• About me
  • About this blog
  • Comment rules
  • Other writings

Love of All Wisdom

~ Philosophy through multiple traditions

Love of All Wisdom

Tag Archives: Eric Voegelin

Of transcendence

11 Sunday Nov 2012

Posted by Amod Lele in Christianity, Flourishing, God, Politics

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

ascent/descent, Augustine, conservatism, Eric Voegelin, Front Porch Republic, Gnosticism, Karl Marx, Mark T. Mitchell, Martha Nussbaum, modernism, Simone Weil, Thomas Aquinas

Last time I discussed the relationship between the concepts of Ascent and of transcendence. I think there’s more to say about the latter. Last time I had noted two forms of transcendence: an Ascent beyond the physical world, and the “transcendence by descent” endorsed by Martha Nussbaum in which one transcends one’s own limits. But I think there’s also a third type found between them, one which I’ve spoken of before in other terms.

A key feature of any kind of transcendence, it seems to me, is dissatisfaction: something appears wrong with that which one is trying to transcend. In Nussbaum’s transcendence-by-descent, one is dissatisfied with one’s own weaknesses and flaws. In an Ascent, one is in some sense dissatisfied with the whole world. But what if one is dissatisfied with the whole world in a way that motivates one not to step outside the world, but to change it? Continue reading →

Intimacy and the eschaton

02 Sunday Sep 2012

Posted by Amod Lele in Confucianism, Death, Epicureanism, Flourishing, Politics

≈ Comments Off on Intimacy and the eschaton

Tags

ascent/descent, Bruce Cockburn, conservatism, Eric Voegelin, intimacy/integrity, Justin Whitaker, Lucretius, Mencius, Simone Weil, Voltaire

Last week’s post explored how my views have begun moving from integrity toward intimacy. To me the key appeal of the intimacy approach, as I discussed there, is the way it can lead to satisficing over maximizing. Last week I focused on the implications of this distinction for happiness.

But there’s an additional appeal to intimacy’s satisficing, one which I have also begun to explore only recently. I have often been curious about the tendency for philosophies to be either supernatural or political (or both) in orientation, and as an explanation I have repeatedly returned to Simone Weil’s quote: “Atheist materialism is necessarily revolutionary, because to orient oneself toward an absolute good down here, one must place it in the future.” The question then is: why do we need to orient ourselves to an absolute good, in the future or up there? Why not just set our eyes lower? Continue reading →

On hating the real world

03 Sunday Jun 2012

Posted by Amod Lele in Aesthetics, Christianity, Confucianism, Early Factions, Place, Politics, Supernatural

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

architecture, Communism, conservatism, Eric Voegelin, Frank Gehry, Front Porch Republic, Gnosticism, modernism, modernity, natural environment, Romanticism, Simone Weil, Wendell Berry

A few months ago I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who is particularly given to pithy epigrams. We were discussing the Stata Center: a brightly colourful building on the MIT campus, designed by architect Frank Gehry, which is designed deliberately to look chaotic, unfinished, random. It’s not a building that leaves many people feeling neutral. My friend disliked its artifice, disjoint from the things around it. I said I thought it would be terribly inappropriate in the middle of a historic neighbourhood, but that it’s just right for a school like MIT, so focused on progress and the future. She didn’t think it was appropriate anywhere, and added: “Frank Gehry hates the real world.”

I’ve been thinking about that quote while reading articles by Patrick Deneen and others at Front Porch Republic, who would probably agree with my friend about Gehry’s architecture (though not about much else). Continue reading →

Supernatural and political death

03 Sunday Oct 2010

Posted by Amod Lele in Death, Epicureanism, Flourishing, Foundations of Ethics, French Tradition, Mahāyāna, Metaphysics, Politics, Psychology, Self, Supernatural, Vedānta

≈ 18 Comments

Tags

Advaita Vedānta, ascent/descent, consequentialism, Disengaged Buddhism, Epicurus, Eric Voegelin, French Revolution, Lucretius, rebirth, Śaṅkara, Śāntideva, Sigmund Freud, Simone Weil, Vladimir Lenin

A couple of my recent posts have explored the idea of anti-politics – the idea that concern with affairs of the state is typically detrimental to a good human life. The anti-political view is one for which I have great sympathy. Now, as the previous post might have suggested, I also reject the supernatural; I believe that natural science is our best guide to the causality of the physical world, and that we would do well to look with skepticism on belief in celestial bodhisattvas, the multiplication of tooth relics, or an afterlife.

But if one takes up the resulting position – neither supernatural nor political – then one has relatively little company in the history of philosophy. From Yavanayāna Buddhists to Unitarian Universalists, those who have sought to move beyond the supernatural have typically also believed in political engagement. The vast majority of political quietists like Śāntideva believed in a vast panoply of unseen worlds far beyond those supported by empirically tested evidence.

I continue to wonder: is there something I’m missing? Is there some reason why so many in the end tend to supernaturalism, politics, or both? Continue reading →

Welcome to Love of All Wisdom.

I invite you to leave comments on my blog, even - or especially - if I have no idea who you are. Philosophy is a conversation, and I invite you to join it with me; I welcome all comers (provided they follow a few basic rules). I typically make a new post every other Sunday. If you'd like to be notified when a new post is posted, you can get email notifications whenever I add something new via the link further down in this sidebar. You can also follow this blog on Facebook. Or if you use RSS, you can get updates through the RSS feed.

