Monday, August 31, 2020

What led to ten centuries of decline

Mirra Alfassa, disciple of #SriAurobindo better known as 'The Mother' - the hidden freedom fighter for India's Independence. Read her full story at - https://t.co/I3DZgv0TB4
https://twitter.com/djjssantulan/status/1300122794286444545?s=19

On these thoughts, you may enjoy looking at Henri Bergson's 'Creative evolution' and the Elan Vital. Also Sri Aurobindo's treatment of the Vedanta from a life affirming and evolutionary perspective.
https://twitter.com/LifeIllumine/status/1300198102150926336?s=19
I can suggest that universal consciousness is purely instinctual as opposed to self authoring and therefore non intercedent or participatory at our 'level'. At the 'god' level, consciousness does not plan, reflect or meta-cognize.

Hard to say. Gebser's drew from D.T. Suzuki's Zen on arationality, acknowledged Sri Aurobindo's integral yoga. 
You could also go back to William James, re: post-rationalism. 
But Gebser does develop a robust, phenomenological description for integral arationality in his work.
https://twitter.com/jdj_writes/status/1299801958170189826?s=19

If you're interested in cosmological alternatives to mechanistic materialism, there are no better sources than Schelling & Whitehead.
In this dialogue, @aufgehendeRest (Christopher Satoor) & I discuss their historical context & continued relevance today https://t.co/hfmDt2wmWf
https://twitter.com/ThouArtThat/status/1300189367919456256?s=19

This year is the 250th birth anniversary of the great racist philosopher Hegel. Please do yourselves a favor, Indians, and read about Hegel’s force of history, the vigor in a civilization to churn the dialectic of change, and how Hegel thought Indians are devoid of that vitality.
https://twitter.com/vakibs/status/1300064068796022785?s=19

This is Bishop Robert Caldwell, celebrated missionary and scholar, who published in 1856 the "Comparative grammar of Dravidian or South Indian Languages". 
Link: https://t.co/886h6mWJMP
It has a large appendix devoted to racist theories. In this thread, I will discuss them. https://t.co/68JLWFO9PD
https://twitter.com/vakibs/status/1276507867634438146?s=19
Bishop Caldwell might have long been dead, along with the British Empire of which he was a servant, but his theories about the Dravidian race are an active force in Indian politics. They are the mainstream dogma in books and academia.
But many people have not read them at all.

In order to understand our present predicament with any degree of accuracy, the present-day thinkers, scholars, academics and bureaucrats do require a holistic understanding of where the story began, at the turn of independence. https://t.co/LLDoC3dSVA
https://twitter.com/epw_in/status/1300194091947483138?s=19

Book Review by Dr. Pingali Gopal: The Indian Renaissance, Sanjeev Sanyal (@sanjeevsanyal) looks at what led to ten centuries of decline and also examines the economic and social forces that are working together to transform India. @IndicAcademy #BookReview https://t.co/Xi2PhL7G8F
https://twitter.com/indictoday/status/1300184016461553665?s=19

Archives | Gandhi advocated that the untouchable castes give up meat-eating altogether. Yet he never asked the Brahmins and Baniyas who stood behind his “cow service” to graze cows or try their hand at leatherwork or agriculture. 
Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd: https://t.co/W5Jl0npszw
https://twitter.com/thecaravanindia/status/1300184016105037825?s=19

Environmentalism in Hindu Thought Part II by Rahul Goswami (@rahul_goa): The Hindu View of Nature and the Environment. #Hinduism #Environment @IndicAcademy 
https://t.co/rsxfdunnYv
https://twitter.com/indictoday/status/1300214215165140992?s=19

Among the many things to fix democracy under a new administration, I would put reform of the federal bureaucracy near the top of the list: https://t.co/UlqU4YHwsi
https://twitter.com/FukuyamaFrancis/status/1300207572499066881?s=19

Viruses are masters of coercion, @DavidEnard tells @kncukier. “They’re really like pirates hijacking a boat.” Listen to our "Babbage" podcast on how viruses have shaped the world—and humanity https://t.co/oxltmukCbY https://t.co/Ir6NXpUwYk
https://twitter.com/TheEconomist/status/1300209949990060032?s=19

Bollywood is Pakistan’s soft power. Narrative of evil, violent, superstitious Hindus constantly pushed. Even movies which cloak itself as “nationalist” featuring India’s armed forces subtlety push Pakistan agenda. Bollywood needs annihilation. If #SSR case can lead to it, good.
https://twitter.com/aaryabharata/status/1300207666057289729?s=19

Missionaries come claiming to "save" natives from "social problems."
In India, the narrative is "caste" to hide the $billion resources of the evangelical war machine.
Africa was converted in the last 50 years with no "caste" It is still reeling from it.
https://t.co/PWOJ7M7vt9
https://twitter.com/sankrant/status/1300195302704476162?s=19

