Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write off the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Showing posts with label Commentary - Peter Rollins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Commentary - Peter Rollins. Show all posts

Saturday, June 24, 2023

Blaise Pascal - by Peter Rollins "Five Part Course on Pascal's 'Pensees'"


Blaise Pascal, "Faith without virtue is meaningless"




Setting Pascal Ablaze | A Pyrotheological Reading of Pensées
June 14, 2023




Blaise Pascal has earned his place in history as one of the world’s greatest mathematicians and scientists, making important intellectual contributions from the age of 16, including the invention of a calculator as a teenager - just to help his dad work out his taxes. However, Pascal is most famous for his philosophical reflections. Reflections which possess a richness, style and insight that make them feel as fresh and vital today as when they were first written.

His masterpiece was an unfinished work that came to be called the Pensées. Through his endeavor to describe and defend Christianity in a compelling way, Pascal ended up giving the world some of the most profound descriptions of the human condition. Predating both Psychoanalysis and Existentialism, his work describes many of the themes that would become so central to these movements, such as the power of self-deception, the anxiety of freedom and the dizzying experience of feeling both the splendor and insignificance of existence. Basically, it’s a intellectual rollercoaster.

In this five part course, we’ll take a deep dive into Pascal’s Pensées, wrestling with its themes and seeing how they might both illuminate and impact our lives.

Course Schedule:
  1. Deception and Distraction - June 25th
  2. Without a Compass or a Map - July 16th
  3. The Gambler and the Machine - July 23rd
  4. Rethinking the God Shaped Hole - July 30th
  5. Class Presentations (optional) - August 20th
All classes will commence at 10 am PST (1 pm EDT, 6 pm BST). Recordings of each session will be available, allowing you to watch live or later. I recommend A.J. Krailsheimer’s translation of Pensées (readings will be assigned from that translation).

How to Join:
Go here to join - https://www.patreon.com/peterrollins for $20.00 / month.

This course is open to everyone who supports me at Blaze level on Patreon. By supporting me on Patreon, you not only enable me to dedicate myself fully to this work, but you also get access to hundreds of hours of archived material, along with regular book studies, hangouts, and other events.

Hope you can join me!


The Child Prodigy, Blaise Pascal



Blaise Pascal
French philosopher and scientist

[abridged edits and re-organization of article are mine - re slater]

Written by Jean Orcibal, Lucien Jerphagnon

Fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Last Updated: Jun 15, 2023 • Article History

Born: June 19, 1623 Clermont-Ferrand, France
Died: August 19, 1662 (aged 39) Paris, France

Inventions

Notable Work

Subjects Of Study


Blaise Pascal, (born June 19, 1623, Clermont-Ferrand, France—died August 19, 1662, Paris), French mathematician, physicist, religious philosopher, and master of prose.

He laid the foundation for the modern theory of probabilities, formulated what came to be known as Pascal’s principle of pressure, and propagated a religious doctrine that taught the experience of God through the heart rather than through reason. 

The establishment of his principle of intuitionism [(feeling? - re slater)] had an impact on such later philosophers as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Henri Bergson and also on the Existentialists.

Pascal’s life to the Port-Royal years

Pascal’s father, Étienne Pascal, was presiding judge of the tax court at Clermont-Ferrand. His mother died in 1626, and in 1631 the family moved to Paris. Étienne, who was respected as a mathematician, devoted himself henceforth to the education of his children.

While his sister Jacqueline (born in 1625) figured as an infant prodigy in literary circles, Blaise proved himself no less precocious in mathematics. In 1640 he wrote an essay on conic sections, Essai pour les coniques, based on his study of the now classical work of Girard Desargues on synthetic projective geometry.

The young man’s work, which was highly successful in the world of mathematics, aroused the envy of no less a personage than the great French Rationalist and mathematician René Descartes.

Pascaline

Between 1642 and 1644, Pascal conceived and constructed a calculating device, the Pascaline, to help his father—who in 1639 had been appointed intendant (local administrator) at Rouen—in his tax computations. The machine was regarded by Pascal’s contemporaries as his main claim to fame, and with reason, for in a sense it was the first digital calculator since it operated by counting integers. The significance of this contribution explains the youthful pride that appears in his dedication of the machine to the chancellor of France, Pierre Seguier, in 1644.

Blaise Pascal conducting experiments


Blaise Pascal


Until 1646 the Pascal family held strictly Roman Catholic principles, though they often substituted l’honnêteté (“polite respectability”) for inward religion

An illness of his father, however, brought Blaise into contact with a more profound expression of religion, for he met two disciples of the abbé de Saint-Cyran, who, as director of the convent of Port-Royal, had brought the austere moral and theological conceptions of Jansenism into the life and thought of the convent.

Jansenism was a 17th-century form of Augustinianism in the Roman Catholic Church. It repudiated free will, accepted predestination, and taught that divine grace, rather than good works, was the key to salvation. [Of the three, process theology is argues for, and is based upon, freewill, rejects predestination in favor of a divinely open present and future, and elevates divine grace - re slater]

The convent at Port-Royal had become the centre for the dissemination of the doctrine. Pascal himself was the first to feel the necessity of entirely turning away from the world to God, and he won his family over to the spiritual life in 1646. His letters indicate that for several years he was his family’s spiritual adviser, but the conflict within himself—between the world and ascetic life—was not yet resolved. 

