January 26, 2014

Plato, Hegel, and Sri Aurobindo

V. P. Varma - The Political Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo
Motilal Banarsidass Publ., 01-Jan-1990 - 494 pages 
At that time I studied Hegel's The Philosophy of History. Then I discovered certain strong points of resemblance between the political thought of Aurobindo and German idealism. Further reflections on the philosophy of history confirmed my ...
... reference to the thought of Dayananda, Vivekananda, Tilak, Pal, Gandhi and Tagore but also with reference to the idealistic school of Western political thought represented by Plato, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Green, Bradley, Bosanquet and others.
My studies in the field of Western philosophy of history especially of Hegel, Marx, Spengler, Toynbee and Berdyaev suggested to me the idea of this reconstruction of Aurobindo's philosophy of history. This study which I have attempted seeks ...
This method we find elaborately employed in the history of European political philosophy, especially with regard to St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Kant and Hegel and even Plato and Aristotle, where not only the theological, metaphysical ...
St. Augustine, Hegel and Marx are philosophers of history in this sense.2 They want to find out the source of the impulsion of historical movements. They may emphasize either God or the absolute idea or the forces of production according to ... Next »
In this sense wherever we get the acceptance of the realistic conception of time we find an element of history.4 Thus we see that contrasted to Schelling, Hegel introduces a dynamic content in his view of the absolute. The metaphysics of ...
First, the rise of the dialectical methodology of Hegel and Marx. Distinguished from a speculative idealism, the dialectic emphasized the ideas of motion, change, progression, catastrophic advance and even sudden retrogression.
Sometimes these metaphysical assumptions are clearly stated as in Hegel, Marx and Toynbee. Sometimes they can only be implicit. It is not possible for a philosopher of history to be an agnostic in his fundamental assumptions. If, for example ...
... of the aspect of supra-cosmic transcendence or essentiality, and therein it is different from the metaphysics of Hegel and Bradley and akin to the traditions of ancient metaphysical Vedantism. Although conceived of as having different poises, ...
... evolution of the human soul through different births.2 (c) Critique of Darwinism Basically and primarily Aurobindo has constructed a theory of cosmic evolution like the Samkhya philosophers of ancient India, Aristotle, Hegel and Spencer.

V. P. Varma - 1990 - ‎Preview - ‎More editions A study of the sources of The Life Divine indicates that at several points Aurobindo has been profoundly influenced by Plato. Aurobindo is not in the habit of mentioning those several philosophers whose thoughts he has incorporated into ..
Posted by at No comments:

January 24, 2014

Wilber's perennialism like Theosophists misinterprets other traditions

Amod Lele on 23 January 2014 at 9:28 pm said: That’s fair, Patrick.
I suspect my tone in the comment to Matthew above was too dismissive. I suppose part of it comes out of an article I published last year on Ken Wilber, whose own perennialism is very much like that of the Theosophists and leads him to gross misinterpretations of the traditions he studies – but I say that while being in very close sympathy with the overall aims of Wilber’s project.
Amod Lele on 23 January 2014 at 9:49 pm said: I agree with you that “those who are skilled or expert in a domain of knowledge or inquiry do in fact have a greater qualification in that regard than do other people.” I used “élitist” with respect to the Theosophists’ belief that they were the skilled experts on each tradition out there, as opposed to others well versed in any given tradition who’d spent far longer with it than the Theosophists themselves had. I suspect this may have reflected at least some amount of class prejudice.
It’s fair to say, though, that this kind of attitude is shared by a number of indigenous Indian traditions (especially Advaitins) and by many contemporary social-scientific scholars of religion – not least those who are determinedly anti-perennialist and anti-theosophical. (The common approach that even your fellow scholars, let alone everyday practitioners, are nothing more than “data”.)

