unskinned
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Posts posted by unskinned
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This seemed like the most appropriate forum. I would put it in one of the science forums, but it's more of a general "science" question, rather than one of the specific areas, so I figured "epistemology" was the next best fit.
I remember that in the thread about Michael Crichton's new book, State of Fear, someone made the comment that Crichton's work tends to emphasize the impotence of man in the face of nature, in certain situations. I agree that this is true of Jurassic Park (the only of his works with which I am truly familiar).
However, this raises the question: What are the true limits of human achievement?
It seems reasonable to assume that there has to be some limit. For instance, it is physically possible to attain a speed that is 99.999% that of the speed of light, but is it really within the realm of human possibility? Are things such as time travel, teleportation, and opening wormholes within the realm of human possibility? In the biosciences, it is becoming increasingly obvious that cloning is in the realm of possibility, but what about the total defeat of death? It seems to me that, even if death is biologically defeated, life must cease to exist at some point--that is when the sun's fuel is dried up.
I made the comment about Michael Crichton's luddism and contempt for man in nature. My point was that a Man capable of creating the swarm from Prey or of Dinosaurs is more than capable of planning ahead and making sure everything works out. Also, he seems more than capable of strapping a junk yard magnet to a helicopter or creating an electronic pulse that would exterminate the electronic swarm he created. Perhaps in the dinosaurs there would be a built in "kill switch," such as weakness to some irrelavent and uncommon, but entirely unleashable disease. Our triumph is not a given, but to take a literary fiction like "technology has magical evil powers" and turn it into a moral message, as Crichton does, as Martin Heidegger did, is intensely troublesome. Here technology takes the blame for what is caused by the socialism, as with our public utilities of today, and it is declared that we need more of the latter. This is my version of "socratism!" Schools Tragedies Socratism
Perhaps not as much so with State of Fear, as the moral happens to be accurate: Global Warming is dubious. As for the sun going cold, might it be possible to crash a thousand material rich comets on Pluto, move there, and set Jupiter on fire with Nuclear weapons? I don't know about the sun exploding, though. Is there nowhere to run or to hide? "I thought by the time the sun was exhausted, men would find a substitute" - Hank Rearden (162)
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I voted for A.S. It's weird because I like C.U.I. the best. Her non-fiction is superior.
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And on a related note, here is a quote which I think, in this context, condemns both the religious conservatives and the disintigrating eurotrash intellectuals:
One method of destroying a concept is by diluting its meaning. Observe that by ascribing rights to the unborn, i.e., the nonliving, the anti-abortionists obliterate the rights of the living: the right of young people to set the course of their own lives.-- Ayn Rand
My bad, that was wrong...
DisintEgrating eurotrash intellectuals. Of course, by that, I mean post-modernists, not Europeans in general. And certainly not Ancient Greeks!
I should also clarify that by "elites" I mean, not a talented clique, but rather a minority of individuals whose idea of literature is the Roger Waters edition of Chicken Soup for the Teenaged Soul. The type of people who use incoherent art as an excuse to give nothing of value, to avoid effort, or simply to convey the message of destruction. I'm lifting my head to think of a more accurate noun... ah yes: Posers.
That's not saying there is nothing of value in existentialism, don't get me wrong, but as a generalization, all this bitterness is terribly accurate.
10. Anthem (still, it is free)
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What is "Socratism"?
Some post-modernists use Socrates as a stand-out example of the "limitations of reason" -- that is, at best, it can only ask questions, but never provide any serious answers. (See David Roochnik, The Tragedy of Reason: Toward a Platonic Conception of Logos.) Further, Nietzsche, in The Birth of Tragedy, sec. 14, 15, et al, referred derisively to "Socratic optimism," that is, the belief that reason matters.
Do you mean something else?
