Aberrant monisms
I conclude my little series on monism with an analysis of its aberrations. For that I shall restrict myself to actual examples and leave hypothetical ones unconsidered.
Aberrant forms of monism come about by denying the holy either by substituting something else for it or by restricting its relevance to the liberation of the soul.
The former happens in socialism. Our mood reflects the logical consistency, adaptedness and holiness of our comportment, but of these three socialism only accepts the two immanent variants, yet the authority of its verdict remains undiminished, i.e. comportment has to agree with it and so have facing and action.
Thus socialists learn that their comportment is sanctioned by their fellow men in rituals where they are stripped of their individual dignity by being attacked for being who they are (attack therapy in Philip Kindred Dick's terms), only to realise that they can be whatever they like as long as their fellow men tolerate it
Of course, the sanctioned comportment thus has rather worldly roots and hence the established order tends to be more or less oppressive, which necessitates periodical cleansings in order to maintain socialism's purity. As of the time of this writing such a cleansing is taking place among New York democrats (for the history of the practice see for instance Doctor Zhivago).
Thus, although socialism denies transcendence altogether, it is structurally monistic. An example of the second type of the denial of the holy is given by Arthur Schopenhauer. It might be tempting to talk about Buddhism in this context, but there is no Buddhism, only Buddhist teachers, and before I consider some Tibetan monk who lived several hundred years ago, I rather consider Schopenhauer.
Schopenhauer doesn't deny transcendence at all. His will is the transcendent entity of existence in my parlance. And I have no doubt that he would have accepted my transcendent entity of the circle of the living as well. Actually, in some areas he accepted more than I do, e.g. Versuch über das Geistersehen und was damit zusammenhängt. But he did not accept a divine intelligence. Thus, according to Schopenhauer, the holy can only be negatively defined, as that which rejects existence. In so doing it frees reason from the clutches of the will and the liberated soul becomes able to see the world objectively, and in particular to create works of art.
Instead of saying that procreation preserves the good of life, he says it preserves the good of having the chance to gain enough insight to give up one's will to live. The good is resignation and the holy leads to it by elevating our understanding of the evilness of existence. Actually, Schopenhauer thus arrives at rather conventional opinions, instead of the better ruling the worse in a soul it is insight into the bad that conquers it.
And having understood that, one might accuse Schopenhauer even of sophistry, because such a substitution will always be possible. If I wanted I could rewrite my understanding of the holy so as to fit into Schopenhauer's mould, but it would lead to absurd contortions: the world developing so that it finally can crown its development by rejecting it. Granted, the intellect has that tendency: When it has solved a problem, it forgets it - who remembers mathematical proofs? But I'm quite certain that sustaining our development isn't about allowing our eventual resignation and that it's more than just rejecting one bad thing after another.
But purely logically Schopenhauer's end goal might be just as well as any other. Only that Schopenhauer has his reasons for taking this stance and they are not logical at all, but psychological. There are two things that Schopenhauer seeks to avoid:
The latter point, although connected with the former, shouldn't be confused with it: That life brings forth beautiful things cannot excuse its hardships. Schopenhauer knows of course that everything can be justified by taking the classical approach: The gods ordained it!, but he doesn't like it one bit, he even complains about Saxons' weather related contemporary stoicism that stiffens the heart. He has an instinctive understanding that it would be dangerous to assume that mindset, that it is better not to disturb the gentle souls, even that those souls are weaving something. But he also knows that in spite of everything, he can't furnish a more nuanced apology for the divine order than the one size fits all answer given by the ancients. So he rather denies God.
I have always taken the view that you should willingly receive what you have ordered and that life is overall fair in this regard. But who would order the insight that there is no other thing worth ordering? Schopenhauer, by refusing to apologise, simply opts out of man's development, or rather, would have had, if he couldn't at least have apologised for his philosophy (which happens to be of value for other reasons than the one given by him, namely primarily as an introduction for Europeans into monism).
Postscript from the following day. Characterising the effects of the aberrations one might say that one is intrusive and the other evasive.
