Montaigne and Woolf

"Mrs. Dalloway," by Virginia Woolf. msussman - August 1, 2006

Mick Sussman, Books Producer, The New York Times on the Web

An early paragraph is an example of the stream-of-consciousness style that Woolf helped formalize in this book, and it also suggests a world view that seems to flow from the method:

"She would not say of any one in the world now that they were this or were that. She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged. She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on. She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day. Not that she thought herself clever, or much out of the ordinary. How she had got through life on the few twigs of knowledge Fräulein Daniels gave them she could not think. She knew nothing; no language, no history; she scarcely read a book now, except memoirs in bed; and yet to her it was absolutely absorbing; all this; the cabs passing; and she would not say of Peter, she would not say of herself, I am this, I am that."

Not this, not that: instead, a moment-by-moment existence, whatever is occupying the mind of the beholder at any given moment, a constant flow. Does this work as a philosophy, and as a narrative method?

msussman #1 10:36 AM ET 8/1/2006 Now that you've asked, it reminds me of Montaigne. He says something like this more than once in his essays. He makes a virtue of being in a constant state of discovery, both about himself and the world at large. Perhaps Woolf was a fan.

Explaining supervenience

This paper appeared in Philosophical And Phenomenological Research Vol. LXII, No.2, March 2001, 253-281. Reprinted in Chalmers, D. (ed.) 2002: Philosophy of Mind: Contemporary and Classical Readings, Oxford University Press. Reprinted in Nagasawa. Y, Ludlow. P, and Stoljar, D. (ed.) 2004. There's Something about Mary: Essays on Frank Jackson's Knowledge Argument, MIT Press. Two Conceptions of the Physical Daniel Stoljar

Abstract: The debate over physicalism in philosophy of mind can be seen as concerning an inconsistent tetrad of theses: (1) if physicalism is true, a priori physicalism is true; (2) a priori physicalism is false; (3) if physicalism is false, epiphenomenalism is true; (4) epiphenomenalism is false. This paper argues that one may resolve the debate by distinguishing two conceptions of the physical: on the theory-based conception, it is plausible that (2) is true and (3) is false; on the object-based conception, it is plausible that (3) is true and (2) is false. The paper also defends and explores the version of physicalism that results from this strategy.

1. One way to view the contemporary debate in philosophy of mind over physicalism is to see it as being organized around an inconsistent tetrad of theses. These are:
(1) If physicalism is true, a priori physicalism is true.
(2) A priori physicalism is false.
(3) If physicalism is false, epiphenomenalism is true.
(4) Epiphenomenalism is false.
It is obvious of course that these theses are inconsistent: (1) and (2) entail that physicalism is false, while (3) and (4) entail that it is true. Barring ambiguity, therefore, one thing we know is that one of the theses is false. On the other hand, each of the theses has powerful considerations, or at least what seem initially to be powerful considerations, in its favor. (1) In support of (1) are considerations of supervenience, articulated most clearly in recent times by Frank Jackson and David Chalmers. A priori physicalism is a thesis with two parts. The first part-the physicalist part-is that the mental supervenes with metaphysical necessity on the physical. The second part-the a priori part-is that mental truths are a priori entailed by physical truths.

Many philosophers hold that supervenience stands in need of justification or explanation; Jackson and Chalmers argue that the project of justifying or explaining supervenience just is the project of making it plausible that there is an a priori entailment of the mental by the physical.

When religion-infested politics is on the march

Reasonable Doubt By REBECCA NEWBERGER GOLDSTEIN NYTimes.com Homepage: July 29, 2006

Spinoza’s reaction to the religious intolerance he saw around him was to try to think his way out of all sectarian thinking. He understood the powerful tendency in each of us toward developing a view of the truth that favors the circumstances into which we happened to have been born. Self-aggrandizement can be the invisible scaffolding of religion, politics or ideology.

Against this tendency we have no defense but the relentless application of reason. Reason must stand guard against the self-serving false entailments that creep into our thinking, inducing us to believe that we are more cosmically important than we truly are, that we have had bestowed upon us — whether Jew or Christian or Muslim — a privileged position in the narrative of the world’s unfolding...

For Spinoza, democracy was the most superior form of government — only democracy can preserve and augment the rights of individuals...The Declaration of Independence, that extraordinary document first drafted by Thomas Jefferson, softly echoes Spinoza. John Locke, Spinoza’s contemporary — both were born in 1632 — is a more obvious influence on Jefferson than Spinoza was. But Locke had himself been influenced by Spinoza’s ideas on tolerance, freedom and democracy. In fact, Locke spent five formative years in Amsterdam, in exile because of the political troubles of his patron, the Earl of Shaftesbury.

Though Spinoza was already dead, Locke met in Amsterdam men who almost certainly spoke of Spinoza. Locke’s library not only included all of Spinoza’s important works, but also works in which Spinoza had been discussed and condemned. It’s worth noting that Locke emerged from his years in Amsterdam a far more egalitarian thinker, having decisively moved in the direction of Spinoza. He now accepted, as he had not before, the fundamental egalitarian claim that the legitimacy of the state’s power derives from the consent of the governed, a phrase that would prominently find its way into the Declaration.

Locke’s claims on behalf of reason did not go as far as Spinoza’s. He was firm in defending Christianity’s revelation as the one true religion against Spinoza’s universalism. In some of the fundamental ways in which Spinoza and Locke differed, Jefferson’s view was more allied with Spinoza. (Spinoza’s collected works were also in Jefferson’s library, so Spinoza’s impact may not just have been by way of Locke.)

If we can hear Locke’s influence in the phrase “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” (a variation on Adam Smith’s Locke-inspired “life, liberty and pursuit of property”), we can also catch the sound of Spinoza addressing us in Jefferson’s appeal to the “laws of nature and of nature’s God.” This is the language of Spinoza’s universalist religion, which makes no reference to revelation, but rather to ethical truths that can be discovered through human reason.

Spinoza had argued that our capacity for reason is what makes each of us a thing of inestimable worth, demonstrably deserving of dignity and compassion. That each individual is worthy of ethical consideration is itself a discoverable law of nature, obviating the appeal to divine revelation. An idea that had caused outrage when Spinoza first proposed it in the 17th century, adding fire to the denunciation of him as a godless immoralist, had found its way into the minds of men who set out to create a government the likes of which had never before been seen on this earth.

Spinoza’s dream of making us susceptible to the voice of reason might seem hopelessly quixotic at this moment, with religion-infested politics on the march. But imagine how much more impossible a dream it would have seemed on that day 350 years ago. And imagine, too, how much even sorrier our sorry world would have been without it. « Previous Page Rebecca Newberger Goldstein is the author, most recently, of “Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity.”

