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20 quotes tagged 'philosophy'

The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 14: Mysterium Coniunctionis

Author: Carl Gustav Jung, R.F.C. Hull (Translator)

Publisher: Princeton University Press (1963)

The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

Publisher: kindle import (0)

104

The people we are tempted to call clods and boors are just those who seem to find nothing fascinating in being human; their humanity is incomplete, for it has never astonished them. There is also something incomplete about those who find nothing fascinating in being. You may say that this is a philosopher's professional prejudice—that people are defective who lack a sense of the metaphysical. But anyone who thinks at all must be a philosopher—a good one or a bad one—because it is impossible to think without premises, without basic (and in this sense, metaphysical) assumptions about what is sensible, what is the good life, what is beauty, and what is pleasure. To hold such assumptions, consciously or unconsciously, is to philosophize. The self-styled practical man of affairs who pooh-poohs philosophy as a lot of windy notions is himself a pragmatist or a positivist, and a bad one at that, since he has given no thought to his position.

The image of God as a personal Being, somehow 'outside' or other than the world, had the merit of letting us feel that life is based on intelligence, that the laws of nature are everywhere consistent in that they proceed from one ruler, and that we could let our imaginations go to the limit in conceiving the sublime qualities of this supreme and perfect Being. The image also gave everyone a sense of importance and meaning. For this God is directly aware of every tiniest fragment of dust and vibration of energy, since it is just his awareness of it that enables it to be. This awareness is also love and, for angels and men at least, he has planned an everlasting life of the purest bliss which is to begin at the end of mortal time. But of course there are strings attached to this reward, and those who purposely and relentlessly deny or disobey the divine will must spend eternity in agonies as intense as the bliss of good and faithful subjects. The problem of this image of God was that it became too much of a good thing. Children working at their desks in school are almost always put off when even a kindly and respected teacher watches over their shoulders. How much more disconcerting to realize that each single deed, thought, and feeling is watched by the Teacher of teachers, that nowhere on earth or in heaven is there any hiding-place from that Eye which sees all and judges all. To many people it was therefore an immense relief when Western thinkers began to question this image and to assert that the hypothesis of God was of no help in describing or predicting the course of nature. If everything, they said, was the creation and the operation of God, the statement had no more logic than 'Everything is up.' But, as, so often happens, when one tyrant is dethroned, a worse takes his place. The Crackpot Myth was retained without the Potter. The world was still understood as an artifact, but on the model of an automatic machine. The laws of nature were still there, but no lawmaker. According to the deists, the Lord had made this machine and set it going, but then went to sleep or off on a vacation. But according to the atheists, naturalists, and agnostics, the world was fully automatic. It had constructed itself, though not on purpose. The stuff of matter was supposed to consist of atoms like minute billiard balls, so small as to permit no further division or analysis. Allow these atoms to wiggle around in various permutations and combinations for an indefinitely long time, and at some time in virtually infinite time they will fall into the arrangement that we now have as the world. The old story of the monkeys and typewriters. In this fully Automatic Model of the universe shape and stuff survived as energy and matter. Human beings, mind and body included, were parts of the system, and thus they were possessed of intelligence and feeling as a consequence of the same interminable gyrations of atoms. But the trouble about the monkeys with typewriters is that when at last they get around to typing the Encyclopaedia Britannica, they may at any moment relapse into gibberish. Therefore, if human beings want to maintain their fluky status and order, they must work with full fury to defeat the merely random processes of nature. It is most strongly emphasized in this myth that matter is brute and energy blind, that all nature outside human, and some animal, skins is a profoundly stupid and insensitive mechanism. Those who continued to believe in Someone-Up-There-Who-Cares were ridiculed as woolly-minded wishful thinkers, poor weaklings unable to face man's grim predicament in a heartless universe where survival is the sole privilege of the tough guys. If the all-too-intelligent God was disconcerting, relief in getting rid of him was short-lived. He was replaced by the Cosmic Idiot, and people began to feel more estranged from the universe than ever. This situation merely reinforced the illusion of the loneliness and separateness of the ego (now a 'mental mechanism') and people calling themselves naturalists began the biggest war on nature ever waged. In one form or another, the myth of the Fully Automatic Model has become extremely plausible, and in some scientific and academic disciplines it is as much a sacrosanct dogma as any theological doctrine of the past—despite contrary trends in physics and biology. For there are fashions in myth, and the world-conquering West of the nineteenth century needed a philosophy of life in which realpolitik— victory for the tough people who face the bleak facts—was the guiding principle. Thus the bleaker the facts you face, the tougher you seem to be. So we vied with each other to make the Fully Automatic Model of the universe as bleak as possible. Nevertheless it remains a myth, with all the positive and negative features of myth as an image used for making sense of the world. It is doubtful whether Western science and technology would have been possible unless we had tried to understand nature in terms of mechanical models.

