What is Husserlian Phenomenology?

Discussion in 'Religion & Philosophy' started by Kyklos, Jul 22, 2018.

  1. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    What would happen if the "Being of all being" commanded Friedrich Schleiermacher to rise from the dead and formulate a sermon? How would the Schleiermacher theological paradigm interpret the world today? This is not only the resurrection of Schleiermacher theologically--it is the Christian Pattern.

     
    Last edited: Jan 24, 2019
  2. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    # Posts and Topic:
    - 1, Introduction to Phenomenology
    - 2, Phenomenological Tools
    - 5, Dasein Analytic and Critique of Culture
    - 7, 8 Neo-Kantians and Eidetic Analysis
    - 9, Mystic A priori
    - 10, 11, 12, Phenomenological Reduction of the Aesthetic Life
    - 15, 16, 17, The Lifeworld
    - 23, Husserl: Empiricism, Psychologism, Circularity, and Reification
    - 24, 25, Absolute Consciousness, Sartre
    -26, 27, Theological Phenomenology, Paul Tillich
    - 29, 30, Ideological Paradigms
    - 31, 32, 33, 34, Martin Heidegger: The Question of Being.
    - 35, Heidegger: The Logos
    - 36, Heraclitus and The Logos
    - 37, The Christian Logos
    -38, Apeiron: Infinity
    -39, Logoi: The Limited Logos
    -40, Collections of Heidegger’s works in English Translation
    -41, Adorno’s Critique of Husserlian Phenomenology
    -42, 43, Adorno’s Critique of Heideggerian Fundamental Ontology
    -45, Heidegger: Christian Theology Demythologized
    -46, Phenomenological Obstruction
    -47, Schleiermacher’s Ethical Socio-Political Theory
    -50, Schleiermacher’s Ethical Social Theory/Christian Pattern

    -52, Thom Hartmann's "The Prophet's Way."

    Concluding views of Thom Hartmann’s “The Prophet's Way” on Spiritual Experience

    I came to a definitive conclusion concerning only my understanding of Thom Hartmann’s best book, “The Prophet’s Way.”

    For me, this book has defied conventional philosophical categorization. There is something very familiar about its approach to...spiritual experience—and that is the answer. The book, “The Prophet's Way,” is in my very humble opinion, a phenomenological description of a spiritual life. You would think I would of known that immediately. The question that stumped me was “How did the author know how to write this description of a spiritual life without knowing anything about Husserl’s phenomenology or the 'epoche’?” I am somewhat sure he did not know this formally, or explicitly. I now better understand that the Husserlian “epoche” is not, as I assumed, just a pan-mathematical-logico-formalistic methodological tool to suspend belief to achieve a “pure” description of phenomena. In the later Husserl, the “epoche” was given a spiritual connotation. So what hermeneutical principles of interpretation did the author use in writing “The Prophet’s Way?”

    The answer is truthfulness, and faith.

    Truthfulness as a principle for the description of experience is enough. He made no absolute commitment to the naturalistic scientific status of his experience presented as description. But as we all know no pure phenomenological description is possible according to the four modes of circularity as Boedeker defined them.

    Not only that, but he had encountered the always present problem of methodological circularity of description and conceptual deconstruction. This is also an epistemological problem that no rational philosopher can escape. In order to describe the spiritual life, one has to participate in the spiritual life just as one has to participate using a saw to experience cutting wood--with a saw! In scientific experience the subject is abstractly negated in the name of objectivity and scientific truth. For the religious phenomenologist, the subject must participate in the spiritual life to gain access to the phenomena she seeks to un-conceal. The reader who at first approaches the book will most likely by default have the passive “naturalistic attitude,” but one has to analytically suspend that cognitive stance to gain insight and this happens slowly after reading this phenomenological description of a spiritual life. So in a paradoxical way, like the epoche, this book in effect adopts Cartesian methodological skepticism—not absolute skepticism--to un-conceal the spiritual dimension of human existence.
     
    Last edited: Jan 27, 2019
  3. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    I hope you took the time to view that “The Mysterious Barricades” video clip of the film “The Tree of Life” which I only discovered the other day. The movie reviewers were unkind to the film, I think, because of its religious theme. This annoys me.

    The little boy in the movie, Jack, gives an amazing prayer. Well, actually he gives two different kinds of intertwined prayers.

    Jack’s first prayer is,
    “I want to be thankful for everything we got...
    Help me not to tell lies...”

    The first prayer is based on the following familiar theological prescriptive proposition:
    I name this first prayer the “Doctrinal Prayer.”

    However, the second prayer is the authentic prayer because of the spontaneous sincere openness which it is said. Soren Kierkegaard once wrote, “Truth is Subjectivity.” This means that for the Christian it is not just what is believed, but how it is believed that matters. In the Widow’s Mite Parable Jesus said, “Amen, I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the other contributors to the treasury. For they have all contributed from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood.” NAB Mark 12: 41-44. Objectivity, this parable is absurd; however, the “intentionality” of any action within the religious sphere is more important than the act itself. The objective is the “what” of what is said, or done. The subjective is the “how” of what is said or done. This is the essence of Christianity according to Kierkegaard.

    Jack’s second prayer is,

    Where you live?
    Are you watching me?

    I want to know what you are...
    I want to see what you see....

    The second prayer is the spiritual prayer:

    “Where you live?” can be theologically translated as, “Are you omnipresent?”

    “Are you watching me?” Jack is asking, “Are you omniscient?

    “I want to know what you are...” is saying, “Are you an object, an entity, or a force?”

    “I want to see what you see...” means, “I want to know the mind of G-d.”

    From giving thanks for “...what I got” to “I want to see what you see” is a very impressive spiritual evolution indeed!

    Consequently, be careful teaching your children to be Christian--they might become one.
     
    Last edited: Jan 29, 2019
  4. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    # Posts and Topic:
    - 1, Introduction to Phenomenology
    - 2, Phenomenological Tools
    - 5, Dasein Analytic and Critique of Culture
    - 7, 8 Neo-Kantians and Eidetic Analysis
    - 9, Mystic A priori
    - 10, 11, 12, Phenomenological Reduction of the Aesthetic Life
    - 15, 16, 17, The Lifeworld
    - 23, Husserl: Empiricism, Psychologism, Circularity, and Reification
    - 24, 25, Absolute Consciousness, Sartre
    -26, 27, Theological Phenomenology, Paul Tillich
    - 29, 30, Ideological Paradigms
    - 31, 32, 33, 34, Martin Heidegger: The Question of Being.
    - 35, Heidegger: The Logos
    - 36, Heraclitus and The Logos
    - 37, The Christian Logos
    -38, Apeiron: Infinity
    -39, Logoi: The Limited Logos
    -40, Collections of Heidegger’s works in English Translation
    -41, Adorno’s Critique of Husserlian Phenomenology
    -42, 43, Adorno’s Critique of Heideggerian Fundamental Ontology
    -45, Heidegger: Christian Theology Demythologized
    -46, Phenomenological Obstruction
    -47, Schleiermacher’s Ethical Socio-Political Theory
    -50, Schleiermacher’s Ethical Social Theory/Christian Pattern
    -52, Thom Hartmann's "The Prophet's Way."
    -54, Schleiermacher: The State


    The State
    (...the suffering of the concept.)

    Schleiermacher distinguishes four types of ethical relations of right, sociability, faith, and revelation. Right is “moral co-existence of individuals in common action” (Munro, p. 239). And this moral co-existence implies possession, community, wealth and trust. Sociability is the moral relationship between individuals as “exclusive proprietor.” Domestic right and hospitality are the necessary conditions of Sociability. The word “Faith” is used to describe this type of ethical relationship in a secular sense meaning faith as the universal “trust-worthiness” of both thought and speech within a community of shared knowledge. Revelation is the “self revelation” of the moral relations between persons in spite of their separateness each person has a sympathetic connection for other human beings. These relations wherein the highest good is sought for the person define all ethical actions. These four spheres of relationships create “moral organisms” which he calls “perfect ethical forms” that include the societal institutions of the State, Society, the School, and the Church.
    Schleiermacher was also a politician known to be “one of the most active leaders in the Liberal Party in its struggle for freedom and advancement” (Ibid., p. 102). With Thomas of Aquinas he could say, “Theologus sum humani nihil a me alienum puto.” (I am man. I consider nothing that is human alien to me.).
    In contradiction to the present Neo-liberalism--an ideology that dares not say its name--seeks to dismantle state authority except for military power, Schleiermacher believed, “The ethical aim of the State is not therefore simply the protection and benefit of the individual; it is the perfecting of the whole by means of the individual, and the individual by means of the whole”(Ibid., p. 242).

    Schleiermacher rejected the political theory accepted during his era that the State is created by the “mutual contract,” or “agreement” of the populous. Hobbes, Hume (close friend of Adam Smith), and John Locke wrote about the authority of the state. A systematic analysis of the atomistic egocentric individual can be found in Thomas Hobbes’ (1588-1679) book, Leviathan, wherein he describes the self-interested economic man and a theory of the State. Hobbes’ philosophical anthropology of human behavior has a familiar ring with today’s popular version of Libertarian philosophy and Neo-Liberal reformist ideology.

    The Leviathan’s theory of state is linked to a belief in the intrinsic competitive nature of human beings. For Hobbes the natural condition of men is “war of all against all” for without the nation-state each person has a right to everything, but a world with such self-interested human beings seeking advantage would be chaotic in which commerce is impossible since no one would be secure against violence the other. In order to avoid this natural state of war for economic advantage, the self-interested rational human being accepts a social contract by which all persons give up some freedom for state protection. According for Hobbes this state could have the form of a Monarchy, Aristocracy, or a Democracy.

    For Hobbes there are no absolute values. Where there is no social covenant, no act can be called unjust. Hobbes writes in the Leviathan, “…the notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law, where no law, no injustice. Force and fraud in the war of “all against all” are the two cardinal virtues.” And there is “…no dominion, no mine and thine distinct; but only that to be every man’s, that he can get: and for so long as he can keep it."

    David Hume (1711-1776) views society as primary since the individual first exists as a member of a group for “Man, born in a family, is compelled to maintain society from necessity, from natural inclinations and from habit.” (Of the Origin of Government, Hume, 1777) . The family is “the first and original principle of human society” (A Treatise of Human Nature, Hume, 1888 ). This concept of government is based on the family-society model of social relations.

    Agreeing with Hobbes, Hume understands society as having great utility for humanity. However, for Hume the concept of justice is artificial in the sense it is based on self-interest and public utility. “Society provides a remedy for these three inconveniences. By the conjunction of forces, our power is augmented: By the partition of employment, our ability increases: And by mutual succour we are less exposed to fortune and accidents. It is by this additional force, ability, and security that society becomes advantageous”(An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hume, 1751).

    Hume believes government is an invention, not a social compact as John Locke claims. As a radical empiricist, Hume denied Lockean ethics that claim Natural Law is based on universal categorical moral law derived from Reason. Hume believed government arose from war and human utility. Hume rejected the Lockean state of nature thesis that the original social contract is an actual historical event by which humans voluntarily agreed to form an organized society to protect freedom and political rights. There is no empirical evidence of any such natural state. Hume wrote,
    To be consistent with this quote Hume would also have to reject Hobbes’ theory of the state of nature as war a historical fiction, or philosophical parable. David Hume’s close friend Adam Smith postulated a similar primordial state of nature by presenting individuals as an accumulating economic bartering savage.

    All of these theories of society and government discussed so far view the individual as an isolated economic unit of activity driven by self-interest, competition, distrust, and greed. The view of the individual driven by utilitarian and hedonistic principles is a gross oversimplification of human motivation and ethical behavior. William Kingdon Clifford (1845-1879) professor of mathematics at University College, London, was critical of this scientific conception of the individual. Historian of philosophy, Frederick Copleston, wrote in summary of Clifford’s views,
    Without government a state would be like modern Somalia, as Hobbes claimed, ruled by warlords and gangs—that is your free market Neoliberal Libertarian paradise. However as George Orwell wrote of Hayek’s book “The Road to Serfdom,”
     
    Last edited: Jan 30, 2019
  5. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    # Posts and Topic:
    - 1, Introduction to Phenomenology
    - 2, Phenomenological Tools
    - 5, Dasein Analytic and Critique of Culture
    - 7, 8 Neo-Kantians and Eidetic Analysis
    - 9, Mystic A priori
    - 10, 11, 12, Phenomenological Reduction of the Aesthetic Life
    - 15, 16, 17, The Lifeworld
    - 23, Husserl: Empiricism, Psychologism, Circularity, and Reification
    - 24, 25, Absolute Consciousness, Sartre
    -26, 27, Theological Phenomenology, Paul Tillich
    - 29, 30, Ideological Paradigms
    - 31, 32, 33, 34, Martin Heidegger: The Question of Being.
    - 35, Heidegger: The Logos
    - 36, Heraclitus and The Logos
    - 37, The Christian Logos
    -38, Apeiron: Infinity
    -39, Logoi: The Limited Logos
    -40, Collections of Heidegger’s works in English Translation
    -41, Adorno’s Critique of Husserlian Phenomenology
    -42, 43, Adorno’s Critique of Heideggerian Fundamental Ontology
    -45, Heidegger: Christian Theology Demythologized
    -46, Phenomenological Obstruction
    -47, Schleiermacher’s Ethical Socio-Political Theory
    -50, Schleiermacher’s Ethical Social Theory/Christian Pattern
    -52, Thom Hartmann's "The Prophet's Way."
    -54, Schleiermacher: The State
    -55, The False Memories of a Reified World



    The False Memories of a Reified World

    The myth of a “social contract” is not unlike the Adam Smithian Barter Savage myth that Polanyi critiques in his criticism of Neoliberal ideology. The common thematic thread the two economic myths share is they are designed to provide ideological justification and therefore acceptance of wealth inequality and commodification of money in a self-regulating economy. An important aspect of ideological justification of this particular kind of Smithian market capitalism is to present the state as rational and scientific.
    Science plays an important role in laying the foundations of Neo-liberalism ideology so as to be accepted as true by society, and to resist criticism when markets fail.
    This perceived scientific and naturalistic myth is actually an irrational reified philosophy that distort experience. Society (Community) and the Subject (Individual) are distorted according to narrow political interests by subtracting the community’s complexity and history through ideological abstraction. Yet, freedom in the reified theory of the self-regulated market is reduced to a “market view of society which equated economics with contractual relationships, and contractual relations with freedom.”(Ibid., p. 266).

