Spiritual vs intellectual

"Avatar" answering the question "should one distinguish between spiritual and intellectual...?"

It seems intelligence and spirit have fundamentally the same meaning: one speaks without distinction of human intelligence and human spirit... intelligence signifying what proceeds from human intelligence, and spiritual what comes from the human spirit.

From this objective consideration, and as is often the case when there are two synonymous terms, other meanings have been superimposed. We say intellectual, for example, when we wish to say non-manual, or university professor, or abstract, or someone whose feet are not grounded in reality, or even “mind-aching” (prise de tête). The same diversity exists with the word spiritual, which sometimes means humorous, or religious (this last term is in my view a quite equivocal falsehood), or even divine (“Gods” spirit), to distinguish between divine intelligence and human intelligence, etc.

As far as the distinction made by editors in their “Spirituality” collection, we have here, I think, a mistranslation (which I pointed out) between spiritual and religious. Yet, fundamentally, there is synonymity. I see here on the one hand a type of marketing gimmick which seeks a label which does not ruffle anyones feathers; on the other hand, one must recognize that these collections include everything and its opposite: religious considerations, psychoanalysis, astrology, clairvoyance, and what have you... Therefore, they include what purports to be a rather speculative reflection, which happens to correspond to the first sense of “intellectual”.

I think the term intellectual is not used solely because the connotation is sometimes pejorative or mocking in nature; the same is true for the term “speculation”, which would turn away the clients who claim to be non-intellectual and pragmatic, concrete, with their feet solidly anchored in the ground! Hence “spiritual” is much more consensual, and in any case the term is gratifying. In short, “spiritual” signifies astute and clever, whereas “intellectual” can signify pretentious and pain-in-the-neck, which is evidently not the best pitch.

In brief, spiritual sounds “authentic” whereas intellectual has undertones of “concepts” or “ravings”. It is a bit foolish, but I think that is why it is so; a bit as why red and yellow are associated to biscuits, and why few of them are sold in a blue package. :-)

Fifth round

It’s a classic, at the fifth round of drinks, someone gets up and says “if God knows in advance what I will freely decide, that means in truth that it was planned or written in advance, and this means that I am not free.”

So someone else asks “if "he" whom you call God exists, and if "he" is as you suppose eternal, why would "he" not know in advance what you will decide freely? For that would mean that "he " is not atemporal…”

Obviously, this creates a bit of discomfort, and usually the spotlight swings immediately to “and me, why don’t I know in advance what I will freely decide?”

Which then shows the desire to not be free, putting forward the following dialectic: “If I know ahead of time what I will decide freely later on, then I will freely choose the opposite, or at least something else, just to experience what it will do. Yet I cannot decide to do differently or the contrary of what I ignore!”…

Thus the bloke answers that he would like to freely renounce his freedom, which is a sophism evidently... therefore, we find ourselves in front of the following assertion: “I am not free to not be free”, that is to say in front of two consecutive negations.

But does saying “I am free to be free” make any sense? Not really any more than the preceding double negation, for “I am free” is enough, and we don’t clearly see what “to be free” adds. In consequence, it seems that a freedom which contemplates itself should necessarily and logically lead to its suicide, bogged down in a sort of perverse effect: I request not to be free”. Just as if that was the only choice. Curious isn’t it?

This shows that freedom is not an end in itself, and also that when one seeks to make a transcendental out of it, we kill it. I wonder if that is not what we do when we carry to the rank of transcendental whatever else that is not one, like beauty for example. I mean by this that I wonder if to make a transcendental out of beauty doesn’t also, sooner or later, lead to negate beauty. Finally, instead of creating, that is when one assimilates oneself to "he" whom religious traditions call “God”, what we mostly know what to do, is destroy lol

What characterizes contemporary thought is negation. Aristotle is the friend of wisdom in as much as he starts by admiring, even that which is reputed to be self-evident. Aristotle is the philosopher of admiration. The contemporaries are for the most part the buffoons of doubt and of negation. It is Descartes who pulled the first punch: “I think, therefore I doubt, and therefore I am”… Geez! 

It is because of Descartes that all of contemporary thought is a saloon-bar philosophy.

