Nietzsche, Whitehead, & Levinas

Among recent philosophers, perhaps only Whitehead can claim to have accounted for the life of non-human objects, though his position is haunted by other serious difficulties. The problem is that everyone wants to avoid the naive versions of realism, but they also don’t want to be driven into the patent absurdities of solipsism, since it is far safer not to adopt any metaphysical position at all. Having painted itself into a corner on this issue, contemporary philosophy is left with the sole emergency measure of inventing sophistical compromise phrases such as “internal realism,” “quasi-realism,” or “the mad human subject positing the very gap between real and ideal.” But all of this reduces reality to its effect on humans: a position better known simply as idealism. NAIVE IDEALISM 427 Graham Harman PHILOSOPHY TODAY WINTER 2004

Braver accuses Nietzsche of backsliding into noumenal naiveté of a sort that Hegel had ended, and that even Putnam is praised for transcending (159). For despite Nietzsche’s apparent dissolution of reality into infinite interpretations, “this metaphor of interpretations brings in the idea of the text that gets interpreted, masks [that] imply an original face, and so on” (159). Braver’s verdict is clear: “[Nietzsche’s] Kantian way of framing the issues is strewn with conceptual traps…. Another revolution is needed” (159). For Braver that revolution is found in the later Heidegger, with the early Heidegger paving the way. A FESTIVAL OF ANTI-REALISM 203 Graham Harman PHILOSOPHY TODAY SUMMER 2008

I think my first bet would be on Levinas standing the test of time a lot better than many of my friends think he will. So many people seem to view Levinas as just a preachy old finger-wagger who talks about God too much. That’s not the Levinas I know. Then again, the Levinas I know was encountered through Alphonso Lingis, who isn’t exactly a preachy old finger-wagger who talks about God too much. Maybe you need to encounter Levinas through Lingis to be able to see Levinas as an utterly cutting-edge thinker, which is exactly the way I see him. 4th and final Philosophy Today article now posted by doctorzamalek “Levinas and the Triple Critique of Heidegger.” HERE.

Integral God: Footnotes to Plato

Intimations of an Integral God: A lecture at CIIS | Footnotes to Plato: 'via Blog this'

Slide 8: Emmanuel Levinas, who was heavily influenced by Buber, finds God in the infinite responsibility that takes the ego hostage in any authentic face-to-face encounter with another. He writes: “The free [human being] is dedicated to [her] fellow; no one can save [herself] without others. The inside-out domain of the soul does not close from inside” (Humanism of the Other, p. 66). The soul is infinite, and so it seems it cannot find wholeness without relating to divinity, which for Levinas is the holiness of others. This notion of a soul unable to close from the inside also reminds me of Teilhard de Chardin’s question as to why “we are not more sensitive to the presence of something on the move at the heart of us that is greater than ourselves?” (The Human Phenomenon, p. 120).

Slide 9: An integral God would not only foster community, but would deepen the intimacy of our relationship to the cosmos. Teilhard’s love of matter goes a long way in this direction, but I think the German shoemaker turned mystic Jakob Boehme’s vision of the relationship between God and creation may have even more to say to us. The physicist Basarab Nicolescu distills the essence of Boehme’s cosmology of divine self-manifestation as “a threefold structure leading to a sevenfold self-organization of reality” (Science, Meaning, and Evolution, p. 90)."

Goal of Evolutionary Nature « Sri Aurobindo Studies

1. Sri Aurobindo points out that if it is the goal of Nature to awaken man to awareness of the supreme Reality and liberate him from the action of Nature in the world,...

Don Salmon on Evolution

This is a collection of excerpts from a book I wrote with my wife, Jan Maslow entitled Yoga Psychology and the Transformation of Consciousness: Seeing Through the Eyes of Infinity, based on the Integral Psychology of Sri Aurobindo. The previous essay in this series examined the controversy over the idea of direction or progress in evolution. Frank Visser wrote a very interesting response (see "Theories are Confessions: Response to Salmon"). I originally posted my response to Frank's article in the Integral World Forum ("Up the Evolutionary Stream Without a Paddle"), which Frank took and posted here at Integral World. If you have questions or criticisms, but don't have the time to put together an essay, I invite you to join me over at the Integral World Forum or on the Integral World Facebook page.

