitation of truth.
An artist that is capable of maker level creation would not choose to create at the level of the artist.
Ion - Plato
Poetry, and all all art is created in divine possession. During this possession one loses one's mind and becomes free of knowledge to create art. Art does not require knowledge. In fact knowledge must be excluded from the creation of art.
Poets do not create poetry. They interpret what the divinity that possesses them states. Poets are interpreters.
Those who memorize and recite poets are merely interpreters of interpreters. They have no art, but are divinely inspired by their chosen poet.
On Tragedy - Aristotle
Tragedy is imitation with embellished language.
Embellished language is language where rhythm, harmony and song are mixed.
Tragedy is the imitation of an action.
Tragedy has six parts:
1. Plot - imitation of action
2. Characters - virtue ascribed to agents
3. Diction
4. Thought - needed when a truth is revealed
5. Spectacle
6. Melody
The plot is the soul of the tragedy and the most important part.
The Character is the second most important part.
Thought is the third most important and is the faculty of saying what is possible and pertinent to the circumstances.
Character reveals moral purpose.
Thought enunciates a general maxim.
Diction is the expression of the meaning in words.
The Birth of Tragedy
Friedrich Nietzsche
A critical backward glance:
The period of Greek life that was full of dissolution and weakness turned them from their true pessimistic outlook to an optimism, and a more scientific outlook.
"What kind of figure does ethics cut once we decide to view it in the biological perspective?" (329).
Linehan - How can one perceive ethics biologically?
Art, not ethics constitute the essential metaphysical activity of man.
Morality is a mere fabrication for purpose of gulling.
Christianity, a purely moral system sets itself to abominate art.
Christianity is the "most dangerous, most sinister form the will to destruction can take" (330).
In Christianity, life (moral existence) will always be wrong.
Morality is merely a will to deny life and the "Supreme Danger".
Apollo & Dionysus
Art owes it continuous evolution to the Apollonian-Dionysian duality as the propagation of the species owes its continuance on the duality of the sexes.
Dreams (the birthplace of art) are a sense of delight and a necessity of being.
In Dionysian intoxication the artist ceases to be the artist and becomes himself the work of art.
Tragedy is the child of the Apollonian dream interpreters and the Dionysian ecstasy.
Dionysian ecstasy was the unleashing of the mind and liberation to pursue a complete sexual promiscuity and cruelty.
Eternal contradiction is the begetter of all things. (Linehan - eternal flux?)
Apollo demands self-control which implies a knowledge of self-temperance was virtue to Apollo and hubris and excess were the principal vices.
On Oedipus Rex and Hamlet
Sigmund Freud
The fact that Oedipus Rex is as powerful to men now as it was to the ancient Greeks shows that the tragedy does not depend on the conflicting between fate and human will, but upon the nature in which the material is revealed.
We may be moved by the story because we are all destined to make our first sexual impulses to our mother and our first hate impulses to our fathers.
The story of Oedipus is merely "a wish-fulfillment - the fulfillment of the wish of our childhood" (340).
Hamlet is rooted in the same soil as Oedipus Rex.
Every character of the poet stems from more than one interior motive and is thusly open to more than one exterior interpretation.
Of the Standard of Taste
David Hume
It is natural for man to seek a standard of taste.
There is a species of philosophy in which no standard of taste can be ascertained.
Beauty is a product of the mind and has no external existence.
However, there must be some objective beauty for us to judge beauty at all.
When works are art, they are are not guided by presciences, but by the rules of art.
Sometimes pieces can be beautiful when they break the rules of that art, but they are beautiful despite those breeches, not because of them.
Bad artists can be praised for a while, but time will prove them flawed.
There is room for a degree of taste or preferences within a standard of task where only general principles are enunciated. This allows us to judge what is beautiful and what is not in a fairly universal sense.
The more one is experienced in a specific art the more one is capable of judging it as a whole and its individual parts.
The principles of taste are universal and nearly the same in all men, but few are qualified to give judgment on any work of art or establish their own sentiment as the standard of beauty.
Judgments about the Beautiful
Immanuel Kant
Taste - the faculty of estimating an object mode of representation by means of delight or a version apart from any interest.
Beautiful - The means of delight of taste
"The beautiful is that which apart from a concept, pleases universally" (454).
What is agreeable is subjectively, (agreeable-to-me) is not universally agreeable.
Everyone has their own sense of taste.
If something is merely pleasing to one's self it is not beautiful.
"Beauty is the form of finality in an art object, as far as perceived in it apart from the representation of an end" (455).
There are two types of Beauty:
1) Free Beauty (pulchritudo vaga)
2) Dependent beauty (pulchritudo adhaeren)
Estimating free beauty involves pure judgment of taste.
"The beautiful is that which, apart from a concept is cognized as object of a necessary delight" (456).
Fine art is the art of Genius.
Genius - natural talent which gives the rule of art, the innate mental aptitude through which nature gives the rule to art.
A product cannot be called art if it does not proceed from a rule.
Genius:
1) A talent for producing that for which no definite rule can be green
2) Produce products that must be models, exemplary and serve as a standard
3) Not scientifically expressible, must give its rules as the nature of the art
4) Nature prescribes the rule through genius to art
Art cannot be explained how it was conceived and created as a whole.
To estimate beautiful objects one needs only taste. To produce such objects, one needs genius,
"A beauty of nature is a beautiful thing; beauty of art is a beautiful representation of a thing" (458).
The Philosophy of Fine Art
G.W.F. Hegel
Art:
1. Not a product of nature, it is brought into being by man
2) created essentially for man, and more or less addressed to the sense of man.
