Christian Socialism

  

“Not he who rejects the gods of the crowd is impious, but he who embraces the crowd’s opinion of the gods.” (From Epicurcus’s letter (341–270 BC) to Menokeus on the tenth book of Diogenses Laertitus)

“…the criticism of religion is the premise of all criticism.”—Marx (Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, 1844)

Dr. Vervaeke presented a great summary of Hegelian Absolute Idealism within one hour (Ep. 24 - Awakening from the Meaning Crisis - Hegel). A course on this topic in the United States would cost a fortune, but is given freely by the good professor Dr. Vervaeke. What first attracted me to his lectures was the constant focus on consciousness and an insightful review of its evolution in the history of philosophy. This theme seemed very familiar, but it was only when studying the word “Telos” that I consciously realized the similarity with Hegel’s famous work, The Phenomenology of Spirit, that essentially has the same angle of approach: review theories of cognition through history while searching for “patterns of intelligibility,” another fantastically useful term.

In a second video, A Metaphysical Dialogue with John Vervaeke Jun 23, 2019, he goes into even greater detail by introducing two new important terms of which I must have been asleep in class when it was taught in college: emergence ontology, and emanationist ontology. Clearly, Marx viewed Hegelian Absolute Idealism as emanationist since it has a strong Neo-Platonic notion of the transcendent ideal forms that objectively exists and all of being is derived. And Marx would view a certain kind of materialist philosophy as emergent since material being interacts with itself to build complex emergent properties. A single cell cannot read, but billions of organized specialized cells can read, write, and speak. I would argue, however, that both Hegelian idealism and Marxian historical materialism (Marx never used the term “dialectical materialism”) synthesizes emergence and emanationism cosmologies.

“In direct contrast to German philosophy which descends from heaven to earth [Hegel], here we ascend from earth to heaven.”—Karl Marx in The German Ideology (1845)

Absolute Idealism developed just as Hegel predicted; his idealist system presented a thesis, materialism is the antithesis, and Marx provided a synthesis. Hegel begins with mind in his ontology, and Marx begins with mind in existence so that initially Hegel descends, and Marx ascends. What is often overlooked and misrepresented by Cold War propaganda is both Marxian and Hegelian ontologies are dynamic feedback loops. The Hegelian road to experience is one in which consciousness evolves to self-consciousness and then to Reason. This process involves learning from experience, changing existence, and advancing from mere Perception (Empiricism), to Understanding (Kantian Transcendental Idealism). In Marx’s case, his starting-point is consciousness in existence, but material existence is dynamic, alive, and evolving—this is not the dead matter of crude materialism that is automatically used as a straw man argument against Marx (Not Copyrighted Material):

“In direct contrast to German philosophy which descends from heaven to earth, here we ascend from earth to heaven. That is to say, we do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive, nor from men as narrated, thought of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive at men in the flesh. We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life-process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process. The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life-process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises. Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development; but men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking. Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life. In the first method of approach the starting-point is consciousness taken as the living individual; in the second method, which conforms to real life, it is the real living individuals themselves, and consciousness is considered solely as their consciousness” (Karl Marx. The German Ideology ,1845, Part I: Feuerbach: Opposition of the Materialist and Idealist Outlook).

Remember that Hegelianism was the dominant philosophy of the time so Marx emphasized material existence.  Whenever Marx or Engels are asked if existence is the determining factor of life, they would argue on the side of consciousness; on the other hand, asked if consciousness in the determining factor of life, they would argue on the side of material existence. This historical context is never mentioned whenever Marxist historical materialism is discussed by persons that never studied Marx.

Friedrich Schelling took over the Chair of Philosophy at the University of Berlin after Hegel's death in 1831. Schelling was a school roommate of Hegel and was deeply personally offended by his critical comment that “in the absolute all cows are black.” Schelling believed that Hegel’s system did not give actual existence it proper ontological place. Within one year of taking the Chair, Schelling began his lectures on “positive philosophy.” Soren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Engels along with anarchist Bakunin attended Schelling’s lecture! Interestingly, both Schelling and Hegel were friends with Goethe. Excepting Bukunin, all of the philosophers mentioned borrowed from Schelling’s philosophy including Fichte whom he accused of plagiarism. Also, Heidegger’s Dasein analytic in Being and Time was inspired by Schelling. Dasein is a Romantic!