My intention in posting these excerpts is not to claim that when looked at together, the findings of neuroscience and evolutionary biology prove some kind of directionality or purpose to evolution. Rather my goal is to elucidate what I find to be some extremely interesting parallels between the two. Whether this suggests the working of any kind of "quasi mystical" force or is merely the result of a "blind, uncaring shuffle through Chaos"[2] is left for the reader to decide. Ken Wilber's Evolutionary View Gets a Trim With Ockham's Razor ...
http://www.integralworld.net/salmon10.html

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Wilber's Aurobindianism

For The Turnstiles by DGA on Oct 27, 2011 8:10 PM

To draw some threads together: Suppose it is true that the argument of Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality is predicated on positions taken by Nagarjuna, Plotinus, Schelling (and by extension Hegel), and Aurobindo. Also suppose that it is this argument that predicates most of the theoretical work in integral studies that follows after it. Problems accumulate.

There are problems in the way Wilber advances his claims on Nagarjuna. Specifically, Nagarjuna's description of emptiness in no way coincided with Wilber's, where Emptiness is reified into Spirit and made to equate with the metaphysics of Meister Eckhardt. Raphael Foshay's essay "Tension on the Left" in a recent JITP addresses this in part as well, as do my essays in The Integral Review. At a minimum, this warrants a detailed and uncompromising comparative analysis of Wilber's appropriation and deployment of Nagarjuna's methodology.

There are problems in the way Wilber describes Plotinus' philosophy. Brian Hines' essay "What Wilber Gets Wrong about Plotinus" is convincing enough, to my mind, that a similar detailed and uncompromising reconsideration of Wilber's use of Plotinus in the context of the rest of his work is warranted.

There are problems with the way Wilber deploys German Idealist historicism. This is the topic of all three of my contributions to The Integral Review. My point is not that Wilber misunderstands Schelling or Hegel (he may or may not, I do not have a pony in that race). My point is that this kind of idealist historicism is untenable logically and reproduces the social relations that produced it (e.g., it is a cipher for imperial capitalism). I think this warrants a similar reconsideration of Wilberian natural history and cultural history.

Charles I. Flores' essay on Aurobindo demonstrates related problems with Wilber's appropriation and use of that writer, strong enough in my opinion to open an investigation into the validity of Wilber's Aurobindianism.

In all four cases, care must be taken to consider how these doctrines are used in the broader context of Wilber's argument. This is a genealogical analysis I am proposing: what are the consequences of disproving this or that premise? What happens to subsequent claims that, before, had followed from that premise?

This is separate from the broader question of the reason behind Wilber's arguments, which are also very suspicious to my mind and to others. My point is that if Wilber's premises are faulty, then his broader systematic claims are definitely subject to critique as described above (and should have been since Jeff Meyerhoff's book or before).

Four Theses of Flat Ontology

The Democracy of Objects
Levi R. Bryant
OPEN HUMANITIES PRESS, AN IMPRINT OF MPUBLISHING, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN LIBRARY, 2011
Contents
Dedication
List of Figures and Tables
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Towards a Finally Subjectless Object
1. Grounds For a Realist Ontology
1.1. The Death of Ontology and the Rise of Correlationism
1.2. Breaking the Correlationist Circle
1.3. The Onto-Transcendental Grounds of Experimental Activity
1.4. Objections and Replies
1.5. Origins of Correlationism: Actualism and the Epistemic Fallacy
1.6. On the Alleged Primacy of Perception
2. The Paradox of Substance
2.1. Introduction
2.2. Aristotle, Substance, and Qualities
2.3. The Paradox of Substance
3. Virtual Proper Being
3.1. The Mug Blues
3.2. Deleuze's Schizophrenia: Between Monism and Pluralism
3.3. Virtual Proper Being
3.4. The Problem With Rabbits and Hats
3.5. Žižek's Objecting Objects
4. The Interior of Objects
4.1. The Closure of Objects
4.2. Interactions Between Objects
4.3. Autopoietic and Allopoietic Objects
4.4. Translation
4.5. Autopoietic Asphyxiation: The Case of the Lacanian Clinic
5. Regimes of Attraction, Parts, and Structure
5.1. Constraints
5.2. Parts and Wholes: The Strange Mereology of Object-Oriented Ontology
5.3. Temporalized Structure and Entropy
6. The Four Theses of Flat Ontology
6.1. Two Ontological Discourses: Lacan's Graphs of Sexuation and Two Ways of Thinking Being
6.2. The World Does Not Exist
6.3. Being is Flat
Bibliography
Permalink: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.9750134.0001.001
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The Life Divine is the culminating point of the Indian mind

