Buddha's Nirvana, Plato's Forms, Schopenhauer's Quietude
There seems to be a general trend in various philosophical traditions to make a dichotomy between restlessness and rest. There is the material realm of restless movement, and there is the esoteric realm of rest and stasis. Plato's Forms might fall into this narrative. Schopenhauer had a quote:
It seems like there are various Eastern and Western traditions of being and becoming. Buddhism's central idea of the transience of the world, and the attainment of non-being (which ironically is aligned more with "being" as I am using it here in its juxtaposition to becoming). Then there is Plato's Forms, which have a sort of esoteric being only intuited by special sensibilities (gnosis). Schopenhauer's Will is constant becoming and being is only had through contemplation of artistic forms, ego-less compassionate intuition, and mainly ascetic living and practices.
What is it about these quasi-spiritual beliefs that the world is becoming whilst the core of some higher level of being is being? Why is this such a central theme? Where does this type of thinking originate, philosophically-speaking? Animals don't seem to have a need for this. Is this just humans bewailing the self-awareness that our species possesses or is there something really "true" about these sentiments?
Schopenhauer- The Vanity of Existence:In a world where all is unstable, and nought can endure, but is swept onwards at once in the hurrying whirlpool of change; where a man, if he is to keep erect at all, must always be advancing and moving, like an acrobat on a ropein such a world, happiness is inconceivable. How can it dwell where, as Plato says, continual Becoming and never Being is the sole form of existence? In the first place, a man never is happy, but spends his whole life in striving after something which he thinks will make him so; he seldom attains his goal, and when he does, it is only to be disappointed; he is mostly shipwrecked in the end, and comes into harbor with masts and rigging gone. And then, it is all one whether he has been happy or miserable; for his life was never anything more than a present moment always vanishing; and now it is over.
It seems like there are various Eastern and Western traditions of being and becoming. Buddhism's central idea of the transience of the world, and the attainment of non-being (which ironically is aligned more with "being" as I am using it here in its juxtaposition to becoming). Then there is Plato's Forms, which have a sort of esoteric being only intuited by special sensibilities (gnosis). Schopenhauer's Will is constant becoming and being is only had through contemplation of artistic forms, ego-less compassionate intuition, and mainly ascetic living and practices.
What is it about these quasi-spiritual beliefs that the world is becoming whilst the core of some higher level of being is being? Why is this such a central theme? Where does this type of thinking originate, philosophically-speaking? Animals don't seem to have a need for this. Is this just humans bewailing the self-awareness that our species possesses or is there something really "true" about these sentiments?
Comments (138)
Good question. As others have noted, philosophy has often associated the Real with the permanent, with that which defies time and refuses to change -- that which is complete and sated and blissfully motionless. As one poet put it time is fire in which we burn. Cue also the fire sermon.
Bhikkhus, form is burning, feeling is burning, perception is burning, volitional formations are burning, consciousness is burning. Seeing thus, bhikkhus, the instructed noble disciple experiences revulsion towards form ... feeling ... perception ... volitional formations ... consciousness .... Through dispassion [this mind] is liberated....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%80dittapariy%C4%81ya_Sutta
Cue also Ernest Becker and Sartre. The untrustworthy boy becomes a man whose promises can be relied upon. The movement is from ape to god, towards a 'god' who can only be approximated by the flesh. I get control over myself. I get off approximating the self-caused self-directed self-pleased unmoved mover. The stoic is a statue of virtue, nobly Static. His child dies or his leg is broken, but He is proud and content (proud of being proud and content.
The old man preacher of omnia vanitas, who takes many faces, glories in the transcendence of the truly human symbolic realm over the stupid accidents of the realm of mere flesh. He speaks from royal eternity, greater than the passing kings of this world, identified (more or less explicitly) with the graveleaping softwhere that knows itself immortal.
Here's one version of this:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ludwig-feuerbach/
The human species is basically understood as a self-loving god. Feuerbach, a bit like Schopenhauer, acknowledged the centrality of sex. Unlike Schopenhauer, he got to experience a happy marriage. Now S had a wacky theory of sexual shame that only suggests to me a personal issue. He is wiser in other moments (he was full of insights and contradictions.) F saw that our love for other human bodies and other human minds was the joy and justification of life, for those who could get enough and had the crucial material-political context for the development of their human potential. Hard to expect the starving or hunted to end up with a sunny curious disposition.
Whether true or not about Buddhism, I balk at the idea of the inevitability of being that then must be freed from it. It's my complaint in the other thread. Something is monstrous if the "disturbance" happened from the state of Nirvana. Why the disturbance? Why not Nirvana?
So ensues layers of post-facto reasoning. Here comes that shifty subversive "balance" again :smirk:.
Nescience might be inescapable at one level (particularly if we are staring at eternity), but knowledge need not be a mere dream (if that inspires angelic visions for some, I would not be astounded). I do not scurry away from a higher state that transcends the flaws of one kind of existence and is yet not utter demolition.
Reasoning can be multifaceted and be simultaneous (implicitly or explicitly) with the process of arriving at the fact. Balance can act as a bulwark against a blind leap into absolutist affirmations of any proposition that bears the risk of ignoring an indispensable aspect of reality. However, I do understand the value of a reasonable inclination towards a destination (assuming that it exists).
This needs to be examined that in order for goodness you need some evil. This itself can be construed of as an evil. That is to say, there is no "paradise" (in the ideal/conventional sense), only some sort of relative good-by-needing-the-bad. This situation seems rotten itself as there is no unmitigated good. That is to say, one cannot just experience good without it somehow having itself a negative consequence (boredom, no longer novel, etc.). Mediocre universe creates mediocre philosophies whereby good is only relative to some privations necessary to maintain its goodness. Chuck it all out. Baby and bathwater. No baby, then no bathwater.
I know you disparage Nietzsche a lot but his genealogical method pertaining to the origins of our thoughts and philosophical convictions seems to me like a fruitful way of opening the discussion. I don't think it was meant to be taken at face value but this reminds me of Nietzsche's 'story' of how you first had masters and slaves, (strong individuals and weak individuals) and so I guess in Nietzschean fashion you could say that the reason the world of becoming is condemned so much throughout the history of Eastern and Western philosophy is a problem of the philosopher's own impotence-their congenital defect as Nietzsche calls it. Of course, this is all a bit reductive and the story doesn't end here. But food for thought I'd say
From a materialistic perspective, I still believe that a bottomless chasm cannot be good or bad for anyone, which is why the possible need for needs does not make the alternative better.
While some evil can allow us to appreciate the good, positive states of being don't require privations, even if they may always exist to a certain extent. Disliking others is not a prerequisite for meaningful bonds (with a person or something more abstract). There is no unrestricted evil. Harms such as loneliness also require a good (a prior feeling of contentment with one's way of life) to exist. The hole does not precede the sheet of paper. There may not be complete fulfilment, but it is also true that good experiences always exist at some level. When I used to suffer from severe pain due to high fever and extreme allergies, there was a distinctly good feeling, undoubtedly subtle at times, that never ceased. Boredom can reflect a wondrous past and a large amount of exhilarating opportunities. It could be that it is "hell" that requires the usage of the term "relative". There are more than a few bathrooms. The indefinable potency of the good cannot be pulverised effortlessly. The time is ripe
Not exactly sure if I understand. Perhaps you could expand?
To me there is no answer to the ultimate why question. There can't be, which means maybe that the ultimate why question is not a proper question.
I like to think of the negative Socrates, the one who knew he didn't know, who could admit it.
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Becker's The Denial of Death continues this kind of thinking. How do vulnerable human beings make peace with their situation ? I'd say primarily through myths that give them a heroic role (as simple in many cases as a good mother, a true patriot, a real man, etc.)
I don't think boredom is a universal problem. It could be that our age is so entertained that it's no longer a problem. Or maybe I'm a lucky eccentric in this regard.
The situation is rotten indeed at times. Also it's great at times. Cliche but true.
When we talk about non-being as being, we are exploring the idea that there is a deeper reality beyond the transient and ever-changing nature of the material world. This perspective suggests that non-being does not imply a state of absolute nothingness or negation, but rather a state of existence that transcends the limitations and impermanence of the physical realm.
In many philosophical traditions, including Eastern and Western philosophies, there is a recognition that the material world is characterized by constant flux, impermanence, and the ceaseless cycle of becoming and decaying. This restless movement can be seen as a source of suffering and dissatisfaction, as Schopenhauer's quote highlighted.
Non-being, in this context, can be seen as a realm of existence that is free from the constraints of the material world. It is a state of being that is not subject to the transience and instability inherent in the physical realm. It is not bound by the limitations of time, space, and change. Instead, it represents a state of profound freedom, unity, and wholeness. So, one is naturally not speaking about absolute nothingness (if it is even possible).
This understanding of non-being as being can be found in various philosophical and spiritual traditions. For example, in Buddhism, the concept of non-being is related to the idea of nirvana, which is a state of liberation from the cycle of birth, suffering, and rebirth. It is a state of ultimate reality that transcends the impermanent and illusory nature of the world.
Similarly, in Plato's philosophy, the realm of Forms represents a higher reality that is immutable, eternal, and unchanging. These Forms are seen as the true essence or archetypes of the physical objects we perceive in the world of becoming.
Thanks ! Yes I get it now. That's what I was also getting at with my talk of the symbolic realm.
Let me throw in a psychoanalytic theme too. Projection keeps the rat on the wheel. One way to see the wise man is as someone who embraces fantasy -- who realizes that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and cuts out the middle man. There's the meme of the recluse who lives joyfully in the woods in a simple hut, untempted by the vanities of the city, finding enough entertainment in his own wild and yet serene mind, which has incorporated and sublimated the city already. I think of Shakespeare as a great spiritual figure -- as everyone and no one. Some kind of harmonic stasis is maybe achieved, if the body is healthy and safe enough anyway, because the flesh is always the foundation.
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I am grateful for the addition of the symbolic realm and the insights from psychoanalysis. It adds a captivating layer of richness to our exploration, like the brushstrokes of a master painter on a canvas of ideas.
Within the tapestry of the symbolic realm, where meanings intertwine and dance, the wise one emerges as a visionary, embracing the wonders of fantasy. They understand that beauty is a kaleidoscope, shimmering and shifting, and they bypass the intermediaries to gaze directly into the depths of their own perception. In their solitary hut nestled within the woods, they find enchantment, undisturbed by the siren call of worldly vanities. Their mind, wild yet serene, becomes a playground where the echoes of the city intertwine and ascend to sublime heights.
Shakespeare, that enigmatic figure, stands as a spiritual giant, a ghostly presence weaving tales that transcend time and identity. In his words, he becomes the embodiment of the human collective, speaking to our deepest fears and desires, capturing the ineffable essence of our shared existence. He teleports between roles, inhabiting the souls of countless characters, and in that fluidity, he becomes both everyone and no one, an enchanter of hearts and minds. I had not thought about Shakespeare as a spiritual leader, and yet, it's bizarre that the interpretation did not come to my mind. Then again, considering my infinitesimal knowledge, it isn't really a surprise.
An equilibrium where inner symphony finds its delicate balance is surely worth celebrating. Here, the body, the foundation upon which our experiences are woven, assumes its role as a sanctuary. When the flesh is nourished and sheltered, it becomes a fertile ground for the blossoming of tranquility and spiritual pursuit. But even without this good, the mystifying resilience of consciousness persists.
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Beautiful line ! Entwining echoes gets it just right, and the synthesis is indeed climbing, greater than the sum of its parts.
Yeah, doesn't seem to move me. Quite opposite. I just see Ayn Rand with a mustache, or perhaps Ayn Rand is Nietzsche with lipstick. Either way, both about the same level for me in terms of their Ubermensch.
