Literary Discussions

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The OP for philosophy posted: For those who intend to discover and to
understand, not to indulge in conjectures and soothsaying and rather
than contrive imitation and fabulous worlds, plan to look deep into
the nature of the real world and to dissect it -- for them everything
must be sought in things themselves.

The Op's post about looking into reality for answers, which made me
think of Nietzsch's quote about peering into the abyss, and
Heidegger's quote about Being unveiling, made me search on google and
find this interesting essay,
entitled, "Being as Refusal: Melville's Bartleby as Heideggerian Anti-
Hero"

According to Heidegger, what is essential to human nature is not to
reveal, unveil, or render accessible to direct observation what is
hidden, so much as to be drawn toward what is concealed. This
tendency of the human to be drawn towards the withdrawn is referred
to by Heidegger as "a sign":

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Session Start: Thu Jul 04 10:28:36 2002

The OP of the Philosophy channel posted:

For those who intend to discover and to understand, not to indulge in
conjectures and soothsaying and rather than contrive imitation and
fabulous worlds, plan to look deep into the nature of the real world
and to dissect it -- for them everything must be sought in things
themselves. Comments?

ionized: I agree partly with that. Certainly seeking things as they
are in themselves, with as little subjectivity as possible

DbleHelix: ionized: Where do you disagree with it?

ionized: now that you say that double, I think I don't disagree with
it at all

ionized: I had to read it a couple of times

Sitaram: My comment (this is what jumps to my mind), Nietszche
saying, "Beware, when you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back
into you"

Sitaram: We stare into the abyss of quantum, and we see the chaos of
random events which disturbed Einstein (his comment that God does not
play dice)

ionized: I find it gratifying rather than disturbing

Sitaram: Kierkegaard and Sartre seemed to find something of despair,
angst, absurdity, staring into the abyss of being/reality (Pascal too
I suppose)

ionized: true Sitaram, it can be very despairing at times, depressing
at times, uplifting at times

Sitaram: Heidegger says something about man standing and beholding
being as it unveils itself (can remember exactly what I read)

ionized: but what do YOU say, Sitaram?

Sitaram: Ha ha, how curious, someone who is concerned with the "what
do YOU say", which really translates into "i am most concerned about
what I myself say"

ionized: Yes I am really

Sitaram: Which gets back to what I posted earlier today about how
modern education corrupts us by a notion of contest/competition

ionized: I can read tons of books, hear what others say, but I have
my own experiences that are fabulous as well, and I think most of us
do... so when I ask what do YOU say, I am certainly interested a
little, but mostly it is to awaken in others the sense that they to
experience

Sitaram: Ok.... so..... putting that together with what the Op
posted, about our looking to reality, being to see what it teaches
us... well... whatever reality has to tell us, it is what REALITY
says, not what we say,.... so we will be dismayed, since we are
preoccupied with the "ego" of knowledge

Sitaram: if I peer into the abyss, and learn anything, it is
not "mine", it is not what I say

Sitaram: but... the abyss peering back into me,.... as Nietszche
warns.... seems to me to touch on Sartre's point about hell
being "other people", except it is ABYSS of being/reality which
becomes other for us in our I/Thou competition of misology

Sitaram: Socrates stresses that misology is a form of misanthropy, ..
this is a difficult point to understand, but I feel it is of great
significance

Perignon: Sartre was right. Ask any monk or nun in a monastery what
is the worst aspect of the contemplative life and their honest answer
is: Other People (co-residents)

Sitaram: I will share with you something which is pertinent to these
points.... but which has to do with a theological discussion I had
some years ago (though the point I am trying to make is not a
religious or theological one)....

Sitaram: Someone once challenged me to explain certain things about
theology, so... I began citing various scriptures and theologians of
antiquity....

Sitaram: they interrupted me to object "ahhh but I do not care what
THOSE people and books said, I want to know what YOU say..."

Perignon: Sitaram: a familiar refrain heard often at most graduate
schools in any field of study.

ionized: I thought asking what you think was a very reasonable
question

Sitaram: I explained that, in the tradition under discussion.... the
very essence of ones activity was presumed to be to totally immerse
oneself in the TRADITION and discipline... to become ONESELF the
tradition, allow the tradition to speak through one's every thought,
action...