"History will tell you that there’s always a thirst and a search for prophets at a time when there’s turbulence and transition" —@peterfrankopan 
Check out our history book recommendation interviews—370 published so far and counting... https://t.co/MWqjZKf7XQ
https://twitter.com/five_books/status/1300199117021483008?s=19

Lest we forget that white supremacy and racial injustice are still endemic in America, we need to remember the Colfax massacre of 1873 and the lasting harm it wrought, write William Briggs and Jon Krakauer https://t.co/lIZMuFKvpm
https://twitter.com/nytopinion/status/1300215194552012800?s=19
Posted by at No comments:

Monday, August 17, 2020

Eric Weiss was an integral philosopher of Whitehead and Sri Aurobindo

Another teacher of mine, Eric Weiss, died yesterday.

He was an integral philosopher, scholar of A. N. Whitehead and Sri Aurobindo. 

Eric initiated me into the Whitehead mystery school back in my first semester at CIIS in Fall 2008. I was a night owl back then but still dragged

Something about internally related drops of experience perishing into objective immortality in the consequent nature of God... Again, no idea what that might mean at the time,

but the passion in his voice and the vortexes streaming from his eyes had me convinced it was worth trying to figure out. 

Bon voyage, Eric

PS- How auspicious that you passed on Aug 15, which is Sri Aurobindo's birthday as well as the date of the Assumption of Mary.
https://twitter.com/ThouArtThat/status/1295136840765251584?s=19




Posted by at No comments:

Tuesday, August 11, 2020

Probabilistic this-world karma

The fundamental issues are about karma, but they also encapsulate larger issues about Buddhist modernism. I say that the concept of karma is inherently eschatological-theodicean (I’ll say more about these Greek words below); Lele denies this, and says that the concept is inherently only eudaimonistic (another Greek word). Note that I don’t deny that the concept of karma has a eudaimonistic element. Rather, I say that this element by itself isn’t sufficient for what karma means, because the concept of karma necessarily includes eschatology and theodicy. So, the crucial issue is whether can you remove the eschatology-theodicy from the concept of karma and still legitimately claim to be talking about karma. Lele thinks you can, whereas I think you can’t.

What Lele does is to invent a new concept. He deletes the idea that karma operates across former and future lives. This immediately raises the problem of how karma can possibly work, given that many people act in good ways and experience bad results, and act in bad ways and experience
good results. Lele’s answer is that karma works probabilistically: good actions are more likely to produce experienced good results in this life, and bad actions are more likely to produce bad experienced results in this life. Karma is “probabilistic this-world karma.”

I’d call this shwarma, not karma.

If Lele were to say something like this, I’d have no objection (at least not yet). This is what philosophers do, in contrast to historians and philologists. He’d be owning up to cherry picking, and so wouldn’t be trying to have his cake and eat it too

(to mix metaphors). He’d be thinking as a Buddhist and as a cosmopolitanist (in
the philosophical sense of cosmopolitanism I advocate in Why I Am Not a
Buddhist). I’d say, “I sympathize with your situation, more power to you,
let’s see what you can do, and let’s see how others inside and outside the tradition respond.” For me, the proof would be in the pudding (to add another metaphor).

In the case at
hand, the pudding is “probabilistic this-world karma.” This is the conceptual
engineering we’re being offered. I don’t think it works.

“Probabilistic”
properly speaking applies to a scientific causal model. When we have a causal
model consisting of a set of variables, we can define a probability measure
over propositions about the variables and their values. But what is the model
in the case of eudaimonistic karma? What are the variables and parameters? Unless
we can specify these, we don’t really know what we’re talking about. Are we supposed
to use game theory and decision theory to answer these questions? But these
theories typically abstract away from individual moral virtue, which is the key
concept of eudaimonistic thought. These theories and the concept of karma don’t
seem to fit together very well.

I worry that we’re
dealing with the same kind of scientism that infects much of Buddhist
modernism. By “scientism” I mean using scientific concepts where they’re not
appropriate. “Eudaimonistic karma” is a normative concept. It refers to good
and bad individual mental intentions and actions. Normative concepts operate in
the logical space of reasons—the logical space of being able to justify what
you say in relation to norms and values. The concept of probability, however,
is a descriptive one that operates in the logical space of causes. When you say
“probabilistic karma” you just code switch between the normative and
descriptive languages without helping us to think about their relation.

There are other
problems. As I wrote before, ...

