Re: Adolf Eichmann: Banality of Evil
Posted: Thu Apr 23, 2015 9:54 pm
the philologist said, "there is no original text," much to the chagrin of his father...
-Imp
-Imp
For the discussion of all things philosophical, especially articles in the magazine Philosophy Now.
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I would certainly say that function is one of the terms of value or valuation. Yet what you are really saying (I think?) is that you understand that all value was sort of pre-created? God created the Universe and so God will also be seen to have created all value, or the possibility of value? Would you then fall into the category of those who, like the Vedists, understand that revealed scripture descends directly from a higher world and must be taken as such?Immanuel Can wrote:Your assumption, then is that "function" determines the value of things? That looks like a very human-centered universe. But since we neither created ourselves nor have any means of controlling the day of our death or the practical circumstances of our lives, that would seem to be rather a lot of hubris...and not much more.
I weave toward and then away from what appear to be two poles of conception. I tend to see, or to imagine, that all possible meaning and all possible value, have in a sense a predetermined 'answer'. I have thought that in our universe, and infinite numbers of times, beings have confronted all that we confront and have 'solved' the issues we face. So, it is really then a question of 'plucking down' out of the Universe a way of being, and even perhaps what I understand you to mean when you speak of 'guidance' or turning one's will over to God, or perhaps cooperating with God.If you like a "story," then it's true? And if you don't, it's not?
What I meant is old organisations of language. The old forms that people seem often to want to recur to. Excuse the metaphor but it seems like our 'new wine' cannot fit into 'old skins'. No part of what I am saying has to do with decimating spirituality, and in no sense do I think that The Masses can be allowed to flail in uncertainty. What I see when I look around me is a whole world of people who seek and require illusion. So I have no other option but to begin to conceive that the 'higher truths' about things---all things---are not truths that can be shared. And since this seems to me to be true I would logically posit a sort of esotericism.Old language forms are meaningless?
It is just a given that those we don't agree with seem opaque to us....as a theorist, I find you entirely opaque.
Too easy. One can agree with a person because one understands, or you can find someone perfectly understandable and yet decide not to agree. But opaque, that's a different issue. It's not a given at all.It is just a given that those we don't agree with seem opaque to us.
Yes. You seem to speak in what McLuhan called a "memes" or "probes" style rather than to make propositions.It is possible that I am blurry but it is not that I do not have clear ideas to express. Nearly everything is experimental for me.
Yep. That's more or less what I said. You're floating poetry, or something analogous to that. "Experimental" you call it. The problem is that no one can agree or disagree with poetry. It just is what it is...whether just noise or something else. Being aesthetic, it's beyond objective rational judgment. Only if it dissolves into some kind of proposition can it be judged on the basis of rationality, not merely taste.honestly I am not attempting propositions here,
Yeah, some people say that. It doesn't make it true. It's just wish-fulfillment on their part...kind of Freudian, actually.That Story has collapsed
If there are 'identifiable propositions' your own statement has defeated your initial accusation. I do what I do in an effort to communicate my meanings and my views. It is absurd and I think false that you claim I am trying to, or am interested in, 'using reason to disprove reason'. I am saying that an inner structure in the Stories upon which religious faith is constructed has significantly eroded, for various reasons, and that the specifics in these stories are now, generally, understood to be false claims: lies if you will. Thus, the whole edifice of the classical religious position is in significant danger.Your elaborate claims not to be making any propositions are framed in about two dozen identifiable propositions of your own -- categoricals, mostly. That's the self-defeating nature of the argument that reason can disprove reason. If it succeeds, it has proved something, which means it fails. If it fails, it isn't true, and thus it fails again. There's just no way to make that claim succeed. You need -- and repeatedly make -- propositions.
Apparently, I am up an imagined creek in your imagination!Even the claim, "My poems connect to reality" is a proposition, so you're really, really up the creek on that one.
I did not say 'this is all digression'. Everything here is completely relevant. Well, at least what I am endeavouring to bring out. You are apparently saying 'This is all digression'. And Eichmann is, for you, your emblem of ontological malevolence. What more need be said?But you are right -- this is all a digression. Have you anything relevant to say about Eichmann?
And wouldn't it be terrible if we had to arbitrate matters that way?The terms of Aristotelian logic perhaps?
Feel free to clarify, then. So far, opaqueness.To have a conversation about Nazism and Eichmann (as I understand things at this point) would involve clarifications that likely move beyond those occurring, or being attempted, here.
Agreed.I have the sense that these questions and issues bring us to the very heart of very important and considerable issues.
It's not the "fortitude" I have hesitations about: it's the "attitude."It seems to require fortitude to move in, and though, this territory
There is a holocaust going on right now. Whilst we all benefit from the machinations of corporate monsters. When you fill up your car, you are spending money to dispossess Kenyan children who have their rivers and fields posioned by oil deposits.Immanuel Can wrote:There was nothing unthinking about the Holocaust..