Sitaram: and to stress one's own innovations and idiosyncracies was
to miss the point of that very theology and tradition...

Perignon: the question being begged is: Whose tradition? there are
more traditions than people.

Perignon: tradition = dogma?

Sitaram: for me, we are touching now upon the I/Thou aspect between
self and reality, self and knowledge/truth

Perignon: new synonym?

Sitaram: semantics/buzzwords (and bogeymen)

Perignon: find your own path, it is your personal tradition.

Perignon: Beware of Dogma.

Sitaram: we are always searching for "truth" , yet we scorn the idea
of anything "old" being handed down (tradition), since it is old, and
hackneyed, and most of all, not "our own"

ionized: before I studied at university, I knew most of the thoughts
I have had where my own, cause I grew up a secluded country life, and
thought a lot. then I got to school and found that my thoughts had
all been thought before. this is very disheartening at first, but I
persisted, and continue to have innovative thoughts

Sitaram: "beware of dogma" is itself very dogmatic

Perignon: ionized: excellent
Perignon: beware is cautionary, not imperative.

Sitaram: but why disheartening (is that not ego speaking,... and the
more pernicious aspect of ego at that)

Perignon: not the same as, Ignore Dogma!

ionized: I will not deny that I have ego

Perignon: Is any human beyond or above ego? Is any human a saint?
Perignon: Ego, thy name is Human.

ionized: I at one time thought I had killed the ego. I only weakened
it, and it came back stronger once it recovered. this happens.

Sitaram: so, if one of us should peer into the abyss of
being/reality, and come back undestroyed, with a nugget of truth, we
will be an outcast, at first (like Galileo and other innovators), but
finally, our nugget will be stolen, plagiarized, accepted, and then
will become hackneyed dogma to be eyed with caution by the xenophobic

Sitaram: the psychology of knowledge

pisces30: I was just watching a documentary about an archeological
investigation to find the tablets of the ark of the covenant

vicent: and what are the conclusions?

pisces30: they found the remains of some big blocks of stones that
indicated a much older structure

pisces30: one wall of it remained

pisces30: and they did some radio scans under the wall

pisces30: found two anomalies which could be cavities

Sitaram: it is curious how, in the old testament (torah) there is
language which seems to indicate that the ark will be preserved for
all posterity, and that a jar of manna should be kept for all future
generations to see (i may be mistaken about this, but im certain I
remember such language)

pisces30: where Ramases III on his invasion of southern Judea would
have stored them

pisces30: and the tablets would have been a few inches by a few
inches not as they are stereotyped in the moves and two big stone
blocks

Sitaram: and no hieroglyphic references to the seemingly monumental
events described in the Pentateuch, to my knowledge

Sitaram: I searched Epictetus (circa 90 ad) for references to
Christianity, and found only one sentence, where he says something
like "oh, and by the way, don't be sour faced like those Christians"

DbleHelix: Sitaram: That's an excellent point. You'd think that
getting slammed by multiple cataclysms would be noteworthy, or maybe
the last Plague was Erasing All The Evidence Of Genesis And Exodus.

pisces30: but anyway they tried to get approval from the govt. but
the Palestinian govt. just frustrated the search

Sitaram: and I searched what I could of Marcus Aurelius writings
(circa 120ad) and found only one similar sentence/reference to
Christians

vicent: and now what's happening?

DbleHelix: pisces30: Well, that's not surprising. I'm sure the last
thing they'd want to hear is more polemics about how the land was
destined by God to belong to the Hebrews until he destroys the world
for the second time.

Sitaram: the Op's post about looking into reality for answers, which
made me think of Nietzsch's quote about peering into the abyss, and
Heidegger's quote about Being unveiling, made me search on google and
find this interesting essay: Being as Refusal: Melville's Bartleby as
Heideggerian Anti-Hero

Sitaram: the Op wrote: plan to look deep into the nature of the real
world and to dissect it

Sitaram: in Melville's story, Bartleby represents Being/Reality,
which refuses to reveal itself to humanity

Sitaram: the theme of Being as refusal to unveil

pisces30: interesting

Sitaram: you may like to read this essay yourself at this URL:

pisces30: I think being and reality only refuse to reveal themselves
when our 'higher faculties' are aborted

Sitaram: Heidegger writes: a broken hammer discloses the
questionableness of our being

DbleHelix: Sitaram: How does it do that?

