[atari 2600]

I don't know Lacan...did he come-up with "double-bind?" In that case, then I have heard of him. He's a psychoanalysist and not a philospher, right? Give me C.G. Jung, or Otto Rank. If his psychology is like the philosophy of Hegel or Kant, then to hell with him; simply stated, both of those guys are clearly evil.
Descartes is another philosopher that I generally disagree with, but he does have some value.

[Glice]

I would recommend Lacan. I shan't patronise/ confuse you with a summary, but his basic notion is that our mental formation of the notion of 'reality' is formed from a lie - that the image of ourselves is actually ourselves. This is a split from the 'real' real. This 'fake' reality is taken as real reality, and our metaphysics is confused thenceforth.

To my mind, and to many Europeans' minds (but not British or Americans generally speaking) he's as important a figure as Descartes or Plato.

I absolutely loathed Descartes until I read Derrida's 'Cogito, and the history of Madness' in Writing and Difference.

I'm sure you're being provocative, but you surely can't dismiss Kant and Hegel so entirely as to hate them? I have a Hegelian friend who would probably insist that Hegel would win if you do so. My Hegelian friend is a total, utter prick though.

[atari 2600]

"Hegelian friend"...the words do not compute.

Hegel and Kant are wrong about everything. For thinkers so seemingly impeccably logical, each build their respective bulwarks on a false premiss.

Consider Newton. He ushered in the Industrial Revolution and the Scientific Age, yet his "laws" only work perfectly on Earth. In a vacuum, in the large space of Eternity, they fall to pieces.
Relativity changes all the rules because it broke all the boundaries. The world is not a clock, it is a living organism.


From the wiki listing it seems Lacan was big on inter-disciplinary studies (including linguistics) and that's a big plus.

As far as philosophy goes, the last truly important philosopher is Ludwig Wittgenstein who is also very inter-disciplinary. Of course, Albert Einstein is far more important to philosophy, as is Karl Schwarzschild (and the others that came after with quantum mechanics like Bohr and Heisenberg), but they were all physicists.

[Glice]

I would argue that Derrida is as important as Wittgenstein, but also a great deal more obscure - arguably, the most obscure philosopher since Hegel.

Kant's metaphysical leap troubles me, but I can't fault his aesthetics (third critique). Then again, I've pretty much settled on Kant's aesthetics because visual art isn't a large concern of mine, rather than it 'connecting with my innermost soul'.

I've not read enough Einstein, but I do agree he's often neglected within philosophy. Then again, I am in Britain, and the British are still getting excited about the analytics, who, as a group, are probably the dullest thing in the whole of history.

I'm going to re-read the Lacan Wiki, last I remember it was written by an American, and Americans don't have Lacan (or Freud, for that matter) anything like right.

[atari 2600]

Well, you've got Stephen Hawking right there in Britian too (let's not sleight him) and he's done much to get us closer towards a unified theory combining relativity with quantum mechanics. His work has helped to keep other research cutting-edge like the work of brilliant astronomer Eric Becklin over at UCLA. His primary interest has been in black holes at the center of our galaxy.

As much as I love Jung, Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky, and Picasso,
Albert Einstein is clearly the man of the last millenium.

[Glice]

I know a guy who went for a drink with Hawking. Said he was an utter cunt. True story.

The Lacan wiki is a lot better than it was whenever I looked at it last. Possibly a bit too much emphasis on his psychoanlytical side, which is entirely crucial but not my immediate interest in him.

[nomadicfollower]

Originally Posted by Glice

that the image of ourselves is actually ourselves.

I'm currently attempting The Sickness Unto Death, and it seems to me (with my limited philosophical knowledge) that this is what Kierkegaard is trying to argue. That the self relates to the self (but I was very confused at this part). This relation, however, is incomplete, and thus, is the source of despair - or man's advantage over the beasts - and is the grounding for the soul, which would complete the relation.

Static harmony also seems to exemplify Kierkegaard's not wanting in despair to be oneself.



(atari, please correct me if I'm wrong. This book has plagued me for the past two weeks, and I'm not yet halfway in, and I would hate to be on the wrong track)

[atari 2600]

Originally Posted by Glice

I know a guy who went for a drink with Hawking. Said he was an utter cunt. True story.

And a great story at that. Ha HA. I remember you bringing this up before too. Ask your friend for more details or otherwise write them, please!



Looking at who I named before...

Einstein (cunt...would have never amounted to much without his scientist first wife who he dumped for a teenage cousin/had many mistresses/then again, his letter with Leo Szilard (who was the primary agent of the whole affair) to FDR may have saved our asses/doomed them too),
Dostoyevsky (cunt...worse than me with money...chronic gambler/neglected his children as a result)
Picasso (always had a wife and several girlfriends...an infamous cunt in all his affairs and dealings)
C.G. Jung (was a Sun-worshipping cunt), and finally,
Kierkegaard (who was probably a cunt to not marry Regina/wonder if he would have been more or less of cunt if he stayed with the clergy instead of leaving it).