3) It contains an end bound up with it.
Since it is brought into existence by man it is knowable, divulgable and learnable by others.
A work of art originates in the human spirit.
The function of fine art is to arouse feeling.
Aesthetics: A Reader in Philosophy of the Arts 2nd Ed.
David Goldblatt & Lee B. Brown
Against Imitation - Plato
The painter is a creator of appearances just as a mirror is a creator of appearances.
Art creates merely some semblance of existence because it cannot create the essence of what it represents.
Three types of creators:
1) God - creates the eternal idea
2) Maker - creates the physical object
3) Artist - paints/sculpts the artistic representation of God's creation and the maker's creation
Art is merely imitation of physical appearances, not an imitation of truth.
An artist that is capable of maker level creation would not choose to create at the level of the artist.
Ion - Plato
Poetry, and all all art is created in divine possession. During this possession one loses one's mind and becomes free of knowledge to create art. Art does not require knowledge. In fact knowledge must be excluded from the creation of art.
Poets do not create poetry. They interpret what the divinity that possesses them states. Poets are interpreters.
Those who memorize and recite poets are merely interpreters of interpreters. They have no art, but are divinely inspired by their chosen poet.
On Tragedy - Aristotle
Tragedy is imitation with embellished language.
Embellished language is language where rhythm, harmony and song are mixed.
Tragedy is the imitation of an action.
Tragedy has six parts:
1. Plot - imitation of action
2. Characters - virtue ascribed to agents
3. Diction
4. Thought - needed when a truth is revealed
5. Spectacle
6. Melody
The plot is the soul of the tragedy and the most important part.
The Character is the second most important part.
Thought is the third most important and is the faculty of saying what is possible and pertinent to the circumstances.
Character reveals moral purpose.
Thought enunciates a general maxim.
Diction is the expression of the meaning in words.
The Birth of Tragedy
Friedrich Nietzsche
A critical backward glance:
The period of Greek life that was full of dissolution and weakness turned them from their true pessimistic outlook to an optimism, and a more scientific outlook.
"What kind of figure does ethics cut once we decide to view it in the biological perspective?" (329).
Linehan - How can one perceive ethics biologically?
Art, not ethics constitute the essential metaphysical activity of man.
Morality is a mere fabrication for purpose of gulling.
Christianity, a purely moral system sets itself to abominate art.
Christianity is the "most dangerous, most sinister form the will to destruction can take" (330).
In Christianity, life (moral existence) will always be wrong.
Morality is merely a will to deny life and the "Supreme Danger".
Apollo & Dionysus
Art owes it continuous evolution to the Apollonian-Dionysian duality as the propagation of the species owes its continuance on the duality of the sexes.
Dreams (the birthplace of art) are a sense of delight and a necessity of being.
In Dionysian intoxication the artist ceases to be the artist and becomes himself the work of art.
Tragedy is the child of the Apollonian dream interpreters and the Dionysian ecstasy.
Dionysian ecstasy was the unleashing of the mind and liberation to pursue a complete sexual promiscuity and cruelty.
Eternal contradiction is the begetter of all things. (Linehan - eternal flux?)
Apollo demands self-control which implies a knowledge of self-temperance was virtue to Apollo and hubris and excess were the principal vices.
On Oedipus Rex and Hamlet
Sigmund Freud
The fact that Oedipus Rex is as powerful to men now as it was to the ancient Greeks shows that the tragedy does not depend on the conflicting between fate and human will, but upon the nature in which the material is revealed.
We may be moved by the story because we are all destined to make our first sexual impulses to our mother and our first hate impulses to our fathers.
The story of Oedipus is merely "a wish-fulfillment - the fulfillment of the wish of our childhood" (340).
Hamlet is rooted in the same soil as Oedipus Rex.
Every character of the poet stems from more than one interior motive and is thusly open to more than one exterior interpretation.
Of the Standard of Taste
David Hume
It is natural for man to seek a standard of taste.
There is a species of philosophy in which no standard of taste can be ascertained.
Beauty is a product of the mind and has no external existence.
However, there must be some objective beauty for us to judge beauty at all.
When works are art, they are are not guided by presciences, but by the rules of art.
Sometimes pieces can be beautiful when they break the rules of that art, but they are beautiful despite those breeches, not because of them.
Bad artists can be praised for a while, but time will prove them flawed.
There is room for a degree of taste or preferences within a standard of task where only general principles are enunciated. This allows us to judge what is beautiful and what is not in a fairly universal sense.
The more one is experienced in a specific art the more one is capable of judging it as a whole and its individual parts.
The principles of taste are universal and nearly the same in all men, but few are qualified to give judgment on any work of art or establish their own sentiment as the standard of beauty.
Judgments about the Beautiful
Immanuel Kant
Taste - the faculty of estimating an object mode of representation by means of delight or a version apart from any interest.
Beautiful - The means of delight of taste
"The beautiful is that which apart from a concept, pleases universally" (454).
What is agreeable is subjectively, (agreeable-to-me) is not universally agreeable.
Everyone has their own sense of taste.
If something is merely pleasing to one's self it is not beautiful.
"Beauty is the form of finality in an art object, as far as perceived in it apart from the representation of an end" (455).
There are two types of Beauty:
1) Free Beauty (pulchritudo vaga)
2) Dependent beauty (pulchritudo adhaeren)
Estimating free beauty involves pure judgment of taste.
"The beautiful is that which, apart from a concept is cognized as object of a necessary delight" (456).
Fine art is the art of Genius.
Genius - natural talent which gives the rule of art, the innate mental aptitude through which nature gives the rule to art.
A product cannot be called art if it does not proceed from a rule.
