{∅, {∅}, {∅, {∅}}} : Rage Against the Meat Grinder
General Category => What Now? => Topic started by: Holden on August 12, 2015, 06:58:46 am
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The year 1848 was decidedly nervewracking for the established rulers of Europe. Not only had Marx and Engels published their Communist Manifesto at the year's beginning, calling on the proletariat to rise up and throw off their chains, but bourgeois-democratic and progressive forces were out on the streets of European capitals, demanding the overthrow of the old quasi-feudal order. Before the year was out, France, Italy, Denmark, Germany, the Austrian Empire and the Netherlands had seen popular uprisings, the monarchies in France and Denmark had fallen, and serfdom had been abolished in Austria and Hungary.
Not everybody was sanguine about this upsurge in revolutionary consciousness. Holed up in his Frankfurt apartment, Arthur Schopenhauer, who had written so powerfully of the importance of compassion, was worried that the "sovereign canaille" - the rabble on the streets - would deprive him of his wealth. He dismissed the leaders of the German revolt as "students gone wrong" and suggested that the materialism of their philosophy - eat, drink, there is no pleasure after death - was a kind of bestialism. His biographers report that he began to economise, gave up his daily lunches at the Zum Schwan inn, and was prone to bouts of rage and fearfulness.
Matters came to a head in Frankfurt on September 18th, when the simmering tension of the previous months spilled over into violence, sparked by the new German parliament's endorsement of a peace treaty between Denmark and Prussia that favoured the status quo. The result was barricades on the street, the brutal murder of two conservative politicians, and a bizarre encounter between Schopenhauer and the Austrian army.
Schopenhauer's apartment on the Schone Aussicht afforded the philosopher a good view of the day's tumultuous events, and he didn't much like what he was seeing. His biographer, David Cartwright, reports that he watched "a disorderly crowd of people armed with poles, pitchforks and rifles pour across the bridges from Sachsenhausen." Snipers from the Austrian army took up strategic positions, and fired into the crowd.
It was at this point that things took a rather surreal turn. Schopenhauer heard a commotion outside his locked apartment, followed by loud banging on his front door. Fearing that the sovereign canaille had finally tracked him down, he left it to his maid to go see what all the fuss was about. She reported back that it was not the rabble at the door, but rather the Austrian army. Schopenhauer was thrilled.
Immediately I opened the door to these worthy friends. 20 stout Bohemians in blue pants rushed in to shoot at the sovereign canaille from my window. Soon, however, they thought better of it and went to a neighboring house. From the first floor the officer reconnoitered the crowd behind the barricade. Immediately, I sent him my big, double opera glasses...
The idea, of course, was for the officer to use the glasses as a rifle-sight to make it easier for him to take pot shots at the rabble in the street below.
It is fair to say that Schopenhauer was not a great fan of revolutions; he was, as Bryan Magee puts it, "a counter-revolutionary, a reactionary in the strict sense of that word." It is no great surprise, then, that he called for Robert Blum, one of the leaders of the Frankfurt uprising, to be hanged; that he sang the praises of Prince Alfred Windisch-Graetz for successfully quelling the rebellion; and that a few years later he left a large sum in his will to the "fund for the relief of the Prussian soldiers who... had become disabled in their struggle for the maintenance of law and order in Germany, and of the next of kin of those who had fallen in this struggle".
I’m certain there is a lesson here,somewhere..
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Does this change how you feel about Schopenhauer's philosophy?
I have mixed feelings, for sure.
What comes to my mind are the crowds on Black Friday when "the people" are in a mad rush to go shopping. I reflect upon the way crowds behave in spectator sports and even some rock concerts.
I am not sure if I have much love for "the people".
It's all such a nightmare, Holden.
Where would anything lead? I guess we have to take it for what it's worth. Like I mentioned in another thread, I can become very frustrated with words.
I don't know where I stand. We have both alluded to how fortunate Schopenhauer was to be able to live on an inheritance. He still chose a scholarly lifestyle. I still appreciate the work he passed down to us.
We each are born into our own circumstances. I find it hard to have any faith in "the revolution" although I do support raising the minimum wage as I can attest that seeking higher education in mathematics, computer science, or even engineering may not be enough for one to rise out of the unskilled labor pool.
I see no shame in stocking shelves in a grocery store, and learning is a lifelong project.
Damn, Holden. It's all so complicated, if I were hard pressed to choose a side, I would not know what to do. I am certainly not wealthy, so I would not risk my life to defend others' capital and property, but I am no fan of riotous crowds either.
Can't we just quietly disappear into the void and forget about publishing our critique? :-\
I'm feeling rather lazy and uninspired. 8)
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Au contraire. What I wrote ,in a way, beautifully illustrates what S.meant when says “Qualitas Occulta”.So long as we have the principle of sufficient reason, causality,space ,time, principium individuationis,a blind craving Will-there can be no revolution by definition.
They have not abolished slavery, only made it politically correct. They cannot, if they wanted to.
A thought experiment: S. helps the “rabble”.
Consequence:He loses his money & peace. The rabble’s so-called revolution gets crushed anyway. But of course,S.was no emotional fool.
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I guess Schopenhauer was very intimate with the will, even the will-of-others.
That's why he slept with a loaded revolver by his pillow! ;)
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There is but One WILL.
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The Will in Nature (plus Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason) (http://en.bookfi.org/book/1294338)
I don't know if the other one made it. Maybe you can grab it directly. This copy looks like it is actually from 1890, only shortly after Schopenhauer's death.
It's kind of cool looking. Very old pages.
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Thank you my friend.
Schopenhauer ask in his essay On the Foundation of Morality, "How is it possible that suffering that is neither my own nor of my concern should immediately affect me as though it were my own, and with such force that it moves me to action?...This is something really mysterious, something for which no basis can be found in practical experience. It is nevertheless of common occurrence, and everyone has had the experience. It is not unknown even to the most hard-hearted and self-interested. Examples appear every day before our eyes of instant responses of this kind, without reflection, one person helping another, coming to his aid, even setting his own life in clear danger for someone whom he has seen for the first time, having nothing more in mind than that the other is in need and in peril of his life..."
Schopenhauer's answer to this question is that this immediate reaction and response represents the breakthrough of a metaphysical realization---namely (as he states the idea in Sanskrit), "tat tvam asi, thou art that."
"This presupposes," he declares, "that I have to some extent identified myself with the other and therewith removed for the moment the barrier between the 'I' and the 'Not-I'. Only then can the other's situation, his want, his need, become mine. I then no longer see him in the way of an empirical perception, as one strange to me, indifferent to me, completely other than myself; but in him I suffer, in spite of the fact that his skin does not enfold my nerves."
"Individuation is but an appearance in a field of space and time, these being the conditioning forms through which my cognitive faculties apprehend their objects. Hence the multiplicity and differences that distinguish individuals are likewise but appearances. They exist, that is to say, only in my mental representation. My own true inner being actually exists in every living creature as truly and immediately as known to my consciousness only in myself. This realization, for which the standard formula is in Sanskrit is tat tvam asi, is the ground of that compassion upon which all true, that is to say unselfish, virtue rests and whose expression is in every good deed."
Im certain that the Buddha has not attained salvation,for I have not attained salvation.
And neither has Schopenhauer,for you have not attained salvation.Is that why Gary strives?
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Yes. There is no salvation, reward, nor punishment ... and yet, if eternity is in a mustard seed, then we experience our punishments and rewards in the Now.
The "salvation" seems to be only a temporary state of release from care and worry, but are not our "punishments" (strong cravings and wants) also temporary - erased by death?
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The best way to understand Kant, is to first understand Hume and then understand the different philosophical approaches between both Kant and Hume. As Kant stated: ‘From this it follows incontestably, that pure concepts of the understanding never admit of a transcendental, but only of an empirical use, and that the principles of the pure understanding can only be referred, as general conditions of a possible experience, to objects of the senses, never to things in themselves…’ — Critique of Pure Reason, 1781.
Influenced by Hume, the basis of Kant’s resistance to the contemporary philosophers of that day (orthodox rationalism) who held that knowledge is expressed from reason, is his ‘thing-in-itself’, that our minds cannot come into direct contact with ultimate reality because our brains are pre-fitted with many various concepts and sensory filters. This follows that since knowledge is expressed through experience rather than reason, what we perceive and understand as reality, is in actuality a step or two removed from things in themselves.
Where Kant differs from Hume is on the very nature of experiences, Kant denied the classical empiricist position (that experiences cement themselves on the brain), to Kant the idea that concepts are a result of experiences and depend upon them and cannot exist before them seemed totally ridiculous. Hume maintained that concepts e.g. such as the minds notions on space, time etc.. are based upon observations within an experience, Kant ultimately refuted this by peeling back Hume’s ideas and evaluating them at square one.
Kant achieved this by the following, in concerns to say the concepts of time and space, how can we as humans experience that one thing is next to another thing (space) or that one event happens after another (time)? Unless we already have concepts such as ‘next to’ and ‘after’ i.e. the concepts of time and space built into our minds to begin with, Kant solidified this argument by making clear that if such things were not already built into our minds to begin with, we could never even make sense of the complexity that is perception. Concepts of space, time along with an army of other ‘categories’ such as quality, relation, cause, quantity must be inherent to thought, Kant believed, they are forms in which we impose on experiences in order that we may understand and organise them — to make sense of them.
In addition to this, since everyone shares the same thoughts on space, time and such therein, Kant also upheld that these ideas are not only innate but are also universally contained. If space and time only exist in the mind, as Kant pretty much implies, then by experiencing the world as existing within time and space we are in fact just experiencing how the world appears to us, not really how it is. The oasis-mirage you see in the desert, is really just sand.
Do you agree that its all a mirage?
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Unless we already have concepts such as ‘next to’ and ‘after’ i.e. the concepts of time and space built into our minds to begin with, Kant solidified this argument by making clear that if such things were not already built into our minds to begin with, we could never even make sense of the complexity that is perception.
This reminds me very much of "Where Mathematics Comes From" ... (Lakoff) ... you know, the way the very foundations of the theory of numbers and counting is firmly rooted in concepts such as "next to" and "after" ... and, you are absolutely on point suggesting that we cannot imagine space without the concept of time any more than we could possibly imagine time without the concept of space.
Is it all a mirage? In some sense, yes, quite definitley. It's a mirgae in the sense that its all just data from sensory receptors fed to the "understanding" which translates the raw data into some kind of approximation of our "situation."
I think that, as a teenager, I was so drawn to hallucingens because they made the illusory nature of "the real world" clear.
There is a joke and I hardly remember how it goes, but it ends with me getting crushed by a big fat elephant who is a figment of my imagination! ???
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I read your new article on your blog.Very well written.Been thinking of the painting Scream.Did you know that S.inspired it?Munch wrote how the visionary experience of The Scream came to him:
I went along the road with two friends—
The sun set
Suddenly the sky became blood—and I felt the breath of sadness
A tearing pain beneath my heart
I stopped—leaned against the fence—deathly tired
Clouds over the fjord of blood dripped reeking with blood
My friends went on but I just stood trembling with an open wound
in my breast trembling with anxiety I heard a huge extraordinary
scream pass through nature.
The experience came to him high up on Ekeberg at sunset. Ekeberg is to the east of Oslo.