Is caste system really India’s biggest problem? ~Guunjan अप्रैल 25, 2013 10S टिप्पणियाँ Quite frequently, someone or the other comes up with vices of caste system that is claimed to run along with the history of Hindus. But, is caste system really India’s predominantly Hindu society’s biggest problem? Has it ever been such? While this write-up is not intended to hurt anyone at all, a few questions must be raised by us all. Unfortunately, asking questions has become a rare trait that is also responsible for our perennial decay but that would be a different diatribe.
If caste system was or is one of the greatest problems of India, let us evaluate the impact of casteism, as called, with its effects on our society. A natural question arises whether we have had any caste based wars in India in her history. After all, if caste system “suppressed” disadvantaged classes, which have been an overwhelming majority, then there must have been public rebellion or wars against the minority but supposedly ruling upper castes.
History has ample evidences all across the globe of the uprising of downtrodden whenever suppression has continued for a long period of time. But, perhaps it will not be surprising for any of us that there have been no caste based wars in India! It would also not surprise that forward castes were not butchered when there was a king from lower castes... Hope it is also not surprising that quite a few of the greatest kings of India have all been from lower castes! ... The story doesn’t end in ancient India. Many Nayanar saints, Alwar saints, Balakdas, Ghasidas, Namdev, Ravidas, Dadu Dayal, Kabir, Kahar, Narhari, Tukaram and Tukdoji were all backward or scheduled caste in post-ancient India. This list is perhaps endless. After all, is spirituality limited to castes or class in Hindus? Apparently if one reads beyond left leaning authors, it is tough to find caste based “discrimination” prior to Islamic invasion early last millenium. Varna vyavastha did exist, so did castes, if you call it such, but caste-based discrimination doesn’t have any concrete evidence. 

Sri Aurobindo had the advantage of not dealing with his own theory as a new category Posted by Tusar Nath Mohapatra, President @SavitriEraParty: Sri Aurobindo had the advantage of not dealing with his own theory as a new religious or political category which we are forced to do today. Lack of popularity, no doubt, is a severe disability for Sri Aurobindo's teaching but by no means for its worth or relevance for the future. Negligible success both on the spirituality & philosophy front after 63 years of Sri Aurobindo's departure forces us to be humble on claims. Dissonance between theoretical formulations and actual performance by people or organizations associated with Sri Aurobindo bogs scrutiny. Though seeming elitist or abstract The Mother & Sri Aurobindo actually strike at the most pertinent & intricate problems of human existence.
Ethical licence is implicit in Monarchy and as a legacy political parties do condone moral transgressions in Democracy. AAP has come of age! India is doomed until intellectuals need to be told about the importance of Sri Aurobindo's writings which they fail to notice on their own. Sri Aurobindo resisted bolstering the Nazi forces and despite all his patriotism, Netaji fails the test of aligning with Evolutionary arrow. Uncritical extolling of historical personages is fraught with risk and The Mother & Sri Aurobindo offer a safe guide https://t.co/gcMKxuuTYz
Leftist atheism, Nehruvian secularism, and RSS obscurantism are hurdles for full blossoming of Indian nationhood that Sri Aurobindo insists. Sri Aurobindo understands the ontological worth of religion for future Evolution of man and neither RSS-BJP nor AAP. http://t.co/syPMskdrN7 TOI edit is spot on on electoral arithmetic but forgets about the deeper issue of place of religion in nation-building which BJP-RSS stress. More than any particular religion or geographical territory Sri Aurobindo is concerned about the future man, his destiny & moulding society.