Evan Thompson

elisa freschi | August 11, 2020 at 2:17 pm | Tags: Gananath Obeyesekere, Stephen Harris | URL: https://wp.me/p486Wp-1b6

http://indianphilosophyblog.org/2020/08/11/losing-the-thread-a-response-to-lele-guest-post-by-evan-thompson/

Posted by at No comments:

Sunday, March 01, 2020

Sri Aurobindo's concept of woman

Misc. References

SRI AUROBINDO'S CONCEPT OF WOMAN : A LITERARY ANALYSIS. By. Supervisor : (Prof. 3iala^har (Pane)a,. P. G. Department of English,. Sambalpur ...

Date, Time, Details. 2 Feb 2020. Sunday. 8 AM. Monthly Morning Walk *. 6 PM, AIM Magazine Reading and Discussion. 9 Feb 2020. Sunday. 6 PM. Thematic ...

Along with Sri Aurobindo, the Mother of Sri AurobindoAshram has been a major inspiration behind the founders of the Cultural Integration Fellowship: Mrs. Bina ...

A New Vision of Humanity's Future A selection of readings from the poet, political leader and sage, Sri Aurobindo and his co-worker, Mira Alfassa, will be read ...

Sri Aurobindo has said that – Throughout the Veda it is in the hymns which celebrate this strong and brilliant deity (Agni) that we find those which are the most ...

Sri Aurobindo was born in Calcutta, on August 15, 1872, at 5:00 am, the hour of dawn. The date is doubly important. Seventy-five years later, on August 15, 1947 ...

Sri Aurobindo Society · June 4, 2019 ·. THE MOTHER'S WORDS ON HER BLESSINGS. "My blessings are very dangerous. They cannot be for this one or for that ...

This is a non-affiliated site, run by and for devotees and followers of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. The site features talks and writings of Alok Pandey and ...

Date, Event. 02/28/2020 6:00 pm - 9:15 pm, South Indian Vegan Dinner and a Movie MATAGIRI SRI AUROBINDO CENTER, Mount Tremper NY. 02/29/2020

Referring to Sri Aurobindo's views on education, the Vice President said that education has to be holistic and it must be enlightening and empowering. “It should ...

Dear Colleagues, and Whit, Namaste
Nor science nor ontology nor a putative account of "spirituality" as if independent of them and of experience, can provide a final answer nor characterization of anything, they can only operate in a certain cognitive framework, which ultimately is that of the embodied mind. This is particularly so in relation to the (putative?) existence and constitution of quales, 

The case of Phi, Golden Mean, is most remarkable in pointing out to this and to a continuity of the embodied mind with that of a universe as if the mind would not be. If you wish, a panpsychism which does not imaginately require a self to sustain the cognitive framework nor for the universe at large to be such.This is what science as it stands on dualism actually does, and purportedly, quantum mechanics has broken the spell.

In other terms, as if the universe would have a design which can be done whether a partial subject is the case or not, or still the subject paradoxically excluded at large as the universe itself. Here the paradox arises from the joint continuity already mentioned, and the imaginative act of making this continuity redundant if not superfluous. For dualism, there is no such paradox since there is no such continuity, and thus, in the dualistic setting, science is "just so". So too is its ontology.
Diego Lucio Rapoport

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/Online_Sadhu_Sanga/

Hi Deigo,
Can science account for the golden mean being beautiful, or is this akin to the beauty we often find in symmetries (and other geometric patterns), even those which become apparent through science?

There are science-like explanations, such as that we prefer symmetries just because symmetric faces and bodies are clues to genetic fitness. But beyond just-so stories, does science have any purchase on beauty at all? And ... should it? If it should, how should it develop it?
Best, Whit

Dear Colleagues, Namaste
That science has a limited conception of reality is beyond dispute, but this still misses that it further fails short of even mentioning the imaginal domain and its articulation as and in experience. This requires transcending duality, actually a logophysics, rooted in the Klein Bottle metaform.

The issue, as i see it, is not that science cannot account for aesthetics, which is not altogether correct (the Golden Mean), but rather that as has been developed following Plato's rejection of supradualism in the Presocratics, it has been hell bent in appropiation of Nature and directed to war.

When one reads that even the apologetics of music by Plato is in his own words a psyop medium to war, plus all the blabla about "beauty", then we are fully slapped hard into realising how deep this has gone from the very beginnings of this misappropiation. 
Cordially
Diego Lucio Rapoport

Namaste, 
Modern science reveals an extremely limited conception of reality, and should not be interpreted as explaining the whole story. Science may be able to quantify and predict certain phenomena, but it cannot account for the quality of beauty that this phenomena evokes within the observer. 
Humbly in service, 
Krishna Keshava Das
Serving Assistant
Princeton Bhakti Vedanta Institute of Spiritual Culture and Science www.bviscs.org

Living Organism ultimately has the Concept as its Substance
Śrīpād Bhakti Mādhava Purī Mahārāja, Ph.D. (Serving Director of Princeton Bhakti Vedanta Institute of Spiritual Culture and Science, NJ, USA: http://bviscs.org )

The living organism internally assimilates itself and produces itself. This self-consumption and self-production is its metabolism, by which it anabolizes and catabolizes, creates and destroys its own cellular substructure in order to maintain its own superstructural integrity. Likewise, the superstructural system assimilates the outer environment of which it is an integral participant. It both consumes and produces the environment in which it lives, but on a localized scale, unlike the totality of its destructive and constructive activity that occurs within itself. Reproduction is a production of itself as a totality but in a localized portion of the environment. It is a process of preservation of the species. 