Home > E-Library > Magazines > Sraddha > November 2009 > Contents

The Dharma of The Gita Sri Aurobindo 7

Sri Aurobindo Arabinda Basu 10

Veda Vyasa’s  Mahabharata  in

Sri Aurobindo’s  Savitri Prema Nanda Kumar 25

Sri Aurobindo and Vedic Riks Dr Sampadananda Mishra 39

The Path of Nachiketa: The journey Alok Pandey 47

Sri Aurobindo’s  The Life Divine:

The Immortal Text On The Divine Truth R.C. Pradhan 54

Sri Aurobindo and Uttarpara Speech Trija Roy 69

The Mother Abides Nolini Kanta Gupta 89

A Canadian Question 92

Twin Prayers 95

November 17, 1973 97

Integrality Matthijs Cornelissen 98

Practices in Integral Yoga Larry Seidlitz 111

Spiritual Knowledge Martha G Orton 121

Sri Aurobindo and the Hindu Muslim Problem Kittu Reddy 134

The Theme Of Urvashi In

The Indian Renaissance:

Madhusudan Datta,

Rabindranath Tagore , Sri Aurobindo Ranajit Sarkar 141

The National Value of Art Pabitra Kumar Roy 159

Cover Design : Dhanavanti’s painting ‘Rainbow rhythm’

Editorial

Space permitting, there is also a proposal to reproduce some of the ‘golden oldies’, essays of extraordinary depth and insight written by authors of eminence, most of whom are no more living. These priceless treasures secreted in the ageold vaults of the Advent, Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual, Mother India, Srinvantu, Sri Aurobindo Circle, etc. need to be dug out and their authentic and authoritative views made known to a wider audience, especially among readers of this generation and those who wish to make a serious study of Sri Aurobindo. [Recent developments in analytic philosophy, Language and Mind, Vol. 1: A Western Perspective (Kant, Fodor, Searle, Kripke)]

Sri Aurobindo’s  The Life Divine : The Immortal Text On The Divine Truth

R.C. Pradhan

Sri Aurobindo’s The Life Divine represents the spirit of man in ascending the higher realms of the divine Truth. It is a text of the immortal voice of man aspiring for the highest Truth realisable in human life. If the Upanishads laid the foundations of the immortal life on earth and the Gita propounded the Karmayoga to effectively make it a part of the worldly life, The Life Divine further established the transforming power of the Supermind to make the earth its home. It has fulfilled the prophetic vision of the Upanishads and the Gita in concretising the immortal Truth of the Divine Reality on the rugged surface of the earthly life surrounded by darkness. The Life Divine is the culminating point of the Indian mind in its evolutionary history from the primitive to the most enlightened forms of spiritual realisation.

What I will do in this essay is not to summarise the vast knowledge unfolded in the text, but to throw hints as to how one could wade through the labyrinth of the divine drama created and enacted in Sri Aurobindo’s immortal text. Mine will not be a textual reading but an interpretation of the most important concepts dealt with in the text.

The National Value of Art

Pabitra Kumar Roy

Man, for Sri Aurobindo, is always the traveller of the cycles of society and his road is forward. This thesis holds no less in the domain of man’s aesthetic adventures. As elsewhere, he gathers in his material from the minds and lives of his fellow-men around him and makes the most of the experience of humanity’s past ages, and does not confine himself in a narrow mentality. The dialectic of individual and humanity is a characteristic of the logic of the evolutionary process. At one pole of man’s being, he is a variation of human individual, and yet belonging to his race and class types. He has his svadharma, according to which man resembles some, and differs from others. Society is formed on the ground of human affinity. Social affinity enriches the individuals, and his enrichment, in turn, enriches the society. For Sri Aurobindo, in modern times, society is the nation. By enriching the national life, the individual helps the total life of humanity. But it should not be understood that he holds that one’s nationality is one’s exhaustive identity. Rather, “if by a part of himself he belongs to the nation, by another he exceeds it and belongs to humanity.” 1 (HC, p. 81). 

