Plato (427-347 B.C.E.) is the ancient writer "to whom all of Western philosophy is merely a footnote" (Whitehead). Plato is notable for his recording of Socrates, the "despotic logician" (Nietszche) who forced Athens to look uncomfortably at itself during a period of considerable political instability, governmental incompetence and declining fortune. Plato was concerned above all else with answering the searching Socratic questions, "What can I know?", "How should I act?" and "How should the City be governed?"
In mathematics, Plato is responsible for an attitude of thinking known as mathematical realism. For the mathematical realist, the numbers, sets, functions and other objects the mathematician manipulates in his (her) imagination are real entities. They are actual supersensible things that resist the mathematician's efforts to understand them, and that when they give up their secrets often disclose a supernal beauty that no human mind could have invented. For the Platonic realist, supersensible things manifestly exist and they are the intimate companions of the trained mathematician whose daily exercise leads him into dimensions unknown to the ordinary sensibility.
Socrates' Dream
In Plato's Theatetus, Socrates relates a dream he had in which the objects he perceived had no properties. Each of them, in itself, 'could only be named;' it was impossible to say anything else about it. It could not be said 'either that it was or that is was not.' It would not admit of the application of such words as 'itself,' or 'that,' 'each,' 'alone,' or 'this,' or 'any other of the many words of this kind.' Socrates very clearly had had an alchemical dream, a state of consciousness and a kind of experience that simply outclasses and overawes the kinds of experience humans normally have in day to day waking and sleeping.
Socrates' companion, Theatetus, likewise a capable student of mathematics, immediately recognizes Socrates' dream, and attests that he to has had such experience. They then procede to try to understand what it means to know something like the objects in such a dream, what these have to do with speech and with music, and whether a logos adequate to these objects can be constructed.
Do people here know what we mean by an alchemical dream? I think it is basic to the sort of thing we want to do with Goethean conversation.
sensory object
Hi Carl - how are you friend?
It is interesting you link alchemical dreaming with Goethean conversation. In my experience I would link Goethean study (reading, contemplating) with alchemical dreaming. Moving it to conversation is, might we say, avant-garde as conversation involves two or more people whereas individual study is singular and the alchemical dreaming is symbolic in individual uniqueness of perception?
When we read Steiner's 'The Human Being's experience's beyond' we learn how the spiritual is a reversal of the physical realm. Tim's post on 'hunting the snark' is this very subject. We understand, through Steiner, we die every night on a mini-scale. Our astral although still joined to the physical, is loosened every night we sleep. There are many stages in sleep life and the deep, unconscious sleep which is freed and unattached from our brain process is where our ultimate place might be.
In my understanding; looking at conscious dreaming - when we are in spiritual realms (ie a shift in consciousness) it is not the case of traveling along and coming across an object or a person. In the reversal Steiner talks about; during the waking day we perceive objects on the outside of us - our eye falls upon the object and our eyes register the make-up of the object eg. a red flower. The opposite happens in conscious dreaming, in conscious dreaming the object is inside us and we project the object outside of us. In waking conscious the object is before us - in dreaming conscious our perception of the object is projected from within to without. Here we see how the symbols in our dreams reflect our inner feelings. In Life after Death when the astral body is completely loosened we do not gaze at the spiritual world - the spiritual world gazes at us and in this gaze we are the object. I would also say alchemical dreaming, is different from out-of-body-experience. In my experience of obe - it is real time in the physical plane.
Also, once I had an experience; I have a small box covered with sea shells and shells I have collected while on the coast here, in this box is also a small silver cross of mine. Every now and then I open this box. I opened it once and I had this flash of a scene come over me - I was part of the scene. Everything was a golden colour and I was the sea, I was the air, I was the beach, I was nature and I had totally awareness of myself. It was truly a beautiful sensation and experiencing this I can understand when Steiner said 'world eye and ear'….
So Carl, if I understand you correctly saying alchemical dreaming in Goethean conversation is contemplating a study or object and discovering if the projection of perception is similar? I do think it is a worthy study and also contemplating dreaming ... are we consciously dreaming here or are we unconsciously dreaming?
Platonic Ideas, Great Dreams and PoF
Now this is an interesting area...
The one line from PoF that I think touches most on this realm of human experience is "what a concept is, cannot be said in words". That is the most profound sentence to me, it makes me aware of something like what Carl is describing, something that is most intimately close to me because it is part of my own thinking process but at the same time a realm that is only perceptible to me inwardly, for example in mathematical thought as you say.
Now the Platonists and Neo-Platonists were very keen the concept of the so-called Platonic Ideas, which we can think of perhaps as real archetypes or beings which underly the physical world. But in PoF Steiner steers carefully away from this area of abstract thought, preferring not to for example posit a "spiritual world" which is "more real" than the "physical world".
That I think is not because he believed this zone of human experience was not valid, but because he was so interested in ensuring that any entry into this region of conscious human experience was done in complete freedom.
With that out of the way I think Carl maybe what you mean by "alchemical dreams" is something very similar to what Jung called "Great Dreams" - ones which are so obviously numinous and reeking of the archetypes, as it were, that the impact and after-effect of the experience is huge for the individual concerned.
Dreams and references
Carl - this is fascinating.
Alchemy implies transformation. After an alchemical experience I feel changed. The persistent sense of presence that accompanies such changes is a hallmark of their numinous vigour. Such experiences can occur in dreams, reverie, inner realisation, conversation, and come close to that realisation feeling of having forgotten something vitally important, which Tom Brown calls an inner release. If you want to know about Tom Brown, open up a new journal entry somewhere and do not expect anything anthroposophical.
Carl - is there any chance of including some online links to the texts of your philosophic greats for us slackers who otherwise will not get to read any of them? The Socratic reference sounds so interesting and we who wander the corridors of academia like to check the explicit references. I guess that many are not online, but the oldies and goodies often are.
I reckon Socrates dreamed of a concept. Let's hear all about the concept of concept next!
How Should the City be Governed?
Plato's Republic is an attempt to answer the question, "How should the City be governed?" The answer should have parallels with the answer to "How should anthroposophical conversation be governed?"
Plato thinks that the Guardians of society, the "best and the brightest" among us need to live a socialized, communalized existence. They need to own no private property and they should keep themselves lean and mean, constantly sharpening each other's faculties of intelligence, self-control and courage. They need to be in constant competition with one another, so that when they are called on to settle some injustice in the real world, or to go to war there, they have the requisite experience and training to do so.
I think the model works for Goethean conversation. What we want in Goethean conversation are the anthroposophical Guardians. We want people who are continually testing each other's wisdom, self-control and commitment to a Community. For Plato, the Community is what comes first, and love for the Community arises from the beauty of its order.
For the anthroposophist it should be the same. The anthroposophist should love the Community, because only from the Community do impulses for free action arise. Free action in anthroposophical Community is free because of where it takes place. Action in anthroposophical Community has the quality of freedom because action in anthroposophical Community is always and only judged on the basis of its beauty.
