This is so peculiar. By European standards, Mahler is high art, and Bukowski is popular art. Not comparable at all. The same person cannot appreciate both (unless they are confused).
— baker

To me there's a class aspect and a quality aspect to the high-art / pop-art distinction. I consider Bukowksi a first-rate novelist and so 'high art' in terms of quality. I expect him to eventually be in a Norton anthology of American literature (along with John Fante and Henry Miller). — j0e

I don't think I've met anyone who can't enjoy high and low art together. Even Shakespeare put fart jokes in his play. I used to love the movie Barfly. Bukowski is certainly up there with a number of American writers (Miller/Thompson/ Kerouac) but not really my thing these days.

I don't think I've met anyone who can't enjoy high and low art together. — Tom Storm

:up:

Bukowski is certainly up there with a number of American writers (Miller/Thompson/ Kerouac) but not really my thing these days. — Tom Storm

Might add Lester Bangs to that list too. Leaving the states, do you like Kundera? Hesse? Good examples I think of philosophical novelists. For better or worse I've been reading mostly philosophy these days.

You refer to a few writers as esoteric, having said earlier that you are opposed to the idea of the esoteric. However, some of the ones you seem to be pointing to seem worth reading in my opinion. But I really don't understand how you define esoteric. It seems that you are referring more to those on the fringe or countercultural. If that is how you define it, isn't there a danger that you are reinforcing writing and ideas which are popular and rejecting those which are less conventional? Surely, it is partly about personal preference and taste. But I think that it would be so useful if you laid down some criteria and clarity for thinking about what esotericism entails.

:clap:

Might add Lester Bangs to that list too. Leaving the states, do you like Kundera? Hesse? Good examples I think of philosophical novelists. For better I worse I've been reading mostly philosophy these days. — j0e

Hesse - 30 years ago. Kundera 20 years ago. My favourite Kundera quote (I can't find the source anymore) and this is better than many whole books of philosophy, 'You create a utopia and pretty soon you're going to need to build a small concentration camp.' Just recently Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence. One of the most exceptionally well written and observed novels I have read. Every paragraph is like an unbearably rich chocolate mousse. I really like George Elliot too.

By the way Jack - look into that book mentioned above, Between the Lines. I have a few of Lachmann’s books, including the Secret Teachers of the West book, but I think that one is in another league. Lachmann is OK but he’s a pop philosopher (even if I envy him for having carved out that fascinating niche in popular literature,)

Gary Lachman is a pop writer, and was even drummer of the pop band, Blondie. However, what I think that he does so well is taking the ideas and writers out of the esoteric domain for larger audiences. However, my own understanding of the esoteric tradition would include Steiner, William Blake, Emmanuel Swedenborg, and I don't think that it is possible to talk about the esoteric without some mention of Madame Blavatsky.

But I think that it would be so useful if you laid down some criteria and clarity for thinking about what esotericism entails. — Jack Cummins

Good advice for many of us.

I think the term is problematic because to me it has some ugly connotations. Esotericism is that which is known or available only to a cognoscenti. I am not keen on castes and divisions and I recognize that recondite pleasures come in secular and spiritual flavours. The scholars who celebrate Joyce's Finnegan's Wake belong to the secular variety, while those who study, let's say, Gurdjieff's Beezlebub's Tales to His Grandson belong to the other. The Hermetica stands out to me as the classic exemplar of esoteric occult literature.

I think some people retreat into esotericism because life is hard and there are obvious consolations in difficult knowledge and feelings of belonging to an exclusive project. Even better if it deals in truths unavailable and incomprehensible to the hoi polloi. This can be highly charged and intoxicating stuff. I also think esotericism is a terrible word to use to describe contemplative traditions. Esoterica also sounds like a stuffy, late Victorian description for what a Professor of Oriental Studies pursues.

Sure. Actually I did know that about him. I spent a long time hanging out at Adyar Bookshop & Library, so am well acquainted with Mdme. Nevertheless it’s well worthwhile to see how such ideas can be validated against the mainstream of Western philosophy rather than only the fringes, because it can be done. I read just now that Neoplatonism is actually the mainstream of Western philosophy - and I think that’s true. But it’s obviously worlds away from how it is seen in the modern academy.

You refer to a few writers as esoteric, having said earlier that you are opposed to the idea of the esoteric. — Jack Cummins

It's a delicate issue. I'm not simply opposed to the esoteric. Recall that I suggested that the 'rational' community was its own 'inner circle' and a kind of epistemological veganism that sneers at outsiders (a joke on my tribe, you see, to suggest a transcendence of it, but that's my tribe's endless game.)

I guess the difference between me and Wayf (he can clarify or correct) is that I'm happy saying that the esoteric stuff is 'just' stories (mythos) that can be useful to and/or tell truths about human nature. I say 'truths' because I think we think analogically, that cognition is metaphorical. To me this 'just' is not problematic, because I live in the realm of human metaphor and feelings and don't feel the lack of something beyond it. At the same time I acknowledge a non-human encompassing Nature that doesn't play by human rules & (apparently) doesn't care about us. Between me & Wayf the big difference, as I see it, is that I think Nature is 'dead' or 'inhuman.' He can give his view and correct me if I am wrong. Both of us clearly value mythos. I just want to naturalize it.