Sitaram: Ordinarily, when a hammer works well, its being is masked by
its use

ionized: I agree pisces. if you ask me, most of being reality is
right in front of us, part of us, only refusing to unveil itself to
those who refuse to look

Sitaram: only when it breaks down, do we notice its "thingness"
sticking out like a sore thumb

pisces30: ionized: *nods*

Sitaram: As being without the justification of "serviceability" the
broken hammer discloses the questionableness of our being

Sitaram: Heidegger focuses on Being's concealment, on its refusal to
be disclosed

Sitaram: that which shrinks from every disclosure (Heidelberg, Godel)

Sitaram: in Melville's story, the employer (humanity) can never find
out a thing about Bartleby (who is Being/Reality), and cannot even
FIRE or evict Bartleby from the premises,... in the end, the employer
moves his business to another location, and leaves Bartleby sitting
there

pisces30: hehehe

Sitaram: I think that Kierkegaard and Sartre are correct about
literature being a more powerful tool to explore certain questions
than expository explicit monovalent writings

pisces30: if being and reality is matter and mind and desire, the
employer (humanity) cant move to another location
pisces30: cause the employer would destroy its very nature of what is
composed

pisces30: that is, some of Bartleby is the employer and the employer
part of Bartleby

Sitaram: we strive with a language (dialect) of ONE, (UNI-versity,
UNI-verse) to speak of what is inherently MANY, when what we need is
a language (dialect) of manyness

Sitaram: the Jaina philosophical term, "anekantavada"
(manypointedness), or "no one single point of view"

Sitaram: that any attempt to describe reality is but a partial aspect
of reality

ionized: this too is disheartening at times

Sitaram: Shankaracharya circe 900 ce, wrote a hymn which begins 'Oh
thou, from whom all words recoil" (Being?)

Sitaram: being/reality?

ionized: yeah sounds like that is what was meant

Sitaram: compare to Dionysius Areopagite's apophatic (speaking away
from)

Sitaram: we can say what it is NOT, and approach as close as we
please (calculus nascent and evanescent), but never arrive never
capture in the sense of "comprehend" (enclose)

Sitaram: Being is defined and fenced in by all our magnificent
failures

Sitaram: like the Rabbinic notion of Talmud as "a fence" around the
Torah

meduwerig: Sitaram I thought Heidegger thought that the pre-
Socratic Greeks understood Being but ever since then, it had been
covered up by centuries of metaphysics, which only showed us beings,
not Being

meduwerig: if we could just get back to the good ole pre-Socratic
understanding, Being would be revealed

Sitaram: yes, and the ancients knew the correct pronunciation of the
Tetragrammaton (YHWH), but alas,.... lost in the mists of
antiquity.... lost in a golden age....

Sitaram: back to the garden of Eden, before the angel with the fiery
sword (language?) was posted to guard its entrance

ionized: where do the eastern and western philosophies mesh? am I
wrong in thinking that they don't?

Sitaram: truth is more like a koan than a doctoral dissertation,
perhaps?

cafeteria: William James tried to combine them

Sitaram: show me your original face before your parents were born

Sitaram: Wm James, the last great pre Freudian psychologist

pisces30: I think they mesh with Schopenhauer

pisces30: if not enmesh, are adopted

pisces30: "everything is suffering"

meduwerig: ion it is not just an east/west schism. You could
instead ask where do Chinese/Indian philosophies mesh? or where do
Christian/Muslim philosophies mesh? etc

pisces30: its all too depressing

ionized: yes I see that, but I was trying to make a simple statement

Sitaram: somewhere in Islamic Hadith it says that paradise is under
the shadow of swords

meduwerig: ion in some ways, Indian philosophies are more similar
to western philosophies than to Chinese

Sitaram: shadow sounds ominous, shade sounds nomadically refreshing...

