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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    -89, Paradigm Shifting
    -94, 95, The Telos of Absolute Idealism, Pt. 1 – 2
    96, 97, Christian Socialism, Pt. 1 – 2
    100, Tillich on Being, Theos, Idolatry, Pt. 1
    101, Tillich on Being, Theos, Idolatry, Pt. 2



    “God above God”


    Tillich is known for two re-definitions, or re-interpretations of the theological concepts of theism (“God above God”), and religion (“Ultimate concern”) making them more encompassing and universal for dialogue with other world religions.

    Positivistic science only gives us a scientifically ordered world so the language of science is inappropriate for analyzing normative questions of religion, ethics, and aesthetics. Science and language-in-general is designed only for application to the world of experience—not the metaphysical. Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein accepted the metaphysical, but not metaphysics. Tillich believed,

    “Both the concept of existence and the method of arguing to a conclusion are inadequate for the idea of God. However it is defined, the “existence of God” contradicts the ideas of a creative ground of essence and existence. The ground of being cannot be found within the totality of beings…The scholastics were right when they asserted that in God there is no difference between the essence and existence. Actually, they did not mean “existence.” They meant the reality, the validity, the truth of the idea of God, an idea which did not carry the connotation of something or someone who might or might not exist…”(ST., Vol. II p. 205.)

    The God above existence and essence is the non-objective “God above God.” This is not a personal God, nor a theistic anthropomorphic God. Tillich rejected proofs of the existence of God as being on the same plain as the fundamentalist atheist’s thinking—both are arguing an absurdity. Tillich believed the apologist’s task of theology is its only task. The theistic debate of the twentieth century use the “argumentum ex ignorantia” by searching for gaps in scientific and historical knowledge to find a place for God in an otherwise completely mechanical universe. Such apologetics only “reduced God to a stopgap”(Ibid., p. 6). Ernst Bloch wrote, "Only an atheist can be a good Christian; only a Christian can be a good atheist."

    Tillich wrote, “It would be a great victory for Christian apologetics if the words “God” and “existence” were very definitely separated except in the Christological paradox. God does not exist. He is being-itself, beyond essence and existence. Therefore, to argue that God exists is to deny him”(Ibid., p. 205).

    God as the "highest being" among beings, or alongside other beings, lacks theological refinement by merely transforming the concept of God into a finite object co-existing with other finite objects. Theism is a spatial-temporal concept of an objective God that makes the divine just another causal entity alongside other causes. Accepting this framework finally results conceptually in a dichotomy between the "natural" and the "supernatural." Paul Tillich rejects this division and argues going beyond religious symbolism of naturalism and super-naturalism. Tillich agrees with Naturalism's rejection of super-naturalism. There are no sound "proofs" (meaning both consistent and true) for the existence of an objective Supreme Being. Kant has established this truth in his “Critique of Pure Reason,”(1781) under “The Ideal of Pure Reason, Sec. III: Of the Arguments of Speculative Reason in Proof of the Existence of a Supreme Being. “ Kant shows how these arguments fail.

    God as "transcendent" does not mean we must establish a "super world" of divine objects. God as transcendent means that the finite world, a world of objects, point beyond itself and is "self-transcendent." The use of the words “in” and “above” relies on a spatial metaphor to express the relationship between God and the world. Yet, if God were not an object, then everything we say about the divine would be symbolic, but if we make a non-symbolic statement about God we rejected the idea of God as "transcendent." This is a limitation of our ability to know and our existential situation to be separated--barricaded--from the infinite. Tillich accepts “being- itself” as a non-symbolic term for God:

    “…the question arises as to whether there is a point at which a non-symbolic assertion about God must be made. There is a point, namely, the statement that everything we say about God is symbolic. Such a statement is an assertion about God which itself is not symbolic. Otherwise we would fall into a circular argument. On the other hand, if we make one non-symbolic assertion about God, his ecstatic-transcendent character seems to be endangered. This dialectical difficulty is a mirror of the human situation with respect to the divine ground of being. Although man is actually separated from the infinite, he could not be aware of it if he did not participate in it potentially. This is expressed in the state of being ultimately concerned, a state which is universally human, whatever the content of the concern may be” (ST. Vol. II, p. 5).

    Tillich distinguishes between “sign” and “symbol.” A sign stands for something known just as any word corresponds, or refers to an object. A symbol also points beyond itself, but to something unknown or ethereal, but allowing participation in an otherwise inaccessible "depth dimension of reality itself."

    Religion can become an “ism”? The Greek root “ism’ means any “action, or practice, state or condition, principles, doctrines, a usage or characteristic, devotion or adherence.” But what is the essence of religion? Tillich argues that all ideologies have in common an “ultimate concern.” Ultimate concern can be for truth (realism), or reality (science), or even non-truth (nihilism), or non-reality (absolute skepticism). For if anyone says that a certain proposition, or belief, existence or non-existence of an entity, or doctrine is true, or even false as in the case of anti-intellectualism they are postulating that reality is structured a certain way and not another—that is an “ism.”

    Tillich says, “He is a theologian in the degree to which his existential situation, and his ultimate concern shape his intuition of the universal logos of the structure of reality as a whole is formed by a particular logos which appears to him on his particular place and reveals to him the meaning of the whole. And he is a theologian in the degree to which the particular logos is a matter of active commitment within a special community” (ST., Vol. 1, p. 24-25).

    Tillich wrote, “There is hardly a historically significant philosopher who does not show the marks of a theologian. He wants to serve the universal logos.” Issac Newton viewed himself as more a theologian than a scientist. This is because any “ism” is saying that the world is one way and not another, that a certain practice is compatible and corresponds with the structure of the world rather than not. In this sense, Tillich says, they are religious. The word “religion” comes from "re-ligare", means "to tie back, tie fast, tie up" meaning to connect to truth, the actual state of affairs, and not error.

    An epistemological problem occurs with “ism” represents ideological dogmatism. When an “ism” pre-defines the world in a certain way, experience no longer counts. Dogmatic orthodoxy defines science as one thing and religion as something else so this division becomes a self-evident truth when it is only an ideological definition that often become either a tautology, or a traditional aphoristic truism. Tautologies are easy to argue such as “the truth is true” or “reality is real,” “ the physical is really real,” or “religion is religious belief.” The non-theist, Paul Tillich, openly redefined the meaning of religion as “ultimate concern.” With this new broader definition of religion, Tillich believed that “Genuine atheism is not humanly possible, for God is nearer to a man than that man is to himself.” Today, there is a special kind of scientific dogmatism called “scientism” that is really naive realism that parasitically binds to the complexity of scientific theory, epistemology, and metaphysics which all schools of science commit themselves whether they admit it or not. Ultimately, all “isms,” scientific or non-scientific, are based on some unjustified belief. Believers in scientism are as dogmatic and intolerant as any religious cult could be.

    Idolatry

    The Greek word eidos (εἶδος) means “that which is seen,” to which the derived word eidolon (εἴδωλον ) as in “ideology,” means interestingly, “idea,” “phantom,” or “idol.” In an effort to retrieve some old Christian symbols that have lost the power of logos, I want to review Paul Tillich’s Voice of America broadcasts that read like sermons to the German people as they were being bombed by WWII American and Allied Forces.

    [1] The term “socialism” was very popular in Europe during the late 1800s so it became the name of many political parties for both the left-wing and right-wing in Germany much like “democracy” is popular today such as the conservative “Free Democratic Party” (Germany), or Kim Jong-un’s national title “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.” The “National Socialist German Workers' Party,” or “National Socialism,” often shortened to “Nazi” was a right-wing political party greatly admired by the industrial magnate Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, William Randolph Hearst, and JFK’s Father Joseph Kennedy (The Rise of American Fascism).
    Marx and Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto,
    “...we could not have called it a socialist manifesto…. In 1847, two kinds of people were considered socialists… the various utopian systems…On the other, the manifold types of social quacks who wanted to eliminate social abuses through their various universal panaceas and all kinds of patch-work, without hurting capital and profit in the least…. Socialism in 1847 signified a bourgeois movement, communism a working-class movement. Socialism was, on the Continent at least, quite respectable, whereas communism was the very opposite...we were very decidedly of the opinion as early as then that we could have no hesitation as to which of the two names we should choose. Nor has it ever occurred to us to repudiate it” (Marx, and Engels, Communist Manifesto, 1847, p. 11)(Not Copyrighted Material).





    She


    She caught a hole in the fence and she ran.
    She left her troublesome prison behind.
    She didn't wanna fuel the fire.
    She didn't wanna lose her desire.

    She, she.
    She, she.

    She looked out to the horizon.
    She didn't have much left to see.
    Greed had taken the trees away.
    She had taken the bees away.

    She, she.
    She, she.

    She don't know where she gonna go now.
    She looked up to and it should've been stars.
    She said I wanna go to Mars.
    This planet, it ain't ours...

     
  2. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    96, 97, Christian Socialism, Pt. 1 – 2
    100, Tillich on Being, Theos, Idolatry, Pt. 1
    101, Tillich on Being, Theos, Idolatry, Pt. 2

    102, Tillich's Wartime Addresses to Nazi Germany


    Paul Tillich’s Wartime Addresses to Nazi Germany


    "The spell must be broken so that the German people can live."--Paul Tillich, May 9, 1944


    Paul Tillich broadcasted one hundred Voice of America speeches to the German people during 1942 to 1944. Tillich’s collected speeches in, “Against The Third Reich,” Paul Tillich’s Wartime Addresses to Nazi Germany 1942 to D-Day 1944 (pdf. referred to as WAN here after), represent about half of the broadcasts. [1] Any person listening to these broadcasts, or reading anti-Nazi pamphlets did so at great risk for they could be punished by torture and death. Philosophy students Hans and Sophie Scholl were beheaded by guillotine for distributing anti-Hitler leaflets at Munich University in 1943. A University janitor identified the Scholls as the students who threw leaflets in a campus building. Czech theologian Jakub S. Trojan reported that anyone listening to the Voice of America broadcasts could be executed. During President FDR’s administration, Voice of America was not allowed to broadcast false information. [2]

    Tillich’s speeches refer to the Nazis as the “National Socialist dictatorship.” Tillich became a religious socialist after WWI during which he held a higher military rank than Hitler. [3] Socialism was very popular with German labor during the late 1800s and early 1900's so the title of “socialist” was very common like the title “democracy” became popular after WWII. What made “National Socialism” different from other sects of socialism was its fanatical support for an anti-Communist, militaristic, racist, totalitarian state.

    Ultimate Concern and Idolatry


    Tillich addresses subjects such as the community, power politics, freedom, justice, truth, hate, guilt, and de-humanization. He frequently reports on the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis reminding listeners “to be anti-Jewish was to be antiChristian(WAN, p. 6). Parochial nationalism is called anti-Christian and idolatrous by Tillich and is the primary focus of his criticism throughout the broadcasts. He defined idolatry as “the elevation of a preliminary concern to ultimacy”(ST.,Vol.I, p.13). Also, Tillich re-interprets the meaning of “religion” to give theology greater relevancy in order to formulate a contemporary socio-political “theology of culture.” Tillich expanded the concept of “religion” to mean ultimate concern: “The object of theology is what concerns us ultimately. Only those propositions are theological which deal with their object in so far as it can become a matter of ultimate concern for us.” (Ibid., p. 12). And again Tillich explains, “like every human being, he [the philosopher] exists in the power of an ultimate concern, whether or not he is fully conscious of it, whether or not he admits it to himself and to others.”(Ibid., p. 24).

    Ultimate concern is for Tillich the essentially religious and an object for theological analysis. Idolatry takes something conditional and elevates it to the unconditional; the particular is given universal significance; the finite is raised to the level of the infinite. If holiness is considered inherent in something, it becomes demonic. Holy objects symbolically represent human ultimate concern, but over time the object, or a system of sacred things tend to become the ultimate concern that then transforms the holy objects into an idol, “Holiness provokes idolatry(Ibid., p. 216). Idolatry is committed when the relative symbol itself is substituted for the reality of the symbolized. The infinite is reduced to an object; symbols become mere signs, spirituality becomes empty, or misdirected ritual. Religious nationalism is the epitome of idolatry that sets in motion an anti-demonic struggle for Christians.

    In Tillich’s broadcast on the defeat of Nazi nationalist belief, he named them a “National Socialist tribal religion against the Christian spirit” (WAN, p.163). The Nazis fought against Christianity because they understood Christianity had “a particular attitude toward life” that was the complete antithesis to Nazism. Nationalist self-idolatry has its origins in tribalism older than Christianity where “every tribe considered itself to be the greatest in the world.” Christianity attempted to rise above this nationalistic tribalism to proclaim one law, truth, justice, and one God--not a national god. A universal God symbolizes the unity of humankind, unity of justice in all nations that uphold the dignity of every person and not one tribe or race, or the idolatry of nationalism—the “dragon of pagan idolatry.” When ancient Israel chose the god of nationalism, the people were “surrendered to foreign powers by the God who was its God.” As the Christian church became weak and irrelevant, ancient pagan nationalistic gods “rose from their graves,” and “equates its own limited power with the highest power and, in this way, destroys itself.” He urged the German people to “return home” to Christianity and humankind.

    Tillich warned that Nazi Nationalists wanted to put the German people in the condition where they could be “dragged to the slaughterhouse” by exploiting a fearful nation which renders people unable to form clear judgments. The Nazis instill a “false fear-phantom” of an unknown future to drum up “heroic courage” so the German people will endure their present hardships and continue to sacrifice themselves keeping the sorcerers of fear in power. Like the Japanese, the Nazis turned the belief of their own sacredness of blood and soil into barbarity, arrogance and a false sense of national invulnerability. Tillich warns, “One can deal with what one fears. But out of anxiety one must awaken.

    Tillich testifies how German youth are educated by state “preachers and teacher, and educators of death” to seek the meaning of life in the death of an opponent, or one’s own death. Community, instead of providing life, turns education against humanity and any true religious-ethical meaning. They hate the spirit and try to kill the spirit, distort truth, deface justice, and teach tragic heroism. Educators teach a cult of death and heroism, which is really “an education for the extinguishing of all personality and for the mechanization of all humanity”(WAN, p. 45). Germany allowed itself to become “half willingly, half unwillingly” an instrument of destruction and self-destruction and are now entrapped by Nazi power.

    How did Germany with such an advanced culture become the instrument of Nazi power? Tillich gives three reasons: 1). Germany, especially German Protestant religion, emphasized escapism from this life to another afterlife. German Evangelical churches in particular speak of the kingdom of heaven as otherworldly, and should not have any power in this world. However, this otherworldly attitude hands “this world over to satanic powers.” Tillich noted that Catholicism and Protestant Anglo-Saxon religions always felt responsible for the political and social organization of this world. 2.) German Protestantism withdrew from the political sphere by emphasizing spiritual freedom and setting themselves in opposition to political freedom. Freedom of thought which only means the freedom to dream replaced freedom of life (WAN, p. 54). Lastly, 3) the political sphere became ideologically separated from the human. In Germany, the nation and authority become separated. The original relationship between the nation and authority was forgotten so that political power became inhuman power in hands of the Nazi Nationalists. Government is accountable to the nation so that the political sphere is not outside the human, or the religious, or the intellectual for these are “part of what it means to be human, the absence of which makes full humanity impossible”(Ibid, p. 55).

