/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.5280350]

> “For the normative self-understanding of modernity, Christianity has functioned as more than just a precursor or catalyst. Universalistic egalitarianism, from which sprang the ideals of freedom and a collective life in solidarity, the autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of a continual critical reappropriation and reinterpretation. Up to this very day there is no alternative to it. And in light of the current challenges of a post-national constellation, we must draw sustenance now, as in the past, from this substance. Everything else is idle postmodern talk.”

Would you agree?

What about Eastern religions?

[Anonymous No.5280376]

>>5280350
>“For the normative self-understanding of modernity, Christianity has functioned as more than just a precursor or catalyst. Universalistic egalitarianism, from which sprang the ideals of freedom and a collective life in solidarity, the autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of a continual critical reappropriation and reinterpretation. Up to this very day there is no alternative to it. And in light of the current challenges of a post-national constellation, we must draw sustenance now, as in the past, from this substance. Everything else is idle postmodern talk.”
It's....it's beautiful....

[Anonymous No.5280401]

>>5280350
where is that from?

[Anonymous No.5280413]

>>5280401

http://books.google.com/books/about/Time_of_Transitions.html?id=h9mW3tszYnUC

[Anonymous No.5280417]

⇒Would you agree?
Lol nope. It's a bunch of pseudo-intellectual bullshit and factually wrong. The ideas of freedom, equality and democracy are much older than Jesus and in fact it was the church who oppressed them throughout the dark ages and middle ages. In many regards christfag dogma explicitly contradicts these ideals.

⇒"the individual morality of conscience"
Outdated nonsense for the emotionally weak. The modern Übermensch is a nihilist.

⇒"we must draw sustenance now, as in the past, from this substance"
Appeal to tradition is a fallacy, you fuckwit.

⇒What about Eastern religions?
"Hurr durr be a NEET and meditate all day" may have worked for a rich spoiled bastard like Buddha. For someone in our society it is garbage.

[Anonymous No.5280462]

>>5280417
>inability to comprehend even the most basic idea of continental thought - a certain way of thinking does not solely depend on historical, temporal origin. this is the fallacy of historicism

>actually using the übermensch as an ideal without having understood it - Nietzsche was not a nihilist, and neither is the übermensch. In fact, the übermensch is meant to OVERTHROW nihilism, you fucking retard

>the special snowflake-arrows

You are a stupid neckbeard and you need to stop posting.

[Anonymous No.5280463]

>>5280417

[Anonymous No.5280480]

>>5280462
⇒a certain way of thinking does not solely depend on historical, temporal origin. this is the fallacy of historicism
Redirect that criticism to the philosotard OP is quoting. He commits that fallacy.

⇒Nietzsche was not a nihilist, and neither is the übermensch. In fact, the übermensch is meant to OVERTHROW nihilism
I know, you fucktard. You probably learned that factoid from one of my posts in an earlier thread. That's why I carefully used the modifer "modern" when mentioning the Übermensch in this ITT. But such subtleties are obviously too hard to comprehend for your underdeveloped non-STEM brain.

⇒You are a stupid neckbeard
Even if I wanted, biologically I couldn't grow a beard. Get rekt, projecting dumbass.

[Anonymous No.5280490]

>>5280480
Ah, you're just a troll. Never mind.

[Anonymous No.5280492]

>>5280417

[Anonymous No.5280497]

>>5280490
⇒gets told
⇒yells "troll"

Why are you even here if you can't handle criticism by someone more educated than yourself?

[Anonymous No.5280509]

>>5280480

> your underdeveloped non-STEM brain

you gave yourself away too easily m8.

6/10.

[Anonymous No.5280510]

>>5280497
you're not even good at it

[Anonymous No.5280525]

>>5280509
You are actually confirming the quoted phrase by demonstrating that the rhetorical spice distracts you from recognizing the actual argument. Reread my post again and this time pay attention to the content and not to your hurt feelings.

>>5280510
Good at what?

[Anonymous No.5280532]

>>5280525

You don't make arguments, arrow. You know that. You make declarative statements that are usually just the inverse of whatever was originally posted. This is normally called "contradiction." That is all you do. That is all you will ever do. You know nothing else.

[Anonymous No.5280548]

>>5280532
Please point out one statement of mine ITT which wasn't factually correct.

[Anonymous No.5280562]

>>5280548

Being "factually correct" does not make a statement an argument. It just makes it a true statement.

We've had this discussion several times now. You never learn, do you?

[Anonymous No.5280573]

>>5280562
Facts are the best arguments.

[Anonymous No.5280586]

>>5280525

No, only that your "rhetorical spice" and content cannot be divorced. We don't even need to "project".

May I ask why you're so upset?