During times of political upheaval in history the sophists appear to share their “knowledge,” but they really want only to distract, mislead, and coerce. It was during a time of great political upheaval that Christianity arose as a world religion. During religious upheaval the Book of Revelations is used to frighten the population, “All the apocalypses attribute to themselves the right to deceive their readers”(On the History of Early Christianity, 1894 (HEC). Engels wrote,

“We shall find that the type of ideologists at the time [Early Christian sectarianism] corresponded to this state of affairs. The philosophers were either mere money-earning schoolmasters or buffoons in the pay of wealthy revellers.”--Friedrich Engels in Bruno Bauer And Early Christianity, 1882.

I will let you figure out who is who.

Also, Engels noted, “It is a curious fact that with every great revolutionary movement the question of “free love” comes into the foreground. With one set of people as a revolutionary progress, as a shaking off of old traditional fetters, no longer necessary; with others as a welcome doctrine, comfortably covering all sorts of free and easy practices between man and woman” (Engels in “The Book of Revelations,” 1883, referred as BOR).

“Christian Socialism is but the holy water with which the priest consecrates the heart-burnings of the aristocrat.”-- Communist Manifesto (1848)

The same can be said of Christian Socialism that is often discussed out of its historical context. Engels helped draft the Communist Manifesto that was going to be entitled, “The Socialist Manifesto,” but another group already took the name “Socialist”—no Hegelian metaphysical debate decided the manifesto’s title. The Marxists did not care for the socialists anyway since all they wanted was a better dogcatcher and not really challenge the power of capital. Marx viewed religion as a fetish, but Engels had a deeper understanding of organized religion than the Manifesto would imply. Engels was raised in a very religious home and had surprisingly in-depth knowledge of biblical criticism of his era. Toward the end of his life, Engels viewed Christianity as a proletarian movement against the Rome Empire.

“And this is correct. Christianity got hold of the masses, exactly as modern socialism does, under the shape of a variety of sects, and still more of conflicting individual views clearer, some more confused, these latter the great majority — but all opposed to the ruling system, to “the powers that be.”—Engels in BOR.

Christian theologians Martin Luther, Georg Hegel, and Soren Kierkegaard were much harsher critics of Christianity than Marx, or Engels. Hegel’s “The Phenomenology of Spirit “ inspired Ludwig Feuerbach to write The Essence of Christianity, 1841, in which Feuerbach agreed with Hegel that all theology is anthropology, “Thus God is nothing else than man: he is, so to speak, the outward projection of man's inward nature.^[1] “ Engels viewed Christianity as emerging out of a “Darwinistic struggle for ideological existence.”(Engels in “Bruno Bauer and Early Christianity,” 1882, referred to as BEC). During this time a plethora of new religions sprang up within the Roman Empire causing a wave of religious debate and buffoonery just mentioned. Engels agreed with Biblical scholar Bruno Bauer (1809-1882) that Christianity was influenced by Ancient Greek thought more than Judaism arguing that the philosopher Philo actually formulated Christianity with aspects of Stoicism (Seneca) injected into its theology. Engels further wrote,

“Christianity, like every great revolutionary movement, was made by the masses. It arose in Palestine, in a manner utterly unknown to us, at a time when new sects, new religions, new prophets arose by the hundred. It is, in fact, a mere average, formed spontaneously out of the mutual friction of the more progressive of such sects, and afterwards formed into a doctrine by the addition of theorems of the Alexiandrian Jew, Philo, and later on of strong stoic infiltrations. In fact, if we may call Philo the doctrinal father of Christianity, Seneca was her uncle”(BOR).

