woensdag 25 mei 2016
De geweldenaar
Jan Blommaert schreef een stukje over geweld.
Met een aforisme als afsluiter.
"Wie geweld tot z'n ware omvang en aard herleidt is diegene die geweld ernstig neemt."
Dat vraagt om een antwoord.
"Geweld" en "waar" in één en dezelfde zin gebruiken is een gewelddadige actie.
De geweldenaarsparadox.
In een vlaag van - ja van wat? - gooien we er nog ééntje bovenop.
"Wie de paradox tot zijn ware omvang en aard herleidt is diegene die zichzelf alleen nog maar tegenspreekt. Of niet spreekt."
Zelf wens ik mezelf voortdurend dat laatste toe, maar het wil maar niet lukken.
zondag 15 mei 2016
Meneer A
Paul Cliteur op de bres voor de vrijheid van satire, voor de vrijheid van meningsuiting.
Succes verzekerd.
Wie is er nu tegen de vrijheid van meningsuiting?
Wie zou er nu een kanttekening durven maken bij de vrijheid van meningsuiting?
En dan heb ik het hier niet de voor de hand liggende uitzonderingen als laster en eerroof.
Neen.
Menneskene ere dog urimelige. De bruge aldrig de Friheder, de har, men fordre dem, de ikke har; de har Tænkefrihed, de fordre Yttringsfrihed.
Dat schrijft meneer A.
Meneer A schrijft:
"O How unreasonable people are! They never use the freedoms they have but demand those they do not have; they have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech."
(Vertaling van Meneer en Mevrouw Hong)
Dat is een merkwaardige zin. Er wordt gesuggereerd dat de mens helemaal geen vrijheid van meningsuiting heeft. Meer nog, er wordt gesuggereerd dat zij die vrijheid van meningsuiting eisen hun vrijheid van denken opgeven.
Dat wordt zelfs niet alleen gesuggereerd, dat wordt boudweg geponeerd.
Nu kan u zich daar natuurlijk met een wegwerpgebaar en een "Het zal me worst wezen wat die meneer A poneert" van af maken.
Anderzijds zou het toch fascinerend zijn om te achterhalen waarom een absolute nitwit als meneer A, tegen alles en iedereen in, dergelijke nonsens zou verkopen.
Waarom is er een absolute tegenstelling tussen de vrijheid van denken en de vrijheid van meningsuiting?
Omdat er een absolute tegenstelling is tussen de "vrijheid van denken" (Tænkefrihed) en "eisen" (fordre)
Omdat er een absolute tegenstelling is tussen "vrijheid" en "eisen".
Misschien "moet" u daar eens over nadenken.
(One must not think slightingly of the paradoxical…for the paradox is the source of the thinker’s passion, and the thinker without a paradox is like a lover without feeling: a paltry mediocrity.)
zaterdag 14 mei 2016
Paul Cliteur
Soms komt een mens tot de pijnlijke vaststelling dat hij jaren in de waan vertoefd heeft.
Zo ben ik heel recent tot het inzicht gekomen dat de alom gekende schlager van Ria Valk "Theo, je bent vannacht weer dronken geweest" helemaal niet "Theo, je bent vannacht weer dronken geweest" blijkt te zijn.
Hoe ik daar ben achter gekomen?
Ik las een tekst van Paul Cliteur op "de redactie".
We moeten erkennen dat het
huidige terrorisme een religieuze basis heeft en we moeten er mee mogen
lachen, ook als dat kwetst. Het laatste deel van onze reeks "In
godsnaam waarom
Deze tekst is een samenvatting van de laatste lezing "Verkenning van
religieus geweld" op 7 juni met als thema "In godsnaam waarom?" Meer
informatie: De Vrijzinnige Dienst van de UA en de Humanistische Vrijzinnige Vereniging.
Paul Cliteur is hoogleraar encyclopedie (Leiden) en schreef onder meer, samen met Dirk Verhofstadt, Het Atheïstisch Woordenboek (2015).
Paul Cliteur is hoogleraar encyclopedie (Leiden) en schreef onder meer, samen met Dirk Verhofstadt, Het Atheïstisch Woordenboek (2015).
Wat is de belangrijkste agenda voor dit moment in de bestrijding van het terrorisme? Volgens mij twee dingen.