[Anonymous No.5280602]

>>5280586
So you admit using the fallacy of cherry picking?

[Anonymous No.5280606]

>>5280573

Facts are simply facts. Again, we've been over this. And, for the record, you haven't really posted any facts, only your opinions.

[Anonymous No.5280613]

>>5280606
⇒Facts are simply facts
And they can be used as arguments.

⇒you haven't really posted any facts, only your opinions.
So what? My opinions are still more true than yours.

[Anonymous No.5280617]

>>5280602

No. Maybe if you had answered my question.

[Anonymous No.5280623]

>>5280613

Never change.

[Anonymous No.5280630]

>>5280350
>Everything else is idle postmodern talk.”

Couldn't agree more, Habermas.

[Anonymous No.5280635]

>>5280613

> My opinions are still more true of yours.

Congratulations! You've been upgraded to 7/10.
Several people are still responding to you.

Now would anyone care to genuinely respond to OP?

[Anonymous No.5280694]

The problem is the existence of god.

Even if Christianity was the best thing to ever happen to us, it still does not make god real.
Christianity or any other religion can not be the basis on which we build our future. Science does contract with religion, if you like it or not. The Bible and Christian teachings were proven wrong again and again.

The only reason why Christianity is better than, lets say Islam, is because it´s a less strict religion. It constantly adapts to what the people want and need. (evolution is now accepted, gays are no longer hunted, other religions no longer forbidden, hell is no longer real)

Everyone has a different understanding of Christianity anyway.
Some hate gays because the Bible says so and it´s tradition and others love them because you should love everyone. I´ll never understand you theists.

[Anonymous No.5280763]

>>5280417
>muh middle ages
>muh oppressive church

God I fucking hate reading shit like this. Mostly when it comes from idiots who don't know shit about the middle ages. Here's a hint in case you didn't get the memo:

The church as an organization wasn't as powerful in medieval times as you might believe. It was merely a moralistic tool for worldly leaders who controlled and bribed the catholic councils in order to shift the balance of power within europe towards their favor. It was like an appeal to morality you bought for your country.

Once the appeal to morality by being the popes favorite lost its shine (which mostly happened once a nation became the major power in europe) the church barely had any fucking power. That is why the holy roman emperor could excommunicate the pope (and vice versa) and napoleon could just take him prisoner.
And behind the curtains nobody gave a fuck. Because everyone knew how the game was played.

There is not a single thing carried out by the church that did not have an economic or political effect, which benefited the current donors.
Where the fuck do you think the church got all those fancy buildings from? By spending the money they got from peasants?
Of course not you humongous retard.

Barely any of this "church oppression" has anything to do with the christian doctrine.

would tip fedora out of 10

[Anonymous No.5280840]

>>5280763
⇒The church as an organization wasn't as powerful in medieval times as you might believe.
I'm sure that explains how a pope could force a fucking emperor to walk to Canossa and kneel before him.

⇒and napoleon could just take him prisoner.
Are you seriously saying Napoleon lived in the middle ages? I know americlap education is bad, but come on m8, seriously.

⇒Barely any of this "church oppression" has anything to do with the christian doctrine.
You're partially right. Even worse than christfag dogma was greek philosotard dogma. Galilei, Coppernicus and Kepler had to be silenced because they contradicted Aristotle's retarded crystal sphere model of celestial mechanics.

[Anonymous No.5281097]

>>5280840
>I'm sure that explains how a pope could force a fucking emperor to walk to Canossa and kneel before him.

In fact it does.
If your pea brain actually had some reading comprehension you would have realized that the whole connection between the vatican and other states is a matter of public relationship.

>Are you seriously saying Napoleon lived in the middle ages? I know americlap education is bad, but come on m8, seriously.

Now you're just a trolling double nigger and you know why.

[Anonymous No.5281110]

>>5280480
You're really much of a two-trick pony, arrow. You should change your method one bit, you're just paridying yourself at this point.

[Anonymous No.5281115]

>>5280350

Wait, the bible says a whole lot of shit about slaves and the inferiority of women... and aren't the jews the chosen people of god in the old testament? Doesn't sound very egalitarian to me.

[Anonymous No.5281125]

>>5281115
Christian dogma is still more egalitarian than other doctrines because it rests on the idea of normalfags/poorfags being the way to God. "It's harder for the rich to go into heaven", "everyone can be saved if their repent", that's the geist. Christian dogma doesn't just come from the Bible, it was decided through conciles, reforms and civil wars.

[Anonymous No.5281166]

>>5281097
⇒In fact it does.
It doesn't. You know nothing about medieval history. Do they really not teach this in 'murica?

⇒Now you're just a trolling double nigger and you know why.
No, I don't know why. I was correcting a wrong statement of yours. How is it "trolling"? Please explain.