Consider this a correction :brow:

Please say more. I don't want to misunderstand you.

OK, sorry, that was a reflexive post. What I mean is, that esoteric teachings are NOT simply just-so stories. They relay something crucial - vital information but which can only be conveyed to those ready to understand them. But nowadays, if those ideas can’t be validated scientifically, then they are ‘just-so stories’ - notwithstanding that the entire Big-Bang-Neo Darwinian-Materialist story is the ‘just so’ story par excellence.

vital information but which can only be conveyed to those ready — Wayfarer

That's good. Can you expand a little on 'vital' and 'ready'?

Perhaps the modern-day sage is the psychologist, who comes up with theories about consciousness that cannot be located within the body (just yet). Personally I respect Sigmund and Anna Freud, Carl Jung, Donald Winnicott and everyone else in the field. But there seems to be a problem when mythology is used to justify the prescription of pills. In that regard, it is perhaps the challenge of the philosopher to come up with more quantifiable methods for verifying truth and knowledge. Though I'm pretty sure the same thing has been argued in this post in more elaborate language by others.

What I mean is, that esoteric teachings are NOT simply just-so stories. They relay something crucial - vital information but which can only be conveyed to those ready to understand them. — Wayfarer

I can relate to this if I think in terms of analogies that one has to be ripe for, through study or in terms of life-experience.

But nowadays, if those ideas can’t be validated scientifically, then they are ‘just-so stories’ - notwithstanding that the entire Big-Bang-Neo Darwinian-Materialist story is the ‘just so’ story par excellence. — Wayfarer

This is where we might differ, because we've shifted from talk about human nature (the human 'soul') to biology and physics. The vibe is that you think there's a valid esoteric approach to such things. If so, that's where we diverge. Maybe the current understanding of evolution will look primitive in a few centuries (is blind to something important), but I guess I trust the biologists to keep one another honest.

Perhaps the modern-day sage is the psychologist, — TaySan

Where I come from psychologists are not well liked, so I'm not so sure. Which probably brings us to another perspective on sages. One person's sage is another person's cult leader.

... recondite pleasures come in secular and spiritual flavours. — Tom Storm

:up:

My favourite Kundera quote (I can't find the source anymore) and this is better than many whole books of philosophy, 'You create a utopia and pretty soon you're going to need to build a small concentration camp.' — Tom Storm

:party: :death:

His Immortality knocked me out.

Just recently Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence. One of the most exceptionally well written and observed novels I have read. — Tom Storm

Your glowing review will be remembered for future use.

I really like George Elliot too. — Tom Storm

She translated the The Essence of Christianity, which is a great little book of philosophy relevant to the OP, a 'decoding' or naturalization of Christian doctrines.

Perhaps the modern-day sage is the psychologist, who comes up with theories about consciousness that cannot be located within the body (just yet). Personally I respect Sigmund and Anna Freud, Carl Jung, Donald Winnicott and everyone else in the field. — TaySan

I like psychoanalysis (Freud and maybe some Lacan) even if it might just be updated shamanism.

I think I pointed out above that the original derivation of Upaniṣad was 'sitting close'. In other words, those discourses - they're somewhat similar to the Platonic discourses in places, albeit with references to Hindu religious ritual - were intended to be imparted from teacher to student. It's similar to what @baker has been saying above about the idea of 'guilds' and the regulated transmission of knowledge. The teacher had to be sure the student was ready to understand what was being told to them. Maintaining the continuity of the understanding was of the highest importance. it involved an apprenticeship, a long period of learning.

It's even true in science. In fact much of scientific practice grew out of those roots and mirrors them, although the underpinning assumptions are plainly very different. But, I do see some hope that science itself is starting to converge with some of those esoteric traditions. (I was one of the first registrants for Science and Non-duality and went to the first session in 2009 in San Rafael. Not that I don't have many reservations about the overall content.)

The vibe is that you think there's a valid esoteric approach to such things. That's where we diverge. — j0e

True! That's where I diverge from a lot of people here - not everyone, but many.

I sometimes think that mainstream religion has homeopathically immunised Western culture against ideas of higher awareness. This is because the approach to such ideas was defined so strictly - remember the battles over orthodoxy and heresy? - that the entire issue had to end up being ring-fenced, cordoned off. The Articles of the Royal Society specifically mentioned exclusion of 'religious metaphysic' - because of the interminable wars over those very questions. 'Don't mention the war!' So there's this suppressed stratum in Western culture - the shadow of its religiosity - which is hugely but covertly influential in today's mindset. It's kind of a cultural pathology, in a way.

From a commentary on Jurgen Habermas' late-life dialogue with Catholicism:

What secular reason is missing is self-awareness. It is “unenlightened about itself” in the sense that it has within itself no mechanism for questioning the products and conclusions of its formal, procedural entailments and experiments. “Postmetaphysical thinking,” Habermas contends, “cannot cope on its own with the defeatism concerning reason which we encounter today both in the postmodern radicalization of the ‘dialectic of the Enlightenment’ and in the naturalism founded on a naïve faith in science.”

