THANK YOU

Just so that each of you know my time with you was very valuable to me. I learned a lot in dialogue with each of you and I appreciate that each of you took the time to contribute something to that process.Thank you for all hard work and please never hesitate just to email me from time to time with the musings of your life.

Cheers,
Danny

Agora and Modern Atheism

http://www.wordonfire.org/WOF-TV/Commentaries-New/Fr--Barron-comments-on--Agora-.aspx

When we mentioned Agora again in class it reminded me of a priest, Fr. Barron, who acts as sort of an apologists to Catholicism. He talks about Agora, but more specifically he focuses on the blatant anti-Catholicism of the movie director. It sort of mirrors what was going on in the age of the early Church fathers. For the third time in history (Post-Reformation through Enlightenment being the other) blatant anti-Catholicism is acceptable, leading some like Fr. Barron to call it the last acceptable prejudice. But it is interesting that this period has more in common with the first: many different sides are coming down on the Church (mostly from the atheists now-a-days though) and religious sentiment of both periods are more like each other than the other.

Agora is such a great movie to match this modern sentiment of hatred towards Catholicism and even Christianity in generally. This period is taken by the director and twisted to match his own version of Christianity: people that are ignorant and destructive. While the Christians at that time certainly were not the best (indeed at no point in history has it ever been clean), the director makes it seems as if they are beasts.

Last Blog

This semester i learned a lot in Hellenistic Philosophy. I have a greater appreciation for Hellenistic philosophy after taking this course. When you go over the several schools and movements during this time period you become to understand the importance of how relevant some of these concepts are to fundamental questions and every day life. All of these philosophies were about praxis. They strive to achieve happiness by making their philosophy a way of live. Going over Christianity during the end of the semester from a philosophical perspective was very intriguing. I honestly was ignorant of the the fact that paganism does not necessarily believe they are polytheistic. It also makes since to me that Christianity is one in plurality. Once again in St. Austine's writings its evident that happiness is pivotal. Happiness for Augustine is contemplation of wisdom. This is where you can see a Hellenistic aspect in religion. Thus, showing how i have come to understand the importance and foundations of many concepts in philosophy. Hellenistic philosophy was far from an age of decadence, yet it was an age of revolutionary thought from ancient philosophy. Thank you professor Layne. I really enjoyed this class and learned a lot. I wish you the best of luck on your future endeavors.

As I Go Back

While studying for the upcoming final, I realized how important this class has been to my development as a thinker, especially considering this is my last semester at Loyola. Funny how a look deep into the past can be so relative to life today. I've studied philosophy and history of more recent times through several classes, but never have I realized how important the Greco-Roman world still is today. The idea of the forms, starting with Plato, but then edited by Aristotle and the Neoplatonists helped me come to a better understanding of my own view on metaphysics. Although Aristotle did not explicitly get to some sort of One, or he may very well have and I did not realize through my studies, I feel he laid down the path with putting ideas like deskness only present in our world through desks, and not separating it in a different realm. I now can't help but agree with the One concept, and although it may have been refuted, it still makes my belly warm at night. As I approach the last class of the semester, and my last class at Loyola, I wish that it was only the beginning. Yet I can't go back, and my parents want me to move on from the collegiate life. But I still have to say that this class was by far one of the best I have taken during my four years a Loyola. Thanks Dr. Layne.

Old synopsis

Class Synposis for 4/6/11

How can we think without intentionality? Isomorphism—identity between subject and object. This of intellection is Isomorphism, and due to this we can’t think of intellect as discursive reasoning. Discursive reasoning causes a subject-object split, but through intentionality we are always intending or projecting towards an object.

Solution to the subject object split may be found in a pre-reflexive object. The pre-reflexive object becomes object of reflexive cogito that tried to get to the objectiveless-intetionless.

We talked about Gnosticism and what it means and how it perpetuates the subject object split within one’s own self. Basically, it is the belief that the world is through and through evil. Prison for transcendent selves. All spirits are imprisoned by the world, and in a similar sense imprisoned by the body. The split between an evil body and a transcendent spirit are seen as illusory according to Plotinus. For Plotinus, the idea of waiting for spiritual being is ridiculous. World is valuable—salvation is in us—up to us. Only you can save yourself! Body is not inherently bad. We must turn inward—when turning outward you can’t help make a subject object split.

