/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.18778821]

>religion is for the masses.
>philosophy is for the enlightened few.
>mfw philosophy concludes we are all one.
I don't want to be equated with the masses though.

[Anonymous No.18778829]

>>18778821
>I dont want to be equated with the masses though
The first lesson of any religion or philosophy worth its salt is that you are, in fact, significantly lower than the masses.

[Anonymous No.18778864]

>>18778829
Why do religion and philosophy always in the end revert to populism though?

[Anonymous No.18778872]

>>18778864
what on earth do you mean by populism

[Anonymous No.18778876]

>>18778829
...and why can't it be elitist?

[Anonymous No.18778883]

>>18778872
the quality of appealing to ordinary people.

[Anonymous No.18778890]

>>18778876
Because elitism is a retarded waste of time, thats why

Because there is absolutely no challenge to it. You just whittle down the elite further and further until you are your own God, and then you become static by every external measurement, and you start living just like the masses you criticized because external measures no longer apply to you. It completely collapses under its own weight.

Getting other people to seek the good? Now that's more worthwhile and significantly more fun

[Anonymous No.18778899]

>>18778883
but it isnt, its demanding that they improve

[Anonymous No.18778913]

>>18778890
I've been poor and I've been rich too. I can't care at all for people of both classes. I just seek comfort in books.

[Anonymous No.18778956]

>>18778821
>religion for the masses
>philosophy for the asses

[Anonymous No.18778965]

>>18778829
>significantly lower than the masses
You don't gotta tell me.
I fucking WISH I was a normie.
GOD FUCKING DAMN IT
GOD FUCKING DAMN IT ALL

[Anonymous No.18778980]

>>18778965
Ok relax
you are not supposed to despair
humility is one thing, despair is quite another
You may be humble but never forget that you bear the image of God

[Anonymous No.18778999]

>>18778980
Why do philosophy leads to non-dualism which leads to basically some form of religious communism when I want it to lead to a hierarchical religio-aristocracy so badly.

[Anonymous No.18779001]

>>18778980
>we're just shitty simulacra of god
This has to be one of christerism's worst doctrines. And they claim to have suppressed gnosticism as a heresy!

[Anonymous No.18779006]

>>18778999
Checked but also check your ressentiment levels

[Anonymous No.18779007]

>>18778999
Because your pride and your despair are getting in the way of seeing the truth. Accept the limits of your general and personal nature.

[Anonymous No.18779010]

>>18779001
It's the logos dumb-dumb.

[Anonymous No.18779016]

>>18779001
>worst doctrines
why?
>gnosticism is a heresy
well yeah, because they hate the body and the physical world which were given to us as gifts by God. They literally refused to believe that Jesus physically died on the Cross because they are so afraid of their piss and hair that they couldnt believe God would condescend to assume it.

[Anonymous No.18779041]

>>18778999
One could simply reject monism or non-dualism and put forward a dualistic proposition and somehow argue for the need for an aristocracy to combat the manifestations of evil such as in the middle ages. I'd advise you to start with the Zaehner and his works on Zoroastrianism since they are strict dualists. Others could be the Samkhya tradition but I don't know of any of their writings.

[Anonymous No.18779074]

>>18779016
Imagine believing you're an inferior copy of something immortal and that you can get back to this origin by dying with the correct beliefs.

[Anonymous No.18779082]

>>18779074
I dont have to imagine it, I do believe that

Although the correct belief thing is sometimes slightly overstated by some denominations.

[Anonymous No.18779092]

>>18779082
Oh right, if you perform the correct acts along with holding the correct beliefs when you die, then you get to be immortal instead of a bad copy. Platonism had a similar attitude but did not make you swear by the events that happened to a specific person in a specific point in history.

