Philosophy: books and discussion

[beppe]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

You know I love you, beppe!



The Bible is certainly in the main a patriarchal book, but there are notable exceptions. Jesus at times seemed to run against the patriarchal grain, and then there's the possibility (largely because of the sympathetic depiction of women in the writings of the "J" author, according to Harold Bloom and David Rosenberg) that the Yahwist may have been an educated woman in the court of King Solomon; as I mentioned earlier in this post.

That is a completely reciprocal feeling. And this time I am using reciprocal in a not sloppy sense.

I am aware of the gender of the compiler. I read somewhere that it is for the style. From the little I know of Hebrew culture, their she persons occupied a very high position, In to day situation, some of Woody Allen films just strengthen this impression. I am writing this as Chairman of the Italian Chapter of Mothers' Enemies International Association.

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by TimMason

Sorry - I was writing from memory, which is never a good idea.

I fully concur, I often think "now where did I read that" and then waste time not finding it .... mind, memory for me, these days, is sadly lacking. Once upon a time I used to be able to quote chapter, verse and sentence of instructions at work, now I'm hardly able to bring anything I read back to mind within an hour or so ....

Originally Posted by beppe

That is a completely reciprocal feeling. And this time I am using reciprocal in a not sloppy sense.

I am aware of the gender of the compiler. I read somewhere that it is for the style. From the little I know of Hebrew culture, their she persons occupied a very high position, In to day situation, some of Woody Allen films just strengthen this impression. I am writing this as Chairman of the Italian Chapter of Mothers' Enemies International Association.

Chairman of Mother's . a perilous place to be my good chairperson ....

[beppe]

I live in the country where there is no scarcity of churches. Of every shape, size, and age. From the small church in an semi abandoned village in the Alps, to the great historical cathedrals. And why not, the modern architectural show pieces.

I am not a believer, nor am I a practitioner. I might be called an interested atheist. This is just to qualify the statements that follow.

For me, and for the large majority of the Italians with whom I shared this subject, a church is a place to go, sit and find a moment of spiritual peace. A safe place where to let a balmy and healing void fill the mind and the spirit.

It is what I imagine a Zen feeling, to feel one with the impressions that permeate the place. This is more so in the small, modest more ancient churches, devoid of signs of temporal power, with no architectural value, just that for almost 2000 years, people put there their fears, their hopes, their pains and their joys.

Lately I found a real marvelous church. It is not in Italy, but in France, in Sainte-Maxime (in provençal: Santa Maxima). Not far from where August 15, 1944, the Allied landed. There is a building and the absyd (apse?) opens completely on a small sloping amphitheater in the open, shaded by mighty Mediterranean oaks and with simple stone terraces. People sit there and take part in the celebration of the mess. Some time I go there and sit in the shadow and breath in the spicy mixture of Druidism and Catholicism.

[beppe]

Originally Posted by GeoffC

I fully concur, I often think "now where did I read that" and then waste time not finding it .... mind, memory for me, these days, is sadly lacking. Once upon a time I used to be able to quote chapter, verse and sentence of instructions at work, now I'm hardly able to bring anything I read back to mind within an hour or so ....



Chairman of Mother's . a perilous place to be my good chairperson ....

Anomia benigna. It's not a bad thing. Choco helps a lot.

Oh yes. But risk is my job. In my matriarchal society it is one of the few ways not to succumb.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by GeoffC

I fully concur, I often think "now where did I read that" and then waste time not finding it .... mind, memory for me, these days, is sadly lacking. Once upon a time I used to be able to quote chapter, verse and sentence of instructions at work, now I'm hardly able to bring anything I read back to mind within an hour or so ....


....

Whaaa?

[GeoffC]

Whaaaa? (back) ....

[beppe]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Whaaa?

Originally Posted by GeoffC

Whaaaa? (back) ....

I cannot remember names. So I have to go through descriptive algorithms. It is helping me a small card with names, soon I'll make one with pictures also.

Listen kids. This is a serious thread, so I make amend and I invite you to refrain from crossing our good Florence.

[GeoffC]

Whaaa ?

Back on topic please .....

[TimMason]

Should the philosopher discourage laughter? Simon Critchley is suspicious of it, but Foucault found laughter at every revelation. Plato disliked it intensely, and Hobbes, ambiguously, described it thus :

“Laughter. Sudden glory, is the passion which maketh those grimaces called laughter; and is caused either by some act of their own, that pleaseth them; or by the apprehension of some deformed thing in another, by comparison whereof they suddenly applaud themselves” (Leviathan 52).

[FlorenceArt]

Originally Posted by TimMason

Should the philosopher discourage laughter? Simon Critchley is suspicious of it, but Foucault found laughter at every revelation. Plato disliked it intensely, and Hobbes, ambiguously, described it thus :

See, what did I tell you? I knew it! This guy had no idea what life is all about. He was also extremely suspicious, or just downright disaproving, of visual arts. Pff.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by TimMason

The ceremonies in the caves would have included sound, light, and visuals, as well as dancing (ask yourself why the brand of Christianity that is really taking off all over the world is Pentecostal).