Eén: Huidig terrorisme is religieus
Allereerst: erkenning dat het terrorisme, waarmee we tegenwoordig geconfronteerd worden, mede een religieuze
basis heeft. Dat betekent niet dat geen andere factoren een rol spelen
bij terrorisme, maar ook de overtuiging van de daders kan men niet
buiten beschouwing laten.
En dat is nu precies wat gebeurt. Bijna alle regeringsleiders filteren de religieuze overtuiging van de daders weg en concentreren zich op huisvesting, identiteitsproblemen, al dan niet vermeende discriminatie, et cetera.
Maar mensen doen wat zij denken dat zij moeten doen. En dat denken is een religieus bepaald denken: het hedendaags terrorisme is een theoterrorisme.
En dat is nu precies wat gebeurt. Bijna alle regeringsleiders filteren de religieuze overtuiging van de daders weg en concentreren zich op huisvesting, identiteitsproblemen, al dan niet vermeende discriminatie, et cetera.
Maar mensen doen wat zij denken dat zij moeten doen. En dat denken is een religieus bepaald denken: het hedendaags terrorisme is een theoterrorisme.
Twee: Eigen waarden niet verloochenen
Bij de bestrijding van terrorisme is dus eerst een goede diagnose
nodig. Maar voor de weerbaarheid tegenover terrorisme is ook van belang
dat de staten, die door het theoterrorisme worden getroffen, niet de
waarden verloochenen die theoterroristen proberen te vernietigen. En een belangrijk deel van het theoterrorisme is gericht op de vernietiging van satirische kritiek op religie.
Het is van belang dat de geest van Rushdie de overhand krijgt op de geest van Khomeini.
Die satirische kritiek op religie verdient het dus te worden verdedigd. Het is van belang dat de geest van Rushdie de overhand krijgt op de geest van Khomeini.
Er zal eens een moment moeten komen dat de iconen die de theoterroristen van satirische kritiek proberen te vrijwaren op dezelfde manier worden behandeld als alle andere iconen in deze wereld. Dat wil zeggen: open voor kritiek, ook satirische kritiek.
Er zal eens een moment moeten komen dat de iconen die de theoterroristen van satirische kritiek proberen te vrijwaren op dezelfde manier worden behandeld als alle andere iconen in deze wereld. Dat wil zeggen: open voor kritiek, ook satirische kritiek.
Kwetsend
Sommigen vinden dat niet “respectvol”. Zijn achten satire
“beledigend”. Laten we dat eens wat nader bezien. Dit is een definitie
van “satire”, zoals te vinden in Wordweb: “Satire: witty language used
to convey insults or scorn, esp. saying one thing but implying the
opposite”. De Oxford Dictionary geeft onder satire: “the use of humour,
irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people’s
stupidity or vice, particularly in the context of contemporary politics
and other topical issues”.
Satire is dus altijd beledigend, kwetsend, onaangenaam voor sommigen. Maar als het om dictators gaat, is dat niet erg. Sterker nog, het is geboden. Het is van belang dat we de kritische functie van satire zijn werk laten doen: het kritiseren van de macht.
"THEOTERRORISME."
Ik had er nog nooit van gehoord.
Even begon ik te twijfelen aan mijn intellectuele capaciteiten.
Dat gebeurt nu éénmaal als je stuit op een woord dat je helemaal niet kent.
Enig opzoekingswerk bracht evenwel soelaas, soelaas in de betekenis van "verlichting".
Het blijkt immers om een nieuw woord te gaan.
Een "nieuw woord" is eigenlijk een eufemisme voor een "verzonnen woord", een woord dat eigenlijk niet bestaat. Dat scheelt een slok op een borrel als het de graadmeter van je intellectuele capaciteiten betreft. Het is nu éénmaal niet verwonderlijk dat je nog nooit gehoord hebt van een woord dat niet bestaat.
De eerlijkheid gebiedt mij evenwel om dat laatste te corrigeren, dat het een woord is dat niet bestaat bedoel ik dan.
Want wanneer bestaat een woord?
Een woord bestaat van zodra er een definitie van wordt gegeven.
En wat blijkt?
Er bestaat wel degelijk een definitie van het woord "theoterrorisme".
Het woord "theoterrorisme" wordt gedefinieerd door ene Paul Cliteur op het kennisdeelplatform "Ensie".
Voor alle duidelijkheid, "theoterrorisme" blijkt dus geen terreur die Theo op zijn geweten heeft.
Vaag in mijn achterhoofd hoorde ik de echo van ene Wittgenstein.