[Anonymous No.5281187]

>>5280613
You've obviously never taken a rhetoric class, have you?

[大阴茎温柔的心脏 No.5281217]

>>5280350
what about the greeks? what about the romans?

i want to use that guys face as a punching bag. i'm probably not the first one to get that idea, from the looks of it

[Anonymous No.5281234]

>>5281187
I don't live in burgerland. Where I live, children are expected to develop common sense on their own. We don't need rhetoric classes.

[Anonymous No.5281240]

>>5281234
Rhetoric was the foundation of classical education.

[Anonymous No.5281250]

>>5280840
>I'm sure that explains how a pope could force a fucking emperor to walk to Canossa and kneel before him.

An Emperor who lated turned back on his promises, by the way.

Now, of course, the strenght of the Church during the Middle Ages wasn't constant from the beginning until the end, but if there is a pattern we can see, is that the stronger the Church, the more prosperous Christendom was.

From the 5th century to the 8th the Church was weak, the Bishop of Rome was merely a vassal of the Byzantine Empire, not even worthy of being chosen by the emperor, instead the Exarch of Ravenna apointed the Pope. That was what most people consider the "Dark Ages". Then the Pope allies himself with the Carolingians during the Iconoclast controversy and become stronger by result. That was the Carolingian Renaissance.

Later the Church entered a new dark period, the "saeculum obscurum" where the Bishop of Rome was a controlled by a family of italian prostitutes. Christendom declined accordingly.

By the 11th century, the Pope managed to regain some powers with the Investiture Controversy, that was when Gregory VII forced the Emperor to walk to Canossa. That increase in power by the Church was followed by the Renaissance of the 12th century.

Then the Church lost power yet again, during the Schism of the XIVth century there was often two, or even three, rival popes, appointed by kings and patricians and fighting each other, and like the realm of some fisher king Europe suffered together with the Church, enduring plague, famine and war.

After the Council of Constance the Church regained it's power, become unified again and voila, the Renaissance gained force.

So, really, the narrative that "the Church was a evil institution curbing the progress" doesn't really follow the facts.

[Anonymous No.5281254]

>>5281240
Where? In your fedora'd escapist fantasies?

[Anonymous No.5281262]

>>5281250
Explain this infographic.

[Anonymous No.5281266]

>>5280350
Obviously not the case since Christianity existed for so many years before the enlightenment. Economic prosperity and scientific advancement are what have allowed us to progress as a society. Anyone who tries to claim that the present state of our civilization is due to anything else (especially a particular religion) is full of horseshit.

[Anonymous No.5281267]

>>5281254
In classical Greece.

[Anonymous No.5281276]

>>5280480
Please never leave us, arrow-chan.

[Anonymous No.5281277]

>>5281262
>infographic
>completely arbitrary graph

[Anonymous No.5281280]

>>5281267
We don't live in ancient Greece.

[Anonymous No.5281286]

>>5281262
how do you quantify something as vague as "scientific advancement" like that? citation(s) needed.

[Anonymous No.5281287]

>>5280840
Galileo was arrested because he broke his promise to stop teaching Copernican astronomy without evidence (he didn't have any, since he was assuming circular orbits).

Copernicus' theories were presented in a series of lectures in Rome in 1533, attended by Pope Clement VII and several cardinals who were greatly impressed. Once De revolutionibus was printed it was dedicated to Pope Paul III.

Kepler was never 'silenced' either.

[Anonymous No.5281290]

>>5281280
But it was the foundation for the society we do live in, and we can learn a lot from their example.

[Anonymous No.5281296]

>For the normative self-understanding of modernity, Christianity has functioned as more than just a precursor or catalyst. Universalistic egalitarianism
Stopped reading there

Who talks like this? Who is this guy trying to impress, Professor SAT?

Can language BE more juxtaposed?

[Anonymous No.5281305]

>>5281290
⇒But it was the foundation for the society we do live in

Nope. Read the OP. Our society is based on judeo-christian tradition. The influence of the Greeks is negligible.

[Anonymous No.5281307]

>>5281296
Habermas who might just be one of the most important sociologists alive.

[大阴茎温柔的心脏 No.5281322]

>>5281307
for you

[Anonymous No.5281349]

>>5281262
You can't really quantify "scientific advancement" this way, but if you really want to talk about the decline of Greek science in the Late Antiquity (which is what this infographic is all about) you must return to much earlier.

