Criticism

[JeffreyW]

Perhaps we can’t, because I believe you are misrepresenting my arguments at every step. There probably is no path forward, which is fine.

Let me just list out some points I think your arguments are putting forward and you can tell me how accurate they are. Please ignore the terms used if they differ from yours, because I am asking about the core meaning underlying them, i.e. the function in your overall philosophy.

1. In ancient times, all aesthetic qualities of Being were perceived concretely/physically. At some point, perhaps around time Socrates, Plato, etc. this concreteness was divided when representational thinking made its ascendancy.

2. Since then, all Western philosophy has been abstract metaphysical attempts to intellectually recover and represent that which is unrepresentable, leading to many flawed positions such as rationalism and dualism, Kant-Schop epistemology, etc.

3. Currently, representational thinking simply builds up abstract mental models which have little or nothing to do with Being as such. The very framework of abstract space-time in which we think is completely veiling Being, whatever it is.

4. Through contemplation of poetry and music, one can experience and know qualities of Being, but this knowing cannot be systematized into any representational framework. When any such attempt is made, the aesthetic knowledge has been abstracted, reduced, and rendered meaningless.

5. We are still evolving and, at some point over evolutionary timescales of aeons, we may recover ancient perception of aesthetic qualities of Being in some form or fashion.

(Somewhere in this framework you also assert we can be epistemically confident that physical energy etc. is closer to Being as such than conscious experience of the world content, but maybe we can leave this aside for now).

1. Generally, yes, but the important difference was the removal of Being to a metaphysical plane.

2. Yes, but until Nietzsche, when that was reversed by 20th Century philosophers.

3. I would add rational reduction to space and time.
4. Yes.
5. We can recover authentic perception right now, It will take longer for us to represent a world without time, space, principle of sufficient reason, and identity principle.

[JeffreyW]

Thanks again, and once more I ask your indulgence as I try to learn these things. If you think this is bad, you should see me try to string a video together. Oddly enough, I do have GarageBand down pretty well.

Well, maybe because creating music is more vital to you than creating rhetoric, and perhaps so it should be. In a way I can see why you might prefer a face-to-face dialogue, and not have to be concerned about code and emoticons and such ... except of the body language kind such as this ...

I see what you did!

And yes, music is my primary mode of experience.

[AshvinP]

Perhaps we can’t, because I believe you are misrepresenting my arguments at every step. There probably is no path forward, which is fine.

Let me just list out some points I think your arguments are putting forward and you can tell me how accurate they are. Please ignore the terms used if they differ from yours, because I am asking about the core meaning underlying them, i.e. the function in your overall philosophy.

1. In ancient times, all aesthetic qualities of Being were perceived concretely/physically. At some point, perhaps around time Socrates, Plato, etc. this concreteness was divided when representational thinking made its ascendancy.

2. Since then, all Western philosophy has been abstract metaphysical attempts to intellectually recover and represent that which is unrepresentable, leading to many flawed positions such as rationalism and dualism, Kant-Schop epistemology, etc.

3. Currently, representational thinking simply builds up abstract mental models which have little or nothing to do with Being as such. The very framework of abstract space-time in which we think is completely veiling Being, whatever it is.

4. Through contemplation of poetry and music, one can experience and know qualities of Being, but this knowing cannot be systematized into any representational framework. When any such attempt is made, the aesthetic knowledge has been abstracted, reduced, and rendered meaningless.

5. We are still evolving and, at some point over evolutionary timescales of aeons, we may recover ancient perception of aesthetic qualities of Being in some form or fashion.

(Somewhere in this framework you also assert we can be epistemically confident that physical energy etc. is closer to Being as such than conscious experience of the world content, but maybe we can leave this aside for now).

1. Generally, yes, but the important difference was the removal of Being to a metaphysical plane.

Agreed at a broad level, although we may differ on details here.

2. Yes, but until Nietzsche, when that was reversed by 20th Century philosophers.

Specifically with Nietzsche, I hold that he made a lot of progress away from abstract metaphysics, but actually did not extricate himself from it (and the reason why is very important to our discussion here). I believe it was Heidegger who said Nietzsche was "the culmination of Western metaphysics". Steiner also comments on this in relation to his relationship with Schopenhauer and Wagner:

And since Schopenhauer saw in music an immediate image of the will, Nietzsche also believed that he should see in music the best means of expression for a Dionysian creative spirit. To Nietzsche, the language of civilized people appears sick. It can no longer be the simple expression of feelings, because words must gradually be used more and more to express the increasing intellectual conditioning of the human being. But, because of this, the meaning of words has become abstract, has become poor. They can no longer express what the Dionysian spirit feels, who creates out of this primordial will. The Dionysian spirit, therefore, is no longer able to express himself in the dramatic element in words. He must call upon other means of expression to help, above all, upon music, but also upon other arts. The Dionysian spirit becomes a dithyrambic dramatist. This concept “is so all encompassing that it includes at the; same time, the dramatist, the poet, the musician” ... “Regardless how one may imagine the development of the archetypal dramatist, in his maturity and completeness he is a figure without any hindrances whatsoever and without any gaps; he is the really free artist, who can do nothing but think in all the arts at the same time, the mediator and conciliator between apparently separate spheres, the reconstructor of a unity and totality of artistic possibilities which cannot be at all conjectured or inferred, but can be shown only through the deed.” (Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, ¶ 7)