Marx, Freud, Saussure, Focault, Feminism etc.

The Middle Way: On being an Indian in Britian today Ranjit Sondhi CBE Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies Dinner, Leicester Stage Hotel, 18 November 2005

It is now universally accepted that the modern age has given rise to a decisive form of individualism. The individual has been torn free from his/her stable moorings in traditions and structures. Those who hold that modern identities have been let loose argue that we are not simply estranged from others but also dislocated in themselves. The social scientist, Stuart Hall argues that this dislocation has resulted from five great influences in social thinking during the second half of the twentieth century.

The first of these was the way in which Marxist thought was first rediscovered and reworked in the sixties in the light of the argument that individuals could not be in any sense the agents of history. There was no universal essence of man, no free will, and that he was entirely determined, not by cultural tradition or by divine grace, but by social and economic relations. His identity was not internally generated but externally imposed. His destiny was determined not by himself but by larger processes over which he had no control.

The second of the great dislocation was Freud’s discovery of the unconscious. Our identities, our sexuality, and the structure of our desires, are formed by the psychic processes of the unconscious, not by reason. Now, like Marxist thought, Freudian thought also plays havoc with the notion of man as an all-knowing rational subject in complete control of himself. Freud says that we learn about ourselves gradually, and the feelings that our ‘self’ is divided, or is somehow incomplete, remain with us for life. Thus identity is something that is formed through unconscious processes over time, rather than being innate in consciousness at birth, and that the process is never finished. So identity arises not so much from the fullness of an identity which is already inside us, but from a lack of wholeness which is filled from outside us by the ways we imagine ourselves to be seen by others.

The third great dislocation arises from the work of the linguist Saussure. He argued that we are not in any absolute sense the authors of the statements we make. We can only use the rules and meanings of a language constructed by others. Language was there before us. It is a social, not an individual system. To speak a language is not so much to express our own innermost thoughts but also to activate the vast range of meanings already embedded in our language and our cultural system. Our identity is structured like language which in turn is fixed by our cultural system. And like language, identity is not entirely in our control. No matter how much we try to fix our identity, it is constantly sliding away from us, just as we cannot close down the meaning of what we say.

The fourth major dislocation of identity is to do with the work of the philosopher Focault. He tried to show how our lives are controlled by what he calls disciplinary power. This power arises out of the regulation and government of whole populations and of individuals. The control centres of this power are the workshops, the schools, the hospitals, the prisons, the barracks. The aim is to bring the individuals’ physical health, sexual practices, family and work life under stricter discipline and control, to turn the human being into a docile body. The interesting and paradoxical aspect of such control is that collective institutions bear down upon people to further individualise and isolate them.

The fifth great dislocation occurs through the impact of identity politics like feminism which appealed to the specific social identity of its followers. Such movements questioned opened up whole new areas of debate around the family, housework, domestic division of labour, and child-rearing, and the individuals place in relation to these issues.

The result of all these developments has been to transform the idea of fixed and stable identities of the past into open, contradictory, unfinished, fragmented identities of the present. Now what is happening to the rest of this society is also, up to a point, also happening to its constituent parts.

Morality cannot be captured in a universal code

'The Bourgeois Virtues,' by Deirdre N. McCloskey Review by JIM HOLT

In a riff on capitalism and morals, the maverick economist makes the case for the bourgeois life. First Chapter: ‘The Bourgeois Virtues’

Deirdre McCloskey is a maverick, and in more ways than one. A classically trained economist — Harvard Ph.D., junior appointment to the star-studded University of Chicago economics department, résumé packed with rigorous quantitative research — McCloskey broke ranks in 1985 with “The Rhetoric of Economics,” which mocked the pretensions of economists to scientific objectivity. What the profession needed was less highfalutin mathematics and more emphasis on persuasion, stories, rhetoric: so she argued. Or he, I should say. For, at the time, Deirdre was still a man named Donald. In 1995 McCloskey broke ranks again by choosing to undergo a sex-change operation, the central event in her memoir, “Crossing” (1999). Currently a distinguished professor of economics, history, English and communication at the University of Illinois, Chicago, McCloskey is that rarest of things, a transexual, new-Christian, postmodern, minimal-government conservative. She is also, by her own avowal, “a tough urban girl who can take it as well as dish it out.”

And dish it out she does. Foremost among the many, many recipients of McCloskey’s abuse are those who (she thinks) misunderstand the nature of morality. How do we determine what is right and wrong? Modern moral philosophers have offered two sorts of answer. One focuses on consequences: according to the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham, for instance, the right action is the one that results in the greatest happiness for the greatest number. The other focuses on the acts themselves: for Immanuel Kant, the right action is the one that conforms to a certain idea of duty, regardless of consequences. (Thus, by Kant’s lights, it is always wrong to kill an innocent person on purpose, even to save the world.) McCloskey will have neither of these; each, she thinks, wants to reduce ethics to “a quick little formula, the pocket-sized card.”

In the last few decades, however, an alternative to utilitarian and Kantian ethics has emerged, one that harks back to the ancient philosophers. It centers neither on acts nor on their consequences, but on character. According to “virtue ethics,” morality cannot be captured in a universal code; the right thing to do in a particular situation is what a virtuous person would do. And how do we identify a virtuous person? Aristotle defined virtue as a quality of character that makes for a life well lived. Then he characterized the good life as a life lived in accordance with virtue. Circular? Today’s virtue ethicists obviously don’t think so, but they have nevertheless struggled to come up with an account of human nature that would give some definite content to the idea of virtue.

McCloskey likes virtue ethics for two reasons. First, it elevates stories over abstract rules. The guide to action becomes “What would X do?” where X is to be filled in by one’s moral exemplar of choice, who might be drawn from the Bible, say, or from a Jane Austen novel. Second, virtue ethics lends a womanly touch to moral theory, which has long been a “guy thing,” with masculine notions like justice and autonomy shutting out feminine notions like caring and love. Many of the movers behind virtue ethics, she notes with satisfaction, have been women, like Elizabeth Anscombe, Iris Murdoch and Martha Nussbaum. (On the other hand, some pretty important male philosophers — Alasdair MacIntyre, Bernard Williams, John McDowell — have also played a role. One man that McCloskey decidedly does not want on her team is William J. Bennett, who, she observes with some severity, pumped his royalties from “The Book of Virtues” into slot machines.)

Sweetness & Light

Van said... I've been reading this series of post with great interest, but I suspect that you may be overplaying both the Pro's of the Jew's and the Con's of the Greco-Roman's.Recall that both cultures (Jew's & Greeks) were the first to begin to step out of the darkness, the Greeks with Reason, and the Jew's with the poetic idea of Goodness being one, what eventually became monotheism - keep in mind though, that the early Jew's weren't monotheists - they believed there were many God's, they just chose to keep it simple and attach themselves to just one (pardon the cheek).