Absorbed again in his scientific interests, he tested the theories of Galileo and Evangelista Torricelli (an Italian physicist who discovered the principle of the barometer). To do so, he reproduced and amplified experiments on atmospheric pressure by constructing mercury barometers and measuring air pressure, both in Paris and on the top of a mountain overlooking Clermont-Ferrand.

These tests paved the way for further studies in hydrodynamics and hydrostatics. While experimenting, Pascal invented the syringe and created the hydraulic press, an instrument based upon the principle that became known as Pascal’s principle: pressure applied to a confined liquid is transmitted undiminished through the liquid in all directions regardless of the area to which the pressure is applied. His publications on the problem of the vacuum (1647–48) added to his reputation. 

When he fell ill from overwork, his doctors advised him to seek distractions; but what has been described as Pascal’s “worldly period” (1651–54) was, in fact, primarily a period of intense scientific work, during which he composed treatises on the equilibrium of liquid solutions, on the weight and density of air, and on the arithmetic triangle: Traité de l’équilibre des liqueurs et de la pesanteur de la masse de l’air (Eng. trans., The Physical Treatises of Pascal, 1937) and also his Traité du triangle arithmétique [Treatise of Triangle Arithmatic - re slater]In [his] last treatise, a fragment of the De Alea Geometriae, [Of Angular Geometry? - re slater], he laid the foundations for the calculus of probabilities.

By the end of 1653, however, he had begun to feel religious scruples; and the “night of fire,” an intense, perhaps mystical “conversion” that he experienced on November 23, 1654, he believed to be the beginning of a new life.

He entered Port-Royal in January 1655, and though he never became one of the solitaires, he thereafter wrote only at their request and never again published in his own name. The two works for which he is chiefly known, Les Provinciales and the Pensées, date from the years of his life spent at Port-Royal.


Les Provinciales of Blaise Pascal

Written in defense of Antoine Arnauld, an opponent of the Jesuits and a defender of Jansenism who was on trial before the faculty of theology in Paris for his controversial religious works, Pascal’s 18 Lettres écrites par Louis de Montalte à un provincial deal with divine grace and the ethical code of the Jesuits

They are better known as Les Provinciales (“The Provincial Letters”). They included a blow against the relaxed morality that the Jesuits were said to teach and that was the weak point in their controversy with Port-Royal; Pascal quotes freely Jesuit dialogues and discrediting quotations from their own works, sometimes in a spirit of derision, sometimes with indignation. In the two last letters, dealing with the question of grace, Pascal proposed a conciliatory position that was later to make it possible for Port-Royal to subscribe to the “Peace of the Church,” a temporary cessation of the conflict over Jansenism, in 1668.

The Provinciales were an immediate success, and their popularity has remained undiminished. This they owe primarily to their form, in which for the first time bombast and tedious rhetoric are replaced by variety, brevity, tautness, and precision of style; as Nicolas Boileau, the founder of French literary criticism, recognized, they marked the beginning of modern French prose.

Something of their popularity, moreover, in fashionable, Protestant, or skeptical circles, must be attributed to the violence of their attack on the Jesuits. In England they have been most widely read when Roman Catholicism has seemed a threat to the Church of England.

Yet they have also helped Catholicism to rid itself of laxity; and, in 1678, Pope Innocent XI himself condemned half of the propositions that Pascal had denounced earlier. Thus, the Provinciales played a decisive part in promoting a return to inner religion and helped to secure the eventual triumph of the ideas set forth in Antoine Arnauld’s treatise De la fréquente communion (1643), in which he protested against the idea that the profligate could atone for continued sin by frequent communion without repentance, a thesis that thereafter remained almost unchallengeable until the French church felt the repercussion of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (which had granted religious freedom to French Protestants) in 1685.

Whereas the Jesuits seemed to represent a Counter-Reformation predominantly concerned with orthodoxy and obedience to ecclesiastical authority, the Provinciales advocated a more spiritual approach, emphasizing the soul’s union with the Mystical Body of Christ through charity.

Further, by rejecting any double standard of morality and the distinction between counsel and precept, Pascal aligned himself with those who believe the ideal of evangelical perfection to be inseparable from the Christian life.

Although there was nothing original in these opinions, Pascal nevertheless stamped them with the passionate conviction of a man in love with the absolute, of a man who saw no salvation apart from a heartfelt desire for the truth, together with a love of God that works continually toward destroying all self-love.

For Pascal, morality cannot be separated from spirituality. Moreover, his own spiritual development can be traced in the Provinciales. The religious sense in them becomes progressively refined after the first letters, in which the tone of ridicule is smart rather than charitable.


