FM> .....it is  better not to speak of "negative philosophies." I believe we
 FM> should have enough respect for history to acknowledge that there are not
 FM> "philosophies" (negative OR positive).  What I take you to mean, rather,
 FM> would be better termed "opinions."
 DM> I was using the time honored "common" practice of using the term
 DM> "philosophy" to convey long standing "opinions". I am sometimes caught
 DM> between "street language" conventions and a more correct usage.
   I'm not just being picky.  Philosophy as "love of wisdom" cannot be
multiplied.  If it could I'd lose interest quickly.  
 FM> I have no argument at all against the assertion that we do not "know it
 FM> all."  That is what Voegelin meant when he observed that history has no
 FM> eidos (knowable meaning) and "history is not a stream of human beings
 FM> and their actions in time" (snails, horses and apes have THAT) but the
 FM> process of man's participation in "a flux of divine presence that has
 FM> eschatological direction."
 DM> Again we have more the nice sound to meaning than THE nice meaning
 DM> itself.  There is NOTHING to indicate that even the process of man's
 DM> participation in a/the "flux of divine presence in eschatological
 DM> directions" has any significance at all, an even chance of being a bit
 DM> nothing-ish.
   O.K.  I would have thought you'd examine the assertion a bit more
precisely.   It doesn't take a whole lot of energy just to say "that's what
you think" or "that is all hogwash."  If history DOES have a knowable meaning
and Voegelin is wrong rush me the outlines of the knowable meaning or
structure we're all able to discern.  I'm not averse to knowing how it's all
going to turn out.  But, I'm sure you're aware that it will have to be so
tight that nobody anywhere can dissent and describe some other "knowable"
structure.  I never, BTW, EVER knew Voegelin to sacrifice intellectual energy
for "niceties."  The Louisiana State University Press, where he taught only a
relatively few years, is not publishing his entire life work because of a few
"nice-sounding" utterances.   I don't think either Spengler or Toynbee came 
p
with such a meaning although Toynbee obviously gave some weight, finally, to
the world's four higher religions.  Jaspers didn't either.    Both Berdiaev
and Chardin appear to have insisted on SOME meaning but they were hesitant to
describe it in any apocalyptic extravaganza.  Both knew too much of
philosophical studies.
 DM> I hold the "nihil" as a valid point on a compass ....a serious
 DM> direction. I also acknowledge the other compass points but am forced to
 DM> overplay that particular point because it is so often pushed aside by
 DM> positive ""opinions"" as to make it seem the compass only has three
 DM> points .....kind of like your compass !
 DM> Most move beyond the primitive "nihil" stages as perhaps one day I
 DM> will also.
   Nothingness as a point on a compass??  What, pray tell, is difference
between a "primitive nothingness" and a "sophisticated nothingness?"  
 FM> I can fully understand.  The gnostic mass movements of the centuries
 FM> since "enlightenment" have filled the horizon massively and they are
 FM> both political and intellectual. Renunciation of them was made
 FM> intentionally difficult because reality DOES clearly involve the desire
 FM> to know and so it furnishes in these confusions of symbolisms competing,
 FM> attractive "totalities" or "systems."  It is difficult to approach the
 FM> conclusion that they may be, like Nietzsche's "changing of masks"
 FM> something of an invitation to turn from the "disputing with shadows"
 FM> toward the more uncertain realm in which gratefulness is entertained for
 FM> the blessing of science and faith (not as assurance) permits an escape
 FM> from the "institutions, secular or religious" and a search for
 FM> existential order beyond "mere opinion."  There is certainly no escape
 FM> from history for history is the reality which must be lived and died.
 DM> Yes! well understood and well said...... Now you catch a glimpse of my
 DM> cantankerous need for room and balance to move around in ...away from
 DM> popular positive mind-candy  however sacred, or draped in historical
 DM> robes, or even mystified by "faith".
   Well, you do not analyze far enough for much of a glimpse.  What is meant
by "positive mind-candy."  Is this a critique of Comte, the father of
Postivism or not.  It is a bit difficult to know because you seem, David, 
nly
to make brief statements that are designed for what?  Shock?  Nothing, as far
as I know can be mystified by "faith" unless one gets to form some special
meaning for faith.  
   Do you imagine that I'm intellectually cramped?  It may be true.  I prefer
to think of it as a bit of discipline and unwillingness to buy into the
possible validity of every wind that blows.  I prefer History as something of
an anchor.  
 DM> Philosophy and its many cousins of evaluation, have a good mind-feel;
 DM> and has been brightened by evolution into a hungry button in our nerve
 DM> system. Also?  the "nothing-ish" conclusions might be in error or partly
 DM> so. There are ever even third-ish possibilities that meanings may be
 DM> other than  "nothing" or the "somethings we have invented them to be,
   Sounds like an assertion that no one should ever leave the realm of the
figures on the shadowy wall disputing shadows because it might be more fun
than an existential tug in the direction of more reality than is found there.
That is a bleak prognosis for education but perhaps no more bleak than the
actuality, come to think about it.  I prefer to help the golden cord with a
slight push.  It doesn't hurt anything or anybody as far as I can discern.
 DM> "Attunement to an order of being" is relative to all the slippery edges
 DM> of consciousness. To say it has nothing to do with "mind-feel",  is at
 DM> best optimistic and at worst naive . Also! I may be incapable
 DM> of seeing your "faith" reach more than "sugar-plumish", but time might
 DM> well expand my vision. As I have said, or will, I don't have it all
 DM> together .....yet!  The only one that "scratched"  my thinking some
 DM> along such lines was Teilhard de Chardin, who still  after many years,
 DM> whispers into my thoughts (much as I TRY to keep him  out!).
   "Optimism" and "Pessimism" are words along with "Altruism" beloved of the
Positivists because they sound as though they have reached beyond the 
onfines
of a restrictive past.  Faith, however it is defined, is not MY faith as
though it was some invention of MY mind.  It is what led Chardin to be
intellectually quite comfortable in quieting any libido dominandi that would
DEMAND a MEANING in ULTIMATE REALITY that had to be PERSONAL.  He said he was
quite satisfied to be only a part of ultimate reality - not necessarily a
recognizable separate personality.  He felt no need to "personalize" the
extending of "salvation through grace in death."   I find that admirable in a
confessed Christian - something I'm not certain I could claim to be.  
   You place a great deal of emphasis, it seems, on "feeling."  I would join
with Goethe in saying that such enters into a full experience of the world 
he
said it in so many words when he said, in effect that whether or not he might
be a monotheist, a polytheist or a dualist depended on whether art, morality
or something else predominated at any given moment.  
   I sense that you take the position more often than not that YOU are
carefully analyzing matters while the other party is merely following some
favorite and nice-sounding feelings.  If that is more comforting for you then
you should declare that up front and at the beginning, David, so that the
other person in the dialogue will know what to expect and that her/his/its
thought is not going to be measured very carefully or analyzed very much in
detail but is going to be more or less shrugged off with a few well chosen
phrases.  
Sincerely, 
                                     Frank
                                                                              
                                                       
--- PPoint 2.05
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