Ronald Beiner and his book "Dangerous Minds"

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Alizia
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Re: Ronald Beiner and his book "Dangerous Minds"

Post by Alizia »

-1- wrote: Sun Apr 07, 2019 4:04 pm You guys are really bent.
I promise to do better. I can't force Immanuel, Belinda, Dubious or uwot to make the necessary changes. But keep after them!

I found this in another Arktos article (I paragraphed it):
"Whilst the posthumous editions of Nietzsche published by his sister Elisabeth pushed the philosopher’s ideas towards a National-Socialist bent for many years, modern scholarship has allowed us to realize that Nietzsche is in fact better read not as encouraging the replacement of Christianity with an authoritarian dominance of the weak by the strong per se, but instead as a kind of reinvention of Christianity by and for individuals. Nietzsche may have held deep philosophical grievances about Christianity, but a strangely Christian spirit of overcoming one’s natural inclinations in order to become something greater than oneself remains within Nietzsche. An opponent of power politics and an advocate of free will, Nietzsche in many ways represents the figure of Jesus more purely than many of the bishops and Popes who ‘succeeded’ Christ. Indeed, Nietzsche’s own upbringing as the son of a Lutheran pastor cannot have had any little impact upon him.

The oft-misrepresented quotation, in fact a lament more than a triumphant declaration, that ‘God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him’ is in fact the outcry of one of the Western world’s most poignant and fearful moral crises: remove God, and Man is forced to create his own values. Nietzsche knew well the consequences of rejecting the Christian God. In this sense, however much Nietzsche may have disliked the Christian God, we cannot say that he ‘hated’ the concept of deity, period.

Whilst it may be controversial to say that Nietzsche believed that every man ought to be his own God, what is certainly true is that Nietzsche reworked the idea of imitating a divine figure, and attempted to focus human creative energy upon the perfection of the self, rather than the emulation of what he considered to be a self-destructive and misleading Christological abstraction. To put it in Danto’s terms, Nietzsche wished for philosophy itself, not some bourgeois institution, to become people’s way of life. At the same time, it seems that Nietzsche’s underlying recognition of an inescapable natural order is the true root of his concept of the Overman.

Not all people would take well to the life of Nietzsche’s future perfect philosopher, nor would they be able to fulfill the criteria for inclusion in this apparently elite group. Nevertheless, such is the case in every society that there must naturally exist ranks and elites. It appears that, for Nietzsche, the act of striving for philosophical perfection itself was a necessary and sufficient act in separating the Overmen from the rest of society. That in itself is by no means a hateful project, nor is it necessarily incompatible with the aims and values of Christianity, which in certain forms accepts the spiritual differences between those who strive for spiritual perfection (albeit in the imitation of a particular interpretation of Christ, rather than the Overman) and those who wallow in mediocrity. Perhaps, therefore, Christianity’s escape route out of mediocrity lies not only in rediscovering the roots of its traditional ethical positions, but in making Christ into a model Overman worthy of the struggle itself."
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Re: Ronald Beiner and his book "Dangerous Minds"

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-1- wrote: Sun Apr 07, 2019 4:04 pm You guys are really bent.
Alizia wrote: Sun Apr 07, 2019 7:03 pm The oft-misrepresented quotation, in fact a lament more than a triumphant declaration, that ‘God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him’ is in fact the outcry of one of the Western world’s most poignant and fearful moral crises: remove God, and Man is forced to create his own values.
Hoo, Boy! I am very glad you wrote this, Alizia.

Because the quote cuts right into the heart of things.

To a theist (such as a Catholic) the bible is God's word. To an atheist, the bible is a collection of what man's evolving lack of knowledge of natural history, human history, anthropology, and philosophy garnered instead of scientifically accepted theories.

So; there are a few things that remain unchanged from biblical times, and you very smartly pointed at morals, ethics.

These things don't change even if you remove gods, worship, the supernatural from the equation.

Because the words given to an imaginary and not at all manifested god, the words that were given to him were words of man; ideas of man; values of man.

The ethics and morals that you suppose (but I don't suppose) only work with the presence of the god, in my view also work in the absence of god. God, being a being that never has manifested to man, has had nothing to build the tenets of morals and ethics that the bible teaches. Therefore they are man's, and man's alone.

