Self-Help and the Deflation of Philosophy
I wanted to lay out a critique I pulled together from a grab bag of sources from Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue, Philip Reif's classicThe Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith after Freud, to Ronald Purser's McMindfulness, and Eva Illouz's Saving the Modern Soul: Therapy, Emotions, and the Culture of Self-Help.
Modern self-help culture, mindfulness programs, positive psychology, and to a lesser extent outdoor education, present themselves as the heirs of ancient, medieval, and Eastern wisdom traditions (i.e., to philosophy and spirituality). They borrow their vocabulary from these sources, speaking to "character development," virtue, flourishing, balance, discipline, detachment, etc., yet sever these practices from the original anthropology that supported them. In turn, the switch towards a "thin" anthropology, and the liberal phobia of strong ethical claims tends to unmoor them from any strong commitment to an ordering telos that structures the "self-development" they intend to promote. Everything becomes about the individual, about getting us what we want.
For instance, I was just reading a piece from Michael P. Krom on how Kurt Hahn's original vision for Outward Bound, which was grounded in his reading of Plato and Cistercian traditions, was flattened out after his death. For instance, the focus on "community" becomes instrumentalized. It becomes about how community helps me grow, "discover myself," or enjoy the experience. Talk of the Good was likewise first secularized (via the progressive education movement, and more typical progressive liberalism), and then replaced by talk of your good or finding your authentic self.
I would say that this rings true from my experience (although I would also allow that outdoor education programs are, in general, still a great influence; it's just that they might be better).
In the Western tradition ascetic/spiritual exercises were meant to re-order the soul toward truth, goodness, and the divine. In Buddhism, mindfulness is embedded in the Eightfold Path and oriented towards liberation. By contrast, modern adaptations tend to treat these disciplines as mere tools for the self-interested individual, e.g., a means of coping, maximizing productivity, reducing stress, or achieving authenticity. I have seen this particularly in some pieces on Stoicism I've read that seem to be largely aimed at the "tech-bro" crowd. A commitment to truth gets shoved aside for a view of philosophy as a sort of "life hack."
There is a sort of "managerial" outlook here, where praxis reduced to a sort of tool. In a similar vein, I have seen the critique that modern therapy/self-help largely focuses on helping us "get what we want," but not so much on "what we ought to do" or the question of if "what we want" is what will ultimately lead to flourishing and happiness. That is not seen as the purpose of therapy or self-help. That might be fair enough, but then it also not seen as the purpose of education either. So, what does fulfill that function? It seems to me that nothing does, except for perhaps wholly voluntary associations that one must "choose" (where such a choice is necessarily without much guidance). Aside from "self-development," this seems problematic for collective self-rule and social cohesion.
The Manosphere as an Example:
At first glance, the online "Manosphere" (Andrew Tate, Roosh, and the like) and the wellness/positive-psychology world seem like polar opposites. One is a common target of abuse in outlets like The Guardian, the other often praised in that sort of left-leaning managerial space. However, I'd argue that they share a similar anthropological deficit.
The Manosphere exalts self-discipline and self-improvement, but in the service of epithumia (bodily pleasures) and thymos (status, honor, recognition). The man encountering the Manosphere is sold on becoming an "alpha male," without any nod towards questioning if achieving power, or sexual conquests, will actually bring fulfillment, or if it is actually good. Indeed, I'd argue that sex in particular is fetishized precisely because it is one of the last things to be fully commodified and marketized and so remains a source of "validation" (thymos). Yet this sort of "self-development" would, at best, satisfy (in a maladaptive way) the needs of thymos (and epithumia), but not logos (the rational appetite for goodness and truth).
The Manosphere (and female-oriented dating advice) very often discuss romantic relationships in economic terms, e.g., sexual marketplace value, high-value men, trading up, SMV curves," etc. Likewise, one actually finds this quite a bit in the wellness/managerial culture space as well, with references to "returns on investment," for mindfulness, "productivity," "optimization," etc. The wellness/managerial culture promotes mindfulness and resilience, but primarily in the service of comfort and social recognition. The self gets treated like a portfolio to be optimized and protected.
Anyhow, it seems to me like both incorporate fragments of older ascetic traditions that have been hollowed out by modern ideologies. One plays at being a warrior, the other at being the sage, but both collapse into marketable techniques for the (suffering) autonomous individual, and both neglect the desires of logos.
Conclusion:
Philosophy itself has been thoroughly academicatized and professionalized. Outdoor education and similar areas might have a better claim to its ancient mantel at this point (that is, they come much closer to how it was practiced). Meanwhile, outside the realm of political activism, it has tended to be therapy, self-help, wellness, the "New Age" movement, and of course traditional religious organizations that took over the entire "praxis" side of philosophy. I guess my point here would be that this divorce seems to lead towards some serious issues. There is an analogous issue with education as well. You get a philosophically hollow praxis, and a philosophy divorced from the practical.
Modern self-help culture, mindfulness programs, positive psychology, and to a lesser extent outdoor education, present themselves as the heirs of ancient, medieval, and Eastern wisdom traditions (i.e., to philosophy and spirituality). They borrow their vocabulary from these sources, speaking to "character development," virtue, flourishing, balance, discipline, detachment, etc., yet sever these practices from the original anthropology that supported them. In turn, the switch towards a "thin" anthropology, and the liberal phobia of strong ethical claims tends to unmoor them from any strong commitment to an ordering telos that structures the "self-development" they intend to promote. Everything becomes about the individual, about getting us what we want.
For instance, I was just reading a piece from Michael P. Krom on how Kurt Hahn's original vision for Outward Bound, which was grounded in his reading of Plato and Cistercian traditions, was flattened out after his death. For instance, the focus on "community" becomes instrumentalized. It becomes about how community helps me grow, "discover myself," or enjoy the experience. Talk of the Good was likewise first secularized (via the progressive education movement, and more typical progressive liberalism), and then replaced by talk of your good or finding your authentic self.
I would say that this rings true from my experience (although I would also allow that outdoor education programs are, in general, still a great influence; it's just that they might be better).
In the Western tradition ascetic/spiritual exercises were meant to re-order the soul toward truth, goodness, and the divine. In Buddhism, mindfulness is embedded in the Eightfold Path and oriented towards liberation. By contrast, modern adaptations tend to treat these disciplines as mere tools for the self-interested individual, e.g., a means of coping, maximizing productivity, reducing stress, or achieving authenticity. I have seen this particularly in some pieces on Stoicism I've read that seem to be largely aimed at the "tech-bro" crowd. A commitment to truth gets shoved aside for a view of philosophy as a sort of "life hack."
There is a sort of "managerial" outlook here, where praxis reduced to a sort of tool. In a similar vein, I have seen the critique that modern therapy/self-help largely focuses on helping us "get what we want," but not so much on "what we ought to do" or the question of if "what we want" is what will ultimately lead to flourishing and happiness. That is not seen as the purpose of therapy or self-help. That might be fair enough, but then it also not seen as the purpose of education either. So, what does fulfill that function? It seems to me that nothing does, except for perhaps wholly voluntary associations that one must "choose" (where such a choice is necessarily without much guidance). Aside from "self-development," this seems problematic for collective self-rule and social cohesion.
The Manosphere as an Example:
At first glance, the online "Manosphere" (Andrew Tate, Roosh, and the like) and the wellness/positive-psychology world seem like polar opposites. One is a common target of abuse in outlets like The Guardian, the other often praised in that sort of left-leaning managerial space. However, I'd argue that they share a similar anthropological deficit.
The Manosphere exalts self-discipline and self-improvement, but in the service of epithumia (bodily pleasures) and thymos (status, honor, recognition). The man encountering the Manosphere is sold on becoming an "alpha male," without any nod towards questioning if achieving power, or sexual conquests, will actually bring fulfillment, or if it is actually good. Indeed, I'd argue that sex in particular is fetishized precisely because it is one of the last things to be fully commodified and marketized and so remains a source of "validation" (thymos). Yet this sort of "self-development" would, at best, satisfy (in a maladaptive way) the needs of thymos (and epithumia), but not logos (the rational appetite for goodness and truth).
The Manosphere (and female-oriented dating advice) very often discuss romantic relationships in economic terms, e.g., sexual marketplace value, high-value men, trading up, SMV curves," etc. Likewise, one actually finds this quite a bit in the wellness/managerial culture space as well, with references to "returns on investment," for mindfulness, "productivity," "optimization," etc. The wellness/managerial culture promotes mindfulness and resilience, but primarily in the service of comfort and social recognition. The self gets treated like a portfolio to be optimized and protected.
Anyhow, it seems to me like both incorporate fragments of older ascetic traditions that have been hollowed out by modern ideologies. One plays at being a warrior, the other at being the sage, but both collapse into marketable techniques for the (suffering) autonomous individual, and both neglect the desires of logos.
Conclusion:
Philosophy itself has been thoroughly academicatized and professionalized. Outdoor education and similar areas might have a better claim to its ancient mantel at this point (that is, they come much closer to how it was practiced). Meanwhile, outside the realm of political activism, it has tended to be therapy, self-help, wellness, the "New Age" movement, and of course traditional religious organizations that took over the entire "praxis" side of philosophy. I guess my point here would be that this divorce seems to lead towards some serious issues. There is an analogous issue with education as well. You get a philosophically hollow praxis, and a philosophy divorced from the practical.
Comments (88)
:100: Schopenhauer said that money is happiness in the abstract. Popularised versions of Buddhist meditation are similar - enlightenment as the ultimate problem solver and even means of fulfilment of your aims and wishes by clearing away obstructive habits.
Consider this contrast between traditional and secular Buddhism, from scholar-monk Bhikkhu Bodhi:
[quote=Facing the Great Divide; https://inquiringmind.com/article/3102_20_bodhi-facing-the-great-divide/] Classical Buddhism sees human existence as embedded in the condition called sams?ra, understood literally as the beginningless chain of rebirths. From this standpoint, humans are just one class of living beings in a vast multidimensional cosmos. Through time without beginning all beings have been roaming from life to life in the five realms of existence, rising and falling in accordance with their karma, their volitional deeds. Life in all these realms, being impermanent and fraught with pain, is inherently unsatisfactorydukkha. Thus the final goal, the end of dukkha, is release from the round of rebirths, the attainment of an unconditioned dimension of spiritual freedom called nibb?na. The practice of the path is intended to eradicate the bonds tying us to the round of rebirths and thereby bring liberation from repeated birth, aging and death.
Secular Buddhism, in contrast, starts from our immediate existential situation, understood without bringing in non-naturalistic assumptions. Secular Buddhism therefore does not endorse the idea of literal rebirth. Some Secular Buddhists regard rebirth as a symbol for changing states of mind, some as an analogy for biological evolution, some simply as part of the dispensable baggage that Buddhism drags along from Asia. But Secular Buddhists generally do not regard rebirth as the problem the Dharma is intended to resolve. Accordingly, they interpret the idea of sams?ra as a metaphor depicting our ordinary condition of bewilderment and addictive pursuits. The secular program thus reenvisions the goal of Buddhist practice, rejecting the ideal of irreversible liberation from the cycle of rebirths in favor of a tentative, ever-fragile freedom from distress in this present life itself.[/quote]
The implicit problem is that naturalism of all stripes is incompatible with liberation as understood in Eastern traditions (mok?a, Nirv??a), as nature is part of what liberation is from. But in modernity, nature is esteemed as representing purity and authenticity, as opposed to the artificial, the manufactured, the polluted. Liberation, if such a thing is contemplated, is invariably in terms of oneness with nature (see another critique by a scholarly monk, Bhikkhu Bodhi, in Buddhist Romanticism. ) Hence meditation as optimised coping, dealing better with stress, and so on.
The message of all the classical religions is not one of worldly well-being or technological flourishing, but extirpation of the roots of suffering that lie deep in the human condition. Not something we much want to hear in our day and age.
That's an interesting article. I had been reading Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche's book on Lojong practice, and I recall thinking that the key "preliminaries" to practice had some elements that I didn't think would sail in contemporary mindfulness.
I don't think there is anything wrong in syncretism per se, or borrowing practices. Actually, because disparate practices that seem to have evolved in relative isolation are so similar, I think it suggests some elements being more universal (e.g., Orthodox breathing practices and "dwelling on death," seem quite similar to some Eastern practices, along with the repetition of mantras being akin to the "Jesus prayer" or other repeated prayers). But I do think there is differences between good and bad philosophy, or a robust versus "thin" anthropology. There might be many adequate ways to describe man, useful for different purposes, but some seem clearly to be inadequate for a sort of broader "philosophical praxis."
You are making an argument premised on the belief that there is actually something more than just pragmatism when it comes to living life. You name these higher facts as truth, goodness, and the divine. You want to put these at the centre of our attention and efforts, and advocate for practices that are self-denying, self-effacing, oddly self focused in being self-rejecting. A life built around rejecting the everyday stress and pleasure of being a social self and aimed at becoming this notion of some more perfected state of being. A godly creature barely existing in the world as it generally is, and generally must be, for an organism pragmatically dependent on its socially-constructed environment.
So what supports this metaphysics as a factual argument? Where is the evidence that this ought to be any kind of project for us humans?
