/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.7281083]

Can aesthetics redeem the life of man in a potentially indifferent, godless universe?

[Anonymous No.7281099]

No.

[Anonymous No.7281101]

You're not depressed cause there's no god, you're depressed cause your brain isn't functioning correctly.

[Anonymous No.7281103]

god is aesthetics

[Anonymous No.7281104]

>>7281101
Sadness is the natural state of man.

[Anonymous No.7281110]

>>7281101
no one talked about depression before you, are you sure you aren't projecting?

>>7281103
I can get behind this!

[Anonymous No.7281116]

>>7281083
>thinking some arbitrary arrangement of colours or shapes is somehow truly meaningful

good one, got any other jokes fam?

[Anonymous No.7281123]

>>7281083
Your life doesn't need redemption. If you think it does, that's probably because you've been surrounded by theistic slave/shame morality all your life.

[Anonymous No.7281124]

>>7281103
I would "fuck" God tbh

[Anonymous No.7281127]

>>7281116
>thinking everything is meaningless because the skies haven't opened up and told you otherwise

stay cucked

[Anonymous No.7281130]

>>7281104

I think it's terribly sad an banal that some psychologists believe a depressed mind is merely a mind with an inhibited ability of self-delusion.

[Anonymous No.7281133]

>>7281127
>implying I'm a theist
>not being a nihilist

wow fam

[Anonymous No.7281147]

>>7281133
i like how my subjective experience of meaning in aesthetics is subordinate to your subjective experience of there being no meaning. good one fam

[Anonymous No.7281153]

If you admit that beauty exists then you are not far off discovering God. In reality, beauty is grounded in God as its principle, or is identical to God. Remember St. Augustine's, "O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you!" Once you admit the existence of truth, goodness, and/or beauty, you are going to have to arrive at the First Principle, or the One, which is self-sufficient and which grounds these principles and all other principles.

If we live in an indifferent, godless universe whose first principle is chaos or chance, then there is no beauty and thus no aesthetics. In fact, if we live an indifferent, godless universe then there is no philosophy at all, or any discourse. Everything is chaos, a "tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing". To be honest, the very fact that we have such notions as "universe", "godlessness", etc., shows that there is a God, because without God, i.e. the first principle in being and in thought and in goodness and in beauty, we wouldn't be able to think them up in the first place. If you deny God you inevitably end up in nihilism, non-cognitivism, the view that everything is an illusion.

[Anonymous No.7281159]

>>7281147
Not him, but a nihilist would say there is potentially meaning in aesthetics but it's up to you to decide to cultivate that or not. All nihilism holds is that there's no universal yardstick of value.

[Anonymous No.7281161]

>>7281153
In other words, if you deny God you deny yourself. You can't do anything without God so it's pointless to deny him.

[Anonymous No.7281165]

>>7281153
>>7281161
Sophistry at its finest. Take note.

[Anonymous No.7281176]

>>7281101
Source?

[Anonymous No.7281182]

>>7281153
If you admit that beauty exists then you are not far off discovering unicorns.. In reality, beauty is grounded in unicorns as its principle, or is identical to unicorn. Remember St. Augustine's, "O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you!" Once you admit the existence of truth, goodness, and/or beauty, you are going to have to arrive at the First Principle, or the One, which is self-sufficient and which grounds these principles and all other principles.

If we live in an indifferent, unicornless universe whose first principle is hornless equestrians, then there is no beauty and thus no aesthetics. In fact, if we live an indifferent, unicornless universe then there is no philosophy at all, or any discourse. Everything is hornless, a "tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing". To be honest, the very fact that we have such notions as "universe", "unicornlessness", etc., shows that there is a unicorn, because without unicorn, i.e. the first principle in being and in thought and in goodness and in beauty, we wouldn't be able to think them up in the first place. If you deny unicorns you inevitably end up in nihilism, non-cognitivism, the view that everything is an illusion.

[Anonymous No.7281183]

>>7281153
[Citation needed]: the post. Was your goal to spout as much stupid conjecture as possible?

[Anonymous No.7281185]

>>7281153
plato pls

[Anonymous No.7281201]

>>7281130
so you think the idea is sad or the fact that some psychologists believe it?

[Anonymous No.7281209]

>>7281201
he's doing a DFW impression, this should be obvious because of
>terribly sad and banal

[Anonymous No.7281220]

>>7281153
maybe during augustine's or plato's time it was ok to equate beauty with "the good". but nowadays we have stuff like nuclear bomb explosions, microscopic images of bacteria or SS uniforms, and applying platonic aesthetics to this stuff looks a bit provincial.

[Anonymous No.7281261]

>>7281220
What does that have to do with anything? We got iphones now, so we're living in a different universe where the good ISN'T a reflection of the divine?

