I wasn't educated by Jesuits, but I read Bernard McGinn's book about Eckhart. Eckhart did not believe that God is a person.

But you're right.. sometimes Christian mystics do.

Thanatos Sand I wasn't educated by Jesuits, but I read Bernard McGinn's book about Eckhart. Eckhart did not believe that God is a person.

Then McGinn was wrong, if he actually said that. Firstly, Eckhart never stopped believing that Christ was also God, so he was definitely a person, there. And Eckhart never rejected the Summa Theologica that said that God was the essence of personhood.

He believed that the Christ is a kind of agent. God is the ground of being. He's an example of how a person can be a Christian and also be what in Spinoza's time was called atheist.

So, I'm a bit late I suppose, but I just heard the bit regarding the Boy Scout speech and the purported phone call afterwards...

It's a context... nothing more.

So, one gives a speech. Afterwards, the speaker claims that a particular person called on the phone and congratulated the speaker, saying it was the best speech ever given, or words to that affect/effect. The problem is that that particular person spoke up afterwards and outright denied ever making the call or saying what was claimed by the speaker.

That's a bit interesting, isn't it?

Person A stated that person B called person A. Person A stated that during that phone call person B stated "X". Person B denied calling person A. Person B denied stating "X".

Then, a spokesperson for person A held a press conference. During the press conference, a reporter raised concern over the aforementioned the phone call. Specifically, the reporter accused person A of lying. The spokesperson acted as if the reporter had crossed some ethical line by calling speaker A a liar.

Then the spokesperson offered an interesting apologetic saying that conversations happened, lot's of congratulations and praise was offered, it just did not happen they way that person A said it did. Presumably... therefore speaker A wasn't lying?

No. Assuming that speaker A isn't suffering from severe delusion, s/he is most certainly lying.

The phone call never happened. That was admitted by the spokesperson. The particular praise wasn't offered by person B. That was admitted. None of that happened. Now...

There is no way that the speaker believed it did. Thus, there is no way that they believed their own statements...

Either the speaker is mentally ill, or lying... possibly both.

He believed that the Christ is a kind of agent.

No, he didn't, that would have made him an Arian heretic, and he would have been excommunicated and possibly worse the moment he wrote it, said it publicly, or told another Dominican that. You're just making this stuff up now.

God is the ground of being. He's an example of how a person can be a Christian and also be what in Spinoza's time was called atheist.

Sorry, that was not how Eckhart saw it. Again, that would be a rejection of both the Trinity and the Summa Theologica. He did neither. If you're just going to make this stuff up, there's no point in continuing.

Lol. He was tried for heresy.

LOL. He was tried for contesting technical aspects of the Summa (a charge from the rival Franciscans), and he won his case. So, try again.

If he had ever said Christ was an agent, he would have been toast.

Ok

Greetings Erik!

You wrote:

Fair enough. But how does one recognize truth if not to actively seek it out? It doesn't seem to just randomly fall into your lap. Seems an acknowledgement of one's ignorance along with a concomitant desire to actually know are both necessary. Not many people, I'd imagine, even make it this far.

I think about the conditions under which my beliefs and opinions have shifted over the years, and these always involved discovering a new set of facts which challenged my guiding presuppositions.

For instance, the idea that the US champions freedom and democracy at home and abroad (a belief I held for all of my youth) was undermined by certain actions that I became aware of only much later: things like overthrowing a democratically-elected regime in Iran and propping up a dictator more amenable to our business interests in its place, our supporting the Saudi royal family and giving China most-favored nation trading status, despite the undemocratic nature of the regimes and their horrible disregard of human rights.

The common denominator in these and similar actions appeared to be the expansion of financial interests for a select few, and had absolutely nothing to do with adhering to a set of principles like truth, justice and freedom.

So I held a belief which didn't match with 'reality.'

I'll grant that the aforementioned actions took place. It doesn't follow from the fact that there have been dishonest actors influencing our government, that the US doesn't champion freedom and democracy. It follows that some leaders took actions contrary to that. Suffice it for me to say that the particular actors involved in those situations are not equivalent to the US.

