Subj : Rush to Judgement?                                       [2]
To   : FRANK MASINGILL
From : RALPH ZETTER
Date : Mon Nov 06 2000 12:46 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."

I agree.
 
>         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.

Again, I agree!

> 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.  
> 

Well, what about answers, which have finality to them, that are the product
of a long life of 
searching? Are they also in the same distrustful category? Is their
finality always invalid?


>         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.  
!
If you eliminate something which you don't think is near THE truth, then
that seems to require 
some concrete opinion as to what THE truth is, else you'd have no real
criteria for judging what 
is near and what is not, right?

> 
>         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.  

Whew! That was quite a mouthfull. There's a lot to chew on there. One small
comment would 
be that the recognition of the possibility of a life of untruth is ITSELF a
form of truth. Not a bad 
foundation for a person to work from.

>         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.  
> 

Could you tell me what you mean by "immanentizing"?
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