>>7281153
lmao le unfalsifiable unicorn argumen

actually extrapolating the existence of a First Cause or Monad or whatever from the argumen that beauty, truth, and goodness exist and can be experienced is infinitely more reasonable than UNICORNS CHRISTFAGS BTFO XDD

God necessarily follows from a deep reverence of aesthetics, unicorns don't.

[Anonymous No.7281267]

>>7281083
A delusion lost needs no redemption

[Anonymous No.7281270]

>>7281261
>God necessarily follows
nuh uh

[Anonymous No.7281287]

>>7281270
Read Emerson. Read Plotinus.

[Anonymous No.7281300]

>>7281261
>What does that have to do with anything?
shows that "beatuy = good" cant be a universal equation
shows that aesthetic perfection is possible outside good/bad, true/wrong or useful/harmful dichotomies.

[Anonymous No.7281303]

>>7281287
>Emerson
Now I know you're trolling. I love Boston and its intellectual culture, but the Brahmins never did anything of lasting worth.

[Anonymous No.7281309]

>>7281303
>everything has to be empirically rigorous an analytic to be of any worth to a supreme gentleman like me

>>7281300
>what is the sublime

[Anonymous No.7281323]

>>7281300
>SS uniforms
>beautiful

are you high

[Anonymous No.7281326]

>>7281153
the Tao that can be spoken of is not the Constant Tao

[Anonymous No.7281340]

>>7281309
Didn't say a thing about empiricism or anlalytics. Transcendentalism is just not worth much unless you're a particular breed of bored rich guy. As a bored rich guy, I think there are better options.

[Anonymous No.7281345]

>>7281083

how has nobody mentioned the birth of tragedy yet? Nietzsche argues that aesthetics are the ONLY thing to redeem the life of man in an indifferent, godless universe

read it op

[Anonymous No.7281349]

>>7281323
thats irrelevant
consensus has spoken

[Anonymous No.7281359]

>>7281323
there has never been, nor will there ever be again, a more fashionable regime

[Anonymous No.7281364]

>>7281345
and dumps "redemption" as a silly idea in the foreword again. also several aphorisms against "therapeutic" consumption of art in his other books.

[Anonymous No.7281378]

No. The pleasure of multiplicity burns with the fires of passion, hatred, and delusion. By turning to sensual beauty you are like a dog gnawing on a chain of bones. It will give you nothing but weariness and dissatisfaction, in this life and the next.

[Anonymous No.7281390]

>>7281378
>looking at beautiful landscapes will give you nothing but weariness and dissatisfaction
how would this play out, explain.

[Anonymous No.7281420]

>>7281390
Sensuality is like a dream of a beautiful landscape. As soon as you wake up, it's gone forever. If you try to cling to meaning in aesthetics, inevitably you will die and be reborn elsewhere and it will have been for nothing.

[Anonymous No.7281434]

>>7281364

im not saying it's perfect, and I'm not saying the means by which he establishes the thesis are necessarily sound, but I do think a lot of it has a great deal of philosophical value. I think that a modern re-working of TBoT could be a great piece of philosophy, but instead of focusing on the artistic drives contributing to greek tragedy, if one were to focus on how the anxiety underlying Man's existence drives one to create or seek aesthetic/phonetic outlets, that would be a good thesis.

[Anonymous No.7281446]

>>7281420
landscape addiction and withdrawal?

[Anonymous No.7281472]

>>7281378
>The pleasure of multiplicity burns with the fires of passion, hatred, and delusion.

This is why you have to find the One in the Many.

[Anonymous No.7281520]

>>7281165
How about you refute it instead of making assertions?

[Anonymous No.7281554]

>>7281520
"God is beauty" supposes that beauty is good, when it is not.
>>7281446
An addict is always looking for his next fix, because whatever satiety he wins from his drug of choice is fleeting and quick to pass away. This is how we ordinary untaught people are with regard to sensuality.

[Anonymous No.7281643]

>>7281220
well we find nuclear explosions on par with the sublime, as in they are beautiful and terrifying to experience if we know we're not the ones on the receiving end.

Is that not goodness we find because we are alive? as for bacteria, can we not celebrate the beauty of natural forms created by God? Just because they play a "morally reprehensible" part in a grand scheme over which we delude ourselves to understand and put quantifiers of morality on? Schopenhauer says the universe is mainly suffering, one must simply observe one animal eating another to see the disproportionate amount of suffering versus pleasure that exists. But animals do not worry themselves with 'morality', its simply the way the world must exist. The most we can do since we have this burden placed only on us to change ourselves. We can't place morality on things like bacteria or carnivores.

[Anonymous No.7281646]

>>7281520
>beauty if grounded in God as its principle
This only makes sense if you already believe it, but sounds so good that I converted a few people primarily on that appeal back when I was an evangelical Christian. Those people I converted are still believers.