Pascal finally decided to write his work of Christian apologetics, Apologie de la religion chrétienne, as a consequence of his meditations on miracles and other proofs of Christianity. The work remained unfinished at his death. Between the summers of 1657 and 1658, he put together most of the notes and fragments that editors have published under the inappropriate title Pensées (“Thoughts”).

In the Apologie, Pascal shows the man without grace to be an incomprehensible mixture of greatness and abjectness, incapable of truth or of reaching the supreme good to which his nature nevertheless aspires. A religion that accounts for these contradictions, which he believed philosophy and worldliness fail to do, is for that very reason “to be venerated and loved.” 

"The indifference of the skeptic," Pascal wrote, "is to be overcome by means of the “wager”: if God does not exist, the skeptic loses nothing by believing in him; but if he does exist, the skeptic gains eternal life by believing in him." Pascal insists that men must be brought to God through Jesus Christ alone, because a creature could never know the infinite if Jesus had not descended to assume the proportions of man’s fallen state.

The second part of the work applies the Augustinian theory of allegorical interpretation to the biblical types (figuratifs); reviews the rabbinical texts, the persistence of true religion, the work of Moses, and the proofs concerning Jesus Christ’s God-like role; and, finally, gives a picture of the primitive church and the fulfillment of the prophecies. The Apologie (Pensées) is a treatise on spirituality. Pascal was not interested in making converts if they were not going to be saints.

Pascal’s apologetics, though it has stood the test of time, is primarily addressed to individuals of his own acquaintance. To convert his libertine friends, he looked for arguments in their favourite authors: in Michel de Montaigne, in the Skeptic Pierre Charron, in the Epicurean Pierre Gassendi, and in Thomas Hobbes, an English political philosopher. For Pascal, Skepticism was but a stage. Modernist theologians in particular have tried to make use of his main contention, that [i] “man is infinitely more than man,” in isolation from his other contention, that [ii] man’s wretchedness is explicable only as the effect of a Fall, about which a man can learn what he needs to know from history. In so doing, they sacrifice the second part of the Apologie to the first, keeping the philosophy while losing the exegesis. For Pascal, as for St. Paul, Jesus Christ is the second Adam, inconceivable without the first.

Finally, too, Pascal expressly admitted that his psychological analyses were not by themselves sufficient to exclude a “philosophy of the absurd”; to do so, it is necessary to have recourse to the convergence of these analyses with the “lines of fact” concerning revelation, this convergence being too extraordinary not to appear as the work of providence to an anguished seeker after truth (qui cherche en gémissant).

He was next again involved in scientific work:

First, the “Messieurs de Port-Royal” themselves asked for his help in composing the Élements de géométrie; and second, it was suggested that he should publish what he had discovered about cycloid curves, a subject on which the greatest mathematicians of the time had been working.

Once more fame aroused in him feelings of self-esteem; but from February 1659, illness brought him back to his former frame of mind, and he composed the “prayer for conversion” that the English clergymen Charles and John Wesley, who founded the Methodist Church, were later to regard so highly.

Scarcely capable of regular work, he henceforth gave himself over to helping the poor and to the ascetic and devotional life. He took part intermittently, however, in the disputes to which the “Formulary”—a document condemning five propositions of Jansenism that, at the demand of the church authorities, had to be signed before a person could receive the sacraments—gave rise. Finally a difference of opinion with the theologians of Port-Royal led him to withdraw from controversy, though he did not sever his relations with them.

Pascal died in 1662 after suffering terrible pain, probably from carcinomatous meningitis [a form of brain cancer - re slater] following a malignant ulcer of the stomach. He was assisted by a non-Jansenist parish priest.

Legacy of Blaise Pascal

At once a physicist, a mathematician, an eloquent publicist in the Provinciales, and an inspired artist in the Apologie and in his private notes, Pascal was embarrassed by the very abundance of his talents.

It has been suggested that it was his too concrete turn-of-mind that prevented his discovering the infinitesimal calculus; and in some of the Provinciales the mysterious relations of human beings with God are treated as if they were a geometrical problem.

But these considerations are far outweighed by the profit that he drew from the multiplicity of his gifts; his religious writings are rigorous because of his scientific training; and his love of the concrete emerges no less from the stream of quotations in the Provinciales than from his determination to reject the vigorous method of attack that he had used so effectively in his Apologie.

Thursday, December 10, 2020

Peter Rollins - The Price of Happiness




It’s very easy for us to question the possibility of experiencing a lasting happiness.

Can we really find it?

Is it something that we can hold onto for prolonged periods of time?

The answer is likely ‘yes’. Indeed there are many who have dedicated their entire lives to cultivating it, even creating retreats and seminars designed to help others realize it.

However, in psychoanalysis there is a price to pay for happiness: the fundamental compromise of your desire. The more that happiness pervades ones life, the more that individual becomes estranged from their unspeakable passion.

In this way, people like Zizek refer to happiness as the category of the fool. It is the pursuit undertaken by one who would rather avoid confronting the contradictions and antagonisms that lie within them. Contenting themselves instead with a peace that is opposed to chaos, rather than a peace that is hard won via tarrying the chaos.

