I believe too, that in the Old Testament there is an attitude in which the world is presented as justified in itself. I do see that the expulsion from the garden is portrayed as a disturbance, which has consequences for man, but mainly in his new perception of the world. This also leads to the fratricide and ultimately to the flood, but since these representations are a mythical processing of the inner conflict in man, I do not recognize any representation of nature as not good. On the contrary, the world suffers from our discord because we are appointed as stewards. Nor do I discern in Jesus words, a change in this attitude, and rather see the call to take up the role as light in the world. The NT sees the crucifixion and resurrection as the necessary condition to do that. So, reason for optimism actually. So I don’t agree with the idea that Scripture is to blame, but admittedly the Church has portrayed all of creation as decrepit and consequently wretched, just like humans in their inner conflict were.
It is telling of the times that all revolutions somehow were pessimistic, leading up to the nineteenth century, as were all the religious wars. From what I have read from The World as Will and Idea, he didn’t follow that lead, like Kierkegaard, Marx and Nietzsche, but followed the idealism we have spoken about as a result of reading Kastrup.
It is telling that the church failed on the whole to inspire a change of awareness, in which Christians felt included in the resurrection of Christ and empowered to be the light of the world. There were some people who were in that way inspired, but too few. It could have been an optimistic and inspiring development.
This comment, which in context refers to the monistic materialism of Spinoza, I present as clarification of Schopenhauer’s pessimistic metaphysical idealism for which his entire body of work makes a thorough and consistent case.
Hi Felix, I had to get a German version of the book, and browse that, because I had seen something that had stuck in my mind, which is (translated by me) …
I read in these words a certain melancholy, which he says is unique to the reasonable man, but quoting Goethe, also to the genius of the poet:
Goethe also says:
My poetic rapture was very small,
So long as I only encountered good
But it burnt with a bright flame
When I fled from threatening evil.
The tender poem, like the rainbow,
Is only drawn on a dark ground;
Hence the genius of the poet
Loves the element of melancholy.
Schopenhauer, Arthur. The World as Will and Idea: With Supplements (S.1091). Random Shack. Kindle-Version.
Is melancholy an attribute of pessimism? On the other hand, he says:
Mohammedan mysticism has a very serene character, Christian mysticism a gloomy and melancholy character, while that of the Hindus, standing above both, in this respect also holds the mean.
But all in all, he was very unhappy with pessimistic teaching, so perhaps melancholy and pessimism were not synonym in his mind.
I think the basis for Schopenhauer’s pessimism is belief that life in the phenomenal, only apparently material world is suffering and belief in neither in God nor an afterlife. Wisdom to him is avoiding pain and suffering as much as possible. The Will which is the thing itself is an irrational life force of not a good God per se. The will is behind the illusory world of separate consciousness. But, at the end of the day when the long dream of life is over, he saw insufficient evidence for reabsorption into the will.
Yes, that will probably be the cause of an attitude that does not hold a pronounced optimism. But can it be interpreted as pessimism, or would he call it realism?
The question seems to suggest the possibility that pessimism might be unreal. Optimism is commonly viewed as unrealistic as well. But realism as understood by most today is materialist. For them the ideal is a fiction. Schopenhauer affirmed the reality of the ethical ideal on metaphysical grounds in the second volume of The World as Will and Idea. Nevertheless “philosophy like the overture to Don Juan commences with a minor chord.” youtu.be/jyjVCbTo5F0
"…on the question of evil, which has always been put to Teilhard [de Chardin]. Because of Teilhard’s vision, which is borne of great optimism, he is often accused of being too optimistic and that there is no place in his worldview for suffering, sin, and failure of any kind. Even if one accepts evolution as a fact, the question of the purposefulness of evolution remains controversial for some. Does evolution really mean “progress” or only constant “change”? Teilhard answers to it: The innumerable attempts to become one step by step mean disorder and destruction in the different stages of the evolution. At the moment when life appears, pain is added, from the appearance of man, sin. Evil is thus the expression of a state of multiplicity that is still incompletely organized. Teilhard argues that with every progress there would also be failures and errors. The evil is a secondary effect of the cosmos in evolution.