Man’s societal self-limitation and subjection to his environment and group is hardly the last credential of a man’s existence. He shares something of the infinity, complexity and free variation of the Self manifested in the world, and thus has a necessary tendency of expansion and transcendence of his environmental affinities. The individual lives in humanity as well as humanity in the individual. The point is that nation is a temporary necessity. This view of nation and nationality we have to keep in view when we discuss Sri Aurobindo’s ideas concerning the national value of art. [Beauty Art and Man, David Hume;: A critical introduction to his theory of knowledge]

Univerisity of the Integral Yoga: Integral Library

Integral Library Integral Yoga 1. Sri Aurobindo and Mother - 2. Yoga for Every Day - About this blog

Sri Aurobindo and Mother left us a huge gift of knowledge about the practice of yoga, the device of the universe and human psychology. On this blog we will regularly put the words of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, help us to understand increasingly the work performed by them on the ground and how we ourselves can contribute to its development.

Human existence contains a set of planes of being: physical, vital, mental, and others that can be accessed at the present time we have is limited. We plan to create multiple partitions on a blog, each of which will gradually reveal the details of each of the levels of our being, and use this knowledge in everyday life.

About our center

There are different centers, each of which expresses and presents some ideas and deeds. Our center - a center of striving towards the Divine and the possibility of realization of God in the phenomenal world.

No and no rigid concept of the center, which is essentially a dynamic implementation. As we move along the path, there will be corresponding changes in the center. This center is not only a virtual phenomenon. He should and will be embodied physically in order to provide an opportunity for live communication and exchange of experience.

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, what is their teaching that they brought the earth and mankind, what is their job? We will try together to find answers to these questions. What the seeker, the soul is awakened when he heard the call of God, but the mind does not know where to start and what to do when the usual boundaries of society begin to compress the chest and cover your breath? Perhaps this project could partly solve these problems.We do not pretend to much, we just try to do your job well and be faithful to the call of his soul.

There are people who are in search of something elusive, searching for the truth of his soul. Perhaps they will find here the sound to a note that always sounds inside.

We are not a closed society and we are sincerely glad to help anyone who wants to help in the development of our center. This is not an easy job in which there is no rapid progress, and every achievement requires more effort. According to Sri Aurobindo, we can not find any authority other than on himself. Stepping on this path, we must be prepared to give everything, but only Allah and none else. Requires full commitment. His mother says that if a person does not sincere in their aspirations and these words are not in tune with him, he should not undertake this yoga - it's a flame that burns.

No seclusion can not move forward in this yoga far enough. Over time, there comes a time when it is necessary to take the next step, and if it is not done, will move in a circle, and progress will stop. No individual progress is impossible without a collective component, repeatedly talked about Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. We sincerely hope that the collective component finds its rightful place here and help us all make a few more steps on the path of ascent to the divine.

Center for the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother Univerisity of the Integral Yoga VladNesh's Channel - YouTube - Vladnesh | Integral Library

The Human Cycle; epub v.1.0 Posted on 16/07/2011 by Vladnesh

Hi friends! Today we are publishing one of Sri Aurobindo major works “The Human Cycle” which includes in itself three titles: “The Human Cycle” itself, “The Ideal of Human Unity” and “War and Self-Determination”. I hope you will enjoy this … Continue reading → Posted in ePub, Integral Yoga | 1 Comment

The Synthesis of Yoga; epub v.1.0 Posted on 16/07/2011 by Vladnesh

Hi friends! Today we are publishing one of Sri Aurobindo major works and this one is particularily dear and presious to my heart, it is: “The Synthesis of Yoga”. This book in great detail shows human psychology and possibility of … Continue reading → Posted in ePub, Integral Yoga | 1 Comment

Sri Aurobindo’s Letters to his wife Mrinalini Devi; epub v.1.0 Posted on 16/07/2011 by Vladnesh

Hi folks! Today we are publishing a unique collection of Sri Aurobindo’s letters to his wife which gives us a rare opportunity to peek in to the past of our Master, his early years of private life which reveals us … Continue reading → Posted in ePub, Integral Yoga | Leave a comment

Syncretism in Sri Aurobindo’s thought – part 2 Posted on March 18, 2010 by Sandeep

One of the pleasures of reading Sri Aurobindo’s works is that such contradictions do not exist because he resolves every contradiction by tracing it to its Divine origin and reconciling it as part of a larger Truth.   He explicates how every principle has it’s play in a certain context but if we over-generalize, then it loses its value. […]

What can we glean from the writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on the Nature versus Nurture debate?  We are given the understanding that nature and nurture can be reconciled in the greater spiritual truth, that there is an soul within Man evolving towards Divinity.  This soul persists across incarnations, puts forth its own distinct personality in every life and is also influenced by the genetic makeup of the parents as well as by the prevailing Zeitgeist. […]

Intelligent Design raises valid questions about abiogenesis (i.e. how life arises out from inorganic matter) and speciation (i.e. how do new species arise) but is unable to satisfactorily answer them with a suitable teleology, other than to posit the existence of an extra-cosmic entity which must be managing the Universe.

