Santiago Odo wrote:Therefor I cannot say I understand what you are up to (and doubt that you know!)
Is it really such a mystery? I mean, I'm doing what I've always done - not exclusively of course - from my very first post to this forum: examining ideas claimed to be "absolute truth" or otherwise important or at least worthy of consideration and offering a critique. That of course involves critiquing the arguments made in favour of those ideas too.
To ask a probative question does not imply - as you seem to suggest it does - that one ought to be interested in the answer for its own sake and thus that, if one is not, the question is "vain". Sometimes - as in this case - these sorts of questions are useful simply to interrogate and understand the limits of an argument.
I think your answers clearly
do show the limits of your argument. The best example of this is your position on Jews with respect to Judaism, of whom you write:
"
In my view, it is imperative that conscious Jews (those who really do desire to be Jews and not merely quasi-Jews) must choose to *serve Europe*. Not Judaism, not Jewish processes, not Jewish *infiltration* of a European host".
In other words, in your view, Jews should
not follow "their" tradition simply because it is "theirs": they should instead follow "ours" (because that's what a "real" Jew would do).
So, it seems that your argument that "we" should follow "our" tradition simply because it is "ours" is not a serious one, because it is not one that you apply consistently: it doesn't apply to Jews, whom you believe should
not follow "their" tradition but rather should follow "ours".
This is consistent with what I've been saying from the start: that it conflicts with your other argument for Christianity - that Christianity is "uniquely powerful" - and that you would do better to drop it and to stick with the argument from unique power.
But if you are still unwilling to accept this critique, then perhaps we can keep exploring this issue via an additional question:
Imagine a hypothetical "you" who had been born into a Brahman family in India. This hypothetical you understands "your" tradition (Hinduism) as a native born into it,
but also knows all that the real you currently knows about the Western tradition including Christianity. Which metaphysic would you advise or expect this hypothetical you to adopt and why? Hinduism, because it is "your" tradition, or Christianity, because it is "uniquely powerful"?
It might seem unnecessary that I persist with this critique, but over the years on this forum and elsewhere you have made so much of the need to become familiar with one's own tradition that it is only natural that any critique of the ultimate form into which you have developed this line of thought - an argument for Christianity from cultural belonging - should also assume significance. It is also important because it could save us a bunch of (already wasted to some extent) effort: if we are to agree to drop the fickle argument from cultural belonging, then we can focus on the
relevant argument - that from "unique power".
I remain, as I have been from the start, very interested in what exactly you mean by Christianity being "uniquely powerful". I have alluded to this question already, but you haven't clarified it. "Powerful" in which sense? In the sense of effectiveness for some purpose? If so, which purpose? Or do you mean in the sense of truth? Do you mean that it is uniquely powerful in its absolute truth?
In any case, here is a set of cross-over questions which might shed light on the meaningfulness of
both arguments:
Is salvation possible for a non-Christian? Indeed, what
defines a Christian, what
is salvation, and from what does it save? Are you advocating for the Catholic doctrine of heaven, hell, and purgatory? If so, are these literal realms? And what is the
requirement for salvation? Faith in Christ? Obedience to his commandments? A lightness of spirit and a tangible relationship with him and with the Father? Some combination of the preceding? Something else?
All of this is to ask:
What is it that you are battling for, and why? You offer a variety of categories, not all of which are compatible: Johannine Christianity, Catholicism, Gnosticism, Eurocentrism - but when the rubber meets the road,
what exactly is it for which you unsheath your sword, and what motivates that unsheathing?
Santiago Odo wrote:Research and analysis could only honestly be undertaken and carried through by someone with a thorough background in Occidental forms.
A general, broad knowledge of a
variety of different metaphysical systems is, I think, very useful for such a programme, but I don't see why
unique knowledge of Occidental forms is necessary. Since you do, perhaps you could elaborate a little on
why you think so: on
what is unique about the Occidental tradition and
why it is (most?) powerful.
Santiago Odo wrote:But there is something else too : your agnostic metaphysics would result in no metaphysics at all! Agnosticism is non-knowing. You cannot build a metaphysics on what is not-known. So, unless I am missing something, your approach would result (logically) in the ending of metaphysical view. And this is, I intuit, what your own position really is. This is not a criticism and is not meant as a barb in any sense.
I wouldn't mind even if it was a criticism or a barb - it's perfectly reasonable as both.
Yes, you're right:
strict metaphysical agnosticism would leave us floundering in utter uncertainty, unable to make confident choices. Perhaps there is a more accurate term for what I'm actually proposing, but roughly (and feel free to question), it is something like this: that, collectively, we formally establish, as a basis for social and political decision-making, only that which we can know for sure or at least meaningfully agree on, including the natural ethic and the social and political structures that follow or are developed from that ethic, and that we leave out of our collective metaphysic that on which we can't agree or can't meaningfully demonstrate or argue interpersonally to be true or known: on those matters, individuals are free to believe whatever they want, albeit that they are only free to
act on those beliefs insofar as those acts do not impose unreasonably upon others.
