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Re: Schopenhauer being clumsy or sort of dumb?

Posted: Mon Jul 05, 2021 4:27 pm
by AshvinP
Soul_of_Shu wrote: Mon Jul 05, 2021 4:14 pm
AshvinP wrote: Mon Jul 05, 2021 3:58 pmBK's framing in DSM is even better (which also aligns with his framing in the Q&A response). That is a much more comprehensive framing which still manages to omit this basic observation of our own Thinking activity that we are trying to highlight. Sometimes these things begin sounding too abstract and roundabout, so let me just state is this way - until we understand our own force as spiritual beings who bring meaning to the world through Thinking, we are going absolutely nowhere with our otherwise sound philosophy. The long-term metamorphic consideration is very important, but not at all necessary to recognize this fact, as Steiner demonstrates clearly in PoF. Recognizing this fact is not the final explication of what is going on, it's the very beginning of the process to try and figure out what's going on.
Well put ... in any case, my reading of Steiner is pretty much limited to your and/or Cleric's framing of it, so I'm in no position to challenge it.
Thanks, but that's precisely the problem. I'm really not trying to give you a hard time here, but I know you are someone who will consider these things carefully. Until you read PoF, it will be limited only to our "framing of it" and that can easily get lost in a sea of abstractions when coming across other philosophers who write just as well or better and put forth very interesting ideas and arguments. When you have some time, I really encourage you to take a look at it online and start reading the first few chapters at least to see if it truly resonates with your thought. Here is the link - https://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/En ... index.html

Re: Schopenhauer being clumsy or sort of dumb?

Posted: Mon Jul 05, 2021 4:43 pm
by Soul_of_Shu
AshvinP wrote: Mon Jul 05, 2021 4:27 pmThanks, but that's precisely the problem. I'm really not trying to give you a hard time here, but I know you are someone who will consider these things carefully. Until you read PoF, it will be limited only to our "framing of it" and that can easily get lost in a sea of abstractions when coming across other philosophers who write just as well or better and put forth very interesting ideas and arguments. When you have some time, I really encourage you to take a look at it online and start reading the first few chapters at least to see if it truly resonates with your thought. Here is the link - https://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/En ... index.html
Well currently, as the sole mod here, most of my allotted reading time is absorbed by this forum, so the prospect of delving into such tomes leaves one feeling a bit tired just thinking about it, but I will give it a look ... though I'm loathe to say it may have to wait until after Wimbledon, the Euro finals, and the Jays and Les Habs are eliminated :oops:

Re: Schopenhauer being clumsy or sort of dumb?

Posted: Mon Jul 05, 2021 5:13 pm
by findingblanks
Soul, you said:

"For what it's worth, my take on the Schope quote is that in making the point that there are no objective 'things' out there existing independent of consciousness, but only the experience of the apparency of such objects, he's surely aware that the 'hand and the eye' are as much a part of that apparency as the 'earth and the sun.' But since he's not here to clarify this implicit understanding, we're left with woulda/coulda/shoulda ruminations about how it may have been here and there better worded—not an exercise I'm inclined to indulge in..."

I think you are absolutely right. In fact, so far, I can't imagine that Schopenhauer would have claimed that human hands and eyes are the exception to this thousands of page explication of the nature of representations.

"But no doubt you'll carry on as you seem compelled to do."

You know how Bernardo likes to do four hour podcasts? I love it. And I think when Bernardo feels that his work or Jung's or Schopehauer's is being misunderstood, going on about it is great.

Unfortunately, as I said, I need actual scholars to step in and tell me if Steiner is capturing a fatal flaw in Schopenhauer's philosophy. Steiner clearly believes that Schopenhauer missed a very simple logical contradiction and this destroys his philosophy? Steiner wasn't a bad philosopher, but this is the move that bad philosophers make all the time: Find a paragraph, find a contradiction in the phrasing, reveal the implications of that contradiction, and you've destroyed an edifice. Typically the other philosopher can very quickly explain why the summation misses the point they've already made more clearly elsewhere. Steiner himself often talked about the way this was done to him and it was impossible to avoid.

Anyway, Soul, you'll probably get your wish because I'm not a Schopenhauer expert. It seems somewhat obvious what Bernardo would say if he actually had the time to see the way Steiner destroyed Schopenhauer's entire body of work. But maybe someday :)

Re: Schopenhauer being clumsy or sort of dumb?

Posted: Mon Jul 05, 2021 10:51 pm
by AshvinP
findingblanks wrote: Mon Jul 05, 2021 5:13 pm Soul, you said:

"For what it's worth, my take on the Schope quote is that in making the point that there are no objective 'things' out there existing independent of consciousness, but only the experience of the apparency of such objects, he's surely aware that the 'hand and the eye' are as much a part of that apparency as the 'earth and the sun.' But since he's not here to clarify this implicit understanding, we're left with woulda/coulda/shoulda ruminations about how it may have been here and there better worded—not an exercise I'm inclined to indulge in..."