On the other hand, Neo-Darwinism only examines the superficial evolution of forms, and remains unaware of the greater aeonic evolution of souls as they are reborn in progressively more complex forms, (plant, animal and human) as determined by the evolution of soul consciousness.

We present the synthesis of the above ideas as discovered in the works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.  Speciation is explained by the fact that consciousness precedes form in evolution [12]. Consciousness precedes form in evolution

Sri Aurobindo scores over Whitehead

Joy of being: All about life The Hindu August 18, 2011 R. DINESH

Though I had been brought up exposed to Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy, I actually re-discovered his teachings in his writings, “Essays on the Gita’’ and translation of the Upanishads. Initially, they were hard to understand, but soon I realized that once the essential Truth is understood, every word makes sense and can be experienced and related to every situation of our life, both in thoughts and actions. 

The Upanishads, 1st US Edition by Aurobindo Ghose Words of a Master, October 14, 2010 Amazon Review Written by John Pellicci (Palm Beach Gardens, United States)

There are few who can compare with Sri Aurobindo Ghose. His erudition is only surpassed by his realization. A wordsmith of the highest order, who can bring to light and clarity the often confusing and veiled jargon of the ancient Rishis. His commentaries on the Upanishads opens vistas of thought that allow the earnest and informed seeker the opportunity to sit at the feet of a modern master-sage. Comment | Permalink

Process Philosophy and OOO from Larval Subjects . by larvalsubjects

We get a lot of lectures about Whitehead explaining Whitehead to us, but I think this misses the point that our differences with Whitehead are not failures to understand him (cf. my post on transference), but because of genuine disagreements with Whitehead. For me, there are three basic points of divergence. First, I believe that Whitehead is a complete non-starter so long as his account of God is not severed from his thought and his thought isn’t thoroughly severed from process theology. Following Donald Sherburne, I think that Whitehead’s account of God is incoherent and at odds with the ontological foundations of his own philosophy. Any engagement of Whitehead that doesn’t sever it from his concept of God and substantially modify his ontology is, I believe, a priori to be excluded. …

Am I a process philosopher? Sure. I argue that objects are processes and processes are objects. Yet all of my work is focused on the precise nature of what processes are and how relations come to be forged. Above all, I’m interested in how relations can be broken so that we might be able to form a more just and equitable society than the one we find ourselves in today.

Shaviro on The Prince and the Wolf from Object-Oriented Philosophy by doctorzamalek (Graham Harman) HERE. …

Like many other readers of Whitehead, I find that Steven is projecting a dynamism into his instants that is there in only the feeblest sense, and is perhaps over-reacting to the connotations of the word “process.” I find this to be especially the case among readers of Whitehead who are inspired by Deleuze. But there’s simply no comparison between the two thinkers, however much people want there to be. In all the important senses they are polar opposites, for the same reason that Whitehead and Bergson are polar opposites. 11:09 PM

Bogost on firehose materialism from Object-Oriented Philosophy by doctorzamalek (Graham Harham)

Ian now responds to Steven Shaviro, HERE. My favorite part of Ian’s post is probably the final sentence:

“…the fundamental dispute between OOO and process philosophy is a legitimate philosophical disagreement, not just a failure to communicate or understand.”

Levi made roughly the same point in his own post. The problem cannot be reduced to claiming that one side is misunderstanding Whitehead. No, there’s an actual philosophical disagreement at work. Incidentally, I should also add that Steven’s posts are always welcome, since they stay on topic.

