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[Papus79]

With a little bit of cursory digging - both Shestov and Kierkegaard sound like they might be my cup of tea. Will check into some of the others here as well.

[Hereandnow]

Well, are you kind of person who is above all patient? And are you not afraid of new language, non reader friendly, terminologically alien, intellectually rigorous study? Speed is not going to happen. These are things you read, go back to again and again. Being and Time is Heidegger's amazing analysis of being in the world. But then, he rests with the rationalist, Kant. Kant is the starting point, but it takes patience. Perhaps you've looked into his Critique of Pure Reason. I have been meaning to read him again, and my first read was shotty. He would be good, but difficult and dry. All the existentialists build on Kant, a reaction to Kant's rationalism, is often the case.

[Papus79]

I can jump into things with both feet, got on a tare with a particular topic we discussed earlier where I read - constantly - for about three or four years. My main concern is that most of us, if we're lucky, have 24 hours times maybe 30,000 days to live and in that frame you have to do a lot of triage and filtering because the overwhelming amount of information out there really isn't that great. Patience is also a virtue only on certain conditions - ie. if you have the endurance to weather a process that will leave you better on the other end then that's a good thing, OTOH if you can't recognize an abortive endeavor or a system of thought with too many of it's makers flaws then extra sunk cost in terms of time and energy is something if a failing. I think back to my three or four year reading binge and realize that I read most of what was worth reading in that stack maybe toward the end of my first year and beginning of my second and past that there were maybe a few gems but after that mostly repetition. I wouldn't say I lost that time, I learned some very important things about learning and systematization themselves, but that's also part of why I'd approach this carefully - because I have been burned to some degree in the past whether it was that endeavor or whether it was the joke we often call 'college education' where you spend several years learning things you'll forget after your next test and never use again.

Most of the language in what I was reading was indeed alien albeit my biggest problem now, as I look at it, was that so much of it was an attempt to systematize what was largely ineffable, had too few touchstones for us to grab onto (thus people constantly made them up in between), and what people then did was make an attempt at a Tower of Babel made of speculations. I worry that philosophy can do that later part quite well and often if I get too 'wowed' by name-brand thinkers and it's probably a lot more important to focus on their methodology and whether they're looking for easy closure or whether they're more open to holding contradictory views simultaneously and even willing to admit that permanent mystery is okay when the truth itself leaves our human reach.

I'm going to say - I don't think we need to worry about my character or dedication that much one way or another because I don't think I really need any hands-on involvement or mentoring, that is I don't think anyone should worry about me being their sunk cost later - I'm really just hoping to do this independently with maybe a few well-aimed pointers and that I might chat about it a bit after I actually read some things.

[Hereandnow]

Then Kant's Critique of Pure Reason? I have a pdf I can send you. I don't read physical books anymore because with pdf I can write notes, have instant access to the internet for assistance, and so on. I also have a great many texts On Kant's Critique I can sens along as well. All pdf.

I should add, I am not a rationalist, but studying his rationalism is foundational for existentialism.

Frankly, my idea of time well spent is to read texts like this, very closely. In the end, one becomes a phenomenologist, and this changes everything, for ground zero of it is to exist, to think, to experience has a Copernican Revolution, as Kant calls it. His Transcendental Deduction is a challenge, but once gone through, one can move into Kierkegaard, Husserl, fink, Heidegger, and so on. Even Derrida. It depends on how well received the literature is for you. For me, especially after Emanuel Levinas, it is a, dare I say, spiritual awakening, for the issue of the real loses its distance: phenomena are there, part and parcel of what a self is.

there is systematization of, not the ineffable, but the marginal effable, and it is here (esp. good is Eugene Fink's Sixth Cartesian Meditation) things get what I would call revelatory.

Let me know how you want to go.

[Papus79]

Is it 798 pages with a blue cover? If so I think I found it.

Also I just grabbed Shestov's 'All Things Are Possible' on Kindle, it's relatively short and I'll probably tackle that first.

The silver-lining to the whole Covid-19 thing is I've had some time freed up this weekend and will probably have a lot more time this week for reading than I normally would otherwise.

[Hereandnow]

Shestov's 'All Things Are Possible'? Sure, I have it. haven't read it. Read into it a bit if you will, and let me know what you think.

[Papus79]

I'm about half way through it and so far I'm liking it quite a lot.

What I'd say about it is its a very uplifting and freeing sort of pessimism, ie. he does a lot to remind the reader that so much of what we're suffering from is inflicted by our own pressures and in a lot of ways what he seems to be angling toward is an almost Daoism-like orientation to life which is perhaps part of why he avoids systematizing and prefers instead to offer his thoughts in a range of lengths between two-liners and one or two page blurbs.