What should we gain by a definition, as it can only lead us to other undefined terms?
P.S.
Wat is een dictator? Een dictator is een persoon die zijn definitie oplegt.
P.P.S.
Op "Ensie" kan je dus de definitie van bepaalde begrippen opzoeken.
Handig.
"Objectitiviteit" is er, hoewel het hier een vaandelbegrip (een nieuw woord!) betreft (Ensie is overzichtelijk en werkt vanuit de drie principes van zichtbaar auteurschap, expertise en objectiviteit), jammer genoeg nog niet in opgenomen.
Werk aan de winkel Paul.
Satire is dus altijd beledigend, kwetsend, onaangenaam voor sommigen. Maar als het om dictators gaat, is dat niet erg. Sterker nog, het is geboden. Het is van belang dat we de kritische functie van satire zijn werk laten doen: het kritiseren van de macht.
"THEOTERRORISME."
Ik had er nog nooit van gehoord.
Even begon ik te twijfelen aan mijn intellectuele capaciteiten.
Dat gebeurt nu éénmaal als je stuit op een woord dat je helemaal niet kent.
Enig opzoekingswerk bracht evenwel soelaas, soelaas in de betekenis van "verlichting".
Het blijkt immers om een nieuw woord te gaan.
Een "nieuw woord" is eigenlijk een eufemisme voor een "verzonnen woord", een woord dat eigenlijk niet bestaat. Dat scheelt een slok op een borrel als het de graadmeter van je intellectuele capaciteiten betreft. Het is nu éénmaal niet verwonderlijk dat je nog nooit gehoord hebt van een woord dat niet bestaat.
De eerlijkheid gebiedt mij evenwel om dat laatste te corrigeren, dat het een woord is dat niet bestaat bedoel ik dan.
Want wanneer bestaat een woord?
Een woord bestaat van zodra er een definitie van wordt gegeven.
En wat blijkt?
Er bestaat wel degelijk een definitie van het woord "theoterrorisme".
Het woord "theoterrorisme" wordt gedefinieerd door ene Paul Cliteur op het kennisdeelplatform "Ensie".
Voor alle duidelijkheid, "theoterrorisme" blijkt dus geen terreur die Theo op zijn geweten heeft.
Vaag in mijn achterhoofd hoorde ik de echo van ene Wittgenstein.
What should we gain by a definition, as it can only lead us to other undefined terms?
P.S.
Wat is een dictator? Een dictator is een persoon die zijn definitie oplegt.
P.P.S.
Op "Ensie" kan je dus de definitie van bepaalde begrippen opzoeken.
Handig.
"Objectitiviteit" is er, hoewel het hier een vaandelbegrip (een nieuw woord!) betreft (Ensie is overzichtelijk en werkt vanuit de drie principes van zichtbaar auteurschap, expertise en objectiviteit), jammer genoeg nog niet in opgenomen.
Werk aan de winkel Paul.
De toogfilosoof
LEF
Levensfilosofie, ethiek en filosofie.
Als de uitdrukking "te veel hooi op zijn vork nemen" op iemand van toepassing is, dan is het toch wel "de burger van morgen".
In mijn niet aflatende pogingen om de "leerling van morgen" te behoeden voor een overdosis kennis zou ik vandaag een warm pleidooi willen houden voor het nieuwe vak "Levensfilosofie, filosofie" (spreek uit "Elf").
Ethiek?
Aan ethiek hoeft niet meer dan een lesuurtje besteed te worden.