    Reified concepts result in a reified intellectual life in which experience is distorted and impairs our ability to articulate the complexity of our own lives and world. Reification is radical objectivism that reduces the irreducible object to a limited false concept. Reification is a false consciousness that embraces a “Naive Realism” that gives epistemological validation to reified assumptions in whichthe object is independent of subjectivity and is apprehended as it is in-itself. It presents the order of knowing as a fully given object being passively received by a subject.”(Brian O'Connor, Adorno's Negative Dialectic: Philosophy and the Possibility of Critical Rationality, p. 50.) Radical empiricism, or positivism, is distinguished as an epistemology of the passive subject, or passive knower that merely collects data. The reified consciousness cannot conceive of objects that are not already reduced to pre-fabricated ossified concepts.
     
    Last edited: Jan 30, 2019
  6. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    Chris Hedges reviews in the video speech below Rosa Luxemburg's understanding of the political forces during the Spartakist Uprising in Berlin on January 1919. The Social Democrat Party leader and German chancellor Friedrich Ebert ordered the Freikops to stop the uprising. In just a few weeks Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, Leo Jogiches, and hundreds more were simply murdered.

    Another side fact is during the Spartakist uprising Herbert Marcuse, a German-American philosopher, was one of the participants. Hundreds of Spartacists were murdered and dumped in a river. Marcuse was an original member of the "Red Rose" dissidents named after Rosa Luxemburg. Later, Marcuse fled Nazi Germany to the US in 1934. At one time, Marcuse was Heidegger's student. Because of his vast knowledge of Marxism, the US Office of War Information (OWI) hired him on anti-Nazi propaganda projects and then the the Research and Analysis Branch of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency to do research on Soviet Russia.

    You see, the US Intelligence services read and study what they tell you not to read. I wonder why?

     
    Last edited: Jan 31, 2019
  7. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    # Posts and Topic:
    - 1, Introduction to Phenomenology
    - 2, Phenomenological Tools
    - 5, Dasein Analytic and Critique of Culture
    - 7, 8 Neo-Kantians and Eidetic Analysis
    - 9, Mystic A priori
    - 10, 11, 12, Phenomenological Reduction of the Aesthetic Life
    - 15, 16, 17, The Lifeworld
    - 23, Husserl: Empiricism, Psychologism, Circularity, and Reification
    - 24, 25, Absolute Consciousness, Sartre
    -26, 27, Theological Phenomenology, Paul Tillich
    - 29, 30, Ideological Paradigms
    - 31, 32, 33, 34, Martin Heidegger: The Question of Being.
    - 35, Heidegger: The Logos
    - 36, Heraclitus and The Logos
    - 37, The Christian Logos
    -38, Apeiron: Infinity
    -39, Logoi: The Limited Logos
    -40, Collections of Heidegger’s works in English Translation
    -41, Adorno’s Critique of Husserlian Phenomenology
    -42, 43, Adorno’s Critique of Heideggerian Fundamental Ontology
    -45, Heidegger: Christian Theology Demythologized
    -46, Phenomenological Obstruction
    -47, Schleiermacher’s Ethical Socio-Political Theory
    -50, Schleiermacher’s Ethical Social Theory/Christian Pattern
    -52, Thom Hartmann's "The Prophet's Way."
    -54, Schleiermacher: The State
    -55, The False Memories of a Reified World
    -57, Schleiermacher: Originalism and Judicial Nihilism



    Schleiermacher’s Social Theory of The State: Originalist Constitutional Interpretative Theory
    And Judicial Nihilism


    Since Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell authored the “The Powell Memo” to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Education Committee on August 23, 1971 there has been a highly organized effort to dismantle the American State by a faction of corporations and well-financed think tanks. For the last fifty years Neo-Liberalism has injected the poison of Originalist Textualism into the fount of American Democracy—the US Constitution. I want to closely examine the concealed ideologies and ultimate goal of Originalist Judicial Theory. My analytical approach will be in the tradition of Critical Theory focusing on propaganda, hermeneutics, and epistemology.

    Sociological propaganda
    To identify propaganda is not an easy task, but analysis of propaganda can reveal how it works and expose the subordinated ideologies and concealed epistemological assumptions delivered in seemingly simple, and not so simple, slogans, doctrines, and opinions. Philosopher Jacques Ellul defines propaganda in his book, Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes, (1965) as “… a set of methods employed by an organized group that wants to bring about the active or passive participation in its actions of a mass of individuals, psychologically unified through psychological manipulations and incorporated in an organization.” To “organized,” “unify,” and “incorporate” are key concepts of how propaganda begins its work on the oblivious propagandee.

    Assuming the propagandee is unintelligent must to be rejected: persons most susceptible to propaganda are the highly educated that monitor media, current events, and who believe they have immunity to propaganda influence. Thinking propaganda is easily detectable and crudely simple exposes one to possible unconscious manipulation. There are various types, or functions, of propaganda that operate in areas not typically thought to be in the sphere of propaganda.

    Ellul makes a distinction between two general types of political propaganda: 1.) Agitation propaganda and 2.) Sociological propaganda. Agitation propaganda is what most people think of when they hear the word propaganda. It’s the kind of propaganda characteristic of elections and campaigns that seek immediate limited results for some specific short-term goal. The politician who, for example, agitates for revolt using pamphlets, speeches, posters and rumor is utilizing political “Agitation propaganda.” Also referred to as “Agitprop,” it is very energetic, but short in duration. Agitprop is relatively simple to disseminate and is inexpensive. Agitation propaganda is sometimes referred to as “vertical propaganda” since it originates from the top directed downward.

    On the other hand, “Sociological propaganda” is the opposite in many ways and is typically not seen as propaganda because of its passivity, low profile, and directed to achieve long-term goals. Sociological propaganda is also known as “horizontal propaganda” However, sociological propaganda requires a large communications infrastructure, many organized participants--and it is very expensive. Its long-term goal is not to agitate, but to integrate and include…
    Sociological propaganda functions as “integration propaganda.” Integration propaganda is designed to persuade persons to think and act in certain desired patterns. Its goal is conformity by individuals and uniformity of society as a whole by establishing shared stereotypes, beliefs, and group reactions. In many ways, integration propaganda is the antithesis of agitation propaganda. Integration of persons ensures stable behavior, reshapes thought and action by unifying, remolding the person, and reinforcing group relations. This type of propaganda is much more complex requiring long term planning for permanent--not temporary--effect. Thus, it is subtle, if not invisible, acting slowly and gradually assimilating the total persona. Integration propaganda is most effective with the highly educated. Rationalization, not wild emotion, is the primary function of integrating propaganda. Whereas agitation propaganda only requires leaflets, posters, and rumor to trigger mob violence, integration propaganda must have the communication infrastructure of mass media and the State. Integration propaganda appears in film, education, literature, social service, and non-political organizations that are not ordinarily categorized as propagandist by the average person. In order for propaganda to be effective, it must encompass the entire life of the propagandee.
    Notice that a judicial system itself can act as a platform for propaganda.

    With such total saturation of society with propaganda from government and non-government groups, the propagandee suffers from various psychological effects. There are two effects that may explain the indifference we see by the average person to the substantial changes of our system of government and laws. First is “mithridatization” in which the propagandee ignores the intellectual content of propaganda, but continues to obey its rules.
    A second psychological effect of propaganda is “privatization” which is “…the feeling that leads man to consider his private affairs as most important and produces skepticism toward the activities of the State.” Propaganda can either encourage privatization, or discourage it depending whether the government wants to encourage participation in affairs of the State such as warfare, or if necessary, to discourage resistance to the State.
    Those uninteresting “very complex” issues include constitutional laws and the balances of powers in government. One writer made the comparison between political life and a vast ocean. On the ocean’s surface are the waves, wind, and turmoil, but deep below the surface are vast currents that move slowly and massively, but are undisturbed by the chaos above. Likewise, American politics is active with elections, campaigns, symbolic acts, and partisan conflicts. These events capture our attention and give the impression of change and progress, but these do not change the forces beneath the surface where real power is working to determine the State’s direction.

    Sociological and integration propaganda conceal the application of legal theories of Originalism that are used today in constitutional jurisprudence interpretation. The courtroom is also the propagandist’s podium. Legal theories based on an epistemology of totalitarianism will have a predetermined outcome for legal decisions and a built in methodological bias for identifying what are the issues of the day.

    The question of Constitutional interpretation is only a symptom of a systemic problem in American society. Originalism is consistent with a governmental system that only uses democratic concepts as slogans or an advertising brand. The American government is at its heart totalitarian and makes use of propaganda just as any totalitarian government. Jacques Ellul argues that no democratic government can use propaganda effectively without becoming totalitarian itself because propaganda is inherently totalitarian. The effect of propaganda on democracy “is comparable to radium and what happens to the radiologists is well known” (Ibid., p. 242).
     
    Last edited: Feb 5, 2019
  8. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    # Posts and Topic:
    - 1, Introduction to Phenomenology
    - 2, Phenomenological Tools
    - 5, Dasein Analytic and Critique of Culture
    - 7, 8 Neo-Kantians and Eidetic Analysis
    - 9, Mystic A priori
    - 10, 11, 12, Phenomenological Reduction of the Aesthetic Life
    - 15, 16, 17, The Lifeworld
    - 23, Husserl: Empiricism, Psychologism, Circularity, and Reification
    - 24, 25, Absolute Consciousness, Sartre
    -26, 27, Theological Phenomenology, Paul Tillich
    - 29, 30, Ideological Paradigms
    - 31, 32, 33, 34, Martin Heidegger: The Question of Being.
    - 35, Heidegger: The Logos
    - 36, Heraclitus and The Logos
    - 37, The Christian Logos
    -38, Apeiron: Infinity
    -39, Logoi: The Limited Logos
    -40, Collections of Heidegger’s works in English Translation
    -41, Adorno’s Critique of Husserlian Phenomenology
    -42, 43, Adorno’s Critique of Heideggerian Fundamental Ontology
    -45, Heidegger: Christian Theology Demythologized
    -46, Phenomenological Obstruction
    -47, Schleiermacher’s Ethical Socio-Political Theory
    -50, Schleiermacher’s Ethical Social Theory/Christian Pattern
    -52, Thom Hartmann's "The Prophet's Way."
    -54, Schleiermacher: The State
    -55, The False Memories of a Reified World
    -57, Schleiermacher: Originalism and Judicial Nihilism
    -58, Interpreting Original Meaning


    Interpreting Original Meaning

    Within the same year of corporate lawyer Lewis Powell’s memo and his appointment as Supreme Court Justice, a new organization named “The Business Roundtable” was formed. This organization is only limited to CEOs such as its founding chairman W. B. Murphy of Campbell Soup Corporation. TBR now has 160 members which include Phil Condit of Boeing, John Dillon of International Paper, John Snow of CXS Transportation ( later George W. Bush’s Treasury secretary), Drew Lewis of Union Pacific Corporation (later Reagan’s Secretary of Transportation). Other members are the heads of Aetna, Alcoa, Allstate, American Express, Archer Daniels Midland, AT&T, Dow, FedEx, GE, General Motors, JP Morgan, American Express. (list of BRT members)

    The Reagan Administration seized political power in 1981by deception and advanced this new theory of constitutional interpretation called “Originalism.” Antonin Scalia, ClarenceThomas and Robert Bork are the most famous judges known to subscribe to this theory of legal interpretation. Pseudo-Conservatives argue this school of constitutional interpretation most closely reveals the true meaning of the constitution and results in sound court decisions that maintain the authority of the people. Originalism, they claim, guarantees consistent court rulings based on a clear and accurate understanding of the constitution’s meaning instead of a judge’s personal beliefs and prejudices. These extremist ideologues claim that Originalism produces clear, predictable, impartial, and stable court judgments. Furthermore, Originalism insures that a judge’s ruling will remain within the domain of the judiciary and not the legislature, or executive, so as to preserve the balance of power between the three branches of government.

    Originalism is a mixture of other theories of interpretation, language meaning theory, and philosophy of law combined to interpret constitutional law.

    Original Intent
    is a theory of law by which one is to interpret a legal text. The basic approach is to interpret legal text to determine what its author intends to achieve with a particular law even if the intent contradicts the actual wording, or legal text. Here the author’s intended purpose of a law is more crucial than the written historical text itself. Intention determines semantic meaning that in turn creates the legal meaning. Not all constitutional Originalists accept this “intentionalist” theory of interpretation.

    Original Meaning
    is a closely related, but very different theory of legal interpretation that understands the meaning of a law as identical to the plain meaning of legal text at the time it was ratified and became law. Original Meaning is actually a combination of three legal theories of interpretation: 1.) Legal Formalism, 2.) Legal Positivism, and 3.) Textualism. First, Original meaning theory analytically separates empirical legal reasoning from normative issues and political concerns. Authorial subjective intent is irrelevant. Originalism assumes legal formalism, which is concerned with what the law “says” and not with what it “should say.” True interpretation of law requires analytic understanding of language, logic, and definitions. Secondly, this theory of legal interpretation is also positivist because it views law as strictly an institutional, or bureaucratic process of government procedure. Again, intent of the author is irrelevant. Thirdly, the theory of Original Meaning is a form of Textualism that holds that a legal text’s ordinary meaning (not just dictionary definitions) as understood by a reasonable person’s reading of that text should determine interpretation. Non-textual information such as intention, purpose, system objectives, designs, fundamental values, or goals are external --ex post facto-- to the interpretative meaning of law. Subjective “intention” is expelled from legal reasoning by these three different interpretive criteria of Originalism.

    This description is a very abstract summary of Originalism. Justice Antonin Scalia is currently the most well known representative of this theory of constitutional interpretation. And from his scholarly speeches on the lecture circuit about Originalism, we can better understand how this theory guides his interpretation of constitutional law and its meaning.

