"Idealism and Consciousness": My Comment/Challenge to BK
Posted: Sat Oct 02, 2021 10:43 pm
I just came across this interview with BK from a few months ago. There is some talk about Sam Harris around minute 30, who BK really dislikes as a public intellectual (and I can't blame him for that), and how Harris "would never debate" BK because he cares so much about his public image and he knows BK would wipe the floor with him. So here is the video and the comment I posted below the video. I am not sure how else it could be brought to BK's attention, but any ideas or efforts to do so are welcome.
Speaking of not caring about public image and just debating the ideas as they come up (30 min. into video), it would be great to get BK's take on the Schopenhauer v. [Rudolf] Steiner debate which tooks place on his forum - viewtopic.php?p=11904#p11904 - "Philosophy Unbound: Schopenhauer v. Steiner".
It is sort of like Harris (Schopenhauer) v. BK (Steiner), just in terms of current popularity and visibility. Steiner basically takes Hegel's philosophy of Spirit (Thinking) to a whole new level of phenomenological analysis, and directly challenges Schopenhauer's philosophy of universal Will in his book, "The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (Freedom)", written in 1895. BK did actually address it briefly in a Q&A session, which was the inspiration for starting the thread linked above, but a few commenters (mostly myself and one other - "Cleric") responded to his response. To date, it has by far the most views on the forum at 13,550 (although admittedly much of that came from a pretty crazy back and forth with another commenter who claimed no one understands Schopenhauer OR Steiner). Here is a very crude summary of the argument written in one of the early posts:
"At the core of the vs. topic is the fact that for Schopenhauer the Will was in its essence blind (unconscious). Only at some stage does it attain to inner reflection. Steiner points out that the only will we know is that which is imbued with idea. The most intimate example of this is thinking. The point is that postulating the World Will (which is unconscious except within human bodies) as the foundation, is an act of thinking. It is not a given fact. Actually it can never be experienced as such (this Ashvin elaborated in his essay). We can never know that blind will exists as the foundation because in its very definition it is not consciously (knowingly) experienced. This defeats the whole purpose of trying to bridge the Kantian divide in this way. Yes, we recognize the part of the will that has become self-conscious within man so Schopenhauer was on to something when he sought the unity of reality within the will but he again brings the unknowable thing-in-itself into the picture when he says that the World Will outside the human being is unconscious. He certainly brings it closer to our experiential world but nevertheless remains forever inaccessible in the domain outside man."
Speaking of not caring about public image and just debating the ideas as they come up (30 min. into video), it would be great to get BK's take on the Schopenhauer v. [Rudolf] Steiner debate which tooks place on his forum - viewtopic.php?p=11904#p11904 - "Philosophy Unbound: Schopenhauer v. Steiner".
It is sort of like Harris (Schopenhauer) v. BK (Steiner), just in terms of current popularity and visibility. Steiner basically takes Hegel's philosophy of Spirit (Thinking) to a whole new level of phenomenological analysis, and directly challenges Schopenhauer's philosophy of universal Will in his book, "The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (Freedom)", written in 1895. BK did actually address it briefly in a Q&A session, which was the inspiration for starting the thread linked above, but a few commenters (mostly myself and one other - "Cleric") responded to his response. To date, it has by far the most views on the forum at 13,550 (although admittedly much of that came from a pretty crazy back and forth with another commenter who claimed no one understands Schopenhauer OR Steiner). Here is a very crude summary of the argument written in one of the early posts:
"At the core of the vs. topic is the fact that for Schopenhauer the Will was in its essence blind (unconscious). Only at some stage does it attain to inner reflection. Steiner points out that the only will we know is that which is imbued with idea. The most intimate example of this is thinking. The point is that postulating the World Will (which is unconscious except within human bodies) as the foundation, is an act of thinking. It is not a given fact. Actually it can never be experienced as such (this Ashvin elaborated in his essay). We can never know that blind will exists as the foundation because in its very definition it is not consciously (knowingly) experienced. This defeats the whole purpose of trying to bridge the Kantian divide in this way. Yes, we recognize the part of the will that has become self-conscious within man so Schopenhauer was on to something when he sought the unity of reality within the will but he again brings the unknowable thing-in-itself into the picture when he says that the World Will outside the human being is unconscious. He certainly brings it closer to our experiential world but nevertheless remains forever inaccessible in the domain outside man."