{∅, {∅}, {∅, {∅}}} : Rage Against the Meat Grinder

PAUSE documenting solutions to Introductory (Set-Theoretical, Real Number based) ANALYSIS.

PAUSE Language, Logic and Mathematics in Schopenhauer (edited and partially authored by Jens Lemanski).

Reasons:

See Humor in Horror

See Burn Math Class | Berlin Lectures in Manuscript Remains?

By the way, I found it difficult to sustain motivation for taking notes from the collection, Language, Logic and Mathematics in Schopenhauer, edited and partially authored by Jens Lemanski.  I suppose I might have to skip many of the chapters (contributions) on language and search for the sections on logic and mathematics.

It is humbling to face the limits of our reason, the limits of what we are actually able to devote our conscious attention to.   

I hope you, Holden, are continuing to stand your ground as far as "whether or how you want to live in this world."

______________________   New Trajectory  _______________

I have opted to continue readings of phenomenologist John Wild, reread my philosophical notes from the past 4 years, and forge ahead with rational trigonometry (to a universal geometry), that is, "Divine Proportions.

John Wild is mentioned in the Hegel thread:

Kierkegaard saw in Hegelian collectivist theory a ghastly mistake fraught with terrible possibilities for the future. Its use of the term freedom is only a deceptive cloak for an insidious form of essentialist determinism. When the human person is viewed as an object, he is apt to be lost as a tiny drop in the ocean of humanity, swirled along by the overwhelming tides of history.

This subordination of the individual to the life of the mass is a conspicuous feature of Hegelian thought. It fits in with certain social tendencies which have become accentuated with the coming of the industrial Revolution and mass production.

Kierkegaard was keenly aware of these tendencies and hated them with a passionate intensity.

Also, in the Husserlian Phenomenology thread (What Now?): John Daniel Wild.

In the Why Bother? Forum, in a thread called
Having the Courage to be an Absolute Nobody, talking about Erich Fromm's The Sane Society:

As for the big problems, such as the fact that adaptation to normalcy could be the root of mental illness, well, this is for the great thinkers to ponder; but maybe I am not one of these great thinkers.  Maybe I find the big questions just too frustrating to contemplate.

I may peck away at reading a pdf file of the book, but I just can't embark upon committing myself to reading a hard copy, and, if I'm going to study something alongside mathematics, I would prefer to read John Wild who I had never heard of.  I want more insight into Kierkegaard, another thinker I have avoided since I find religion so off-putting; but I am interested in human despair.   Maybe I am just frustrated with how much restraint it takes to stay focus on the mathematics deemed essential by the mathematicians writing the textbooks in the 1960's - a rare event in the history of education, by the way.   

I don't want to become too distracted by high-minded philosophical treatises when it appears to me that I get more satisfaction from mastering more technical material, like manipulating equations and analyzing graphs.   Maybe I just lack the patience to give my attention to grand generalizations about what is wrong with our culture.   And here, too, I concede that the culture Fromm is generalizing about is "Western Civilization".   From what Holden tells me, capitalism and consumerist values are no different in India, a place I have always looked upon as vast and mysterious and immune to contamination.   No, I have to say that my communications with Holden have made me less naive in this respect.  I understand that "our culture" is one civilization, East and West, one human condition wrought with social injustices and the madness even in traditional lifestyles considered "normal".

I am one of those who is immersed in a sort of refined hopelessness.  I cannot criticize nor applaud Fromm since I have not read much of his work, even though I certainly have access to it.   It's not that I am lazy.  It is because I acknowledge that I have a limited amount of attention, as we all must have; and I can't read everyone whose ideas I am interested in.

One book leads to another, and the path leads into a jungle of ideologies.   Math is different.  With math I can stay focused, but there is so much I have to keep on the shelf just to maintain this degree of focus.  I am quite certain that teenagers would totally understand the predicament I am attempting to articulate.   There is simply too much information to absorb!

Just reading the introduction to a later edition to The Sane Society, I learned of a book called Social Amnesia: A Critique of Conformist Psychology from Adler to Laing by Russell Jacoby.   Do you see how this unfolds?   I discover other writers and then I am distracted.   