The Society of the Spectacle

Author: Guy Debord

Publisher: kindle import (0)

The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross

Author: John M. Allegro

Publisher: Paperjacks (1971)

The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Author: Julian Jaynes

Publisher: University of Toronto Press (1978)

209

The observation of difference may be the origin of the analog space of consciousness. After the breakdown of authority and of the gods, we can scarcely imagine the panic and the hesitancy that would feature human behavior during the disorder we have described. We should remember that in the bicameral age men belonging to the same city-god were more or less of similar opinion and action. But in the forced violent intermingling of peoples from different nations, different gods, the observation that strangers, even though looking like oneself, spoke differently, had opposite opinions, and behaved differently might lead to the supposition of something inside of them that was different. Indeed, this latter opinion has come down to us in the traditions of philosophy, namely, that thoughts, opinions, and delusions are subjective phenomena inside a person because there is no room for them in the ‘real,’ ‘objective’ world. It is thus a possibility that before an individual man had an interior self, he unconsciously first posited it in others, particularly contradictory strangers, as the thing that caused their different and bewildering behavior. In other words, the tradition in philosophy that phrases the problem as the logic of inferring other minds from one’s own has it the wrong way around. We may first unconsciously (sic) suppose other consciousnesses, and then infer our own by generalization.

Consciousness is a much smaller part of our mental life than we are conscious of, because we cannot be conscious of what we are not conscious of. How simple that is to say; how difficult to appreciate! It is like asking a flashlight in a dark room to search around for something that does not have any light shining upon it. The flashlight, since there is light in whatever direction it turns, would have to conclude that there is light everywhere. And so consciousness can seem to pervade all mentality when actually it does not.\n\n The timing of consciousness is also an interesting question. When we are awake, are we conscious all the time? We think so. In fact, we are sure so! I shut my eyes and even if I try not to think, consciousness still streams on, a great river of contents in a succession of different conditions which I have been taught to call thoughts, images, memories, interior dialogues, regrets, wishes, resolves, all interweaving with the constantly changing pageant of exterior sensations of which I am selectively aware. Always the continuity. Certainly this is the feeling. And whatever we're doing, we feel that our very self, our deepest of deep identity is indeed this continuing flow that only ceases in sleep between remembered dreams. This is our experience. And many thinkers have taken this spirit of continuity to be the place to start from in philosophy, the very ground of certainty which no one can doubt. Cogito, ergo sum.\n\n It is much more probable that the seeming continuity of consciousness is really an illusion, just as most of the other metaphors about consciousness are. In our flashlight analogy, the flashlight would be conscious of being on only when it is on. Though huge gaps of time occurred, providing things were generally the same, it would seem to the flashlight itself that the light had been continuously on. We are thus conscious less of the time than we think, because we cannot be conscious of when we are not conscious.

What a startling doctrine [Behaviorism is]! But the really surpising thing is that, starting off almost as a flying whim, it grew into a movement that occupied center stage in psychology from about 1920 to 1960. The external reasons for the sustained triumph of such a peculiar position are both fascinating and complex. Psychology at the time was trying to wriggle out of philosophy into a separate academic discipline and used behaviorism to do so. The immediate adversary of behaviorism, Titchenerian introspectionism, was a pale and effete opponent, based as it was on a false anaology between consciousness and chemistry. The toppled idealism of World War I created a revolutionary age demanding new philosophies. The intriguing succeses of physics and general technology presented both a model and a means that seemed more compatible with behaviorism. The world was weary and wary of subjective thought and longed for objective fact. Anf in America objective fact was pragmatic fact. Behaviorism provided this in psychology. It allowed a new generation to sweep aside with one impatient gesture all the worn-out complexities of the problem of consciousness and its origin. We would turn over a new leaf. We would make a fresh start.\n\n And the fresh start was a success in one laboratory after another. But the single inherent reason for its success was not its truth, but its program. And what a truly vigorous and exciting program of research it was! with its gleaming stainless-steel promise of reducting all conduct to a handful of reflexes and conditional responses developed from them, of generalizing the spinal reflex terminology of stimulus and response and reinforcement to the puzzles of headed behavior and so seeming to solve them, of r unning rats through miles and miles of mazes into more fascinating mazes of objective theorems, and its pledge, its solemn pledge to reduce thought to muscle twitches and peronality to the woes of Little Albert. In all this there was a heady excitement that is difficult to relate at this remove. Complexity would be made simple, darkness would be made light, and philosophy would be a thing of the past.