Never vanquished

Should you ask people around you what truth is, you will mostly be told that it depends on your conception of truth. If you insist and point out that what exists or not is entirely oblivious to any opinion one may have of it as far as being or not being, you will, without more ado, be singled out as sectarian. You will be told that you are trying to impose your ideas, exactly as if reality was an idea. Now then, whether or not you seek to impose what you think neither affects error nor truth, and consequently it is well and truly postulated that reality does not exist outside the idea you make of it. Not to consent to the relativity of reality constitutes in many places a form of raging intolerance. To accept that each and everyone can express his opinion is one thing, something important, for sure, but on the other hand truth also deserves to be upheld. :)

A suicide of intelligence

These days you are not understood if you say that the primacy of being has been substituted by nothingness. Most people stare at you with a dazed look. Yet, for anyone who has the slightest inkling of metaphysics, it is obvious that being primes over non-being, and that it is well and truly being which is, before nothingness… despite Jean-Saul Partre and the cortege of logy intellectuals of the 20th century. Thus negation has taken front stage, in all spirits, even those of the blockheads.

In short, if one is no longer understood on a metaphysical level, one can nevertheless clearly distinguish the primacy of negation concerning the human person and freedom. In this day and age, in the person we firstly see someone who is ailing (thanks to the psychocretins & co who have reduced the human person to personality), and in freedom the capacity to say “no”, that is to say the most infantile vision of things.

Thus we find the three poles where lies the solution to any problem (the person, truth, freedom) absolutely poisoned by negation: truth is firstly nothingness, the person is firstly ailing, and freedom is firstly saying “no”. If that is not a suicide of intelligence, it strangely resembles it, for what “falls” first in intelligence is being, not non-being, which figures the absence of being, thus the destruction through despair of intelligence, memory and will. Hence, we claim to fecund the spirit firstly with nothingness, that’s a good one, for it is exactly as hallucinating as a farmer who would sow “nothing” whilst prophesizing an unparalleled crop.

Roots of ideologies

Nietzsche, in my opinion, was an artist bestowed with a prodigious capacity to love and with an … unflinching jealousy, jealousy consisting certainly, in its most speculative and humanely sublime form, in looking for a master over which to dominate.

Ultimately, if we wish to separate the poets from the philosophers, contemporaneous or not, and precisely identify the sources of ideologies, even to hatch a few, it is quite simple. I know three means to go about it.

The first is to consider one of the seven dimensions of man which most of the worldly traditions lay out – the vegetative dimension, the animal dimension, the spiritual dimension, work, friendship, politics and religion – and to isolate one of these dimensions from the other six (one can also take 2 or 3 of them and mix them together, whilst separating them from the others, or even endeavour to exclude one of them and only consider the 6 remaining ones). For example, Marx and Nietzsche exalted (admittedly in quite different ways) work or the artistic activity as being the only acceptable way to save man and humanity. Kant exalted the religious dimension and morals, etc.

The second means consists in taking the three poles at the center of which rests the answer to any problem – Truth, The Human Person and Liberty – and in the same way as in what preceeds, to isolate one of the three. For example, Sartre isolates Liberty and veneers it for its own sake, etc.

The third is even more efficient, as it is more hidden to blunt intelligences. Take the 5 transcendentals (transcendental = notion which is convertible to Being) : Esse (Being), Aliquid (Something), Verum (Truth), Unum (One) and Bonum (Good). I’m showing you the general technique here, without entering into any detail, because we may end up getting spotted! LoL Firstly, note that "beauty" is not a transcendental, even though it has been exalted as such and is still exalted in this manner. Many people do not understand for example how the concentration camp SS could listen to the quatuors of Mozart during their dinner… as if beauty finalizes! Beauty is relative to the transcendentals and can be separated from them.

All right, but even more devious, only Being is an authentic transcendental, it is the keystone, and the four other transcendentals are acolytes of Being. Those who have a metaphysical touch understand this, the others stare blankly, persuaded that all this has no interest at all or is not concrete, even though we are well and truly at the heart of the most real reality.

Therefore, if one seeks to identify the source of all the deliriums and monstrosities that human intelligence is capable of, sometimes with much talent, one only needs to isolate one of the 4 transcendentals relative to Being (Aliquid, Verum, Unum, Bonum) and to consider it as separated from Being. You will have there a formidable tool to manipulate the fools and seduce the intellectuals. This approach is obviously the name of the game, the other two being more immediate and straightforward. :P

Aerobics

In the last analysis, love consists in stooping down whereas art consists in stepping up... and we are no more an artist by stooping down than we love by stepping up, which means, if you are still following, that we do not stoop down by stepping up nor do we step up by stooping down. Evidently, evidently... The most distressing are those who crawl with their head high up, but that's another story. :)

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A logical question

A little (pre-arranged) conversation between myself and "Avatar". "I think you" means "you are the subject of my thoughts".


Good day all,

If I write this proposition: I think you, therefore you are. Can I logically deduce the following one : I don't think you, therefore you are not?