Right Effort Three - I hope so...
Carl wrote: For the anthroposophist it should be the same. The anthroposophist should love the Community, because only from the Community do impulses for free action arise. Free action in anthroposophical Community is free because of where it takes place. Action in anthroposophical Community has the quality of freedom because action in anthroposophical Community is always and only judged on the basis of its beauty.
I learnt to overcome the sweeping general statement because I reaslised just how ineffective it was. This was not easy because I had to overcome a serious love of such statements which felt so powerful and authoritative.
"because only from the community do impulses for free action arise". Only is a strong word, it means... only. As in, there are no other ways. I have learnt from POF and 3-fold studies that freedom has quite a lot to do with being an individual. Now, a community is made up of individuals, but if that is what you mean why leave the doubt?
"Free action in anthroposophical community is free because of where it takes place". Do you mean because it takes place in the individual? Perhaps you mean it is only possible to be free in a community? Which would be bizarre. On the one hand it could be a statement of the obvious, ie we are all in community, so if we happen to be free we will perforce be in a community. However, that would be a pointless assertion, so the only alternative I can think of is that we can only be free in a certain sort of community - presumeably one operating according to the rules you elucidate. Which would be a fantastically, even, phantasmagorically arrogant, self seeking and ultimately utterly futile assertion. Futile because the thrust of the times, the stage of evolution of human kind, is to overcome the kingly gesture. But, perhaps I have not got to the heart of what you are trying to say... I hope you find it interesting to find out how your words come across to me.
Then you say "because action in anthroposophical community is always and only judged on the basis of its beauty". Which, with that lovely strong "always" is of course untrue. I have experienced many judgments from the anthroposophical community which are based on an evaluation of beauty, but others that were based on other things. Then I wonder why you assert that it is only judged on its beauty, and then I wonder whether you are implying that is a good thing, and then I wonder why you might think that?
So in conclusion, I wonder why you would be so unclear and inaccurate. It occurs to me that perhaps you are not describing "what is", that although you use a definitive present tense, you are describing what you think "should be". Then I wonder why you leave such doubt as to your meaning and - this is a flyer - I wonder whether you are trying to make us work harder for our own good - a bit like Steiner is supposed to have done...
On the one hand I worry that your picture of the "'best and the brightest' among us need to live a socialized, communalized existence" is flawed because, to name only one reason, it seems to be elitist and very far from the concepts of the Rights realm in the 3-fold. I am deeply puzzled why you communicate in an impenetrable way. Perhaps you hope that your words will be understood by, and be attractive to the "best and brightest" so that you attract to you the Community you are searching to belong to? I may be, but I am trying my hardest not to judge you by my own standards, I am struggling to get behind your eyes and experience from your point of view the concepts you are trying to convey.
The last time I engaged with you in discussion you surprised me by interpreting my comment as being a suggestion that I think you are some sort of a dark force. You also responded to my post with assertions as to my feelings. Perhaps this is according to your principles of conversation, but I hope note. I have engaged with this post because I am trying to support your endeavour on this site, out of love for the purpose of the site and out of our kinship as fellow strivers on an anthroposophical path. I would be happy to continue this discussion, if you want to, as long as you respond to what I have written, and, if you make an inference then I would ask that you cite your evidence.
Peace and freedom,
Sebastian
Idealised or romanticised?
My vote goes to the beauty of Sebastian's post. Carl, it is wonderful to hear your take on aesthetic judgement in this context, although it arrives here, over the great pond, as a romanticised style of idealism. Assumption caveat: my ears and mind may not accurately reflect your mind and voice.
Carl, are you scrupulously applying to posts on this site the form of aesthetic valuation as expressed in: always and only judged on the basis of its beauty - ?
If so - and I sincerely hope so - I believe it would be accurate to say that some of your expressions of aesthetic value are deemed ugly by some other writers. I believe that Sebastion is engaging you in the manner that you invite upon yourself as platonic and helpful encouragement. There seems no better opportunity than now for you to publicly practice your stated principles.
Go to it Carl!
The Social Contract
Hi Sebastian,
Thank you for the thoughtful and well-written post, and for the idealistic motive it expresses. And thanks to John also for recognizing what is there.
I am using categorical language ("for all x," "there exists an x," etc) in order to approach mathematical expression and mathematical thought in ordinary conversation. Some day I hope we'll enjoy real-time conversations everywhere that have the rhythm and form of mathematical relations, much as good music does.
Yes, I mean we can only be free within a certain sort of community, within a certain sort of contractual arrangement. That generally is what freedom is - a contract between or among people otherwise in a state of civil war. The freedoms one enjoys in a state of civil war - loss of compunction about robbery or murder, for example - are given up in favor of agreements which limit that original freedom, giving that freedom over to a Sovereign Power which everyone now musters a Will to Obey. The result is civil society. This is Hobbes' picture.
What is remarkable about the Social Contract is that it makes people more free, not less free. It makes it possible for them to do more things than they could under the condition of Original Freedom. A man enjoying Original Freedom may be able to kill a neighbor with impunity, but a man bound by the social contract, and able to call on the resources of a vast system of contracts and material technology (Production, in Valdi's language) is able to do so many more things that he in reality is the more free of the two.
Now I am trying to envision the Ideal Anthroposophical Community, and the nature of the contract underlying it. As you know, I think that contract is a conversational contract. What I'm trying to draw out is an intuition of what social life would be under such a contract.
So yes, I actually do mean that beauty is the sole standard of moral and aesthetic judgment in Anthroposophical Community, just as in Plato's Republic beauty is the standard by which the Guardians judge themselves and everything else in society.
Now, why would a Community committed to beauty always and everywhere be the sort of thing that realizes freedom not so much in the individual's moral and ideal Imagination, and in his self-generated deeds, but more in an ongoing form of universal (and therefore transcendental) Inspiration? I guess it's because something like that is simply higher. It represents an advance from a culture of individualism to a culture of contractualism. It represents the opening of human inwardness and opacity to a transcendental and transparent domain of cosmic forms, cosmic currents and cosmic intuitions.
It is a world in which to be a human being is to be a literal, disembodied spirit.
law of beauty
where is a beauty also exist artist. God is artist which have created world and we have to create acording of law of beauty
Valdi
Is There a Law of Beauty?
What do people here think about the Law of Beauty?
Is there such a law?
Are anthroposophists obligated by it?
Law of Beauty
Carl I was joking, but everybody should create things or ideas acording of "Law" of Beauty. Nor only girls are nice also the good logical ideas are bauteful.
Valdi
Here's one from the good doctor...
The true purpose of Earthly existence is to gain insight into, and bring to realisation, the intentions of the living Christ. To reveal this in its fullness in wisdom, beauty and our doing is the deepest goal of Rosicrucianism. -- Rudolf Steiner (1907)
The Beauty Police are watching us, guys!