Your ethical armageddon therefore, with the removal of god from the big picture, is NOT to be feared. Man's morals are man's, in the bible or outside the bible; there is not going to be a change, never has been, and things will just go smooooothly on the course man has got staked out in the sea of ethical life.
Dubious
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Re: Ronald Beiner and his book "Dangerous Minds"

Post by Dubious »

Belinda wrote: Sun Apr 07, 2019 12:19 pm Dubious quoted:
Snell, who had managed to remain in Germany during the period of National Socialism and still keep his hands and his soul clean, was concerned that Christianity had not provided an adequate resistance to the forces inherent in Nazism and sought to elaborate an alternative vision in the legacy (or legacies) of Ancient Greece.
May we take it that the legacies of Ancient Greece are primacy of reason, sovereignty of good(Plato), and democracy, not necessarily in that order?
In this connection reason , let's agree, is not limited to scientific activity.
Sorry! Not my quote...at least that I'm aware of! :)
Alizia
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Re: Ronald Beiner and his book "Dangerous Minds"

Post by Alizia »

-1- wrote: Sun Apr 07, 2019 7:50 pm To a theist (such as a Catholic) the bible is God's word.
I hope that you won't mind if I correct you here. Certainly the Bible contains God's word. And it has to be interpreted. That brings up the question of 'hermeneutics' and alongside the hermeneutic process there is 'the presence of God' (Paraclete).

To a Catholic there is a whole other range of information that enters into the picture. Yes, scripture has high relevance. But 'we' have a whole other information-set (unsure how to express it) and that is 'tradition'. For example, from the early days people had all manner of different experiences, relationships, to the Incarnation (the life and presence of the being named Jesus) and, of course, to those people who had proximity to him (his friends and associates). A good part of early Catholic knowledge and understanding comes from that. It was communicated from person to person in those early days and, at some points, put into writing. But it became part of 'tradition'.

Certainly the scriptures are a base but, oddly enough (I assume this is new information for you) they are not the only base.
So; there are a few things that remain unchanged from biblical times, and you very smartly pointed at morals, ethics. These things don't change even if you remove gods, worship, the supernatural from the equation.
Well, I do not remember saying that. I think many many things have changed from Biblical times -- obviously this is true -- and the question I would ask is: What, if anything, has not changed?

Furthermore, I would not have said that ethics and morals do not change. I think they do. But if by that you are asking -- or are you asserting? -- that there are pre-established, constant ever-true things that do not modify with the passing of time, that is a question that has me stumped.

Finally, remove 'gods' and also liturgy (I think this is what you mean by worship?) and 'the supernatural from the equation' and, beyond any shadow of a doubt things change significantly: radically.

Are you a partial or a total atheist, or something in-between?
Dubious
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Re: Ronald Beiner and his book "Dangerous Minds"

Post by Dubious »

Alizia wrote: Sun Apr 07, 2019 9:34 pm
Furthermore, I would not have said that ethics and morals do not change. I think they do. But if by that you are asking -- or are you asserting? -- that there are pre-established, constant ever-true things that do not modify with the passing of time, that is a question that has me stumped.
Even though this post is not addressed to me, it's more than obvious that morals change according to time and place. Civilizations, current and past easily yield to these differentials. But I do believe there is an archetype of what could be termed a constant and that is the impetus toward a morality (upon which laws are also based) though not its content. Morals operate indigeneously as mores in the sense of being strictly group dependent whereas the motive for it is universal. In spite of all the differences among humans the psychological imperatives of being human is what we still have in common being in itself an instinct. Every belief humans have ever held are simply variations on a theme heard by everyone.

This may also partly explain why traditions outlast beliefs. A long held belief is a type of programming that cannot so easily be dispensed with. Traditions remain as memories of beliefs once held. Europe is mostly atheistic and yet its monuments to Christianity are maintained and protected and many who don't believe still go to mass or midnight mass. Why? Because the living memory of a belief still offers some of the comfort it once had.

