Re: Theos-World communion in the source
Apr 27, 2009 11:42 AM
by Govert Schuller
Dear Bill,
Good quote. There are other moods that drive philosophy. Wonder might have been the original mood with the Greeks and Romans, though the latter were already entertaining the moods of skepticism and cynicism from which they were thinking. In the middle ages there was a set-back into faith, with thought its 'hand-maiden.' Then in modernity skepticism set in quite forcefully, which created the space for science to flower, but also tossed out too much like the esotericism of the Renaissance. The effect was that the whole of man and nature got dis-enchanted and even stripped of any meaning whatsoever with two alternatives left: scientific materialism and dogmatic religionism. In this milieu Theosophy stepped in and was able to counter that trend by re-enchanting the world with its occult philosophy, basically picking up where the Hermeticist Renaissance had left off. But the trend of secularization, fragmentation and skepticism seems to have overtaken the Theosophical agenda and at this moment the mood that drives philosophy and the intellectual world is Angst, which German concept can be translated as existential anxiety or ontological insecurity. There is this sense that all religions, ideologies, grand narratives and metaphysical systems have come short and this leaves man intellectually and spiritually quite naked in the face of all the pleasures and cruelties of this world. The bottom has been kicked out under us and we're floating above an abyss, wondering when we'll fall. And instead of re-doubling our efforts to grapple with the great questions of what we can know, what we may belief and what we should do, there is a disturbing trend of fleeing from our Angst into anti-intellectual postures which demean thought and individuality and declare everything to be merely construct or illusion and thereby wash their hands of any global, intellectual responsibility. Hopefully these are merely the spasms of post-modernity as we might be on the brink of something of a new mode of consciousness, the integral, which, as it implies, can integrate the mystical, occult, mythic and rational modes in a balanced way and not be partial or even antagonistic towards any of them. This might also imply that the different philosophical moods can get intergrated into something that is more than the sum of its parts, something that is nimble enough to be wondering, having faith, being skeptical and holding the deep questions about our being in anxious regard, all in a balanced and integrated way. The prophets of this mode have already made their tentative pronouncements on the future of being, with Jean Gebser possibly being the most important one amongst them.
(BTW, if you're in the neighbourhood of Wheaton, come and join a class in which the editor of the Jean Gebser journal will give something of an overview of Gebser's philosophy. Monday May 4 at 7 pm, at the TS)
----- Original Message -----
From: Bill Meredith
To: theos-talk@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, April 27, 2009 8:10 AM
Subject: Re: Theos-World communion in the source
Hi Govert,
I wonder....
"Philosophy springs from wonder, and wonder is aroused by the awareness of difficulties, by the need to understand. The difficulties which not infrequently lead men and women into the province of philosophy are the problems they meet in the attempt to live their own lives intelligently and with discrimination. What makes life worth living? What goals shall I choose? What is the meaning of failure and evil and suffering? What is my place in the scheme of things, if indeed there be a scheme of things? What is the nature of knowledge, and how can I identify truth and distinguish it from what is false? These and many other questions face all of us who take our own existence seriously and are not content to live by other people's rules and to carry out other people's wishes; who believe that life is not merely to be accepted and lived blindly, but is to be examined and its possibilities compared and tested."
Thompson, Samuel M; THE NATURE OF PHILOSOPHY; Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1961; p4
Bill
----- Original Message -----
From: Govert Schuller
To: theos-talk@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sunday, April 26, 2009 2:53 PM
Subject: Re: Theos-World communion in the source
Dear Bill,
Are you a student of philosophy?
Govert
----- Original Message -----
From: Bill Meredith
To: theos-l@yahoogroups.com ; theos-talk@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, March 23, 2009 3:16 PM
Subject: Theos-World communion in the source
"We have spoken of an analogy between the history of philosophy and the authority of religious tradition. True, philosophy has no canonical books such as those possessed by the religions, no authority which need simply be followed, no definitive truth which simply exists. But the historical tradition of philosophy as a whole, this deposit of inexhaustible truth, shows us the roads to our present philosophical endeavour. The tradition is the profound truth of past thought, toward which we look with never-ending expectancy; it is something unfathomable in the few great works; it is the reality of the great thinkers, received with reverence.
The tradition is an authority that cannot be obeyed with certainty. It is incumbent upon us to come to ourselves through it by our own experience, to find our own source in its source.
Only in the seriousness of present philosophical thinking can we gain contact with eternal philosophy in its historical manifestation. It is through the historical manifestation that we gain the profound ties that can unite us in a common present.
Thus historical research is conducted on various levels. In his approach to the texts the conscientious student of philosophy knows on which plane he is moving. He must gain intelligent mastery of the "facts." But the end and summit of historical study lies in the moments of communion in the source. It is then that the light dawns which gives meaning and unity to all factual research. Without this centre, this philosophical source, the history of philosophy would be a mere record of fallacies and curiosities.
Once it has awakened me, history becomes the mirror of what is my own: in its image I see what I myself think.
The history of philosophy--a space in which I think and breathe--reveals in inimitable perfection prototypes for my own searching. By its attempts, its successes and failures, philosophy raises the question. It encourages me through the example of those men who have unswervingly followed its arduous path.
To take a past philosophy as our own is no more possible than to produce an old work of art for a second time. At best we can produce a deceptive copy. We have no text, like pious Bible readers, in which we may hope to find absolute truth. We love the old texts as we love old works of art, our hearts go out to them, we immerse ourselves in their truth, but there remains in them something remote and unattainable, unfathomable, though it is something with which we always live, something which starts us on the way to our present philosophizing.
For philosophy is essentially concerned with the present. We have only one reality, and that is here and now. What we miss by our evasions will never return, but if we squander ourselves, then too we lose being. Each day is precious: a moment can be everything.
We are remiss in our task if we lose ourselves in the past or future. Only through present reality can we gain access to the timeless; only in apprehending time can we attain to that sphere where all time is extinguished."
--Jaspers, Karl; WAY TO WISDOM, translated by Ralph Manheim, Yale University Press, 1954, p142-144
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