Engels understood Christianity as essentially a subversive force against Roman tyranny:

“It is now, almost to the year, sixteen centuries since a dangerous party of overthrow was likewise active in the Roman empire. It undermined religion and all the foundations of the state; it flatly denied that Caesar’s will was the supreme law; it was without a fatherland, was international; it spread over the whole empire, from Gaul to Asia, and beyond the frontiers of the empire. It had long carried on seditious activities underground in secret; for a considerable time, however, it had felt strong enough to come out into the open. This party of overthrow … was known by the name of Christians [10] (see “Engels, ‘Introduction to Karl Marx’s The Class Struggles in France’).(Not Copyrighted Material)

Christianity was in opposition to the Roman Empire, but the Empire’s eventual response was to absorb Christianity as the official state religion and make Christians subject by law to Roman military inscription. This synthesis of religion and state is known as Constantinism and is when first century Christianity became the bureaucratic Christendom Kierkegaard protested against (Not Copyrighted Material):

“A religion that brought the Roman world empire into subjection, and dominated by far the larger part of civilized humanity for 1,800 years, cannot be disposed of merely by declaring it to be nonsense gleaned together by frauds. One cannot dispose of it before one succeeds in explaining its origin and its development from the historical conditions under which it arose and reached its dominating position. This applies to Christianity. The question to be solved, then, is how it came about that the popular masses in the Roman Empire so far preferred this nonsense — which was preached, into the bargain, by slaves and oppressed — to all other religions, that the ambitious Constantine finally saw in the adoption of this religion of nonsense the best means of exalting himself to the position of autocrat of the Roman world”(BEC).

Engels argues with Bauer that Christianity arose among the slaves, which included nearly everyone, “It was in the midst of this general economic, political, intellectual, and moral decadence that Christianity appeared. It entered into a resolute antithesis to all previous religions”(BEC). “Such was the material and moral situation. The present was unbearable, the future still more menacing, if possible. There was no way out. Only despair or refuge in the commonest sensuous pleasure, for those who could afford it at least, and they were a tiny minority. Otherwise, nothing but surrender to the inevitable”(BEC). In search of material and spiritual salvation Stoicism was an inadequate substitute for religion and parasitic Stoic disciple conduct “discredited its doctrines.” 

Christianity became a universal religion from the doctrines of fallen humankind and individual persons feeling responsibility for the corruption they witnessed and lived. The Christian doctrine of atonement offered salvation which many other religions understood and welcomed. The slave Christians pointed the accusing finger at themselves for the corruption and sought spiritual redemption (Not Copyrighted Material): 

“Christianity struck a chord that was bound to echo in countless hearts. To all complaints about the wickedness of the times and the general material and moral distress, Christian consciousness of sin answered: It is so and it cannot be otherwise; thou art in blame, ye are all to blame for the corruption of the world, thine and your own internal corruption! … The admission of each one's share in the responsibility for the general unhappiness was irrefutable and was made the precondition for the spiritual salvation which Christianity at the same time announced. And this spiritual salvation was so instituted that it could be easily understood by members of every old religious community. … Christianity, therefore, clearly expressed the universal feeling that men themselves are guilty of the general corruption as the consciousness of sin of each one; at the same time, it provided, in the death-sacrifice of his judge, a form of the universally longed-for internal salvation from the corrupt world, the consolation of consciousness; it thus again proved its capacity to become a world religion and, indeed, a religion which suited the world as it then was” (BEC, emphasis added).