So much hinges upon the avoidance of confusion and error

sam mickey | July 29, 2011 at 12:56 pm

I’m thinking of four anthologies released in the last few years that bring Whitehead into philosophical and theological dialogue with Badiou, Derrida, Deleuze, and others. Process and Difference (Daniell and Keller), Secrets of Becoming (Faber and Stephenson), Deleuze, Whitehead, Bergson (Robinson), and Event and Decision (Faber, Krips, and Petus). …

If you’re interested in postsecular theology that addresses the challenges of our current historical moment, check out Clayton Crockett’s new book (if you haven’t already), Radical Political Theology. No Whitehead (although he does mention a little process theology, particularly Catherine Keller, perhaps the greatest process theologian), but there are plenty of helpful resources for understanding atheism and nihilism in their contemporary contexts.

Matthew David Segall | July 31, 2011 at 6:22 pm Glad you stopped by, Sam.

When I argue against metaphysical atheism in recent posts, I’m not thinking of the sort of “atheism in the name of God” that Alan Watts used to talk about. The “atheism” of the later group of thinkers you mention (Haraway, Derrida, etc.) is unlike the type that Bryant is arguing for in his responses to me. He seems to suggest that naturalism has made the “God hypothesis” (not the way I’d want to construe theological speculation) irrelevant, which is surprising to me since I didn’t think an OOO philosopher would try to lean on scientific materialism/naturalism to marginalize religion. He doesn’t seem to have read his Whitehead, or my posts on Whitehead in response, since he keeps accusing me of employing the concept of a transcendent “God” to explain natural processes when I’ve explicitly criticized such concepts. God is not a hypothesis meant to explain the universe, anymore than “matter” could be conceived of as such.

Matthew David Segall | August 1, 2011 at 10:14 am

Speculative philosophy must hold the binary (God/no-God) together to form a coherent image of the universe. The question is not: “does God exist?” but “what is the universe such that God does and does not exist?” Theism makes no sense without the possibility of atheism, and vice versa: they are interdependent, sometimes parasitic, sometimes symbiotic modes of thought.

What is Philosophical Realism? | The Radical Academy by Jonathan Dolhenty, Ph.D.

Philosophy is the attempt to understand the most basic facts about the world we inhabit and so far as possible to explain these facts. This enterprise is not the exclusive concern of certain specialists, but one in which every human being is deeply involved, whether or not he is clearly conscious of it.

Every way of life is based upon a way of looking at life. The way you look at life is your philosophy. Just as there are many ways of life, so are there many philosophies, some more true and some less true. So important is this basic enterprise of man, so much hinges upon the avoidance of confusion and error, that since the time of the ancient Greeks a certain discipline has been set aside for the concentrated consideration of philosophical problems and for the careful comparison and criticism of different ways of answering them. This discipline is called philosophy.

Husserl’s endless reductions, Heidegger’s endless preparations, Whitehead and Bergson are polar opposites

Shaviro on The Prince and the Wolf from Object-Oriented Philosophy by doctorzamalek (Graham Harman)

HERE. Unsurprisingly, Steven sides with the Latour/Whitehead relationism against my critiques of that position. But it’s a well-written and thoughtful response to the book, also unsurprisingly. […]

As for Whitehead, I’m not sure I know what Steven means when he says the eternal objects are there as a source of novelty rather than a source of connection. The point is, prehension is always mediated by the eternal objects, and the eternal objects are in God. It’s hard to be more of an occasionalist than to say that God is the mediator of all relations and that entities exist only as occasions. It’s textbook occasionalism, in fact. Like many other readers of Whitehead, I find that Steven is projecting a dynamism into his instants that is there in only the feeblest sense, and is perhaps over-reacting to the connotations of the word “process.” I find this to be especially the case among readers of Whitehead who are inspired by Deleuze. But there’s simply no comparison between the two thinkers, however much people want there to be. In all the important senses they are polar opposites, for the same reason that Whitehead and Bergson are polar opposites.

Potentiality and Virtuality « Larval Subjects 26 May 2007 larvalsubjects Says: May 27, 2007 at 4:17 pm

This occurs often with political theory as well. Endless preparations to get things just right without jumping into the fray. This is the issue I have with epistemology: Kantianism, Husserl’s endless phenomenological reductions, Heidegger’s endless preparations to pose the question of the meaning of being (he argues that there has to be all sorts of preliminary work before the question itself can even be posed!), the epistemological debates of the 17th century, and yes, the endless refinements of critique among the critical theorists. Lacan liked to say that obsessional desire is the desire for an impossible desire. As a structure– i.e., something about a particular form of life, not an individual –obsessional desire sustains its desire by perpetually deferring the object of its desire, and it defers its object of desire by rendering that desire impossible. Critique, in my view, often functions in this way. 

