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Sitaram · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079

http://sulekha.com/chpost.asp?for...ilosophy&show=0&cid=81872

I wonder if there is a genetic component that predisposes some
people to be philosophical ?

Thomas Mmerton wrote: it is not our speech which disturbs our
stillness, but our anxiety to be heard

We may please some of the people all of the time, and all of the
peoople some of the time, but we cannot please all of the people all
of the time

Study the sentence carefully, you will notice the word "may", which
is quite different in meaning from "must", denoting possibility, but
not necessity

The desire for superiority is perhaps part of the primordial survival
instinct, a will to power which may
be seen in some manner in all forms of life, a striving for advantage

Putting it a different way, sartre said "hell is other people"

Hate is easy, love is a challenge

Socrates frequently said "xalapa ta kala" (beautiful things are
difficult)... (though the converse, "difficult things are beautiful"
does not necessarily hold true)

It is so simple to be happy, but it is so difficult to be simple

No one is ever cheated out of death, even those who are never born
get to die (foetuses).... but life is an
opportunity, we must try to find something to do with this
opportunity called "life"

I have been thinking lately about the "noble lie" in Plato's Republic

There are things which empower us apart from any question their
facticity

There is some ambiguity in that the "red" sea may also be translated
as "the sea of reeds" (implying something far more shallow)

Are there facts which are not historical?

In "Brothers Karamazov", Doestoevsky has an interesting dialogue
between two brothers (alyosha the monk and Ivan
the atheist), and ivan reads him a poem he wrote about Christ coming
back and meeting the grand inquisitor of the spanish inquisition

You would enjoy reading a paperback "Starets Amvrosy as a Model for
Staretz Zosima in Doestoevsky's
Brothers Karamazov", it is about the real life monk/priest at the
Optina Pustn, whom Doestoevsky met and used as a model for the
fictional Father Zossima

http://publish.uwo.ca/~jbell/Iit4.pdf

this url looks interesting on doestoevsky

By the way, both friends and foes of christianity will benefit
greatly from reading Jaroslav Pelikan's 5 vol.
(paperback) "History and Development of Christian Doctrine" (pelikan
is a Sterling Prof. of History at Yale)

You might also like the 1 volume paperback "History of Heresy" by
David Christie-Murray, who began the book as
an anglican priest, but after 20 years of research, was so
transformed that he became a Quaker

Read the banned catholic Hans Kung's "On Being Christian", it is a
worthwhile read

here is a url with the actual passage from doestoevsky's Brothers
Karamazov, the dialogue between the monk

Alyosha and his atheist brother Ivan, regarding Christ

meeting the Grand Inquisitor

http://jesus.com.au/library/literature/grand_inquisitor.

php

Would that everything could boil down to an essential point (tis a
consumation devoutly to be

wished)... but anyone is free to read, if they like

Which reminds me, that famous director of "the seven samurai",
Kurasawa, was asked by a critic "what is the essential point of your
film", and he answered, "if there was one essential point, I would
not have made the film, i would have held up a card with that
essential point written out" (i though that an amusing and
instructive anecdote when i first heard it)

My interest has been aroused recently by the following:

"if knowledge is power, and power corrupts, then does it follow that
knowledge corrupts"

Hegel spoke of absolute knowledge (and an end to history)

Flesh is grass

Godel seems to have bailed us out, at least in mathematics, with that
incompleteness proof, and

Heisenberg bailed us out i suppose in quantum, perhaps we are safe
from the clutches of absolute knowledge we are spared from absolute
knowledge, but not it seems from urls

Rebel without a cause

Don Quixote, jousting at windmills

Ursula LeGuin: left hand of darkness

The Lathe of Heaven (LeGuin) is excellent

Socrates spoke of being a midwife to help people "give birth" (to
ideas i suppose)

I heard of a small child who was utterly terrified at a disney film
with a wicked witch (was it snow white)

I suppose hanzel and gretel was really about cannibalism in some
sense, but then (many are offended

when i say this), the the same might be said of the eucharist

Hero with a thousand faces - joseph campbell

The pbs 9 hour interview of bill moyers with joseph campbell is quite
worthwhile (and available on vhs/dvd)

"the power of myth" is the title, also available in book form

Jung did such fine work on myth

Jung was such a giant,... it is said that freud feared him and once
fainted while in his presence

a wonderful book on the interaction between freud and jung
entitled "Freud and Jung: Years of Friendship,

