The Self as God in German Philosophy

Book: Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx | 1961 | Robert Tucker

[JohnGalt]

King Arthur versus the Teutonic Order, the mythos of each culture sealed its fate. While King Arthur was fighting for such abstracts as "justice and chivalry," the Teutonic Order was pushing back the Mongrel invasion. The Teutonic Knights declared those who fight the order, fight Jesus Christ...a few hundred years of history later, one can understand the divergence.

[KC Burke]

What was the secret in Britain that kept them safe from infatuation with an all-encompassing edifice of thought, unlike the "continentals"?

The existance and prominance at the time of three particular minds:

Adam Smith
Edmund Burke
Dr. Samuel Johnson

And I might add, minds that at the time which did not see themselves in tune or harmony. Only in retrospect do we see them part of The Great Melody that became, and was Old Whig style, Classical Liberalism and its associated good sense in the affairs of men. Good sense, as opposed to overly indulging in those <> messy metaphysics.

[tictoc]

Now isn't that odd, Dr. Johnson was the first name that came to my mind, but then I thought, naw, he isn't a heavy-duty philosopher-king.

Then again, maybe that's the point!

The other name that instantly flashed across my mind's eye was William Shakespeare. Arguably the greatest writer who ever lived. His brilliance is a riddle that will never, ever, be solved.

Maybe having so many great men (sorry for male chauvinism, but until recently in history, all the greats were men) skew toward the practical, applied, performing side of arts and letters explains why the English (and the Scottish, Irish, Welsh) were spared excessive involvement with over-elaborate philosophical systems.

But that is begging the question, innit? How come... etc.

Minor Germanic cogitator anecdote: I know a German Ph.D. (Physics) who told me with a straight face that the reason why most of the revolutionary discoveries in theoretical physics at the last turn of the 20th century were made in Germany was the deep complexity of the German language.

In her opinion, a history of intimate familiarity with metaphysics, the convoluted grammar, and the rich assonances and connotations of the language predisposed the great German physicists to be so creative.

I don't know whether or not she is right, although Heisenberg, at least, may have fit that description.

[KC Burke]

Tell your german friend that Szilard (Hungarian) and Bohr (Dannish) would probably disagree. Each is probably at least as important in the atomic age history as Einstein as I understand it.

The Germans have the same self assurance about social thought and politics -- hence their great advancement to humanity as a major contributor to all forms of socialism, and armed ideology in general.

[cornelis]

They are system builders. And insofar as Locke is turned into one, we have the same problem.

[lockeliberty]

Thanks, good post.

[IronJack]

Existentialism postdates those three gentlemen by at least a century.

[diotima]

The Brits are "analytics." And they too have an infatuation with an all-encompassing edifice of thought: logic. I mean hard logic, which was slightly diverted by Wittgenstein.

[diotima]

Thanks for the ping, I enjoyed the read. I never studied Hegel's religious thought in depth. (I sat in Stanley Rosen's class on the greater logic, what an adventure!)

[tictoc]

In the future, would you two please wear a distinguishing characteristic so I can tell you apart.

Kantian, you can put on Mickey Mouse ears.

KC, how about a stovepipe hat.

Thanks.

[KC Burke]

Only in Kierkegaard do we find it fully formed and named. I know that Pascal has been said, in hindsight, to have blazed that trail, but few could see anyone on that path until the 19th century. The cultural elite of Britian, the New Whigs of Fox, were the point where Britian became infatuated with the French Revolutionary Spirit underlaid by the Enlightenment Rationalism, but those three strong voices, the "old heads" still spoke to loudly in the cultural mind of British life to let the tumult overtake them.

Now, Richard Weaver tells us that the real sea-change came with William of Occam and the even earlier age of the birth of nominalism:

The powers of darkness were working, subtly, as always, and they couched this proposition in the seemingly innocent form of attack upon universals. The defeat of logical realism in the great medieval debate was the crucial event in the history of Western culture; from this flowed those acts which issue now in modern decadence.

&&&&&&&

Fot this reason I turn to William of Occam as the best representative of the change which came over man's conception of reality at this historic juncture. It was William of Occam who propounded the fateful doctrine of nominalism, which denies that universals have a real existance. His triumph tended to leave universal terms mere names serving our convenience. The issue ultimately involved is whether there is a source of truth higher than, and independent of, man; and the answer to the question is decisive doe one's view of nature and detiny of humankind. The practical result of nominalist philosophy is to banish the reality which is percieved by the intellect and to posit as reality that which is percieved by the senses. With this change in that affirmation of what is real, the whole orientation of culture takes a turn, and we are on the road to modern empiricism.

It is easy to be blind to the significance of a change because it is remote in time and abstract in character. Those who have not discovered that world view is the moat important thing about a man, as about the men composing a culture, should consider the train of circumstnces which have with perfect logic proceeded from this. The denial of universals carries with it the denial of everything transcending experience. The denial of everything transcending experience means inevitably -- though ways are found to hedge on this --the denial of truth. With the denial of objective truth there is no escape from the relitavism of "man the measure of all things".

.........