That whole post is nothing but assertions.

[Anonymous No.7281695]

>>7281643
yeah, but don't forget that these are absurd implications of your own model, not mine.

[Anonymous No.7282130]

>>7281520
You can't really "prove" anything that is supposedly alive or concrete; math only works because it deals with abstract and dead things. You can't communicate what you experience without removing it from its "life", so to speak. A god that can be proved is a dead and void god. What you experience and know, and not what you just heard about, you don't feel the need to justify or explain to yourself: it simply is there, it simply is. What is real and alive you can just hint, and it will not be to the other person the same thing it is for you.

He who speaks doesn't know.

[Anonymous No.7282199]

>>7282130
He who knows has relinquished quarrels and argumentation.

[Anonymous No.7282215]

>>7281267

/thread

[Anonymous No.7282279]

I think by making this post I will be responsible for the decline in the quality of this thread considering that I'm a relatively less educated person than most people arguing about God here.

However, I have a question that I would like to be answered.

Why do people in the above comments speak about God and aesthetics as if they're tied? Why does the existence of aesthetics necessitate the existence of God?

Posts like >>7281153 are so vague in which almost every second statement seems massively questionable and unjustified to me.

I am a complete layman so I ask as one, why can't one find beauty (however fleeting) in a sensory experience? What does that have anything to do with God or any higher being?

Or is there a presupposition that one can find beauty in only that which has "meaning" ?

[Anonymous No.7282291]

>>7282279

I apologize if I misunderstood something incorrectly. Please do correct me if you think I have.

[Anonymous No.7282297]

>>7281161
gr8 b8 m8

[Anonymous No.7282312]

>>7281104

Could you please justify that statement?

I'd say the natural state of man is that of struggle and all the emotions that it evokes. Man is a slave to the his physical form and therefore is in a perpetual struggle till his death in that slavery. Any and all emotions that arise are in the end a consequence of that struggle.

Do you disagree? If so, why?

[Anonymous No.7282327]

>>7282297

(not the person who you replied to)

Is the term self-rejection here used in the literal sense? That I introspect, find flaws and shortcomings and reject myself as an imperfect being? (Sorry if I sound naive. I haven't read much about this)

[Anonymous No.7284096]

bump

[Anonymous No.7284118]

>>7281083
If a link between aesthetics and self-replication in non-living systems were found, this might give rise to a new view of agency in the universe.

[Anonymous No.7284127]

Epicurus says yes, hell yes. Nietzsche too

Onfray's new book talks about this I think
http://cup.columbia.edu/book/a-hedonist-manifesto/9780231171267

[Anonymous No.7284264]

>>7282279
Beauty implies design. Design implies a creator.

Really, it's not the strongest argument because beauty can also just be randomly created by evolutionary/psychological factors, It's basically a design argument, which is the silliest of them all because our entire universe has been empirically shown to be capable of organic creation, it's actual origins are uncertain but the nature of entropy and necessity mean we can arrive at this point, or rather a certain point, without the necessity of a God. Still doesn't mean he hasn't used natural methods to forge us, but it doesn't mean that the complexity of our world = God.

At a personal level however, the beauty I see here makes me feel closer to my idea of a God.

[Anonymous No.7284285]

>>7284264
>Beauty implies design.
no it doesn't

[Anonymous No.7284290]

>>7284264
>Really, it's not the strongest argument because beauty can also just be randomly created by evolutionary/psychological factors, It's basically a design argument

No it can't. Beauty cannot be "randomly created". Even if evolution is true, evolution cannot be "random" if it is to give rise to all the order and beauty we see in nature. Psychological factors are not "random", they have their basis in our nature, which is not random. If you are saying that chaos/chance is the foundation of things, then you are saying that there is no beauty in the world. In fact, you are saying that there is no discernible world or "things" at all, because if chaos is the foundation of things then all of our experience of order and beauty must be an illusion. This is why the existence of beauty necessarily requires there to be a self-sufficient First Principle that orders and grounds all other principles.

[Anonymous No.7284295]

>>7284290
>Beauty cannot be "randomly created".

[Anonymous No.7284298]

If chaos was the fundamental principle then the world would not be intelligible. The fact that the world is intelligible proves that the fundamental or first principle of things is Order.

You people that believe that chance created the universe are no more enlightened than the ancient pagans that thought the same and so worshipped gods of rape, incest, and war.

>>7284295
Of course, there is nothing random there. Look at the stability of that mountain. In a universe based on chaos, that mountain would be changing its structure, weight, colour, texture, its very substance, every moment.