Its inner metabolic process is the preservation of its particularity. Its assimilation and defense against the environment is the preservation of its individuality. And the reproduction of itself as a species is the preservation of its universality. The particular, individual and universal aspects of the living process are characteristic of what is called a Concept. A Concept has three aspects: universal, particular and individual. For example, in biology we speak of genus, species and specimen. Mammal is a genus (general or universal), whereas tiger is a particular species or kind of mammal, and the individual tiger that we meet in the jungle is a specimen. All three of these aspects are required in order to completely specify the individual identity of whatever is experienced.

The living organism, therefore, ultimately has the Concept as its substance when it is comprehended completely. Thus, the categories of understanding that seek to fix identities in their identity (e.g. A=A, B=B, etc.) cease to be applicable to the living organism whose participants do not possess isolated identities but are identified only in their mutual relations. Unlike chemical objects, the participants of a biological system are produced by as well as productive of the other participants.

United News of India-22-Feb-2020
She motivated Kayasree to become an engineer in future and take care of the Bahour lake as a custodian adding that the Sri Aurobindo Society will provide the ..

United News of India-20-Feb-2020
Puducherry, Feb 21 (UNI) A large number of devotees from different parts of the country and abroad thronged the Sri Aurobindo Ashram here on the occasion of ...

Times of India-18-Feb-2020
An audio recording of the Mother reading selected portions from the book, 'The Mother' by Sri Aurobindo will be played during the meditation session.

The Indian Express-17-Feb-2020
Guruji was also influenced by Sri Aurobindo's teaching that for the creator of the universe, Ma Bhagwati, we must become virtuous souls who can spread love ...

Supramental Consciousness in its embryonic state - February 28, 1968: Auroville was born, just two months before May 1968 sweeping whole Europe. #SriAurobindo February 28, 2020: Serious political and communa...

February 29: Supramental descent day- The red book hours: Discovering CG Jung's art mediums and creative process MA Janice Geller - Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 2019 … It, like many othe...

Sri Aurobindo, Pal, Tagore, Gandhi, and Savarkar - Their Villains are Vivekananda and Aurobindo, Not just Savarkar or 'Sangh Parivar' 20-May-2018 · After Savarkar and Sangh Parivar, it is Swami Vivekananda a...

Books have the power to transport us to faraway worlds - 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,...

Uberman may come flying - If you harbour even an iota of desire to understand #TheMother & #SriAurobindo, here's a chance just at a glance. #SavitriEra: Sri Aurobindo's theoretical ..

My original contributions to understanding Sri Aurobindo - My original contributions to understanding or interpreting Sri Aurobindo can be summarised under a number of heads: 1) Against Hindutva, Mythology, & Astro...

Posted by at No comments:

Friday, February 21, 2020

Uberman may come flying

If you harbour even an iota of desire to understand #TheMother & #SriAurobindo, here's a chance just at a glance. #SavitriEra: Sri Aurobindo's theoretical salience https://t.co/upjH4BU1Q1 @NathTusar Further:
https://t.co/YGoEhdLyp7
https://t.co/9IaBwJNfVI
https://t.co/h0M1PU8wpP
I'm not much familiar and I will check. But I don't think Sri Aurobindo recognises them as Devatas; they are rather impersonal principles. Like, Varuna is Vastness, Mitra is Harmony, etc. Thus, all later philosophical formulations are deformations. Puranas and Epics are creative.
Please read 7 in the light of 10. All these are long term pictures and hence there's nothing to fear. But, even technology is perhaps forcing a more uniform cultural atmosphere, you will agree. Thanks.