I think you are absolutely right. In fact, so far, I can't imagine that Schopenhauer would have claimed that human hands and eyes are the exception to this thousands of page explication of the nature of representations.

"But no doubt you'll carry on as you seem compelled to do."

You know how Bernardo likes to do four hour podcasts? I love it. And I think when Bernardo feels that his work or Jung's or Schopehauer's is being misunderstood, going on about it is great.

Unfortunately, as I said, I need actual scholars to step in and tell me if Steiner is capturing a fatal flaw in Schopenhauer's philosophy. Steiner clearly believes that Schopenhauer missed a very simple logical contradiction and this destroys his philosophy? Steiner wasn't a bad philosopher, but this is the move that bad philosophers make all the time: Find a paragraph, find a contradiction in the phrasing, reveal the implications of that contradiction, and you've destroyed an edifice. Typically the other philosopher can very quickly explain why the summation misses the point they've already made more clearly elsewhere. Steiner himself often talked about the way this was done to him and it was impossible to avoid.

Anyway, Soul, you'll probably get your wish because I'm not a Schopenhauer expert. It seems somewhat obvious what Bernardo would say if he actually had the time to see the way Steiner destroyed Schopenhauer's entire body of work. But maybe someday :)
So we won't be hearing from your "scholar" on Schopenhauer, after all? There are so many things maddening about your above post and your disingenuous approach in general, but nothing good will come of pointing it out. I am going to exercise my universal Will and refrain... for now.

Re: Schopenhauer being clumsy or sort of dumb?

Posted: Tue Jul 06, 2021 1:06 am
by findingblanks
I wonder if Schopenhauer wasn't aware that his grasping of the fundamental nature of the will has to have included a fundamental aspect of that will. I'd be shocked that I'd see that and he wouldn't. Too bad nobody here really knows what Schopenhauer means and can point to paragraphs and chapters in which he possibly indicates that grasping reality intuitively can't involve something not essentially active as that reality.

It seems foolish to imagine he thought that his deepest ideas were just cloudy guesses floating far away from his subject matter. But it also is foolish to not notice that your hands and eyes are representations as much as the sun and the moon. This could be the kind of foolishness that upsets Bernardo about materialists.

One of us might somebody study his work so intensely that we will feel very confident in knowing exactly what he meant in the passage that Steiner says makes his entire philosophy collapse on itself.

Re: Schopenhauer being clumsy or sort of dumb?

Posted: Tue Jul 06, 2021 1:08 am
by findingblanks
"So we won't be hearing from your "scholar" on Schopenhauer, after all?"

How about I email him every four hours that I find he hasn't posted here? I could threaten him with blackmail? I notice that I don't always get what i want. For instance, I want to really understand Schopenhauer's philosophy enough to know if Steiner's summation is accurate. It seems to me that Schopenhauer wasn't implying that hands and eyes are special but I certainly see why if he did, Steiner was right! That would be amazing!

Re: Schopenhauer being clumsy or sort of dumb?

Posted: Tue Jul 06, 2021 1:37 am
by AshvinP
findingblanks wrote: Tue Jul 06, 2021 1:08 am "So we won't be hearing from your "scholar" on Schopenhauer, after all?"

How about I email him every four hours that I find he hasn't posted here? I could threaten him with blackmail? I notice that I don't always get what i want. For instance, I want to really understand Schopenhauer's philosophy enough to know if Steiner's summation is accurate. It seems to me that Schopenhauer wasn't implying that hands and eyes are special but I certainly see why if he did, Steiner was right! That would be amazing!
Please... if you had any real interest in understanding Schopenhauer or Steiner, you would have been paying attention to Cleric's posts which explained the holistic meaning of both philosophies several times in two different threads. You would be reading them carefully and then responding with questions for clarification or challenges if you still have any. You would have also responded directly to my point that Steiner is not - I repeat NOT - claiming Schopenhauer said hands and eyes are "special", so that entire point of yours is a strawman. But you stopped doing that because these things became so patently obvious that there was no way to obfuscate them more. So now you start claiming a Schopenhauer "scholar" is backing you up in private. I am not saying you are 100% lying, but if someone forced me to put money on it, I wouldn't hesitate for a second with my bet. And if someone with the nickname "Schopenhauer Scholar" shows up on this thread soon after I post this comment, I am going to analyze any posts to see if the manner of writing is similar to your own. Yes... that's how much your obfuscating approach has gotten under my skin at this point :!:

Re: Schopenhauer being clumsy or sort of dumb?

Posted: Wed Jul 07, 2021 5:02 pm
by findingblanks
Yeah, but sometimes it seems like people read Steiner saying,

"That with this the whole theory cancels itself, is clear without further argument."

