I don't claim to be a messiah, to have answers suitable for all societies and cultures. Not even for this one. We all find the answers that work for us personally. People who tell you that they have such answers are usually selling something.
And yet here you are to play with questions saying certainty matters and then it doesn't bother you.
Some things can be established with reasonable certainty. Some things can't. The fact that uncertainty exists in some places doesn't bother me. Why should it?
Moreover, your "too deus ex machina for me" is not the view of the common man.
Yes. But that doesn't bother me either. Suppose it were the view of "the common man"? Would that cause you to change your mind about it?
I can't be anything other than what I am - can you?
Rather it is a sophisticated divertissement and conjuration of the ghosts of Freud and Feuerbach.
LOL. Would it help if I explicitly rejected Feuerbach too? And Freud, Hegel, Engels, Adorno, Horkheimer, Etzioni, Sartre...shall I go on? ;)
I grab bits and pieces here and there. It does not follow that I am in some opposing "camp" from the fact that I do not accept Voegelin in his entirety. Nor does it follow that I am a "something"-ist because I find a thing of worth in that something. If I say that Marx was right about 19'th century capitalism being rather brutal, does that make me a Marxist?
We already recognize your penchant for Descartes.
"We"? I cannot help but get the impression that "we" is busily trying to classify me, so that "we" might put me in a nice little box with a neat little label on the front.
So be it. If "we" is more comfortable having me fit into some sort of taxonomic order, then my suggestion that I don't fit comfortably into any category is unlikely to stop "we" from trying ;)
I trust you can forgive the classification. It was only meant to see your tipping of the hat to the common man for what it was.
And that is why I read your last significant post to bb not without some grief. It doesn't take much too realize that your response to bb is insufficient for a people. And yet here you are to play with questions saying certainty matters and then it doesn't bother you. Moreover, your "too deus ex machina for me" is not the view of the common man. Rather it is a sophisticated divertissement and conjuration of the ghosts of Freud and Feuerbach.
Behind the courtesy to the common man we all recognize the common man's assent to revelation. And apart from the infatuation of the common man (this, too, has a long-standing tradition) their naive perception is one in a milieu created by larger figures. And this is exampled by you, as one who is able to carry on this conversation with their very thoughts.