(Originally written November 16, 2016 in Book 26)
Introducing Plato
D. Robinson
Particulars are contingent
Universals are the properties that particulars share with one another.
Plato was the first philosopher to see that universals were problematic.
Plato tried to explain it with a two-world system. A perfect world of universals and an imperfect world of copies (particulars).
The world of forms/ideas is never quite explained perfectly.
Forms exist in their own world and can only be "recollected only in the minds of a few talented and well-trained individuals" (Robinson, 65).
Plato's epistemology is difficult because it is mystical and therefore, not directly communicable.
Plato needed the forms to deal with the problem of Heraclitus' flux.
"Forms are more 'real' than particulars, because, unlike particulars, they are eternal and unchanging. Authentic philosophical knowledge can only ever be of these 'forms'" (Robinson, 74).
Everyone is born with the knowledge of the forms because everyone encounters them in earlier lives.
Some of the reason why Plato thought this way about particulars and universals was an account of the Greek language. It was a sort of linguistic determinism. It equates "meeting" and "knowing".
Heidegger was similar in his thinking as German is similar to Greek in how it deals with nouns. It precedes nouns with either masculine, feminine and neuter articles, allowing Heidegger to think about "the nothingness" rather than nothingness.
The forms suffer from an infinite regress, or third man argument.
Plato was also unsure if all man-made objects had forms or not.
The forms have weird ontological problems as well. How can the forms have more reality than particulars? Can reality have degrees?
Plato, because of the notion that meeting and knowing are the same thing, "Maintaining that real knowledge has to be a kind of personal and mystical encounter" (Robinson, 84).
What about universals?
Aristotle - universals are real, but don't exist separately
British Empiricists - universals are a mental image arrived at by abstraction.
"Wittgenstein suggested that our craving for definitive generalities can never be ultimately satisfied, and it is rather unhealthy" (Robinson, 87).
Plato introduced a problem that has not been satisfactorily solved.
Political Philosophy
Plato's view of society is communitarian, emphasizing the social nature of individuals. "Individuals can therefore be judged primarily in terms of their contribution to the State" (Robinson, 88).
The formation of the State came from humans developing a taste for luxury. Divisions of labor is then necessary to provide the luxuries.
Plato would turn the education over to the State (away from the hands of the dangerous Sophists). His educational system is roughly based on the Spartan system which produced a strong army and a stable society.
Plato wanted his society to have experts in every profession. The experts in ruling would get the guardian status and guardian education.
Plato would teach the myth that each man was born of a certain type of metal, thus predetermining every man's status in life.
The myth of the Cave allegory illustrates the ability and the duty of the guardian class.
Those who exit the cave know true knowledge comes from thinking, not seeing.
Plato's ideal republic is hierarchical but because of the myth of the four metals it will function well because everyone will know and accept their place in society (like a beehive).
"By the second generation, everyone will believe this myth of hierarchical castes to be natural and inevitable. Plato is quite content to admit that his hierarchical society must be based on a lie" (Robinson, 101).
Marx inverted the term "ideology" to explain how Plato's big lie works in reality.
The Guardian life is extremely rigorously controlled:
- lived coed in the barracks
- own no property
- breed only with one another by lot
- children are not left with their parents
"Plato's guardians are allowed no individuality or personal freedom" (Robinson, 103).
The social system Plato advocates is severe but it is meritocratic and is not sexist.
"Socrates maintained that morality is a special kind of knowledge which, once known, would always be chosen. Plato seems to have agreed, but argued that this knowledge must be restricted to Guardian experts who will always know the 'correct' answers to all moral problems" (Robinson, 106).
Plato had no time for art in the ideal republic. Only art as propaganda would be admitted. (This art foreshadowed the propagandist art of the Nazis and Soviets).
Plato's moral geometry is often rejected for being inflexible and for reason linking morality and knowledge.
Plato was anti-democratic because democrats have to resort to populism to stay in power. Populist policies are thus favored over wise ones.
"Democratic politicians are merely the slaves of those they pretend to rule, and ordinary people are volatile, violent and bestial" (Robinson, 114).
Popper argued against Plato for his utopianism.
Utopianists often advocate for wiping the slate clean which entails the destruction of society to build a new one.
"The Laws makes a disappointing ending to a philosophical body of work that began with a total commitment to Socrates' own freedom of speech and thought" (Robinson, 131).
"Because Plato cannot have perfect people, he insists on perfect laws which must be obeyed because they are perfect" (Robinson, 131).
The Symposium
Plato seems convinced that homosexual love could be transformed into something spiritually transcendental.
What is love?
Phaedrus: a good thing that instills honor and self-sacrifice
Pausanias: love is sensual gratification but is somehow purer when directed at young men rather than young women
Eryximachus: "love is the cosmic force that constitutes the universe itself" (Robinson, 134).
Aristophanes: Everyone was originally male, female and hermaphrodite. Love is the quest to find the lost part of one's soul. (Zeus punished humanity by splitting everyone into single genders).
Agathon - love is a yearning towards some object of beauty which is not yet possessed.
Diotima - love is the link between sensible and spiritual worlds. "If love is that which moves towards what is beautiful, and wisdom is beautiful, then love is the manifestation of the human soul seeking out the true wisdom of the forms" (Robinson, 136).
The Timaeus
Presents a cosmological account of creation.
"Time is simply a series of numbers that measure how the sub-standard cosmos is always changing" (Robinson, 142).
Plato follows Empedocles' view that all matter is various combinations of the four elements.
Humans are different because of their soul. The soul will return to its star after death if the owner of the soul lived a deserving life.
Plato also advocated metempsychosis (reincarnation) for those souls who aren't worthy of returning to its home star.
Plato's cosmology is similar to M-theory and other string theories that rely on mathematics.
Plato vacillates in the Thaetetus on his theories of perception. Sometimes he is a phenomenalist (we perceive mental images of the world, not the world itself). Sometimes he is a naive realist.
Despite his waffling on the notion of perception he remains staunchly a rationalist - all permanent knowledge comes through thought.
Being a rationalist, Plato had to come up with reasons for error. He claimed that errors arose from memory misapplication.
Knowledge - that which we believe, that which is true and that which we can clearly identify.
The Phaedrus condemns writing because writing is complete. Philosophy is always a process and therefore never complete. As such, dialoge is the best tool for philosophical discovery.
Plato had a long and varied influence:
- Origen developed a neo-platonic theology
- Galileo embraced Plato in his anti-Aristotelian view
- Hegel's dialectical philosophy
Showing posts with label Hegel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hegel. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 16, 2016
Tuesday, August 4, 2015
Heraclitus
Heraclitus
The Classical Mind
W.T. Jones
1980
-For Heraclitus, the original stuff is fire. "This world...was ever, is now, and ever shall be an everlasting fire" (Jones, 14).
-Heraclitus was influenced by the Milesian three, but was more subtle and refined
-Heraclitus' notion to resolve the problem of how one thing becomes every thing and is still one was to make the 'one thing' a non-material thing. For Heraclitus, the one thing then was the process itself.
-For Heraclitus, who like most men have difficulty in truly thinking abstractly, let alone communicating abstract thoughts, he called this process 'fire', which is always changing and yet still fire.
-The problem for the Milesian three was they held a belief in unity and still needed to reconcile the fact that things changed. Heraclitus however in proclaiming process as the one thing went to the extreme and created the problem of permanence. Because everything was fire and process, everything was always changing. This is the state of flux.
-Flux accounts for the change. Permanence is accounted for by accepting that the thing that is changing appears permanent because the rate of change is always the same.
-In addition to the Milesian three's problem of one and the many, Heraclitus has the problem of the world as it appears and the world as it really is.
-Heraclitus did not stop at describing the physical world as the Milesian three did. He dabbled into more areas.
-He used the eternal flux in describing how politics works as well. The political system is a constant tension of opposites. For example, without strife peace could not exist.
-Heraclitus' political theory was representative of his time. There was constant strife between the various city states and peace only existed when neither of the warring city states had enough power to overcome the other. Likewise, in the individual city states the nobles and the commoners only achieved a balance of peace when neither party was powerful enough to impose their will on the other. Heraclitus was on the side of the nobility.
-Heraclitus was contemptuous of the masses.
-In addition to social theory, Heraclitus showed an interest in religion. For Heraclitus, his aristocratic contempt for the masses extended to his religious sentiments. Accepting the scientific nature of the Milesian three, he rejected the contemporary religion of the masses.
-Heraclitus is quoted as saying 'the wisest man is an ape compared to God, just as the most beautiful ape is ugly compared to man'
-Heraclitus sometimes identifies his god as the process of flux
-Heraclitus' god was not personal. It was indifferent to human conceptions of right and wrong, justice and was immune to men's prayer.
-Heraclitus equated the flux/process sometimes with 'logos'.
-Some passages indicate that Heraclitus' ethics held that the chief good of man is to listen to the logos and even become absorbed by the logos
-Heraclitus was both a scientific and religious philosopher.
The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
1972
[The Greeks] "discovered mathematics and the art of deductive reasoning. Geometry, in particular, is a Greek invention, without which modern science would have been impossible" (Russell, 39). The limitation to this Greek way of thinking though is that it is reasoned deductively from self-evident facts rather than inductively from empirical observations.
-Heraclitus was an aristocratic person from Ephesus.
-famous for his theory that everything is in a state of flux
-He was mystical in thought
-Fire was the fundamental substance
-everything is born by the death of something else
-there was a unity in the world, but that unity came out of the combination of opposites
-believed that mankind was so inherently bad that only force would compel them to act for their own good
-believed that War was necessary and good
-believed that strife was justice and that all things come into being and pass away through strife
-"His ethic is a kind of proud asceticism, very similar to Nietzsche's" (Russell, 42).
-The soul was a mix of fire and water, the fire being the noble part.
-Claimed the 'dry' soul was the best, but that it is pleasurable to the soul to get 'wet'. Hence, the asceticism
-He was hostile to the Bacchic religion, for example he wrote "They vainly purify themselves by defiling themselves with blood, just as if one who had stepped into the mud were to wash his feet in mud. Any man who marked him doing this, would deem him mad" (Russell, 43).
-Perpetual change was the state of the world.
-The unity in the world was a result from diversity.
-His god did not care about mankind - "To God all things are fair and good and right, but men hold some things wrong and some right" (Russell, 44).
-Like Hegel, Heraclitus seems to believe that a synthesis of opposites creates the world as it is.
-Heraclitus has a sense of cosmic justice in his system as no single thing can ever prevent one thing from totally taking over its opposite
-For Heraclitus, his God is distinct from the gods. His God is the embodiment of cosmic justice.
-Both Plato and Aristotle agreed that Heraclitus taught that nothing ever is, everything is always becoming.
-"The doctrine of perpetual flux, as taught by Heraclitus, is painful, and science, as we have seen, can do nothing to refute it. One of the main ambitions of philosophers has been to revive hopes that science seemed to have killed. Philosophers, accordingly, have sought, with great persistence, for something not subject to the empire of Time. This search begins with Parmenides" (Russell, 47).
Early Greek Philosophy
Jonathan Barnes
2001
-Heraclitus came from Ephesus in Asia Minor, circa 500 BC
-He was nicknamed 'The Obscure' and 'The Riddler'
-Even Socrates, when given a book of Heraclitus by Euripides states what he understood was splendid and was sure that what he didn't understand was splendid as well.
-Heraclitus rebuked and condemned a lot of people for their ignorance in his writings
-He claims all things are one, 'day and dusk - for they are one', 'the path of the carding-comb is straight and crooked', 'the path up and down is one and the same', etc.
-He was very critical of everyone he disagreed with, which was basically everyone. "Much learning does not teach thought - or it would have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, and again Xenophanes and Hecataeus" (Barnes, 53).
-He defines wisdom as the ability to grasp the knowledge of how all things are steered through all.
-He was regarded by some of the ancients as arrogant and purposefully obscure
-He claimed that all things were made of fire and perished back into the fire
-Everything that exists is harmonized by the transformation of opposites
-Everything is full of souls and spirits
-He distrusted sensory perception
John Stobaeus quotes a couple of interesting Heraclitus sayings:
-It is better to hide folly than to make it public
-It is not good for men to get what they want
-To be self-controlled is the greatest excellence. And wisdom is speaking the truth and acting with knowledge in accordance with nature.
-All men can know themselves and control themselves
Again, he is not very complimentary of the common man: "For what thought or sense, he says, do they have? They follow the popular singers and they take the crowd as their teacher, not knowing that most men are bad and few good" (Barnes, 58).
He claims that most men satisfy themselves like beasts. The best men seek fame from mortals.
He is especially critical of Pythagoras. "Pythagoras, son of Mnesarchus, practiced inquiry more than any other man, and selecting from these writings he made a wisdom of his own - much learning, mere fraudulence" (Barnes, 59).
-He held that the world was uncreated
Stobaeus says "Heraclitus said that a man's character is his fate" (Barnes, 62).
On God Plutarch remarks that Heraclitus believed "In all respects superior to us, [god] is especially unlike and different from us in his acts; but of divine acts, the majority, according to Heraclitus, escape our knowledge through lack of trust" (Barnes, 66).
He claimed that philosophical men must be versed in many things
He distrusted the senses - bad witnesses for men are eyes and ears of those who have foreign souls (the mark of a foreign soul is to trust in non-rational perceptions)
War is to be praised in Heraclitus because it brings about strife, which is justice.
Aristotle describes his cosmology as the harmony achieved through the blending of the most contrary principles.
Again, he's not real complimentary of the masses, claiming that donkeys would prefer rubbish to gold.
The Classical Mind
W.T. Jones
1980
-For Heraclitus, the original stuff is fire. "This world...was ever, is now, and ever shall be an everlasting fire" (Jones, 14).
-Heraclitus was influenced by the Milesian three, but was more subtle and refined
-Heraclitus' notion to resolve the problem of how one thing becomes every thing and is still one was to make the 'one thing' a non-material thing. For Heraclitus, the one thing then was the process itself.
-For Heraclitus, who like most men have difficulty in truly thinking abstractly, let alone communicating abstract thoughts, he called this process 'fire', which is always changing and yet still fire.