    Legal text is the proper domain of legal interpretation in which the objective text transmits the constitution’s message. The text is the object of interpretation.

    ”The words are the law,”
    rule anchors the law to a fix point of meaning avoiding transitory interpretation of the constitution. Scalia is concerned that changing interpretations of law will result in a weak relativistic constitution.
    Consequently, Originalism claims, that appealing to what the constitution “ought” to be goes beyond the static text into the realm of normative subjectivism (Ethics), and legal relativism (Anarchy) that result in superfluous rights not found in the original text. The goal of constitutional interpretation is not what “ought to be” constitutional law, but what empirically ‘is’ constitutional law in text.
    Those who view the constitution capable of change are “evolutionist” and even the concept of judicial review--that the Supreme Court can nullify a statute unconstitutional --is the result of misinterpreting the role of the Supreme Court as a court of “Super-Law.” This was the original disposition of the Constitution. Further, he warns, “”I think we depart from the traditional view of the constitution[sic] at our own risk.” So for Scalia, interpreting the constitution is strictly non-normative [Non-ethical]: culture, democratic society, politics, and current social trends are ex post facto to the written legal text. Shockingly, but consistently, Scalia said, “I'm not very good at determinating what the aspirations of the American people are. I am so out of touch with the American people. I don't even try to be in touch” (Ibid.). In this speech at The Catholic University of America Washington, Scalia presents a challenge to non-Originalist critics.
    Therefore, the challenge proposed is to answer the normative question, “Is there anything better?”
     
    Last edited: Feb 5, 2019
  9. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    # Posts and Topic:
    - 1, Introduction to Phenomenology
    - 2, Phenomenological Tools
    - 5, Dasein Analytic and Critique of Culture
    - 7, 8 Neo-Kantians and Eidetic Analysis
    - 9, Mystic A priori
    - 10, 11, 12, Phenomenological Reduction of the Aesthetic Life
    - 15, 16, 17, The Lifeworld
    - 23, Husserl: Empiricism, Psychologism, Circularity, and Reification
    - 24, 25, Absolute Consciousness, Sartre
    -26, 27, Theological Phenomenology, Paul Tillich
    - 29, 30, Ideological Paradigms
    - 31, 32, 33, 34, Martin Heidegger: The Question of Being.
    - 35, Heidegger: The Logos
    - 36, Heraclitus and The Logos
    - 37, The Christian Logos
    -38, Apeiron: Infinity
    -39, Logoi: The Limited Logos
    -40, Collections of Heidegger’s works in English Translation
    -41, Adorno’s Critique of Husserlian Phenomenology
    -42, 43, Adorno’s Critique of Heideggerian Fundamental Ontology
    -45, Heidegger: Christian Theology Demythologized
    -46, Phenomenological Obstruction
    -47, Schleiermacher’s Ethical Socio-Political Theory
    -50, Schleiermacher’s Ethical Social Theory/Christian Pattern
    -52, Thom Hartmann's "The Prophet's Way."
    -54, Schleiermacher: The State
    -55, The False Memories of a Reified World
    -57, Schleiermacher: Originalism and Judicial Nihilism
    -58, Interpreting Original Meaning
    -59, The Nihilist's Hermeneutic


    The Nihilist’s Hermeneutic

    The Same Suspects
    I want to discuss the use, or more accurately the misuse, of language that the Right-Wing propagandists Frank Luntz employed to construct political talking points for the Republican Party. His methodology has its roots in Language Analysis epistemology that treats language like a behavioral machine and focuses on form rather than content—they focus on the ‘Is’ of the text rather than the “Ought” of ethics. The goal of Luntz’s analysis is to “clarify” how language is actually used by the common man in the street. Critical observations on language analysis and a critique of Luntz can easily be applied to Originalism. This is no mere accident; both language analysis and Luntz’s research share the same epistemology thus making this critique inherently integrated. I want to restate three important points about Luntz’s modus operandi prior to examining Originalism.

    1. Luntz is a radical empiricist. As a classical empiricist there are only two kinds of language propositions: propositions of fact and propositions of definition. Propositions of fact can be verified as true or false by observation. Definitions are tautologically true. So if one said that a garden is shaped like a regular triangle, they would only have to measure all three internal congruent 60-degree angles. And it may be true or false that the garden is shaped like a regular triangle. However, if I say all regular triangles have three internal congruent 60-degree angles, we don't have to measure anything because it is true by definition--no observation is necessary. The first statement "The garden is an regular triangle” is a "synthetic” proposition. The proposition, "A regular triangle has three internal congruent 60 degree angles" is an "analytic" proposition. All propositions are either analytical (definition), synthetic (factual), or normative (prescriptive) in this philosophy of language. As analytic language philosophy evolved, normative statements (or ethical statements) and many others types were added by Wittgenstein that earlier were thought to be meaningless--but I digress.

    2. Luntz avoids all value statements or ethical propositions. He always avoids words like “truth” “good” “right” “wrong.” This is because prescriptive statements are neither synthetic propositions nor are they analytic. In Analytic Language Analysis ethical statements are only “prescriptions.” If I say, “X action is right,” I am merely prescribing an action as the way people should act. When I state, “Always keep a promise” I am really saying “No one should never break a promise.” I am only prescribing a certain kind of behavior. The same with the “prescription” that one should never murder children. The prescriptive proposition is merely a personal preference. This is because there are only three kinds of meaningful statements: statements of fact, ethical statements uttering a prescriptions, and tautologous definitions. There is a huge body of philosophical writings by this school of thought presenting this very argument.

    For example, if one said to another, “What you do is immoral,” an ethical nihilist would say, “You are only saying ‘I don’t like X (gambling),’or ’I like Y (gaming),’ and ‘I want Z.’ ” Ethical nihilists consistently avoid the language of ethics. This ideology understands itself not as immoral, but amoral. One would expect an “ethical argument” but we only get the language of convention, appetite, emotion, preference, and sense impression—synthetic statements. Nihilism consistently avoids the language of ethics because they believe there are no values.

    3. Luntz’s ideology is inherently conservative. In the discussion on gambling Luntz can only appeal to how language ‘is’ used—not its validity or truth. He avoids ethical questions but instead appeals to the status quo--how a word ‘is’ used in general--because there is no other real standard for determining the question. One can only appeal to polls, focus groups, to convention, or the unconventional. This static and limiting form of extreme empiricism, nihilism, and conservatism is the politically safe ideology promoted by academia, science, business, and government. Language analysis’ mission is only to “clarify” words and meaning then describe as a passive observer how language is used by the common person.

    Language Analysis makes a metaphysical desert and then calls it truth—and sometimes does not even admit that it is truth. This nihilistic instrumental reasoning is anti-human because it is anti-divine. We will see these same theoretical, and ultimately, political tendencies in Originalism’s formalistic and inflexible judicial linguistic interpretation of the constitution. Textualism is to legal theory what Skinnerian Operand Behaviorism is to psychology. De-realization of ethical concepts ultimately leads to de-sacralization and de-humanization of society. Chris Hedges recently quoted a passage from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book “Ethics.” Here is a short excerpt:
     
    Last edited: Feb 7, 2019
  10. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    # Posts and Topic:
    - 1, Introduction to Phenomenology
    - 2, Phenomenological Tools
    - 5, Dasein Analytic and Critique of Culture
    - 7, 8 Neo-Kantians and Eidetic Analysis
    - 9, Mystic A priori
    - 10, 11, 12, Phenomenological Reduction of the Aesthetic Life
    - 15, 16, 17, The Lifeworld
    - 23, Husserl: Empiricism, Psychologism, Circularity, and Reification
    - 24, 25, Absolute Consciousness, Sartre
    -26, 27, Theological Phenomenology, Paul Tillich
    - 29, 30, Ideological Paradigms
    - 31, 32, 33, 34, Martin Heidegger: The Question of Being.
    - 35, Heidegger: The Logos
    - 36, Heraclitus and The Logos
    - 37, The Christian Logos
    -38, Apeiron: Infinity
    -39, Logoi: The Limited Logos
    -40, Collections of Heidegger’s works in English Translation
    -41, Adorno’s Critique of Husserlian Phenomenology
    -42, 43, Adorno’s Critique of Heideggerian Fundamental Ontology
    -45, Heidegger: Christian Theology Demythologized
    -46, Phenomenological Obstruction
    -47, Schleiermacher’s Ethical Socio-Political Theory
    -50, Schleiermacher’s Ethical Social Theory/Christian Pattern
    -52, Thom Hartmann's "The Prophet's Way."
    -54, Schleiermacher: The State
    -55, The False Memories of a Reified World
    -57, Schleiermacher: Originalism and Judicial Nihilism
    -58, Interpreting Original Meaning
    -59, The Nihilist's Hermeneutic
    -60, Textualism is not in the Text


    Textualism Is Not In The Text


    “… the ontology of a false condition.”--Adorno, Negative Dialectics, p.11.


    Textualism is a theory of interpretation used by Originalism. The term “Textualism” was coined by Mark Pattison in 1863 to criticize Puritan theology (Wiki) for some of the very same reason that Originalism is criticized—a too narrow reading of text that ignores the larger principles, intent, and spirit of the subject. Theologians criticized Christian Protestants for allowing biblical scripture to become a “Paper Pope” and replacing genuine spirituality with a strict moralistic legalism in an idolatry of the text. Ironically, Christianity itself originated as a reaction against ancient Talmudic legalism and the rabbinic court system that regulated matters of dietary and ritual law, marriage, divorce, and social organization. Remember the biblical story of Jesus' disciples picking grain for food on a Sabbath (Mark 2:23-28 ). When the legal scholars of the time, the Pharisees, challenged Jesus over their violation of the Torah’s text to observe the Sabbath, he declared, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." Or analogously, one can say, “the constitution was made for man, not man for the constitution.”

    Further parallels can be made between Christian Biblicists and secular Textualism, but our immediate concern is how this theory is being applied to interpret constitutional law. The appeal of Textualism is also an appeal to empiricism--one simply refers to the words of the text and reads the meaning. Thus, there is an unambiguous procedure, a set of objective steps, to understanding and applying the law. Likewise, the words themselves are defined by a set of operations—an empirical methodology-- to determine their meaning. This methodology is called Operationalism by which “the process of defining a concept as the operations that will measure the concept (variables) through specific observations.” Operationalism is characteristic of technological reasoning and scientific positivism.

    One consequence of this theory of interpretation and methodology of defining linguistic meaning is a tendency to identify names, or words with their function, properties, and processes used to measure them. This identification has a profound effect on how language is viewed and used in analysis.
    The principles of textualist interpretation are designed to minimized or even nullify concepts supporting legal human rights, personal freedom, and quality of life. Words, especially of normative concepts, are stripped of their larger conceptual meaning and become names only. Textualism reduces concepts even further to mere text. Thus, Universal concepts like “Freedom,” “Democracy,” “Life,” “Rights” and “Truth” are demoted, if not discarded, by a reductionist ideological empiricism that has an ulterior purpose of its own.
    "Word" and "Reason" are derived from the same Greek term "logos," but positivist Textualism leaves only the "word" and the larger ontological concept of "Reason" is excluded from its meaning. Universals are demoted to the particular. Textualist analysis is inherently restrictive, reductive, and exclusionary so to lockout normative issues and questions. This specialized methodology represses intuition, conceptual thinking, and critical analysis since its scope is limited to the concrete fixed image of written text.
    Originalists argue that this exclusion of normative questions is a virtue of their methodology and that addressing normative issues is actually harmful to democracy. The interpreter's eliminationist intent is the true intent of Textualism: "The analysis is ‘locked’; the range of judgment is confined within a context of facts which excludes judging the context in which the facts are made, man-made, and in which their meaning, function, and development are determined"(ODM, p. 107). Not only is this reductionism internal in how it understands language, but also extends externally to non-textual factors by eliminating the author's intent and historical context to determine textual meanings. The historical developments of democratic values are reduced to rejectamenta of a legal formalism. We get a textual interpretation that is even proud of its ahistorical character, lacking intentionality, and references only the lexicon. "Where these reduced concepts govern the analysis of the human reality, individual or social, mental or material, they arrive at a false concreteness--a concreteness isolated from the conditions which constitute its reality. In this context the operational treatment of the concept assumes a political function"(ODM, p.106).

    The resulting interpretations are highly biased being derived from the neutrality and objectivity of nihilism that re-enforces authoritarianism by default. Interpretation by this method is a highly political act in which democratic rule really means indifference to the democratic citizenship--that is to say, it is anti-democracy. Legal interpretation independent of society’s normative democratic tradition actually gives the judge greater license to apply any meaning they understand to be "plain" and "reasonable." In fact, we do not even need a judge, just an ordinary English speaking person.
    ***************
    “What was in the past no longer counts, only that which actually is. Oblivion is the basic trait of such a life, whose outlook upon past and present shrink so much that scarcely anything remains in the mind but the bald present"--(Karl Jaspers in the Modern Age, p.50 [trans. altered] on the rise of Nazi Fascism)
    .
    ***************​
    The word hermeneutics is a term derived from the Greek word for "interpreter" and is likely taken from the name of the Greek god Hermes, who in Greek mythology is the interpreter of the messages from the g-ds which he would sometimes mischievously change! Hermeneutics has since come to mean the theories of the interpretation and understanding of texts. By using a hermeneutical theory to interpret possible meanings of a text, it does not help deciding which theory of interpretation to apply to determine its legal meaning. There is nothing in the constitutional text itself that instructs the reader to interpret by intent, plain meaning, or as a reasonable person. Textualism is not in the text! To select one method over the other is a conscious political choice. Normative choices cannot be avoided by the very question posed, "What is the best way to interpret the text?" The law is not a hidden calculus concealed within text, but is normative in character. Interpreting text is ultimately a normative act that produces a norm, or law backed by government power. The normative and empirical components of interpretation cannot truly be separated analytically.