The main slaughterhouse for the city was up there, and so was Gaustad, the city’s madhouse, in which his relative had been incarcerated. He had probably gone up there to visit him. The screams of the animals being slaughtered in combination with the screams of the insane were reported to be a terrible thing to hear.
The Scream is the the image on the reverse, the hidden side of the eyeball as Munch looked into himself. Strindberg’s interpretation was, ‘A scream of fear just as nature, turning red from wrath, prepares to speak before the storm and thunder, to the bewildered little creatures who, without resembling them in the least, imagine themselves to be gods.’
It is often linked with Schopenhauer’s concept of dread. Writing in Philosophie der Kunst, Schopenhauer ponders the degree of expressiveness that a work of art can achieve and he sets the challenge for pictorial art to reproduce a scream.
Munch's words: ‘And for several years I was almost mad—that was the time when the terror of insanity reared up its twisted head. You know my picture, The Scream? I was being stretched to the limit—nature was screaming in my blood—I was at breaking point . . . You know my pictures, you know it all—you know I felt it all. After that I gave up hope ever of being able to love .
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That's an extreme scenario, the screaming animals at the slaughterhouse and the inmates of the madhouse screaming with dread and anxiety ... I found a similar artistic expression, although not as intense, in Celine's Journey to the End of the End, where he can't help but overhear a husband and wife involved in a violent argument. Just sitting in one's apartment with the sounds of life playing itself out ... the battling of the wills and so forth ...
I have heard people say there is safety in numbers, and yet masses of any creature seems more like a horror.
Maybe I find such peace in researching mathematical ideas, looking at anonymous code, changing it a little to suit my private purposes, and all that, is because, while thousands of individuals contribute to the wealth of knowledge being zapped throughout all these computer networks, we each are separated into our little private cells where our wills (and creative impulses) do not clash.
Many derogatory and denigrating remarks are made about those who are "self-absorbed", but that is where the inner action is going on. It's not about numbers, but about insight.
And while I have tender feelings toward someone like "Pope" Francis, I also see the irony that the one who "Saint" Paul was supposedly the central motivation for building a "Church" had advised his "followers" not to make a circus out of "prayer" but to go lock themselves in a room alone and pray in privacy.
So, whereas some are horrified by the extreme cases like screaming animal life being slaughtered in an efficient and mechanical manner, as well as the sounds of those moaning and groaning in despair in huge factory-like prisons and dungeons, there is also this subtle horror one can experience just viewing mass society in action ... the madness and politics ... How did Schopenhauer describe it? Parades, horns, bells and whistles ... and what is going on? Fanfare ... red carpets ... What is all this monkey business?
Oh, by the way, I attached a few pages to what will most likely eventually become Chapter 19 of Dead End. For whatever reason, while just responding to a comment, I must have had a clear mind, and I realized that is the kind of writing I would put in "the philosophical diary". Kind of uncanny.
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In Weimar S. had become acquainted with Goethe, for whom he felt an admiration almost religious in its intensity, and had studied the theory of colors which the poet was passionately advocating against the generally accepted theory of Newton. The result was a new work, On Vision and Colors. Schopenhauer followed in the footsteps of Goethe, attacking Newton unsparingly, but introduced certain speculations of his own not wholly in agreement with the poet's.
Are you familiar with this conflict?What do you think of it.
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I will think about this. I was aware of his reverence for Goethe. Wasn't he a bit peeved that his mother was some kind of social butterfly? She was only 17 when she married his father, who was older. Did she entertain Goethe. I'm not sure ...
As far as Schopenhauer attacking Newton's theories, it wouldn't surprise me. Arthur Schopenhauer appears to have been tormented by a "strong will".
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I looked into this, and as I was just going through sympy.physics.mechanics, I thought of how the name Newton is associated with the kind of Physics that we call Mechanics. I remembered your post about Schopenhauer's hesitance to go along with Newton's theories, and I thought maybe there is a connection with Quantum Physics.
So I did a quick search and download a 20 page paper from Academia.
I will try to attach it to this message.
What contemporary quantum physics seems to be telling us is that deep down, way below the microscopic level, the world is not a world of spatially and temporally located particles of matter – it is not the world of phenomena. “Particleness” itself is a subjective imposition that enters the picture only when an “observer” enters. Unobserved – or as Schopenhauer would put it “un-represented to our perceiving instrument,” or “outside the world as representation,” or “in the world as Will,” – true reality, at its deepest level, consists of “possibilities, tendencies, and urges.”
It seems that even for the quantum physicists it is difficult to avoid anthropomorphisms like the word “urges”. The quantum physicists may indeed be telling us that the world, at that level of deep reality, is “Will” (and its dehumanized, inanimate correspondent), and that what we take to be the attributes of “matter” are really subjective impositions, i.e., events that occur in the acts of observing and perceiving – or events that our perceiving instrument represents to us. It seems difficult to conclude otherwise – or so one might imagine Schopenhauer arguing.
The file did not attach itself. I will send via email.
I will also read it in full before commenting again.
It's called "Schopenhauer’s Metaphysics and Contemporary Quantum Theory"
Notes:
It is in the implications of the theory of quantum physics that Schopenhauer’s metaphysics find their closest analogue.
Schopenhauer’s influence on later artists, writers, philosophers, psychologists – thinkers in general – is well known. One need only mention a few, like Wagner, Turgenev, Zola, Proust, Hardy, Conrad, Melville, Mann, Tolstoy, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, and Jung. Less well known, however, is the fact that, in the world of the hard science of physics, several of the originators and developers of quantum theory had studied and found much to admire in the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer. Moreover, it is not simply that many of the quantum physicists, like Albert Einstein, Wolfgang Pauli, Erwin Schrödinger, and others, studied Schopenhauer and appreciated his philosophy. The connection between Schopenhauer and these great physicists goes beyond mere study and appreciation. Schopenhauer may have influenced the thinking of at least some of them. And beyond the notion that the writings of Schopenhauer may have influenced the thought of some of the great quantum physicists, there is, influence or no, a remarkable consonance between the tenets of Schopenhauer’s metaphysics and the tenets of contemporary quantum theory.
Pauli’s biographical data demonstrate his rich familiarity with Schopenhauer’s philosophy. In a letter to his colleague Victor Weisskopf, written in 1954, some time after his major contributions to quantum theory, Pauli described his (Pauli’s) own philosophical orientation: “My own philosophical background,” wrote Pauli, “is a mixture of Schopenhauer (minus the determinism of his times), Lao Tse, and Niels Bohr.” In another letter, this time written to the analytical psychologist Carl Jung, Pauli wrote: “As you well know, in regard to religion and philosophy, I come from Lao-Tse and Arthur Schopenhauer.” Pauli expanded on those terse statements in another letter to the philosopher H. L. Goldschmidt:
"The East as a whole has made a strong impression on me [wrote Pauli], China even more than India, both the ideas of the I-Ching (Yin-Yang polarity) and also Lao Tse. Schopenhauer’s attempt to bring Kant and Buddhism under one umbrella I found very interesting, but, owing to Kant’s recalcitrance and Buddha’s passivity in the face of the world, not successful."
Schopenhauer’s dual world is a strange one indeed – every bit as strange as the dual world of the quantum theorists. At the ordinary level – the phenomenal level, i.e., the level at which we normally perceive things – we experience things and events as discrete and concrete “realities”. But at that other level, the level of true reality, the level of thing-in-itself – the noumenal level – it is quite a different situation. At that deep level, which we can experience only dimly and inferentially, all is “will”, a chaos of tendency – tendency to exist, to occur, to live, to interconnect, and to survive.
The point is that contemporary quantum physicists also posit a dual reality. At the ordinary level – the level at which we live and work – we experience things and events as discrete and concrete “realities”, realities that are quite adequately explained in terms of Newtonian physics and Euclidean geometry. But at that other level, the level of true reality, the submicroscopic level of “thing-in-itself” as understood by the quantum physicists, all is … what? Waves? Waves of what? Waves of probability, of tendency. Reality at the quantum or thing-in-itself level seems to be a chaos of tendency – tendency to exist, to occur, to live, to interconnect, and to survive – patterns of probabilities – searching for a word that isn’t there. Schopenhauer chose the word “will”.
“The fundamental tenet of the Vedanta school consisted not in denying the existence of matter, that is, of solidity, impenetrability, and extended figure (to deny which would be lunacy), but in correcting the popular notion of it, and in contending that it has no essence independent of mental perception; that existence and perceptibility are convertible terms.” These words [wrote Schopenhauer] adequately express the compatibility of empirical reality with transcendental ideality.
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Thank you so much-this is something which I have been looking for.I will check my mail.Buddhism today is usually seen as a kind of pragmatic therapy that cures or reduces suffering, but from approximately 1820 to 1890--Europe was haunted by the nightmare of an alternative religion that denied existence and recommended annihilation. It had less to do with the rudimentary state of Buddhist studies during that period than with Europe's fears about its own incipient nihilism, which would later ripen into the horrors of the twentieth century. Thinking they were talking about the Buddha, Westerners were talking about themselves.
At the end of the eighteenth century, new translations of Indian texts were exciting European intellectuals, giving rise to hopes for another Renaissance greater than the one that had resulted from the late-medieval rediscovery of Greek texts. But it never happened. About 1820, when scholarly research first clarified the distinction from Brahmanism, "Buddhism" became constructed as a religion that, amazingly, worshiped nothingness, and European commentators reacted in horror.
In their descriptions of nirvana, earlier scholars such as Francis Buchanan and Henry Thomas Colebrooke had been careful to deny that it was equivalent to annihilation. Their influence, however, was overwhelmed by the philosophical impact of Hegel and later the unsurpassed authority of Eugene Burnouf at the Collge de France. Hegel established the strong link with Nichts that would endure throughout most of the century. Instead of benefiting from the best scholarship then available, he relied on earlier sources such as de Guignes and the Abbots Banier and Grosier, evidently because their views of Buddhism fit better into his equation of pure Being with pure Nothingness. In Hegel's system this equation signified the advent of interiority, a "lack of determination" that was not really atheistic or nihilistic in the modern sense--more like the negative theology of Rhineland mystics such as Meister Eckhart. Later, Burnouf's Introduction a l'histoire du Buddhisme indien (1844) was immensely influential because it provided the first rigorous study of the Buddha's teachings, thus taking Buddhist studies to a new level of sophistication, but one which firmly established the nihilistic specter: despite making cautious qualifications due to the West's still-limited knowledge, Burnouf did not hesitate to identify nirvana with total annihilation.
Burnouf's scholarly objectivity was soon supplemented by apologetic and missionary ardor. Catholic preachers such as Ozanam declared that, behind his serene mask, the Buddha was Satan himself in a new incarnation. The Buddha's cult of nothingness aroused in Felix Neve's soul the need to liberate Buddhist peoples from their errors, weakness, and immobility. Victor Cousins, who played a major role in establishing philosophical education in mid-century France, and who proclaimed that Sanskrit texts were worthy of Western philosophical attention, nevertheless followed Burnouf in reacting against the Buddhist system: it was not only an anti-religion but a counterworld, a threat to order. His follower Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire took a further step and denied that such a "deplorable and absurd" faith could be philosophically relevant, even asking whether such a strange phenomenon meant that human nature in India "is still the same nature we feel within ourselves," since Buddhism's "gloomy meaning" led only to "moral suicide" . Ernest Renan called Buddha "the atheistic Christ of India" and attacked his revolting "Gospel of Nihilism" .