    Tillich views Nazi Nationalism as a revival of an ancient pre-Christian pre-historic repressed barbarism by pre-human monsters that are malicious to spiritual depth, freedom, and individual human dignity. In fact, they desire and compulsively seek human degradation. Nazi Nationalism is the “ancient dragon” that must be slain. Nazi Nationalism can easily give security with slavery, but not security with freedom. The German people could not tolerate freedom because they never had to struggle for freedom and have genuine revolutions like other countries and so stayed submissive to authority of the princes, nobles, teachers, magistrates, property owners, and mayors. What makes this false fanatical nationalistic German revival so frightening is its synthesis of ancient barbarism with a modern Machine Age Anti-Humanism that replaces all authentic community traditions with an artificially created “phantom” culture. [4] The German government preferred a society of human machine to true human beings. Young men are made into war machines, and young women into incubators (WAN, p. 231). Nationalistic fascism only produce “semi-intellectual products,” taken from inferior ideals dressed in un-German anti-Christian symbolism that is affirmed by the “priests of German idol worship.”

    Tillich urges the German people to spiritually separate themselves and break away from the enslaving Nazi spirit. They are “thieves of millions who are adorned with medals,” and even worse than this they “deliberately set the earth aflame”(WAN, p. 201). The Nazis know that they are losing the war and want to disappear so to re-appear later when conditions are right. For now they urge the German people to fight against the Allies only to prolong Nazi rule as long as possible so to prolong their lives. The fascists reason that even if they lose their life in battle they at least escaped facing justice. In other words, the Nazis are heading to catastrophe and are willing to let the world perish with them while “knowingly allow German people to bleed to death for the sake of their power”(WAN, p. 236).

    [1] Page numbers cited are the original book’s pagination, and not the pdf document page numbers.
    [2] On July 2, 2013 the U.S. repealed the ban on broadcasting propaganda to the American people. Today the Pentagon posts directly and by proxy on social media to influence news and political commentary.
    [3] Interestingly, William L. Shirer wrote in his book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960), “…there is no doubt that Corporal Hitler earned the Iron Cross, First Class” (p. 30).
    [4] Tillich must of known that “phantom” in Greek eidolon (εἴδωλον ) as in “ideology,” means both “idol” and “phantom.” He avoided all academic language in his broadcasts.




    Standing Outside A Broken Phone Booth With Money In My Hand

    I've been downhearted baby
    Ever since the day we met

    Jan lays down and wrestles in her sleep
    Moonlight spills on comic books
    And superstars in magazines
    An old friend calls and tells us where to meet
    Her plane takes off from Baltimore
    And touches down on Bourbon Street

    We sit outside and argue all night long
    About a god we've never seen
    But never fails to side with me
    Sunday comes and all the papers say
    Ma Teresa's joined the mob
    And happy with her full time job

    I've been downhearted baby
    Ever since the day we met

    Am I alive or thoughts that drift away?
    Does summer come for everyone?
    Can humans do as prophets say?
    And if I die before I learn to speak
    Can money pay for all the days I lived awake
    But half asleep?

    A life is time, they teach you growing up
    The seconds ticking killed us all
    A million years before the fall
    You ride the waves and don't ask where they go
    You swim like lions through the crest
    And bathe yourself in zebra flesh

    I've been downhearted baby
    Ever since the day we met
     
    Last edited: Aug 4, 2019
  3. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    -94, 95, The Telos of Absolute Idealism, Pt. 1 – 2
    -96, 97, Christian Socialism, Pt. 1 – 2
    -100, 101 Tillich on Being, Theos, Idolatry, Pt. 1 & 2
    -103, Tillich and Wittgenstein on Personal Experience



    Tillich and Wittgenstein on Private Experience


    “You surely know what ‘It is 5 o’clock here” means; so you also know what ‘It’s 5 o’clock on the sun’ means… It means simply that it is just the same there as it is here when it is 5 o’clock.”—The explanation by means of identity does not work here…(PI §350).” –Wittgenstein

    “…the whole system of reason finally leads to some point at which reason does not deny itself, does not abdicate, but transcends itself within itself. —Tillich, “Philosophical Background of my Theology (1960)” in “Paul Tillich: Philosophical Writings, Vol. 1,” ed. Gunther Wenz, 1989, pdf., p. 414.


    At the risk of sounding annoyingly repetitious, I just want to note that the ancient Greek word for “a knowing and knowledge” is γνῶσις (gnosis) derived from γιγνώσκω (gignosko) that means, “to learn to know, to perceive, mark, and learn.” However, Tillich explains that later in Greek history gnosis took on the meaning of a total person centered participatory knowledge, or cognitive commitment. In the New Testament gnosis took on three meanings: mystical union, sexual intercourse, and a kind of knowledge that is not ἐπιστήμη (episteme as in “epistemology”) meaning “scientific knowledge.” Later in the Greek period, gnosis was united with epistemological analysis (Ibid., p. 388, referred to “PW” here on).

    I believe Dr. Verveake’s lecture Ep. 30 - Awakening from the Meaning Crisis - Relevance Realization Meets Dynamical Systems Theory is a profound postmark so far where he concluded, “There can not be a scientific theory of relevance because how science works.” What else cannot be theorized by science? Tillich is focusing on this same problem of philosophy by making this distinction between Gnostic and Epistemic knowledge. Amazingly, Tillich’s epistemology, metaphysics, politics, and ethics are derived from his non-theistic theology:

    “Only if, through a kind of methodological imperialism, we make controlling knowledge the pattern of all knowledge, do existential knowledge and cognitive commitment become meaningless concepts. But it is not only in religion that one had to resist such imperialism” (PW, p. 201).

    In lecture Ep. 31 Embodied-Embedded RR as Dynamical-Developmental GI Dr. Vervaeke proposes a “plausibly argument to integrate cognitive science and human spirituality to address the meaning crisis” (56 minutes). In Ep. 32 -RR in the Brain, Insight, and Consciousness the concepts of Caring and Heidegger’s participatory knowledge (51 min.). And Ep. 33 -The Spirituality of RR: Wonder/Awe/Mystery/Sacredness deals directly with religion, or “Religio.” Just these four lectures cover an encyclopedic amount of philosophical literature much like Hegel’s method of researching a concept through the entire history of Western philosophy. I must say these lectures on spirituality, cognitive science, and philosophy has greatly enhanced my understanding and appreciation for religion in general and Christian theology in particular.


    Wittgenstein on Gnosis/Episteme in the “Beetle Box”


    Wittgenstein is known for his famous quote at the end of his treatise on language, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus,(1921), “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.” This statement is Wittgenstein’s entire summary of Kantian Transcendental Idealism. This is not a nihilistic statement that denies the existence and meaning of anything that is not an object of positivistic science, but rather an observation about the limits of language that is constructed for and functions in a world composed of objects whether they are empirical objects or logical objects. The Hindu Advaita Vedantins (Advaita literally means “not-two”) understood this limitation of language:

    ”Human language has its source in phenomenal experience; hence, it is limited in its application to states of being that are beyond that experience; logic is grounded in the mind as it relations to the phenomenal order; hence, it is unable to affirm, without at the same time denying, what extends beyond that order, “All determination is negation,” to apply a predicate to something is to impose a limitation upon it; for, logically, something is being excluded from the subject…The Real is thus unthinkable: thought can be brought to it only through negations of what is thinkable”(Advaita Vedanta, Eliot Deutsch,1969, p.11).

    However, this object-based language also has difficulty communicating experience in the sensible world. Wittgenstein believed the problem is the use of language that fundamentally misunderstands the phenomena that it attempts to explain, or to convey the meaning of some experiences. Later in life he understood philosophy as solely an attempt to clear up the misunderstandings that improper language use creates. Many thinkers disagree that the only role of philosophy is to correct the misuse of language, or that all philosophical problems are only the result of using unclear language. Be that as it may, Wittgenstein was able to go a long way in resolving many philosophical puzzles and identifying hidden mistakes in the use of language. In his later philosophical work, Philosophical Investigations, (referred to hereafter as PI) published posthumously in 1953, he wrote:

    “We feel as if we had to penetrate phenomena: our investigation, however, is directed not towards phenomena, but, as one might say, towards the ‘possibilities’ of phenomena. We remind ourselves, that is to say, of the kind of statement that we make about phenomena…Our investigation is a grammatical one. Such an investigation sheds light on our problem by clearing misunderstandings away. Misunderstandings concerning the use of words, caused, among other things, by certain analogies between the forms of expression in different regions of language” (Philosophical Investigations, published 1953, paragraph §90).

    Our topics of spirituality, and mystic experience are exactly the kind of problems Wittgenstein had in mind. He does not discuss mysticism directly in the Philosophical Investigations, as he did in the earlier work, Tractatus; however, he does discuss philosophical problems that have the same problem of language as mysticism—that is subjective phenomena that only the person experiencing it could know, like the sensation of pain for example. Fortunately, there is one particular quote in the PI that summarizes his view and exposes the misunderstanding that language creates when applied to our subjective inner private worlds:

    “If I say of myself that it is only from my own case that I know what the word “pain” means—must I not say the same of other people too? And how can I generalize that one case so irresponsibly?
    Now someone tells me that he knows what pain is only from his own case! –Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a “beetle”. No one can look into anyone else’s box, and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle. —Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box. One might even imagine such a thing constantly changing. —But suppose the word “beetle” had a use in these people’s language? —If so it would not be used as the name of a thing. The thing is the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something: for the box might even be empty. —No, one can ‘divide through’ by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is. That is to say: if we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of ‘object and designation’ the object drop out of the consideration as irrelevant” (Philosophical Investigations §293).


    In this quote Wittgenstein is using the phenomenon of pain sensation as an example of a private object, but later he also uses color-impressions, feelings of fear, or headaches as other examples of sensations in a world of private objects. He attempts to examine how language is used in describing this private inner world, “Now, what about the language which describes my inner experiences and which only I myself can understand?” (PI §256).

    One problem is we are each trapped in our own world of inner experiences and we really cannot know the objects in the private world of others—that is, we cannot look into the other persons box, or inner world of private objects. Color-sensations are another case of not being able to know if the next person is experiencing the same color sensation, as you might be experiencing, “The essential thing about private experience is really not that each person possesses his own exemplar, but that nobody knows whether other people also have this or something else. The assumption would thus be possible—though unverifiable—that one section of mankind had one sensation of red and another section another” (PI §272).

    Our ordinary language ignores this problem of private inner experience because it really cannot deal with it as a functioning language: there cannot be a private language so we simply out of habit assume that the color-sensation I experience is the same color-sensation that others experience, “Look at the blue of the sky and say to yourself “How blue the sky is!”—When you do it spontaneously—without philosophical intentions—the idea never crosses your mind that this impression of colour belongs to you. And you have no hesitation in exclaiming that to someone else” (PI §275).

    This is where language use creates a misunderstanding. We cannot assume that the “beetle” in my container is the same as the other person’s yet our ordinary language is built on that assumption, “I can only believe that someone else is in pain, but I know it if I am” (PI §303).

    We apply the concept of identity to our inner experiences and then generalize that sensation to other persons when we speak of it, or even deny it as an experience. The identity language rule cannot be assumed to work in the world of private objects: “But if I suppose that someone has a pain, then I am simply supposing that he has just the same as I have of often had.” –That get us no further. It is as if I were to say; “You surely know what ‘It is 5 o’clock here” means; so you also know what ‘It’s 5 o’clock on the sun’ means. It means simply that it is just the same there as it is here when it is 5 o’clock.”—The explanation by means of identity does not work here…(PI §350).

    Wittgenstein formulated the theory of language-games. The word “game” means rule based linguistic activity--not game meant as in the cynical sophistic use of language as some try to interpret it--which misses the point. Naming objects--where a child is taught to match a word with an object--is a language game in this sense. Wittgenstein defined language-games as the following: “…And the processes of naming the stones and of repeating words after someone might also be called language-games. Think of much of the use of words in games like ring-a-ring-a-roses. I shall also call the whole, consisting of language and the actions into which it is woven, a “language-game” ”(PI §7).

    When Wittgenstein wrote, “The thing is the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something: for the box might even be empty,” he is pointing out that the language-game being used in his beetle example is based on a language of material objects that creates misunderstanding when used to described private objects such as pain, color-sensation, or feelings in our inner private world. These sensations are not objects. When we tried to create a new language not based on the material-object language game to speak of our inner subjective world, we would be creating an impossible language—a private language. He does not mean that a coded language cannot be created, since the code is based on some shared language game. Wittgenstein defined a private language as the following: “But could we also imagine a language in which a person could write down or give vocal expression to his inner experiences—his feelings, moods, and the rest—for his private use?—Well, can’t we do so in our ordinary language?—But that is not what I mean. The individual words in this language are to refer to what can only be known to the person speaking, to his immediate private sensations. So another person cannot understand the language” (PI §243). Such a private language based on only what the originator could experience would in principle be unintelligible to others and even to the originator themselves. How would the originator know if they missed used a word? Language, for Wittgenstein, is a public tool designed to interpret the private life with this inherent fault for objectification and reductionism.

    Wittgenstein is not denying that we experience pain, or see colors, or have inner experiences. He is pointing out the inadequacy of ordinary language built on the model of ‘object and designation’ to describe the subjective world of experience:

    “…It is not a something, but not a nothing either! The conclusion was only that a nothing would serve just a well as something about which nothing could be said. We have only rejected the grammar which tries to force itself on us here.The paradox disappears only if we make a radical break with the idea that language always functions in one way, always serves the same purpose: to convey thoughts—which may be about houses, pains, good and evil, or anything else you please” (PI §304).

    ...to continue with “Tillich on Chronos and Kairos Time Experience.”
     
    Last edited: Sep 1, 2019
  4. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    -94, 95, The Telos of Absolute Idealism, Pt. 1 – 2
    -96, 97, Christian Socialism, Pt. 1 – 2
    -100, 101 Tillich on Being, Theos, Idolatry, Pt. 1 & 2
    -103, Tillich and Wittgenstein on Personal Experience

    -104, Tillich on Chronos and Kairos


    Tillich on Chronos and Kairos Time Experience


    6.3611 We cannot compare any process with the “passage of time”—there is no such thing—but only with another process (say, with the movement of the chronometer).”--Wittgenstein​


    Chronological time, or Chronos, (the Ancient Greek word, Χρόνος,) is linear time, or objectively measured clock time of science contrasted with the other Greek word for time, kairos, (καιρός ) meaning right, proper, exact, critical time, or lived time. Chronos is quantitative mathematical time, but Kairos is qualitative time. Personal psychological lived time, or temporal existentiality, is just as valid as abstract scientifically measured time. Tillich finds the same distinction in Heideggerian phenomenology as Existential time and objective time:

    “Most radical is Heidegger’s distinction between “Existential” and objective Time…In his analysis of Kant he indicates that for himself Time is defined by “selfaffection,”[Sic] grasping oneself or one’s Personal Existence. Temporality is Existentiality. In distinction from this qualitative Time, objective Time is the Time of the flight from our own Personal Existence, into the universal “one,” the “everyone,” the average human Existence, in which quantitative measurement is necessary and justified. But this universal Time is not eigentlich, or proper; it is Time objectified, and it must be interpreted in the light of Existential Time, Time as immediately experienced, and not vice versa” (Paul Tillich Philosophical Writings, Vol. 1, ed. Gunther Wenz, 1989, pdf, p. 368 ).