Tusar Nath Mohapatra on 25 January 2014 at 7:01 am said:
Demarcation between philosophy proper and history of Indian philosophy has been deep since the arrival of Sri Aurobindo in the scene. This year marks the Centenary of his magnum opus “The Life Divine” and other original works like “The Secret of the Veda.” The Evolutionary dialectic of his Integral Ontology seeks to establish a universal template of philosophy that acts as applied psychology as well by suitably incorporating poetic aesthesis. So, not to include him in the list would be an injustice to the future of human civilization and education. [TNM55]

For those who reach Sri Aurobindo through the Ken Wilber route, it is the other extreme. They are continually administered sedatives in small doses so that they never are Sri Aurobindo enthusiasts. All kinds of prejudices are fed to them in a sinister fashion to belittle the Great Master. In a way, it is the revenge of Theosophy that Sri Aurobindo fought a century back returning in a new avatar.
Thus, Wilber is the greatest threat at the moment in the west to build up of any mass attraction for The Mother and Sri Aurobindo and their immortal works. That is, of course, no cause to be disheartened for the Savitri Erans. The English reading public there can some day be motivated to taste the nectar that is Savitri. And from then on there would be no looking back. In the meanwhile, may our aspiration and action match! Posted by Tusar Nath Mohapatra at 5:42 AM

Posted by at No comments:

January 23, 2014

Pfau, Lakoff, and Raffoul

Jayarava on 22 January 2014 at 11:17 am said:
Perhaps the problem with periodisation is similar to the one I have been exploring with evolution. The metaphors and structures we employ are outdated and under-sophisticated. We can take a leaf from the book of physical archaeology. For example an archaeologist may talk about the “Iron Age”, but the Iron Age began at different times in different places. In India ca. 1000 BCE. In Australia or my home in New Zealand, there was no natural transition from Stone Age to the use of metals, no Bronze or Iron Age. This does not mean that Iron Age as a general category is meaningless. As a general term it is useful since cultures change in predictable ways when they discover how to work with iron and steel. If we have anxiety about categories then it might be well to read about how they work. George Lakoff’s, Women, Fire and Dangerous Things is an excellent introduction to a useful approach to categories and what they represent.

The Origins of Responsibility by Keith Ansell-Pearson
In this book François Raffoul seeks to undertake a major reconsideration of the concept of responsibility, drawing upon the rich resources offered by trajectories in continental thought, notably Nietzsche, Sartre, Heidegger, Levinas, and Derrida...
It is not that Nietzsche is not important or significant (far from it!), but to make him the centrepiece in the turning of thought that is held to be required is to exaggerate his significance at the expense of other pivotal figures one might draw upon to support the aims of the research. I am thinking here in particular of Bergson and his analysis of the dual sources of morality, including his extraordinary treatment of the 'open soul' and dynamic morality in his neglected Two Sources of Morality and Religion. It is arguable that seminal strands of continental philosophy -- for example, the work of Levinas and possibly even Derrida -- take their cue, consciously or not, from Bergson as much as, if not more than, they do from Nietzsche... Rather than provide a normative ethics Raffoul shows the need, first of all, to inquire into the meaning of ethics or what he calls the ethicality of ethics.

The Unintended Reformation: Genre, method, and assumptions posted by Brad S. Gregory More than 60 reviews of The Unintended Reformation have appeared since January 2012, including forums in four journals (Historically Speaking, Church History, Catholic Historical Review, Pro Ecclesia), in addition to the multiple sessions that have been devoted to the book at professional conferences. The responses here at The Immanent Frame add another ten. I am grateful to my colleagues for their responses, to Jonathan VanAntwerpen and The Immanent Framefor hosting them, and for the opportunity to reply. I am gratified the work has provoked discussion and debate that shows little sign of abating. I am also pleased that most reviewers have acknowledged the book’s ambition and erudition, and that some regard it as an important analysis of modern Western history comparable to Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age or Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Less satisfying (although not unpredictable) has been the ways in which the book has been misread, misunderstood, and misrepresented by some reviewers, including some respondents here.
Because The Unintended Reformation is unconventional and unsparingly compressed, understanding it requires careful reading. It deliberately crosses disciplinary and chronological boundaries normally kept distinct. Without these transgressions, its animating question about the intertwined formation of contemporary Western ideological and institutional realities could not have been answered...
But I reject as specious the assumption that all premodern paths and ends have somehow succumbed to that vulnerability simply by dint of being premodern—that we are in effect bound to enact the part prescribed for us by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in seeing especially the distant past as “a repository of expired meanings and outmoded practices,” as Thomas Pfau has recently put it in his magisterial work, Minding the Modern: Human Agency, Intellectual Traditions, and Responsible Knowledge. 
Posted by at No comments:

January 21, 2014

Sri Aurobindo's hermeneutical coup


Tusar Nath Mohapatra on 13 January 2014 at 8:46 am said:
Aware of the constraints of not straying outside the texts and syllabi, let me mention for the sake of discussion that later day philosophical formulations contain many ingenious notions like Sanghita or Loka-Sangraha to predicate emancipation. The problem of rebirth itself undergoes substantial transformation in the hands of Sri Aurobindo and hence antiquity of sources shouldn’t be the only criteria for ontological veracity. [TNM55]

Gaveshana or Research derives from the word Go meaning light, a connotation brought to light in modern times by Sri Aurobindo in his epochal The Secret of The Veda. This hermeneutical coup has so unsettled the received wisdom that there is unwillingness to look at the later texts in terms of the Vedic Sanskrit as unveiled by Sri Aurobindo. This blog, however, is a sign that such resistance will recede. [TNM55]

# larvalsubjects
That remark is directed at how politics is thought in critical theory, not what’s going on out there in the world. So much of our critical theory– and there are exceptions –seems to only recognize some variant of semiopolitics.
Truth be told, as my thought has evolved the issue of correlationism had fallen off the radar for me.  Somehow the debate had come to seem too “philosophical” to me, too “scholastic”, too remote from what interests me:  understanding why social assemblages are organized as they are, how power functions in social assemblages, and what we might do to address that power and change things.

 # Love of All Wisdom [Cross-posted at the Indian Philosophy Blog]
I am increasingly getting the impression that the debates over Orientalism in Asian traditions have taken a new turn, and one very much for the better. Few books of the twentieth century have made as much impact as Edward Said’s 1978 Orientalism. It is particularly striking that even though Said’s book was entirely about the Middle East, it has been a major scholarly landmark in the study of South and East Asia.
Posted by at No comments:

January 19, 2014

Nisbet, Wilson, Bourdieu, and Derrida

 A broader view of his entire body of work reveals Bourdieu as a theorist of social transformation as well. Gorski maintains that Bourdieu was initially engaged with the question of social transformation and that the question of historical change not only never disappeared from his view, but re-emerged with great force at the end of his career.
The contributors to Bourdieu and Historical Analysis explore this expanded understanding of Bourdieu's thought and its potential contributions to analyses of large-scale social change and historical crisis. Their essays offer a primer on his concepts and methods and relate them to alternative approaches, including rational choice, Lacanian psychoanalysis, pragmatism, Latour's actor-network theory, and the "new" sociology of ideas. 

We Have Never Been Modern by Bruno Latour
The critics have developed three distinct approaches to talking about our world: naturalization, socialization and deconstruction. Let us use E.O. Wilson, Pierre Bourdieu, and Jacques Derrida – a bit unfairly – as emblematic figures of these three tacks. When the first speaks of naturalized phenomena, then societies, subjects, and all forms of discourse vanish. When the second speaks of fields of power, then science, technology, texts, and the contents of activities disappear. When the third speaks of truth effects, then to believe in the real existence of brain neurons or power plays would betray enormous naiveté. [...]
Unable to believe the dual promises of socialism and ‘naturalism’, the postmoderns are also careful not to reject them totally. They remain suspended between belief and doubt, waiting for the end of the millennium.