The State
S: "Wickedness can never know either itself or excellence, but excellence, when education is added to natural endowment, can in course of time acquire knowledge of wickedness as well as of itself. It is the good man, therefore, and not the bad man who will, in my opinion, make our wise judge"
G: "I agree with you."
S: "This then is the kind of medical and judicial provision for which you will legislate in your state. It will provide treatment for those of your citizens whose physical and psychological constitution is good; as for the others, it will leave the unhealthy to die and those whose psychological constitution is incurably corrupt it will put to death."
-The Republic, 409d-410a
Forever Young - Nazism, Idealism and Beauty
I am wondering about the connection between the ideals of Nazism, romanticism and idealism in general and an emphasis on beauty as the sole and most important criterion in life.
Plato has been accused of being a proto-Nazi because of quotes like this. If taken literally and applied to today's society the quote is generally unacceptable because of the spirit of the times. At most people today might be willing to take it as an analogy for a healthy disposition of the invididual's soul and spirit, and the Republic is sometimes read as an allegory for that, at least at one level.
We are not ancient Greeks, is there an element here that is "forever young" because it has not yet advanced from Intellectual Soul to Consciousness soul?
Or to put it in non-anthropop terms, the Jungians speak of the "puer" or eternal youth as an archetype - just think of the Romantic poet Keats, or Wagner's Siegfried or Goethe's Young Werther. This is a wonderful thing to be but it must be overcome also or it becomes an unduly limiting factor in life. This might sound very abstract but I see it all around me every day in all kinds of ways in people's lives, including my own of course... :-)
I am generally uncomfortable with the idea that a social contract is an advance on the free individual. My take on it is that a group of free individuals will invent and reinvent the social contract as the spirit moves them, even on a daily basis if required. Perhaps "contract" is no longer a good word for such a reality? Remember the picture of the disciples at Pentecost, each with an individual flame of spirit, sitting together in the upper room.
The Eternal Youths
Tim, thank you very much for this post, which begins to open up an important area.
Yes, Plato is seen today as a fascist and as opening the door to fascism. And one can certainly see parallels between Plato's conception of the State and Hitler's policies of eugenics and propaganda. Plato advocates both eugenics and propaganda, although not on the scale and with the virulence that Hitler used.
Were Plato and Hitler merely pueri aeternati, narcissistic and fantastically-minded youths, to be discounted as dangerous crazies, or was there something deep and true in their impulses? A dangerous question, perhaps, because of Hitler's motives and outcomes, but one reads The Republic with enchantment and approval. Why? If Plato is merely dangerous, why is he dangerous? Why does he sound a note that resonates through the ages?
Please let's go into your discomfort with the idea that the social contract is an advance on the free individual. It's exactly the question I was hoping someone would ask.
I recognize the spirit of the Pentecost. It's a very important image, a counter-balance to the human-centered idealism of the Greeks. What's interesting is that this image comes from the other stream in Western history. This is not the Hellenic stream, but the Jewish stream.
The idea of a social contract is that people, tiring of the futility of the life of individualism, decide on the basis of sound reasoning to give up some of their freedoms for the sake of freedoms which turn out to be greater by an order of magnitude. This looks right to me. Why does it make you uncomfortable?
Contracts, Groups and Individuals
Hi Carl,
Further explore my discomfort with the idea that the social contract is an advance on the free individual... That is an essay topic that could take me a few lines or a few volumes to answer... let me try for the three (or so) line answer :-)
Quite simply, my discomfort is based well and truly in my own life experience of groups. Others will have had different experiences.
Over the years I have been fortunate to have been a member of many groups which have helped me to grow in one way or another, benefited me in many ways and brought me wonderful gifts that I certainly could not have brought forth merely out of my own individual being. Schools, universities, churches, workplaces, spiritual groups of various kinds, circles of friends and so on and so on.
I have never found any group within which I feel that my full being is or can be realised. It is always necessary for me to keep back something of myself from any group, to enter into what is termed a "social contract" so that the relationship between me and the group is healthy. The social contract I conceive of as a set of rules and guidelines, written and unwritten, that govern my behaviour and that of others in the group. This is not to say that, everything of my being that is withheld from the group is "good" and everything that is included in the group is "bad".
But I do not believe I will ever find a group where the opposite is the case... where everything that is within the group is "good" in the sense that it realises the potential of my highest being and everything that is outside of or excluded by the group is "bad" in the sense that it's something of myself that I choose not to realise or express anyway.
So your idea that there is a social contract which can be defined by certain guidelines or axioms and somehow enhances or improves upon the full being of the human individuality in all its fullness is contrary to my own experience. I certainly can't say that it's impossible but I am highly dubious about the idea.
To me, what individuals bring creates the value of the groups they participate in, the groups do not enhance or extend the individuals in that sense. Any group that becomes an end in itself and believe that it has absolute sway over the entire being of any human individual within it is on the wrong track in my opinion - simply because I am hard pressed to see how putting the group and its rules and axioms first can ever be conducive to the creation of truly free human beings. That is because such a group is seeking to place the human being in a box and believing that what is in the box is the whole thing. Surely we have enough of that in our society without creating yet another box?
However I am still with you 100% about the idea of Goethean conversation groups... again from my own modest experience I am positive about the framework and its outcomes in groups. It is the immodest, almost metaphysical claims for groups based on certain principles that are being put forth that I am uneasy about.
Lastly a shameful confession... I am not actually all that much of a free human being, but I do hope to keep working towards the lofty ideal that Steiner puts before us so clearly in this best of all his philosophical writings. And I don't know very much despite putting on airs to the contrary sometimes. So if someone can help me understand how the two ideas of the free individual and Carl's belief that an axiomatically defined conversation group based on contracts fully contains and extend the free individuals within it can be reconciled into a higher unity I'm willing to listen!
Reincarnation
It is interesting to realise that in a culture that recognises reincarnation, capital punishment could be contrued as giving someone a fresh start...
Funerals
John, thank you for this post. This is likewise a point I've been hoping would come up.
Recently I attended a set of Buddhist rites for a Chinese woman who lived a long and honored life, and who taught me qigong for twenty five years. The rites stretched out over a period of eight weeks, with a long series of chants, invocations and recitals of blessing, all invoking the Amitabha Buddha and the Pure Land where it is hoped the departed will end up and from which it is hoped he (she) will reincarnate in a propitious circumstance. Considerable effort and expense by the family, which is respectable if not particularly well-off, were expended to perform these rites.
The remarkable thing is that the rites seemed to work. One got the sense that the Way really was being eased for the departed soul, and that the Pure Land actually was something that the Living were working to accomplish, not only for the Dead but for themselves as well.
Now suppose we were living in a culture where insight into the realities that lie beyond death was subject to ongoing scientific research. Suppose we had good scientific evidence to believe that there really is an astral body, that it leaves the body at death and circulates out into the cosmos in various forms of togetherness and disarray, gets plastered against a set of stars where it is held fixed for a few centuries and then returns to Earth existence to try to get its act together again.
