Views of the current age:
Kierkegaard's leveling - that meanings have been leveled out. A leveling of meaningful distinctions of worth. A clock strikes the hour every hour, but for what? In contrast to middle ages Dante, were everything has its level of meaning. The clock bell meant something then.
Nietzsche's The Gay Science section 125 God is Dead. And we have all killed him. That is, God no longer has a role in organizing our daily meanings and practices.
Charles Tyler's book Secular Age
He argues that now is the first truly secular age.
No more certainty about belief because nonbelievers can live a good life too, so there is an added pressure on the believer to argue against nonbelievers.
So God has no more social authority... where do we draw meaning from?
Nietzsche likes this situation, nihilism. We get to chose our values, a freedom. Sartre similar to Nietzsche in that we have a total freedom in what we are - a total responsibility in ourselves. No appeal to God, Kant's categorical imperative, or even utilitarian justifications - can only appeal to ones self. Is this freedom and groundlessness good news?
David Foster Wallace and T.S Elliot- two paradigm cases of Nietzscheans who preached absolute self sufficiency - taking everything as their responsibility
This world of leveling and the death of God presents a meaning crisis where nothing means anything more than the other so why act, why chose? Frozen in inaction, frozen in an infinity of possibility, lives filled with endless series of indecision.
We have this unique problem in the west what are we to do? We must look at history and great works of art and re-appropriate ways of being of the past, but not romanticize the past.
Fight:
Hegel's history - progressive can be an "end of history" a culmination. From slavery to liberal democracy. Cross cultural universal truths that can be reached.
v.s.
Heidegger's - No rational cross cultural progress. Works of art that organize peoples lives. Lives in one age not commensurable with others, true rebirth of ways of living. No absolute way of being, but adaptive.
So we read these works as highlights of ways of being in a certain epoch and see if these ways of being can be re-appropriated into our own to solve problems in our epoch.
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Contemporary nihilism
An anti nihilist ---
Heidegger's essay the question concerning technology that:
Heidegger's essay the question concerning technology that:
-Aristotle had a better since of cause and effect than we do today.
-to live in a technological age as we do does not only mean the existence of tech devices but a mode of revealing (disclosing).
-we in our practices enframe that is we look at things as resources to organize or use as a resource. E.g. an airplane has how many seats, passengers as hunan resources to fill it instead of individuals. We even view ourselves as resources, we have our calendar to optimize our work. This is dangerous. It shuts us out from dealing with the demands of a situation from without.
vs.
A nihilist----
Foster Wallace - looking for a saving grace in every moment by an intensely self-conscious force of will. Trying to find a spiritual transcendence at every moment. Opposed by Homer were the hero sticks out tuff times and lets the inspiration come to them. David F had a Descartes view of human flavor. That's to say such a strategy makes it very hard to connect with things outside ones mental sanctuary.
Heidegger - wants to resist the idea that we are at our best as totally self contained selves against objects. Against Descartes self in pure thought. We should be more trusting and open to things outside our inter mental sanctuary.
-against the view that we project meaning on a meaningless world, we are receptive to meanings already in the world - the receptivity view of the world, Homer agrees
-Helen is praised in Homer for being a receptive being by running away with Paris, listening to Aphrodite. Helen is a paragon of womanhood.
Homer's Odyssey is an exemplification of a way of being respectful of outside influences, the suiters represent the "bad guys" since they act as though all actions are born from themselves with no outside influences and they act as autonomous agents wrecking everything. Maybe the way of the suitor in Homer is what Wallace is aiming for.
Kant the originator of us as a self law giving self. This cuts us off from the world already with its own meanings and this leads to a kind of nihilism.
So we have Wallace's controlling our inter mental states in order to deal with the current state of meaninglessness, while Heidegger contrast this with an appeal to forces from without to save us from meaninglessness.
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Heidegger - we are currently in the epoch of enfraiming were everything is looked at as a commodity or resource to be optimized.
-the danger in this is it keeps us from being receptive to meanings outside ourselves.
Wallace - we are in an age of distractions that prevent our taking control of our lives
-saved from this by controlling how and what we think about situations, to project our own meaning / Heidegger exactly opposed
[Student makes a good point] that H tackles the technological aspect of closing our receptivity W takes on the informational aspect, that our quest for more and more information closes us off from being open to more satisfying meanings
Kantian essential human is the constantly conceptualizing and categorizing being - active thinking beings - self law and meaning givers actively following an imperative or meaning at every moment - autonomous agents of the enlightenment
- H's essential human being is receptive (not to be confused with passive).