Genius:
1) A talent for producing that for which no definite rule can be green
2) Produce products that must be models, exemplary and serve as a standard
3) Not scientifically expressible, must give its rules as the nature of the art
4) Nature prescribes the rule through genius to art
Art cannot be explained how it was conceived and created as a whole.
To estimate beautiful objects one needs only taste. To produce such objects, one needs genius,
"A beauty of nature is a beautiful thing; beauty of art is a beautiful representation of a thing" (458).
The Philosophy of Fine Art
G.W.F. Hegel
Art:
1. Not a product of nature, it is brought into being by man
2) created essentially for man, and more or less addressed to the sense of man.
3) It contains an end bound up with it.
Since it is brought into existence by man it is knowable, divulgable and learnable by others.
A work of art originates in the human spirit.
The function of fine art is to arouse feeling.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Philosophy of Religion - Hick: Ch. 3 (B)
(Originally written January 31, 2007 in Book 7)
Philosophy of Religion
John Hick
Chapter 3 (continued)
The Freudian Theory of Religion
Sigmund Freud (1856 - 1939) regarded religious beliefs as "illusions, fulfillment's of the oldest, strongest, and most insistent wishes of mankind" (Hick, 34).
Religion is a mental defense against the threatening aspects of nature, i.e. earthquakes, hurricanes, etc.
Religion is the "universal obsessional neurosis of humanity" (Hick, 34).
Freud associated religion with the universal Oedipus complex of mankind.
Freud saw faith as a 'psychological crutch'.
The Challenge of Modern Science
The Biblical writers have a pre-scientific worldview and their account of nature must be separated from their divine inspiration.
The more science discovered, the more the Church opposed. But, critically thinking deists and Christians can piece together science and faith.
The sciences have cumulatively shows that nature can be studied without any reference to God. But does it follow from this that there is no God?
God could have epistemically distanced himself from man and created a relatively autonomous universe which man can exist in with a degree of independence.
God could have created man as free and responsible beings in an autonomous universe.
Science can neither confirm or deny the existence of God.
Miracles can be shown to be either compatible or incompatible with an autonomous universe. It is based on the use of the term 'miracle'. If 'miracle' is defined as a breach of natural law, one can declare a priori that there are no miracles.
A school of theological thought maintains that miracles presuppose faith. They are an inner understanding of a natural, however odd, event. They are not an evangelical tool.
One can neither prove or disprove (conclusively) the existence of God.
Philosophy of Religion
John Hick
Chapter 3 (continued)
The Freudian Theory of Religion
Sigmund Freud (1856 - 1939) regarded religious beliefs as "illusions, fulfillment's of the oldest, strongest, and most insistent wishes of mankind" (Hick, 34).
Religion is a mental defense against the threatening aspects of nature, i.e. earthquakes, hurricanes, etc.
Religion is the "universal obsessional neurosis of humanity" (Hick, 34).
Freud associated religion with the universal Oedipus complex of mankind.
Freud saw faith as a 'psychological crutch'.
The Challenge of Modern Science
The Biblical writers have a pre-scientific worldview and their account of nature must be separated from their divine inspiration.
The more science discovered, the more the Church opposed. But, critically thinking deists and Christians can piece together science and faith.
The sciences have cumulatively shows that nature can be studied without any reference to God. But does it follow from this that there is no God?
God could have epistemically distanced himself from man and created a relatively autonomous universe which man can exist in with a degree of independence.
God could have created man as free and responsible beings in an autonomous universe.
Science can neither confirm or deny the existence of God.
Miracles can be shown to be either compatible or incompatible with an autonomous universe. It is based on the use of the term 'miracle'. If 'miracle' is defined as a breach of natural law, one can declare a priori that there are no miracles.
A school of theological thought maintains that miracles presuppose faith. They are an inner understanding of a natural, however odd, event. They are not an evangelical tool.
One can neither prove or disprove (conclusively) the existence of God.
Sunday, November 12, 2006
The Mysticism of Paul
(Originally written November 12, 2006 in Book 11)
Chapter 2: Christianity: The Formative Years: The Mysticism of Paul
Paul was a Jew of the Diaspora. He was Hellenized, of a well-to-do family, educated and a Roman citizen.
Paul was extremely proud of his Jewish heritage.
He aimed himself to destroy the heretical Christian movement.
Paul's vision
Paul switched from persecuting Christians to spreading Christianity after a vision.
Christians explain this vision as a direct intervention of God, Freudians explain it as a psychotic man suffering from sexual repression and a father fixation. Epilepsy, fatigue and other mental problems have been labeled as the cause of Paul's transformation.
Paul's transformation, whatever the cause, had a monumental effect on the history o the Western world.
Paul interpreted Jesus' teachings in light of familiarity with Eastern mysticism.
Paul interpreted all of Early Christian teaching in a way that the Roman world could accept. His reinterpretation of it led to a cult to become a world religion.
The Letter to the Romans
Paul made the historical Jesus into a savior god and "built up a mythical setting for this god out of the Jewish legends and stories" (Jones, 41).
All men have inherited sin from the sin of Adam. Because of sin man's doomed, but Jesus was a savior for all.
Paul was ascetic, holding that the functions of the body were low.
Sin in Paul became associated with flesh and much wider than mere incontinence.
Paul adopted a dualism battle between flesh and spirit for his metaphysical base.
He held that the will was divided unless God intervenes to make it a unity.
This dualism was markedly different from Jesus' teachings.
Paul's asceticism was also much more severe than Jesus' mind-set.
Jesus took for granted that man was capable of working at his own problems, whereas Paul held man to be incompetently helpless.