[Anonymous No.7284322]

>>7284290
Come on anon, let's be grounded here. Beauty is arguably a social factor and is influenced by society from time to time, look at the various fashions of man, even ones that look hideous to us are seen as very attractive by others. If beauty is a universal standard then why does it rest on the eyes of it's beholders? Moreover, there are mathematical ratios like the Fibinacci sequence or the golden ratio that are linked to our aesthetic awareness. Such numbers are important because they are not "chaotic", they may be spawned "spontaneously" and that spontaneity (the universe's beginning) however creates it's own internal logos, unlikely yes but no more or less likely than a Creator God, and from those internal laws or physics, we can have a stable universe capable of creating an image of beauty for us. Chaos doesn't mean beauty can't exist, in fact, it may be it's birthplace. You argue that everything happens for a reason, and it seemingly does, but even an arbitary reason has been shown to be able to create order out of that chaos, to arrange itself automatically into combinations of great complexity and possible beauty. That is not to say again that God may not play a part in it, but it does mean that God isn't a necessary part of that - the "beauty" you see can be randomly created, it just might be a different kind of "beauty" to the one you see today if the die were re-rolled.

[Anonymous No.7284324]

>>7284298
Order does not mean a Creator.

Empiricism has shown how natural order can arise.

[Anonymous No.7284325]

>>7284298
randomness = absense of teleology

your definition of randomness is "chaos" which seems to be a maximum entropy situation and supports your shitty "god = beauty" meme.

[Anonymous No.7284330]

>>7284290
>>7284298
I get the point you're making, and I agree with it somewhat. It's just all that zeal is putting me off.

[Anonymous No.7284331]

If you think that chance created the universe you have no objective basis for morality at all. If chaos is the mother of all things then there is nothing in reality which prohibits such acts as theft, rape, murder, and so on.

>>7284322
>Come on anon, let's be grounded here. Beauty is arguably a social factor and is influenced by society from time to time, look at the various fashions of man, even ones that look hideous to us are seen as very attractive by others.

Beauty is prior to social interaction. Beauty exists before men begin talking to each other. Sure, social interaction creates standards of social beauty, but before men even begin talking to each other there has to be the world with all its harmony, the stability of being. Without the constant ordering of being we wouldn't have any society.

> If beauty is a universal standard then why does it rest on the eyes of it's beholders?

It doesn't. Everything that exists is beautiful in its existence. This is objective beauty. Think of something "ugly", like a cockroach. This repulses people, naturally. But a cockroach is beautiful in its being, its existence, in the ordering of its parts, and in its nature. Imagine looking at a cockroach and it metamorphosing every second into another creature or object of various colours and dimensions. That would be close to true ugliness, true chaos. That would be something our minds would be truly repulsed by. But even that would not be complete and utter ugliness, because even in an existence as chaotic as that, there is still existence.

>Chaos doesn't mean beauty can't exist, in fact, it may be it's birthplace.

No, order or being is the source of beauty. Try imagining the abomination that I just described above. That is a creature closer to chaos, but, even then, not a true creature of chaos, because a true creature of chaos would not be intelligible at all, you wouldn't be able to see or experience it in any way.

>>7284324
>Empiricism has shown how natural order can arise.

Empiricism cannot possibly do that, it's beyond its scope.

[Anonymous No.7284336]

>>7284298
>In a universe based on chaos, that mountain would be changing its structure, weight, colour, texture, its very substance, every moment.
The mountain is changing every moment

it's been 2500 years since heraclitus get with the times

[Anonymous No.7284338]

>>7284336
It's been about the same length of time since Aristotle made Heraclitus obsolete, along with Parmenides.

"Everything is flux" is a sophism. It's incoherent.

[Anonymous No.7284342]

>>7284331
>If chaos is the mother of all things then there is nothing in reality which prohibits such acts as theft, rape, murder, and so on.
only if you pretend that moral realism is the only possible ethical position.

>If beauty is a universal standard then why does it rest on the eyes of it's beholders?
>It doesn't.
show somebody a beautiful flower imitation. as soon as you tell them that it's fake, they lose interest. yet it's still the same object.

[Anonymous No.7284356]

>>7284342
>only if you pretend that moral realism is the only possible ethical position.

that's why I said
>nothing IN REALITY

Without there being an order to being or reality, there obviously cannot be a moral order to it.

>show somebody a beautiful flower imitation. as soon as you tell them that it's fake, they lose interest. yet it's still the same object.

Beauty is not identical to sensual pleasure. Sensual pleasure is in the eye (and the rest of the sensual organs) of the beholder. Beauty transcends the senses, although it is by our senses that we access this transcendent beauty. Your example even hints at this, because the fake flower looks no different to the eye before or after you tell them its a fake; what repulses them is that they were looking for a more transcendent beauty, they were using the flower as it appeared in their senses as an occasion to contemplate the beauty of the natural world, but once they discovered that the flower appearing to them was not of that world they lost interest. To be honest, they could still have contemplated its beauty in terms of its being, its design, the skill in its construction.