In this pop-up seminar I’ll be exploring the chasm that lies between happiness and desire via reference to an ancient Jewish parable and the Lacanian notion of the barred subject.


Against Happiness
by Peter Rollins
Streamed live on Dec 8, 2020


Comment: Peter. I was wondering if you could do a talk on the damage done to mental health of kids, and still when these kids are adults, by extreme fundamentalists, especially Calvinists. Here in Northern Ireland it would be churches like Free Presbyterians, Independent Methodists, Reformed Baptists, Brethren. I had to attend a Free P school and I, and others, are still mentally affected. My father was moderator of the Free P church, so I have significant inside knowledge if you need details privately. There are a huge number of people struggling as as a result of their upbringing. Many thanks.


* * * * * * *

Wikipedia - The Graph of Desire

Lacan devised numerous quasi-mathematical diagrams to represent the structure of the unconscious and its points of contact with empirical and mental reality. He adapted figures from the field of topology in order to represent the Freudian view of the mind as embodying a 'double inscription' (which could be defined as the ultimate inseparability of unconscious motivations from conscious ones).

Graph

The graph of desire was first proposed in a 1960 colloquium, and was later published in the Ecrits. It depends on ideas developed originally in Lacan's Schema R, a graph in which fundamental organising structures of the human mind are shown in a schematic relationship to the domains or 'orders' which in turn structure human reality: the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real.

The graph of desire is a 'flattened' representation of a signifying chain as it crosses a pathway Lacan called a vector of desire. It appears as two curved lines which cross one another at two separate points. Each line has a symbolic meaning.

Elements of the graph

The signifying chain begins in a linguistic sign (S) and progresses to a signification (S'), or a linguistic meaning. It can be expressed sententially and has a duration.

The vector of desire is a representation of the volition and will of the split or barred subject ($). Unlike the signifying chain, the vector of desire is expressed metaphorically, and has no duration.

It is necessary to bear in mind the special conception of the subject Lacan means by the $ symbol. The barred subject is the internally conflicted result of the processes of individuation that begin in infancy. In Lacan's account of individuation, the infant must respond to the loss of symbiosis with the mother by creating a symbol of this lack. In doing so the infant is constrained by the always-already present structures of a natural language. There is a certain relief in the summoning of a symbolically present 'mother', but the experience of the mother who returns to the infant as someone-signified-by-the-word-'mother' is nevertheless one of absolute, irremediable loss. Mother — and the world — is now mediated by the Symbolic order and the exigencies of language.

With this in mind, the crossing of the two pathways in the graph of desire can be understood to connote interference and constraint. Desire for the primordial object is not fulfilled except through the constraints of the signifying chain. The vector of desire is metaphorical, substituting various objects for the absolutely lost primordial one, and irrupting into language without regard for the passage of time, or for the particular human relationship through which the vector moves.

Finally, the points at which the vector of desire and the signifying chain cross can be seen as instances of Freudian double inscription. The 'conscious and unconscious' significance of an act or utterance are one and the same, and each constrains the other.


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Lacanian Graph of Desire

Lacan developed his graph of desire in four stages – you find them below. The graphs and the theory behind it can be found in the 1960 essay “The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire in the Freudian Unconscious.”


In: Jacques Lacan, Ecrits, trans. Bruce Fink (New York: W.W.Norton &Company, 2006), p. 435.









See also:


Free Ebook - 



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Happiness and Desire by Peter Rollins
or, the Meaningfulness of Opposition and Contradiction

Abridged Notes by R.E. Slater
December 10, 2020

Optimized Therapies help one become happy whereas Productive Maladaptation Psychoanalysis confronts the contradictions of one’s self whereby one may (mal)adapt to find a less conflicted sense of purpose, meaning, contentment again.

Pete tells of a Jewish Parable to help explain The Elemental Signifier "S" in the Graph of Desire by Jacques Lacan:

In the parable God interrupts two rabbis who have been arguing about a subject for twenty years. Growing weary of the conflict God goes to tell them what the topic of their division means but as soon as God introduces Himself the two rabbis ask God to bugger off so that they may continue arguing about their differences.

What is the meaning of this Jewish parable? First, God is the incoming of happiness which neither want. They want the struggle to discover who they are, not the answer to their difference. Second, the rabbis represent the Torah which presents the interpretive struggle of their context. Without the struggle there can be no discovered meaning which might significantly change their being. And lastly, the removal of God’s Self from the argument is the pleasure of God in allowing freewill beings to gather meaning in order to garner resolve and productive movement into and through their lives.

In Lacanian terms we would deconstruct our idea of happiness against our desire for happiness knowing that it is in the contradiction to happiness that we might find in the struggle of one’s self "that which we are and which we want."

In religious terms God is the One who brings wholeness and peace into our lives. Conversely, the Torah is seen to represent the signifying chain which are a set of meanings or words which convey a form of communication between one to the other. But not exactly in the same ideations but in close approximation of meaningful ideations. (Cf. Signifying chain by Jacques Lacan. Also see, Lacanianism in Wikipedia)

Along this signifying chain, or line of personal meaning, is the process of discovery where we start at one place and end up at another. However, without the process of discovery, of struggle, of opposition, there can be no meaningful or significant “end” of discussion, or change of being, should the process be denied, interrupted, or mediated in less oppositional terms.