Presumably, if we had knowledge of this sort, our cultural attitude toward things like eugenics, capital punishment and the Beauty Police would be quite different than they are under present conditions, where we are all more or less in the dark about these matters and, thanks to the Fascists of the 20th century, pretty thoroughly on guard about them.
Plato emphasizes the importance of an honored burial for a Guardian who has performed his duties well, and has made the Community better and stronger.
Let's see what we can do to work toward the knowledge we need to make an enquiry into the Law of Beauty a legitimate undertaking, and not a taboo.
I don't know why Carl is
I don't know why Carl is trying to destroy this site, sully Rudolf Steiner and turn people away from Anthroposophy, but I do know that is what he is doing.
I sense that Tom has fallen out of love with his site and my heart cries out to him to not abandon his progeny.
Tom, you need 10 years, not 2 years to make this project work. Your vision is true, but your hopes for the short term are so high. Looking back from 10 years you will see that it took 7 years to get started. This site is 2 years old - at least that is how long you have been a member - is it a surprise to find tantrums happening?
As the owner of this newly incarnating project one of your roles is to be the parent. Just like any parent you have to find your way - just like any child, this project has a being of its own. One day it will not be appropriate for it to be owned by one person anymore. You and the site will have to find the right way for it to leave home. That could be an incredibly painful time - in the charitable sector it is called "Founders Disease" and it occurs when it is time for the founder to step back. Take the Orchestra I look after - a huge crisis in its 25th year which ended, for unconnected reasons, with the Founder leaving. It was time for the Orchestra to leave home - but leaving home doesn't have to be awful, not if the process is consciously understood.
You may look around at other businesses and other web sites and find examples of projects that took less time to take off. Good for them. If they have achieved their success by following a middle path, by being supportive of the human beings working within and around the organisation then I celebrate their good luck.
Your site has some naughty goings-on, and it would be so sad if you turned your back on it and let it wither away. It needs your love, your pure parental love.
In love and freedom,
Sebastian
Individual Projects
I consider the current conversation friction just a part of the awakening process of community and a healthy sign. Of course the growth process and relationships are complicated but hopefully learning will result rather "atomizing" as Steiner calls community separation.
My interest is in producing content that is helpful in some way for the study of The Philosophy of Freedom. Public response has indicated what I have come up with so far hasn't been that helpful so I want to come up with some new material.
Producing some helpful material is a 17 year old project that has resulted in returning to the drawing board many times in the past so this is nothing new for myself. It is difficult and requires a lot of attention so I plan to clear out my life responsibilities as much as I can to make time for this.
I think the website has functioned well, but I would like to produce some new content as my contribution. I hope others have some fresh ideas to increase the usefulness of the site. The site can support many different motives and interests at the same time. I don't know if a concensus in direction is possible but individuals can always jump in at any time with their own project initiative on the site.
My instant reaction to that
My instant reaction to that is to ask you whether you are comfortable with your uncomfortable? Would you prefer to go round in endless circles than to stick with one direction for too long?
All the tools you bring are helpful - they will all be be just right for someone. You can present them all with this site, lined up and ready to meet whoever should happen upon them.
On one side there are the numerous study aids, on another there are the galleries, and on another side there are the journals. Each aspects is contributing, each aspect is important.
The life development of this site is guided or not guided by you. Maybe it will atomize - that has already happened to some extent.
This web site is given its life by the human beings that are involved. It is not surprising that the biography development of human projects tracks the biography phases of human beings.
Life Development Facilitator
Life development of the site would be related to the Communication Services staff group. Perhaps we need a "Life Development" facilitator. Someone to pay attention to website conditions so that individual spiritual activity can flourish.
When conditions occurred that was choking life then some positive action could be taken.
German Idealism
Sebastian,
I'm not trying to destroy this website. I am, to be sure, trying to move it in a certain direction. But there's a distinction between the two intentions.
If I were to begin pontificating on the Philosophy of Freedom in a systematic way, then we might get some real fireworks. I have avoided doing this not because I don't think it's important material, but because I want to focus on something distinct, but related.
I believe Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom is not substantially different from Kant's critical philosophy. I believe it is basically an extension of Kant. It is neither a refutation of Kant nor a break with Kant. It is Kant viewed from a privileged position, the position of clairvoyant intuition, into the things Kant felt were outside the bounds of sense and reason. It is remarkable and important for that reason. It cannot be understood without understanding Kant.
I believe more generally that Steiner's philosophy is on all fours with the general philosophical movement we call German Idealism. I believe it is particularly agreeable with Hegel's idealism. Steiner says somewhere that he is substantially in agreement with Hegel, who in turn uses Kant as a basis for developing something he calls Absolute Idealism.
Now German Idealism was a wonderful and a terrible thing. It led to some of the highest speculations and intuitions about science, art and religion that have ever been attempted by a people and a culture. It also led an entire people and an entire generation to condone a cold-blooded and systematic disenfranchisement of an entire class of humanity which, for not very good reasons, they decided were fit only for the ash heap.
So people working with German Idealism need to be aware of this history, and of these facts, and to carry their banner with a certain amount of moral sophistication and moral rectitude.
I'm happy to discuss these things, and I think we probably should, but here I want us to focus on Plato, and on his idealism. If we decide to discuss the Philosophy of Freedom in detail, let's please open another part of the website.
What Moral Development Is
John, I want to respond to your Barriers on Caryn's thread here. I want to start with this quotation from Plato, and then get more personal, as you request.
S: Bearing in mind our distinction between beauty in itself and beautiful things in particular, do you think the common man will allow it? Will he ever believe anything of the sort?
G: He certainly won't
S: So philosophy is impossible among the common people?
G: Quite impossible.
S: And the common people must disapprove of all philosophers?
G: Inevitably.
S: So also will all the people who want to mix with the crowd and be popular with it?
G: That is obvious.
S: What hope can you see in this that the philosophic nature will remain true to its vocation and persevere to the end? You will recall that we agreed earlier that it must be quick to learn, to have a good memory, to be brave and generous.
G: Agreed.
S: With such gifts a man is bound from childhood to take the lead among his fellows, especially if he is gifted physically as well as mentally.
G: Yes, that's bound to happen.
S: And his friends and fellow citizens will want to use him for their own purposes when he grows up.
G: Of course they will.
S: They will be very submissive when they ask for favors or express their admiration, flattering in anticipation the power that will one day be his.
G: That is the way of the world.
S: Then in the circumstances, how do you expect him to behave? Especially if his native country is a great one, and he himself is a man of wealth and family, and well-built and good-looking in the bargain. Isn't he sure to be filled with boundless ambition and think himself capable of running the affairs of Greece and of all the world beside? Won't he become very high and mighty and full of senseless ostentation and inane pride?
G: Yes, he will.