Along these lines, we can imagine a person who understands everyone, who can always look into a soul and find something familiar there, something he knows from the inside. Nothing human is alien to Shakespeare. Everywhere he goes, he finds pieces of his own harmonized internal chaos. Most of these pieces are dissonant, finite, and therefore engaged, attached, trying to prove something, sure that their enemy is truly other. Shakespeare's other is Shakespeare.
Good point. It's impressive to what degree material challenges can be overcome if the mind/spirit is developed and trained to maintain morale and control.
I got the idea from Harold Bloom and James Joyce. I often think of the trinity of Jesus, Socrates, and Hamlet/Shakespeare. The third contains the first two perhaps.
I think you have a Nietzsche allergy that blinds you to his worth. No doubt he had some quirks. But I just a thinker by their best moments, and Nietzsche overall is a great example of a daring mind wrestling with the death of god and indeed with the uncertain legacy of Schopenhauer -- who lived to be an old man, relishing the attention he was finally getting. ( I have the Wallace bio of S on the way. It looks great.)
Perhaps. Why would I agree with Nietzsche's assessment? He thought Noise was good and Quietude was weak. He thought the weaklings were too long praised.
In my view, it's better to think of Nietzsche as an experimental skeptic than as an earnest bringer of truth. He had his manic-prophetic moments, which adds to the whole, but I especially value his heroically honest self-vivisection
One of many ways to look at him is as a disciple of Schopenhauer who took that kind of depth and daring and turned it back on itself, digging beneath the pose of his hero, and of course each of his own poses as he tried them one after another. This is Schopenhauer as possibility rather than substance. The true disciple repeats the initial stormy intention in its radicality and not the performance itself. Nietzsche is something like a naked chaos, a playful poisonous and poisoned Hamlet, poisoned by the sword. His ghostly father Shakespeare was poisoned through the ears, as his eerie cousin Socrates was poisoned through the mouth.
Thank you very much. And I can't help but agree.
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So true. I also think that there can be a glimpse of the ultimate symphony as the melange is perceived in its entirety.
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Doubtlessly. The materiality of the immaterial should not be impetuously discarded.
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That is quite a novel perspective. It seems that it is inherent in the idea of a trinity that there are unifying characteristics. Hamlet's introspection and philosophical contemplation parallel Socrates' emphasis on self-examination and the search for wisdom. Both delve into existential questions, moral dilemmas, and the nature of truth. Shakespeare, like Jesus, delved into the depths of human experience, exposing the complexities of human nature and exploring themes of love, betrayal, redemption, and mortality. Both Shakespeare and Jesus have had a profound impact on literature and culture. Hamlet's tragic nature can be seen as encompassing elements of both Jesus' sacrificial love and Socrates' willingness to face the consequences of questioning societal norms and challenging authority. In view of this, a synthesis is not an unreasonable conclusion.
Not so. That is a nihilist view. Nirv??a is beyond the vicissitudes of existence but is not mere non-existence. This is laid out in a very long text in the Pali canon called the Brahmajala Sutta (the doctrine of the net of views), which details the various kinds of false nihilist view (that being one) and false eternalist views (the idea that one can be perpetually reborn in fortunate existences.)
Quoting schopenhauer1
Because they havent passed the threshold of self-awareness and all that this entails and implies. Note that in the Buddhist tradition, with the implicit acceptance of the reality of re-birth, re-birth in the animal realm is regarded as both likely and extremely unfortunate, as animals are stupid and incapable of understanding dharma. (Dont ask me how they get out of that condition, Ive never been able to figure that out.)
A brief introduction by the author (since deceased) can be viewed below.
Believe it or not, Alan Watts has a popular interpretation of this idea. I tossed it to the oracle who responded: According to Watts, the Divine, which can be understood as the underlying essence of all things, is omnipresent and all-encompassing. However, in order to truly experience and know itself, the Divine must temporarily forget its true nature and engage in the illusion of otherness. This is accomplished through the process of incarnation, where the Divine takes on the form of individual beings and forgets its true nature (cf Plato anamnesis.)
Through this self-imposed limitation, the Divine embarks on a journey of self-discovery, seeking to find itself within the vast diversity and multiplicity of life. The game of hide-and-seek symbolizes this process, as the Divine "hides" from itself in order to eventually "seek" and reunite with its true nature.
Watts often emphasized the importance of realizing one's inherent connection to the Divine and breaking free from the illusion of otherness. He suggested that by recognizing the underlying unity of all existence, individuals can awaken to their divine nature and experience a profound sense of interconnectedness and oneness. (cf Dalai Lama to hotdog salesman: Make me one with everything. Also recommend the Michael Douglas 1997 movie, The Game, which reflects this kind of theme in the idiom of Californias human potential movement. )
This is essentially Advaita Vedanta. Brahman, through the power of Maya (often translated as "illusion"), limits himself as a form of divine play (Lila). These limitations then, as a consequence of their ignorance, mistakenly think that the world of distinctions forms the fundamental layer of reality. It is only when non-difference is understood that moksha (liberation) is attained.
"According to the mantra 1-4-10 of Brihadaranyaka Upanishad and Sri Shankara's commentary to that mantra, it is Brahman which has superimposed limitations upon itself, realizes by the grace of THE GURU who is none other than Brahman Itself, that it is the limitless Brahman Itself. It is Brahman/Atman realizing itself as Brahman/Atman. It is The Infinite which limits Itself and takes Itself to be a 'me' and then, when taught by a Guru who is none other than Brahman, realizes Itself as "I AM ".THIS IS THE DIVINE DRAMA that is being enacted and going on."
https://www.advaita-vedanta.org/archives/advaita-l/2019-October/053468.html
I think that Mr Watts was also influenced by Advaita Vedanta.
As a Hindu, I am inclined towards a panentheistic interpretation, but I do have immense respect for Adi Shankaracharya and Advaita.
:100: And also Zen. He was very popular in my youth (long time ago now) and has also enjoyed an Internet renaissance, not least because of the efforts of his son Mark Watts who has managed his intellectual property since Alan Watts untimely death from alcoholism in his 50s.
Trey Parker, one of the guys behind South Park, also made a whole bunch of animations set to Watts Richard Burton-like voice, such as this one:
The emphasis on direct experience and the interconnected nature of reality are definitely common elements.
Quoting Wayfarer
I am glad that Mr Watts has done so much to preserve and disseminate the valuable ideas of his father.
Just for clarity, the number three was accidental. Jesus and Socrates are Jerusalem and Athens (two deep sources of our current culture.) Shakespeare throws in London, and he represents a possibility truly other than Jesus and Socrates.
Slight digression, but I recently read What The Buddha Taught by Walpola Rahula. The key point in this context is that the wiseman or saint has to be part of the economy. Does he live on alms ? A holy bum ? Is Diogenes a kind of holy man ? But the issue for me is that this cannot be generalized. Not everyone can play this game. Most people have to marry, breed, work, and enjoy the holy man as an otherness, as a symbol or doll. 'The envelope is the letter.' This may work great in traditional societies, but even there a true renunciation of the world cannot be sincere. The monks are essentially subsidized performance artists.
I don't consider this a shameful thing, but I do want a spirituality to grasp its own role without illusion. That's my inheritance from Socrates and Hamlet -- I want to know myself truly. Someone like Joyce understood the artist to 'forge the conscience' of a people, from within the world, explicitly selling the strange form of scripture known as serious literature. Joyce (an updated Shakespeare figure) had a family, got his hands dirty, got his life dirty, but also articulated a transcendence rich enough to mock itself. Ulysses follows its protagonist to the toilet, because that's part of reality, taking a shit while reading a newspaper. What I'm getting at is the fearless embrace of every aspect of reality (nothing human is alien to me) which is also transcendent, wise as a serpent and gentle as a dove (Leopold Bloom, when pressed by abuse to evangelize for a moment, insists that hatred is no life for men and women ---that love is the point of being here --a stupidly simple message which is nevertheless the truth.)
Why do you see Nietzsche as a kind of proto Ayn Rand? I think Nietzsche wouldve detested Ayn Rand. Her obsessions with the strong man titans of industry who are supposedly leading the world to a better place through their own will is just self-aggrandizing BS. Nietzsche would point out these people arent ubermensch, anything but. If anything the capitalist figures who Rand thought were the real hard working ones arent accomplishing any difficult deeds, creating great works, or doing anything for human culture. Just look at those billionaires who died in the submarine accident. They were a bunch of comfortable fools role playing in a fantasy land. Theyre human, all too human in Nietzsches language
interesting you mention Beckers book. Ive not read it myself but I am familiar a bit with his thesis. To answer the question in the OP, perhaps we can see the world of becoming and ephemerality was condemned by the philosophers because of their own intelligence. These were individuals living in relative comfort (for the time) who had time to ponder about death and about impermanence. In the OP it says why dont animals seem to condemn the world of becoming, well maybe in a Nietzschean fashion, those who were best suited for living didnt think about their own death and impermanence. The strong had no time for that self reflection. They were too busy bursting other peoples skulls open for looking at them wrong.
Of course, we should stay wary of thinking Nietzsche thinks strong, unthinking brutes=good. He sings his praises of slave morality as well given the learned culture it allowed for us. Platos rejection of the unstable world of appearances for the stable realm of the forms is seen by Nietzsche as a mistake in thinking, but in no way was that a kind of original sin that tainted our thinking forever. Without Plato, without the people condemning Heraclitean flux, we wouldnt have any of the good stuff culture gives us now.
Beautiful accidents can be miraculous. Still, thank you for the clarification.
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I wholeheartedly welcome the detour. Indeed, the path of wisdom, the quest for truth, is one that beckons the wiseman, the saint, to immerse themselves in the tapestry of existence. The intricacies of the world, the ebb and flow of life's currents, they cannot be fully grasped from the shores of detachment alone. No, the wiseman is not a mere observer, detached from the economy of being. Instead, they partake in the dance of livelihood, for the world is their stage, and they are both actor and spectator. It is true that the wiseman may be seen as a symbol, a doll in the theater of spirituality, embraced by a world that yearns for transcendence while mired in the mundane. The envelope, as you mentioned, becomes the letter itself. In traditional societies, this interplay may be more pronounced, where the renunciation of the world dances with the subtleties of insincerity. Monks, these performers of devotion, find their sustenance bestowed by those who seek a glimpse of divinity in their otherness.
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Yes, I think that wisdom lies in not casting a pitch-black shadow of shame upon this interdependent interlude, for it is within this delicate dance that spirituality finds (or can find) its footing, grappling with its role sans illusion. Your post reminded me of the fact that the aims of a Hindu are not confined to asceticism and negation. Artha (wealth), Kama (good pleasure), and Dharma (righteous behaviour) are also vital. A multi-pronged approach can be of ineffable value. In this mosaic of contemplation, turning our gaze to the artist, as you have rightly done, is inevitable. The artist is the one who wields the pen as a sword, piercing the veils of perception to forge the conscience of a people. Joyce, a maestro of words, understood this symphony. He walked the path of life, gathering its grime upon his hands, while his art bloomed like a lotus in the mire. Occasionally, we stumble upon a truth that is too good to be false. Love can be seen as one of them.
"We must widen the circle of our love till it embraces the whole village; the village in its turn must take into its fold the district, the district the province, and so on till the scope of our love becomes co-terminus with the world."
