Philosophy Now Forum

Hi Jack,



I have been asking myself what is the next piece of work that I have to do and this thread has given me the answer. I need to tackle my own vanity. I don't know what that will involve yet but if 'having' implies a withdrawal from the world as I said, and having is egocentric as you wrote then perhaps the withdrawal takes the form of a dominance of making-present over having-present (in Heidegger's terminology).

I lack the humility to really look.

At the moment this is cast in moral terms (vanity-humility) and I might need to re-cast it in a different form, something a bit less self-flagellating, but I think that this is a departure point for an attempt at more deconcealment.

Bullwinkle

Hi RachelAnn, thanks for asking. I would be glad to give it another try.

Jack

Bullwinkle, what do you mean by "world?"




Bullwinkle, I need to clarify my above statement because as we know there are many words that can have more then one meaning. Two such words have been used above, "world" and "having". I will only address "having" for now. In the context in which we are speaking here, it can mean one or the other of the following.



Things own Man or Man owns things.


To word it in a different way:


Things are in the saddle and they are riding Man or Man is in the saddle and he is riding things.


In other words Having or Being





Well lade da, join the club


Jack

Hi Bullwinkle

I posted these Erich Fromm interviews on another topic subject but you might not have seen them yet. They are about the Having / Being modes of orientation.


Erich Fromm Interview Excerpt 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7GpHrdXOFI



Erich Fromm Interview Excerpt 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsyDhlz6qJ8



Erich Fromm Interview Excerpt 3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmdJ7CDjx60



Erich Fromm Interview Excerpt 4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygwAhrT2too

Hi Jack,


I mean the beings themselves that I encounter as I go about my life as opposed to my ideas of what they are. I was talking about a withdrawal from spontaneity and into preconceptions.

I will listen to the Fromm interview.

Bullwinkle

Bullwinkle, the following excerpt will throw a little more light on the Having / Being dichotomy.


Eckhart denounces the property structure of existence as the evil that stands in the way of man's freedom, his aliveness, his finding himself. But there could be no greater misunder­standing than to think that Eckhart's ideal was a passive, or even a completely contemplative, life.

For Eckhart the abandonment of having, clinging, craving, the giving up of the mode of having, the inner "expropriation," as Mieth calls it, meant creating the condition for the fullest activity-not of trivial but of essential activity. Productive, "es­sential" activity, he believed, was possible only under the condi­tions of freedom, and we were free only if we did not cling to what we had-including our ego. Eckhart said something, more generally and more radically, that many people know: Giving excludes holding on; loving requires one to drop one's ego. One who is preoccupied with himself cannot love; even sexual functioning requires concentration.

The problem, according to Eckhart's teaching, is not that I have nothing) but that I am not egocentrically bound to what I have. This is the decisive point in Eckhart's teaching about pov­erty and not having. While traditional thinking offered the al­ternative between having much (luxury) and having nothing (ascetic poverty), Eckhart cut through this alternative and showed its illusionary character: The man indulging in luxury and the ascetic depriving himself of everything both share the egocentric mode of having-the one by affirmation, the other by negation. The real opposition is that between the ego-bound man, whose existence is structured by the principle of having, and the free man, who has overcome his egocentricity, "who eats when he wants to eat and sleeps when he wants to sleep." (This Eckhart's statement is almost literally the same as the Zen statement that the enlightened person "sleeps when he sleeps and eats when he eats.")

For the free man, all he has is merely an instrument for greater aliveness; it does not matter whether he has more or less, because he is himself! Everybody is able to have the same experience. If he can attain a state of mind in which he is not preoccupied with anything, still, concentrated, not holding on to anything, he will experience unusual strength and vitality if he turns to something he feels like doing. Out of this stillness he acquires the energy for action-but only for essential action (i.e., action that corresponds to his essence as man).


On Being Human
by
Erich Fromm

P.S. Today's my birthday - the big 62

JACK WRITES:


HAPPY BIRTHDAY -- ENJOY THOSE BIRTHDAY SPANKINGS!!!!!!!

Happy birthday Jack!

Did you know that we are both Leos?

I hope you party all night and wake up knackered in the morning!

Bullwinkle

Thank you RachelAnn and Bullwinkle for those birthday greetings. I had a great day, but in reality I guess every day is a great day. It just depends on how we look at it. " It is not that something different is seen, but that one sees differently." ( Carl Jung quote)

Jack

Our problem with all this talk is that we can talk about it forever and still not know what we are talking about. In saying this I would be a fool to exclude myself and there is nothing easier then to be a fool.

I think we might do well to consider that the reason Plato did not include himself so much in his writings was for the fact that Socrates was indeed the better or truer philosopher. And what is Socrates greatest claim to fame. I would say that it was his honest belief that he did not know what he did not know. In other words a man that is not truly humble and authentically honest with himself can ever hope to be an authentic philosopher.



Jack

Jack,

Or that he didn't want to commit, in name, to the words and views he ascribed to Socrates. After all, Socrates was put to death for the views he held - and history is littered with similar examples of people whose ideas were intolerable in thier own time. This is because society is organized around common fictions held as absolute and unquestionable truths, that dictate who is included and excluded, who eats first and most, and who is carried and who does the carrying. But more than all these, who talks and who listens...

mark.

Mark, I do not know for a fact that the following is true but I tend to believe it. Socrates said that he did not fear death and if Plato was a good disciple, I would bet he did not fear death either. So I highly doubt that Plato was writing all of his great works in fear of death but instead with respect and love for Socrates and for Mankind.

Jack

Jack,

Nor do I - it was wild speculation based on the human social relationship to knowledge, perhaps saying more about that than about Plato's motives of which I know nothing. I have read a number of the dialogues - and particulalrly liked the discussion with the hedonist. I've also had some fun with the form, writing a few short dialogues of my own. I found posing and countering my own arguments an interesting way to develop rhetorical skill - and given that I'm speculating wildly again, this could just have well been Plato's motivation.

mark.

Mark, I like the new you. I don't mean by your agreeing or disagreeing with me but the how of you doing it. I believe that if you can change then there might be hope for all of us, that we might be able to change whatever our personal flaws are.

But Mark don't be surprised if some times you fail, because thats life.


Jack

Thanks Jack.

I said in another thread that I thought I was developing some tact, and three posts later blew it by trying to tell someone something they apparently didn't want to know. 'There's nowt as strange as folk.' That I believe - but I'm having doubts about 'better out than in.' Maybe it only applies to toenails and burps!

mark.