The Illuminatus! Trilogy

Author: Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson

Publisher: Fine Communications (1998)

632

DEFINITIONS AND DISTINCTIONS FREE MARKET: That condition of society in which all economic transactions result from voluntary choice without coercion. THE STATE: That institution which interferes with the Free Market through the direct exercise of coercion or the granting of privileges (backed by coercion). TAX: That form of coercion or interference with the Free Market in which the State collects tribute (the tax), allowing it to hire armed forces to practice coercion in defense of privilege, and also to engage in such wars, adventures, experiments, 'reforms,' etc., as it pleases, not at its own cost, but at the cost of 'its' subjects. PRIVILEGE: From the Latin privi, private, and lege, law. An advantage granted by the State and protected by its powers of coercion. A law for private benefit. USURY: That form of privilege or interference with the Free Market in which one State-supported group monopolizes the coinage and thereby takes tribute (interest), direct or indirect, on all or most economic transactions. LANDLORDISM: That form of privilege or interference with the Free Market in which one State-supported group 'owns' the land and thereby takes tribute (rent) from those who live, work, or produce on the land. TARIFF: That form of privilege or interference with the Free Market in which commodities produced outside the State are not allowed to compete equally with those produced inside the State. CAPITALISM: That organization of society, incorporating elements of tax, usury, landlordism, and tariff, which thus denies the Free Market while pretending to exemplify it. Illuminatus! Trilogy Seite 357 von 470 CONSERVATISM: That school of capitalist philosophy which claims allegiance to the Free Market while actually supporting usury, landlordism, tariff, and sometimes taxation. LIBERALISM: That school of capitalist philosophy which attempts to correct the injustices of capitalism by adding new laws to the existing laws. Each time conservatives pass a law creating privilege, liberals pass another law modifying privilege, leading conservatives to pass a more subtle law recreating privilege, etc., until 'everything not forbidden is compulsory' and 'everything not compulsory is forbidden.' SOCIALISM: The attempted abolition of all privilege by restoring power entirely to the coercive agent behind privilege, the State, thereby converting capitalist oligarchy into Statist monopoly. Whitewashing a wall by painting it black. ANARCHISM: That organization of society in which the Free Market operates freely, without taxes, usury, landlordism, tariffs, or other forms of coercion or privilege. RIGHT ANARCHISTS predict that in the Free Market people would voluntarily choose to compete more often than to cooperate. LEFT ANARCHISTS predict that in the Free Market people would voluntarily choose to cooperate more often than to compete.

494

Is the thought of a unicorn a real thought? In a sense, that is the basic question of philosophy— I thought you were going to tell me a story, not launch into some dreary German metaphysics. I had enough of that at the University. Quite so. The thought of a unicorn is a real thought, then, to be brief. So is the thought of the Redeemer on the Cross, the Cow who Jumped Over the Moon, the lost continent of Mu, the Gross National Product, the Square Root of Minus One, and anything else capable of mobilizing emotional energy. And so, in a sense, Eris and the other Olympians were, and are, real. At the same time, in another sense, there is only one True God and your redeemer in His only begotten son; and the lloigor, like Tsathoggua, are real enough to reach out and draw you into their world, which is on the other side of Nightmare.

The Denial of Death

Author: Ernest Becker

Publisher: Free Press (1975)

At about the same time that Rank wrote, Heidegger brought these fears to the center of existential philosophy. He argued that the basic anxiety of man is anxiety about being-in-the-world, as well as anxiety of being-in-the-world. That is, both fear of death and fear of life, of experience and individuation. Man is reluctant to move out into the overwhelmingness of his world, the real dangers of it; he shrinks back from losing himself in the all-consuming appetites of others, from spinning out of control in the clutchings and clawings of men, beasts and machines. As an animal organism man senses the kind of planet he has been put down on, the nightmarish, demonic frenzy in which nature has unleashed billions of individual organismic appetites of all kinds—not to mention earthquakes, meteors, and hurricanes, which seem to have their own hellish appetites. Each thing, in order to deliciously expand, is forever gobbling up others.