Years of Loss" (grew out of the author's NYU masters dissertation)

"Assault on Truth" is a powerful criticism of Freud by someone who
was a dedicated freudian for years,

(and was a trustee of the Freud Archives)

Nothing benefits us, unless we learn about it (sort of like pills in
a bottle, they do not benefit us unless

and until we open the bottle and try some)

Curious, that term "think tank", which vaguely resembles "septic
tank", oh, and also, fish tank

All those brainy people behind glass doors, (with people walking by
and peering in)

In one medical school, the professor passed out the first exam to the
first year students,... and there

was only one question on it: "what is the name of the woman whom you
see every night cleaning" (his point was that the future doctors
should take a personal interest others, and not see them as things or
objects)

Of course, kant said that others should always be an end, and not a
means to an end

Needless to say, all those students failed their first test, but
perhaps many carried an indelible lesson

away from that failure

Failure is sometimes an excellent teacher, no?

Stop and think how, since the time of the industrial revolution, and
Descartes Method,... we have

been seeking methods, formulas, (and paint by number technology) to
make everyone wise, (like some magic wand)... now everyone can buy
adobe paintshop (even if they are not artistic), and the quadratic
equation lets everone solve 2nd degree polynomials... or should i
say, make everyone clever (even the
automatic rifle makes every taylor into a warrior)

An old neoconfucian/taoist saying "when the wrong person employs the
right means, then the right means

yield the wrong result"

or the notion that EVERYONE must go to college, get a bachelor's
degree (or else there is something

wrong with you)

wrong person/right means means giving photoshop and quark to someone
who does not have the eye of a graphic artist

nietzsche's comment

aha, yes, i have that neitzsche quote in my back pack, in a wonderful
lecture given by Eva Brann, st. johns

tutor, in fall of 1967, entitled "the student's problem" i shall
fetch it now from my knapsack...

alex: well you KNOW how i detest posting url's , but no it is not
anywhere, and when i have time, i should like to post it

ok... Nietzsche wrote this about the Universities in 1873:

"... The young man is kicked through all the centuries; boys who know
nothing of war, diplomacy, or commerce are considered fit to be
introduced to political history. We moderns also run through art
galleries and hear concerts in the same way as the young man runs
through history.

We can fel that one thing sounds different from another, and
pronounce on the different "effects".

And the power of gradually losing all feelings of strangeness or
astonishment, and finally being pleasd at

anything, is called the historical sense or historical culture.

The crowd of influences streaming on the young soul is so great, the
clods of barbarism and violence flung at him so strange and
overwhelming that an assumed stupidity is his only refuge.

a one to one teacher/disciple was a wonderful way, but the industrial
revolutionization of education

for the masses demands overhead projection of transparencies (with
xerox handouts of course) and

multiple choice exams

discipleship is a luxury in the wealth of these modern times

except for 4 years at st. johns annapolis, i have had to teach myself
most of my life,...

Apparently Jefferson felt that education was essential for the
populace, for the survival of the

infant republic, and small liberal arts colleges sprang up everywhere

This situation of mine was not bad , not good, just the way it was
for me, i had

little choice

I once spoke at great length with a PhD Clinical Psychologist, and
he complained that the dissertation

writing process was a tedious struggle with each paragraph, to arrive
at the lowest common denominator of

consensus with all the members of a committee

But then someone once observed that a camel is a horse designed by a
committee

the point being that horses are so noble and elegant, while camels
are comical and ungainly

It just now occurs to me that, whatever anyone may study, read,
learn, well.. it matters very little

unless they can USE it in some way (oh i dont mean necessarily
practical), but if you have studied some

area, have you mastered it enough to speak about it extemporaneously
for hours, in such a way as to

illuminate or simplify issues for others,... or can you weave things
together in writing in a way that makes it

fresh and alive, that attracts or inspires others....

someone once said that each persons life is worth a novel

snoopy once said "those who cannot do teach"

welcome to the cherished minority, enjoy your persecution (just
joshing)

and as socrates would say "by the dog!"

i have an entire book to recommend about pooh "the pooh purplex"
written by a literature phD to
demonstrate isogesis, reading anything you like into a work

one chaper was freudian: entitled "the underside of pooh"

another chapter was supposed to by a humanist, showing how pooh fits
right into the roomy fabric of humanism

I suppose there was some existentialist chapter on pooh,... and some
deconstructionist chapter

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