    For Kant, Time is essentially mathematical, linear, and spatial. A clock is a spatial metaphor (meaning to transfer) for time. The hands of the clock create a spatial pattern transferred from lived Time, but clock time is absolutely different than immediately experienced existential lived time. We can make the clock more accurate, change the spatial metaphor from non-digital to digital patterns, but existential temporality can never be reconstructed with observation and analysis of objectively measured time. Existence cannot be derived from essence. This argument is not based on the tautology of “my inner experience is my inner experience,” but that all knowledge assumes an ontological subject/object polarity.

    The Ontology of Cognition

    Tillich writes, “The unity of participation and separation in the cognitive situation will always remain a fundamental problem of philosophy”(PW., p. 338 ). This epistemological problem emerges from the “ontology of cognition”(p. 382). When we ask any question about existence the subject-object structure of reality is already presupposed a priori. Asking the question of Being, or the meaning of Life is “not mere subjective emotions with no ontological significance; they are half-symbolic, half-realistic indication of the structure of Reality itself”(PW., p. 365). Tillich critically reviews in his writings how various philosophers struggled with this assumption and the limits of human cognition. Tillich reminds us Schelling argued that the Principle of Identity in Thought is “valid only in the realm of essences, not of existence.” When Thought (Essence) and Being (Existence) are separated –not aligned, unsynchronized, not attuned--there is no correspondence to Truth. Truth is the state of thought being in agreement with, or attached to existence. The separation of subject and object logically implies the dialectical possibility of their polar unity. So knowledge as a possibility paradoxically depends on separation and detachment so that “There is no knowledge wither there is no separation”(PW., p. 383). Kant founded his metaphysics on the ontological separation between subject and object that characterize finite human reason. Heidegger believed that the Hegelian critique of Kant’s doctrine of the thing-in-itself (Ding-an-sich) was a denial of finite human knowledge. Tillich agrees with the Neo-Kantian critics of mystic ontology that any claim of a priori knowledge of Being is hubristic irrationalism, but “an ontology which restricts itself to the structure of finitude is possible.” Tillich believed--just as Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Husserl believed--that the objective impersonal worldview of naturalistic science is swallowing the creative source of life like a “monstrous mechanism” (PW., p. 366).

    Tillich’s philosophical historical survey continues focusing on the fundamental ontological division between essence (Idea) and existence (Nature). This ontological division of cognition is the foundation of existentialist philosophy and the key to a critique of all Hegelian holistic idealist systems that make truth impersonal. Existentialism is the philosophy of personal participatory experience from which all interest and decisions originate—there must be “interest” for actual negation and synthesis (Marx). Hegelianism lost the participatory subject in an impersonal objective dialectical process of a progressive teleological history (Kierkegaard). When Hegelianism claims that “A” is negated into a synthesis with “not-A,” “A” is simply being labeled as negated. This is because thinking (essence) is being taken as the same as existence, which is a common error of pure Idealism. Labeling here is just ideology so there is really no negation of “A.” Marx’s insight is the Idea will fail if personal participatory interest, passion, and decision-making is not involved. Tillich applies this same criticism of confusing thought with existence to “every rational theory of progressive evolution, idealistic as well as naturalistic, including the later so-called “scientific Marxism.”(PW., p. 359). Marx famously said that philosophers have only interpreted existence as essences, but the point is to change existence. From these Schellingian, Hegelian, Marxist, Heideggerian critiques Tillich develops a systematic ethical and political theology of culture grounded in personal participatory temporal existential subjectivity, or Kairos experience. (Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture, 1970, pdf.).

    The Kairos Circle

    “Awareness of a Kairos is a matter of vision…. It is not a matter of detached observation but of involved experience.”Tillich, “Systematic Theology, Vol. III, p. 370.


    Tillich develops Kairos into an existential theology of participation that is more of an “attitude of consciousness,” than a political party, or a popular cultural fashion. The word Kairos is used in the New Testament as meaning, “fulfillment of time,” or “God’s timing” referring to the churches experiencing the “self-transcending dynamics of history.” Kairos is the opportune time, the right time, or the harvest time of crops. Kairos is the occasion of an existential decision made in a concrete historical situation based on an analysis, and anticipation of something old passing and the new emerging, but calculation does not produce the Kairos-experience. Scientific-technical foresight of unknown forces working along with human decisions makes predicting the world historical process impossible.

    In the Greek sense of the word, Kairos means “any practical purpose which a good occasion of some action is given”(Ibid., p. 369). Kairos is used in the New Testament when Jesus speaks of the “signs of the times,” or when Jesus said the time for his death had not come yet; John the Baptist and Jesus used it to announce the fulfillment of time for the Kingdom of God; or when the prophetic Spirit arises in the Pauline era. Paul uses it in speaking of Christ, the “great Kairos,” that can enter history at any time and is selected as the “center of history” which can be re-experienced again, and again (meaningful repetition of time, not mathematical linear time). But not every Kairos is of the same historical importance. Relative “kairoi” (plural meaning “the times”) describes when the Church reforms itself against a distorted age, or refuses to reform against heresy.

    The Kairos experience can describe a world-historical paradigm shift in an era of tyranny and domination that suffers from paradigm entropy by failing to provide a meaningful worldview resulting in collapse that makes way for a new paradigm, a new society—and a New Being-- to emerge in history. There is difficulty distinguishing a Kairos from a relative kairoi. Kairoi can be demonically distorted and tragically wrong.

    The term Kairos was used after WWI in central Europe to describe religious socialism, but it was also used “…by the nationalist movement, which, through the voice of nazism, attacked the great Kairos and everything for which it stands. The latter use was a demonically distorted experience of a Kairos and led to self-destruction. The Spirit nazism claimed was the spirit of the false prophets, prophets who spoke for an idolatrous nationalism and racialism. Against them the Cross of the Christ was and is the absolute criterion” (Ibid., p. 371).

    Kairos is a normative concept, not just a description. The Kairos is the moment the archer decides to release his arrow aimed at a target. Tillich tells us that no date foretold by Kairos has ever been correct. No situation foretold by Kairos ever came into being, but history has been changed. History does not progress in a steady predicable rhythm, but undergoes violence change, extreme creativity, extremely dormant periods, oppression, possibilities, cruelty, liberation, and expectation.

    In 1919 Paul Tillich formed the “Kairos Circle” with Eduard Heimann, Carl Mennicke, Arnold Wolfers and others to ask the church to be open to socialism and social democracy, and a synthesis of Christianity with socialism. Tillich published the “Journal for Religious Socialism” between 1920-1927 for the group and later from 1930 published the “New Journal for Socialism.” Tillich declared that theology and ethics must “step forward in opposition to the capitalist and militarist order of society in which we find ourselves, and whose final consequences became obvious in the World War.” Tillich’s ultimate goal is for persons to “experience the divine in everything human, the eternal in everything temporal(“Paul Tillich as a Systemic Theologian,” by Oswald Bayer in “The Cambridge Companion to Paul Tillich, Ed. by Russell Re Manning, Cambridge University Press, 2009, Pdf., p.19).

    Peter Gabriel in Athens, Greece



    "Lay Your Hands On Me"

    Sat in the corner of the Garden Grill, with plastic flowers
    on the window sill
    No more miracles, loaves and fishes, been so busy with the
    washing of the dishes
    Reaction level's much too high - I can do without the stimuli

    I'm living way beyond my ways and means, living in the
    zone of the in betweens
    I can see the flashes on the frozen ocean, static charge of
    the cold emotion
    Watched on by the distant eyes - watched on by the silent
    hidden spies

    But still the warmth flows through me
    And I sense you know me well
    No luck, no golden chances
    No mitigating circumstances now
    It's only common sense
    There are no accidents around here

    I am willing - lay your hands on me
    I am ready - lay your hands on me
    I believe - lay your hands on me, over me

    Working in gardens, thornless roses, fat men play with their
    garden hoses
    Poolside laughter has a cynical bite, sausage speared by the
    cocktail satellite
    I walk away from from light and sound, down stairways
    leading underground

    But still the warmth flows through me
    And I sense you know me well
    It's only common sense
    There are no accidents around here

    I am willing - lay your hands on me
    I am ready - lay your hands on me
    I believe - lay your hands on me, over me
    over me



     
    Last edited: Sep 4, 2019
  5. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    I added three long posts in another thread titled “Attack Against Christendom” because they were a better fit as a theme—“Tillich on the Demonic.” This thread has been my main focus for the last fifteen months and now approaching 90,000 words.

    So this thread “What is Husserlian Phenomenology?” is my primary subject. I try not to jump around, but once I post here at PF, I of course cannot edit after a certain amount of time. Consequently, I post an editable backup version of this thread at “Strange Phenomenon.” I have made some very minor word changes and rewrote some awkward sentences—but the meaning is unchanged. Sorry, I should of caught it the first time.

    Also, I am following the good professor Dr. Vervaeke and his video lecture series that are insanely insightful-- if there is such a thing. I am even a Patreon member. His newest lecture “Ep. 38 - Awakening from the Meaning Crisis - Agape and 4E Cognitive Science,” will leave your mind racing! Dr. Vervaeke’s talk on Agape is profound—and on a topic that is rarely discussed in-depth.
     
  6. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    Years ago just before reading Kant’s study of space and time in his work “Critique of Pure Reason,” I wondered how much could one possible write about space and time? I did not think it could be very much. Now it seems the topics will not go away.

    Currently, I am working on a new essay titled, Carnivalesque Culture And ‘The Joker’ as a Narcissistic Social Character in Liminal Space,” as a meme for a critique of modern industrial society. I am referring to the 2019 version of the film “Joker” recently released. The movie character Arthur Fleck, a professional clown who adopts the name ‘Joker’ from an insult, tells his psychological counselor after being fired from his clown job, “My clown name was ‘Carnival.’”

    I will draw heavily from a 2000 essay written by Professor of Sociology, Lauren Langman, titled, “The ‘Carnival Character’ of the Present Age.” Remember as a reference point that Langman’s essay was written before the 9/11/2001 terrorists attacks--nineteen years ago!

    This essay would be in the category of critique of culture of which Paul Tillich thought was essential for modern Christian theology. I have composed one other very short essay on critique of culture in this thread “What is Husserlian Phenomenology?” (I know the title is outdated now, but I can’t change it). Over at Strange Phenomenon , I titled this same series of essays “A Theory of Spiritual Experience: A Synthesis of Symbolic Logic and Mysticism.” I mean “mysticism” in the Kantian sense that the noumenal is the realm of faith, not of reason.

    The first critique of culture essay in this thread is titled Aesthetic Life.”

    Dr. Vervaeke posted a few weeks ago a YouTube discussion on the symbol in popular culture of the Zombie in First Discussion: Symbols and Zombies with another author Christopher Mastropietro that has an insightful detailed analysis of this phenomenon of the Zombie meme in science fiction. As I wrote before, do not underestimate the power and importance of this type of critique of popular cultural symbols such as Zombies, Replicants, or other science fiction themes. In 1912 at Freiburg the journal “ Yearbook for Philosophy and Phenomenological Research” was founded by Edmond Husserl with his student disciples Moritz Geiger, Alexander Pfänder, and Adolf Reinach. They wrote phenomenological critiques of music, books, plays, and popular media and became to be known as the Munich Circle of phenomenologists out of which the phenomenological movement emerged as a school of thought proper. This is sound philosophy.

    Also, recently Future Thinkers did an interesting YouTube analysis of the film “Joker” at “Joker is a Warning.”
     
  7. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    -94, 95, The Telos of Absolute Idealism, Pt. 1 – 2
    -96, 97, Christian Socialism, Pt. 1 – 2
    -100, 101 Tillich on Being, Theos, Idolatry, Pt. 1 & 2
    -103, Tillich and Wittgenstein on Personal Experience
    -104, Tillich on Chronos and Kairos
    -107, Carnivalesque Culture And 'The Joker' as a Narcissistic Social Character in Liminal Space




    Carnivalesque Culture And ‘The Joker’ as a Narcissistic Social Character in Liminal Space

    [​IMG]
    The Liminal Dance


    “Destructiveness is the outcome of unlived life.”
    —Eric Fromm, Fear of Freedom, p. 158 (italics in original).



    “Sacredness homes us against horror…the sense of losing touch with reality.”—The good Professor, Dr. John Vervaeke, in Sacredness: Horror, Music, and Symbol.


    The purpose of this critical philosophical essay is to make the unintelligible intelligible by analytically applying two important concepts of the carnival and liminality to interpret the fictional character Arthur Fleck in the film “Joker”(2019). All mythological identities represent patterns in existence of some life principle or value. The conceptual lens of carnival and liminality allow us to grasp deeper patterns of cultural-historical meaning stored in this encoded fictional story of what at first appears to be the idiosyncratic neurosis of a criminally narcissistic character named Arthur. On one level “Joker” is meant to be an interpretive understanding of life in modern advanced industrial society today. Also, the Joker character can serve as a useful mnemonic tool to learn and retain many analytical concepts developed by various schools of thought in sociology, political economy, and psychology.

    I will draw heavily from a 2000 essay written by Professor of Sociology, Lauren Langman, titled, “The ‘Carnival Character’ of the Present Age.” As a reference point, Langman’s essay was written before the 9/11/2001 terrorists attacks--nineteen years ago! He applies the concept of the European medieval Carnival as a symbol for privatized hedonism of modern industrial mass consumer society that provide endless Carnivalesque cultural spectacles resulting in “narcissistic character disorders,” and a false self based on consumer culture. [1] First, Langman understood the carnival concept as representing “cyberfeudalism” in a synthesis of modern technology and feudalism. Secondly, he argues that privatized hedonism is “a new mechanism of escape.” The carnival provided medieval people a space of liminal playfulness where the political and erotic combined in a controlled ritualized escape from their dominated damaged lives. Liminality is the key concept for understanding Arthur Fleck and his deviant Liminal Dance scenes. The paradigmatic Fleck persona can clarify and even further develop Langman’s analysis of consumer society using the important concepts of carnival and liminality. We will see Arthur Fleck metamorphose from a natural conformist, to unhappiness, to urban neurosis, and then to the demonic Joker. The narcissistic Arthur Fleck who transforms into the master criminal Joker began his life as a tortured unhappy child suffering from stunted maturity.