While the Greeks, and later Roman's acceptance of pederasty is indeed strange, I think if you check deeper into your sources, you'll find that that was more of an aberration of the elite's, sort of like our current elite's adoration of all things "Will & Grace" swishy-ness gone wild. It may get approval in some parts of the city’s but step into the 'burbs and it gets a whole different kind of attention. Still though, it did exist, and accelerated as civilization grew, and that, as well as the norm of making women virtual shut-in's (more among the Greeks, lessening among the Roman's) couldn’t help but have a warpening affect upon their cultures.

I would argue that it was a bit of a vicious circle, in that the Greeks having raised Reason to the center of their admiration, found little of it being evident among their closeted women. I think Men are naturally drawn to femininity, and if the truly feminine - woman - who having been shut-in, demonstrated little or no evidence of their central focus of admiration, Reason, they out of necessity sought substitutes for the idealized mind & body femininity elsewhere, which left children as their hapless and sickening focus.

But cut them some slack, they were the first to step from the darkness and towards "Sweetness & Light"; the practices you mention were EVERYWHERE the norm. History gathers momentum so slowly, it takes a great deal of time to pick up speed. The Greeks, beginning with the philosophers & playwrights of the Periclean age were beginning to question why Woman was thought to be inferior, and in time I think they would have corrected themselves through the implacability of Reason as it continued to question all.

The Jews, on the other hand, may have been the first to value the children (I applaud your post's insight here, I hadn't thought of Abraham & Issac from that perspective before, or the idea of where else would Love thy Neighbor be heard, but among the Jews?), but if you've read the old testament lately, there's a whole lot of darkness persisted there, towards women, children & all else.

But please cut the Greeks & Romans some slack, take another look at Plato, Aristotle, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Cicero, and remember that they were the first of their kind to begin trying to shrug off the darkness of thousands of years, and your style of writing and analysis (not to mention the science that made Blogs possible) owes far more to them than to the Old Testament. (I’m trying to dash this off before being late for work – ooh, too late - and it looks more antagonistic than intended, sorry GOTTA GO!, I really enjoy your site) 6:14 AM

Gagdad Bob said...Van--Yes, we are necessarily speaking in large generalizations. And yet, there was a time that virtually all children had what we would call an abusive childhood. True, primitive and barbaric people were primitive and barbaric, including the ancient Hebrews. And yet, we clearly see the dawn of a new concern for children and women, that sliver of light I'm talkign about. You are correct that men are naturally drawn to femininity, but not without ambivalence. Likewise, almost all parents love their children, but not without ambivalence. It seems that the further back in history you go, the more ambivalence there is and the more it is acted out rather than internalized as a neurosis. And there is no doubt that some of the Greek philosophers intuited the light, especially, of course, Plato. But his ideas did not trickle down to the masses. 6:29 AM One Cosmos

Sri Aurobindo not admitted to Delhi University

The greatest philosopher of modern India, Sri Aurobindo, does not find a place in the Philosophy syllabus of Delhi University. Many great scholars of the country and from abroad have already authored several treatises on the philosophy as well as the metaphysical poetry of Sri Aurobindo. Many comparative works, too, have been brought out by established publishing houses and top academic institutes. But Sri Aurobindo has yet to pass a test by our pedantic Professors of the University of Delhi.

"One of Sri Aurobindo's main philosophical achievements was to introduce the concept of evolution into Vedantic thought. Samkhya philosophy had already proposed such a notion centuries earlier, but Aurobindo rejected the materialistic tendencies of both Darwinism and Samkhya, and proposed an evolution of spirit rather than matter. He rejects the Mayavada of Advaita Vedanta, and solves the problem of the linkage between the ineffable Brahman or Absolute and the world of multiplicity by positing a transitional hypostasis between the two, which he called The Supermind...There are interesting parallels between Sri Aurobindo's vision and that of Teilhard de Chardin...

"Sri Aurobindo comes at a very crucial moment in the history of thought when Marxist materialism, Nietzschean individualism and Freudian vitalism were popular and fashionable. Besides, phenomenology and existentialism had their run along-side him. On the whole, along with the new-fangled science and Theosophy, these new philosophical formulations fermented enough confusion among the elite. In a way, the disparate positions arrived at in Western thought find their synthesis in Sri Aurobindo's philosophy. By aligning them with the ancient Indian wisdom, he comes up with an integral vision that breathes universality as well as contemporarity. Thus, Kant's sublime, Hegel's absolute, Schopenhauer's will, Kierkegaard's passion, Marx's matter, Darwin's evolution, Nietzsche's overman, Bergson's élan vital, all find their due representation in Sri Aurobindo's grand exposition." Wikipedia

Schopenhauer, Heidegger, Freud, Cioran

Pessimism, Philosophical opinion or doctrine that evil predominates over good; the opposite of optimism

Systematic forms of pessimism may be found in philosophy and religion. In religion Buddhism and Hinduism pessimistically appraise the world, while Christianity's pessimism is more restricted. Numerous philosophers have been pessimistic, notably Arthur Schopenhauer in the 19th cent. and Martin Heidegger in the 20th cent.

Sigmund Freud could also be described as a pessimist and he shared many of Schopenhauer's ideas. He saw human existence as being under constant attack from both within the self, from the forces of nature and from relations with others.

Cioran's pessimism (in fact, his skepticism, even nihilism) is more than that of one who looks deeply into the abyss, yet is able to continue existing with the tragic wisdom he has discovered and remain, in his own particular manner, joyful.

Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein

copithorne said... My questions, and your inability to answer them do signal that you are trying to use language in a strange way. It is good for you to acknowledge the strangeness of how you are speaking and try to work out how you are using language, try to develop a theory of it all. If you know Wittgenstein, you'd know that those theories will never withstand analysis.

The philosophy you present here falls in the tradition of neo-Platonism. Thoughts are real, substantial, vivid. They are in contact with a realm of ultimate forms. Life as it is actually lived is, in your word, "trivial" -- a pallid reflection. In the Christian faith, this was rejected as a Gnostic heresy. Neo-Platonism was bypassed in the Vedic tradition as well. There IS a special way in which religion uses language. That way is the language of faith. You hear it in a church or a temple. But you are not using the language of faith, are you?