Though I'm thoroughly devoid of any god inclusions, I'd still love to go to mass on Sundays and midnight mass on Christmas in one of those Bavarian or Austrian Baroque churches where sound of a Haydn or Schubert mass together with the architecture can still evoke the grandeur of belief.
Alizia
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Re: Ronald Beiner and his book "Dangerous Minds"

Post by Alizia »

I read your post with interest, thank you.
Dubious wrote: Mon Apr 08, 2019 12:23 amThough I'm thoroughly devoid of any god inclusions.
I have proposed that ideas, patterns, ways of seeing, and then of course morals & ethics, have been programmed in to the creation. I know this is strangely esoteric but bear with me.

I can understand why someone would have no 'god inclusion'. But would you not say that, somehow, what is, what happens, what occurs, in this and 'all possible worlds', is happening because it has been programmed in as 'possibility'?

Does not what shows up, what manifests, have to have been part-and-parcel of the origination of all things?

Or, would you suppose that everything is 'made up as it goes along'? And thus that we, too, make it up?

Is this not, in a certain sense, what 'god' means, if only in a sort of deistic sense?
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Re: Ronald Beiner and his book "Dangerous Minds"

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Alizia wrote: Sun Apr 07, 2019 9:34 pm
So; there are a few things that remain unchanged from biblical times, and you very smartly pointed at morals, ethics. These things don't change even if you remove gods, worship, the supernatural from the equation.
Well, I do not remember saying that. I think many many things have changed from Biblical times -- obviously this is true -- and the question I would ask is: What, if anything, has not changed?

Do you remember saying this, Alizia?

So, though I can say that the basic issues (as I understand them) such as immigration; Europe's loss of nerve; its being overcome by nihilism; its surrender of its core 'masculinity' to something opposite of that (not necessarily femininity or the female); and a general weakness and indecisiveness in the face of what confronts 'us': this described our 'moralistic labyrinth': the pit of confusion into which we have fallen, the place we find ourselves.

This is what you said, and of this statement I deciphered the following:
Alizia wrote:
So, though I can say that the basic issues (as I understand them) such as (1) immigration; (2) Europe's loss of nerve; (3) its being overcome by nihilism; (4) its surrender of its core 'masculinity' to something opposite of that (not necessarily femininity or the female); and (5) a general weakness and indecisiveness in the face of what confronts 'us': (6) this described our 'moralistic labyrinth': (7) the pit of confusion into which we have fallen, the place we find ourselves.

You said in the above which (a) I remembered your having said, but (b) you denied having said.

In this last quote, (1) is tangible, (2), (3), (4), (5), are complete babble, gibberish, by a person who can't even comprehend European reality, since he never even came near Europe, its peoples, its languages, its cultures. In points (2) through (5) you mention vague platituded, meaningless metaphors, and out-of-place references.

But like in point (1), you finally return to some reality description in point (6) and in point (7) in which you talk about morality as of a labyrinth (unnavigable), and as a place of pit of confusion into which we have fallen (WE? Not Europe, but 'we', a part of the world which is not Europe... you are confusing your own concepts and locations).

So here you declared that modern European morality can't be mapped (as a labyrinth), it is full of traps, and it is confusing.

Well, none of the above. But that's a side issue. The main issue is that you don't remember from one day to the next what your own claims are.

Indeed, your entire lot of essays are like a sticky, pulling, miasma, it is without concrete content, it speaks in terms of concepts that sound hifolutin, but in reality they are meaningless and unrelated to anything, especially reality.

But the one thing you said that had some sense of being able to attach to reality, which was that Europe is in a moral disarray and will stay that way until it gets "unified" by some Christian or Catholic values, that one thing that you said and was tangible, you, your own self, can't remember!
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Re: Ronald Beiner and his book "Dangerous Minds"