Something else I have to be clear about - I've been a big fan of John Gray's writing and style of thinking for quite a while and it was a vivid shock to see 103:

"The summit of human existence, say the philosophers, is spiritual serenity, aequanimitas: But in that case the animals should be our ideal, for in the matter of imperturbability they leave nothing to be desired. Look at a grazing sheep, or a cow. They do not look before and after, and sigh for what is not. Given a good pasture, the present suffices for them perfectly."

(worth adding too - Gray mentioned at least once in Straw Dogs that as observed in the play of otters and other animals, Daoism seems to be the closest thing to a realistic natural religion in terms of reflecting reality as we receive it, I haven't yet read his 'The Silence of Animals' but I'd have to guess that it's an expansion on these same ideas)

Another really good stanza, 84 (after talking about the universal futility and misery in the lives of everyone in the world of Anton Chekhov's Ivanov in 83):

"Gradually there settles down a dreadful, eternal silence of the cemetery. All go mad, without words, they realize what is happening within them, and make up their minds for the last shift: to hide their grief forever from men, and to speak in commonplace, trivial words which will be accepted as sensible, serious, and even lofty expressions. No longer will anyone cry: "Life is a waste," , and intrude his feelings on his neighbors. Everybody knows that it is shameful for one's life to be a waste, and that this shame should be hidden from every eye. The last law on earth is - loneliness."

Writings like this might be horribly depressing to a lot of people but for someone whose more easily prone to depression and anxiety due to their ideals and should's ganging up and clubbing them in a corner - this is a huge sigh of relief and a suggestion that life isn't only hard but that the narratives we're fed by other people are mostly lies and that if you can it's really important to 'lighten up' to whatever degree is possible.

Clearly survival is still an issue and dealing with other people will always be fraught as it does have consequences and there's very little people are more jealous of and narcissists more drawn to target than someone who seems truly liberated in an internal sense, but regardless - I see it as a call to apply pessimism in the best possible way which is to cut your own shackles, be as practical as you can in how you fashion your own inner life (especially given the circumstances of what life is), and be extremely careful what kinds of ideological or philosophic koolaid you drink and that can even go as far as the Darwinian narrative that having kids is the only rating system nature has and that nothing else matters more than passing your 23 on. Some of these stories might have more concrete heft to them than others but, like Shestov suggests in a few of his aphorisms, that if you shackle yourself too much to logic or reason that's based on these stories your electrified into place in such a way that you lose your freedom and your life and range of imagination gets hijacked by whatever system of values that you might settle on as 'ultimate'.

I should also add - he's said some very observant things about human nature as well throughout this, not just the consistent failings and hypocrisy of human nature but the ways in which some of this works, case in point somewhere in the 80's or 90's stanza series he says some things about shy or introverted people and the delayed and rich responses they can have, or having huge inner worlds and great bravery when alone, which I can deeply relate to.

[Papus79]

Some closing thoughts, on Part II and everything up through section 46 (pulling this from my journal):

What I see him doing overall with his philosophy is this:

1) Trying to impart just how wide the possibility space actually is while at the same time trying to destroy any illusions that the whole space is easily searchable.

2) Trying to undermine our false closures on the complexities of the possibility space.

3) Attacking systems that have artificially closed the width, breadth, and depth of the possibility space by simply declaring higher-hanging fruit to not be real. This is great for big bureaucratic systems and ways for people to get meal tickets - not for inspecting or living real life.

4) Trying to get the reader to, in abandoning certain applications of logic and reason, stay open to natures innovations and the possibility of not getting locked into or vampirized by systems of false closure which were made up by other people really in efforts to mask their own weakness and placate their own needs.

[Hereandnow]

Let me read it. I'll have time tomorrow.

[Hereandnow]

Papus79
Some closing thoughts, on Part II and everything up through section 46 (pulling this from my journal):

What I see him doing overall with his philosophy is this:

1) Trying to impart just how wide the possibility space actually is while at the same time trying to destroy any illusions that the whole space is easily searchable.

Lev Shestov. All Things are Possible (Kindle Location 88).

2) Trying to undermine our false closures on the complexities of the possibility space.

3) Attacking systems that have artificially closed the width, breadth, and depth of the possibility space by simply declaring higher-hanging fruit to not be real. This is great for big bureaucratic systems and ways for people to get meal tickets - not for inspecting or living real life.

May I suggest taking this more slowly? The first parables are very interesting, and they set the stage for all to come.