Example of responding to a meaningful authority of a situation outside oneself:
-The grand master chess player through hours of practice learns to see the chessboard differently. Moves that need to be made are already on the board without the need for much thought. One cannot really control what they see in a necker cube depiction, its been proven that it isn't up to us. We have no real way of controlling how predefined gestalts shape out perceptual world, so the practiced chess players gestalt concerning the chessboard shapes meaning he experiences, he cannot will this purely on his own. An outside authority he must conform to in-order to win. The practice is not entirely conceptual but a way of conforming to situations outside oneself.
-Training is a way to change ones gestalt to bring out new skills and therefore new meanings in the world, not a learning of new concepts and intellectual distinctions.
Hegel on Homer - that human being was partially developed in homeric times. On a scale from non-free to free agents or the human spirit (history on the level of groups or states) developing itself (realizing itself) the greeks made a partial improvement from nature. World historical individuals whose individual needs are in perfect sync with the age they are in move history forward by shear force of will.
Heidegger - no progression of history in a neseccery chain of epochs to a final goal.
-no world historical figures who actively force through will a new epoch of history.
-h's lecture "the principal of reason" 1955-56 pg.191 the geschik of being or how being changes across epochs..."being cleared and lit itself as if it had a character of shining forth..." ..."the epochs suddenly spring up like sprouts" very different from Hegel's rational development of epochs.
The project ti re-appropriate saving practices from past epochs is useless in a Hegelian view of history, because the past is seen as something that is incomplete and useless. Only if we have a view of history as a series of gestalt shifts and stat clear of value judgments about their stage in some culmination can we start the project.
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Is there a way to base our existence on a non-ratiinal basis since a rational bases ends in the answer there is no rational reason to continue existence?
The modern person is seen as an self contained autonomous rational agent. This type is not seen much in Homer's Odyssey. Can we learn something from this epoch of history and bring it into our own?
Bernerds Homer:
We find in Homer a kind of being outside the Kantian moral imperative and utilitarian debate, one that makes a blind leap that gets its meaning retroactively - for they do not know the consequences nor deliberate on a moral maxim about a situation.
Homer's phenomenology of the gods was one of attunement. No internal moods but the god represents an attuner. The mood of a party is a public one, one were it can catch you up or not at all, it is not up to you, the public mood proceeds you. You must get attuned.
There are people who can attune themselves to a situation according to what that situation demands at that moment and not according to a general rule deliberated upon in lonely isolation.
5 Homer
Homer reifies or ontologieses the phenomenal experience of acting according to what a particular situation demands of one as a visitation from a god, yet we can still treat this experience seriously without reifying the outside authority as a god.
Bernerd Williams book Shame and Necessity is similar to the All Things Shining (ATS) project.
-same in that he rejects Hegel's progressive view of history
-telimicus leaving the door open of the store house was an unintentional act that he took responsibility for - responsibility without intentional action
-intentional act without responsibility--Agamemnon takes Persais away from Achilles in The Iliad thus leaving Achilles in depression. Agamemnon explains that the gods produced a kind of blindness when he did it. Bernerd takes this as an account of someone in a state unlike their usual selves and this type of act not blameworthy.
-Kelley disagrees that this blindness from the gods is the same in all cases from Homeric writers. Helen of troy's case is different than Agamemnon's or Oedipus's case in that she drawn to do something that allowed her to do and be what was best in her situation.
-to be open to the gods is good in that it allows the human being to be their best, but the consequences may not always be good for everybody. It is risky.
-we can in our time make a distinction as to if we want to follow through in a action that may allow us to be our best yet have adverse effects.
-Agamemnon was blinded and then acted on his own where Helen was blinded and then led by Aphrodite.
-like sleep one cannot force it or plane it but can only open oneself or relinquish oneself, then sleep my come.
The role of "gods" in Melvil's Moby Dick and In Homer are similar and we want to recover but everything in between (jesus, The Orestia, Dante's Inferno) is too rational leaning.
7 Aeschylus (A)
-A represents a midpoint in the phenomenological role of the gods in greece between Homer and Aristotle where Zeus replaced by the prime mover.
-his understanding of the gods radically different than Homer.
-A is writing during the axial age (800 to 200 B.C.), which was a large world shift from polytheism to monotheism. A shift from the outside source of meaning of different incommensurable types into a single transcendent source.
-Phusis by Parmenides and Heraclitus was the view that nature or whatever that there is has the whooshing up and fading away aspect to it. In the monotheistic standpoint the whooshing up from is named and unifies what things are whooshing up from.