Nietzsche revered Richard Wagner as a Dionysian spirit, and Richard Wagner can only be described as a Dionysian spirit as Nietzsche represented the latter in the above mentioned work. His instincts are turned toward the beyond; he wants to let the voice of the beyond ring forth in his music. I have already indicated that later Nietzsche found and could recognize those of his instincts which by their own nature were directed toward this world. He had originally misunderstood Wagner's art because he had misunderstood himself, because he had allowed his instincts to be tyrannized by Schopenhauer's philosophy.

3. I would add rational reduction to space and time.

So this is where we depart in a big way, because I assert that our "knowing", even by way of rationality and reason, is not a creation of inner mental models in an attempt to mirror an external reality. I say that can only be concluded by implicitly importing the Cartesian-Kantian dualism. Without the influence of that dualism, we can perceive how what we bring to the outer appearances from within in the form of concepts belongs to those appearances as much as their color, shape, size, etc., which we call sense-perceptions ("percepts").

Even if you disagree with that, I am wondering if you can see how that shift leads to radically different conclusions about what our knowing inquiries via Reason can accomplish in terms of understanding the 'aesthetic qualities' of Being?

4. Yes.

This would be one of those radically different conclusions, i.e. we can systematize aesthetic knowledge in an objective way which can be the public pursuit of philosophers and scientists and artists, just as it is for abstract intellectual theories today. We have seen the glimmers of this approach in theoretical physics, depth psychology, and cognitive science (Peterson, Vervaeke and Hoffman are good examples here), and we can expand it much further.

5. We can recover authentic perception right now, It will take longer for us to represent a world without time, space, principle of sufficient reason, and identity principle.

This relates to #3 above. My position can be crudely summarized as, we are already perceiving a world without abstract time, space, etc. (abstract as opposed to the aesthetic meaning of Time, Space, etc.), but we have simply forgotten that we are. It is veiled by each individual's localized cognition, i.e. not a forgetfulness inherent to the structure of Being itself, the latter position otherwise known as Kantian-Schop epistemology.

Ok and I will briefly summarize my own position in bold under your points above.

[JeffreyW]

Let me just list out some points I think your arguments are putting forward and you can tell me how accurate they are. Please ignore the terms used if they differ from yours, because I am asking about the core meaning underlying them, i.e. the function in your overall philosophy.

1. In ancient times, all aesthetic qualities of Being were perceived concretely/physically. At some point, perhaps around time Socrates, Plato, etc. this concreteness was divided when representational thinking made its ascendancy.

2. Since then, all Western philosophy has been abstract metaphysical attempts to intellectually recover and represent that which is unrepresentable, leading to many flawed positions such as rationalism and dualism, Kant-Schop epistemology, etc.

3. Currently, representational thinking simply builds up abstract mental models which have little or nothing to do with Being as such. The very framework of abstract space-time in which we think is completely veiling Being, whatever it is.

4. Through contemplation of poetry and music, one can experience and know qualities of Being, but this knowing cannot be systematized into any representational framework. When any such attempt is made, the aesthetic knowledge has been abstracted, reduced, and rendered meaningless.

5. We are still evolving and, at some point over evolutionary timescales of aeons, we may recover ancient perception of aesthetic qualities of Being in some form or fashion.

(Somewhere in this framework you also assert we can be epistemically confident that physical energy etc. is closer to Being as such than conscious experience of the world content, but maybe we can leave this aside for now).

1. Generally, yes, but the important difference was the removal of Being to a metaphysical plane.

Agreed at a broad level, although we may differ on details here.

2. Yes, but until Nietzsche, when that was reversed by 20th Century philosophers.

Specifically with Nietzsche, I hold that he made a lot of progress away from abstract metaphysics, but actually did not extricate himself from it (and the reason why is very important to our discussion here). I believe it was Heidegger who said Nietzsche was "the culmination of Western metaphysics". Steiner also comments on this in relation to his relationship with Schopenhauer and Wagner:

And since Schopenhauer saw in music an immediate image of the will, Nietzsche also believed that he should see in music the best means of expression for a Dionysian creative spirit. To Nietzsche, the language of civilized people appears sick. It can no longer be the simple expression of feelings, because words must gradually be used more and more to express the increasing intellectual conditioning of the human being. But, because of this, the meaning of words has become abstract, has become poor. They can no longer express what the Dionysian spirit feels, who creates out of this primordial will. The Dionysian spirit, therefore, is no longer able to express himself in the dramatic element in words. He must call upon other means of expression to help, above all, upon music, but also upon other arts. The Dionysian spirit becomes a dithyrambic dramatist. This concept “is so all encompassing that it includes at the; same time, the dramatist, the poet, the musician” ... “Regardless how one may imagine the development of the archetypal dramatist, in his maturity and completeness he is a figure without any hindrances whatsoever and without any gaps; he is the really free artist, who can do nothing but think in all the arts at the same time, the mediator and conciliator between apparently separate spheres, the reconstructor of a unity and totality of artistic possibilities which cannot be at all conjectured or inferred, but can be shown only through the deed.” (Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, ¶ 7)

Nietzsche revered Richard Wagner as a Dionysian spirit, and Richard Wagner can only be described as a Dionysian spirit as Nietzsche represented the latter in the above mentioned work. His instincts are turned toward the beyond; he wants to let the voice of the beyond ring forth in his music. I have already indicated that later Nietzsche found and could recognize those of his instincts which by their own nature were directed toward this world. He had originally misunderstood Wagner's art because he had misunderstood himself, because he had allowed his instincts to be tyrannized by Schopenhauer's philosophy.

3. I would add rational reduction to space and time.

So this is where we depart in a big way, because I assert that our "knowing", even by way of rationality and reason, is not a creation of inner mental models in an attempt to mirror an external reality. I say that can only be concluded by implicitly importing the Cartesian-Kantian dualism. Without the influence of that dualism, we can perceive how what we bring to the outer appearances from within in the form of concepts belongs to those appearances as much as their color, shape, size, etc., which we call sense-perceptions ("percepts").

Even if you disagree with that, I am wondering if you can see how that shift leads to radically different conclusions about what our knowing inquiries via Reason can accomplish in terms of understanding the 'aesthetic qualities' of Being?

4. Yes.

This would be one of those radically different conclusions, i.e. we can systematize aesthetic knowledge in an objective way which can be the public pursuit of philosophers and scientists and artists, just as it is for abstract intellectual theories today. We have seen the glimmers of this approach in theoretical physics, depth psychology, and cognitive science (Peterson, Vervaeke and Hoffman are good examples here), and we can expand it much further.

5. We can recover authentic perception right now, It will take longer for us to represent a world without time, space, principle of sufficient reason, and identity principle.

This relates to #3 above. My position can be crudely summarized as, we are already perceiving a world without abstract time, space, etc. (abstract as opposed to the aesthetic meaning of Time, Space, etc.), but we have simply forgotten that we are. It is veiled by each individual's localized cognition, i.e. not a forgetfulness inherent to the structure of Being itself, the latter position otherwise known as Kantian-Schop epistemology.

Ok and I will briefly summarize my own position in bold under your points above.

2. Heidegger did say that, and it is a point of disagreement I have with him. Heidegger had no understanding of music, and that perhaps impeded his understanding of Zarathustra. The deep bells that brought Zarathustra to his understanding of the abyss did not come from beyond, but from the bowels of Earth. And his midnight revelation of truth came not from beyond, but the moon seen through the spider web. The truths that accompanied him as snake and eagle. Nietzsche’s use of hinüber was not a beyond into a metaphysical realm but a beyond our current mentality within this world.

When I taught Nietzsche in graduate seminars, I always urged them not to read too much Schopenhauer into these works, and especially not into Zarathustra, which was a significant departure.

3. I vaguely see your point, but of course completely disagree. I should clarify that I resolutely do not see representations as totally created in the mind, but conditioned by the energy impeding our senses, with its own character. We perceive blue, for example, only in response to a narrow band of of the electro-magnetic spectrum, although this blue does not exist outside our subjective sensation. There is a formal and mathematical correspondence between our conceived objects and what they represent. But these remain superficial and reductive for their intended practical purpose.

Perhaps our difference can be shown in how we approach words. Most people today approach words as something to define; to borrow from T S Eliot: something formulated and fixed with a pin. I see that as a misappropriation of the meaning, which cannot be defined but is to be explored, much as Heidegger does with “Grund”, or “Eigen”. By rethinking poetically the manifold revelations of words, we recover their originating revelation and the history of Being they collect over time. Reasoned analysis can do no such thing, nor can this meaning be systematized. It is organic.

To repeat: we have two modes of knowledge evolved for two different purposes: Representational knowledge for practical control of our environment, and esthetic knowledge for exploring the essence of Being and our own nature as derived from it. Both are necessary in their proper realm. As Hölderlin wrote: Voll Verdienst, doch dichterisch wohnet der Mensch auf dieser Erde.