[Anonymous No.18779133]

>>18779092
You are missing the spirit of it. Those other things spring from the reorientation of the heart towards God. As one orthanon said,
>Right belief comes from right spiritual life, not the other way around
That is, as you continue to bring your will in alignment with God, He himself will nudge you toward the right belief. I believe that this God came down to earth and took on human flesh to teach us and conquer death, and that his name was Jesus of Nazareth. Why? Because the story makes sense to me in a deep way. Why would God do anything else but that? The location and time are a bit odd, but other than that, why wouldn't God do something like allow Himself to be killed so that He could rise from the dead, to show His contempt for causality and physics?
But that is to say, everything that Christianity recommends we do is so that we can open our hearts to God. We believe certain things about Him because 1. He said them and 2. Humility. We perform the acts for the same reason. But His promise to us, and the testimony of the saints, is that these are simply channels opening our hearts to His love and power. That is the goal, that is the point: creating space for Him to operate within us, and when He operates that way, then we start to perform those actions and hold those beliefs out of love for God and our fellow-men. Just making the effort opens the door to that power. There is no exact formula, no list of things to do; that is a Pharisaical view of it. There are commands, traditions, and practices, but we do them in order to open ourselves up to God, not to just check boxes on a list.

[Anonymous No.18779156]

>>18778821
That's not close to Plato's philosophy, brainlet.

[Anonymous No.18779166]

>>18778890
>Because elitism is a retarded waste of time, thats why
Wrong.
>Because there is absolutely no challenge to it.
Diametrically wrong.
>Getting other people to seek the good?
Is not exclusive with elitism. Slavery is a way to ensure people seek the good when they're too stupid to do it themselves (see Aristotle).

[Anonymous No.18779171]

>>18779166
I would be interested to hear more besides
>wrong

[Anonymous No.18779173]

>>18778821
Spooked. I am above the "Masses", for the "masses" are simply an idea in my mind. There is no "masses".

[Anonymous No.18779214]

>>18779133
I think you mistake "checking boxes in the list" with the perfection of worship. As above, so below and as the heavenly bodies move in an orderly manner in space and time so too will your acts of worship move in an orderly manner in space and time. This is just the second of three principles. The first is the perfection of your animalistic restraints. Restraint from eating that which is dirty (carcasses, swine, etc), restraint from overindulgence in sex (marriage or celibacy) and restraints in producing ones livelihood (don't commit usury or pollute). The third principle is the perfection of contemplating the Self-Evident Truth.

I haven't gotten that far to the third principle yet tho. But my point is it's not merely pharasaical or beureaucratic. There is a purpose to bring into order chaos.

[Anonymous No.18779220]

>>18778821
>Philosophy concludes

[Anonymous No.18779234]

>>18778899
Kant and Hegel specifically said they were appealing to the common reason in their main texts (especially PoS for Hegel, despite its notorious difficulty, it was meant to be understandable by any human consciousness). It basically becomes more and more the case the longer philosophy "progresses", which is why we've gradually come to the point where "common sense" is the only valid philosophy (which includes scientism). You also beg the question, "improve" by what standards? Today the "good person" is the average person who goes to university, gets a degree and works a dead end job or research degree which provides him with a false sense of accomplishment for the rest of his life, where he eventually dies in the comfort of his home from a heart attack or some other disease of indolence. There is no longer any real human greatness encouraged by philosophy (with the one possible exception of Nietzsche, who is realistically sidelined from society anyway), human mediocrity is encouraged because all philosophy now appeals to the common man. Compare Plato's ideal (gold, silver, brass) to the Hegelian or Kantian ideals to see the vast gulf even between those three. Even Aristotle was guilty of this, albeit to a lesser extent.
>>18779171
I'd be interested to hear more than "it's retarded because I say so"

[Anonymous No.18779332]

>>18779214
Christianity really has nothing to do with Hermeticism dude, even if Christian imagery is used in some of the Hermetic texts.

>to bring order into chaos

I can see why you would think that, but its actually to resurrect the spirit and its innate capacity for loving God. The "orderly manner" aspect is not operative in Christianity; when we follow a proscribed rule that isnt an explicit command of God, it is out of humility, obedience, and love for the rule giver, which is the attitude that Christ commands us to take. Any order that comes into play is produced by that love organically, or at least will be when it has room to operate properly.