I think I mean exactly what you have written. I am referring specifically to Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy. The more simplistic intellectuals try to say that a "Socrates" believes that reason matters, or that there is an upset of the proper relationship between Apollo and Dionysus, the conscious and unconscious. In their world, anyone who laments that there is too much tragedy, is decrying all tragedy and destroying the culture. He is participating in Socratism. Euripides is given as a major example.
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Wow...you're right...maybe that's why I hated all the books I read in school. I knew there was a reason and you just pointed it out. Thanks! We should get more Heroic books in there.
No doubt.
For purposes of self-flagellation:
9. The Sun Also Rises
And on a related note, here is a quote which I think, in this context, condemns both the religious conservatives and the disintigrating eurotrash intellectuals:
One method of destroying a concept is by diluting its meaning. Observe that by ascribing rights to the unborn, i.e., the nonliving, the anti-abortionists obliterate the rights of the living: the right of young people to set the course of their own lives.-- Ayn Rand
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I'm just wondering. Is it Socratism to want to have read just ONE serious sunlit book for school? Is this not a problem in our society, the DELIBERATE or DEFAULT removal of all serious triumph from our schools? Did I miss any books? Let's compile a list of serious non-tragedies that are read in highschools. Obviously sports and fantasy, great genres though they may be, are out because they are human recreations of actual reality.
Here:
1.The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged... because they come in the mail for free? Not even to my school.
2.Faulkner? ( We never read him. He still seems tragic and silly.)
3.The Old Testament
4.The Adventures of Tom Sawyer / Huckleberry Finn (favorites of Nietzsche, a fact which I imagine is eagerly overlooked, still it is a book about children)
6.Hatchet Gary Paulsen (yikes)
7.Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
8. Beowulf (this is a freebee, ***SPOILERS*** let's say that, even though the hero dies, he dies as all ancient warriors must, in the grips of his dead enemy, Wiglaf takes his treasure and lives on to tell the tale, which beams to us from the past to this day. One of most influential pieces of literature in my life (I can't handle the darkness!))
Hugo?
That is it for now. Sparknotes.com helped me refresh my memory. Go see the desert for yourselves, maybe you'll find more for the list. Hundreds of titles there and all students seem to be getting are the above. Notice that the other good books are American autobiographies like Franklin and Douglass, or American histories. Is there something about tragedy, besides dramatic elites thinking it is cool, that makes it a categorical imperative in literature? Existentialism says "Existence precedes essences, There is Being and Nothingness, there is life and there is death." But Objectivism says that existence is identification, existence exists and only existents exist, which makes existentialism and universal tragedy look like post nihilism and death worship. "The reification of the zero." What do you think?
UN-SKINNED-ALIVE
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Just wondering some of your opinions. I don't know much about the political atmosphere of Egypt, but from what I can tell, they seem like the best ally we have in the Middle East. Although, Saudi Arabia also "looks" that way, so I remain somewhat skeptical.
I'm not sure ally is the right word. The way I understand it is that proto-Al Quaeda had to leave Egypt after the assassination of Anwar Sadat. The government takes grand steps against fundamentalism. Egypt behaves.
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There is only one absolute, that there is only one... and this is it.
What if the people who said "There are no absolutes" started saying this?
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On the subject of Chairman Mao and other forms of happiness, I would like to add this. What about all the Chairman Mao's who have been killed or live as slaves? There's only one Chairman Mao and he was a fool for taking the road he did. He should be a dead man like all the people he tortured and stepped on in his scramble to the top. Everything about the statistics of powermongering shows the reality of these characters, that they are dependent.
Someone mentioned the prudent predator as well. Such an example, and Mao certainly overlaps, is unrealistic. If rational life truly is about having and getting in good habits, as Aristotle suggests, how is there much opportunity, in addition to the factor of an active police, for someone to be prudently dependent on the weakness of others? We all know people who cheated on tests in highschool. The neccessity of habituation in our lifestyles means that even the most prudent cheat is taking a step down a road. The road to white collar prison. Reason recomends that we reject dependence on principle.