Aberrant forms of monism come about by denying the holy either by substituting something else for it or by restricting its relevance to the liberation of the soul.
The former happens in socialism. Our mood reflects the logical consistency, adaptedness and holiness of our comportment, but of these three socialism only accepts the two immanent variants, yet the authority of its verdict remains undiminished, i.e. comportment has to agree with it and so have facing and action.
Thus socialists learn that their comportment is sanctioned by their fellow men in rituals where they are stripped of their individual dignity by being attacked for being who they are (attack therapy in Philip Kindred Dick's terms), only to realise that they can be whatever they like as long as their fellow men tolerate it
Of course, the sanctioned comportment thus has rather worldly roots and hence the established order tends to be more or less oppressive, which necessitates periodical cleansings in order to maintain socialism's purity. As of the time of this writing such a cleansing is taking place among New York democrats (for the history of the practice see for instance Doctor Zhivago).
Thus, although socialism denies transcendence altogether, it is structurally monistic. An example of the second type of the denial of the holy is given by Arthur Schopenhauer. It might be tempting to talk about Buddhism in this context, but there is no Buddhism, only Buddhist teachers, and before I consider some Tibetan monk who lived several hundred years ago, I rather consider Schopenhauer.
Schopenhauer doesn't deny transcendence at all. His will is the transcendent entity of existence in my parlance. And I have no doubt that he would have accepted my transcendent entity of the circle of the living as well. Actually, in some areas he accepted more than I do, e.g. Versuch über das Geistersehen und was damit zusammenhängt. But he did not accept a divine intelligence. Thus, according to Schopenhauer, the holy can only be negatively defined, as that which rejects existence. In so doing it frees reason from the clutches of the will and the liberated soul becomes able to see the world objectively, and in particular to create works of art.
Instead of saying that procreation preserves the good of life, he says it preserves the good of having the chance to gain enough insight to give up one's will to live. The good is resignation and the holy leads to it by elevating our understanding of the evilness of existence. Actually, Schopenhauer thus arrives at rather conventional opinions, instead of the better ruling the worse in a soul it is insight into the bad that conquers it.
And having understood that, one might accuse Schopenhauer even of sophistry, because such a substitution will always be possible. If I wanted I could rewrite my understanding of the holy so as to fit into Schopenhauer's mould, but it would lead to absurd contortions: the world developing so that it finally can crown its development by rejecting it. Granted, the intellect has that tendency: When it has solved a problem, it forgets it - who remembers mathematical proofs? But I'm quite certain that sustaining our development isn't about allowing our eventual resignation and that it's more than just rejecting one bad thing after another.
But purely logically Schopenhauer's end goal might be just as well as any other. Only that Schopenhauer has his reasons for taking this stance and they are not logical at all, but psychological. There are two things that Schopenhauer seeks to avoid:
- beauty's connection with procreation,
- apologetics.
The latter point, although connected with the former, shouldn't be confused with it: That life brings forth beautiful things cannot excuse its hardships. Schopenhauer knows of course that everything can be justified by taking the classical approach: The gods ordained it!, but he doesn't like it one bit, he even complains about Saxons' weather related contemporary stoicism that stiffens the heart. He has an instinctive understanding that it would be dangerous to assume that mindset, that it is better not to disturb the gentle souls, even that those souls are weaving something. But he also knows that in spite of everything, he can't furnish a more nuanced apology for the divine order than the one size fits all answer given by the ancients. So he rather denies God.
I have always taken the view that you should willingly receive what you have ordered and that life is overall fair in this regard. But who would order the insight that there is no other thing worth ordering? Schopenhauer, by refusing to apologise, simply opts out of man's development, or rather, would have had, if he couldn't at least have apologised for his philosophy (which happens to be of value for other reasons than the one given by him, namely primarily as an introduction for Europeans into monism).
Postscript from the following day. Characterising the effects of the aberrations one might say that one is intrusive and the other evasive.
Labels: 29, formalisierung, gesellschaftskritik, gesetze, institutionen, rezension, sehhilfen, wahrnehmungen, ἰδέα, φιλοσοφία
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14:27