4. As continuation from above, this way holds the risk of metaphysics, and I would see your three examples as something to avoid. Science, on the other hand, is abstracted from observation, and as long as it stays within the bounds of the sensible it is perfectly legitimate. Rather, I see Rovelli as a way forward - scientists who are able to go from representation to poetic thought through metaphor.

[AshvinP]

2. Heidegger did say that, and it is a point of disagreement I have with him. Heidegger had no understanding of music, and that perhaps impeded his understanding of Zarathustra. The deep bells that brought Zarathustra to his understanding of the abyss did not come from beyond, but from the bowels of Earth. And his midnight revelation of truth came not from beyond, but the moon seen through the spider web. The truths that accompanied him as snake and eagle. Nietzsche’s use of hinüber was not a beyond into a metaphysical realm but a beyond our current mentality within this world.

When I taught Nietzsche in graduate seminars, I always urged them not to read too much Schopenhauer into these works, and especially not into Zarathustra, which was a significant departure.

We are getting deep into the core disagreements here. I believe we are looking at the exact same aesthetic phenomena, including thought-systems like that of Nietzsche's Zarathustra, and coming to completely different conclusions. Again, the only reason which makes sense of this to me is the underlying metaphysical assumption. I think you are subconsciously importing dualism, but maybe we can 'circumambulate' that particular issue by way of these other points.

The "beyond" of Wagner (and many similar artists) should not be confused for "trascendental divine" of Kant. For ex., his understanding of the "beyond" was informed by ancient German folk myths, which conveyed truths of the spirit-soul imagistically. I think that is a major modern prejudice these days - all spiritual thinking is lumped into the abstract transcendant category. Nietzsche's Zarathustra is perfect example of his intuiting an immanent spiritual reality. The "bowels of the Earth" are nothing other than the 'collective unconscious' of Jung, which is nothing other than the currently imperceptible spiritual realms (imperceptible to normal intellectual cognition). Everything that remains as fuzzy intuition, inspiration, or imagination is perceived as 'dark forces' within ourselves, just as we perceive 'dark matter', 'dark energy', and 'black holes' outwardly in the Cosmos.

But when the light of Reason and fully conscious Imagination is shed on these subconscious realms, they are perceived in their higher spiritual essence. The spiritual ideals of Wagner are consciously recovered as immanent, concretely perceived imaginations, inspirations, and intuitions which give rise to the world of appearances. That is what Jung referred to as "individuation", whereas Freud simply left it as dark realms of the human psyche, precisely because of his rationalism and implicit dualism. I think this is perfectly clear in the mythopoetic narrative of Nietzsche's Zarathustra (who, in esoteric Western tradition, is intimately connected to Christ incarnte). To what extent Nietzsche himself was aware of what higher spirtual essence was flowing through him onto the pages is a matter for reasonable debate.

3. I vaguely see your point, but of course completely disagree. I should clarify that I resolutely do not see representations as totally created in the mind, but conditioned by the energy impeding our senses, with its own character. We perceive blue, for example, only in response to a narrow band of of the electro-magnetic spectrum, although this blue does not exist outside our subjective sensation. There is a formal and mathematical correspondence between our conceived objects and what they represent. But these remain superficial and reductive for their intended practical purpose.

Perhaps our difference can be shown in how we approach words. Most people today approach words as something to define; to borrow from T S Eliot: something formulated and fixed with a pin. I see that as a misappropriation of the meaning, which cannot be defined but is to be explored, much as Heidegger does with “Grund”, or “Eigen”. By rethinking poetically the manifold revelations of words, we recover their originating revelation and the history of Being they collect over time. Reasoned analysis can do no such thing, nor can this meaning be systematized. It is organic.

To repeat: we have two modes of knowledge evolved for two different purposes: Representational knowledge for practical control of our environment, and esthetic knowledge for exploring the essence of Being and our own nature as derived from it. Both are necessary in their proper realm. As Hölderlin wrote: Voll Verdienst, doch dichterisch wohnet der Mensch auf dieser Erde.

Well, I think how the bold conclusion is connected with Cartesian-Kantian dualism should be obvious, but I will approach it in direct response to what you said.

I fully acknowledge the distinction between prosaic and poetic speech and how they function in our experience. The problem is when that is reified into a division, i.e. they are seen as categories of words with two different essences underlying them. That is a division born of the modern age and abstract intellect. It is our living Reason and Imagination which can redeem that division and put back together what our intellect tore asunder. The discontinuity you are inserting between Reason and Imagination, by way of amorphous "energy impeding our senses", is entirely unwarranted in my view, and it comes from that implicit dualism of "knowing" as recreating with mental images of mind "in here" of sensory reality "out there". It is that one 'tiny' difference in our understanding of what "knowing" is which gives rise to pretty much all of our deep disagreements above, IMO, including what you say about blue color. Consider this:

Another difficulty in the way of the unprejudiced observation of the relationship between the percept and the concept wrought by thinking, as here described, arises when, for example, in the field of experimental physics it becomes necessary to speak not of immediately perceptible elements, but of non-perceptible quantities as in the case of lines of electric or magnetic force. It may seem as if the elements of reality of which physicists speak had no connection either with what is perceptible or with the concepts which active thinking has wrought. Yet such a view would be based on self-deception. The main point is that all the results of physical research, apart from unjustifiable hypotheses which ought to be excluded, have been obtained through percept and concept. Elements which are seemingly non-perceptible are placed by the physicist's sound instinct for knowledge into the field where percepts lie, and they are thought of in terms of concepts commonly used in this field. The strengths of electric or magnetic fields and such like are arrived at, in the very nature of things, by no other process of knowledge than the one which occurs between percept and concept.