Mahatma Gandhi (YI, 27-6-1929, p. 214)
"If love or non-violence be not the law of our being, .there is no escape from a periodical recrudescence of war, each succeeding one outdoing the preceding one in ferocity
All the teachers that ever lived have preached that law with more or less vigour. If Love was not the law of life, life would not have persisted in the midst of death. Life is a perpetual triumph over the grave. If there is a fundamental distinction between man and beast, it is the former's progressive recognition of the law and its application in practice to his own personal life. All the saints of the world, ancient and modern, were each according to his light and capacity a living illustration of that supreme Law of our being. That the brute in us seems so often to gain an easy triumph is true enough. That, however, does not disprove the law. It shows the difficulty of practice. How should it be otherwise with a law which is as high as truth itself? When the practice of the law becomes universal, God will reign on earth as He does in Heaven. I need not be reminded that earth and Heaven are in us. We know the earth, we are strangers to the Heaven in us. If it is allowed that for some the practice of love is possible, it is arrogance not to allow even the possibility of its practice in all t he others. Not very remote ancestors of ours indulged in cannibalism and many other practice which we would today call loathsome. No doubt in those days too there were Dick Sheppard's who must have been laughed at and possibly pilloried for preaching the (to them) strange doctrine of refusing to eat fellow-men."
Mahatma Gandhi (H, 26-9-1936, p. 260)
Good points and themes !
Quoting Albero
My own take on this, which I got from others, is that humans tend to find (or rather lose?) their identity in the group. If I am a good Roman soldier, I am one with Rome. My body may die, but my essence, Rome, is immortal. In 1984, Orwell gives The Inner Party a self-conscious version of this. We all start 'immersed' in various imposed memberships, and we never completely escape out having been thrown into an identity we did not choose. But we can work toward some ideal autonomy and sense of having chosen our essence.
To me perhaps the key change in human spirituality is the moment when individuals had to start making their own religion (which we might call ideology or personality). Campbell's last volume of The Masks of God focuses on this chaotic era of individual solutions. Every man is his own king and pope in Vico's chaotic age. I can only truly conform by surprising everyone and (slightly) rewriting the rules, this includes revolutionary philosophers like Nietzsche, who becomes part of an institution that lives like a parasite on its rebels. To be fair, the traditional roles are still on the self, but it sometimes looks like nostalgia when people take them up. Polarized US politics are an especially common and boring way to lose/find identity too.
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Another beautiful aphorism !
I take from Hegel the idea of philosophy as a graveleaping Conversation that accumulates the treasure of experience. You and I largely are that Conversation. It is our substance, that which is most human in us. Here and now we continue to it, trying to compress it, extend its mastery, highlight its relevance. Our work is stored in (potentially anyway) in tribal memory, within this Conversation as part of what gets passed on. In other words, 'theology itself is God' --- or philosophy is the process of divine self-recognition. Humans 'perform' the divine, progressively liberating and empowering themselves through a self-consciously critical and ever-unfinished discussion.
Interesting that Marx liked to think of the communist utopia in terms of everyone being both a workman and an intellectual. Fish in the afternoon, literary criticism in the evening, etc. No one is left out of the 'priesthood.'
I can't say that I live in hope for that kind of thing though. I reluctantly accept that utopia will not and even cannot arrive. I wouldn't preach this, try to convince others.
So it's gallowshumor and muted post horns and deep conversations with those attuned to frequencies that I can't help preferring. I still believe in the good, but for me it's very local. I'm kind to strangers that I meet in my little world. I try to tolerate otherness. My way is not the only way, maybe not the best way. That kind of thing.
I thought Nietzsche was correct to see himself as descended from the ascetics that he criticized. His criticism is itself more of the same sublimated vivisection at a higher level of intensity and complexity.
This would gel nicely with the Jnana Marga of Hinduism that is essentially about the divine spark realising its true nature.
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Even if perfection is elusive, we can always strive to do our best and leave the rest to the lap of the future. The voyage can be prepossessing without reaching a final destination.
It's not actual billionaires (like Donald Trump) but her idea of "titans of industry" who through their greatness and will do great things and move humanity forward. The realities of said billionaires isn't the comparison, but her ideal as written in her um, "works", such as Atlas Shrugged or Fountainhead.
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Rand strikes me as someone humorlessly identified with her persona. Her work is not going to teach the reader to see through her pose.
Nietzsche, on the other hand, remains elusive, even now. His books discuss masks, tease the reader like a Nabokov novel to look for secret codes. I think he could have been a cult leader like Rand (had the skill) but wasn't interested in such a sorry game and hanging out with people who were weak or undeveloped enough to take him for a prophet. Nietzsche as possibility rather than substance is a liberating thinker, making one more rather than less independent.
I mean, how is Nietzsche, when simplified to its actual ideas different from something like "positive psychology" or "Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs", specifically "Self-Actualization"? It's kind of the mantra of the ideal aspirations of those who want to achieve something (the hero, the adventurer, the inventor, the capitalist titan, etc.). To me there isn't much "there" there. Kind of circuitous aphorisms alluding to the idea of a Great Man who should not be restrained to fill their potential. Meh, doesn't move me.
To me it seems you are living with a cartoonish reduction of Nietzsche. No offense intended. I grant that Nietzsche contains that cartoon among so much other stuff. But it's like collapsing Shakespeare to Polonius.
I understand if you don't want to read all this. But I dug up some Nietzsche I found illuminating. He's digging into the pose of the philosopher, into his own pose, which forces a change in that pose. Nietzsche (and critical minds in general) are clowns with their sleeves on fire, trying to put out the fire and only spreading it. Or they are haunted by sarcastic imps, calling them out for the phoniness, for not knowing what they really mean by their fine phrases, etc. This self-torture is also onanism.
[quote]
We are unknown, we knowers, ourselves to ourselves: this has its own good reason. We have never searched for ourselveshow should it then come to pass, that we should ever find ourselves? Rightly has it been said: "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." Our treasure is there, where stand the hives of our knowledge. It is to those hives that we are always striving; as born creatures of flight, and as the honey-gatherers of the spirit, we care really in our hearts only for one thingto bring something "home to the hive!"
As far as the rest of life with its so-called "experiences" is concerned, which of us has even sufficient serious interest? or sufficient time? In our dealings with such points of life, we are, I fear, never properly to the point; to be precise, our heart is not there, and certainly not our ear.
...
"What is the meaning of a philosopher paying homage to ascetic ideals?" We get now, at any rate, a first hint; he wishes to escape from a torture.
7.
Let us beware of making dismal faces at the word "torture"there is certainly in this case enough to deduct, enough to discountthere is even something to laugh at. For we must certainly not underestimate the fact that Schopenhauer, who in practice treated sexuality as a[Pg 134] personal enemy (including its tool, woman, that "instrumentum diaboli"), needed enemies to keep him in a good humour; that he loved grim, bitter, blackish-green words; that he raged for the sake of raging, out of passion; that he would have grown ill, would have become a pessimist (for he was not a pessimist, however much he wished to be), without his enemies, without Hegel, woman, sensuality, and the whole "will for existence" "keeping on." Without them Schopenhauer would not have "kept on," that is a safe wager; he would have run away: but his enemies held him fast, his enemies always enticed him back again to existence, his wrath was just as theirs' was to the ancient Cynics, his balm, his recreation, his recompense, his remedium against disgust, his happiness. So much with regard to what is most personal in the case of Schopenhauer; on the other hand, there is still much which is typical in himand only now we come back to our problem. It is an accepted and indisputable fact, so long as there are philosophers in the world and wherever philosophers have existed (from India to England, to take the opposite poles of philosophic ability), that there exists a real irritation and rancour on the part of philosophers towards sensuality. Schopenhauer is merely the most eloquent, and if one has the ear for it, also the most fascinating and enchanting outburst. There similarly exists a real philosophic bias and affection for the whole ascetic ideal; there should be no illusions on this score. Both these feelings, as has been said, belong to the type; if a philosopher[Pg 135] lacks both of them, then he isyou may be certain of itnever anything but a "pseudo." What does this mean? For this state of affairs must first be, interpreted: in itself it stands there stupid, to all eternity, like any "Thing-in-itself." Every animal, including la bête philosophe, strives instinctively after an optimum of favourable conditions, under which he can let his whole strength have play, and achieves his maximum consciousness of power; with equal instinctiveness, and with a fine perceptive flair which is superior to any reason, every animal shudders mortally at every kind of disturbance and hindrance which obstructs or could obstruct his way to that optimum (it is not his way to happiness of which I am talking, but his way to power, to action, the most powerful action, and in point of fact in many cases his way to unhappiness). Similarly, the philosopher shudders mortally at marriage, together with all that could persuade him to itmarriage as a fatal hindrance on the way to the optimum. Up to the present what great philosophers have been married? Heracleitus, Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Kant, Schopenhauerthey were not married, and, further, one cannot imagine them as married. A married philosopher belongs to comedy, that is my rule; as for that exception of a Socratesthe malicious Socrates married himself, it seems, ironice, just to prove this very rule. Every philosopher would say, as Buddha said, when the birth of a son was announced to him: "Râhoula has been born to me, a fetter has been forged for me" (Râhoula means here[Pg 136] "a little demon"); there must come an hour of reflection to every "free spirit" (granted that he has had previously an hour of thoughtlessness), just as one came once to the same Buddha: "Narrowly cramped," he reflected, "is life in the house; it is a place of uncleanness; freedom is found in leaving the house." Because he thought like this, he left the house. So many bridges to independence are shown in the ascetic idea], that the philosopher cannot refrain from exultation and clapping of hands when he hears the history of all those resolute ones, who on one day uttered a nay to all servitude and went into some desert; even granting that they were only strong asses, and the absolute opposite of strong minds. What, then, does the ascetic ideal mean in a philosopher? This is my answerit will have been guessed long ago: when he sees this ideal the philosopher smiles because he sees therein an optimum of the conditions of the highest and boldest intellectuality; he does not thereby deny "existence," he rather affirms thereby his existence and only his existence, and this perhaps to the point of not being far off the blasphemous wish, pereat mundus, fiat philosophia, fiat philosophus, fiam!
8.