What you dismiss as modern watering downs of real therapeutic strategies positive psychology, outward bound courses, and the like I instead see as useful turns towards the recognition that the human lot is a social co-constructed one. It actually applies the theory by highlighting the rules of the game that is becoming a self within the context of a society. Positive psychology draws people's attention to the fact that they are socially embedded and the little nagging voice in their head may be a cultural programming speaking scripts that they have some possibility of changing.
These kinds of life lessons can be worked into the educational curriculum from a young age so that children start off properly equipped with an understanding of how their real world works, and the possibilities for improvement of the self and its society that flow from there.
You then say that this pragmatic realism then finds its distorted reflections in toxic developments like the Manosphere. Well yes. Society has been run too long on romantic notions of truth, goodness, and the divine. And of power, domination, and all that seems "other" to those wishy-washy principles.
So it is not positive psychology or pragmatism that produces the Manosphere. It is the celebration of humanity as bestial rather than celestial. And that is just another way of by-passing the real facts of what it is to be human which is to be socially constructed as a self fit to live in the kind of society that that self will in turn tend to re-construct by their actions. The organismic view of what humans are. The view which finds us placed somewhere more everyday practical between the bounding caricatured extremes of the selfish beast and the selfless divine.
In summary, your assumptions need questioning. And the counter-argument is that all the evidence supports the fact that the human self is socially-constructed. So any therapeutic technology would have to be based on that understanding. The starting point is the relation we might individually form with the community we live in.
And "you" might not even be the problem. Your society might be what is fucked up particularly in ways illustrated by the Manosphere. Or even by some of its hair-shirt, ascetisim preaching, cults run by dodgy gurus.
The issue at this level isn't even philosophical. You will get no solutions from examining ideologies. Ideologies of any stripe become the problem when they are marketed as the absolutes that must rule our lives rather than some possible wisdom about how best to play the game that is being a useful member of a flourishing community.
Maybe tangential, but when I see people chasing forms of self-improvement (including certain strands of management theory), I often see nostalgia projects: heirs to the Romantic movement and the current era's obsession with the aesthetic as an expression of authenticity. Isnt the hallmark of capitalism the marketing of lifestyles premised on you are incomplete, some cloaked in tradition, others in radicalism? Some lean right, some lean left, but all flog in the same promise of contentment and meaning.
Lots of good thoughts. :up:
The classical object of the common good seems mostly invisible to liberalism. The idea of a telos that transcends self is a non-starter, and a beleaguered institutional landscape is icing on the cake. The modern cosmos revolves around the passions of the individual. Alternatives have become inconceivable.
People speak about great enlightened sages such as Gautama saying that such greats do not seem to be around these days, and yet all we know of Gautama's life is contained in writings produced fairly long and some very long, after his death. How do we know he was not a pedophile, or that he didn't exploit his position of power to have sex with some of his young nubile followers?
People who acknowledge that they do not think of themselves as enlightened (or are they merely being falsely modest?) nonetheless take it as read that enlightened ones did exist, and may exist even today (however rare that might be) but how can this be shown to be more than merely a personal belief?
I think there is a puritanical elitist element in the idea that modern self-help programs are merely watered down caricatures of the ancient "true" practices. I mean, if these programs really do help people to live better, more fulfilled and useful lives, then what is the problem? Is it because they don't really renounce this life in favour of gaining Karmic benefit or entrance to heaven? Is the most important thing we can do in this life to deny its value in favour of an afterlife, an afterlife which can never be known to be more than a conjecture at best, and a fantasy at worst? There seems to be a certain snobbishness, a certain classism, at play in these kinds of attitudes.
Some are like that, although the "life-hacking" stuff tends to lean more "cutting edge." Then there was the Human Potential Movement too, and things of that nature.
I didn't mention the military, but that's still a strong allure. Everyone I knew before they enlisted primarily enlisted because of the self-development, community, challenge, purpose elements. I assume that's common because they lean very hard into that in their advertising.
Likewise, the "elite school" motif is popular enough that it's basically it's own sub-genre in fantasy and sci-fi, and particularly in fiction aimed at young adults.
This makes sense to me. I dont know much about Buddhism. The only Asian philosophy I have experience with is Taoism. That has always struck me as a reasonably practical and down home philosophy. As I understand it, there isnt much talk about inevitable suffering, self renunciation, or esoteric practice. God has always struck me as an afterthought. I never felt any conflict between how I knew the world as an engineer versus how I knew it as a reader of Lao Tzu.
My attitude towards all philosophies, eastern or western is that their primary purpose is to encourage self-awareness. Thats certainly true of Taoism.
That might be because this topic is philosophy of religion.
[quote=Josiah Royce and the Paradox of Revelation;https://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2014/10/josiah-royce-and-the-paradox-of-revelation.html]Josiah Royce: ...the need for salvation, for those who feel it, is paramount among human needs. The need for salvation depends on two simpler ideas:
a) There is a paramount end or aim of human life relative to which other aims are vain.
b) Man as he now is, or naturally is, is in danger of missing his highest aim, his highest good.
To hold that man needs salvation is to hold both of (a) and (b). I would put it like this. The religious person perceives our present life, or our natural life, as radically deficient, deficient from the root (radix) up, as fundamentally unsatisfactory; he feels it to be, not a mere condition, but a predicament; it strikes him as vain or empty if taken as an end in itself; he sees himself as homo viator, as a wayfarer ( :yikes: ) or pilgrim treading a via dolorosa (path of sorrows) through a vale that cannot possibly be a final and fitting resting place; he senses or glimpses from time to time the possibility of a Higher Life; he feels himself in danger of missing out on this Higher Life of true happiness. If this doesn't strike a chord in you, then I suggest you do not have a religious disposition. Some people don't, and it cannot be helped. One cannot discuss religion with them, for it cannot be real to them.[/quote]
There is very little about religion in the OP. The sources identified in the first paragraph of the OP are social commentary. Philosophies that dont focus on truth, virtue, or purpose are not somehow a sign of decadence.
There is a Taoist monastic tradition; the lifestyle is similar to Buddhist monks in broad outline, obviously with a different set of traditions. They embrace celibacy, etc. Hermetic life is also part of the tradition, obviously with Lao Tzu himself.
The role of the daoshi priests would be "esoteric practice" though, no?
I agree. I love the Dao De Ching myself (although I bet I haven't read as many different translations as you have). Speaking of Buddhism, I was intensely attracted to Zen from the age of about 17 until I was about mid-twenties, and I've had other reading forays throughout the intervening years. I read everything I could find about Zen: D T Suzuki, the other Suzuki (Zen Mind, Beginners Mind) Alan Watts, Dogen and many many others that don't come to mind right now. Another text I got a lot out of is the Bhagavad Gita.
I never thought of any of it in terms of an afterlife, but rather in terms of living this live with clarity, equanimity and freedom, which of course also means, as you say, with self-awareness or perhaps more importantly, awareness of others. Anything that really helps people with that I would count as a good thing.
I quite like the old chestnut "the unexamined life is not worth living" and I also really resonate with the flipping of that: "the unlived life is not worth examining", and really I think the latter is the more important insight. There may be many people who live very good, yet largely unexamined, lives.
This is true, and my experience and understanding of those traditions is not very deep. But if you go back to the source - the Tao Te Ching and Chuang Tzu - you find very little of that.
So why is it filed under General Philosophy then?
If you want the grounding assumptions of the argument to go unchallenged, perhaps you ought get it shifted pretty quick.
There are, and any philosophy that doesnt acknowledge that is fundamentally flawed as I see it.
Wellness retreats, access to outdoor education, etc. all skew towards the high end of the income distribution, so I'm not really sure what you're talking about. There aren't a lot of yoga studios or mindfulness retreats in depressed inner cities and rural areas. The self-help literature I had in mind tends to be rather explicitly oriented at "yuppies" and the like.
A lot of people within the Manosphere give testimonials about how it awakened them to the true (transactional/power-centric) nature of human relations (and the "real nature of women"). They say it radically improved their lives. Is it thus beyond criticism?
The Manosphere is actually a space that probably does draw more from the lower class, or at least downwardly mobile.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I haven't studied the demographics of such things. I used to attend the Sydney Gurdjieff Foundation meditation nights and weekend workshops, and the people there represented a fairly even distribution of professions, trades and jobs.
In any case I wasn't referring to literal classes, but to a kind of intellectual snobbishness and classism shown in thinking that the old ways and practices were more pure, more "real' when the reality is we know nothing about what those ancient cults were really like. It seems to be just unfounded "Golden Age" thinking, and I think it more likely that all the same kinds of abuses were practiced in the old days as they have been in the modern age and are today.
Anyway, that aside, the presumption is that there was genuine enlightenment to be found then which is not to be found in the modern settings, and I think this betrays unfounded assumptions about knowing what is the reality of transcendent knowledge and wisdom. It's that puritanism that I referred to as "a certain kind of snobbishness and classism". The idea is that esoteric understanding is not for the uneducated masses. And I am not saying there are not such "schools" alive today either.
I am saying that the whole idea of such esoteric knowledge is bogus. Real wisdom is always pragmatically centered on this life? like Aristotle's notion of phronesis or practical wisdom. The only wisdom that matters is the wisdom that enables one to live happily and harmoniously and usefully with others. Focusing on seeking personal salvation cannot but be a self-obsessed "cult of the individual". And I've been there and seen it in action, so I'm not merely theorizing.
Quoting Wayfarer
Of course such renunciate organizations were probably always supported financially by their communities. These sad, life-denying fools were essentially parasites living only on account of the good will of those who had to work hard to survive.
Youre probably phrasing this a little bit more strongly that I would but I think this frame resonates with me too. When I was hanging around New Age and Theosophy circles it was extraordinary how much of the activity was narcissistic and virtue signalling- Im more aware/developed/higher than you. And yet everyone concerned was immature, materialistic and competitive in ways at odds with higher consciousness goals. The people who were most sound actually volunteered in homelessness services and focused on solidarity and improving life for others rather than jerking off about their spiritual journeys.
Ok, so then it wasn't supposed to be relevant to what I wrote? I didn't write anything about "esoteric knowledge," nor any necessary preference for the older over the newer for that matter.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
What would the forum be about if it werent for our jerking off about our spiritual journeys?
Maybe my statement was too strong, but I still think philosophies and spiritual practices that dont focus on those issues and be of value.
:up: :up:
Quoting Janus
:fire:
Quoting Tom Storm
:smirk:
Though a bit over my head, unfortunately. It's easily enjoyable by even the most novice of intellects, per your unique and concise spirit of wording. It's like you "get us" normal folk. :wink:
Very cool. Do post more. If you would?
Quoting Tom Storm
I like to be less than diplomatic at times?only for the sake of emphasis, mind...:wink:
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
The above was what I had in mind. What could knowledge of "(spiritual) truth, goodness and the divine" be but "esoteric knowledge" if not merely a matter of understanding ordinary truth and goodness as commonly conceived?
What could seeking liberation be but an esoteric pursuit if it is thought to consist in more than merely being and feeling free to be yourself without fear of the opinions of others? As soon as it becomes concerned with purported transcendental knowledge of course it is esoteric. Many of the so-called 'wisdom schools" were quite explicit about the difference between esoteric and exoteric religion. Whether or not people are community-minded is a separate issue.
The point I was objecting to is that you are denigrating modern self-help practices for their superficiality compared to the purported profundity of the genuine traditional spiritual schools, and I think the comparison is underdetermined, most particularly because we were not there to see what they were really like and also because claims to transcendental knowledge and wisdom cannot but be pretentious, whereas practical wisdom is shown in one's actions.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Self-help teachings and practices, if they are effective, should help people to live better lives. Of course I realize some of them are all about how to achieve financial success, but is that really such a bad aim for someone if it doesn't degenerate into acquisitive greed, especially if they aspire to be a householder and parent?
"What we ought to do" is of course important too. In Australia, several years ago there was a move to teach ethics in school, but the kibosh was put on that idea when religious organizations objected that ethics could not be effectively taught without God. :roll:
A very interesting topic. I would also add numerologists, astrologers, tarot readers and other palmists who have become popular recently to the group of esoteric lovers.
I absolutely do not like how these guys exploit philosophical concepts, tearing out the parts they like, mixing completely contradictory ideas and ideas, forgetting what their original message was. All for the sake of successful success!
But I also cannot but agree with : how do we know in which direction it is "correct" to philosophize? It follows that for any statement, some starting axiom is needed, which can be different for everyone.
On the other hand, I have not come across literature on esoteric topics that would be worked out at least to the level of the absence of internal contradictions. Not to mention some academic value. (If there is such, share the link). Academic philosophy is always about "directing the soul to truth, goodness or the divine." Even the vile (in my opinion) Schopenhauer writes about alleviating suffering.
An interesting point is that philosophers reflect on esotericism. Maybe this is not the area that should be taken into account at all?
Good read, thanks for writing
Just a couple questions.
What is the original anthropology that supported these practices?
Do you believe pre-modern philosophers were acting without self-interest, and that their philosophical activity had no telos towards their own self-development, but towards something else?
That's the fundamental question of ethics, no? @apokrisis is essentially advancing his own answer to that question here and in the recent thread on wisdom I would take it. Likewise, it's not like liberalism doesn't answer this question. You cannot have any sort of large organization, let alone a state, without answering key ethical considerations and making judgements about the human good, even if only by default. I'd argue that everyone answers these questions (re method, truth, and values) one way or another, either reflectively or non-reflectively.