-The problem for the Milesian three was they held a belief in unity and still needed to reconcile the fact that things changed. Heraclitus however in proclaiming process as the one thing went to the extreme and created the problem of permanence. Because everything was fire and process, everything was always changing. This is the state of flux.
-Flux accounts for the change. Permanence is accounted for by accepting that the thing that is changing appears permanent because the rate of change is always the same.
-In addition to the Milesian three's problem of one and the many, Heraclitus has the problem of the world as it appears and the world as it really is.
-Heraclitus did not stop at describing the physical world as the Milesian three did. He dabbled into more areas.
-He used the eternal flux in describing how politics works as well. The political system is a constant tension of opposites. For example, without strife peace could not exist.
-Heraclitus' political theory was representative of his time. There was constant strife between the various city states and peace only existed when neither of the warring city states had enough power to overcome the other. Likewise, in the individual city states the nobles and the commoners only achieved a balance of peace when neither party was powerful enough to impose their will on the other. Heraclitus was on the side of the nobility.
-Heraclitus was contemptuous of the masses.
-In addition to social theory, Heraclitus showed an interest in religion. For Heraclitus, his aristocratic contempt for the masses extended to his religious sentiments. Accepting the scientific nature of the Milesian three, he rejected the contemporary religion of the masses.
-Heraclitus is quoted as saying 'the wisest man is an ape compared to God, just as the most beautiful ape is ugly compared to man'
-Heraclitus sometimes identifies his god as the process of flux
-Heraclitus' god was not personal. It was indifferent to human conceptions of right and wrong, justice and was immune to men's prayer.
-Heraclitus equated the flux/process sometimes with 'logos'.
-Some passages indicate that Heraclitus' ethics held that the chief good of man is to listen to the logos and even become absorbed by the logos
-Heraclitus was both a scientific and religious philosopher.
The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
1972
[The Greeks] "discovered mathematics and the art of deductive reasoning. Geometry, in particular, is a Greek invention, without which modern science would have been impossible" (Russell, 39). The limitation to this Greek way of thinking though is that it is reasoned deductively from self-evident facts rather than inductively from empirical observations.
-Heraclitus was an aristocratic person from Ephesus.
-famous for his theory that everything is in a state of flux
-He was mystical in thought
-Fire was the fundamental substance
-everything is born by the death of something else
-there was a unity in the world, but that unity came out of the combination of opposites
-believed that mankind was so inherently bad that only force would compel them to act for their own good
-believed that War was necessary and good
-believed that strife was justice and that all things come into being and pass away through strife
-"His ethic is a kind of proud asceticism, very similar to Nietzsche's" (Russell, 42).
-The soul was a mix of fire and water, the fire being the noble part.
-Claimed the 'dry' soul was the best, but that it is pleasurable to the soul to get 'wet'. Hence, the asceticism
-He was hostile to the Bacchic religion, for example he wrote "They vainly purify themselves by defiling themselves with blood, just as if one who had stepped into the mud were to wash his feet in mud. Any man who marked him doing this, would deem him mad" (Russell, 43).
-Perpetual change was the state of the world.
-The unity in the world was a result from diversity.
-His god did not care about mankind - "To God all things are fair and good and right, but men hold some things wrong and some right" (Russell, 44).
-Like Hegel, Heraclitus seems to believe that a synthesis of opposites creates the world as it is.
-Heraclitus has a sense of cosmic justice in his system as no single thing can ever prevent one thing from totally taking over its opposite
-For Heraclitus, his God is distinct from the gods. His God is the embodiment of cosmic justice.
-Both Plato and Aristotle agreed that Heraclitus taught that nothing ever is, everything is always becoming.
-"The doctrine of perpetual flux, as taught by Heraclitus, is painful, and science, as we have seen, can do nothing to refute it. One of the main ambitions of philosophers has been to revive hopes that science seemed to have killed. Philosophers, accordingly, have sought, with great persistence, for something not subject to the empire of Time. This search begins with Parmenides" (Russell, 47).
Early Greek Philosophy
Jonathan Barnes
2001
-Heraclitus came from Ephesus in Asia Minor, circa 500 BC
-He was nicknamed 'The Obscure' and 'The Riddler'
-Even Socrates, when given a book of Heraclitus by Euripides states what he understood was splendid and was sure that what he didn't understand was splendid as well.
-Heraclitus rebuked and condemned a lot of people for their ignorance in his writings
-He claims all things are one, 'day and dusk - for they are one', 'the path of the carding-comb is straight and crooked', 'the path up and down is one and the same', etc.
-He was very critical of everyone he disagreed with, which was basically everyone. "Much learning does not teach thought - or it would have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, and again Xenophanes and Hecataeus" (Barnes, 53).
-He defines wisdom as the ability to grasp the knowledge of how all things are steered through all.
-He was regarded by some of the ancients as arrogant and purposefully obscure
-He claimed that all things were made of fire and perished back into the fire
-Everything that exists is harmonized by the transformation of opposites
-Everything is full of souls and spirits
-He distrusted sensory perception
John Stobaeus quotes a couple of interesting Heraclitus sayings:
-It is better to hide folly than to make it public
-It is not good for men to get what they want
-To be self-controlled is the greatest excellence. And wisdom is speaking the truth and acting with knowledge in accordance with nature.
-All men can know themselves and control themselves
Again, he is not very complimentary of the common man: "For what thought or sense, he says, do they have? They follow the popular singers and they take the crowd as their teacher, not knowing that most men are bad and few good" (Barnes, 58).
He claims that most men satisfy themselves like beasts. The best men seek fame from mortals.
He is especially critical of Pythagoras. "Pythagoras, son of Mnesarchus, practiced inquiry more than any other man, and selecting from these writings he made a wisdom of his own - much learning, mere fraudulence" (Barnes, 59).
-He held that the world was uncreated
Stobaeus says "Heraclitus said that a man's character is his fate" (Barnes, 62).
On God Plutarch remarks that Heraclitus believed "In all respects superior to us, [god] is especially unlike and different from us in his acts; but of divine acts, the majority, according to Heraclitus, escape our knowledge through lack of trust" (Barnes, 66).
He claimed that philosophical men must be versed in many things
He distrusted the senses - bad witnesses for men are eyes and ears of those who have foreign souls (the mark of a foreign soul is to trust in non-rational perceptions)
War is to be praised in Heraclitus because it brings about strife, which is justice.
Aristotle describes his cosmology as the harmony achieved through the blending of the most contrary principles.
Again, he's not real complimentary of the masses, claiming that donkeys would prefer rubbish to gold.
Wednesday, July 1, 2015
Philosophical Notes on Nadja
I finished Nadja by André Breton yesterday and am somewhat still digesting it. It is pretty out there in literary style, but it was not nearly as difficult in reading Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar. But there were stylistic similarities - the most notable of which were the various asides that the main characters had when you weren't sure if they were speaking or using interior monologue. I wish I had read Nadja first because I think that it would have helped me read Hopscotch. But, I'll read a couple more Surrealist novels before I reread Hopscotch and hopefully that will make the hopscotching reading of Hopscotch a little easier. But, that is neither here nor there.
Philosophical Concepts:
"What I must have ceased to be in order to be who I am" (Breton, 11). This idea of renunciation or to put it in economic terms, the opportunity cost of becoming who you are by ceasing who you were was just a fascinating thought for me.
"I strive, in relation to other men, to discover the nature, if not the necessity, of my difference from them" (Breton, 13). In this we see Breton struggling to discover once again who he is, by comparing himself to others to see who he is by negation. He is not the other by necessity.
The slope facts and the cliff facts that Breton references on page 20 is interesting to think about. Here he has a hierarchy of facts, some of which only he can be the witness of and others he flatters himself that he possesses the full details. But, some of those facts deny a person rational acknowledgement and it is only by "our very instinct of self-preservation to enable us to do so" (Breton, 20). Breton seems to state that some facts are so inescapable, so brute and thus, so horrifying that we can only escape them through a matter of self-preservation.
Breton has some interesting views on the moral value of work. "I am forced to accept the notion of work as a material necessity, and in this regard I strongly favor its better, that is its fairer, division. I admit life's grim obligations make it a necessity, but never that I should believe in its value, revere my own or that of other men" (Breton, 59-60). To Breton, work is a means to an end, a necessary evil. The only good that can come from work is the material gains that come from it, not the character that it can provide.
"But it's so easy to return slowly toward the Rue Lafayette, the Rue du Faubourg Poissoniere - to begin by going back to the very spot where we were" (Breton, 74). Interestingly, after leaving Nadja at her door where he discovers that she is at the extreme limit of the surrealist aspiration, he questions what now? So he goes back to where he was; to begin again anew. I'm not sure if this is to repeat the cycle, or if it is an act of cowardice.
"Unless you have been inside a sanitarium you do not know that madmen are made there, just as criminals are made in our reformatories. Is there anything more detestable than these systems of so-called social conservation which, for a peccadillo, some initial and exterior rejection of respectability or common sense, hurl an individual among others whose association can only be harmful to him and, above all, systematically deprive him of relations with everyone whose moral or practical sense is more firmly established than his own?" (Breton, 139). This is such a scathing rebuke of Breton's societal surroundings about prisons and mental health professionals. Madmen are made in the madhouse. Criminals are made in the prison system. And, what's worse, its done systematically. It's not an accident. The system is tragically flawed and will always produce those results. In spite of Breton writing in 1928 France, the same still stands here in 21st century. The criminals are hardened in their reforming prisons. Criminals are made in the prison system.
"The most absolute sense of love or revolution...involved the negation of everything else" (Breton, 153). This is a very true thing. Love and revolution require total commitment to the cause. That said, I find the surrealist touch here a bit interesting. There seems to be an equating going on between love and revolution as if they are one in the same.
"But that is the way of the world, isn't it, the outer world, that is - a matter of sleep-walking" (154). Again the surrealist applies the opposite of reality. The outer world is the sleep-walking world. Does this mean that the inner world, the world of sleep and dreams is the world of awareness?
The Hegel quote in the end is interesting: "each man hopes and believes he is better than the world which is his, but the man who is better merely expresses this same world better than the others" (Breton, 159).
Philosophical Concepts:
"What I must have ceased to be in order to be who I am" (Breton, 11). This idea of renunciation or to put it in economic terms, the opportunity cost of becoming who you are by ceasing who you were was just a fascinating thought for me.
"I strive, in relation to other men, to discover the nature, if not the necessity, of my difference from them" (Breton, 13). In this we see Breton struggling to discover once again who he is, by comparing himself to others to see who he is by negation. He is not the other by necessity.
The slope facts and the cliff facts that Breton references on page 20 is interesting to think about. Here he has a hierarchy of facts, some of which only he can be the witness of and others he flatters himself that he possesses the full details. But, some of those facts deny a person rational acknowledgement and it is only by "our very instinct of self-preservation to enable us to do so" (Breton, 20). Breton seems to state that some facts are so inescapable, so brute and thus, so horrifying that we can only escape them through a matter of self-preservation.
Breton has some interesting views on the moral value of work. "I am forced to accept the notion of work as a material necessity, and in this regard I strongly favor its better, that is its fairer, division. I admit life's grim obligations make it a necessity, but never that I should believe in its value, revere my own or that of other men" (Breton, 59-60). To Breton, work is a means to an end, a necessary evil. The only good that can come from work is the material gains that come from it, not the character that it can provide.
"But it's so easy to return slowly toward the Rue Lafayette, the Rue du Faubourg Poissoniere - to begin by going back to the very spot where we were" (Breton, 74). Interestingly, after leaving Nadja at her door where he discovers that she is at the extreme limit of the surrealist aspiration, he questions what now? So he goes back to where he was; to begin again anew. I'm not sure if this is to repeat the cycle, or if it is an act of cowardice.
"Unless you have been inside a sanitarium you do not know that madmen are made there, just as criminals are made in our reformatories. Is there anything more detestable than these systems of so-called social conservation which, for a peccadillo, some initial and exterior rejection of respectability or common sense, hurl an individual among others whose association can only be harmful to him and, above all, systematically deprive him of relations with everyone whose moral or practical sense is more firmly established than his own?" (Breton, 139). This is such a scathing rebuke of Breton's societal surroundings about prisons and mental health professionals. Madmen are made in the madhouse. Criminals are made in the prison system. And, what's worse, its done systematically. It's not an accident. The system is tragically flawed and will always produce those results. In spite of Breton writing in 1928 France, the same still stands here in 21st century. The criminals are hardened in their reforming prisons. Criminals are made in the prison system.
"The most absolute sense of love or revolution...involved the negation of everything else" (Breton, 153). This is a very true thing. Love and revolution require total commitment to the cause. That said, I find the surrealist touch here a bit interesting. There seems to be an equating going on between love and revolution as if they are one in the same.
"But that is the way of the world, isn't it, the outer world, that is - a matter of sleep-walking" (154). Again the surrealist applies the opposite of reality. The outer world is the sleep-walking world. Does this mean that the inner world, the world of sleep and dreams is the world of awareness?
The Hegel quote in the end is interesting: "each man hopes and believes he is better than the world which is his, but the man who is better merely expresses this same world better than the others" (Breton, 159).
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Notes on Dreadful Freedom
(Originally Written October 22, 2009 in The Journal)
OK Ashley, you've heard my sob stories about loneliness and depression and this new unrequited love. You've heard of the destruction of my body, the breaking of my heart and the crushing of my soul. But now let's witness my glory - my mind. How about some philosophy.
Dreadful Freedom
Marjorie Grene
Chapter 1 - Why existentialism
Existentialists insist on their essential optimism that man makes himself.
Existentialism in a sense is a reaction against the speculative idealism of Hegel.
Existentialism comes from Kierkegaard's phrase "existential dialectic".
In existentialism, existence is prior to essence. This means that the consciousness of one's own soul comes before anything else becomes clear.
Existentialism revolts against system building and focuses on more pressing human concerns.
The relation of cause to effect is measured by the efficacy of an act.
The relation of cause and effect is indistinguishable from means and end.
Sartre and Dewey (pragmatists) criticize philosophies of the past for stabilizing the norms that kept ruling parties in power.
Pragmatism and existentialism are similar in aim at first glance.
Sartre resets values from past to future. The past value is an emphasis on the bourgeois privilege whereas if values are set with the future in mind it leads to revolution.