Everything he says in embedded in a history of ideas and there content here that is lost on those who haven't read what he has read. I have read Tolstoy but not in any scholarly way, e.g. I do know that he celebrates the yeoman farmer and the purity and clarity of nature, and I identify with this somewhat that has its British counterpart in Wordsworth, Blake, et al.

Slowly. He writes in parables, like most of Nietzsche, and both Nietzsche and Kierkegaard have an ax to grind with formal, dogmatic attempts by philosophers to pin down what it means to be a person, a self, in the world. I haven't gotten as far a your comments on space suggest, so your comments about space I will hold on to until later. I do know he is leading to a more coherent and thematic presentation, but in the beginning he seems arbitrary; but then, his aphoristic approach does itself deny the programmatic way that he is intent on criticizing. The idea that all things are possible is a clear reference to human freedom, freedom in the Kierkegaardian, Nietzschean sense (though their theories about what freedom is differ radically), which is freedom from dogma and the strict calculative attempts to tell us what IS, what the truth is, for, and this is crucial, the world does yield its secrets to the theoretical dispositions of philosophers. The world is OPEN, and so are we.

Now, I invite you to look closely at #6. Shestov presents this idea: ideas that are materially unprofitable should not therefore be rejected. There is this, already a hint of the kind of freedom he is going to defend. Here is the "dirt of life" in the literary realism of his day, for which there really is "no need," that is, not even as a "useful pathology". Realism is harmful, and once there, in the mind, it stays put. A terrific ply here on these ideas follows re. Tolstoy, the Eden fable (into 7) then on to a priori judgments and their "perfect knowledge".

This passage is an analytical cornucopia. Realism is freedom, is it not? Adam had bliss but no freedom, for curiosity was a transgression. What an idea, curiosity a transgression. For stepping into the world of critical thought is certainly a step toward, well, disaster and uncertainty, and it is not just historical--reaching back to a time before culture could reflect upon itself, bringing all the awful things in the world OUT of myth, and into clarity--- but it is in the analytic of the self amid the inertial everydayness (this is Heidegger). See the people all around going about the affairs, working, dreaming, in unqualified conviction that there are no questions about this.

This is a major theme in existentialism, starting with Kierkegaard's critique of Christendom. One has to be wary of Shestov's endless irony, for it is, as with Kierkegaard, mixed with his earnestness. Re. Tolstoy it gets a bit slippery. In Eden work is absent, but so is inquiry, and this latter has consequences, we know, as one gets kicked out of paradise for wanting to know. Now the idleness Tolstoy found repugnant " he found a cure for at "the tail of the plough" into a return to "the most primitive state" of Edenic bliss. In Tolstoy's farming there is "peace of Mind". But then, conversely, "present day people" prefer work, for in this work there is "smoothness" and "regularity". Shestoc is dancing, almost literally, with his thoughts on this. In the end idleness gets equated with the apriority of predicting, knowing, controlling, stabilizing, a priori because we don't allow inquiry to intrude into our assuptions about the way things are, we act and think without testing, probing, and this is the edenic bliss!

Obviously, he taking on the way dogmatic attitudes rule thought, and it is The Question that will, I hazard, be a significant part of the way he defines human authenticity.

Moving on to #8, but pls let me know your thoughts on 6 and 7.

[Papus79]

So to be fair and clarify things:

- When I wrote that last post I had finished my first read of the book.

- As I said earlier, I wasn't intending to drag the whole thread and everyone watching it into the beat of my drum. I was looking for a place to get my feet wet and for me that was finding someone in this area who I'd personally find interesting - which I did.

- My outlook on reading these types of books, aphoristic or otherwise, is that when I read anything particularly good I read it with the understanding that if it's a really fascinating or amazing book it might take a half-dozen passes, even a dozen maybe, to really bring out all of its content. For example as someone who hasn't read all of the people he's critiquing, if I was going to rate my level of depth-resolution on what was in this book on a scale of 1 to 5 I'd probably say it was a 2. In your case, at least for Kant, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, or anything else that you have read it may be closer to a 4 on first pass and you may read it a lot more slowly than I did because you're shaking out what he's saying against what you already know of the authors and what they are or aren't saying.

Part of the challenges with reading great thinkers is that the first pass is your initial absorption, and for me I like to go and read other thinkers, broaden my actual opinions on what their topics are (opinions that I've reached on solid ground rather than borrowed authority) because I've noticed that great minds can have almost a blinding light and I can easily find myself agreeing with them on all kinds of things even when they either contradict my own usual views or they could directly contradict the views of the last great thinker who I felt the same way about who said something much the opposite on some detail and I went with it just as blithely. When I notice those inconsistencies it makes me want to know more, coast on authority and brilliance less, and actually get a solid foundation on the topic at hand.