It also can mean that once we arrive at a meaningful discovery or deconstruction point in our lives, then by looking back on our past, or on some aspect of meaning we had held as significant, that all those self-placement points of meaning will have now shifted to become either more meaningful or less meaningful in the personal reconstruction process. It is in this way which Lacan is seen in post-structural terms of postmodernism.

Hence, the signifying chain of one’s being is both a process moment of forward activity as well as a retroactive moment of letting go of the past process that was becoming us. Though Pete doesn’t say this, Lacan has identified what the Process Logician Alfred North Whitehead would call a very process moment of “being and becoming.” (Cf. Process and Reality by Whitehead)

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Addendum

While listening to Pete's discussion to the vain pursuit of happiness I thought I might twist it a bit to show how Lacan may easily fit in with Whitehead's philosophy of process. As an integral theory, Whiteheadian thought is by its nature inclusive to any and all parts of academic and biblical discussions. No longer may other 'isms rule such as Plato or Neo-Platonism nor any biblical theologies based upon Hellenised Platonisms (or Scholasticisms, or Modernisms). Process thought is best expressed through postmodern post-structuralism and should continue to be an integrating force far beyond the 21st Century. But it was first best expressed in postmodernism. And so, while we struggle with fear and uncertainty, we must also know that in the bible, in Israelite societies and all societies coming after them, that fear and uncertainty is a constant in human survival. Process thought says to allow it be, learn from it, and build better societies from there. In biblical terms this means we replace fear of life with trust in God's presence in our lives. That we replace division of society because of uncertainty to trust with one another to work together towards a better unity. And that at the last, having gone through common struggles of survival with one another we might also have formed tighter bonds of fidelity and wellbeing with one another. It is vain to pursue happiness when in the very pursuit we deny to ourselves the process of being and becoming which is the very thing we are attempting to artificially create but cannot against the reality of disallowing deconstruction, contradiction, and opposition to shape us towards a more meaning personal identity held with the bounds of societal togetherness. - res


Wednesday, January 8, 2020

The Son of Protagoras - "Standing Between Wisdom & Destruction"


Son of Protagoras by MTO


The Son of Protagoras

Go down ye burning church
before the Cathedral of St. Anne's
look down its burdened byway
where angry boy cradles dead dove.

Pierced by arrows of religion
brotherhoods of the same God
whose self-same heart lies pierced
along flung pathways to peace.

See the pained eyes of boy's glare
wincing away from slain discovery
now fixing upon Christ's church
studying its faiths, its truths.

Ye bonded churchmen of God
ye altars of truth - nay it were love!
Are you looking? Have you?
At lowly dove lying pierced?

Or is the dove of the Lord
too slight a sacrifice?
Too frail a thing to honor
On yon altars of truths?

How comes this truth if it has
no eyes, no lips, no wisdom?
Though truth ever rages doth not
love bear wisdom enough?


R.E. Slater
January 8, 2020;
Edited Jan 11, 2010


@copyright R.E. Slater Publications
all rights reserved



"One of the things that interests me most is the way that [the artwork]
is located across from the Cathedral. As you stand there viewing it, you find yourself 
midway between the Cathedral [of St. Anne's] and the figure. If the building can be
seen as representative of the priest, then the artwork symbolizes the fiery prophet.
One is concerned with protecting the accumulated wisdom and rituals of the ages,
the other is concerned with pointing out how they turn dogmatic and destructive."

- Peter Rollins



Son of Protagoras
by Peter Rollins

I'm currently working on my upcoming Atheism for Lent practice, and one of the reflections is from the ancient Greek philosopher Protagoras. It reminded me of a powerful piece of graffiti that you can see in Belfast, N.Ireland (if you've been to WAKE you'll likely have seen it on our graffiti tour). It's called Son of Protagoras and was painted by the famous French Graffiti artist MTO. The large and brooding figure is located right across the road from St Anne’s CathedralThe angry gaze of the son of Protagoras is directed at cathedral, which can be seen through a gap in some buildings.

The figure cradles a dead dove that has been pierced by two arrows bearing the cross of the Knights of Malta and the Latin crossThe artist made this work as a comment on the conflict that once raged between Irish Catholic nationalists and the Protestant unionists. A conflict that was bound up in religious identity.
The piece is rich with powerful symbolism. A dove - representing peace - has been killed by two arrows - representing the Protestant and Catholic sides of the divide. The son of Protagoras looks with anger at the Cathedral, which represents institutional religion.

One of the things that interests me most about this piece (which I'll include as supplemental material in AfL) is the way that it's located across from the Cathedral. As you stand there viewing it, you find yourself midway between the Cathedral and the figure. If the building can be seen as representative of the priest, then the artwork symbolizes the fiery prophet. One is concerned with protecting the accumulated wisdom and rituals of the ages, the other is concerned with pointing out how they turn dogmatic and destructive.