[Anonymous No.7284365]

>>7284356
OK let me modify this somewhat. There is a sense in which beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Sensual pleasure from looking at something is a kind of beauty that comes from the bodily eye. But there is also an intellectual beauty that comes from contemplating the thing with the mind's eye. Then, above all this, there is the objective beauty which is seen by contemplating the essences of things themselves, and this is the beauty that's in the Divine eye. Things have objective beauty because God is looking at them / sustaining them in existence, and he has an objective eye because he is the foundation of reality, the objects in themselves.

[Anonymous No.7284393]

>>7284365
why didnt the divine eye spot a fake flower?

[Anonymous No.7284469]

>>7284338

(Not who you responded to and I don't agree with that person either)

But
>"Everything is a flux" is a sophism

Why? Everything IS in a state of flux.

Also, how do you define flux? If by flux you mean change in physical state then you should know that matter is composed of atoms that are in a state of flux.

Also, chaos!=randomness.

Chaos needn't imply that anything everything random can happen. I think chaos is prevalent in our universe in the sense that the laws of physics are arbitrary. A different universe could have a completely different set of laws of physics.

However, due to the arbitrariness of these laws, there is no "natural" order. Just one that has been imposed by the laws of the universe in which we live in.

[Anonymous No.7284478]

>>7284338
It's hardly more incoherent than its refutation, which necessarily entails a denial of all change (if a single thing changes then so does its relation to everything else, and consequently the universe as a whole -- if there's a triangle and one of its sides detaches and flies off, it is no longer a triangle, even if the other sides "remain the same"), and therefore also of time, life, thought and perception. You are denying a) that you have reached this conclusion, b) that you are speaking about it, and c) that it can be evaluated or proven.

[Anonymous No.7284500]

>>7284365
god doesn't exist.

[Anonymous No.7284518]

>>7284365

I don't agree with you at all but some of the arguments that you put are interesting and ones I've not come across before.(Can you name a few pieces of literature that influenced this view of yours?)

Also, for GOD is a pre-requisite for objective beauty to exist and I will not try to refute God's existence because that's an entirely different thread/topic/discourse.

However, IF things have objective beauty because God is sustaining them in existence and everything exists due to God then doesn't that mean that EVERYTHING is objectively beautiful?

If everything that exists is objectively beautiful, then the entire notion of objective beauty is meaningless.

[Anonymous No.7284557]

>>7284285
>>Beauty implies design.
>no it doesn't

Beauty (defined as complexity divided by order) could act as a chaotic attractor, where future events that exert their influence on the present and past. Design as creator.

[Anonymous No.7284608]

>>7284557
why do you divide by order instead of multiplying?

[Anonymous No.7284625]

>>7284518
>some of the arguments that you put are interesting
kek
>Can you name a few pieces of literature that influenced this view of yours
everything pre-enlightenment, obviously.

[Anonymous No.7284701]

>>7284608
The future exerts a joke on me.

[Anonymous No.7284747]

>>7284557
>Beauty (defined as complexity divided by order)

Who exactly came up with that definition?

> could act as a chaotic attractor, where future events that exert their influence on the present and past. Design as creator.

How exactly does the future exert anything on the present or the past? How does the concept of time even come into the argument or concept of beauty?

Could you please elaborate?

[Anonymous No.7284800]

>>7284747
>How exactly does the future exert anything on the present or the past?
Chaotic attractors are fractal patterns that emerge in random events, influenced by future inevitabilities. This exists. Then I added my own speculation relating this to aesthetics and how if there are guiding design influences on self-replication in non-living systems, this might give us new ideas about what could be meant by higher power.

[Anonymous No.7285309]

>>7284800

>influenced by future inevitabilities
>This exists.
[citation needed]

You used your own speculations to define aesthetics as complexity divided by order? That seems quite specious to me.

[Anonymous No.7285342]

Beauty exists objectively.

We cannot know the first cause of beauty, but we can know it by its effects.

If beauty can be defined as "some arrangement of elements that produce feelings of wonder, awe, terror (sometimes), transcendence etc." then we are left with two positions:

1) God as the source of beauty

2) beauty as a distinct category of subjective experience

God or atoms, at the end of the day beauty, or at least the capacity or sensibility for it, is hardwired in the universe's programming.

It is an intelligibility that exists on a higher order than the simple mental intelligibility of numbers, systems, and processes. It is an intelligibility that speaks to the Self.

Even if God doesn't exist then we live in a chaotic meaningless universe that still gives us beauty and harmony and the physiological hardware to appreciate it. There is also something very beautiful about that as well.

[Anonymous No.7285361]

>>7281083

Shut up.

[Anonymous No.7285374]

>>7281183
Yes, that's a theists goal: to say something that sounds like it means something when it's devoid of content

[Anonymous No.7285388]

>>7282199
>He who knows has relinquished quarrels and argumentation.