D Frame
… While Hegel is descriptive, Aurobindo is proscriptive as the divine life, where a fully actualized existence is possible in ones lifetime. A gnostic life brings about personal accountability and benefits the species through altruism …
S Banerjee - Our Heritage, 2020
… ISSN: 0474-9030 Vol-68-Issue-51-February-2020 A Spiritual leader are the greatest leaders in all respect they get sincere support and faithful followers. Aurobindo is an example. Sri Aurobindo the freedom fighter …
S KARTHICK
Cosmic consciousness is the cardinal philosophy of human life. Sri Aurobindo's poetry reveals the cosmic purpose from the evolution through his Vedic verses. Human being lives in a material life their consciousness may acquire the …
V Jalan
… They advocated about aesthetics in their philosophies and considered it significant in fine arts. Sri Aurobindo and GWF Hegel also gave their theories on aesthetics in literature. They expansively explained the fundamentals of aesthetics and its importance in literature …
M Sivaramakrishnan - Creativity, 2019
Starting from the common agreement established in Aurobindo studies that The Life Divine (1914–1919; book form: 1939–1940) was Sri Aurobindo's (1872–1950) philosophical exploration of his ideals, while Savitri (manuscript form: 1916; separate …
B Mehra - 2020
… of women were used for our exploration. Also included were Sri Aurobindo's and the Mother's keen … a collection of essays written by Nolini Kanta Gupta, one of the earliest associates and close disciples of Sri Aurobindo. The …
AO Atiemo
… Sometimes, it is used as a cover term for most manifestations of contemporary Hinduism as presented by the nineteenth century interpreters of Hindu traditions such as Rammohun Roy, Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo Ghosh …
K Chaudhary - Our Heritage, 2020
… today, especially rural women. The Ramayana, the Adikavya-the first epic of Indians-as Aurobindo observed, is an epic that has "fashioned much of what is best and sweetest in the national character" of India. “There can …
IOF PEACE
… Thus, from Śaṅkarāchārya to Sri Aurobindo and Rabindra Nath Tagore all the savants of India have advocated this path to comprehend the 'ultimate reality' but which is unreachable by the flippant movements of passions …
NG Barnes, BR Singh, S Parayitam - … Journal of Yoga-Philosophy, Psychology and …, 2020
… However, one of the leading scholars on spirituality of the 20 th -century Sri Aurobindo propagated spirituality and maintained that it is dangerous to give excessive importance to sexual complexes by psychoanalysts, which …
GW Horowitz - 2019
… report the discovery of this larger Self or some facet of it. It has been called psychic being by Aurobindo, Over Soul by Emerson, Inner Man (1958), inner teacher, Higher Self, and so forth.” (129) This higher law, along with its many terms, is the overflowing spirit Emerson …
SL Shapoval - 2019
… In the 1930's, George Nakashima worked at Antonin Raymond's architectural firm in Tokyo and helped design and supervise the construction of the dormitory at Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry, India.16 The time George …
Given the curious tendency of people to convert ontological claims into value claims, I've come to suspect that there's some feature of our psychology that leads us to do this...
I get very impatient with debates in philosophy about who interpreted a philosopher better, or whether we should be Kantians or Hegelians or speculative realists, or whether Heidegger got it right or Badiou got it right. These all have merit and value, but they're not what I'm after. By larvalsubjects Read more of this post
Posted by at No comments:

Sunday, December 08, 2019

Overman - a consciously evolving future human being

Transhumanism

JM Gidley - Critical Terms in Futures Studies, 2019
… Synchronously, Indian political activist Sri Aurobindo conceived the notion of an “Overman,” a consciously evolving future human being (Aurobindo [1914] 2000). Both … humanity? References. Aurobindo, Sri. [1914] 2000. The life divine …

[PDF] Everyday Aesthetics in Indian Cultural Communities

HM Tapaswi - 2019
… Aurobindo's (1997, p. 145) classifies beauty into four types – sensuous beauty, intellectual beauty, imaginative beauty and ideal beauty … This kind of beauty, according to Aurobindo, can be considered as intellectual beauty …

[HTML] Nurturing Employee Creativity. By James Houran & Gene A. Ference Wednesday, 30th August 2006

ITB Berlin, ABA Progams
… For this reason it is commonly referred to as the "reptilian brain." It is rigid, obsessive, ritualistic, and filled with "ancestral memories" (corresponding to what Sri Aurobindo called the "mechanical mind" and perhaps tangentially …

Sri Aurobindo and Hinduism.

Social & Political Aspects of Colonial India as envisioned by Sri Aurobindo
 Dr. Debashri R Banerjee

[PDF] Anthony Burke and Rita Parker: Global Insecurities: Futures of Global Chaos and Governance.

M Zemanová - Czech Journal of International Relations, 2019
… The author portrays the current era of transition as moving away from the state-centric approaches of … Chapter 15, “The International Governance of Forced Migration”, written by Savitri Taylor, Chapter 16, “Three Generations …

Of Bliss and Love: Methodological "Play" in Hindu-Christian Comparative Theology

Truth, Diversity, and the Incomplete Project of Modern Hinduism (2008)
 Jeffery Long
2008, Hermeneutics and Hindu Thought: Toward a Fusion of …

Review of HUDSON, EMILY T. Disorienting Dharma: Ethics and the Aesthetics of Suffering in the Mahabharata....
 Brian Collins

[PDF] The Meaning and Making of Supramental Vision with Reference to the Poetry of Sri Aurobindo