4. As continuation from above, this way holds the risk of metaphysics, and I would see your three examples as something to avoid. Science, on the other hand, is abstracted from observation, and as long as it stays within the bounds of the sensible it is perfectly legitimate. Rather, I see Rovelli as a way forward - scientists who are able to go from representation to poetic thought through metaphor.

To me, Rovelli's approach is like saying we can only escape from the modern abyss by staring into it deeper and further reducing it to the most abstract concept we can possibly imagine, his "emptiness of emptiness" (which he incorrectly adopts from Nagarjuna, precisely because he takes ancient Buddhist philosophy as abstract concepts). Now I may be wrong about Rovelli, in which case my criticism is of the general philosophy that I am assuming he holds right now. It really doesn't matter which individual person holds to it, but rather that it actually exists and is prevalent within the brightest minds of our culture.

That philosophy is completely at odds with all those great poetic thinkers we have been referencing, who presupposed in their philosophy and art that the abyss only remains dark for us in so long as we refuse to acknowledge that it can be illuminated through our Thinking. Even if the poetic thinkers didn't realize it, they were engaging in these living thought-processes. There is no logical warrant for separating out what Holderlin writes below, for example, from the process of careful Reasoning of the sort we engage in philosophy and science (without abstract assumptions). The fact that poetic speech can bear these aesthetic qualities in the first place is a direct reflection of what Reason and Idea truly are in their non-reductive essence, and what we have only temporarily forgotten due to our own flawed abstract assumptions about them and reductions of them.

Yes, they say rightly that he reconciles day with night,
And leads the stars of heaven up and down forever —
Joyful always, like the boughs of evergreen pine
That he loves, and the wreath he chose of ivy,
Since it endures, and brings a trace of the fugitive gods
Down to the darkness of those who must live in their absence.
What the sons of the ancients foretold of God's children:
Look, it's us, the fruit of Hesperia!
Through humans it is wonderfully and exactly fulfilled;
Let those believe who've examined the matter. But so much
Goes on, yet nothing succeeds: we are like heartless shadows
Until our Father Aether recognizes us and belongs to us all.
Meanwhile the Son, the Syrian, comes down among
The shadows, as torchbearer of the Highest.
Holy sages observe it; a smile shines out from
The imprisoned soul; their eyes thaw in the light.
Titans dream more softly, asleep in the arms of the earth—
Even jealous Cerberus drinks and falls asleep.

[JeffreyW]

2. Heidegger did say that, and it is a point of disagreement I have with him. Heidegger had no understanding of music, and that perhaps impeded his understanding of Zarathustra. The deep bells that brought Zarathustra to his understanding of the abyss did not come from beyond, but from the bowels of Earth. And his midnight revelation of truth came not from beyond, but the moon seen through the spider web. The truths that accompanied him as snake and eagle. Nietzsche’s use of hinüber was not a beyond into a metaphysical realm but a beyond our current mentality within this world.

When I taught Nietzsche in graduate seminars, I always urged them not to read too much Schopenhauer into these works, and especially not into Zarathustra, which was a significant departure.

We are getting deep into the core disagreements here. I believe we are looking at the exact same aesthetic phenomena, including thought-systems like that of Nietzsche's Zarathustra, and coming to completely different conclusions. Again, the only reason which makes sense of this to me is the underlying metaphysical assumption. I think you are subconsciously importing dualism, but maybe we can 'circumambulate' that particular issue by way of these other points.

The "beyond" of Wagner (and many similar artists) should not be confused for "trascendental divine" of Kant. For ex., his understanding of the "beyond" was informed by ancient German folk myths, which conveyed truths of the spirit-soul imagistically. I think that is a major modern prejudice these days - all spiritual thinking is lumped into the abstract transcendant category. Nietzsche's Zarathustra is perfect example of his intuiting an immanent spiritual reality. The "bowels of the Earth" are nothing other than the 'collective unconscious' of Jung, which is nothing other than the currently imperceptible spiritual realms (imperceptible to normal intellectual cognition). Everything that remains as fuzzy intuition, inspiration, or imagination is perceived as 'dark forces' within ourselves, just as we perceive 'dark matter', 'dark energy', and 'black holes' outwardly in the Cosmos.