A Lecture on Ethics
Before I begin to speak about my subject proper let me make a few
introductory remarks. I feel I shall have great difficulties in
communicating my thoughts to you and I think some of them may be
diminished by mentioning them to you beforehand. The first one, which
almost I need not mention, is that English is not my native tongue and
my expression therefore often lacks that precision and subtlety which
would be desirable if one talks about a difficult subject. All I can do
is to ask you to make my task easier by trying to get at my meaning in
spite of the faults which I will constantly be committing against the
English grammar. The second difficulty I will mention is this, that
probably many of you come up to this lecture of mine with slightly wrong
expectations. And to set you right in this point I will say a few words
about the reason for choosing the subject I have chosen: When your
former secretary honoured me by asking me to read a paper to your
society, my first thought was that I would certainly do it and my second
thought was that if I was to have the opportunity to speak to you I
should speak about something which I am keen on communicating to you and
that I should not misuse this opportunity to give you a lecture about,
say, logic. I call this a misuse, for to explain a scientific matter to
you it would need a course of lectures and not an hour's paper. Another
alternative would have been to give you what's called a popular
scientific lecture, that is a lecture intended to make you believe that
you understand a thing which actually you don't understand, and to
gratify what I believe to be one of the lowest desires of modern people,
namely the superficial curiosity about the latest discoveries of
science. I rejected these alternatives and decided to talk to you about a
subject which seems to me to be of general importance, hoping that it
may help to clear up your thoughts about this subject (even if you
should entirely disagree with what I will say about it). My third and
last difficulty is one which, in fact, adheres to most lengthy
philosophical lectures and it is this, that the hearer is incapable of
seeing both the road he is led and the goal which it leads to. That is
to say: he either thinks: "I understand all he says, but what on earth
is he driving at" or else he thinks "I see what he's driving at, but how
on earth is he going to get there." All I can do is again to ask you to
be patient and to hope that in the end you may see both the way and
where it leads to.
I will now begin. My subject, as you know, is Ethics and I will adopt
the explanation of that term which Professor Moore has given in his book
Principia Ethica He says: "Ethics is the general enquiry into what is
good." Now I am going to use the term Ethics in a slightly wider sense,
in a sense in fact which includes what I believe to be the most
essential part of what is generally called Aesthetics. And to make you
see as clearly as possible what I take to be the subject matter of
Ethics I will put before you a number of more or less synonymous
expressions each of which could be substituted for the above definition,
and by enumerating them I want to produce the same sort of effect which
Galton produced when he took a number of photos of different faces on
the same photographic plate in order to get the picture of the typical
features they all had in common. And as by showing to you such a
collective photo I could make you see what is the typical -say-Chinese
face; so if you look through the row of synonyms which I will put before
you, you will, I hope, be able to see the characteristic features they
all have in common and these are the characteristic features of Ethics.
Now instead of saying "Ethics is the enquiry into what is good" I could
have said Ethics is the enquiry into what is valuable, or, into what is
really important, or I could have said Ethics is the enquiry into the
meaning of life, or into what makes life worth living, or into the right
way of living. I believe if you look at all these phrases you will get a
rough idea as to what it is that Ethics is concerned with. Now the
first thing that strikes one about all these expressions is that each of
them is actually used in two very different senses. I will call them
the trivial or relative sense on the one hand and the ethical or
absolute sense on the other. If for instance I say that this is a good
chair this means that the chair serves a certain predetermined purpose
and the word good here has only meaning so far as this purpose has been
previously fixed upon. In fact the word good in the relative sense
simply means coming up to a certain pre-determined standard. Thus when
we say that this man is a good pianist we mean that he can play pieces
of a certain degree of difficulty with a certain degree of dexterity.
And similarly if I say that it is important for me not to catch
cold I mean that catching a cold produces certain describable
disturbances in my life and if I say that this is the right road I
mean that it's the right road relative to a certain goal. Used in this
way these expressions don't present any difficult or deep problems. But
this is not how Ethics uses them. Supposing that I could play tennis and
one of you saw me playing and said "Well, you play pretty badly" and
suppose I answered "I know, I'm playing badly but I don't want to play
any better," all the other man could say would be "Ah then that's all
right." But suppose I had told one of you a preposterous lie and he came
up to me and said "You're behaving like a beast" and then I were to say
"I know I behave badly, but then I don't want to behave any better,"
could he then say "Ah, then that's all right"? Certainly not; he would
say "Well, you ought to want to behave better." Here you have an
absolute judgment of value, whereas the first instance was one of a
relative judgment. The essence of this difference seems to be obviously