This is skirting around the notion of what counts as a just war, or act thereof.

At first I tried to resolve the cognitive dissonance through rationalizing away those actions which ran contrary to our professed principles by contextualizing them. Supporting brutal dictators was in some cases the lesser of two evils.

But the ultimate step after gaining more and more information concerning US politics--both foreign and domestic--was to finally accept the hard truth: while this nation's principles may be extremely admirable, they've clearly been used quite frequently as "noble lies" to maintain the illusions of cave dwellers like myself. And often to do the dirty work of supporting the 'elites' who benefit most from the situation.

Well, it's most certainly no secret that the US government has legitimized it's own bribery. Literally. However, this is all new. Quite new in the big picture.

My point in this long and tedious personal digression is twofold. First, to show that (in my case at least) arriving at the truth is a difficult process that involves both emotional and factual aspects. Facts were important, but not enough at the start. My emotional attachment to a particular conception of America was very strong and would not allow me to accept the significance of certain facts right away.

On the first aspect, what you're calling "arriving at the truth" is what I would call becoming aware of your own fallibility. I'm not minimizing what you're saying at all. I mean, I am personally very well aware of how unsettling it can be to suddenly realize that things are not the way we thought they were. We all have those moments, often in differing degrees of severity.

I want to echo A.J. Ayer here...

It does not follow from the fact that we've been wrong about some things that we're wrong about everything, or that we've been wrong about everything.

On my view, how one reacts to such a 'reality check' matters much more than going through one. There is no better time, nor reason, to begin a very invasive examination of one's own thought/belief system. The problem of course is that that is self-contained, and thus cannot recognize it's own flaws. I mean, no one makes a mistake on purpose. Likewise, it is impossible to believe something that you're certain is false. So, introspection requires something external to one's own thought/belief system. Another human suffices.

The second point of bringing it up, is to challenge (yet again!) the idea that Trump's use of lies are ultimately more malicious and more consequential than those which have been used by other American politicians since this nation's inception, and more generally throughout human history.

I would defend neither Trump, nor other actors involved in anything you've mentioned, regardless of whether or not they are elected politicians. <-------That's a subtlety that warrants careful consideration, as it underwrites the moral/ethical degradation of American government within the last fifty or so years.

I was close to joining the military precisely because I believed we represented great things. I would never have done so absent those illusions. The simplified narrative of American moral superiority many of us have been fed is not only wrong, but it's had far-reaching (often negative) consequences for others around the globe.

It doesn't follow from the fact that some folk do not adhere to great principles that the principles aren't worthy. America is a nation founded upon principles, those principles - when implemented properly - result in much greater things than can be had without.

This issue is very personal, and I don't buy the notion that it's fine (or even more acceptable) to deceive someone as long as they think you're telling them the truth. That's an incredibly insulting standpoint, and especially corrosive of the foundations of a democracy in which an informed electorate is an essential component. So we can hate Trump while simultaneously acknowledging the history of lies this country's politicians have engaged in.

No argument here. I concur.

So we're not in a post-truth age politically because we've never been in one in which politicians (or the special interests they almost always represent) were genuinely devoted to truth. I'm going to bludgeon you all with this point over and over and over again if necessary! Trump is more bold in his lying and an even more horrible human being than most, but that doesn't exonerate his political forbears in the least.

This is working from the presupposition that being in a post truth age requires a previous age when all politicians were honest actors. It's not all about politicians, a post truth era, I mean. Aside from that bit of semantics...

I would most certainly not exonerate, nor make light of any dishonest actors in recent past. They paved the way.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Last, but certainly not least...

Cultivating an American society that can stand as a shining example to the rest of the world requires leading by example. This country has most certainly had it's fair share of admirable leaders, and still does, although fewer and farer between in recent past. Allowing dishonest actors to dissolve one's trust in American ideals is akin to doing away with stop signs simply because some folk don't abide.