    In the philosophical area of study called meta-ethics, the is-ought problem was posed by David Hume by stating “Is cannot be derived from ought.” Here, the ‘is’ refers to facts, and “ought” to normative, or ethical concepts that describe or prescribe what should be. Hume, the famous classical empiricist, is saying one cannot formulate a normative rule just by examining nature because “ought” statements are evaluative statements concerning a potential non-existing state. A fact can be perceived, but an “ought” is a hypothetical (subjunctive future mood) since it has not come into being yet (indicative mood), “…the tension between the ‘is’ and the "ought," between essence and appearance, potentiality and actuality--ingression of the negative in the positive determinations of logic. This sustained tension permeates the two-dimensional universe of discourse which is the universe of critical, abstract thought. The two dimensions are antagonistic to each other; the reality partakes of both of them…” (ODM, p. 97) But if only facts, minus their historical context, are recognized as the only basis of meaning, law, and understanding then normative interpretations become impossible.
    “Facades”
    by Philip Glass​
     
    Last edited: Feb 8, 2019
  11. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    -50, Schleiermacher’s Ethical Social Theory/Christian Pattern
    -52, Thom Hartmann's "The Prophet's Way."
    -54, Schleiermacher: The State
    -55, The False Memories of a Reified World
    -57, Schleiermacher: Originalism and Judicial Nihilism
    -58, Interpreting Original Meaning
    -59, The Nihilist's Hermeneutic
    -60, Textualism is not in the Text

    -61, The Interpreter’s Purpose

    The Interpreter's Purpose

    (…ruled by the Pharisees.)​

    Originalism's avoidance to making normative legal decisions is a calculated effort to hold back the legislature from making broad regulatory government policies. Judges, like Scalia, are deceptively advocating a theory of legal interpretation that is designed to diminish the court’s role in protecting society and realizing democracy. Originalism's goal is to undermine the legislative and judicial function of the courts by instituting a purposely dysfunctional interpretive ideology that achieves its goal by abstaining from reinforcing the values and principles of a normative democratic legal framework. Textualism is incoherent in principle and practice. Originalism is political activism directed toward omitting the principles and norms of democracy. But publicly this laisser passer, do-nothing doctrine of constitutional interpretation is presented as being cautious, objective, conservative, and original to the constitution's meaning. Originalism is an ideological mechanism for changing the minds, judgments, and values of its adherents by providing a frame of reference for systematic falsification. Professor of Law at the University of Southern California, Andrei Marmor, writes in his paper entitled, The Immorality of Textualism
    Conversely, Originalism’s scheme to incapacitate constitutional interpretation must not itself be a list of detailed instructions. Instead, embracing an unified passive methodology result in non-action and is much better suited for dealing with the variety of legal situations that are likely to come before a Originalist judge. This way the judge can spontaneously and independently determine how to interpret law that is consistent with Originalism. First, there must be an effort to persuade the legal community to think and act in a desired pattern and to achieve conformity of beliefs, thoughts and actions--or inaction. Enlisting members for an ideological school of legal interpretation is a subtle and invisible way to unify, or integrate group opinion and beliefs. Such homogenizing of opinion and beliefs is what Ellul Jacques called “sociological propaganda.” Sociological propaganda characteristically is not easily recognized even by its spokespersons.

    The Originalists’ criteria and rules for interpreting the constitution overshadow the constitution itself. Legal formalism requires ignoring purpose, values, and goals of the original authors such as Edmund Randolph’s contribution to the preamble of the Committee of Detail at the Constitutional Convention in which he advised in writing the constitution to “1. To insert essential principles only; lest the operations of government should be clogged by rendering those provisions permanent and unalterable, which ought to be accommodated to times and events: and 2. To use simple and precise language, and general propositions, according to the example of the constitutions of the several states." But this is all extra-textual information and is not to be considered by the interpreter. In some cases, Originalism is ignored, and in other cases, Originalism is adhered to even when it contradicts the constitution’s text. Originalism has metamorphism into Constitutional Scholasticism. The Latin word “scholasticus” means, “that which belongs to the school.” Scholasticism has the tendency to transforming from a school in search of the truth to the Truth itself. The Medieval Scholastics would be asked, “How many teeth are in a horse’s mouth?” They would then search all the ancient texts of Plato to find every reference to a horse to find the answer until one day someone said, “Let’s look in a horse’s mouth and count them.” That is when scholasticism ends.

    PURPOSIVE INTERPRETATION IN LAW

    The antithesis of Originalism is known as the “Purposive Interpretation,” or the “The Living Constitution” principle for interpretation.

    The arguments presented so far are not the only counter-arguments against Originalism. The critique only touched on the methodological problems of this school of legal interpretation. Legal theorists have argued that Originalism ignores the obvious relation between the law and society’s political power structure. Legal rules are applied without regard to the real complexes of society that include structural inequalities of classes and the historical context that social behavior is acted out. These existential factors cannot be subtracted from the application of law—that would be selectively non-empirical.

    Such abstract formalism is dangerous as exemplified by the Originalist German judges’ failure to stem the rise of totalitarianism in Germany during the 1930s. Law is politics, and legal decisions are also political decisions. Historically, the law has advanced the interests of the wealthy elites by subordinating the interests of the women, minorities, the poor, and the working class. An Originalist reading of the constitution intrinsically reinforces the historic acceptance of slavery and denial of women’s rights.

    Taking into account society’s complexity, history, diversity, social structure, and system of cultural values, interpreting constitutional law is portrayed by Originalists as “judicial activism” since a judge can overrule any law as unconstitutional. This is not just an issue of interpretation methodology, but of the judge’s role and duty to protect the Constitutional law that represents other implied values. The exercise of judicial discretion does not necessarily lead to chaos and abuse of power just as judicial inaction does not necessarily mean sound neutral judicial judgment. The effort to avoid “judicial activism” is itself taking into account the hypothetical consequences of judicial decisions and does not automatically negate the judge’s political intentions, but instead merely conceals, or masks them.

    There is in physics the concept of the observer effect that postulates the very act of observing itself changes the thing being observed. An observer does not have direct access to phenomena because interaction is unavoidable. A common example of this principle can be found in physics where any effort by a scientist to observe an electron would require a photon to interact and change the path of any targeted electron. The subjective observer, no matter how passive, can only be artificially subtracted from the objective event or thing perceived. Analytical separation of the passive Subject on the one hand, and Objective reality on the other, is a conceptual falsification of experience.

    Likewise, the interpretation and understanding of text involves an interaction of the parts with the whole. The whole text can only be understood by reference to the isolated parts and yet each part can only be understood by referring to the whole. These two conceptual polarities of the general and the specific are essential to understanding text. This circular character of interpretation is called the Hermeneutical Circle. The meaning of text can only be understood if its entire historical context, cultural values, authorial intentions, and literary traditions are included. This approach is the antithesis of Textualism that assumes words have a fixed, or static meaning whereas words are actually imprecise and often deliberately ambiguous to convey their meaning. Terms like “equal protection,” “cruel,” “Liberty,” “Freedom,” “Rights” are used in the constitution precisely because they are ambiguous and yet remain powerful normative abstract concepts that remain meaningful in all ages. The most hideous effect of Textualist propaganda is its de-realization of these Universal concepts of democracy as products of mere functional political bureaucratic processes and not of a way of life, of a concept of society, of a system of democratic values and historic vision

    This inherent ambiguity of language and intended imprecision of words—especially of normative concepts—is what makes judicial reasoning indeterminate and unpredictable. The history of the Supreme Court is a history of disagreement and dissent. The Originalists’ belief in only one correct judicial deduction from legal text is itself yet another non-textual assumption brought into litigation to determine legality. Alternative interpretations of law are not a weakness as the Originalist claim, but a great strength for anticipating historical change and different mitigating circumstances by providing flexible interpretations

    In 1944 a young child named Aharon Barak was smuggled out of the Nazi created ghetto Kovno in a suitcase by a Lithuanian farmer. Aharon Barak later became a professor of law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and President of the Supreme Court of Israel from 1995 to 2006. He is known for his theory of Purposive Interpretation of reading constitutional texts. He has presented his interpretive methodology in this book entitled, Purposive Interpretation in Law, (Princeton University Press, 2005, pp.464).

    There is one section of the California Penal Code that has always impressed me. In the “California Peace Officers Legal Sourcebook (March 1994)” there is a section under Criminal Law (13.1) where it says the following,
    This is actually how the California Evidence Code 4 in 1994 reads:

    “The rule of common law, that penal statues are to be strictly construed, has no application to this code. All its provision are to be construed according to the fair import of their terms, with a view to effect its objects and to promote justice”(California Penal Code, Evidence Code, 1994, Division 1, section 2, p. 135).


    The Legal Sourcebook further says, “…when a reasonable question arises as to the meaning or intent of a given law, the courts will look at not only the literal meaning of the words used, but also the spirit in which the statue was written, its relation to other code provisions, the legislative intent behind it, and the scope of its effect.”

    There is hope! Originalism is easy to defeat, the living constitution is easy to defend. Transforming the US court system is a necessity for preserving democratic values, and living a lofty, great, rounded, splendid life.

    The Hopi Indian word
    Koyaanisqatsi”​

    This concludes the critique of the State…finally. Next, what is Schleiermacher’s view of society?
     
    Last edited: Feb 11, 2019
  12. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    -50, Schleiermacher’s Ethical Social Theory/Christian Pattern
    -52, Thom Hartmann's "The Prophet's Way."
    -54, Schleiermacher: The State
    -55, The False Memories of a Reified World
    -57, Schleiermacher: Originalism and Judicial Nihilism
    -58, Interpreting Original Meaning
    -59, The Nihilist's Hermeneutic
    -60, Textualism is not in the Text
    -61, The Interpreter’s Purpose

    -62, Schleiermachian Sociology & Critique of Ideology


    Schleiermachian Sociology And A Critique of Ideology


    “Individualism sees man only in relation to himself, but collectivism does not see man at all, it sees only ‘society’. With the former man’s face is distorted, with the latter it is masked… …Modern individualism has essentially an imaginary basis...modern collectivism is essentially illusory....”-- (Between Man and Man, Martin Buber, 1947, Macmillan, p. 200).

    “The subject no longer revolves around the object in our critical epistemological system; rather, the object now revolves around the subject. This altering shift has occurred because the object has shown itself to be an imposter.”—Anonymous


    The critical philosopher should be aware that the strict distinctions between the State, Society, Church, and Education are only for the purposes of organization and analysis. A person could be a physician employed by a state university and who is religious moving seamlessly through each sphere of civil society routinely. There is a violence of abstract idealization in the process of analysis that distorts the observed object by minimizing how these spheres overlap and interact dynamically, or dialectically in everyday experience. There are two meanings of “critique” used in Critical Theory: 1.) Critique focused on the conditions for the possibility of knowledge. 2.) Critique as examining systems of constraint. We have extensively discussed a Neo-Kantian critique of knowledge using the concept of ideological paradigms. The critique of systems of constraint is best exemplified in the critique of Originalism and Textualism. These two types of critiques will also overlap in this analysis of society in applying the concept of ideological paradigms and examining the power of society to construct reality through a coercive system of illusions.

    Christian theologians recognize Schleiermacher as the founder of modern theological ethics. A necessary condition for a moral agent is that she is free to choose between moral and immoral action. However, we are only “free in as far as we can act from our own inner being; we are not free in as far as we can be determined by the objective whole, of which we are an integral part” (Munro, p. 231). Material existence is not viewed inferior as in Platonic Idealism. Most modern Western legal systems understand that the person is not in control during all circumstances; therefore, conscious “intention” is a relevant element is determining the severity of a criminal act, and its punishment. In this theological model the individual, or person is believed to be created in the image of G-d as a self-determining and self-authenticating being that is the center of finite existence acting as a mirror of the universe (Munro, p. 139). Schleiermacher believed “…a person should be an individual ‘without violating the laws of humanity’, that ‘each human being should represent humanity in his own way’, and that what is valuable is a person’s ‘distinctive being and its relation to humanity’ “ (Stanford Encyclopedia: Schleiermacher). Through human reason and volition the foundation of ethics is established and the entire cosmos is given meaning. Schleiermachian teleology views human beings not as accidental to existence, but indispensable to achieving ethical purpose of the cosmos

    As Martin Buber noted, collectivism and individualism are polar opposites between which society swings from one extreme to the other. Christian Pietism is inherently individualistic. Schleiermacher adds community as an important organ of balance to enhance the greater good of society.
    Amazingly, Schleiermacher’s view of German society in the early 1800 is in many ways more politically progressive than America is today. Schleiermacher was committed to the welfare of humanity and respected cultural diversity while encouraging intercultural exchange and discourse to gain valuable insights into life for the greater good. He did not believe any one society had a monopoly on truth and that other cultural perspectives are life enriching. Schleiermacher held the same cosmopolitan views for cultural diversity in religion. He defended the Jews from discrimination and exploitation that forced them to be baptized to obtain legal rights. Schleiermacher advocated the abolition of capital punishment as revengeful and viewed the death penalty as deeply un-Christian. Criminals instead should be educated and reformed for re-entry into civil society as productive citizens. If the State or civil society is itself corrupted, reform must come from the individual member of society for reform, not revolution in the Schleiermachian view.

    Even more surprising is Schleiermacher’s pre-Marxist view on labor in his 1799 essay Toward a Theory of Sociable Conduct. Remember, Karl Marx was not born until 1818! Schleiermacher is not Marxist, but a proto-Marxist! Great Britain did not started legislating a series of English Factory Acts until 1833 through 1864 to regulate workers’ labor rights (Marx, Capital Vol. 1, chapter 10, sec. 6). Schleiermacher was concerned about three major issues with labor: existential de-humanization, spiritlessness, and the total scientization of life by instrumental reason.
    Schleiermacher was the first male proto-feminist and encouraged women to enter areas traditionally male dominated. He wrote in a short essay, Idea for a Catechism of Reason for Noble Ladies ( 1798 ), to “Let yourself covet men’s culture, art, wisdom, and honor.” And again in his Confidential Letters Concerning Friedrich Schlegel’s Lucinde, he encourage “women to seek sexual fulfillment, and to free themselves from inhibitions about discussing sex” in 1800! He viewed women as an even greater benefit to society when they are allowed to contribute intellectually and spiritually. He thought women are the moral counter to violence and cruelty within society based on their personal experiences of having limited freedom of choice. He wrote in Idea for a Catechism, “You should not bear false witness for men. You should not beautify their barbarism with words and works”(Ibid.).

