Subj : Rush to Judgement?                                       [2]
To   : RALPH ZETTER
From : Frank Masingill
Date : Fri Nov 03 2000 07:32 am

 RZ> > Philosophy is being done WHEREVER man is questioning and
 RZ> > wondering in true Aristotelian fashion.  When one has
 RZ> > stumbled on a satisfactory ANSWER or a GOOD MIX philosophy
 RZ> > has twinkled out of the door.

 RZ> I'm not sure I get that. If philosophers are searching for
 RZ> wisdom and truth in life, then why would you distrust someone
 RZ> when they discover an answer?

 RZ> > Perhaps because they have found, in studying the questions
 RZ> > thoroughly, that "answers" tend to be either wrong or
 RZ> > penultimate. Even when they are hearing the "answers" they
 RZ> > often resent what it contains.  When Socrates attempts to
 RZ> > make DIE, so that he might LIVE, the soul of Callicles,
 RZ> > Callicles does not believe AT ALL that a man ought to judge
 RZ> > HIMSELF or not gather EVERYTHING he can in life even at the
 RZ> > expense of humanity, hence, he follows neither the "saving
 RZ> > tale" of Socrates or the "persusaion" through the myth of
 RZ> > the judgement.  (Plato's _Gorgias_)

 RZ> Hmmmm......If answers tend to be wrong, then philosophy is
 RZ> futile. Why search for meaning in life if any answer you come
 RZ> to is wrong or "penultimate" ( i had to look that one up, it
 RZ> means final). If the search for wisdom never reveals
 RZ> meaningful answers, then it's futile, which means the very
 RZ> search for answers and meaning is futile. And if meaning in
 RZ> life is futile, then life itself is futile. And if life is
 RZ> futile, then you see my point hopefully. :)

        Yes, I see your point and first of all, let me congratulate
both of us for the dialogue in which we have been engaged.
Unfortunately this sort of dialogue is all too rare on a forum that
is named "Philosophy."

        Now to the impatience and futility expressed in your
comments immediately above.  Please note in my comments above your
comment that I referred to "stumbling upon answers that prove to be
either "wrong or penultimate".  It is the "stumbling upon" that I
worried about.  This is quite a different process from the one in
which one searches with his entire being for the truth of existence.
I gave one example above of the existential dialetic Plato sets up
in the meeting between the two ways of Socrates and Callicles in the
_Gorgias_.  In the Christian context, one might recall the
confession of St. Augustine the "our souls shall never find rest, Oh
God, until they find rest in thee."  Now, this is not an "answer" I
am trying to convey to you and it is not one that could simply be
"stumbled upon" through somebody telling it TO you although when you
hear it you might take it seriously as the experience SOMEBODY
really had and thus make it part of your own search for THE truth of
existence.  However that might be, Augustine, one may be well
assured, did not simply "stumble upon that truth" for him.  It was
tested in a life of experience and whatever other criticism might be
made of Augustine, he is the one who pretty much settled the
question of the relationship of the Christian to the world in the
Civitas Dei.   The world will remain as it is and his Christians
must live IN the world with a faith in which they also participate
in the world beyond with salvation through grace in death.
Aristotle had said centuries before that God is not jealous of men
who, through the life of reason (nous) attempt to "immortalize"
(athanatizein) as far as that is possible to man as soul in body in
nature.  

        I have no "true doctrine" or "false doctrine" to offer you
as a ready-made vehicle leading into THE truth. I was "infected"
with philosophy (as the love of wisdom through love of the divine
sophon - Plato) by Eric Voegelin.  He introduced me to that search
back in the years, 1948-53 and for the most part after that I had
contact with him only through his books.  He, himself, was the
intellectual product of his own meeting with a multitude of minds
also pursuing that search for the truth of existence - minds like
Max Scheler, William James, Henri Bergson, the common-sense
philosophers, and myriads of others.  His volumes in _Order and
History_ are still reference points but my own thoughts and
personal anamnesis have been stimulated toward a search which, as
for many others, often is grounded in the elimination or negation of
that which I cannot perceive to BE near THE truth.  

        Plato's analogy of the Cave illustrates perhaps best of all
the point that movement toward a llfe in truth begins in the
recognition that one is living in danger of living a life of
"untruth" (or the "delusion" side of Parmendides' night vision." The
prisoner in the cave does not simply turn around by pure chance
toward the light which at first he sees dimly.  He KNOWS, at least,
that something is wrong and has begun a journey of the soul in which
the discovery will be made that the "reality" of the chained
prisoners between the fire and the wall is NOT reality but that the
figures are merely shadows.  He is "drawn" but he also exercises
inititative of his own.  In the _Laws_ Plato will later characterize
this "drawing" (helkind) as that of God as the player of the puppets
which needs the "help" of man.  

        I may soon be continuing this line of thought along lines
more pertinent to my own search which began drawing upon elements of
depth psychology that I first encountered in Neumann's _History and
Origins of the Unconcious_ and other sociological works.  Voegelin,
so far as I have discovered, thus far, never discussed the tension
between the Maternal and what I call the Masculine as elements of
the soul, perhaps out of fear of Jung's tendency toward
immanentizing of the spirit.  

Frank

--- PPoint 2.07
 * Origin: Maybe in 5000 years (1:396/45.12)

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