    Surplus Repression and Repressive De-sublimation

    There are additional concepts needed to understand the meaning of the carnival and liminality. Herbert Marcuse takes the term “repression” from Freudian instinct theory to mean “in the non-technical sense to designate both conscious and unconscious, external and internal processes of restraint, constraint, and suppression”(Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, 1955, p. 35). Marcuse wanted to develop a theory to explain why revolutionary consciousness failed to emerge from the working class in capitalists societies, but instead turned to fascism. A key concept of the Marcusian critique is “sublimation” that describes the diversion of psychic energy derived from instinctual impulses--such as sexual desire or aggressive energy--into other creative activity. Freudian psychology views sublimation as a defense mechanism for the psyche. Herbert Marcuse also adopts this concept of “sublimation” from Freud, but instead uses the confusing synonym “Repressive De-sublimation.” Both of these terms mean the gratification, or release of instinctual drives directed, or redirected within the limits of the dominant social norms. “De-sublimation” would mean to release unacceptable impulses and drives without restraint. Marcuse also used the term “Surplus Repression” defined as the necessary societal repression and control needed in a capitalist mode of industrial production: “The difference between basic and surplus repression is an index of both unnecessary alienation and political domination…modern capitalism depends upon surplus needs, surplus labor, surplus repression, and surplus aggression for its very survival” (Herbert Schoolman, The Imaginary Witness: The Critical Theory of Herbert Marcuse, New York University Press, 1984, p. 96). The union of psychoanalysis and politics was not received enthusiastically in the 1960s because of the rise of positivistic Operand Behaviorist Psychology in American academia.

    One goal of The Frankfurt School of Critical Theory was to reconcile Freud and Marx in an attempt to understand socialization in modern capitalist society. Specifically, Eric Fromm was a Marxist Neo-Freudian Revisionist whose task was to understand how mass discontent of the working class is neutralized in capitalism. The Frankfurt School sought to use analytical social psychology as a tool to examine socio-economic structures and their effect on basic human instinctual drives under capitalism. Fromm believed conscious and unconscious aggression is diverted by purposeless rituals of pseudo-liberation and conformity by an ideological “culture industry”(Horkheimer). The culture industry suggests “…symbolic satisfaction to the masses, guiding their aggression into socially harmless channels(Martin Jay, “The Dialectical Imagination: A history of the Frankfurt School And the Institute of Social Research, 1923-1950 by Martin Jay, Little, Brown & Company, Canada, 1973, p. 91). Interestingly, Eric Fromm was a very religious person coming from an Orthodox Jewish family. His favorite Old Testament books were Isaiah, Amos, and Hosea.

     
  8. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    -94, 95, The Telos of Absolute Idealism, Pt. 1 – 2
    -96, 97, Christian Socialism, Pt. 1 – 2
    -100, 101 Tillich on Being, Theos, Idolatry, Pt. 1 & 2
    -103, Tillich and Wittgenstein on Personal Experience
    -104, Tillich on Chronos and Kairos
    -107, Carnivalesque Culture And 'The Joker' as a Narcissistic Social Character in Liminal Space

    -108, The Carnival as Repetition and Reversal of Time and Space



    The Carnival as Repetition and Reversal of Time and Space

    [​IMG]

    “My clown name was ‘Carnival.’ ”—Arthur Fleck

    Time overcomes the category of Life as existence moves toward the inescapable sequence of birth to death—from growth to decay. This Life-process, Tillich notes, “cannot be reversed, but it can be repeated.” The circle is the Ancient Greek symbol for space because it represented the “circular motion of continuous repetition” which diminishes the power of time over Life, but the circle of the Law of Life and Death cannot be overcome in existence so that space always dominate Life (Theology of Culture, p. 31).

    Philosophical critique is a kind of unmasking. The carnival as a festival can ultimately be traced back to medieval folk culture and their concern for not wasting food especially for perishables such as butter, milk, and meat. “Carnival” literally means in Latin “take away the meat.” The carnival festivals were held just before the season of Lent in March or February (Pre-Lent) when Christians fasted for 40 days in recognition of Christ’s propitiatory sacrifice and resurrection (Easter). After the fasting there would likely be food shortages so the festival goers would consume all the leftover perishable food including alcohol which was not perishable. This pragmatic aspect of the festival become more and more salient for dominated feudal people. Overtime the carnival ritual became a secular event throughout the world degrading into gluttony and sexual orgies even in contradiction to the local cultural norms. This contradiction is known in Christianity as the battle between Carnival and Lent. Religious rituals often become reified transforming symbols that refer to themselves as signs instead of pointing to the Holy that is the dimension of ultimate reality. Symbols are not identical to the Holy. Rather, symbols initiate participation with the Holy. All holy objects, doctrines, and rites are always in danger of becoming demonic. Tillich writes, “All idolatry is nothing else than the absolutizing of symbols of the Holy, and making them identical with the Holy itself (Theology of Culture, p. 60). Religious festival goers attended the carnival as a hedonistic orgy in anticipation of scarcity following Lent, which defeats the original purpose of the religious ritual.

    “When, for example, the thing you are required to do is to walk, it is no use at all to make the most astonishing inventions in the way of the easiest carriages and to want to convey yourself in these when the task prescribed to you was...walking.”—Kierkegaard, “Attack Against Christendom,” (1854) p. 100.

    The most interesting characteristic of the carnival festivals is the satirical ritual of social status role reversal. Participants wore bizarre masks, painted their faces, and constructed costumes with absurdly exaggerated noses, mouths, and other body parts. People would dress as the opposite sex. They believed in Apotropaic magic (from από- "away" and τρέπειν "to turn" away) to wart off evil influences. Obscene language was permitted even toward the ruling class engaging in gross and degrading acts that glorified the erotic, the profane, the vulgar, and bodily excreta. There were ritual fights, and in some countries Jewish people from ghettos were publicly humiliated by being forced to perform degrading acts. Senseless acts are sometimes committed publicly to uncover some conflict, or grievance. The carnival was meant to temporarily reverse the social hierarchy of power (reversal of space). The carnival was not total chaos, but rather organized repressive de-sublimation.

    In Spain the carnival evolved to symbolize the battle between Good/Evil (Zoroasterism) and Light/Darkness (Manichaeism). During the Holy Week celebrations Spanish crowds would carry a grotesque twisted effigy of Jesus appearing as a Tragic/Comic figure to which people would direct insults and show complete disrespect. All the conflicts within the souls of humanity are symbolically represented in the sublimated grotesque deformed body of a crucified Christ. Severe psychological stress often sublimates into seemingly unrelated physical ailments (psychosomatic illness) such as a backache, or limp: they are the incarnations (from Latin “carno” literally meaning “meat”) of psychic contradictions. The purpose of the crowds’ insults toward the effigy of a clown like Christ is to reaffirm the Holy. Easter Season represents the serial events of Resurrection, Liminal state, and Rebirth. However, the carnival reverses this temporal order; “King Carnival,” Liminal state, and Death. Mircea Eliade wrote, “Any new year is a revival of time at its beginning, a repetition of the cosmogony”(The Myth of the Eternal Return, pdf., p. 54).

    The ancient conflicts of life sometime reappear wearing new clothing making them unrecognizable to a newer generation. Arthur Fleck, whose last name refers to a meaningless speck, is a creature of the Carnival—the mask, and the involuntary laugh that represents his real sublimated emotions of anger, fear, and tragic sadness. Langman interprets the carnival as representing mass consumer culture designed as an escape mechanism from personal feelings of anxiety and powerlessness. A Carnivalesque culture is a “culture of amusement,” which functions as a method of domination to repressively de-sublimate feelings of discontent by redirecting them to some other controlled arena—such as a lifestyle completely based on consumption of industrial commodities. Consumer capitalism has developed a technical apparatus which enables it to enforce social conformity by simply organizing society in a way that repress certain desires, create false needs, delimits thinking, and ideologically manipulates language to construct a false self and reality. It is from a “consumer based selfhood” that narcissistic borderline personalities emerge in society. Arthur is the story of how managed repressive de-sublimation gradually resulted in unrestrained de-sublimation—or a crime spree.

    “Every neurosis represents a moral problem. The failure to achieve maturity and integration of the whole personality is a moral problem.”—Eric Fromm, “Man for Himself,” pp. 225-226.

    A lack of identity is Arthur’s most urgent existential problem that prevents him from communicating with others, or having meaningful relationships. He has no meaningful life narrative because he is unable to define an identity or intelligible world. However, his meaning making cognitive abilities are still functioning until a series of increasingly devastating events wear down his resilience that give rise to parallel liminal transformative trances. The only narrative Fleck can construct is one of tragic cruelty which in the reverse realm of the carnival would be a comedy. In the film’s beginning, Arthur is a humorless introverted conformist at heart and even displays some heroic underdog characteristics. He is a clown for hire (wage laborer) that sometimes suffers stage fright. Wearing a costume and makeup is a job requirement that intensifies his lack of personhood and alienation: he chose an arena in which he lacks any of the skills needed for even minimal success. Fleck works as a nonsensical clown in a blurred anomic reality around unhappy dangerous people with a profound sense of insecurity. Arthur is existentially homeless. His sense of rootlessness expresses itself as a sublimated twisted disfigured thin body. At one point Fleck attempts to gain a self-determined identity by believing he is the illegitimate son of the wealthy Gotham mayoral candidate Thomas Wayne. Arthur is an overly enthusiastic fan of a well-known TV comedian, Murray Franklin, and attempts to gain a self-identity by mere association, but both efforts fail causing even greater psychological disintegration.[2] Arthur is a non-person with no sense of what is real or illusion which enables the movie viewing audience to vicariously participate in his feelings of alienation, moral ambiguity, existential confusion and uncertainty.

    [1]Chris Hedges develops this critical theme of spectacle in his 2009 book, “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and The Triumph of Spectacle.” The first chapter is about his experience at a World Wrestling Entertainment tour—the same carnival business that Donald Trump had been involved for years.

    [2] Fromm studied authoritarian personalities and identified three general personality types that form as defense mechanisms against feelings of anxiety, frustration, and powerlessness: A.) Authoritarian, B.) Destructive and, C.) Conformist. Fleck’s transformative evolution exemplified all three general character types at some point in the film. Fromm also identified four more specific social character orientations classified as 1.) Submissive conformist orientation, 2.) Exploitative aggressive orientation of dynastic elites, 3.) Hoarding wealth-accumulating orientation, 4.) The Marketing self-selling managerial bureaucrat. With that said, Fleck does not really meet all the modern criteria of a narcissist.



    …to continue as “The Liminal Trickster.”
     
    Last edited: Oct 18, 2019
  9. Ernest T.

    Ernest T. Newly Registered

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    Too much for Ernest T.
     
  10. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    -94, 95, The Telos of Absolute Idealism, Pt. 1 – 2
    -96, 97, Christian Socialism, Pt. 1 – 2
    -100, 101 Tillich on Being, Theos, Idolatry, Pt. 1 & 2
    -103, Tillich and Wittgenstein on Personal Experience
    -104, Tillich on Chronos and Kairos
    -107, Carnivalesque Culture And 'The Joker' as a Narcissistic Social Character in Liminal Space
    -108, The Carnival as Repetition and Reversal of Time and Space
    -110, The Liminal Trickster




    The Liminal Trickster


    [​IMG]

    "Hermes...the divine trickster..the god of boundaries and the transgression of boundaries."
    --Walter Burkert


    The carnival represents repressive de-sublimation of existential angst that is not a phobia meaning a fear of some object. Angst is a generalized anxiety that has no specific object, but still casts a shadow of fear over all existence. The Carnival is the opiate of oppressed people that dulls angst by redirecting psychic tension in another direction. The Latin noun “angor” (distantly related to German ‘angst’) means strangulation in addition to anguish, torment, trouble, and, vexation. Langman interprets the Carnival as highly organized capitalist consumerism intended to desublimate aggression for channeling disenchantment away from the social status quo. The concept of the Carnival is cultural relative reality meaning Life could be organized in a different way: in this sense the carnival is artistically negative, or critical in Adorno’s definition of negative dialectics. Liminality is an important second dimension of the Carnival that is symbolized by the archetypal figure of the Trickster representing the liminal state of being between the sacred and the profane. “Liminality” comes from the Latin word līmen, meaning "a threshold.” German scholar of Greek mythology, Walter Burkert, interprets the Trickster archetype as the boundary crosser in ludic playfulness having access to the re-creative power of life. Limbo (limbus) means in Latin, “edge or border.” The boundaries crossed include those of the social status quo. The Trickster (Greek Hermes, Roman Mercury, Native American Cherokee Coyote) mocks all authority. The divine messenger Hermes was the god of economic commerce; he invented lying; and would sometimes change the messages to and from the other Olympic gods to his own liking! Spiritual leaders are viewed by some cultures as Tricksters such as the Norse mischief-maker, Loki, who can shift shape and whose gender is variable, or ambiguous. The symbol of the Trickster often plays the role of a clown; however, the laughter and playfulness is actually sublimated hostility. Many native traditions held clowns and tricksters as essential to any contact with the sacred. “People could not pray until they had laughed, because laughter opens and frees from rigid preconception. Humans had to have tricksters within the most sacred ceremonies for fear that they forget the sacred comes through upset, reversal, surprise. The trickster in most native traditions is essential to creation, to birth” (Wiki: Byrd Gibbens, Professor of English at University of Arkansas at Little Rock; quoted epigraph in Napalm and Silly Putty by George Carlin, 2001).

    French ethnographer, Arnold van Gennep (1873-1957), first coined the term “liminality” in his famous work, “The Rites of Passage,” (1909). Liminality is a special time during transition of social status, or new being such as engagement to marriage, death to burial, graduation to official award, youth to adulthood, outsider status to insider, or Pentecost. Gennep organized the anthropological liminal sequence pattern as 1.) Pre-liminal break with an old order; 2.) Liminal nameless disorientation and restructuring; 3.) and Post-liminal new being. These transitional phases are done in a strict sequence and completed by a Master of Ceremonies. The liminal phases are both destructive and constructive. Interestingly, Karl Jasper coined the term “Axial Age” as a time of radical change and collapse.

    British cultural anthropologist Victor Turner (1920-1982) discovered Gennep’s study of rites of passage, but further develops his work “Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture” (1978 ) to encompass both the political and cultural realms by applying liminal states to the individual level, group level, and postmodern industrial society as a whole. Turner described the liminal as “bewixt and between” characterized by order reversal, uncertainty, fluidity, malleability, new possibilities, new perspective and scrutiny of culture. Any person or group not fully integrated into society is considered liminal such as undocumented refugees, persons in jury trial, teenagers, or transgender persons. A church congregation during worship is in liminal space. Liminality is the revolt against the objective finality of defining human beings as some-“thing” since it is essential that consciousness is not objectified by the Other (Hegel). The participant’s personal agency is empathized by combining thought and action in ritual instruction. During the Post-liminal phase a “communitas” (John, Graham St., 2000, “Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performance”), or community forms around the camaraderie of groups that share the same liminal experiences. Turner defines three types of communities that form post-liminal groups: 1.) Spontaneous-Ecstatic, 2.) Ideological-Utopian Obstructionist, and 3.) Normative Reformist. The nameless liminal phases are too intense to be a permanent state of being, but they are also dangerous because liminal periods can be subject to manipulation and distortion if there is no Master of Ceremonies.

