WrittenFromUtopia
Puritan Board Graduate
What is "is"?
Existentialism
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WrittenFromUtopia
Puritan Board Graduate
Originally posted by crhoades
Am I the only one that cannot read that without hearing a Bill Clinton inflection?
Well, he was well educated.
crhoades
Puritan Board Graduate
I have no idea what the ramifications are to this answer but a knee-jerk answer is - God.
Only God is. He is the Great I AM. He is the only eternal, infinite, unchangable, perfect being. Everything else is created and therefore cannot just 'be'.
Your thoughts? What are the problems/implications of this answer? Never thought through this before, so cut me some slack if it leads down a path that I don't want to go.
WrittenFromUtopia
Puritan Board Graduate
Originally posted by crhoades
I have no idea what the ramifications are to this answer but a knee-jerk answer is - God.
Only God is. He is the Great I AM. He is the only eternal, infinite, unchangable, perfect being. Everything else is created and therefore cannot just 'be'.
Your thoughts? What are the problems/implications of this answer? Never thought through this before, so cut me some slack if it leads down a path that I don't want to go.
Hegel has the same answer. God is "Absolute" for Hegel. All Truth is Absolute, therefore all that is True is God. So, you'd need some major qualifications for that answer in order to avoid the Pantheism of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (which, taken in the right context and applied properly, is a wonderful study on consciousness and knowledge, in my opinion).
WrittenFromUtopia
Puritan Board Graduate
I would say "is" is subjective, individual, sense-perception; but, I'm not wholly committed to that just yet. There is a lot to think about when answering something like this...
WrittenFromUtopia
Puritan Board Graduate
[Edited on 8-10-2006 by WrittenFromUtopia]
WrittenFromUtopia
Puritan Board Graduate
WrittenFromUtopia
Puritan Board Graduate
Vytautas
Puritan Board Freshman
"is" means "=". "=" means equals so it also means that something is the same as something else. For example, red is a color. This example means there is a simulatirty between color and red. The similarity is that red is a sub-category of color. In this case the things are not completely equal so the "œis" deserves a squiggly equals sign. So "œis" also means approximant to as well as equal to.
It is more correct to say that all Truth is "of" God, when writing from the human perspective. Yes, Truth is God, as long as we recognise that man's comprehension of truth is not exhaustive. Hence Truth continues to transcend human experience, thus defeating Pantheism.
There can be no predication, IS, without God, I AM. More particularly, there can be no human predication, IS, without the Logos. All things were made by Him and for Him.
[Edited on 8-11-2006 by armourbearer]
Cheshire Cat
Puritan Board Sophomore
When I say "Truth *is* absolute", does the connective word "is" make that statement subjective, individual, or based on my sense-perception? Can I test that proposition by my sense experience? These questions are rhetorical btw...
Maybe I can put this a better way. *Is* 'truth' subjective, individual, and based on our sense perception?
[Edited on 8-11-2006 by caleb_woodrow]
[Edited on 8-11-2006 by caleb_woodrow]
JohnV
Puritan Board Post-Graduate
Existentialism was an idealism that sprang out of man's self-centred approach to reality. That is, he believed himself to be the reference point of all knowledge, and therefore where he was and what he knew was the crucial element to knowledge, to certainty in knowledge.
As I recall, that was what it was back in its heyday. It is passe now. But at the time people were turning to things that would bring them new revelations, and drugs were a big part of that in its later manifesting stages. "The happening" was the code word for some kind of spiritual or mental interaction with some kind of religious experience; "religious" here not meaning our usual sense of the term, for it could be interaction with anything that even seemed spiritual or "other". It ran out of steam, as I recall, because it was manifesting itself in ever increasing debauchery in its adherents, and ran out of moral ground, like so many "isms" before it.
As I recall, that was what it was back in its heyday. It is passe now. But at the time people were turning to things that would bring them new revelations, and drugs were a big part of that in its later manifesting stages. "The happening" was the code word for some kind of spiritual or mental interaction with some kind of religious experience; "religious" here not meaning our usual sense of the term, for it could be interaction with anything that even seemed spiritual or "other". It ran out of steam, as I recall, because it was manifesting itself in ever increasing debauchery in its adherents, and ran out of moral ground, like so many "isms" before it.
WrittenFromUtopia
Puritan Board Graduate
You have to account for the literary aspect of the Existential movement as well. It was more than philosophy, per se.
JohnV
Puritan Board Post-Graduate
Existentialism was expressed through the arts as well, to be sure. It is part of the whole cultural expression, first though philosophy, then through the arts, and then through actual practices. There is the propagation aspect, and then the culmination aspect, with everything in between, along with before and after, making up the whole of it. It was expressed through literature, painting and sculpture, as well as through music. There is the European expression of it, and then later the North American expression.
It was a way to label the time that history went through, explaining why things went as they did. It was really nothing more than a feeble attempt of man to go on his own, apart from God. It all happened simultaneous with the assumed victory of science over the Bible, the extreme optimism that man could do anything he set his mind to. At its height it was declared that God was dead; as it waned the same influential voices began to declare that man was resurrecting God. It turned out that the extreme optimism was nothing more than a verbal con game, using words to advantage to give a notion of substance, but really lacking it altogether. That was why God needed to be resurrected.
One of the biggest ideas that gave rise to it was the question of, "What is?" It was also its downfall, for they found they had explained exactly nothing in the end, but only gave out an illusion of answers to the question. They still found they needed God in the end, but supposed they could raise their own god to fill the void. But they were still hanging with their intellectual feet well off the solid ground. And they still did not know what was right side up or up side down. They were still the reference point in themselves to determine such things, and found they were not big enough to answer the important questions. "What is?" still loomed large.
It was a way to label the time that history went through, explaining why things went as they did. It was really nothing more than a feeble attempt of man to go on his own, apart from God. It all happened simultaneous with the assumed victory of science over the Bible, the extreme optimism that man could do anything he set his mind to. At its height it was declared that God was dead; as it waned the same influential voices began to declare that man was resurrecting God. It turned out that the extreme optimism was nothing more than a verbal con game, using words to advantage to give a notion of substance, but really lacking it altogether. That was why God needed to be resurrected.
One of the biggest ideas that gave rise to it was the question of, "What is?" It was also its downfall, for they found they had explained exactly nothing in the end, but only gave out an illusion of answers to the question. They still found they needed God in the end, but supposed they could raise their own god to fill the void. But they were still hanging with their intellectual feet well off the solid ground. And they still did not know what was right side up or up side down. They were still the reference point in themselves to determine such things, and found they were not big enough to answer the important questions. "What is?" still loomed large.
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