Berlin Blues

It Ruffled up my feathers and it barked right up my tree

When Suddenly it seemed all the fingers were pointing on up at me

And the footsteps in the sand

And we are were all getting

Washed up by the sea

To leave me in stitches

Bursting at the seams

Bursting at the seams

When the sun came out to greet me

I only saw the wolves from my dreams

This is my Berlin blues song

Sometimes life can get a little wrong

But it won't be long

Cuz it just makes me strong

And there is a place where we one day

Would delve where there no more walking on eggshells

Where ideas are for free

OH! It's the place to be

A great mind's no longer the minority

I'll see you there with your hands in the air

Where the canvas is bare

And there's no more despair

And your third eye would stare

Nothing can compare

not want care

and I'll see you there

I'll see you there

I'll see you there

This is my Berlin blues song

Sometimes life can get a little wrong

But it won't be long

Cuz it just makes me strong

The Telos of Absolute Idealism

“…in the Absolute, all is one,”—Friedrich Schelling

“…in the Absolute, all cows are black…”—Hegel’s critique of Schelling

The Greek concept of Telos (τέλος) is introduced in episode 2 of Dr. Vervaeke’s lecture series on cognition along with the concept of “patterns” in meaning, meaning making, and cognition. His lectures have greatly enhanced my understanding of the theologian Wilhelm Hegel’s absolute idealism and appreciation of this discipline known as cognitive science. In a way, this topic leads back to theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) a contemporary of Hegel (1770-1831) who was also a theologian. Telos means “fulfillment,” “end,” “result” or even can mean a charged “tax,” or “toll.” A person on a journey, or climbing to a mountaintop has a telos, goal, or purpose. Historical time can be viewed as cyclical, or linear. Time thought to be circular is a closed system. The Ancient Greeks viewed historical time as circular with persons having predetermined fates. A linear upward climb of time to a goal or completion is teleological and open ended to multiple possibilities. For the Ancient Greeks the ancient past is perfect and as time moves into the future the cosmos becomes imperfect. On the other hand, a progressive telos of history is thought to be moving upward and onward to reach a higher level of actualized being (Aristotle). But exactly what is history moving toward?

“For Hegel, the inner movement of reality is the process of God thinking as manifested in the evolution of the universe of nature and thought; that is, Hegel argued that, when fully and properly understood, reality is being thought by God as manifested in man's comprehension of this process in and through philosophy”(Wiki: Hegel).

You should not have skipped that philosophy course in college! The theological view of Hegelian absolute idealism is a little more intelligible only because we are familiar with Christian theism so this interpretation is actually very helpful in understanding what Hegel means by reality, mind, phenomenon, historical process, and knowledge. The German word for mind, “Geist” is also the same word as for “spirit.” Mind in this context has the meaning of “distinct from the body.” Spirit can mean “spirit of the times,” as in Zeitgeist, or spirit can mean “The Holy Spirit” as in “der Heilige Geist.” Absolute knowledge is a key concept for Hegel. Absolute knowledge does not mean knowing everything which is clearly humanly impossible, but rather knowledge of reality, as what is, and not as the world appears. Hegel shows in his work “Phenomenology of Spirit” (1807) (referred to as PS) how this knowledge is possible and it is not merely a matter of collecting more empirical data, which is the job of science. Hegel’s scientific philosophy is a history of cognition on the path of experience.

Hegel viewed his task as documenting the historical journey of human thought--of mind, of consciousness in the highest abstract sense--educating itself as it struggles with material existence and itself. Consciousness changes into different shapes or forms, “as series of configurations,” as it reaches a higher understanding of itself on the torturous historical road of experience—to Calvary. Adorno referred to this historical process as the “suffering of the concept.” Hegel’s abstract idealism is integrated with world history for this is how mind becomes appearance, a phenomenon. Thought comes to know itself as self-consciousness and understands that reality is ultimately mind creating a purposive collective social community with coercive force that can build or destroy. Absolute knowledge is reached when thought realizes through this experience of consciousness that it seeks to know itself. Self-consciousness is consciousness reflecting on itself. History is the teleological manifestation of a pattern, the incarnation, and appearance (phenomenon) of mind in human historical experience.

The force that moves history forward is the logical impulse of mind itself to resolve all division, disunity, and contradiction in thought and existence.  In Hegelian philosophy the category of “Contradiction” is not just a rule of formal logic (p and ~p) rather “contradiction” mirrors a part of the ontological structure of Being—not merely a methodological tool to investigate the world. Contradictions can be forensically, or critically investigated to determine what ideas brought together opposing theses. We see this all the time in Marx’s critique of political economy.

“But the goal is as necessarily fixed for knowledge as the serial progression; it is the point where knowledge no longer needs to go beyond itself, where knowledge finds itself, where Notion corresponds to object and object to Notion. Hence the progress towards this goal is unhalting….” (Phenomenology of Spirit, Intro., para. 80).

Hegel is an absolute idealist, not a relative idealist that believes there are many interpretations of many different realities and like a solipsist thinks only their own experiences and thoughts are real with no objective reality by which to judge any one worldview over another. Absolute idealists believe in one reality because there is only one mind. The Absolute is an indefinite One: not a definite substance, or a cow--only immaterial mind.