While we might be find ourselves more often closer to one of these sides than the other, standing between them is a good reminder of how these two figures are intertwined, and how we must allow space for both.

The video I've included allows you to explore the artwork by dragging your mouse across the screen. I've also included two pictures of St Anne’s Cathedral.





St. Anne's Church, Belfast, Northern Ireland


St. Anne's Church, Belfast, Northern Ireland


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"The Son of PROTAGORAS"

by MTO

International artist, MTO was in Belfast recently attending the “Hit the north”, Culture night and created this inspirational mural as a way of passing his message to the local community. Titled as ”The son of Protagoras”, MTO, brings some indirect mythology to offer his position on human conflict. A true masterpiece!

Located in the yard of “Northern Ireland War Memorial,”
21 Talbot Street, BELFAST, NORTH IRELAND.

The peace lines or peace walls are a series of border barriers in Northern Ireland that separate Irish nationalist and unionist neighbourhoods. They have been built at urban interface areas in Belfast, Derry, Portadown and elsewhere. The stated purpose of the peace lines is to minimise inter-communal violence between Catholics (most of whom are nationalists who self-identify as Irish) and Protestants (most of whom are unionists who self-identify as British).

Protagoras was a proponent of agnosticism. he wrote: “Concerning the gods, I have no means of knowing whether they exist or not or of what sort they may be, because of the obscurity of the subject, and the brevity of human life.”


Son of Protagoras by MTO, Belfast Art Show


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MTO ’s work is mostly known and characterized by incredibly detailed renditions of famous and cult-y actors and musicians with a dash of red as his signature usually on a red outline of his work. It also works well as a boundary. He has launched a series of projects in the US and Europe. He has managed to reinvent his style and content by stepping up and evolving his techniques! Unpredictable as well as troubled, he never fears of challenging ideas and stereotypes.


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Urban Art


WHO IS MTO?

Mateo aka MTO is a French artist known for his grey scaled photo-realistic works of art, mostly portraits, which stand out from the masses because of their high quality, that led him to become a respected artist in the Graffiti and Street art scene.

MTO is a Mystery

He was born in France, and then moved to Berlin in 2006, just to leave if 7 years later. And, that pretty much sums all that he is willing to discover about himself. Visiting Barcelona was the kick-start for MTO’s work on the streets. The vibrancy of the city’s exterior culture inspired him to create. Yet his work, although labeled street art, goes way beyond graffiti.

Ciao, Berlin!

Berlin is the city where he has represented some of his best work throughout his career so far – black and white graffiti with a touch of red and pink of mostly famous pop culture icons, but also some really known movie scenes. He has left Berlin in style – by painting Ciao, Berlin on its walls. In just 7 Berlin years the French Street Artist MTO, known for his grayscale photorealistic works of art, mostly portraits, which stand out from the masses because of their high quality, has become a respected artist in the Graffiti and Street art scene.

The last time Berlin “saw” MTO was on the 11.10.2013, when he was painting a new work of art during the “Street Art Meeting” which took place at “Yaam Berlin“. At the time, we, like most other people, had no idea that his decision to leave the city had already been made.

MTO’s grayscale and red outline portraits

MTO sprays his portraits with a typical red outline (that is part of the artwork and his signature at the same time) – usually of people who inspired him. For that reason he started painting musicians like the young Michael Jackson, Ray Charles or Jimmy Hendrix but also movie actors and their most interesting film scenes, like Jack Nicholson from “Shining”, Robert De Niro from “Taxi Driver” or Angelina Jolie from “Tomb Raider”.

Some of the most interesting works of MTO for street art lovers are definitely the portraits of Berlin based street artists like Emess, Alias or 4rtists (aka. Mr.6). Of course he proofed his skills also by painting objects like big turntables or showed a lot of humor by painting the German chancellor Angela Merkel as a punk in the old art house Tacheles.

The portraits are 8-9 feet high and wide and it takes him about 2-5 hours to finish one piece which sounds amazing when you take the quality of his work in consideration. His art also interacts with the environment around it.

The current location of MTO is unknown. Or, as he says: Currently living in “Nowhere”, Planet Earth.


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~ By MTO ~ Photo: twistedsifter.com
~ By MTO ~ Photo: twistedsifter.com

Jack Nicholson from “Shining” ~ By MTO ~ Berlin, Germany - Photo: streetartbln.com
Jack Nicholson from “Shining” ~ By MTO ~ Berlin, Germany – Photo: streetartbln.com


WHO IS MTO?

https://streetartrat.com/2015/11/04/who-is-mto/


The street artist MTO, which is the short form for Mateo, was born in France and allegedly moved to Berlin a couple of years ago, his current location is unknown. There is not much information about MTO since he likes to keep his identity hidden. His artworks are often very elaborate and realistic. He likes to create large black-and-white murals, like this one in Riga.


~ By MTO ~ Berlin, Germany - Photo: streetartbln.com
~ By MTO ~ Berlin, Germany – Photo: streetartbln.com

Angelina Jolie ~ By MTO ~ Berlin, Germany - Photo: streetartbln.com
Angelina Jolie ~ By MTO ~ Berlin, Germany – Photo: streetartbln.com


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What is A Sophist?