S: Suppose someone approaches him as he is falling into this state and gently tells him the truth - that he's completely lacking in understanding and won't acquire it unless he works for it like a slave. Do you think he'll find it easy to listen, beset with so many evil influences?
G: No, he'll find it very difficult.
Ideal voice
Thank you Carl. I can begin to hear Plato's voice more distinctly in some of your previous writing. I look forward to hearing more of your own voice, because I think we have all moved on a long way since Plato drew breath, even if we often think like our forefathers and foremothers.
Would you accept me as a subscriber in your group because it is so useful to have the emails to sift through for back posts. I solemnly promise not to strange your pitch by posting journals. Hey, Carl, how about it?
How to Run the Republic
Let's keep in mind how Plato thinks human affairs should be governed. He calls these the "Three Waves," because when Socrates proposed them, he was afraid he would be scorned, ostracized and inundated with a tide of opprobrium for arguing for them.
First wave: Give women complete equality and allow them to compete on an equal footing with men in everything except war. Thereby a pool of talent otherwise excluded from the State would be introduced, and its resources proportionately increased. Women, Plato thought, wouldn't be able to do as much or to do what they did as well as the men could, but they could make the system more balanced and sensible, and restrain some of its sillier impulses, like the expedition to Syracuse, which ended in a total disaster for Athens.
Second wave: Abolish the family and raise the Guardian class in State-run nurseries. This measure would preclude the moral infection of the leading members of society by the frailties of amateur parenting. Professional parenting was to be the norm; no Oedipal complexes here, no sado-masochism. Complete moral rectitude and no moral infection. Mating would occur at annual festivals, and biological parenthood would be kept anonymous.
Third wave: Give political power to those capable in mathematics, conversation and the martial arts, and train them in these. Make sure they understand what in itself is beautiful and true and good. Require of them a long apprenticeship in academic and physical discipline, followed by a long period of civil service and then a retirement into philosophy, from which they would be called and would reluctantly serve the State in positions of Directorship. The more avidly someone seeks political power, the more he (she) should be mistrusted and prevented from attaining the position sought.
This looks like a pretty good system to me. What do people think of it?
Initiative
Where does initiative, development and growth play into all this? It could well be a self-encapsulating dogma based on its own assumptions. It does not appear to allow for karma to work through the creative arts, with its iconoclastic revolutionaries, as far as I can see from an initial impression.
Interesting that Socrates could be perceived as making inevitable his own demise among such ideas. Do we not need individuals such as the self-proclaimed ignoramus, Socrates?
Banishing Artists
Hi John,
My recollection of The Republic is that it's even worse than that - I believe the artists are actually banned from practicing their arts on the basis that they are like panderers or deceivers. All myths, poems, paintings and stories are banned because they depict "untrue" things like gods behaving as if they were fallible humans and so on.
One of Steiner's great strengths, at least for me, has always been how highly he valued the arts.
Carl, when I read the Republic Plato's ideal state made sense to me as something that he might imagine to address the evils he saw in his own society. However I've never had the slightest inkling that such a thing should be done in our times - I feel things have moved on.
Intelligibles
Hi Tim,
Yes, Plato thought that representational art had "no serious value," and that real social value lay in measurement and calculation. This assessment is borne out when you look at contemporary values. Waldorf schools, which are art-oriented, have no money, but Harvard University, which is built up around measurement and calculation, has an endowment of $29 billion.
More broadly, measurement and calculation, for Plato, are what allow one to approach the Form of the Good. This is the Domain of the Intelligibles. Art, except perhaps for extraordinary exhibitions like the Goetheanum, remains in the physical realm, commensurate merely with beliefs and illusions.
What we need are social practices that keep us in contact with the Intelligibles.
Clairvoyance and the Forms
I hope it is clear to people that Steiner-style clairvoyance and the Platonic Intelligibles are almost certainly first cousins. Both are spiritual quantities abiding in higher dimensions than the ordinary domains of space and time. We get glimpses of these in occasional dreams and in experience with psychoactive substances.
On Steiner's program, we adapt to these transcendental realities by making individual moral progress and by means of exercises designed to open the astral lotus petals.
Plato thought we could approach them by mathematics, deductive reasoning in conversation and moral training.
I think it is rather obvious that this is the sort of thing, either Steiner-style or Plato-style or some combination, we need more of today. They are not something we've moved beyond. They belong to our future.
Not conceptual art
Are you yourself saying, Carl, that art has no access to the Intelligibles?
I wandered lonely as a star...
(William Wordsworth)
How are we going to get lone-stars to be sociable? The starry sky only appears to be studded with far out pin-pricks because we identify our outer experience with an internal mental picture inculcated in us as far-out pin-prickedness. Plato viewed a different sky differently.
If we lived in the culture that Plato nurtured his mental pictures, then he would be more immediately relevant today. We reinterpret Plato because we cannot think as Plato thought, any more than we can hear early music as a medieval person heard it. Even the living truths that entered Plato's noesis have evolved. Can we find a common point of reference from a contemporary noesis? It is all too easy to wallow in past enlightenment.
Carl, can you reproduce with contemporary relevance the virtues of social practices that keep us in contact with the Intelligibles? I would insist that the reproduction values the bearers of inconvenient creative genius that herald new futures, such as yourself. What are the selling points?
Professional Wrestling
Yo John,
Plato's idea is actually pretty straightforward, and it's something we all know deep down is true. Representation lacks contact with truth. It places us at a certain remove from truth. It mediates between us and truth. Representational art, therefore, is an "inferior child borne of inferior parents." Moreover, if it is allowed to play a significant cultural role, it can only "infect" the higher parts of the mind with impulses from the lower parts. Both Islam and Judaism recognize this pornographic liability in representational art, and in different ways take steps to eliminate it from their cultures.
The theory of the lower mind and its cultural transmission (and the reasons to abjure them) is likewise straightforward. The tendency in human nature that is "irrational, lazy and inclined toward cowardice" is easily represented in art (movies, novels, etc). The reasonable element, with its "unvarying calm" is very difficult to represent and made to appeal to the "motley audience gathered in a theater." Human cultures are thus downgraded and demoralized rather systematically by common representational art, particularly when admixed with sex and violence. Professional wrestling, which is wildly popular in Western societies, and which is a spectacle based on representational gestures suggesting sexual sadism and masochism, is a very good example of this sort of thing. The internet is full of it, and will become more full of it as virtual realities, particularly virtual sex, become feasible.
What is needed is an effort in exactly the other direction. Islam and Judaism don't really have the required forms. I think the Waldorf Schools do have it. Here, art goes beyond mere representation. Fine art of this kind seems to contact truth directly. Certainly this is the sort of gesture that Goethean conversation is supposed to make. What is important is to strengthen the impulses of those who see that this kind of moral expression needs to permeate all of our social gestures, and to make it more or less inevitable that the irrational, lazy and cowardly gestures of self-indulgent, pornographic minds either wither away through neglect and disuse, or become consigned to social sectors quite apart from those where contact with the Intelligibles is actively being developed.
