I think life and humans are pretty dreadful, but what can you do?I don't whine. I don't celebrate. I have a tendency towards optimism which, try as I might, I can't suppress. Absurdism works for me too. — Tom Storm

:up:
Fuck yeah ! (Is this just an Americanism? Or you got it over there too?)

It is, unconsciously... but usually no philosopher will admit as much consciously, that is the philosophers conceit, their pride in their reason getting in the way. — ChatteringMonkey

:up:

Even “ghastly nihilism” can be seen aesthetically. — praxis

:up:

Important point. Why do people drink moonshine ? Because they can ?

Try harder at seeing the full picture. You don’t see the spider ripping off that insects head? The homeless man having a meltdown? The terrible accident? The unwanted chore? The starvation of not doing X to get Y? Disagreement? Physical pain? Emotional pain? Ennui? The uncomfortable situation? The hostile situation? The annoying situation? The dire situation? The deadly situation? — schopenhauer1

Don't forget the festival of cruelty. Maybe people often check the news to get their fix of others' suffering, pretending it's a drag (maybe it's also a drag, such being our twisted complexity.) Some vivisect themselves. One who despises himself still respects himself as one who despises. It may be that the humiliation of our rivals is a sweet nectar indeed. See Rorty on private irony. He whispers our nasty secret. Why those who question the gods and seek to remove all hiding places from the thunder ? Isn't antinatalism one more knife ? The ultimate rhetorical killjoy ? An attempt at 200 proof moonshine ?

I think "aesthetic reasoning" can be used, at best, to rationalize "morality and meaning". It's actually akin to fideism, no? — 180 Proof

Could be. Rationalisation sounds like a more precise account of it.

Even “ghastly nihilism” can be seen aesthetically. — praxis

Indeed. I think that's what I'm saying - the aesthetics of atheism and nihilism is a turn off aesthetically to some. So it must be a 'turn on' for others. But you've got me thinking. Is there anything which can't be regarded aesthetically?

Ironically Nietzsche rejected Christianity and God precisely on aesthetic grounds. And he thought most philosophy through the ages essentially boiled down to a rationalisation for morality, aesthetics : — ChatteringMonkey

Nice. Thank you.

t is, unconsciously... but usually no philosopher will admit as much consciously, that is the philosophers conceit, their pride in their reason getting in the way. — ChatteringMonkey

I suspect this is right.

In the Tractatus Wittgenstein treated morality as an aesthetic rather than intellectual matter. A matter of what one sees and experiences, of how one stands in relation to the world. — Fooloso4

I need to follow this up.

Personally I think the 'aesthetic' is too easily relegated to the sidelines of philosophical chat. — mcdoodle

Interesting.

That is the area of opinion that you are ascribing to 'religion': that there is some wholeness, in this supposedly religious view, that integrates talk about 'meaning' and talk about 'aesthetics'. (Morality is another step on) — mcdoodle

Yes. I referred to some people who use it to 'rationalise' religious belief, but it may well be used in a range of ways.

Hannah Ginsborg has written about this (including a Stanford entry on the topic) but it is under-explored. — mcdoodle

I'll check this out.

Hitchens saw value in the word numinous as well, whereas I have always associated that word with other rather woo woo words like transcendent. — universeness

I just see it as a variation of wonder and awe which are quotidian experiences. But I do have a penchant for some religious language. They haver fun words.

It is an aesthetic standard, but I still find it compelling, or at least appealing. I'm not sure how that fits into your discussion, but it's what came to mind. — T Clark

I think it is related. Thanks.

Fuck yeah ! (Is this just an Americanism? Or you got it over there too?) — plaque flag

Fuck yeah! We've got all your words down here.

To my advantage, they are the bad boy trouble makers of the Catholic Church. I think I probably argued along the lines of seeing his attack on Christianity as something for Christian critical self-examination. — Fooloso4

Nicely done. Yes, Nietzsche is like the loyal opposition, a human adversary against which to sharpen their beliefs. But a lot of Christians seem to like Nietzsche too, given some of the consequences he predicts for the culture following the death of God.

I need to follow this up. — Tom Storm

Here are some relevant statements from the Tractatus:

6.41:
In the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it does happen: in it no value exists—and if it did exist, it would have no value.
What makes it non-accidental cannot lie within the world, since if it did it would itself be accidental.
It must lie outside the world.

6.42:
So too it is impossible for there to be propositions of ethics.
Propositions can express nothing that is higher.