These philosophers, you see, are by no means uncorrupted witnesses and judges of the value of the ascetic ideal. They think of themselves what is the "saint" to them? They think of that which to them personally is most indispensable; of[Pg 137] freedom from compulsion, disturbance, noise: freedom from business, duties, cares; of clear head; of the dance, spring, and flight of thoughts; of good airrare, clear, free, dry, as is the air on the heights, in which every animal creature becomes more intellectual and gains wings; they think of peace in every cellar; all the hounds neatly chained; no baying of enmity and uncouth rancour; no remorse of wounded ambition; quiet and submissive internal organs, busy as mills, but unnoticed; the heart alien, transcendent, future, posthumousto summarise, they mean by the ascetic ideal the joyous asceticism of a deified and newly fledged animal, sweeping over life rather than resting. We know what are the three great catch-words of the ascetic ideal: poverty, humility, chastity; and now just look closely at the life of all the great fruitful inventive spiritsyou will always find again and again these three qualities up to a certain extent. Not for a minute, as is self-evident, as though, perchance, they were part of their virtueswhat has this type of man to do with virtues?but as the most essential and natural conditions of their best existence, their finest fruitfulness. In this connection it is quite possible that their predominant intellectualism had first to curb an unruly and irritable pride, or an insolent sensualism, or that it had all its work cut out to maintain its wish for the "desert" against perhaps an inclination to luxury and dilettantism, or similarly against an extravagant liberality of heart and hand. But their intellect did effect all this, simply because it was the dominant instinct, which carried through its orders in the case[Pg 138] of all the other instincts. It effects it still; if it ceased to do so, it would simply not be dominant. But there is not one iota of "virtue" in all this. Further, the desert, of which I just spoke, in which the strong, independent, and well-equipped spirits retreat into their hermitageoh, how different is it from the cultured classes' dream of a desert! In certain cases, in fact, the cultured classes themselves are the desert. And it is certain that all the actors of the intellect would not endure this desert for a minute. It is nothing like romantic and Syrian enough for them, nothing like enough of a stage desert! Here as well there are plenty of asses, but at this point the resemblance ceases. But a desert nowadays is something like thisperhaps a deliberate obscurity; a getting-out-of the way of one's self; a fear of noise, admiration, papers, influence; a little office, a daily task, something that hides rather than brings to light; sometimes associating with harmless, cheerful beasts and fowls, the sight of which refreshes; a mountain for company, but not a dead one, one with eyes (that is, with lakes); in certain cases even a room in a crowded hotel where one can reckon on not being recognised, and on being able to talk with impunity to every one: here is the desertoh, it is lonely enough, believe me! I grant that when Heracleitus retreated to the courts and cloisters of the colossal temple of Artemis, that "wilderness" was worthier; why do we lack such temples? (perchance we do not lack them: I just think of my splendid study in the Piazza di San Marco, in spring, of course, and in the morning, between ten and twelve). But that which Heracleitus[Pg 139] shunned is still just what we too avoid nowadays: the noise and democratic babble of the Ephesians, their politics, their news from the "empire" (I mean, of course, Persia), their market-trade in "the things of to-day "for there is one thing from which we philosophers especially need a restfrom the things of "to-day." We honour the silent, the cold, the noble, the far, the past, everything, in fact, at the sight of which the soul is not bound to brace itself up and defend itselfsomething with which one can speak without speaking aloud. Just listen now to the tone a spirit has when it speaks; every spirit has its own tone and loves its own tone. That thing yonder, for instance, is bound to be an agitator, that is, a hollow head, a hollow mug: whatever may go into him, everything comes back from him dull and thick, heavy with the echo of the great void. That spirit yonder nearly always speaks hoarse: has he, perchance, thought himself hoarse? It may be soask the physiologistsbut he who thinks in words, thinks as a speaker and not as a thinker (it shows that he does not think of objects or think objectively, but only of his relations with objectsthat, in point of fact, he only thinks of himself and his audience). This third one speaks aggressively, he comes too near our body, his breath blows on uswe shut our mouth involuntarily, although he speaks to us through a book: the tone of his style supplies the reasonhe has no time, he has small faith in himself, he finds expression now or never. But a spirit who is sure of himself speaks softly; he seeks secrecy, he lets himself be awaited, A philosopher is recognised by the[Pg 140] fact that he shuns three brilliant and noisy thingsfame, princes, and women: which is not to say that they do not come to him. He shuns every glaring light: therefore he shuns his time and its "daylight." Therein he is as a shadow; the deeper sinks the sun, the greater grows the shadow. As for his humility, he endures, as he endures darkness, a certain dependence and obscurity: further, he is afraid of the shock of lightning, he shudders at the insecurity of a tree which is too isolated and too exposed, on which every storm vents its temper, every temper its storm. His "maternal" instinct, his secret love for that which grows in him, guides him into states where he is relieved from the necessity of taking care of himself, in the same way in which the "mother" instinct in woman has thoroughly maintained up to the present woman's dependent position. After all, they demand little enough, do these philosophers, their favourite motto is, "He who possesses is possessed." All this is not, as I must say again and again, to be attributed to a virtue, to a meritorious wish for moderation and simplicity; but because their supreme lord so demands of them, demands wisely and inexorably; their lord who is eager only for one thing, for which alone he musters, and for which alone he hoards everythingtime, strength, love, interest. This kind of man likes not to be disturbed by enmity, he likes not to be disturbed by friendship, it is a type which forgets or despises easily. It strikes him as bad form to play the martyr, "to suffer for truth"he leaves all that to the ambitious and to the stage-heroes of the intellect, and to all those, in fact, who have time[Pg 141] enough for such luxuries (they themselves, the philosophers, have something to do for truth). They make a sparing use of big words; they are said to be adverse to the word "truth" itself: it has a "high falutin'" ring.
Finally, as far as the chastity of philosophers is concerned, the fruitfulness of this type of mind is manifestly in another sphere than that of children; perchance in some other sphere, too, they have the survival of their name, their little immortality (philosophers in ancient India would express themselves with still greater boldness: "Of what use is posterity to him whose soul is the world?"). In this attitude there is not a trace of chastity, by reason of any ascetic scruple or hatred of the flesh, any more than it is chastity for an athlete or a jockey to abstain from women; it is rather the will of the dominant instinct, at any rate, during the period of their advanced philosophic pregnancy. Every artist knows the harm done by sexual intercourse on occasions of great mental strain and preparation; as far as the strongest artists and those with the surest instincts are concerned, this is not necessarily a case of experiencehard experiencebut it is simply their "maternal" instinct which, in order to benefit the growing work, disposes recklessly (beyond all its normal stocks and supplies) of the vigour of its animal life; the greater power then absorbs the lesser. Let us now apply this interpretation to gauge correctly the case of Schopenhauer, which we have already mentioned: in his case, the sight of the beautiful acted manifestly like a resolving irritant on the chief power of his nature (the power of contemplation and of intense[Pg 142] penetration); so that this strength exploded and became suddenly master of his consciousness. But this by no means excludes the possibility of that particular sweetness and fulness, which is peculiar to the æsthetic state, springing directly from the ingredient of sensuality (just as that "idealism" which is peculiar to girls at puberty originates in the same source)it may be, consequently, that sensuality is not removed by the approach of the æsthetic state, as Schopenhauer believed, but merely becomes transfigured, and ceases to enter into the consciousness as sexual excitement. (I shall return once again to this point in connection with the more delicate problems of the physiology of the æsthetic, a subject which up to the present has been singularly untouched and unelucidated.)
[quote]
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/52319/52319-h/52319-h.htm
Seems to relate to the OP, and might be worth talking about.
Ok, so why this passage? I do like his critiques of Schopenhauer's personal life as compared to his philosophy, that he indeed lived a vigorous although relatively lonely life. But I am not getting much out of that verbosity other than the instinct to ascetic ideal is rather more of a strategy for creative thought or something like that. I am not sure of any ethical, aesthetic, metaphysical, or epistemological stance in this other than perhaps alluding to philosophers being more about creative expression than actually living out ascetic ideals. But again, it's hard for me to wade through his over-verbage. Perhaps that is his over-man talking too much.
To make this more concrete and personal, just think of a person trying to analyze their own motives. For instance, you might ask what role antinatalism plays in your life. Does it give you a heroic identity as an activist for the Good ? Or it more like playing the hero of consciousness ? More about seeing the world truly than changing it ?
In my own case, I'm comfortable with the seeing version of the heroic. The world is a big ugly beautiful god, and I don't pretend to be able to put a dent in it. To me it matters whether or not a movement has a chance of success. Evangelizing is also (for me) an embarrassing position, because it asks something of others. It needs others.
Shifting to Schopenhauer, his speech on the futility of suicide is also maybe a handy rationalization, a way to dodge a performative contradiction of his not escaping from the supposed evil of existence. Like the guy with the glass to his throat in that Black Mirror episode, Schopenhauer became a pop star, an influencer, truly famous for a little while, a sage for the mighty Wagner. He talked about the shittiness of life, but clung to his property and his prostitutes, kept a gun for those who might rob him, forgetting to see through the illusion of personality. He was a genius but also (like every genius?) an actor, a phony, a personality product.
I associate Nietzsche with the kind of personality who is well aware of this theatre of the self --who is never self-seduced for more than an ecstatic holiday.
The motif of comparing rest with motion, reminds me of Psalm 1:
Quoting Psalms,1
These ambulatory options amongst the world of humans are compared to a tree:
Martin Buber first brought this difference to my attention in his book Good and Evil. And morality undoubtedly concerns the finishing detail of the metaphor:
Just as importantly, the metaphor expresses a desire to be supported directly by whatever it is that supports anything rather than choose between what humans make up for each other.
Agreed. Well-acknowledged that Schop never lived up to his philosophy for sure. And Nietzsche is right perhaps for taking him to task. Philosophers are often more about providing ideals than living up to them.
Edit: To be fair to Schopenhauer though, he did have an idea of character that was determined to a large extent. Perhaps he didn't think he had the character to be the "heroic" ascetic sage?
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This aspect I can get on board with. In that respect, it is very Cioran. But of course, that is not all his philosophy is. He is not just social critic. He does have some positive philosophy (that is things he posits, not just critiques). And I believe it is that which I most disagree with.
As far as antinatalism and pessimism, I see it more in regards to "Do you see what I see?!". Perhaps communal catharsis? At the least, it is bringing what is normally in the background of people's murky consciousness into the fore and keeping the light there and not blinking.
Indeed, so how do you suppose this manifests in life? Religious life? Ascetic? I'd imagine that is what the usual interpretations are.
I am not of one mind regarding religious expression. I have lost more than one interlocutor while lingering in the hall without a good answer.
The ascetic idea is presented in many ways of getting some sort of leverage when the odds are stacked against one. I prefer Epictetus over Aurelius because tactics are what you need when forced into a corner. Taking it as a form of life is not a simple matter. Looking for some kind of angle to change what is usually inevitable is interesting.
What I really like about Psalm 1 is that it encourages so much reasoning by means of negation. We know what assholes are like and what it looks like when we are like them. Before going into the desert to deprive ourselves of all those temptations. The choices are all more local. Even accidental. Pay attention.
I still like Schop, but I can't unsee the performative contradiction. I'm guessing part of him knew well enough that he was a fame-thirsty poet looking for applause, looking for a personal survival of death in the usual literary way. I don't judge him for this. I only give him hell for incomplete analysis. But we all die too soon, and he was more honest than most.
Quoting schopenhauer1
In my opinion, framing the perception of the evils of life in terms of an impossible activism obscures the true goal, which is commiseration, communal gallowshumor. Personally I'd 'advertise' it (when looking for others to talk with) in terms of the dark side of life, or the ugly side that people largely ignore.
Freud comes to mind. From a letter:
I think Freud is trying to be funny and sincere at the same time, joking about the shit sandwich of life, while being personally 'saved' more than most by his powerful curiosity and sense of mission. As Nietzsche points out, Schopenhauer was probably happy in this way too.
It's fucking fun to tell the nasty truth.
What do you think is wicked and sinful? The usual murder, theft, dishonesty, et al?
Before such thing as a "personality disorder" was really known, I think Schopenhauer had one, and probably something akin to Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder with his emphasis and severe exorations on how other people didn't meet standards (and yet not looking at himself very critically). That being said, I know it's not good to backseat psychologize, but thought it was relevant here.
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True enough. But I do think taking seriously the pessimistic mindset is significant and not just a fun thing to toy around with. I think it leads to greater empathy (goes with commiseration). The gallows-humor is actually also part of this. Communal laughter. There is a reason many comedians shine a light on the pessimism and we commiserate communally (George Carlin, Louis CK, MOST comedians that aren't just doing a one liner but bigger themes...hell even the one-liner comedians often are doing that in their own form of aphorisms).
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Excellent quote!! SO much to unpack there actually. Imagine someone with a chronic but debilitating mental illness (schizophrenia, OCD, anxiety, personality disorders etc.), and that is getting in the way of existential unhappiness (think more Maslow, Viktor Frankl, etc.). That is to say, there are unhappy existential situations that are universal to the human condition and then there are individualistic psychological illnesses that affect only certain people. The point is to move everyone from those individualistic diseases to grappling with existential problems.
In a way, I've said this before, I want everyone from sub-Saharan Africa, to Western Europe, Mongolia, and North America to achieve the level of existential ennui on par with Cioran. In other words we need to get past the socio-economic, and acute psychological issues to the existential ones so we can all see the human condition as it is.
Hurting other people sucks. I feel like you are asking a leading question.
No I'm not really. I'm just trying to understand the metaphor on a concrete level as you brought it up so asking you more direct questions about its meaning. Be like a tree near a good source. What is the source? What does the tree represent? And things like that.