Postmodernism announces (loudly and often) that a supposedly neutral, objective rationality is always a construct informed by interests it neither acknowledges nor knows nor can know [e.g. @Joshs] Meanwhile science goes its merry way endlessly inventing and proliferating technological marvels without having the slightest idea of why. The “naive faith” Habermas criticizes is not a faith in what science can do — it can do anything! — but a faith in science’s ability to provide reasons, aside from the reason of its own keeping on going, for doing it and for declining to do it in a particular direction because to do so would be wrong.

The counterpart of science in the political world is the modern Liberal state, which, Habermas reminds us, maintains “a neutrality . . . towards world views,” that is, toward comprehensive visions (like religious visions) of what life means, where it is going and what we should be doing to help it get there. The problem is that a political structure that welcomes all worldviews into the marketplace of ideas, but holds itself aloof from any and all of them, will have no basis for judging the outcomes its procedures yield.

All these themes are writ large on the debates here.

I sometimes think that mainstream religion has homeopathically immunised Western culture against ideas of higher awareness. — Wayfarer

That's a great line...

What secular reason is missing is self-awareness. It is “unenlightened about itself” in the sense that it has within itself no mechanism for questioning the products and conclusions of its formal, procedural entailments and experiments.

This line baffles me, since philosophical secular reason seems enormously self-aware and self-critical, though it could be accused of being secular. Even that's complicated, because negative theology is treated with some respect by certain continentals.

The counterpart of science in the political world is the modern Liberal state, which, Habermas reminds us, maintains “a neutrality . . . towards world views,” that is, toward comprehensive visions (like religious visions) of what life means, where it is going and what we should be doing to help it get there. The problem is that a political structure that welcomes all worldviews into the marketplace of ideas, but holds itself aloof from any and all of them, will have no basis for judging the outcomes its procedures yield.

Isn't it more accurate to say that the liberal state enacts a blend of worldviews within the confines of the rights of individuals? I'd rather live in Denmark than Saudi Arabia.

I will say that I don't know where we are heading as a species. The next dominant 'religion' might be something like trans-humanism or something involving AI. Just guessing, but I think technology will be central, for better or worse.

I understand. Similarly to cult leaders they seem to have a certain superiority, being able to impose their truth on others. The difference though is that a cult leader derives its power from the cult. They cannot stand on their own. It takes a whole formal procedure to put a malpractisioning psychiatrist out of office. There are moral psychologists and psychiatrists though. The whole problem is that they're bound to their bible, the DSM.

One of my friends escaped a cult and is still haunted by it. I think it illustrates the necessity of free thought for human wellbeing.

This line baffles me, since philosophical secular reason seems enormously self-aware and self-critical. — j0e

It is in the hands of philosophers. But not in the hands of scientific secularism.

I'd rather live in Denmark than Saudi Arabia. — j0e

Me too, for sure. Interesting my post provokes that reaction. Makes a point, don't you think?

It is in the hands of philosophers. But not in the hands of scientific secularism. — Wayfarer

But I look at the politicians. What do they talk about? Justice, liberty, abundance, security. I don't deny that they use science & tech to pursue these goals.

Me too, for sure. Interesting my post provokes that reaction. Makes a point, don't you think? — Wayfarer

Sure, but the point works both ways. Where are the countries without religious tolerance (for atheism or DIY religion or religion classic ) that you'd want to live?

The difference though is that a cult leader derives its power from the cult. — TaySan

Can you think of a sage today who is not part of an immense industry and organised merchandising?

There are moral psychologists and psychiatrists though. — TaySan

People wouldn't necessarily question their morality, just their training, practice and assumptions. No doubt they are often well-meaning.

But I look at the politicians. What do they talk about? Justice, liberty, abundance, security. — j0e

It’s still not the point at issue. The reason that secular philosophy is lacking in self-awareness is precisely that it has bracketed the subject out of its reckonings. That, of course, is the critique of Husserl and phenomenology, which you might know, but which is hardly common knowledge. ‘It has no mechanism within itself for questioning the products and conclusions of its formal, procedural entailments and experiments.’ That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have critics, but the critics are external to it. Peer review doesn’t question the idea of science as philosophy, but whether the results obtained are consistent with the hypotheses, etc.

In case you are interested, a couple who weeks ago, in another thread@Bitter Crank referred to a website called, 'Forgotten Books'. This showed, and has downloads of many extremely unusual books, especially some esoteric ones. I downloaded quite a few. I like to read these kinds of books, but I don't necessarily agree with all the ideas. But I find these ideas give me plenty to think about, as I believe that we can benefit from reading unusual ideas. After all, if we only read the perspective we agree with it would be like philosophical shoegazing.

I don't know what classifies as a sage. A monk? A guru? A mystic? A witch? A shaman? etc. Perhaps I hope to find out through this post what it is. It is not on par with a cult leader in my opinion. But that's more out of personal experience than philosophy.

I suppose you are right, I think most people are well-meaning actually. It's a difficult topic. It's more about conscience than consciousness. I'll have to read more into it.