APPENDIX
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Appendix A1
I discovered a wonderful new philosopher, Johannes Achill Niederhauser PhD, appearing from the North through the lectures of Dr. John Vervaeke. Both philosophers deliver very high quality talks in their fields of study and interest.
Also, Dr. Vervaeke will soon have a video series on Socrates.
Notice that Dr. Niederhauser reads Heraclitus out loud in the original Greek! My goodness! Johannes has many more videos on his channel "Classical Philosophy" that are incredibly insightful.
I loosen, break, release, undo, resolve, atone for.
"She shall be released!"
Paradigm for the Greek verb λύω
Cronos: Χρόνος
Appendix A2
Christopher Lynn Hedges (born September 18, 1956) is an American journalist, Presbyterian minister, and visiting Princeton
University lecturer. In 2001, Hedges
contributed to The New York Times staff entry that received
the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for the paper's coverage of global terrorism. He
also received the Amnesty International Global
Award for Human Rights Journalism in 2002. He has taught at Columbia
University, New York University, the University of Toronto and Princeton University, where he is a visiting lecturer in African
American studies. And Hedges has taught college credit courses for several
years in New Jersey prisons. (Wikipedia: Chris Hedges)
In the spirit of Friedrich Schleiermacher, Rev. Chris Hedges
gave the following sermon in Victoria BC on January 20, 2019.
Appendix A3
Paul Tillich could be viewed
as representing the religious wing of the Frankfurt School of Critical
Research. Tillich was never an official member of the Frankfurt School,
however, he knew Max Horkheimer as both a fellow professor at the University of
Frankfurt, and the director of the Frankfurt School of Critical Research.
Tillich once dedicated the essay "Participation and Knowledge: Problems
of an Ontology of Cognition” to Max Horkheimer's sixtieth birthday in 1955.
Also, Professor Tillich knew
the young Theodor Adorno as his student while acting as adviser for his
habilitation (a written thesis), which the University of Frankfurt accepted.
The approved habilitation gave Adorno permission to lecture. Eventually, all
three scholars had to immigrate to the US as German exiles during the 1930’s as
the Nazis took power.
Paul Tillich, Theodor
Adorno, and Max Horkheimer wrote about the same concerns of the modern age
using the same methodologies of dialectical reasoning, critical theory, and
phenomenology. All foresaw the dangers of instrumental rationality, systems of
domination, existential alienation, repressive reified social concepts,
objectification of human beings, and nihilism. Tillich formulated and applied metalogic
(a reconfiguration of dialectical analysis, critique, and phenomenology) as his
methodology to examine these modern afflictions in both the religious realm
(heteronomy), and secular culture (autonomy). Adorno demanded everyone keep
their feet on the ground of existence, and not fly off into pure metaphysical
speculation. Horkheimer was more of a mediator between the two other
philosophers.
As a religious socialist,
Tillich worked to keep Christianity relevant to persons in modern industrial
society by reinterpreting its symbols of meaning, and categories. For Tillich
culture is directed to “conditioned forms,” while religion is directedness to
“Unconditional meaning,”(Schelling).
Tillich writes,"...culture is a form of expression of
religion, and religion is the substance of culture" (Tillich, What is
Religion?, p. 73)(pdf). On the other hand, “....culture in
substance is religious, even though it is not so by intention, (ibid.,p.
97).
In both cases the religious and cultural unintentionally display
common essential elements that seek fulfillment in a complete unity of meaning
within the “living stream of meaning reality.”
"...every religious act is... a cultural act; it is directed toward the totality of meaning. But it is not by intention cultural; for it does not have in mind the totality of meaning…. In the cultural act, therefore, the religious is substantial; in the religious act the cultural is formal”(ibid.,p. 59).
For more about the philosophical relationship between Horkheimer,
Tillich, and Adorno see the very short summary review of the book, Prophetic
Interruptions: Critical Theory, Emancipation, and Religion in Paul Tillich, Theodor
Adono, and Max Horkheimer (1929-1944), Atlanta, GA: Mercer University
Press, November 2017.
I studied some of the
Youtube video lectures about Paul Tillich, and selected this one by Russell Re
Manning as one of the best overviews. Part I of II.
I want to provide some background for the two videos on the Frankfurt School.
By the way, the Frankfurt School is often referred to as "Culture Marxism," a popular old Cold War trope. And, it is true that the Frankfurt School is about Marxism for sure, but what they do not tell you is the Frankfurt School is also about Christian theology--they lied to us again, but we're used to it. Marxism has had more impact on Western Christian theology, than on Western economic theory--and it has only been 170 years. After reading something written by Paul Tillich, I feel...free.
Some Frankfurt School members fled fascist Germany, and while in exile
attempted to understand how fascism emerged out of a Capitalist society by
researching German society.
1.) The Frankfurt School scholars extended ideological critique to social
psychology. The psychology of the individual is an important agent in the rise
of fascism. They did the first studies on the authoritarian personality and
family structures (which turns out to be a key source of fascism).
2.) The Frankfurt School explained the self-reinforcing qualities of
Capitalist social infra-structure and the process of power legitimation.
Our practical reason (ethical reasoning) is used to achieve freedom, but
instead evolves into “Instrumental Reason,” (technology) to the point that
there is an “Eclipse of
Reason.” The Enlightenment has been replaced by positivism to reinforce
Capitalism. The tendency of instrumental reason is to dominate both human
beings and nature by a systemic internal process sustained by social
organizations. Instrumental reason has redefined the meaning of human existence.