For #6 - We have all kinds of blunt examples of this in the world today, they're obvious. The most straight-forward and least imaginative example is when corporations make profits by raiding the commons and/or creating unaccounted externalities. For a long time there was no such thing as environmentalism so the process of turning priceless things to junk and profit had the dimension of the environment that it could trample right over top of unchecked because that wasn't on the books and as of the back half of the 20th century into the 21st it's become the case that environment is now on the books and there are probably many other unaccounted exchanges, opportunity costs, etc. that need to be added as well if we really want a comprehensive lens to view economic activity through.

On realism - I look back at Maslow's hierarchy of needs and this relates back to having a strong foundation, so there's very little that's sweet about it, a lot that's sour or bitter, and yet we're fixated on it because it gives us vital information. We could say that in Eden, lets say when we were in trees, awful acts of violence happened, death happened regularly, misfortune, etc. and as other animals we had such shallow horizons and low capacity for suffering that it didn't bother us. The idea of 'accountability' either for others or ourselves had not crept in and at that point with no tribe (a troop maybe at most) and simply being able to live off of the land and trees because we really weren't that plentiful - our problems were small even if what we were doing was horrifically boring by modern man's standards.

In the back half of #6 where he calls it a lie and harmful, it's like he sailed this one through under-defined. I can't agree or disagree with him because I don't know what he means. To say that realism gives you perfect information about the world around you or guarantees that you won't over-extrapolate and hem yourself into a box (I think of several MGTOW content creators on Youtube who've done an excellent job of that with themselves) - that I can agree is a lie. Some dose of realism as opposed to living on fantasy though? Depends on how willing you are to throw yourself into the jaws of nature and I'd liken that extreme, similar to 'Law of Attraction' extremists, a bit like taking the kamikaze approach to wish fulfillment, and - TBH - it really, really helps to be delusional to try that because if you aren't you'll weigh the odds that you'll be a bug splat on the pavement, shake your head, and move on to something else. From everything else he's said I don't think he's endorsing the later and for his annoyance with scientism and little else to frame this with he's probably suggesting the former - ie. that it's a lie if overextrapolated as a perfect frame of reality.

As for #7 - the idea of antifragility seems to sum it up. When I was professionally temping I'd have times where there might be a month between jobs and that month started out okay and often got strange. When I was on one particular assignment a roommate lost his job, his sleep schedule slowly began to invert the way sleep schedules often can when you don't have a day job, and things started going out of sync for him. Without a day job your skill-sets can dull unless you force the issue strictly of your own industry and your directions in life can start to float away with is quite dangerous. If people are out there for too long they won't have anything useful to say because they aren't making contact with reality anymore. There's another side of work as well, whether physical or knowledge-based professional work, in which you're always coming in contact with physics, ie. the 'unforgiving', in which you have to deal with it for what it is and it can't be bluffed, loss of contact with that tends to atrophy people's orientation to reality.

[Hereandnow]

Papus79
For #6 - We have all kinds of blunt examples of this in the world today, they're obvious. The most straight-forward and least imaginative example is when corporations make profits by raiding the commons and/or creating unaccounted externalities. For a long time there was no such thing as environmentalism so the process of turning priceless things to junk and profit had the dimension of the environment that it could trample right over top of unchecked because that wasn't on the books and as of the back half of the 20th century into the 21st it's become the case that environment is now on the books and there are probably many other unaccounted exchanges, opportunity costs, etc. that need to be added as well if we really want a comprehensive lens to view economic activity through.

You would have t explain this to me.

On realism - I look back at Maslow's hierarchy of needs and this relates back to having a strong foundation, so there's very little that's sweet about it, a lot that's sour or bitter, and yet we're fixated on it because it gives us vital information. We could say that in Eden, lets say when we were in trees, awful acts of violence happened, death happened regularly, misfortune, etc. and as other animals we had such shallow horizons and low capacity for suffering that it didn't bother us. The idea of 'accountability' either for others or ourselves had not crept in and at that point with no tribe (a troop maybe at most) and simply being able to live off of the land and trees because we really weren't that plentiful - our problems were small even if what we were doing was horrifically boring by modern man's standards.