We're dealing with a very big ignoramus in this thread. Whoever dares to say that Kierkegaard is an atheist/mystic who thinks Christianity is dead and he isn't trying to build anything on its grave has probably NEVER read Kierkegaard. If anything Kierkegaard was a conservative Christian who thought that the only way to cure the illnesses of modernity is to return to a personal relationship with God, which is for example a subject addressed in Sickness Unto Death.

Furthermore to suggest Kierkegaard doesn't believe in a personal God is ABSOLUTE lunacy!! Kierkegaard, the man who, along with Pascal, rejected the God of the philosophers for the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob! And to suggest that most Christian mystics don't believe in a personal God - oh dear!

God is an underlying creative force... something like that. — Mongrel

>:O >:O >:O >:O Yeah right, cause Christians are New Age believers!

Interesting point. That is one of Kierkegaard's positions as well. — Mongrel

>:O >:O >:O

Nietzsche is targeting nihilism. His philosophy is about the separation between morality and meaning. He demands honesty about values and meaning. Rather than being dedicated to identifying what people ought to do, his philosophy is about undoing the pretence it’s morality or justice which deifies meaning.

Holding Nietzsche is taking a position that “all is good” is somewhat close, but also quite mistaken. His position would be better described as all has meaning. No matter how moral or immoral the world might be, meaning obtains. The meaning or “worth” of the world cannot be ransomed to appearing in the ways we demand or only those ways “which make sense” to us.

The nihilistic fool says: “I cannot go on. Life has too much pain to have any meaning. There needs to be a transcendent force which inputs meaning.”

A depressed Ubermensch says: “I will not go on. The meaning of my life is constant pain. I ought not go on. Death (whether it be a figurative death of an action which might have occurred or the literal death of suicide) is my meaning.”

Nietzsche’s point is existence is always a creation or affirmation. Moral or immoral, wonderful or horrific, meaning obtains. To exist is to mean, no matter what happens to you, whether you enjoy it or not, whether you live a month or a hundred years. He’s not discussing how to be moral, but rather describing how meaning is present regardless of moral status (morality, no matter how true, is just a social whim, concerned with possession and origination of finite states. Often important, but never any threat to meaning).

The distinction is is also clear in Agustino misunderstanding of asceticism and Nietzsche. If one is honest about asceticism, that one endures of because the world (i.e. you, the ascetic), then Nietzsche doesn't have a problem. It actually fits pretty with Nietzsche's thought ; the treadmill of seeking feeling pleasure often constitutes nihilism, where getting the next hit is a transcendent solution to meaningless.

It's the falsehood Agustino is telling which is the problem for Nietzsche. The ascetic doesn't succeed by renouncing the world, but rather in affirming it-- "I am the existence which denies petty desires, who does not fall into just seeking my wishes and pleasure. " — TheWillowOfDarkness

Have you actually read Nietzsche while trying to be honest to what he was saying? I can see the point you're trying to make, but it has little to do with what Nietzsche actually wrote:

“To see others suffer does one good, to make others suffer even more: this is a hard saying but an ancient, mighty, human, all-too-human principle [...] Without cruelty there is no festival.”

What about stuff like this? And there's a lot of it in Nietzsche. You agree with it? :s

Kierkegaard, the man who, along with Pascal, rejected the God of the philosophers for the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob! — Agustino

Yep. He was a mystic. My goodness... two posts attacking me. :D

Yep. He was a mystic. My goodness... two posts attacking me. :D — Mongrel

How was he a mystic if he rejected the God of the philosophers and rather accepted the personal God who directly and literarily spoke with Abraham? :s You're the first person I hear who claims K. to be a mystic, quite a lot of the secondary literature on him that I've read finds him to be anti-mystical if anything.

Anyone who spends much time contemplating union with the divine is a mystic. I'm not sure how anyone could interpret that as anti-mystical.

We're some ways off topic now.