Jesus held salvation to be obtainable by taking care of one's inner life. Paul believed man needed transcendental help.
Paul's dualism was two-fold:
1) Man was body and spirit
2) Jesus was God and Man
Each dualism had a battle between higher and lower principles, the only difference is that Jesus' higher principles was out unaided by God.
Paul placed emphasis on the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus more than any other part of Jesus' life.
Jesus' suffering for us became Paul's chance to give all men hope to achieve the higher principle of life.
Like the Mystery cults, Paul emphasized the union of God and men. According to Paul, this happened through the salvation of man through Christ.
The Mystical Union with Christ
Paul's focus on the mystical union with Christ was a radical departure from the old worship of YHWH.
Man becomes identical with Christ according to Paul.
Paul regarded the Law as the way for man to live prior to the coming of Christ.
Paul attacked the Judaizing of Christianity. He focused on the ritual of circumcision.
Despite using Jesus as a freeing from the Law, Paul still maintained religious rules so people did not live life as there were no consequences.
Some followers of Paul abused the freedom from the Law, but Paul corrected them, especially in Galatians.
Paul maintained that those who truly live in spirit will no longer want to do evil deeds.
Paul held love as the ultimate virtue; knowledge, beauty, strength and wisdom are nothing without love.
Love was the source of all other virtues. Paul also added to love the virtues of faith and hope as important virtues.
Paul's mysticism
Paul was eloquent and a phenomenal missionary.
Paul was brought before the Roman leadership in Jerusalem by the Jews. He was then imprisoned in Caesarea, transferred to Rome, had a long imprisonment and was executed in 62 AD.
Pauline Christianity
Paul was a mystic, not a philosopher. Paul's views have however persisted to be a part of philosophy since the Middle Ages.
Paul's unique cultural background is what enabled him to turn Christianity into a world religion.
The synthesis of Paul's views into a systematic view was a difficult task for Paul's followers.
Paul's view of salvation freed contradicting theses in his own works:
1) Salvation is magical (through ritual acts)
2) Salvation is spiritual (through mystic inner changes)
Paul was contradictory in faith and works to salvation.
Paul's doctrine of original sin was almost problematic. How did men inherit the sin of Adam? If man inherited sin how is he responsible for it? Why did God allow Adam to sin? These questions plague theologies still today.
Another major problem for Paul is Jesus is son of God, but monotheism has to be maintained by now.
Chapter 2: Christianity: The Formative Years: The Mysticism of Paul
Paul was a Jew of the Diaspora. He was Hellenized, of a well-to-do family, educated and a Roman citizen.
Paul was extremely proud of his Jewish heritage.
He aimed himself to destroy the heretical Christian movement.
Paul's vision
Paul switched from persecuting Christians to spreading Christianity after a vision.
Christians explain this vision as a direct intervention of God, Freudians explain it as a psychotic man suffering from sexual repression and a father fixation. Epilepsy, fatigue and other mental problems have been labeled as the cause of Paul's transformation.
Paul's transformation, whatever the cause, had a monumental effect on the history o the Western world.
Paul interpreted Jesus' teachings in light of familiarity with Eastern mysticism.
Paul interpreted all of Early Christian teaching in a way that the Roman world could accept. His reinterpretation of it led to a cult to become a world religion.
The Letter to the Romans
Paul made the historical Jesus into a savior god and "built up a mythical setting for this god out of the Jewish legends and stories" (Jones, 41).
All men have inherited sin from the sin of Adam. Because of sin man's doomed, but Jesus was a savior for all.
Paul was ascetic, holding that the functions of the body were low.
Sin in Paul became associated with flesh and much wider than mere incontinence.
Paul adopted a dualism battle between flesh and spirit for his metaphysical base.
He held that the will was divided unless God intervenes to make it a unity.
This dualism was markedly different from Jesus' teachings.
Paul's asceticism was also much more severe than Jesus' mind-set.
Jesus took for granted that man was capable of working at his own problems, whereas Paul held man to be incompetently helpless.
Jesus held salvation to be obtainable by taking care of one's inner life. Paul believed man needed transcendental help.
Paul's dualism was two-fold:
1) Man was body and spirit
2) Jesus was God and Man
Each dualism had a battle between higher and lower principles, the only difference is that Jesus' higher principles was out unaided by God.
Paul placed emphasis on the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus more than any other part of Jesus' life.
Jesus' suffering for us became Paul's chance to give all men hope to achieve the higher principle of life.
Like the Mystery cults, Paul emphasized the union of God and men. According to Paul, this happened through the salvation of man through Christ.
The Mystical Union with Christ
Paul's focus on the mystical union with Christ was a radical departure from the old worship of YHWH.
Man becomes identical with Christ according to Paul.
Paul regarded the Law as the way for man to live prior to the coming of Christ.
Paul attacked the Judaizing of Christianity. He focused on the ritual of circumcision.
Despite using Jesus as a freeing from the Law, Paul still maintained religious rules so people did not live life as there were no consequences.
Some followers of Paul abused the freedom from the Law, but Paul corrected them, especially in Galatians.
Paul maintained that those who truly live in spirit will no longer want to do evil deeds.
Paul held love as the ultimate virtue; knowledge, beauty, strength and wisdom are nothing without love.
Love was the source of all other virtues. Paul also added to love the virtues of faith and hope as important virtues.
Paul's mysticism
Paul was eloquent and a phenomenal missionary.
Paul was brought before the Roman leadership in Jerusalem by the Jews. He was then imprisoned in Caesarea, transferred to Rome, had a long imprisonment and was executed in 62 AD.