But when the light of Reason and fully conscious Imagination is shed on these subconscious realms, they are perceived in their higher spiritual essence. The spiritual ideals of Wagner are consciously recovered as immanent, concretely perceived imaginations, inspirations, and intuitions which give rise to the world of appearances. That is what Jung referred to as "individuation", whereas Freud simply left it as dark realms of the human psyche, precisely because of his rationalism and implicit dualism. I think this is perfectly clear in the mythopoetic narrative of Nietzsche's Zarathustra (who, in esoteric Western tradition, is intimately connected to Christ incarnte). To what extent Nietzsche himself was aware of what higher spirtual essence was flowing through him onto the pages is a matter for reasonable debate.

3. I vaguely see your point, but of course completely disagree. I should clarify that I resolutely do not see representations as totally created in the mind, but conditioned by the energy impeding our senses, with its own character. We perceive blue, for example, only in response to a narrow band of of the electro-magnetic spectrum, although this blue does not exist outside our subjective sensation. There is a formal and mathematical correspondence between our conceived objects and what they represent. But these remain superficial and reductive for their intended practical purpose.

Perhaps our difference can be shown in how we approach words. Most people today approach words as something to define; to borrow from T S Eliot: something formulated and fixed with a pin. I see that as a misappropriation of the meaning, which cannot be defined but is to be explored, much as Heidegger does with “Grund”, or “Eigen”. By rethinking poetically the manifold revelations of words, we recover their originating revelation and the history of Being they collect over time. Reasoned analysis can do no such thing, nor can this meaning be systematized. It is organic.

To repeat: we have two modes of knowledge evolved for two different purposes: Representational knowledge for practical control of our environment, and esthetic knowledge for exploring the essence of Being and our own nature as derived from it. Both are necessary in their proper realm. As Hölderlin wrote: Voll Verdienst, doch dichterisch wohnet der Mensch auf dieser Erde.

Well, I think how the bold conclusion is connected with Cartesian-Kantian dualism should be obvious, but I will approach it in direct response to what you said.

I fully acknowledge the distinction between prosaic and poetic speech and how they function in our experience. The problem is when that is reified into a division, i.e. they are seen as categories of words with two different essences underlying them. That is a division born of the modern age and abstract intellect. It is our living Reason and Imagination which can redeem that division and put back together what our intellect tore asunder. The discontinuity you are inserting between Reason and Imagination, by way of amorphous "energy impeding our senses", is entirely unwarranted in my view, and it comes from that implicit dualism of "knowing" as recreating with mental images of mind "in here" of sensory reality "out there". It is that one 'tiny' difference in our understanding of what "knowing" is which gives rise to pretty much all of our deep disagreements above, IMO, including what you say about blue color. Consider this:

Another difficulty in the way of the unprejudiced observation of the relationship between the percept and the concept wrought by thinking, as here described, arises when, for example, in the field of experimental physics it becomes necessary to speak not of immediately perceptible elements, but of non-perceptible quantities as in the case of lines of electric or magnetic force. It may seem as if the elements of reality of which physicists speak had no connection either with what is perceptible or with the concepts which active thinking has wrought. Yet such a view would be based on self-deception. The main point is that all the results of physical research, apart from unjustifiable hypotheses which ought to be excluded, have been obtained through percept and concept. Elements which are seemingly non-perceptible are placed by the physicist's sound instinct for knowledge into the field where percepts lie, and they are thought of in terms of concepts commonly used in this field. The strengths of electric or magnetic fields and such like are arrived at, in the very nature of things, by no other process of knowledge than the one which occurs between percept and concept.

4. As continuation from above, this way holds the risk of metaphysics, and I would see your three examples as something to avoid. Science, on the other hand, is abstracted from observation, and as long as it stays within the bounds of the sensible it is perfectly legitimate. Rather, I see Rovelli as a way forward - scientists who are able to go from representation to poetic thought through metaphor.

To me, Rovelli's approach is like saying we can only escape from the modern abyss by staring into it deeper and further reducing it to the most abstract concept we can possibly imagine, his "emptiness of emptiness" (which he incorrectly adopts from Nagarjuna, precisely because he takes ancient Buddhist philosophy as abstract concepts). Now I may be wrong about Rovelli, in which case my criticism is of the general philosophy that I am assuming he holds right now. It really doesn't matter which individual person holds to it, but rather that it actually exists and is prevalent within the brightest minds of our culture.

That philosophy is completely at odds with all those great poetic thinkers we have been referencing, who presupposed in their philosophy and art that the abyss only remains dark for us in so long as we refuse to acknowledge that it can be illuminated through our Thinking. Even if the poetic thinkers didn't realize it, they were engaging in these living thought-processes. There is no logical warrant for separating out what Holderlin writes below, for example, from the process of careful Reasoning of the sort we engage in philosophy and science (without abstract assumptions). The fact that poetic speech can bear these aesthetic qualities in the first place is a direct reflection of what Reason and Idea truly are in their non-reductive essence, and what we have only temporarily forgotten due to our own flawed abstract assumptions about them and reductions of them.