My point here was that the problem of "philosophical praxis as consumer product," combined with the general separation of theory and practice leads to a practice with shallow answers to this sort of question. Or, there isn't any real questioning at all, but rather a default to the (neo)liberal preference for skepticism and abstract "choice" (which, IMO, is not always "informed choice"). Or, if there has been such questioning, as in Kurt Hahn's case, cultural and market forces tend towards stripping out any firm answer and instead prioritize individual choice (as liberalism tends to conceive of it, in economic terms) as the ultimate good, so that a structured focus on any other good has to take a back seat.
Now, people can certainly object to any single answer on values, but it hardly follows from this that values can be ignored. If one raises up "pragmatism" or "choice," as a solution to the values question, this is just to have recommended the prioritization of a different sort of value. If one says that "spiritual" questions are ridiculous distractions, and the good life focuses on the pragmatic pursuit of worldly pleasures/goods (Charles Taylor's"exclusive humanism,") that isn't a non-answer on this question either. The problem I was hoping to identify is a sort of praxis that tries to go with a "non-answer" and so ends up simply affirming whatever we already happen to believe (a non-answer is still an answer, it affirms instrumentalizing praxis).
I guess this is sort of a larger issue. Skepticism about philosophy and values leads doesn't negate the imperative to answer such questions. They still get answered.
Quoting NOS4A2
Obviously, this varies from tradition to tradition. But, for instance, I would say the Stoic, Platonist, Peripatetic, and then much of the Jewish/Christian/Muslim tradition have a lot in common in how the view the nature of man and the human good. Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy is probably the paradigmatic idea of the late-antique synthesis here.
Obviously, Eastern sources have a different tradition (although there are some similarities). I just meant to contrast this with the rather thin anthropologies that have been very influential in folks like Nozick and Rawls, which don't leave much room for virtue (excellences vis-á-vis what it is to be man) but instead focus on a sort of abstract choosing agent. Here the right is elevated above the good (and so the human good).
I think the creep of the language of economics and the corporate world into wellness/mindfulness literature, or the Manosphere, is a good, if extreme example. Obviously, Homo oecononimicus, the atomized, self-interested utility maximizer is about as thin of an anthropology as you can get. You have a black box of preferences, and then the abstract game theoretic chooser.
Quoting NOS4A2
Absolutely not. I am not a big fan of modern ethical theories in general, and the separation of "moral good" from "what appears good (desirable)." Aristotle focuses on the good as "being qua desirable," and this is carried on in other traditions.
The questions of "what sort of life is best for man?" or "how does one live a good life and become an excellent person?" are obviously going to have relevance for the self, right?
When I mention what I see as a corrosive focus on the self this meant to suggest the idea that ethics must be uninterested in the self (a sort of Kantian turn). It's rather rejecting the idea that the self, in its current form, with its current desires, is the measure of what is good and truly desirable. It's the collapse of a reality/appearance distinction in terms of what is most desirable/fulfilling that I find troubling in a sort of "consumerist" context.
The world "spiritual" is not in the original quote. Aristotle, Plato, the Stoics, and their successors broadly orient their ethics and grounding of the human good in this way. Does their ethics require "esoteric knowledge" to practice? I don't think so. They certainly refer to such ends, particularly Plato, Plotinus, etc., but the whole point of dialogues such as the Charmides, I take it, is about the ability to make progress and refine understanding without such an end "in hand." Likewise, Aristotle's ethics provides a robust account of the human good and the development of virtue, while still pointing to contemplation as its highest point (Book X of the Ethics) and climaxing in Book XII of the Metaphysics.
By contrast, the ethics of liberalism has tended to remain firmly wed to the Reformation (particularly Protestant) vision of ethics as a sort of divine command, only now with God lopped out. The focus on law and obligation, highlighted by Anscombe in "Modern Moral Theory," or Philippa Foot, Alasdair MacIntyre, etc., dominates utilitarianism and deontological ethics. It also leads to the very thin anthropology I was speaking to, since the entire idea is that ethics must necessarily be about rules, and since divine revelation is ruled out, and paired with the general skepticism of empiricism, we get a foundation of "rules all 'rational agents' will agree to." Or, because this is unconvincing, you get anti-realism and an ethics of sentiment that collapses any distinction between what is currently desired and what is truly desirable.
This is precisely what absolutizes individual preference and privatizes any deeper notions of teleology.
Quoting Janus
A focus on wealth (or career success as a proxy for status) as a primary aim seems to be a paradigmatic example of "putting second things first," no? Sure, wealth is useful. There are plenty of miserable wealthy people though. Wealth is only useful in parting with it; it's a proximate aim at best.
Quoting Janus
Exactly the sort of thing I had in mind. The "privatization" part of secularization makes it essentially impossible to have any public teaching of ethics per se. Of course, ethics is still taught, just not directly and reflectively.
The reduction in religious circles of ethics to religion is another consequence of the focus of obligations and rules, and the crowding out of any focus on the human good form a teleological perspective. The origin point for this sort of outlook is the same as it is some forms of liberal athiesm ironically.
But of course, fundamentalists find their own theories of praxis and various popular luminaries to be "helpful." If what is helpful is just what individuals find to be helpful, then the ideology motivating this sort of rejection of ethical education will itself be unimpeachable.
Quoting Tom Storm
:up: this was largely my experience as well. I think there is something quite similar that could be said about modern reinventions of esoterica by figures such as Crowley, Evola, Peter Carol, where they essentially take the language and external symbols of a tradition and cut out all the teleological grounding actually.
Yes. Unmoored is the post-enlightenment state of affairs. And it is self-defeating: in the name of freedom, this unmooring makes us unable to be free, as in the name of self-development much advice diminishes the individual.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
My good will never be as good as the good. I am authentically in flux, so by only seeking my authentic self, without seeking virtue and objective moral guidance from outside myself, I never actualize something that is only potential in me. Basically, if one admits to oneself what ones authentic self really is (namely, a potentially good person in need of assistance) one should be drawn out of ones self (or instructed to look deeper into experience than merely at ones self).
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
All of the transcendent, metaphysical aspects of philosophy have been mocked as superstition. Thrown out once and for all by Nietzsche and buried by post-modernism. But the self-helpers still find a sort of role-playing as metaphysician yields some physical benefits (for some unexplained reason), so they dress up like a philosopher to satisfy the deepest human cravings with tidbits and appetizers despite no sense of principle (because despite some traditional practices yielding practical benefits, self help is anathema to most all of our traditions. The East teaches us that seeking/finding any authentic self (in the liberal sense of self) is the opposite of enlightenment, and judeo-Christian-Islamism teaches we need Gods help, not just our own.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
With no respect at all paid to these older sources. We are too enlightened now to truly admire anyone pre-1969 (except maybe Marx, Darwin and Nietzsche).
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I have always said that wisdom most often is found outside of academia. This is the case by conscious choice of many academics. Some universities are downright dangerous places for some individuals who naively seek wisdom there.
You argue that modern liberalism, in the guises of personal
improvement, self-help and wellness programs, gives preference to the desires of the individual over the community, but you dont question the split between personal and collective desire this presupposes. You also dont mention that an ethic of the collective good and an ethic of self-actualization have in common the grounding of will in a metaphysical subject. The reason that advocates of. personal improvement beleive that bettering the self by attending to ones needs and wants ( Maslow, Rogers) is the route to bettering society is that they put their faith in a natural or innate disposition toward the good, a biological or spiritual compass that guides development in a way that melds the ethical and the personally desired. More enactively inclined approaches reject the idea of an innate ethical disposition in favor of a notion of phronesis, an ethical wisdom or attunement that centers on the attainment of compassion. This compassion, in turn, arises out of the realization of no-self, the awareness that the grasping ego is a mirage we cling to. Shaun Gallagher explains how Francisco Varela derives this notion from a melding of enactivism and Buddhism:
Quoting Joshs
I think this is probably true to some degree, particularly in some specific areas of the self-help space (the Manosphere being a hyperbolic example). However, I think this is somewhat ancillary. Sometimes, there is a big focus on community mixed in, outdoor adventure education being a prime example. IMHO, the larger issue is the collapse of the distinction between apparent/current individual desires and what is truly desirable. It's normally not an "anti-realism" about the human good, but rather a sort of bracketing/privatizing move that justifies this. But you can't have praxis grounded in ends that lie outside current desire (a telos) without that distinction.
Quoting Joshs
I don't think they're entirely in the wrong here either, insomuch as virtue is desirable. But it strikes me as quite optimistic. We might believe that the attainment of virtue fulfills desire, even the deepest desires, and still believe that misordered desires can lead inexorably away from virtue. At the limit, the notion that fulfilling current desires (whatever they happen to be) always leads towards virtue (the enjoyment of right action) and freedom would essentially be the denial that vice exists, i.e., that no one can become habituated to bad action.
Now, I can see a case for the idea that no one flourishes in a state of vice, and so there is always an impetus for change, but the whole idea of "disordered desires" is that that impetus can become ignored for prolonged periods.
The second approach is more interesting. It's in line with many of the critiques of instrumentalized mindfulness, which write off that deconstruction phase. The metaphysics underwriting that move also aren't embraced, because no clear metaphysics is; that's sort of the idea of making the praxis portable and instrumentalizing it, but also the risk.
A common notion in modernity, found in things like the "invisible hand," is that one should just focus on X and Y will work itself out. "Just focus on what is personally desired and your biological or spiritual compass will guide development in a way that takes care of the ethical." Ayn Rand's Egoism is of a similar modality.
Building on some of , I would say that this requires a kind of naivete about the easy coupling between the private good and the common good, or between the self-interested act and the noble act. "Would that it were so!"
Quoting Joshs
...and the "split" is a phenomenon of philosophical anthropology. It's not so easy for children of Hobbes to reprogram their belief in the split.
The difference between self-help and philosophy may be about the analytic concepts of philosophy and the pragmatic aspects of life. This is most obvious in ethics but how one copes with personal problems is also relevant.
Self-help may be seen as less important than wider spheres of ethics. However, how one views personal issues may also be relevant to issues of wider concern.
Also, while the issues identified might stem from elements of liberalism, I should probably do a better job precisely identifying which elements. A program like Americorps is obviously very grounded in liberalism (being a US government program) and yet I would say it has fewer of these deficits. It is certainly community oriented. I think a key difference there might be that it doesn't have to operate as a business, or to necessarily "sell itself" in the way other avenues of praxis might.
But if there is no God and we know the good to be a necessary organising idea that is always socially constructed, then that puts moral philosophy on a quite different basis. One rooted in naturalistic metaphysics rather than transcendental beliefs.
Solutions to problems are to be uncovered by better social science rather than getting closer to God.
If the self help industry seems an issue as it is lightweight and commercialised, isnt that more because it seems to sell non-Western practices as a distraction from the faults of the Western socially constructed view of life, or because it sells the promise of an insiders track to mastering that way of life, with all its flaws.
Therapy based on a pragmatic understanding of human social organisation doesnt need to us to become either medieval monks or masters of the universe. It is just the commonsense approach of understanding why the game is what it is and how to think your path through that.
Quoting apokrisis
At a certain point these begin to sound awfully similar. Better and better knowledge orients and organizes itself teleologically on the basis of the way things are as a ground of becoming. The divine in-itself has given way to the natural in-itself. Meet the new boss
Auguste Comte, generally recognized as the father of social science, explicitly modeled his approach on that of religion in general and Catholicism in particular with his "Religion of Humanity." Indeed, thinkers who apply evolutionary thought to the social sphere don't generally draw a hard and fast distinction between religion and social doctrine.
One thing that might be understood about what we might call religions of the spirit is that the very knowledge of the higher truth is itself liberation, is itself the Good. Its unmediated and inherently peaceful, joyous, and totally fulfilling in a way that knowledge of mundane facts can never be. So its not a matter of ameliorating social conditions or improving political systems (which it may or may not do). So the ending of suffering is putatively a state where all the factors leading to suffering, and its causes, are for once and for all ended. Believe it, dont believe it, that, at least, is what it is about.
Social theory tells us why humans have to organise under transcendent narratives. We have to believe in something bigger than ourselves to accept that as our common tribal identity.
So yes. That is just an essential feature of the semiotic technology. We can accept a boss if that boss is also subsumed into the collective identity by being just as restricted by some supreme boss.
The supreme boss could be a narrative about ancestral spirits, a god in heaven, or a moral philosophy encoded as law and political structure. We can accept kings and presidents if they too bow a knee to some transcendent power that properly closes the human social system and gives it a known identity as it now has its clear boundary.
This narrative is not a fiction in our lives. We have to believe in its reality. Otherwise our own identity would be unmoored.
So my pragmatism doesnt put an end to the need for a transcendent narrative. It just opens the way to a self-conscious discussion - a philosophical discussion - of the evolution of the jumble of such narratives that we find being handed down.
Quoting apokrisis
I don't see how that follows. Presumably, it is bad for a bear to have its leg mangled in a trap, yet I'm not sure how this would be "socially constructed." Likewise, ceteris paribus, it is bad for man to be lit on fire, and I'm not sure how this would be "socially constructed" in any strong sense. Certainly, our notions of the good are always filtered through culture, because man is a social animal. The human good is inextricable from social constructions. But it also seems obvious to me that the human good is affected by principles that lie prior to any particular society, just as human nature is prior to human culture, in that the latter cannot exist without the former and is always shaped by it.