Sitaram: under the SHADE of swords (like an oasis)

Sitaram: shadow is too Jungian

ionized: and to think that shade and shadow are really the same thing

meduwerig: sit I don't think of words in such negative terms

Sitaram: my father gave me my first lesson in the business world,...
he heard me say (our product is CHEAPER), so he explained that it was
preferable to say "economical" or "cost-effective"

Sitaram: pastors minister the word, but heretics spout and spew

Sitaram: the wise man discourses but the sophist rants

ionized: the enlightened smiles

meduwerig: Sitaram Heraclitus and the logos tradition sees words
in terms of fire or light rather than shade or shadow

Sitaram: a full-figured woman is different from a fat lady

Sitaram: but then, technically, the crucifixion may be seen as a
suicide (willingly going to one's own execution), and Eucharist is a
form of child sacrifice (the Father sacrifices his only begotten),
and communion is symbolic cannibalism (eat my flesh)...

meduwerig: Sitaram I thought the Fat Lady was Brunnehilde singing
the Immolation Scene in Goetterdaemerung, after which Wagner's 18-
hear long Ring Cycle concludes

Sitaram: Socrates in a sense acquiesced to suicide by not attempting
escape, but he seemed to see it as the obligation of a social contract

meduwerig: not that Bruennhilde was supposed to be fat, but the kind
of body required to sing Wagnerian soprano is pretty hefty, massive
lungs required

meduwerig: especially such a long and torturous solo as Bruenhilde's
immolation

Sitaram: we need more reasons for being fat (justifications)

Sitaram: practical and applied philosophy

ionized: I don't mind being small

meduwerig: first rate Wagnerian sopranos have to have freakish bodies

Sitaram: Woody Allen made a futuristic movie in which the doctor
scolds him for not smoking more and eating more chocolate

Sitaram: sometimes, we look for doctors (and philosophers) who will
tell us what we want to hear

Sitaram: but Socrates said "xalapa ta kala" (beautiful/noble/good
things are difficult)

Sitaram: no mother ever scolds her child for giving away too many
toys.

meduwerig: Sitaram: no mother ever scolds her child for giving away
too many toys.. = Imagine Ayn Rand as a mom

Sitaram: If we look to the physics of the universe for wisdom, we
seem to see a thermodynamics which tells us that everything is in a
great march from order (negative entropy) to disorder (maximum
entropy)... yet we stubbornly prize order over disorder, and seek to
impose order on Being

Sitaram: We pride ourselves on our ability to forecast and predict,
yet we abhor the notion of a total determinism which leaves no room
for free will and individuality

Sitaram: At the heart of science is the repeatable experiment with
predictable results

ionized: if we look into the physics deep enough, we see the physics

meduwerig: sitar many determinists abhor randomness, spontaneity or
indeterminism, and imo philosophy suffers a glut of determinists

Sitaram: So what should we do if we peer into the abyss of Being and
learn a truth which we do not care for

meduwerig: sitar also, in India, as well as in the west among
Protestants like Calvinists & Lutherans, freedom is not highly
regarded

Sitaram: the inexorable law of karma, which even the deity is subject
to

Sitaram: but then, the new testament says 'for God cannot lie"

meduwerig: sit right, in India, even the gods are subject to
karma, and the notion of free will is regarded as senseless

ionized: it seems people are confused

Sitaram: well, one has free will choice, but there are karmic
consequences for every thought and action....

Sitaram: like Newton's third law, for every action, there is a
reaction

DbleHelix: Sitaram: I've seen no evidence for the validity of that
principle.

Sitaram: One may choose his own dance style, but must pay the piper

meduwerig: sitar ..not to mention that your current actions were
determined by karmic consequences from past acts

ionized: not when applied to things other than forces

Sitaram: We are what we do, and we do what we are - Maslow

Sitaram: Mathematics is the baptism which cleanses every sin, isn't
it?

ionized: we regard symmetry as high on the list of goods

Sitaram: We assume that we know what we shall find, what it will look
like, how it will behave, before we ever embark on our quest

ionized: Sometimes that is very true Sitaram

Sitaram: Abraham Heschel says, "We must learn to understand what we
see, rather than simply see only what we understand"

meduwerig: sitar ok, if we are looking for something specific

Sitaram: Lobachevsky sincerely believed that he would reach a
reduction ad absurdum and prove Euclid's fifth postulate

Session Close: Thu Jul 04 12:15:50 2002