Shestov says that there really is "no need," that is, not even as a "useful pathology" for realism, that there is something entirely superfluous to this radical consciousness that knows beyond what it should. He is baiting us, for the anticipated theme in this is going to be realism at the cost of happiness. It is not the utility of realism he wants to bring up, really; it's that part of us the MUST have the real, as if it is foisted upon us and there is no edenic solution. See where he mentions that once the idea of is there, Eden is lost. He is trying to establish something paradoxical about the human condition, which is that Edenic bliss, the kind Tolstoy seemed to think is the key to our redemption at the end of a plough as a yeoman farmer (see Levin in Anna Karenina) is never to be achieved again, for we are imprisoned, if you will, by our freedom: the cost of freedom is misery. The theory of human existence came from the existential notion that humans so not have fixed essence; perhaps you've heard the cliche existence precedes essence which says we are a kind of nothing and in our freedom we create our essence (Kierkegaard will call this the spirit, Heidegger will call this our ownmost self, authentic existence), and therefore absolutely free. This freedom is a structural feature of the self, and Shestov will no doubt posit this.

8, 9: we can see his rebellion against the human attempt to make the world toe the line according to rules,laws, eternal truths--such things come and go; but it is only a weak and petty mind that insists on "internal" order (while dealings with others requires moral rigor). A chaotic mind> No, but chaos is the only alternative to dogmatism. Kieekegaard wrote his Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin. No doubt, Shestov is alluding to this all throughout, for Kierkegaard is adamant in is denial that reason can encompass actuality. Shestov is clearly an antirationalist here, repeatedly rejecting claims about a systematic conception of the world. Sartre called this "radical contingency". Ever read his Nausea? The world is not the order we logically impose upon it. The world can do anything; it is not delimited of constrained, for this is what WE do in the world, to the world.

All of this is somewhat derivative of Kierkegaard. His Concept of Anxiety is excellent for understanding Shestov.

[Papus79]

You would have t explain this to me.

Being that you're saying that while quoting an example I made means my giving more examples isn't likely to help. Is there a well-pointed question you have in mind?

Shestov says that there really is "no need," that is, not even as a "useful pathology" for realism, that there is something entirely superfluous to this radical consciousness that knows beyond what it should. He is baiting us, for the anticipated theme in this is going to be realism at the cost of happiness. It is not the utility of realism he wants to bring up, really; it's that part of us the MUST have the real, as if it is foisted upon us and there is no edenic solution. See where he mentions that once the idea of is there, Eden is lost. He is trying to establish something paradoxical about the human condition, which is that Edenic bliss, the kind Tolstoy seemed to think is the key to our redemption at the end of a plough as a yeoman farmer (see Levin in Anna Karenina) is never to be achieved again, for we are imprisoned, if you will, by our freedom: the cost of freedom is misery. The theory of human existence came from the existential notion that humans so not have fixed essence; perhaps you've heard the cliche existence precedes essence which says we are a kind of nothing and in our freedom we create our essence (Kierkegaard will call this the spirit, Heidegger will call this our ownmost self, authentic existence), and therefore absolutely free. This freedom is a structural feature of the self, and Shestov will no doubt posit this.

To be fair, having read farther in, he gives enough examples of common misery being the broad state that's difficult for me to imagine him seeing the common man or woman having been philosophically indoctrinated into realism.

You brought up the binary of 'free in Eden without self-aware reflection' vs. 'having self-aware reflection and paying the price' - yes, I get it, I may have spoken a few too many levels after that point to verify that I got that point. This where I brought up accountability, ie. that as animals with dimmer consciousness any baked-in sense of accountability was instinctive, having the minds we have today our accountability both as guardians of our own minds and bodies, guardians of spouse and children, guardians of property, guardians of roles given to us at work and responsibilities that we have skin in the game over, we have a lot to think about and particularly sharp consequences for screwing up.

I also don't know for certain which definition of 'realism' he's using but from the context I'm taking it that he means stepping off of the mytho-poetic landscape in favor of the empirical. When you find yourself in a world where you're held to account for everything, punished severely for 'screwing up', realism in the form of desiring empirical information so as not to screw up seems like it's par for the social pressures. Here I'm not even saying that these social pressures are bad, you probably wouldn't want a doctor, dentist, lawyer, auto mechanics, air plane pilot, or building contractor of any building you work in or highway bridge you drive across not taking up that pressure. It's a price we pay for having what we have and the complexity that's gone with supporting what we have.

8, 9: we can see his rebellion against the human attempt to make the world toe the line according to rules,laws, eternal truths--such things come and go; but it is only a weak and petty mind that insists on "internal" order (while dealings with others requires moral rigor). A chaotic mind> No, but chaos is the only alternative to dogmatism. Kieekegaard wrote his Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin. No doubt, Shestov is alluding to this all throughout, for Kierkegaard is adamant in is denial that reason can encompass actuality. Shestov is clearly an antirationalist here, repeatedly rejecting claims about a systematic conception of the world. Sartre called this "radical contingency". Ever read his Nausea? The world is not the order we logically impose upon it. The world can do anything; it is not delimited of constrained, for this is what WE do in the world, to the world.