If they don't value the argument itself or the result of widespread clarity in the population then they won't argue. Many others believe there is some good to come from persuading others of an idea or opinion.

[Anonymous No.7285396]

>>7284285
I find people's opinions and their justifications for it a form a beauty. Opinions are formed unconsciously, not by design.

[Anonymous No.7285420]

>>7284338
Except we do know that geologic and atmospheric and whatever else you'd like to throw in processes are changing the mountain at every moment. You know that saying you can never step in the same river twice?

[Anonymous No.7285422]

>>7285374

>the universe is perfect because otherwise it wouldn't exist, and it exists because if it didn't exist it wouldn't exist and therefore it wouldn't exist

[Anonymous No.7285431]

>>7285374
Ah, the empiricist, so scornful of uncertainty in a universe he'd die on a hill to proclaim godless

[Anonymous No.7285440]

>yfw there is no "why"; only "how"

[Anonymous No.7285450]

>>7284298
>The fact that the world is intelligible proves that the fundamental or first principle of things is Order.
shitpost : the story
We find order in the world through our perception of it, there is no a priori order of things.
What is also in favour of Chaos is that the perception of order is mostly structural and it disapears at smaller scales.

[Anonymous No.7285458]

>>7285450
Or maybe chaos is just an implicit order on a much higher scale

I think it's hilarious you're whipping out the "order is a social construct" card when we're here right now shitposting on a tibetan exotic pet forum thanks to our mastery of intelligible natural forces. kek

[Anonymous No.7285469]

>>7284331
>If you think that chance created the universe you have no objective basis for morality at all. If chaos is the mother of all things then there is nothing in reality which prohibits such acts as theft, rape, murder, and so on.

So? There is no objective basis for morality. Why is that consequence unacceptable to you?

>It doesn't. Everything that exists is beautiful in its existence

My argument against that is in the following post:

>>7284518
>However, IF things have objective beauty because God is sustaining them in existence and everything exists due to God then doesn't that mean that EVERYTHING is objectively beautiful?
>If everything that exists is objectively beautiful, then the entire notion of objective beauty is meaningless.

[Anonymous No.7285477]

>>7285458
>Or maybe chaos is just an implicit order on a much higher scale
yup but our inability to comprehend it will forever make us belive it is chaos...

I didn't say it was a social construct but a structure meaning that order mostly appears at human-like scale and that the more things you try of order the more incomprehensive it gets.

I don't say I like that, I just say that I think it's the way it works

[Anonymous No.7285490]

>>7285458

Chaos is prevalent in our universe in the sense that the laws of physics are arbitrary. A different universe could have a completely different set of laws of physics.

However, due to the arbitrariness of these laws, there is no "natural" order. Just one that has been imposed by the chaotic laws of the universe in which we live.

[Anonymous No.7285493]

>>7285469
In the highest mystical states, when one experiences his environment with an almost divine awareness, it is actually the case that everything is beautiful because it exists. I am no mystic but I have experienced intimations of this state myself.

Reality is perfect because it is.

[Anonymous No.7285504]

>>7285490
Citation needed on all that brush. I think it's hilarious posters you rash on theists but your arguments are hinged on unfalsifiable assertions like "the laws of physics are arbitrary and just happened lol iunno bro"

[Anonymous No.7285557]

>>7285493

I don't know about any higher state. Perhaps there might be one where one finds everything that exists aesthetically appealing. I have never achieved it unfortunately. To be honest, majority of the things disgust and repel me.


>Reality is perfect because it is

See that is the statement that I have a big problem with. There might be a higher state in which you find everything beautiful.

But claiming that something is "objectively" beautiful by virtue of it being in existence is something that I feel you have not justified.

Unless the very definition of the term "objective beauty" according to you is "something that exists".

The very definition of beauty mandates subjective experience. That which one finds aesthetically appealing. Speaking of beauty outside the realm of subjective experience is ABSOLUTELY meaningless because that contradicts the definition of beauty itself.

[Anonymous No.7285563]

>>7285504

That was a horrible post. I deleted it. Sorry.

[Anonymous No.7285622]

>2015
>not accepting the determinism of your brain chemistry and cultural upbringing

Ride the sin wave dudes

[Anonymous No.7285653]

>>7281130
It's true though, depressive realism is where it's at.

[Anonymous No.7285667]

Can a cognitive bias redeem the life of man in a potentially indifferent, godless universe?

[Anonymous No.7285674]

>>7285557
The mystic plumbs the depths of his immediate experience of reality to find God. Existence is then a Good and by being a Good it is also beautiful.

Many will argue that there is evil and suffering but meditation will teach you pretty quickly that moment to moment existence is not innately painful or unpleasant.