6.421:
It is clear that ethics cannot be put into words.
Ethics is transcendental.
(Ethics and aesthetics are one and the same.)

6.422:
There must indeed be some kind of ethical reward and ethical punishment, but they must reside in the action itself.
(And it is also clear that the reward must be something pleasant and the punishment something unpleasant.)

6.43:
If the good or bad exercise of the will does alter the world, it can alter only the limits of the
world, not the facts—not what can be expressed by means of language.
In short the effect must be that it becomes an altogether different world. It must, so to
speak, wax and wane as a whole.
The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man.

Is there anything which can't be regarded aesthetically? — Tom Storm

This reminds me of Schegel versus Hegel, which I mentioned in passing before. As I see it, the world as spectacle requires the assumption of at least a minimal self as spectator. Kojeve's comments on skepticism are probably also relevant here.

Fichte sets up the ego as the absolute principle of all knowing, reason, and cognition, and at that the ego that remains throughout abstract and formal. Secondly, this ego is therefore in itself just simple, and, on the one hand, every particularity, every characteristic, every content is negated in it, since everything is submerged in this abstract freedom and unity, while, on the other hand, every content which is to have value for the ego is only put and recognized by the ego itself. Whatever is, is only by the instrumentality of the ego, and what exists by my instrumentality I can equally well annihilate again.

... But in that case the ego can remain lord and master of everything, and in no sphere of morals, law, things human and divine, profane and sacred, is there anything that would not first have to be laid down by the ego, and that therefore could not equally well be destroyed by it. Consequently everything genuinely and independently real becomes only a show, not true and genuine on its own account or through itself, but a mere appearance due to the ego in whose power and caprice and at whose free disposal it remains. To admit or cancel it depends wholly on the pleasure of the ego, already absolute in itself simply as ego. Now thirdly, the ego is a living, active individual, and its life consists in making its individuality real in its own eyes and in those of others, in expressing itself, and bringing itself into appearance. For every man, by living, tries to realize himself and does realize himself.

Now in relation to beauty and art, this acquires the meaning of living as an artist and forming one’s life artistically. But on this principle, I live as an artist when all my action and my expression in general, in connection with any content whatever, remains for me a mere show and assumes a shape which is wholly in my power. In that case I am not really in earnest either with this content or, generally, with its expression and actualization. For genuine earnestness enters only by means of a substantial interest, something of intrinsic worth like truth, ethical life, etc., – by means of a content which counts as such for me as essential, so that I only become essential myself in my own eyes in so far as I have immersed myself in such a content and have brought myself into conformity with it in all my knowing and acting. When the ego that sets up and dissolves everything out of its own caprice is the artist, to whom no content of consciousness appears as absolute and independently real but only as a self-made and destructible show, such earnestness can find no place, since validity is ascribed only to the formalism of the ego.

True, in the eyes of others the appearance which I present to them may be regarded seriously, in that they take me to be really concerned with the matter in hand, but in that case they are simply deceived, poor limited creatures, without the faculty and ability to apprehend and reach the loftiness of my standpoint. Therefore this shows me that not everyone is so free (i.e. formally free)[52] as to see in everything which otherwise has value, dignity, and sanctity for mankind just a product of his own power of caprice, whereby he is at liberty either to grant validity to such things, to determine himself and fill his life by means of them, or the reverse. Moreover this virtuosity of an ironical artistic life apprehends itself as a divine creative genius for which anything and everything is only an unsubstantial creature, to which the creator, knowing himself to be disengaged and free from everything, is not bound, because he is just as able to destroy it as to create it. In that case, he who has reached this standpoint of divine genius looks down from his high rank on all other men, for they are pronounced dull and limited, inasmuch as law, morals, etc., still count for them as fixed, essential, and obligatory. So then the individual, who lives in this way as an artist, does give himself relations to others: he lives with friends, mistresses, etc; but, by his being a genius, this relation to his own specific reality, his particular actions, as well as to what is absolute and universal, is at the same time null; his attitude to it all is ironical. — Hegel

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ae/introduction.htm#s7-3

For the professor, an atheist worldview was ugly and deficient. His account of god provided a type of poetic wholeness, coherence and perfection. Or so he thought.

Any views on this, or am I full of shit? — Tom Storm

I think you've nailed down a great issue. Of course the professor just couldn't appreciate the kind of beauty available to the atheist, that maybe the cosmos is more open and terrible and wonderful for those who don't pretend to know its origin or final law.