[Anonymous No.18779365]

>>18779332
My apologies. I meant to say "bring order into chaos"

[Anonymous No.18779373]

>>18779365
no worries, I read it as you intended kek

[Anonymous No.18779411]

>>18779332
May I put a forward a question to you.

Can Man achieve union with the Truth in the absence of revelation?

This includes isolated populations that have no contact with the Christian world (e.g. the Andamanese or Amazonian tribes). I propose that they can through the use of their intellect and reason to restrain their animal nature, perfect their worship as how it reflects the orderliness of the heavenly bodies and to propel themselves into reaching that realization of union with God. This is a more accurate proposition than that of the dismissive tone that God will forgive them for not having heard the Word of God. And I believe other groups like the Neo-Platonists, the Advaitins, Zoroastrians have all reached this union through the use of their intellect and reason before there was a Christ or having heard of one.

[Anonymous No.18779433]

>>18779411
Thats a pretty common theory among the Orthodox especially. The technical term for people who do that is "virtuous pagan" but yes, the thought is that this was possible at least before the Incarnation and possibly now too. The precise limits are seriously fuzzy. There is a very good book called Christ the Eternal Tao that argues (convincingly, I think) that Laozi perceived the Logos in its pre-incarnate, universal form as the Way, through his genuine virtue and loving pursuit of the Truth. The thing is though that Christ is pretty clear that salvation comes through Him, probably as the person rather than in the abstract sense of the Logos. In any case, the view of the Church is that the restricted view is the safer bet, that we cant go wrong following the commands closely out of love and humility, and that we cant in good conscience endorse a mode of approaching God that we arent really, really sure about.

[Anonymous No.18779491]

>>18779433
I'm of the view that Christ's mission is superseded by the Islamic one though as to me that saying 'no one comes to the father except through me' is situational to his time period. Though we do as Muslims affirm his words but only for those he preached to at that time. Hopefully once he returns he could tell us himself who's been right or wrong all along.

[Anonymous No.18780046]

>>18778999
It can also lead to dualism, see gnosticism

[Anonymous No.18780048]

nuancefags are the absolute worst

[Anonymous No.18780069]

how the fuck do I start believing in God if I'm literally unable to take anything in the Bible literally

[Anonymous No.18780109]

>>18778821
First one of those bell curve memes I've seen in a while that I agree with. Nothing I hate more than people's attempts to mystify the world around them by muddying the waters of reality because they refuse to be specific or empirical

[Anonymous No.18780117]

>>18780069
Kinda pathetic you want to believe in something you know is not real but it's pretty easy once you make a habit of it

[Anonymous No.18780145]

>>18780109
What is the nature of reality?

[Anonymous No.18780181]

>>18779234
>Kant and Hegel specifically said they were appealing to the common reason in their main texts (especially PoS for Hegel, despite its notorious difficulty, it was meant to be understandable by any human consciousness). It basically becomes more and more the case the longer philosophy "progresses", which is why we've gradually come to the point where "common sense" is the only valid philosophy (which includes scientism). You also beg the question, "improve" by what standards? Today the "good person" is the average person who goes to university, gets a degree and works a dead end job or research degree which provides him with a false sense of accomplishment for the rest of his life, where he eventually dies in the comfort of his home from a heart attack or some other disease of indolence. There is no longer any real human greatness encouraged by philosophy (with the one possible exception of Nietzsche, who is realistically sidelined from society anyway), human mediocrity is encouraged because all philosophy now appeals to the common man. Compare Plato's ideal (gold, silver, brass) to the Hegelian or Kantian ideals to see the vast gulf even between those three. Even Aristotle was guilty of this, albeit to a lesser extent.
Dude read wisdom of Solomon, whole point of it is to self improve and not be a cucked retard, to learn and value criticism.

[Anonymous No.18780994]

>>18778999
this is what /lit/ thinks dualism/monism lead to?

[Anonymous No.18781004]

>>18780181
>read wisdom of Solomon, whole point of it is to self improve and not be a cucked retard, to learn and value criticism.
>trying to get someone here to read the Bible

You have courage my friend