APPENDIX
A

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.  

λύω 

I loosen, break, release, undo, resolve, atone for.

λυθήσεται

"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.

Appendix A4

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!

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.