A Kumari, DK Sharma - Journal of the Gujarat Research Society, 2019
As far as Indian thoughts and literature are concerned, Sri Aurobindo stands as a profound yogi, mystic and aesthetician shining brightly and spreading his light in the sky of life and literature. His own yogic experiences were deeply rooted in the …

Woman for Woman: Langley's Oriane in A House in Pondicherry

AK Gupta, S Jain - Glass Ceiling and Ambivalent Sexism (Critical …, 2019
… Dr. Ashish Kumar Gupta, Dr. Sarita Jain herself born in India, in Calcutta, had a special place for India and describes its rich beauty as well. Langley writes in acknowledgment in her book HIP1 and says: Auroville and Sri …

[PDF] Subjectivity under domination: a dialogue between Nandy's' the intimate enemy'and Dangarembga's' nervous conditions'

LR Castro - Revista Psicologia Política, 2019
… As vidas do escritor Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) e do escritor, ativista e iogue indiano Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) são estudadas e contrastadas em relação às escolhas que cada um faz para levar uma vida mais desejável …

Posted by at No comments:

Sunday, November 24, 2019

Hegel was not the be-all and end-all on the subject of Being

Throughout his work, Husserl regularly points out that the objects of our intentions are structured around internal and external horizons.  The marker sitting on my desk presents itself to me in profiles.  I am never able to apprehend all of the marker at once.  I pick it up and I turn it about, and now new profiles appear or give themselves.  The others disappear.  I intend or apprehend the marker as a unity, as a totality, but it is never given all at once.  Elements of it are present and others are absent.  Nonetheless, it is given to me as a whole or a totality.  The absent profiles I intend in the marker are the internal horizon of the marker.  This internal horizon is deeply temporal as well.  I anticipate the profiles that will appear should I turn the marker about, and I retend the profiles that disappeared as I make new profiles appear.  Indeed, the very act of grasping the marker despite the fact that profiles of it are absent in my visual perception of it already indicate the work of a bodily intentionality in my engagement with things that encounters them as unities and totalities, rather than two-dimensional beings gradually built up out of atomic sensations.
larvalsubjects | November 18, 2019 at 10:41 am | Categories: Uncategorized | URL: https://wp.me/s390V-zoos

Probably the single big confusion that lead to the creation of materialism is the confusion between ontological states and their epistemic content. People experienced the ontological state with epistemic content of "chair outside me" and they took the epistemic content as representing an ontological state of the world, so they thought there really is a "chair outside me", when the real ontological state was that of a state of consciousness. Therefore, it appears that in order to get rid of materialism is to stop making this confusion. The problem that arises is that no matter how hard we would try to do that, any retreat from the epistemic content of an ontological state will only gives us just another ontological state with the only difference being a different epistemic content. No matter what, we cannot escape epistemic contents. Is idealism therefore fundamentally unthinkable ?

I opened this topic after reading about process philosophy. They say that the solution to understanding the world is to not think in terms of "substances", but in terms of "events". The problem is that "events" is also an epistemic content, in the sense that the concept of "event" is extrapolated from the subjective feeling of passage of time. But the "passage of time" is just a quality/an epistemic state of consciousness. To take it as revealing to us a deep character of the world is to do the same mistake materialism is doing. So, in order to avoid the mistake of materialism is to recognize this fact, and thus to reject that "event" can be anything ontologically meaningful. Is there any way to escape this vicious circle of confusions between ontological states and epistemic contents and get to an idealistic conception of the world, or is idealism fundamentally unthinkable ?

Dear Cosmin,

Namaste. The problem is not in the either/or of epistemology or ontology. It is the opposition of these two that is the problem. Ontology deals with the being-in-itself of objects, or THAT an object IS - its pure being-there (G.Dasein). In German a distinction is made between Being (G.Sein) and Being-there (G. Dasein). This marks the distinction between the general or universal concept of Being (pure indeterminate generic Being), and a particular determinate concept or type of being (eg. human being). 

To say THAT something is, and to say WHAT that something is are two different judgments or determinations. In English the difference is not represented by different words although it is certainly implied every time we make a judgment like "It is a cow." The 'It" refers to the indeterminate being of an object, while "cow" represents the determinate moment or aspect of the judgment. The identity that is implicit is this judgment, i.e. "it" = "cow" is usually invisible/unconscious to the one making the judgment. IOW, people are generally unconscious of what they are really talking about. They don't think about what they are thinking.

This naivete or uncritical thinking is the main problem of what we today call scientific thinking, where the attention or consciousness is focused on the senses, or what is being thought about - the object of thought, rather than on the content of thinking itself and its essential contribution to THAT or WHAT object is being thought about.