There is the mystic finding everything appealing but it is grounded on the notion that all existence subsides in and draws from some transcendent principle that is felt most keenly in the presence of love and beauty, and so the joy that derives from that is immeasurable. In that sense, it is not that existence is beautiful because X y and z but that existence is beauty. As I've come to understand it in my limited study anyways

[Anonymous No.7285904]

>>7285674

At this point I will admit that I am beginning to lose grasp of your perspective. I see that for you "existence IS beauty" but I'll have to read more in order to fully comprehend/critique your perspective.

If there's any piece of literature that you could point me to (which I can read and understand your position and it's arguments better), that'd be great.

[Anonymous No.7285911]

>>7285904
>>7285674

I asked because as incredulous as I think your position is, it still is new and interesting to me and therefore I do not want to dismiss it without having a deeper understanding of it.

[Anonymous No.7285969]

>>7285911
I enjoy the writings of Plotinus, Zen stories, the Bhagavad Gita, Rilke's Duino Elegies (long mystical poems about angels as transcendent singularities of beauty of which this world is only a pale reflection), Qabbalistic writings (where beauty is seen as the Christ-force and the way to higher states of consciousness), and Stephen Mitchell's Enlightened Heart and Enlightened Mind anthologies which are filled with sacred prose and poetry from many traditions.

The one thing they'll all recommend is meditation and direct experience. Get high in a park, chill with a pretty girl, listen to some dope music, ride around the city at night shit like that. That feeling of just being in the world, how much bigger it is than you but also how beautiful in its smallest and largest dimensions, that's the bedrock on which those writings build on. They're nothing without an aesthetic sensibility in the first place.

[Anonymous No.7285991]

You are still trapped in the Christian Weltaunschauung. Man (and let's not forget Woman) requires no redemption, precisely because of His potential for the realization of, creation of, beauty. Science is not the best means of improving the world: no doubt it is useful, but it will always have to play with the cards it has been randomly dealt and work from there to try to reach a state that is the most preferable in a purely utilitarian sense; but the arts inherently refuse Nature's raw deal, picking and choosing judiciously those cards (categories, sensations, archetypes) that will best serve in the creation of the entirely intentional depiction or description. It is true the depiction will always be puny in comparison to Nature's hodgepodge because Man's mind isn't God's, but it is as good as we have, and good enough. This is what is meant when some philosophers, who at first seem falsely hubristic and cynical, say that Man is God. It is Nature and Entropy, the closest thing we have to God, who is unredeemed, but Her best fruits (Humanity) are, at their best, small gods, and at their worst, still the best artistic subjects for their betters.

[Anonymous No.7285992]

>>7285969

Thank you. Despite my deep skepticism, I will try to keep an open mind when reading up on this.

[Anonymous No.7286006]

>>7285992
>>7285969
This is why I like /lit/.

[Anonymous No.7286030]

>>7285622
>pun on "sin" and the abbreviation for "sine" (since brainwaves take the form of a periodic function when graphed)
I'll just be borrowing that, if you don't mind. That's very clever.

[Anonymous No.7286050]

>>7285969
>le born in the wrong generation
>bitches dont know about my premodern aesthetics

[Anonymous No.7286061]

>>7285969
>Zen Stories

My nigga.

If you like those, you should try Kafka's short works. Basically the exact same aesthetic impression. He's also closely related to Rilke.

http://zork.net/~patty/pattyland/kafka/parables/parables.htm

[Anonymous No.7286065]

>>7281099
/thread

[Anonymous No.7286114]

>>7286050
actually it was working at a nightclub that solidified my love for this shit. the life, the energy of it, just getting fucked up, and wanting to melt into the music. all the inhibitions of polite society just melting away, and everyone you meet is their raw self.

i really like that weeknd song "the hills" because of that line "when I'm fucked up, that's the real me". there's something really poignant about it in this day and age

then philosophy and religious stuff started to resonate a lot more and here we are.

[Anonymous No.7287430]

Is the closest analogue to mystical religious experience for the secular-minded intense aesthetic experience?

[Anonymous No.7288645]

>>7281159
no, it's that all meanings are ultimately arbitrary and baseless, including subjective ones.

Where did you get this odd definition of nihilism?

[Anonymous No.7288649]

>>7281103
This guy gets it.
God is not god because of beauty and beauty is not beauty because of God. They are inseperable, one in the same.

To be fair I also believe ugliness is God.

[Anonymous No.7288822]

>>7287430
it's not close to anything mystical. these faggots also used to say "god is love" or some shit. now it's beauty. they'd take any undeniable subjective experience to promote some church. if dunning kruger effect had positive connotations they would claim that god manifests himself in dunning-kruger.

but intensity of emotion isnt correlated with any depth of insight. getting high doesnt bring you closer to any truths. this mode of thinking is reserved for children and women. only weakfags cling to it.