    Next, let's look at the ideology of Western Individualism.
     
    Last edited: Feb 20, 2019
  13. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    -50, Schleiermacher’s Ethical Social Theory/Christian Pattern
    -52, Thom Hartmann's "The Prophet's Way."
    -54, Schleiermacher: The State
    -55, The False Memories of a Reified World
    -57, Schleiermacher: Originalism and Judicial Nihilism
    -58, Interpreting Original Meaning
    -59, The Nihilist's Hermeneutic
    -60, Textualism is not in the Text
    -61, The Interpreter’s Purpose
    -62, Schleiermachian Sociology & Critique of Ideology

    -63, The Ideology of Individualism

    The Ideology of Individualism

    “…in modern times much more depends on the correct thinking through of a situation than was the case in earlier societies.”Karl Mannheim in “Ideology and Utopia,”(1936)

    “They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.”Margaret Thatcher

    Ideology is a pre-constructed abstract interconnected pattern of a unified thought system that gives order to the multiplicity of experience, but is not necessary for experience. Ideology is not just about facts—but also about the order of the totality of facts. The concept of the atomistic individual is a theoretical abstraction also, not only society. If there is no society, there can be no markets but only buyers and sellers according to this nominalistic reasoning. Hobbes, Locke, Hume, and existentialist philosophy all use the concepts of “individual” and “individualism,” so that it is a highly ideological term that ranges from philosophies of atheistic egoism (Rand) to theistic existentialism (Kierkegaard). I want to revisit Hobbes again, but focus instead on his view of the individual in civil society.

    The very act of static conceptual abstraction of a particular behavior of humans removes it out of context thereby circumscribing any greater significance it may have. The “economic man” is an unconscious distortion by static model driven abstract classification, “the act of rationally objectifying,” that reinterprets human beings as “individuals” absent from a greater community matrix and history. Collectivism says, “E pluribus unum,” or Latin for "Out of many, one." Individualism says, “From the one, many.” Separating the one from the many invite false assumptions about human existence. According to this ideology a mythic-philosophic “individual” drops from the theoretical sky into history miraculously already having fixed unbounded knowledge of all world history. All human motivation is reduced to a search for exchange value in this version of theoretical economic individualism. Human beings become a contractualist wealth-accumulating self-directing machine only seeking power over others. She is the Hobbesian possessive accumulator of wealth so that individualism produces a rational exchange agent from a natural human process. Hayekian Libertarianism and the other Austrian Economic School variations distort the human face—it is reified fiction.

    A systematic analysis of the atomistic egocentric individual can be found in Thomas Hobbes’ (1588-1679) book, Leviathan, wherein he describes the self-interested economic man and a theory of the state and society. Hobbes’ philosophical anthropology of human behavior has a familiar ring with today’s popular version of Libertarian philosophy represented by Ayn Randian psychological egoism.1 The Leviathan’s theory of state is linked to a belief in the intrinsic competitive nature of human beings. For Hobbes the natural condition of men is “war of all against all” for without the nation-state each person has a right to everything. Such an irrational society ruled by self-interested human beings would be chaotic making commerce impossible since no one would be secure against violence from another. In order to avoid this natural state of war rational human beings accepted, in theory, a social contract by which all persons give up some freedom for protection from another. Such a regulating state could have the form of a Monarchy, Aristocracy, or a Democracy.

    1. Footnote: Randian Self-Interest Egoism is really an anti-ethical theory. “Interest egoism,” means “Everyone always acts so as to promote his own self-interest either immediately or long run, to the exclusion of everyone else.” The first modern schools of ethical theory were moral sentiment theories (not "emotionalism") based on human "sympathy" and "empathy" which is the opposite of self-interest egoism of which there are other versions. Randian Interest Egoism is a version of “Want Egoism” or “Wantism” that states “X wants Y; therefore, Y is right.” An ethical theory only based on self-interest is no ethical theory at all, but uses the language of ethics such as "happiness," "rational," "good," "life," "prosperous" and other tautologous names for their definition of immoral selfishness. And then out of thin air the interest egoist proclaim a universal a priori prescription--even a Duty! (Categorical Imperative)-- saying, "Everyone should seek their self-interest." If a person really believed in “self-interest egoism” they wouldn’t tell anyone since others acting in their self-interest is just more uncontrolled social competition against one’s own self-interest. I just killed Ayn Rand in a footnote.

    In Hobbes’ Leviathan the state is not founded on universalistic morality, nor on political human rights, but on non-traditionalist human economic self-interest. Cultural norms are not completely arbitrary because there are some unchanging laws of nature on which norms can be based. In this case normative laws are derived from the biological competitive nature of humans according to Hobbes. Interpreting social competitiveness as human nature legitimizes competition as part of a false social totality. Karl Popper calls this interpretation “biological naturalism.” Man is only an accumulating machine seeking power over others. Biological naturalism is essentially a zoological definition of human beings.

    The Hobbesian economic man is intrinsically anti-social who forms the basis of an inherently unstable community that is only designed to assist in exploiting members and accumulating power. In this view there is nothing else to connect private individuals in society except competition and human convention. Each wealth accumulator has no ethical responsibility for his beaten competitor- the poor, or anyone else. Both the unfortunate poor and the shameful criminal are indistinguishable and expelled from society as unproductive. Hobbesian power philosophy has been adapted to popular Libertarian sects in America. Libertarianism and Neoliberalism embrace this anthropological view of humans as a capital-accumulating machine. Libertarian atomized anti-social community doesn’t exist on any other foundation than self-interested advantage, possessive individualism, competition, economic contractualism, and ethical egoism if not crude materialistic nihilism. Hobbes does not deny the existence of society, only that in its natural state society is disorganized war.

    For Hobbes there are no absolute values. Where there is no social covenant, no act can be called unjust. Hobbes writes in the Leviathan, “…the notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law, where no law, no injustice. Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.” And there is “…no dominion, no mine and thine distinct; but only that to be every man’s, that he can get: and for so long as he can keep it." In modern advanced industrial society this competitive comportment minimizes the civil and familial to emphases vocational privatism characterized as possessive individualism, utilitarianism, and un-coerced obedience to external authority with a fatalistic acceptance of conventional work morality (Habermas and the Dialectic of Reason, David Ingram, Yale University Press, 1987, p.15).

    The Free Market Fundamentalist thought-system is based on the view of human relationships as primarily economic and transactional with rational self-interested agents producing, distributing, and selling commodities in a market that reflect rational consumer demand. The entire premise of Free Market Fundamentalism is based on a fallacy—the informal logical Fallacy of Composition. One cannot infer something is true of the whole from the fact that it is true of some part of the whole. In other words, the buyers and sellers may be “rational,” but the market can stay “irrational” longer than you can stay financially solvent. This is the reigning ideological view today in America and is not new in the life cycles (Greek: Kuklos) of societies. See, Kuklos: The "Cycle" of Government Types From Aristocracy To Tyranny.

    Market fundamentalism, Hyper-Individualism, Libertarianism, and Neoliberalism all seek to deny an obvious fact --we are all members of society and much of what we prize as the best of human achievements has come from collective effort in building a commons. We must examine human processes in a fuller socio-historical context to truly understand human existence—to recover lost human experience, and not accept an ahistorical ideological characterization of human being. When Libertarianism describes humans as merely Hobbesian wealth accumulating contractualist machines they are not only describing a false philosophical anthropology, but also prescribing a set of behavioral goals for society. The description of human behavior as egoistic self-interestedness is self-fulfilling by ideologically re-enforcing the very attributes that are supposed to be inherent unchanging laws of biological naturalism—the economically strong rule over all. As one author wrote, “the docile and gullible come in droves to prove the now tautologically objectified point.”

    Chris Hedges' description of society emphases the importance of “place” and “community” and is identical to Schleiermacher’s view of society as a community of individuals.
    In America today the very concept of community is under endless attack. Within the sphere of community are cultural values that are the source of social rationality in science and knowledge (theoretical), religion and morality (practical), art and taste (aesthetics). It is these strengths within the sphere of human community that monopoly capitalism is attacking and colonizing private civil life through extreme privatization. These market forces reduce the theoretical to ends-means instrumental technology; the practical is replaced with nihilistic contractual possessive individualism; and aesthetics are reduced to manipulative consumer marketing by multi-national corporations. Society is transformed into a network of dominating pseudo-democratic administrative systems of constraint. Culture becomes an elaborate set of ideologies of socially pragmatic functional false beliefs. The personal sphere metamorphoses into social alienation, fatalism, and mental neurosis. Then in the midst of all this debris of damaged life Free-Market Fundamentalism alleges that human nature and democracy are the root problems.

    Do humans have a nature? Going back to antiquity we find in the fourth century B.C. Aristotle writing in Magna Moralia about a “first nature,” and “learned custom” which can be as strong as first nature.

    Despotism
    by Encyclopaedia Britannica Films
     
    Last edited: Feb 22, 2019
  14. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    -50, Schleiermacher’s Ethical Social Theory/Christian Pattern
    -52, Thom Hartmann's "The Prophet's Way."
    -54, Schleiermacher: The State
    -55, The False Memories of a Reified World
    -57, Schleiermacher: Originalism and Judicial Nihilism
    -58, Interpreting Original Meaning
    -59, The Nihilist's Hermeneutic
    -60, Textualism is not in the Text
    -61, The Interpreter’s Purpose
    -62, Schleiermachian Sociology & Critique of Ideology
    -63, The Ideology of Individualism

    -64, The Social Construction of Reality


    The Social Construction of Reality


    “For what comes by nature is harder to cure than what comes by custom for the reason why custom is held to be so strong is that it turns things into nature.” —Aristotle, Magna Moralia, Book II, 4 B.C..

    “1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things.”—
    Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus


    A very brief overview of the philosophical school of thought known as the “Sociology of Knowledge” is needed before further discussing Aristotle’s distinction between first human nature and a second constructed cultural nature. Max Scheler (1874-1928 ) was known in 1920 as the father of the “Sociology of knowledge” (Wissenssoziologie), which is concerned with the relationship between thought, and the social context it arises. His phenomenological examination focused on how existential determination dialectically influences thought.

    The best overview of this area of critical sociology is a small book authored by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann titled, “The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (Anchor Books, ed. 1967, here after referred to as 'SCR').” This book is particularly indebted to Emile Durkheim as the first French professor of the sociology of knowledge although authors Berger and Luckman give a dialectical interpretation of Karl Marx’s critique of society combined with sociologist Max Weber’s research into how subjective meanings become reality (SCR., p. 17). I first encountered this book when an excited graduate sociology student hurriedly walked into the philosophy department holding a paperback book saying, “Have you guys heard of this?” I think in some ways the sociology of knowledge presents critical theory more intuitively than critical philosophy since it has a stronger empirical side that people can relate to instead of abstract epistemological questions. [1] For many readers the sociology of knowledge was their first introduction to critical theory.

    1 Footnote: A point of phenomenological interest is Peter L. Luckmann worked with Alfred Schutz on the text, “Structures of the Life-World (1982).” We discussed the concept of the Lifeworld in regard to Husserl. The sociology of knowledge uses the phenomenological method to critique ideology and understand how ideas are formulated in a social context to create a commonsense worldview.

    Max Scheler (not to be confused with Karl Schlegel) further developed Husserl’s phenomenological method by researching a new area of study called the phenomenology of ethics. Interestingly, Scheler understood phenomenological observation to be akin to a “spiritual posture.” The later Husserl likely adopted Scheler’s interpretation of the phenomenological method of the Epoche. Scheler viewed Husserl’s phenomenological method as “an attitude of spiritual seeing...something which otherwise remains hidden....”[2] Ethics and phenomenological description merge in Scheler’s methodology.
    Scheler’s key insight is that human knowledge is given in society as a priori to individual experience giving thought the order of a “relative-natural view”(SCR., p.8). Scheler developed an entire theory of values based on “beings-of-value” (Wertsein). Heidegger had a very high regard for Scheler’s contribution to contemporary philosophy. Scheler was the only prestigious member of the German intelligentsia to warn of rising German Nazism in 1927. Scheler’s entire works where not in English even in 1967. One interesting historical note is Pope John Paul II studied Scheler’s ethics resulting in his dissertation titled "Reevaluation of the possibility of founding a Catholic ethic on the ethical system of Max Scheler.[3]

    **********
    “The world expresses itself in the type of the human spirit, and this type represents itself in the world."—
    Friedrich Schleiermacher
    ********​
    Another important scholar that inspired the sociology of knowledge is Karl Marx with his critique of human activity as labor (Substructure) and the society (Superstructure) this activity produces. 1.) Marx and Engels had a dialectical view of the interaction between consciousness and a dynamic material world: in history human consciousness re-shapes material existence (Nature), then material existence in return re-shapes consciousness (Society). 2.) Ideology holds the stock of cultural knowledge, which can be manipulated to reflect and advance only the interests of factional groups. 3.) Socially functional false beliefs create a false consciousness in which the thinker is alienated from his own life. 4.) Reification occurs when the subject apprehends human phenomena as “things” which are non-human, or even super human that re-appear as an alien force (Economic Depressions). However, reification also includes “facts,” “cosmic laws,” or the “will of a divine being.” Reification is a kind of forgetting of the past and de-humanization of the world (SCR., p.89). When Wittgenstein said, “The world is a totality of facts, not of things,” he means A.) The concepts of “world” and of “facts” are linguistic interpretations of existence as appearances. B.) “Things” are appearances (phenomena) of which we cannot go beyond to the thing-in-itself (noumena). The key question for sociology of knowledge is how these subjective meanings are transformed into objective facts.