The more somber social interpreters of our time, such as Robert Heilbroner, Robert Nisbet, and L. S. Stavrianos, perceive Western civilization and ultimately mankind as a whole to be in immediate danger of decline.
One Cosmos under God: The Unification of Matter, Life, Mind and Spirit by Robert Godwin 
According to Webster’s dictionary, the word evolution is etymologically linked to the French evolvere, which referred to the unrolling of a scroll, or book. And as Sri Aurobindo expressed it above, “All time is one body, Space a single book.” Or, putting it in a Western context, in the words of Aldous Huxley, “all science is the reduction of multiplicities to unities.”46
Posted by at No comments:

January 13, 2014

Indian Philosophy in America


Posted by at No comments:

January 10, 2014

Our values and preference-schedules keep changing

 Love, Life and Death by D. P. Chattopadhyaya (September 11, 2012) 
 ‘Do all people write, hoping always, that they will be able to write something radically new? Or, do they write primarily to express themselves to others, those living presently or yet to be born?’
I often wonder whether one of the main purposes of self-expression is not to share one’s ideas with others. One may raise the question: What can we possibly gain by sharing our experiences, expectations, bits of information, views and values with others? One of the many answers returned to these questions has been that by sharing our information, views and values with others, we can, in some cases, perhaps, help them and in others, harm them, influence them to our benefit, to that of society and maybe, to the benefit of the human race itself.
If we decide after deep and careful reflection that we should enlarge, or at least try to enlarge, a positive state of peace and happiness for others, and ourselves; the dissemination of our views and values then, may be welcome. On the other hand, if we think that we are veritably placed in a situation of conflict or struggle and should try to weaken opposing views and values, we will perhaps find ourselves called upon to fight our opponents, weaken their cause and intention... 
The physical ability, mental capacities and the aesthetic sensibility, which are necessary for having repeatedly or at least at pleasing intervals, this kind of welcome experience are not available to most of us. The objects of human desire change enormously and often unpredictably with the passage of years. At different phases of life, as we see, our values and preference-schedules keep changing.

The Concealed Art of the Soul: Theories of the Self and Practices of Truth in Indian Ethics and Epistemology by Jonardon Ganeri (February 8, 2013) 
As Martha Nussbaum has said, a philosophy that aims at therapy for the soul ‘will often need to search for techniques that are more complicated and indirect, more psychologically engaging, than those of conventional deductive and dialectical argument. It must find ways to delve into the pupil’s inner world’. In particular, the tropes of reluctance and secrecy in the Upanishads, and likewise the use of metaphors and parables in the Nikāya, encourage the reader to rework their understanding of self, a reworking that takes the form of an uncovering of what is already there rather than the creation of something altogether new. One theorist will claim, perhaps ambitiously, that this is even the hidden purpose of the epic Mahābhārata, whose author, Vyāsa, ‘shows that the primary aim of his work has been to produce a disenchantment with the world and that he has intended his primary subject to be liberation and the rasa of peace’. How texts like these can guide their readers to such a goal—not least through their depictions of the figures of the Buddha, the Upanisadic sage, and the epic hero—is my topic in Part I, and I won’t forget Nietzsche’s warning about soul doctors of every sort: ‘All preachers of morality, as also all theologians, have a bad habit in common: all of them try to persuade man that he is very ill, and that a severe, final, radical cure is necessary.’ [...]
The recalcitrant sages of the Upanisads are coy but not covert. They do not, in general, conceal their true beliefs with false words; they are not insincere. Tardiness not trickery is their leading trait, an immense reluctance to ‘spill the beans’, a coyness rooted not so much in a self-serving secretiveness or a disinclination to share the knowledge that gives them power, but which exists rather as a response to a deep respect for the power of that knowledge, and a recognition of the need not to be frivolous either with the knowledge itself or with its potential recipients. 


Writing the Self: Diaries, Memoirs, and the History of the Self by Peter Heehs (Feb 14, 2013)

Montaigne, Locke, and Nietzsche were aware of their predecessors’ beliefs, incorporating them into their own or reacting against them. Yet the process was not linear, a predictable movement in a single direction. [...]