A sophist (Greek: σοφιστής, sophistes) was a specific kind of teacher in ancient Greece, in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. Many sophists specialized in using the tools of philosophy and rhetoric, though other sophists taught subjects such as music, athletics, and mathematics. In general, they claimed to teach arete ("excellence" or "virtue", applied to various subject areas), predominantly to young statesmen and nobility. The term originated from Greek σόφισμα, sophisma, from σοφίζω, sophizo "I am wise"; confer σοφιστής, sophistēs, meaning "wise-ist, one who does wisdom", and σοφός, sophós means "wise man".


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Who is Protagoras?

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Protagoras
Salvator Rosa - Démocrite et Protagoras.jpg
Democritus (center) and Protagoras (right)
17th-century painting by Salvator Rosa
in Hermitage Museum
Bornc. 490 BC[1][2]
Diedc. 420 BC[3]
EraPre-Socratic philosophy
RegionWestern philosophy
SchoolSophistic Movement
Main interests
languagesemanticsrelativismrhetoricagnosticismethics
Notable ideas
'Sophist' as teacher for hire, 'Man is the measure of all things'
Protagoras (/prˈtæɡərəs/GreekΠρωταγόραςc. 490 BC – c. 420 BC)[1] was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. He is numbered as one of the sophists by Plato. In his dialogue Protagoras, Plato credits him with inventing the role of the professional sophist.
Protagoras also is believed to have created a major controversy during ancient times through his statement that, "Man is the measure of all things", interpreted by Plato to mean that there is no absolute truth but that which individuals deem to be the truth.
Although there is reason to question the extent of the interpretation of his arguments that has followed, that concept of individual relativity was revolutionary for the time, and contrasted with other philosophical doctrines that claimed the universe was based on something objective, outside human influence or perceptions.

Biography

Protagoras was born in Abdera, Thrace, opposite the island of Thasos (today part of the Xanthi regional unit). According to Aulus Gellius, he originally made his living as a porter, but one day he was seen by the philosopher Democritus carrying a load of small pieces of wood he had tied with a short cord. Democritus realized that Protagoras had tied the load together with such perfect geometric accuracy that he must be a mathematical prodigy. Democritus promptly took him into his own household and taught him philosophy.[4] Protagoras became well known in Athens and even became a friend of Pericles.[5]
The dates of his lifetime are not recorded, but extrapolated from writings that have survived the ages. In Protagoras Plato wrote that, before a gathering of SocratesProdicus, and Hippias, Protagoras stated that he was old enough to be the father of any of them. This suggests a birth date of not later than 490 BC. In the Meno he is said to have died at approximately the age of 70, after 40 years as a practicing Sophist.[6] His death, then, may be presumed to have occurred circa 420 BC, but is not known for certain, since assumptions about it are based on an apparently fake story about his trial for impiety in Athens.[7]
Plutarch wrote that Pericles and Protagoras spent a whole day discussing an interesting point of legal responsibility, that probably involved a more philosophical question of causation:[8] "In an athletic contest a man had been accidentally hit and killed with a javelin. Was his death to be attributed to the javelin, to the man who threw it, or to the authorities responsible for the conduct of the games?"[9]

Philosophy

Even though he was mentored by Democritus, Protagoras did not share his enthusiasm for the pursuit of mathematics. "For perceptible lines are not the kind of things the geometer talks about, since no perceptible thing is straight or curved in that way, nor is a circle tangent to a ruler at a point, but the way Protagoras used to say in refuting the geometers" (Aristotles, Metaphysics 997b34-998a4). Protagoras was skeptical about the application of theoretical mathematics to the natural world; he did not believe they were really worth studying at all. According to Philodemus, Protagoras said that "The subject matter is unknowable and the terminology distasteful". Nonetheless, mathematics was considered to be by some a very viable form of art, and Protagoras says on the arts, "art (tekhnê) without practice and practice without art are nothing" (Stobaeus, Selections 3.29.80).
Protagoras also was known as a teacher who addressed subjects connected to virtue and political life. He especially was involved in the question of whether virtue could be taught, a commonplace issue of fifth century BC Greece, that has been related to modern readers through Plato's dialogue. Rather than educators who offered specific, practical training in rhetoric or public speaking, Protagoras attempted to formulate a reasoned understanding, on a very general level, of a wide range of human phenomena, including language and education. In Plato's Protagoras, he claims to teach "the proper management of one's own affairs, how best to run one's household, and the management of public affairs, how to make the most effective contribution to the affairs of the city by word and action".[10]
He also seems to have had an interest in "orthoepeia"—the correct use of words—although this topic is more strongly associated with his fellow sophist Prodicus. In his eponymous Platonic dialogue, Protagoras interprets a poem by Simonides, focusing on the use of words, their literal meaning, and the author's original intent. This type of education would have been useful for the interpretation of laws and other written documents in the Athenian courts.[11] Diogenes Laërtius reports that Protagoras devised a taxonomy of speech acts, such as assertion, question, answer, command, etc. Aristotle also says that Protagoras worked on the classification and proper use of grammatical gender.[12][13]
The titles of his books, such as Technique of Eristics (Technē Eristikōn, literally "Practice of Wranglings"—with wrestling used as a metaphor for intellectual debate), prove that Protagoras also was a teacher of rhetoric and argumentation. Diogenes Laërtius states that he was one of the first to take part in rhetorical contests in the Olympic games.[12]