    Authentic subjective liminal experience can be replaced by inauthentic “Liminoid” experience (term coined by Turner) that has no transformative power, but only objectively performs nihilistic mimetic rivalry. Liminoid experience is the opiate of the people. Liminoid is spectacle that generates endless meaningless chatter. Liminoid experience is the trickster’s clown act devoid of the possibility of authentic identity formation and transformation consequently the person attempts to stay in a permanent state of liminality.

    Turner wrote “…for young people, liminality of this kind has become a permanent phenomenon...Postmodern Liminality”(Kahane Reuven et al., The Origins of Postmodern Youth, 1997,New York, p. 31). The Liminoid suspension of time is not for real personal transformation, but an inauthentic escapism from endless tragedy through hedonistic consumption and narcissistic rivalry. Rock concerts, nightclubs, sports events seek to reproduce Liminoid experience in advanced industrial society by creating an in-between space outside the everyday cultural norms.

    The symbolism of Arthur Fleck as the Joker is clear. Traditionally, adopted children are viewed as liminal since they are not with their natural parents, but are not parentless. Fleck smothered his mother, not his father: the reverse of Oedipus, an adoptee, who unknowingly killed his father at a crossroads (in-between). Fleck’s career is to provide hollow liminoid experiences which are in parallel to a downward destructive spiral of his unlived life overtaken by frenzied parasitic processing (Meaning Crisis: Ep. 13, Dr. Verveake, at 34 min.) in complete isolation. In an hypnogogic Jungian state Fleck is able to tap into archetypal images that he mimics in a desperate reach for some kind of intelligibility of being. However, Fleck’s carnival is one of unlimited demonic de-sublimation that attracts a spontaneous communitas of other persons since the Joker is King Carnival--the Trickster Himself. During a rage riot following a police shooting, a protester upheld a sign that read, “We are All Clowns,” to make clear the film is about class-based struggle and the reifying objectification of unique human beings whose lives must be lived.


    Liminal Dance



     
    Last edited: Oct 23, 2019
  11. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    Well, I have to catch up on my reading. YouTube really cuts into my reading time, and yet it offers a lot of resources to read!

    And speaking of Youtube, I came across a really interesting and insightful video by Jonathan Pageau on "Kanye West - Jesus is King | The Fool and the Inversion." I think Pageau's interpretation of culture as inversion of the sacred is really on the mark.

    Paul Tillich believes that the autonomous unbelief-ful attitude of culture (secular culture, or idealism for example) is really belief-fulness, but it presents itself as unbelief-fulness by intention because it stops at the concrete: it stops at immediate contingent objects, yet senses a beyond which is the Unconditional (purpose giving) on which all meaning has its ground. In other words, secular creative culture is sublimated spirituality that expresses itself in conditioned world-forms (Ritual, music, art, poetry). Tillich writes:

    "In contrast to faith we have the unbelief attitude...its essence is that it stops with the actualities or objects in their immediacy, in their conditioned forms, and does not penetrate through to the grounding import. Unbelief-fulness is therefore the mark of the typically autonomous attitude of culture; but it is that only by intention. Actually, every creative culture act is also belief-ful; in it pulsates the meaning of the Unconditional...But the cultural intention as an intention is unbelief-ful" ("What is Religion?," Paul Tillich, p.77).
     
  12. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    -104, Tillich on Chronos and Kairos
    -107, Carnivalesque Culture And 'The Joker' as a Narcissistic Social Character in Liminal Space
    -108, The Carnival as Repetition and Reversal of Time and Space
    -110, The Liminal Trickster
    -112, The Ayn Randian Propagandistic Trope Concerning Postmodernism.




    The Ayn Randian Propagandistic Trope Concerning Postmodernism


    “…the whole system of reason finally leads to some point at which reason does not deny itself, does not abdicate, but transcends itself within itself. “- Paul Tillich


    By chance I discovered a video, Critique of Stephen Hicks’ “Explaining Postmodernism,” which is a critique of the book “Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault,”(2010) authored by the writer Stephen R. C. Hicks who refers to himself as a Randian Objectivist. The video is well versed in Kantian epistemology and critiques Hicks’ attack on a philosophical school known as postmodernism. I want to go into greater detail than the video to give additional counter-arguments against Hicks’ understanding of postmodernism.


    I never liked generalized philosophical labels such as Idealism, Libertarianism, Socialism, or Rationalism since there is nearly always some mixture of these views influencing a philosopher’s thinking with close analysis. These terms are useful as tools for topical organization, but are limited at a certain level of granularity especially while examining specific logical arguments of an intellectual tradition. The term and concept of postmodern seems particularly ambiguous and I have wanted to investigate this issue for sometime now because it is often used as an ad hominem truncheon in discussions today.

    The Fallacy of Circular Reasoning:

    The most important step of philosophical analysis is to methodologically define the term postmodern, which turns out to be a big problem for this book. Since Hicks is authoring a book on postmodernism the burden of proof is on him to define how this term is used. Hicks refers to postmodernism as “anti-realist,” “denies reason,” “subjective,” and “radical.” Early in his book Hicks wrote, “The term “post-modern” situates the movement historically and philosophically against modernism”(Loc: 546). In other words postmodernism is bad since the opposite, modernism, is good.


    Hicks describes his methodology as, “…understanding what the movement sees itself as rejecting and moving beyond will be helpful in formulating a definition of postmodernism. The modern world has existed for several centuries, and after several centuries we have good sense of what modernism is”(Loc: 546). Defining any group by what they think of themselves might not be the best methodological approach anymore that judging the moral character of a person by what they say about themselves. Do we really have a good sense of what modernism is?

    However, there is a second even more serious methodological problem by using how “the movement sees itself,” as a definition since we are faced with the problem of deciding which movement we will select as postmodern. Hicks already presupposes what postmodernism is otherwise how else could Hicks identify any group as a member of the movement! How can one recognize postmodernism independently of Hicks’ judgment? It seems that the term postmodernism has no essence. Wittgenstein used the word “game” as an example of a concept that had no essential meaning. The word’s meaning is how it is used. Likewise, the meaning of postmodern is whatever Hicks points to since it has no essence. Omnium-gatherum as a methodology for collecting the particulars of a universal concept will not work if one does not already have a universal concept of postmodernism. So the reader must rely on Hicks to point at any particular group he declares as postmodern. This behavior suggests that Hicks has an unstated criterion for identifying postmodernism that precludes his identifying some group as postmodern. And, Hick consciously and unconsciously carries out this circularity through out the entire book.

    The Fallacy of False Dilemma:

    This problem of an essential definition gets worse for Hicks. His concept of postmodernism is extremely vague so that its scope of meaning can be expanded, or contracted by mere pointing depending on the effectiveness of any criticism. To better understand Hick’s use of the term postmodern-ism we can divide speculative philosophy into two general types of theories of knowledge: The
    realistic theory of knowledge and the idealistic theory of knowledge. In the realistic theory knowledge meaning is receiving. In the idealistic theory meaning is bestowing. Hicks names everything “objective” as realistic, and everything subjective is “postmodern.” The problem with this crypto-definition of postmodernism is that objective and subjective elements cross over into both philosophies of knowledge. Hicks uses an array of synonyms to describe the realistic epistemologies as the following:

    Realistic: Modern, Enlightenment, rational, competent, universal, absolutist, individualistic, conservative, and objectively true.

    On the other hand Hicks describe postmodernism with synonyms such as:

    Idealistic: Non-realist, postmodern, anti-Enlightenment, anti-reason, incompetent, contingent, relativistic, collectivist, extremist, and subjective.

    With this matrix of dialectical polarities Hicks can setup pre-constructed fallacies presented as false dilemmas, “Either P, or Q, and ~P, therefore Q.”

    Or symbolically written: [(P v Q) * ~P ] ⊃ Q.


    “Either P, or Q” can be expressed as disjunctive propositions: “either accept Kantian relativism, or embrace objectivism; either accept postmodernism or embrace the Enlightenment; either embrace Objective truth or accept postmodern relativism.”

    Interestingly, these false dilemmas can be rhetorically disguised giving the impression that an additional sound argument is being offered:

    “Either not P, or not Q, and P; therefore not Q.”

    Or symbolically written: [(~P v ~Q) * P] ⊃ ~Q

    This expression can be disguised as “Either reject all truth with skeptical subjective Kantian relativism, or reject realism based on universal objective reason. Obviously, those who accept Kantian relativism are in fact rejecting Objective truth which realism is based.”

    The argument’s fallacy is not that its disjunctive argument form is invalid—that is why it is called an Informal Fallacy, but that other disjuncts [(P v Q) v (R v S) v (Φ v ψ)] are excluded by definition, or oversight, or to logically force a false conclusion based on false disjunctive choices.

    Objectivists mindlessly repeat this trope ad infinitum.

    The Insidious Metaphor Logical Fallacy: Φ

    Hicks wrote, “Kant was the decisive break with the Enlightenment and the first major step toward postmodernism” (Loc: 1139). These synonyms are as ambiguous and misleading as the term postmodern itself. For example, the term “Enlightenment” has a positive meaning that is unconsciously imported through a metaphor influencing the reader’s thinking. Not everything that happened in the Enlightenment was Enlightening; not everything modern is good; nor was everything in the “Dark Ages” conceptually backwards; and the “Cold War” had millions of human casualties; and even “Realism” can be an idealist theory of knowledge subjectively biased. What Hicks referred to as the “Modern Era,” Kant and Hegel a history of errors. Even if the belief in objectivism is objective, then that belief provides no evidence whatsoever for the truth of objectivism. Beware of bare assertions based on insidious metaphors that unconsciously influence critical thinking.


    The Fallacy of Ambiguity: ψ

    Hick’s critique of postmodernism is based on the thesis that Kant’s epistemological skepticism is irrational. “Kant was thus different from previous skeptics and religious apologists…But earlier skeptics had never been as sweeping in their conclusions.”(Loc: 1130). If Hicks’ thesis is false, then the book’s entire philosophical narrative collapses. Hicks wrote, “Thus, the argument runs, Kant should be placed in the pantheon of Enlightenment greats.[27] That is a mistake“ (Loc: 897). And again he writes, “His [Kant’s] philosophy is thus a forerunner of postmodernism’s strong anti-realist and anti-reason”(Loc: 1191). In another passage he writes, “Any thinker who concludes that in principle reason cannot know reality is not fundamentally an advocate of reason” (Loc:1130). This is just one of Hick’s shocking summary judgment of Kantian epistemology.


    Hicks wrote, “Bacon, Descartes, and Locke are modern because of their philosophical naturalism, their profound confidence in reason, and especially in the case of Locke, and their individualism,” (Loc: 574). Hicks avoids any in-depth look at Locke and Descartes because they are counter-examples to his claims that Kant (1724-1804) is an extreme skeptic. Kant was a skeptical philosopher of the Enlightenment, but so was the Enlightenment philosopher Descartes (1576-1650) famous for emphasizing methodological doubt; and the empiricist David Hume (1711-1776) is the most famous Enlightenment skeptic of the Western World. Hicks claims “With Kant then, external reality thus drops almost totally out of the picture, and we are trapped inescapably in subjectivity—and that is why Kant is a landmark.” (Loc: 1157). Descartes most famous argument in the “Meditations” is “I think; therefore, I am,” which is a subjective argument. Would Descartes’ anchoring all knowledge in the subjectivity of “I think,” be as irrational as Kant? I think Hicks has his philosophers mixed up, or his concept of postmodern is simply empty.

    In fact, radical skepticism can be traced back all the way to ancient times such as the Greek philosopher Pyrrho (360 B.C.- 270 B.C.). “Pyrrhonism is credited with being the first Western school of philosophy to identify the problem of induction”(Wiki). Pyrrhonism dealt with the same problems of induction as the radical empiricist skeptic Hume. A strong current of skepticism can be found throughout the history of Western ideas.

    Science today has fundamental questions going back to Isaac Newton (1642-1726) that are still unsolved today. Newton understood that that machine paradigm of nature and the absurd observable phenomena of interaction at a distance such as the non-physical interaction of gravity, or magnetic repulsion and attraction were scientific mysteries. During Newton’s era these phenomena were believed to be occult ideas yet modern scientific mechanical philosophy concluded that there could be no physical interaction without physical contact. Newton, Hume and Locke agreed that the scientific machine paradigm could not explain non-physical interaction. Newton wrote, “The notion of action at a distance is inconceivable. It’s so great an absurdity, I believe no man who has in philosophical matters that competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into it…we concede we do not understand the phenomena of the material world….”(see Chomsky lecture, “The Machine, the Ghost, and the Limits of Understanding”). Newton’s conclusion is nothing works by machine principles—there are no machines!

    The empiricist, John Locke (1632-1704), wrote further concerning these scientific mysteries:
    Consequently, the “modern” scientists lowered the standard of scientific intelligibility by adopting the machine paradigm of nature regardless of the non-material interaction at a distance theoretical problem thereby reducing science to pragmatic object-manipulation. Pragmatism is the epistemological foundation for the denial of knowledge (Tillich). The history of modern science is the very opposite of Hicks’ thesis that modernism is the paradigm of realism. Hicks assumes modern scientific reasoning had no theoretical problems explaining reality. “Epistemologically having rejected the notion of an independently existing reality, postmodernism denies that reason or any other method is a means of acquiring objective knowledge of that reality” (Loc: 546). By ignoring the history of modern Western Science, Hicks’ concept of science is a philosophical caricature of scientism rendering him incapable to understanding the most fundamental ideas of Kantian epistemology.

    And there are many more serious logical problems with this book’s thesis…to continue!
     
    Last edited: Dec 20, 2019
  13. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    I should give a reminder that at Strange Phenomenon is my editable version of these posts so that I can make minor changes. I added this short little paragraph to the above post (#112).
     
    Last edited: Dec 23, 2019
  14. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    -104, Tillich on Chronos and Kairos
    -107, Carnivalesque Culture And 'The Joker' as a Narcissistic Social Character in Liminal Space
    -108, The Carnival as Repetition and Reversal of Time and Space
    -110, The Liminal Trickster

    -112, 114 The Ayn Randian Propagandistic Trope Concerning Postmodernism.


    “[Hayek produced] a terrific steam hammer in order to crack a nut—and then he does not crack it.”—Piero Sraffa’s critique of Friedrich von Hayek’s book “Prices and Production,” (1932).