Schopenhauer discovered in Buddhism many of his favorite themes--renunciation, compassion, negation of the will to live--but relatively late, so, Buddhism had no significant influence on his system. However, his annexation of Buddhist principles brought the Buddhist challenge back to Europe, from missionary conversion to counteracting home-grown nihilism. Ever the philosopher, however, Schopenhauer was careful to say that nirvana could only be nothingness "for us," since the standpoint of our own existence does not allow us to say anything more about it. Would that other commentators had been so sensible.
The nihilistic understanding of Buddhism had a significant impact on Arthur de Gobineau's Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races , which would become enormously influential for the Nazis and other twentieth-century racists. For Gobineau, humanity was rushing to perdition and nothingness due to degeneration caused by intermingling of the races. He viewed Buddhism as the effort of an inferior people to overthrow the racially superior Aryan Brahmins. The failure of this attempt--the fact that Buddhism was largely eliminated from India--was somewhat inconsistent with his own historical pessimism, which accepted the inevitability of decline; but it may have encouraged the Nazis to attempt their own program of extermination for the sake of racial purity.
Nietzsche, too, accepted the view of Buddhism as aspiring to nothingness, although for him it was the similarity with Christianity, not the difference, that was the problem. In the end the choice is between Buddhism, Schopenhauer, weakness, and peaceful inactivity, or strength, conflict,pain, and tragedy. Buddhism's spread in Europe was unfortunate, Nietzsche believed, since "Nostalgia for nothingness is the negation of tragic wisdom, its opposite".
The issue at stake was always Europe's own identity. With "Buddhism" Europe constructed a mirror in which it dared not recognize itself. (Darwin, the death of God, and Europe's own hopes for/fears of a religion of Reason without transcendence.)
When the question of the Buddha's atheism arose, it was the atheism of the Europeans that was really in question. No one really believed, and almost no one ever said, that the beliefs of the Buddhists on the other side of the world were going to come and wreak havoc among the souls of the West. It was not a conversion, a corrosion, a 'contamination' of any kind that was threatening, coming from outside. It was in Europe itself that the enemy, and the danger, were to be found.
This was not only a threat to the foundations of one's personal belief-system, but a challenge that threatened to undermine social order. "The nothingness of order corresponded to the nothingness of being. Once again, this nothingness was not the equivalent of a pure and simple absence. It was supposed to undo and disorganize. It was dangerous because it shattered, it leveled, it instigated anarchy.
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Ernest Renan called Buddha "the atheistic Christ of India" and attacked his revolting "Gospel of Nihilism"
It's funny how detractors often complement the ones they attempt to insult.
These are honorable titles, I think: the atheistic Christ of India ... the Gospel of Nihilism ...
Gabriel Harvey, a jealous hater of Christopher Marlowe, gave an unintentional tribute to the strength of Marlowe’s personality with the following (intended) indictment: “He that nor feared God, nor dread Devil, nor ought admired but his wondrous self.”
;D
While we can't ignore the history of those who "worshipped Nothingness" before us, it is quite possible one can approach this outside of a religious context, on a very personal level.
These days, and I guess I can only speak for myself, I don't even believe such a thing as the soul exists. So many abstract concepts ... so many wrong assumptions passed down to us.
I have to agree with Schopenhauer when he points out how much more psychologically sophisticated Buddhism appears in comparison to the Jewish religions (he includes Christianity and Islam).
I have learned to just go along with ideas about "the soul" since people are evidently very attached to this concept.
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I started reading The Will in Nature (http://en.bookfi.org/book/1294338) last night. I don't know why it took me so long to track this book down. I really appreciate en.bookfi.org.
I remember trying to track down a copy of this book 20 years ago, and then I just gave up, I guess.
Schopenhauer really resented professional academic philosophers, going so far as saying that University philosophy (as a trade) is the enemy of true philosophers. He was very aware of why he had been ignored for so long by his contemporaries.
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The man who has not mastered the Kantian philosophy, whatever else he may have studied, is, so to speak, in a state of innocence; in other words, he has remained in the grasp of that natural and childlike realism in which we are all born, and which qualifies one for every possible thing except philosophy. Consequently, such a man is related to the other as a person under age is to an adult.
(Arthur Schopenhauer)
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In a famous passage toward the end of the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant says that two things fill the mind with ever increasing wonder: the starry heavens above and the moral law within. Through Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and others, incredible progress had been made about understanding the "starry heavens above." But skeptical philosophers like David Hume maintained that the scientific success could not be extended to other areas such as theology or morality.
Hume said that what we see in the natural world might have all kinds of causes. Inferring a Creator, let alone a particular kind of Creator, goes beyond the evidence. In fact, the very concept of causality is merely a habit of the mind that we form by constantly seeing two things happening together. If we did not repeatedly observe that a billiard ball moved when hit by another billiard ball, we would not bring the two events in relation to each other. And we certainly would not be able to infer from the movement of the one ball that another ball had struck it, unless we have constantly observed the two together.
Likewise, we cannot infer anything about supposed metaphysical causes by looking at the physical world, because causal relations only form in our minds through repeated experience. But no one in his right mind claims, for instance, that he constantly observes God creating the world. God as a cause is inferred from the effect, but that is precisely what, according to Hume, we cannot do.
These and other thoughts by Hume awoke Kant, as he himself said, out of his "dogmatic slumber." Essentially, Hume raised in him the following questions:
Given what Hume said about causality, how can I affirm the validity of Newton’s physics, which is built on the concept of causality? What makes it possible for natural science and mathematics to give us apparently reliable knowledge of the world?
Why is it so difficult to make similar progress in metaphysical questions about God, the soul, free will, and morality? Is knowledge about these things possible at all? And if so, in what way and to what degree? Clearly, Reason itself compels us to ask these questions, but then Reason seems to be unable to answer them. Why is that?
In Kant’s long and laborious answer, laid out in his Critique of Pure Reason, he essentially harmonizes Hume with Newton. Science and mathematics are so successful, he says, because they only describe reality as it appears to us, not as it is in itself. Science only studies the world that we can touch, feel, see, hear, and smell—the experiences of our senses. Even with the aid of technology such as a telescope or, nowadays, a particle accelerator, we take in all scientific data through our senses. But the way that we experience our senses—the way our mind puts together what we touch, feel, see, hear, and smell—depends on certain forms in which our mind is structured. We cannot help thinking in terms of space and time, cause and effect, quantity and quality, modality and relation. These ways of thinking are what Kant calls a priori, that is, they come before experience. In fact, all coherent experience is dependent on them.
The problem of dogmatic metaphysics is that it pretends we can free ourselves from these necessary preconditions of our experience and get direct, unfiltered knowledge of ultimate reality. Not so, says Kant. Even space and time are not a reality that we perceive without a human filter. On the contrary, it is impossible for us to think of anything without picturing it in time and space. Space and time are, so to speak, mental cookie cutters. They are forms of the human mind that the dough of our experience has to conform to in order to experience anything at all. In Kant’s terminology, they are "forms of intuition" or "forms of sensibility."
Does that mean, then, that space and time are completely subjective and do not exist at all except in our minds? Do we live in some kind of illusory world, like in the Matrix? No, that would be to misunderstand Kant. Space and time are real for Kant. Objects do not merely seem to exist in time and space; they are in time and space. But since space and time are necessary concepts for any experience whatsoever, the concepts only apply to things as they appear to us. In what way and to what degree space and time apply to reality apart from our experience of reality, is unknowable to us. All we can say is they are necessary concepts for experiencing reality. Therefore, while all objects of our experience are in time, not all of reality must necessarily be in time as we understand it. While all objects of our experiences are in space, not all of reality must necessarily be in space as we understand it. On an ultimate level, reality might be quite different from the space-time framework from which we cannot free ourselves.
That is why, Kant thinks, mathematics and geometry have truths that can be definitely proven. They are about the necessary forms of all our experience, which is why they are internally coherent. Geometry takes place in space, and mathematics is done in time. Thus, they must conform to our a priori intuitions of space and time.
This makes arithmetic and geometry "synthetic a priori truths." "Synthetic" means that they are truths not merely about the meaning of words, which would be "analytic" truths, but about the real world. At the same time, however, these truths are a priori in that they are not based on our experience of the real world.
Kant’s conception of time and space as they relate to arithmetic and geometry is a good example of why he called his philosophy a new "Copernican Revolution." Just like Copernicus had reverted our understanding of the universe by proposing that it is us who move, even though it looks as if the sun moved, so Kant tried to show that it is really the structure of our minds that "moves" in a certain way and lets reality appear to us according to these "movements." Empiricists such as John Locke had thought that objective reality impressed itself on the blank slate of our minds. Kant proposed that it was the other way round: Our minds impressed themselves on objective reality. All our experiences of the outer world must necessarily conform to the a priori forms of our intuition and fundamental categories of our understanding. If Locke and Hume had been right, all our ideas about the world would arise as a result of our experience. They would come "after" experience, a posteriori. In contrast, Kant thought that a priori knowledge—knowledge prior to experience—was possible, namely the knowledge of the categories of our understanding to which our experiences conform.
Kant divided these categories as follows:
Quantity: unity, plurality, and totality.
Quality: reality, negation, and limitation.
Modality: possibility, existence, and necessity.
Relation: inherence, causality, community, and correlation.
While there was nothing particularly new about this list as such, as Aristotle and the Scholastics had already made similar categorizations, the revolutionary move on Kant’s part was to say that they are a priori: that they precede experience and are necessary conditions for it. In the longest and probably most difficult part of the Critique of Pure Reason, called the "Transcendental Deduction of the Categories," Kant tries to prove that these categories are in fact a priori.
Having, in Kant’s mind, provided this proof, he is now ready to answer his initial questions more explicitly. (1) What makes it possible for natural science and mathematics to give us apparently reliable knowledge of the world? (2) And why is it so difficult to make similar progress in metaphysical questions about God, the soul, free will, and morality? The answer is that science, arithmetic, and geometry stay within the framework of what is possible for us to experience—a framework that is set by the forms of intuition and the categories of the understanding. This is why science is so effective, but it also means that science is limited. It shows us only the “phenomenal” world, not the “noumenal” world. That is, it only shows as the world as it appears to us, not as it is in itself. The world as it is in itself is the realm of metaphysics, and this is why we cannot give scientific answers to metaphysical questions.
The last third of the Critique of Pure Reason attempts to show, as Robert Kane has put it, “how we get into trouble when we try to press the human mind beyond possible experience into the realms of metaphysics.” Take the existence of God, for instance. Trying to prove his existence has failed, Kant says, because such proofs take the categories of the understanding that only apply to the physical world of appearances and impose them on matters that exceed the bounds of our possible experience. We cannot infer what caused the universe to come into existence based on our way of thinking, because our way of thinking is only fitted for inferences about the physical world of appearances.
Or take the soul. We cannot, Kant stresses, know the soul as such, only the self as it appears to us—our “phenomenal” self, not our “noumenal” self. We do not and cannot know what the soul is in itself, apart from the way our sense of self appears to us. Neither can we say anything of scientific certainty about the mortality or immortality of the soul. We may have faith and hope in eternal life based on what Kant calls “practical” Reason, but not scientific certainty.