    American sociologist Karl Mannheim combined Marxian critique to Scheler’s work in sociology of knowledge. His main interest was the phenomena of ideology and distinguishing between the “part, whole, and general concepts of ideology” (SCR., p.9). Ideology can dominate a part or the whole of consciousness as in Marx’s false consciousness. Ideology influences both the other’s thinking as well as one’s own thoughts. No one is immune to the influences of ideology. Mannheim most famous book is “Ideology and Utopia” (1936) translated from German by Louis Wirth and Edward Shils, Harvest Books, edition, 1996. For editions published in the US after 1936, Part I, was added especially for English readers. Mannheim’s thesis is “utopianism is like ideology, but unlike ideology it has the dynamism to transform that reality into its own image”(SCR., p.10).

    Wilhelm Dilthey’s research focused on countering historical relativism by arguing that a historical situation can be understood only in its own social historical context (SCR., p.7). American sociologist Robert Merton made the very important distinction between “the intended, conscious functions of ideas, and the unintended, unconscious ones” (SCR., p. 11). Merton was the first fully developed sociologist of knowledge. Sociologist Talcott Parsons’ studies were a critique of Mannheim’s research. Neither C. Wight Mills, nor Parsons, nor Merton developed the sociology of knowledge further than Mannheim. And lastly, Werner Stark diverts from Mannheim’s focus on ideology by turning from the “sociology of error” to the sociology of truth.
    Construction of Reality by Externalization, Objectivation, and Internalization

    Dr. Dennis Hiebert of Providence University College, Canada defines the social construction of reality as “…the process whereby people continuously create, through their actions and interactions, a shared reality that is experienced as objectively factual and subjectively meaningful.” This socially unifying process has at least three related processes. 1.) Externalization is a process in which the institutions of society and nature appear as external and independent of one’s own` existence. Reality is that quality of phenomena recognized as being independent of our own existence and volition. 2.) Objectivation is the “…process by which the externalized products of human activity attain the character of objectivity.” Daily life is viewed as having a pre-arranged ordered reality. The dynamics of human created products act back on the producer appearing as other than a human creation. Money capital moving around causing worker dislocation and unemployment is a good example of the objectivation of human labor as profit returning in money form as an alien force. 3.) Lastly, Heibert defines internalization as “…the process whereby the individual learns the legitimations (explanations and justifications) for society’s order.” These justifications could be cognitive, or moral. Knowledge is the certainty that phenomena are real and have attributes. When we define the world, we define ourselves.​

    The Social Totality

    Adorno is known for his intentionally non-scientific philosophical concept of the “social totality.” Adorno argues that 1.) Society gives facts meaning in a social order. The social totality is not a causal chain matrix, nor a collection of disconnected facts. Rather the social totality is a driven self-sustaining system that provides a social pre-constructive model of the world. At the same time the social totality act as a constraint on thinking. Adorno’s thesis is “…that society, as a totality, is not an object which can be grasped through any of the scientific methodologies adopted by positivism”(Adorno, by O'Connor, Brian, Pub. Taylor & Francis Books, 2012, p. 27). Positivism misses the dialectical process by which objective facts are formulated. 2.) Society is shaped by fundamental ideological beliefs. Most importantly, 3.) Society is a coercive totality that can force persons into self-destructive circumstances. However, this influence cannot be understood with the category of “causality,” but rather by “integration.” In is within the social totality that “ ‘Damaged life’—our condition—is a life pursued within the space of the social totality in which our beliefs and decisions are directed by institutional norms which seem objective and reasonable”(Ibid., p. 27).

    Aristotle postulated two human natures: the first nature humans are born with while the second nature is formed by socialization. This second nature is viewed by the sociology of knowledge as having two key general processes the individual undergoes: Primary socialization, and Secondary socialization. However, I want to change these terms to “Primary paradigm,” and Secondary paradigm” in the next discussion.​
     
    Last edited: Feb 27, 2019
  15. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    -50, Schleiermacher’s Ethical Social Theory/Christian Pattern
    -52, Thom Hartmann's "The Prophet's Way."
    -54, Schleiermacher: The State
    -55, The False Memories of a Reified World
    -57, Schleiermacher: Originalism and Judicial Nihilism
    -58, Interpreting Original Meaning
    -59, The Nihilist's Hermeneutic
    -60, Textualism is not in the Text
    -61, The Interpreter’s Purpose
    -62, Schleiermachian Sociology & Critique of Ideology
    -63, The Ideology of Individualism
    -64, The Social Construction of Reality

    -65, Primary and Secondary Socialization Paradigms


    Primary and Secondary Socialization Paradigms


    In the last discussion I noted that Aristotle postulated two human natures: the first nature humans are born with while the second nature is formed by socialization. This second nature is viewed by critical sociology as having two general processes the individual undergoes: Primary socialization, and Secondary socialization. However, I want to change these terms to “Primary paradigm,” and “Secondary paradigm.” Both Berger and Luckmann used the term “socialization” which has the connotation of being about table manners. Sociology texts often use table manners as an example of socialization. It is a good example. One actually has to train a child not to pull the hair of a playmate, or eat out of another’s plate on impulse. This process is mostly successful. However, the term “paradigm” is analytically insightful just as “socialization” since paradigms also define what is real, the self, and knowledge. Luckmann only used the term “paradigm” in a colloquial sense once in his book to describe Robert Merton’s sociological studies. The concept of paradigm is useful for keeping the focus on Mannheim’s critique of ideology. In this study Thomas Kuhn’s scientific paradigm and Berger/Luckmann’s use of the concept of socialization is understood as both have similar meanings as far as the ideological formation and is concerned. [1]

    The Primary Baseworld Sociological Paradigm

    1.21 Each item can be the case or not the case while everything else remains the same.”-- Ludwig Wittgenstein’s definition of logical contingency, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (pdf)

    (∀x)[{Ix --> (Ix v ~Ix)} --> Ry]*(x :/: y) [2]

    The child’s first nature is inherently social according to Aristotle. The primary paradigm constructs the cognitive scheme for a baseworld, or first home world for the socialized child. The baseworld provides a place for the child’s self-identity as a member of society (Generalized other), and access to the stock of cultural knowledge along with intersubjectivity that allow persons to share common interpretations of experiences, thoughts, definitions, and situations. Language is the most important tool for socialization since it “objectifies” the world by creating the system of symbols to organize meanings and things according to a specific hierarchical epistemological scheme. Language allows the child to construct a social identity in which the inner world of thought and the outer world line up in a “symmetrical relationship.” This world ordering implicitly has encoded within it the “social distribution of knowledge” that is also the constricting content of socialization. This cultural stock of knowledge is inherently constrictive since “There is always more objective reality available than is actually internalized in any individual consciousness” (SCR., p. 133). The observing subject cognitively subtracts what is beyond the domain of a paradigm.

    In addition to language, the second essential condition for socially training a child is “emotional attachment to a significant other” or learning is impossible. The parent, or guardian must not only be physically present, but also intellectually, and emotionally present. Without emotional attachment by the child, internalization of the primary paradigm will fail since identification with a significant other failed. The child “identifies” with the significant other’s attitudes by making them their own thereby learning normative correctness. The child’s self identity reflects back the significant other’s view of the child and is “assigned a specific place in the world” (SCR., p. 132). With this kind of identity formation the self is a reflected social self. Berger/Luckmann further write, ”Every individual is born into an objective social structure within which he encounters the significant others who are in charge of his socialization. These significant others are imposed upon him. Their definitions for his situation are posited for him as objective reality…He is thus born into an objective social structure but also an objective social world”(SCR., p. 131). Berger/Luckmann note that there are tremendous variations from person to person with different biographical circumstances (class) and individual “idiosyncrasies” (intellectual, physical) that make each person unique for better or worst. However, empirical studies report persons view themselves as both being inside and outside of society according to Sociologist Georg Simmel (SCR., p. 205).


    The primary paradigm provides a cognitive “nomic structure” to the world. “Nomic” is from the Greek word, νόμος, meaning “ custom, tradition, political tradition, regime, or structure,” (Slater lexicon), and “law” (Middle Liddell Lexicon). The letter ἀ is a negative prefix, or alpha privative. When the prefix is added to “nomic,” it forms “anomic,” or “anomie” which means “no structure,” or “no law.” “Anomie” is an important concept in describing the secondary paradigm and Mannheim’s study of ideology.

    The Secondary Subworld Sociological Paradigm

    The secondary subworld paradigm is a second process of socialization involving other areas of society. The secondary subworld paradigm is parasitical (Greek: para, “beside”, sitos, “the food”) in that it presupposes the baseworld with an already formed social self-identity. Personality tests are often given to measure the degree of socialization of a potential employee. The child’s guardian constructs the first primary baseworld, but a person unrelated to the child’s family constructs this other new subworld. Examples of a subworld would be when a person entered the military, joins a corporation, become a university student, or joins a religious organization. The mentors in this social context can be “anonymous, detached and interchangeable” (SCR., p. 142). This second process of socialization is necessary because of the high social division of labor, and distribution of knowledge by stratified industrial sectors. The person learns a new institutional language and new system of schematization. The family becomes less important in this subworld as a vocational advantage-oriented life style becomes the dominant value in this example. Socialization is successfully completed when people are willing to “sacrifice” themselves in someway for the new paradigm (SCR., p. 145).

    Paradigm Entropy

    However, the secondary subworld has less of the same sense of reality, inevitability, and naturalism as the primary baseworld. Self-identity is not as strongly defined by the subworld. However, experience in the subworld can cause the destruction of one’s self-identity in both levels of socialization. Internalization of the subworld is a vulnerability from an institutional point of view. In fact, one can “hide” within the role specific knowledge of a secondary subworld although this is becoming less and less possible today with employee surveillance technology. Factional groups and social theorizers can engage in ideological manipulation of reality by constructing paradigms to heuristically exclude selective perceptions such as individual intuitive preunderstandings (intuition). The ruling social paradigm does not want to compete with any other legitimizing authority in constructing a socially functional false totality. Society can become repressive in the domains of the cognitive-instrumental (Science), moral-normative (Ethics), and the aesthetic-expressive (Culture). The social totality has coercive force and the power to kill.

    The most important characteristic of the secondary subworld is it can create conflicts of paradigm consistency with the stronger primary paradigm. "Paradigm entropy" is a paradigm that no longer able to give coherent meaning to experience resulting in an asymmetry between thought and life. The primary and secondary paradigms may conflict with different interpretations of phenomena, or there is a conflict of values between different domains of social reality. Phenomenon that appears as reality-disconfirming is named by Kuhn, “paradigm anomaly.” Karl Mannheim called this damaged paradigmatic world “structureless,” and “enfeebled” (Ideology and Utopia, p. 17). Max Weber referred to this condition as “disenchanted experience” in describing modernity. Critical theorist Roger Foster refers to the “atrophy of experience,” “restricted experience,” and “mutilated experience” in a disenchanted world. [3] Paradigm shift may result from the realization there are many possible interpretations of reality by other paradigms alien to one’s primary baseworld. What the subject believed to be the necessary structures for society (Psychological Egoism) and reality (Nihilism) turn out to be “a bundle of contingencies” (SCR., p. 135). Also, the original primary baseworld paradigm may have serious internal crises being a religious cult or hate group. There is always in the background the possibility of one’s world collapsing and metamorphose into a counter-reality and counter-identity. Consequently, there is a need by individuals and institutions for intense “reality maintenance” to uphold “reality-persistence” with theoretical cultural legitimations to enhance internalization by members of the subworld.

    When paradigm entropy reaches a critical mass then revolutions occur or even “Great Awakening” religious movements rise up. Revolutions in history are typically non-violent because most people do not want to die for an already dead paradigm. Total socialization is not possible in a modern industrial society with a complex division of labor (SCR., 165). Human beings construct society, and society in return reshapes what it means to be human so there are continual metamorphoses of society and the individual.


    Metamorphosis
    Philip Glass

    [1] Footnote: the idea of the “reflective social self” likely originated from William James in his book “Principles of Psychology (1890)” (SCR., p. 206).
    [2] Footnote: Wittgenstein never put this proposition into symbolic form, but it might look like this.
    Definitions of symbols for expressing logical contingency:
    :: equivalent
    :/: not equivalent
    v = either, or, inclusive
    --> = Logical operator for implication: If, then.
    * = and, conjunction
    ~ =Not
    (∀x) = for all x
    I = each item
    R = Remains the same
    y = everything else
    x = any item
    [3] For a classic critical analysis of how Internet monopolies are mining personal data for surveillance and monetization of the individual private life see Shoshana Zuboff’s interview about her recent book “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power.” Sociologist Jurgen Habermas described this process as the “colonization of the lifeworld.”
     
    Last edited: Mar 4, 2019
  16. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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  17. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    I reached a resting place here. I still need to summarize Schleiermacher on the Church, and education. However, I must go back and edit what has been written so far. It may take a few weeks. However, I haven't abandoned this thread and will add more posts later. Strange phenomenon indeed!
     
  18. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    Wow, this thread really needed some editing. It might take me three weeks to finish this cycle of editing. Anyway, I found this really cool guitar piece in a song by Kevin Morby. I kinda know what he means...thanks Saraswati. The Kantian Block limits reason to the phenomenal world. Thought fails to cross the block because it is finite. Theism fails to cross the phenomenal/noumenal divide because it is not literally true. Personal acts of creativity in the arts also fail because of their purely abstract idealist origin lacking universal significance, and yet a authentic effort toward transcendence is transforming.



    Harlem River

    Harlem River, talk to me
    Tell me what you think about
    Harlem River I'm in love, love, love, love


    Harlem River talk to me
    Where we heading now?
    Harlem River I'm in love, love, love, love

    All because of you

    In my pearl and my diamond shoes
    I've climbed the cloud that will store the moon
    On the river
    All because of you

    Harlem River swallow me
    Put your hands around my neck
    Harlem River, I can't breath
    You've got the lights down now

    And Harlem River, give me wings
    Put my head up in the clouds
    And Harlem River all because
    Oh, I know where now


    Harlem River, tell me, is it true?
    That in my pearl and my diamonds
    I've climbed the cloud, now I store the moon
    Harlem River, all because of you

    I don't know I don't know
    Just where I'm going
    Cause I've never been

    And I don't know
    Just where I'm going
    Or where I've been
    Oh, Harlem River, like a diamond


    And ride on that easy rider
    Flow like that Harlem River

    Ride on that easy rider
    Flow like that Harlem River


    I ride for you

    I ride for you
     
    Last edited: Mar 19, 2019
  19. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    Almost done editing, and a little earlier than I thought. Mostly, formatting, lots of punctuation, and rewriting a few awkward sentences, but no real change in content.