Yes, they say rightly that he reconciles day with night,
And leads the stars of heaven up and down forever —
Joyful always, like the boughs of evergreen pine
That he loves, and the wreath he chose of ivy,
Since it endures, and brings a trace of the fugitive gods
Down to the darkness of those who must live in their absence.
What the sons of the ancients foretold of God's children:
Look, it's us, the fruit of Hesperia!
Through humans it is wonderfully and exactly fulfilled;
Let those believe who've examined the matter. But so much
Goes on, yet nothing succeeds: we are like heartless shadows
Until our Father Aether recognizes us and belongs to us all.
Meanwhile the Son, the Syrian, comes down among
The shadows, as torchbearer of the Highest.
Holy sages observe it; a smile shines out from
The imprisoned soul; their eyes thaw in the light.
Titans dream more softly, asleep in the arms of the earth—
Even jealous Cerberus drinks and falls asleep.

What I see here is you imposing your metaphysical framework to work your own reductionism. A couple quick examples: 1. You refer to the “thought system of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra”, although Nietzsche emphatically rejected any systematization at all. Nietzsche speculated that reason itself might be no more than an error with no explanatory power of deeper reality. Any thought system you see here is simply your own reductive projection. 2 You reduce the unfathomable mystery of Nietzsche’s Will to “nothing more than the ‘collective unconscious’ of Jung, which is nothing more…”. This is no better than Kastrup reducing the mystery to “consciousness”, or theists reducing it to some idea of god. You are the one still in the grasp of metaphysics, not I.

Once again, the major difference is between rational reductionism and esthetic fullness. Again, as in definition vs. exploration. Reason is was not evolved for or equipped to shed any light on this mystery. Nietzsche was fully aware of the Dionysian power flowing through him, which is antithetical to and impenetrable by rational analysis.

“ they are seen as categories of words with two different essences underlying them.”
This is a gross misstatement. There are no two “essences”. Essence reside in Being, which representational thought conceals. In a world revealed experientially and scientifically as elementarily irrational, I wonder how you could claim Reason’s applicability to reality.

[Eugene I]

What I see here is you imposing your metaphysical framework to work your own reductionism. A couple quick examples: 1. You refer to the “thought system of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra”, although Nietzsche emphatically rejected any systematization at all. Nietzsche speculated that reason itself might be no more than an error with no explanatory power of deeper reality. Any thought system you see here is simply your own reductive projection. 2 You reduce the unfathomable mystery of Nietzsche’s Will to “nothing more than the ‘collective unconscious’ of Jung, which is nothing more…”. This is no better than Kastrup reducing the mystery to “consciousness”, or theists reducing it to some idea of god. You are the one still in the grasp of metaphysics, not I.

Once again, the major difference is between rational reductionism and esthetic fullness. Again, as in definition vs. exploration. Reason is was not evolved for or equipped to shed any light on this mystery. Nietzsche was fully aware of the Dionysian power flowing through him, which is antithetical to and impenetrable by rational analysis.

“ they are seen as categories of words with two different essences underlying them.”
This is a gross misstatement. There are no two “essences”. Essence reside in Being, which representational thought conceals. In a world revealed experientially and scientifically as elementarily irrational, I wonder how you could claim Reason’s applicability to reality.

JW, you approach is totally legit, but if we are to take this approach and to be consistent, we cannot claim any reductions, including reduction of consciousness to energy or anything else. I understand that you don't claim energy to be "fundamental", fair enough. But, I don't see how your statement "consciousness arises from energy" (supported by a rational argument "there is no consciousness without energy, therefore ...") is not reductionism. If you would remain true to you non-reductionist and non-rationalistic position, then you just could not draw any definite conclusion whether consciousness arises from anything more elemental or not.

[AshvinP]

What I see here is you imposing your metaphysical framework to work your own reductionism. A couple quick examples: 1. You refer to the “thought system of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra”, although Nietzsche emphatically rejected any systematization at all. Nietzsche speculated that reason itself might be no more than an error with no explanatory power of deeper reality. Any thought system you see here is simply your own reductive projection. 2 You reduce the unfathomable mystery of Nietzsche’s Will to “nothing more than the ‘collective unconscious’ of Jung, which is nothing more…”. This is no better than Kastrup reducing the mystery to “consciousness”, or theists reducing it to some idea of god. You are the one still in the grasp of metaphysics, not I.

Once again, the major difference is between rational reductionism and esthetic fullness. Again, as in definition vs. exploration. Reason is was not evolved for or equipped to shed any light on this mystery. Nietzsche was fully aware of the Dionysian power flowing through him, which is antithetical to and impenetrable by rational analysis.