Then it's just hard to do much with the professor's tacit feelings cookoff. Maybe there should be a poetry contest ?

Appreciated.

t is clear that ethics cannot be put into words.
Ethics is transcendental.
(Ethics and aesthetics are one and the same.) — Fooloso4

I now remember encountering this some time ago. Given the role an ethical system might have on the suffering of conscious creatures can we say they are precisely the same thing? The consequences of ethics versus the consequences of aesthetics seem to operate in different worlds to me.

If the good or bad exercise of the will does alter the world, it can alter only the limits of the world, not the facts—not what can be expressed by means of language.
In short the effect must be that it becomes an altogether different world. It must, so to
speak, wax and wane as a whole.
The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man. — Fooloso4

This one is like trying to make sense of the Tao Te Ching.

Our moral choices can change the world - but not the facts; that which can be expressed. OK.

This I don't get -

In short the effect must be that it becomes an altogether different world. It must, so to
speak, wax and wane as a whole.
The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man

Translation please, Sir. Is it the nature of subjective experience?

Is there annotated Wittgenstein available on line? I can stare at a couple of sentences of his for hours and get precisely nowhere.

I think you've nailed down a great issue. Of course the professor just couldn't appreciate the kind of beauty available to the atheist, — plaque flag

I think this is right. Is it Norman Rockwell versus Salvador Dali...? too obvious and pat, maybe. I've come to think that rival aesthetical perspectives may be as significant a source of misunderstanding and conflict as anything generated by politics.

Isn't antinatalism one more knife ? The ultimate rhetorical killjoy ? An attempt at 200 proof moonshine ? — plaque flag

So here is a little (not so much a) secret:
Antinatalism is a protest against evil and impositions.
It's about representation and signifiers, not necessarily the outcome.
It respects people's suffering. Everything else is gaslighting, justifying why other people need to do X, or just fixing broken things (including our own broken tranquility).

One last chunkydense quote, which I hope you'll tolerate. I'm a bit of an 'atheist Christian' or some such in the sense that the incarnation myth speaks to me (as myth / metaphor /poetry). There's a Romantic-atheistic way to assimilate its beauty and insight.

The true content of romantic art is absolute inwardness, and its corresponding form is spiritual subjectivity with its grasp of its independence and freedom.

This inherently infinite and absolutely universal content is the absolute negation of everything particular, the simple unity with itself which has dissipated all external relations, all processes of nature and their periodicity of birth, passing away, and rebirth, all the restrictedness in spiritual existence, and dissolved all particular gods into a pure and infinite self-identity. In this Pantheon all the gods are dethroned, the flame of subjectivity has destroyed them, and instead of plastic polytheism art knows now only one God, one spirit, one absolute independence which, as the absolute knowing and willing of itself, remains in free unity with itself and no longer falls apart into those particular characters and functions whose one and only cohesion was due to the compulsion of a dark necessity.

Yet absolute subjectivity as such would elude art and be accessible to thinking alone if, in order to be actual subjectivity in correspondence with its essence, it did not also proceed into external existence...

...the Absolute does not turn out to be the one jealous God who merely cancels nature and finite human existence without shaping himself there in appearance as actual divine subjectivity; on the contrary, the true Absolute reveals itself and thereby gains an aspect in virtue of which it can be apprehended and represented by art.

...the determinate being of God is not the natural and sensuous as such but the sensuous elevated to non-sensuousness, to spiritual subjectivity which instead of losing in its external appearance the certainty of itself as the Absolute, only acquires precisely through its embodiment a present actual certainty of itself. God in his truth is therefore no bare ideal generated by imagination; on the contrary, he puts himself into the very heart of the finitude and external contingency of existence, and yet knows himself there as a divine subject who remains infinite in himself and makes this infinity explicit to himself. — Hegel

I'm a bit of an 'atheist Christian' or some such nonsense in the sense that incarnation myth speaks to me (as myth). — plaque flag

I get you. I'm partial to the Good Samaritan story. It opened up a broader notion of morality to me when I was a kid. We can't help but be shaped by tradition - Nietzsche's shadows on the cave wall...

I'm afraid Hegel is like a too rich chocolate cake. I can only have a nibble before feeling done...