Plotinus’ critique of discursive thinking can be split into two factions: conceptual alterity and ontological. Conceptual alterity (otherness)—words—“this is a desk”—conceptual thining of difference. Differences can be seen in our conception of justice and how it differs from our conception of love. You can see the conceptual intellectual differences, and within these differences you can see multiplicity in difference—make logical/conceptual distinctions. Within this logical/conceptual distinction between plurality you can find a way to also find unity in the differences.

Discursive reasoning makes differences. The Intellect is not in time—time is a measurment/difference between past, present, and future. Truth as pure presence is non-discursive. How can I get to the non-discursive truth? Through experiements that force subject and object to becoe one. Imagine the world—translucent sphere with all contents, experiences, stimuli, whatever else in a succinct form. Where is the self to be found in this? Where are you? You are forced to see that you are the orb, the thing made. Only upon reflection does the I ever surface. When you are reading this synopsis you are no thinking, “I am reading a synopsis,” you are just doing it. If someone were to come up and ask you what you were doing, then you would “procure your I” and say, “I am reading this synopsis.”

We are both the producer and the produced. Contemplate yourself as the totality of things. Exegesis is an attempt to get to non-discursive reasoning.

There is rhetoric of immediacy. I can’t express it because when I do it, it is mediated either through words or sense perception. Everything is immediate through mediation. How is it that you get the words? Something that is a unity is not reducible to letters. This is basically a confirmation that the One is ineffable and any attempt to get to it fails due to the fact that we must mediate all experiences through our own experience.

Unity makes the one possible. Existence would not be without unity. I assented to the one and it brings us back down. Mystical union with the One—some time outside of time. Whole of time preserved with mystical union of the one.

Thinking and being are the same. The symbol is the relationship. It isn’t just a metaphor; it must be a concrete reality. In a sense, all gods are symbols for some to get to the One. An example in class used to express the importance of the ineffable was Love. Problem when thinking of loved one as object. Love happens where there is a unity. Two people made one (hopeless romantics). The idea that not talking when you are with your lover—union with the one. Maybe this is true, but it seems that talking presupposes not talking and vice versa. The ability to be comfortable with one or the other seems to me to be dependent on how much talking or non-talking was going on before any “comfortable” silences.

A Republican Democracy based on Liberal Philosophy

Was killing Bin Laden just?

I have seen many people celebrating the death of Bin Laden, the terrorist who was responsible for the event of 9/11 and the death of hundreds of American citizens, but in reality was killing him morally just? In the news reports it was said that he was given a chance to surrender and that he refused to do so, therefore the fire fight began. But, in other reports we are told that Bin Laden was never given a chance to surrender, the ideas wasn't even in any ones mind, the order were to find him and kill him before he got away. In the first situation we can say that it was just that he was killed because he was given a fair chance to surrender and be brought to justice through trial and refused it. But, in the second situation we cannot justify killing him because He was not given an opportunity to be judged for his actions and be punished in other forms; he was violently killed by our government. I believe that the question of whether or not he was given a chance to surrender has nothing to do with moral justice, only justice in the sense of earthy justice which is based on whether things seem fair or not. I believe that it was morally just to bring Bin Laden in to face a punishment that was equal the pain he caused others and from the American point of view, and from the Aristotelian point of view, it was just to bring him in because he was a terrorist that threatened the well being of the whole. But, no matter which way I look at it I can't back up his killing. I believe that what we did was punish him in order to find revenge. This is more along the lines of what Nietzsche was talking about in his Genealogy of Morals: Bin Laden is in debt to us for what he has done, we are helping to cure our suffering by killing him, we are finding closure, therefore killing him was the morally just thing to do.

we are all computers.

“All human beings from birth onward live to the realm of sense more than to the Intellectual.”

The above was a quote said in class while discussing the Intellectual-Principle and how it is “wise without intermission and therefore beautiful of itself.” But my main point here is not to talk about the Intellectual-Principle ( I would if I thought I had a proper understanding of it) or about the sense (because I feel that everyone knows what the sense are and how to : feel, taste, see, hear, smell). My point in this blog is to discuss the accuracy of this quote. It is very much true that human beings are more in tuned with what is physically around us because those things are easy to understand. The things that are hard to understand, such as the intellectual, we tend to ignore because they intimidate us. They make us feel as if we are losing control of the situation. I believe that humans are more comfortable with the senses because they aren’t ‘lying to us’, ‘what we see is what we get’, and so on and so forth. Yet, what we don’t seem to understand is that everyone perceives things differently; this is why we have likes and dislikes. The senses, in a way, are not the most accurate. We cannot control our sense, but only perceive what they are telling us; we are just computers saving information onto our hard drives.