The main audience would say the source is God or divine law or something of that nature, I would imagine.
I think the metaphor is speaking to a desire. A complete expression in the face of all that makes it unlikely. This is what we want.
Im still in the introductory chapters, where theres a detailed analysis of what Schopenhauer thought was wrong with Schelling and Fichte - mainly that their work is theology pretending to be philosophy, which seems apt. Also details his early influences from a couple of German mystical philosophers whose names are largely forgotten now. It really provides a great insight into Schopenhauers life and development.
I do know the works that influenced him the most are Upanishads, Kant, and Plato.
Upanishads- The Maya illusory realm of representation that a few can escape via ascetic contemplation
Kant- the idea of time, space, causality as ground for Principle of Sufficient Reason. The trappings of the representation. And the idea of noumenal (Will) that is the "real" (not conditioned by time, space, causality), and the phenomenal (that which is the Maya projected and conditioned reality).
Plato- This is shoe-horned in my opinion (and I think Brian Magee also agrees). But Schopenhauer took Forms seriously, and that not only species, objects, but individual characters had a Form of some sort and these were kind of gradations of objectification of the Will that are then conditioned (from the illusory aspect coming out nowhere?) of time, space, causality, creating the "becoming" of the suffering Will to Live that characterizes subjective being.
Edit: And indeed these gradations of being have a Neoplatonic ring to it.
What are you saying the poem is saying of what we want? Ascetic stillness? Grace from suffering? Death? Dreamless sleep? Nirvana? Moksha into the cosmic reality of nothingness?
Yes. Part of the humor and yet truth of it is Freud's avoidance of you-go-girl cheerleading. The goal is hilariously realistic.
Quoting schopenhauer1
:up:
I'd add though that there's a wicked pleasure in Cioran. He doesn't strike me as someone who wanted to be anyone else. Same with Schopenhauer. 'I'd rather be this gloomy asshole than anyone else.' What is the perverse pleasure here? A glorious doomed rebellion against godnature or something.
It's the pleasure in watching George Carlin on a pessimistic rant perhaps. But to me, it's a little more. Rather, we are always but evaluative creatures. There is no such thing as "non-evaluative view of existence". Even so-called "neutral" views are with the capacity of evaluation being in the background. So it is about seeing it for what it is. And they are evaluating it more realistically and accurately as to the how humans experience their way-of-life within it. Of course, Schopenhauer tries to reify it to metaphysical proportions, but you don't even need that. Will can simply be human's will. Becoming and not being, as the human condition.
Toying around with it is the transcendence of gallowshumor. That detachment from the mortal self is the 'demonic' Will glorying in its indestructibility, seeing through the triviality of a merely personal death to the ongoing life of the species. Cosmic humor, what Blake might call perception of the infinite, is like some ironic irreverent twist on Nirvana. Golden laughter, winged feet. Easier talked about than activated of course. But traces of it are all over that Freud quote and all through Cioran.
I'm reminded of Eduard Hartmann:
Quoting Eduard von Hartmann Wiki
It has been my observation that people generally only toy around with pessimism and indulge in gallows humour when they are not actually facing the gallows (metaphorically speaking, of course). It is easy enough to laugh at the reaper, when you are not standing in his shadow. Perhaps some "heroic spirits" keep up the humour until the bitter end, but it would take a lot to convince me that is anything more than pretence. (Which I guess is what you would expect given that most of human life seems to be pretence). Wisdom perhaps consists in knowing that you are just pretending, showing-off...and then,,,to show-off or not to show-off, that is the question,
Glad you brought up Von Hartmann. I really want to get into him but I have no idea how. His philosophy of the unconscious seems like a massive tome dealing with all sorts of crap and owes a lot to Hegel. Doesnt help that he seems very obscure by todays standards
Oh it is as you say, which is why sometimes secondary sources are fine for me. I don't need a bunch of wrong attempts at psychology and science stretched out over long tombs and translated from another language nonetheless. But my main point was how thorough he rode the pessimist wave. In a way he has a prior and parallel idea to my notion of "communal catharsis". That is to say, he thinks that humanity, in Hegelian fashion, will go through some sort of dialectic whereby it reaches an end state of admission of ascetic quietude. But we can only achieve this through going through the prior stages.. that this life has nothing to offer, that an afterlife has nothing to offer, that "progress through science" has nothing to offer, and that at the end, we should just kind of realize the pessimism of it all. That is some thoroughgoing pessimism! He even thinks that we should attain the end state through moving the prior states along. In other words lean into progress through science (presumably this phase) so we realize it is all for naught! Shit man, there is some cynicism par excellance!
I think he just needs to lose the dialectic and scale it down. That is to say, simply offer the idea that we can communally commiserate on small scales. Even the anti-utopian utopia of an End Phase, is some sort of hopeful idea (ala Hegel).
Not this guy:
Quoting Philipp Mainlander Wiki
It seems to me that the world is declared empty not because the world lacks things that are good but exactly because those good things are so fragile and (sometimes) difficult to obtain. As far as I can tell, much of spirituality is a version of nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so. Diogenes trained mind and body toward a radical independence of the goods of the world, all but the truly essential.
I think asceticism is often a kind of minimalism that economically emphasizes fantasy over reality. As Kojeve put it ( with earnest communist bias ?) stoicism and skepticism are escapisms that settle for ('merely') internal freedom. But to me the roleplay of politics can all too easily become (and probably usually is) just as fantastic. The key image is something like a squid drawing in from the world the tentacles representing simultaneously its interest, its investment, and its vulnerability. The form of beauty has been lifted away from the bodies of the fragile and expensive boys of Athens and distilled into a vapor one can carry in the pocket. The earthly crown has been replaced likewise with the idea of True status, invisible to the unworthy.
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I'd say it is more precisely attachment to things which makes them bad; changing the way you think may be a start, but it is not enough.
[i]Love is where you found it
floundering
sometimes its cool
sometimes its hot
whether of or for
a fool or not
some say its all you got
love is not a tool
you should not use it
if you try
you will abuse it
and your love will die
love is everything
the universal glue that binds
yet bondage is unkind
to love so let it go
although
you held on tight
you must be ever ready
to say goodnight[/i]
I think we agree that there are limits to mere thought. I'm trying to sketch what I see as what many spiritual life strategies have in common as 'causi sui' autonomy projects. The body remains stubbornly foundational. The world can't be completely conquered with attitude and philosophy.
How does one triumph over attachment ? I've suggested that the images (note the metaphor in Plato's 'ideas') are peeled off and internalized. Photographs replace reality. The beauty of a particular boy (I use 'boy' as a metonym here) is dangerously out of the philosopher's control. (The madness of the greedy lover is sketched in Phaedrus.) The philosopher must detach this beauty from the fragile and unruly flesh and convert it to an imperishable possession which time cannot steal.
I'm not claiming that this can be achieved completely or even that it's desirable. I'm just trying to sketch a particular enactment of the hero with a thousand faces.
Reminds me of 'Love is a rose but you better not pluck it, it only grows when it's on the vine.' Deep idea there. I think it'd be very difficult to be detached from a spouse or a dear friend (a creative partner perhaps in a project that's going well.). Definitely a noble ideal, to transcend a grasping possessive jealousy. The quote reminds me also a bit of some stuff in Phaedrus. How does a greedy young soul become wise ? What emotional training is necessary ?
To me projection seems like a key concept. The young person's love object is largely 'false.' The beloved as a real person functions largely as a screen for this unconscious projection. The lover is self-fooled and finds something essential to him out of his control.
Through suffering and reflection, the lover separates projection from reality, becoming less capable of intense passion. This is the form of beauty becoming detached from individual bodies and being recognizing as an idea (etymologically a [projected] image).
FWIW, I think a similar projection is involved in the personal hero myth or the archetype of The Cause. In this case, sorting projection from actual human nature tends toward Qoheleth. Or the best lack all convention, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. This old man, as I picture him, drifts above the world that he can almost take or leave. As James put it, the world is a stage for heroic action.
To me it seems like the two great incitements to life (the two glues that keep a soul in the world) are the romantic-sexual game and the egoistic status game, both largely dependent perhaps on illusion/projection.
Spiritual projects tend to be trying to short circuit mere thought. I'm all for that, but it is a different conception of philosophy"philosophy as a way of life", as Hadot or Sloterdijk would have it. The latter was a disciple of Osho for several years and sees Osho as being the greatest spiritual genius of the 20th century. Spiritual disciplines and philosophy conceived in this way are not concerned with discussion and the pursuit of discursive truth so much as they are concerned with altering consciousness and experience.
So, I think you are right in one sense, but in another sense the world can be and is being conquered with attitude and philosophy, and this conquering is a terrible tragedy. The very idea of conquering the world is a dualism-driven error
The self cannot be mastered completely by means of discourse (attitude and philosophy), but they are perhaps the first step on the way, for some at least.
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I think the idea of eternity is often misinterpreted as meaning everlasting life and bliss. I see this dream too as being a form of attachment. I like Blake's notion of eternityTo see a World in a Grain of Sand and a Heaven in a Wild Flower, hold Infinity in the palm of your hand and Eternity in an hour.
So, I don't think seeking the imperishable is the royal road to eternity, in fact quite the opposite. Combine Parmenides and Heraclitus to find the changeless right there in the heart of endless change.
Yes, the ancient idea of passion was actually related to passivity, to being helplessly affected. The more modern idea is to love whatever is your calling intensely. It's not easy or common for sexual relationships to reach the heights of passion in the latter sense, while in the former sense it is arguably largely hormone-driven.
I think the poem speaks to the idea that loving another should honor their individuality and freedom to the utmost. If this involves letting them go their own way, then so be it. Surely this is common enough with good parenting?
I can relate to what you say. Nobby Brown compared lifedeath with undeath or immortality. The immortal is neither alive nor dead. It's frozen. While life, in motion, is always also death.
I think this is part of Heidegger's point about our tendency to identify the permanent with the real. Is there is logical reason for this ? Or an irrational motive ?
At the end of Fast Sofa, a character who was uptight for most of the movie has some insight and loses all fear, basically going 'crazy' and dying in a high speed crash.
I connect this to the 'poisoncure' of philosophy, personified as Hamlet, who questions whether leaving early (dying) is really a thing to be avoided. We typically assume the importance of longevity, as if quantity is not at least threatened with absurdity in the context of the vastness of death.
I'm not equating wisdom with recklessness, but I am challenging the assumption that the goal of life is automatically to live as long as possible (and to identity with something that endures forever). Tristram and Isolde, or the fight for Freedom. We love those plots. Risk is a measure of passion. (Dying for love connects us back to Schopenhauer. The species-pole in us, the genitals, know themselves immortal -- and they overpower the deathfearing ego.
:up:
Yes, helplessly affected. That's the meaning I tend. Ovemastered, washed away, swept up, drugged. Young love is like that, or it was for me. When it's reciprocal, it's beyond anything.
Becker writes well on the 'religion of love' that's common among us, analyzes pop songs.
O first great love affair / does anything compare ?
When it's not reciprocated, it's a hell that perhaps one nevertheless is reluctant to part with, for then all magic leaves the world with it. I'm channelling some old memories to write all this.
Quoting Janus
As a half-civilized man with some grey hairs creeping in, I agree. But I can't help but think that only a cooling of passion makes this possible. 'I can live without you' seems implied in that admittedly mature attitude. Fair enough...but then life moves toward being a spectacle on the screen for an ego. I speak of this ambivalently. I understand the pull of radical autonomy and basically reconceiving marriage as an intense friendship that includes sex (though sex too loses some of its barbaric-mystic meaning here.)
Let's try this in a different key. Imagine two single mothers trading their children, because in both cases they expect a better fit. Does this not offend us ? But is there no cold-bloodedly ethical/rational case to be made for a switch in some situations ?
