Re: Greer post on philosophy
Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2022 5:44 pm
Thanks, Ben. For some reason I was not notified of the response by email. Here it is:Ben Iscatus wrote: ↑Mon Jan 10, 2022 5:27 pm You forgot to post his response, Ash.
But anyway, his latest post says this:
"The mythology of progress I’ve critiqued at length in a variety of venues is only one form that this delusion took; you can find it equally often in spirituality, spanning the notional space from Rudolf Steiner at the century’s beginning to Ken Wilber at its end."
JMG wrote:Ash, I plan on discussing Steiner in future posts, but I’m not yet sure if that’s one of the things I’ll be discussing at length, since the differences between his monist idealism and the Schopenhauerian critical idealism I prefer derive from first principles, and I’ve never seen an argument about those that went anywhere but around in circles. (There’s a case to be made, I think, for the suggestion that every philosopher’s account of the world is ultimately an autobiography, and the only proper response to one that seems false is “Well, that’s not how the world appears to me.”) What impresses me about Steiner is the energy with which he explored the possibilities that come open when you develop and use the imagination as an instrument of perception; if he made mistakes as a result, and overstated his case now and then, that’s a common issue with pioneers, and those who come after are tasked with correcting those problems and mapping out the territory that’s been opened up.
So it looks like he and BK have something in common, as they hold to Schopenhauer's critical idealism. I have also never seen an argument that does not go around in circles on this topic, but that has been for lack of understanding of what Steiner's argument actually is. It sounds like JMG is just going to skip over that most critical epistemic disagreement entirely. I see that he adopts Nietzsche's insight in bold, and also Nietzsche's shortcomings, the main one being he was tyrannized by Schop's uber-pessimistic philosophy. That would also explain why he writes off all forms of progress, i.e. cognitive evolution, as "myth". The question is, can he address the facts of cognitive evolution with reasoned logic or only write it off in a shadow-rationalist fashion? Ironically, it is the very refusal to look at the facts impartially that makes him feel it would be a waste of time looking at the facts, and that arguments can only go around in circles, because all power of Thinking to transcend abstract intellect has been removed from the outset.
The world is my idea." In this sentence Schopenhauer has summed up the thought of recent philosophy. Schopenhauer must be mentioned here, because his main work, The World as Will and Idea, ever since its publication in 1818, has most persistently determined the whole tone of all of nineteenth- and twentieth-century thought - even where this is not immediately obvious, and even where Schopenhauer's statement is opposed. We forget too easily that a thinker is more essentially effective where he is opposed than where he finds agreement.
Even Nietzsche had to pass through a head-on confrontation with Schopenhauer; and despite the fact that his understanding of the will was the opposite of Schopenhauer's, Nietzsche held fast to Schopenhauer's axiom: "The world is my idea."
- Martin Heidegger, What is Called Thinking?
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. This subordination of his own instincts to a foreign spirit power appeared to him later like a sickness. He discovered that he had not listened to his instincts, and had allowed himself to be led astray by an opinion which was not in accord with his, that he had allowed an art to work upon these instincts which could only be to their disadvantage, and which finally had to make them ill.
- Rudolf Steiner, Friedrich Nietzsche: Fighter for Freedom (1895)