You are hoping to translate the language of faith into metaphysics. Many people would like to do that because faith can be difficult. It can be hard to control. It might come and go, whereas philosophical thoughts can always be brought to mind. So, people substitute piety for faith because it feels more secure. But it's a dead end, it's confusing your own thoughts with the grace of God. That temple will only have to be destroyed. 11:38 AM

copithorne said... Intellectual substance of faith which is required to understand scripture? This is like the "requirement" of implicit metaphysics isn't it? You won't be able to make sense of these "requirements." You won't be able to put your finger on them. When you try to look for the operation of this requiring, you'll find you are just playing with words, doing your bebop scat routine, manipulating yourself. In a tradition of faith we might talk about the Holy Spirit here and we might be able to say something meaningful. 12:51 PM

copithorne said... Kierkegaard and others have demonstrated very well that the language of faith cannot be translated into the language of knowledge without falsifying the faith. This falsification will show up as theological errors. This will show up a philosophical errors. This will show up as impediments on the spiritual path. This will show up as violence.

When the philosophical function works in religion, it plays a deconstructive role. That would be like apophatic theism. It would be like the theology of St. Paul. Or it would be like prasangika madhyamika tradition in Buddhism in which philosophical analysis is used to demonstrate the emptiness of every thesis. The alternative to this is that you are making an idol out of your own thoughts. 3:25 PM

Dialectic meant atheism

In another footnote for lecture in 1935, in the same book of lectures on Hegel, Kojève agrees with those who consider Heidegger the consummate athiest.

But very few of [Hegel's] readers have understood that in the final analysis dialectic meant atheism. Since Hegel, atheism has never again risen to the metaphysical and ontological levels. In our times Heidegger is the first to undertake a complete atheistic philosophy. But he does not seem to have pushed it beyond the phenomenological anthropology developed in the first volume of Sein und Zeit (the only volume that has appeared). This anthropology (which is without a doubt remarkable and authentically philosophical) adds, fundamentally, nothing new to the anthropology of the Phenomenology (which, by the way, would probably never have been understood if Heidegger had not published his book): but atheism or ontological finitism are implicitly asserted in his book in a perfectly consequent fashion. This has not prevent certain readers, who are otherwise competent, from speaking of a Heideggerian theology and from finding a notion of an afterlife in his anthropology. P. 259 The Open Giorgio Agamben ¶ 5:29 PM enowning

Bizarre Enlightenment

Thursday, October 27, 2005 ACIM Lesson 107 Truth will correct all errors in my mind. We do not ask for what we do not have. We merely ask for what belongs to us, that we may recognize it as our own. Sounds like Plato.

Truth will correct all errors in my mind, And I will rest in Him Who is my Self. Then let him lead you gently to the truth, which will envelop you and give you peace so deep and tranquil that you will return to the familiar world reluctantly. I've been there. That tranquility is what people get addicted to. You experience it once, and are forever trying to figure out how to experience it again. It's so hard to maintain in the world. There is a fine line between the spirit and spirits. If you use this tranquility to escape the world, then it is nothing more than a drug. ACIM goes on to say... And yet you will be glad to look again upon this world. For you will bring with you the promise of the changes which the truth that goes with you will carry to the world. It's not about escaping anything. It's about living more fully.

I had a kind of bizarre experience. The kind of experience that is starting to seem less and less bizarre all the time. I was sent an e-mail that I should read a post on the Authentic Self. I don't know what he read at my blog to send me this quote, or if he read any of it, because the blog it came from seems kind of like a spam blog. It's the Savitri Era Learning Forum . There's nothing particularly personal in it, just a bunch of quotes. They are all interesting, however. So perhaps it's a collection of ideas. There is some beautiful poetry at another site under the same Blogger ID. But it's not clear if it is his poetry or the poetry of others. Here is the content of the post he sent:

"Andrew Cohen: I wanted to speak about something we've discussed before, which is what I call the Authentic Self. In the development of my work in the field of evolutionary spirituality, I've come to the conclusion that awakening to this Authentic Self is a pivotal factor in the transformational process. And I think that a lot of people who are interested in enlightenment, including myself for a long time, have unintentionally been failing to make the important distinction between the Self Absolute, the Authentic Self, and the ego. As I have come to understand it, the Authentic Self is the deepest part of our humanity beyond ego, or the awakened spiritual conscience. The great twentieth-century sage Sri Aurobindo referred to it as the “psychic being,” and some might call it the soul. And this recognition was very helpful to me, because for a long time the traditional enlightenment model, which only seemed to describe the path from the ego to the Self Absolute, had not been meeting my own evolving understanding of what radical realization is all about when one is no longer merely trying to transcend the world but is simultaneously aspiring to transform it." Fabulous read.

What's weird is that I got on my stationary bicycle yesterday for the first time in more than a year. I have a bunch of old magazines sitting by it and picked up one that was still turned to the page where I left off last time I road my bike. It was What is Enlightenment, the May-July 2004 issue. And the article that I had left the magazine open to but had not yet read was Following the Grain of the Kosmos, dialogue V between Andrew Cohen and Ken Wilber. The quote that was sent to me was in the beginning of this article. Kind of weird, huh?

I bring it up because it speaks to this idea of escapism. You awake to the Authentic Self and become fully engaged in the world rather than thinking it is all an illusion so doesn't matter. I'll read more of the article when I get on my bicycle today. Anyway, I digress. Truth will correct all errors in my mind,And I will rest in Him Who is my Self. To be said 5 minutes at the beginning of every hour. Thursday, October 27, 2005 in ACIM Lessons 1-150 Permalink Comments (0)

Freud on the couch

Dr Anthony Daniels The Times May 05, 2006 Times2

With Freud, it is not easy to say precisely what his achievement was; but a man who created, in Auden’s phrase, a climate of opinion the world over must have been out of the ordinary. The charges against him are many and serious. Far from having been the lone pioneer of the unconscious mind that he claimed to have been, he was a continuer and follower of the ideas of other men, whose influence he dishonestly failed to acknowledge. In short, Freud was a mythomaniac of gigantic proportions who had no hesitation in rewriting the past.

He was intellectually dishonest. He was well aware that his patients were not cured in the way that his published case histories claimed that they were (he fell out with his much more scrupulous colleague and coauthor, Josef Breuer, over this), and that therefore the claims he made for his method were false; hence all his theorising about the structure of the mind was based on no scientific evidence whatsoever. He claimed to be a natural scientist but in fact had little appreciation of scientific method and acted more as the leader of a cult or new religion than as a disinterested searcher after truth.

Whenever a disciple, such as Jung or Adler, disagreed with him, he did not so much refute his ideas as seek to ruin him by excommunication from the “true church” of psychoanalysis, which was a reaction to criticism more appropriate to a theocrat than to a real scientist. Freud wanted uncritical admiration and agreement from his followers, or rather disciples, not honest criticism, which he believed (or pretended to believe ) was the consequence of an unresolved Oedipus complex.

