/lit/ - Literature

Students of the phenomenology of religion — or even just of phenomenology, and/or of existentialism — could learn much from all this. Gurdjieff’s own teachings, basically, are like the idea of the perennial philosophy with roots in the Renaissance interest in neo-Platonism and integrating neo-Platonism and Hermeticism with Greek and Jewish-Christian thought by some of these mystics and thinkers. Of course, this was then appropriated by Aldous Huxley writing “The Perennial Philosophy” (1945), with an even greater range of traditions integrated into it.

Gurdjieff’s approach to this is, “Very well — all these traditions have similar experiences of enlightenment, of higher awareness reached in all of them. But you only write about it, you only talk about it. Do you experience it? What if there was a way to train yourself to experience it and experience it for longer and longer, to become a real person having real mystical experiences instead of just talking and writing about it?”

Strange as it sounds, and (comparatively) obscure as he is, I believe Gurdjieff to be a man who, at some point in his mid-life or later life, at least, reached a similar state reached by Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta Maharaj, and the like. But the strangest thing is Gurdjieff did this in the West, while traveling around, experiencing as much as he could of life, having sex, drinking alcohol and the like (analogous of course to Tantric traditions in which these things, normally forbidden to ascetic Buddhists and Hindus, are allowed to them). So you could argue perhaps Gurdjieff’s way is an even more interesting, fruitful, but more difficult (and therefore more rapid) way. To experience enlightenment in the midst of the ordinary things of life instead of going out into a monastery. This is why he called it “the way of the householder, meant to be lived in ordinary life.”

Anyone who for some reason in this thread and happens to have read Heidegger’s “Being and Time” could even make parallels between how Gurdjieff talks about how the average man, living as an automaton and mere member of the crowd, does not remember his death, and remembering one’s death is one of the best ways to make oneself a real man, as well as the deaths of everyone one lays eyes on — this is advice given by Beelzebub, for instance, in a long-winded speech at the end of BTTHG. He also makes the distinction between “personality” (what is given to one by society, by education, by training, by one’s parents, family, friends, etc.) and “essence” (the true self in man, which he claims is very undeveloped, asleep, and tiny in most, but which should and can be developed to its utmost and lived in). In Heidegger, of course, this would be being an authentic and resolute individual, Dasein, in the mode of Being-towards-death, who has waken up from fallenness in the They (Das Man), or the inauthentic and irresolute They-self.

Chadegger the Rebel

Bundle of ideas.

>>17432255
You are time bro.

>>16727950
HEIDIGGER? more like...

This thread is dedicated to the discussion of the life and thought of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger.

This thread is dedicated to the discussion of the life and thought of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger.

Was he full of shit?

I was once memed into believing that Heidegger was an opportunist and a hypocrite, now I realize that he was one of the greatest philosophical minds of modern times.

>>14020652
The irony is that most of people here waste their time reading Whitehead or Deleuze instead of reading Heidegger, whose philosophy provides the real, actual way towards wisdom.

Can there be analytical systems grounded in and extended from Heidegger’s Philosophy? Since he felt everyone had been brushing over the true nature of being, then accounted it himself, can there then be analytical systems that further explain and evoke Dasein’s engagement and truth-revealing-activities within its facticity of life?

Once one has read Heidegger and mostly grasped his ideas, where exactly is next? Are there any later philosophers that are truly compatible with or steeped in his fundamental ontology?

Heidegger spoke of the inner greatness and potential of National Socialism that obviously wouldn’t have been possible with Hitler’s dependency of capitalism and technology.

What would Heideggerian National socialism look like?

>>12212339
>>12212342
Sentience is sentient

Why does anything exist at all? Why not nothing? Like NOTHING nothing. Not even God. Not even that physicist babble psuedo-nothing muh quantum foam or whatever the fuck. It's mind boggling that anything exists, let alone all this complexity, as well as a consciousness of it. I feel like nothing should exist, although I can't really justify that sentiment. It just seems more reasonable in the same sense that if someone makes a positive claim the burden of proof is on them. Similarly, for the world to exist there better be a damn good reason, and I can't really see any. Anyway, I've heard that Heidegger posed this question as well and considered it important, but I haven't read him.

How do we stop reductionism friends?

Trying to reduce verything down to one or two factors like God, matter, subjectivity, the individual, etc. is at the root of all mistakes in thought.

It's, all just ontotheology you see, making all things (onto-) accounted for by one supreme thing (-theo-) which by the principle of sufficient reason (-logy) accounts for the being of everything else, reducing everything to that thing.
see:
Scholastic theology: Everything is explainable by God
Nihilism: Everything is reducible to Nothing Scientism: Everything is reducible to science XD

Nihilists usually try and reduce everything to nothing because of just one thing, like the fact that you will die. Somehow, this is supposed to drain the meaning out of everything else when really there is much more to the picture. The same things happen in Scholastic theology where everything gets reduced to talking about God or in Scientism where everything outside of science is rejected.

If we are pluralistic though, we can incorporate all of these views without totalizing them.

Reductionism = ontotheology = root of all bad thinking. This is why we need to realize God is dead.

>Anxiety makes manifest in Casein it's Being towards its ownmost potentialiality-for-being- that is, its Being-free for the freedom of choosing itself and taking hold of itself

What did he mean by this?

>>8783575
>implying that bashing Platon hasn't been done before
-_-

What was his problem?

How much weed did he smoke?

What's the best way to go about reading Heidegger and ultimately Being & Time? Stambaugh or Macquarrie & Robinson translation? What should I be familiar with prior to reading? I have an undergraduate phil degree, so I'm not a complete novice, but I have never read anything by Heidegger. I'm trying to change that but I want to make sure I do it the right way. Any advice or good secondary reading (online or otherwise) you can point me towards is much appreciated.