All of this is somewhat derivative of Kierkegaard. His Concept of Anxiety is excellent for understanding Shestov.

Being that we're taking this at a bible-study pace and that the book is in public domain do you think we should just quote the aphorisms so everyone else can jump in? I mean - I'm still happy I did a cover-to-cover on it ahead of time but at this pace there's no need to make it an exclusive conversation between us.

To escape from the grasp of contemporary ruling ideas, one should study history. The lives of other men in other lands in other ages teach us to realise that our "eternal laws" and infallible ideas are just abortions. Take a step further, imagine mankind living elsewhere than on this earth, and all our terrestial eternalities lose their charm.

The state of human knowledge is generally lackluster in all time periods because, for the most part, the majority beliefs and which belief systems become public policy isn't in service to truth - it's in service to political, social, and structural concerns and equally held in place by the people who made said discoveries and can't let anything shake them while they're alive and still have a reputation to defend. It's in line with the apocryphal Max Planck quote that 'Science progresses one funeral at a time', and there's no reason why it couldn't regress with enough careerists in place as well.

We know nothing of the ultimate realities of our existence, nor shall we ever know anything. Let that be agreed. But it does not follow that therefore we must accept some or other dogmatic theory as a modus vivendi, no, not even positivism, which has such a sceptical face on it. It only follows that man is free to change his conception of the universe as often as he changes his boots or his gloves, and that constancy of principle belongs only to one's relationships with other people, in order that they may know where and to what extent they may depend on us. Therefore, on principle man should respect order in the external world and complete chaos in the inner. And for those who find it difficult to bear such a duality, some internal order might also be provided. Only, they should not pride themselves on it, but always remember that it is a sign of their weakness, pettiness, dullness.

I'll grab a definition for modus vivendi in case anyone isn't familiar:
an arrangement or agreement allowing conflicting parties to coexist peacefully, either indefinitely or until a final settlement is reached.

As someone who went through some major pole-shifts between my early 20's to mid 30's (ie. from agnosticism toward atheism, toward an explosion of mystical experience and inquiry back down to a somewhat haunted and animistic world that's otherwise in spitting-distance of Dawkins and Dennett's description of things) I'd fully agree that you have to be able to role with the punches and deal with revelations that come in about the world around you as systems of previous belief either break down or as new ones that may have come on too strong get tamed back into place by full-circle reminders of old events recontextualized. Reliability to others I think is something you have to chose very carefully, that is I'd rather be a friend who my friends know can talk them through a hard time if they need it, help them move if they need it, even lend them money if they need it, just that my religious and spiritual life for most of this time has been too volatile for commitments on that front to be a good idea and sometimes that's just the shape of what's happening and it's better to know which domains you can be reliable in, which ones you can't, and pick your responsibilities accordingly.

As for modus vivendi - I think the only thing I'll say there is that in any time or place you'll have one belief that's dominant or maybe a couple that have a stalemate of some type. Those are the sanctioned beliefs in the land, people start buying into them because they're social currency (most people pick beliefs based on groups - it's social level pulling, not pursuit of truth) and if you think you have something new to add you have to be very good at building alliances - that is even if you're right the truth unfortunately only speaks for itself if you're Sam Harris or someone equally nerdy whose either spent decades straining out their Darwinian instincts or someone who was lucky/unlucky enough to either be on the autistic spectrum or have an unusually high IQ (the same social and life problems of very high IQ hit autistic people at a much earlier quotient). Whatever 'must accept' aspect of popular truths there seems to be is along the lines of punishments for breaching social conformity by believing and especially espousing some idea that's not in socially sanctioned belief basket A, B, or possibly C is such exists, that is anything outside of that is often seen as taboo.

[Papus79]

The state of human knowledge is generally lackluster in all time periods because, for the most part, the majority beliefs and which belief systems become public policy isn't in service to truth - it's in service to political, social, and structural concerns and equally held in place by the people who made said discoveries and can't let anything shake them while they're alive and still have a reputation to defend. It's in line with the apocryphal Max Planck quote that 'Science progresses one funeral at a time', and there's no reason why it couldn't regress with enough careerists in place as well.