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For my own state of well-being, I will state this: I have no problem with tragedy. We all know that there is nothing wrong with crying over the death of a protagonist, especially under the appropriate circumstances. I don't think there is anything wrong with showing that part of life, namely death, either. It's just that we are drowning our children in tragedy and spiritual failure right now. How long will the intellectuals continue to pretend that they are these Nietzschean pariahs of the dark truth? Among intellectuals and artists, they are the mainstream. We are the ones breaking the mold and leaving the herd. But the most important point is that quality and quantity are completely independent of each other. Forget the vain pursuit of individuality for individuality's sake, that is altruistic at base. This is the objective truth for rational individuals: What we need more of right now is what Ayn Rand writes about, spiritual exaltation and realistic sunrise.
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Tom Cruise's recent appearences have been consistantly nauseating. But I disagree with Alexander Marriot's recent commentary on the subject. I really enjoyed Minority Report and even WOTW, to a degree. I think Tom Cruise is a good actor and a symbol of success. What nauseates me more than his recent performances on Oprah, etc, is the crucifiction which is going on right now in the media. To a degree I suppose he asked for it. But my question is this. How do we tell he is not at all genuine? Do people never act like this? "Cruise is not good at live acting..." is that your impression of the Oprah ridiculousness?
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The link only examines one side of the issue. Equally important is - do American people have a tolerably positive view of India? I doubt it. Many are misguided and have unjustifiably negative view of India based on prejudiced news reporting, outdated notions of India/Hinduism and a generally xenophobic attitude that has built up after Sep 11 even though India has always been a target of the same terrorists.
The American people need to wake up and look at India, its culture and dominant religion with an open mind. India is one of the world's oldest civilizations. Dig beneath the outer crust of corruption, poverty & ignorance, and you find a heritage of gold.
Sounds interesting. There is such a thing as radical Hinduism. Actually I think Americans need to learn more about radical Hinduism. That sort of goes along with what you're saying and it sort of doesn't too. I think most americans are not as informed about the negatives of right wing Hinduism and also, as you point out, many things about India in general. There were very interesting articles in time and Newsweek from around the time of the nuclear tests if anyone is interested in a breif introduction.
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Thank you. I really liked that. The light bringer!
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My mistake, this second post was an accident.
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He doesn't lose his ability to reason: he turns against his reason. To sacrifice your mind is to stop using it as your means of knowledge and guide to action. It means placing your emotions above your reason. That is precisely what a bank robber has to do by virtue of the nature of his undertaking. Since reason is man's means of survival, to commit such an act can never be in one's interest, no matter how much money ends up in one's pocket.
Don Watkins
Continuing with this: I will never live my life for another man, nor ask another man to live for mine. It's an entirely personal pledge. You can violate it, but would you ever want to? It's such an integral and personal sense of who you are to live like that.
You should clean up the puke for the same reason that Ayn Rand disparages the "pimp" from Chile in Atlas Shrugged. He could not bother to ash his cigarette in an ashtray accross the table. Is that the kind of man you want to be? Maybe it is, but Rand thought reason and ideals would lead you elsewhere.
You should follow principles religiously while understanding that they are not categorical imperatives. Ultimately it is reason that guides you in a selfish and spiritual quest to be a certain kind of man and a happy one. Your ideal self should be perfect, but not flawless. So, if you are in a hurry, better not to miss your flight, that would be much worse. You just have to move on. Maybe you could leave some money or a note or something, but you might be in too much of a hurry to think of it. It might be best, from a social perspective, to just let the mess remain anonymous and remember the mistake for the future. These should not be rationalizations of feelings but honest attempts to act in accordance with reality. It is the same rationality that reccomends principles and ideals in the first place.
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I hinted at this a little in my previous post.