Pragmatism fails though because fact cannot produce value. Science cannot distinguish between good and evil.
Value for Sartre lies between the way things are and the way things ought to be. The success of man (and failure) lies between the thing as it is and the thing as it should be.
The perception between the way things are and the way they should be is the fundamental insight of existential philosophy.
Values are created solely by the acts of man. What they take as good or bad, beautiful or ugly in their quest to give meaning to a meaningless world.
Positivistic ethics aims at being descriptive not normative.
As in Kantian ethics, existentialists claim there is no good or evil apart from will and there is no will without freedom.
Existentialism does not derive values from mere facts.
Some existentialists demand a return to faith in the Christian God as a necessary way out of our present moral chaos (Marcel & Kierkegaard).
Atheistic existentialists however claim that the return to the Christian God is removing the freedom of man and basing values once again on facts, though these facts are not sense-data but cosmic in origin.
Chapter 2: Soren Kierkegaard: The self against the system
The aim of Kierkegaard, his one problem was: to find out where the misunderstanding lies between speculation and Christianity.
Kierkegaard believed that the misunderstanding had its roots in the nature of personal existence.
Kierkegaard's work has a slight anti-scientific tone but it is really a revolt against Hegelian speculation.
Camus had a very strong anti-scientific tone.
Kierkegaard worries that by focusing on physiology and explaining the whole man in its scope will cause man to lose sight of the important field of ethics.
Kierkegaard argues that the system in never capable of explaining existence until it is complete and thus becoming timeless. Existence as it is happening is never complete and thus, the system is incapable of explaining existence.
Kierkegaard criticizes the systematizers by claiming that they build a palace to live next door in the barn.
The system builders acquire far flung knowledge and ignore the simple understanding of one's self, which is the only important understand.
The system, in its grandeur is deceiving. It uses wordy logical fallacies to appear logical.
Kierkegaard does not propound an orthodox form of Christianity. He denies any "objective truth of Christianity", instead stating the whole problem for every serious Christian is their own path to faith.
Kierkegaard focuses on the inwardness of the subjective journey of the one real entity (the individual) to the infinite being, known by faith.
Kierkegaard turns from the impersonal and trivial truths (though consistent) to the passionate truth realized only subjectively and meaningful. This truth is meaningful because it is contradictory.
By embracing total subjectivity, Kierkegaard renounced all abstraction and left only contradiction and paradox. Since abstraction is gone one cannot transfer through words one's experience to another. paradox is the only way and this is indirect communication.
Philosophy for Kierkegaard, like Kant is focused on the question, what is man? It deals with human problems, not the essence of cosmic reality.
Kierkegaard relies heavily on Plato, not Neo-Platonism, but the Dialogues themselves.
Kierkegaard states we live, or ought to live, in the awareness that here and now may be our last moment.
Existentialism focuses on the contingency of life.
Existentialism pays close attention to the meaninglessness that continually underlies the significance in human life.
OK Ashley, you've heard my sob stories about loneliness and depression and this new unrequited love. You've heard of the destruction of my body, the breaking of my heart and the crushing of my soul. But now let's witness my glory - my mind. How about some philosophy.
Dreadful Freedom
Marjorie Grene
Chapter 1 - Why existentialism
Existentialists insist on their essential optimism that man makes himself.
Existentialism in a sense is a reaction against the speculative idealism of Hegel.
Existentialism comes from Kierkegaard's phrase "existential dialectic".
In existentialism, existence is prior to essence. This means that the consciousness of one's own soul comes before anything else becomes clear.
Existentialism revolts against system building and focuses on more pressing human concerns.
The relation of cause to effect is measured by the efficacy of an act.
The relation of cause and effect is indistinguishable from means and end.
Sartre and Dewey (pragmatists) criticize philosophies of the past for stabilizing the norms that kept ruling parties in power.
Pragmatism and existentialism are similar in aim at first glance.
Sartre resets values from past to future. The past value is an emphasis on the bourgeois privilege whereas if values are set with the future in mind it leads to revolution.
Pragmatism fails though because fact cannot produce value. Science cannot distinguish between good and evil.
Value for Sartre lies between the way things are and the way things ought to be. The success of man (and failure) lies between the thing as it is and the thing as it should be.
The perception between the way things are and the way they should be is the fundamental insight of existential philosophy.
Values are created solely by the acts of man. What they take as good or bad, beautiful or ugly in their quest to give meaning to a meaningless world.
Positivistic ethics aims at being descriptive not normative.
As in Kantian ethics, existentialists claim there is no good or evil apart from will and there is no will without freedom.
Existentialism does not derive values from mere facts.
Some existentialists demand a return to faith in the Christian God as a necessary way out of our present moral chaos (Marcel & Kierkegaard).
Atheistic existentialists however claim that the return to the Christian God is removing the freedom of man and basing values once again on facts, though these facts are not sense-data but cosmic in origin.
Chapter 2: Soren Kierkegaard: The self against the system
The aim of Kierkegaard, his one problem was: to find out where the misunderstanding lies between speculation and Christianity.
Kierkegaard believed that the misunderstanding had its roots in the nature of personal existence.
Kierkegaard's work has a slight anti-scientific tone but it is really a revolt against Hegelian speculation.
Camus had a very strong anti-scientific tone.
Kierkegaard worries that by focusing on physiology and explaining the whole man in its scope will cause man to lose sight of the important field of ethics.
Kierkegaard argues that the system in never capable of explaining existence until it is complete and thus becoming timeless. Existence as it is happening is never complete and thus, the system is incapable of explaining existence.
Kierkegaard criticizes the systematizers by claiming that they build a palace to live next door in the barn.
The system builders acquire far flung knowledge and ignore the simple understanding of one's self, which is the only important understand.
The system, in its grandeur is deceiving. It uses wordy logical fallacies to appear logical.
Kierkegaard does not propound an orthodox form of Christianity. He denies any "objective truth of Christianity", instead stating the whole problem for every serious Christian is their own path to faith.
Kierkegaard focuses on the inwardness of the subjective journey of the one real entity (the individual) to the infinite being, known by faith.
Kierkegaard turns from the impersonal and trivial truths (though consistent) to the passionate truth realized only subjectively and meaningful. This truth is meaningful because it is contradictory.
By embracing total subjectivity, Kierkegaard renounced all abstraction and left only contradiction and paradox. Since abstraction is gone one cannot transfer through words one's experience to another. paradox is the only way and this is indirect communication.
Philosophy for Kierkegaard, like Kant is focused on the question, what is man? It deals with human problems, not the essence of cosmic reality.
Kierkegaard relies heavily on Plato, not Neo-Platonism, but the Dialogues themselves.
Kierkegaard states we live, or ought to live, in the awareness that here and now may be our last moment.
Existentialism focuses on the contingency of life.
Existentialism pays close attention to the meaninglessness that continually underlies the significance in human life.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Notes on Tolstoy, What is Art? Chapter 3 (A)
(Originally Written Feb. 28, 2008 in the Journal)
Baumgarten (the founder of aesthetics) states the object of logical knowledge is truth and the object of aesthetic or sensual knowledge is beauty.
"Beauty is the perfect recognized through the senses; truth is the perfect perceived through reason; goodness is the perfect reached by moral will" (Maude, 92).
Baumgarten sees beauty as a correspondence of the relations of the parts to the parts and of the parts to the whole.
The aim of beauty he states, is to excite a desire.
Baumgarten's followers did nothing more than separate the pleasant from the beautiful.
Sulzer, Mendelssohn and Moritz claimed that the aim of art is not beauty, but goodness.
Johann Georg Sulzer held that which contains goodness can be called beautiful. He contended that the aim of humanity was welfare in social life. He intended to achieve this through moral education; and art, serves this purpose only.
Moses Mendelssohn held that art is the development of beauty until it becomes true and good. He held that the end of art is therefore, moral perfection.
While Baumgarten was concerned with the Perfect or the Absolute, Mendelssohn and Sulzer divided into three forms: truth, goodness and beauty. Beauty then merges back into both the good and the true.
Johann Winckelmann (a German art historian) said that only external beauty is the aim of art. Winckelmann separated beauty from goodness and divided it into three categories:
1. Beauty of form
2. Beauty of idea
3. Beauty of expression
He claimed that beauty of expression could only happen after both beauty of form and beauty of idea had first been accomplished. Winckelmann held that beauty of expression is the highest aim of art. He claimed that it was attained in antique art and therefore, modern art should be aimed at imitating ancient art.
The German aestheticians like Lessing, Herder, and Goethe understood beauty in the way of Winckelmann until Immanuel Kant changed it all.
Aesthetic theories arose in England, France, Italy and Holland that were also equally cloudy and contradictory The started their theories with a conception of the beautiful as existing absolutely and somehow it intermingled with goodness or at least had the same roots as it.
Shaftsbury held that which is beautiful is harmonious and proportionable, that which is harmonious and proportionable is true, and what is beautiful and true is agreeable and good. Shaftsbury held that beauty is only recognized by the mind. He held that God is the fundamental beauty and that beauty and goodness proceed from the same fount.
Hutchenson held that the aim of art is beauty. Beauty's essence consists in evoking a perception of uniformity and variety in us. Hutchenson held we are guided by an internal sense to what art is. He also held that in this internal sense one could contradict the ethical sense and that beauty does not always correspond with goodness and could actually run contrary to it.
Lord Kanes held that beauty is what is pleasant. Therefore, for him, beauty rests solely in taste.
Burke held that the sublime and the beautiful were the aim of art and have their origin in self-preservation and society. He also claimed that art is a means for the maintenance of the race through the individual. The first self-preservation (and the preservation of the individual) is through 1) nourishment, 2) defense, and 3) war. The second self-preservation (the preservation of the society) is achieved through 1) sex and 2) propagation. Self-defense and war are the source of the sublime. Sociability and the sex instinct are the source of beauty.
Yves Marie André held that there are three types of beauty:
1. Divine
2. Natural
3. Artificial
Charles Batteux held that art consists in imitating the beauty of nature. The end of art is enjoyment.
The French and the English held that taste decides what is beautiful. They also hold that the laws of taste cannot be determined.
Pagano held that art consists of uniting the beauties dispersed in nature. He held that the capacity to perceive these beauties is taste and the capacity to bring them together is artistic genius. He held that beauty is goodness made visible and that goodness is inner beauty.
Muratori stated that art is an egotistical sensation founded on the desire for the preservation of self and society.
Hemsterhuis, the Dutch writer, influenced the Germans, particularly Goethe. He held that beauty is that which gives the most pleasure. He held that enjoyment of the beautiful is the highest form of cognition to which men can attain.
Kant held that:
1. Man has a knowledge of nature outside him and himself in nature.
2. He seeks truth outside himself. He seeks goodness inside himself.
3. Seeking truth is pure reason. Seeking goodness is practical reason.
4. Aesthetic feeling is a judging capacity without reason and produces pleasure without desire.
5. Beauty is in subjective meaning. It is that which without reasoning and without practical advantages, nonetheless pleases.
Schiller held that the aim of art is beauty, which is the source of pleasure without practical advantage.
Fichte held that the perception of the beautiful proceeds from nature. Nature has two sides; 1) the sum of our limitations and 2) the sum of our free idealistic activity. In the sum of our limitations we see deformity. In the sum of our free idealistic activity we see beauty. He held that beauty therefore does not exist in the world, but in the beautiful soul (Schöner Geist). He also held that art is the manifestation of this beautiful soul and that the aim of art is the education of the whole man.
Schlegel held that beauty is understood too incompletely. He held that beauty is in art, nature and love. The truly beautiful is expressed by the union of art, nature and love.
Adam Müller held that there are two types of beauty:
1. General beauty which attracts people as the sun attracts the planets
2. Individual beauty which consists in the observer becoming like the sun and attracting beauty.
Thus, a world which harmonizes all contradictions is the highest beauty. He held that art is a reproduction of this universal harmony and that the highest art is the art of life.
Schelling held "art is the production or result of that conception of things by which the subject becomes its own object, or the object its own subject" (Maude, 99). He held that beauty is the perception of the infinite in the finite. The chief characteristic of works of art is unconscious infinity. Art unites the subjective and the objective, nature with reason and the unconscious with the conscious. He held that because of this, art is the highest means of knowledge. "Beauty is the contemplation of things in themselves as they exist in the prototype" (Maude, 99). The artist does not produce the beautiful by knowledge or skill, but by the beauty inside himself.
Krause held that positive beauty is the manifestation of the idea in an individual form; art is the actualization of the beauty existent in man's free spirit.
Hegel held that God manifests himself in nature and art as beauty. God manifests himself in two ways: on the object in nature and in the subject in spirit. Only the soul and what pertains to it is truly beautiful. The beauty of nature is only the reflection of a spiritual content. The sensuous manifestation of spirit is only appearance and this is the only reality of the beautiful. Art, religion and philosophy are means of being and expressing to the consciousness the deepest problems of humanity and the highest truths of the spirit. Hegel held that truth and beauty are one and the same. The idea as itself is truth. The idea, manifested externally, is beauty.
Weisse held that art is the introduction of the absolute spiritual reality of beauty into the external, dead, indifferent matter. Weisse held that the idea of truth entails a contradiction between the subjective and the objective and then the individual ego discerns the universal. Beauty is a reconciled truth.
In addition to Hegelian aesthetic theories there were contemporary and contradictory German theories like Herbart's and Schopenhauer's.
Hebart denied that there can be such a thing as beauty in itself. He held that there are certain relations we call beautiful and that art consists of finding these relations.
Schopenhauer held that the will objectifies itself in the world on various planes. The highest plane has the highest beauty but, each plane contains its own beauty.
Hartmann held that beauty lies in the seeming or "schien" produced by the artist. "The thing in itself is not beautiful, but it is transformed into beauty by the artist".
Schnaase held that there is no beauty in the world. Art gives what nature cannot. Beauty is disclosed then in art.
Kirchmann held there are six realms of history:
1. Knowledge
2. Wealth
3. Morality
4. Faith
5. Politics
6. Beauty - this is art.
Helmholtz held that beauty is manifested by the artist unconsciously and therefore cannot be analyzed.
Bergmann denied defining beauty objectively is possible. He held that beauty is held subjectively and therefore the job of aesthetics is to define what pleases whom.