I'm reading an excellent book, Schopenhauer's Compass, Urs App. Schop was extremely critical of the other German idealists - specifically Schelling and Fichte (not Kant, but as is well known, scathing about Hegel) - for confusing mysticism and philosophy. He fully recognises the reality of higher consciousness - he called it 'better consciousness' - as being outside time and space, but he says that philosophy as a rational discipline can't be aimed at that. He accuses Schelling and Fichte of confusing theology with philosophy. Schop is saying that philosophy's task is purely critical - in the Kantian sense of making us aware of the limitations of discursive reason. It 'drops you at the border', so to speak.
But at the same time, Schopenhaur's is a 'soteriological' aim - liberation from cyclic existence, very much in accordance with his reading of the Upani?ads, of which a Persian edition was one of his main sources of inspiration. He's resolutely atheist throughout, although not in the sense of 20th c atheism, because he still recognises, in fact strives for, 'the sacred'. So I would think that he certainly acknowledges the reality of 'the imperishable', although I'm only up to the first few chapters of the book.
I think it's funny that the atomism of Western society only focuses on economic institutions. It creates its own self-contained nihilism. If we take anything like Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs at all seriously, why wouldn't society be about properly slotting people's "needs" rather than market-driven transactionism? That is to say, institutions are ad hoc transactions rather than concerted caring about people.
I'm reading the Wallace bio. I think Schopenhauer recognizes two imperishables -- the demonic Will and something like Platonic forms. A strange fusion, really, but fascinating.
Quoting Wayfarer
My take is that he fundamentally relied upon a direct intuition of the will. We have special direct access to the will in ourselves (our own little piece of the will ) but must simply watch the stone be overpowered by gravity from the outside. The will splits into pieces that eat one another.
Whence the Forms from Will? Whence Objectification of Will into Forms? And "whence" is time, space, causality turning that into the "kaleidoscope" of the phenomenal world of experience? WHAT is projecting this? Mind? Then where does that fit in with Will and Representation?
I think Schopenhauer is an unstable fusion. I never could take his metaphysics as a whole seriously. Also I'm refreshing my memory as I read, so I may get something very wrong.
But parts of his work have stuck me since I read the section dedicated to him in The Story of Philosophy decades ago.
Darwin and Dawkins 'naturalize' Schopenhauer. The 'Will' is an evolved set of 'irrational' motives and fears that serve the 'stupid' replication of genes. It's almost terrifyingly tautological, the theory of evolution.
Certainly, but this would be antithetical to Schop's main point regarding materialism, that it doesn't properly account for the inner dimension of mind. It is all in our heads which is somehow the Will presenting itself to itself via this weird dynamic of objectification conditioned by time, space, and causality. But WHERE is time, space, and causality coming from? It's in the mind, but mind is not itself explained. He claims a subject/object so maybe mind is like the subject-for-object, and then this becomes further conditioned (by time, space, causality?). I am not sure. One of the better diagrams that tries to make sense of it is here:
https://www.friesian.com/arthur.htm
FWIW, I agree that it's not rational or righteous. There's some brutal game theory involve, probably some thermodynamics. To oversimplify, whatever form of society can out reproduce and outfight other societies will end up with the land. Individualistic capitalism proved massively productive, even with all its corruption. It doesn't matter that it has no exit strategy and assumes endless growth. We ourselves 'irrationally' avoid death and pile up resources and make babies who'll do the same. Copies for the sake of copies, because bad replicators didn't last.
Nature is red in tooth in claw. I like Schopenhauer's grim honesty about the world. The Will is a 'demon.' The world is fundamentally irrational, a beautiful disgusting monster. Jung also talks about this in Answer to Job. If we want morality and decency, we won't get it from God. But we don't even want it (unambivalently) anyway. If we wanted a good world, it's odd to end up this way. It's as if this or that part of us complains always about an opposed part --and Schop wrote just this thought in one of his early journals -- anticipating Freud's metaphor of the psyche as a civil war.
'For God so loved the world' => 'Forgot so left the world'
The it's all in our heads idea has always been doomed, it seems to me. It's with our nervous systems, yes, but these nervous systems are themselves encompassed the world they help us experience.
Even in Kant's own time he was taken out back for a spanking on this issue. (Beiser writes good stuff on this period in German philosophy. )
I don't pretend to know where it all comes from, and I don't think humans even can know, for one can always treat the explanation as itself needing explanation.
Good points. Well, I did start a thread called "Entropy and Enthalpy" and asked what the ethical implication is. As predicted, the minutia mongering over if "enthalpy" is really the right term, or whether it's natural law or human-derived concept ensued, which helped answer the wrong point. Ha. All well and good moving dirt to grow crops. Let the dirt-movers move their dirt eternally like Sisyphus fussing over the dirtness of the dirt they will be moving eternally. You mentioned Moloch, no? Moloch of science and dirt. Minutia-Moloch.
I leave you with a ChatGPT poem of minutia:
"The paradigmatic synergy of the ontological foundations in quantum mechanics, coupled with the teleological aspects of evolutionary biology, explicates the intricacies of emergent phenomena observed in complex systems. Utilizing a multi-level analysis grounded in statistical mechanics and network theory, researchers can delineate the hierarchical structure and interplay of micro and macro components, uncovering the underlying mechanisms governing self-organization and systemic behavior. Moreover, employing a neurobiological lens informed by cognitive neuroscience, one can scrutinize the neural correlates of subjective experience and elucidate the intricate interplay of neural networks and higher-order cognitive processes implicated in consciousness. These interdisciplinary insights, rooted in the confluence of physics, biology, and neuroscience, foster a comprehensive understanding of the intricate tapestry of natural phenomena."
Please note that while this paragraph includes technical jargon, it may be challenging to understand due to the dense language and complexity of the concepts presented."
:up:
We are like burning bags of water that use bones like internal stilts to get around to plop more wood (food) on ourselves. We make new little bags of water because any particular bag of water starts leaking eventually.
Ignoring consciousness for a moment, what is life in energetic terms ?
A little replicating piece of crystalfire (controlled iterable burnstructure). A strange but ultimately futile climb away from the unstoppable heat death, its accidental servant. @apokrisis understands the details much much better than me, but I think I grasp the basic idea. Life can exploit (release) potential energy by using stored energy to pay the cost of activation, push the heavy boulder off the hill, install the waterwheel, build a fission plant over the course of many years at great expense. Can we measure the 'intensity' of life in these terms maybe ?
Pretty funny stuff: a mixture of sense and nonsense, like a terminator trying to pass as a fellow nerd until its target arrives.
You can't ignore consciousness though when talking about us. A sun is "working" no? A river? A human produces stuff to keep its metabolism going, a whole cultural-social-economic epiphenomenon for this. But all this is external. What is it to be the little worker working? You cannot avoid Zapffe. He seeps into everything human. You can't shear consciousness from the human problems. It is the "dagger in the flesh" as Cioran says.
Oddly pretty accurate actually. I wanted more jargony and technical. Math equations and statistics, and engineering problems, and farming, and clothes-making, a list of every minutia-mongerin fckn thing we can be thinking of and pouring over and MONGER over. But GPT is too polite to do that. Little bastard.
This is at the very center indeed, and it's strangely somewhat ineffable. Feeling is first but it slips through conceptual nets. So one doesn't judge life conceptually, it seems to me. Concepts play a role, but feeling is deeper in some sense. The world as [s]will[/s] feeling and [s]representation[/s] concepts.
I am not familiar with Nobby Brown. It seems humans have long entertained ideas of perpetual life. There is no logical contradiction in the idea, but every way of framing it seems to generate its own host of aporias. And yes life is always also death; my life inevitably comes at the cost of many others, and others will come at the cost of mine. Maybe one day there will be no life at all, since it is based on strategies of cheating entropic and that requires conditions to be just right.
As to the equation of the permanent with the real; perhaps we could say that being is permanent, that universal non-being is impossible. But being is also never static, so no particular being (or so it seems) can be permanent. Our own impermanence bothers us, but that seems to be an ego-driven concern.
I haven't seen Fast Sofa, sounds intriguing. When I was in my late teens and early twenties I was ridiculously reckless, being influenced by the beats, particularly Kerouac and his Neal Cassidy character. I often marvel that I didn't die in a car crash, driving absurdly fast while heavily intoxicated on alcohol, marijuana and LSD as I did.
Surprisingly, I have been so lucky as to never have been involved in an accident where I was at fault in over 50 years of driving. Nowadays I want to live as long as possible, so I live a very healthy and balanced life with little indulgence in drugs or alcohol. When I say I want to live as long as possible the caveat of course is as long as life remains interesting and emotionally and physically bearable.
I have no interest at all in the idea of an afterlife, and since I never had any interest in having children, I have no interest in that avenue of perceived immortality either, so my genitals don't feel immortal: in fact, sadly, they seem to have declined in vigor somewhat (although thankfully so far not too much).
As an aside, lately I've been considering the question as to whether we should care about the survival of humanity as a whole, and I've even thought about starting a thread based on that question. Many of the problems we face today seem to have come about on account of the predominating belief in human exceptionalism.
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I guess we'd say they'd be going against their instincts; and we don't like to think that motherhood should ever be a "cold-bloodedly ethical/ rational" relation.
Quoting Wayfarer
I can see the case for thinking of philosophy in that Kantian way. It makes metaphysics in the traditional sense discursively impossible or incoherent, but it makes way for faith, or stimulated imagination driven emotion, and that can indeed be transformative, even if it cannot deliver any propositions that we can rationally argue for. Hence the Critique of Practical Reason.
I find Schopenhauer's claim that we can know the in itself introspectively as will to be nothing more than an article of faith, but then if that idea could be a possible inspiration to spiritual transformation, who cares if it is discursively justifiable?
I'm all in on the representation aspect. Still not sure about the will aspect. Here's one of the passages I often cite which basically demolishes philosophical materialism in a single bound. It's a bit long, but what the heck, electrons are free:
Bolds added.
Ah that must have been tough. An act of love indeed.
I'm still with mine, though the first decade was one long Bukowski novel. We were too young really but glued together by an irrational passion. When I think of Schopenhauer, I think of the overpowering mating instinct 'forcing' most of us to make babies before we really know what life is. The 'old man' has been released from duty. The young have been 'programmed' not to take him seriously, and to worry only about their glamorous and fuckable peers. I'm sure I'm exaggerating, but the peer focus makes sense in the long term.
Quoting Janus
Also know as Norman O. Brown. One of those radical 60s thinkers. An almost mystical use of psychoanalysis by a humanities scholar.
Quoting Janus
To me it makes sense that we'd evolve an (irrational) fear of death. Schopenhauer filtered through Darwin is a strong dark brew. But I like it as a map for hacking the system (condoms are a great example of this, like steeling cheese from the trap.)
Quoting Janus
To me it's even to be expected. Darwin etc. We do of course have logical and sexual and property norms, but this is all to make human groups stronger. It's basically for us to crank out more copies of ourselves. The evolutionary algorithm could not see ahead to the exponential technological age, gave us no tools for controlling it. 'Only a god can save us' indeed, but I don't think any of them have the time just now.
I like to put this in terms of people trying to take the scientific image as somehow behind lifeworld in which it exists as a mere part. An electron only has meaning within an entire system of culture.
Here though Schopenhauer is guilty of an error in the opposite direction. He paradoxically makes the brain, a familiar object in the familiar space of the lifeworld, the cause of the presentation of space and time. This is a version of making the sense organs the product of the sense organs.
As I see it, both errors try to do justice to 'half' of the truth. The world exists for individual nervous systems which are embedded in that world. The world cannot be reduced to a 'dream' and the 'dream' cannot be reduced to some dead meaningless simple stuff.