Existentialism, from what I can tell, tries to move Identity over into epistemology; it says that SOMETHING is (being) but WHAT it is is (identity) some matter of our perception. So, Identity isn't an axiom in the way that we mean.
That's not how I read it, at all. It seems to be the reverse. While we may have different sections of knowledge because we are finite consciousnesses, Existentialists don't deny that a thing is what it is, to everyone. So what-it-is would not be some matter of perception to them. It is that the MEANING of beings, on a personal level, is inspired by consciousness that there is something as opposed to nothing. It seems to me they are saying that meaning comes from revelation, not identification, and therefore reason/identity is the handmaiden of consciousness of existence. Consciousness of existence, (as axioms?), inspire "wonder at the world," that there is something and not nothing. In a nutshell, "it is so wonderful that there is at least something, and not nothing, now let's write some poetry!" (and reason/identification is just a tool for dealing with neccessities, it should not be used to pollute the meanings revealed to us by consciousness)
"Though he has to earn a living,
Man dwells poetically on this earth." -Holderlin
"Hölderlin is one of our greatest, that is, most impending thinkers," wrote Heidegger, "because he is our greatest poet. The poetic understanding of his poetry is possible only as a philosophical confrontatoion with the manifestation of being in his work." (http://www.mythosandlogos.com/Holderlin.html)
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Certainly Ayn Rand rejected "doghood" and "cathood" but would she reject identifying man as the "rational living being?" That he is essentially a "rational life form." That being rational and alive is his essence?
Forget that, I understand you. They are not talking about identity so much as responding to determinists. Existence precedes essence, people change (for example).
Thanks to all three of you, EC and especially Punk and Hal. You can't even know how valuable your help has been.
If you will bite again... The existentialists do not deny that a thing is what it is. Yet they seem to deny that identity is an axiom. Objectivists would say "that there is something and not nothing" IS identification wheras Heidegger seems to subordinate identity as something not just "after" but seperate. Science wants to know nothing of the nothing but depends on it for essences, Heidegger wrote. First we are conscious THAT it is, then we identify WHAT it is, Heidegger wrote. So identity is not exactly an axiom for existentialists? Existence ("Being") and consciousness are axiomatic, but not identity? (for existentialists)
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Heidegger is absolutely *not* straightforward in the German. I've read "Sein und Zeit" in the German, and it is written in that horrible style that characterizes German academic philosophy. On top of this Heidegger gives words idiosyncratic technical meanings as well as basing quite a bit of his reasoning on German word etymologies. Heidegger makes Hegel look like a font of literary clarity (I've read him in German too). For that matter Heidegger makes Kant look like Shakespeare (again, I've read Kant in German).
Perhaps a better comparison to Heidegger in English might be James Joyce, there is something of the the feeling of stream-of-consciousness in Heidegger.
If you would contend that it is just the German language which invites this philosophical style, a simple reading of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer would show what clearly written German philosophy can be like (I've read them in German too).
Heidegger was probably familiar to quite a few people at the time though. German culture has a tradition of the prince among the German philosophy professors who becomes something of a popular cultural figure (the current holder of this position is Habermas). People were probably familiar with him through word-of-mouth accounts of his thought, and some of his lighter material (essays and such) which were very specific on topic and don't range much over his general theory, as well as transcripts of his lectures (you will notice that quite a bit of the Heidegger corpus is transcripts of lectures on this or that topic). I really doubt "Sein und Zeit" was well read popularly.
I think you're right Punk. Despite what I wrote, Heidegger is certainly not straightforward in English. Thankyou for relating that experience and also for the insight about the difference between Schopenhauer's clearer writing and Heidegger's unclarity in English. That seems very true. I think, in addition to inappropriately proposing that "Sein und Zeit" is straightforward, I misused the Peikoff quotation about reason and supermen to suggest that there were many men of reason among the Germans. I think your comment about the philosohical interest of many early 20th Century Germans is more appropriate, as they were philosophically interested but hardly men of reason.