The question why a good God allows evil, Teilhard can answer in the end just as little as theology otherwise. However, he points to two reactions of man: to fight avoidable suffering with all his might, to understand non-avoidable suffering as spiritual energy in the hope that it can be transformed. He also addresses the general human experience that defeats, and failures can be useful for further development. Lessons can be learned from mistakes. Teilhard knows, of course, that evolution is not a human idyll, but a cosmic drama. He justifies his optimism religiously: God as the driving force, rallying point and guarantor of evolution." Adolf Haas, Teilhard de Chardin-Lexikon – Grundbegriffe, Erläuterungen, Texte, Freiburg 1971 (2 Bände)
It seems that de Chardin sought to unite Darwinian evolution with Aquinas’ teleology. Some folks saw the emergence of the internet as the realization of the de Chardinian noosphere. Now that was optimistic!
Bernardo Kastrup does not endorse this interpretation or characterization of analytic idealism. Under the latter, all experiences—and, therefore, all seeming ‘objects’—are merely excitations of a universal field of subjectivity, just as ripples are excitations of water. As such, for the same reason that there is ultimately nothing to ripples but water, there is ultimately nothing to physical objects—and even seemingly individual subjects, such as you and me—but the field of subjectivity itself. The subject-object dualism is thus completely resolved under analytic idealism. Allusions to ‘substrates,’ under analytic idealism, are merely metaphorical, meant to aid understanding, but do not entail or imply the ultimate existence of anything but pure subjectivity.
Whilst it is possible to argue this, it is all but useless.
Since our clearly subjective worlds interact and agree one with another, then it is possible to continue to think of the world as one think about which we all see different aspects: realism.
This always works and although you cannot prove it, like you cannot prove inductive assertions, this approach has utility, and is what is commonly accepted.
On the other hand to solipsism of the subjective idealist world that you have portrayed here is of almost no use whatever.
It might amuse us to consider it for a moment, and I would strain to argue that reflecting upon it might help unpack some of our hopeless assumptions - sadly it is rarely done. Rarely considered most by those that promote the subjective world view, rather using it as an excuse for belligerent scepticism.
In practical terms you have to adopt both, seeing the world from both directions.
On the one hand accepting that there is really a world out there; and on the other hand accepting that we only have a partial even personal view of it. In this way we can progress to make statements about the real world whilst avoiding the obvious pitfalls of our personal view points.
Would that such an approach could be used to combat bad science by the continual challenge of endemic assumptions.
I think that the greatest single problem that we have on this planet is the fact that we fail to see the world and everything in it as a unity that may in fact go beyond this planet. Seeing everything as separate has led to failing to see everything involved in one huge process with many diverse sources of input, and an interpretation of natural history as one grand fight, from which the supposition of the appropriateness of competition and even war amongst human beings arises.
This may have been acceptable in the last century, and has continued into the beginning of the next, but it assumes that we human beings are but beasts that think, causing malevolence and benevolence according to our circumstances. I believe that we are more than that, and that it is our calling to transcend the duality of the past, whether by scientific discovery, religious insight, or philosophical wisdom – or all of them at once.
I also believe that we are seeing more and more that mankind has a role to play in achieving an equilibrium in the world that mankind itself, through its very presence and expansion, put out of balance. That equilibrium is achieved by acknowledging the unity of existence, pulling together and designing a future on a planet that has its limits and boundaries, preserving what natural order we can, and caring for life as a sacred phenomenon.
Hardly useless …
Metaphysical materialism isn’t necessary to avoid solipcism. I simply acknowledge that my conscious perceptions exist and extrapolate this to other entities as well, based on the similarities of their form and behavior to my own.
The philosophical idea that only one’s mind is sure to exist isn’t what criticism of the materialist mindset is about. The position that Kastrup takes is that, of course all of what we experience outside of our own mind exists, it isn’t just a product of my mind. It is a product of “mind at large” or cosmic mind, which I interpret as the ground of being, of which my mind is just a part. All things are manifest out of that and have the appearance of material things, but are in fact an illusion of solidity, being instead a manifestation of energy and motion.
Individual brains, which are all similarly “wired”, help to sort our perceptions, and give us a working interface, but we know that disturbing that interface can give us alternate perceptions, as we witness with patients with brain damage and also those people who use psychoactive substances. Thereby we gain knowledge that our perceptions are not undisturbed sensual information, but processed information. However, even with our processed sensual input, we discover that the essential “stuff” of the material world, as we delve deeper into it, is made up of patterns or form, and deeper still, encompasses unexpected quantities of space between elementary particles.