Nor can we scientifically resolve the conflict between determinism and free will. Science is based on the view that everything works by determined laws, but our understanding of morality is based on the view that we have free will. Without the concept of free will, none of our moral practices would make any sense: no commands or punishments, no blame or excuses, no forgiveness or justice. But how can we reconcile the determined world of science with the free world of morality? Science itself cannot resolve this contradiction, says Kant. It cannot be resolved by “theoretical” Reason, only by “practical” Reason.
And it is this practical Reason that Kant tackles in his second Critique.
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When water that is shut up finds an outlet of which it eagerly avails itself, rushing vehemently in that direction, it certainly does not recognise that outlet any more than the acid perceives the alkali approaching it which will induce it to abandon its combination with a metal, or than the strip of paper perceives the amber which attracts it after being rubbed; yet we cannot help admitting that what brings about such sudden changes in all these bodies, bears a certain resemblance to that which takes place within us, when an unexpected motive presents itself. In former times I have availed myself of such considerations as these in order to point out the will in all things; I now employ them to indicate the sphere to which knowledge presents itself as belonging, when considered, not as is usual from the inside, but realistically, from a standpoint outside itself, as if it were something foreign: that is, when we gain the objective point of view for it, which is so extremely important in order to complete the subjective one. We find that knowledge then presents itself as the mediator of motives, i.e. of the action of causality upon beings endowed with intellect in other words, as that which receives the changes from outside upon which those in the inside must follow, as that which acts as mediator between both. Now upon this narrow line hovers the world as
representation that is to say, the whole corporeal world, stretched out in Space and Time, which as such can never exist anywhere but in the brain any more than dreams, which, as long as they last, exist in the same way. What the intellect does for animals and for man, as the mediator of motives, susceptibility for stimuli does for plants, and susceptibility for every sort of cause for in organic bodies: and strictly speaking, all this differs merely in degree. For, exclusively as a consequence of this susceptibility to outward impressions having enhanced itself in animals proportionately to their requirements till it has reached the point where a nervous system and a brain become necessary, does consciousness arise as a function of that brain, and in it the objective world, whose forms (Time, Space, Causality) are the way in which that function is performed. Therefore we find the intellect originally laid out entirely with a view to subjectivity, destined merely to serve the purposes of the will, consequently as something quite secondary and subordinate; nay, in a sense, as something which appears only per accidens; as a condition of the action of mere motives, instead of stimuli, which has become necessary in the higher degree of animal existence. The image of the world in Space and Time, which thus arises, is only the map on which the motives present themselves as ends. It also conditions the spatial and causal connection in which the objects perceived stand to one another; nevertheless it is only the mediating link between the motive and the act of volition. Now, to take such an image as this of the world, arising in this manner, accidentally, in the intellect, i.e. in the cerebral function of animal beings, through the means to their ends being represented and the path of these ephemera on their planet being thus illumined to take this image, we say, this mere cerebral phenomenon, for the true, ultimate essence of things (thing–in–itself),
to take the concatenation of its parts for the absolute order of the Universe (relations between things–in–themselves), and to assume all this to exist even independently of the brain, would indeed be a leap! Here in fact, an assumption such as this must appear to us as the height of rashness and presumption; yet it is the foundation upon which all the systems of pre-Kantian dogmatism have been built up; for it is tacitly pre-supposed in all their Ontology, Cosmology and Theology, as well as in the aeternae veritates [eternal truths] to which they appeal. But that leap had always been made tacitly and unconsciously, and it is precisely Kant's immortal achievement, to have brought it to our consciousness.
By our present realistic way of considering the matter therefore, we unexpectedly gain the objective stand-point for Kant's great discoveries; and, by the road of empirico-physiological contemplation, we arrive at the point whence his transcendental-critical view starts. For Kant's view takes the subjective for its standpoint and considers consciousness as given. But from consciousness itself and its law and order, given a priori, that view arrives at the conclusion, that all which appears in that consciousness can be nothing more than mere phenomenon. From our realistic, exterior standpoint, on the contrary, which assumes the objective creatures that exist in Nature to be absolutely given, we see what the intellect is, as to its aim and origin, and to which class of phenomena it belongs, and we recognise (so far a priori) that it must be limited to mere phenomena.
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I intend to set up a thousand year Reich-Hitler.
Hitler's Olympic Village of 1936 - the so-called 'Nazi Games' intended to showcase German supremacy against the rest of the world.
Behind closed doors of that facility can be seen the rotting remains of the '1000 year Reich' which vanished in flames after just 12.
Mortification of the flesh:
All those men and women … who in their body serve the world through the desires of the flesh, the concerns of the world and the cares of this life: They are held captive by the devil, whose children they are, and whose works they do.
I know now why the USSR fell.
There was, and still is, a belief in India among many of her ascetics that purification and final deliverance can be achieved by rigorous self-mortification, and the ascetic Gotama decided to test the truth of it. And so there at Uruvelâ he began a determined struggle to subdue his body in the hope that his mind, set free from the shackles of the body, might be able to soar to the heights of liberation. Most zealous was he in these practices. He lived on leaves and roots, on a steadily reduced pittance of food; he wore rags from dust heaps; he slept among corpses or on beds of thorns. The utter paucity of nourishment left him a physical wreck. Says the Master: "Rigorous have I been in my ascetic discipline. Rigorous have I been beyond all others. Like wasted, withered reeds became all my limbs...." In such words as these, in later years, having attained to full enlightenment, did the Buddha give his disciples an awe-inspiring description of his early penances.
There is a certain joy in destroying one's body-the objectification of will.
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recall Holden's original post: Schopenhauer, Opera Glasses and the Rabble (http://whybother.freeboards.org/what-now/interesting/msg1066/#msg1066)
Hysteria in Dallas, Texas (https://www.yahoo.com/news/three-officer-fatally-shot-during-000000452.html)
... um ... Can we borrow you're opera glass, Herr S?
S: "But Nobody is waiting for the delivery of a solution manual for a physics textbook, and a special book from India called Vectors and 3D Geometry. He found a copy for twenty dollars."
The people aren't trying to understand physics, Herr S. They love God and Guns.
H: "I'm terrified of the cities. The city is a death sentence."
Lovecraft: "I have to concur with Nobody as far as the cities go ..."
H: "Can't I just be neutral, like Sweden?"
"I’m certain there is a lesson here,somewhere." - HT aka Holden of India
Suddenly I am aware of how emotionally detached I've become, lost in my own little world, I suppose.
Is there something wrong with me? Why do I feel so detached? Have I become emotionally detached? I just want to lay on the floor on my stomach solving problems ... meanwhile the world is on fire. That is the plain existential truth of the matter. I want to live in La-La Land with vectors and matrices, equations, right triangles, unit circles ... solutions, no solutions, infinite solutions ... What can one do about anything?
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Señor Hentrich,
I read this wonderful part. Really good. I read John Gray´s Straw Dogs where he mentioned Schopenhauer. I liked that part where he kept his pistols loaded all the time. Careful man, Arthur because he knew the misery of the human condition. When he was young, I don´t remember the city in Germany, he left in order to avoid Napoleon´stroops. After all he wisely regarded all that situation as none of his business.
Your question "Is there something wrong with me?" Of course there is. You dont want to be exploited, you don´t want to be abused,you don´t want to be pushed, told what to do, you don´t want to obey the authorities, you don´t want to go to church and get a "breath from the "saviour", you didn´t want to serve in the US army. You don´t want to fit in the Land of the Brave. And last but not least you don´t want to do something "useful" and you don´t want to contribute to "good" society. You are a "menace" to the world. Take care of yourself. Raúl
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:D
I am a menace just being myself ... :-[
This calls to mind my favorite part of Catch-22. I'll have to grab it from the blog.
Found it in Dead End: chapter 16 - Talking Monkeys With Car Keys (https://xhentric.wordpress.com/the-book/16-talking-monkeys-with-car-keys/):
“Well, do you know what you are? You’re a frustrated, unhappy, disillusioned, undisciplined, maladjusted man!” Major Sanderson’s disposition seemed to mellow as he reeled off the uncomplimentary adjectives.
“Yes, sir,” Yossarian agreed carefully. “I guess you’re right.”
“Of course I’m right. You’re immature. You’ve been unable to adjust to the idea of war.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You have a morbid aversion to dying. You probably resent the fact that you’re at war and might get your head blown off any second.”
“I more than resent it, sir. I’m absolutely incensed.”
“You have deep-seated survival anxieties. And you don’t like bigots, bullies, snobs or hypocrits. Subconciously there are many people you hate.”
“Consciously, sir, consciously,” Yossarian corrected in an effort to help. “I hate them consciously.”
“You’re antagonistic to the idea of being robbed, exploited, degraded, humiliated or deceived. Misery depresses you. Ignorance depresses you. Persecution depresses you. Violence depresses you. Slums depress you. Greed depresses you. Crime depresses you. Corruption depresses you. You know, it wouldn’t surprise me if you’re a manic-depressive!”
“Yes, sir, perhaps I am.”
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Señor Hentrich,
In the Essay by Schopenhauer, ,that is, The Emptiness of Existence, in the third paragraph Schopenhauer writes " This is why Kant is so great.". I don´t repeat the three paragraphs. I know an answer to my question may take a whole book. Nevertheless could you tell me why Kant is so great. Stay safe. Raúl
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To put it bluntly, Schopenhauer credits Kant with acknowledging the ideality of time and space. Maybe I don't understand its significance as well as I would like to. I suppose Schopenhauer found something remarkable in Kant, that he "appealed to the heart."
Does the sentence, "the synthetic a priori propositions of Geometry are only possible if space is an a priori intuition" speak to the heart? I'm not sure.
Maybe we can gather some notes that give us some clarity as to just why Schopenhauer felt Kant is so great. Time and space are "intuitions".
Checking some notes of a professor of philosophy:
Space and Time:
Source of all synthetic a priori propositions of mathematics.
Empirically Real, but Transcendentally Ideal. They are the real necessary conditions of all objective experience, but they have no existence outside of our experience.
Forms of Sensibility-
Space and time are the necessary conditions of all empirical intuitions.
A priori Intuitions-
Space and time are themselves intuitions that precede all experience and form the template or grid on which they are placed.
Space: The Form of outer sense. Source of synthetic a priori propositions of Geometry.
Arguments:
1. Space not an empirical concept. All experience of objects in spatial relationships presupposes a space in which they are ordered.
2. Space is an a priori intuition. We cannot represent to ourselves the absence of space.
3. Space not a concept of the relation of things. (a) There is only one space (b) The parts cannot precede this whole since they must exist within it.
(4)Also the synthetic a priori propositions of Geometry are only possible if space is an a priori intuition
4. (5)Space is an infinite given magnitude. No concept of relations can give rise to an infinitude and no concept can contain an infinite number of representations within it.
Time: The Form of inner sense. Source of synthetic a priori propositions of Arithmetic.
Arguments:
1. Time not an empirical concept. All experience of objects in spatial relationships presupposes a time in which they are ordered.
2. Time is an a priori intuition. We cannot represent to ourselves the absence of time.
3. Time not a concept of the relation of things. (a) There is only one time (b) The parts cannot precede this whole since they must exist within it.