    But more importantly, I found an important video of a Noam Chomsky. I really like Chomsky. How can he remember all his research? He must have a photographic memory. I always knew Chomsky was a harsh critic of empirical scientism. I only know his political writings and not his linguistic studies. I thought linguistics field went the way of Skinnerian Operant Behaviorist psychology. That's why I avoided it. Like rats, this scientific paradi....Oh, never mind.

    So this video was helpful. Listen very closely to what Chomsky says about Issac Newton (12 min.), Newtonian physics, and the Machine Paradigm of Nature. Or should I say the theologian Issac Newton. Oh, he also did mathematics and physics on the side. And Chomsky praised British Idealism which is the influence of German Idealism...Kant and Hegel. British idealism largely developed from the German idealist movement.

     
    Last edited: Mar 31, 2019
  20. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    Noam Chomsky - Mind, Consciousness, Descartes, Turing, and Artificial Intelligence.

    “Depth psychology attributes healing powers to insight, meaning not a detached knowledge of psychoanalytic theory or of one’s own past in the light of this theory but a repetition of one actual experiences with all the pains and horrors of such a return.”—Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, Vol. I, p. 96.

    Here is a great video interview of Noam Chomsky on the introspection of thinking and language.

    Wittgenstein believed that language is a public tool to understand the private subjective life. There can be no private languages because they are impossible since how would one know if the wrong word was chosen in a sentence?

    Consciousness necessarily must have an object (Franz Brentano: intentionality). The unconscious is merely potentiality and has no object except language.

    “…the unconscious of …Freud is not a “room” which can be described as though it were a cellar filled with things which once belonged to the upper rooms in which the sun of consciousness shines.” (Ibid., p. 179).

    This is the reason I reject the term “subconscious” because it implies a second hidden mind. “Pre-conscious” is a very good term. Language necessarily posits entities to convey meaning (Word/Object Reference Theory of Meaning). Language is the portal through which the unconscious objectifies into concepts. The price for this objectification of the unconscious into words is distorted reified thinking. Words can still have meaning without actually denoting any object, “The Faun of Narina ” for example.

    “4.002 Language disguises the thought; so that from the external form of the clothes one cannot infer the form of the thought they clothe, because the external form of the clothes is constructed with quite another object than to let the form of the body be recognized.”—Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.

    I believe thinking is fundamentally unification and negation. Derived from the same word Logos is the verb legō (λέγω) meaning "to count, tell, say, or speak." The verb, συλλέγω means “to gather, collect, or bring together.” Thinking is the gathering, and collecting of particulars into a class, or universal concept. Causal thinking is the unification, homogeneity, or identity of the cause with effect. French scientist Emile Meyerson (1859-1833) believed that causal relation and logical implication is simply the process of identification:

    “The principle of causality is simply the principle of identity applied to the existence of objects in time..Identity is the eternal framework of our mind.” –Meyerson, Identity and Reality,1908.

    This principle of identity is very useful for finding food: see the rabbit foot prints, the rabbit path, the rabbit den, and rabbit for dinner. Consciousness cannot help but to unify experience as cause and effect. This mechanical model of thinking is problematic for scientifically understanding the world. Nature is not a machine. The mechanical model of Nature is false (Isaac Newton). Nature cannot be reconstructed deductively.

    Meyerson was a major influence on Alfred Kuhn’s study of scientific paradigms. Also, Einstein was very enthusiastic of Meyerson’s scientific theory and visited him every time he went to Paris. Einstein approved of Meyerson’s critique of positivistic epistemology.
     
    Last edited: Apr 2, 2019
  21. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    I finally finished editing all of relevant posts for this thread. I posted the edited version at Strange Phenomenon to keep as a backup copy and editable version for further editing. Editing mostly involved simple spelling, cleaned up a few awkward sentences, page formatting, but no change in content or theses.

    I will still post in this thread until I finish with Schleiermacher.
     
  22. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    Meyerson's insight of the "identity" and "unification" of thinking can help understanding why the Machine Paradigm of Nature is so dominate in our perceptions of the world, and its limitation (Newton). This problem of the connection between cause to effect is know as the "Induction Problem" (see Wiki article) in that there is no necessary logical connection between cause and effect. Hume claims that "Causes of effects cannot be linked through a priori reasoning, but by positing a "necessary connection" that depends on the "uniformity of nature."
    Chomsky clearly describes the "Induction Problem" through the eyes of Newton, Hume, and Locke. The Wiki article noted is very good and follows Chomsky's thought here closely.
    Noam Chomsky: Induction and Psychic Continuity

     
    Last edited: Apr 13, 2019
  23. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    -50, Schleiermacher’s Ethical Social Theory/Christian Pattern
    -52, Thom Hartmann's "The Prophet's Way."
    -54, Schleiermacher: The State
    -55, The False Memories of a Reified World
    -57, Schleiermacher: Originalism and Judicial Nihilism
    -58, Interpreting Original Meaning
    -59, The Nihilist's Hermeneutic
    -60, Textualism is not in the Text
    -61, The Interpreter’s Purpose
    -62, Schleiermachian Sociology & Critique of Ideology
    -63, The Ideology of Individualism
    -64, The Social Construction of Reality
    -65, Primary and Secondary Socialization Paradigms
    -73, 74 Schleiermacher On the Christian Church


    Schleiermacher on the Christian Church


    “All institutions, including the church, are inherently demonic.”—Paul Tillich


    For Schleiermacher the church has an important role is society and makes a key distinction between religious faith and religious doctrine. The purpose of the Church pulpit is to shape the religious life in a “divine fellowship or kingdom” of which religious consciousness is more important than doctrine. Orthodoxy (Greek: ortho means “true,” or “straight,” and doxos meaning “belief”) is no defense against unbelief so “…Creeds cannot, therefore be absolutely regulative of the Church’s faith” (Munro, p. 104). Rather, Christian theology is not “fixed,” or “immovable,” but a living organ adaptable to each historical era as human existence is a “unity of matter and spirit.” One divine Spirit is manifested through the diversity of the individual’s reason and volition that provides a variety of religious experience adding “infinite variety” and historical renewal making Church orthodoxy relevant to human life.

    When the Church relates to its mass membership as a complex formal rationalized organization then bureaucratization takes over by imitating large-scale state bureaucratic organizations. German sociologist Robert Michels formulated the Iron Law of Oligarchy from his research of organizations and oligarchy. Michels, a student of Max Weber, wrote, “It is organization which gives birth to the domination of the elected over the elected, of the mandatory over the mandators, of the delegates over the delegators. Who says organization, says oligarchy” (Political Parties, Michels, 1911). Large-scale government bureaucracies rely on hierarchic structures that weld the “demonic power of the structures of destruction” which are dynamic, creative-destructive, and self-sustaining. The demonic power of institutions is essentially bureaucratic and characterizes both capitalist and socialist societies. Christian theologian Paul Tillich wrote from experience about this dynamic evil in Fascist Germany before the Nazis drove him out of the German university system:


    "For the Christ, the Messiah, is he who is supposed to bring the “new eon,” the universal regeneration, the new reality. New reality presupposes an old reality; and this old reality, according to prophetic and apocalyptic descriptions, is the state of the estrangement of man and his world from God. This estranged world is ruled by structures of evil, symbolized as demonic powers. They rule individual souls, nations, and even nature. They produce anxiety in all its forms. It is the task of the Messiah to conquer them and to establish a new reality from which the demonic power of the structures of destruction are excluded"(Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, Vol. II, p. 27).

    Surprisingly, Schleiermacher believes that Christianity “brings nothing entirely new, or alien into the domain of Ethics…rather supplements the general principles of all morality”(Munro, 257). Both philosophical ethics and Christian ethics have the same content, but in a different form. Philosophical ethics emerges from the moral reasoning of humans in relation to “the race.” Schleiermacher means by “race,” the Human Race. Christian religious consciousness, on the other hand, originates from individual ethics in relation to the Church. Reform should not be alien to Church orthodoxy. However, Church reforms cannot be based on factional interests, egoism, statism, or uncritical crypto assumptions of creed, but rather remain consistent with the universal principles of Christianity as understood by its members.

    Schleiermacher absolutely rejects physical force to punish children. It is deeply morally wrong. Corporal punishment of children is anti-Christian and has no place in child rearing. FBI Agent John E. Douglas was one of the first serial killer profilers in U.S. law enforcement. When asked what should be done to stop serial killers he said, “Don’t torture your children.” Douglas’s advise is prescient. With revengeful and scientifically sadistic institutions, the United States routinely torture its citizens and is even allowed to torture by law. American citizens can be legally treated as slaves in prison to provide unpaid labor for corporations and the State. Schleiermacher rejects the entire disciplinary system of rewards and punishments for children. American society is very effective in beating out empathy in its children and citizens. Games of chance are “…immoral in all its forms, produces a bad and empty kind of fellowship, and in the case of some it assumes the unhealthy symptoms of a chronic disease”(Munro, p. 287).

    Capital punishment is antithetical of anything bearing the name of “Christian.” The symbol of Christianity is the Roman Empire’s instrument of torture and execution—the Cross. American Christians should wear the lethal hypodermic needle as it modern symbol today. The Christian is asked to imitated the life of Christ--the Christian Pattern-- not worship the instruments of death whether it is a cross, a gun, a guillotine, a hypodermic needle, an electric chair, or a rope. Capital punishment is the remedy for crime in a completely dehumanized authoritarian society. Capital punishment is anti-Christ. Christianity practiced in America is by and large a massive hypocritical self-righteous fraud.

    Christianity is antithetical to murdering “uncivilized races.” Schleiermacher is an anti-imperialist—that is to say, America’s foreign policy since its inception as a nation:

    “Christianity knows nothing of a right to civilize uncivilized races by means of force. It insists upon the avoidance of everything by which the Christian name might be blasphemed among the nations (i Tim. vi. I Tit. ii. 5-8 ) ; and by nothing has it been more blasphemed than by oppression. We rightly wonder how it is that Christians live in intercourse for centuries with pagan peoples without exciting in them any friendly disposition towards Christianity. But the reason of this is to be sought for, not so much in the circumstance that Christian people have no interest in Christianity, as in the fact that Christianity has made itself hated and contemptible through its deeds of violence. Were it not for this, those plastic races with whom it came in contact fifteen centuries ago would have long since been Christianized. That they are now only partially so is a standing disgrace to the Christian name”(Munro, p. 276).

    The United States is responsible for the torture and murder of some 250,000 Latin Americans during the 1980s American/Contra death squad inquisition. Many were professing Catholic Christians that are to this day being discovered in mass graves throughout Central America. Those government officials responsible for this mass murder of Catholic Christians have gleefully returned to U.S. government seats of power to duplicate the atrocities of the American/Contra death squads in Venezuela in a publicly admitted effort to seize its natural resources.

    continue to post #74
     
    Last edited: Apr 15, 2019
  24. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    -50, Schleiermacher’s Ethical Social Theory/Christian Pattern
    -52, Thom Hartmann's "The Prophet's Way."
    -54, Schleiermacher: The State
    -55, The False Memories of a Reified World
    -57, Schleiermacher: Originalism and Judicial Nihilism
    -58, Interpreting Original Meaning
    -59, The Nihilist's Hermeneutic
    -60, Textualism is not in the Text
    -61, The Interpreter’s Purpose
    -62, Schleiermachian Sociology & Critique of Ideology
    -63, The Ideology of Individualism
    -64, The Social Construction of Reality
    -65, Primary and Secondary Socialization Paradigms
    -73, 74 Schleiermacher On the Christian Church


    The Latent Church


    "Plato told Aristotle no one should make more than five times the pay of the lowest member of society. J.P. Morgan said 20 times. Jesus advocated a negative differential - that's why they killed him." – Graef Crystal


    First century Christianity emerged from Christ’s pacifist liberal protest against established orthodox belief. According to first century Christians, by rejecting dogmatic authority, he was fulfilling the true meaning and purpose of Judaic Orthodoxy of his time. This protest also extended to the State’s claim to power and authority. We see this historical cycle of autonomy and new heteronomy over and over again in the secular and religious realms. Christianity first appeared as a critique of authority. Christ was a heretic of the orthodoxy of his time. Christianity is a Jewish religious heresy and qualifies as a cult in Hebrew theology.

    Christianity loses its authenticity to the degree it submits, or surrenders, to the dogmatism of orthodoxy. The Roman Emperor Constantine I was converted to Christianity in 312 A.D. and with his Edict of Milan (313 A.D.) he ended the persecution of Christians. Emperor Theodosius later declared Christianity the official religion of the Rome Empire in 382 A.D. Christianity was truly conquered when it became the official religion of the Roman State. This integration of Church and State is called “Constantinism” and prepared the way for the Medieval Inquisitions—and there were many. After the integrating process of Constantinism, authentic Christianity is then transformed into uncritical conformist “Christendom.”

    It is exactly this “Mass” Christianity, or religion of the Crowd, that Soren Kierkegaard aimed ten polemical tracks, published collectively as “Attack Against Christendom.” Kierkegaard attacked Denmark’s State Church by calling it corrupt, and an “illusion” of Christianity. In Denmark during Kierkegaard’s life it was illegal for anyone but a Christian to own a whorehouse.