Jungmann held that:
1. Beauty is a suprasensible quality of things.
2. Beauty produces pleasure by contemplation
3. Beauty is the foundation of love.
Cousin held beauty always has a moral foundation.
Jouffrey held that the visible world is the clothing by means of which we see beauty.
Lévêque held that beauty was a force behind nature and revealed itself in ordered energy.
Ravaisson held that beauty was the ultimate aim and purpose of the world.
Baumgarten (the founder of aesthetics) states the object of logical knowledge is truth and the object of aesthetic or sensual knowledge is beauty.
"Beauty is the perfect recognized through the senses; truth is the perfect perceived through reason; goodness is the perfect reached by moral will" (Maude, 92).
Baumgarten sees beauty as a correspondence of the relations of the parts to the parts and of the parts to the whole.
The aim of beauty he states, is to excite a desire.
Baumgarten's followers did nothing more than separate the pleasant from the beautiful.
Sulzer, Mendelssohn and Moritz claimed that the aim of art is not beauty, but goodness.
Johann Georg Sulzer held that which contains goodness can be called beautiful. He contended that the aim of humanity was welfare in social life. He intended to achieve this through moral education; and art, serves this purpose only.
Moses Mendelssohn held that art is the development of beauty until it becomes true and good. He held that the end of art is therefore, moral perfection.
While Baumgarten was concerned with the Perfect or the Absolute, Mendelssohn and Sulzer divided into three forms: truth, goodness and beauty. Beauty then merges back into both the good and the true.
Johann Winckelmann (a German art historian) said that only external beauty is the aim of art. Winckelmann separated beauty from goodness and divided it into three categories:
1. Beauty of form
2. Beauty of idea
3. Beauty of expression
He claimed that beauty of expression could only happen after both beauty of form and beauty of idea had first been accomplished. Winckelmann held that beauty of expression is the highest aim of art. He claimed that it was attained in antique art and therefore, modern art should be aimed at imitating ancient art.
The German aestheticians like Lessing, Herder, and Goethe understood beauty in the way of Winckelmann until Immanuel Kant changed it all.
Aesthetic theories arose in England, France, Italy and Holland that were also equally cloudy and contradictory The started their theories with a conception of the beautiful as existing absolutely and somehow it intermingled with goodness or at least had the same roots as it.
Shaftsbury held that which is beautiful is harmonious and proportionable, that which is harmonious and proportionable is true, and what is beautiful and true is agreeable and good. Shaftsbury held that beauty is only recognized by the mind. He held that God is the fundamental beauty and that beauty and goodness proceed from the same fount.
Hutchenson held that the aim of art is beauty. Beauty's essence consists in evoking a perception of uniformity and variety in us. Hutchenson held we are guided by an internal sense to what art is. He also held that in this internal sense one could contradict the ethical sense and that beauty does not always correspond with goodness and could actually run contrary to it.
Lord Kanes held that beauty is what is pleasant. Therefore, for him, beauty rests solely in taste.
Burke held that the sublime and the beautiful were the aim of art and have their origin in self-preservation and society. He also claimed that art is a means for the maintenance of the race through the individual. The first self-preservation (and the preservation of the individual) is through 1) nourishment, 2) defense, and 3) war. The second self-preservation (the preservation of the society) is achieved through 1) sex and 2) propagation. Self-defense and war are the source of the sublime. Sociability and the sex instinct are the source of beauty.
Yves Marie André held that there are three types of beauty:
1. Divine
2. Natural
3. Artificial
Charles Batteux held that art consists in imitating the beauty of nature. The end of art is enjoyment.
The French and the English held that taste decides what is beautiful. They also hold that the laws of taste cannot be determined.
Pagano held that art consists of uniting the beauties dispersed in nature. He held that the capacity to perceive these beauties is taste and the capacity to bring them together is artistic genius. He held that beauty is goodness made visible and that goodness is inner beauty.
Muratori stated that art is an egotistical sensation founded on the desire for the preservation of self and society.
Hemsterhuis, the Dutch writer, influenced the Germans, particularly Goethe. He held that beauty is that which gives the most pleasure. He held that enjoyment of the beautiful is the highest form of cognition to which men can attain.
Kant held that:
1. Man has a knowledge of nature outside him and himself in nature.
2. He seeks truth outside himself. He seeks goodness inside himself.
3. Seeking truth is pure reason. Seeking goodness is practical reason.
4. Aesthetic feeling is a judging capacity without reason and produces pleasure without desire.
5. Beauty is in subjective meaning. It is that which without reasoning and without practical advantages, nonetheless pleases.
Schiller held that the aim of art is beauty, which is the source of pleasure without practical advantage.
Fichte held that the perception of the beautiful proceeds from nature. Nature has two sides; 1) the sum of our limitations and 2) the sum of our free idealistic activity. In the sum of our limitations we see deformity. In the sum of our free idealistic activity we see beauty. He held that beauty therefore does not exist in the world, but in the beautiful soul (Schöner Geist). He also held that art is the manifestation of this beautiful soul and that the aim of art is the education of the whole man.
Schlegel held that beauty is understood too incompletely. He held that beauty is in art, nature and love. The truly beautiful is expressed by the union of art, nature and love.
Adam Müller held that there are two types of beauty:
1. General beauty which attracts people as the sun attracts the planets
2. Individual beauty which consists in the observer becoming like the sun and attracting beauty.
Thus, a world which harmonizes all contradictions is the highest beauty. He held that art is a reproduction of this universal harmony and that the highest art is the art of life.
Schelling held "art is the production or result of that conception of things by which the subject becomes its own object, or the object its own subject" (Maude, 99). He held that beauty is the perception of the infinite in the finite. The chief characteristic of works of art is unconscious infinity. Art unites the subjective and the objective, nature with reason and the unconscious with the conscious. He held that because of this, art is the highest means of knowledge. "Beauty is the contemplation of things in themselves as they exist in the prototype" (Maude, 99). The artist does not produce the beautiful by knowledge or skill, but by the beauty inside himself.
Krause held that positive beauty is the manifestation of the idea in an individual form; art is the actualization of the beauty existent in man's free spirit.
Hegel held that God manifests himself in nature and art as beauty. God manifests himself in two ways: on the object in nature and in the subject in spirit. Only the soul and what pertains to it is truly beautiful. The beauty of nature is only the reflection of a spiritual content. The sensuous manifestation of spirit is only appearance and this is the only reality of the beautiful. Art, religion and philosophy are means of being and expressing to the consciousness the deepest problems of humanity and the highest truths of the spirit. Hegel held that truth and beauty are one and the same. The idea as itself is truth. The idea, manifested externally, is beauty.
Weisse held that art is the introduction of the absolute spiritual reality of beauty into the external, dead, indifferent matter. Weisse held that the idea of truth entails a contradiction between the subjective and the objective and then the individual ego discerns the universal. Beauty is a reconciled truth.
In addition to Hegelian aesthetic theories there were contemporary and contradictory German theories like Herbart's and Schopenhauer's.
Hebart denied that there can be such a thing as beauty in itself. He held that there are certain relations we call beautiful and that art consists of finding these relations.
Schopenhauer held that the will objectifies itself in the world on various planes. The highest plane has the highest beauty but, each plane contains its own beauty.
Hartmann held that beauty lies in the seeming or "schien" produced by the artist. "The thing in itself is not beautiful, but it is transformed into beauty by the artist".
Schnaase held that there is no beauty in the world. Art gives what nature cannot. Beauty is disclosed then in art.
Kirchmann held there are six realms of history:
1. Knowledge
2. Wealth
3. Morality
4. Faith
5. Politics
6. Beauty - this is art.
Helmholtz held that beauty is manifested by the artist unconsciously and therefore cannot be analyzed.
Bergmann denied defining beauty objectively is possible. He held that beauty is held subjectively and therefore the job of aesthetics is to define what pleases whom.
Jungmann held that:
1. Beauty is a suprasensible quality of things.
2. Beauty produces pleasure by contemplation
3. Beauty is the foundation of love.
Cousin held beauty always has a moral foundation.
Jouffrey held that the visible world is the clothing by means of which we see beauty.
Lévêque held that beauty was a force behind nature and revealed itself in ordered energy.
Ravaisson held that beauty was the ultimate aim and purpose of the world.
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Notes on "The Philsophy of Fine Art"
(Originally Written January 6, 2008 in the Journal)
"The Philosophy of Fine Art"
By: G.W.F. Hegel
In order for a thing to be considered art it must meet three standards:
1. It is man-made
2. It is made for man and addressed to his senses
3. It contains an end
As art is man-made it can be known and divulged, learned and reproduced.
A work of art originates in the human spirit.
Any work of fine art is of higher value than a work of nature because it has passed through the spirit and mind of man.
The function of fine art is to arouse feeling.
Art is not the mere imitation of nature.
Art is not purposed to achieve some moral end.
"The Philosophy of Fine Art"
By: G.W.F. Hegel
In order for a thing to be considered art it must meet three standards:
1. It is man-made
2. It is made for man and addressed to his senses
3. It contains an end
As art is man-made it can be known and divulged, learned and reproduced.
A work of art originates in the human spirit.
Any work of fine art is of higher value than a work of nature because it has passed through the spirit and mind of man.
The function of fine art is to arouse feeling.
Art is not the mere imitation of nature.
Art is not purposed to achieve some moral end.
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Aesthetics - What is Beauty? What is Art?
(Originally Written on December 25, 2007 in the Journal)
Aesthetics - What is Beauty? What is Art?
Part I: What is Beauty?
Questions for consideration:
1) Is beauty subjective, objective, or a combination thereof?
2) What is taste?
Part II: Explore different mediums, define art (as a language?)
Research Topics
Immanuel Kant
David Hume
Ludwig Wittgenstein
John Dewey
Leo Tolstoy
Plato
Nelson Goodman
Arthur C. Danto
Martin Heidegger
Jerrold Levinson
Terry Eagleton
Michel Foucault
Friedrich Nietzsche
Aristotle
Edmund Burke
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Topics: mediums, perception of art, why create?
"Of the Standard of Taste"
By: David Hume
It is useful for us to seek a "standard of taste".
A standard of taste is "a rule by which the various sentiments of men may be reconciled".
Aesthetics - What is Beauty? What is Art?
Part I: What is Beauty?
Questions for consideration:
1) Is beauty subjective, objective, or a combination thereof?
2) What is taste?
Part II: Explore different mediums, define art (as a language?)
Research Topics
Immanuel Kant
David Hume
Ludwig Wittgenstein
John Dewey
Leo Tolstoy
Plato
Nelson Goodman
Arthur C. Danto
Martin Heidegger
Jerrold Levinson
Terry Eagleton
Michel Foucault
Friedrich Nietzsche
Aristotle
Edmund Burke
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Topics: mediums, perception of art, why create?
"Of the Standard of Taste"
By: David Hume
It is useful for us to seek a "standard of taste".
A standard of taste is "a rule by which the various sentiments of men may be reconciled".
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
Class notes on Hegelian Aesthetics
(Originally written February 27, 2007 in Book 16)
Hegel (1770-1832)
Last of the German Idealists
In order to do philosophy one must have a coherent framework.
Philosophy is an aspect of God's self-conscious.
Spirit is the ultimate reality.
"Rational is the real and the real is the rational".
Art is one of the three modes of expressing the Absolute Spirit:
1. Art
2. Religion
3. Philosophy
To understand Absolute Spirit one must first understand:
1) Subjective Spirit - known introspectively
2) Objective Spirit - the concrete world is spirit objectified
Dialectical Method
Thesis
Antithesis
Synthesis
The Dialectical method is how Hegel understood all phenomena.
Art precedes from Spirit. Art is part of the absolute's self-manifestation of thought.
Inspiration is a subjective thing in art, but the expression of that inspiration through the work of art is an objectification of a subjective inspiration.
Art is aiming at unifying the subjective and objective
Three types of Art:
Symbolic - sensors element dominates
Romantic - ideas dominate the sensuous part
Classical - a harmony of idea and sensuous part
Architecture is the paradigm of symbolic art.
Sculpture is the paradigm of classical art.
Romantic art is the quintessential art of Christendom, the true Religion.
Art is wasting its time if it is solely imitating nature.
The purpose of art is transcendent. Art is a way spirit is getting to know itself.
Hegelianism continues on through:
1. Marxism
2. Process Theory
3. John Dewey
Dewey held each art form has its own language.
Dewey states that since art always challenges conventions art is essentially liberal and is about producing something new and different.
Hegel (1770-1832)
Last of the German Idealists
In order to do philosophy one must have a coherent framework.
Philosophy is an aspect of God's self-conscious.
Spirit is the ultimate reality.
"Rational is the real and the real is the rational".
Art is one of the three modes of expressing the Absolute Spirit:
1. Art
2. Religion
3. Philosophy
To understand Absolute Spirit one must first understand:
1) Subjective Spirit - known introspectively
2) Objective Spirit - the concrete world is spirit objectified
Dialectical Method
Thesis
Antithesis
Synthesis
The Dialectical method is how Hegel understood all phenomena.
Art precedes from Spirit. Art is part of the absolute's self-manifestation of thought.
Inspiration is a subjective thing in art, but the expression of that inspiration through the work of art is an objectification of a subjective inspiration.
Art is aiming at unifying the subjective and objective
Three types of Art:
Symbolic - sensors element dominates
Romantic - ideas dominate the sensuous part
Classical - a harmony of idea and sensuous part
Architecture is the paradigm of symbolic art.
Sculpture is the paradigm of classical art.
Romantic art is the quintessential art of Christendom, the true Religion.
Art is wasting its time if it is solely imitating nature.
The purpose of art is transcendent. Art is a way spirit is getting to know itself.
Hegelianism continues on through:
1. Marxism
2. Process Theory
3. John Dewey
Dewey held each art form has its own language.
Dewey states that since art always challenges conventions art is essentially liberal and is about producing something new and different.
Sunday, July 23, 2006
Ecclesiastical Reform in the 11th Century
(Originally written July 23, 2006 in Book 5)
The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
Chapter IX - Ecclesiastical Reform in the 11th Century
The progress of the 11th century began with monastic reform.