-A's gods tend to be more monotheistic. Two main forces or type of gods, the old gods (the furies) and the new gods (the olympian gods)
-a tension between to incommensurable ways of acting. A choice between two. Deliberation and choice becomes more important. Unified in the end by Athena via patriotism.
-no need to unify incommensurate values in Homer and Melvil.
The old gods - the furies:
-Revenge
-Family and blood ties
-the night, darkness
-earth
The new gods - the olympians (Apollo et al.):
-Reason
-day, light
-sky
Arrestees in his decision to kill his mother is forced between doing because she killed the king (on the side of reason - Apollo) or because she killed his father (on the side of revenge - the furies).
-this is a tragedy not about psychological flaws in its characters, but characters trapped in between two opposing cultural forces
-Helen is blamed and looked at as promiscuous for running away with Paris in Aeschylus not praised as she was in Homer.
-Zeus protects the host rather than the strangers. Its the revers in Homer.
8 Orestia cont.
-This is a tragedy of greek culture at the time composed of two competing True ways of being, that of loyalty tones family or loyalty to universal justice. not of individual tragedy based on flawed physiology. Set up lose by choosing ether one.
-Agamemnon is forced to chose between killing his daughter and doing what is universally right as a king and his people or not to kill and do what is right as a father. This is a result of the culture presenting this dilemma.
-Arrestees is convincing himself to kill his mother not according to the old gods (vengeance for his father) but for the new (killing is universally wrong - reasoned justice). To do this requires an argument, uses gis dream as an argument to kill his mother with correct reason. However, convincing oneself through an argument is hardly going to get you to kill your mother. Ad Hume said "reason is slave to the passions." Arrestees friend Paladies, takes him out of himself and gives objective social sanction to what he is to do. Paladies says that is better to have man hate you than the new gods (universal justice).
-Athena sets up the first jury system in Greece that is a reconciling between particular (familial) and universal (state) justice.
-the old gods will sit in golden chairs on the earth and not be cast out (suppressed) but invited at the table with the new.
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Heiddegger's The Origin of the Work of Art
-3 types of works of art originating, reconfiguring, and articulating
-art works show things as an equipment not as they are as substances or manifolds of qualities (as what they are if we stand back and look at it). As a thing is used makes up what a thing is. The master carpenter knows more about what a hammer is than the scientist. So a true work of art show the equipmantality of things.
-a work of art holds up and makes explicit a cultures background practices.
-works of art can bring in an entire new way of being. A new way of anythings being as what it is or means is brought forth.
-three works of art in the west have played this role Jesus being the reconfigurer of antiquity into middle ages. an originator of agope love.
-a reconfiguring work of art may be unintelligible at first because of its radical change with the past, so it needs articulation. E.g., jesus speaks in parables and is obscure, he is later articulated by disciples and church fathers.
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-A reconfiguring work of art (such as Jesus) contains a tripartite ontological structure that allows it to reconfigure the worlds meanings.
1) needs a world before. A world of background practices so background as to be obvious and not obvious
2) a being that manifest a whole new understanding of being. One who sees current background practices and can build on them. They will look crazy because radical in their potential to shift the background
3) articulators, people who are interested enough to articulate through known background practices the new crazy sounding practices.
-The trinity is an example of this tripartite structure of an reconfiguring work of art.
1) the hebrew God - the old background practices - jewish law
2)Jesus - the son - the new world reconfiguring mood - agape love - internal sin as opposed to breaking public law. Intentions against outward deeds.
3) the holy spirit - the articulators of Jesus touched by Jesus's agape love - the latter writers of the bible and church fathers
Heidegger's distinction of earth and world. The work of art preserves the context of a struggle between earth and world.
Earth-- "whatever it is that rises up as self closing"
-a being who manifest something that you need to get clear about, but the more you get clear about it the more it closes itself off.
World-- articulators?
Late Heidegger, Eastern thought not unified like the west on being, have many terms for "is"
More polytheist than west on being so closer to Homeric.
Logos
1) Greeks - the word or the ones with words - humans
2) Latin's - rational or animal with rationality
- Heidegger against this assumption of what we are as with words or rational but logos as was truly used by Heraclitus meant the being who discloses a meaningful world on the bases of which we could find words meaningful - condition of the possibility of meanings
Gospel of John "he was in the world and the world cane into being through him the world did not know him"
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The greek platonic rational universal ahistorical way is melded with the particular and personal relationship with God way of the hebrews in middle ages. This mix had problems, Aquinas tries to aristotilienize Christianity away from the platonic to address this.