As if he isn't talking about his own interpretation of Schopenhauer's paragraph. I'm not even that smart and I can see that it is much more likely that Schopenhauer was referring to his ultimate distinction between his ontological primitive and the being through which that primitive 'peeks'. Steiner often talked about how clumbsy he was in his own core texts but that only 'ill-will' would cause a person to try to claim Steiner contradicted himself merely because of a clumsy expression.

I disagree with Steiner. I do not believe that only ill-will causes that kind of rhetoric.

But Steiner clearly thinks that Schopenhauer was claiming that the hands and eyes are very very special and that Schopenhauer never really explained why they were allowed to be special. I see why Steiner felt his understanding of Schopenhauer revealed that Schopenhauer had missed a fairly obvious contradition which "destroyed" his entire philosophy.

But I think a more charitable and coherent understanding of the paragraph is that Schopenhauer was referring to his primary distinciton and not overlooking a simple contradiction. If Steiner's summary was wrong, what would happen, I wonder? I have no clue what would happen.

Re: Schopenhauer being clumsy or sort of dumb?

Posted: Wed Jul 07, 2021 5:38 pm
by AshvinP
findingblanks wrote: Wed Jul 07, 2021 5:02 pm Yeah, but sometimes it seems like people read Steiner saying,

"That with this the whole theory cancels itself, is clear without further argument."

As if he isn't talking about his own interpretation of Schopenhauer's paragraph. I'm not even that smart and I can see that it is much more likely that Schopenhauer was referring to his ultimate distinction between his ontological primitive and the being through which that primitive 'peeks'. Steiner often talked about how clumbsy he was in his own core texts but that only 'ill-will' would cause a person to try to claim Steiner contradicted himself merely because of a clumsy expression.

I disagree with Steiner. I do not believe that only ill-will causes that kind of rhetoric.

But Steiner clearly thinks that Schopenhauer was claiming that the hands and eyes are very very special and that Schopenhauer never really explained why they were allowed to be special. I see why Steiner felt his understanding of Schopenhauer revealed that Schopenhauer had missed a fairly obvious contradition which "destroyed" his entire philosophy.

But I think a more charitable and coherent understanding of the paragraph is that Schopenhauer was referring to his primary distinciton and not overlooking a simple contradiction. If Steiner's summary was wrong, what would happen, I wonder? I have no clue what would happen.
FB, for the last time, Steiner did NOT, that is N-O-T, NOT think Schipenhauer was claiming hands and eyes are very very special. I know you are smart enough to understand that simple sentence I just wrote, so why you avoiding it, pretending it doesn't exist, and then repeating that falsehood over and over again? I am starting to wonder if you are real person or AI robot at this point... either that or your will is the illest of them all.

Re: Schopenhauer being clumsy or sort of dumb?

Posted: Wed Jul 07, 2021 5:59 pm
by findingblanks
"Steiner did NOT, that is N-O-T, NOT think Schipenhauer was claiming hands and eyes are very very special."

I believe that entirely depends on what you mean and what I mean by 'special.' And I don't think we are bad people for not having had a technical conversation about that term. Just as I don't think Schopenhauer nor Steiner were being lazy when they spoke in clumsy ways.

"The eye and the hand are percepts no less than the sun and the earth."

Steiner thinks that Schopenhauer thought of the sun and moon in one very specific way and, yet, thought of 'hands' and 'eyes' in a very different way. How do we know that Steiner thought Schopenhauer had a different understanding of those terms. Well, Steiner contrasts his own ideas with what he believes are Schopenhauer's when he says, "The eye and the hand are percepts no less than the sun and the earth."

You see, 'no less' is often a way of saying something like, "There is no significant difference in this context..."

Steiner certainly thought that Schopenhauer was making a significant distinction between the sun and the eye that sees the sun. And Steiner, then, points out that if Schopenhauer were to be consistent with what he has said about the nature of representations, then he is not allowed to make this distinction when speaking about an eye that sees the sun. Steiner shows that this contradiction points to a fundamental flaw in Schopenhauer's philosophy.

However, I'm simply saying that it can be argued that Schopenhauer wasn't drawing the distinction that Steiner believes he is. I am not very smart, but I can see why Bernardo would say that Schopenhauer, in the paragraph above, is distinguishing all representations from his ontological primitive, that he is not implying there is actually an eye that allows for the representation of the sun. Schopenhauer would say - some of us might think - that the eye is just as much a representation as the sun. Just as Steiner hopes we realize. But maybe somebody will make an argument that convinces me that Schopenhauer literally believed that the eye is more than a representation. I'm going to wait and see. Steiner did not even try to make that argument. He simply took it for granted that Schopenhauer's words must have meant how he took them.