In chapter III of his Philosophical Fragments, Kirkegaard wrote:
“…deepest down in the heart of piety lurks the mad caprice which knows that it has itself produced its God.”
Deepest down in my heart of piety lurks the mad caprice which suspects that this Universe is the way that it is for no particular reason. In which case Hawkins is wrong to suggest, even figuratively, that physics is a portal to “know the mind of God”. Rutherford notwithstanding, physics is ultimately another form of stamp collecting. Given my love for physics this is indeed a mad caprice in an otherwise pious heart.
What mad caprice lurks deepest down in your heart of piety?
Well I must admit I no longer count myself as being particularly insightful for having carried this Kierkegaardian insight around with me for the better part of my life. One, (perhaps immature), reply might go something like this;
“…deepest down in the heart of healthy doubt lurks the mad caprice of a solipsistic naivety which never grew up.”
It would be my opinion that this kind of mad caprice only occurs in contexts where ‘piety’* is already established in its hegemony. Personally, the idea that I might ‘know’ deep down that I created God, carries less weight for me than its companion and corollary; that I might not have done so. At the very least, neither entices or beckons to me more strongly, and I feel that too much weight is here placed on an idea whose perceived novelty and originality is probably no more than a by-product of our cultural norms; or, to phrase it more philosophically in order to point clearly towards the issue at hand - a by-product of a certain metaphysical world-view.
And ‘piety’ is a historical concept connected to our western notion of ‘belief’, which is itself particularistic, historical, and not at all ‘universal’. I could elaborate here if you are interested.
Well, yes. Whether we acknowledge it or not, much of what we think and say is rooted in our cultural history. For one western historical context of “piety” we only need think back to the Euthyphro, wherein Socrates asks Euthyphro whether the pious is loved by the gods because it’s pious, or whether it’s pious because it’s loved by the gods? Socrates wants Euthyphro to expound on the nature of piety. Of course at that point Euthyphro suddenly remembers that he needs to change the oil in his car, or some such thing.
I actually hadn’t meant to comment on the Kirkegaard. I used it as a setup piece. In any case, I don’t share Kirkegaard’s “mad caprice” - I expect few devout atheists would.
My own “deepest down” suspicion has to do with a devaluation. Science, physics in particular, is certainly useful. But even physics can’t tell us how the world is. At best, it can only say what the world seems like. The crux of my “mad caprice” is the suspicion that if the world really is some way, then it is contingently so. No matter how the Universe might be I suspect there were countless other ways that it could have been. My feeling is that this Universe might constitute a parochial backwater of actuality amid a much larger setting.
Btw, necessity does arise retrospectively, in an anthropic sense. But prospectively speaking; that is, prior to actually waking, no conscious being expects to wake-up in a world. Neither could non-beings comment on the fact of their non-being. Only once we’ve awakened can we say that the Universe had to have been such that a conscious being could have wakened in it.
Of course at that point Euthyphro suddenly remembers that he needs to change the oil in his car, or some such thing.
Actually, of all things Euthyphro is going to court to help convict his father of a murder, hence the perplexing question of the source of piety, since he is seemingly being impious toward his father.
But even physics can’t tell us how the world is. At best, it can only say what the world seems like.
Quine makes this point in Two Dogma’s:
As an empiricist I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of science as a tool, ultimately, for predicting future experience in the light of past experience. Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer . . . For my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer’s gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing, the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conceptions only as cultural posits.
The crux of my “mad caprice” is the suspicion that if the world really is some way, then it is contingently so. No matter how the Universe might be I suspect there were countless other ways that it could have been. My feeling is that this Universe might constitute a parochial backwater of actuality amid a much larger setting.
Are you suggesting that there were countless other ways it could have been is due to the insufficient strength of the chains of necessity? Does not the contingency in your caprice guarantee a particular outcome? What is intriguing is that our descriptions of how it has “turned out†are not reducible to what has been described. That though the posits of physics appear from our perspective to be more efficacious, and therefore more meaningful than the gods of Homer, neither has primacy to truth. The “much larger setting†behind your actuality is perhaps the fluidity of possible interpretation, the variety of possible “cultural postsâ€, upon what is described as actuality.