this: Every judgment of relative value is a mere statement of facts and
can therefore be put in such a form that it loses all the appearance of a
judgment of value: Instead of saying "This is the right way to
Granchester," I could equally well have said, "This is the right way you
have to go if you want to get to Granchester in the shortest time";
"This man is a good runner" simply means that he runs a certain number
of miles in a certain number of minutes, etc. Now what I wish to contend
is that, although all judgments of relative value can be shown to be
mere statements of facts, no statement of fact can ever be, or imply, a
judgment of absolute value. Let me explain this: Suppose one of you were
an omniscient person and therefore knew all the movements of all the
bodies in the world dead or alive and that he also knew all the states
of mind of all human beings that ever lived, and suppose this man wrote
all he knew in a big book, then this book would contain the whole
description of the world; and what I want to say is, that this book
would contain nothing that we would call an ethical judgment or anything
that would logically imply such a judgment. It would of course contain
all relative judgments of value and all true scientific propositions and
in fact all true propositions that can be made. But all the facts
described would, as it were, stand on the same level and in the same way
all propositions stand on the same level. There are no propositions
which, in any absolute sense, are sublime, important, or trivial. Now
perhaps some of you will agree to that and be reminded of Hamlet's
words: "Nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." But
this again could lead to a misunderstanding. What Hamlet says seems to
imply that good and bad, though not qualities of the world outside us,
are attributes to our states of mind. But what I mean is that a state of
mind, so far as we mean by that a fact which we can describe, is in no
ethical sense good or bad. If for instance in our world-book we read the
description of a murder with all its details physical and
psychological, the mere description of these facts will contain nothing
which we could call an ethical proposition. The murder will be on
exactly the same level as any other event, for instance the falling of a
stone. Certainly the reading of this description might cause us pain or
rage or any other emotion, or we might read about the pain or rage
caused by this murder in other people when they heard of it, but there
will simply be facts, facts, and facts but no Ethics. And now I must say
that if I contemplate what Ethics really would have to be if there were
such a science, this result seems to me quite obvious. It seems to me
obvious that nothing we could ever think or say should be the thing.
That we cannot write a scientific book, the subject matter of which
could be intrinsically sublime and above all other subject matters. I
can only describe my feeling by the metaphor, that, if a man could write
a book on Ethics which really was a book on Ethics, this book would,
with an explosion, destroy all the other books in the world. Our words
used as we use them in science, are vessels capable only of containing
and conveying meaning and sense, natural meaning and sense.
Ethics, if it is anything, is supernatural and our words will only
express facts; as a teacup will only hold a teacup full of water [even]
if I were to pour out a gallon over it. I said that so far as facts and
propositions are concerned there is only relative value and relative
good, right, etc. And let me, before I go on, illustrate this by a
rather obvious example. The right road is the road which leads to an
arbitrarily predetermined end and it is quite clear to us all that there
is no sense in talking about the right road apart from such a
predetermined goal. Now let us see what we could possibly mean by the
expression, "the absolutely right road." I think it would be the road which everybody on seeing it would, with logical necessity, have to go, or be ashamed for not going. And similarly the absolute good, if it is a describable state of affairs, would be one which everybody, independent of his tastes and inclinations, would necessarily
bring about or feel guilty for not bringing about. And I want to say
that such a state of affairs is a chimera. No state of affairs has, in
itself, what I would like to call the coercive power of an absolute
judge. Then what have all of us who, like myself, are still tempted to
use such expressions as "absolute good," "absolute value," etc., what
have we in mind and what do we try to express? Now whenever I try to
make this clear to myself it is natural that I should recall cases in
which I would certainly use these expressions and I am then in the
situation in which you would be if, for instance, I were to give you a
lecture on the psychology of pleasure. What you would do then would be
to try and recall some typical situation in which you always felt
pleasure. For, bearing this situation in mind, all I should say to you
would become concrete and, as it were, controllable. One man would
perhaps choose as his stock example the sensation when taking a walk on a
fine summer's day. Now in this situation I am, if I want to fix my mind
on what I mean by absolute or ethical value. And there, in my case, it
always happens that the idea of one particular experience presents
itself to me which therefore is, in a sense, my experience par excellence
and this is the reason why, in talking to you now, I will use this
experience as my first and foremost example. (As I have said before,
this is an entirely personal matter and others would find other examples
more striking.) I will describe this experience in order, if possible,
to make you recall the same or similar experiences, so that we may have a
common ground for our investigation. I believe the best way of
describing it is to say that when I have it I wonder at the existence of the world.