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Alizia wrote: Mon Apr 08, 2019 1:35 am I can understand why someone would have no 'god inclusion'. But would you not say that, somehow, what is, what happens, what occurs, in this and 'all possible worlds', is happening because it has been programmed in as 'possibility'?
I would give it a definite YES whether as possibility or potential. But within the realm of each exist a myriad of different outcomes. Consciousness itself having reached a certain flash point could go many different paths but history only records a few and these invariably are related to each other even though they appear distinct.
Alizia wrote: Mon Apr 08, 2019 1:35 amDoes not what shows up, what manifests, have to have been part-and-parcel of the origination of all things?
When you say "the origination of all things", you're going back to the beginning of the universe itself. Everything which transpired in the cosmos from that point proceeded from those processes. Taking only Earth as something we're familiar with into account, there was no predestination involved in how it worked out and the fact that we're here. Part & Parcel could have a multitude of resolutions without changing anything in the way nature operates. We're only ONE instance of it and in that sense we are Part & Parcel of the whole enchilada.
Alizia wrote: Mon Apr 08, 2019 1:35 amOr, would you suppose that everything is 'made up as it goes along'? And thus that we, too, make it up?
Figuratively, just as nature keeps juggling the big pieces which we are consequent of, we keep juggling the smaller ones without knowing where it's going to lead just as nature cannot define a destiny but only advance itself into one.
Alizia wrote: Mon Apr 08, 2019 1:35 amIs this not, in a certain sense, what 'god' means, if only in a sort of deistic sense?
Could be if "god" means playing dice with probabilities. For me deism is a mere camouflage for atheism at a time when belief in god - especially among Enlightenment intellectuals - was virtually non-existent but still not respectable enough to overtly announce. It took a German barbarian named Nietzsche to proclaim it to the world loud and clear in his strident poetic prose.
Belinda
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Re: Ronald Beiner and his book "Dangerous Minds"

Post by Belinda »

Dubious, apology! I extracted that quotation from 'A Nietzschean Perspective' which you recommended.


https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/europe-a-nietz ... rspective/

I'd very much like your opinion on what I asked, please.
Snell, who had managed to remain in Germany during the period of National Socialism and still keep his hands and his soul clean, was concerned that Christianity had not provided an adequate resistance to the forces inherent in Nazism and sought to elaborate an alternative vision in the legacy (or legacies) of Ancient Greece.
May we take it that the legacies of Ancient Greece are primacy of reason, sovereignty of good(Plato), and democracy, not necessarily in that order?
In this connection reason , let's agree, is not limited to scientific activity.
Sorry! Not my quote...at least that I'm aware of!
Belinda
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Re: Ronald Beiner and his book "Dangerous Minds"

Post by Belinda »

Dubious wrote: Mon Apr 08, 2019 12:23 am
Alizia wrote: Sun Apr 07, 2019 9:34 pm
Furthermore, I would not have said that ethics and morals do not change. I think they do. But if by that you are asking -- or are you asserting? -- that there are pre-established, constant ever-true things that do not modify with the passing of time, that is a question that has me stumped.
Even though this post is not addressed to me, it's more than obvious that morals change according to time and place. Civilizations, current and past easily yield to these differentials. But I do believe there is an archetype of what could be termed a constant and that is the impetus toward a morality (upon which laws are also based) though not its content. Morals operate indigeneously as mores in the sense of being strictly group dependent whereas the motive for it is universal. In spite of all the differences among humans the psychological imperatives of being human is what we still have in common being in itself an instinct. Every belief humans have ever held are simply variations on a theme heard by everyone.

This may also partly explain why traditions outlast beliefs. A long held belief is a type of programming that cannot so easily be dispensed with. Traditions remain as memories of beliefs once held. Europe is mostly atheistic and yet its monuments to Christianity are maintained and protected and many who don't believe still go to mass or midnight mass. Why? Because the living memory of a belief still offers some of the comfort it once had.

Though I'm thoroughly devoid of any god inclusions, I'd still love to go to mass on Sundays and midnight mass on Christmas in one of those Bavarian or Austrian Baroque churches where sound of a Haydn or Schubert mass together with the architecture can still evoke the grandeur of belief.

You describe the value of theatre. For believers and unbelievers alike theatre is an age old medium for feelings, and religious theatre is no exception but moreover is historically the origin of modern theatre.

https://www.encyclopedia.com/environmen ... and-ritual
Alizia
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Re: Ronald Beiner and his book "Dangerous Minds"

Post by Alizia »

Dubious wrote: Mon Apr 08, 2019 4:38 am I would give it a definite YES whether as possibility or potential. But within the realm of each exist a myriad of different outcomes.
It seems to me that *in essence* the idea of a 'god' and a 'creator' and an 'originating intelligence' and of course the logical conclusion -- (for what 'logic' is worth when it comes to such large things)! -- that a pre-established and pre-defined outflow is implied, and should be assumed, and therefore it is not hard to understand the logical presupposition of a divinity.