4. The synthetic a priori propositions of Arithmetic are only possible if time is an a priori intuition
5. Time is an infinite given magnitude. No concept of relations can give rise to an infinitude and no concept can contain an infinite number of representations within it.
Come to think of it, I might be losing patience with metaphysics. To be honest, at this point in my life, I would rather try my hand at factoring polynomials (http://www.emathhelp.net/calculators/algebra-1/factoring-polynomials-calculator/?p=n^3%2F3+%2B+n^2%2F2+%2B+n%2F6&steps=on).
Do you think that Kant reached Schopenhauer in a similar way that Schopenhauer has reached us? It could be that Schopenhauer was better at communicating Kant's ideas, hence, the credit I give to Schopenhauer, he gives to Kant and the traditional religious doctrines of India, what he calls the "Hindoos" [sic].
Maybe it is impossible for us to appreciate Kant the way Schopenhauer did. There is a multigeneration gap here. For me, I wouldn't care if Kant did not exist as long as there was a Schopenhauer to explain things to me that neither parents and none of my grandparents or aunts or uncles could. Schopenhauer is my spiritual grandfather.
When Schopenhauer says, "This is why Kant is so great" it does seem sudden and a statement out of nowhere, so all I can take it to mean is that he credits Kant with introducing to him the ideality of time and space. I know I am repeating myself here, but I credit Schopenhauer for introducing me to this transcendental view of the order of things ... simply because I would have probably not taken any interest at all in Kant were it not for Schopenhauer's praise of him ... and I have great respect for Schopenhauer. It is as though he knew it was some kind of miracle that he had escaped the life of a merchant, and he put his intellect to work to pass down some deep insights to the unlucky ones yet to be born.
Of course, there are most likely countless individuals from all cultures around the earth who had deep insights, but there was no medium by which they could pass on their insights to us.
We could think about these things ourselves and see if we can make some sense of it.
What do you think of when you read the phrase "the ideality of time and space"?
I'm not trying to put anyone on the spot, so I will say the phrase is a little mysterious to me.
Does it mean that time and space are mental functions, part of our animality, part of our apparatus for finding our way? All our lives seem to be a great illusion when we consider the immensity of "time" and "space" ... and yet these things do not exist as real things outside experience. When we are dead, there is no more time and space. All the supposed galaxies vanish.
Certain things are difficult to discuss unless we are willing to live with contradictions and paradoxes, such as the fact that the world is in our heads, but our heads are in the world.
Sometimes I get sleepy and cranky ... in those moments metaphysics does not seem to matter too much. No matter what one thinks about anything at all, whatever is remains what it is. This is probably a truism and says nothing. I suppose we have the world of being and the world of knowing. I think Kant may have been grappling with the differences between the world as it is and the world that can be known. It is not so much what he thought or wrote that is significant, but that he wanted to state limits to what can be known. We can only know the world of appearance, according to Kant. And yet Schopenhauer points out that we know the world as it is in the core of our being, and that this world-as-it-is is not pleasant. We know this intimately in our own disagreeableness. We know what it is to be, to have foulness on our breath, etc.
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This is why Hentrich is so great.That was beautiful.Without you, I would have never known Schopenhauer,let alone Kant.
The reason some people find mathematics so soothing is that while mathematics is synthetic on the one hand(this is what makes it interesting),its based on our forms of understanding & thus empty,on the other.There is no a posterior i(the will) content in it & thus no ghosts to scare me there.
It tells me that mathematics is that closet where I can hide from the rest of horrible world,playing with my toys alone.
And I'd love to share my toys with you:-)
Could you find fof if f(t)=t/(1+t^2)^1/2
And I'd love to play with your toys as well i.e. learn programming from you. I'd download the files which you sent in the other thread & try to decipher it.Mathematics is my hiding place.
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Could you find fof if f(t)=t/(1+t^2)^1/2
Are you asking to find f(f(t)), the function of f if it is fed to itself? f(f)?
If this is what you are asking, we would simply replace t with(t/(1+t^2)^1/2), right?
First of all, for clarity, I would rewrite t/(1+t^2)^1/2 as t/sqrt(t^2 + 1).
You can then evaluate f( f(t) ) = f(t)/sqrt(f(t)^2 + 1) = t/sqrt(t^2 + 1) / sqrt((t/sqrt(t^2 + 1))^2 + 1)
t is still the numerator, and the denominator you have sqrt(t^2 + 1) times sqrt( (t^2 / (t^2 + 1)) + 1)
I verified this with Sage by feeding the function to itself.
This is what you were asking, right?
As far as compiling code, a small notebook computer would suffice, preferably with a hard drive of at least 500GB. That way you could set it up to dual boot into both Linux and Windows 10.
If it comes with at least Windows 8 on it, Microsoft is giving Windows 10 for free, which is unprecedented.
I know you get sent from place to place by your employer, so a 13.3 inch Dell would be small enough to lug around. Is there any way to justify the expense other than to play with mathmatical code?
If you did not want to install Linux side by side with Windows, you could always install cygwin and compile code that way. I only say that because GCC is smoother than getting code to compile in the massive Visual Studios ...
It's something to consider. I went a long time without a computer, and then was using a huge old desktop computer my nephew had sent me. Since I was too frugal to get an Internet connection, installing the environments I needed was a pain ... I would lose patience.
Since I have been a "good boy" and not reporting to the liquor store each morning, I have been able to enjoy computing again.
I understand if you cannot justify the expense.
It's just that, as far as mathematics goes, although all you really need is paper and pencil (or, in your grandfather's case, did you say he did his calculations in the sand?), a computer with computer algebra system (Sage) takes it to a different level, I think.
Also, if you get into writing some code in C/C++ and Python, these toys transform into mind tools.
Still, the core concepts are accessible without the computer, of course.
Looking at code and mentally tracing through it is one thing, but firing up a debugger and stepping through the code slowly, watching the local variables change as you step through it, is a tremendously satisfying experience. Seriously, it does not get much better than that.
That's about as good as it gets as far as computing goes. I would not suggest getting a computer just to do what you can do with your phone. You can transform the computer that you get into a mathematics laboratory ... and making it dual boot into Linux and Windows is something I have been doing since around 1997 or so ... when I first got kicked to the curb by the State, my x-employer.
Still, I understand your predicament ...
Do you have an Android? There is C4droid - C/C++ compiler & IDE (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.n0n3m4.droidc&hl=en).
Of course, then you might be on your own, since my experience with smartphones is nil. I would not be able to troubleshoot too much with you. It would be much easier for us to discuss problems if we were dealing with similar environments.
One day soon, maybe someone in your extended family will upgrade to a different notebook computer and you can get their hand-me-down. You will not require much to enjoy the computing power. I mean, it's not like you need high-end graphics or huge processor speeds (like for gamers). Maybe put your feelers out and let others know you are looking for a machine. One man's garbage is another man's gold.
Writing basic mathematics-oriented programs that run in a terminal (console) from the command line, compiling them and using them alongside pencil and notebook, in my opinion, is one of the most intellectually satisfying hobbies I have ever experienced.
This has been my secret goal since 1994 when I was attending community college on weekends and nights --- in my janitor/maintenance years.
All I ever really wanted to do is "play with mathematics" ...
Now I am stepping away from the computer and returning to pencil and notebook ... but I am going through a Linear Algebra textbook specifically to see which exercises might inspire and motivate me to go into codemode.
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Señor Nobody,
Thank you very much. It is very kind of you to reply. I am going to read and reread what you wrote.Stay safe. Raúl
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I am going to read and reread what you wrote.
I have to confess. Although I have thought about this for many years, you probably have as good a chance as I do trying to make heads or tails of it.
Sometimes I feel retarded, especially when attempting to draw vectors in 3D. I actually struggle to draw in 3D on two dimensional paper.
I have to look at something like this (http://immersivemath.com/ila/ch02_vectors/ch02.html#fig_vec_vector_addition_triangle_rule) or that (http://www.math.ubc.ca/~feldman/m105/sketching.pdf) before putting pencil to paper, and even then ... ugh ... I cut out a 30-60-90 triangle from cardboard to assist me. It's rather pathetic.
I am looking into the isosketch from the United Kingdom (https://www.amazon.com/Drawing-Tool-Company-Isosketch-3D/dp/B00IJA001W/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1468453604&sr=8-1&keywords=isosketch).
:-\
It's not like I'm a frustrated artist. I'm not an artist at all. I'm just plain old frustrated ... I'm much more at ease studying geometry by algebraic means. But I am forcing myself to deal with my "retardedness" when it comes to actually sketching 3D surfaces, curves, and vectors on 2D paper.
I do use the computer to represent graphs, using Sage or gnuplot, but I also force myself to draw some rough sketches by hand. This is when I really have to be patient with myself.
You see, with arithmetic and algebra and calculus and physics and programming, you can get by with tons of determination and effort, but, when it comes to "art" or "music", I think some people are talented while others are not. I am not a talented musician. I beat on the drums like a chimpanzee. Nor can I sing very well (I only sing when I'm drunk or stuck in the county lock-up walking around in circles in the little yard when it is raining and all the basketball players are glued to the TV or playing cards, so I haven't belted one out in a long time). As far as art goes, I draw some cartoons. I can draw a circle ... :P
You want to know what else I can't do? I can't start a fire without a lighter like the natives could.
I would most likely starve without the grocery stores.
Enough self deprecating for now. I acknowledge that I do have some intelligence, and even some algebraic skills ... I may even have some deep insights into the tragic and absurd nature of existence ... but I struggle to draw 3D vectors on 2D paper. I'm not going to drown myself in the ocean over it. I just have to try to learn some new tricks ... and I'm getting old ...
old man / heart of gold (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ycit4OwYPNg)
... oh, and I just may be crazy, but I aint going to Alcatraz!
bugs bunny (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7dCTwlAI8Y)
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It was a stormy day. His mind drifted. As if by instinct, he crossed his legs in the yoga pose of meditation. And the natural world paid him homage. As the sun moved through the sky, the shadows shifted, but the shadow of the rose-apple tree where he sat remained still. He felt a sense of pure denial of the Will.
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Herr Hentrich,
As usual, thank you for your reply. You write "you want to know what else I can't do? I can't start a fire without a lighter like the natives could.
I would most likely starve without the grocery stores." I can´t start a fire without a lighter either. I have been told many times that instead of reading "diabollical" writers, I should do practical things. They said that in the supermarket you won´t get food with books or talking about life. Well, you may not go to Alcatraz or Saint Quentin, but have to say, you, me and others are on Planet Earth. A round penal establishment. Stay safe. Raúl
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Greetings my fellow prisoners in the penal colony of existence, my fellow Eaters-of-Food. May we one day lose our appetites and no longer need fire to heat food.
I have to make a slight correction:
I cut out a 30-60-90 triangle from cardboard to assist me. It's rather pathetic.
Actually, I traced two 30-60-90 triangles side by side, forming a 120-30-30 triangle ... I made it so it has a handle so my dumb hand doesn't get in the way while implementing the cardboard tool.
I guess I improved upon the trick Dale Hoffman suggests in Appendix: Sketching Planes and Conics in the XYZ Coordinate System (http://scidiv.bellevuecollege.edu/dh/Calculus_all/CC11_Append.pdf).
