I feel like Bernardo is getting carried away in a scary direction

[Hedge90]

I know I'm not the only one noticing this, but I feel like Bernardo's focus is slowly but surely shifting from a meaning-oriented yet rational philosophy towards something that's basically nihilism in anything but name. Tbh this worries me to some extent, because I think Bernardo is a man of great intellect, who helped me understand things that I couldn't piece together by myself. I find the notion that ultimately he seems like he's arriving at a nihilistic point of view alarming.
Do you know any - if possible, contemporary - philosopher (other than Steiner), who has a similar idealistic framework, but whose ultimate conclusion is not "nothing is true, everything is permitted"?

[AshvinP]

I know I'm not the only one noticing this, but I feel like Bernardo's focus is slowly but surely shifting from a meaning-oriented yet rational philosophy towards something that's basically nihilism in anything but name. Tbh this worries me to some extent, because I think Bernardo is a man of great intellect, who helped me understand things that I couldn't piece together by myself. I find the notion that ultimately he seems like he's arriving at a nihilistic point of view alarming.
Do you know any - if possible, contemporary - philosopher (other than Steiner), who has a similar idealistic framework, but whose ultimate conclusion is not "nothing is true, everything is permitted"?

Hedge,

If by contemporary you mean currently alive, then I am not sure. I have heard some positive things about Daniel Schmachtenberger and Zak Stein, but I don't really know much about them or whether they are metaphysical idealist. In many ways, it seems to me that the people with the most insights to offer now are completely apart from metaphysical discussions. That is because one must really abandon the hyper-abstract concepts of intellectual metaphysics to get to any deeper insights. Abstraction from concrete experience is what leads to nihilism, as it further disconnects us from the life of the Soul-Spirit. We must abstract to think intellectually, but we should always seek out imaginative analogies which marry those abstractions to concrete realities. I think it is more than enough to keep up with Jonathan Pageau and Jordan Peterson when they have spiritual discussions. Everything ideal-psychological is also spiritual-soulful. Psyche = Soul.

The question is nothing less than this: 'does the psychic in general - that is, the spirit, or the unconscious 0 arise in us; or is the psyche, in the early stages of consciousness, actually outside us in the form of arbitrary powers with intentions of their own, and does it gradually come to take its place within us in the course of psychic developments? Were the dissociated psychic contents - to use our modern terms - ever parts of the psyches of individuals, or were they rather from the beginning psychic entities existing in themselves... Were they only by degrees embodied by man in the course of development, so that they gradually constituted in him that world which we now call the psyche?

The whole question strikes us as dangerously paradoxical, and yet we are able to conceive something of the kind. Not only the religious teacher, but the pedagogue as well, assumes that it is possible to implant in the human psyche something that was not previously there. The power of suggestion and influence in a fact... the idea of a complicated building-up of the psyche is expressed in primitive form is many widespread beliefs - for instance, possession, the incarnation of ancestral spirits, the immigration of souls, and so forth. When someone sneezes, we still say: "God bless you", and mean by it: "I hope your new soul will do you no harm.

For those not still alive, there are many modern thinkers who took things in a more concrete direction - Goethe, Coleridge, Emerson, Wagner, Barfield, Gebser (sort of), Jung, Bergson, Teilhard de Chardin, Sri Aurobindo. Lately I have also been appreciating the writings of Mircea Eliade.

[Martin_]

Do you know any - if possible, contemporary - philosopher (other than Steiner), who has a similar idealistic framework, but whose ultimate conclusion is not "nothing is true, everything is permitted"?

Robert Pirsig & His Metaphysics of Quality

[Hedge90]

Thanks for the recommendations to both of you. Lots of new names here for me.

[lorenzop]

I know I'm not the only one noticing this, but I feel like Bernardo's focus is slowly but surely shifting from a meaning-oriented yet rational philosophy towards something that's basically nihilism in anything but name. Tbh this worries me to some extent, because I think Bernardo is a man of great intellect, who helped me understand things that I couldn't piece together by myself. I find the notion that ultimately he seems like he's arriving at a nihilistic point of view alarming.
Do you know any - if possible, contemporary - philosopher (other than Steiner), who has a similar idealistic framework, but whose ultimate conclusion is not "nothing is true, everything is permitted"?

Why? If you want to see Moses leading his people to the Promised Land in a cup of tea, fine - but that mood comes from your body-mind, not the cup of tea. Why turn everything into a mood?

[Hedge90]

I know I'm not the only one noticing this, but I feel like Bernardo's focus is slowly but surely shifting from a meaning-oriented yet rational philosophy towards something that's basically nihilism in anything but name. Tbh this worries me to some extent, because I think Bernardo is a man of great intellect, who helped me understand things that I couldn't piece together by myself. I find the notion that ultimately he seems like he's arriving at a nihilistic point of view alarming.
Do you know any - if possible, contemporary - philosopher (other than Steiner), who has a similar idealistic framework, but whose ultimate conclusion is not "nothing is true, everything is permitted"?

Why? If you want to see Moses leading his people to the Promised Land in a cup of tea, fine - but that mood comes from your body-mind, not the cup of tea. Why turn everything into a mood?

That's a very simplified take on what my problem is. I don't really have time to elaborate now, but the conclusion I'd rather avoid is that there's no positive and no negative, there's nothing to strive towards, there's no good and bad. That's nihilism.

[lorenzop]

Evolution and growth, and the mind's natural tendency to search for happiness - these and a desire to do what we know to be good and right are enough to built and live a great life. Don't have to look for meaning.
On another note, nilihism, idealism, realism, etc.; these are just models, they are not real, they are not right or wrong.

[Starbuck]

That's a very simplified take on what my problem is. I don't really have time to elaborate now, but the conclusion I'd rather avoid is that there's no positive and no negative, there's nothing to strive towards, there's no good and bad. That's nihilism.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.

Rumi


Fear of nihilism is one of the ego's last defences. Stop flinching. Religious tradition is full of the terror of annihilation. Then to a man, they speak of the fullness and perfection they encounter on the 'other side'.

[Hedge90]

That's a very simplified take on what my problem is. I don't really have time to elaborate now, but the conclusion I'd rather avoid is that there's no positive and no negative, there's nothing to strive towards, there's no good and bad. That's nihilism.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.

Rumi


Fear of nihilism is one of the ego's last defences. Stop flinching.

I'm the definition of flinching
Spiritual people are always like "oh that's so beautiful" when they read a quote from Rumi or Maharishi or whatnot, and I'm always like "WELL NOW I WON'T BE ABLE TO SLEEP FOR A WEEK THANK YOU

[Starbuck]

Not trying to scare you, but the cost of truth is your entire world.

The good news is no one is forcing you, you can hang out in Samsara a long time before this stuff knocks at your door. Go for something more comforting, the truth can wait because it doesn't really go away.