This is essentially the system we
have except that, as we both agree, and which I've already pointed out in a prior post, our system is - at least in the academic and intellectual mainstream - biased towards the metaphysic of materialism/physicalism rather than being a "true" metaphysical agnosticism.
I could say more, and I think I anticipate (at least some of) the objections you might have to this, but this is your thread, not mine, so I will leave it up to you as to whether and if so how to pursue this theme.
Santiago Odo wrote:Metaphysics as I mean it occurs within intangibles. There will never be a ‘rational metaphysics’.
The latter, again, is to me an odd statement. It
could be understood as "Any metaphysic is necessarily irrational", but I doubt that you intend it that way so I will not straw man you. I think that what you actually mean is that a metaphysic cannot be
constructed by reason. But why not? Is the Western approach not itself a rational one? I mean, isn't Aristotelian logic a strong part of its core, and has not rational argument led to the basis of many of its political and social institutions?
Too: why should intangibles be unamenable to reason?
Santiago Odo wrote:Metaphysics means an encounter with what is known through other means : intellectus.
This seems to be another part of your core: "intellectus" being some sort of transcendent contact, via the soul, with, and understanding of, the immaterial realm. This raises some interesting questions:
How can a person be confident that the apparently meaningful truths which s/he accesses via his/her intellectus actually
are meaningful truths as opposed to misapprehensions? And what if one person purportedly accesses one meaningful truth via his/her intellectus, whereas another claims to have accessed another, contradictory one? How can this conflict be resolved interpersonally, and especially in the public sphere?
Santiago Odo wrote:And though I might wish to be enlightened otherwise, I do not think that in modernity any *metaphysics* will ever be practicable or coherent.
Reason allows third parties to assess competing claims or arguments on their own merits, such that conflicts can be resolved via rational discussion in the public sphere with the result
being (ideally) practical and coherent. How are such conflicts of vision via intellectus resolved? Is rationality involved
at all? Who gets to decide whose vision-from-intellectus holds sway?
I'll end with an interesting snippet from
an interview of Joseph Campbell by Bill Moyers. I don't agree with everything in this interview, and I don't expect you to either, but this excerpt poses, I think, both an acknowledgement of your critique of modernity as well as an interesting challenge to your subsequent agenda, and I'd be interested to read your thoughts on it (the full interview is fascinating, and I encourage you to read it).
BILL MOYERS: You’ve seen what’s happened to primitive societies that are unsettled by white men’s civilization. They go to pieces, they disintegrate, they succumb to vice and disease. And isn’t that the same thing that’s been happening to us since our myths began to disappear?
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Absolutely it is.
BILL MOYERS: Isn’t that why conservative religious folk today are calling for a return to the old-time religion?
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: That’s right.
BILL MOYERS: I understand the yearning. In my youth I had fixed stars; they comforted me with their permanence, they gave me a known horizon; they told me that there’s a loving, kind and just father out there looking down on me, ready to receive me, thinking of my concerns all the time. Now science, medicine has made a house-cleaning of belief, and I wonder what happens to children who don’t have that fixed star, that known horizon, those myths to sustain them?
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: All you have to do is read the newspaper. I mean, it’s a mess. But what the myth has to provide, I mean, just on this immediate level of life instruction, the pedagogical aspect of myth, it has to give life models. And the models have to be appropriate to the possibilities of the time in which you’re living. And our time has changed, and it’s changed and changed, and it continues to change so fast, that what was proper 50 years ago is not proper today. So the virtues of the past are the vices of today, and many of what were thought to be the vices of the past are the necessities of today. And the moral order has to catch up with the moral necessities of actual life in time, here and now, and that’s what it’s not doing, and that’s why it’s ridiculous to go back to the old-time religion.
A friend of mine composed a song based on the old-time religion, “Give me the old-time religion, give me that old time. Let us worship Zarathustra, just the way we used to, I’m a Zarathustra booster, he’s good enough for me. Let us worship Aphrodite, she’s beautiful but flighty, she doesn’t wear a nightie, but she’s good enough for me.”
And when you go back to the old-time religion, you’re doing something like that. It belongs to another age, another people, another set of human values, another universe. So the old period of the Old Testament, no one had any idea. The world was a little three layer cake, and the world consisted of something a few hundred miles around the Near Eastern centers there. No one ever heard of the Aztecs, you know, or the Chinese, even. And so those whole peoples were not considered, even, as part of the problem to be dealt with. The world changes, then the religion has to be transformed.