That the Good is an organizing principle I can get on board with, but as a prerequisite for intentionality and goal-directedness, it's a much broader principle than simply a principle of psychology or political science. This would make it posterior to biology. Not to go off-topic, but from a metaphysical lens, it's the Good, as "that to which all things strive," that makes anything any thing at all, in that true organic wholes emerge (are unified) by being oriented towards an end (i.e., organisms). Hence, it would seem to me to play a central role in resolving the Problem of the One and the Many.
That said, I don't really disagree with you in that I'd allow that politics/political science would indeed be the architectonic science of practical reason, in that it has the furthest reach (for man) and deals with the most common of goods. I don't see why an understanding of the Good as a metaphysical principle would be at odds with this.
Quoting apokrisis
The problem I have with "naturalism" is that it is equivocated on so broadly that I can never be quite sure how to respond to it (not a dig at you mind you; it's just become a real problem. When everyone is a naturalist it doesn't really tell you much!). What is naturalism here? The idea that everything that exists is changing? The idea that everything is mechanistic?
Quoting apokrisis
I don't think the human good can be reduced to social (or physical) science. For one, philosophical value judgements are prior to all the normative areas of the sciences.
Au contraire, God is not a seiendes (being); a claim Heidegger would have seen repeated explicitly over and over by the Patristics if he had made it further back than the nominalists (e.g., the opening of Eriugena's Periphyseon). You cannot plop the Trinity on a Porphyrean tree alongside the world. Ipsum esse subsistens, not ens supremum, i.e., act not thing. God as an in-itself is a category error. Teleology doesn't come from above, but from within, through participation in infinite plentitude.
Likewise, knowledge is not the imposition of the "in-itself," but participation in the Logos. To speak of the "in-itself" at all often gets written off as a capitulation to modern univocity. It is God "in which we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28; repeated at every liturgy). The groundedness of ethics here is not an external in-itself, but being as intelligible, given, and above all gift. This isn't violence against difference, but the very gift and sustainment of its intelligibility (the "virtual" being a secularized paradoy of participation in critiques), which is grounded in the relational love of three persons (not a static in-itself).
I am sure there is something to take issue with there, I hardly expect it to be convincing, but the two (the traditional theology and modernity) cannot be lumped together. The latter is (originally at least) a self-conscious rejection of the former. In general, the people who write on this stuff tend to have analytics and empiricists as their primary targets.
Quoting Joshs
'The jealous God dies hard'.
But isnt there commentary on the idea that the myth of progress originated with a secularised version of the Christian eschaton? Christianity introduced a linear, purposeful view of history, culminating in an end (eschaton) with cosmic significance (Burkhardt, Lowith, et al). Whereas antiquity largely thought in terms of Eliade's myth of the eternal return.
Modernity, after the Enlightenment, retained the form of historical teleology but emptied it of transcendent content, replacing divine fulfillment with secular goals: reason, science, technological mastery, emancipation, utopia, communism - and now, transhumanism and space travel (Elon Musk et al).
Quoting apokrisis
You may believe in the reality of these narratives, but you dont believe each is transcendent in itself. You believe they are historically contingent. What is transcendent for you is the semiotic technology of becoming, what grounds the fact that social theory tells us why humans have to organize under transcendent narratives.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
So God is just the gift of difference that repeats itself in the contextually relative becoming of experience from
moment to moment? And the intelligibility of understanding arises from the pragmatic enactment of new sense in discursive engagement? Or is there some element external to the utter contingency of contextual becoming, but essential to the Logos we participate in, and essential to god?
... corresponds, imho, to the difference between training (therapy) and understanding (surgery).
Quoting apokrisis
:up: :up:
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Thanks for telling me what I believe rather than listening to what I say.
I argue for pragmatism/semiosis as ontic structural realism. The final Platonic truth of how existence exists. The metaphysical logic that rules it all - and demands contingency as part of that very structure. What Peirce called the tychism that is the other of the synechism. Or what systems science calls the degrees of freedom that are other to the global laws or constraints of an evolutionary ontology.
So I believe in contingency and I believe in necessity. They are the diametric oppositions that together can bound the world as we find it to be. Some pragmatic mix of the two arranged into an upper and lower bound on our reality.
How can you not see that this kind of attitude is relatively modern? In more traditional times, it was more likely to provoke laughter, amusement and excitement. Bull fighting and fox hunting are still respectable public spectacles in civilised parts of the world.
You are picking examples which illustrate the very opposite of what you intend.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes. But have you studied human evolution? Are you familiar with Richard Wranghams self-domestication hypothesis where a crucial step that distinguishes sapiens is that we evolved the new dynamic of empathy coupled to cold blooded violence. We evolved a new level of switching in our brains where we could shift suddenly between two new states - essential to becoming socially constructed beings - in that we either feel a nurturing closeness or flick into the other state of a predatory aggression.
Chimps live in social groups but have only limited empathy coupled to only reactive or hot blooded aggression. Humans tweaked this neurology so that cognitive structure could overlay the emotional circuits. We could extend empathy and so live in close domestic harmony with our surrounds, but also just as usefully, switch into collective organised violence that was premeditated and executed without being a problem for the other thing of our state of domestic harmony.
We could go out as a small band and slaughter a whole herd of mammoths. Then bring back the bounty to share out equally. And this neural dichotomy still deeply marks everything about who we are.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
That is what I am arguing. Except the surprise is that contingency is as essential as finality at this metaphysical level. Evolutionary order is achieved by developing guiding constraints on contingency. But then contingency is still needed so that evolution doesnt get locked into believing it has arrived in some perfect state of adaptation. Natural selection needs random variety so it can continue to optimise a living and mindful structure of habit.
Accidents can be mistakes or they can be discoveries. But they cant become understood as either unless accidents are being produced in sufficient abundance.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
It starts off by opposing itself to the supernatural. It contrasts evidenced fact to narrative myth. It believes in a Cosmos that is somehow its own cause. And right from the first proper metaphysician - Anaximander of Miletus - the general logic of this was being sketched out.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
But that is just a socially constructed stance. You might say it is so. You certainly havent shown it is so.
It is just a narrative framing so you can claim top billing in the social hierarchy you have constructed in your mind.
I thought it was implied, that you were not addressing empirical truth.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
It's really very simple, and no need for a law-giving God. There will always be a tension between individual preferences and societal desiderata. It seems obvious that in any community harmony is more desirable than conflict. Right there is the pragmatic basis for ethics.
You say "deeper notions of teleology": but there is no need to "muddy the waters to make them appear deep".
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
You seem to be doing that black and white thinking. I haven't said that exclusive or even primary focus on accumulating wealth would be a good thing. It wouldn't because it leads to egregious exploitation of other humans, animals and environments.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I disagree. I see no reason to think that ethics could not be taught to children without incorporating the threat of divine punishment and promise of divine reward. I think humans become naturally empathetic and compassionate, once they are able to attain a balanced view of their kinship with others, an understanding that we are all in this together.
Of course there will always be some percentage of sociopaths?no society is ever going to be perfect. Teaching ethics would mean instilling an understanding of the balance between competition and cooperation. I think it is fair to say that competition is overemphasized in many modern societies.
Interestingly, Wranghams self domestication story I just mentioned argues that the genetic change in favour of empathy/cold blooded predation was achieved by tribal groups being close enough to remove any bullies or cheaters from their gene pool by just killing them.
This is still recorded behaviour in tribal societies. Someone makes a nuisance of himself for too long. There is a night of ritualised discussion in the long hut where everyone gets high and muses about the strange visions they are having. Mr X is oddly seen having a nasty accident. The idea hangs heavy in the air.
Next morning, the senior men are on a trip to a claimed sighting of a honey hive up a tall tree. Mr X is teased about being too scared to climb so high, especially where the bees sound so angry. He puts down his spear, starts the climb. Looks down to realise the others are now quietly seated with their spears held easy. Just a certain patient glint in their eyes. Someone aint making it home and it will be one of those things.
A few thousand generations of that would certainly have its impact on the percentage of those not adept at fitting in to the small band structure of prehistoric life.
And it goes also to my theme that a belief in the transcendent is part of the larger framework that is evolutionary pragmatism. The men cant just come out and say we have to murder one of us. The idea has to be sanctified as something that kind of happened because of its own righteous logic. It appeared as foretold in collective mystic ceremony. The idea formed and so Mr Xs fate was sealed. It was probably revealed he was some kind of demon or evil spirit. Everything after that was just pragmatic detail.
See his article .
:100:
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I really liked your idea of outdoor activities. I've been thinking about this for a few days. May I ask you to reveal a little more about how an outdoor philosophy class (or philosophizing) can be linked today? Should it be some kind of practice (borrowed from yoga, for example) or just staying in nature and talking about wisdom, maybe it should be a walk? Maybe it should be a procession (for example, to the sunset) with many stops and conversations? It would be very interesting for me to implement it. What kind of open-air practice is suitable for academic philosophy classes?
Quoting Janus
Sure, I have no real disagreement there. But liberalism says questions of the human good are, for the most part, private matters. Public ethics must be built around liberal dogmas re pluralism and the unknowability of the human good. Hence, if you try to teach ethics, what you get is different parties raging about how it is not the state's place to make any comment on the human good, because this must remain private. Religious people revolt unless their particular theology is on the syllabus, and likewise "secular humanists" decry not only a particularly Christian ethics being taught, but even a Platonism or Aristotelianism that hasn't been sufficiently deflated to fit the presuppositions of "exclusive humanism."
Quoting Janus
That post was written in response to your comment about practical philosophies that were "all about" the acquisition of wealth, hence my response.
Quoting Janus
More desirable for whom? Certainly not for people who want to radically reshape the society, or for those who profit from or enjoy conflict. Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson's Why Nations Fail might rightly get called "Selecting on the Dependent Variable: The Book," but it was well received because the basic phenomena it is analyzing makes sense and has been supported elsewhere. The "case studies" were just window dressing. Their main point is that elites, particularly dictators and their inner circle, often have strong incentives to do things that they know will make their countries poorer, less technologically advanced, and militarily weaker overall.
Why? Because the same reforms that will lead to a better median standard of living, greater political liberty, faster technological progress, a stronger economy, and a stronger military also threaten their control of power and their own impunity. Not only are people like Gaddafi able to control much more wealth than a Musk or a Bill Gates, but they have vastly more power and impunity within their own social sphere. Russia is a fine example of this. Norvell De Atkine's classic study "Why Arabs Lose Wars" is a perfect example of the sorts of incentives at play in the war with Ukraine. You cannot have people who are too competent and charismatic racking up victories because they represent a potential challenge to you (something seen clearly when Putin had to flee his capital as a low-level criminal turned catering chef led his private army on it). But this same sort of issue of "perverse incentives" plays out everywhere, from local government, to corporate boardrooms, to staff lounges, etc.
Man as the political animal cuts both ways. Man might be naturally social and compassionate, but man also has a strong tendency towards overwrought thymotic passions. It seems fairly obvious that man hasn't tended towards a sort of default benevolence. As Gibbon put it: "History is indeed little more than the register of crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind." Many of these disasters stem from meglothymos, the desire for honor, domination, and excellence. The idea that "cooperation is best for comfort and security, so people will naturally tend towards it," not only seems falsified by history, but it's also far too weak of a pitch to motivate people to the sort of heroism needed to maintain civilizations.
Quoting apokrisis
This response just seems to beg the question that good and bad are only just whatever people happen to currently say they are. But prima facie, it is bad for a bear to get its leg mangled in a trap regardless of "what people currently say," just as its bad for a person to drink mercury regardless of if their society currently thinks it's a panacea for all sorts of ills.
This framing does nicely illustrate the way anti-realism collapses any appearance/reality distinction vis-a-vis values though.
Quoting apokrisis
"Optimize" how? This is a value-laden term, just like your earlier invocation of "Darwinian success." Now if there is no end being sought, and whatever is "adaptive" is just whatever just so happens to end up happening, all these value terms are simply equivocations. Indeed, "pragmatism" is itself an equivocation if there is no real end involved.
Quoting Joshs
No, because God is not just contextual becoming, nor is intelligibility a pragmatic construction. God is the infinite plentitude from which difference flows as gift. God is the ground that makes difference and intelligibility possible. As Hart puts it: "All difference is difference in the light of infinite beauty, and so is secured in its truth by that light, rather than left to drift as sheer indeterminacy."
Quoting Astorre
I was mostly thinking about my own experiences with Outdoor Adventure Education (OAE), which I then found reflected in a lot of the literature. The field has long had a heavy focus on "developing character" or even "education in virtue." It generally focuses on progressive challenges for participants, community work, self-governance, opportunities for leadership, and often a focus on environmental ethics. There is an ascetic component as well though. Expeditions are hard work, and on top of this diets are normally quite plain.