“ they are seen as categories of words with two different essences underlying them.”
This is a gross misstatement. There are no two “essences”. Essence reside in Being, which representational thought conceals. In a world revealed experientially and scientifically as elementarily irrational, I wonder how you could claim Reason’s applicability to reality.

JW,

My whole argument is that there is thinking involved in all experience and all activity, including aesthetic speech, which is self-evident if that activity is not subconsciously ignored by the person who is thinking. Ironically, and self-defeatingly, one must think to claim that one is not thinking when speaking and knowing aesthetically. So Nietzsche Zarathustra's "thought-system" is an imaginative and poetic one, but it is one nonetheless (in the broadest sense of it being a system of related thought-symbols).

Jung's 'collective unconscious' (I prefer "subconscious") is simply all currently imperceptible, unknown experience of Being from one's localized perspective in space-time, and the same applies to what I am calling the "spiritual realms". So, by definition, they encompass Being. I only brought that up because you didn't seem to realize the "bowels of the Earth" is imagery of the collective subconscious, i.e. the "beyond".

Anyway, the key questions I want you to ask you at this point, and would appreciate a reply to, are as follows - are you aware that when you write reasoned conclusions about "energy", "esthetic knowledge", etc. that you are, in fact, thinking, even if you normally don't pay attention to that activity while you are engaged in it? Do you acknowledge that the thinking voice in your head is always present in these situations? For ex., when you say "energy is more fundamental than consciousness", or "reason and rationality evolved for a different purpose than aesthetic knowledge", does "energy" or "aesthetic knowledge" relay this conclusion directly through your speech-organ, or is it that thinking voice in your head which arrives to it first? Thanks.

[JeffreyW]

What I see here is you imposing your metaphysical framework to work your own reductionism. A couple quick examples: 1. You refer to the “thought system of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra”, although Nietzsche emphatically rejected any systematization at all. Nietzsche speculated that reason itself might be no more than an error with no explanatory power of deeper reality. Any thought system you see here is simply your own reductive projection. 2 You reduce the unfathomable mystery of Nietzsche’s Will to “nothing more than the ‘collective unconscious’ of Jung, which is nothing more…”. This is no better than Kastrup reducing the mystery to “consciousness”, or theists reducing it to some idea of god. You are the one still in the grasp of metaphysics, not I.

Once again, the major difference is between rational reductionism and esthetic fullness. Again, as in definition vs. exploration. Reason is was not evolved for or equipped to shed any light on this mystery. Nietzsche was fully aware of the Dionysian power flowing through him, which is antithetical to and impenetrable by rational analysis.

“ they are seen as categories of words with two different essences underlying them.”
This is a gross misstatement. There are no two “essences”. Essence reside in Being, which representational thought conceals. In a world revealed experientially and scientifically as elementarily irrational, I wonder how you could claim Reason’s applicability to reality.

JW, you approach is totally legit, but if we are to take this approach and to be consistent, we cannot claim any reductions, including reduction of consciousness to energy or anything else. I understand that you don't claim energy to be "fundamental", fair enough. But, I don't see how your statement "consciousness arises from energy" (supported by a rational argument "there is no consciousness without energy, therefore ...") is not reductionism. If you would remain true to you non-reductionist and non-rationalistic position, then you just could not draw any definite conclusion whether consciousness arises from anything more elemental or not.

Of course, you are quite right it’s reductionist. My preferred approach is a non-reductionist acknowledgment that we can’t even know if there is an “ontological primitive”, let alone say what it is. But Kastrup explicitly makes his argument as a reductionist, for which I have played clips in both my videos, and here I address it within his metaphysical framework as a “what if” to show that even in his reductionism we can show energy to be more fundamental than consciousness.

[Eugene I]

Of course, you are quite right it’s reductionist. My preferred approach is a non-reductionist acknowledgment that we can’t even know if there is an “ontological primitive”, let alone say what it is. But Kastrup explicitly makes his argument as a reductionist, for which I have played clips in both my videos, and here I address it within his metaphysical framework as a “what if” to show that even in his reductionism we can show energy to be more fundamental than consciousness.

Kastrup's philosophy is definitely a version of reductionist metaphysics, no question about that.

But if we take your approach, how can then we claim that the "Being" is the "ontological primitive" or at least something that everything else emerges or "springs" form?

My view according to the non-reductionist approach would rather be that "Being" is simply an obvious aspect or quality of every possible thing in the world: every thing "is", it exists, and so has a quality of "being-ness". And this is all we can say about it. To claim that such being-ness quality is fundamental to everything else and all things emerge from the Being is already a reductionist step. And if we further make a stronger claim that there is nothing from which the Being itself emerges (no other "turtle underneath"), then we arrive at a definite "ontological primitive", the very conclusion you were trying to avoid.