The influence of his ideas, albeit in vulgarised and simplified versions, has been culturally baleful and even catastrophic. For example, the notion that dysfunctional behaviour in adulthood has its origin in infantile or childhood traumas has led to a general belief in the existence of buried psychological treasure which, once unearthed and expressed in clear terms, automatically, in and of itself, causes the dysfunctional behaviour to cease, without any further conscious effort to control it on the patient’s part.

Freud thus strengthened a tendency for people to place the blame for their vices first on their parents and secondly on the doctors who failed to “cure” them of those vices. He was one of the most powerful modern destroyers of the concept of personal responsibility. His view that the repression of childhood sexuality caused, or could cause, neuroses or even psychoses resulted in the crude sexualisation of culture, for it implied that attempts to control oneself were not merely unhealthy but dangerous. Freud was thus the principal intellectual influence behind our current libertinism.

He also weakened the place of rational argument in human affairs. He made it possible for people always to argue that those with whom they disagreed were not so much mistaken about the evidence or logic of the matter as motivated by neuroses of which they were unaware. Thus Marx and Freud were the two patron saints of the ad hominem argument, which leads inevitably to intellectual laziness and dishonesty.

He was possessed of exceptional literary gifts. There can be no question that he was a great writer: to read him is to be beguiled by him. Just as with Sherlock Holmes (with whom the late Professor Michael Shepherd of the Maudsley Hospital once entertainingly compared him), one is inclined to overlook the faults of his logic and lacunae in the evidence for his conclusions because of the sheer brio involved. His imaginative leaps dazzle; his ability to find significance in small details — for example, slips of the tongue (and who among us does not use the concept of the Freudian slip?) — leave us feeling that we have been in the presence of a genius.

Freud was a deeply cultivated man, too. He was a good linguist and his knowledge of literature, especially Shakespeare (which he read and memorised), was vast. Highly intelligent men, such as the great Austrian writer Stefan Zweig, were deeply impressed by him; when Freud arrived in England as a refugee after the Anschluss in 1938, the Royal Society immediately conferred an exceptional honour on him.

The hidden Jew in Spinoza

Spinoza was most interested in creating a state in which it would be safe to philosophize and trying to rein in the more pernicious forces of religion. Spinoza had already died when John Locke had to leave England and went to Amsterdam. But in Amsterdam, Locke did hang with these dissident Protestant thinkers who Spinoza had made a big impression on. And when Locke went back to England, he produced his writings on tolerance that influenced the people who created this extraordinary country that we're fortunate enough to live in. It's a wonderful kind of conceit to think that this reviled Jew might have played a role in creating America.

Rebecca Goldstein NEXTBOOK FEATURE: INTERVIEW

Rarely have I read so much nonsense as in Betraying Spinoza, a book that would be worthless were it not so dangerous. Goldstein's deep delusions about Spinoza would be comical, were they not being taken so seriously, and have received the Nextbook stamp of approval. The book is riddled with errors of historical fact, to say nothing of very dubious interpretations. Any half-way competent editor would have found these errors. It is one thing to write a fictional biography. But Goldstein just makes stuff up (like her total distortion of the letter to Albert Burgh where he cynically refers to the tiresome boasting of the Pharisees about their martyrs -- Spinoza is hardly identifying with Jewish history or her martyrs.

Quite the opposite. His point to Burgh is that a proliferation of martyrs is no proof oif the truth of Catholicism, to which Burgh had recently converted, than it is of the truth of Judaism. Goldstein is so desperate to find the hidden Jew in Spinoza that she simply ignore the overwhelming evidence -- especially in the Theological Political Treatise, with which she hardly deals -- that he despised the Jews and the Judaism of his day, and much preferred Jesus and Paul to Moses and Aaron. Spinoza is very explicit about this preference for Christianity, despite his own atheism, when he writes: "God sent God his Christ to free all men alike from the bondage of the law (i.e. Halakha)...thus, Paul's teachings coincides exactly with our own." (Chapter 3 of the Treatise) Of course, Goldstein simply ignores all of the inconvenient evidence, because the book is all about HER PERSONAL LOVABLE Spinoza, not the actual historical Spinoza and his philosophy.

In fact, her book is really all about her wanting to turn Baruch Spinoza into Rebecca Goldstein. How utterly selfish, narcissistic annoying. And SHAME on Nextbook for publishing this irresponsible rubbish, when there are so many wonderful and responsible single-volume introductions to Spinoza in print. This lazy, self-absorbed book will only misinform its readers about one of the most important thinkers in modern times. And that is a terrible shame ! Posted by Hakham Ba-Layla on 05.26.06

Spinoza was adolescent rebellion

Speaking of being misunderstood, reader Benedict S., a disciple of the philosopher Spinoza, is a case in point. He is trying to understand this blog through the lens of Spinoza's purely rational philosophy, which cannot be done without reducing it to an image of Spinozistic pantheism. I specifically reject any form of pantheism based not upon intellectual speculation, but upon objective metaphysics and personal experience. I'm sure that most readers who enjoy this blog would agree entirely with me.

I see no evidence that Spinoza had any personal acquaintance with the transcendent God, which is why he attempted to reduce the vertical to a simple horizontal oneness. In short, he engaged in a misguided search for the One through the application of reason, therefore taking him down the sterile road of cosmolatry. Like all wrong philosophies--no matter how brilliant--when they reduce reality to mere cerebral intellection they will be only faint shadows of the Real--adumbrations that are missing a few vital dimensions, because the higher reaches of thought lie outside any application of worldly Aristotelian logic. posted by Gagdad Bob at 6:35 AM 24 comments

Now, I have no objection to Spinoza the person (or Benedict the person, for that matter). What I object to is his dangerous ideas. Even then, I should hasten to point out that, in his day, Spinoza undoubtedly represented an advance over what had come before. Remember a few days ago, I made the point that one of the key developments of modernity was the separation of the realms of religion, science, politics, and aesthetics. Prior to the enlightenment, those realms were thoroughly conflated--just like the Muslim Middle East today--so that the church wielded all kinds of inappropriate power over who was in charge or what people were free to discover with their intellect.

In fact, Spinoza was actually excommunicated from his orthodox Jewish community, presumably because of his heretical ideas, although no one knows for sure. I don't know much about 17th century Judaism, but it may have been quite intellectually stifling, much like the Catholicism of the day. So for someone to rebel against it may well have been a courageous thing to do. Looking at it from a world-psychohistorical standpoint, I see the Enlightenment as mankind's adolescence, as we rebel against mother and father God and move out on our own for the first time. This is obviously a vital and unavoidable stage in psychological development...