Anyway, one of the ways in which we probably strongly agree is that it doesn't not make sense to claim that logical-semantic norms are somehow unreal, for those logical-semantic norms are necessary in the very making and support of such a claim.
One can, in my view, tell a story of emergence of spirit (a special kind of nature) from the rest of nature.
Note how science is trapped 'outside' with mere relations of ideas, while intuition will have intimate access to the thing-in-itself, that ocean of Will.
How can that be an error? Isn't it amply confirmed by neuro- and cognitive science? What do you think the fantastic hominid forebrain does with all that power - more neural connections than stars in the sky - other than generate worlds?
Schop has a unity: Will.
Schop tries to explain a plurality: Forms
There is never really a good explanation of how Will is objectified into Forms, or why. It just "does", which is kind of assuming the consequent.
If one was to put a teleological bent on it, perhaps it is the Will "needing" its playground, but then this is akin to some sort of theism.
Thus it becomes a sort of "immediate" flipside of Will. But if Forms are not "formed" but exist contemporaneously with Will, then Will was never a unity. It's hard to pin down. Not to mention, what then is "prior" to what outside the PSR? That's not even a thing so "processes" like "Objectification" can't occur. So it MUST be always there in the equation. But why the Forms and not just Will. Why the bifurcation of subject to object in the first place? Then it is just duality, not unity.
You can formulate some of your own theism to fill it in, but then you are speaking for Schop and not answering as Schop perhaps.
The idea that the brain imposes the forms of time and space is absurd, for the brain is understood in terms of time and space from the beginning.
It does not make sense to say that the brain is its own product, as if it's the dream of itself.
Quoting Wayfarer
I'd wager that most scientists would reject the ideality of space and time (they idea that they aren't real but somehow products of a nervous system which is situated where after all ?)
On the other hand, who would deny that a living brain is necessary for an individual's experience of the world ?
It's the direct realist idea that the brain is just a mirror "catching" reality (such as the objectivity of time and space) and reflecting it back.
I'd personally describe my preferred version of direct realism in terms of the grasp of a lifeworld that cannot be broken into subject and object except as a useful abstraction (fiction). Schopenhauer looks to me like an indirect realist who thinks the Will appears as everyday stuff through the lens of the nervous system. But our intuition and music lets us peak around the rest of our cognition at the essence of reality, blind striving.
Hegel, in one famous passage, defined idealism as holism. It's not that reality is a dream. The stuff that is ideal (mere fancy!) is all the machinery of the non-holistic metaphysicians who insist on denying the aspect of reality they don't like. No finite thing has genuine being. In other words, anything disconnected from everything else is at most a useful fiction, maybe just confusion and vanity.
For instance, the reductive consciousness-denying materialist wants to get rid of slimy embarrassing humanities stuff, and the life-is-my-dream crowd wants to get rid of the constraints of an encompassing world and the status of all that difficult math stuff. A one-sided personality tells a one-sided story of reality. [ I think we are all actually lopsided, all 'finite,' but I like the goal of 'infinity' and completeness.]
Even more, he's a fullblown Idealist. Indirect Realists think there is "something" material external to mind but it's perceived in some constructed way that makes it not directly perceiving the thing itself. Schopenhauer would say something like the Mind is constructing reality itself and there is nothing external to it. The Mind itself being a manifestation of Will. And as I said, how this happens is where Schop kind of has a hierarchy of the real REAL (Will) and the Objectified Will (Forms), and then Conditioned Will/Forms (PSR).
Not to be contrary, but I think a more typical interpretation is like this:
Hence, the title of Schopenhauers major work, The World as Will and Representation, aptly summarizes his metaphysical system. The world is the world of representation, as a spatio-temporal universal of individuated objects, a world constituted by our own cognitive apparatus. At the same time, the inner being of this world, what is outside of our cognitive apparatus or what Kant calls the thing-in-itself, is the will; the original force manifested in every representation.
https://iep.utm.edu/schopenh/#SH2a
That gels with my memory of his bold claim to do what Kant said could not be done.
:up:
I think we know the real answer. Ordinary life gives us competing human beings, but one can learn to see through the 'illusion' of personality, which connects us to Hegel and Feuerbach and other thinkers of essential sociality of reason (there is no private language/logic, etc.)
It's hard to classify him, but these are the things that make it hard to really get at. I think he is saying that it is all illusions of mind, and that there is nothing like an outside world "there" in any way. And that these minds are manifestations of Will. But the minds are so thoroughly representational of the physical that you can almost say they mine as well be without really disrupting the philosophy.
The more I think about it, the weirder and less plausible it seems. Nevertheless, he offers enough to great fragments to deserve his status.
I like to use 'gnostic' as a metaphor for a person with a vision of the fundamental amorality of the world (as if the product of a clumsy or apathetic demiurge). The world is not run by the wisest and kindest, not administered by dutiful guardian angels. But there a rebel/underdog god or principle that one can fall back on. Muted post horn, countercultural esoteric spiritual comforts, etc. Schopenhauer seems to fit into this group. He does not preach world conquest. His 'escapism' (as an earnest communist might call it) is akin to that of certain stoics or skeptics who focus on their own private interpretation of the world and the training of their heart toward serene detachment.
Oh, right, I have a couple of his books, which I've only dipped into. It was the "Nobby" which threw me.
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Right, there is nothing rational about the radically unknown. There is also the fact that death, or rather dying, is associated with loss of faculties and capacities, pain and indignity, and loss of everything familiar, so maybe the fear is not entirely irrational.
Quoting plaque flag Christianity? and Abrahamic religions in general? Capitalism? Marxism? I don't know, maybe they are symtpoms of something inevitable. We keep cheating extinction just because we can, because unlike the other animals we can come up with strategies, plan ahead.
I just always thought it was a cool nickname. He liked to walk up mountains and talk philosophy with friends. I always thought that sounded like my kind of life. I'd call his stuff speculative psychoanalysis though t's all metaphors underneath categories like 'psychoanalysis' or 'theology' and so on. (I risk overstatement, but you know what I mean.)
If we filtered out all of that pain and humiliation, I'd wager that many would still feel from death. But yeah the association of death is aging and accidents and violence isn't the best marketing for it.
Right. And there's seemingly also a competition of cultures (memetic evolution.) Any tribe that isn't good at breeding and fighting loses resources that are good at such things. The winning tribe may be 'bad' by our standards (such as if Germany won WWII because they got the bomb first, as in Phillip K. Dick's alternate world.) (On that note, the idiotic antisemites ran off some of the talent that could have helped them win the war, suggesting an advantage of open, tolerant societies.)
You can see Schopenhauer struggling mightily to avoid the necessity for God. He says at one point that if God has symbolic meaning, then that's OK. I have the sneaking suspicion that the God he is at pains to reject is actually one very like Jupiter. It's a very odd blend of peity and atheism in Schopenhauer - one of his main inspirations, after all, was Jacob Boehme, a Christian mystic.
I need to read more on his doctrine of ideas.
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Schopenhauer is echoing Kant's Transcendental Aesthetic - his analysis of time and space as 'primary intuitions'. The way that I interpret that is that time is inextricably connected to measurement and to the perception of duration. In other words, there is no absolute time or space, existing independently of any observer - the observer furnishes the perspective which makes time a meaningful concept. But the observer is herself always unobserved. There's the rub.
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Au contraire, theres a distinct kind of neuroscientific idealism visible in modern discourse. What we perceive as objective reality is indeed the workings of mind. Heres an article that came up in my news feed recently, You Dont See Objective Reality Objectively. There are many other articles and TED talks circulating about this insight.
When you assert that the brain is situated in time and space, youre tacitly assuming a viewpoint from outside your own perception of the world. Youre speaking from the Gods eye view which presumes that the world you perceive is real independently of your mind. That is what Bryan Magee in his book on Schopenhauer describes as 'the assumptions of the inborn realism which arise from the original disposition of the intellect.' He goes on:
(There is actually a convergence between Kant and Buddhism which has been subject of considerable literature, not least T R V Murti, The Central Philosophy of Buddhism.)
But where and when is this observer ? Kant is justly famous, but this is one of his clunkers. It just doesn't make sense.
Quoting Wayfarer
I've looked into Hoffman. He seems to make the classic sophomoric mistake of self-cancelling relativism. I've addressed specific claims of his in other threads on TPF. Note that I grant that what a person sees is function of both their individual nervous system and of the world. In short, we see the same world differently, from/through different nervous systems.
Quoting Wayfarer
No. I'm using ordinary language to state a truism. What has anyone ever known about brains apart from their 'involvement' in time and space ?
Quoting Wayfarer
But here you are talking to me, apparently assuming that I exist outside your mind, presumably informing me about our world, a world that transcends both of us --one that I'm somehow capable of being wrong about despite it being just my dream. It sure looks like a performative contradiction, another variety of self-cancelling subjectivism.
Quoting Wayfarer
Sure, but you share that quote with me as if I'm a bumpkin who's never so much as heard of Descartes. I was myself much more of subjectivist philosophically until I came around to seeing the logical absurdities in the position.
It's not hard to find them.
Bingo. He's already talking about the world and other minds, informing us about that reality that only bumpkins are supposed to still believe in.
I like Magee, love his show, but he should have known better. It's almost like watching a series of mathematicians divide by 0 and not notice it.
I'd say forget sources and quotes for a moment and consider the logic. The flaw is right there.
In the very first sentence, you're wanting to objectify the observer, locate the observer in time and space. There is no such thing, in an objective sense. And there's a reason that the transcendental aesthetic is at the very start of the critique, because the remainder rests on it. If it is a 'clunker' then the whole project fails.
I'm not suggesting a 'subjectivist' view - the subject in question is not your mind or mine, but the mind, of which yours and mine are instances.
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I'm not addressing you as an object, but as a subject like myself.
To me, this is the central point of philosophy - a mind-independent world is assumed for the purposes of naturalism, but then taken as a metaphysical truth, which it isn't.
Well, yes, else observer metaphor is being stretched here into mystified meaninglessness. It sounds to me like Berkeley now, a theism merely asserted.
Quoting Wayfarer
Well of course his project fails if success is supposed to have been the achievement of a complete and perfect metaphysics. He said some wacky things. Doesn't mean he isn't great in the same way Schopenhauer is great --flawed but massively creative and insightful.
Every philosopher fails. But the pieces are picked up and a new arrangement is tried.
Quoting Wayfarer
The point is we are both encompassed in a world that exceeds each of us as individuals. Something can be the case even if you or I incorrectly claim otherwise. To deny this is to imply it. One need not talk of 'matter' or anything in particular to acknowledge the truth of a claim whose negation is an absurdity.
'There is no world' is a claim about the world.
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I agree, I'd say that, primordially, it's fear of the unknown and the incomprehensibility of the possibility of non-existence.
:up: Just watched the series The Man in the High Castle (haven't read the book). I thought it was pretty good.
I also thought it was pretty good. I especially liked the performance of Rufus Sewell.
I think it's more likely that it is the understanding that is fragmentary.
If we are just rudely blurting out opinions, then I think you aren't very good at distinguishing flowery rhetoric and a host of noobdazzling fallacies from an actual argument.
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I think that the philosophical tradition as a whole does convey a coherent understanding and vision. It's not as if every generation of philosophy has to begin creating the entire discipline de novo.
I think the convergence of Kant and Schopenhauer, on the one side, with Indian philosophy and praxis on the other - the topic of this thread - is, I think, very important but generally neglected or overlooked, as it is almost entirely at odds with current academic standards. There is a coherent and philosophical attitude embodied in all these sources (which is not to overlook the important differences and divergences also.)