“Dealing with something from the perspective of the Absolute consist merely in declaring that …as something definite, yet in the Absolute, A=A, there is nothing of the kind, for all is one…[In this incorrect view of the Absolute]… all cows are black.” —Hegel’s critique of Schelling’s concept of the Absolute, “The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807)” English trans. by J. Baillie, London,1909, Preface, paragraph 16.

Reducing the Absolute (Reality) to a substance, or thing is a common tendency in Western thought. Ambiguously, Hegel has an Eastern concept of the Absolute. However, we find that for Hegel human “history is nothing but the progress of consciousness of freedom”(Hegel: A Very Short Introduction, Peter Singer, 1983, Oxford Univ. Press, p. 33). Once again, mind has stepped into the Agora, ἀγορά (or “marketplace,” related to the word “agriculture”) just as Socrates asked in the agora, “What is virtue?” The cynical and Cynic philosopher Diogenes searched for an honest man in the marketplace-it’s funny when you really think about it. And again the Christian monk Martin Luther “protested” (being a “protest-tant)” in the agora against the lifeless corpse of an authoritarian Christianity by declaring that human beings have their own spiritual nature and do not need permission to interpret the Scriptures from any external authority!

In Hegel’s philosophical work “Philosophy of History” (1837) freedom does not mean to do as one wishes (Ethical Wantism), but having a free mind since we are not free if others coerce us by physical force or lies. We are not free when controlled by personal desire instead of Reason (Vernunft). Freedom only comes from free rational choice. Reason is universal and reality is the self-manifestation of the Logos. Hegel rejects the Kantian block and believes the noumenal world, or the thing-in-itself, is not beyond thought but can be known. Hegel said of this empirical manifestation “the rational is real, and the real is rational.” Logos is a characteristic of mind so that it is also universal. All human beings are linked by universal Reason. The greatest obstacle to a free society is that individual persons do not know they are a part of this universal mind. Consciousness through experience begins to slowly understand itself as both universal and rational. In the Phenomenology of Spirit Hegel travels down the road to Absolute knowledge describing how consciousness finally comprehends the close connection between freedom and knowledge. “Spirit is indeed never at rest but always engaged in moving forward” (PS, para. 11). Mind is necessarily communal in which persons can purposively participate in a rationally organized way:

“…Hegel insists that knowledge is only knowledge if it can be communicated…The necessity of language rules out the idea of a entirely independent consciousness. Consciousness must interact with other consciousness if it is to develop self-consciousness. In the end, mind can only find freedom and self-understanding in a rationally organized community. So minds are not separate atoms, linked together by the accidents of associations. Individual minds exist together, or they do not exist at all” (Singer, p. 96). 

"...the true is the whole."-Hegel

In “Phenomenology of Spirit” the Preface is titled, “On Scientific Cognition” so Hegel understood his historical review of Western philosophy as showing the different shapes of mind: “The series of configurations which consciousness goes through along this road is, in reality the detailed history of the education of consciousness itself to the standpoint of Science” (PS, para. 78). Science during Hegel’s time meant “systematic inquiry.” Hegel examines each stage of mind in detail like a jeweler studying every light-reflecting facet of a finely cut diamond in an attempt to say the unsayable. It is this topic that Hegel mostly earns the reputation of an obscure writer; however, his train of thought can still be followed. Much of what Hegel’s critics call incomprehensible is Christian theology. This phenomenological history is structured to show the triadic stages of consciousness: Consciousness (Bewusstsein), Self-Consciousness (Selbstbewusstsein), and Reason (Vernunft).

Sense-certainty

The first undeveloped form of consciousness appears as the problem of knowledge and certainty.  Hegel described this consciousness in the first part of Phenomenology of Spirit as Sense-certainty that only relies on sense perception of a particular object of knowledge. Sense certainty is the uncritical natural naïve attitude toward objects, but views itself as having genuine practical knowledge of the world.  Sense-certainty only receives sense data at the here and now of this or that.” This type of knowledge really isn’t knowledge at all for it does not categorize the particular, but only records sense perception in the now. This is the most primitive empiricism that cannot coherently state any truth about experience since it lacks universal concepts to classify objects in some order. Knowledge cannot only be of the particular sense experience for they need concepts. However, the very general terms of language “here,” “now,” “that” themselves are universal concepts that point the way to the next higher stage of consciousness.