I have to say, it actually works! I mean, it remedied my frustrations. I can calmly acknowledge that I am not comfortable sketching 3D space on a 2D plane. This little device allows me to set up the "3D illusion" so that I can sketch something not is not too skewed. This brings a certain degree of peace rather than becoming like a frustrated baboon on the verge of a tantrum. I might even spontaneously slip into that state of mind encouraged by Schopenhauer, that state that Holden hints at ...
I calmly draw a vertical line, then, placing the vertex of the 120 (degrees ---> 2*pi/3 radians) angle on the vertical line, trace out what will be the x and y axes. Then I just intuitively flip it so one side is along the x axis, and I trace out upward what is to be the z axis.
So, in two dimensions there are three 120 degree segments. In 3D perspective, the x axis is perpendicular to the yz-plane, the y axis is perpendicular to the xz-plane, and z axis is perpendicular to the xy-plane ... using the imagination, of course ... make-believe.
This is the world as representation, right?
Speaking of penal colonies, I recall reading somewhere in Schopenhauer's meditations his theory that when someone spontaneously denies the Will becoming absorbed in contemplating the world as representation, that is, thinking, it would not matter if one were in a dungeon. You might be more content than a prince in a castle who is driven crazy by his cravings, desires, and demands.
Wait a minute. We can do a search of the full text (https://archive.org/stream/theworldaswillan01schouoft/theworldaswillan01schouoft_djvu.txt) of Herr Schopenhauer's opus!
Here is the very section I was recalling, noting that, yes, our world can be like an open-air prison, but let us continue to be scholarly prisoners who explore diabolical books until we are released!
Actually, when I read Schopenhauer for the very first time, it was from a huge hardcover text from the basement of the library (county headquarters), which happened to be the "World as Will and Idea" translation. It was in 1990. They had to retrieve the old thing from the basement just for yours truly. Upon reading it, I requested my uncle, who worked in Manhattan at the time, track it down for me. I can't describe the influence those books (volumes one and two of the Payne translation) had on me. Volume II has a great index ... but, now we can just search the online editions to reference it.
But when some external cause or inward disposition lifts us suddenly out of the endless stream of willing, delivers knowledge from the slavery of the will, the attention is no longer directed to the motives of willing, but comprehends things free from their relation to the will, and thus observes them without personal interest, without subjectivity, purely objectively, gives itself entirely up to them so far as they are ideas, but not in so far as they are motives. Then all at once the peace which we were always seeking, but which always lied from us on the former path of the desires, comes to us of its own accord, and it is well with us. It is the painless state which Epicurus prized as the highest good and as the state of the gods; for we are for the moment set free from the miserable striving of the will; we keep the Sabbath of the penal servitude of willing ; the wheel of Ixion stands still.
But this is just the state which I described above as necessary for the knowledge of the Idea, as pure contemplation, as sinking oneself in perception, losing oneself in the object, forgetting all individuality, surrendering that kind of knowledge which follows the principle of sufficient reason, and comprehends only relational the state by means of which at once and inseparably the perceived particular thing is raised to the Idea of its whole species, and the knowing individual to the pure subject of willess knowledge, and as such they are both taken out of the stream of time and all other relations. It is then all one whether we see the sun set from the prison or from the palace.
Inward disposition, the predominance of knowing over willing, can produce this state under any circumstances.
May we continue to nurture and develop our inward disposition.
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[/b]Also, if you get into writing some code in C/C++ and Python, these toys transform into mind tools.
Still, the core concepts are accessible without the computer, of course.[/b]
I have a MacBook Pro ,it is a few years old I think,one of my relatives gave it to me about 2 years back.
And I know next to nothing about programming/writing codes,so for example when you write python my brain sees a snake before it sees a programming language:-).I most certainly would like to learn it in order to study math.
I can calmly acknowledge that I am not comfortable sketching 3D space on a 2D plane.
Please tell me a few things:
1.When you are trying to draw 3D space on a 2D plane,the figure which you are trying to draw from a book I assume,do you keep it right next to you in order to refer to it time and again or not?
2.If you are not keeping the figure right next to you in order to refer to it time and again,do you have an EXACT mental picture of it in your mind because you have looked at that figure scores of times?
When I say EXACT I mean is it as clear in your mind as ,say,your name?
There is a certain reason I am asking you these questions,once you respond I would tell you what that is.It may help both of us to understand math better and in a far easier way.
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I have never messed with Macs, but I did use them at the State University in the lab, and they were running Unix ... Solaris, I think.
The first thing we would want to do is get a C++ compiler (GNU GCC) installed and Python environments.
Hmm, I saw this: Installing GNU GCC on Mac (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21173518/install-gnu-gcc-on-mac).
Also How to install gcc compiler on Mac OS X (http://www.mkyong.com/mac/how-to-install-gcc-compiler-on-mac-os-x/).
I will do a little research. We can take it slow. I was not drawn to programming until I returned to school to study Calculus in 1994, that's like an entire decade after my nervous breakdown during my senior year in high school. Anyway, in 1994, it was actually my calculus instructor, Jay Dashabundu, from India of all places, who encouraged me to study programming. He is the one who opened my eyes abouthow "procedures" (in code) are related to "functions" in mathematics ... with arguments, parameters, input, output ... There is so much mathematics in programming, especially if that is what you are drawn to. He, himself had just begun studying programming himself, this is after he had already earned his degree in mathematics. He was drawn to programming.
There are those who make a living creating games and applications who claim one does not need any math for programming. If you want to be inspired, check out Alex Stepanov's From Mathematics To Programming (http://bookzz.org/md5/87D41B99A46375F56F4DAE40480BB438) ...
peace
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Please tell me a few things:
1.When you are trying to draw 3D space on a 2D plane,the figure which you are trying to draw from a book I assume,do you keep it right next to you in order to refer to it time and again or not?
2.If you are not keeping the figure right next to you in order to refer to it time and again,do you have an EXACT mental picture of it in your mind because you have looked at that figure scores of times?
When I say EXACT I mean is it as clear in your mind as ,say,your name?
There is a certain reason I am asking you these questions,once you respond I would tell you what that is.It may help both of us to understand math better and in a far easier way.
When I draw the graph I am not looking at a book, but preparing to plot solutions or a geometric representation of vector space ... I have the image in my mind, yes, but, before I cam up with this strategy of tracing with a 120 degree angle to form the axes, the graph would be skewed. I will think about your questions as I proceed. My approach to mathematics is changing on different levels.
I don't know what the image looks like until I translate the algebra to geometry.
Sage and gnuplot are helpful in plotting parametric and 3D plots, but I still want to develop my ability to sketch at least vectors in 3D, by hand, that is.
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Something totally unrelated: Do you think we are creeps for being so caught up in math and philosophy that we appear unnaturally detached from "historic" (violent) events reported through the media? Should we be more upset? How can I be so emotionally detached?
Also, is this related to Schopenhauer, Opera Glasses and the Rabble?
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Mr.Gladiator,
Thank you for your comment. Let me quote, I am not sure if it´s correct., "Ave Cesar, morituri te salutant". (Hail Caesar, those who are about to die, salute you). My little addition would be Hail Caesar, those who are about to die/live salute you". My prisoner ID is five-seven-zero-one-six-five.Prison facility: Asuncion, Paraguay. Sentence: to die by anguish,boredom, flesh decay, sickness, and final extinction (food for worms). Stay safe. Raúl
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Think of this, too, Raul. It's not just the social order that oppresses us. There are no chains more oppressive than biological necessity.
I can't help but reflect upon the nightmare that life becomes for one who loses control of their bowels. Can you imagine. We could fill many pages listing all the horrors creatures are subjected to without any oppressive government or corrupt social order to blame for their anguish.
Life itself imprisons us, no?
We are born, and this is where the trouble starts. The origin of all our troubles is that we are living creatures. We have been birthed, thrown into this.
I have decided to study math to distract myself from the really deep quandaries and riddles ... and to try not to think about the horror until I am in the grip of it, shiitting my pants, humiliated by being a living creature.
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I have a MacBook Pro
You should be fine with that, Holden. It has a Unix bash shell. I would prefer using terminal (with command-line tools). You could use xCode, which would be like using Visual Studio, I guess. Like I said, I prefer the command line (terminal).
We could start a separate thread when you are into it. I was doing a little research, looking into setting up g++ GNU GCC compiler on your machine.
This is a pretty clear explanation: Editing And Compiling In Apple Xcode (https://www.dvc.edu/academics/mcsd/computer-science/pdfs/UsingAppleXCode.pdf)
I don't want to distract you from your path, though.
It would just be a way to compile a few small programs. No pressure!
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Could it be like this?The reason which gives a priori principles Kant calls “pure reason,” as distinguished from the “practical reason,” which is specially concerned with the performance of actions. What I am trying to focus on is the possibility of experience while studying math.The delineation of the limits of human cognition of math in accordance with the thesis that human thought requires some reference to experience in order to not lose itself in fantasies and as a consequence of this last point ,the demolition of what I call "dogmatic mathematics".
Say,I am trying to solve a problem,or draw a geometrical figure,something with which I am not very familiar ,I just know it a bit.
So,if I am not 100% certain of the concepts,I repeat 100%,I had better keep the solution right in front of my eyes in order to solve the problem,for I would be undertaking an operation that will be synthetic and not an analytic operation.
If I do not have the solution right in front of me,and I am also not very clear about the concepts I am trying to apply,then my thought in absence of reference to experience loses itself in fantasies-this results in my frustration of not getting the right answer,your skewed figures and also SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY.
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Señor Nada,
Yes, It is true. we are slave to our body needs, that is , to ****, to urinate, to ma sturbate, to have sex,and so on.We have been thrown into life without our consent and without our consent we will die. Really absurd. Take care of yourself. Raúl
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As you know like Kafka I continue to work at the moment.Why do you think Kafka never left his job though its evident that he hated it a lot?
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I am no expert on Kafka, but I would say he worked all his life because he was afraid of his father's disapproval.
Speaking of jobs and literature, do you think that part of the appeal of Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces is the shameless anti-job lifestyle of Ignatius Reilly?
His education made him comical as a "weenie vendor".
Of course, Ignatius was fictional. There was an absence of the father figure to threaten to punish him, just his mother asking if he might like to take a little rest at the psychiatric hospital. His reply was, “They would try to make me into a moron who liked television and new cars and frozen food. Psychiatry is worse than communism. I refuse to be brainwashed. I won’t be a robot!”
Once the pointlessness of everything becomes all too apparent, living up to parents' or grandparents' work ethics is no longer an issue. They've got another thing coming ... or not coming. However you want to look at it, I can appreciate the injunction to live in ambitionless peace.
Maybe all the math scribblings I am engaged in now are just the "copy books" of a modern day Ignatius Reilly, and that my entire life is just some kind of existential comedy.
How did Cioran manage to avoid jobs? We know how Schopenhauer pulled it off. Maybe Kafka was really trapped in the thick of it, which is what motivated him to write Metamorphosis, which is really an indictment against jobs and employers and the pressure to report to "the office".
He became a menacing creature which made him unfit for employment.
I suppose the trick is to be just menacing enough to disqualify oneself from servile subservience, but not so menacing as to require incarceration.