The Church sought to consolidate its power but it had to clean up itself first by ridding themselves of two great evils:
1) Simony
2) Concubinage
Simony was the practice of selling a position in the Church for a sum of money.
Celibacy in the clergy was more for political reasoning then Biblical. Priests who had sons passed Church property onto them. The Church did not like this. Celibacy set men apart from others. For priests to be revered in the highest esteem they necessarily had to be celibate. The Church demanded them to be set apart from the laity. Celibacy was a means to this end.
William the Pious, Duke of Aquitaine, founded the Abbey of Cluny and the Cluniac reform movement in 910 AD.
The Camaldolese Orderwas founded by Romuad and the Camaldolese produced Peter Damian.
Bruno of Cologne founded the Carthusians in 1084.
In 1098 the Cistercian Order was founded. St. Bernard joined them in 1113.
The reform of the Papacy began with a simony Pope, Pope Gregory VI. Gregory VI was deposed for simony by the Holy Roman Emperor Henry III in 1046. Henry III continually deposed popes and appointed new ones. Pope Leo IX was then appointed by Henry III in 1049.
Leo IX was a reformer. He claimed independence from Henry III and the Papacy claimed superiority over the Emperor.
The college of Cardinals was set up to select the Pope, depriving the Romans and the Emperors of power.
Pope Nicholas II played a large part in reducing simony. Nicholas II also fought with the archbishop of Milan, who thought he was independent of the Pope.
Saint Peter Damian was crucial to the Milanese clerics repenting of their simony and pledging allegiance to the Papacy.
Pope Gregory VII became Pope in 1073. He was one of the most eminent Popes of all time. Gregory VII enforced clerical celibacy more than any other previous pope. Gregory VII dealt with the Investiture controversy, excommunicating Emperor Henry IV and thus causing civil war in the feudal Holy Roman Empire.
The 10th century was almost devoid of philosophers except for Pope Sylvester II (999-1003).
The 11th century produced a number of philosophers:
1) Anselm
2) Roscelin
3) Peter Damian
4) Berengar of Tours - a semi rationalist
4) Lanfranc
Anselm came up with the ontological argument for the existence of God. The ontological argument states:
1) God is the greatest possible objet of thought
2) If an object of thought does not exist, another, exactly like it, which does exist is greater.
3) The greatest of all objects of thought must exist. Otherwise another object would exist and be greater.
4) Thus, God exists.
The ontological argument has been rejected by theologians, but has faired better among philosophers. Descartes used an amended formed. Leibniz used it to prove the possibility of God. It underlies the Hegelian system. Bradley used it.
Anselm believed in Platonic ideas. He used Neoplatonic arguments to prove the existence of the Trinity.
Anselm considered reason subordinate to faith.
The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
Chapter IX - Ecclesiastical Reform in the 11th Century
The progress of the 11th century began with monastic reform.
The Church sought to consolidate its power but it had to clean up itself first by ridding themselves of two great evils:
1) Simony
2) Concubinage
Simony was the practice of selling a position in the Church for a sum of money.
Celibacy in the clergy was more for political reasoning then Biblical. Priests who had sons passed Church property onto them. The Church did not like this. Celibacy set men apart from others. For priests to be revered in the highest esteem they necessarily had to be celibate. The Church demanded them to be set apart from the laity. Celibacy was a means to this end.
William the Pious, Duke of Aquitaine, founded the Abbey of Cluny and the Cluniac reform movement in 910 AD.
The Camaldolese Orderwas founded by Romuad and the Camaldolese produced Peter Damian.
Bruno of Cologne founded the Carthusians in 1084.
In 1098 the Cistercian Order was founded. St. Bernard joined them in 1113.
The reform of the Papacy began with a simony Pope, Pope Gregory VI. Gregory VI was deposed for simony by the Holy Roman Emperor Henry III in 1046. Henry III continually deposed popes and appointed new ones. Pope Leo IX was then appointed by Henry III in 1049.
Leo IX was a reformer. He claimed independence from Henry III and the Papacy claimed superiority over the Emperor.
The college of Cardinals was set up to select the Pope, depriving the Romans and the Emperors of power.
Pope Nicholas II played a large part in reducing simony. Nicholas II also fought with the archbishop of Milan, who thought he was independent of the Pope.
Saint Peter Damian was crucial to the Milanese clerics repenting of their simony and pledging allegiance to the Papacy.
Pope Gregory VII became Pope in 1073. He was one of the most eminent Popes of all time. Gregory VII enforced clerical celibacy more than any other previous pope. Gregory VII dealt with the Investiture controversy, excommunicating Emperor Henry IV and thus causing civil war in the feudal Holy Roman Empire.
The 10th century was almost devoid of philosophers except for Pope Sylvester II (999-1003).
The 11th century produced a number of philosophers:
1) Anselm
2) Roscelin
3) Peter Damian
4) Berengar of Tours - a semi rationalist
4) Lanfranc
Anselm came up with the ontological argument for the existence of God. The ontological argument states:
1) God is the greatest possible objet of thought
2) If an object of thought does not exist, another, exactly like it, which does exist is greater.
3) The greatest of all objects of thought must exist. Otherwise another object would exist and be greater.
4) Thus, God exists.
The ontological argument has been rejected by theologians, but has faired better among philosophers. Descartes used an amended formed. Leibniz used it to prove the possibility of God. It underlies the Hegelian system. Bradley used it.
Anselm believed in Platonic ideas. He used Neoplatonic arguments to prove the existence of the Trinity.
Anselm considered reason subordinate to faith.
Sunday, July 9, 2006
Knowledge and Perception in Plato
(Originally written July 9, 2006 in Book 4)
The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
Chapter 18 - Knowledge and Perception in Plato
Modern men take for granted the empirical knowledge comes from perception. Plato believed knowledge could not be derived from the senses (thus not from perception).
Plato believed '2+2=4' is genuine knowledge but statements like 'snow is white' is too ambiguous to be considered truth.
Plato was plagued by the idea of a relational proposition (as were most philosophers up to and including Hegel).
Plato argues against Protagoras' doctrine of man is the measure of all things. This is a precursor to arguing against knowledge as perception.
He argues from Heraclitus' point of view that because everything is changing to state knowledge is perception is the same as stating knowledge is not perception.
He argues that we perceive through eyes and ears, not with them. Then finds that some knowledge is had without any sense organ. Since knowledge can be obtained without the aid of sense organs (like the eyes and ears) perception can have nothing to do with knowledge.
Knowledge, not coming from perception via the senses, cannot come from the impressions they give. Thus the mind must recall the impression to find knowledge. Reminiscence is knowledge.
Linehan - If knowledge cannot be obtained from impressions, which are obtained by perception through the senses, then how can reminiscence which conjures up impressions be knowledge? If knowledge is not had in the foundation of reminiscence it cannot have it anywhere.
Perception cannot grasp existence; without existence there is no truth.
Linehan - I don't understand most of this chapter. The bracket on page 153 marks the beginning of where I became confused. The bracket on page 159 (the end of the chapter) marks the end or beginning of my confusion. It is ceaseless it seems in this chapter or at least Russell's argument against Plato's.
The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
Chapter 18 - Knowledge and Perception in Plato
Modern men take for granted the empirical knowledge comes from perception. Plato believed knowledge could not be derived from the senses (thus not from perception).
Plato believed '2+2=4' is genuine knowledge but statements like 'snow is white' is too ambiguous to be considered truth.
Plato was plagued by the idea of a relational proposition (as were most philosophers up to and including Hegel).
Plato argues against Protagoras' doctrine of man is the measure of all things. This is a precursor to arguing against knowledge as perception.
He argues from Heraclitus' point of view that because everything is changing to state knowledge is perception is the same as stating knowledge is not perception.
He argues that we perceive through eyes and ears, not with them. Then finds that some knowledge is had without any sense organ. Since knowledge can be obtained without the aid of sense organs (like the eyes and ears) perception can have nothing to do with knowledge.
Knowledge, not coming from perception via the senses, cannot come from the impressions they give. Thus the mind must recall the impression to find knowledge. Reminiscence is knowledge.
Linehan - If knowledge cannot be obtained from impressions, which are obtained by perception through the senses, then how can reminiscence which conjures up impressions be knowledge? If knowledge is not had in the foundation of reminiscence it cannot have it anywhere.
Perception cannot grasp existence; without existence there is no truth.
Linehan - I don't understand most of this chapter. The bracket on page 153 marks the beginning of where I became confused. The bracket on page 159 (the end of the chapter) marks the end or beginning of my confusion. It is ceaseless it seems in this chapter or at least Russell's argument against Plato's.
Saturday, July 8, 2006
The theory of ideas
(Originally written July 8, 2006 in Book 4)
The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
Chapter 15 - The theory of ideas
I don't understand how things that are sensible exist in contradictory states...
Plato's philosophy is based on the distinction between reality and appearance.
His synthesis of Parmenides' distinction of reality and appearance with the Pythagorean religious tone was extremely powerful and influenced philosophy up to and including Hegel.
What is a philosopher? A man who loves the vision of truth.
What is this vision?
-Not a particular, but a universal. Those who love particulars have opinions. Those who love universals have knowledge.
What is the difference between knowledge and opinion?
- Knowledge is infallible because it is logically impossible for it to be mistaken. "Opinion cannot be of what is not, for that is impossible, nor of what is, for then it would be knowledge. Therefore opinion must be of what both is and is not" (Russell, 120).
How are opinions possible?
-All sensible objects have contradictory characteristics. Opinion makes up the world that is sensible. Knowledge makes up the super-sensible, eternal world.
Heraclitus said 'we step and do not step into the same rivers, we are and we are not'. Combined with Parmenides, we have Plato's theory.
Plato's theory introduced the theory of 'ideas' or 'forms'. This theory is part logical, part metaphysical.
The logical part has something to do with the meaning of words. They are not particulars, but universal words. They do not have position in space or time. They are eternal. The metaphysical part deals with the same word as being the ideal particular, created by God. The particular word takes part in the ideal, but imperfectly. Since they are imperfect versions of the ideal there can be many of them.
A number of individuals that have the same name also have the same form. All the individuals have an imperfect representation of the same ideal.
The ideal is perfect and real. It is through knowledge that one learns of it; whereas one learns of the sensible object through opinions, which are fallible because they correlate to an imperfect object.
The philosopher is concerned solely with the ideal, not the imperfect particular objects.
Plato - "How can he who has magnificence of mind and is the spectator of all time and all existence, think much of human life?" (Russell, 122).
In youth, one who is capable of becoming a philosopher will be distinguished from others by being just and gentle, fond of learning, possessed of a good memory and a naturally harmonious mind.
Side note - Thank God that Plato's prerequisites for philosophers do not stand. For as a youth I was fond of learning and had a good memory, but I was not gentle and had a skewed view of justice. Even today I do not possess a harmonious mind. Any semblance of harmony in my mind has been destroyed and thrown into disarray by studying philosophy. I would not have been a guardian it seems.
To institute Plato's Utopia either the philosophers must become the rulers (which is doubtful) or the rulers must become philosophers.
Plato thought he had found the latter in Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, but Dionysius turned out to be a failure.
Philosophy for Plato was a love of wisdom, a 'vision of truth', a synthesis of mind and feeling akin to Spinoza's 'intellectual love of God'.
Plato distinguishes the world of the intellect from the sensible world. Then the intellect and sense-perception are divided into two kinds.
The two kinds of intellect are reason and understand. Reason is the higher kind and deals with pure ideas via a dialectical method. Understanding is used in mathematics and is inferior because it uses hypotheses that are untestable.
Mathematics cannot tell us 'what is' only 'what could be if...'.
There aren't straight lines or perfect circles in the sensible world. Therefore, for them to exist there must be a super-sensible world.
The cave analogy is like the sensible and super-sensible world. The prisoners see the shadows and to them appear real. But those who have seen objects in the sunlight see the super-sensible world. Because the shadows appear dimmer to those who have seen the sunlight, those who have not seen the sunlight shrug off those who have as mad, crazy or stupid.
Plato regards science and truth like the good, but not the good.
Depsite many errors in Plato's theory, at the minimum one fact remains, "we cannot express ourselves in a language wholly of proper names, but must have also general words such as 'man', 'dog', 'cat' or if not these then relational words such as 'similar', 'before' and so on. Such words are not meaningless noises, and it is difficult to see how they can have meaning if the world consists entirely of particular things, such as designated by proper names" (Russell, 126-127).
It provides a prima facie case in favor of universals.
Plato has no concept of philosophical syntax. He fails to realize how great the gap between universals and particulars is.
His 'ideas' are really particulars, ethically and aesthetically superior to others (which he realizes later and writes one of the most remarkable self-criticisms of all time in the Parmenides).
Christians believe that God created everything. Plato believes God only created that which is good.
Russell - Why would God not then have been content with the world of ideas? Why not skip the cave altogether?
Linehan - The cave is the sensible world, of which necessarily exists for free will beings. If we existed only in some super-sensible world we could not have free will because we would then be equal with God. Why? If the super-sensible world is perfect then all beings in it must be perfect. Perfection is solely reserved for God. Therefore, if only the super-sensible world existed and no cave, then all inhabitants would be Gods or a part of God. Mr. Russell, you would never consider yourself God in the strictest sense of the word (maybe a god, but not God) nor do I. Nor would you fall into Spinoza's pantheistic 'all is God' because of its proven absurdity. Therefore, since we are neither Gods nor a part or extension of God, if God exists (as Christians and Plato believe) then the cave (or sensible world) necessarily exists. Not that I truly believe this, but without much thought is easy to answer your question from a Platonic, Neo-Platonic or Platonic Christian viewpoint. Therefore your question is answered, rebutted, and found fallacious.
The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
Chapter 15 - The theory of ideas
I don't understand how things that are sensible exist in contradictory states...
Plato's philosophy is based on the distinction between reality and appearance.
His synthesis of Parmenides' distinction of reality and appearance with the Pythagorean religious tone was extremely powerful and influenced philosophy up to and including Hegel.
What is a philosopher? A man who loves the vision of truth.
What is this vision?
-Not a particular, but a universal. Those who love particulars have opinions. Those who love universals have knowledge.
What is the difference between knowledge and opinion?