Pauline Christianity
Paul was a mystic, not a philosopher. Paul's views have however persisted to be a part of philosophy since the Middle Ages.
Paul's unique cultural background is what enabled him to turn Christianity into a world religion.
The synthesis of Paul's views into a systematic view was a difficult task for Paul's followers.
Paul's view of salvation freed contradicting theses in his own works:
1) Salvation is magical (through ritual acts)
2) Salvation is spiritual (through mystic inner changes)
Paul was contradictory in faith and works to salvation.
Paul's doctrine of original sin was almost problematic. How did men inherit the sin of Adam? If man inherited sin how is he responsible for it? Why did God allow Adam to sin? These questions plague theologies still today.
Another major problem for Paul is Jesus is son of God, but monotheism has to be maintained by now.
Thursday, November 9, 2006
The Late Classical Period
(Originally written November 9, 2006 in Book 11)
The Classical Mind 2nd Edition
W.T. Jones
Chapter 8 - Late Classical Period
Epicureanism
Epicurus was born circa 341 BC in Samos
He visited Athens around the death of Socrates.
He set up a school in Athens in 306 BC and was worshipped almost like a god.
He lived a simple life and was extremely friendly to everyone.
Epicurus 341 BC - 270 BC
Egocentric Hedonism
Epicurus' physics and theory of knowledge are consistent with Atomism and Democritus.
His ethics were radically different from the Atomists and Democritus.
Epicurus held that the end of life is to maximize pleasure.
While in theory it superficially looks synonymous to radical Sophism, Epicurus' lifestyle was not conducive to the Sophist notion.
Epicurus held that a simple, frugal life was more conducive to pleasure than extreme pleasure feelings like the Sophist's advocated.
He distinguishes between desires:
1) Natural and Necessary - food, sleep
2) Natural and Unnecessary - sex
3) Vain and Idle (Unnatural) - exotic food, fancy clothes
He held that necessary desires must be satisfied. Unnatural desires do not need to be satisfied ever.
Natural desires are easy to satisfy, unnatural ones are not for two reasons:
1) Objects of unnatural desires are exotic and harder to come by.
2) Unnatural desires have no limits.
Difficulties with Egocentric Hedonism
Epicurus held that his ethics of natural, necessary and vain desires were grounded in psychology.
Desires are subjective and vary from person to person so what is an objective standard for necessary.
Epicurus' virtues restend on whether or not they produced pleasure.
The problem with Epicurus' virtue is that some noble acts are painful and some acts that are pleasurable are un-virtuous by nature.
Epicurus was ambiguous in his teachings and that led to his popularity.
Repose
Repose was a necessary and natural desire for Epicurus.
Repose - (Physical) rest and relaxation
Repose - (Mental) freedom from worry
Repose was necessary for the blessed life.
Quietude was the ultimate pleasure.
Competition destroyed repose so competition was to be avoided.
Worry destroyed repose.
The two greatest worries:
1) Fear of death
2) Fear of divine intervention
Epicurus' atomism alleviated both of these groundless, superstitious fears.
Fear of death is due to ignorance of man's nature. Fear of divine intervention was ignorant of the true atomistic materialism.
Epicurus pursued knowledge because science created repose not because knowledge was a good in and of itself.
Epicureanism in Rome: Lucretius
Lucretius was the chief Roman Epicurean
Lucretius was concerned with man's irrational fear of death.
Lucretius attacked religion stating, "religion has given birth to deeds most sinful and unholy" (Jones, 323).
Lucretius suggested that fear of death may be the underlying motive for vices. He predicted some of Freudian Psychology.
Both Lucretius and Epicurus saw religion as being superstitious and disruptive of repose.
The appeal of Epicureanism
Repose appealed to the changing times of post-Alexander and the tumultuous evolution of Rome.
Stoicism
Founded by Zeno
Zeno was from Cyprus and founded a school in Athens circa 300 BC.
Zeno was inspired by the simple ethical opinions of Socrates, not the elaborate metaphysical theories of Plato.
The Cynics were followers of Socrates who shunned the amenities of life.
They focused on Socrates' indifference of circumstances and independence of Character. They ignored Socrates' claim "virtue is knowledge" but clung to his belief that no harm can befall a good man.
Poverty, pain, suffering and death come to all good men all the time, thus the Cynics held that these were not bad.
Virtue, to the Cynics, was indifference to what happened to him.
The Cynics' interpretation of Socrates was completely the opposite of the Platonic Socrates.
Zeno first was influenced by the Cynics' teachings, but their anarchist temperament caused him to shun their interpretations.
Zeno wanted to reconcile the Cynic sage ideal with he political temperament of Aristotle and Plato.
The Reconciliation process of Zeno was left for the Roman Stoics who wished to reconcile the ideal with Roman politics.
Stoics divided philosophy into three parts:
1) Logic (Theory of Knowledge)
2) Physics (including psychology)
3) Ethics
Theory of Knowledge
Stoic theory of knowledge is rooted in extreme sensationalism.
Perceptions are the basis for concepts
Stoics believed in the tabula rosa of the mind. There are no innate ideas.
Form, in the Stoics, differed from Plato and Aristotle. It is neither an independent entity (Plato) nor a component of spatiotemporal substance (Aristotle). It is merely a construct of the mind and has no existence outside of the mind.
The Stoic account of form is conceptualism. Conceptualism, despite problems, has had many adherents in the history of philosophy.
One problem is how one perception is known to be true or false. The Stoics assumed that true perceptions are known to be true because of their vividness and strength. False perceptions are hallucinations and illusions.
Aristotle argued that true perceptions were true because they were derived from real objects with a form.