But again, that will only happen if you raise your intellect up to religion, not drag religion down to ego-level pseudo-rationalism. This vulgar form of religion is undoubtedly what Spinoza and his ilk were objecting to. In fact, Spinoza is considered one of the first, if not the first, to introduce "higher criticism" to the study of the Bible, and to regard it simply as a historical document rather than a revealed one. Again, this undoubtedly had its place in the adolescent scheme of things, but it takes a grown man to get over one's adolescent rebellion and to realize that our parents weren't complete idiots--or how much uncannily luminous wisdom there is in scripture. posted by Gagdad Bob at 6:22 PM 43 comments

Finders of game gene theory

Claudius – Roman Emperor –F– essay on Claudius the Sceptic. Underrated due to superficial reasons. Was daring and conscientious as well as being expert in fun and games. The Lawmakers Dialogue The Lawmakers Exegesis

Chomsky – Humanist who uses the worst of Plato and Descartes, but somehow is still able to see a genetic component in language – most likely as a way for humanity to have a priviledged vantage point over other life. His scientism is an improvement over Skinner. His linguistic theory is too narrow and unremarkable. It makes more sense using the more general game gene theory for grammer rather than a genetic grammer.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig – F – His concept of language game and his feel for contexts as agents of manipulation makes him very close to discovering the gamegene. In addition he understood that people were solpisistic, rule-followers who could recognize contexts and how they trap human perception.

Walsh, W.H. 1960s Historian – F – clear arguments surround his Philosophy of History and while he later seems to overlook his own conclusions he does deduce that history is a "peculiar sort of game" and for that deserves to be recognized as a finder.

Vischer F T - Derives empathetic enjoyment from art similar to play. Aesthetics. Schillar, Herbert Spencer, agree. Lipps developed it.

Tzara, Tristan– F – One of best thinkers of the last hundred years. - see full assessment

Sade, M (Marquis de) – F – An ethicist who worked backwards from the crime he liked to commit towards an invetigation into nature. Unfortunately when he found crime and inate dispositions for violence to be natural he forgot to notice that unfair state punishment is just as natural.

Erasmus – F – A catholic humanist. Nevertheless, in his book "Praise of Folly", he succeeds in the guise of irony in exposing an accurate account of existence. Whether the game of satire led him to it or not, he uncovered vast numbers of insights into meaning and its creation. While he didn't accept his own observations as conclusive he still can be considered an incidental finder of game gene theory.

Books by D P Chattopadhyaya

1. Anthropology and Historiography of Science Isbn: 8120809548 by D P Chattopadhyaya
2. Forms, Concerns, and Development in Historical Perspective: History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization Isbn: 8121509041 by D P Chattopadhyaya
3. Induction, Probability, and Skepticism [Suny Series in Philosophy] Isbn: 0791406814 by D P Chattopadhyaya
4. Interdisciplinary Studies in Science Technology Philosophy and Culture [Phispc Monograph Series on History of Philosophy, Science and Culture in inDia, 6] Isbn: 8121507200 by D P Chattopadhyaya
5. Knowledge Freedom and Language: An Interwoven Fabric of Man, Time and World Isbn: 8120806301 by D P Chattopadhyaya
6. Language Logic and Science in India: Some Conceptual and Historical Perspectives [Phispc Monograph Series on History of Philosophy, Science and Culture in inDia, No 4] Isbn: 8121506891 by D P Chattopadhyaya
7. Mathematics, Astronomy and Biology in Indian Tradition Isbn: 8121506883 by D P Chattopadhyaya
8. Realism: Responses and Reactions Isbn: 8185636451 by D P Chattopadhyaya
9. Science, Philosophy and Culture Part 2 Isbn: 8121507855 by D P CHATTOPADHYAYA
10. Sociology, Ideology and Utopia: Socio-Political Philosophy of East and West [Philosophy of History and Culture, Vol 18] Isbn: 9004108076 by D P Chattopadhyaya
11. Sri Aurobindo and Karl Marx: Integral Sociology and Dialectical Sociology Isbn: 8120803884 by D P Chattopadhyaya
12. Ways of Understanding the Human Past: Mythic, Epic, Scientific and Historic Isbn: 8187586052 by D P Chattopadhyaya

True knowledge is available only through true cognition

In any study of Buddhist philosophy there is a paradox that John Dunne describes in the introduction to his book Foundations of Dharmakirti’s Philosophy. He discusses the Buddhist notion of “beginninglessness” that is present in the sacred texts and beliefs of the tradition. For a Buddhist philosopher to choose a starting point almost seems as though it would already disprove the system of Buddhism as a whole. He writes: “if a beginning occurs, there must be some moment, some “now,” in which it occurs. For the present to exist however there must be a past and a future, for what would “now” mean if there were no time other than now? (Dunne 1-2)”

I would suggest that the most useful solution to this problem lies in the nature of literature itself. It is impossible for a philosophical work to be on an unending loop. Instead for a successful Buddhist philosophy to be unveiled it must not suggest that there is a point at which to start. There should be what Dunne calls a “Point of Departure”. In his work Nayaya-Bindu Dharmakirti chooses a careful analysis of his Pramana Theory as his foundation.To correctly analyze Dharmakirti’s philosophy it is prudent to first examine foundational components of his thought. As with most Indian thinkers the discourse in which he operates focuses on Pramana Theory. Dunne describes Pramana Theory as “the determination of what constitutes indubitable or indisputable knowledge and the reliable means of attaining it (Dunne 16).”

J.N. Mohanty offers a different interpretation in stating “Pramana means “that by which true cognition is arrived at (2001 5)”. Though at first glance these two definitions may seem to drive a wedge in the understanding of Pramana Theory, upon careful examination they highlight an important feature of Indian thought. Using the Mohanty notion of cognition, true knowledge is available only through true cognition.

According to Mohanty every sect that investigated Pramana Theory (Lokayatas, Buddhists, Vaisesikas, Samkhyas, Nyayas, Vedantas, Bhatta Mimamsas, and Prabhakara Mimamsas) ascertain that perception is a pramana, though they often disputed the nature of perception. All of the aforementioned sects other than the Lokayatas accept inference as another pramana. The other pramanas are “Comparison, Word, Postulation, and Nonperception (Mohanty 16-17).” posted by Tucker Brennan I AM THE WINTERNET! Friday, December 9 @ 11:43 AM

The Society for Phenomenology and Media

The Society for Phenomenology and Media, 8th Annual International Conference, 23-25 Feb, 2006, San Diego, CA, United States Contact name: Gabriella Romani E-mail: socphenmedia@yahoo.com

Papers dealing with any aspect of media are considered. Theoretical diversity is encouraged. Past Keynoters: Anna-Teresa-Tymienieska, Vivian Sobchack, J. N. Mohanty, Bina Gupta, Maricio Beauchot, Antonio Zirion, Janina Makota, Barry Smith.