Perception and Understanding

Perception and Understanding (Verstand) are the next forms of consciousness to go beyond the particulars to the universals of language so that unity and coherence is given to the stream of raw sense data received in sense experience. A model of perceptual experience must be created to organize sense perception. And yet perception still lacks the power to understand reality so consciousness constructs its own laws of physics (Gravity, Electromagnetism, Force) to achieve order and unity of experience. Consciousness as understanding, or intelligibility mistakes these paradigmatic constructs as real objects (reification) so that consciousness is now really trying to understand itself. Consciousness in trying to understand itself is now latent self-consciousness.

Self-Consciousness: Stoicism, Skepticism, and Unhappy Consciousness

In discussing how latent self-consciousness becomes self-consciousness, Hegel switches away from epistemology to Life as conflict. Living self-consciousness desires (Begierde) to establish its own identity as a person, so self-consciousness must have an opposing object to differentiate itself, or a non-self. Consciousness’ sense of selfhood needs another self to create its identity-in-difference. Self-consciousness needs an external object to define itself, yet it views all externality as a threat. To achieve recognition self-consciousness needs another object to possess, but when the object is made its own the object’s externality is negated so self-consciousness is alone once again. Self-consciousness must have another object without destroying its otherness so it seeks to possess another person--another self-consciousness, or we-consciousness. This struggle with another consciousness forms a Master/Slave relationship in which one seeks to destroy the other. However, in this power struggle the Master realizes he still needs the other self-consciousness and spares the other to spare his own self. This historical situation causes a variety of internal divisions in consciousness that reappears in other stages of cognition. The master only perceives himself as a true person. The slave (Servile Consciousness) projects his selfhood onto the master, but while in this dialectical relationship the slave transforms material existence by his labor opening the way to the next emerging stage of higher self-consciousness.

“To be free is not to be either master or slave, not to discover oneself in this or that situation in the midst of life: it is to behave as a thinking being in all circumstances.”-Jean Hyppolite (“Genesis and Structure of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit,” Northwestern University, 1974, p.180)(pdf.).

Consciousness takes the form of Stoicism that teaches both master and slave to withdraw from the world into consciousness where “I = I” in an escape into a false liberty existing only in abstract thought. Hegel writes of Stoicism, “The essence of consciousness is to be free, on the throne or in chains….” Stoicism is not just a single isolated philosophy for the citizens of the Roman Empire, but a universal philosophy that every self-consciousness goes through in a teleological development of mind. Since the differences between life and the self remain unchanged, Stoic withdrawing into subjective interiority disconnects the person from the external world making it impossible to actualize itself into a stable human being.

Skepticism is the next stage of consciousness as a self-contradictory philosophical attitude toward life; however, this is not the skepticism of Hume. Historian of philosophy Frederick Copleston said of this transition from Stoicism to Skepticism,“…this negative attitude towards the concrete and external passes easily into the Skeptical consciousness for which the self alone abides while all else is subject to doubt and negation” A History of Philosophy: Modern Philosophy, Fichte to Hegel, Vol. 7, Part I, Doubleday, 1965, p. 223).

The unhappy consciousness is the “alienated soul” reflecting the division of existence into materiality and transcendent spirituality. This internal disunion is reflected in consciousness as physical desire (flesh) working against spiritual fidelity (faith). Hegel viewed this form of Christianity as consciousness projecting onto a transcendental deity all human qualities of personhood missing in the finite material world of suffering. The unhappy consciousness is aware of this internal split that appears similar to the master/slave struggle, but now disunity is between man and G-d. “…the self is conscious of the gulf between a changing, inconsistent, fickle self and a changeless, ideal self…this ideal self can be projected into an other-worldly sphere and identified with absolute perfection, God considered as existing apart from the world and the finite self. ²¹ The human consciousness is divided, self-alienated, ‘unhappy’.” (Ibid., p. 223). Again, this cleft consciousness is not the living spirit of a unified life. For Hegel, Christianity is just one modality of the unhappy consciousness inherited from Judaism.

From this point in the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel continues on to the telos of Absolute knowledge, Reason, and Freedom.