One clarifying point that I forgot to mention here - this also involves forced certainty, ie. that whatever we believe we belief with the full weight of 100% certainty or 99.999999% certain therefore agnostic. That's the force of politics mangling objectivity as it's always wont to do once any system becomes something like a beach ball getting passed around the collective mosh pit.

[Hereandnow]

Papus79
Being that we're taking this at a bible-study pace and that the book is in public domain do you think we should just quote the aphorisms so everyone else can jump in? I mean - I'm still happy I did a cover-to-cover on it ahead of time but at this pace there's no need to make it an exclusive conversation between us.

The fault is mine. I read philosophy in a technical way, as if I'm going to write a paper. Everything is a connection, an implicit historical reference. Putting all this in the public arena would be fine, but, well, it would get pretty uninteresting quickly, and things would quickly go into areas unrelated. But All Things Are Possible does allow for general appreciation, as Nietzsche's texts do, as one can take Shestov's ideas and treat them in a general way. Such a thing is not possible with, say, Sartre's Being and Nothingness or Kierkegaard's Sickness Unto Death. These are very technical and analytical of the structure of Experience as such, and this kind of phenomenological ontology is a thing that takes time and patience, and Shestov, of course, was very aware of all of this (though, Being and Nothingness was in 1943, and this text was in 1905, before Heidegger and the rest; but he had read Husserl, Kant, Schiller, Nietzsche, and so on). Frankly, the technical theory is the only thing that will deliver a change as to the way we think. Otherwise, what you have is just another conversation about things you already know.

At any rate, if you'd like to take this material to another OP that is perfectly fine, and things may even get interesting.

Y

ou brought up the binary of 'free in Eden without self-aware reflection' vs. 'having self-aware reflection and paying the price' - yes, I get it, I may have spoken a few too many levels after that point to verify that I got that point. This where I brought up accountability, ie. that as animals with dimmer consciousness any baked-in sense of accountability was instinctive, having the minds we have today our accountability both as guardians of our own minds and bodies, guardians of spouse and children, guardians of property, guardians of roles given to us at work and responsibilities that we have skin in the game over, we have a lot to think about and particularly sharp consequences for screwing up.

Kierkegaard thought the animal had no soul because it had no spirit, and it had no spirit because spirit required a certain anxiety that comes with being able to question our own existence and finding nothing there, no authority, no facts to examine. In more current language, we call this facing ethical/valuative nihilism, which says all, among other things, human (and animal) suffering (and joy) does not have some foundational (read metaphysical) justification, and our job is to simply accept this. See how the onerous nature of the world's imposition on us is ignored by animals as an issue. Only humans take our own existence as an issue, and there is something in this knowledge that is deeply disturbing. What sets the phenomenologist/existentialist off from analytic philosophy is that the latter will approach this matter through physical science, the former looks at the phenomenon as it is itself, free of the presumptions of both science and metaphysics. Shestov, note is critical all the way around; critical of Tolstoy's romanticism, of Hegel's rationalism, anyone who seeks refuge in presumptuous principles. All are "abortions" in history.

I also don't know for certain which definition of 'realism' he's using but from the context I'm taking it that he means stepping off of the mytho-poetic landscape in favor of the empirical. When you find yourself in a world where you're held to account for everything, punished severely for 'screwing up', realism in the form of desiring empirical information so as not to screw up seems like it's par for the social pressures. Here I'm not even saying that these social pressures are bad, you probably wouldn't want a doctor, dentist, lawyer, auto mechanics, air plane pilot, or building contractor of any building you work in or highway bridge you drive across not taking up that pressure. It's a price we pay for having what we have and the complexity that's gone with supporting what we have.

Why so casual about the world? How about just the impossible wretchedness of the worst there is, like being burned at that stake. When Shestov talks about realism, he isn't really specific, but we can be specific, after all, his point is the knowing with perfect clarity that outside of Eden is a place that defies happiness. If the "realist" notion is to take center stage, then its worst realities have to be have to laid bare, or the point is deflated, divested of the potency that needs to be examined. Here is a quasi Kierkegaardian idea: to understand the world, one has to see that it is entirely indefensible, a priori indefensible, and to know this, one has to abandon all pretenses of ethical knowledge claims.

The realism, that which makes our understanding very uncomfortable, as it should, poses questions most are unwilling to take on, but, since we are in the midst of existential thinking, the worst of it lies with the nihilism: horrible suffering speaks for itself, but realism, in literature, in the drive for the truth, carries nihilism with it, for it is not our suffering, but rather suffering for nothing at all, suffering without redemption, this is the worst the world can be.