The stories of Central Australia often seem strange to people brought up on the fairy-tale. Essentially, they consist of accounts of journeys of mythical ancestors from one sacred place, where they emerge from the earth, to another, where they sit down forever, or go back underground. On their journey, they carry out a number of ceremonies or rituals, which their descendants are obliged to repeat regularly, in order that they and the land they live on may prosper.

These ceremonies consist of inscriptions of collective representations on both the bodies of the participants, and on the land itself. They have both symbolic and natural efficacy, and it is difficult for the outside observer to distinguish between the one and the other. For men and women, the ceremonies help them grow right. For animals and plants, the ceremonies encourage fertility and abundance. The stories are, in a way, road maps and instructions for the rituals. (You can find traces of similar stories elsewhere, where the land remains of day to day importance. There is, for example, a Welsh tale which simply tells of how a witch flew from one place to another, where she crashed and was transformed into a hill).

These stories encode knowledge, but not in ways that make immediate sense to us. Take an example given by Lévi-Strauss (iirc); people fill a container with water, and then ritually chew a particular plant, spitting the fluid into the container. Then a young prepubescent male is given the container and a length of cord; he must successfully climb his way to the top of a large tree and suspend the container from one of the higher branches. They then leave the mixture up in the tree until the moon is high. At that point, the boy shins up the tree again and brings it down. They skim the muck floating on top of the liquid, and they use it for medical purposes.

What they have got is penicillin. It looks as if they have somehow or other accidentally hit on a way of producing this precious substance, but, lacking the scientific method, they have stuck to their tradition,keeping in a whole series of superfluous steps that have no bearing on the matter at all.

However, it can be argued that each of the steps, each of the ritual activities, has its own efficacity. The group sitting round the pot, spitting into it, are working together, and that is important. The boy who is given an important role in the process learns to value it, and this ensures transmission of the skills. The moon is a clock that helps them gauge the time necessary for the transformation. And so on.

So what I'm arguing is that, on the one hand, knowledge gained through the scientific process is only one kind of knowledge, and that there are others which have their own validity. On the other, such ways of knowing are very often corporal as much as they are cerebral, and that in many ways physical movement, ritual, song and artistic inscription, are prior to narrative elaboration. In some ways, that remains true in modern science; laboratories are highly ritualistic places - the use and care of instruments is most thoroughly encoded in the body of the practitioner, and deviations from use and care frowned upon. To the outsider, the scientists may very well seem superstitious.

On fairy tales I wouldn't really trust Bettleheim. Marina Warner's 'From the Beast to the Blonde; on Fairy Tales and their Tellers', is very good indeed, and Jack Zipes worth having a look at - although he has a political axe to grind.

This shows the important role ritual can play is preserving and passing along knowledge, but it isn't "another way of knowing." There are certainly better ways of producing penicillin than those that include spitting in a vat and leaving the mixture exposed to the open air. The ancient Egyptians used feces for a number of medical uses, but that doesn't mean that it was especially effectual. Scientists today investigate traditional medicines in hopes of learning which are useful, and which are not beneficial or even harmful. Throughout our long history, humans have stumbled on many things of benefit to our species, and many of these have been passed on via ritualistic methods, but it has proven to be a haphazard and error-riddled quest. It is hardly another way of knowing.

To date, the scientific method has proven the best yardstick our species has devised for evaluating truth claims.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by TimMason

Sorry - I was writing from memory, which is never a good idea.

Originally Posted by GeoffC

I fully concur, I often think "now where did I read that" and then waste time not finding it .... mind, memory for me, these days, is sadly lacking. Once upon a time I used to be able to quote chapter, verse and sentence of instructions at work, now I'm hardly able to bring anything I read back to mind within an hour or so ....

I fully appreciate where you folks are coming from. I can't begin to say how many times I have sought to quote from one author the words from another. Memory is always a tricky thing, and it doesn't necessarily improve with age.

[GeoffC]

Experience suggests it does not improve with age !!!!

In my case it seems to me that the ability disappeared almost overnight !!!!

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by TimMason

Should the philosopher discourage laughter? Simon Critchley is suspicious of it, but Foucault found laughter at every revelation. Plato disliked it intensely, and Hobbes, ambiguously, described it thus :

I think it has it's place in philosophy, and it certainly has it's place in life. Points made with humor are always easier remembered than those delivered without embellishment. Voltaire was notorious for his use of it. It was said that Kant had a sharp sense of humor in private, although the only "joke" to appear in his philosophical writings was when he said something about how young men always see their potential mates as being perfect; a condition remedied by marriage. (Forgive me; I'm paraphrasing from memory, which we've already said was a poor practice.) And there's no telling how many people have become interested in philosophy from hearing or reading the witticisms of Woody Allen on the subject.

Even the Bible contains instances of humor, and the most philosophical of its books acknowledges that there is "a time to laugh" (Ecclesiastes 3:4), although the author of that book claims that sorrow is of more benefit. (Eccl. 7:3 KJV: Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better.)

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

...Memory is always a tricky thing, and it doesn't necessarily improve with age.

Originally Posted by GeoffC

Experience suggests it does not improve with age !!!!

In my case it seems to me that the ability disappeared almost overnight !!!!

Sorry, Geoff. I forgot the sarcasm tags. Old age, you know!