And I am then inclined to use such phrases as "how extraordinary that
anything should exist" or "how extraordinary that the world should
exist." I will mention another experience straight away which I also
know and which others of you might be acquainted with: it is, what one
might call, the experience of feeling absolutely safe. I mean the
state of mind in which one is inclined to say "I am safe, nothing can
injure me whatever happens." Now let me consider these experiences, for,
I believe, they exhibit the very characteristics we try to get clear
about. And there the first thing I have to say is, that the verbal
expression which we give to these experiences is nonsense! If I say "I
wonder at the existence of the world" I am misusing language. Let me
explain this: It has a perfectly good and clear sense to say that I
wonder at something being the case, we all understand what it means to
say that I wonder at the size of a dog which is bigger than anyone I
have ever seen before or at any thing which, in the common sense of the
word, is extraordinary. In every such case I wonder at something being
the case which I could conceive not to be the case. I
wonder at the size of this dog because I could conceive of a dog of
another, namely the ordinary size, at which I should not wonder. To say
"I wonder at such and such being the case" has only sense if I can
imagine it not to be the case. In this sense one can wonder at the
existence of, say, a house when one sees it and has not visited it for a
long time and has imagined that it had been pulled down in the
meantime. But it is nonsense to say that I wonder at the existence of
the world, because I cannot imagine it not existing. I could of course
wonder at the world round me being as it is. If for instance I had this
experience while looking into the blue sky, I could wonder at the sky
being blue as opposed to the case when it's clouded. But that's not what
I mean. I am wondering at the sky being whatever it is. One might be
tempted to say that what I am wondering at is a tautology, namely at the
sky being blue or not blue. But then it's just nonsense to say that one
is wondering at a tautology. Now the same applies to the other
experience[s] which I have mentioned, the experience of absolute safety.
We all know what it means in ordinary life to be safe. I am safe in my
room, when I cannot be run over by an omnibus. I am safe if I have had
whooping cough and cannot therefore get it again. To be safe essentially
means that it is physically impossible that certain things should
happen to me and therefore it's nonsense to say that I am safe whatever
happens. Again this is a misuse of the word "safe" as the other example
was of a misuse of the word "existence" or "wondering." Now I want to
impress on you that a certain characteristic misuse of our language runs
through all ethical and religious expressions. All these expressions seem, prima facie, to be just similes. Thus it seems that when we are using the word right
in an ethical sense, although, what we mean, is not right in its
trivial sense, it's something similar, and when we say "This is a good
fellow," although the word good here doesn't mean what it means in the
sentence "This is a good football player" there seems to be some
similarity. And when we say "This man's life was valuable" we don't mean
it in the same sense in which we would speak of some valuable jewelry
but there seems to be some sort of analogy. Now all religious terms seem
in this sense to be used as similes or allegorically. For when we speak
of God and that he sees everything and when we kneel and pray to him
all our terms and actions seem to be parts of a great and elaborate
allegory which represents him as a human being of great power whose
grace we try to win, etc., etc. But this allegory also describes the
experience[s] which I have just referred to. For the first of them is, I
believe, exactly what people were referring to when they said that God
had created the world; and the experience of absolute safety has been
described by saying that we feel safe in the hands of God. A third
experience of the same kind is that of feeling guilty and again this was
described by the phrase that God disapproves of our conduct. Thus in
ethical and religious language we seem constantly to be using similes.
But a simile must be the simile for something. And if I can
describe a fact by means of a simile I must also be able to drop the
simile and to describe the facts without it. Now in our case as soon as
we try to drop the simile and simply to state the facts which stand
behind it, we find that there are no such facts. And so, what at first
appeared to be a simile now seems to be mere nonsense. Now the three
experiences which I have mentioned to you (and I could have added
others) seem to those who have experienced them, for instance to me, to
have in some sense an intrinsic, absolute value. But when I say they are
experiences, surely, they are facts; they have taken place then and
there, lasted a certain definite time and consequently are describable.
And so from what I have said some minutes ago I must admit it is
nonsense to say that they have absolute value. And I will make my point
still more acute by saying "It is the paradox that an experience, a
fact, should seem to have supernatural value." Now there is a way in
which I would be tempted to meet this paradox. Let me first consider,
again, our first experience of wondering at the existence of the world
and let me describe it in a slightly different way; we all know what in
ordinary life would be called a miracle. It obviously is simply an event
the like of which we have never yet seen. Now suppose such an event
happened. Take the case that one of you suddenly grew a lion's head and
he began to roar. Certainly that would be as extraordinary a thing as I
can imagine. Now whenever we should have recovered from our surprise,
what I would suggest would be to fetch a doctor and have the case
scientifically investigated and if it were not for hurting him I would
have him vivisected. And where would the miracle have got to? For it is
clear that when we look at it in this way everything miraculous has
disappeared; unless what we mean by this term is merely that a fact has
not yet been explained by science which again means that we have
hitherto failed to group this fact with others in a scientific system.