The "solo," several hours, a day, or a few days spent alone in the woods, is a fairly common practice (this was a common practice in pre-modern philosophy too). While fasting is less of a focus, it is still not uncommon in OAE for adults, on a choice basis. I also worked for a program where students helped construct a sweat lodge over a week and then had a Native America ceremony led for them inside. Journaling, writing letters to yourself, and group discussions are also common elements one finds in the ancient tradition and modern OAE (although in antiquity they often wrote monologues as other people as an exercise, particularly Biblical characters). I haven't seen as much "close reading" in OAE though. It doesn't tend to leave a ton of time for reading.
So, there is a rough similarity in methods and aims. However, one thing I noticed, that is confirmed in the literature, is that this focus on "character" has been challenged and has eroded over time, while programs like the YMCA and Outward Bound also underwent a "secularization" process that not only removed Christianity from the programs, but also much of the connection to pre-modern thought more generally, and notions of virtue or character in particular. The latter gets replaced by "therapy," which focuses more on coping, comfort, adjustment, and self-acceptance, and the smooth flow of enjoyment for the individual (and the group as a function of promoting individual enjoyment). One way I've seen it framed is the difference between:
"becoming what you are made to be" (older tradition) and;
"becoming what you want to be." (therapeutic)
To quote Gothe on the early stages of this sort of shift: "humanity will win in the long run; I am only afraid that at the same time the world will have turned into one huge hospital where everybody is everybody elses humane nurse"
Or as the Catholic Encyclopedia of Social Theory puts it surprisingly polemically:
That might be stronger than many critics would put it, but you get the idea.
For instance, one paper I read noted how some YMCA programs still call their nighttime discussion questions "vespers" after the canonical Christian prayer of the hours, but Christianity was first removed from these, then notions of virtue, and old questions were replaced with one's that tended to focus on individual self-realization in a pluralist framing.
Philip Rieff's book, The Triumph of the Therapeutic is the classic study of this new "therapeutic" paradigm (Zygmunt Bauman's Liquid Modernity, Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue, Christopher Lasch's The Culture of Narcissism all have some similar elements in terms of broadly influential studies). They mostly focus on culture writ large, or philosophy and related fields, but the books I mentioned in the OP show how this has trickled down into the self-help industry and related areas.
The OAE literature (which is smaller) grapples with this same phenomenon. Character and virtue have been attacked from a post-modern and situationist angle (although the replication crisis in social psychology and charges of ideological bias have seemingly taken some of the wind out of the drive to fully erase character talk). It's also been attacked as not being sufficiently pluralistic, or precisely because "character" presumes that there is any one better way to be. On this topic, I found a number of papers circling around the fear that OAE was simply degenerating into adventure tourism with the loss of this background.
Quoting Astorre
I'm not sure. I would think a camp/farm environment would be fine. I imagine that just having a small group, no distractions from nightlife, networking, etc., and no internet would be a huge boon for engagement. You would get students who self-select for serious study and avoid the tidal forces of digital distractions. But structured time for silence and group labor seem to be time honored/tested practices in both philosophy and outdoor programs. Plus, rustic accommodations and diets are cheap, and having participants work or gardening and repairs can make it cheaper.
Labor wasn't really a thing for the Pagan philosophers, at least in late-antiquity, because of a stigma against menial labor, but the early Christians differed on this dramatically. They thought it was essential for community building, fostering humility, being able to provide aid to the needy, and as a form of meditative practice. Their structured production is what allowed them to take on people from all classes, not just the wealthy, and become sources of aid/food for others in times of need (although it is also what slowly lead to them becoming wealthy and prosperous, which eventually undercut their mission in some places). Ascetic communities, because of their organization, tended to produce a surplus, and this actually led to its own problems because now there was wealth to covet.
Optimise speaks to the idea of finding a middle path between dichotomised limits. Finding balance within a system of dynamics.
You may read it as finding the best path. But I am using it as meaning the most balanced path. The one that emerges out of the confluence of opposed forces.
And this is simply how Nature works. Physics is based on the finality expressed as the principle of least action. The Lagrangian. The greatest distance covered with the least effort.
If it is a laden term, it is laden with physical realism. Finding the trajectory which balances out the competing forces is the end towards which Nature universally tends.
Good and bad is just a world described as a single fixed direction. There is no balancing described and so no flexibility or dynamism. No emergence or evolution. Nothing of interest or complexity involved at all.
As metaphysics, it makes no actual sense of the world as we know it or life as we live it. Folk cant optimise their behaviour in terms of being some balance of being reasonably good and reasonably bad.
Of course, we all end up having to arrive at some notion of that balancing act. Pragmatism rules. But all the talk of good versus bad just frames life as a guilty confusion. A constant battle with our failure to meet some impossible and unliveable standard.
No wonder people need therapy if they have been brought up like that. Never good enough and just having to trust their sins will be forgiven. They will ride the up elevator rather than the down one at the final curtain call. Their life will have been weighed in terms of good and bad and they did just enough to tip the balance. Grudgingly allowed to join the club of the good, the true, the perfect, the beautiful, the divine.
Value-laden thinking is the assumption that reality is monistic - to be weighed against a standard measure. But Nature tells us that reality is always relativistic - some balance that is always complementary. An optimisation of two goods.
Society is good when it is civilised. When it understands that it is good to be both competitive and cooperative in ones behaviour. Optimisation is then being flexibly positioned between those two general extremes in a way that seems most appropriate to some particular occasion.
Good versus bad admits to no flexibility. Thoughtful choice isnt even required of its adherents. It only seems a pragmatically useful idea if you want to run some hierarchy of subjugation. You run the show and you tell people how high they need to jump.
I disagree?since liberalism advocates both democracy and individual rights it does not accord any notion of my rights being any more important than yours. So, essentially the idea consists in saying that you are free to do whatever you want as long as what you do does not infringe on the rights of others.
The "Golden Rule' sums it up. Although I think it would be better formulated as "Do unto others as they would want you to do unto them". Individual flourishing is important and so is community flourishing. If you flourish at the expense of others then you harm the flourishing of the community.
You say liberalism entails or is built upon "the unknowability of the human good". This is false in my view. There is just one human good, and that is flourishing, but we must think of flourishing as having two poles?the individual and the communal.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Here is the passage you were responding to again. Quoting Janus
Note that in that passage I said " if it doesn't degenerate into acquisitive greed". I was talking about practical self-help teachings and practices, not overarching moral philosophies that preach making money for making money's sake. Teaching people about how to make and manage money does not need to involve, should not involve, teaching people that all that is important is making money. All or nothing thinking again!
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
More desirable for the majority?we are speaking about democratic principles after all. That there may be sociopaths is inevitable and lamentable. No society is perfect. people who want to radically reshape societies are ideologues who are usually quite prepared to impose their wills on others, and that is never a good thing.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I think most people naturally social and compassionate, and I acknowledge that there will always be a sociopathic minority who will tend to indulge "overwrought thymotic passions". If they indulge such passions and harm others in the process, they go against the flourishing of the community.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
The end is survival and flourishing. Adaptive evolution does not have a prescribed end, but species that overuse resources will eventually pay the price. The balance is always restored, except in the case of us super-clever and adaptable apes that have been able to live almost everywhere. If the resources in one area are used up, affected animals can move to another area if possible, or if not their population will decline, allowing the resources to build up again. Since we have covered the Earth, if resources are depleted everywhere there will be nowhere left to go.
Yeah, I think this is right, despite the fact that we seem to be beating a dead horse.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Interesting quote. :up:
Is the source, "Encyclopedia of Catholic Social Thought, Social Science, and Social Policy"?
Yes, this is a point Reiff makes in The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith after Freud. I have found that book to be extremely prescient and well written, although somewhat polemical in a way only a book written as far back as 1966 could be, since so much it diagnoses has become hegemonic in academia and sociology in particular.
In particular, his comments about literature dying and culture being dominated by perspectivist psychodramas in the form of video media have been prescient and comments about the need for constant stimulus seem perfectly predictive of the era of the smartphone and "video game addiction" as a serious medical issue.
Just a few quotes:
Of course, that last paragraph applied better in 1966 when the book was written. Since then we have oscillated between this and the "detached reason" of the "effective altruist," crowd who would have us reach utopia through a series of technocratically perfected incentives and nudges paired with ever more effective therapies born of neuroscience, pharmacology, and new digital technologies, and of course ever better data collection and cycles of "continuous improvement." It's not so much a brave new world as a continued oscillation between Enlightenment optimism and Romantic Dionysian pessimism. The former crowd has ascended above morality (while nonetheless still practicing a moralizing ideology, as the ideological tenor of the replication crisis in social psychology and sociology attests), while the other either dispenses with it or "creates" it as an aesthetic project. Hence, it isn't only the liberal theorists who have cut out logos, and the champions of "dispassioned reason" have cut out thymos too.
One of the more prescient parts:
[Quote]
By this time men may have gone too far, beyond the old deception of good and evil, to specialize at last, wittingly, in techniques that areto be called in the present volume, ''therapeutic ," with nothing at stake beyond a manipulatable sense of well-being.8 This is the unreligion of the age, and its master science. What the ignorant have always felt, the knowing now know, after millennial distractions by stratagems that did not heighten the more immediate pleasures. The systematic hunting down of all settled convictions represents the anti-cultural predicate upon which modern personality is being reorganized, now not in the West only but, more slowly, in the non-West. The Orient and Africa are thus being acculturated in a dynamism that has already grown substantial enough to torment its progenitors with nightmares of revenge for having so unsettled the world...
Our cultural revolution does not aim, like its predecessors, at victory tor some rival commitment, but rather at a way of using all commitments, which amounts to loyalty toward none. By psychologizing about themselves interminably, Western men are learning to use their internality against the primacy of any particular organization of personality. If this re-structuring of the Western imagination succeeds in establishing itself, complete with institutional regimens, then human autonomy from the compulsions of culture may follow the freedoms already won from the compulsions... Psychological man, in his independence from all gods, can feel free to use all god-terms; I imagine he will be a hedger against his own bets, a user of any faith that lends to therapeutic use...
...I expect that modern society will mount psychodramas far more frequently than its ancestors mounted miracle plays, with patient-analysts acting out their inner lives, after which they could extemporize the final act as interpretation. We shall even institutionalize in the hospital-theater the Verfremdungseffekt, with the therapeutic triumphantly enacting his own discovered will.
The wisdom of the next social order, as I imagine it, would not reside in right doctrine, administered by the right men, who must be found, but rather in doctrines amounting to permission for each man to live an experimental life. Thus, once again, culture will give back what it has taken away. All governments will be just, so long as they secure that consoling plenitude of option in which modern satisfaction really consists. In this way the emergent culture could drive the value problem clean out of the social system and, limiting it to a form of philosophical entertainment in lieu of edifying preachment, could successfully conclude the exercise for which politics is the name. Problems of democracy need no longer prove so difficult as they have been. Psychological man is likely to be indifferent to the ancient question of legitimate authority, of sharing in government, so long as the powers that be preserve social order and manage an economy economy of abundance...
Culture as therapy becomes realizable in part because of the increasing automaticity of the productive system.But without the discipline ot work, a vast re-ritualization of social life will probably occur, to contain aggression in a steady state and maintain necessary levels of attention to activity.The rules of health indicate activity; psychological man can exploit older cultural precepts, ritual struggle no less than play therapy, in order to maintain the dynamism of his culture.Of course, the newest Adam cannot be expected to limit himself to the use of old constraints.If ''immoral" materials, rejected under earlier cultural criteria, are therapeutically effective, enhancing somebodys sense of well-being, then they are useful. The end goal is to keep going. Americans, as JF. Scott Fitzgerald concluded, believe in the green light.
[/quote]
Of course it's dour, but in some ways maybe a bit optimistic. "Plenitude" probably isn't enough, but "growth in plentitude." That seems to have run out though.
See also The Strange Persistence of Guilt Wilfred McClay, Hedgehog Review.
Thank you for your response, I am really interested in the idea of outdoor practices. What is particularly interesting is the lack of a methodology for such activities in the field of academic philosophy. It seems that a true philosopher should reject all physical and practical aspects, and focus solely on rational reasoning. However, where better than in harmony with nature to experience one's own physicality and connection to the world and others?
Regarding your first part of the response, about Gaddafi and Putin, I believe these topics were discussed in another thread. Feel free to respond there, you would greatly add to the discussion. By the way, a little bit about "that" topic. The impetus for its start for me was that I noticed that on this forum, philosophers are ready to argue about the nature of the mog, the universe or understanding, but when it comes to liberalism - here the majority of the precondition - "liberalism is holy". Further judgments are built from these considerations. What then is liberalism as not an ordinary belief? So I decided to find out, and that's how the topic came about.
Exactly. Flourishing is a balance of two imperatives that at first blush seem antithetical. But arranged in the architecture of a hierarchy, we can see the natural logic. A social system seeking to maximise its growth potential and adaptive flexibility must be "good" at creating suitably motivated individuals within a fairly constraining community. What is being optimised is a balance between local independence and global dependence. Each in themselves is the opposite of the other. But each also provides what the other one is missing.
The ideal situation is where both sides of the bargain feel the deal being struck is fair. A win-win. I get to do anything I can imagine wanting to do ... to the degree that I can also rely on everyone else being there to bail me out when I stuff up. And everyone else says I'm free to stuff up as much as I like, but there is a limit to the bail-out that the community is willing to provide. In the long run, my free action has to be judged as being a positive contribution to the community.