Of course Kierkegaard would disagree with all of this Hegelian systematization. As much as he railed against Hegel's dialectical system, Kierkegaard incorporates dialectical "contradiction" in his description of the stages of human existence, but going in the opposite direction! In contradiction to Hegel, Kierkegaard wrote “Concluding Unscientific Postscript”(1846) as an anti-Hegelian dialectic which moves not toward universal world-history, but the subjective individual existent; not to Absolute knowledge, but to uncertainty and faith; not theoretical integration, but fragmentary disintegration of truth. The Real is the absurd. Human spirituality cannot just be another object of science. Human existence is "Unscientific," or dynamically ongoing and fragmentary. Human existence can only be a  "Postscript," or an unsystematic remainder of any comprehensive philosophical system.

That was grueling. I need Space Lady...

Synthesize Me

Your eyes are set on stun

You are hotter than the sun

I love to see you shine

Because you really blow my mind

Your heart beats like a drum

It hammers when you're gone

The terms with you and me are up, set us free

Synthesize Me

Hypnotize Me

Humanize Me

Energize Me 

Your eyes are set on stun

You are hotter than the sun

I love to see you shine

Because you really blow my mind

Your heart beats like a drum

It hammers when you're gone

The terms with you and me are up, set us free

Synthesize Me

Hypnotize Me

Humanize Me

Energize Me 

I've seen the rings of Saturn

And the craters on the Moon

Oceans of Venus in the middle of June

Mirrors of Mercury and Mars' electric skies

Pearls of Neptune in Jupiter's eyes

I heard the old man who plays the lake

Amazing things will make you want to shake

A strange planet a zillion lightyears away

Through a black hole across the milky way

Synthesize Me

Hypnotize Me

Humanize Me

Energize Me 

Don't patronize me

Don't glamorize me

Don't paralyze me

You can't surprise me

Harmonize me

Mesmerize me

Solarize me

Synchronise me

Synthesize me

Paradigm Shifting

Of course Dr. Vervaeke’s lectures can stand on their own and do not need my input as the lecture series continues. I do not want to sound pretentious even though it is probably already too late. Also, I do not want to spin the lecture topics either before being viewed by interested parties; although, some interpretation cannot be avoided in reviewing the philosophical language in his lectures. I want to briefly mention some, but not all paradigm shifting concepts that continually reappear through out the lectures.

Whatever may be “paradigm shifting” is relative to each person in two ways. First, paradigm shifting means that new phenomenon appear that was not noticed beforehand in a dominant paradigm. Alfred Kuhn recounted how seventh and eighteenth French scientists studying electricity adopted the fluid paradigm to understand the flow of electricity through a circuit. The old model for electricity was based on its attractive and repulsive effects of differently charged bodies. This new model of electricity assumed that electricity flowed like water; therefore, it could be stored like water and from this metaphorical presupposition the capacitor (leyden jar) was developed.

Secondly, paradigm shifting can also mean that old phenomenon previously not understood take on new meaning. The theory of thermodynamics during natural philosopher Joseph Priestley's time postulated a hypothetical substance (pholgiston: Ancient Greek φλογιστόν, phlŏgistón for "burning up") thought to be present in all things and released as flames during the process of combustion. This theory accounted for the phenomenon of mass loss when something such as wood was consumed by fire. However, this explanation could not account for the increase in weight by certain metals after exposure to heat. Only later did this phenomenon have significance for the scientist who rejected the pholgistic theory that Priestley could never abandon.

Here is a more relevant example of paradigm shifting that result in a new understanding of old phenomenon. The term “psycho-technology” is defined in lecture Ep. 1 as a systemic use of cognitive tools to achieve insight into the self and the world. The use of ritual is a disruptive means to get outside the box, or everyday conceptual framing to alter one’s attention and perspective. Ritual, meditation, dancing, music, and community assisted altered states of consciousness can be used as psycho technologies to enhance cognition. At first glance one is tempted to categorize these customs or rituals as merely “anthropological” attributes or “mores” of ancient people. But that cultural categorization may miss a deeper understanding of consciousness and how meaning is created in human society. And notice that psycho- technology presupposes consciousness can change in order to align itself with being anew. This critical idea of consciousness is going to become even more prominent in later lectures.