Epistemology is the study of  what the content or thinking process itself contributes to our knowledge of the ontological object of knowledge. We may thus consider epistemology to deal with WHAT determinations of objects THAT are there in themselves before any other determinations are made about them besides their being-there, In this way epistemology has two roles to play simultaneously: it posits THAT something IS, and it determines WHAT that something IS. This unites and identifies both the ontological and epistemological aspects of knowing or knowledge without collapsing the difference between them. This invokes the principle of identity in difference and difference in identity for those who are not asleep/unconscious to what is going on rationally. 

Humbly with respect,
B Madhava Puri

Dear David,

Namaste. While the distinction between Being and Existence is not generally recognized in common ordinary parlance, there is actually a prominent difference in the technical, philosophical meaning of these words. "Existence" refers to the manifestation or appearance of Being, and Hegel, in his Science of Logic, goes through great detail in over 400 pages to describe that difference. 

This means that 'being' is not the same as 'existence' and Dasein implies a specific determinate moment in the dialectical self-development of Being (Sein). While Dasein represents a transformation within Being (from universality to particularity), Existence represents a transition to the reflective category of Essence.  

Modern materialistic science generally fails to recognize or even investigate the logical and rational concepts that underlie its own theories, hypotheses, or principles, fixated upon finding truth in the objects of sense observation. It therefore falls into an inescapable prison formed of its own errors and misconceptions.

With humble regards and respect,
B Madhava  Puri

Dear M. Puri Maharaja,

Hegel was not the be-all and end-all on the subject of Being, otherwise Heidegger would not be widely praised for his extensive treatment of the subject.

Moreover, Hegel has had many eminent philosophers criticizing his thinking processes from many angles. Two of them were Kierkegaard and William James. Have you ever read the latter's penetrating essay, "On Some Hegelisms"?

Now, let me ask you what kind of reasoning, or insight, is behind your statement,

"Existence represents a transition to the reflective category of Essence."

I would think that Being is closer to the concept of Essence than is Existence. The distinction between Essentialism and Existentialism has been known since the middle ages, and the whole modern philosophy of Existentialism (one of whose pioneers was Kierkegaard, by the way) gives existence priority over essence.

By the way, the  whole mindset of existentialism is a dimension apart from the viewpoint of materialistic science.


Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics         -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

Dear Peter,

Namaste. Thank you for furthering this discussion. The vast lacuna that lies between Heidegger's dogmatic/empirical presumptions concerning being and Hegel's scientific,(i.e. systematic, dialectical) self-development of the thought Being are hardly comparable at the philosophical level. However, it does serve as a useful ruse to show exactly what distinguishes the systematic  development of pure reason from the opinionated  contingencies of empirical thought. This might more clearly be understood as the difference between pure thought thinking itself (pure because thinking does not go beyond its own self for its content, and is thus self-determined or free), and Heidegger's thought thinking about things,  which is the empirical attitude, embracing duality (thought v. tjhing) and  dogmatism (the giveness of things) and the contingent epistemology that adopts opinion, hypothesis, interpretation, or theory that to conjoin the opposition of thought and thing without ever being able to understand their prior underlying dialectical unity in difference.

The fact that anyone is "widely praised" does not speak to their authenticity but only to  their resonance with those who may be under the same common misconceptions as the author. Popularity is often, but not always, an indication of superficial sentiment than sound reasoning, which is always rare to find among the masses.

It would be hard to call James' essay on "Some Hegelisms" penetrating. Are you aware of the author's own comment on his essay? Here is how he estimates it in his own words:

"The essay 'On some Hegelisms' doubtless needs an apology for the superficiality with which it treats a serious subject. It was written as a squib, to be read in a college-seminary in Hegel's logic, several of whose members, mature men, were devout champions of the dialectical method. My blows therefore were aimed almost entirely at that. I reprint the paper here (albeit with some misgivings), partly because I believe the dialectical method to be wholly abominable when worked by concepts alone, and partly because the essay casts some positive light on the pluralist-empiricist point of view."

As for Kierkegaard, his relation to Hegel has come under more careful scrutiny of late. In his review of  Jon Sewart's book,  Kierkegaard's Relation to Hegel Reconsidered, CUP 2003, Matthew Edgar of Fordham University writes in his review:

"Without denying the existence of a certain “metalevel” dispute between Hegel and Kierkegaard, Stewart argues that (a) many of Kierkegaard’s central ideas, such as the theory of stages, are creatively, i.e., not uncritically, adopted from Hegel, and, (b) the true target of Kierkegaard’s critique is not Hegel per se, but prominent Danish Hegelians of his time. According to Stewart, ignorance of Kierkegaard’s intellectual milieu, coupled with a distorted and inadequate understanding of Hegel, has led many English-speaking critics to adopt the overly simple ’either / or’. Stewart seeks to correct this problem by showing how Kierkegaard’s writing rose out of, and responded primarily to, debates in Denmark in the 1830’s and 40’s surrounding Hegel’s philosophy and its implications for theology."

