/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.16509798]

>That only man, the most complete of all visible creatures, is capable of evil, shows already that the ground of evil could not in any way lie in lack or deprivation. The devil, according to the Christian point of view, was not the most limited creature, but rather the least limited one. Imperfection in the general metaphysical sense is not the common character of evil, since evil often shows itself united with an excellence of individual. forces, which far more rarely accompanies the good. The ground of evil must lie, therefore, not only in something generally positive but rather in that which is most positive in what nature contains, as is actually the case in our view, since it lies in the revealed centrum or primal will of the first ground.

Schelling is untouchable.

[Anonymous No.16510460]

>>16509798
Give us more, OP, or the whole chapter, if you will.

[Anonymous No.16510519]

>>16509798
Fantastic, but where did he write this?

Also I know a lot of these moral and traditional conceptions were transmuted into Heidegger's "system", but did he ever explicitly speak with the words good and evil?

Also a related quote by Heidegger on Schelling's Freedom essay.

>"God lets the oppositional will of the ground operate in order that might be which love unifies and subordinates itself to for the glorification of the Absolute. The will of love stands about the will of the ground and this predominance, this eternal decidedness, the love for itself as the essence of being in general, this decidedness is the innermost core of absolute freedom."

And now quite a good quite by Evola.

>“Many of the most bizarre features of [Heidegger’s] ontology appear to have been lifted right out of the occult aether wherein Schelling developed them: [such as] the historical destiny of the artist-scholars of a coming apocalyptic generation to build a new world whose architectonic is established by singing together their own epic poem.”

And some other related statements by Heidegger:

>"Philosophy will not be able to effect an immediate transformation of the present condition of the world. This is not only true of philosophy, but of all merely human thought and endeavor. Only a god can save us. The sole possibility that is left for us is to prepare a sort of readiness, through thinking and poeticizing, for the appearance of the god or for the absence of the god in the time of foundering [Untergang] for in the face of the god who is absent, we founder. Only a God Can Save Us."
>"For us contemporaries the greatness of what is to be thought is too great. Perhaps we might bring ourselves to build a narrow and not far reaching footpath as a passageway."
>"God has always been with me."
>“There is a thinking more rigorous than the conceptual”
>“...the most extreme sharpness and depth of thought belongs to genuine and great mysticism”
~Martin Heidegger

[Anonymous No.16510525]

>>16509798
>man
>the most complete of all visible creature
Kek, man doesn't even have six limbs while there are creature that go up to twenty and beyond.

[Anonymous No.16510530]

>>16510525
Mate, do you think ai' fooken cockroach or centipede could do anything a mun' could do ey?

[Anonymous No.16510537]

>>16509798

Nah, it sounds very pretty, but it has multiple problems. For the purposes of this reply/intellectual exercise, I will assume that the translated quote is an accurate rendering of Schelling's thought, albeit that a quote plus a translation is fertile ground for misrepresentation via copying.

To begin, the first sentiment is a false implication. "Human beings enjoy several abilities not seemingly shared by other entities (animals, etc). Therefore, humans enjoy a plenum or ABUNDANCE of something very special (abilities, cognition, reflection, having a soul, etc), and are yet capable of EVIL. Therefore, the ROOT of evil can in NO SENSE involve lack, privation, POVERTY." Well, no. As we and Schelling all know, manifold prosaic "evils" (in this particular usage: "bad things") issue from privation (and it is clearly this common sense truth that he wants to banish): poor people commit crime and get into trouble (and so do rich people), and it is at this point that someone will want to step in and remind me that the quote deals with the ROOT of evil, not the incidentals as they play out. The problem is that Schelling incorrectly banished the materialistic grounds of "evil" in the sense of a poor person growing up poor in the world and later descending into crime/transgression (lower-case evil), whether drugs, violent crime, the more prosaic categories.

Now, Schelling is getting after the ROOT of evil (bad thing happen because Reason), importantly, per the quote, but the central fork/disjunction here is a root metaphysical cause versus the claim that an aspect (poverty, privation) is only ever incidental, in a very particular way. He can't have it both ways because he himself anticipates the materialistic rebuttal in his metaphysics.

Again, the devil (originally an angel) is mischaracterized as properly "unlimited", but of course he was constrained to love god until he decided not to. Someone will cavil that loving god is the greatest freedom, and thereby miss the point.