Some cultures enjoy cultural booms which last 150-200 years when suddenly there is a release of creative energy and genius which forever defines their intellectual activity. There were the Italians from 1300 to 1600, the English from 1550 to 1750 (Tallis, Byrd, Purcell- composers, Boyle- father of chemistry, Shakespeare, Milton, Donne, ...-literature, Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley-philosophy, Gilbert- discovered magnetism, Harvey- physiology, blood circulation, Newton- the greatest scientist ever, Halley- astronomy, Cavendish- physics & chemistry, discovered hydrogen etc)

The Jews are experiencing one right now, since the 1800s they have produced Kafka, Mahler, Marvin Minsky, Otto Lilienthal, Salman Waksman, John Von Neumann, Hermann Broch, Karl Landsteiner. But such things don't last forever. The Italians are not nearly as creative and productive as they were in the Renaissance, and even the German genius, which molded the Second Industrial Revolution was somewhat dried.

Now, if there was a outburst that forever changed the world, it was the Greek one from 400 to 200 BC, but like i said, it wasn't eternal, by the beginning of the first century there wasn't much going on, as Edward Gibbon said, Greek science has become a "cloud of critics, of compilers, of commentators". The only real genius in that period where Galen and Hipparchus, now compare to 100 BC.

So Christianity is irrelevant in the context of the decline of Greek culture in the Roman world. It was a culture that exhausted itself.

Now it's preservation is something we owe only to Christians, which is notable.

Now the political collapse of the Roman Empire, which is what we refer to as the "Dark Ages". You have to remember that it began before Christianity became a force, during the Crisis of the Third Century, the Roman Empire collapse, as Empires are wont to do, under it's own height. As with Greek science, the survival of Roman political forms and law is another thing we should thank the Christian Church instead of talking about how they could have done it more. It's not fucking easy to to science when Goths, Franks, Burgundians, Huns, Alans are wrecking your shit.

PS: A interesting sidenote is that the only part of the Christian world that escaped destruction during this era experienced something of a Golden Age during the European Dark Ages. Ireland, which was never part of the Roman Empire and therefore wasn't sacked experienced a age of unrivalled cultural (and even scientific, though i admit not much) production during this period. Eurigena, Dicuil, Fingal, Dungal where some of the highlights.

Of course that ended when the Vikings wrecked their shit. Should we blame Christians for that one too?

[Anonymous No.5281363]

>>5281349
>Hipparchus

I mean Diophantus, sorry.

[Anonymous No.5281367]

>>5281115
The universality of Judaism comes from the unbending moral imperative of monotheism, and somewhat of a thieves' code of "all are equal in this place". Early God was a bit unpredictable, but it was the only acceptable god and eventually God evened out his temper. And remember that anybody can convert to Judaism, and also that membership is matrilineal which means any dumb fuck could be your dad but you are still a Jew.

Jesus said that anybody could get into Heaven and that all could be blessed by God.

The Greeks et al. were more or less moral relativists and/or pragmatists, e.g., multiple gods could be worshipped and each had their own personality and whims, and if you won the war it was often justified by somewhat of a Calvinist interpretation of events. Greek morality was pretty much limited to "be rich and don't run from a fight".

>>5280350 is a little heavy handed, since the Romans had a decent republic for a while, although they were pretty much Christianizing for most of their existence. Regardless of where these ideas originated, I don't think there's much arguing against the notion that they were spread quite effectively by Christianity.

[Anonymous No.5281394]

>>5281349

I really appreciate your familiarity with history. I'm reading Copleston's History of Philosophy now so this shit really interests me; and anyone who brings up John Scotus Eriugena gets a wink and a point from me.

Any books, sites, sources you can personally recommend?

[Anonymous No.5281410]

>>5281307
>sociology
penntrashed.webm
I can't imagine a softer "science"

[Anonymous No.5281417]

>>5280350
>Would you agree?
Totally, except for his conclusion. We still live in very Christian world, when you look at our values and morals. We just removed the God figure to simplify a bit.
But I don't think we should continue to be influenced by it, neither should we necessarily copy any existing or past belief systems, except for maybe drawing inspiration from some early Greeks (everything but Socrates and Plato, two of the starters of all of this) and whatever else that reverses our values.

[Anonymous No.5281421]

>>5281410
>I can't imagine a softer "science"
(Most) sociologist claim that sociology is *not* a science and that is very very good. To pretend that it is science would mean one paradigm i.e. one ideology.

[Anonymous No.5281443]

>>5281394
You can't go wrong with Will Durant: The Story of Civilization.

For something specifically about the Middle Ages, there are this series.

http://www.ahistoryofeurope.eu/A_History_of_Europe/A_History_of_Europe.html

And the Armarium Magnum (by an atheist!) have some good resources on the early Middle Ages and the "myth of the Dark Ages". I had to restrain myself to not just post a copypasta from him.

[Anonymous No.5281752]

>>5281443

Fantastic! Many thanks!