George Orwell wrote: “Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful." By this standard, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions, the prototypical modern memoir, ought to be regarded as trustworthy, since it contains many things that eighteenth-century readers found scandalous. But historians agree that much of what Rousseau wrote was untrue. More recently, memoirists of the “misery lit” subgenre have vied in their efforts to reveal the most humiliating details of their lives, but the result has not been trustworthy memoirs. Many such books have fictional scenes; others are complete fabrications.






Posted by at No comments:

January 06, 2014

Battle in the clouds

  1. The Ends of History: Questioning the Stakes of Historical Reason

    books.google.com/books?isbn=1136157751
    Amy Swiffen, ‎Joshua Nichols - 2013 - ‎Preview - ‎More editions
    “There is no world, there are only islands”: it is very tempting to think that Derrida has fallen prey here, late in life, or perhaps already from the beginning, though we are only now noticing it, to that cardinal sin of metaphysics known as solipsism  ...

  2. Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Religion - Page 729

    books.google.com/books?isbn=1136696857
    Chad Meister, ‎Paul Copan - 2013 - ‎Preview - ‎More editions
    He argued that we deal perpetually with traces and not with presences (the text is the trace of his author), and that the chief sin of 'metaphysics' has been to focus on presence. And therefore, any idea of a unitary meaning vanishes: meaning is   ...

  3. Philosophy of Science Complete: A Text on Traditional ... - Page 319

    books.google.com/books?isbn=1133943039
    Edwin Hung - 2012 - ‎Preview - ‎More editions
    For example, you can tell your friend that your cup of coffee has an excess of hydrogen ions without committing the “sin” of metaphysics as long as you do not mean that there are invisible tiny things called hydrogen ions swimming in your  ...

  4. Religion, Reason, and Culture in the Age of Goethe - Page 247

    books.google.com/books?isbn=1571135618
    Elisabeth Krimmer, ‎Patricia Anne Simpson - 2013 - ‎Preview - ‎More editions
    Just as Spinoza fought to overcome Cartesian dualism, Deleuze strove to redeem the original sin of metaphysics, its perpetual construction of a transcendental Other to which concepts can only refer, through the expressive immanence of  ...

  5. Christian Examiner - Volume 7; Volume 12 - Page 386

    books.google.com/books?id=NkA4AAAAMAAJ
    1832 - ‎Full view - ‎More editions
    This is the crying sin of metaphysics, the foundation of its thousand systems, all equally perfect and equally false, — of its jarrings, its confusions, its mysticism, its eternal disputes about truth. It saw, for it could not well help it, a 386 [July,  ...

  6. The Christian Examiner and General Review - Volume 12 - Page 386

    books.google.com/books?id=mRUZAAAAYAAJ
    Francis Jenks, ‎James Walker, ‎Francis William Pitt Greenwood - 1832 - ‎Full view - ‎More editions
    This is the crying sin of metaphysics, the foundation of its thousand systems, all equally perfect and equally false, — of its jarrings, its confusions, its mysticism, its eternal disputes about truth. It saw, for it could not well help it, a 386  ...

  7. The Christian Examiner - Volumes 11-12 - Page 386

    books.google.com/books?id=FGo1AQAAMAAJ
    1831 - ‎Full view - ‎More editions
    This is the crying sin of metaphysics, the foundation of its thousand systems, all equally perfect and equally false,— of its jarrings, its confusions, its mysticism, its eternal disputes about truth. It saw, for it could not well help it, a 386 Constitution  ...

  8. The Ladies' Repository, and Gatherings of the West

    books.google.com/books?id=1hkAAAAAYAAJ
    1848 - ‎Full view - ‎More editions
    That, indeed, were a curious ratiocination, amounting to the positive sin of metaphysics, and nullifying even that, by its own rule. One of the most sensible modern improvements is the repudiation of this old- fashioned rhetorical figure of  ...