Derrida is a remarkably economical thinker

Camille Paglia rips on "the pretentious, verbose trinity of Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan and Michel Foucault." I don't know Paglia well enough to even guess whether she's being ironic. May be the reference to her "78- page review essay" is a clue. Anyhow, her target is Foucault, which doesn't interest me so much. I am interested in the charge of verbosity being leveled against Derrida, because in my limited experience Derrida is a remarkably economical thinker.

Clark at Mormon Metaphysics touches on Derrida's way of thinking with regard to metaphor. At a certain level of abstraction, I think can understand what Clark is saying. It's as if Derrida had a model similar to Gödel's incompleteness theorem that he applied to various problems. For sure, Derrida is adept at axiomatic reduction and manipulation, and keen to logical contradictions, and the idea of a supplement does seem to be a constant element of his thinking.

I'd been meaning to respond to Clark's reading of Derrida since he commented on Derrida's interpretation of Husserl's Origins of Geometry, because I didn't think Clark's synopsis of Husserl's argument got it quite right. Sometimes it takes me forever and a day to assemble my thoughts, and meanwhile Clark has whizzed on by in several other posts devoted to Derrida's thinking. And it's difficult to concieve of responding to somebody who uses some but not all of the books that you've read, and some books that you haven't read and maybe won't ever get around to. It's funny that this difficulty should appear in the context of a hypothetical difference of opinion on a topic where I believe we would largely and essentially agree. How much worse could it be?

Jacques Derrida has become an icon, a transcontintental cultural marker. Some of the people who have read Derrida's works also have informed opinions about Camille Paglia, one way or another. Others don't. In cases like this, it is very hard for me to see what is essential about a thinker. Can we imagine that Socrates understood Heraclitus better than the Heracliteans? Of course, but it does raise questions about thinking, essence, logos, nous, etc.. One thing that persistently bugs me--a fault in my own thinking as much as a constant feature of pretentious and verbose discourse--is the feeling that opinions are formed primarily based on identification with a name, and once they are set, if they turn out to be pretty worthless, it's like a root canal trying to get them unset. The Whole Enchilada.... posted by Fido the Yak at Friday, February 17, 2006 5:57 PM.

Western vs. Eastern

While large tracts of Western philosophy and some theology are acceptable in scientific discourse, this is by and large not true for Eastern philosophy. If I bring up Plato, Socrates, Aquinas, Fichte, Schelling, Kant etc. in a discussion, there's no problem. But if I were to bring up Nagarjuna, Fa-tsang, Sankara, Aurobindo, Trungpa Rinpoche etc., I'm usually amazed and taken aback by the hostile reception.

Sometimes the discussion veers off into finding approximate Western counterparts for Nagarjuna (Derrida), Sankara (Berkeley), Aurobindo (de Chardin) etc. as though this makes the person feel safe that the discussion is now again "Western." Or else, and this happens sometimes, the person (that I'm talking to) will just state baldly that there is not a single idea of merit in "Eastern mysticism" (whatever that term means). What amazing and breathtaking arrogance. Where does it come from? I have no clue. # posted by NoOne @ 10:50 AM Sutra, Tantra and Ati

Eco-philosophy

Henryk Skolimowski

T'he idea of scientific philosophy arrived on the stage around 1910 with Bertrand Russell. Then the philosophers from the Vienna Circle in Vienna, in Austria, picked up the idea and pushed it to an extreme. Philosophy became a scrutiny of the structure of language and, in my opinion, was short-changed. Bit by bit, philosophy was made an inquiry into the nature of linguistic propositions. Philosophers became preoccupied, to the point of obsession, with how language works. Distinguished philosophers such as J.L. Austin started writing essays on "Ifs and Cans." If you think how much that is removed from the real quest of philosophy, then you realise that something bizarre has happened.

Nowadays, even analytical philosophers themselves are rather unhappy with the position they have been pushed into. They try to get out of it. Somehow, however, they are stuck. They try to get unstuck in a piecemeal way, while what we need is a total reconstruction, changing the whole mode of thinking, of perceiving and of valuing. It is here that Eco-philosophy comes into focus as a new cosmology, a new way of rethinking the multitude.Instead of conceiving the universe as a clocklike mechanism, governed by deterministic laws, in which we are stuck as a little bolt or screw, we can assume that the universe is a sanctuary and we am its custodians-priests if you will. The mechanistic universe was based on the assumptions of the mechanistic nature of the cosmos.

Eco-philosophy is based on the view that the nature of the universe is unfolding, evolutionary, and emergent. Because it's emergent, you don't know what will happen next. It is the glory and the beauty of evolution that it is creative, producing new variation f which the human mind is one. Every new idea is a blossoming of creative evolution. A new philosophy is for me a manifestation of the ability of evolution to create through us. Put otherwise, a new creative conception of the cosmos is a response of evolution-through us!-to get unstuck. For if we are stuck evolution is stuck. We have got locked In a cul-de-sac and now we are unlocking ourselves by creating new vistas through which we show that we have somewhere to go, and that evolution has somewhere to go.This is a very short answer to what Eco-philosophy wants to accomplish. It wants to create a new cosmology within which we are at home in this universe and at peace with all creation...

Take the history of science. Until the second half of the twentieth century, the view prevailed that science is like a monolithic pyramid to which scientists, like masons, add one stone each. If you look at the picture of the evolution of science as presented nowadays by such people as Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn, it is a different picture altogether. It is a dramatic picture, a discontinuous picture, reminding us more of a kind of Shakespearean stage in which main actors basic theories-like kings in old tragedies are slain and new ones emerge. After a new paradigm emerges, the old paradigm is dethroned like an old dynasty.

This is also confirmed by psychologists, according to whom our own individual development does not proceed smoothly from year to year. At certain points, there are periods of tension which is so great that we do not know who we are any more. After the process of Inner transformation, as it were, a new person has emerged. For instance, a teenager has become a young adult.

What I hate about Foucault

Camille Paglia

I never met or saw Foucault in the flesh. (He died in 1984.) My low opinion of him is based entirely on his solipsistic, mendacious writing, which has had a disastrous influence on naïve American academics. I miss no opportunity to throw darts at Foucault's scrawny haunches because he is the last standing member of the Terrible Triad of French poststructuralists, whose work swept into American universities in the 1970s and drove out the home-grown radicalism of our own 1960s cultural revolution. I militantly maintain that the intellectual gurus of my college years -- Marshall McLuhan, Norman O. Brown, Leslie Fiedler, Allen Ginsberg -- had far more vision and substance than did the pretentious, verbose trinity of Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan and Michel Foucault.