This shows that it is absurd to say "Science has proved that there are
no miracles." The truth is that the scientific way of looking at a fact
is not the way to look at it as a miracle. For imagine whatever fact you
may, it is not in itself miraculous in the absolute sense of that term.
For we see now that we have been using the word "miracle" in a relative
and an absolute sense. And I will now describe the experience of
wondering at the existence of the world by saying: it is the experience
of seeing the world as a miracle. Now I am tempted to say that the right
expression in language for the miracle of the existence of the world,
though it is not any proposition in language, is the existence of
language itself. But what then does it mean to be aware of this miracle
at some times and not at other times? For all I have said by shifting
the expression of the miraculous from an expression by means of language to the expression by the existence of
language, all I have said is again that we cannot express what we want
to express and that all we say about the absolute miraculous remains
nonsense. Now the answer to all this will seem perfectly clear to many
of you. You will say: Well, if certain experiences constantly tempt us
to attribute a quality to them which we call absolute or ethical value
and importance, this simply shows that by these words we don't mean
nonsense, that after all what we mean by saying that an experience has
absolute value is just a fact like other facts and that all it
comes to is that we have not yet succeeded in finding the correct
logical analysis of what we mean by our ethical and religious
expressions. Now when this is urged against me I at once see clearly, as
it were in a flash of light, not only that no description that I can
think of would do to describe what I mean by absolute value, but that I
would reject every significant description that anybody could possibly
suggest, ab initio, on the ground of its significance. That is to
say: I see now that these nonsensical expressions were not nonsensical
because I had not yet found the correct expressions, but that their
nonsensicality was their very essence. For all I wanted to do with them
was just to go beyond the world and that is to say beyond significant
language. My whole tendency and I believe the tendency of all men who
ever tried to write or talk Ethics or Religion was to run against the
boundaries of language. This running against the walls of our cage is
perfectly, absolutely hopeless. Ethics so far as it springs from the
desire to say something about the ultimate meaning of life, the absolute
good, the absolute valuable, can be no science. What it says does not
add to our knowledge in any sense. But it is a document of a tendency in
the human mind which I personally cannot help respecting deeply and I
would not for my life ridicule it.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1929
zondag 8 mei 2016
G.W.F. Hegel
LEF
Levensbeschouwing, ethiek en filosofie.
Mij lijkt "de selectie" de grootste uitdaging van het project.
Wat wordt er behandeld en wat niet?
Af en toe is er natuurlijk wel een meevaller.
Zo kan het ganse (omstandige) oeuvre van Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel samengevat worden in één enkele zin.
“Hegel seems to me to be always wanting to say
that things which look different are really the same. Whereas my
interest is in showing that things which look the same are really
different. I was thinking of using as a motto for my book a quotation
from King Lear: 'I’ll teach you differences'.
...
'You’d be surprised' wouldn’t be a bad motto either.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein
De lefgozer
"Maar wie heeft hen (d.i. de fundamentalisten) ooit uitgelegd dat je in een liberale rechtsstaat 100 procent overtuigd mag zijn dat jouw profeet de waarheid in pacht heeft, en tegelijk kunt pleiten voor de liberale rechtsstaat?
Dat moet je uitleggen.
Veel moslims denken dat de de liberale rechtsstaat tegen de islam is. Terwijl dat natuurlijk niet het geval is. Het punt is net dat in een liberale rechtsstaat iedereen zijn profeet mag hebben. Iedereen mag denken dat hij of zij de waarheid in pacht heeft."
Patrick Loobuyck in de morgen.
LEF.
Levensbeschouwing, ethiek en filosofie.
Een nieuw vak op school.
Dat is een hele boterham.
Levensbeschouwing, ethiek en filosofie.
Eén van de cruciale onderdelen van de nog op te stellen cursus lijkt mij de leerlingen duidelijk te maken dat er een verschil is tussen "geloven" en "denken".
Er is een verschil tussen
"Iedereen mag denken dat hij of zij de waarheid in pacht heeft."
en
"Iedereen mag geloven dat hij of zij de waarheid in pacht heeft."
Dat moet je uitleggen.
Bij deze alvast de eerste examenvraag van het nieuwe vak Levensbeschouwing, ethiek en filosofie.
Om niemand af te schrikken stel ik voor om het examen op te stellen in de vorm van meerkeuzevragen.
Kan je dat uitleggen?
A.
Ik denk van wel.
B.
Ik geloof van wel.
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