  9. The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson - Page 132

    books.google.com/books?isbn=0226064972
    Daniel J. Boorstin - 1993 - ‎Preview - ‎More editions
    'Abstraction,' which was the prime occupation and the essential sin of metaphysics, was the greatest menace to all true philosophy. It was a surrender to the human temptation to oversimplify, and the tantalizing complexity of nature made such  ...

  10. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Primary Beliefs - Page 79

    books.google.com/books?id=B3lZAAAAcAAJ
    Richard Lowndes - 1865 - ‎Full view - ‎More editions
    But the subject has been obscured, and its sphere unduly narrowed, by that which has been the besetting sin of metaphysics in all ages—an over-haste to theorize upon insufficient data. Catalogues of the powers or faculties of the All that is in  ...

  11. The Ladies' Repository - Volume 6 - Page 321

    books.google.com/books?id=N8cRAAAAYAAJ
    1846 - ‎Full view - ‎More editions
    That, indeed, were a curious ratiocination, amounting to the positive sin of metaphysics, and nullifying even that, by its own rule. One of the most sensible modern improvements is the repudiation of this old- fashioned rhetorical figure of  ...

  12. The Knickerbocker; Or, New-York Monthly Magazine

    books.google.com/books?id=OQkgAQAAIAAJ
    1862 - ‎Full view - ‎More editions
    Let us, to avoid the sin of metaphysics, (punishable, as you well know, in the other world by being converted for eleven thousand years into a leaden image of Somnus,) let us, we say, confine ourselves to the manifestations — the avatars of   ...

  13. Foederal American Monthly - Volume 59 - Page 480

    books.google.com/books?id=VXtRAAAAYAAJ
    1862 - ‎Full view - ‎More editions
    Let us, to avoid the sin of metaphysics, (punishable, as you well know, in the other world by being converted for eleven thousand years into a leaden image of Somnus,) let us, we say, confine ourselves to the manifestations — the avatars of  ...

  14. The Knickerbocker: Or, New-York Monthly Magazine - Page 480

    books.google.com/books?id=PIw4AQAAMAAJ
    Charles Fenno Hoffman, ‎Timothy Flint, ‎Lewis Gaylord Clark - 1862 - ‎Full view - ‎More editions
    Let us, to avoid the sin of metaphysics, (punishable, as you well know, in the other world by being converted for, eleven thousand years into a leaden image of Somnus,) let us, we say, confine ourselves to the manifestations -~the avatars of the  ...

  15. The Presbyterian Quarterly Review - Volume 9 - Page 324

    books.google.com/books?id=y7QRAAAAYAAJ
    Benjamin John Wallace - 1861 - ‎Full view - ‎More editions
    A notable attempt to burn a man alive for the sin of — metaphysics. As introductory to our purpose, we do not know that we can do better than to bring in an extract from a letter of Dr. Duf- field, in which he speaks with affectionate regard of the  ...

  16. The Life Divine - Page 78

    books.google.com/books?isbn=0941524612
    Sri Aurobindo - 1990 - ‎Preview - ‎More editions
    In this way they avoided to a certain extent the besetting sin of metaphysics, the tendency to battle in the clouds because it deals with words as if they were imperative facts instead of symbols which have always to be carefully scrutinised and  ...

  17. On Modern Origins: Essays in Early Modern Philosophy - Page 251

    books.google.com/books?isbn=073910814X
    Richard Kennington, ‎Pamela Kraus, ‎Frank Hunt - 2004 - ‎Preview - ‎More editions
    Dworkin notices that the phrase "natural rights" has for many people "disquieting metaphysical associations"; that is. to speak of nature is to commit the sin of metaphysics. Nevertheless. Dworkin suggests that we resume the use of the phrase  ...

  18. Sunshine in Thought - Page 104

    books.google.com/books?id=2PseAAAAMAAJ
    Charles Godfrey Leland - 1863 - ‎Full view - ‎More editions
    Let us, to avoid the sin of metaphysics (punishable, as you well know, in the other world by being converted for eleven thousand years into a leaden image of Somnus), let us, we say, confine ourselves to the manifestations — the avatars of the  ...