What existential use is in what cannot be described? Kierkegaard’s leap into absurd faith was grounded in this fact that existence cannot be know as a system for a human being. In existence, it is always impossible to distinguish the beginning from the laws of beginning and becoming. This nullifies science and logic and philosophy and origins are sought out in faith. He believed that existence was a system for God, that its physics were not our business, to put it one way. God was reached through the existential dread in the experience of only descriptions and the passion for eternal truths and purposes.
What “turns out,” at each and every moment is starting anew. Moments are disconnected beyond the anxiety of the infinite and existential truths are contingent…one after the other…constantly becomming. I fail to see how a faith in metaphysics or ontology or any other study of reality can alleviate the contingency of description.
You are celebrating what Kiekegaard was protesting.
Although you meant to, somehow.
Hawking ended up believing that God couldn’t be proven, only that if God existed he couldn’t step in and intervene in the events of the universe after it started, had he created it.
Its like a deist, “starting the clock and stepping aside.” It suggests a transcendent and denies an immanent.
What existential use is in what cannot be described?
The existential productivity of various meanings. The plethora of the possible resides perhaps in description, and not the assume actuality.
You are celebrating what Kiekegaard was protesting.
Heaven forbid I violate Kiekegaard’s perverse pleasure in self-provoked suffering. A superb manufacture of paralysis deserves credit, but I have read his Diary of a Seducer and so will not be seduced. Let him protest. The picking at a scab provides it own satisfaction, though it retards its healing and gives a nice scar to muse about for the rest of your life.
Geez, I haven’t heard such a violent polemic about a philosopher I like since Sartre.
What are you drinking anyway?
Hatorade?
The secret of Kierkegaard blows like the strange wind you feel in Spinoza, Dunamis. The “happiness” of trembling before a passion so strong you fall to your knees.
Do you not find comfort in meloncholy, sir? A strange pleasure, some emotion that brings joy and tears?
The infinite is heavy, Dunamis. Descriptions of descriptions of description is all you’ll ever do. Kierkegaard had to explain it indirectly it was so deep. One couldn’t just “say” the truth. One has to experience it in a strange yet comforting wind.
I have a small case of athlete’s foot, I think (that or just dry skin on my foot), and I love to scratch it. It never gets worse, but I always love to scratch it. I don’t want it to heal, because it doesn’t get any worse. I want to be able to love to scratch it.
Have you ever found that spot on a dog that makes him almost paralyzed, kicking his leg in uncontrolled ecstasy, when you are petting it.
I haven’t heard such a violent polemic about a philosopher I like since Sartre.
Violent? I love Kierkegaard, or at least have loved him for years, and yes a wind blows through him in similar vein as does Spinoza. The difference, and yes the difference may be in my years, is in apprehending what can be done, rather than nourishing oneself on what cannot be done. The is a sense I get with Kierkegaard that he relishes his predicament, and would not have it any other way. A nice prison to visit, I learned many things in that cell, but one day I turned the key and opened the door. I feel much this same way with all of existentialism, a kind of erected crucible upon which the Spirit is to be purified. A brilliant and intricate crucible, but when you realize that “you” constructed it, it looses some of its transformational power. If I must wade into the existential landscape again, I prefer Dostoevsky to Kierkegaard. At least his Raskolnikov became a Myshkin.
Sometimes it gets worse, sometimes it stays the same, but always it preoccupies the Self with the autoerotic recursivity that prevents, or at least consumes, its ends. You have purposively and calculatingly reduced yourself to a reflex. This is known as addiction.
Aren’t we all, my friend. Charged ions across a membrane. A pulse. A release of tension. Even your words, the understanding of your words, to me, to yourself.
The key is to situate your reflex within the larger reflexes of the world and so as to move from a more passive to more active state. Barring that, hook yourself up to a poppy-seed IV drip and play nintendo til the bedsores consume the skin.
Look here, bud. I can run eight miles and still out-run you, out-fight you, and out-philosophize you, (but not out-type you, obviously). I’m even working on my one-handed push-ups, like ol’ Polemarchus does. These indirect references to the scum-bag drug users has to stop. I don’t know what images you have of me but it sure as hell ain’t no drug feign lying on a gurney.