- Knowledge is infallible because it is logically impossible for it to be mistaken. "Opinion cannot be of what is not, for that is impossible, nor of what is, for then it would be knowledge. Therefore opinion must be of what both is and is not" (Russell, 120).
How are opinions possible?
-All sensible objects have contradictory characteristics. Opinion makes up the world that is sensible. Knowledge makes up the super-sensible, eternal world.
Heraclitus said 'we step and do not step into the same rivers, we are and we are not'. Combined with Parmenides, we have Plato's theory.
Plato's theory introduced the theory of 'ideas' or 'forms'. This theory is part logical, part metaphysical.
The logical part has something to do with the meaning of words. They are not particulars, but universal words. They do not have position in space or time. They are eternal. The metaphysical part deals with the same word as being the ideal particular, created by God. The particular word takes part in the ideal, but imperfectly. Since they are imperfect versions of the ideal there can be many of them.
A number of individuals that have the same name also have the same form. All the individuals have an imperfect representation of the same ideal.
The ideal is perfect and real. It is through knowledge that one learns of it; whereas one learns of the sensible object through opinions, which are fallible because they correlate to an imperfect object.
The philosopher is concerned solely with the ideal, not the imperfect particular objects.
Plato - "How can he who has magnificence of mind and is the spectator of all time and all existence, think much of human life?" (Russell, 122).
In youth, one who is capable of becoming a philosopher will be distinguished from others by being just and gentle, fond of learning, possessed of a good memory and a naturally harmonious mind.
Side note - Thank God that Plato's prerequisites for philosophers do not stand. For as a youth I was fond of learning and had a good memory, but I was not gentle and had a skewed view of justice. Even today I do not possess a harmonious mind. Any semblance of harmony in my mind has been destroyed and thrown into disarray by studying philosophy. I would not have been a guardian it seems.
To institute Plato's Utopia either the philosophers must become the rulers (which is doubtful) or the rulers must become philosophers.
Plato thought he had found the latter in Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, but Dionysius turned out to be a failure.
Philosophy for Plato was a love of wisdom, a 'vision of truth', a synthesis of mind and feeling akin to Spinoza's 'intellectual love of God'.
Plato distinguishes the world of the intellect from the sensible world. Then the intellect and sense-perception are divided into two kinds.
The two kinds of intellect are reason and understand. Reason is the higher kind and deals with pure ideas via a dialectical method. Understanding is used in mathematics and is inferior because it uses hypotheses that are untestable.
Mathematics cannot tell us 'what is' only 'what could be if...'.
There aren't straight lines or perfect circles in the sensible world. Therefore, for them to exist there must be a super-sensible world.
The cave analogy is like the sensible and super-sensible world. The prisoners see the shadows and to them appear real. But those who have seen objects in the sunlight see the super-sensible world. Because the shadows appear dimmer to those who have seen the sunlight, those who have not seen the sunlight shrug off those who have as mad, crazy or stupid.
Plato regards science and truth like the good, but not the good.
Depsite many errors in Plato's theory, at the minimum one fact remains, "we cannot express ourselves in a language wholly of proper names, but must have also general words such as 'man', 'dog', 'cat' or if not these then relational words such as 'similar', 'before' and so on. Such words are not meaningless noises, and it is difficult to see how they can have meaning if the world consists entirely of particular things, such as designated by proper names" (Russell, 126-127).
It provides a prima facie case in favor of universals.
Plato has no concept of philosophical syntax. He fails to realize how great the gap between universals and particulars is.
His 'ideas' are really particulars, ethically and aesthetically superior to others (which he realizes later and writes one of the most remarkable self-criticisms of all time in the Parmenides).
Christians believe that God created everything. Plato believes God only created that which is good.
Russell - Why would God not then have been content with the world of ideas? Why not skip the cave altogether?
Linehan - The cave is the sensible world, of which necessarily exists for free will beings. If we existed only in some super-sensible world we could not have free will because we would then be equal with God. Why? If the super-sensible world is perfect then all beings in it must be perfect. Perfection is solely reserved for God. Therefore, if only the super-sensible world existed and no cave, then all inhabitants would be Gods or a part of God. Mr. Russell, you would never consider yourself God in the strictest sense of the word (maybe a god, but not God) nor do I. Nor would you fall into Spinoza's pantheistic 'all is God' because of its proven absurdity. Therefore, since we are neither Gods nor a part or extension of God, if God exists (as Christians and Plato believe) then the cave (or sensible world) necessarily exists. Not that I truly believe this, but without much thought is easy to answer your question from a Platonic, Neo-Platonic or Platonic Christian viewpoint. Therefore your question is answered, rebutted, and found fallacious.
Sunday, July 2, 2006
Chapter 5 - Parmenides
(Originally written July 2, 2006 in Book 2)
The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
1974
Chapter 5 - Parmenides
Heraclitus believed that everything changes; Parmenides believed that nothing changes.
Parmenides was native of Elia (Southern Italy). He lived in the mid 5th century BC.
Parmenides developed a metaphysical argument used by most subsequent philosophers, up to and including Hegel.
He is called the inventor of logic, but really invented metaphysics based on logic.
He distrusted the senses, believed the only true being was "the One" an infinite and and indivisible being; did not believe in opposites (cold = not hot, dark = not light, etc.)
Two teachings:
1) The way of truth
2) The way of opinion
He believed that in order to use thought or language it had to correlate to something real. Whatever can be thought of or spoken of must necessarily exist at all times. Thus, there can be no change.
"Parmenides maintains that not only must George Washington have existed in the past, but in some sense he must still exist, since we can use his name significantly. This seems obviously untrue, but how are we to get around the argument?" (Russell, 49).
Parmenides assumed that words have a constant meaning, but words are never used the same way by two people. Parmenides argued that since we can now know what happened in the past, it can't really be past, but must somehow exist presently.
Parmenides' major problem was the ease of which he drew metaphysical conclusions from language. The remedy for this is to push logical and psychological study of language further than metaphysics normally do.
Parmenides most important philosophical contribution was not the denial of all change, but the concept of substance being indestructible.
The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
1974
Chapter 5 - Parmenides
Heraclitus believed that everything changes; Parmenides believed that nothing changes.
Parmenides was native of Elia (Southern Italy). He lived in the mid 5th century BC.
Parmenides developed a metaphysical argument used by most subsequent philosophers, up to and including Hegel.
He is called the inventor of logic, but really invented metaphysics based on logic.
He distrusted the senses, believed the only true being was "the One" an infinite and and indivisible being; did not believe in opposites (cold = not hot, dark = not light, etc.)
Two teachings:
1) The way of truth
2) The way of opinion
He believed that in order to use thought or language it had to correlate to something real. Whatever can be thought of or spoken of must necessarily exist at all times. Thus, there can be no change.
"Parmenides maintains that not only must George Washington have existed in the past, but in some sense he must still exist, since we can use his name significantly. This seems obviously untrue, but how are we to get around the argument?" (Russell, 49).
Parmenides assumed that words have a constant meaning, but words are never used the same way by two people. Parmenides argued that since we can now know what happened in the past, it can't really be past, but must somehow exist presently.
Parmenides' major problem was the ease of which he drew metaphysical conclusions from language. The remedy for this is to push logical and psychological study of language further than metaphysics normally do.
Parmenides most important philosophical contribution was not the denial of all change, but the concept of substance being indestructible.
Saturday, July 1, 2006
Chapter 4 - Heraclitus
(Originally written July 1, 2006 in Book 2)
The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
1974
Chapter 4 - Heraclitus
The Greeks were fathers of theories, mathematics, deductive reasoning and Geometry. The error that the Greeks caused in the Ancient World and most of modern times is that they used deductive reasoning from supposed self-evident axioms rather than inductive reasoning from observed facts. The scientific method has slowly corrected this error.
"In studying a philosopher, the right attitude is neither reverence nor contempt, but first a kind of hypothetical sympathy, until it is possible to know what it feels like to believe in his theories, and only then a revival of the critical attitude, which should resemble, as far as possible, the state of mind of a person abandoning opinions which he has hitherto held. Contempt interferes with the first part of this process, and reverence with the second. Two things are to be remembered: that a man whose opinions and theories are worth studying may be presumed to have had some intelligence, but that no man is likely to have arrived at complete and final truth on any subject whatever" (Russell, 39). This is how to study philosophers and philosophy.
Xenophanes, while his dates are uncertain, followed Pythagoras, but preceded Heraclitus. Xenophanes was an Ionian who lived in Southern Italy. He believed that all things were made of earth and water. In regard to the gods he was a freethinker. He believed in one God, but that knowledge of god was unknowable. He criticized Pythagoras' mysticism and his view on the transmigration of the souls.
Heraclitus was an aristocratic Ephesian around 500 BC.
He believed that everything existed in perpetual flux.
Heraclitus was a mystic Ionian. He believed fire to be a primordial substance and that all things come to be by the death of something else.
He was pantheistic in his belief. "All things come out of the one, and the one out of all things... which is god" (Russell, 41) (A foreshadowing of Spinoza?)
Heraclitus was ill-tempered, mean spirited in argumentation and generally combative.
Heraclitus was a warmonger who believed war was both the father and king of all.
Strife is justice and the origin of all things.
He had a Nietzsche like ethic of proud asceticism.
Primordial Substances:
Thales - Water
Anaximenes - Air
Heraclitus - Fire
Empedocles - Earth, air, fire and water
Heraclitus believed the world to be eternal: ever was and is and will be.
Heraclitus' strife philosophy contains the same mess of synthesizing opposites as Hegel.
"Nothing ever is, everything is becoming" (Russell, 45).
Heraclitus' view of perpetual flux is painful and science has nothing to refute it. Philosophers have sought, tirelessly to find something not subject to time to refute the perpetual flux. THis search began with Parmenides.
The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
1974
Chapter 4 - Heraclitus
The Greeks were fathers of theories, mathematics, deductive reasoning and Geometry. The error that the Greeks caused in the Ancient World and most of modern times is that they used deductive reasoning from supposed self-evident axioms rather than inductive reasoning from observed facts. The scientific method has slowly corrected this error.
"In studying a philosopher, the right attitude is neither reverence nor contempt, but first a kind of hypothetical sympathy, until it is possible to know what it feels like to believe in his theories, and only then a revival of the critical attitude, which should resemble, as far as possible, the state of mind of a person abandoning opinions which he has hitherto held. Contempt interferes with the first part of this process, and reverence with the second. Two things are to be remembered: that a man whose opinions and theories are worth studying may be presumed to have had some intelligence, but that no man is likely to have arrived at complete and final truth on any subject whatever" (Russell, 39). This is how to study philosophers and philosophy.
Xenophanes, while his dates are uncertain, followed Pythagoras, but preceded Heraclitus. Xenophanes was an Ionian who lived in Southern Italy. He believed that all things were made of earth and water. In regard to the gods he was a freethinker. He believed in one God, but that knowledge of god was unknowable. He criticized Pythagoras' mysticism and his view on the transmigration of the souls.
Heraclitus was an aristocratic Ephesian around 500 BC.
He believed that everything existed in perpetual flux.
Heraclitus was a mystic Ionian. He believed fire to be a primordial substance and that all things come to be by the death of something else.
He was pantheistic in his belief. "All things come out of the one, and the one out of all things... which is god" (Russell, 41) (A foreshadowing of Spinoza?)
Heraclitus was ill-tempered, mean spirited in argumentation and generally combative.
Heraclitus was a warmonger who believed war was both the father and king of all.
Strife is justice and the origin of all things.
He had a Nietzsche like ethic of proud asceticism.
Primordial Substances:
Thales - Water
Anaximenes - Air
Heraclitus - Fire
Empedocles - Earth, air, fire and water
Heraclitus believed the world to be eternal: ever was and is and will be.
Heraclitus' strife philosophy contains the same mess of synthesizing opposites as Hegel.
"Nothing ever is, everything is becoming" (Russell, 45).
Heraclitus' view of perpetual flux is painful and science has nothing to refute it. Philosophers have sought, tirelessly to find something not subject to time to refute the perpetual flux. THis search began with Parmenides.
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Free Will, Perception and Hegelian consciousness
(Originally written April 25, 2006 in 3 Subject)
Free Will vs. Determinism
The will is free when it is not impeded by anything to do as it pleases. I will myself to study philosophy; I choose it freely. But, when I must meet other obligations, such as eating something to survive, I am not free to study philosophy at the moment. It is true that I have the choice to eat or not eat, but if I choose to not eat enough times in a row the consequences would be disastrous. Thus, do the consequences of not eating determine my will? Or do I simply make the choice out of free will to eat? Yes. I have the choice (free-will) but something other than my will (my instinct to avoid hunger and thus death) determines the boundaries of my will.
Thus, I am free to make individual choices, but my overall outcome is determined by other things. This combination of determinism and free will governs all of my life.
Types of Perception"
-Perception of God - sensus divinitatis
-Perception of the physical realm (perception of living creatures and inanimate objects and material stuffs)
-Perception of the spiritual realm (natural and unnatural)
-Perception of the self (body)
-Perception of the mind (consciousness)
-Perception of the self (soul)
Hegelian consciousness and Creation:
Hegel may have been right in claiming that consciousness must exist in externalizing itself or manifesting itself with other consciousness. However, since God is triune, or three persons, He can manifest His consciousness with Himself since there are three consciousness in Himself. Thus, the creation of the world was not necessary for God to manifest His consciousness.
Free Will vs. Determinism
The will is free when it is not impeded by anything to do as it pleases. I will myself to study philosophy; I choose it freely. But, when I must meet other obligations, such as eating something to survive, I am not free to study philosophy at the moment. It is true that I have the choice to eat or not eat, but if I choose to not eat enough times in a row the consequences would be disastrous. Thus, do the consequences of not eating determine my will? Or do I simply make the choice out of free will to eat? Yes. I have the choice (free-will) but something other than my will (my instinct to avoid hunger and thus death) determines the boundaries of my will.
Thus, I am free to make individual choices, but my overall outcome is determined by other things. This combination of determinism and free will governs all of my life.