Third, Schelling does some straight-up German tier metaphysical nonsense when he separates "imperfection" and "evil", grounding same in how evil shows up in "excellent individuals" (take Hannibal Lecter as a cartoon-tier example, psychology wasn't a big thing until 19th+ century).

Basically Schelling here seems to want to have it both ways, to say a little bit about the real world by way of a metaphysical argument, failing both ways. THe obvious materialist "retroactively refuted" figure is Marx, but not really as I've indicated. My remarks could themselves likewise be criticized for their own inconsistencies, I suspect.

[Anonymous No.16510553]

>>16510519
Is "the ground" Boehme's Ungrund?

[Anonymous No.16510583]

>>16510537
Posts like this remind me that universal literacy was a mistake. Everyone wants to 'participate' in smartness but most are incapable of real thought. Reminds me of a brown person I know, total dilettante, can only interpret things overly literally, at the same time has zero rigor in his arguments and only looks for 'gotchas' obtained through focused misunderstanding.

[Anonymous No.16510591]

>>16510530
A cockroach could certainly fuck your mom m8, so that puts it in league with most of the animal kingdom.

[Anonymous No.16510644]

>>16510553
Haven't read Boeme(though I really want to), but ground can be considered the world, and all that of course entails for Schelling with freedom and such.

[Anonymous No.16510664]

>>16510583

When you want to type nigger, just type nigger. When you want to type smartness, insted try intelligence, so as not to undermine your tack. When you want to compare your opponent to the hated and resented strawman nigger in your personal life, instead directly insult me, rather than than insinuating via the hated niggers' properties by proxy, in a feminine gossip tactic.

I do feel your pain in the later sentiments in some of my private interactions with others.

[Anonymous No.16510668]

>>16510591
Hey faggot, you'r the one who thinks a cockroach could fuck just as well as you.

[Anonymous No.16510704]

>>16510664
He's not a nigger, he's some kind of brown. Street shitter offshoot, owns a curry stained degree in mathematics.

I sensed the likeness, but it's hard to articulate. The very clear trappings of the trappings of 'education'.

[Anonymous No.16510714]

>>16510704
Imagine having such a warped perception of reality

[Anonymous No.16510717]

>>16510537
you totally missed the point buddy

[Anonymous No.16510738]

>>16510460
>>16510519
It's from his essay on human freedom. I don't know why this whole board hasn't read it yet. Schelling's the closest German Idealism has come to flirting with radical dualism. He does talk about good and evil

>>16510537
He means only a human is capable of becoming inhuman. And he's right that intelligence can coincide with evil. There are many serial killers with high IQs. Even scientifically a human being is one of the most complex organisms on the planet. He means man is most complete because in man are the light and dark principles most differentiated.

[Anonymous No.16510755]

>>16510553
This is what I was thinking when I read it, very very similar concepts.

[Anonymous No.16510788]

>>16510738
>He does talk about good and evil
I'm aware Schelling does, but did you mean Heidegger?

[Anonymous No.16510887]

>>16510553
Yes

[Anonymous No.16510928]

>>16509798
>That only man, the most complete of all visible creatures, is capable of evil
No.

[Anonymous No.16510935]

>>16510928
>animals are capable of good and evil
Bruh.

[Anonymous No.16510962]

>>16510935
(not the anon u are replying to, but)
well if u exclude animals from the very possibility of good and evil then u can't infer anything from the fact that animals
it's not 'animals can't commit evil because they are perfectly moral beings' (hence there's something particularly notable about man's evil)
it's 'animals can't commit evil by definition, because we said that what they do doesn't count as evil'

for my money, for any definition of evil that makes sense, almost everything animals do is evil (and i love them for it anyway)

[Anonymous No.16510965]

>>16510962
>can't infer anything from the fact that animals
* aren't evil

[Anonymous No.16510972]

>>16510962
I'm saying that animals may do something bad, but it would be wrong to say it is evil in the sense of guilt of blame, or in any real respect to man's. You can say the whole situation has evil, the whole world, but not a particular animal.

[Anonymous No.16511219]

>>16510537
You are way the fuck out of your depth. Stop.

[Anonymous No.16511242]

QRD for a brainlet?

[Anonymous No.16511568]

>>16509798
>>16510738
>evil often shows itself united with an excellence of individual. forces
not only often, but always.

>which far more rarely accompanies the good
idk what he means here.

not having the time to read and meditate on it but is there any contradiction to what schelling posited in saying that evil always depends on the good?