.

rival aesthetical perspectives may be as significant a source of misunderstanding and conflict as anything generated by politics. — Tom Storm

:up:
That remind me of Lakoff's take on metaphor as the way we cognize. William James wrote of the (existential) world as a stage for heroism. I hypothesize that a vision of the world and an always complementary heroic role to play to within it are something like a rockbottom map in all of us for an otherwise terrifying chaos. I guess/hope there are sophisticated/evolved versions of this where the narcissism has become more magnanimous and inclusive.


Like all young men I set out to be a genius, but mercifully laughter intervened.

Underneath an artist's preoccupations with sex, society, religion, etc. (all the staple abstractions that allow the forebrain to chatter) there is a soul tortured beyond endurance by the lack of tenderness in the world.

I'm afraid Hegel is like a too rich chocolate cake. I can only have a nibble before feeling done... — Tom Storm

Fair enough. That is some dense stuff. To me this is the essence:

God in his truth is therefore no bare ideal generated by imagination; on the contrary, he puts himself into the very heart of the finitude and external contingency of existence, and yet knows himself there as a divine subject who remains infinite in himself and makes this infinity explicit to himself.

We created the incarnation myth because we feel like gods trapped in crucified dogs. How could such glory live in food for maggots ? How else could it live ?

It respects people's suffering. Everything else is gaslighting, justifying why other people need to do X, or just fixing broken things (including our own broken tranquility). — schopenhauer1

:up:

I do like the respect for people's suffering. But it can also cause people's suffering. I can hurt people by wrecking their final vocabulary (their spiritual substance, really) in the name of fixing them or waking them up. 'Don't you see that you should not have been born, sir ?'

I don't preach the gospel of ironic atheism, for instance, to people who might not be able to run that program in their lives. Whiskey for me is poison for them.

Translation please, Sir. — Tom Storm

Far as I've been able to tell, Wittgenstein is talking about Feeling that eludes conceptualization. He also seems to make ethics a matter of taste (emotivism?).

Given the role an ethical system might have on the suffering of conscious creatures can we say they are precisely the same thing? — Tom Storm

The Tractatus is a rejection of ethical systems.

This one is like trying to make sense of the Tao Te Ching. — Tom Storm

He makes a distinction between the world and my world. The world is the world of facts. He denies any values in the world of facts. (6.41)

I am my world. (The microcosm.) (5.63)

My world is solipsistic. It is mine alone. It is the world as I see it. As I experience it.

5.632:
The subject does not belong to the world but it is a limit of the world.

5.633:
Where in the world is a metaphysical subject to be noted?
You say that this case is altogether like that of the eye and the field of sight. But you do not really see the eye.
And from nothing in the field of sight can it be concluded that it is seen from an eye.

This explains in what sense the world becomes a completely different world. How the world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man. The facts of the world do not change, but how I experience it does. To be happy is to be in accord with the world, to not set one's will against the world.

It was Socrates who posed, “Is it good cause the gods like it or do the gods like it because it is good?” — schopenhauer1

:up:

This leads to Feuerbach and others grasping that the divine predicates are of course just the kinds of things we humans like, so that God is an idealized human (and a tribal god is an idealized/idolized tribe member/leader, which would not be a human in our nowcommon global or generic sense.)

Is it Norman Rockwell versus Salvador Dali...? — Tom Storm

:up:
If (?) we make Dali something that never quite arrives but is always over the horizon...

Fear of death is maybe (also) fear of change. Some paint us as thrown into endless interpretation, the hard work of sensemaking. Others call this our being condemned to be free. A god of deathless stone who offers the Final Word offers freedom from freedom, sleep for the mind weary of making it new.

Any views on this, or am I full of shit? — Tom Storm

I saw a documentary on atheism once. The documentarian said a world without religion seemed "thin" to him. He was an atheist, but he appreciated the full bodied mythology, art, and community associated with religion.

It wasn't a reason to believe. Maybe more of a reason for tolerance.

This leads to Feuerbach and others grasping that the divine predicates are of course just the kinds of things we humans like, so that God is an idealized human (and a tribal god is an idolized tribe member, which would not be a human in our nowcommon global or generic sense.) — plaque flag

The question in the Euthyphro is: what is piety?

Socrates proposes that the pious is what is just. (11e) The gods as well as men are to be held to the standard of the just.

Sure. That's more technically careful (I've looked into the text very recently), but I still maintain that its existential payload is that the gods themselves must conform to human values. Else we'd call them demons rather than gods. Exemplars, heroes, egoideals, Fathers, Mothers,...