Wrestling with Wrestling
Hi Carl,
This is good, I like concrete examples. The question I would like to ask you up front is, if you were in power, say president of the U.S., what would you "do" about professional wrestling?
I know it's a bit artificial but it might lead to some interesting discussions. Anyway, here are my thoughts on it, very very biased and one-sided of course:
I have been aware all my life of professional wrestling. Even in a smalllish city/town like ours it has always been around locally but I never thought of it as a moral threat to anybody. However I've never had the inclination to experience it, to pay the price of a ticket or watch a full professional wrestling show on TV. But I always view it with a smile and as an outsider would feel that our society was a little poorer, a little less diverse and tolerant, if it were banned for some - what I see as - "puritan" reason.
Now, at one level we know that officially professional wrestling is "low brow". It doesn't get funding as a "highbrow" artistic activity either from the government or from arts bodies anywhere in the world that I'm aware of (though somebody will probably tell me there's a town somewhere down south in the good ole US of A that does fund professional wrestling publicly, along with both kinds of music, country and western...:-)
But neither is it generally repressed. It has always to me lurked in that world of kickboxing, sideshow carnival ride owners and circuses that constitutes a kind of subculture. I think, by the by, quite a few of the people living in that cultural world will tend to practice body piercing and/or tattooing to some extent (uh-oh, there I go trying to bait people again...:-)
Now here is where my concern lies with your approach to social issues. You seem eager to "pick a winner", as Plato has Socrates do in "The Republic", to make a list and say, professional wrestling is out because it panders to low tendencies in the human being (and we can always ask, who decides that?), the bearded lady at the circus is out because she debases human sexuality, standup comedy is out because there is too much swearing, model train hobbyists are out because they worship Ahrimanic spirits and so on and so on.
I am deliberately being flippant here not because I don't think highly of your ideals (which I think involve developing the very highest spiritual capacities in human beings, helping everyone reach their highest potential) but because when it comes to methods it seems to me you want to come from a very specific and - in my opinion - dogmatic position.
At one level, society already "picks winners" as I've already implied. Things like classical music, opera, scientific research, mathematics etc. "get the nod" and are funded because they are seen as "good things" that benefit society. Other things like fast food companies, tobacco companies and circuses are left to make a go of it - or not - on their own, at an economic and social level. Religion, especially in America, gets very special treatment as I understand it and Richard Dawkins had a lot to say about that in his "God Delusion" book, some of which I feel has some validity.
You seem to want to take the process of picking cultural winners even further. I believe you have very definite ideas on how this could be done. But I don't think that it can be done in practice given the current social reality as I'm aware of it in most Westernised countries. Perhaps Iran and some of the ex-communist countries still practice some forms of what you have in mind as a technique.
Let me close with a somewhat flippant story in Hollywood style - suppose an exceptional individual were brought up in close contact with the world of professional wrestling. She also comes into contact with martial arts and kickboxing. In later life she seeks the deeper meaning of these activities and through a low point in her own life comes to a personal revelation - as a result she develops a new kind of artistic activity which becomes extraordinarily popular and also introduces a genuinely artistic element into this subculture. (Yes I can feel the script forming already... Lindsay Lohan and Nicole Kidman as leads I think with a special guest appearance by Paris Hilton. I'll have to fit Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCapricio in somewhere as well with a soundtrack featuring the Red Hot Chilli Peppers :-)
Hopefully you get the idea, ...my personal feeling is that society as it presents itself to us now must be transformed from within by the individuals who make it up, not shaped by a leading elite who formulate an abstract set of black and white principles. That process of transformation from within may lead to surprising reversals of fortune, what is now valued being devalued and vice versa...
Don't forget in all this the passages from the New Testament about Christ being "the stone that was rejected which became the cornerstone", about God "making the wisdom of this world foolish" through what Steiner calls the Mystery of Golgotha and so on. Those passages to me sound a constant warning about picking cultural winners, as a result I personally favour erring on the side of tolerance and reserving judgement where possible in these things. Don't forget that Christ consorted primarily with "sinners and tax collectors" not primarily with Rabbis, philosophers or Greek dramatists. I think there is deep wisdom for the future of humanity in keeping that simple thought in mind.
Shameful Images
Ho Tim,
Thanks much for this post. I think it's an important topic, but I see not many are willing to take it on. Probably there is some fear and guilt attending it.
I hope it is clear to everyone that professional wrestling is representational art. It is a dramatization of certain archetypes in consciousness, the most salient being Good and Evil, and the Hero. These archetypes are then spiced up by putting them into a violent sexual context, where the natural intercourse between man and woman leading to childbirth is generalized into a kind of morality tale with certain reversals and perversions. Between men and women, of course, the natural and proper thing is deep longing, love and its physical expression. On the stage occupied by the professional wrestler, however, what you get is representatational sado-masochism with characters and subplots with endless variety and varying degrees of depravity.
This sort of thing, as Plato says, is very easy for artists to represent. In the case of professional wrestling, it probably plays a major role in keeping the mass of human consciousness on the level it's currently at - materialistic, sex-obsessed, fearful, juvenile. The evolution of consciousness moves on very large time scales.
These images are exactly the wrong sort of thing to put into people's minds, and it should be illegal to do so. People today are sanctimonious about violence in videogames and on television, but no one seems willing to point out that professional wrestling is the real problem. Probably this is because its content, like pornography goes too deeply into people's psyche. It causes sexual responses in its viewers. People just aren't willing to bring to the surface and legislate against a set of mental images and physical responses, installed by vulgar art, that are in there, that won't go away, that are cruel and that they are ashamed of.
If those images weren't there, and if we understood enough about the mind, social intercourse and the purpose of human life to keep them out because of a higher wisdom we possessed, we'd be living in a much better world. And we wouldn't have to put up with much of the subjective palaver about individual freedom and individual experience we get, for example, from certain people here on the PoF site. You got me, Jeff?
If I were President, my actions would be rather modest. It just wouldn't make much political or economic sense to promote an Environmental Movement of the Mind from the bully pulpit. Too much sophistication among ordinary people would be presupposed in taking legislative and cultural action against subconscious, animal processes. That needs to occur organically and naturally, through grassroots intelligence. What I would do as President would be to fund a meta-university, a place where people who understood something about what spiritual practice and the transcendence of the Animal Within really is could work on conversation theory. These people would very quickly get to the environmental movement of the mind that Plato is talking about in the Republic, and would free themselves of the type of mental life that previously chained them in Plato's cave. Once that example was up and running, a good deal would follow from it.
Suggestive images
Carl, I am following your train of thought. Have you considered another trainline?
What if wrestling represents the battle of polar extreme with polar extreme: evil vs evil? You have soundly reasoned your reading of wrestling, and this one is open for reasoning too.