Getting back to the point, my original comment was that thousands of troopers died with Heidegger's works in their packs. It was NOT that most did. I was never suggesting that. I will also reiterate that I do not think Heidegger bares the most intellectual responsibility for the assumption of the Nazis. As I wrote, it would seem that is on Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and the darker romantics. Yet, it is obvious that he bares some responsibility.
When I review or come across even better sources than those already posted, I will be sure to bring them here.
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Here is another quotation which seems to echo the idea of Germans having philosophy in their packs:
The book concludes with a helpful epilogue, "Europe Discovers Nietzsche," where Safranski discusses some early interpretations of Nietzsche's thought (Mann, Bertram, Baeumler), the often-mentioned fact of the distribution of 150,000 copies of This Spoke Zarathustra to World War I German foot-soldiers (along with the Bible and Goethe's Faust), and Nietzsche's influence on several great European minds of the twentieth century (Bergson, Jaspers, Heidegger, Adorno/Horkheimer, and Foucault).from:Essays in Philosophy
A Biannual Journal
Vol. 4 No. 1, January 2003
Book Review (of)
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Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography, Rüdiger Safranski. Translated by Shelley Frisch. London and New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2002. 409pp.
Yes, it was a different war and slightly richer subject matter, but only slightly different in both cases. I don't consider Zarathustra to be light reading.
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I wrote: Philosphy drove the intelligentsia to fail to challenge Hitler.
You replied:
Most major existentialist figure opposed Nazi Germany. Many had Soviet sympathies, and were disgusted by Heidegger's stance.Many had Soviet sympathies... I view that as a failure to challenge Nazism. What an awful alternative intellectually, and certainly historically. Lenin's victims alone almost cry out from the grave at such a suggestion. That was part of the reason fascism erupted, many europeans wanted anything but to be submitted to that.
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I find it almost impossible to believe the average trooper could/would read Heidegger, do you have some kind of source for this?
Here is one source.
On Heidegger's Nazism and Philosophy
by Tom Rockmore
University of California Press, 1992
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Among these prophets, Heidegger was perhaps the most unlikely candidate to influence. But his influence was far-reaching, far wider than his philosophical seminar at the University of Marburg, far wider than might seem possible in light of his inordinately obscure book, Sein und Zeit of 1927, far wider than Heidegger himself, with his carefully cultivated solitude and unconcealed contempt for other philosophers, appeared to wish. Yet, as one of Heidegger's most perceptive critics, Paul Hühnerfeld, has said: ***"These books, whose meaning was barely decipherable when they appeared, were devoured. And the young German soldiers in the Second World War who died somewhere in Russia or Africa with the writings of Hödlerlin and Heidegger in their knapsacks can never be counted."... ****
What Heidegger did was to give philosophical seriousness, professorial respectability, to the love affair with unreason and death that dominated so many Germans in this hard time... And Heidegger's life -- his isolation, his peasant-like appearance, his deliberate provincialism, his hatred of the city -- seemed to confirm his philosophy, which was a disdainful rejection of modern urban rationalist civilization, an eruptive nihilism.
... When the Nazis came to power, Heidegger displayed what many have since thought unfitting servility to his new masters -- did he not omit from prints of Sein und Zeit appearing in the Nazi era his dedication to the philosopher [Edmund] Husserl, to whom he owed so much but who was, inconveniently enough, a Jew?
Peter Gay, Weimar Culture, the Outsider as Insider, Harper Torchbook, 1970, pp. 81-83.
I think Leonard Peikoff wrote that it is a common fallacy that reason is the faculty of supermen. In the original German, I bet Heidegger was actually pretty straightforward. I realized that he writes very logically and clearly. I do not take Huhnerfeld's "...can never be counted" as a deliberate vaguery but as a statement that these works were well known to be widely read by this population. It might be comparable to the way Chomsky and Zinn are read in America. This characterization by Huhnerfeld does not conflict with my understanding of what was once called "The Nation of Philosophers."