Thus began the "abomination of desolation" appearing today as a feeling of alienation from all fixed truth.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

[Three more pages of profound logical analysis, by Weaver is followed with>>>>]

There is no term proper to descibe the condition in which he is now left unless it be "abysmality." He is in the deep and dark abysm, and he has nothing whith which to raise himself. His life is practice without theory. As problems crowd upon him, he deepens confusion by meeting them with ad hoc policies. Secretly he hungers for truth but consoles himself with the thought that life should be experimental. He sees his institutions crumbling and rationalizes with talk of emancipation. Wars have to be fought, seemingly with increased frequency; therefore he revives the old ideals--ideals which his present assumptions actually render meaningless-- and, by the machinery of state, forces them again to do service. He struggles with the paradox that total immersion in matter unfits him to deal with the problems of matter.

His decline can be represented as a long series of abdications. He found less and less ground for authority at the same time he thought he was setting himself up as the center of authority in the universe; indeed, there seems to exist here a dialectic process which takes away his power in proportion as he demonstrates the his independence entitles him to power.

This story is eleoquently reflected in changes that have come over education. The shift from the truth of the intellect to the facts of experience followed hard upon the meeting witht he witches. A lttle sign appears, "a cloud no bigger than a man's hand," in a change that came over the study of logic in the fourteenth century--the century of Occam. Logic became grammaticized, passing from a science which taught men vere loqui to one which taught recte loqui or from an ontological division by categories to a study of signification, with the inevitable focus on historical meaningns. Here begins the assualt upon definition; if words no longer correspond to objective realities, it seems no great wrong to take liberties with words. From this point on, faith in language as a means of arriving at truth weakens, until our own age, filled with an acute sense of doubt, looks for a new remedy in the science of semantics.

[betty boop]

The issue ultimately involved is whether there is a source of truth higher than, and independent of, man; and the answer to the question is decisive [for] one's view of nature and destiny of humankind. The practical result of nominalist philosophy is to banish the reality which is perceived by the intellect and to posit as reality that which is perceived by the senses. With this change in that affirmation of what is real, the whole orientation of culture takes a turn, and we are on the road to modern empiricism.

Absolutely brilliant insight, KC Burke!!! (Hope to get back soon....)

Thanks so much for the bump!

[cornelis]

Logic became grammaticized, passing from a science which taught men vere loqui to one which taught recte loqui or from an ontological division by categories to a study of signification, with the inevitable focus on historical meanings. Here begins the assualt upon definition

This is where a traditionalist, I think, can get hung up.

It may be that in passing from Occam over Kant to the parisian parsers, that Weaver's presentation of the debate over nominalism and others loses sight of the fact that universals have been considered at least in two ways. And this concerns the two sources of those universals.

First, there are those who subscribe to universals from a source of truth higher than, and independent of, man. This already holds the stage with Aeschylus and Sophocles, before Plato engaged the debate in the person of Socrates.

Then, there are those who subscribe to univerals (after Occam, if you will) as a part and parcel of "common reason." This takes the stage after the denial or loss of a source of truth higher than, and independent of man. This is the enterprise of common reason via Descartes and Kant and culminating in Hegel.

After their failure, due to the strain on the human species to play the new universal role, we finally enter the total loss of orientation for language. If this is so, definition, as Weaver has it, is not only an issue between empiricism and rationalism. It concerns the source of universals--and seperately--the adequacy of language to designate that source, whether it is of reason or of something else.

Otherwise, Weaver's "banishing reality perceived by the intellect" can be confused as banishing the common reason to which Descartes and Kant appealed. When Weaver speaks of ontological categories, is he t0 be read as the modern would, and not of the ancient? The ancient view regards language as a stopgap. It could well designate a universal, but it could never stand for it. For a word and its meaning and the accepted definition cannot exhaust the reality it is meant to convey, whether it designates a universal or not. It is an image, and approaches its reality, objective, universal, particular, mental, extra-mental, human, divine, through the potency of its signfication adopted and submitted by a real person speaking. This view stand somewhere between turning words into useful floaties from the old stone counters there were supposed to be. Words were truly spoken because they directed us to the whatever we experienced.

As much as I enjoy Weaver's tract (and I still think he is makes a better point in the chapter discussing Jazz) I always had a hunch that the wrap-up at the end on language was missing something.

[KC Burke]

I see what you are pointing out, but my meager background of study in this field leaves me stumbling to tie my twist back to the original starting article's contention while doing justice to your point. I'm going to have to re-read this whole thing and then reflect where the handle to this well pump is...

[cornelis]

Sorry, I may have gone a bit of topic. In any case, the deification episode is an the attempt that occurs between 14th c. Paris and 20th century Paris. When Nietzsche bemoaned the death of god he was crying about the loss of the universalizing genius which 20th century Paris is now saying we should do without.

[KC Burke]

But logic always tempered. The loss of the grand flow of culture was rarely their downfall.

By the way, good to see your!!!!!!!!!!

[KC Burke]

With Kantian wearing the "ears" you've prescribed, I'll be very distinguished without the hat to set me off.

[tictoc]

Can't beat your logic!

[KC Burke]

LOL, you must remember that I only have the self taught training to build buildings; not men with minds. You are on a much more detailed path than I, and I often must pick up my calculator, my bundles of plans, and my technical rubis and cast it aside for a moment to play with you advanced, < grin >, minds.

[cornelis]

I'm delighted you joined the thread. There's no end to picking up the tools in either profession. And if anyone pretends that he knows, Socrates is always a good anti-dote.