Morning Felix,
— Thanks for weighing in. I read it but I don’t see the problem. I am reminded of Refugee by Tom Petty. “Somewhere, somehow,
some metaphysician must have kicked you around some.” I’ll keep your objections in mind as I try to go forward.
O- Cool.
— Of course, “I think”. I have admitted that I am speculating. Thought can vanish like dew in the morning sun. The avowed reductionists tear their hair. Whitehead said “Rationalism never shakes off its status of an experimental adventure.…Rationalism is an adventure in the clarification of thought, progressive and never final. But it is an adventure in which even partial success has importance.”
O- I agree with him on this.
— Unfortunately, Whitehead was developing his profoundly new vision of the world just as analytic philosophy was rejecting metaphysics carte blanche.
O- This is regrettable. But it would be as regrettable to ignore, for example, the objections of analytical philosophy, as you say “carte blanche”.
— Consequently, they found metaphysical questions and answers to be literally meaningless.
O- There is more value in what the later Wittgenstein had to said as opposed to the early Wittgenstein. Not that they are meaningless, but that it is a social process.
— The need for a comprehensive vision of reality hasn’t decreased since Whitehead. A unifying vision of reality is needed more than ever. The discovery of new theoretical constants in the sciences extends the unifying vision supplied by process-relational thought. I think people need to see the interwoven, relational character of our world and our lives. Vision will enrich lives in a world where thought is too often fragmented and self-referential.
O- Like I said, the enhancements gained do not demonstrate the rationality of the idea. It could be another noble lie.
I agree with you about the dreadful state of western society, however I disagree with the diagnosis and treatment proposal, because to me the beginning of disintegration is rotted elsewhere. It was not analytical philosophy that did us in. We never abandoned rational thought because it is the default mode of our species. None is an absolute sceptic. Establishing universals, as Plato did, also, will not serve as a social bandage. You cannot learn to be a better neighbor, you cannot demonstrate the need for community. All the books that could be filled with such “visions” would not be worth a cup of coffe with another human being.
I believe that the apathy you see is not universal, and certainly other cultures exist today, like the mediterrean culture, that do not match your description of effects. Be careful not to create an ogre so that you have a definite target instead of a difused process whose cure is intractable.
I do believe though that only a theological vision might be effective. However there is a human coil that always obscures the vision. The vision (worldview) of the real is not divided between the physical and the conceptual but between the rational and the irrational. Thus, even in the best of worlds, “you will always have the poor…” Rationalism is not the solution in absolute, in fact it can be argued to be part of the problem, for what is it that you see in the universal? It might be a vision of a chosen people, a vision of purity. And if you have a clear vision of this, you might visit the world incredible cruelty in accordance with the IDEA. The vision might unite you but not to the present, to the living, but to the dead and those not yet born.
It would be nice to demonstrate our connectedness in a mathematical ratio, to render the voice of God as universal as math rather than as diverse as revelations go, but this lack is not the only cause for war and massacress because we are rational up to a point and our needs go beyond a loving community. As Nietzsche would say all is WTP. The vision is WTP, the lack of a vision is WTP. Some need is being met.
What I think will bring people to accept one another, to see the self in another, is exposure to others, to the stranger and recognizing not how we are interconnected but how we are the same, with the same dreams, the same fears (this is the IDEA) under the different languages and dresses.
