Daelach
Setian
I'd like to address some points and have a kind of "open discussion". Means, I'm not asking questions to be answered, it's just the broad overall topic I've been occupied with over the last months. I'll try to keep it short, though I could without doubt elaborate much deeper, but who would read it then? So, just feel free to add in your thoughts.
Reason tells us why something happens. It gives us causalities, i.e. it answers why-questions. What it can't give is meaning. Hard-core materialists consequently state that there is no meaning at all, that we're living in a cold, meaningless world of matter.
Magic says that it isn't only matter. Thought is important, too. Science is better at manipulating matter and energy, that's why we have this internet forum instead of telepathy; but the world isn't just mindless matter where the formulas for mindless matter apply because we also have consciousness. Thus, magic provides means that can complement science. What magic doesn't provide, either, is meaning - magic answers how-questions.
Meaning, actually, is the realm of relegion. This touches the realm of values, only poorly governed by the secular offshoot of religion, i.e. philosophy. Philosophy by and large shows up when religion has created the cultural ground and then secularises the whole thing. That is why philosophy has never founded a culture, as religion does, and why philosophy is the servenat of theology, as they said in the middle ages.
Now, since I addressed also Setianism: Of course it is also a philosophy, but as such, it has quite a hard time of answering why Becoming actually is a value to live for. You could as well stick to humanism, to the Stoa or to whatever. Unless there is a religion which the philosophy can parasite on, there is no philosophy because every value can be deconstructed. Welcome to the nihilism that Nietzsche had announced (and to which his uberhuman pathos devoid of content was no solution).
Since values ultimately cannot be argued (that's why they can be deconstructed!), they just must be put forth, and that's what religion does. You can't argue why Becoming is a good thing without having bought heavily into the whole becoming-thing before, which is circular logic. Only that "logic" is the wrong kind of category here as religion isn't about logic.
Reason tells us why something happens. It gives us causalities, i.e. it answers why-questions. What it can't give is meaning. Hard-core materialists consequently state that there is no meaning at all, that we're living in a cold, meaningless world of matter.
Magic says that it isn't only matter. Thought is important, too. Science is better at manipulating matter and energy, that's why we have this internet forum instead of telepathy; but the world isn't just mindless matter where the formulas for mindless matter apply because we also have consciousness. Thus, magic provides means that can complement science. What magic doesn't provide, either, is meaning - magic answers how-questions.
Meaning, actually, is the realm of relegion. This touches the realm of values, only poorly governed by the secular offshoot of religion, i.e. philosophy. Philosophy by and large shows up when religion has created the cultural ground and then secularises the whole thing. That is why philosophy has never founded a culture, as religion does, and why philosophy is the servenat of theology, as they said in the middle ages.
Now, since I addressed also Setianism: Of course it is also a philosophy, but as such, it has quite a hard time of answering why Becoming actually is a value to live for. You could as well stick to humanism, to the Stoa or to whatever. Unless there is a religion which the philosophy can parasite on, there is no philosophy because every value can be deconstructed. Welcome to the nihilism that Nietzsche had announced (and to which his uberhuman pathos devoid of content was no solution).
Since values ultimately cannot be argued (that's why they can be deconstructed!), they just must be put forth, and that's what religion does. You can't argue why Becoming is a good thing without having bought heavily into the whole becoming-thing before, which is circular logic. Only that "logic" is the wrong kind of category here as religion isn't about logic.