Now “surplus repression” is necessary to exploit and maintain the flow of
surplus value.
3.) The Frankfurt philosophers rethought the concept of the “Negative,” (the
possible) as opposed to the “Positive”(the actual). Marcuse reformulated a
method for critical negative dialectics, or the dialectics of imagination for
possibilities by borrowing concepts from a.) Freud, the b.) Existentialists,
c.) Heidegger’s fundamental ontology, d.) Hegel’s concept of
"negation" and “determinate negation.”
Adorno contributed his
“Negative Dialectics”(1966) to re-define and refine a critical dialectical
methodology (imminent critique) to derive contradictions from systems of
concepts, and paradigms. The genetic influence of Hegelian Absolute Idealism in
Marxism allows the critical theorists to shift the analysis from
its historical emphasis of Marxist’s so called materialism --a Positivistic
dialectic of actual existence--to a Negative dialectic of essences and
possibility.
4.) Habermas attempted to bring a new hermeneutic, or principles of interpreting political theory. Capitalism has changed modern
"politics" from the Greek “polis” of participation and attempts to
reclaim communication from a distorted reality, and Orwellian contradictions.
I touched on many of these themes in this strange book of
mine, but the two part video series on “Adorno and Horkheimer: Dialectic of
Enlightenment, Part I”
more clearly brings them all together. Part II is
particularly well done.
Appendix A5
Critical Negative Thinking as the Logic of Protest and the Impoverishment of Experience
“… the "inner" dimension of the mind in which opposition to the status quo can take root is whittled down. The loss of this dimension, in which the power of negative thinking--the critical power of Reason--is at home, is the ideological counterpart to the very material process in which advanced industrial society silences and reconciles the opposition” (One-Dimenisonal Man, Herbert Marcuse, Beacon,1964, p.13)(pdf).
Negative critical thinking
is possibility thinking, of what could exist as opposed to what actually
exists (positive). Critical thinking is often viewed as “utopian” thinking (οὐ, no; τόπος,
place) especially when scientific empirical positivism is the dominant
paradigm that de-realizes, discourage, and de-legitimizes this dimension of the
cogitative inner self (Geist). The logic of domination (instrumental
logic) results in the constriction of human experience—in the poverty of
experience. This sublimated inner-dimension is where spiritual experience
abides.
”The world of immediate experience-the world in which we find ourselves living-must be comprehended, transformed, even subverted in order to become that which it really is.
In the equation Reason = Truth = Reality, which joins the subjective and objective world into one antagonistic unity, Reason is the subversive power, the “power of the negative” that establishes, as theoretical and practical Reason, the truth for men and things — that is, the conditions in which men and things become what they really are”(ibid., p.85).
When
we critically examine the appearances (phenomena) in the living stream of
meaning-reality, they fade away into a cloud of quantum haze.
In
spite of our “struggle against…absorption into the predominant
one-dimensionality,” the universe is open.
Paul Tillich: The Open
Universe and the Sacred
Appendix A6
I want to find the best
video lectures on some of the key philosophers discussed in “A Theory of
Spiritual Experience.” I once took a graduate level course on Hegel taught by
Dr. David Carr reading mainly the Introduction to “The Phenomenology of
Spirit” (1807). There were only about 15 students in the class. Dr.
Carr is best known for translating Edmond Husserl’s “The Crisis of European
Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology”—Yes, that David Carr.
I only mentioned that to say
philosopher Dr. Gregory B. Sadler has a free online YouTube
paragraph-by-paragraph reading course of Hegel’s entire “The Phenomenology of Spirit”! Dr. Sadler is at paragraph
644 now! I’m trying to catch up by watching one lecture a day. It’s unbelievable!
Be sure to not miss his future lectures starting at paragraph 672 on Art, Religion, and Philosophy. This section on religion is where Paul Tillich learned systematic Christian theology!
Be sure to not miss his future lectures starting at paragraph 672 on Art, Religion, and Philosophy. This section on religion is where Paul Tillich learned systematic Christian theology!
Dr. Sadler delivers very
clear commentary and interpretation—clearer than Hegel, for sure. I learned an
awful lot from these marathon expert lectures and have
already link to one of his insightful videos in one of my essays quoting Hegel.
Dr. Sadler is cool! However, he hoards chalk.
Appendix A7
Biblical Economics
through the ages.
Dr. Hudson explains why
Christians hate Jesus so much.
Sociologist Jim Vrettos
interviews Professor Michael Hudson, Economist, Wall St. Analyst, Political
Consultant, Commentator and Journalist; who offers his views in the way finance
works and how debt is actually a tool for oppression.
Dr. Hudson has written many
books including:
- Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American
Empire (1972)
- Urbanization and Land Ownership in the Ancient Near East (1999)
- Killing the Host (2015)
- J is For Junk Economics: A Guide to Reality in an Age of
Deception (2017)
- ...and Forgive Them Their Debts: Lending, Foreclosure and Redemption from Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year (2018)
Appendix A8
"Despair is suffering without
meaning"-Victor Frankl
(∀x)[Dx ⊃ (Sx * ~Mx)]
“The secret of Kant’s philosophy is the unthinkability of despair.”--Theodor Adorno
It is as if Dr. Frankl gave this interview yesterday. Frankl
knew his chances of surviving the Nazi Death Camps were statistically 1 in 29.
Victor Frankl: Finding meaning in difficult times.