Quoting Janus
And in biology, death and decay are part of the cycle. Or part of the great re-cycling. :grin:
Nature has to have a way to break down its own adaptive structure as it has a habit of becoming too optimised, too adapted.
You couldn't have an efficient process of evolution unless bodies got routinely destroyed to make way for the fresh contest of a new generation of gene recombination. The big step from simple single cell life based on cloning and gene exchange even across species was the ability to cleanly separate an immortal germline from the mortal body.
And even at the level of ecosystems, the old eventually must give way to the new. You have the canonical life-cycle that is immaturity, maturity and senescence.
To be young is to be growing so fast and furiously that many mistakes get made, but also many mistakes are recoverable. Growth papers over the accidents and starts to establish the smart habits that define the mature organism. But individual organisms and even whole species and ecosystems can become over-adapted to a way of life they have co-created with their environment. Senescence becomes the stage of life where the organism/ecosystem has become so wedded to predictable habits that they are both super-efficient but also fatally brittle.
A mature forest is a vast maze of stable relations that recycles itself so efficiently that it produces its own soil. It even makes its own rain. It is the opposite of wasteful and has arranged the world exactly to its wants. Even lightning strikes and forest fires are incorporated into its collective genetic scheme its global identity.
But then there are always perturbations larger than its own adaptive time frame. A volcano erupts and temperatures drop. Or a land bridge emerges and new kinds of animals or pests arrive. The forest might be flourishing and supremely optimised. But in achieving this high state of efficiency and purpose, it then lacks the furious growth and wild experiment that is natural to youth. Suddenly it is in a world it no longer knows and has lost the capacity to learn about.
But nature rolls on. A life runs its course, always aiming for complete mastery over the world that it finds. And it all works until it suddenly doesn't. The carcass is recycled and the game of life is renewed.
I like this view as it says each stage of life is optimised in its own obvious way. We are immature and that is itself already an optimal balance between clumsy mistakes and necessary life lessons. We are mature, which sounds really good, but now also a mix of mistakes and lessons. It is only the proportion of the two that should have progressed in some sensible fashion. We should be highly effective but also able to pick ourselves up off the floor.
Then senescence isn't actually failure as yet. It is becoming so well rooted and wise in the ways of a world we have helped construct that we are highly efficient and don't need to sweat the small stuff anymore. However, that complete adaptation to some knowable horizon can only extend so far into the future. And something will always come over the horizon to knock us down.
At the ecosystems level, it really is left to chance vagaries at the geological level of weather, plate tectonics and crashing asteroids. But at the level of individual members of species, nature throws in some planned obsolescence too. Hearts, teeth and hormones and other things don't have to be built to last forever. Especially if the vagaries of disease, famine and accident are likely to take you out of the game anyway.
Nope. You keep turning away from a live discussion in order to flog the same old strawman.
:fire:
I think that identifies a very common thread in modern culture, but I think it oversells its reach. Surely, plenty of people do think they have reached a sort of "radical innocence," where as Yeats put it: "its own sweet will is Heaven's will." This seems to be the case in various hedonistic pop culture subcultures, and there is also the harsher example of the Manosphere I mentioned in the OP. There is the promise of edenic hedonist polyamory in various social scenes, enhanced by a growing cornicopia of pharmacological innovations, or else the worship of sheer power and self-assertion one finds in others (and sometimes the two are mixed together in various subcultures). It seems to me that is largely the upper class, and what remains of the "striving middle class" that suffers from this residue of guilt, probably because their literature (a dying art) sells hedonism and the pursuit of power as a sort of specifically moral act that must still somehow be justified, whereas the popular culture versions just celebrate themselves reflexively (showing there was never much of a gap between Nietzsche's "master morality" and his "last men.")
So, I can certainly see the phenomena the article speaks to, and it is very potent, but it also seems more absent in some wide areas.
It makes a great point:
Not "nearly as powerful," I would say. The appetites of logos are more easily crowded out and disordered by epithumia and thymos (more easily disordered because they demand to rule and order the lower appetites) but they are also stronger. From monks renouncing status, wealth, and sex, to martyrs, to revolutionaries, etc., the appetites of logos routinely show themselves to be capable of wholly overwhelming the desires for physical comfort, or even life itself, and those for honor and regard.
Liberalism could arguably defend itself in terms of giving individual man, and civilization collectively, a better structure for embracing these appetites than any past system through its open-endedness and promotion of technologies of information and discourse (as well as education). But, since it tends to make such appetites wholly privatized, skirting them in education and governance, as well as ethics and political theory, it can make no such claim. Instead, merit has to be banished from political theory because it cannot be justified without an ordering telos. We can have "meritocracy" as a sort of procedural sorting, but never merit. Perhaps that's one source of guilt. Those most invested in gaming the "meritocratic" system are the one's most aware of how it is more of a procedural game than anything else, designed to ruthlessly sort winners from losers not based on any criteria of virtue, but with an eye to procedural efficiency.
Which liberal theorists did you have in mind here? I was thinking of Rawls, Fukuyama, Nozick, or further back Mill, Locke, Hobbes. They tend to ground politics in contractual, procedural terms. For Rawls, a procedural justice must be elevated above the good because the human good is irreducibly plural and private. A person might, for instance, find the pinnacle of the human good in meticulously counting the blades of grass in a field and there would be no reason not to affirm this (Rawls' example).
There is a very strange interlude in Fukuyama's latest book, a defense of liberalism, where he attacks this element of liberal theory with an example. There is the layabout wealthy young man who doesn't work, lives off his parents, is completely unengaged with politics, and spends his time consuming video games, drugs, alcohol, pornography, and other forms of digital media while remaining wholly self-interested. The contrast case is a dutiful young women from a poor family who supports her sick mother while pursuing an education, and is as engaged in politics as she can be. Fukuyama claims that we can condemn the former and praise the latter because the two don't come down to racial, sexual, ethnic, or religious identity. However, it's totally unclear if he has actually left himself any grounds for doing this in his liberalism. Indeed, he constantly refers any "ultimate question" about human flourishing to the Thirty Years War, as if answering these in any concrete form can only participate apocalyptic violence.
So why are stable relationships better than pornography or prostitution? Why is one supposed to help one's parents rather than pursue one's dreams (even if those dreams are largely hedonistic)? In virtue of what is one deserving of merit and the other blame?
I've read all of Fukuyama's books so I can say pretty safely that his only option is to justify his ideal case with an appeal to what "makes society work best," which will of course, in his terms, be an appeal to greater consumption, more safety, and the "reasonableness" of prioritizing epithumia.
I think the idea that our only problem is that some sociopathic bad apples spoil the batch re liberalism is over optimistic. Certainly, it has been argued though. But even if this was so, it would suggest that liberalism has a profound tendency to elevate the sociopathic few to leadership positions across society, from corporate board rooms to senior government posts and many places in-between.
Whereas, I would say that it's hardly surprising that an elite who was raised on the axioms of moral anti-realism, the "(contained) greed is good" of Ayn Rand and much contemporary economic theory, a relentless focus on success (climbing the "meritocratic ladder"), and power and the satisfaction of current appetites as freedom turn out to be a recalcitrant leadership class when they come of age.
Quoting Astorre
Well, this is certainly not the view that dominates in pre-modern philosophy, in either the West or the East. Eastern philosophy has a heavy focus on praxis and asceticism, as did the major schools of Western pagan philosophy, and certainly Christian philosophy as well. The idea that anyone can just slip into a state of pure, dispassioned rationality without any cultivation of virtue is an Enlightenment idea. Whereas, if the nous is clouded and most men suffer from disordered appetites, serious praxis must be undertaken, and praxis is central to the intellectual virtues.
Pierre Hadot's stuff is pretty good on the huge gap between ancient (mostly Pagan) "philosophy as a way of life," where the paradigmatic philosopher is a sage and holy man, and the Enlightenment ideal of sheer procedural reason.
Quoting Astorre
Right, and with outdoor education, it's also recognized as a good environment for avoiding distraction and cultivating virtue and character. People are outside their comfort zones, which allows for progressive challenges, and there is also much more immediate, natural feedback when one acts unwisely. It also helps with community because the small group cannot turn outwards, while the basic nature of the skills being practiced tend to mean that everyone can contribute meaningfully to collective success.
There are large differences between the practices but they share some core similarities that are interesting.
Quoting Astorre
Well, just because liberalism is founded on skepticism and preaches a certain sort of quarantined pluralism doesn't mean it isn't an evangelical ideology, or any different from Marxism in that respect. From the beginning it spread itself through violence. During the French Revolution, the clergy were seen as a threat, due to being an outside source of moral authority and wellspring of an alternative sort of philosophy. When the guillotine proved inadequate for the pace required for massacring them, they turned to constructing sinkable barges so boatloads could be drown together at once. The activities of the Infernal Columns in the Vendee served a similar "liberating" raison d'être.
More recently, from the opening of Japan to US trace at gun point, to Cold War coups, to the post-Cold War era of unchallenged neoliberal hegemony that has seen interventions by liberal states across the globe, that order hasn't shied away from using coercion or even violence to spread its system. This isn't inconsistent with early liberal theory. Both Locke and Mill adopt a similar position that it might be acceptable to enslave backwards people to "free them from indolence" and so lead them to economic prosperity (a key pillar of freedom in liberalism). There is likewise also a long tradition of justifying the use of coercion to dissolve cultural institutions and norms that cut against the grain of liberal pluralism, or to safely quarantine them.
For instance, what makes the religious right so objectionable to progressive liberals is not that they are religious, which is of course a perfectly fine private choice, but that they bring their religiously informed notions of politics into the public sphere. "Religious freedom" is more ideally "the freedom for religion to become publicly irrelevant." But conservative liberals are not actually all that different here with how they defend the "free market" (even as capitalism dissolves all the cultural institutions they want to conserve; if anything, conservative liberalism is even more obviously self-undermining).
Of course, progressive liberalism faces the same sorts of contradictions in that the dissolution of norms and customs, the marketization of all facets of human life, the procedural meritocracy, etc. all tend to promote the interests of the exceptional individual over the median citizen (and indeed, they were originally advocated for on just these grounds by Mill, Nietzsche, etc.). Norms of constraint and duty are, almost by definition, most binding on those with the wealth, talents, and power to not be otherwise bound by other forms of constraint.
Deneen's "Why Liberalism Failed" is quite good on these paradoxes. Or for a more Continental approach, Byung Chul Han's "The Agony of Eros" and "The Burnout Society."
Good write-up. I think I agree with the core of your diagnosis, though I have not read your sources. I'm sadly too ahistorical in my philosophical practice. I want to read MacIntyre soon.
In either case, inspired by your observations, I will spin for a while. The following might be a bit "out-there" but I find it to be an interesting angle.
A possible part of the story is that many take what I would call a pornographic stance towards representations of wisdom. Here, I use the term "pornographic" not in the usual, sexual sense, but rather in a generic sense that C. Thi Nguyen & Bekka Williams (2020) define as using representations of X for the sake of immediate gratification, freed from its usual costs and consequences.
Using philosophy as a form of "wisdom porn" in this sense, people gratify themselves without investing the time and effort to deeply understand the content and its context. For example, one might use bite-sized quotes from great thinkers to feel the immediate rush of sophistication without much care for what the quotes are really about.
A problem with this kind of engagement is that it risks shaping how one engages with philosophy. To gratify oneselfto feed the fantasy of being, for instance, an "alpha male"one might avoid what is true and good, rather instrumentalizing representations of wisdom that feed this desire. If one's engagement is about gratifying a fantasy, then one has a bad incentive to fetishize the parts of philosophy that gratify instead of engaging with the parts that are worthy.
However, I'm not sure it is necessarily always bad to engage with wisdom porn. It might be a gateway to more genuine forms of engagement. One might learn important things as a side-effect. The question is, if one removed the immediate gratification, facing the difficulties of philosophy, would one still engage?
References:
Nguyen, C. T., & Williams, B. (2020). Moral outrage porn.Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, 18(2).
Thank you; I really, really like that idea. I have read some of Nguyen's stuff before and liked it; thanks for reminding me about him. If anyone is interested, here is the article.
I am not sure if you're familiar with Byung Chul Han, but he makes a somewhat similar (although also in other ways quite different)
For Han pornographization describes a trend in late-modern culture whereby a loss of distance, eroticism (the ancient and medieval view of knowledge as both a sort of ecstasis and transformation a "knowing by becoming"), and any negativity in favor of immediacy (and immediate gratification), the subsumption of the other into the self through consumption, and transparency.
In the Agony of Eros, the main theme is about the loss of the Other, leading to everything becoming a form of consumption in "the Inferno of the Same." There is an excess of visibility, whereby everything is stripped bare and flattened into surfaces without depth. I cannot help but see some similarity between this and forms of "anti-metaphysics."
Anyhow, they're similar framings in seeing a loss of depth and claims on us. Han's view is more expansive, although less detailed.
Quoting GazingGecko
Yes, I think that's the most obvious example. But I think this would also apply in some ways to the distanced, ironic approach to philosophy, as well. It's a way to engage that makes no claims on a person. This might be particularly true when it comes to engagement with those areas of philosophy that claim that praxis is essential, although I can see it applying more generally. The same might be said of the tendency to "retreat" into the analytic stance so as to ascend above good and evil.
That's difficult of course, because some would probably argue that ironic detachment is the height of wisdom.