If we watch wrestling - as I did in my late teens when it was on Saturday afternoon TV - then we are condoning participants in the event. We can come away with all the feelings that you have described, either consciously or unconsciously. We know it will be back next week and this subtly teaches us that there is no winner in this contest becuase the contesting continues with different examples of protagonists. Ultimately - as I did - we learn that the whole affair is endless and irrelevant. That was a good lesson for me. I am grateful for the lesson and I would not go back. I involve myself with other events, or similar events differently.
Are there other lessons in this view too?
The Logical Atoms
There is a form of Platonism that developed out of Hegel and was carried on by F.H. Bradley in England and accepted by Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore in the late 19th century. It's called Logical Atomism. The idea is that self-consciousness is a composite made out of atoms, and that the job of philosophy is to discover what those atoms are and to organize conversation around them.
Introspective self-consciousness, once it gets past inner dialog and the free associativity of the mind, quickly discovers that the living body is full of logical atoms. These are the "therefore" and the "not" of appetite and aversion, the "there exists" and the "for all" of perception and sleep and the many other unplumbed atoms having to do with the circulation of the blood, with the energy in the joints and connective tissue and the circulation in the ether from up to down and down to up, from periphery to center and center to periphery. Some of these atoms have to do with the cosmic condition of the human being after death. All of them have to do with judgment, commitment and self-expression.
The animal impulses of belonging with a group, of sex and procreation and of aggression and domination are likewise logical atoms. They are natural elements in the world put there by our actions and by our self-consciousness that, in the cosmic scheme of things, are building up a future world in which human consciousness will function like the angel's consciousness does in the present epoch.
It is important that we relate to one another on the basis of these logical atoms, but only insofar as these atoms are organized into cultural forms that put them in orderly, lawful and esthetic relation to one another. Good company and good conversation, according to rules, are the most obvious candidates we have to apply the Platonic standards of measurement and calculation, or better, or of accurate geometrical construction and projection, to our self-consciousness, and to transcend the undisciplined, subjectivist me-talk of the common and freewheeling individualist.
The Principle of Reproduction is intended to move our conversation away from the endless subjectivism of common society and toward the sort of higher society that Plato tries to outline in the Republic. It is intended to establish anthroposophical community on the basis of self-discipline, courage, wisdom and justice.
What we all really want, presumably, is to participate in the endless energy, information and novelty that is intrinsic to our cosmic condition as Man. We want the logical atoms which compose our self-consciousness to survive our death and to reincarnate in an increasingly fortuitous way. We want to be able to see into karma and into the the tableau of Earth evolution as immortal beings astride a tableau of cosmic proportion and cosmic variety. Anthroposophy is a cultural framework for playing with the logical atoms, and for ushering us into our proper positions among the stars.
Ignoramus
Umm, Carl, can you kindly explicate:
I am flummoxed at the turn you have taken here. Are you suggesting that what wrestlers represent is less interesting than their relationships?
What is the difference between prepositions in language and this logical atomic theory?
Why is it suddenly raining concepts when I was just getting warmed through by the image of Plato's Republic becoming just a wrestling match? Am I tuned into the wrong radio station, or is this just a word from the sponsor? Please pass out the crutches soon Carl...
Courage
Hi John,
It's a word from the sponsor. Here's the idea.
Since the pre-Socratics, it's been a tradition that reality is made up of atoms. The scientific corpuscular theory has had considerable success with atomism. Leibniz thought consciousness was made of atoms (he thought the mind was a private, windowless monad, and that there were untold numbers of such monads). Russell, Moore and Wittgenstein took seriously the concept of logical atomism, the idea that logic reflects an atomic structure in the mind, but their speculations didn't extend into the social dimension.
A great deal of difficulty attends saying just what logical atoms are. Russell thought the only really simple names, the only really simple logical constants, were the terms 'this' and 'that' when used in the ostensive sense of direct acquaintance with reality. But these names were short-lived. They could not be used to re-identify the particular this or that that they were used to name, and so contact with the logical atoms could only be accomplished "perhaps once in six months for about half a minute."
Nonetheless, it was thought these atoms must exist. The world, which is a gigantic collection of facts, Wittgenstein insisted, has a structure, so there must be fundamental atoms. They must be there in consciousness, and they must somehow be the ultimate contact that the mind has with reality itself. When you look at Socrates' dream in the Theatetus, and at the alchemists and, I take it, at what the professional wrestler represents, or tries to represent, you are looking at something like a logical atom. So you see, this thread is going to stay sexy after all.
Now the sexual imagination, which is exploited in all sorts of ways in contemporary culture, and almost always as a way to sell something unnecessary to someone else, reverses its character when it's finally pushed past the Guardian of the Threshold in a lawful way. When that occurs, if it does, the images that disturb or motivate or otherwise chain ordinary consciousness into its stupid, self-conscious caves are transformed into living, spiritual presences of a supernal quality and sensitivity. They become, it would appear, real beings, the Essences of life itself. These are the moments, things and relationships that are actually what we live for. These are the things at the root of Jeff's unscientific and freewheeling associations here, of Joel's plodding pontifications, of Sebastian's 'peace and freedom,' etc. These are the logical Forms in consciousness, transformed, and placed in contact with the cosmic atoms that are instantiated in the cosmic evolution of Man himself.
Now with Goethean conversation we've got a chance to work with the logical forms and the logical atoms. But we can't do it without a certain minimum of moral intelligence (intellectual intelligence is not so important here; what's important is moral intelligence). I think we've got some of the required intelligence here, among the Peripheral anthroposophists, but that we don't have all of it. Probably what's lacking is Courage.
Logical Atoms in Conversation
For the record, and because my language is misleading in The Logical Atoms above, I need to add here that Hegel and F.H.Bradley were not logical atomists. They were logical monists, similar to Steiner, whose monism is more ethical than logical. Are people here clear that Steiner's PoF is monist?
It was the rationalism of Hegel and Bradley, not their atomism, that was accepted by Moore and Russell. Moore ended up with something called 'super-realism,' which views propositions and facts as non-mental realities. Russell follows Moore, and develops a logical atomism built up on atomic propositions, molecular propositions and general propositions. Russell was committed to the logical analysis of language, whose symbols he thought was the only thing we could really understand. Moore was thus a realist, but Russell was an empiricist, who thought the only contact we have with reality is when we become directly acquainted with it in special moments. For Russell, we spend most of our time just trying to understand our language. Sound familiar?
Wittgenstein is a whole other story. I'll treat his logical atomism in a separate Journal.
Logical atomism leads to some problems concerning just where the ideal leaves off and where the real takes up. It's not really clear where the logical atoms are. If they only make themselves felt in dreams, that would be one thing. But if we can have conversations where they make themselves felt, that will be something else. I think we can discover logical atoms in conversation. I think logical atoms will prove to be features of our bodies, in particular features of our nervous system, which operate like computers. They will prove to be features of our anatomy that will come to light only under the right social (i.e. the right logical) conditions.