Recent Comments

  • Amod Lele on The Confucian obligations of a manager
  • Nathan on The Confucian obligations of a manager
  • Amod Lele on Defending half-elves and half-Asians
  • Amod Lele on Defending half-elves and half-Asians
  • Paul D. Van Pelt on Defending half-elves and half-Asians

Subscribe by Email

Post Tags

20th century academia Alasdair MacIntyre Aristotle ascent/descent Augustine autobiography Buddhaghosa Canada conferences Confucius conservatism Disengaged Buddhism Engaged Buddhism Evan Thompson expressive individualism Four Noble Truths Friedrich Nietzsche G.W.F. Hegel gender Hebrew Bible identity Immanuel Kant intimacy/integrity justice Karl Marx Ken Wilber law Martha Nussbaum modernity mystical experience Pali suttas pedagogy Plato race rebirth religion Siddhattha Gotama (Buddha) technology theodicy Thomas Kuhn United States utilitarianism Śaṅkara Śāntideva

Categories

  • African Thought (13)
  • Applied Phil (294)
    • Death (38)
    • Family (44)
    • Food (18)
    • Friends (15)
    • Health (23)
    • Place (29)
    • Play (15)
    • Politics (169)
    • Sex (20)
    • Work (40)
  • Asian Thought (407)
    • Buddhism (292)
      • Early and Theravāda (126)
      • Mahāyāna (119)
      • Modernized Buddhism (89)
    • East Asia (85)
      • Confucianism (55)
      • Daoism (13)
      • Shinto (1)
    • South Asia (133)
      • Bhakti Poets (3)
      • Cārvāka-Lokāyata (5)
      • Epics (16)
      • Jainism (24)
      • Modern Hinduism (38)
      • Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika (6)
      • Sāṃkhya-Yoga (14)
      • Vedānta (38)
      • Vedas and Mīmāṃsā (7)
  • Blog Admin (27)
  • Indigenous American Thought (6)
  • Method (247)
    • M.T.S.R. (139)
    • Metaphilosophy (162)
  • Practical Philosophy (367)
    • Action (11)
    • Aesthetics (46)
    • Emotion (158)
      • Anger (32)
      • Attachment and Craving (26)
      • Compassion (7)
      • Despair (3)
      • Disgust (3)
      • Faith (19)
      • Fear (8)
      • Grief (6)
      • Happiness (48)
      • Hope (15)
      • Pleasure (33)
      • Shame and Guilt (7)
    • External Goods (51)
    • Flourishing (88)
    • Foundations of Ethics (111)
    • Karma (43)
    • Morality (66)
    • Virtue (153)
      • Courage (5)
      • Generosity (13)
      • Gentleness (6)
      • Gratitude (10)
      • Honesty (14)
      • Humility (22)
      • Leadership (5)
      • Mindfulness (15)
      • Patient Endurance (29)
      • Self-Discipline (9)
      • Serenity (28)
      • Zest (6)
  • Practice (123)
    • Karmic Redirection (5)
    • Meditation (33)
    • Monasticism (45)
    • Physical Exercise (3)
    • Prayer (14)
    • Reading and Recitation (12)
    • Rites (20)
    • Therapy (10)
  • Theoretical Philosophy (343)
    • Consciousness (17)
    • Epistemology (109)
      • Certainty and Doubt (15)
      • Prejudices and "Intuitions" (28)
    • Free Will (17)
    • God (66)
    • Hermeneutics (57)
    • Human Nature (31)
    • Logic (28)
      • Dialectic (16)
    • Metaphysics (94)
    • Philosophy of Language (20)
    • Self (66)
    • Supernatural (49)
    • Truth (59)
    • Unconscious Mind (14)
  • Western Thought (436)
    • Analytic Tradition (91)
    • Christianity (145)
      • Early Factions (8)
      • Protestantism (24)
      • Roman Catholicism (51)
    • French Tradition (48)
    • German Tradition (86)
    • Greek and Roman Tradition (112)
      • Epicureanism (24)
      • Neoplatonism (2)
      • Pre-Socratics (6)
      • Skepticism (2)
      • Sophists (7)
      • Stoicism (20)
    • Islam (38)
      • Mu'tazila (2)
      • Salafi (3)
      • Sufism (9)
    • Judaism (34)
    • Natural Science (88)
      • Biology (24)
      • Philosophy of Science (47)
    • Social Science (152)
      • Economics (33)
      • Psychology (62)

Recent Posts

  • How to learn from indigenous North American philosophy
  • The Confucian obligations of a manager
  • On knowing how hard BIPOC faculty have it
  • Defending half-elves and half-Asians
  • On AIs’ creativity

Popular posts

  • One and a half noble truths?
  • Wishing George W. Bush well
  • Do Speculative Realists want us to be Chinese?
  • Why I am not a right-winger
  • On faith in tooth relics

Basic concepts

  • Ascent and Descent
  • Intimacy and integrity
  • Ascent-descent and intimacy-integrity together
  • Perennial questions?
  • Virtuous and vicious means
  • Dialectical and demonstrative argument
  • Chastened intellectualism and practice
  • Yavanayāna Buddhism: what it is
  • Why worry about contradictions?
  • The first philosophy blogger

Personal favourites

  • Can philosophy be a way of life? Pierre Hadot (1922-2010)
  • James Doull and the history of ethical motivation
  • Praying to something you don't believe in
  • What does postmodernism perform?
  • Why I'm getting married

Archives

Search this site

All posts, pages and metadata copyright 2020 Amod Lele. Comments copyright 2020 their comment authors. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (BY-NC-SA) licence.

Proudly powered by WordPress Theme: Chateau by Ignacio Ricci.