I am wondering if you would bother to, say, contest such a presupposition? or if you would see it as logically untenable? Or, would you simply dismiss it as non-productive speculation?

I also wonder of when you say "But within the realm of each exist a myriad of different outcomes" if you are here engaging in speculation or if you have something solid from the physical and mathematical world to base it in? I'd be interested in knowing.
Dubious wrote: Mon Apr 08, 2019 4:38 am When you say "the origination of all things", you're going back to the beginning of the universe itself.
In fact, to well before 'present origination' since, logically, such must be presumed. I will admit that my thinking is simplistic (unsure how to have 'complex thinking' on the topic, but I am not a physicist) insofar as one origination (our present Kosmos) implies an infinite number of others.

I am rather 'stuck' (as it were) in the basic notion that not everything, as in any possible thing, but the 'certain and definite things' which do come into being, come because in the most essential senses they were -- sorry to say it like this but I have no other way -- predesigned and pre-established as that.

Is there leeway as things manifest (as they 'flow into their forms?'). But importantly, in our human world, must be (or must we not) refer in one way or another to the 'invisible, existing patterns' that are there, somehow, as part-and-parcel of the outflowing world?

PS: [I saw the idea of deism not as a veiled atheism but as a way to avoid specific theism].
Alizia
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Re: Ronald Beiner and his book "Dangerous Minds"

Post by Alizia »

Immanuel Can wrote: Sat Apr 06, 2019 1:39 pm{ silence }
You seemed to have abandoned the field. Was it something I said? [grins]
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Re: Ronald Beiner and his book "Dangerous Minds"

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Alizia wrote: Mon Apr 08, 2019 11:05 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Sat Apr 06, 2019 1:39 pm{ silence }
You seemed to have abandoned the field. Was it something I said? [grins]
Oh no...not at all. I was quite enjoying talking to you earlier. But then you got busy with someone else, and to be honest, the conversation wasn't at that point anything I found very interesting or challenging (that was no fault of yours)...so I was taking a break.

Was there something on your mind?
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Re: Ronald Beiner and his book "Dangerous Minds"

Post by uwot »

Alizia wrote: Sun Apr 07, 2019 9:34 pmTo a Catholic there is a whole other range of information that enters into the picture. Yes, scripture has high relevance. But 'we' have a whole other information-set (unsure how to express it) and that is 'tradition'.
Actually, 'tradition' expresses it very well, being the word the Vatican uses itself. It is no coincidence that the Mafia calls itself 'cosa nostra' - 'our thing'. The church and the Medici had their things, both of which exploited the disenfranchised, some of whom decided to be as corrupt and violent as religion and politics. The whole point of Protestantism was to break with 'tradition' and give control of scripture to individuals. People liked the idea that Jesus could save them, but they wanted salvation on their own terms. The only authority was 'sola scriptura'. The Bible was printed in the vernacular and anyone could interpret it as they saw fit. So now there is a denomination to suit most tastes. If you can't find one that fits, just make up your own, accuse anyone that challenges you of heresy and condemn them to eternal torture, if that pleases you. Which is exactly what Mr Can and his type have done.
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Re: Ronald Beiner and his book "Dangerous Minds"

Post by attofishpi »

-1- wrote: Sun Apr 07, 2019 7:50 pmTo a theist (such as a Catholic) the bible is God's word. To an atheist, the bible is a collection of what man's evolving lack of knowledge of natural history, human history, anthropology, and philosophy garnered instead of scientifically accepted theories.
I wish you had stated:- To some theists (such as some Catholics) the bible is God's word.
-1- wrote: Sun Apr 07, 2019 7:50 pmGod, being a being that never has manifested to man, has had nothing to build the tenets of morals and ethics that the bible teaches. Therefore they are man's, and man's alone.
Actually you are wrong. This entity has 'manifested' itself to me for many years. I have little doubt, that many in the history of the creation of (man's) work - the bible, have also had direct 'manifestation' of this 'God' entity.
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