;)
It's a razor's edge. To live outside the world of jobs can be hazardous to one's health depending on where one's cell happens to be. If one inhabits certain environments where anxiety levels are intense, one could easily succumb to self-destructive behavior. Hence, my current abstinence from alcohol and avoidance of pleasure-seeking adventures. In a sense, I have become a model prisoner in the Open Air Prison so as to enjoy a few privileges, such as access to textbooks, computers, fine coffee, and tobacco - and to be available to assist my mother ... (that's another Confederacy of Dunces connection).
Preferring to study higher mathematics rather than reporting to a supervisor is condemned, so one has to become impervious to social condemnation.
Maybe studying things like differential equations is how I justify such a lifestyle. I am no genius. These subjects are difficult and impractical. Who is to say I would be better off with job security and keys to a Volkswagen? Myself, I am no literary genius. I don't have it in me to write novels. I am no artist. There was a time in my life when I tried to be an ideal employee. I really did try. Now I am resolved to just study math, even if I don't make too much progress. I am satisfied when I gain understanding of the fundamentals, just familiarizing myself with the esoteric notation.
Why did Kafka submit? Because he could. I cannot submit. I suppose my personality makes employment problematic. I'm making the most of the situation, I think. Did Kafka "choose" to submit? Can we say that I actually choose not to submit? Kafka himself admitted that he was amazed with how one little event could transform one's destiny. A series of such events have made it so today I can study differential equations in peace, and remove the mystery once and for all.
HP Lovecraft would have gladly submitted, but nobody wanted to employ him. I might be in a similar situation. Nobody wanted to hire me, even after I acquired more education. In fact, for someone like me, more education seems to make matters worse. I mean, more education made me even less satisfied with jumping through hoops for supervisors and all that monkey business; although for some, their educations have the opposite effect, making them even more manipulable for want of prestige, clout, titles, authority, etc. They come to worship authority.
The bottom line is that I have never equated more education with helping me back into a harness. I wonder if I could ever be harnessed again.
It's not what we make of life, but what life makes of us. We have to deal with our own particular situations. Then again, Kafka died fairly young, didn't he? Perhaps, if he had lived a little longer, his predicament would have forced him into unemployment. He did not live long enough to become an extreme failure. I have lived that long, and then some.
And yet my drift out of the workforce was never planned or contrived. I was simply going from one day to the next, going on emergency assistance, and generally just giving up, going with the flow. It has been a rocky road, and now my mental health seems to be hinged on being able to continue studying mathematics at my own pace without any kind of pressure to "put it to use".
I would work even less if I were already dead.
Does every difficult pursuit have to be motivated by a desire to reach some distant goal?
I guess, if one wants to engage in useless activities like studying applied mathematics, that one better be independently wealthy or else risk being condemned as a drain on the war economy.
At least, in my defence, I can say I haven't replicated. I don't want to be the president of Amerika. Learning a little more "computational science" is about as far as my ambition goes.
And you know what? I can see that even this little goal requires me to stay focused and determined, and not to feel pressure to work in haste or to sink in despair over the seeming impossibility of making any progress whatsoever.
So, no, I suppose I am not a good role model for those aspiring to "do something with their lives".
Thankfully my agenda does not require anyone's approval ... as long as I am not "disturbing the peace" or behaving bizarrely in public. And, in a way, by keeping my nose in books outside the workforce, at least I am not spreading subversive ideas among the troops.
By the way, Holden, I hope that you find a way to make the scholarly part of your life the primary part. What I mean to say is, I hope that your employer does not drain all your energy, so that your nights alone in your room can be enjoyed rather than just re-energizing ...
Take care.
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“By all evidence, we are here in the world to do nothing.” ~ Cioran (http://whybother.freeboards.org/what-now/welcome-to-the-taker-prison/msg120/#msg120)
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Dear Mr H,you are the living proof of all that Schopenhauer said about university professors,for I have learnt more from you in two short years than from all my professors put together over far longer period.Thank you for your responses,they have literally saved my life.
Now,if one were to read Kant,would you say that the most important books written by Kant are The Critique of Pure Reason & the Prolegomena & that the second & the third critiques are not so profound/true.
Furthermore, as Schopenhauer says that one should read works by Plato,which books by Plato would you recommend?
The reason why I write to you everyday with such tenacity is the same reason why a drowning man clutches the line thrown to him.
You are the most learned of all men alive today & the posterity shall certainly recognise that.
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I am happy to consider myself an amateur.
Thank you just the same for your encouraging words.
I think it may be hyperbole, though. Now this Titus Beu (http://www.phys.ubbcluj.ro/~tbeu/) - he may be the most learned. Holden, you have to realize I am simply a lifelong autodidactic student. I have learned my lessons simply from living. As far as technical knowledge goes, like I said before, I am simply an enthusiastic amateur. :)
When I was trying to read everything Schopenhauer demanded, I did read The Critique of Pure Reason, the Prolegomena to any future metaphysics (which was nice and short!), Religion Within the Limits of Pure Reason Alone (https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ethics/kant/religion/religion-within-reason.htm), A Critique of Judgement (too rigid - I didn't care for it), and Critique of Practical Reason, none of which left a lasting impression on me. I can live without them.
I knew this when I was gathering belongings into suitcases preparing to get on a train to travel across the continent to be homeless in Seattle. Kant was not coming along! Schopenhauer and Cioran were. Even Knuth's Fundamental Algorithms: The Art of Computer Programming, Volume 1 made it. I still have the copies I lugged around, storing most in my nephew's little apartment ... until I found a place.
I would suggest skimming through some commentaries.
Please do follow your own inclinations, for while I did follow Schopenhauer's instructions as far as reading Kant goes, the parts that struck me most in Kant were limited to those parts in Critique of Pure Reason that discussed the noumenon and phenomenon. It was here that we easily recognize Schopenhauer's world as will and representation.
I once had a big fat green book with the collection of Plato's writings. I merely nibbled at them.
I like to remember what David Abram (https://xhentric.wordpress.com/scholar-warrior/animism-phenomenology/) points out in his writings about Plato and Socrates. Socrates belongs to the oral, pre-written, pre-alphabetized tradition, and Plato is one of the first to put things in writing. That is what makes Plato's work significant.
An excerpt from an excerpt:
The Hebrews were the first real caretakers of this great and difficult magic – alphabetic literacy. The pain, the sadness of this exile, is precisely the trace of what has been lost – FORGOTTEN INTIMACY.
It seems as though the Greeks may have further objectified space and time into distinct dimensions. Time becomes inseparable from number and sequence. The thorough differentiation of “time” from “space” was impossible so long as large portions of the populace still experienced the surrounding terrain as animate and alive.
The burning of tens of thousands of women (most of them herbalists from peasant backgrounds) as “witches” during the 16th and 17th centuries may be understood as the nearly successful extermination of the last orally preserved traditions of Europe in order to clear the way for the dominion of alphabetic reason over a natural world increasingly construed as a passive and mechanical set of objects. (Abram 1996)
In 1781, Immanual Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason, agreed with Newton that time and space were absolute, that they were independent of any objects. However, these distinct dimensions did not belong to the surrounding world as it exists in itself, but were necessary forms of human awareness, the two forms by which the human mind structures the things it perceives.
Keep in mind when reading these excerpts that I am well aware that Abram appears to not take into account Sanskrit and what is taking place in your part of the planet. Please forgive the "Eurocentric" perspective. At least Eurocentricism is something Schopenhauer can never be accused of!
We do know that the Ancient Hebrews were among the first communities to make sustained use of phonetic writing – the first bearers of an alphabet.
Unlike other Semitic peoples, they did not restrict their use of the alphabet to economic and political record keeping, but used it to record ancestral stories, traditions, and laws.
They were perhaps the first nation to so thoroughly shift their sensory participation away from the forms of surrounding nature to a purely phonetic set of signs, and so to experience the profound epistemological independence from the natural environment that was made possible by this potent new technology. To actively participate with the visible forms of nature became idolatry by the ancient Hebrews; it was not the land but the written letters that now carried the ancestral wisdom. (Abram 1996)
Although the Hebrews renounced animism, they retained a participatory relationship with the wind and the breath – the relationship is inferred from the structure of the Hebrew writing system.
On the journey across the Mediteranean, on the journy to Greece, the letters of the aleph-beth left behind their ties to “the enveloping life-world.” The alpha-beth became a much more abstract set of symbols. The Greek scribes introduced vowels. The resulting alphabet was a different kind of tool from its earlier Semitic incarnation.
Text had lost its ambiguity and mystery, leaving less for creative imagination to interpret. There is one correct way to read it. Active interpretation is not invited. There is no longer any choice about which vowels to insert. By using visible characters to represent the sounded breath, the Greeks effectively DESACRALIZED the breath and the air. By giving form to the invisible, they nullified the mysteriousness of the enveloping atmosphere.
Not two centuries later, Plato and Socrates were able to co-opt the term psyche, which for Anaximenes was associated with the breath and the air. Plato used the term psyche to indicate something not just invisible but utterly intangible. The psyche was now a thoroughly abstract phenomenon enclosed within the physical body as in a prison. Plato’s transcendent realm of eternal “Ideas” was itself dependent upon the new affinity between the literate intellect and the visible letters (and words) of the alphabet. Plato’s realm of pure bodiless Ideas was incorporeal, connected to the rational psyche much as the earlier, breath-like psyche was joined to the atmosphere.
Unlike the Hebrew Bible, the Christian New Testament was originally written primarily in the Greek alphabet. And wherever the alphabet advanced, it proceeded by dispelling the air of ghosts and invisible influences – by stripping the air of its anima, its psychic depth.
In the oral, animistic world of pre-Christian and peasant Europe, all things – animals, forests, rivers, and caves – had the power of expressive speech, and the primary medium of this collective discourse was the air.
To sum all this up, while I will not discourage you from exploring translations of Kant's and Plato's writings to your heart's content, I will simply remind you to consider the moon glaring in the night sky and allow it to cast it's spells. Continue to listen to the language of the wind, the thunder, and your own wordless nightmares.
You have all the necessary apparatus that Kant or Plato had access to. It is one being that we all are, right?
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Now,if one were to read Kant,would you say that the most important books written by Kant are The Critique of Pure Reason & the Prolegomena & that the second & the third critiques are not so profound/true.
Furthermore, as Schopenhauer says that one should read works by Plato,which books by Plato would you recommend?
When I was making room on my shelf for yet another "preliminary" text (Analytic Geometry) in an attempt to fill in the gaps where my education is weak - (studying spherical and cylindrical coordinates in the year 2000 without a solid grasp of polar coordinates caused me severe anxiety), I removed a book I held on to since I was 17 years old - The Three Pillars of Zen. Maybe I am still not quite ready for that book, but I went to a section in the supplements called Dogen on "Being-Time (http://www.thezensite.com/ZenTeachings/Dogen_Teachings/Uji_Welch.htm)". There is much underlined by my 17 year old "self".
I instantly had an epiphany about the parallels between our difficulties with Kant's system of speculative thought and the kind of dilemma the Zen practitioners face when considering the writings of their scribes.
Maybe, as thinkers or writers, we will not so much want to emulate Schopenhauer or Kant, but might strive to become more similar to Dogen in the respect that Dogen sought to emancipate men from the fetters of greed, anger, and delusion by teaching them how to live a truly meaningful life based on the Way of the Buddha, and not to formulate a system of speculative thought.