Christ as platonic heaven, unrelatible to humans vs. christ as hebrew earthy savior who normal humans can relate to.
Enter Dante's Inferno, a work of Aristotelian christianity.
This world of the high middle ages everything that has any meaning is in virtue of its association with god. A higherarchy of being based in levels of godliness.
This is not a plurality of worlds like in Homer or competing worlds as in Aeschylus there is only one good only one way of being.
There is no longer a possibility of tragedy, god is behind everything, everybody gets what they deserve.
Virgil is Dante's first guide but cannot follow him into heaven because Virgil was of the time before Jesus, a stoic so he is stuck in a passionless limbo state. The great greek philosophers also are in this state.
the city walls of Dis keep God out, not sinful soles in. A city of soles rebellious of Gods love and the world of being dictated by gradations of god.
Gods love draws everything towards him, he is the prime mover. The human will be fulfilled as long as he does not resist this natural pull of Gods love. A sinner closes himself off from this natural human attraction.
!!!!!! This force from outside is similar to Homer or Heidegger's being open to outside influence but differs in that there is only one true way of doing it while in Homer there are many ways !!!!!!
Dante circles of hell can represent the many ways we can get in the way of opening ourselves to an outside authority. Three big distinctions:
1) the virtuous pagans in limbo who lack any knowledge of Gods love
2) people who love the wrong thing who's authority is not Gods love or influence i.e. love of food, sex, power.
3) those inside the city if Dis, ones who wholly and knowing reject outside authority or Gods loving force. Rejecting the view of humans as being open and receptive beings to outside authority and affirming humans as active automatons or agents totally producing a self-reflexive world of meaning, later actualized through Descartes, Kant, N, and nihilism.
The very center of hell is satan flapping his wings cooling hell. Frozen from the lack of gods love no movement cold. Satan the supreme representative of an autonomous being a total rebelling of any outside source of inspiration. This over rationality freezes him indecision.
A work representing a kind of monotheistic nihilism in that nothing means anything but ones relation to God.
Beatrice leads Dante to heaven. She rips herself from a state of pure contemplation of God to do this. Dante is to learn that this direct relation to God trumps even his love for Beatrice.
12 Melville's Moby Dick
The subject as cut off from all outside influences is made common in western culture by Descartes. Satan's rebellion against Gods love is represented in all human beings and is now is a state of total doubt as to any outside influence at all. The subject becomes in a world of private sensations the only source of authority. Autonomous subjects or as Kant latter dubs self moral law givers.
Ahab - The representative of the monotheistic nihilist - fanatical in his belief. The whale somehow holds the secret to his meaning in life and behind its face an universal meaning of life.
Ishmael - The one who is open to multiple outside authorities represented in moods. He can take on the moods of many people throughout the story.
Moods since Descartes and Kant are seen as psychological and internal in the subject and a neutral mood of stilted reason is most prized. We want to over turn this conception of a mood. Moods are from without and not internally produceable. Our moods color are whole outlook through and through, we must open ourselves to these public moods, not close off in disassociated aloof cutoffedness.
The story begins with Ishmael in a nihilistic mood " stormy November drizzle" the only answer to this is to go to sea. To travel to new worlds similar to Odeusus in the Odyssey.
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The whale represents the background practices in that they make up what we do and are - ever present. but we can never really grasp what they may all be , never write then down in a book say. The whale is white. White is a "dumb blankness full of meaning." White represents all colors and in this case all ways of being and all possible moods. One cannot see its face not because it has no face. Ahab in his zealous religious nihilism believes he can see its face and drives him and his crew to certain death in his effort.
If we are to escape from nihilism we must resurrect the Gods of old. Not the christian god nor gods as real entities but resurrect a since of multiple paths of human excellence instead of just one as with monotheism or self created paths as with nihilism.
A return of the mayday gods of old
A panoply of multiple and incommensurate ways of life
The new poly ways of being different from Homers in that Zeus being the gateway to other ways (he was the leader of a family of like gods, the strangers go-between) is replaced by the white whale, the faceless indeterminable whiteness giving no real analog to other modes of existence.
The meta poetic skill:
Not all ways to meaning are the correct ways. There can be bad ways as in getting caught up in Hitlers mood of a master race. Good in getting swept up in Martine Luther Kings mood of equality.
To not get caught up at all because of the fear of the loss of ones autonomy (which is what will happen) would be to perhaps live the life of leveled meaning or never allow cultural change. We need to cultivate a skill in being able to determine right moods from wrong. A skill not a reason.