Again,many popular opinions on matters of philosophical and scientific importance are based on ignorance of the proper "intellectual milieu, coupled with a distorted and inadequate understanding of Hegel," As mentioned in previous posts, the current epistemological attitude of modern science fosters dogmatic opinionation in opposition to rational conceptual self-critique and  self-determined truth.

No doubt my previous statement

>"Existence represents a transition to the reflective category of Essence." 

requires some unpacking. Hegel often used the  phrases "in-itself" meaning implicit, and "for-itself" meaning explicit. Being in its own self, or implicitly involves many micro-logical or dialectical determinations that have only to do with itself, within itself, within  Being. You may read the Science of Logic for the details. 

On the other hand there are categories that represent reflections on Being that are beyond Being within itself. To understand this we  first have to grasp that the term "reflection" indicates a difference is invoked between what is original and its reflected image, as in a mirror. Here we leave the sphere of the in-itself, or implicitness of Being, and progress to the categories that have to do with the for-itself - possessions or what belongs to Being. This other sphere is called Essence.

Being and Essence are different although related, just as a mirror image and its original are different although identical formally. Thus we say that Essence is the truth of Being. In this sense Being takes the position of the appearance of Essence, which is the truth of Being. This relation of the identity with difference is called reflection. 

When it comes to the term "Existence" we mean the difference that arises when Being is considered the ground or truth and Existence is the manifestation or appearance of that Being. Thus we find both moments within thought, where Being is considered the appearance in relation to Essence, as well as the case where Being is considered the ground of Existence. The result is that we cannot really consider Essence any closer to Being than Existence. We might say that they are two sides of the same coin.

With humble respect and regards,
B Madhava Puri

Dear Peter,

You wrote:

>Materialism received a huge boost from the ever-growing discovery that fossils >reveal a long succession  of life over eons

Fossils (naturally preserved bones) do not produce other fossils. Bones (matter) are the products of life. Without life there are no bones produced naturally in Nature. IOW (in other words) the idea of evolution of bones is based on a complete misunderstanding of what is more fundamental: life or bones.

The Bhagavat Vedantic vies is based on the two empirically observable scientific concepts that Life comes from Life, and Matter comes from Life. How does that boost materialism? It is rather the refutation of that idea.

Furthermore, even within the materialistic camp of evolutionists the idea of evolutionary development of bones is under sever critique. One only has to take off their doctrinal blinders and look at the contrary evidence they have uncovered and what such scientists themselves have to say about fossils. Evolution is not a doctrine written in stone.

With humble and sincere regards,
B Madhava Puri

[PDF] Manoj Das: An Incredible Bridge between Literature and Philosophy

SK Nayak - 2019
… Therefore, Professor JM Mohanty has rightly said, “[…] he travels all over the world, and writes stories, novels, travelogue, essays, belles letters etc. with equal competence.” (2006: p. 611) We can take for an instance of his …

[HTML] American psychology's psychobiological perspective in the light of Sri Aurobindo's theory of social development

CA Latino
American psychology currently employs a psychobiological perspective in its study of the human psyche and tends to conduct its research using objective empirical methods based on the natural world. This article situates the American …

[PDF] Woman and Water Kindred by Nature

A Mukhopadhyay
… thought-mind. Their ray was extended horizontally; there was something above, there was something below.” (Sri Aurobindo 101) Explanation … is the first seed of what afterwards appears as the sense-mind. (Sri Aurobindo 101-02) “The …

The “Y” Goes to India: Springfield College, Muscular Missionaries, and the Transnational Circulation of Physical Culture Practices

P Vertinsky, A Ramachandran - Journal of Sport History, 2019
… declared, “You will understand the Gita better with your biceps, your muscles a little stronger.”48 His impact in the United States and his well-known treatise Raja Yoga helped set in motion a demystification of yoga's many benefits …

[HTML] This Debate

R Vanita
… Yeats's contemporary Sri Aurobindo suggested that many Romantic poems work as mantra, which he defined as "rhythmic revelation" (31) … Oxford: OUP, 2007. Ghose, Aurobindo. The Future Poetry. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1953. Glaser, Brian Brodhead …

[HTML] Edward Carpenter

E Carpenter
… [6]. An early advocate of sexual freedoms, he had an influence on both DH Lawrence and Sri Aurobindo, and inspired EM Forster's novel Maurice. [7]. Early life. Born in Hove in Sussex, Carpenter was educated at nearby …

R Alpert, A Adams, GF Feng, B Fuller, M Harner…
… Price was admitted to a mental hospital for a time, before returning to San Francisco. [17] Murphy, meanwhile, traveled to Sri Aurobindo's ashram in India, [18] and then he also returned to San Francisco. After they met, Murphy and Price found much in common …

Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)