Are philosophers obliged to favor a Godless system?

philosophical obligations from plastic bodies by plasticbodies

Leon has linked to an article which explores the question: is God necessary for Whitehead’s system? This raises the question: say you are presented with two metaphysical systems identical save for the fact that one includes God and the other omits God. Are we as philosophers obliged to favor the Godless system?

Whitehead and Catholicism Monday, August 8, 2011

Is God indispensable to Whitehead's metaphysics? The following article attempts to answer that question (pp. 666-669) as well as clarify Whitehead's relationship to Catholicism.

Norman Pittenger, "Whitehead and 'Catholicism'" Theological Studies 32 (1971): 659-70.

Re: The Parable of Two Birds by Sandeep on Tue 05 Jul 2011 10:49 PM IST |  Profile |  Permanent Link

It is essential to have a holistic perspective of the full spectrum of topics such as Creation, Evolution, Reincarnation, Karma in order to arrive at the right answer to these questions.

On Ultimate Ends: Heaven & Hell from ANTIDOTE by naturalorder@gmail.com (Sauvik)

Ludwig von Mises said that the Science of Human Action is all about "means and ends." Now, this choosing of means towards ends is firstly a Moral Question - and Adam Smith was a Professor of Moral Philosophy, for there were no "economists" then. Adam Smith therefore encouraged our "natural propensity to truck, barter and exchange," and proposed a System of Natural Liberty as a Moral Solution to Life.

But Socialists have done otherwise, and have encouraged Aggression - which even Sigmund Freud told us to "sublimate" - through their System of Legal Plunder. Now, Ludwig von Mises said that, whereas the choice between means and ends is directed at short term goals, there are what he called "ultimate ends," and Mises said that the choice of ultimate ends are "a matter of the soul and the will." 

[A theory of government from Cafe Hayek 

One theory is that government exists to correct externalities and provide public goods. The other is that government uses the language of helping people to justify giving stuff to the politically powerful out of the pockets of the rest of us.]

Comment on The Accidental Tagore by Amit Chaudhuri by abdul lateef from Comments for Posthuman Destinies by abdul lateef

“To recover Tagore today as a poet and writer must entail some sense of the Bengali language becoming a realm of literary possibility….”

AL: This seems to be akin in some ways to trying to recover Sri Aurobindo’s Guru English that he expresses in Edwardian prose and Romantic poetry to restore contemporary relevance. The project requires both a refolding of language and the modernist aesthetic.

Husserl, Heidegger, Whitehead, & Sri Aurobindo

Did God Create Man, or Did Man Create God? « Sri Aurobindo Studies

Sri Aurobindo points out that some may hold that “the spirit which now presides over the human soul-experience was originally formed by a human mentality ...

Is common sense merely plausible? rom Love of All Wisdom by Amod Lele

In sum, it does not seem that, even on Thill’s view as developed here, common sense qua common sense carries any epistemological weight beyond mere plausibility. There is some “extra-commonsensical” criterion or criteria according to which common sense may be judged infallible or not. Once we hear what that is, we can debate whether it is correct that this criterion allows us to declare certain beliefs infallible. Regardless: according to this quote here, certain kinds of common sense are proposed to be infallible; but it is not and cannot be the fact of their being common sense that makes them so.

speaking of phenomenology from Object-Oriented Philosophy by doctorzamalek (Graham Harman)

When Derrida was king (and keep in mind, I did not like that period) this accusation could not be made. Derrida knew Husserl and Heidegger and Levinas extremely well, and was very much digesting all of it and doing something new with it. You could disagree with his personal spin on it (I did) and also find his style often worse than exasperating (I did). But there was never any question that Derrida was deeply rooted in the phenomenological tradition, which –like it or not– is still the gold standard for recent continental philosophy. The situation became more problematic on this front after Derrida’s star began to dim somewhat.

Deleuze takes off in a completely different direction, and a very refreshing direction in many respects. But he never really came to terms with the Husserl/Heidegger legacy, and the passing remarks on phenomenology are among his most impressionistic and shallow.

With Badiou and Žižek it’s a bit more complicated. They do full justice to Heidegger in terms of praising him, talking about how great and important he was, and so forth. But he leaves too little trace on their own philosophical positions, which are basically Hegelian and Lacanian and have little direct resonance with Heidegger. As for Husserl (despite Badiou’s claims to understand him well) they don’t get the point at all, though in this respect they’re no worse than most others at present.