It's certainly is not that the things you mention about the pressures of modern life are not bad, they clearly can be awful, but the question goes existential, which means it is built into our being here; it is not the contingent facts about our daily miseries so much as the altogether inexplicable presence of misery at all, structured into the "nature of things." This is why I like the crucifix, a great symbol, not of religious dogma, but of the intensity of human suffering, Religion is about nothing if not human suffering. Being burned alive at the stake has to be the worst, though the Sicilian Bull is like worse.

The state of human knowledge is generally lackluster in all time periods because, for the most part, the majority beliefs and which belief systems become public policy isn't in service to truth - it's in service to political, social, and structural concerns and equally held in place by the people who made said discoveries and can't let anything shake them while they're alive and still have a reputation to defend. It's in line with the apocryphal Max Planck quote that 'Science progresses one funeral at a time', and there's no reason why it couldn't regress with enough careerists in place as well.

On the other hand, there is that which Shestov claims will not be put out of mind, which is the realism that will forever haunt our desires to be at peace. Politicians and administrators will keep the trains running, but ideology, these are free floating institutions now.

As someone who went through some major pole-shifts between my early 20's to mid 30's (ie. from agnosticism toward atheism, toward an explosion of mystical experience and inquiry back down to a somewhat haunted and animistic world that's otherwise in spitting-distance of Dawkins and Dennett's description of things) I'd fully agree that you have to be able to role with the punches and deal with revelations that come in about the world around you as systems of previous belief either break down or as new ones that may have come on too strong get tamed back into place by full-circle reminders of old events recontextualized. Reliability to others I think is something you have to chose very carefully, that is I'd rather be a friend who my friends know can talk them through a hard time if they need it, help them move if they need it, even lend them money if they need it, just that my religious and spiritual life for most of this time has been too volatile for commitments on that front to be a good idea and sometimes that's just the shape of what's happening and it's better to know which domains you can be reliable in, which ones you can't, and pick your responsibilities accordingly.

As for modus vivendi - I think the only thing I'll say there is that in any time or place you'll have one belief that's dominant or maybe a couple that have a stalemate of some type. Those are the sanctioned beliefs in the land, people start buying into them because they're social currency (most people pick beliefs based on groups - it's social level pulling, not pursuit of truth) and if you think you have something new to add you have to be very good at building alliances - that is even if you're right the truth unfortunately only speaks for itself if you're Sam Harris or someone equally nerdy whose either spent decades straining out their Darwinian instincts or someone who was lucky/unlucky enough to either be on the autistic spectrum or have an unusually high IQ (the same social and life problems of very high IQ hit autistic people at a much earlier quotient). Whatever 'must accept' aspect of popular truths there seems to be is along the lines of punishments for breaching social conformity by believing and especially espousing some idea that's not in socially sanctioned belief basket A, B, or possibly C is such exists, that is anything outside of that is often seen as taboo.

So, popular truths, Dennett, Dawkins, Darwinism; what strikes me about this discussion of yours is the need for grounding. Why not read some serious technical existential philosophy? Heidegger speaks to all of these in one way or another. Take Dennett, committed to a reductionist view on consciousness and its affairs, and Dawkins right behind him, and Darwin behind both: These are empirical theorists, not phenomenologists, and they put their thinking forth based on bold and groundless assumptions about how things are in the materialist model of the world. Heidegger (and Husserl, Kierkegaard, Kant, ..) will have nothing of this, for empirical observation begs the question regarding how such a model holds up when asking basic questions. What is needed here is the only reduction that upturns all common thinking, which is the phenomenological reduction. Physicality, material--these are vacuous terms when examined closely, and the natural sciences cannot begin to address ethics, for ethical matter are essentially unobservable (see Wittgenstein's Lecture on Ethics. I often refer others to this because most haven't a clue as the nature of metaethical problems and Wittgenstein presents the case well, though I disagree with some things). Darwin's evolution is, of course, a plausible theory, and it would be foolish to oppose it, BUT: it is NOT philosophy; it is derivative of structures of consciousness which themselves demand examination. Empirical ideas are cast in language, e.g. Is it possible to separate language from objects in the world? Can we even discuss the world if the conditions of interpretation are absent from analysis? Sam Harris is not a serious thinking person, if you ask me, but he is taken seriously by the unread.

Shestov is interesting, but Heidegger's Being and Time is life altering,to speak of life style, as is Kierkegaard, but like I said before, such works take time and patience. I read phenomenology, period, and have little to do with analytic philosophy, of which I have also read, and found very helpful, but unprofound. Phenomenology is profound. If you are interested in this kind of text, it runs at, as you say, a Bible study's pace. But everything else is most often chit chatty and tit for tat.