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The answer is YES, I can logically deduce the second affirmation from the first, but I must add "in my mind" in both cases. The sequence is therefore "I think (of) you, therefore you are (exist) in my mind. Consequently, if I don't think (of) you, you are not (don't exist) in my mind."

However, if one does not precise "in my mind" the first proposition is already false because there is no necessary link between the fact that I think something (necessarily in ones mind) and the existence of this thing elsewere than in ones mind.

If you agree with this cursory analysis, you must conclude that any reality which is not in your mind transcends your mind. If you do not agree, then there is no difference for you between "to exist" and "to exist in your mind".

Hello,

Your answer has hit me in the face to a point you can not imagine. Now I understand that Descartes in fact said "I think, therefore I am in my head". This changes everything. I now feel freed from my cartesian chains!

Harvey

Harvey,

I am pleased to hear your Harry Houdini type evasion has been successful. Without a doubt there is something akin to prestidigitation in Descartes formula, which starts in full immanence (I think) and dreams of spewing out a transcendence (therefore I am).

Avatar

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Peripaticians

Impromptu online discussion on the subject of the source of modern Western human thought, Aristotle and his metaphysics.

The radical difference between Plato and Aristotle is that the former considers his personal and interior experience to come first, whereas the latter looks firstly at reality which is exterior to him (obviously this is less poetic!). It is fashionable to consider Plato to be a philosopher, even though he is more of a poet of the soul, and to denigrate Aristotle whom we find less amusing, and moreover whose musings are not as easily accessible. In particular, Aristotle is criticized for his theory on the spontaneous generation, his treatise on the heavens which today seems rather infantile, etc., as if this chap were a scientist… but Aristotle was first and foremost a philosopher, and was only interested in science “accidentally”, using the tools of his time!

This preference for Plato is linked to the poetry of his discourse, to the exaltation of intimacy and interiority (immanent and immediate experience), to his explanations which are often metaphorical… He has always exerted a great seduction, which is normal as he is a poet, whereas Aristotle is hardly poetic, and is sometimes lacking in humor! William of Ockam, in the 14th century, gave a new life to Plato; later Descartes brought him to the forefront, and practically permanently! Later still, some mystics like Simone Weil expressed their love of Plato and their aversion for Aristotle. It is too bad really, and this probably proceeds more from ignorance than discernment. In particular, Plato held women to be slightly more evolved than animals, and without a soul. It is Aristotle who was the first in Ancient Greece to speak of friendship – philia – between man and woman, returning dignity to women by elevating them to the rank of human beings, on an equal footing to men… I’m not certain Simone Weil knew that, and even less so for many unconditional contemporary admirers of Plato!

So one must read “Nicomacian Ethics… which is a simple book, much more so than the treatise on the soul or the treatise on metaphysics. Aristotle is the first to have given a real metaphysics to the Western world, i.e. a science beyond physics, what he called “first philosophy”, but what was later named meta-physics (beyond physics) for this treatise was found, after his death, on his bookshelves, just after his book on physics. Today one must speak of “first philosophy”... if you speak of metaphysics, you get penalty points… even if they are one and the same thing! Being that we have celebrated the death of metaphysics, this shouldn't come as that much of a surprise! :)

So, in two words if possible, what is Aristotle’s metaphysics? Precisely because he distinguishes himself from his master Plato (whom he followed for 15 years, in silence), who set thought before reality, Aristotle sets reality before the idea he makes of it, and he does this through what some call the judgement of existence”: THIS IS. One must note that in the fundamental assertion “This is”, the “this” is not “me”… !!! This is the radical difference with the notorious “I think, therefore I am” of Descartes, who sets the “I” before the “this”, or the internal experience before the perceived external reality, in other words sincerity before truth.

Consequently, Aristotle seeks foremost reality as it is other than himself and which is unmindful of the idea he makes of it to be what it is. He then looks at what intelligence is, where it comes from, what it is made of, according to what model and in view of what, five interrogations which can be associated to his five senses: what it is (sight); where it comes from (hearing); what it is made of (touch), according to which model (taste), and in view of what it is (smell). To answer your question more concretely, it is obvious that seeking what is true entails a constant back and forth between our sensible touch of reality and intelligence, in other words a perpetual round trip between the abstraction of reality through the senses, delivering the observation to intelligence, and reinjecting into reality what I understand of it, to verify the adequacy between my intelligence and reality. Thus, for Aristotle, truth is the adequacy between intelligence and reality. Well, it isn’t easy to speak of these “things” in a few lines… We’ll speak again, hopefully… and it is important to have fun around this neck of the woods, is it not? :))

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