This would be great if it weren't for the fact that I am trying to devote myself to the technical aspects of building skills with "school mathematics" which I firmly believe I was never taught, regardless of the high school and university diplomas.   I don't want to live a lie.   For me, the study of the 1960's and 1980's school mathematics [as presented with "New Math"] entails disillusionment and the glorious process of undeceiving myself of what I thought I knew.   To me, it is absolutely liberating to expose myself to my ignorance and to bravely and squarely face the brute fact that I know and understand far less than I have ever assumed.

Is it just me?  Does anyone else notice how one book leads to another, one writer leads to another writer, and that one can't ignore the limits of our attention?

So, my theory is that we must demand the right to feel stupid, and to move at an honest pace with our readings as well as with our engagement with texts.

My apologies for the free-flow style of my posts lately.   Sometimes I am a calculating writer.  Other times I am just a madman, after all is said and done.

Withdrawing into my cerebral realm ... Goodbye to romance, goodbye to friends ...

In What Nietzsche Did Not See:

While reading John Wild I discovered that for decades my notion of "metaphysics" was not entirley correct.  I took it literally to mean "beyond physics," when it turns out that it is only called metaphysics because it came after Physics in something written by Aristotle.  So, to be fair to myself I think it is best I try to cultivate the Beginner's Mind so as not to be made ignorant by my own assumptions of having understood something that I understood incorrectly.  It is quite possible that many others also understand the word metaphysics to mean "beyond physics," and so there may be widespread "Ignorance parading itself around as authority," a phrase used by Schopenhauer which took root in my mind many years ago.

Something tells me that there is a WILD connection between my being drawn to Wildberger's theory of rational trigonometry (to a universal geometry) and my inability to ignore John Wild's theory of a realistic existentialism which uses phenomenology as a method of description and analysis of the Lebenswelt.

Have we broken through the mass hypnosis yet?

Dietrich von Hildebrand was a German Roman Catholic philosopher and religious writer.

My interest is his focus on ethics and morality.  I am curious to explore his realist phenomenological methods.  While I am put off by his religiosity, I may have to overlook this for the moment so as to transcend my own prejudices.

Works available:

Direct link to PDF file:  What is Philosophy (the one I will explore first, for those who wish to go deep sea diving with me)   

http://libgen.rs/search.php?req=Dietrich+von+Hildebrand+&lg_topic=libgen&open=0&view=simple&res=25&phrase=1&column=def

https://hildebrandproject.org/hildebrand-press/


In the thread, Faith in Science:

Schopenhauer wrote at a time when faith in science and an attendant optimism about humanity were gaining steadily in influence, and his writings must be understood as a powerful countercurrent probing the flaws of this belief, highlighting the limits of human knowledge, and stressing the forces within the human psyche that were—and remain—largely unappreciated.

Note that, from what I read in the Introduction to  Hildebrand's What is Philosophy?, he has this in common with Schopenhauer.   Dietrich von Hildebrand may also be a powerful countercurrent probing the flaws of this naive fetish with "science" we "moderns" have been contaminated with.

The problem I see is that Hildebrand might be yet another great thinker who has not dared acknowledge Arthur Schopenhauer.  He pays tribute to Edmund Husserl, but not a word praising "Our Great Teacher of Mankind," "Our Buddha of Berlin" ?

Is this another case of !!! Totschweigentaktik !!! [German: Death by Silence]?

I have still yet to forgive John Wild for slighting Husserl and ignoring Schopenhauer.  At least Hildebrand didn't slight Husserl.   Both Hildebrand and Wild tended towards "realistic phenomenology".   

Why did Freud never mention Schopenhauer's influence on "the theory of the unconscious mind" ?   At least Carl Jung (The Aryan Christ?) acknowledged Schopenhauer as his spiritual grandfather!

I suspect, like Kant before Schopenhauer, Dietrich von Hildebrand needed the protection or support of an institutionalized religious authority, so I'm going to try to overlook his identification as a Roman Catholic.  Such are the politics of our pitiable species.