    There is more recognition of first century New Testament Christian principles in secular Progressive society than in the today’s organized churches of the Christian Right-Wing. The organized Christian Right-Wing has become a church of idolatrous religious nationalists. With American Progressives and Secular Humanists re-emphasizing human empathy and the social duties of Christianity, they have become an external latent church of conscience. This latent church is based on the universality of moral principles:

    "Well, there is an elementary moral principal which is called the principal of universality. The principal says if something is right for us it's right for others [if] it's wrong for others it's wrong for us. If you can't accept that principal, you should have the decency to shut up. So either you accept that principal or you say O.K. I'm a Nazi. I'll do anything I like, no more discussion of right and wrong. Those are the choices in effect." -- Noam Chomsky

    Paul Tillich (1886-1965) was a German born American theologian. He taught theology at the University of Berlin, Marburg, Dresden, Frankfurt and Leipzig. Tillich among the first to oppose the Nazis movement and was the first non-Jewish professor to be dismissed from the German University system by the Nazis. The Nazi’s targets where those they labeled with carefully crafted propagandistic names such as “liberals,” “leftists,” “communists,” and “humanist.” Tillich fled Nazi Germany and was accepted to teach at the Union Theological Seminary in the United States and he brought with him the trauma and historical memory of the fascists invading German society and churches by bribery, force, and deception. History is repeating itself now in American society.

    One of the many egregious crimes of Nazi fascism was its crude and profane entry into the realm of spiritual consciousness. This historical experience of fascism influenced Tillich’s philosophical thought and theological writings throughout the rest of his life and appear in his own personal political choices and commentary. He comprehended the disappointment and alienation individuals in modern secular society developed toward the organized church because of its moral failure to wholly resist demonic fascism in its capitalistic (Italy) and socialistic (German) forms.

    The Catholic and Protestant churches competed for Nazi favoritism in the hope of securing the monopoly of managing the Germany's public educational system. This same struggle is happening is the American school system. The Catholic Church won the prize only because it was more organized and centralized than the Protestant Churches. This moral failure of organized Christianity submitting to Hitler has damaged it credibility for almost a hundred years. And it appears to be happening once again today, but in a collapsing corrupt American society. The atheists have a sound moral case to despise organized Christianity given its poor track record of supporting tyranny throughout the centuries. Anti-religious sentiment is completely understandable given its disgusting tendency of joining tyrannical forces in times of crisis:

    “It will not do to designate as non-churchly all those, who have become alienated from the organized Churches and traditional creeds. My life in these groups for half a generation showed me how much latent Church there is in them: the experience of the finite character of human existence; the quest for the eternal and the unconditioned, an absolute devotion to justice and love; a hope which is more than any Utopia; an appreciation of Christian values; and a most delicate apprehension of the ideological misuse of Christianity in the Church and State. It often seemed to me as if the latent Church, which I found in these groups, were a truer church than the organized Churches, because its members did not assume to be in possession of the truth”(The Interpretation of History by Paul Tillich, 8, On the Boundary Between Church and Society).

    Paul Tillich recounts Nazism and Religious Nationalism in Germany during the 1930s and how some “Christians” cooperated with them. The Christian Socialists tried to warn of the coming danger, but the warnings were ignored because they were merely religious socialists:

    “Those possessed of demons in the New Testament know more about Jesus than those who are normal, but they know it as a condemnation of themselves in their condition of cleft-consciousness. The Ancient Church called the Roman Imperial Government demonic, because it made itself equal to God, and yet prayed for the Emperor and gave thanks for civic peace, which he assured. In a similar way religious Socialism attempted to show that Capitalism and Nationalism were demonic powers, insofar as they were at the same time sustaining and destructive, attributing divinity to their highest values. The development of European Nationalism [Nazism] and its religious interpretation of itself has fully confirmed this diagnosis of mine”(Paul Tillich, The Interpretation of History ).

    Just as it is happening today in America, nationalism emerged in Nazi Germany with the patina of Christian symbolism—and it was only symbolism. All nationalism is a violation of the most “fundamental” principle of New Testament Christianity—the sin of idolatry:

    "Idolatry is the elevation of a preliminary concern to ultimacy. Something essentially partial is boosted into universality, and something essentially finite is given infinite significance. The best example is the contemporary idolatry of religious nationalism"(Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, Vol. I, p.13).

    Capitalism is essentially a demonic enterprise:

    ”But real demonry—if this word is to have any special content---occurs only in connection with a positive, sustaining, creative-destructive power...This is true also of the last great demonry of the present, nationalism.... National things receive sacral untouchability and ritual dignity. But just there demonization begins. With the creative-supporting forces, destructive ones combine: the lie with which the self-righteousness of one nation distorts the true picture of its own and foreign reality; the violation, which makes other nations an object whose own essence and independent might is despised and downtrodden; the murder, which in the name of the g-d pledged to the nation is consecrated to holy war. Beyond this, it is the peculiarity of the national demonry of our time that it has subjected itself to capitalism. The nations entered the World War as capitalistic groups of power; and the chief bearers of the will for war were at the same time the bearers of the capitalistic domination in their own nation; not from any personal demonry, but themselves supported by the demonic figure of capitalism which they represent. Thus the social demonry of the present is revealed in its duality, in its immense supporting and destructive strength. Shattered for a moment, it is at present on the point of re-establishing itself, in order better to sustain and—better to destroy”(The Interpretation of History by Paul Tillich.I: The Demonic).

    Martin Buber, an existentialist theologian, tried to counter the rising fascist tide by arguing that the doctrine of fallen man cannot be used to justify establishing a Police State. Crime is often the proxy issue for establishing a fascist state:


    “In a famous polemic with Friedrich Gogarten, written during the early days of the Nazi regime and published in Germany in 1936, Buber tries to define the political implications of human sinfulness. Gogarten, following a pseudo-Lutheran line, justifies the authoritarian state on the ground that man is "radically and irrevocably evil, that is, in the grip of evil," and therefore must be kept in rigorous control by the state. Buber denies this conclusion, and points out that even in Gogarten's own theology, man stands in "radical evil" only before God, because "God is God and man is man and the distance between them is absolute." Over against his fellow men and society, however, "man cannot properly be described as simply sinful because the distance is lacking which alone is able to establish the unconditional." Gogarten’s justification of the authoritarian state is, therefore, invalid; indeed, Buber generalizes, "no legitimate use can be made in political theory of the concept of human sinfulness" (The Writings of Martin Buber, Meridian, 1959, by Will Herberg, p. 67).

    After living through the rise of Nazism in Germany in which there were 80 million casualties worldwide and witnessing the church’s sickening moral failure to resist the demonic forces of nationalism, Paul Tillich concluded, “All institutions, including the church, are inherently demonic.”


    The Curse



    And the people went into their hide, they oh
    From the start they didn't know exactly why, why
    Winter came and made it so all look alike, look alike
    Underneath the grass would grow, aiming at the sky

    It was swift, it was just, another wave of a miracle
    But no one, nothing at all would go for the kill
    If they called on every soul in the land on the move
    Only then would they know a blessing in disguise

    The curse ruled from the underground down by the shore
    And their hope grew with a hunger to live unlike before
    The curse ruled from the underground down by the shore
    And their hope grew with a hunger to live unlike before

    Tell me now of the very souls that look alike, look alike
    Do you know the stranglehold covering their eyes?
    If I call on every soul in the land on the move
    Tell me if I'll ever know a blessing in disguise​
     
  25. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    -50, Schleiermacher’s Ethical Social Theory/Christian Pattern
    -52, Thom Hartmann's "The Prophet's Way."
    -54, Schleiermacher: The State
    -55, The False Memories of a Reified World
    -57, Schleiermacher: Originalism and Judicial Nihilism
    -58, Interpreting Original Meaning
    -59, The Nihilist's Hermeneutic
    -60, Textualism is not in the Text
    -61, The Interpreter’s Purpose
    -62, Schleiermachian Sociology & Critique of Ideology
    -63, The Ideology of Individualism
    -64, The Social Construction of Reality
    -65, Primary and Secondary Socialization Paradigms
    -73, 74, Schleiermacher On the Christian Church

    -75, Four Conclusions

    Four shocking conclusions so far in this search for a theory of spiritual experience:


    First, Noam Chomsky is one of the best theologians of today! Don’t believe me? Go back and listen to what Chomsky says about Newton and the mechanical paradigm of nature. Newton is saying, “THERE ARE NO MACHINES.” I find this very exciting! There must be something wrong with me. Some still don’t get it. Chomsky believes there is great potential in the phenomenology of consciousness and the Cambridge Platonists in the study of language. Only theologians and a few economists get it (See these two fantastic interviews with Steve Keen, and Jim G. Rickards who are way ahead of the times). You heard it a million times. Listen to these lectures by Chomsky. During the four years I spent in graduate school studying philosophy, Noam Chomsky was never mentioned once in or out of the classroom:

    Noam Chomsky on Logic/Epistemology/Metaphysics


    “You could not have any capacities at all, if you didn’t have limits because the capacities determine the limits.”—Noam Chomsky on principles and perimeters.

    Secondly, I am still laughing about Martin Heidegger being philosophically the Christian theologian Schleiermacher incognito. Right-wing extremists like the Silver Shirts knew it intuitively because they attempted to suppress this entire area of study in the U.S. (The pre-Socratics in particular); the Left-wing does not have a clue. Without any evidence, I pursued Heidegger’s fundamental ontology because of the theological themes found everywhere in his writings, but in a demythologized form. I knew about Schleiermacher's theology, but I did not know Heidegger lectured on Schleiermacher until a few weeks before I posted it!

    Some universities in English language countries have been putting out this propaganda for decades that Heidegger was a Nazi. Well, Heidegger was a Nazi in the same sense that you and I are Americans. I am an American while my imperialist government is by remote control, or by proxy murdering, raping, and torturing the guilty with the innocent all over the world. Yes, I am an American. Just try not standing while the American anthem is being played at a sporting event. The hypocrisy is astounding as critics point their blood drenched finger at Heidegger is self-righteous judgment as Americans remained silent while the Neo-Fascist-Mafia Republican Party took over the country.

    The character assassination of Heidegger was a sociological propaganda hit job. A.) I could find nothing in his works “Being and Time” and “Introduction to Metaphysics” that had any fascist ideology. B.) Heidegger had at least two very good character witnesses. First, German-born Jewish philosopher and theologian Hannah Arendt who spent time in a concentration camp before escaping was not only Heidegger’s student, but also his paramour. She never denounced Heidegger. Secondly, German Christian theologian Paul Tillich was the first non-Jewish professor expelled from the German university system by the Nazis. That should tell you something about Paul Tillich. Tillich’s entire three volume Systematic Theology is structured like Heidegger’s fundamental ontology and actually refers to Heidegger in footnotes. Tillich never denounced Heidegger. C.) Lastly, even if he was a true ideological Nazi it still is an Ad hominem argument.

    I am totally convinced that the entire US education system is designed to only teach college students to make ad hominem arguments because academia is totally bankrupt. They teach Heidegger, Newton, Karl Marx, and Wittgenstein in the most stupid and dishonest ways. The American educational system makes you into a fool. D.) The Nazis didn’t care much for Heidegger and named him the “The Most Useless Professor” then sending him digging ditches by the Rhine.

    Without any historical context, for context is subversive, the entire educational system of America steers students away from Heidegger for fear that Christian Socialism may rise again. The Fascist Nazis and the US government have a common enemy—New Testament Christianity. That’s why today we have this pus some call Christianity that allies itself with any authoritarian movement that comes around. The American oligarchy will never ever tell you the truth. Every word from their mouth is an outrageous stupid lie to make you into an idiot.

    Thirdly, the phenomenological Epoche turned out to be something totally different from what I was taught. I am not surprised that this religious interpretation of the Epoche is passed over. Religion is not taken seriously because it is judged a prior as irrational and center right professors are the worst! They are similar to the pseudo-intellectual cultured despiser of religion, Sam Harris. How would you like to have a person like him be your college professor? I had one like him.

    Harris reminds me of something that happened years ago. A politically conservative language analysis professor offered a class on Wittgenstein’s work, Philosophical Investigations (1953). At the beginning of the first class on the first day, he announced that the syllabus would be primarily concerned with Wittgenstein’s analysis of logical positivism’s verification theory and not “metaphysical issues like theology.” He stood their silent and then about one third of the class walked out with their heads up. He tried to humiliate them. It was just so many less pounds of meat to teach. I should have walked out with them, but I was nearly finished with my graduate work. The class was cancelled because of too few students! By the way Professor, Wittgenstein doesn’t teach verification theory in the Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations (1953) is not even positivistic…***hole! Wittgenstein had utter contempt for academic philosophy. Paul Tillich is also suppressed in academia because he contradicts the fascist dogma of American Christian fundamentalism.

    If I knew then what I know now, I would have been a much better student, and a lot more trouble.

    Logical Positivism is a political movement, not scientific objectivism (My bold text for emphasis):
    Why don’t the Logical Positivists teach verification theory from the Tractatus? Oh, because it isn’t there. So they have to cram Verification Theory down your throat in the later Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations which is not positivistic. All person’s that are non-believers in verification theory can now leave the room. You can’t speak because you are not allowed to speak and still be within the sphere of Reason.

    Lastly, Wittgenstein was a serious Christian and mystic. It makes sense that the Vienna Circle Logical Positivists led by physicist Moritz Schlick rejected Wittgenstein’s philosophy just after naming him the founder of logical positivism. Logical positivism is a philosophy of science that originated in the Vienna, Austria during the 1920s as a form of extreme empiricism. It proposed that science be based on observable verified empirical facts. Positivism’s most famous contribution is the “Verifiability Theory of Meaning” that says a statement is meaningful if and only if it is empirically verifiable. All judgments must be based on empirical experience as foundational. This school of philosophy no longer formally exists and disbanded in the 1920s because the verifiability principle itself could not be verified! Positivism still has a strong influence in the sciences today.

    Positivism simply ignores its epistemological issues. It is a serious problem for an epistemology to not meet its own criteria of meaningfulness.
    While the verifiability principle seems to work well for particular affirmative existential claims (X is a virus), or particular negative categorical propositions such as “Not all Scotsmen are Right handed,” (∃x)(Sx * ~Rx). The Verifiability Principle has problems with universal categorical propositions such as “All Crows are Black” (∀x)(Cx --> Bx). The scientist would have to observe every crow that ever existed in order for the proposition to be verified as true or false. Or take the proposition that “All objects on earth fall at the same rate.” Good luck verifying that one. These epistemological problems are all swept under the rug, but still taught as science.
     
    Last edited: Apr 19, 2019

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