Relativism

Protagoras also said that on any matter, there are two arguments (logoi) opposed to one another, and according to Aristotle, Protagoras was criticized for having claimed "to make the weaker argument stronger (ton hēttō logon kreittō poiein)".[12]
Protagoras is credited with the philosophy of relativism, which he discusses in his work, Truth (also known as Refutations).[11][14] Although knowledge of his work is limited, discussion of Protagoras' relativism is based on one of his most famous statements: "Man is the measure of all things: of the things that are, that they are, of the things that are not, that they are not."[15][16] By this, Protagoras meant that each individual is the measure of how things are perceived by that individual. Therefore, things are, or are not, true according to how the individual perceives them. For example, Person X may believe that the weather is cold, whereas Person Y may believe that the weather is hot. According to the philosophy of Protagoras, there is no absolute evaluation of the nature of a temperature because the evaluation will be relative to who is perceiving it. Therefore, to Person X, the weather is cold, whereas to Person Y, the weather is hot. This philosophy implies that there are no absolute "truths". The truth, according to Protagoras, is relative, and differs according to each individual.[11]
As with many fragments of the pre-Socratic philosophers, this phrase has been passed down through the ages, without any context, and consequently, its meaning is open to interpretation. His use of the word χρήματα (chrēmata, "things used") instead of the general word ὄντα (onta, "entities") signifies, however, that Protagoras was referring to things that are used by, or in some way, related to, humans, such as properties, social entities, ideas, feelings, judgments, which originate in the human mind. Protagoras did not suggest that humans must be the measure of the motion of the stars, the growing of plants, or the activity of volcanoes.
As many modern thinkers will, Plato ascribes relativism to Protagoras and uses his predecessor's teachings as a foil for his own commitment to objective and transcendent realities and values. Plato ascribes to Protagoras an early form of what John Wild categorized as phenomenalism.[17] That being an assertion that something that is, or appears for a single individual, is true or real for that individual.
However, as described in Plato's Theaetetus, Protagoras's views allow that some views may result from an ill body or mind. He stressed that although all views may appear equally true, and perhaps, should be equally respected, they certainly are not of equal gravity. One view may be useful and advantageous to the person who has it, while the perception of another may prove harmful. Hence, Protagoras believed that the sophist was there to teach the student how to discriminate between them, i.e., to teach "virtue".
Both Plato and Aristotle argue against some of Protagoras's claims regarding relativity; however, they argue that the concept provides Protagoras with too convenient an exemption from his own theory and that relativism is true for him yet false for those who do not believe it. They claim that by asserting that truth is relative, Protagoras then could say that whatever further theory he proposed must be true.[18]
Because knowledge of most of his work is limited or missing, modern attempts to apply the Protagoras theory of relativism tend to result in disagreement and refer to scientific reasoning. Carol Poster states that with a modern preference toward scientific reasoning and objective truth, for example, rather than considering individuals evaluating their sense of comfort, a modern philosopher would look at a modern instrument, the thermometer, objectively to see the scientific measure of the temperature, whereas the Greek method would entail looking at larger philosophical implications.[19]

Agnosticism

Protagoras also was a proponent of agnosticism. Reportedly, in his lost work, On the Gods, he wrote: "Concerning the gods, I have no means of knowing whether they exist or not, nor of what sort they may be, because of the obscurity of the subject, and the brevity of human life."[20][21] According to Diogenes Laërtius, the outspoken, agnostic position taken by Protagoras aroused anger, causing the Athenians to expel him from the city, and all copies of his book were collected and burned in the marketplace. The deliberate destruction of his works also is mentioned by Cicero.[22]
The classicist John Burnet doubts this account, however, as both Diogenes Laërtius and Cicero wrote hundreds of years later and as no such persecution of Protagoras is mentioned by contemporaries who make extensive references to this philosopher.[23] Burnet notes that even if some copies of the Protagoras books were burned, enough of them survived to be known and discussed in the following century. A claim has been made that Protagoras is better classified as an atheist, since he held that if something is not able to be known it does not exist.[24]

Spectrum of topics

Nonetheless, very few fragments from Protagoras have survived, although he is known to have written several different works: Antilogiae and Truth. The latter is cited by Plato, and was known alternatively as, The Throws (a wrestling term referring to the attempt to floor an opponent). It began with the "Man is the measure" (ἄνθρωπος μέτρον) pronouncement. According to Diogenes Laërtius other books by Protagoras include: On the GodsArt of EristicsImperativeOn AmbitionOn Incorrect Human ActionsOn those in HadesOn SciencesOn VirtuesOn the Original State of Things and Trial over a Fee.[12]

See also