My world is solipsistic. It is mine alone. It is the world as I see it. As I experience it. — Fooloso4

My world is a private language? Is not my world then a beetle in a box?

The facts of the world do not change, but how I experience it does. To be happy is to be in accord with the world, to not set one's will against the world. — Fooloso4

Why can't the man simply write clearly? Why the fucking riddles and bloody obtuse prose style? :razz:

I saw a documentary on atheism once. The documentarian said a world without religion seemed "thin" to him. He was an atheist, but he appreciated the full bodied mythology, art, and community associated with religion.

It wasn't a reason to believe. Maybe more of a reason for tolerance. — frank

Nice. Thank you.

Can those immersed in the philosophical tradition tell me if aesthetic reasoning is used to justify positions on morality and meaning? — Tom Storm

Excellent OP, Tom!

The way I see it there is beauty in courage and cowardice is ugly. Greed, jealousy, hatred, exploitation and cruelty are ugly. Generosity, admiration, love, nurturance and kindness are beautiful.

Over the years, I have often heard people debating god versus no god - and the argument I seem to hear from many theists is that the world is uglier and less enchanted without a god and/or without contemplative practice. The person expressing such a view appears to regard atheism and humanism and the privileging of science over the 'supernatural' as unattractive, mean and an example of bad taste. — Tom Storm

I think the debate over God being understood in aesthetic terms is like debating the aesthetic worth of art works, poetry or music. Taste is individual, so such debates are ultimately pointless. That said the aesthetic value of something that has been around for a long time may be argued on the basis of its having become canonized, thus showing it to have some universal appeal.

Contemplative practice is also, I think, a matter for the individual; it seems to work for some and not for others. I don't think science should be privileged over the supernatural or vice versa per se; people are drawn to the ideas that resonate with how things seem to them and what inspires them personally and argument is pointless because the presuppositions that are foundational to each side of the divide are radically different even though those on both sides may have what they take to be the best interests of humanity at heart.

They seem to be saying that their experience of the world, transfigured through the veneration of the divine is deeper, richer and more beautiful than yours (atheist). They see, or hope for, transcendent beauty. You see, or live in, ghastly nihilism. — Tom Storm

Again I think that is an absurd argument. It might seem to someone that veneration of the divine is deeper, richer and more beautiful than nihilism, but that is merely a personal preference. Others may see it the other way around.

I remember once talking to an emeritus professor of religion and Nietzsche came up. He shuddered. "An abominable man!' he spat out. I asked why. 'He couldn't fully experience the Creation with such vulgar sensibilities.' — Tom Storm

Some religious thinkers understand and appreciate Nietzsche. Others have a powerful hatred of what they take him to represent. Personally I have great admiration for Nietzsche and respect for his ideas even though I also think he profoundly misunderstands religion in some ways and gets it profoundly right in others. Nietzsche and Kierkegaard are a good pair to compare and contrast in this context. Both were sons of pastors and both reacted against the comfortable "lip service" forms of religion they found around them.

Nietzsche and Kierkegaard are a good pair to compare and contrast in this context. — Janus

The salt and pepper brothers!

I think the debate over God being understood in aesthetic terms is like debating the aesthetic worth of art works, poetry or music. — Janus

It is, but 'taste' is also where the passion is. I'm fascinated by passion and commitment and why some ideas and not others.

I don't think science should be privileged over the supernatural or vice versa per se — Janus

I think lots would agree. I have a sister in-law with terminal cancer. There are some friends of hers who have said - don't get treatment, all you need is prayer. This for me is when the supernatural becomes problematic. When it exceeds its speculative limitations and becomes a course of potentially harmful action.

Again I think that is an absurd argument. It might seem to someone that veneration of the divine is deeper, richer and more beautiful than nihilism, but that is merely a personal preference. Others may see it the other way around. — Janus

Good point.

Thanks.

Theists often claim a calling which is 'higher than any other calling,' including any call to human science, and I think we should NEVER forget to totally challenge that arrogant, unjustified claim. — universeness

Conversely atheists may claim that a calling to science is higher than a calling to religion, which would be an equally arrogant claim. The world would be a far better place if people learned to speak only for themselves, and fully realize that they speak only for themselves. That said the voice of organized religion can often be one of the worst offenders, but it is still far from being the only offender.

The world would be a far better place if people learned to speak only for themselves, and fully realize that they speak only for themselves. — Janus

I think this is true but so hard when identity is often based on a community of shared values which often feels or is marginalized.