There's a scholar called Andrew Brooks, who's written extensively on Kant as being the godfather of cognitive science (some of the Stanford entries on Kant are written by him.) Many of Kant's ideas are still seminal in that discipline.
As for the idea of the mind-created world - I know that you and many others will say that it sounds absurd or preposterous, but it is an idea which comes up again and again in contemporary neuroscience and philosophy (for fun, just google it). The TED talk I linked to provides a good introduction - it is by an author who has written and published an open access book on the subject, who is a physicist with a degree in complexity science. I don't see him as fringe or eccentric.
To try and put it in philosophical terms, my considered view is that there is a subjective pole to even the most apparently objective and detached scientific understanding of reality. This subjective pole is the faculty which integrates knowledge, perception, judgement and cognition - very close in meaning to the ancient Greek idea of 'nous'. But it is not 'out there somewhere', it is not itself amongst the objects of cognition or part of the objective world, so it is something barely considered in 'modern' culture with it's extroverted and objectively-focussed attitude. Due to the exclusive emphasis on objective knowledge, the presence and significance of that faculty has been overlooked - precisely the point of that Schopenhauer passage quoted.
Indeed. Much of life is enduring. Sleep is best. But sleep cannot be forced. So then there is meditation or just learning to sit quietly in an empty room. It's the opposite of the two instincts of the modern man- production and consumption.
In this conception the virtuous man focuses on production. He betters his "skills". He becomes a more able and better X. And X is some sort of ability or knowledge in various fields of knowledge and trade.
But the idea of quietude works against this. It isn't for a goal of being better at X, but to as you say, escape. It is a rejection, a denial. Perhaps this is what makes Schopenhauer's pessimism more thorough than ones that are simply austere. The austere ones generally are to get you to be better at X. Be a better soldier, worker, citizen, etc. No, that is the opposite. That is life affirming. This is rejecting all of it for an eternal nod to non-being as @Wayfarer once said.
Sleep I would see is the ultimate ideal in this philosophy. It is the easiest route to escape.
Again, nirv??a is not non-existence or non-being or a dreamless sleep, or anything of the kind. The difficulty is that it cannot be defined, specified or described, and attempts to do so invariably result in misconceptions and further clinging and craving - in this case, clinging and craving for what is presumed to be a goal, the 'highest state', and so on. Which is why in many of the discourses, Nirv??a is spoken of in negative terms - what it is not, rather than what it is. That includes the discourses about emptiness (??nyat?) which is often described as 'nothingness' (see introductory article here). But even that leads to fallacious interpretations. There are books about how the early Western discoveries of Buddhist literature were interpreted in nihilistic terms - Neitszche's description of it as the 'sigh of an exhausted civilisation' is an example. There is a vital distinction between beyond existence and non-existence but it's an impossible distinction to make in a one-dimensional culture such as this, where there is no conceptual space for anything other than sensory (or what Schopenhauer calls 'empirical') consciouness. From Urs App:
I wasn't referring to Nirvana per se. I was referring to the idea that Schopenhauer was world-denying rather than stoic or other such similar-looking philosophies. Chill out man. I know more than you think I do on these. Don't assume I don't know these things and also make me out to be a boogie-man.
Not trying to. Sorry if I did. Amended post accordingly.
Schopenhauer mentions how certain painters capture the expression of dispassionate knowledge. I've seen that in paintings and have always responded to it. One sees it in real people too, occasionally. Unlike most, who often seemed absorbed in their doings at the moment, a few seem wide eyed and calm, taking in the spectacle of life, detached from their current task, really noticing strangers. There's no tension in the face ('like a baby at a parade before it can smile.')
Funny you posted that right as I was responding. I was claimed by the real world all day.
I'd say that sleep (including the sleep of death ) is fine, but this serene detachment is also a worthy goal. In my view, it's preferable to sleep/death --- while death is preferable to hopeless torment.
Damn world of appearance!
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Indeed. What is serene detachment?
Schopenhauer described it as thus (at the very end of Book IV):
Excellent quote. It touches on a related issue. I looked into all is vanity recently, and 'vanity' is a translation of the word 'hevel.' This word, which literally means something like 'vapor' or 'mist' is itself already a rich metaphor in the original text. Different scholars lean toward different dominant meanings as the best interpretation. To me it's beautiful that the metaphor is elusive, because I think hevel also suggests the ambiguity (blurryness, slipperiness) of human life.
Vapor, mist, fog. Life is a journey through fog. It's not just the unpredictability of many events and the limit of our sense organs (I can't see around the mountain.) In my opinion, humans don't and even can't have that strong of a grip on the meaning of the words they use. We are trained into stringing together the usual hieroglyphics (a metaphor for metaphoricity.) The hollowness or emptiness of our practical chatter is usually politely ignored. We worship machines that work. Science shines by reflected light. Give us this day our cellphone porn and opiates. It doesn't matter that we parrot the creeds of the day with minimal comprehension. Wave the blue flag or the red. Show up to work. Get the results. [ This isn't always unpleasant, just to be clear. ]
But calling it vapor and fog and emptiness creates a distance, transforms the passionate anguished submersion into a spectacle, a game, a view also above and not just from stage. Schopenhauer discusses the genius (surely a self-portrait) as hardly really there in the world, living mostly in a symbolic realm, finding Platonic structure (and therefore beauty!) is the otherwise empty spectacle --in the ambiguous vapor, blurry form without substance. No matter. (No matter as solid substance surviving the fire of time -- unless the fire of time itself be that 'substance' -- or we count the patterns that are destroyed and created again and again (a Finnegans Wake theme.) )
Indeed, the ascetic goes even beyond the artistic genius who it is claimed, sees the eternal Forms. It is a full-blown denial of will. Everything indeed becomes vapor. However, in a literal sense, what does this character of serene detachment do? I do know that Mahayana Buddhism has an idea of a Bodhisattva. This is anathema to the goals of Nirvana in Theravada schools. Buddha was "enlightened" but he did not simply cease to exist. He was free of all attachments, so some sort of "ego death". But what is that really? Is that really what Schopenhauer is referring to? Schop's seems to be much more thoroughgoing. I see the detached person as not just "enlightened". Supposedly Buddha gets hungry, but Buddha doesn't care if he can't eat. I see this as the stoic phase. Rather, what does complete denial of will look like, or is it really that pedestrian?
Judging by What The Buddha Taught (Rahula),his life became about helping people free themselves from the greed and confusion that tends to capture human beings. I expect it was the joy an ideal parent takes in watching their child's personality develop.
In my opinion, ego death is also featured in Hegel and Feuerbach. To become a cultural being is to transcend the usual petty identifications and learn to take the impersonal personally. As I see it, Qoheleth and the Buddha both have therapeutic intentions. To me there's something like a sugared consumerist mystified version of the wise man and something even anti-Romantically earthy.
Jung wrote an essay on Joyce's Ulysses that starts out negative and critical but more and more gets to the realistically mystical essence of the book, bringing us basically to what Shakespeare symbolizes -- a god who watches without judgment, without identifying with the good guys or the bad guys but shining like a sun on all. The ferryman in Hesse's Siddhartha also represents this. As a biased person, I suggest that the usual sentimental version of the holy man is a consumer product, because it methodically excludes (for profit and popularity) the integration of the shadow (an awareness that the world is fucked up because it mirrors my own ambivalent depths.) This integration, dangerous and unpleasant, has been presented as a path that can lead to a harmonization of internal contradictions. In short, I don't see the Buddha as someone who hid from the evil in himself. He knew it so intimately that he could be bored with it. Everything is burning, him first.
I should add for completeness that one could very much focus on an explicitly suicidal sage. We could create one as a character in a cosmic novel. His minimal belief is that nonexistence is always better. His ethics is spreading the word of the cure of suicide. He prints his manifesto like a friendly virus and swallows hemlock.
Who was the pessimist who hung himself by stepping off a stack of copies of his just-published suicidal opus ? There's a dark beauty in that.
When I was younger, I was occasionally gripped by intense depression -- to the point of almost continual suicidal ideation. I would go to bed at night and wake up in the morning thinking about offing myself (wrestling with it, trying to justify the harm I'd cause others, dwelling on the details of method, worrying about leaving a mess.) Part of the hell was I could not talk about it, because it was as if I was afflicted by the truth as a lethal virus. I had been bitten by a zombie and should jump into the nearest active volcano, that sort of thing. I'd look at the world through suicidal eyes for the few weeks this depression usually lasted. The whole world becomes a disgusting spectacle on a TV that one is seriously considering 'repairing' with a sledgehammer.
[i]Lifes but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.[/i]
But even in suicidal despair, there's a part of the self (I claim) that enjoys the glory of transcendence. To call the world an idiot's babble is to speak from a place above it -- and above everybody in it. To eat a shotgun is to repeat the gesture of a god who once used water to the do the same thing. (We are limited to destroying our own nervous system, our own window in a world that stubbornly exceeds us.)
That would be Philipp Mainlander
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I bring up sleep, perchance to dream, because it is so discounted as a transcendent state. Often elusive, we all want it, most of us can't get enough of it, and often desire it more than most other things. It is torturous when it cannot be obtained easily.
Here's some good Cioran quotes on sleep:
But look at modern man. All the trappings to have a "good night's sleep". How can something so supposedly "natural" be something so wrought with anxiety? Can we just sleep on the bare dirt with maybe some leaves and straw like our ancestors?
All the production and consumption to maintain this edifice. It is the awake part that is questionable. Sleep can never be its own absolute realm because it must be the slave to that which keeps the person at homeostasis for the next round of it. We can never literally "sleep our life away". We must embrace the layers upon layers of work, of keeping entropy at bay with more enthalpy. Of putting one's own will, and engagement, and effort, with the physical and social interactions. And all at the end of the day for escape to do it again. We are forced up and out and engaged in this or that. All of this fuss. Look at Cioran's quote again:
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When I think of Schop's idea of "life affirming" philosophies, I don't just think of pure optimism or stoicism, but less associated philosophies like Taoism. Taoism, seems to want one to sort of glide through the surface of the struggle rather than fight it. There is a Way and it flows like a river. But you see, that is tolerance of the struggle, not escape. Sleep is escape par excellence. The Way is tolerance (meditate whilst doing the dishes, sweep the floor in a fluid motion, etc.). Sleep is escape.
Yes, Taoism also uses the metaphor of the sweet old grandmother. So one glides through life with a tenderness for others. I work around women who clearly get much of their joy from nurturing (health field, boyfriends, children, pets.) That sweet unselfish love is indeed a nice way to slide through time.
I love sleep, personally. I haven't worked as hard as I could have in the world (haven't piled up coins) because I like to sleep in, daydream. But sleep is a popular metaphor for death, and sleeping through life is like a nonviolent substitute for death that maximizes Taoism's glide.
We are forced to wake from the mud, but life is to some degree a choice. I've known suicides and half-suicides (junkies who overdosed.) I don't judge them. I don't think I'm better than them in some absolute sense. Our mortality threatens all such calculations. Does it matter that this boy got himself killed by messing around with the wrong girl or driving drunk ? Another plotline features him dying of ass cancer in Florida. It matters to a few other mortals while they last. Meaning is a function of the perishable flesh.
Other people are hell- Sartre wasn't wrong.
Most people are narcissistic- they think their estimation of life, and their loneliness means more children should be born.
Most people are robotic- they produce and consume, buying into the modern trope. The ennui hasn't sunk in. In fact, they try to out pace it with goals and reasons.
Most people are inconsiderate- they don't care about their surroundings. They are noisy and disturbing (the gods were rightly pissed at all the noise in The Epic of Gilgamesh!)
Much of life is a zero sum game. No good deed goes unpunished.
The sooner we are all at the level of world-weariness, the sooner we can get past the illusions of an enthalpic creature staving entropy, burdened and burdening others.