    The Fallacy of Equivocation between the terms Doubt and Skepticism

    Hicks completely missed the different types of skepticism. Skepticism can be a methodological technique engage in doubt for testing hypotheses, and/or skepticism can be an attitude of doubt “toward all the beliefs of man, from sense experience to religious creeds”(Tillich, Dynamics of Faith, p.19, pdf.). Hicks’ initial look at Kant suggests skepticism in the first methodological sense, but then the book equivocates to the attitudinal sense of doubt, and then later creeps over into nihilism. Hicks states, “Kant’s point was deeper, arguing that in principle any conclusion reached by any of our faculties must necessarily not be about reality. Any form of cognition because it must operate a certain way, cannot put us in contact with reality”(Loc: 1130). And he writes, “Earlier skeptics had their negative conclusions, continued to conceive of truth as correspondence to reality”(Loc: 1163). So there are philosophers that are not pure skeptics such as Descartes. But yet, Hicks points to Kant as the archetypal skeptic. Kant is not the lone skeptical “all-destroyer”(Loc: 1157).

    Kant understood his transcendental criticism of speculative metaphysics as necessary to avoid falling into harmful dogmatic philosophies motivated by mere philodoxy, or in Greek ϕιλόδοξος (ϕιλό-love; δοξος- belief), meaning love of belief, or opinion. Kant argues a critical philosophy is needed to avoid dogmatism.
    Kant was not a theist in the traditional sense, but likely a non-theist for his goal in the Critique was to make room for faith whereas Hume was a faithless atheist because natural-scientific positivism forces him there—another difference between Kant and Hume that the generic term skepticism does not acknowledge. Hicks uses the label of skepticism, and other labels, in the most generic sense such as relativism.

    The Fallacy of Equivocation between Barroom Relativism with Relationalism

    And yet another Fallacy of Equivocation is committed with the term relativism which claims all judgments have no universal validity. Hicks wrote, “Hegelian dialectical reason also differs from Enlightenment reason by implying a strong relativism, against the universality of Enlightenment reason”(Loc: 1336). Hegel is categorized by philosophy as an absolute idealist---not as a relative idealist. Hegel is best known as the philosopher that affirmed universal reason as the necessary condition for freedom. A relative idealist believes there are many interpretations of many different realities; and like a solipsist, think only their own experiences and thoughts are real with no objective standard by which to judge any one worldview as more real than another. Absolute idealists believe in one reality because there is only one mind. This is another case of equivocation of the concept relativistic idealism with absolute idealism.

    Another version of relativism is the belief there is no absolute truth since the concept of truth itself is relative to space and time. The relativist’s flawed argument is the following: “It was once true that the capital of Brazil was Rio de Janeiro, but now it is false since the capital of Brazil today is Briazilia. Therefore, truth is not absolute, but relative to time.” In another example the relativist might argue, “’The light is above John’ is a true proposition; however, in a different location Y the proposition is false; therefore, truth is not absolute, but is relative to space.” The problem with these arguments is the relation of space and time are not consistently reflected in the propositions. It is true the capital of Brazil in 1960 was Rio de Janeiro, and it will always be true. And for today’s date, it will always be true that the capital of Brazil is Briazilia. There is no contradiction here as the relativists claim. That the light was above John at location X is true regardless of what new location Y he has moved to later. There are no sane philosophers that hold to this crude version of relativism--not Kant, Hegel, and certainly not Einstein. Hicks is confusing this un-sophisticated version of epistemological relativism with relationalism. Relationalism, however, only holds that all elements of meaning in a given situation refer to other elements of meaning in a reciprocal historical interrelationship. Relationalism is a term coined by sociologist Karl Mannheim (Ideology and Utopia, 1936, Harvest books, p. 86).

    The Fallacy of Ambiguity between the terms Kantian Idealism and Berkeleian Idealism

    Kantian Transcendental Idealism is the critical science of the logically necessary conditions for the possibility of experience. The term “transcendental” is used by Kant to mean a priori, or before experience. For example, the pure forms of sensibility are space and time which are necessary a priori conditions to have sense experience (intuition) of any object of knowledge. Berkeleian idealism holds that “to be (exist) is to be perceived.” Kant absolutely did not hold this version of idealism, but instead confirmed the thing-in-itself which cannot itself be perceived. Kant wrote, “the unconditioned does not lie in things as we know them, or as they are given to us, but in things as they are in themselves, beyond the range of our cognition”(Critique, p.15). Hicks’ use of the term idealism to describe Kant is very misleading because he again never goes beyond their generic meaning except to equivocate.

    Post hoc Explication is Not Refutation

    The best counter-argument that directly refutes Hick’s epistemology is the second edition fifteen-paged Preface to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1782) then compare it with Hick’s chapter on ”Kant the Turning Point.” You can get a free preview of Hicks’ book online. Kant’s second edition preface to the Critique is aimed precisely at critics similar to Hicks who are often referred to by Kant as metaphysical dogmatists. Kant defined dogmatism as “… the dogmatic procedure of pure reason without previous criticism of its own powers….”(Critique, p. 22). These metaphysical dogmatists include the religious thinkers of his day who were stunned by Kant’s devastating refutation of the traditional proofs of the existence of a supreme being in the Critique, “Transcendental Logic: Second Division. Transcendental Dialectic: Introduction. I. Of Transcendental Illusory Appearance,” ([A:292-294; B:349-350], Ibid., p. 209).

    Post hoc explication alone is not a refutation. However, Hicks refutes himself constantly. He makes a statement and then walks it back by reciting limited summative statements of Kant’s so called radical relativistic skepticism distantly scattered throughout the book without actually integrating them into his assessment of Kant. Throughout the entire book he makes academically obligatory boilerplate acknowledgements to some of Kant’s concepts as a post hoc camouflaged repair patch job, but then jumps out in the open to interject Maoist like anti-Kantian slogans. Bare assertion is not refutation. Hicks never engages Kant’s arguments, but only gives short-change summaries of Kant’s epistemology. Hicks noted that “Kant did not take all the steps down to postmodernism, but he did take the decisive one” (Loc: 1157). But, he then states, “Kant is a landmark…Kant went a step further and redefined truth on subjective grounds” (Loc: 1157). Kant’s landmark status is not for being an irrational subjective relativistic skeptic, but for other important reasons such as defeating all the traditional arguments for the existence of a supreme deity, and resolving the problem of the origin of knowledge, which hounded Rationalism and Idealism. Kant wrote to the religious dogmatists,
     
    Last edited: Dec 27, 2019
  15. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    -104, Tillich on Chronos and Kairos
    -107, Carnivalesque Culture And 'The Joker' as a Narcissistic Social Character in Liminal Space
    -108, The Carnival as Repetition and Reversal of Time and Space
    -110, The Liminal Trickster
    -112, 114, 115 The Ayn Randian Propagandistic Trope Concerning Postmodernism.


    The Fallacy of Equivocation between the terms Real1 and Reality2

    Take for example Kant’s concept of noumenon and phenomenon, which are the foundational concepts of Kantian epistemology. Hicks wrote after reviewing Kant, “Abstracting from the above quotations yields the following. Metaphysically, postmodernism is anti-realist, holding that it is impossible to speak meaningfully about an independently existing reality”(Loc: 526).

    He only mentions the term noumenal, but doesn’t go into detail of what noumenon means. Kant’s epistemological dichotomy of appearance and reality is the foundation of Representational Epistemology: there is mediation between the thing-in-itself, and the thing as it appears to the observer—a distinction that can be traced back to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. The thing-in-itself can only be known indirectly through appearances (phenomena) as experience, which is the domain of Reason.

    Plato’s Allegory of the Cave

    Hick’s refuses to seriously examine the concept of noumenon that can be traced back to ancient Platonic epistemology.

    For Plato, empirical observation was the lowest of all states of mind of which there are two: lowest level of knowledge is opinion Doxia (δόξα) “belief” as in orthodoxy, and the higher level is scientific knowledge (ἐπιστήμη, epistēmē) related etymologically to the “Epistles,” or letters, for example.

    The lowest from of knowledge is opinion based on empirical image (εἰκών, icon), and observing biological life (ζωὴ, Zoa, or 'life' as in the word ‘Zoo’).

    The higher levels of knowledge include mathematics (μαθηματικά, method) and the highest level of knowledge is of the Forms (ἀρχή, archetype). Only in the state of mind of Noesis (νόησις) meaning “understanding, concept, or notion” is there intelligibility of the invisible (Forms) as opposed to opinion, and belief based on visible empirical images.

    The allegory of the cave found in Plato’s Republic (514a–520a) is about epistemological progress and transformation of human worldviews. Plato has Socrates describe to Glaucon, the brother of Plato, a story of a group of prisoners within a cave who are chained to a low wall for their entire lives while only facing the cave’s opposing wall which has moving shadows projected on it by firelight burning behind the prisoners. Persons behind and above the prisoners make sounds and move patterned shaped shadow images across the cave wall. This shadow-world of (εἰκασία) or “apprehension by images and shadows” is reality1 for these chained prisoners who even give names to the shadows (see lecture: Dr. Harrison Kleiner lectures on Plato's Allegory of a Cave).

    Socrates imagines what would happen if a prisoner were released to freely walk out of the cave. Socrates thought the prisoner may have to be forced away from the shadows of their reality1, and would even try to kill the man that tried to release them. Reality1 is the reality of the empirical images and shadows (Doxia). Plato is subtly drawing an analogy to Socrates as the man executed by the Athenian State for attempting to release its citizens from ignorance. As the freed slave walks out of the cave, they enter the sunlight. This walk to sunlight could be interpreted as religious and/or a historical-epistemological journey from mere Doxia, or belief, to Noesis,(νόησις), meaning understanding, concept, or notion.

    What does the sun symbolically represent? The sun is “…the domain where truth and reality shine….”(508d). The cave’s firelight provided the shadow show and is historically interpreted allegorically as deceptive rhetoric, distorted politics, and sophistry posing as wisdom. The second light is the noumenal sunlight of ultimate reality2. Interestingly, Plato described the human eye as “…the most sunlike of all the instruments of sense”(508b). However, he also said, “Neither vision itself nor its vehicle, which we call the eye, is identical with the sun”(508a). Socrates may be implying to himself there is mediation between the subject and object of knowledge. Plato seems to have recognized the meaning-bestowing activity of consciousness in shaping the objects of sense perception. This is typical of Plato to foreshadow an entire Western philosophical school of thought in one summary sentence.

    The cave firelight could also be interpreted ontologically as Nature itself. For the ancient Greeks, “phusis” (meaning “Nature,” or “physics”) characterize both Logos (Reason) and of what-is (all things). Nature gives what-is the ability to manifest itself, but does not show itself as the activity of manifesting” (see “Heidegger and the Greeks,” by Dr. Carol J. White, p.127)[Pdf].

    We may interpret the Kantian term phenomenon as the reality1 of the shadows, and noumenon as reality2 of the thing-in-itself. The shadows are empirically real1, but they are not reality2. The categories of reason only apply validly to the shadow play reality1; however, nothing can be said conditionally, or objectively about the noumenal reality2 according to Kant: “…the unconditioned does not lie in things as we know them, or as they are given to us, but in things as they are in themselves, beyond the range of our cognition”(Critique, p.15). This heterogeneous division between, “cognition of things as phenomena, and of things in themselves”(Ibid., p.15) is known as the “Kantian Block.” Plato believed the forms are within the realm of intelligibility. Hegel’s objection to Kantian epistemology is that knowledge of the noumenal realm is possible, but only after human consciousness has traveled up the long suffering road of historical experience passing through the hierarchies of knowledge to the complete holistic Notion—or in Hegelian language—to Calvary. The “notion” could be interpreted to mean paradigm.

    Hicks continually equivocates between the two meanings of reality throughout the book. To remain consistent Hicks could have written, ”Plato has no concept of objective reality! He only acknowledges the shadows within the cave!” For both Plato and Kant there is an epistemological noumenal sun. Hicks conveys an anti-Classical sense of reason by failing to clearly address the appearance and reality distinction in Western Representational Epistemology, and specifically Kantian Transcendental Idealism. Instead, he carefully avoids the noumenon concept, and endlessly repeats anti-realist anti-Kantian slogans. There are classic philosophical arguments critical of Kant’s concept of noumenon, but Hicks does not seem to know any of them.

    For some philosophers the problem of knowledge is not that we do not know reality2, but that we can know reality2 in so many ways.

    The critique of a Postmodern Trope continues...with a lot more.
     
    Last edited: Dec 27, 2019
  16. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    The last few weeks have been great in many ways! Professor Vervaeke gave his lectures on Heidegger EP.47, and Paul Tillich EP. 50, which is the high point for me. I learn something new every time I listen to experts reviewing philosophers like these last fifty lectures on the meaning crisis. I viewed all fifty lectures plus the question and answer videos; and now I must re-view them again since I learned more from the lectures themselves.

    The most recent video is a discussion between Prof. Anderson Todd and Prof. John Vervaeke on Jungian psychology of which I only know a little. Prof. Todd, has very impressive encyclopedia knowledge of philosophy and cognitive science also! Anderson Todd is the Assistant Director of U of Toronto Wisdom and Consciousness Lab. Toronto is lucky to have such good multi-talented philosophy professors! I liked the different interpretations of Jung, and the Shadow discussion. What I like most of all is the authentic discussion. Oh! I heard in one of those videos that Dr. John Vervaeke is now a full professor! I sleep better now!

    I think the greatest Canadian professor is the economist Dr. John Kenneth Galbraith. Dr. Galbraith was an important Canadian economist that helped pull the United States out of the Great Depression of 1929. Through his economic policies and the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, millions upon millions of American were saved from lives of grinding poverty. My parents were born during the Great Depression and were damaged, but able to become lower middle class citizens as adults, and not perish from old age poverty or illness because of FDR’s Social Security New Deal insurance program. Their children could be educated, and their grand children all prosper to this very day because of the radical economic changes Dr. John Kenneth Galbraith helped bring to America.

    One consequence of this lecture series is that my reading has increased, and I took a deep dive into Tillich’s other writings (Courage to Be, Dynamics of Faith, What is Religion?,ect.) instead of reading broadly. These other satellite writings are further elaborations of the topics Tillich discussed in his three volumes “Systematic Theology.” Tillich’s philosophical writings are architectonic and encapsulated in his Systematic Theology. Yes, Tillich does have a gnosis element in his theology, but it is limited. Take for example his views on theologies of experience such as Schleiermacherian religious consciousness as feeling, which I think Tillich confuses with mere “sense sensation,” just as Hegel did. However, Christianity has always had a gnosis influence in its doctrines. One can accidentally learn a huge amount of philosophy by reading Paul Tillich’s works. Because of his experience with the Nazis, he viewed apologetics as the first task of the theology of culture to render the Christian symbolism more relevant and bring intelligibility to life in modern industrial society.

    The poet, Leonard Cohen, is another famous Canadian!
     
  17. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    -104, Tillich on Chronos and Kairos
    -107, Carnivalesque Culture And 'The Joker' as a Narcissistic Social Character in Liminal Space
    -108, The Carnival as Repetition and Reversal of Time and Space
    -110, The Liminal Trickster
    -112, 114, 115, 117, The Ayn Randian Propagandistic Trope Concerning Postmodernism.