[Anonymous No.7289046]

>>7288822
I'm an agnostic, but do you seriously hold no wonder or appreciation for the natural world?

[Anonymous No.7289148]

>>7289046
i called it undeniable subjective experience. *sniff* i just dont want it to become a sublime object of ideology. we can infer unlimited ideas from good art and nature, but grasping and logically proving a singular last "purpose" is impossible.
proselyting sectarians arbitrarily narrow it down to one purpose only, hoping that their frivolous enthymemes find a naive audience. if they don't ignore the absurd consequences of their simple and innocent sounding assumptions they begin building a large scaffolding which tries to fix one problem, creating ten new ones and so on. and a new form of scholasticism was born.

[Anonymous No.7290444]

Attempting to describe beauty is foolish, because it defeats its purpose. We want to understand how it works, but it's like a magic trick, if you explain it with a rational method you ruin it.

[Anonymous No.7290485]

>>7288822
God has been beauty since Plato you dunce. If a surplus of emotion is not correlated with truth, then neither is the absence of it. And that's not to even say that nirvana and other anagalous mystical states disdain the passions. You're arguing with cartoony caricatures in your head.

[Anonymous No.7291732]

>>7281101
Ye

[Anonymous No.7292365]

>universe
>godless
choose one

[Anonymous No.7292377]

>>7284298
> being this retarded
> never having heard of quantum mechanics

[Anonymous No.7292386]

>>7284518
>I don't agree with you at all but some of the arguments that you put are interesting and ones I've not come across before.(Can you name a few pieces of literature that influenced this view of yours?)

Read Plato. Read the book of the Bible called "Wisdom" (it's not in Protestant bible, but it is in Catholic/Orthodox).

>If everything that exists is objectively beautiful, then the entire notion of objective beauty is meaningless.

Everything that exists is beautiful in its existence. This does not mean than some things aren't more beautiful than others; it's just that everything in its basic existence is good/beautiful.

[Anonymous No.7292396]

>>7284469
>Why? Everything IS in a state of flux.

IF everything is in a state of thing then nothing is. There is no BEING. There is no IS if everything is in flux. If everything in flux then even the "Is" or "Being" itself is in flux. If everything is in flux then there are no THINGS.

>>7285420
>You know that saying you can never step in the same river twice?

It's false.

Look at yourself. How old are you? Likely, every atom that was in your body the day you were born has been replaced by another. Yet you are still you. If everything was in flux you wouldn't be able to say, "I".

[Anonymous No.7292403]

>>7292377
Quantum mechanics is voodoo bullshit.

[Anonymous No.7292418]

>>7285504

while the post you responded to are deleted, the laws of physics *are* simply arbitrary; they just happened.

Let's start with what we know:
there is a universe
we dwell in said universe
said universe has laws

if one can agree to that, which I'd imagine one should, then from these alone you have sufficient material to concede that laws are at least potentially arbitrary. From the fact that there is a universe, I think it follows that any universe must be governed by some laws--otherwise, I don't see how it could persist at all. That's not to necessarily say it couldn't, it just seems to me that regardless of its constitution, some law must govern its interactions. The fact that ours happen to be as they are is but mere coincidence: the fact that our universe exists at all demands, if you'll concede my prior point, that there must be some laws--thus to argue that there's an inherent purpose to any given set of laws kind of falls on its back. If a universe, in order to exist, must have some laws, then any given constitution, should it breed life, may be viewed by its living to have purpose; however the fact that life is able to exist within it is moreso a result of the particular constitution of laws, rather than an argument for their being ordained. I think people tend to conflate capacity for life with purposes of life, when to say that 'there has to be a creator, look at how well everything suits our needs!' has the inherent misconception wherein if it didn't suit our most basic needs required to sustain life, we would not be.

[Anonymous No.7292422]

>>7292403

gr8 b8 m8

[Anonymous No.7292464]

>>7292396
>babby's first buddhist insight into the emptiness of form

[Anonymous No.7292482]

>>7292418
You're giving me all these parameters about how reality is dictated but failing to see the fact that there even being parameters in the first place suggests it probably isn't so arbitrary. There is a universe, with laws x. If laws are not x, there is no life around to comprehend anything. If laws are x, there is life. But why is there life in the first place to be expressed? What defines these conditions?

[Anonymous No.7292499]

>>7292482

if you concede that the laws themselves are perhaps arbitrary (though you seem to deny this, the fact that you're using 'if' conveys to me that at least hypothetically they may be otherwise, i.e. arbitrary), why then shoot yourself in the foot and ask 'why' life is? the laws define the conditions

[Anonymous No.7292514]

>>7292482

and how do parameters convey purpose? the parameters are resulting from my first consideration, that a universe will necessarily have laws