At the top of my wish list for continental philosophy in 2030 … is that we need to get back on the Husserl/Heidegger page again and push things further, not simply pretend without proof that they are vaguely archaic figures. You have to work your way through figures of that magnitude, and at least Derrida was trying.

The Battle For Eyeballs: Take #2 from ANTIDOTE - Jul 30, 2011 Second, all of you must read Paul Johnson's excellent book titled Intellectuals.

In this excellent book, Johnson has compiled brief biographies of many, … who wrote completely stupid books on how "society" could be better "organised" - and all their stupid books led the world astray. There is Rousseau, Marx, Sartre and more. 

The BATTLE For Honest, Sunnah Money Is NOT For The Faint-Hearted from ANTIDOTE by naturalorder@gmail.com (Sauvik)

My first book, published in 2000, Antidote: Essays AGAINST The Socialist Indian State, contains an essay on money, sub-titled "Why private money is the only sound money" - but my thoughts have developed far beyond that essay written so long ago, thanks especially to my study of the works of Ludwig von Mises. My best so far is the one in my 2007 book Natural Order: Essays Exploring Civil Government & The Rule of Law, which reflects the study of the works of Jesus Huerta de Soto, and this essay can be read online by scrolling down the right-hand bar.

Understanding plurality and underlying relationships

Free philosophy from preconditions and prejudices

Philosophy aims at understanding the plurality and their underlying relationships. But the puzzle remains unresolved after thousands of years and people begin all over again after every few decades. The basic difficulty, however, is to translate the multiplicity in terms of the essential unity. Performing this, obviously, is an absurd demand but man never tires of attempting to accomplish it empirically. 

For professors drawing salaries from secular universities a peculiar paradox is at play. Like Kant and Hegel in their time or Levi and Harman today, they carry the burden of manufacturing metaphysics sans any Divine contagion. Further, they are at pains to give the impression that their output emanates from their free thinking, whereas, in actuality, it is geographically-challenged and paradigm-driven. Camouflaging dishonesty in sophisticated verbiage is the most debilitating tendency that afflicts most sincere-seeming quest for knowledge today.

Philosophy, to be true to its task, must free itself from preconditions and prejudices. As science and technology progresses and human beings undergo ever increasing perplexity to keep abreast as well as making sense, philosophy will continue to be a source of solace. 20th century has grappled with enough of uncertainties; let the 21st be the era of assurance. Over to Savitri Era. [TNM] 8:39 PM Saturday, July 10, 2010

Demolishing Sri Aurobindo’s opposition is our prime task

Sri Aurobindo is yet to receive the recognition and respect he deserves and demolishing Sri Aurobindo’s Opposition is our prime task. The story of his life and the writings he has left behind constitute a fount of inspiration for generations to come and disseminating those across the globe is a gigantic challenge. The occult significance of the work of The Mother & Sri Aurobindo is exceedingly complex and hence to fathom it is beyond the scope of individuals engaged in routine life. Most are, therefore, happy with their own understanding of things and hardly feel the necessity of being acquainted with the teachings of The Mother & Sri Aurobindo. Mind boggling multiplicity of New Age offerings and their aggressive marketing is another major cause of our ware being marginalized.

That the philosophy, psychology, politics, & poetry of The Mother & Sri Aurobindo are the sole and supreme avenue of man’s emancipation is no hyperbole. No human being living at present has the capacity to scrutinize them as regards their efficacy. It is only through a ceaseless yearning for their servitude that we earn the fortunateness of partaking an iota of their grace.   

This in the secular-academic domain, paradoxically, poses a grave methodological problem. The transmission of the teachings of The Mother & Sri Aurobindo is largely academic in nature. Their interdisciplinary implications rather fall mostly at the postgraduate level or above while the ritualistic dimensions are only a miniscule. Applying the theory concurrently in one’s day to day life is also part of the learning process. The three aspects form such an integral whole that the unique subjective nature of the ongoing and ever changing concoction tends to defy any sort of syllabi or evaluation. With communication modalities morphing multifariously, molding our worn out teaching techniques and modulating them to the signals of the future, therefore, is a priority. [TNM] 8:04 PM Monday, July 05, 2010 Links