    …Continuing the Critique of a Postmodernism Trope.


    “… they may try to disguise themselves by the assumption of a popular style and by changes on the language of the schools, unavoidably fall into metaphysical declarations and propositions, which they profess to regard with so much contempt”—Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Meiklejohn, p.5.


    The Fallacy of Tunnel History


    Hicks’ historical narrative presents a too narrow view by selecting Kantian epistemology as the landmark philosopher who destroyed realist epistemology. Over emphasis of a few historical events, or persons can lead to distortion and misinterpretation. There were other forces that brought about the decline of an intelligible religious world-order having a clear hierarchy of authority inherited from the Middle Ages. Kant, Descartes, and Leibnitz were part of the rationalistic current that was sweeping the world. Hobbes (1588-1679) Locke, Berkeley (1685-1753), and Hume all constructed psychological oriented epistemologies and were forces in themselves bring about the Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution. Others interpret Kant as contributing to the empiricist-mechanistic-scientific realist epistemology that reduced modern science to the technology of subject-object manipulation. Of course those who blame Kant as responsible for this trend of Enlightenment science should also consider the explosion of new technology resulting from the destabilizing effects of capitalist factory production that encouraged scientific empiricist instrumental rationality. Marx was one of the first to note hyper-technical innovation in Capitalist production, “The inanimate machinery not only wears out and depreciates from day to day, but a great part of it becomes so quickly superannuated, by constant technical progress, that it can be replaced with advantage by new machinery after a few months” (Capital Vol. I, p. 400). Historical events and persons may act as both cause and effect in the movement of history.

    Hicks commits the Fallacy of Tunnel History as formulated by historian J. H. Hexter in “Reappraisals of History,” (Evanston, Ill., 1961, p. 194-95).

    Let us construct a hypothetical historical matrix with twenty historical events. *

    Time________Past events
    (Past)
    1____ A B C D E
    2 ____B C D A B
    3 ____C D A B C
    4 ____D A B C D
    5 ____A B C D E
    (Present)

    There are other economic, political, culture, religious, and philosophical forces that Hicks overlooked by misinterpretation and over emphasis. If we place Kant as the central figure in the historical event matrix, it would have the following pattern:

    Time________Past events
    (Past)
    1__________ B
    2 ________B
    3 ______B
    4 ____B
    5 __B
    (Present)

    A more likely historical narrative would look at the larger historical picture and not just reduce history to one person, issue, or event. A more inclusive historical event matrix would have a somewhat different pattern:

    Time________Past events
    (Past)
    1_A_C_D_ B_E
    2 ___________
    3 _B_ D_A_C_
    4 __________
    5 _B_C_A__E_
    (Present)

    * Historian David H. Fischer created this clever historical matrix diagram in “Historians’ Fallacies” (1970), Harper Perennial, p.142.

    The Fallacy of Difference

    The fallacy of difference is an attempt at a special definition of a group by genus (common traits), and differences in which the genus is omitted or forgotten.

    Hicks claimed skepticism is a unique trait of postmodernism, making it different from modern realism.

    Pyrrho, Plato, Kant, Hume, Descartes, and Locke were all skeptics in some since, not just Kant. The single word “skepticism” has many meanings such as Humean scientific empirical skepticism, Descartes’ rationalist methodological doubt, attitudinal skepticism, atheistic doubt of any type, or simply mean non-dogmatic. All of these philosophers applied methodological doubt—even Pyrrho (360 B.C.)—in their respective fields of study so Kant is not unique as a skeptic in this sense.

    To help clarify this fallacy American Puritanism is again a good example. Puritanism is often identified with witch burning as its special characteristic from other religious sects of its time and region. However, historian Dr. Fischer noted that much of Puritan theology was Anglican, a greater amount was Protestant, and the majority was Christian (source: David Hackett Fischer, The Historians’ Fallacies, 1970, Harper/Perennial, p. 222).

    The attempt to define postmodernism by the special characteristic of skepticism does not make postmodernism distinct from modernism for want of an insight into a criteria of difference.

    The Converse Fallacy of Difference

    This fallacy attempts to render a definition of a group by a quality, which is not special to it. Fischer’s Puritan historical example is helpful for understanding this fallacy also. Historical records show that the Puritans engaged in the fewest witch killing, and burned none. However, this difference among the other sects is ignored and the Puritans are especially distinguished as witch burning fanatics instead.

    Hicks tries to group together epistemological skepticism which “cannot put us in contact with reality,” and postmodernism (the shadow of circularity still hangs over this term) with philosophers Kant and Hegel. However, Kant and Hegel had opposite views about this very question of the possibility knowledge. Again skepticism is being used as a special characteristic of postmodernism. Kant argued the thing-in-itself (noumenon) could not be known determinately. Hegel argued that absolute knowledge (as opposed to knowledge of appearances) is possible; therefore, Hicks should not point to Hegel as an example of a postmodern skeptic, yet he does by ignoring this and other differences. Hicks also links David Hume with postmodernism (Loc: 786). Kantian faithful non-theism is much different than Humean atheistic empiricist skepticism. Kantian skepticism is not cynical attitudinal skepticism. Kantian Transcendental Idealism is wholly different than Berkeleian Psychological Idealism.

    Since the terms skepticism, idealism, and relativism have multiple meanings, the attempt to define postmodernism by these special characteristics does not make postmodernists distinct even from themselves for want of an insight into a criteria of sameness.

    Consequently, Hicks committed both the Fallacy of Difference and the Fallacy of Converse of Difference as a result of committing the Fallacy of Equivocation at the very beginning. We can think of these fallacies as multiple compounding felonies.

    The Static Fallacy Relating to Process, Truth, and Falsity.

    The Static Fallacy is another common formulation of the False Dilemma Fallacy.

    This fallacy attempts to conceptualize a dynamic process in static terms. Hicks views various schools of philosophy as isolated ahistorical monads by treating them as inert elements having only the two possible values of true and false (bivalence). Historical process is absent in this tunnel vision narrative of postmodernism except for the continuous thread of ill-defined Kantian skepticism. Instead of thinking in terms of true and false, Hegel understood the history of philosophy in terms of parts and whole in which historical process is included so that a school of philosophy (bud) will past away to only reappear as a new fuller form (blossom), and then as truth:
    Hicks’ understandable longing for a lost world-order of essential meaning, identity, hierarchy, and faith—a lost substantial world of meaning (Lifeworld)-- is what Hegel spoke of in tracing the history of philosophical movements. The pre-scientific worldviews and past religious orthodoxy are now just dead empty husks. A distressed humanity is now demanding from philosophy the recovery of this lost world of certainty. Hegel wrote that Geist (Mind, or Spirit),
    Hegel warned that in desperation for meaning dogmatists will seek to restore that lost sense of substantial being by engaging in metaphysics, “He will find ample opportunity to dream up something for himself. But philosophy must beware of the wish to be edifying“(Hegel, para. 9). Kant uses the terms metaphysics in a variety of ways that are both negative and positive (Critique, p.471). Metaphysics in its negative sense means the attempt to apply the cognitive categories of a priori reason to the non-empirical--not within the sphere of possible experience. Kant wrote this kind of metaphysics, “…deals with mere conceptions—not, like mathematics, with conceptions applied to intuition—and in it, reason is the pupil of itself alone”(Critique, p.12).

    The real issue for scientific philosophy is knowledge and truth, but instead dogmatic philosophy has become (my italics)...”no more than a device for evading the real issue, a way of creating an impression of hard work and serious commitment to the problem, while actually sparing oneself both. For the real issue is not exhausted by stating it as an aim, but by carrying it out, nor is the whole, but rather the result together with the process through which it came about” (Hegel, para. 3). The static view of history fails to perceive the process of Mind (Spirit). Tillich tells us that at these historical moments of paradigm shifting reason must not deny itself, does not abdicate, but turns into itself to transcend itself, within itself.

    …Next are collected quotations by Kant contradicting Hicks’ straw man interpretation of The Critique of Pure Reason.
     
  18. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    -104, Tillich on Chronos and Kairos
    -107, Carnivalesque Culture And 'The Joker' as a Narcissistic Social Character in Liminal Space
    -108, The Carnival as Repetition and Reversal of Time and Space
    -110, The Liminal Trickster
    -112, 114, 115, 117, 118, The Ayn Randian Propagandistic Trope Concerning Postmodernism.


    Concluding critique of a postmodern trope…


    “Thoughts without content are void; intuitions without conceptions, blind.”— Kant, Critique, trans. Meiklejohn, p.64 (pdf.).

    “But, though all our knowledge begins with experience, it by no means follows that all arises out of experience.”Ibid., p. 27.


    Appearance and Reality in the Copernican Revolution


    Kant’s Copernican Revolution is his version of Plato’s cave allegory. Remember that the prisoners with “…the most sunlike of all the instruments of sense”(508b) named the shadows created by a maintained firelight behind a wall. We discussed the two senses of real and reality that Hicks overlooks which the following two quotations reflect:

    “Thus Kant, that great champion of reason, asserted that the most important fact about reason is that it is clueless about reality”-(Hicks, Loc: 917).

    “In the arguments based on the relativity and causality of perception, the identity of our sense organs is taken to be the enemy of awareness of reality”-(Hicks, Loc: 1088 ).

    Hicks referenced Galileo (1564-1642) five times in his writing as a free speech hero, but never discussed the reason why the state church censored Galileo. Galileo asserted against the appearances that the sun is the center of the known universe (Heliocentric model) and not the earth (Ptolemy’s Geocentric model). From an ordinary observer’s point of view the sun’s movement appeared the same in both models of the universe. Kant wrote,
    The categories a priori are necessary for experience, and are the standard of objectivity. “And he [Kant] held that reality conforms to reason, not vice versa”(Loc: 1130). Hicks’ grammar is misleading of Kant’s meaning of conform. Notice the ambiguity of “conform” when he writes of Kant “the object must conform to the subject”(Loc: 1047), which suggests Berkeleian Idealism: “To be (exist) is to be perceived.” Kant’s meaning is that “the object conforms to the nature of our faculty of intuition,” so that when Galileo imagined, and later concluded, that the earth obits the sun, Galileo didn’t change the earth’s movements one iota, but scientific understanding advanced.

    When I perceive the color blue (sense perception, or sense impression is the empiricist relation to the object, or thing--John Locke, David Hume) that state of consciousness (seeing blue) is subjective. Even empiricism cannot be entirely objective. Locke used the term “ideas” with three meanings: sensible qualities, sense-data, and concepts/universal ideas. In this epistemological model empiricism is idealism. And when scientific empiricism demands the universal categorical imperative that all judgments be founded on verified sense experience to be considered objective, then empiricism has become pure speculative idealism. Positivism is really a disguised metaphysical doctrine of language, and not about the world. Worse, it presupposes the very world and language that it is supposed to explain. The world is constructed sense datum, and makes assumptions about its construction.

    The Copernican Revolution is another example of how objects conform to consciousness in knowledge. Copleston explained Kant’s reasoning as “If objects, to be known, must conform to the mind, and if this means that they must be subjected to the categories of the understanding in order to be objects in the full sense, no further justification of the use of the categories is required”(Copleston S.J., The History of Philosophy, Vol. 6, Part II, Kant, Doubleday/Image, p. 47). The categories have objective validity.

    Hicks is not defending the values of Western Civilization with an incoherent attack on Kant that is simultaneously an assault on the foundational principles of Western Christian theology and ethics. He fails to mention that Kant was critical of metaphysical speculative free-thinking. Kant wrote, “Criticism alone can strike a blow at the root of materialism, fatalism, atheism, free-thinking, fanaticism, and superstition, which are universally injurious— as well as of idealism and skepticism, which are dangerous to the schools, but can scarcely pass over to the public”(Critique, p. 21). Kant was concerned about the very epistemological, religious, and moral “isms” that Hicks claimed Kant is responsible for bringing about in postmodernism. Kant wrote,

    The Limitation of Knowledge is not a Denial of Knowledge

    “Epistemologically, having rejected the notion of an independently existing reality, postmodernism denies that reason or any other method is a means of acquiring objective knowledge of that reality”-(Hicks, Loc: 529).

    “One purpose of the Critique accordingly, was to limit severely the scope of reason”-(Hicks, Loc: 949).

    These quotes represent another equivocation by the author between the distinction of the limits of knowledge and absolute skepticism. Recognizing the limits of reason is not necessarily a rejection of the possibility of knowledge. An epistemology of limitation is possible. For Kant such an epistemology avoids the airless space of pure ideas that metaphysics seek such as for example, the Platonic Forms, and speculative dogmatic theology. Plato abandoned the world of sense perception; however, Kant wanted to turn back to the appearances, but newly understood as sense experience necessarily organized by the a priori categories of knowledge.

    The Scandal of Philosophy

    “For all of their differences, the empiricists and rationalist had agree with the broadly Enlightenment conception of reason-that human reason is a faculty of the individual, that it is competent to know reality objectively, that it is capable of functioning autonomously and in accordance to universal principles”-(Hicks, Loc: 951).

    Kant recovered rationalism and empiricism by making a synthesis of the two opposing epistemology. The Empiricists were having difficulty with the problem of induction and causation such as the ancient skeptic Prryho. The Rationalist Cartesians were unable to prove the mere existence of anything except their own selves with any certainty. The situation was a philosophical scandal. Kant most likely had Berkeley (1685-1753) in mind when he wrote:

    Science in Disrepute


    Hicks falsely believes that modern science was some kind of pre-lapsarian epistemological utopia. Cartesian and Humean realism turn out to be completely solipsistic. This problem was an epistemological trap that Cartesian rationalism and Humean empiricism could not escape, and not a matter of negotiating “pay offs and trade-offs”(Loc: 1066) with science losing and religion winning credibility: the business metaphor is greatly misleading. Transcendental logic in not psychology as with empiricist psychological oriented epistemologies, but rather concerns the necessary conditions for the possibility of experience—not what is accidental to experience. One cannot negotiate that the categories and forms of intuition are optional for experience anymore than one can negotiate that a triangle should have two sides instead of three. Kant wrote, “It is therefore not merely possible or probable, but indubitably certain, that space and time, as the necessary conditions of all our external and internal experience….”(Critique, p.59). This is why the Critique is organized by transcendental deductions. Hicks completely misunderstands the meaning of transcendental logic as a critical science of a priori logical necessity and not of the accidental attributes of psychology. For Kant, the necessary conditions for the possibility of experience universally apply to all sentient self-conscious beings—even to angels.
    Hicks does not understand the Critique of Pure Reason as a solution to anything because he is unaware of exactly what were the epistemological problems. He provides no architectonic non-Kantian epistemological answers to the problem of solipsism in rationalism or empiricism. He laments, “Reason is clueless about reality,” but is seeking edification instead of seeking truth as Hegel warned.
     