Does this mean it is under these conditions that Ahriman has a chance to enter? Probably so, although as with everything in the human realm, it will depend on how much of the Christ impulse is simultaneously present. Ahriman is intelligence, and the more closely our conversations resemble Turing-computable functions, the closer they will come to Ahriman's domain. But we need to keep in mind that Ahriman is a fundamental principle of Earth evolution. We need to make room for him if we're going to make anything of this world.
Picturing Ahriman
I hope people here understand that it is important to represent Ahriman very clearly in our cultural forms and transactions with one another. The Goetheanum and its grounds are a place where Ahriman is represented over and over, in the various forms of architecture, in the eurythmy performances, in the colors of the windows, etc. The purpose of representing Ahriman is to deprive him of the power to capture us subconsciously.
Direct acquaintance with Ahriman can only occur through what I'm here calling "logical atoms," moments in consciousness that "can only be named," but about which it is impossible to say anything else. It is important that we acquire the capacity to experience these logical atoms directly and in a systematic way. When we do, we are in a position to witness the Earth's karma, as well as that of our own, and to take wise actions on behalf of them.
People who are capable of this sort of thing, or who aspire to be, are pretty no-nonsense. They don't really have time for the idleness of those who don't work systematically and scientifically. But they are more than willing to show the way to those who express an interest and a willingness to work.
Ahriman is the Spirit of Coldness, of which there is a very great deal in the cosmos. The cosmos is really nothing other than vast volumes of cold and contraction punctuated by smaller, intense volumes of heat and expansion. Working with heat and cold is a good way to understand the Ahriman-Lucifer polarity, and I teach it at my Mount Shasta retreats.
Finding the balance point between the A-L polarity in each meeting with another ego is what we mean by Christ and Christianity. Christianity is a phenomenally interesting cultural tradition. It represents a movement toward an Apocalypse that never seems to arrive, but that has made material life on earth more and more sophisticated and intelligent. Without Christianity, it is arguable that objective science and the progressive and free social culture that comes with it would never have entered Earth evolution. Plato's rationalism would not have been enough. Certainly the Oriental traditions would not.
Supportive
This is very helpful Carl - thanks.
It seems to me that we can build meaning out of relationship more effectively than out of naming. An aim of mine is to build true and elegant relationships. A name may be no more than a reference point where the point itself has zero extension. Only the influences that radiate from and towards the point of reference are meaningful. That which cannot be but named can be related to another distinctive point of reference. Is this more of dynamism than atomism? All relationships are spiritual entiities in my view. Can relationships, such as intentional love, be regarded as monads?
Disclaimer. This was very quickly posted to catch up.
Needle in haystack
Hi Carl - I want to try to connect up some of the recent thread-speak and this seems like a relevant place for my needle.
There are some questions here, and they may not deserve an answer, but hopefully they localise where I have got to...
Can we regard a social contract as a logical atom? Are logical atoms relevant to our endeavour or are they just a distraction from the converse with spirits?
When we talk about truth, are we considering truth as an actual spiritual being or are we stopping short at some point before that? If we are talking about spiritual beings, then perhaps our talk of rules and principles could become talk of requisite actions, or conditions, that enable the converse with spiritual beings to take place. In other words, you are defining a reverse ritual in matter of fact terms. If these principles are necessities for the spiritual beings, why do they appear so finite in expression?
Am I slowly getting on your track, Carl?
Retreat From The Jungle
Yo John,
Somewhere in the jumble out there I think you were musing about a contract you and I had to stay on topic, and that I hadn't done that. That could be true, and if it is I apologize.
Yes, I think the social contract is probably a logical atom. It's called language. Remember, a logical atom is something that you can't say anything about. It would seem that language, the appearance of which can only mean that a social contract has somehow been agreed to, is likewise something about which one cannot ultimately say anything meaningful.
The logical atom that is language and society, however, can very readily depict something. It can show something about the very same relations in reality. This is the idea of the alchemical dream. In alchemical conversation, we want to get pictures in the mind that depict realities which transcend the average day-to-day.
At a minimum, truth is a function of the activity of spiritual beings, namely ourselves. To the extent that our activity depends on the activity of beings higher than ourselves, and to the extent that their activity depends on our own activity, we'd want to say that truth is a function of those beings as well. I don't know what the material physics of truth fundamentally is, so I don't know if it has a Personality or not. I think most likely truth is a Relationship between ideas in the mind and other ideas in the mind.
You may want to look at my analysis of spiritual activity in a new post under Wittgenstein as a way to pursue these ideas. What I've got there probably won't make total sense to you, but I think it is on the right track in terms of logical atomism and the computability paradigm, which promises to dominate culture into the foreseeable future and beyond.
Carl and John and non-truth plus non-sense,
Dear Carl and John,
How can you both be pretending to talk about truth, especially truth as a spiritual being when Carl is nothing but lies and distortions? John, you seem like a decent person and I do not understand why you insist on giving Carl a dispensation from his role as the ugly catalyst in the racist dialogue that has been going on here.
Are you both so weak that you think that you can talk about truth and get away with it, when Carl has displayed nothing but untruths on this website.
What is up with this nonsense? And who are the spiritual beings that promote untruth in nonsense the "jungle bunnies" whom Carl has tried to shove aside.
Still here,
Patri
This is painful
Dear Patri,
I acknowledge where you are coming from. You wrote: Carl is nothing but lies and distortions...
Are you not beginning to embody through this statement, the falsity of dogmatism that we all wish to avoid? That sentence is derogatory and inflammatory in a manner that reflects all that you have written about Carl's use of such statements. There are shadows appearing here, yet you are a being of light.
Carl has decided not to comment on the jb issue directly. He is free to do this. The jb issue does not define Carl. Nor does this issue define the truth or otherwise of his entire output. I have chosen not to write these jb words out again and again in posts here.
Although I did not solicit an apology from Carl over another issue, he offered one freely. We have had previous exchanges about his use of language, which I assume you have not read.
You interpret my silence as ignoring. Actually I am holding the issue in my heart quite actively, and in this sentence that becomes openly transparent. I do not know yet how that transparency will affect the inner process. It is the first time - as far as I remember - that such a heart process has become a public one. I have asked around locally to find out if others read racial significance into the jb words.
I am exploring my current position in the journal on Freedom and Fireworks. It does not rest, nor does it consume me to the exclusion of other matters. I apologise to you for unintentionally increasing your sense of hurt. I can only trust that you will come to understand me.
Thank you for engaging in this.
Socrates and Christ
Yes, John, but now compare Christianity which supersedes it in Western civilization. Now there's a self-encapusulating, apocalyptic dogma based on assumptions which have never turned out to be true, at least not in a straightforward way. I plan to open a Journal on Christianity soon. The parallel between Socrates and Christ warrants examination.
Yes, we seem to need such individuals. We can't seem to come up with these things out of our own reason, and our good social sense, unless you want to count Adams, Jefferson, Franklin and Madison.