FM> In my view the larger question facing man both in the classical period
 FM> and in the modern period is that of whether or not "God" or "Man" is the
 FM> "measure of all things - the ultimate Socratic question.
 DM> It is hard to see why either of them is the measure of any meaning. Man
 DM> in the course of heavy universal history, would likely be a flash in the
 DM> pan, and God as a measure, has no foundation.  At best, man and God
 DM> would both be some minor fragment of some "OTHER" measure ...and at
 DM> worst a nothing. I need no evidence, but would accept your reasoning as
 DM> to how what I've said might be otherwise!
   David, I am wondering if you are aware that above you transposed almost
completely what I said into something else.  I spoke of the symbolism of that
occupied the founders of philosophy in their contention that God is the
measure against the sophistic "man is the measure" and you forthwith rather
gratuitiously assigned to them a "measure of meaning."   While I see no 
eason
to object to this the addtition is completely superfluous.  An experience IS 

meaning and man is virtually defined as that conscious being "who is a
historical being" i.e. as a being with history or who lives in history.  
ats,
horses, sheep, cows, dogs, etc., do NOT have history as far as we can
determine.  Philosophy of HISTORY evolved in Western Civilization and then
became "universal" with the acceptance of the symbol around the globe in the
wake of the opening of the world as an entity for trade and contemplation in
the period, principally from the 18th century onward.  
   I cannot argue with you as to what your experience is for you know that
better than I.  Nor can I argue that reality ultimately might not look like
something very different from that which I and other people living in the
western world with its symbolism and differention accumulative over centuries
appears to be.  If there is nothing but the nihil as far as we are concerned
then you certainly are correct and not only has the meaning evaporated we are
not only dead (along with God) but never were alive in the first place.
Nihilism certainly was a strong symbolism in the wake of "enlightenment" and
as it moved into Russia in the 19th century was quite strikingly celebrated 
s
the Russian novelists, like Dostievsky, so well depicted.  We would just have
to say in such an eventuality that the nihil was all there ever was in the
beginning and all there is in the beyond or eschatologically.  Perhaps, since
this is what we attribute to OUR minds we can even say that this is OUR great
discovery and reality has simply tried to fool us into thinking something
otherwise by maintaining us in that cave facing the wall and disputing 
hadows
with only the FALSE impulse to turn and seek a truth of existence not filled
by "meaningly shadows" endlessly disputing the meaning of their movements.  
   But, then, if such has turned out to be true why philosophize at all or
rather is there really anything to philosophize about.  Can we imagine a CAT
philosophizing?  Surely not. 
   In such a situation (if that is where human beings are) certainly "God id
dead" and so is the man who experiences God as his "measure."  In that case
"history" does not have its original meaning of "man in the present under 
od"
It is simply a symbol whose meaning has changed so that it now is a kind of
description of "events transpiring in time" as though they were meat going
through a grinder and becoming in their "meaninglessness" simply an empty
process.  That is not much different, in fact, than the situation when "man 
s
the measure."  In such a situation I'm not sure I wouldn't go all the way and
buy into Nietzsche's "eternal recurrence" so that in some future turning of
the wheel there would be another Plato, Moses and Paul to undergo another
revelation of greater luminosity of reality within man and on and on ad
infinitim.  Faith (not religion) leads me toward another view and a hope that
whatever love of man I have experienced is not false but it IS FAITH and not
assurance - of that I am completely aware.  
   What else could I say?
Sincerely, 
                                     Frank
                                                                              
                                                       
--- PPoint 2.05
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