Derrida's reputation was already collapsing (thanks to the exposure of his ally Paul de Man as a Nazi apologist) when I arrived on the scene with my first book in 1990. Lacan, however, still dominated fast-track feminist theory, which was clotted with his ponderous prose and affected banalities. The speed with which I was able to kill Lacanian feminism amazes even me. (A 1991 headline in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera blared my Achillean boast, "I and Madonna will drive Lacan from America!")

Though much diminished with the waning of the theory years, Foucault still survives, propped up by wizened queer theorists who crave an openly gay capo in the canon. I base the rhetoric of my anti-Foucault campaign on Cicero's speeches in the Roman Senate against the slick operator and conspirator Catiline ("How long, O Catiline, will you continue to abuse our patience?"). Greek and Roman political history -- about which Foucault knew embarrassingly little -- remains my constant guide.

Yes, I have indeed written at length about my objections to the grossly overpraised Foucault, in a 78-page review-essay, "Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders: Academe in the Hour of the Wolf," published in 1991 by the classics journal Arion and reprinted in my first essay collection, "Sex, Art, and American Culture." One of my observations was that Foucault's works are oddly devoid of women. Shouldn't that concern you as a feminist? It is simply untrue that Foucault was learned: He was at a loss with any period or culture outside of post-Enlightenment France (his later writing on ancient sexuality is a garbled mishmash). The supposedly innovative ideas for which his gullible acolytes feverishly hail him were in fact borrowed from a variety of familiar sources, from Friedrich Nietzsche, Emile Durkheim and Martin Heidegger to Americans such as sociologist Erving Goffman.

Foucault's analysis of "power" is foggy and paranoid and simply does not work when applied to the actual evidence of the birth, growth and complex development of governments in ancient and modern societies. Nor is Foucault's analysis of the classification of knowledge particularly original -- except in his bitter animus against the Enlightenment, which he failed to realize had already been systematically countered by Romanticism. What most American students don't know is that Foucault's commentary is painfully crimped by the limited assumptions of Sussurean linguistics (which I reject).

As I have asserted, James Joyce's landmark modernist novel "Ulysses" (1922) contains, chapter by chapter, far subtler and more various versions of language-based "epistemes" inherent in cultural institutions and epochs. I'm afraid I bring rather bad news: Over the course of your careers, your generation of students will slowly come to realize that the Foucault-praising professors whom you respected and depended on were ill-informed fad-followers who sold you a shoddy bill of goods. You don't need Foucault, for heaven's sake! Durkheim and Max Weber began the stream of sociological thought that still nourishes responsible thinkers. And the pioneers of social psychology and behaviorism -- Havelock Ellis, Alfred Adler, John B.Watson and many others -- were eloquent apostles of social constructionism when Foucault was still in the cradle.

A massive work like W.E.B. DuBois'"The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study" (1899) shows the kind of respect for empirical fact-gathering and organization of data that is completely missing from Foucault, who selectively tailors his material to fit a monotonous, rigidly dualistic a priori thesis. For those in the humanities, where anti-aesthetic British cultural studies (shaped by the out-of-date Frankfurt School) has become entrenched, I recommend "The Social History of Art" (translated into English in 1951), an epic work by the Marxist scholar Arnold Hauser that influenced me in graduate school. No one in British or American cultural studies has Hauser's erudition, precision and connoisseurship.

Foucault-worship is an example of what I call the Big Daddy syndrome: Secular humanists, who have drifted from their religious and ethnic roots, have created a new Jehovah out of string and wax. Again and again -- in memoirs, for example, by trendy but pedestrian uber-academics like Harvard's Stephen Greenblatt and Brown's Robert Scholes -- one sees the scenario of Melancholy, Bookish, Passive, Insecure Young Nebbish suddenly electrified and transfigured by the Grand Epiphany of Blindingly Brilliant Foucault. This sappy psychodrama would be comic except for the fact that American students forced to read Foucault have been defrauded of a genuine education in intellectual history and political analysis (a disciplined genre that starts with Thucydides and flows directly to the best of today's journalism on current events).

When I pointed out in Arion that Foucault, for all his blathering about "power," never managed to address Adolph Hitler or the Nazi occupation of France, I received a congratulatory letter from David H. Hirsch (a literature professor at Brown), who sent me copies of riveting chapters from his then-forthcoming book, "The Deconstruction of Literature: Criticism After Auschwitz" (1991). As Hirsch wrote me about French behavior during the occupation, "Collaboration was not the exception but the rule." I agree with Hirsch that the leading poststructuralists were cunning hypocrites whose tortured syntax and encrustations of jargon concealed the moral culpability of their and their parents' generations in Nazi France.

American students, forget Foucault! Reverently study the massive primary evidence of world history, and forge your own ideas and systems. Poststructuralism is a corpse. Let it stink in the Parisian trash pit where it belongs! SALON Dec. 2, 1998

The aim of this play

Sri Aurobindo not only saw these possibilities in his yogic vision but also found them corroborated by reason. All our scriptures describe this earth as a field of divine play where God is playing hide and seek with Himself. He had hidden Himself completely in gross matter, from where by a slow process of self-finding, He has evolved at present as man in whom He has partially displayed a little of His wonderful knowledge, love and power. The aim of this play is a complete self-finding and a full display of all His capacities, knowledge, love and power. posted by Ulysses Saturday, May 31, 2003 @ 12:31 AM <<>

Intuition

Is there a spiritual way to enhance creativity? RAM SEHGAL The Hindu Tuesday, August 10, 2004

I belive the answer lies in what Sri Aurobindo has written in his magnificent book, The Life Divine. He states that we need to go beyond the mind and reason. For, if we examine carefully, he says, we shall find that intuition is our first teacher. Intuition brings to man those brilliant messages from the unknown, which are the beginning of his higher knowledge. "Reason only comes in afterwards to see what profit it can have of the shining harvest," writes Sri Aurobindo.

Intuition gives us that idea of something behind and beyond all that we know. The path towards creativity is to enlarge the mind and let it grow and encompass the higher layers and spheres above the mind. In fact, this is the start to a spiritual seeking. The journey is long and tough. It will need a great deal of sincerity, tenacity and relentless pursuit; to keep the mind silent and passive. One will need to curb one's ego and to acknowledge that what we know is far less than what we can know.

One needs to leave behind all that one knows; the courage to travel towards the unknown by breaking all the shackles. Sri Aurobindo's Life Divine shows the way. It is quite an extraordinary book, which offers every seeker a path of self-discovery and true creativity. You will get out of this book what you wish to take out of it. # posted by Tusar N Mohapatra : 11:08 PM 1 comments