    Last edited: Jan 9, 2020
  19. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    -104, Tillich on Chronos and Kairos
    -107, Carnivalesque Culture And 'The Joker' as a Narcissistic Social Character in Liminal Space
    -108, The Carnival as Repetition and Reversal of Time and Space
    -110, The Liminal Trickster
    -112, 114, 115, 117, 118, 119, The Ayn Randian Propagandistic Trope Concerning Postmodernism



    Kant Recovered Rationalism, Empiricism, and Spiritual Faith

    The Kantian concept of the thing-in-itself recovers both rationalism and empiricism from solipsism. This is contrary to Hicks’ interpretation of Kant. The synthesis with transcendental idealism not only rescued rationalism and empiricism together as coherent epistemologies for science, but also expunged the solipsistic character of both with the noumenon doctrine of which nothing determinate can be said of the thing-in-itself.* Kantian transcendental idealism is not solipsistic which means for Hicks it is not realundefined or objective.

    *I must add this note: Kant’s argument that the noumenon is indeterminate and nothing can be said determinate about the noumenal without contradiction is a rejection of solipsism. Tillich duplicates this same Kantian logical move in defining God as “being-itself” which has “no qualities, beyond everything, above and beyond all determination, above essences”(see, ”Tillich and the Postmodern,” by John Thatamanil in “Paul Tillich Cambridge Companion,” p. 28 )(pdf). This is why Tillich cannot be called onto-theological, and Kant cannot be understood as a non-realist, or a solipsist.

    Conclusion

    The term postmodernism as used by Hick’s is a trope, and a style of rhetoric. “Trope” from Greek “tropos” means “style, a turn, or related to turning.” He consciously constructs a Kantian straw man to create a false stereotype, which is then used to smear all the other philosophers he identifies as postmodern, and later as the forefathers of terrorism (Loc: 3725) and cultural Marxism which is yet another trope. The same poor reasoning is duplicated with each philosopher he describes as postmodern so that there are endless errors based on his initial Kantian straw man constructed from circular argument and informal fallacies of content. Unfortunately, Hicks’ book will turn some readers away from the philosophers he smeared while those that are still interested will have special difficulty understanding Kantian epistemology having unknowingly embraced distorted and distorting assumptions.

    "The Future"
    by Leonard Cohen
    (1992)



    Give me back my broken night
    my mirrored room, my secret life
    it's lonely here,
    there's no one left to torture


    Give me absolute control
    over every living soul
    And lie beside me, baby,
    that's an order!

    Give me crack and careless sex
    Take the only tree that's left
    and stuff it up the hole
    in your culture

    Give me back the Berlin wall
    give me Stalin and St Paul
    I've seen the future, brother:
    it is murder.


    Things are going to slide, slide in all directions
    Won't be nothing you can measure anymore....
    You don't know me from the wind
    you never will, you never did
    I'm the little jew
    who wrote the Bible

    I've seen the nations rise and fall
    I've heard their stories, heard them all
    but love's the only engine of survival


    Your servant here, he has been told
    to say it clear, to say it cold:
    It's over, it ain't going
    any further


    And now the wheels of heaven stop
    you feel the devil's riding crop
    Get ready for the future:
    it is murder

    There'll be the breaking of the ancient
    western code
    Your private life will suddenly explode
    There'll be phantoms
    There'll be fires on the road
    and the white man dancing


    You'll see a woman
    hanging upside down
    her features covered by her fallen gown
    and all the lousy little poets
    coming round
    tryin' to sound like Charlie Manson
    and the white man dancin'

    Give me back the Berlin wall
    Give me Stalin and St Paul
    Give me Christ
    or give me Hiroshima


    Destroy another fetus now
    We don't like children anyhow
    I've seen the future, baby:it is murder...
     
    Last edited: Jan 9, 2020
  20. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    If ever I cannot access this discussion board, a better edited version of this same thread with a new title is at "A Theory of Spiritual Experience: A Synthesis of Symbolic Logic and Mysticism."




    The Martin Heidegger Blues

    You got your Existentialism, Phenomenology,
    you learn to say the words,
    you get a PhD,
    but what is all the learn'n gonna do fur you?

    That's when you know,
    you got the Martin Heidegger blues!
    You made your reduction,
    transcended your ego too,
    that's what you discovered,
    that you're just a fool,
    but the ground of Being,
    is closing in on you!

    That's when you know,
    you got the Martin Heidegger blues!

    Well, Freud don't scare you,
    And Skinner's a fool.
    To hear about Husserl,
    and you think he's so cool!
    But your coach Ito,
    is making a monkey out of you!

    That's when you know,
    you got the Martin Heidegger blues!
    What is Truth and Reality?
    You read a book by
    Merleau-Ponty,
    and you read all 200 pages,
    and it makes no sense to youuuuu.

    That's when you know,
    you got the Martin Heidegger blues!

    When you're at a Duquesne orgy,
    sit'in next to Andy Georgie,
    he looks down at your paradigm and says
    "Hey, boy that's out of line!"
    He says "You better forget about all those traditional schools!"

    That's when you know,
    you got the Martin Heidegger blues!

    And then there's Soren Kierkegaard,
    who needed some money for bread,
    He sat down one day,
    and wrote the "Concept of Dread!"
    He said, "Either, Or"
    "I got the Sickness unto Death"
    Yeah!
    That's when you know,
    you got the Martin Heidegger blues!
     
  21. bricklayer

    bricklayer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I give no merit to "Husserlian Phenomenology", but I can't get the words out of my head. The words themselves have a ring to them.
     
  22. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    APPENDIX


    I discovered a wonderful new philosopher, Johannes Achill Niederhauser PhD, appearing from the North through the lectures of Dr. John Vervaeke. Both philosophers deliver very high quality talks in their fields of study and interest.

    Also, Dr. Vervaeke will soon have a video series on Socrates.

    Notice that Dr. Niederhauser reads Heraclitus out loud in the original Greek! My goodness! Johannes has many more videos on his channel "Classical Philosophy" that are incredibly insightful.



    λύω

    I loosen, break, release, undo, resolve, atone for.

    λυθήσεται
    "She shall be released!"

    [​IMG]

    Cronos: Χρόνος

    [​IMG]
     
  23. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    Trump is unable to delivery what he promises because of his incompetence and inherent criminality so his primary concern now is to keep power no matter the consequences even if it's for a day while Americans die from a new lethal pandemic virus. We hear only praises for themselves by themselves creating a free floating narrative unconnected to reality. If Trump and his administration were to give up power they would have to face justice for a long history of organized criminal acts so they are taking this crisis opportunity to extract wealth from a collapsing hybrid-capitalistic economy, loot the monetary system, seize total absolute political power, punish enemies for revenge and pleasure, establish a Chinese style digital surveillance state. So this pandemic has accelerated the course of events to some version of Mussolini fascist totalitarianism, or maybe a new society established on care, and a new being.

     
    Last edited: Mar 23, 2020
  24. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    Appendix A2

    Christopher Lynn Hedges (born September 18, 1956) is an American journalist, Presbyterian minister, and visiting Princeton University lecturer. In 2001, Hedges contributed to The New York Times staff entry that received the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for the paper's coverage of global terrorism. He also received the Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism in 2002. He has taught at Columbia University, New York University, the University of Toronto and Princeton University, where he is a visiting lecturer in African American studies. And Hedges has taught college credit courses for several years in New Jersey prisons. (Wikipedia: Chris Hedges)

    In the spirit of Friedrich Schleiermacher, Rev. Chris Hedges gave the following sermon in Victoria BC on January 20, 2019.


    Appendix A3

    Paul Tillich could be viewed as representing the religious wing of the Frankfurt School of Critical Research. Tillich was never an official member of the Frankfurt School, however, he knew Max Horkheimer as both a fellow professor at the University of Frankfurt, and the director of the Frankfurt School of Critical Research. Tillich once dedicated the essay "Participation and Knowledge: Problems of an Ontology of Cognition” to Max Horkheimer's sixtieth birthday in 1955.

    Also, Professor Tillich knew the young Theodor W. Adorno as his student while acting as adviser for his habilitation (a written thesis), which the University of Frankfurt accepted. The approved habilitation gave Adorno permission to lecture. Eventually, all three scholars had to immigrate to the US as German exiles during the 1930’s as the Nazi took power.

    Paul Tillich, Theodor W. Adorno, and Max Horkheimer wrote about the same concerns of the modern age using the same methodologies of dialectical reasoning, critical theory, and phenomenology. All foresaw the dangers of instrumental rationality, systems of domination, existential alienation, repressive reified social concepts, objectification of human beings, and nihilism. Tillich formulated and applied metalogic (a reconfiguration of dialectical analysis, critique, and phenomenology) as his methodology to examine these modern afflictions in both the religious realm (heteronomy), and secular culture (autonomy). Adorno demanded everyone keep their feet on the ground of existence, and not fly off into pure metaphysical speculation. Horkheimer was more of a mediator between the two other philosophers.

    As a religious socialist, Tillich worked to keep Christianity relevant to persons in modern industrial society by reinterpreting its symbols of meaning, and categories. For Tillich culture is directed to “conditioned forms,” while religion is directedness to “Unconditional meaning,”(Schelling).

    Tillich writes,"...culture is a form of expression of religion, and religion is the substance of culture" (Tillich, What is Religion?, p. 73)(pdf). On the other hand, “....culture in substance is religious, even though it is not so by intention, (ibid.,p. 97).

    In both cases the religious and cultural unintentionally display common essential elements that seek fulfillment in a complete unity of meaning within the “living stream of meaning reality.”

    "...every religious act is... a cultural act; it is directed toward the totality of meaning. But it is not by intention cultural; for it does not have in mind the totality of meaning…. In the cultural act, therefore, the religious is substantial; in the religious act the cultural is formal”(ibid.,p. 59).

    For more about the philosophical relationship between Horkheimer, Tillich, and Adorno see the very short summary review of the book, Prophetic Interruptions: Critical Theory, Emancipation, and Religion in Paul Tillich, Theodor Adono, and Max Horkheimer (1929-1944), Atlanta, GA: Mercer University Press, November 2017.

    I studied some of the Youtube video lectures about Paul Tillich, and selected this one by Russell Re Manning as one of the best overviews. Part I of II.
     
  25. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    -Post # 124: Appendix begins A1 to A3
    -125, Appendix A4 to A7

    Appendix A4


    I want to provide some background for the two videos on the Frankfurt School.

    By the way, the Frankfurt School is often referred to as "Culture Marxism," a popular old Cold War trope. And, it is true that the Frankfurt School is about Marxism for sure, but what they do not tell you is the Frankfurt School is also about Christian theology--they lied to us again, but we're used to it. Marxism has had more impact on Western Christian theology, than on Western economic theory--and it has only been 170 years.

    Some Frankfurt School members fled fascist Germany, and while in exile attempted to understand how fascism emerged out of a Capitalist society by researching German society.

    1.) The Frankfurt School scholars extended ideological critique to social psychology. The psychology of the individual is an important agent in the rise of fascism. They did the first studies on the authoritarian personality and family structures (which turns out to be a key source of fascism).

    2.) The Frankfurt School explained the self-reinforcing qualities of Capitalist social infra-structure and the process of power legitimation. Our practical reason (ethical reasoning) is used to achieve freedom, but instead evolves into “Instrumental Reason,” (technology) to the point that there is an “Eclipse of Reason.” The Enlightenment has been replaced by positivism to reinforce Capitalism. The tendency of instrumental reason is to dominate both human beings and nature by a systemic internal process sustained by social organizations. Instrumental reason has redefined the meaning of human existence. Now “surplus repression” is necessary to exploit and maintain the flow of surplus value.

    3.) The Frankfurt philosophers rethought the concept of the “Negative,” (the possible) as opposed to the “Positive”(the actual). Marcuse reformulated a method for critical negative dialectics, or the dialectics of imagination for possibilities by borrowing concepts from a.) Freud, the b.) Existentialists, c.) Heidegger’s fundamental ontology, d.) Hegel’s concept of "negation" and “determinate negation.”

    Adorno contributed his “Negative Dialectics”(1966) to re-define and refine a critical dialectical methodology (imminent critique) to derive contradictions from systems of concepts, and paradigms. The genetic influence of Hegelian Absolute Idealism in Marxism allows the critical theorists to shift the analysis from its historical emphasis of Marxist’s so called materialism --a Positivistic dialectic of actual existence--to a Negative dialectic of essences and possibility.

    4.) Habermas attempted to bring a new hermeneutic, or principles of interpreting political theory. Capitalism has changed modern "politics" from the Greek “polis” of participation and attempts to reclaim communication from a distorted reality, and Orwellian contradictions.

    I touched on many of these themes in this strange book of mine, but the two part video series on “Adorno and Horkheimer: Dialectic of Enlightenment, Part I” more clearly brings them all together. Part II is particularly well done.




    Appendix A5

    Critical Negative Thinking as the Logic of Protest and the Impoverishment of Experience:
    Negative critical thinking is possibility thinking, of what could exist as opposed to what actually exists (positive). Critical thinking is often viewed as “utopian” thinking (οὐ, no; τόπος, place) especially as scientific empirical positivism is the dominant paradigm that de-realizes, discourage, and de-legitimizes this dimension of the cogitative inner self (Geist). The logic of domination (instrumental logic) results in the constriction of human experience—in the poverty of experience. This sublimated inner-dimension is where spiritual experience abides.
    When we critically examine the appearances (phenomena) in the living stream of meaning-reality, they fade away into a cloud of quantum haze.

    In spite of our “struggle against…absorption into the predominant one-dimensionality,” the universe is open.

    Paul Tillich: The Open Universe and the Sacred



    I want to find the best video lectures on some of the key philosophers discussed in “A Theory of Spiritual Experience.” I once took a graduate level course on Hegel taught by Dr. David Carr reading mainly the Introduction to “The Phenomenology of Spirit” (1807). There were only about 15 students in the class. Dr. Carr is best known for translating Edmond Husserl’s “The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology—Yes, that David Carr.

    I only mentioned that to say philosopher Dr. Gregory B. Sadler has a free online YouTube paragraph-by-paragraph reading course of Hegel’s entire “The Phenomenology of Spirit”! Dr. Sadler is at paragraph 644 now! I’m trying to catch up by watching one lecture a day. It’s unbelievable!


    Dr. Sadler delivers very clear commentary and interpretation—clearer than Hegel, for sure. I learned an awful lot from these marathon expert lectures and have already link to one of his insightful videos in my essay on Hegel.

    Dr. Sadler is cool!



    Appendix A7

    Biblical Economics through the ages.

    Dr. Hudson explains why Christians hate Jesus so much.

    Sociologist Jim Vrettos interviews Professor Michael Hudson, Economist, Wall St. Analyst, Political Consultant, Commentator and Journalist; who offers his views in the way finance works and how debt is actually a tool for oppression.

    Dr. Hudson has written many books including:

    • Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (1972)
    • Urbanization and Land Ownership in the Ancient Near East (1999)
    • Killing the Host (2015)
    • J is For Junk Economics: A Guide to Reality in an Age of Deception (2017)
    • ...and Forgive Them Their Debts: Lending, Foreclosure and Redemption from Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year (2018 )
     
    Last edited: Apr 4, 2020

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