Types of Perception"
-Perception of God - sensus divinitatis
-Perception of the physical realm (perception of living creatures and inanimate objects and material stuffs)
-Perception of the spiritual realm (natural and unnatural)
-Perception of the self (body)
-Perception of the mind (consciousness)
-Perception of the self (soul)
Hegelian consciousness and Creation:
Hegel may have been right in claiming that consciousness must exist in externalizing itself or manifesting itself with other consciousness. However, since God is triune, or three persons, He can manifest His consciousness with Himself since there are three consciousness in Himself. Thus, the creation of the world was not necessary for God to manifest His consciousness.
Monday, April 24, 2006
Aphorisms - My little tidbits of truth
(Originally written April 24, 2006 in Book 1)
I. Philosophy
I agree with Hegel when he calls philosophy "the service of God" but not much else. I am indebted to Bertrand Russell for igniting the fire of philosophy that now burns inside me, though I scarcely agree with a word he says. Nietzsche, from whom I borrowed the title strikes me somewhat with a stick of fear. Every philosopher I have read seems to have an inkling of truth, a glimmer of knowledge and a mess of errant beliefs. I fear deeply that I will be remembered, if I am remembered at all in this same light.
Philosophy has not provided me with any answers, only questions. I can scarce remember a time when I was not perplexed by some haunting question. Philosophy has spun me round and round, if I lift my arms I would soar like a helicopter; however, I can't be sure my arms truly exist. Therefore, I spin as a screw and am neck-deep in the ground.
Where do I turn for guidance? If I look to my perceptions then I am doomed to perceive only appearances and not true reality, if there is such a thing. I can turn to God, but if I cannot be sure what I see is real, how can I be sure what I cannot see is any more real?
Questions haunt me deeply and I fear I will never be able to answer them, let alone rid myself of them. The few answers I have found have created more complex and pressing questions. While I have philosophized only a short while now, I feel have stepped into some never ending nightmarish carousel of doom.
What saving grace have I? Faith, hope, perseverance are my rescue. Jesus Christ is my rescuer. Of this, I have no doubt. My faith need not be validated to assure salvation, but validation seems to be the only way to ease my mind. It is ironic that to ease my mind I must first vex it.
Questions and answers, answers and questions - this is my life now. It is true that I have chosen philosophy, but the more I learn of it, the less certain I am of that choice. The deeper I delve, the more I see that philosophy has actually chosen me.
I. Philosophy
I agree with Hegel when he calls philosophy "the service of God" but not much else. I am indebted to Bertrand Russell for igniting the fire of philosophy that now burns inside me, though I scarcely agree with a word he says. Nietzsche, from whom I borrowed the title strikes me somewhat with a stick of fear. Every philosopher I have read seems to have an inkling of truth, a glimmer of knowledge and a mess of errant beliefs. I fear deeply that I will be remembered, if I am remembered at all in this same light.
Philosophy has not provided me with any answers, only questions. I can scarce remember a time when I was not perplexed by some haunting question. Philosophy has spun me round and round, if I lift my arms I would soar like a helicopter; however, I can't be sure my arms truly exist. Therefore, I spin as a screw and am neck-deep in the ground.
Where do I turn for guidance? If I look to my perceptions then I am doomed to perceive only appearances and not true reality, if there is such a thing. I can turn to God, but if I cannot be sure what I see is real, how can I be sure what I cannot see is any more real?
Questions haunt me deeply and I fear I will never be able to answer them, let alone rid myself of them. The few answers I have found have created more complex and pressing questions. While I have philosophized only a short while now, I feel have stepped into some never ending nightmarish carousel of doom.
What saving grace have I? Faith, hope, perseverance are my rescue. Jesus Christ is my rescuer. Of this, I have no doubt. My faith need not be validated to assure salvation, but validation seems to be the only way to ease my mind. It is ironic that to ease my mind I must first vex it.
Questions and answers, answers and questions - this is my life now. It is true that I have chosen philosophy, but the more I learn of it, the less certain I am of that choice. The deeper I delve, the more I see that philosophy has actually chosen me.
Class Notes on Hegel
(Originally Written April 24, 2006 in 3 Subject Book)
History of Philosophy II
Hegel
-agrees with Plato that knowledge is acquired through a dialectical method
-Yet, Plato's and Hegel's dialectical methodologies vastly differ
Existence (apparent & publicly manifest)
Essence (the hidden and internal)
The in between of existence and essence is actuality
example: The in between of Being and Non-Being is becoming
Master-Slave Dialectic
-Slave (labor, objectification)
-Master (desire, consumption)
-There is conflict and domination between the two
-The product of the slave's labor and the master's desire leads to the object being created
Political Philosophy:
Three moments of the Ethical
1) Family
2) Civil Society
3) The State
History is teleological: it has a goal, which for Hegel, is freedom
The Hegelian & Christian God
Being itself, the totality (Hegel) v. Infinite being that is still distinct from the world (Christian)
Self-thinking thought (Hegel) v. Spirit with thoughts distinct from itself (Christian)
Immanence without transcendence (Hegel) v. Immanence with transcendence (Christian)
God of process of becoming (Hegel) v. Primordial being, which is immutable (Christian)
Criticisms of Hegel
-Too abstract
-Too esoteric
-Not grounded enough in experience
-Hegel's theology is not Biblically backed
-Dialectical method can justify things that are problematic (Dewey & Marx)
History of Philosophy II
Hegel
-agrees with Plato that knowledge is acquired through a dialectical method
-Yet, Plato's and Hegel's dialectical methodologies vastly differ
Existence (apparent & publicly manifest)
Essence (the hidden and internal)
The in between of existence and essence is actuality
example: The in between of Being and Non-Being is becoming
Master-Slave Dialectic
-Slave (labor, objectification)
-Master (desire, consumption)
-There is conflict and domination between the two
-The product of the slave's labor and the master's desire leads to the object being created
Political Philosophy:
Three moments of the Ethical
1) Family
2) Civil Society
3) The State
History is teleological: it has a goal, which for Hegel, is freedom
The Hegelian & Christian God
Being itself, the totality (Hegel) v. Infinite being that is still distinct from the world (Christian)
Self-thinking thought (Hegel) v. Spirit with thoughts distinct from itself (Christian)
Immanence without transcendence (Hegel) v. Immanence with transcendence (Christian)
God of process of becoming (Hegel) v. Primordial being, which is immutable (Christian)
Criticisms of Hegel
-Too abstract
-Too esoteric
-Not grounded enough in experience
-Hegel's theology is not Biblically backed
-Dialectical method can justify things that are problematic (Dewey & Marx)
Saturday, April 22, 2006
Hegel - Raymond Plant
(Originally written April 22, 2006 in Book 1)
Hegel
Raymond Plant
1999
The importance of Hegel:
Hegel is still influential in philosophy, political and social theory, aesthetics, philosophy of history, theology and the philosophy of religion (which is this particular book's focus).
Karl Löwith states that Hegel is the philosopher of the bourgeois Christian world.
Hegel saw his work as systematic, thus concentrating on a single field without recognizing it as a part of the whole would misconstrue his philosophy.
Life & Development:
Born in 1770, in Stuttgart. Educated at the Stuttgart Gymnasium, then at Tübinger Stift (a famous Swabian theological seminary). He wanted to be a Lutheran pastor or an honorationen.
Supported the French Revolution from Tübinger. Lived with Hölderlin (a poet) and Schelling (a philosopher) while at Tübinger.
Concerned himself with fragmentation and brokenness of man's relationship to God, to nature and to society.
Instead of following his aspirations he took up a tutoring position in Bern. He left Bern to move to Frankfurt with Hölderlin then took a position at the University of Jena with Schelling.
Napoleon closed Jena and Hegel took an editor job at the Bamberg Gazette, a Catholic paper.
Hegel left the position at the paper to become the Rector of the Grammar School in Nuremberg, where he was charged with the job of shifting education away from the Catholic based teachings to a humanistic approach.
Hegel left the school to become the chair of philosophy at Heidelberg in 1816. In 1818 he moved to the University of Berlin to be its chair of philosophy and perform the same reform as he did at Nuremberg.
He died suddenly in 1831.
Fears of Fragmentation:
Hegel, Hölderlin and Schelling developed a fear of "division and fragmentation in modern life and in particular the bifurcation between man and God; between man and society, between man and nature and indeed the division within the individual's own personality" (Plant, 11) while at the Tübinger Shift.
The rediscovery of Greek culture by the Germans in the 18th century and its concept of all life being unified set the stage for Hegel's fear of fragmentation.
Hegel was inspired by the Greek unified life. He saw it as how man could fully reach his potential and become a whole man.
Hegel saw Christianity as being a polar opposite to Greek life. Greek life embraced this world; whereas a Christian's true home was in heaven, not on earth.
"Our religion [Chrisitanity] wishes to educate men to be citizens of heaven who always look on high and this makes them strangers to human feeling" (Plant, 13-14).
He saw Christianity as a private religion, unconcerned with social and moral unity in a community.
Hegel saw the modern world could not return to the Greek way of life because of Christianity and the rise of individualism. Hegel wished to reinterpret Christianity as a folk religion so it could provide a basis for common life.
Jesus' ministry was a failure in Hegel's view because the disciples understood God in too Jewish of a context. "Instead of following Jesus in teaching a general message about the reconciliation of the divine and the human in all life, this reconciliation was understood to be achieved in Jesus alone" (Plant, 17).
Towards Philosophy:
Hegel sought to rework Christianity by combining rationality and mythology.
"Bifurcation is the source of the need for philosophy" (Plant, 21).
Philosophy provides the interpretation of human experience and existence.
The self must be understood in relation to family, economics, politics, art, religion and philosophy. If it is not the theory of mind will be overly rationalistic and unlivable.
A theory of mind must be a unification of self and its relationship with activities the individuals engage in.
Hegel believed philosophy must be systematic.
Philosophy must provide the basis for all modes of social life and show how they are interconnected.
Hegel's view of philosophy being a 'meta-narrative' that provides an interpretation of all the forms of human experience is opposed by post-modern philosophers who celebrate fragmentation.
Hegel's view is troubling to the analytic tradition. Analytic philosophers believe that logic is relative to the facet of life it is being used to. Thus, fragmentation is not only desirable, but necessary.
Hegel also believed that philosophy must be historical.
The historical development was teleological for Hegel. It was a rational process that leads to the ultimate goal of attaining Absolute Knowledge.
Absolute Knowledge occurs when all the shapes of human life, in terms of their historical development and their connections are understood.
History, for Hegel, was not a series of discontinuous contingent events. It was the structure of development. This development is what Hegel called the dialectic.
The dialectic was the "process in which an account of how forms of life develop is embodied. Forms of social life, whether religious, political, artistic or social have organizing principles or forms of ethos. The process of dialectical development shows how in human history one form turns into another because contradictions are revealed in previous forms. Previous forms are not lost... rather what is true in them... is carried over into a richer and deeper form of life (Plant, 25).
Humans often do not realize Absolute Knowledge because they merely understand thing in and of themselves and disregard their connections. The level of understanding (Absolute Knowledge) must be used to reach the level of reason (the dialectic). This level of understanding is the Vorstellung. This level of Reason is the Begriff.
History is not accidental in Hegel's account.
The organizing principle of human existence becomes concrete in nature, in history, in human society, in art, in religion and in philosophy through the actions of God being united with human life. This is what Hegel called the "Absolute Idea".
When the absolute idea is embodied in the interconnections of human life it becomes Spirit. When the Spirit is fully comprehended it becomes Absolute Spirit.
"God as he is in himself before the foundation of the world is transformed by Hegel into the Absolute Idea" (Plant, 27).
"The philosophical understanding of the rationality of human experience and history is equivalent to the incarnate life of God, or the embodiment of the Absolute Idea. Absolute Knowledge is the transcription of the religious idea of the role of the Holy Spirit when we have a comprehensive understanding of the indwelling of God in this process."
For Hegel, religion became a rational system of understanding human existence based on reason, not faith. Religion is one stepping stone on the path to Absolute Knowledge.
Hegel claimed that his philosophy was a true transcription of Christianity.
Religion:
Religion was a vital part of Hegel's philosophy. Christianity was Hegel's religion, albeit a highly interpreted form of it.
The Concept of God:
Hegel did not believe it was impossible for man to state something true about the nature of God because of man's finitude and God's infinitude. (Contra to Kant, Jacobi, and Schleiermacher). He rejects this belief because it makes God hollow and all one can then know is that God is.
"God is" is an abstraction of a supreme being, but when God is cognized we have a representation with content.
Hegel rejects the view of God's nature being unknowable for:
-Hegel's view of consciousness (consciousness is the level of awareness that this view gives us of the knowledge that God is) requires interaction with other beings. Therefore, if we are conscious of God it is because man's consciousness and God's consciousness have come into contact.
-Hegel sees the study of history and of the physical world as the study of the very nature of God.
"God is not to be considered in abstraction, for that is not possible" (Plant, 34)
Creation:
Hegel rejects the concept that God is complete in and of himself. He rejects this view because it leads to the belief that God created the world on a mere whimsical notion. Hegel's notion of consciousness being necessarily connected with other consciousness naturally leads him to this concept of creation.
Hegel views the world as the self-disclosure of love by God and the embodiment of freedom.
Incarnation:
The Incarnation of Hegel, is a "representation in religious form of the conceptual truth about the nature of God as consciousness and subjectivity" (Plant, 37).
It is the necessity of God to externalize Himself and manifest His consciousness in the world. The Incarnation was a necessity because "only what exists in an immediate way, in inner or outer intuition, that is certain. In order it [this divine human unity] to become a certainty for humanity, God has to appear in the world in the flesh" (Plant, 38).
A quote from Hans Küng: "Jesus is the revelation of that God man which is the hidden, true nature of ever person" (Plant, 40). Hegel embraced this concept.
The Fall
Adam is the representation of all men. The Fall is a myth based on the reality of where man is now.
Redemption is not the return to innocence because that is impossible. Instead it is a midway point between innocence and fallenness.
The consciousness is the vehicle to redemption because it is the starting point of both evil and good.
Religion and Philosophy:
Religion and philosophy are both modes of Absolute Knowledge. Religion transcends philosophy. Philosophy transcends religion. Philosophy and religion have the same goal: eternal truth, which is God and nothing else.
"Philosophy does nothing but transform our representations into concepts. The content remains always the same" (Plant, 49).