Veridical perception - the transference of the object's sensible form to the percipient.
Aristotle, with vertical perception, had a criteria to distinguish true and false perceptions. But, "there is no way of applying this criterion in specific cases" (Jones, 327).
The Stoics abandoned Aristotle's criteria without realizing the problem that would follow.
Physics
Only matter is real. Nothing exists except the body.
The Stoics faced a paradoxical situation with this because not only does god and the soul have to be body, but good and bad must also be corporeal.
The Stoics identified fire with matter. This is an influence of Heraclitus.
The Stoics were content to basically follow Aristotelian physics and made no advances in the field.
Ethics
The Stoics were original in their ethical theory.
The highest good for anything was for that thing to act in accordance to its nature. They called this happiness.
Unlike Aristotle who called contemplation the highest happiness, the Stoics saw knowledge merely as a means to happiness. They valued science for its utility.
The utility of science in Stoicism is that it helps man to discover its nature (contra to the utility of science in Epicureanism, which is debunking superstition and fear).
The Stoic determinism involved (somehow) divine providence.
Matter was fire, but god was also fire in Stoicism.
The Universe is rational in Stoicism.
"The universe and man, they reasoned, stand to each other as macrocosm and microcosm" (Jones, 321).
Man's life has order, law and reason. Sure, man is a microcosm of the universe, so to0 the universe has these properties.
The "nature" (or logos or providence) of the universe was to be rational.
The old question of law vs. convention had been argued since the 5th century B.C. The Sophists maintained that the nature of the world (its order and laws) was merely a convention of man's mind. Conversely, Plato and Aristotle held that there is a nature of laws in the universe. They held morality as being in accordance with the nature of the world.
The "norm" of a thing is its nature. It is a pattern or a relationship of that thing's parts.
Everything has a nature. This was held by Plato and Aristotle and the Stoics latched onto it.
Humans have a norm and a nature. The deviation from that norm in any particular human being is what can be judged as a deviation from the good or ethical.
The Stoics' conception of nature led them to the idea of universal brotherhood of all men.
The idea of a cosmopolis or universal city was a Stoic invention. Had Plato or Aristotle not been so indoctrinated in the polis or city-state mentality they would most likely have come up with it.
The Stoics held that nature is a criterion and a universal order.
The expansion of the Roman Empire was justified by the notion of the brotherhood and by the ideal of the cosmopolis.
The Stoics maintained that there was a nature or laws that governed men that superseded the laws of any state. Thus, the laws that bound them are not issued by any state. This provided the chance for assimilation of cultures in the expanding empire.
This concept of Stoicism's natural law was absorbed by the Romans, the Christians (reinterpreting it as divine law) and the U.S. founding fathers (Bill of Rights).
The notion of duty was derived from the concept of nature. Though duty was a very old concept by the Stoics' time they gave it a primacy that it never received before.
They separated duty from advantage and spoke of man's end being happiness in negative terms.
Stoic happiness was not Platonic or Aristotelian development of a person or Sophist pleasure.
Stoic happiness was apathy, the peace of mind that comes to accept the world as the way it is. Happiness is indifference to reality.
Stoics held that only motive, not consequences had moral significance. Intention, not outcome mattered.
The stoics utterly rejected emotions.
While the Greeks had been working for centuries to control emotions and had gravitated towards moderation, temperance and the mean. The Stoics held that moderation was as bad as excess. Only apathy is good.
Virtue in Stoicism is either wholly present or wholly absent.
Virtue is obtained at a single point, after years of training. It is achieved when worldly things are put aside and the true perspective of the universe is seen.
Stoicism's extreme asceticism and narrowness are problematic.
Another problem is the rejection of the forms, but the emergence of natural laws.
Another problem is the determinism vs. choice problem. If the universe is determined can we make the choice to be in accordance with nature?
Despite these problems, the Stoic ideal of men living in one community where men act for respect of natural law, not personal gain, is still appealing today.
The Stoic notion of equality for men is another appeal for their theory. A universal state with universal citizenship was centuries ahead of its time.
The Appeal of Stoicism to Romans
Romans, rather than rejecting Stoicism, aimed to purge it of exaggerations.
Rather the apathy, Romans wanted their politicians to put aside personal gain for the well-being of Rome.
Rather than focusing on acceptance as the sole virtue/duty of man, Roman Stoics devised many natures of man and how to act in accordance to one's own nature.
Throughout Roman Stoicism, an ascetic and altruistic tone continued to dominate their views because of their insistence and focus on obligation over interest.
Roman Stoicism's ideal of courage was taking one's political duties seriously and unflinchingly.
Stoicism failed to create a consistent moral philosophy. This fact did not trouble the Stoics themselves because they are more interested with how their philosophy could be used to live in a troubled world rather than how well their philosophy could explain the world.
"Stoicism, in fact, was more a religion (doubtless a rather secular religion) than a philosophical theory" (Jones, 333). This fact came out in their usage of more emotive terminology, rather than cognitively precise meanings.
The Classical Mind 2nd Edition
W.T. Jones
Chapter 8 - Late Classical Period
Epicureanism
Epicurus was born circa 341 BC in Samos
He visited Athens around the death of Socrates.
He set up a school in Athens in 306 BC and was worshipped almost like a god.
He lived a simple life and was extremely friendly to everyone.
Epicurus 341 BC - 270 BC
Egocentric Hedonism
Epicurus' physics and theory of knowledge are consistent with Atomism and Democritus.
His ethics were radically different from the Atomists and Democritus.
Epicurus held that the end of life is to maximize pleasure.