It reminds me a bit of what David Foster Wallace said about irony:
Quoting GazingGecko
Right, the problem might not be such engagement in itself, but it becoming more the sole mode of engagement.
In terms of the more strenuous praxis of much Eastern thought, the Pagan traditions as originally practiced, Sufism, traditional Christianity, etc. there is also a similar phenomenon where one frequently sees contemplation and meditation (which are of course situated in a way of life and long-term cultivation) compared as almost equivalent with short-term experimentation with psychedelic drugs. Perhaps this comes from the undue focus on "peak experiences" in James and others (as William Harmless points out, many of the most famous Western mystics report no such experiences, or make them ancillary, or report experiences extremely unlike short term intoxication, such as the prophet Ezekiel being immobilized for months on end). I think this is an unhelpful conflation, but it also points to a focus on the short term and consumable, and as a refutation of the need for praxis it's a bit tragic. (Mark Vernon's commentary on the Divine Comedy, which I quite liked overall, was guilty of this repeatedly for instance).
I came away with quite a different reading. For example....
So better and worse cash out here as creative vs slavish. One kind of system seeks the win-win of pragmatic realism, the other the lose-lose of slavish autocracy. And in the real world of public record, we can discern a difference in the degree of resilience and self-organisation that marks societies set up in these contrasting ways.
Is it the kind of society that is collectively adapting itself on the fly?
Interesting approach. Developing this logic, it turns out that when we read philosophical works, we are sort of watching pornography: we are watching how someone, using various tools, penetrates all the cracks of other philosophers' ideas about reality. In this case, is independent philosophizing onanism or is it sex?And our collective philosophizing on the forum? Is it nothing other than an intellectual orgy?
I apologize if I hurt anyone's feelings with such metaphors, but it turned out funny. It all reminded me of Plato's "Feast" where something like a philosophical "erotic symposium" takes place, where the theme of Eros unfolds from the physical to the divine, from sexual desire to the pursuit of truth and beauty.
Right, but Fukuyama's Hegel is very much Kojeve's deflated, liberal Hegel. Actually, I'd argue that Fukuyama fundamentally misunderstands Hegel in seeing the Last Man problem he diagnoses so presciently as a sort of "paradox at the end of history," instead of what it rightly should be in Hegel's theory, a contradiction that will power a move to a new stage in history, a new challenge that must be sublated by liberalism or else destroy it. I have written on this at length in the past.
Hegel has a very classical idea of freedom as "the self-determining capacity to actualize (and communicate) the Good." He is at odds with the dominant modern view (which dominates both liberalism and the post-modernism it spawned), which defines freedom primarily in terms of power and potency (the ability to "choose anything"), instead of actuality (this itself being a shift that comes from late-medieval nominalism, fideism, and volanturism, which is then entrenched during the Reformation; it's a theology that still groundsalthough as an unexamined remnantmuch athiest philosophy). At the opening of the Philosophy of Right Hegel explicitly challenges this vision of freedom as bottoming out in arbitrariness, and so contradiction (since arbitrariness is the opposite of freedom).
Hegel sees human freedom progressing through several contradictions it must sublate to become freedom. For example, he can allow that authenticity is an important part of freedom, but only if it is essentially oriented towards a telos and grounded in reflexive freedom, oriented towards a Good, as opposed to being a sort of groundless procedural freedom. This is very different from a theory grounded in the abstract "choosing agent" of Kantian liberalism. The highest stage of freedom involves a sort of moral freedom, where a civilization's institutions come to positively objectify a morality it knows as good (the "free will willing itself," of PR).
Suffice to say, I don't see this in Fukuyama. He has adopted the "Hegel made safe for liberalism (and empiricism)" of 20th century commentators, and in doing so lost some of Hegel's most important insights. When Fukuyama makes a rare move to discuss virtue and vice it seems that virtue is largely "what benefits the health of the liberal state," and this is desirable precisely in that the liberal state promotes "freedom" of the modern liberal variety.
But of course, the promotion of virtue in this context is actually a limit on freedom if freedom is defined in the liberal fashion, since it makes us "less free" to be a "good time Charlie" or bon vivant. Fukuyama elevates liberal virtue to the life of action/honor/service (thymotic life) but not to the life of logos (which remains instrumentalized). But if it is the rational appetites that allow us to transcend current beliefs and desires, and so our own finitude (the transcendent function of logos in the classical tradition) then one can not have true rational freedom and self-determination without logos leading (which is a view Hegel ultimately keeps fairly close to, but his liberal commentators dispense with).
This can be seen in his latest book, Liberalism and Its Discontents, where epithumia and thymos come into view, but never logos. Hegel, by contrast, has logos on top, as in reality, the engine of history. The need for people to see their society as "truly best," and not only to have this opinion, but to know it, is essential.
That, and he also adopts one of the regrettable elements of Hegel, in the idea of a providential unfolding of teleology, the march of man towards an Earthly Paradise in history. It's this that made his "End of History" thesis overstep, and he has been pairing it back ever since, and this is also what makes him tend towards "Whig history" and a justification of liberalism in rhetorically weak terms focused on adaptation and natural selection. But I think Dante and Solovyov see clearer here. Man's freedom is such that we are not on an inevitable march to utopia, and indeed Hegel's project only makes sense in the end because the Absolute as an end, while encompassing and suffusing history, is not reducible to it nor contained in it. History is ordered to something higher, giving it a telos, but also allowing for real failure.
Freedom is the power to act. Constraint is the collective rational good. And thus as I have argued page after page, society arises out of the algorithm that is to strike the fruitful balance that is to be found between local competition and global cooperation. Foster the power of independent choice. But then place that in a context where it is being shaped by a communal telos. One knows whether one is fitting in or striking out as the distinction becomes very clear in ones mind. To compete or to cooperate becomes a choice one has to own and so a power to spend wisely.
Fukuyama is good at giving a structuralist account of how every society in history has had a similar set of ingredients, but balanced somewhat differently due to historical and geographic circumstance. And through examining that evolutionary variety, a general systematic trend can be observed.
If he doesnt seem a strict Hegelian, it is only probably because Hegel serves as a useful peg to hang his structuralism on. Being a Hegelian in the world of Anglo history departments is instantly controversial. Or it was back when that is how he became overnight famous just for a book title.
Yes, the problem is that the power elites and the financial elites tend to make their own rules, the comfortable-enough turn a complacent or blind eye, and even the disadvantaged mostly don't seem to see the big picture well enough not to support the right of the exploiters to exploit at will.
Nice elaboration on the cycle of life. No one wants to die or to lose those close companions of course, but unfortunately there are still many who cannot face the hard reality, and cling to the hope of eternal life or personal salvation in some form or other. Not that I'm advocating the abolition of organized religion, but as psychologically necessary as it might be to many, it does seem to be overall a detriment to human flourishing in general.
Quoting apokrisis
It's a dialectical synthesis, not a reduction.
Quoting apokrisis
What communal telos? One knows if one is corresponding to what is "said to be good by others," yet this is not the same thing as knowledge of what is truly best. It would be a strange answer to say that Socrates deserves to be killed because justice is just the will of the many, as expressed as a system of outputs, for instance.
Quoting apokrisis
First, how is this not a monadic view of freedom?
And that's precisely the idea I was arguing against (and which Hegel takes on). Freedom as sheer power collapses into contradiction. If such "freedom" isn't aimed at any prior end then it is sheer arbitrariness, but sheer arbitrariness is the opposite of freedom. The muscle spasms is not the paradigm of free action.
Moreover, to do or think anything determinant is to have made a choice that rules out other choices (any determinacy and so any choice is a move away from sheer power/potency). Hence, any choice at all represents a limit of absolute freedom, a reduction in freedom. Yet the idea that choice is a limit on freedom is contradictory, hence freedom collapses into its opposite.
But the next level of the dialectical (for Hegel at least) isn't "the community," it is a reflexive freedom, freedom over the self and the positive movement towards determinacy as an end. Yet such a freedom will also turn out to be arbitrary if it has arbitrary ends. Hence, freedom as the self-determining capacity to actualize the good must already have an end or nature in view (although we haven't attained it at this stage).
Modern Hegelians (e.g. Honneth) sometimes squeeze authenticity in here, since it's obvious that people with a great deal of self-control and self-discipline sometimes possess this in a way that is bent back against itself.
Then we get social freedom because the individual possessing of reflexive freedom, still having no clear end, can obviously move to deprive others of their liberties. There is at least the potential for the Hobbesian struggle of "all against all." Moreover, man as the "political animal" in unfree to fulfill his political nature without real communion.
However, something like A Brave New World is a great example of how social freedom is of itself inadequate. Institutions objectify morality, but they can do so in a stunted form. Even if citizens social welfare functions align, they and their society can fail to be fully virtuous, and so fully self-determining.
This progression can be described in evolutionary or systems terms, but not reduced to them. If it is reduced to them, we risk a slide to a sort of speculative providential teleology that isn't empirically justified, or a slide towards the arbitrariness of a values anti-realism.
Of course, ceteris paribus, the virtues are good for survival. Being prerequisites for true self-determination, they are also prerequisites for an organic whole that is (relatively) less and less dependent on "good fortune." But survival isn't the measure of virtue. A mountain may last aeons, but it isn't virtuous or self-determining, nor even much of a true whole.
The later moments in the dialectical sublate the earlier ones, they do not refute them. As Hegel puts it in the preface to PhS, "the truth is the whole." The flower does not refute the bud. The problem for Hegel though is that his providential teleology seems like wishful thinking. It's Hegel's naturalism and his desire to domesticate the divine by wrapping it in the immanence of history that leads to the good deflating into a monadic attractor.
Quoting apokrisis
I agree. Arguably, he slips into selecting on the dependent variable, but to be honest that problem is endemic to the type of work he does. His two volume opus on state development is magisterial. I am just not sold on his defense of liberalism as an ideal political theory. His response to Deneen, Taylor, MacIntyre is particularly weak. He acknowledges they have strong points and then just defaults to "if you don't like liberalism you can leave," a funny comment from a defender of a globally hegemonic ideology that insists on inserting itself into every culture, by coercion or force if need be.
Theres a difference between two becoming one and and a dichotomy becoming stabilised as a pair of complementary actions - the asymmetry that can become fixed as it is moved apart in scale to become a structure of relations sandwiched by its local and global horizons.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
You might find is strange. An anthologist like Richard Wrangham instead accounts for the evolutionary value of such behaviour in terms of the self-domestication of humans - the step that actually allowed humans to become tribal creatures. Both generally empathetic and coldly predatory. Strong in forming in-groups as also strong in identifying out-groups.
You are simply applying this ingrained human principle. Social science explains why it was useful for there even being someone like a Socrates in the first place to prize or murder.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
This is getting desperate. Freedom and constraint are being accounted for in terms of each other. They are a unity of opposites. You might then call that one thing, but it is the one thing of an irreducibly triadic hierarchical relation. So not monadic and not dyadic but triadic.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
And away you go. Not listening to a thing I say.
The arbitrariness or contingency is precisely why the system can also consist of its other that is its constraint or necessity. There is the counterfactuality of a contrast taken to its limiting extremes. Which is how meaningful states of balance can arise as a spectrum of concrete possibility inbetween.
A muscle spasm is the kind of paradigmatically locally free and unconstrained action which can now make sense of the other thing which is a muscle contracting under the global constraint of a volitional intent. It is a local power that can be collectively harnessed.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Only in your confused telling. The idea of freedom can only exist to the degree that its other - a context of constraint - also exists.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
But here you are talking about freedom as it would be understood by the suitably socialised individual. One that has internalised the constraints of their community and culture, so is equipped to trade off their personal agenda against that larger collective agenda.
All you are doing is describing the way that western people were being taught to socially construct their habits of conduct under a particular axial religion and feudal economic structure. The monkish formula of a personal relationship to God which meant an individual had to act with the goal of achieving a Platonic level notion of what was good, true, beautiful and divine.
You have been socially constructed to think a certain way and you cant escape that training, no matter how often that causes your rationalisations to collapse into self-contradicting confusions.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Another argument that is just stupid. Could even a chimp be virtuous? But isnt a chimp somewhat self-determining?
If you want to argue, at least find interesting edge cases that might be designed to get at the issues in hand. Make some kind of effort to not waste both our time.
To whom does the socially constructed notion of virtue apply except to those who have been socially constructed under that cultural paradigm.
When the missionary lands on the Polynesian beach, Bible and rosary clutched in hand, what is his proper judgement of the savages he confronts - unsaved souls in perhaps some natural state of disgrace. What is his most virtuous course of action when confronted by some other set of people with its own adapted lifestyle - its own socially constructed way of life that seems to have functioned pretty well even in the absence of the Catholic Church and its medieval rehash of Ancient Greek philosophy.
Lets put your arguments out in the reality of the wider world as see how they fare.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yep. Even an Aristotle or Peirce becomes problematic once they try to connect the inherent force of their logic to the socially-constructed paradigms they are meant to also be upholding.
Rationality is telling them one thing - it points towards the structural order of a self-organising nature. And custom is telling them they still need to bend their account back towards being near enough socially-acceptable.