The author of The Three Pillars of Zen cautions the reader: "Dogen's realization liberated him from the basic anxieties of human existence. A word of caution. These passages ought not to be read as abstract metaphysic. Dogen is not speculating about the character of time and being, but is speaking out his deepest experience of that reality. This is clearly stated in his Fukan Zazengi, where he admonishes, 'You must cease concerning yourself with the dialectics of Buddhism and instead learn how to look into your own mind in seclusion.'"
Maybe by saying that we and all creatures/beings are time, Dogen, who lived very long ago, might have identified the mysterious subject, "I", that so baffled Kant. Maybe time is "the I", the very subject of consciousness.
In my youth a teacher told me that I have a tendency to get caught up in an abstract world, and so he encouraged me to "shoot hoops with my nephew" or take a walk in the woods.
And yet, when I allow myself to hunt down unique texts that might help clarify where the source of my confusion is coming from, this requires that I look into my own mind in seclusion. Maybe that teacher was mistaken advizing me to shoot a basketball into a hoop since, when I am in that zone zooming in on what I find confusing, I might be engaged in my own peculiar style of zazen.
Meanwhile, in a box up over my cot, to make room for the 3 pillars of zen, I removed a couple books on learning Spanish. Yo soy estupido en espanol. I put them in a crate on top of the giant Assembly language book, texts on TCP/IP (unix), and Frances Cress Welsing's "The Isis Papers" ... There is only so much I can focus on ... out of sight is out of mind. I know where to find them if I suddenly feel compelled to switch gears.
My brain is being overtaken by mathematics ! I have to force myself to eat. I am a man obsessed. The doctors would say I am "manic".
If this is a mood disorder I am experiencing, I don't want equilibrium. In fact, I would say one HAS TO BECOME OBSESSED if one is going to make any headway in studying in seclusion.
One's inner mental life has to become more spectacular and interesting than anything the war-mongers, sports-entertainment industries are peddling. Then seclusion becomes a welcome state, and not something to be avoided at all costs.
On this point, Schopenhauer was very clear.
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I have been pecking away at Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy Monographs: Schopenhauer's Encounter with Indian Thought.
I want to tear myself away from the mathematics and programming for just this breif interlude so i can note here some of what I was reading late after mindnight.
“If I wished to take the results of my philosophy as the standard of truth, I should have to concede to Buddhism pre-eminence [over other religions]." ~ Schopenhauer
In On the Will in Nature Schopenhauer includes a brief discussion of the obstacles standing in the way of European understanding of Oriental religions..
- sidenote: I have often read that it is considered wrong to use the term Oriental (as it cuts the world in half - Occidental vs Oriental), but this was the term used in Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy Monographs, so I am retaining its usage in this excerpt.
Europeans, Schopenhauer says, had come so closely to identify the notion of religion with theism and to assume without evidence that all peoples on earth worshipped a single World-Creator as they themselves did, that the discovery that this was not the case in lands like China and India loomed disproportionately large for them. A second obstacle he identifies is the optimistic view of the world that is the necessary complement of belief in a beneficent Creator-God. This too is absent in the East:
“They [Europeans] have been brought up in optimism, whereas existence is regarded there [in the East] as an evil.” ~ Schopenhauer
And a third major obstacle standing in the way of European understanding is “the decided idealism ( entschiedenen Idealismus), essential to both Buddhism and Hinduism.” Idealism for Schopenhauer is the doctrine of “the merely apparent existence of this world that is presented to our senses.” It is, he says, “a view known in Europe merely as the paradox of certain abnormal philosophers and as hardly worthy of serious consideration,” and yet in Asia it pervades society and finds expression even in the popular belief. It is this idealism and the extent to which its expression in Indian thought corresponds to Schopenhauer’s own teaching of representation.
another sidenote: While I was attending the state university in 2000-2002, I was renting a room from a grouchy German woman. Another student also renting a room was from India. Evidently he had been raised in a home where servants did all his laundry and cooking. He told me this himself. He delighted in walking to the foodstore for frozen waffles which he prepared in the toaster. He treasured being able to do his own laundry.
Anyway, during one of our conversations, he told me that he did not care for India being refered to as Asia, or grouped with Asia. He said that India is like a continent of its own, in its own right.
This got me to thinking how "Europe" seems to be a kind of strained effort of seeming to be separate from the land mass where it happens to be located.
And then there is the United States in North America ... I don't want to get side-tracked by my own chaotic thoughts.
... While in Dresden, Schopenhauer withdrew from the library of that city the first nine volumes of Asiatick Researches, retaining them for six months. These volumes cover the years 1788–1807 and include important articles by Jones, Colebrooke, Francis Buchanan, and others.
Some forty-five pages of notes preserved in the Schopenhauer Archive and
written in English (with which Schopenhauer was familiar) are evidence of his interest. They are records of passages that drew his attention, and there is generally no comment, other than underlining of significant passages and a few brief marginal remarks. These provide indications of the direction and extent of Schopenhauer’s interest and belong to a critical period during the formative stage of his philosophy. In accordance with the character of the early volumes of Asiatick Researches, most of these notes concern Hinduism.
However, volume 6 (1799) contained a discussion of Buddhism in the form
of Buchanan’s long essay “On the Religion and Literature of the Burmas.”
Schopenhauer found this work of considerable interest, and his notes show that he drew the following conclusions:
1. Gotama and Buddha, and probably also the Chinese Fo and Shaka, are the same.
2. The doctrine of transmigration is held by the Buddhists of Burma.
3. Buddhists (“The Sect of Gotama”) consider the belief in a divine being who created the universe to be highly impious. This note is emphasized by Schopenhauer with double vertical lines and a marginal comment, “This is the teaching of the Buddha” ( d. ist die Lehre des Buddha).
4. The Burmese religion knows of no supreme Being who is creator and preserver of the universe (similar emphasis by Schopenhauer).
5. Their system of morals is as good as that of any religion.
6. The Buddha’s followers are atheists (emphasized).
7. Nirvāna is the most perfect of all states and consists in a kind of annihilation. Nothing can give us an adequate idea of it. It is salvation and freedom from the miseries attaching to old age, disease, and death.
I am being pulled from the keyboard by my mother requesting my assitance.
I just wanted to leave some notes here. They are of extreme importance to me.
It was Schopenhauer's understanding that the Buddhists (“The Sect of Gotama”) considered the belief in a divine being who created the universe to be highly impious. That is, wicked. This is great stuff. It would explain to me why the pious believers seem so mean-spirited.
The Burmese religion knows of no supreme Being who is creator and preserver of the universe.
The Buddha’s followers are atheists.
I have to go.
I think I am an atheist of the Buddhistic-Schopenhauerian variety.
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Herr Raskolnikov,
I hope you and your mother are well over there. Although philosophical issues are beyond my understanding, I found your post much enlightening.
You write:
“7. Nirvana is the most perfect of all states and consists in a kind of annihilation. Nothing can give us an adequate idea of it. It is salvation and freedom from the miseries attaching to old age, disease and death.”
My question is: Does the perfect state of Nirvana free us from even death?
I thought, forgive my ignorance, that death leads us to Nirvana.
What does salvation and freedom mean to someone who is approaching fifty and feeling the decay of the body and mind also? Here in Paraguay there is an increase of adolescent girls bringing birth to babies at the age of fifteen, sixteen years of age. These girls, who have not yet gone through the process of growing up, bring innocent to this, this quilombo (ruckus,) to this zoo or human coop. This a horrible evidence that most of us enjoy becoming guinea pigs. Life is an imposition. Death is an imposition. No freedom to choose.
“The Buddha´s followers are atheists.”
Can one be a Protestant Christian atheist, that is to say, not to believe in a god taught by the Protestant teachings? Can one be this kind of atheist who rejects the god of his upbringing?
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The Buddha´s followers are atheists.
Can one be a Protestant Christian atheist, that is to say, not to believe in a god taught by the Protestant teachings? Can one be this kind of atheist who rejects the god of his upbringing?
Back in 1984 or so, there was actually a Philosophy course (in high school !) called, "Myths, Dreams, and Cultures" where we were exposed to the idea that myths are real. That is, myths are the way a given culture explains reality. Joseph Campbell might even consider our modern day natural sciences as a kind of mythology. Have we seen electrons ? Do we know atoms ?
As a young adult exposed to "treatment for substance=alcohol abuse" I would come to recognize a strange pattern, since there were so many, like myself, with resentments towards all things religious. Those raised in some Protestant denomination would lean towards agnosticism (like logician Bertrand Russell?), whereas those raised Catholic would make no qualms about their atheistic stance.
My paternal grandmother was raised Lutheran, and she was not the least bit devout; but she seemed 'spiritual' --- in a magic gypsie kind of way. Well, my mother remembers when this mother of my father told her that she believed our Life/World [on earth] to be Hell.
Was it not Schopenhauer who observed how much more easily Dante was able to describe Hell than describing Paradise? Hell is all around us and within us, no? It was not difficult for Dante to describe. When it came to Paradise, the description is cheesy.
By calling the God of Jews, Muslims, and Christians 'Satan,' the Gnostics flip the script, but they are not atheists. There is that element of belief in the supernatural.
To believe in NO CREATOR-GOD, that is my understanding of atheism.
Imagine my contempt and disgust when some "old timer" in AA, back in 1989, scolded me for claiming I had discovered a religion without a Creator God. The arrogant bastard insisted that, for Buddhists, the Buddha is their "God" ... I would become outraged. It was a prime example of ignorance parading around as authority.
You are, of course, free to reject the god of your upbringing. I am no authority. You are also free to embrace myths which allign more with your day to day, moment by moment, psychological experience. If we understand that these myths are simply explanations of reality - not literal hard core brute facts, but Symbolic Representations, then I don't see any contradiction with atheism.
If I were God, at the sight of the physical sufferings the universe and especially among animals and men, I would be of such horror that I would instantly annihilate all my creation and myself with her.
~ Maurice Maeterlinck, Before God. Belgium, 20th century.
I'll end up killing myself, it's obvious. It would be better for me to be dead, really. There is no limit to human suffering.
~ Katherine Mansfield, Journal. New Zealand, 20th century
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Sad to die, lugubrious is life.
Hell exists, but here, on earth.
Let us suffer, then, brothers,
without hoping for life a single solid joy,
Because we are in hell.
Auguste Strindberg, Inferno. Sweden, nineteenth century.
The Inferno, by August Strindberg (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/44108/44108-h/44108-h.htm)
Also from The Inferno:
Since he was also heavily in debt to the restaurant, he had to go about the streets, hungry. Among other things he confessed that he had taken morphia enough to kill two people, but death apparently did not yet want him. After an earnest discussion, we agreed to go to another quarter, and there eat our meals in some obscure cook-shop. I said I would not desert him, and that he should pluck up new courage and begin a new picture for the exhibition of independent artists.
This man becomes now my sole companion, and his misfortunes cause me a double share of suffering, so closely do I identify myself with him. I do so in a spirit of defiance, but presently gain an interesting experience thereby.
He reveals to me his whole past. He is a German by birth, but partly because of family disagreements, partly because of a lampoon for which he had been brought into court, he has spent seven years in America. I discover in him intelligence above the average, a melancholy temperament, and unbridled sensuality. But behind this mask of a cosmopolitan I begin to divine another character which disquiets me, and the full discovery of which I postpone to a favourable opportunity.