Anyone who spends much time contemplating union with the divine is a mystic. I'm not sure how anyone could interpret that as anti-mystical. — Mongrel

Kierkegaard thought union with the divine is impossible, in that the human self always remains separate from God, and cannot merge into God... :s

Reference?

Reference? — Mongrel

Read Sickness unto Death, or Either/Or. Also you can check out this book:

Struggling with God: Kierkegaard and the Temptation of Spiritual Trial

Kierkegaard's emphasis upon God's transcendence could also play an important role in tempering the intimacy of the mystic's relation with God... It is only be an act of grace on God's part and not by the mystic's striving for experience of or union with the Divine that he comes into God's presence. It is in making clear these truths that the value of Kierkegaard's anti-mysticism lies.

By the way you should already be aware that merging into God is HERESY in Christian theology. So Christian mysticism is different than other forms of mysticism. Even Eckhart's mysticism is different.

Theosis - which is union with the Trinity - and is the goal of life according to Orthodox Christianity does not mean the annihilation of the self into God, but rather the self being deified and joining the Three Persons of the Trinity in communion, but still remaining separate.

Really people don't get it but Kierkegaard is as Catholic/Orthodox as you can get in terms of a philosopher. Even Thomas Aquinas isn't as Christian as Kierkegaard in the positions he adopts. Thomas Aquinas adopts a lot of Aristotle, but Kierkegaard rejects all philosophers for Scripture.

I agree he meant that striving doesn't get one there..."power which is impotence"

What document is your quote referencing?

What document is your quote referencing? — Mongrel

The book I recommended you.

From Amazon's description of that book:

" Invoking the biblical motif of Jacob's struggle with the Face of God (Genesis 32), Simon D. Podmore undertakes a constructive theological account of 'spiritual trial' (tentatio; known in German mystical and Lutheran tradition as Anfechtung) in relation to enduring questions of the otherness and hiddenness of God and the self, the problem of suffering and evil, the freedom of Spirit, and the anxious relationship between temptation and ordeal, fear and desire. This book traces a genealogy of spiritual trial from medieval German mystical theology, through Lutheran and Pietistic thought (Tauler; Luther; Arndt; Boehme), and reconstructs Kierkegaard's innovative yet under-examined recovery of the category (Anfægtelse: a Danish cognate for Anfechtung) within the modern context of the 'spiritless' decline of Christendom. Developing the relationship between struggle (Anfechtung) and release (Gelassenheit), Podmore proposes a Kierkegaardian theology of spiritual trial which elaborates the kenosis of the self before God in terms of Spirit's restless longing to rest transparently in God. Offering an original rehabilitation of the temptation of spiritual trial, this book strives for a renewed theological hermeneutic which speaks to the enduring human struggle to realise the unchanging love of God in the face of spiritual darkness."

:-}

What's kenosis? Anyway, we're done. Life's too short for me to spend much time talking to a sexist jerk.

Yes what about it? Why aren't you happy about it? It will dispel your misconceptions about the Christian spirituality that K. was advocating and you'll see that it's actually a very Orthodox view.

And it will certainly cure you of your idea that Christianity is dead.

I just saw the "spectacular" additions to your post ...

What's kenosis? — Mongrel

Kenosis means self-emptying through loving activity.

Anyway, we're done. Life's too short for me to spend much time talking to a sexist jerk. — Mongrel

:-} Just because I find your comments in this thread stupid and you're a woman doesn't make me a sexist, nor a jerk. You just don't know what you're talking about with regards to Kierkegaard (or Christian mysticism for that matter). Your judgement is so dominated by your 1960s atheistic/humanistic/leftist ideology that you can't even see beyond your own nose. It's pathetic. Everyone who disagrees with you is labeled a sexist.

Being and Time is crap in comparsion to for example Nietzsche and Kierkegaard

That's a childish unfounded claim that shows you probably never read it.

Being and Time — Beebert

It's easy to define Heidegger in terms of other philosophers, but harder to define N or K in terms of others.