They need to be doing this as if they really mean it too. Otherwise Socrates! Or the fate suffered by the many Enlightenment rationalists that the Inquisition existed to suppress.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
So Fukuyama likewise follows the logic of his own argument until he hits that point where he encounters the dominant socially-constructed paradigm of his day. He goes a little weak in the knees. He makes the sacrifice he rather regrets which is to acclaim the Pax Americana as the End of History.
Who needs to read the books once you have already read the headline?
But then also, when you speak of a globally hegemonic ideology that insists on inserting itself into every culture, by coercion or force if need be, isnt that more true of the Catholics, Mormons and Scientologists of this world?
As a faith, liberalism seems far more wishy-washy and porous in nature. We did have the UN and various international bills of rights and courts of war crimes. A legalistic structure for embedding a liberal philosophy. But that hasnt really stuck. History didnt in fact end at that high water mark.
This is a very astute observation, which reminds me it is at the back of my mind, though I was not coherently aware of what's happening with the use of philosophy as a personal self-help advise. So, putting it together like your post is helpful.
Repurposing is a very common human activity, including repurposing the philosophical writings for personal gain. Thankfully, forums like this know the difference and I haven't seen an argument advocating for life-hacks as the purpose of philosophy.
The School of Philosophy, as the classics had viewed philosophy, is not harmed insofar as the teachings remain the scholars domain and philosophical procedures such as hermeneutics, are in place -- scholars who assiduously read and translated some of the most difficult writings were a gift.
An 1881 Fragment of Nietzsche's:
Ive come to the thread late as Ive been enjoying a vacation.
I agree with the OP, I would point out though that in the past, when these practices were originally developed the world was a very different place. Indeed it is very difficult to even come close to imagining what it was like. Things like time (ones time), ones needs (for sustenance), the simplicity of ones beliefs, the influence of societal leaders over ones everyday life, the value of your life, the size of ones societal group. The currency of such things was very different. As such we should also shine a light on our own currencies and how common practices (between the past and now) become applied differently.
In those days, it was cheap to spend your whole life, or a significant part of it in a monastery, or labouring on one acre of land, to feed a handful of people. Knowledge was held by priests, or their equivalent. Resources of every type were plentiful, with little demand for them. The deep identification with the simple objects and activities which shaped our lives was unshakable. Myths would develop around everyday objects and events. Magic was everywhere.
Hilary Mantel frames our knowledge of,(more recent) history;
History is not in the past-its in the method we have evolved of organising our ignorance of the past. Its the record of whats on the record. Its the positions taken when we stop the dance to note them down. Its whats left in the sieve when the centuries have run through it. Its the multiplication of the evidence of fallible and biased witnesses, combined with incomplete accounts of actions not fully understood by the people who performed them.
https://downloads.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2017/reith_2017_hilary_mantel_lecture1.pdf
I neednt contrast this past with the present, as we know the present so well.
I knew a Guru who advised against meditation because the modern world is such a cocophony of noise and stimulation that it was more likely to result in mental issues, than in Samadhi. He followed the route of puja, ceremonial worship as an alternative, which was equally high in stimulation.
I would also say that our civilisation is in a stage of collapse, or imminent collapse. The decadence crumbling into moral and economic decline. Crime and dishonesty increasing. Most people have some sort of trauma, which is a serious blockage to self development in most people who have suffered it.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
No. I see the connection though. The ideas sound very interesting. I'll definitely give the Agony of Eros a read in the near future.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I find this connection striking. For instance, hedonism might become "common-sense" because one struggles to comprehend something of value outside one's own experience. Ethics is obviously just personal preference, if it is anything at all. It captures the vast spread of contemporary cynicism and scientism well. Was it something in this direction you had in mind with "anti-metaphysics?"
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes, good points. I would not take all of the ironic approach to be pornographic, but that the pornographic stance might be quite common in that approach. The quote by David Foster Wallace is well-chosen for this point. There can certainly be something gratifying in cynicism.
Still, instrumentalization extends beyond the pornographic stance. Maybe the analytic and ironic can avoid the pornographic stance, yet still often instrumentalize in a problematic manner. There is clearly more to the story than the pornographic stance.
I suspect the analytic stance is less pornographic than the ironic, at least in general. Yet, while introspecting, I can certainly see the allure even in the analytic. Only focusing on a narrow problem inside a big problem, breaking it down into conditionals and treating important questions like sterile puzzles has a strange comfort.
Modern self-help products are a for-profit genre. So already from this perspective, what is being sold by the self-help genre has to be tailored in such a way that it will make it marketable, appealing to prospective consumers.
This means that there has to be an intense focus on the idividual and what he wants (or subversively, what he should want, so as to benefit the author of self-help).
Further, in much of self-help, the underlying assumptions, made both by authors as well as consumers go like this:
[i]It's a dog-eat-dog world.
Might makes right.[/i]
Of course, it's mostly considered too crude to actually say these things out loud, so they are mostly just implied; although there are self-help books that are direct like this.
The "help" offered is in line with those assumptions, less or more obviously, thus the egoic and managerial focus of self-help products.
It's the only way that plebeians are able to conceive of philosophy. And plebeian mentality is the prevalent type of mentality nowadays, even in many people with advanced degrees and lots of money.
Why do you think Nietzsche is the most popular philosopher? Because he seems the easiest one to read, and people love his combative tone.
I think insufficiently so. In the past, philosophy typically used to be reserved for the leisurely elites who didn't have to worry about paying bills, so they were able to concern themselves with matters of truth in the abstract without this having adverse effects for them. I think it should be kept that way. Because people who have to work for a living, often to the point of exhaustion, simply cannot afford to invest in activities that could in any way hamper their ability to function in a brutally competitive market (such as by inducing self-criticism or self-doubt, as reading philosophy can easily do in people).
Hence to allure of koans. Thinking about a koan makes one's mind stop, which is oddly satisfying.
Of course, but actually going through with one's personal salvation project used to be reserved for the select few, certainly it wasn't meant for everyone.
One problem with that is that the watered down versions are being promoted as the real thing, and can eventually even replace it. This can lead to a lot of wasted time, wasted life opportunities, a lot of interpersonal strife.
Buddhism is a good example for this.
These things become more relevant and glaring once you look at them in the context of the particular religion/spirituality where they take place.
Again, Buddhism is a good example. It's gotten to the point where one has to defend the Pali Canon (the foundational text of Buddhism) to people who claim to be Buddhists. From an insider's perspective, a total insanity is going on. From an outsider's perspective, it probably doesn't matter.
Quoting Janus
Of course. However, the striving for harmony usually involved a lot of torture and killing in the past, and still involves a lof of strife.
Indeed.
But if this is so, how do you propose to teach it, and why??
It would be like being a successful stock broker but revealing your business secrets to others. You couldn't be successful for long afterwards.
I suspect that marketing something as an "absolute" is first and foremost a power move, an effort to exert control over others. If one can control what other people consider real and relevant, one can control others.
To be free of the primary "cares" of the world involves renunciation, and not many are capable of, or want to do, that. Even with renunciation there is no guarantee of salvation or liberation. The whole desire for, and belief in, salvation could well be just a fear-based wishful delusion.
Quoting baker
What you say assumes what is at issuethat there really is is a "real thing" to be found.
Quoting baker
Right, there is no perfect harmony. And what portion of humanity people consider to be their kin, or even their kind, is a big issue.
I said more later in the post you quoted.
In Buddhism, there is the theme that we are now living in an age in which the Dharma ends:
(ironic, the ads that pop up on that precise page ...)
If you look at traditional accounts of "enlightenment", "enlightenment" is not something one would normally desire, ever, because for all practical intents and purposes, "enlightenment" is a case of self-annihilation, self-abolishment.
In traditional Buddhist scriptures, "enlightenment" is described as being attainable mostly only to monks (who are able to devote all their time and energy to the pursuit of it and do not have to concern themselves with earning a living). While it is said that if a lay person does attain "enlightenment", they have to ordain as a monastic within a few days or they die (!!), because an enlightened person is not able to live in this world, as they lack the drive and the ability to make a living.
But few people read old scriptures or care about them, so such people invent their own ideas of "enlightenment" that fit into their way of life. It's not uncommon nowadays for people to desire to become "enlightened" and to think that one can be "enlightened" and still go to work, have a family, and generally eat, drink, and make merry. From a traditional perspective, this is totally absurd.
As sketched out above, they are such caricatures.
To say nothing of how dangerous it can be to pick and choose from old traditions as one pleases. For example, people sometimes get permanent brain damage from intense meditation retreats! Some commit suicide. Some marry and start families in completely dysfunctional circumstances. Picking and choosing from an old tradition without regard for its wholeness can have unforeseeable and dangerous consequences.
Why call these new self-help practices by the old names? Why call something "Buddhist" when it has nothing to do with Buddhism?
This sounds rather victim-ish.
That's one interpretation.
Quoting baker
It depends on what is meant by "enlightenment". Ramana Maharshi reportedly became spontaneously enlightened as a schoolboy, then left home on a train to Arunachala (a sacred mountain if I recall correctly), where he was found starving and covered with ants. People then fed him and treated him as a sage.
The Shivapuri Baba is a very different casehe had heaps of motivation, after leaving his family and becoming enlightened in the forest according to reports he walked form India to England.
Han Shan lived by himself on Cold Mountain, and survived just fine for many years.
I think there is much of mythology in all this.
Quoting baker
What gets called "Buddhist" that has nothing to do with Buddhism. Do you fancy yourself to know what the essence of Buddhism is?
Quoting baker
What are you talking aboutwhy "victim-ish"? It seems more likely that you are projecting your own victimhood.
Quoting baker
I couldn't find the "more" you said you said.
Quoting baker
So what? Who's to say that's true?
I was thinking primarily of the empiricist movement away from any metaphysical theorizing, although the continental tradition has its own version of this. Hume is a good early example. But really it's an issue across modern thought that emerges as epistemology becomes "first philosophy," while at the same time that epistemology comes to absolutize the immediate asif not "more real"then at least "more secure" than the intelligible. (This is a bit of a generalization of course. This move to the sensible sometimes leads to a prioritization of what can be quantified, such that mathematics is "most real," but I think that this move towards mathematization is actually also grounded in the elevation of the "common sensibles" as laid out here). More broadly, the problems of modern epistemology have generally been "building a bridge back to reality" precisely because its starting assumptions include a buffered, if not solipsitic agent. I'm not really sold on post-modern attempts to dissolve this agent either, since they still seem to fall into the same habit of absolutely prioritizing the immediate. On this, I think Hegel had a good point in the Phenomenology that the absolutely immediate, if taken to the limit, is itself contentless.
Charles Taylor lays this out quite well in A Secular Age, and I found a good summary of the part I liked:
This tends to isolate us from anything but surfaces appearances (indeed, consider the wide, continuing influence of the Kantian notion that all we have access to is appearances). This seems to lend itself quite well to Han's "death of the Other."
Quoting GazingGecko
Sterile, but also potentially solipsistic if we get stuck in an epistemology that never lets us outside our own heads. And I'm not sure if merely being "stuck inside language" is that much better.
Not to put to fine a point on it, but the essence of sin for Saint Augustine was the incurvatus in se, the way the soul becomes bent in around itself. At the limit, it becomes like a black hole, wholly cut off from communion and the erotic ascent towards Being. Two trends in modern literature suggest this problem. The first is a sort of straight jacket intellectualism that is unable to transcend procedural reason, and so gets stuck in the cul-de-sac of skepticism, cut off from being. The second is voluntarism, the will becoming entirely its own object. The two pathologies reinforce each other though, since if one can know nothing else, the self must be the object of the will, while a will focused on itself will only direct the intellect outwards in terms of the desires of the self.
For examples of the intellectualist strain, there is Hamlet, Ivan Karamazov, or Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, or the society of A Brave New World (an extremely rational society that is focused on hedonism and economic growth because it sees nothing else to seek outside the immediacy of "utility"). For the volanturist strain, there is Milton's Satan or 1984 (or maybe some of Ayn Rand's heros, although less self-consciously)sheer self-assertion and power. Those are sort of the limit cases in art, but I feel like much more mundane philosophies can get trapped in the dialectic that those literary works bring out in the extremes.
I don't disagree with you here really. A big point made by the authors of the "Manosphere" is that their transactional view of romantic relationships (and even friendship) and open embrace of "might makes right" is simply a more honest approach to what people already knowingly (if not as explicitly) embrace in the common framing of human life in terms of "market forces." I think this is a warped view of reality though (although it can be a self-fulfilling sort of view). The atomized utility maximizer of liberal economics is not an empirical fact, but an interpretive lens.
Well, a common counter to this is that some ills seem to be decreasing. Violent crime has decreased (before tipping up again lately), although this seems to be largely attributable to an aging population and the fact that young people (who tended to commit most crimes) increasingly just don't socialize at all and anesthetize themselves with drugs and electronic entertainment instead. Teen pregnancies have gone down, but that's because pregnancies in general have collapsed and people are having sex, forming couples, and getting married less overall. Other ills, such as "deaths of despair" seem higher than ever though.
I think it's telling that the great monster of our era has shifted from serial killer predator of the Baby Boomers, a sort of monstrous hedonism wed to human cunning, who became a sort of cultural icon (e.g., anti-heros like Hannibal Lecter), to the sheer inchoate rage (and terrible efficiency) of the spree killer.
What isn't an interpretive lens?