Philosophy is the Gottes Dienst (the service of God)
Conclusion
Hegel's theology is panentheism, distinguished from deism, pantheism and orthodox theism.
Panentheism is a combination of three Greek words:
Pan - All
en- in
theos - God
"God is immanent in the world, but is more than the sum of the parts of the world" (Plant, 52).
Hegel
Raymond Plant
1999
The importance of Hegel:
Hegel is still influential in philosophy, political and social theory, aesthetics, philosophy of history, theology and the philosophy of religion (which is this particular book's focus).
Karl Löwith states that Hegel is the philosopher of the bourgeois Christian world.
Hegel saw his work as systematic, thus concentrating on a single field without recognizing it as a part of the whole would misconstrue his philosophy.
Life & Development:
Born in 1770, in Stuttgart. Educated at the Stuttgart Gymnasium, then at Tübinger Stift (a famous Swabian theological seminary). He wanted to be a Lutheran pastor or an honorationen.
Supported the French Revolution from Tübinger. Lived with Hölderlin (a poet) and Schelling (a philosopher) while at Tübinger.
Concerned himself with fragmentation and brokenness of man's relationship to God, to nature and to society.
Instead of following his aspirations he took up a tutoring position in Bern. He left Bern to move to Frankfurt with Hölderlin then took a position at the University of Jena with Schelling.
Napoleon closed Jena and Hegel took an editor job at the Bamberg Gazette, a Catholic paper.
Hegel left the position at the paper to become the Rector of the Grammar School in Nuremberg, where he was charged with the job of shifting education away from the Catholic based teachings to a humanistic approach.
Hegel left the school to become the chair of philosophy at Heidelberg in 1816. In 1818 he moved to the University of Berlin to be its chair of philosophy and perform the same reform as he did at Nuremberg.
He died suddenly in 1831.
Fears of Fragmentation:
Hegel, Hölderlin and Schelling developed a fear of "division and fragmentation in modern life and in particular the bifurcation between man and God; between man and society, between man and nature and indeed the division within the individual's own personality" (Plant, 11) while at the Tübinger Shift.
The rediscovery of Greek culture by the Germans in the 18th century and its concept of all life being unified set the stage for Hegel's fear of fragmentation.
Hegel was inspired by the Greek unified life. He saw it as how man could fully reach his potential and become a whole man.
Hegel saw Christianity as being a polar opposite to Greek life. Greek life embraced this world; whereas a Christian's true home was in heaven, not on earth.
"Our religion [Chrisitanity] wishes to educate men to be citizens of heaven who always look on high and this makes them strangers to human feeling" (Plant, 13-14).
He saw Christianity as a private religion, unconcerned with social and moral unity in a community.
Hegel saw the modern world could not return to the Greek way of life because of Christianity and the rise of individualism. Hegel wished to reinterpret Christianity as a folk religion so it could provide a basis for common life.
Jesus' ministry was a failure in Hegel's view because the disciples understood God in too Jewish of a context. "Instead of following Jesus in teaching a general message about the reconciliation of the divine and the human in all life, this reconciliation was understood to be achieved in Jesus alone" (Plant, 17).
Towards Philosophy:
Hegel sought to rework Christianity by combining rationality and mythology.
"Bifurcation is the source of the need for philosophy" (Plant, 21).
Philosophy provides the interpretation of human experience and existence.
The self must be understood in relation to family, economics, politics, art, religion and philosophy. If it is not the theory of mind will be overly rationalistic and unlivable.
A theory of mind must be a unification of self and its relationship with activities the individuals engage in.
Hegel believed philosophy must be systematic.
Philosophy must provide the basis for all modes of social life and show how they are interconnected.
Hegel's view of philosophy being a 'meta-narrative' that provides an interpretation of all the forms of human experience is opposed by post-modern philosophers who celebrate fragmentation.
Hegel's view is troubling to the analytic tradition. Analytic philosophers believe that logic is relative to the facet of life it is being used to. Thus, fragmentation is not only desirable, but necessary.
Hegel also believed that philosophy must be historical.
The historical development was teleological for Hegel. It was a rational process that leads to the ultimate goal of attaining Absolute Knowledge.
Absolute Knowledge occurs when all the shapes of human life, in terms of their historical development and their connections are understood.
History, for Hegel, was not a series of discontinuous contingent events. It was the structure of development. This development is what Hegel called the dialectic.
The dialectic was the "process in which an account of how forms of life develop is embodied. Forms of social life, whether religious, political, artistic or social have organizing principles or forms of ethos. The process of dialectical development shows how in human history one form turns into another because contradictions are revealed in previous forms. Previous forms are not lost... rather what is true in them... is carried over into a richer and deeper form of life (Plant, 25).
Humans often do not realize Absolute Knowledge because they merely understand thing in and of themselves and disregard their connections. The level of understanding (Absolute Knowledge) must be used to reach the level of reason (the dialectic). This level of understanding is the Vorstellung. This level of Reason is the Begriff.
History is not accidental in Hegel's account.
The organizing principle of human existence becomes concrete in nature, in history, in human society, in art, in religion and in philosophy through the actions of God being united with human life. This is what Hegel called the "Absolute Idea".
When the absolute idea is embodied in the interconnections of human life it becomes Spirit. When the Spirit is fully comprehended it becomes Absolute Spirit.
"God as he is in himself before the foundation of the world is transformed by Hegel into the Absolute Idea" (Plant, 27).
"The philosophical understanding of the rationality of human experience and history is equivalent to the incarnate life of God, or the embodiment of the Absolute Idea. Absolute Knowledge is the transcription of the religious idea of the role of the Holy Spirit when we have a comprehensive understanding of the indwelling of God in this process."
For Hegel, religion became a rational system of understanding human existence based on reason, not faith. Religion is one stepping stone on the path to Absolute Knowledge.
Hegel claimed that his philosophy was a true transcription of Christianity.
Religion:
Religion was a vital part of Hegel's philosophy. Christianity was Hegel's religion, albeit a highly interpreted form of it.
The Concept of God:
Hegel did not believe it was impossible for man to state something true about the nature of God because of man's finitude and God's infinitude. (Contra to Kant, Jacobi, and Schleiermacher). He rejects this belief because it makes God hollow and all one can then know is that God is.
"God is" is an abstraction of a supreme being, but when God is cognized we have a representation with content.
Hegel rejects the view of God's nature being unknowable for:
-Hegel's view of consciousness (consciousness is the level of awareness that this view gives us of the knowledge that God is) requires interaction with other beings. Therefore, if we are conscious of God it is because man's consciousness and God's consciousness have come into contact.
-Hegel sees the study of history and of the physical world as the study of the very nature of God.
"God is not to be considered in abstraction, for that is not possible" (Plant, 34)
Creation:
Hegel rejects the concept that God is complete in and of himself. He rejects this view because it leads to the belief that God created the world on a mere whimsical notion. Hegel's notion of consciousness being necessarily connected with other consciousness naturally leads him to this concept of creation.
Hegel views the world as the self-disclosure of love by God and the embodiment of freedom.
Incarnation:
The Incarnation of Hegel, is a "representation in religious form of the conceptual truth about the nature of God as consciousness and subjectivity" (Plant, 37).
It is the necessity of God to externalize Himself and manifest His consciousness in the world. The Incarnation was a necessity because "only what exists in an immediate way, in inner or outer intuition, that is certain. In order it [this divine human unity] to become a certainty for humanity, God has to appear in the world in the flesh" (Plant, 38).
A quote from Hans Küng: "Jesus is the revelation of that God man which is the hidden, true nature of ever person" (Plant, 40). Hegel embraced this concept.
The Fall
Adam is the representation of all men. The Fall is a myth based on the reality of where man is now.
Redemption is not the return to innocence because that is impossible. Instead it is a midway point between innocence and fallenness.
The consciousness is the vehicle to redemption because it is the starting point of both evil and good.
Religion and Philosophy:
Religion and philosophy are both modes of Absolute Knowledge. Religion transcends philosophy. Philosophy transcends religion. Philosophy and religion have the same goal: eternal truth, which is God and nothing else.
"Philosophy does nothing but transform our representations into concepts. The content remains always the same" (Plant, 49).
Philosophy is the Gottes Dienst (the service of God)
Conclusion
Hegel's theology is panentheism, distinguished from deism, pantheism and orthodox theism.
Panentheism is a combination of three Greek words:
Pan - All
en- in
theos - God
"God is immanent in the world, but is more than the sum of the parts of the world" (Plant, 52).
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Dreadful Freedom - Marjorie Grene
(Originally written December 20, 2005 in Book 1)
Dreadful Freedom
Marjorie Grene
1948
Chapter 1 - Why Existentialism?
Existentialism is (in some sense) a reaction against Hegel.
Existentialism's first principle is that existence is prior to essence.
Existentialism can come off as a more complex version of pragmatism. Both attempt to shift value from the past to the future. Dewey and Sartre have similar shifts of the definition of value. However, Sartre proposes a philosophy that supports a constant state of revolution, whereas Dewey would replace the old dogma with an emphasis on maintaining a progressive society (this is still dogmatic, just less precise).
Both systems state existence before essence, but pragmatism moves philosophy from speculation to practical outputs; whereas existentialism focuses in on a stream of consciousness. Pragmatism uses science; existentialism uses sense-data to promote scientific research.
"It is a different kind of existence whose priority to essence is proclaimed by the two philosophies" (Green, 9).
Pragmatism fails to recognize that pure facts and pure science cannot produce values. It can only add or detract from them.
Some existentialists believe that a return to faith in the Christian God is "a possible and even necessary way out of our present moral chaos" (Green, 13). The atheistic existentialist however contends that values must be founded on objective facts.
Both a return to God and a value system based on facts "seek to escape our ultimate, inexplicable and terrible responsibility for the values that we live by, by giving them a cosmic rather than a human... source" (Green, 13).
Chapter 2 - Soren Kierkegaard: the self against the system
Kierkegaard's problem was to find out what the misunderstanding was between speculation and Christianity. He contends that the problem is rooted in individual existence. (He uses the term 'speculation' as understood in Hegelian speculation).
He condemns empirical science: natural science is dangerous, especially physiology's attempt to take over ethics. He states that it is bad to treat ethics like a natural science, to make it an illusion of statistical averages.
He asks, "Do I need to know how the movement in the nervous system works in order to believe in God and love men?" (Green, 16).
Kierkegaard is afraid that by embracing natural science we will lose ourselves to it and forget that which is important, God.
Kierkegaard contends that the only important thing worth understanding is one's self.
Kierkegaard is limited by the Christian paradox: man's experience is nothingness before God, but it still fulfills his existence.
He contends there is no objective truth of Christianity.
He states that the problem for the sincere Christian is subjective. It is not to build a theological system, but to find the way to heaven for themselves. The Christian is only aware of his own personal existence and the existence of God.
Kierkegaard focuses philosophy into the question: "what is man?"
What is man?
-What can I know?
-What ought I do?
-What may I hope?
Kierkegaard attempted to fuse Plato & Christianity.
Kierkegaard and modern existentialism both held to the awareness that here and now may be the last moment as a central idea.
"Pragmatism is afraid to face evil" (Green, 27). It is also afraid of facing the ultimate puzzle of individual humanity.
Kierkegaard drowns himself in paradoxes and word plays. Some of his most profound passages are difficult to decide whether their profoundness lies in an amazingly brilliant insight or such incredibly word trickery.
Dreadful Freedom
Marjorie Grene
1948
Chapter 1 - Why Existentialism?
Existentialism is (in some sense) a reaction against Hegel.
Existentialism's first principle is that existence is prior to essence.
Existentialism can come off as a more complex version of pragmatism. Both attempt to shift value from the past to the future. Dewey and Sartre have similar shifts of the definition of value. However, Sartre proposes a philosophy that supports a constant state of revolution, whereas Dewey would replace the old dogma with an emphasis on maintaining a progressive society (this is still dogmatic, just less precise).
Both systems state existence before essence, but pragmatism moves philosophy from speculation to practical outputs; whereas existentialism focuses in on a stream of consciousness. Pragmatism uses science; existentialism uses sense-data to promote scientific research.
"It is a different kind of existence whose priority to essence is proclaimed by the two philosophies" (Green, 9).
Pragmatism fails to recognize that pure facts and pure science cannot produce values. It can only add or detract from them.
Some existentialists believe that a return to faith in the Christian God is "a possible and even necessary way out of our present moral chaos" (Green, 13). The atheistic existentialist however contends that values must be founded on objective facts.
Both a return to God and a value system based on facts "seek to escape our ultimate, inexplicable and terrible responsibility for the values that we live by, by giving them a cosmic rather than a human... source" (Green, 13).
Chapter 2 - Soren Kierkegaard: the self against the system
Kierkegaard's problem was to find out what the misunderstanding was between speculation and Christianity. He contends that the problem is rooted in individual existence. (He uses the term 'speculation' as understood in Hegelian speculation).
He condemns empirical science: natural science is dangerous, especially physiology's attempt to take over ethics. He states that it is bad to treat ethics like a natural science, to make it an illusion of statistical averages.
He asks, "Do I need to know how the movement in the nervous system works in order to believe in God and love men?" (Green, 16).
Kierkegaard is afraid that by embracing natural science we will lose ourselves to it and forget that which is important, God.
Kierkegaard contends that the only important thing worth understanding is one's self.
Kierkegaard is limited by the Christian paradox: man's experience is nothingness before God, but it still fulfills his existence.
He contends there is no objective truth of Christianity.
He states that the problem for the sincere Christian is subjective. It is not to build a theological system, but to find the way to heaven for themselves. The Christian is only aware of his own personal existence and the existence of God.
Kierkegaard focuses philosophy into the question: "what is man?"
What is man?
-What can I know?
-What ought I do?
-What may I hope?
Kierkegaard attempted to fuse Plato & Christianity.
Kierkegaard and modern existentialism both held to the awareness that here and now may be the last moment as a central idea.
"Pragmatism is afraid to face evil" (Green, 27). It is also afraid of facing the ultimate puzzle of individual humanity.
Kierkegaard drowns himself in paradoxes and word plays. Some of his most profound passages are difficult to decide whether their profoundness lies in an amazingly brilliant insight or such incredibly word trickery.
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