While in theory it superficially looks synonymous to radical Sophism, Epicurus' lifestyle was not conducive to the Sophist notion.
Epicurus held that a simple, frugal life was more conducive to pleasure than extreme pleasure feelings like the Sophist's advocated.
He distinguishes between desires:
1) Natural and Necessary - food, sleep
2) Natural and Unnecessary - sex
3) Vain and Idle (Unnatural) - exotic food, fancy clothes
He held that necessary desires must be satisfied. Unnatural desires do not need to be satisfied ever.
Natural desires are easy to satisfy, unnatural ones are not for two reasons:
1) Objects of unnatural desires are exotic and harder to come by.
2) Unnatural desires have no limits.
Difficulties with Egocentric Hedonism
Epicurus held that his ethics of natural, necessary and vain desires were grounded in psychology.
Desires are subjective and vary from person to person so what is an objective standard for necessary.
Epicurus' virtues restend on whether or not they produced pleasure.
The problem with Epicurus' virtue is that some noble acts are painful and some acts that are pleasurable are un-virtuous by nature.
Epicurus was ambiguous in his teachings and that led to his popularity.
Repose
Repose was a necessary and natural desire for Epicurus.
Repose - (Physical) rest and relaxation
Repose - (Mental) freedom from worry
Repose was necessary for the blessed life.
Quietude was the ultimate pleasure.
Competition destroyed repose so competition was to be avoided.
Worry destroyed repose.
The two greatest worries:
1) Fear of death
2) Fear of divine intervention
Epicurus' atomism alleviated both of these groundless, superstitious fears.
Fear of death is due to ignorance of man's nature. Fear of divine intervention was ignorant of the true atomistic materialism.
Epicurus pursued knowledge because science created repose not because knowledge was a good in and of itself.
Epicureanism in Rome: Lucretius
Lucretius was the chief Roman Epicurean
Lucretius was concerned with man's irrational fear of death.
Lucretius attacked religion stating, "religion has given birth to deeds most sinful and unholy" (Jones, 323).
Lucretius suggested that fear of death may be the underlying motive for vices. He predicted some of Freudian Psychology.
Both Lucretius and Epicurus saw religion as being superstitious and disruptive of repose.
The appeal of Epicureanism
Repose appealed to the changing times of post-Alexander and the tumultuous evolution of Rome.
Stoicism
Founded by Zeno
Zeno was from Cyprus and founded a school in Athens circa 300 BC.
Zeno was inspired by the simple ethical opinions of Socrates, not the elaborate metaphysical theories of Plato.
The Cynics were followers of Socrates who shunned the amenities of life.
They focused on Socrates' indifference of circumstances and independence of Character. They ignored Socrates' claim "virtue is knowledge" but clung to his belief that no harm can befall a good man.
Poverty, pain, suffering and death come to all good men all the time, thus the Cynics held that these were not bad.
Virtue, to the Cynics, was indifference to what happened to him.
The Cynics' interpretation of Socrates was completely the opposite of the Platonic Socrates.
Zeno first was influenced by the Cynics' teachings, but their anarchist temperament caused him to shun their interpretations.
Zeno wanted to reconcile the Cynic sage ideal with he political temperament of Aristotle and Plato.
The Reconciliation process of Zeno was left for the Roman Stoics who wished to reconcile the ideal with Roman politics.
Stoics divided philosophy into three parts:
1) Logic (Theory of Knowledge)
2) Physics (including psychology)
3) Ethics
Theory of Knowledge
Stoic theory of knowledge is rooted in extreme sensationalism.
Perceptions are the basis for concepts
Stoics believed in the tabula rosa of the mind. There are no innate ideas.
Form, in the Stoics, differed from Plato and Aristotle. It is neither an independent entity (Plato) nor a component of spatiotemporal substance (Aristotle). It is merely a construct of the mind and has no existence outside of the mind.
The Stoic account of form is conceptualism. Conceptualism, despite problems, has had many adherents in the history of philosophy.
One problem is how one perception is known to be true or false. The Stoics assumed that true perceptions are known to be true because of their vividness and strength. False perceptions are hallucinations and illusions.
Aristotle argued that true perceptions were true because they were derived from real objects with a form.
Veridical perception - the transference of the object's sensible form to the percipient.
Aristotle, with vertical perception, had a criteria to distinguish true and false perceptions. But, "there is no way of applying this criterion in specific cases" (Jones, 327).
The Stoics abandoned Aristotle's criteria without realizing the problem that would follow.
Physics
Only matter is real. Nothing exists except the body.
The Stoics faced a paradoxical situation with this because not only does god and the soul have to be body, but good and bad must also be corporeal.
The Stoics identified fire with matter. This is an influence of Heraclitus.
The Stoics were content to basically follow Aristotelian physics and made no advances in the field.
Ethics
The Stoics were original in their ethical theory.
The highest good for anything was for that thing to act in accordance to its nature. They called this happiness.
Unlike Aristotle who called contemplation the highest happiness, the Stoics saw knowledge merely as a means to happiness. They valued science for its utility.
The utility of science in Stoicism is that it helps man to discover its nature (contra to the utility of science in Epicureanism, which is debunking superstition and fear).
The Stoic determinism involved (somehow) divine providence.
Matter was fire, but god was also fire in Stoicism.
The Universe is rational in Stoicism.
"The universe and man, they reasoned, stand to each other as macrocosm and microcosm" (Jones, 321).
Man's life has order, law and reason. Sure, man is a microcosm of the universe, so to0 the universe has these properties.
The "nature" (or logos or providence) of the universe was to be rational.