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The 'official voice' of Objectivism as far as I'm concerned is and always will be Miss Rand. The final judge of reality is . . . ME. I need no passage of apostolic authority to be able to manage that perfectly well.
Do you think, perhaps, that Objectivists need some kind of spokesperson? We're not a political pressure group seeking favors from the government. Individual, happy, successful Objectivists leading their lives are the most effective spokespeople as far as any other purpose is concerned.
So, to sum up: if Dr. Peikoff dies before Ayn Rand's copyrights expire someone will have to take up the task of managing her estate. No other 'heir' is necessary or desirable.
Isn't it a little more than that? I believe Ayn Rand deemed Leonard Peikoff the person most qualified to talk and write about Objectivism. Intellectual heir doesn't mean pope, but it also doesn't mean anything less than "intellectual heir." That is something more than "will designee."
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More importantly, Hitler's rise to Chancellor was not allowed by members of the Weimar cultural scene who held existential or nihilistic ideas, but by politicians such as Hindenburg who were generally interested in seeing some semblence of authoritarianism due to the German political "tradition" of authoritarianism, a tradition that argurably was carried over from Prussia and Bismarck, and so backed Hitler as the candidate to lead the authoritarian drive, believing him to be a chractecter who could be manipulated. (they were of course, incorrect).
That is not entirely true. I have read some accounts of existentialist students at the time claiming to have been generally horrified by the support for Nazism. But at least one of the major figures of existentialism, Martin Heidegger, was an undeniably rabid advocate of Nazism and Hitler. They found thousands of dead troopers on the eastern front and N. Africa with Heidegger's works in their packs.
Also, you may be right in suggesting that philosophy did not drive the general intelligentsia to support Hitler, but that is not the main point. Philosphy drove the intelligentsia to fail to challenge Hitler. Again, evil triumphs when good men do nothing. And it's not just Shopenhauer, either. Many early existentialists, as far as I have understood them, took the stand that there is no "set" of ethics. That there is no way to justify reccomending one code of values over another. It is a kind of moral caution which does not keep people from joining the resistance, once the evil is blindingly obvious, but rather that makes them unwilling to see evil that is obvious but more distant. It is a kind of moral caution that justifies the condemnation and fighting of evil only after it is entirely too late.
Also, when I talk about evil here, Strangelove, I am referring to threats to my life, personally. Nothing more than that, just so you know. That is an Objectivist idea of evil.
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You are trying to get me to attribute the rise of Nazism to a single cause, a "philisophical" case. I don't see merit in that view for this situation. I do not believe that because, and only because of the weakness of the philosophies of the Weimar Cultural scene that Nazism was able to rise.
I doubt that. The standard point here is that philosophy was the main reason for the rise of Nazism. The extent to which a philosophy influenced the culture is roughly associated with the time it took for that philosophy to become popular and widely accepted. The most influential philosophers, as far as I am concerned, were Kant, Hegel, and Shopenhauer. There is a saying, "evil triumphs when good men do nothing." For a brilliant example of a philosophy that reccomends that the virtuous men literally withdraw from the world and do nothing, read Shopenhauer (sp?). All societies go through hard times, it is usually the extent to which philosphy has been corrupted in that society that they succumb to those hard times.
Futhermore, there are two different issues being discussed here. One is the rise of Nazism, the other is the unleashing of the Nazis on Europe. Philosophy also had a negative influence on Europe, especially (for instance, moral relativist) those which allowed people to want peace at any price. As long as we are talking about the effect of the nazis on Europe and World War II, we are talking about the negative influence of philosphy on the French and English. Hitler's armies had orders to retreat from the Ruhr at the first sign of French resistance. There was no resitance. Again, evil trimphs when good men do nothing.
Happy Birthday, David!
in Miscellaneous Topics
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Here here. Happy Birthday.