[atari 2600]

Originally Posted by nomadicfollower

I'm currently attempting The Sickness Unto Death, and it seems to me (with my limited philosophical knowledge) that this is what Kierkegaard is trying to argue. That the self relates to the self (but I was very confused at this part). This relation, however, is incomplete, and thus, is the source of despair - or man's advantage over the beasts - and is the grounding for the soul, which would complete the relation.

Static harmony also seems to exemplify Kierkegaard's not wanting in despair to be oneself.



(atari, please correct me if I'm wrong. This book has plagued me for the past two weeks, and I'm not yet halfway in, and I would hate to be on the wrong track)

Kierkegaard is not walk-in-the-park as a reading experience. Once you get the way he structures things, he still has loops yet to throw you for and you also have to be familiar with the dialectic nature of his philosophy. His primary influences are Schopenhauer, Socrates (Plato), and the New Testament. I'm glad that I can read him and other authors like Jung. I have read some Karl Jaspers, but I can't understand it. I have also tried and am always trying to muddle through Martin Heidegger's Being and Time.

The Sickness Unto Death is a weird one (although very succint Kierkegaard-wise) because it is a very late work and one of his most religious, yet it is authored under the pseudonym Johannes Anti-Climacus. It is important to note that Kierkegaard also wrote under the name Johannes Climacus and many other names.
I'd say get The Attack on Christendom next since you started with that one. As far as what you were asking about, ultimately Kierkegaard believes (like myself, like Mohammed, Buddha, Lao-Tzu, Jesus) that the Self is an illusion that causes Despair, Dread and anxiety. It is the human condition, "the sickness unto death." Union of the individual with God is the only remedy for the illness and area for True Possibility and Becoming; it's the only way to become a True Individual, indivisible.

Kierkegaard did write some works in his own name as "edifying discourses." The greatest of these, and perhaps his greatest work, is the slender Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing: The Good in Truth. It's very religious. It's a sermon. And it also beautifully unifies poetry, philosophy, and psychology with Christian religion.
He chose to write by pseudonym when the material was too controversial as in the case of Either/Or Part I, or because when he deliberately attempts to lure you in with a seductive philosophy of easy answers (albeit through a series of rather complicated analogies), which he then proceeds to tear down.

Fear and Trembling is probably the most well-known of his anti-Hegelian diatribes. He was ridiculed in his time, but now he is known as the father of existentialism.

[davenotdead]

Originally Posted by atari 2600

I've never seen it as one book. I read from the Hong's translations (Princeton Press editions) for most of Kierkegaard's works.

Yeah, this is a good bit of reading...



Yet Einstein himself believed in God.

copy & paste #1
Let's go back to this whole label of "God," because as you shall see, I presuppose nothing. By naming God as a separate entity, we also do a disservice to the Truth. The earliest philosphers knew this to be the case & thus prohibited the naming of God. Language usually serves to only perpetuate the virus of confusion further. In our corporeal state, the dimension of time is absolutely & certainly a reality. But in Relativity, Time is just another dimension that is relative & is not absolute at all. What are the constants? There are none. The speed of light comes closest to being a true constant; it's absolutely constant in a vacuum of space. So what does this mean, then? It means that all matter in the universe is in constant flux & transformation, but in essence, everything always perfectly zeroes itself out no matter what. This defines our universe a continuum. Time & Eternity have a strange (seemingly paradoxical) relationship to each other. We can observe that the really large things in the universe are a bit more stabilized than everything else & follow precisely predictably ellipictal orbits & lifespans. On the other hand, we can attempt to observe the smallest of things & what we discover is beyond our wildest ideas of ever understanding because of the amount of kinesis & the overwhelming amounts of nuclear energy involved. Ponder that nearly all atoms of matter that everything is composed of is made up of overwhelmingly empty space. The closest we can (& probably will) ever get to being able to predict anything about these infintesimally small particles of matter is through what we already have, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, which allows us to guess intelligently by using the shadows.

With our conscious waking minds, we perceive separations that aren't ultimately there. All matter is composed of slightly varying forms of the same field of energy. God is not "the Other". There is no such thing as "the Other" except in one's own mind. Your unconscious already knows All a priori if you can key that information into conscious activity through calming your restless fears & anxieties. From all this it should naturally be apparent that our incessantly clinged-to notion of a "Knower" & "the Known" is yet another false boundary that is reinforced through the conditioning of our seemingly ever-pervasive creaturely existence.

metaphysics are fascinating, but again, how does raw energy form into an immune system...who created the energy? even if you say it just exists, then how is it harnessed and ordered into human beings...electromagnetic waves are present on the earth, but how are they useful if not harnessed and formed into something useful?

[HaydenAsche]

You're an idiot. You either believe in God or not. Becoming religious doesn't mean going to church, dumb twat.