In the body, when it isn’t dead when investigating the cellular level, we witness an amazing reciprocal, interactive community of cells, all working to maintain the whole, even policing, and eradicating rogue cells that unrestrictedly reproduce and block the function of cells and organs. The complexity of this interaction is overwhelming, and much of the ideas that existed in the twentieth century about the cellular functions of living organisms have been re-thought and the lessons that I had during my nursing training have proved to be simplistic and mechanistic in concept. Iain McGilchrist talks about this in his latest book.
He too speaks of the uncanny fact that life in so many facets is held together by an elusive something “in between” that in some way provides information to overcome problems at the micro level, just as at our macro level it is that certain something “in between” that makes the difference in interaction in human societies.
This is an argument for realism and objectivism; and the tragic consequent authoritarianism that follows to impose a single world view.
Better that we accept and try to embrace other’s POVs in the hope of finding understanding of the differences that clearly exist between different human groups.
I am happy to accept that differences in ethnicity, creed and religion is the result of the most base human tendancies to tribalism and groupthink, but that is not a thing to encourage.
Whose “equilibrium”, whose view of what is and what is not unacceptable?
And whose POV is going to be pouted as anathema?
Where is the objective; where the bias?
I am not talking about a single worldview, but about recognizing the reality in which we live. We are a species that has achieved an accelerating doubling of population on a finite planet with finite resources and a changing climate. It would make sense to sit down and figure out how we can achieve coexistence rather than consider a violent “solution” to these problems (which would likely have far-reaching consequences even for the survivors).
There is no guarantee that humanity will survive the ultimate consequences of climate change, so we really need to look for the least bad outcome. It is probably worth noting that there is no way that a peaceful solution will not require some sacrifice from all of us, depending on the value we place on things (and it is “things” that are at stake in the West, traditionally a bit more than in the East). It has already been established that humans are depleting natural ecosystems 1.7 times faster than the Earth’s rate of regeneration, and that rate is steadily increasing. So even if the West (or the East) wiped out all the competition, it would be over in a century at most.
The East has traditionally been critical of clinging to “things”, often because of the illusion of security they give people, like holding on to a rock when falling off a cliff, but thinking one is safe. Although, if we had paid attention, Jesus said virtually the same things. We have in the last two centuries at least been working on the assumption that there will always be new resources, even if we have to take it from others, and habits are hard to overcome. We still entertain the sheer madness of “perpetual growth” in industry. Some countries still think they can expand. This is a largely materialist attitude.
Perhaps primarily for the reasons stated above. I believe that each ethnicity, faith, and religion was fine in its own right because it provided society in isolation with a working basis with which it could at least survive and, at best, thrive. Relatively recently, we were able to discover that cultural differences had masked an evolution of forms of participation in the environment that they all shared to some degree. In fact, those who were willing to dialogue found that spiritual practice, especially when dualism was overcome, had great similarities despite the cultural differences.
It is just a question of how to achieve this solidarity.
I’m talking about the world’s equilibrium, to which there seems to be a large consensus amongst environmentalists of all kinds, even if their methods of re-attaining that balance may differ. Environmental equilibrium is the balance among the components of ecosystem. The interaction among environmental components is a continuous process and keeps the balance among the components until a disturbance arises as a result of many factors. We must find out what enables a stable equilibrium or homeostasis, and all work towards that goal. There has been talk about terraforming Mars. How about doing something similar for the Earth?
This is of course a task of finding a working consensus, not dictating one. It is based on what Spinoza said about peace not being the absence of war. “Peace is a virtue, an attitude of mind, an inclination to goodness, trust, justice." So, what do you think is anathema? And how do we overcome bias? I think we all know the answer, but the problem is, it starts with us.
It’s not a contradiction, it’s an inference based on the experience of empathy with other conscious beings. Beyond that I believe consciousness not matter is fundamental substance of the universe in which we live and move and have our beings. I recognize your consciousness as a manifestation of that fundamental consciousness of the universe. Your accusation of solipsism is totally unfounded.