The old question of law vs. convention had been argued since the 5th century B.C. The Sophists maintained that the nature of the world (its order and laws) was merely a convention of man's mind. Conversely, Plato and Aristotle held that there is a nature of laws in the universe. They held morality as being in accordance with the nature of the world.
The "norm" of a thing is its nature. It is a pattern or a relationship of that thing's parts.
Everything has a nature. This was held by Plato and Aristotle and the Stoics latched onto it.
Humans have a norm and a nature. The deviation from that norm in any particular human being is what can be judged as a deviation from the good or ethical.
The Stoics' conception of nature led them to the idea of universal brotherhood of all men.
The idea of a cosmopolis or universal city was a Stoic invention. Had Plato or Aristotle not been so indoctrinated in the polis or city-state mentality they would most likely have come up with it.
The Stoics held that nature is a criterion and a universal order.
The expansion of the Roman Empire was justified by the notion of the brotherhood and by the ideal of the cosmopolis.
The Stoics maintained that there was a nature or laws that governed men that superseded the laws of any state. Thus, the laws that bound them are not issued by any state. This provided the chance for assimilation of cultures in the expanding empire.
This concept of Stoicism's natural law was absorbed by the Romans, the Christians (reinterpreting it as divine law) and the U.S. founding fathers (Bill of Rights).
The notion of duty was derived from the concept of nature. Though duty was a very old concept by the Stoics' time they gave it a primacy that it never received before.
They separated duty from advantage and spoke of man's end being happiness in negative terms.
Stoic happiness was not Platonic or Aristotelian development of a person or Sophist pleasure.
Stoic happiness was apathy, the peace of mind that comes to accept the world as the way it is. Happiness is indifference to reality.
Stoics held that only motive, not consequences had moral significance. Intention, not outcome mattered.
The stoics utterly rejected emotions.
While the Greeks had been working for centuries to control emotions and had gravitated towards moderation, temperance and the mean. The Stoics held that moderation was as bad as excess. Only apathy is good.
Virtue in Stoicism is either wholly present or wholly absent.
Virtue is obtained at a single point, after years of training. It is achieved when worldly things are put aside and the true perspective of the universe is seen.
Stoicism's extreme asceticism and narrowness are problematic.
Another problem is the rejection of the forms, but the emergence of natural laws.
Another problem is the determinism vs. choice problem. If the universe is determined can we make the choice to be in accordance with nature?
Despite these problems, the Stoic ideal of men living in one community where men act for respect of natural law, not personal gain, is still appealing today.
The Stoic notion of equality for men is another appeal for their theory. A universal state with universal citizenship was centuries ahead of its time.
The Appeal of Stoicism to Romans
Romans, rather than rejecting Stoicism, aimed to purge it of exaggerations.
Rather the apathy, Romans wanted their politicians to put aside personal gain for the well-being of Rome.
Rather than focusing on acceptance as the sole virtue/duty of man, Roman Stoics devised many natures of man and how to act in accordance to one's own nature.
Throughout Roman Stoicism, an ascetic and altruistic tone continued to dominate their views because of their insistence and focus on obligation over interest.
Roman Stoicism's ideal of courage was taking one's political duties seriously and unflinchingly.
Stoicism failed to create a consistent moral philosophy. This fact did not trouble the Stoics themselves because they are more interested with how their philosophy could be used to live in a troubled world rather than how well their philosophy could explain the world.
"Stoicism, in fact, was more a religion (doubtless a rather secular religion) than a philosophical theory" (Jones, 333). This fact came out in their usage of more emotive terminology, rather than cognitively precise meanings.
Thursday, November 2, 2006
What is this thing called science? Ch. 5 (A)
(Originally written November 2, 2006 in Book 8)
What is this thing called science?
A. Chalmers
Ch. 5 - Introducing Falsificationism
Introduction
Popper was the most forceful advocate of falsificationism.
Educated in Vienna in the 1920's (the heyday of Logical Positivism)
Rudolph Carnap (a positivist) had a large following and his supporters clashed with Popper's until the 1960's.
Popper became disenchanted with inductivism because of the Freudian and Marxists and their using it in their theories to make all facts fit into their systems. These systems appeared to be powerful because they were affirmed by a wide variety of facts, but could neither prove anything nor disprove anything.
Popper claimed that true scientific theories are falsifiable.
Falsficationism freely admits that observation is guided by and presupposes theory.
Science is to progress by trial and error and by conjectures and refutations.
Theory in falsification cannot be true, but it can be hopefully said to be the best available.
A logical point in favor of falsificationism
Some theories can be shown to be false through the results of observation and experiment.
This has a logical flavor to it.
The falsity of universal statements can be deduced from suitable singular statements.
What is this thing called science?
A. Chalmers
Ch. 5 - Introducing Falsificationism
Introduction
Popper was the most forceful advocate of falsificationism.
Educated in Vienna in the 1920's (the heyday of Logical Positivism)
Rudolph Carnap (a positivist) had a large following and his supporters clashed with Popper's until the 1960's.
Popper became disenchanted with inductivism because of the Freudian and Marxists and their using it in their theories to make all facts fit into their systems. These systems appeared to be powerful because they were affirmed by a wide variety of facts, but could neither prove anything nor disprove anything.
Popper claimed that true scientific theories are falsifiable.
Falsficationism freely admits that observation is guided by and presupposes theory.
Science is to progress by trial and error and by conjectures and refutations.
Theory in falsification cannot be true, but it can be hopefully said to be the best available.
A logical point in favor of falsificationism
Some theories can be shown to be false through the results of observation and experiment.
This has a logical flavor to it.
The falsity of universal statements can be deduced from suitable singular statements.
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