At about the same time that Rank wrote, Heidegger brought these fears to the center of existential philosophy. He argued that the basic anxiety of man is anxiety about being-in-the-world, as well as anxiety of being-in-the-world. That is, both fear of death and fear of life, of experience and individuation.11 Man is reluctant to move out into the overwhelmingness of his world, the real dangers of it; he shrinks back from losing himself in the all-consuming appetites of others, from spinning out of control in the clutchings and clawings of men, beasts and machines. As an animal organism man senses the kind of planet he has been put down on, the nightmarish, demonic frenzy in which nature has unleashed billions of individual organismic appetites of all kinds—not to mention earthquakes, meteors, and hurricanes, which seem to have their own hellish appetites. Each thing, in order to deliciously expand, is forever gobbling up others.

The Mind's I

Author: Douglas R. Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett

Publisher: Bantam Books (1982)

The Fourth Way

Author: P.D. Ouspensky

Publisher: Vintage (1971)

348

You must understand that in our system—or in any system for that matter, whether it is acknowledged or not—there are three different languages, or three ways of thinking philosophical, theoretical and practical When I say 'this is theoretical' or 'this is philosophy' in answer to a question, it means that the language is wrong You cannot ask something in a philosophical way and expect a practical answer. An abstract question cannot have a concrete answer. You must understand that the difference in meaning between these words 'philosophical', 'theoretical' and 'practical' is quite contrary to the ordinary meaning attributed to them The philosophical is the easiest approach, the theoretical is more difficult and more useful, and the practical is the most difficult and most useful of all. There can be philosophical knowledge—very general ideas, there can be theoretical knowledge—when you calculate things, and there can be practical knowledge, when you can observe and make experiments In philosophical language you speak not so much about things as about possibilities, in other words, you do not speak about facts In theoretical language you speak about laws, and in practical language you speak about things on the same scale as yourself and everything around you, that is, about facts So it is really a difference of scale.

166

Q. How can one recognize truth on our level? A. By coming to simple things. In simple things one can recognize truth; one can recognize what is a door and what is a wall, and one can bring every difficult question to the same thing. It means that you have to recognize a certain quality in quite simple principles and verify other things by these simple principles. This is why philosophy—just discussion of possibilities or the meaning of words—is excluded from this system. You must try to understand simple things, and you must learn to think in this way; then you will be able to bring everything to simple things. Take for instance self-remembering. You are given all the material; if you observe yourself, you will see that you did not remember yourself at that moment; you will notice that at some moments you remember yourself more and at some moments less, and you will decide that it is better to remember yourself. This means that you have found a door, that you see the difference between a door and a wall.

The Origins and History of Consciousness

Author: Erich Neumann

Publisher: Princeton University Press (1954)

338

This progressive assimilation of unconscious contents gradually builds up the personality, thus creating an enlarged psychic system which forms the basis of man's inner spiritual history as this makes itself increasingly independent of the collective history going on all around him. This process, initiated in the first instance by philosophy, has today reached what is chronologically its latest stage in psychology, still of course only in its infancy. Hand in hand with this there goes a 'psychization' of the world. Gods, demons, heaven and hell are, as psychic forces, withdrawn from the objective world and incorporated in the human sphere, which thereupon undergoes a very considerable expansion. When we give the name of 'sexuality' to what was once experienced as a chthonic divinity, or speaking of 'hallucination' instead of revelation, and when the gods of heaven and the underworld are recognized as dominants of man's unconscious, it means that an immense tract of external world has dropped into the human psyche. Introjection and psychization are on the other side of the process by which a world of physical objects becomes visible, and this world can no longer be modified by projections to the degree that it could before.

The time of the beginning, before the coming of the opposites, must be understood as the self-description of that great epoch when there was still no consciousness. It is the wu chi of Chinese philosophy, whose symbol is the empty circle. Everything is still in the 'now and for ever' of eternal being; sun, moon, and stars, these symbols of time and therefore of mortality, have not yet been created; and day and night, yesterday and tomorrow, genesis and decay, the flux of life and birth and death, have not yet entered into the world. This prehistoric state of being is not time, but eternity, just as the time before the coming of man and before birth and begetting is eternity. And just as there is no time before the birth of man and ego, only eternity, so there is no space, only infinity.

The Book of Merlyn

Author: T.H. White

Publisher: Berkley (1978)

The Portable Nietzsche

Author: Friedrich Nietzsche

Publisher: Portable Library (1977)