Late mid-morning. Breakfast and paper. Chores. And you are thinking about a comfortable bath for think time.
Last night while in bed I was listening to a Japanese radio station from Tokyo in English. The cadence was somber, lots of statistics. And, I found it moving because it was a Japanese station not BBC or an American affiliate. I thought about the eighteenth century philosophers and theodicy and the sublime. One of the definitions of theodicy found online is:
"Literally, "the righteousness of God". Any explanation of how evil and suffering can exist in the world if God is both all-powerful and loving."
And, the definition of sublime is:
"Longinus, writing in the classical historical tradition says that the sublime implies that man can, in emotions and in language, transcend the limits of the human condition. Longinus's approach is contradistinguished from Plato's declaration of poetic inspiration as dangerous divine madness or the poet as liar. Yet like Plato, Longinus feels that the human was the art or technical aspects, while the sublime was the "soul" or that which eluded our experience of art. In order to understand the sublime, we must have some notion of what exists beyond the human, empirical experience. Longinus explains that this "beyond" is comprehended in terms of metaphor, or in terms of what is absent from the empirical world. Our sense of the sublime is an illusion, which draws the reader to new heights, to the realization that there is something more to human life than the mundane, the ordinary. In fact, the sublime entails a kind of mystery. The sublime is that which defeats every effort of sense and imagination to picture it. It is that whose presence reduces all else to nothingness. It can be defined and described only in symbolic terms, which ironically defies the pictorial arts to sketch it. It remains only for the art of the metaphorical language of poetry to give the suggestion of the sublime."
From: www.sjsu.edu/faculty/patten/sublime.html
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We can discuss this using the above terms of definition. Take your bath, relax, and let these questions go for the moment. Post. – Amorella.
Early afternoon. The “righteousness of God” was a touchstone in your discussions of good and evil and suffering in the world as a backdrop to Milton’s Paradise Lost. Your existential leanings discount putting G---D in the equation for such calamities. Suffering is what people do when they are in emotional or physical pain. You feel that without a sense of pain the species would not think as deeply and would not so easily survive as you see it as a necessity in being born.
In the books and blog I am not as committed to the concept of G---D as seen from your more Deistic perspective, though to deny aspects of Deism exist in the books and blog would be untruthful. You discount the possibility of miracles almost entirely other than perhaps the fact of existence itself. You are agnostic to the core, orndorff. In fact, the concept that scientifically there is a possibility that a real Betweener might exist outside the border of space-time, tweaks your sense of possibility without downgrading the continue doubts such a thing could actually be.
I am more fiction than not, it is no wonder I doubt.
The above statement is an illuminating example of why the Dead need other Dead to define themselves as individuals.
If I were as real as you are in your mind, would you classify me as a miracle?
No. I would say ‘our’ connection was accidental, a happening in Nature not a miracle. I would say this for any aspect of such thinking outside of G---D.
Thus, you discount theodicy as an aspect of the recent earthquakes.
I do, but I do not know anything when it comes to what I call metaphysics. I cannot deny suffering exists and I cannot deny the possibility of G---D. So, it appears I have to let this go. It is probably best that I avoid such material in the books. Such thinking is a waste of my time as no one can resolve this satisfactorily. At least no one has resolved it to date.
Post. – Amorella.
Mid-afternoon. The Sublime is of more personal interest to you. As a transcendentalist you also intuitively sense that the human species can, through emotion and language, transcend the limits of the known human condition. From your perspective “limits” are what they are, and cannot be crossed.
Self-clarity here. ‘Upper limits’ is better than limits. As a human it would be impossible to know what our upper limit is. This is like saying no one can have an IQ over 180. Only a non-human who is higher up on a similar intellectual scale would be able to comprehend what a similar human IQ potential would be. Even then it would be possible that a ‘freak of nature’ may allow a human with an IQ of 300. But what would that mean for the rest of us lower IQed minds? How could a 180 IQued mind know what a 300 IQued mind would be? It is a rather silly argument. I have no idea what human limits are. I do not know what cannot be crossed.
You do know what your own limits in regards to metaphysics are however, do you not? – Amorella.
Strange question. At first I would emphatically respond, “Yes.” But, then, how can I or anyone else know herorhis limits in regards to metaphysics? So, I say, “No, I do not.” I do however agree with the last statements in the definition of sublime above:
“The sublime is that which defeats every effort of sense and imagination to picture it. It is that whose presence reduces all else to nothingness. It can be defined and described only in symbolic terms, which ironically defies the pictorial arts to sketch it. It remains only for the art of the metaphorical language of poetry to give the suggestion of the sublime.”
As you are producing the books via myself and your heartansoulanmind, would you say the blog and books border upon the sublime? – Amorella.
Perhaps, a little. I don’t know, Amorella. I don’t know enough to make a response even though I am the legal writer. Under these humbling circumstances I find the books and the blog rather amusing, funny really. Here I am writing about stuff I know nothing about. Mother always said to write only about what I know. I can hear her muttering now, “Dick, you are an old fool.” -- Such humor is wonderfully put. Classically, Mother. And, I (would) have to agree with her.
An interesting note to end on. Post. – Amorella.
Running on twenty-one hundred hours and as you glance over what you have for the day you still come to a smile. And, as usual, you really don’t know what to say because nothing comes to mind. . . . shortly though you return to the “righteousness of God” as an earlier thought.
The unconsciousness, and intuition after all my inner existential-like and even imaginary experiences leads me to feel that it is possible, perhaps even probable, that G---D is both far away and close by at the same time. It is only a feeling, but to deny it would be dishonest. This is about the only thing I 'feel' I know. The rest is less, and perhaps even a murmur of nothing at all. – rho
Sincerely put. Humbly felt. Understood, and rather humanly thought. – Amorella.
Amorella, what you say here cannot count. You may be, and probably are, only a part of myself. I may just be reinforcing myself, my concepts. I know this. But, the feeling above is intuitively true in my mind and hopefully in my heartansoulanmind also. It is an inwardly existential statement I can live with and also be dead with. - rho
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