  19. The Limits of a Limitless Science: And Other Essays - Page 99

    books.google.com/books?isbn=1882926463
    Stanley L. Jaki - 2000 - ‎Snippet view
    Einstein's fiasco should seem all the more baffling as he battled positivism even at the price of exposing himself to the indignity of being held by them to be "guilty of the original sin of metaphysics." Obviously Einstein was haunted by the very  ...

  20. Journal of Science, and Annals of Astronomy, Biology, ... - Page 360

    books.google.com/books?id=4nM6AQAAMAAJ
    1882 - ‎Full view - ‎More editions
    ... these gentlemen blaspheme and deny their metaphysicism, be it of the revealed or of the intuitive type, as Peter did his Christ, for the occasion. , I have sometimes committed the sin of metaphysics; they are the infinite sea from which all finite  ...

  21. Crisis consciousness in contemporary philosophy - Page 18

    books.google.com/books?isbn=0930656210
    András Gedő - 1982 - ‎Snippet view - ‎More editions
    And this riddle is claimed to be insoluble: "metaphysics," it is claimed, threatens humanity, but at the same time is part of its nature. The sin of "metaphysics" is forgetting the last and first question of philosophy: that of "Being."20 For Heidegger ...

  22. The Journal of Science, and Annals of Astronomy, Biology, ...

    books.google.com/books?id=33E7AQAAIAAJ
    1882 - ‎Full view - ‎More editions
    I have sometimes committed the sin of metaphysics ; they are the infinite sea from which all finite science rises, and on which it must for ever float ; without them we would be savages worse than brutes. If the pamphlet moves on the boundary  ...

  23. The Journal of Science, and Annals of Astronomy, Biology, ...

    books.google.com/books?id=S-k4AAAAMAAJ
    James Samuelson, ‎William Crookes - 1882 - ‎Full view - ‎More editions
    I have sometimes committed the sin of metaphysics ; they are the infinite sea from which all finite science rises, and on which it must for ever float ; without them we would be savages worse than brutes. If the pamphlet moves on the boundary  ...

  24. The Journal of Science and Annals of Astronomy, Biology, ... - Page 360

    books.google.com/books?id=PlsFAAAAQAAJ
    Snippet view - ‎More editions
    I have sometimes committed the sin of metaphysics ; they are the infinite sea from which all finite science rises, and on which it must for ever float ; without them we would be savages worse than brutes. If the pamphlet moves on the boundary  ...

  25. Selected works - Page 375

    books.google.com/books?id=AKclAAAAMAAJ
    Ivan Mikhaĭlovich Sechenov, ‎Mikhail Nikolaevich Shaternikov - 1968 - ‎Snippet view - ‎More editions
    This is the second deadly sin of metaphysics — a sin which makes it possible to confuse the name of an object with the object itself, e. g. the name Peter, and Peter the man; and its origin lies in the peculiarities of our speech, and the attitude ...

  26. In the law's darkness: Isaac Ray and the medical ... - Page 21

    books.google.com/books?id=KZBqAAAAMAAJ
    John Starrett Hughes - 1986 - ‎Snippet view - ‎More editions
    This is the crying sin of metaphysics, the foundation of its thousand systems, all equally perfect and all equally false, — of its jarrings, its confusions, its mysticism, its eternal disputes about truth.13 Phrenology, with its supposed stress on  ...

  27. The play and place of criticism - Page 246

    books.google.com/books?id=1bVMAQAAIAAJ
    1967 - ‎Snippet view - ‎More editions
    And the Platonic domination, the propositional structure, stands revealed: the skeleton that puritanically denies flesh, denies body — ultimately denies the singularity that permits love. Thus the sin of language is joined to the sin of metaphysics,  ...
Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)