During the decade around 1913 Wittgenstein reviewed Bertrand Russell’s book co-authored with Alfred Whitehead on logic titled Principia Mathematica. With Russell’s approval Wittgenstein was to correct problems with Russellian set theory and work out the rules for categorical quantifying symbols such as the following:

(∀x)Φx ≡ Everything is

~(∀x)Φx ≡ Nothing is

(∃x)Φx ≡ Something is

~(∃x)Φx ≡ Something is not

  

Wittgenstein was having great difficulties with Russellian mathematical logic and his critical review seemed to stall completely. Without informing Russell, Wittgenstein decided to be hypnotized to help him develop a system of logic that avoided uncertainties in Russell’s theoretical effort of basing mathematics on logic. Can hypnotism be a psycho-technology? While Wittgenstein was hypnotized Dr. Rogers asked questions about logic that Wittgenstein was unable to resolve. Dr. Roger put Wittgenstein to sleep after two attempts, but it took half an hour to wake him. Wittgenstein reported that he felt anesthetized and paralyzed, but could hear Dr. Roger’s questions. Wittgenstein was later able to work out a “theory of symbolism” to avoid the problems of Bertrand Russell’s theory of types. Although some Wittgenstein biographers comment offhandedly that the hypnotism session was not useful without further elaboration. I view this as an example of phenomenon left un-interpreted simply because hypnosis and logic appear to be incompatible concepts. In fact, Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) is viewed in the West as a work primarily on Logic and theory of language, but in Austria-Hungarian Viennese intellectual circles the Tractatus was interpreted as a philosophical work on ethics. Some Vienna Circle Logical Positivists actually told students to ignore section seven of the Tractatus all together because of its reference to mysticism. The Viennese would put the Tractatus somewhere in the same category as Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents written in 1929 and first published in German in 1930. 

Is there a real division between Logic and Ethics, or are they different aspects of a deeper understanding of Reason?  The youngest of Wittgenstein’s three sisters, Margarete, was brighter than her youngest brother Ludwig who was considered the dullest of the family.  Margarete was attuned to Austrian intellectual culture and gave her brother some of Kierkegaard’s writings. For Kierkegaard the essence of Christianity is subjectivity, or as he wrote, “Truth is subjectivity.”

“The objective accent falls on WHAT is said, the subjective accent on HOW it is said.”—Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 1848, Princeton ed., p. 181.

Truth in ethics, and religion is defined by subjective intention. In one New Testament parable the Widower only gives a mite to the temple, while the rich man gives a greater amount, but it is less of a sacrifice for him, and thus has less spiritual significance. However, in the arena of epistemology Wittgenstein strangely used the same language, “3.221 … A proposition can only say how a thing is, not what it is.” For Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein only in subjectivity is there decisiveness. For objective reflection the truth is an object. For subjective reflection truth is “appropriation,” of “participation in,” and “inwardness”(ibid., 171). Wittgenstein thought Russell and Frege’s focus on logic completely misunderstood the Tractatus and considered withdrawing it from publication. For Wittgenstein he interpreted his own work as about the ethical:

“My work consists of two parts, the one presented here plus all that I have not written. And it is precisely this second part that is the important point. For the ethical gets its limit drawn from the inside, as it were, by my book; … I’ve managed in my book to put everything firmly into place by being silent about it …. For now I would recommend you to read the preface and the conclusion, because they contain the most direct expression of the point” (ProtoTractatus, p.16).

Anagoge

I do not remember ever studying the Greek word, Anagoge, which over time came to mean, " ‘reasoning upwards’ (sursum ductio), when, from the visible, the invisible action is disclosed or revealed.^[3]” However, the literal meaning of anagoge (ἀναγωγή) is “lifting up of the soul” or “leading up,” but also “fullness of being.” Anagoga is the root word in “andragogy” referencing the methods for teaching adults, and “pedagogy” references teaching children or the young. “Hegemon” means “leader.” And “anarchy” means “no leader.” So Dr. Henry Giroux’s favorite term “critical pedagogy” is from “anagoge,” or to lift up the soul of the young. Wonderful!

One thing about studying philosophy; every so often one experiences a paradigm shift and then you must go back and re-see everything all over again.

This word study is fun and a good way to memorize them so let me find some more.

  

“6.44 Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is.”