Schleiermacher and Steiner's contrasting anthropologies

Schleiermacher influenced theology from a rational, dogmatic, traditional system to one centered in experience, mainly his famous "feeling of absolute dependence" (on a presumed God, not the Void, which would come to be felt more widely later in the 19th).
with a different anthropology (which Schleiermacher would have rejected), Steiner held also to an experiential "theology" of (mystical) sorts, but one more of conditional independence.

Schleiermacher in Moscow

having a chocolate-coffee near Revolution Square in Moscow in a Seattle-based cafe this afternoon, reading C. W. Christian's Friedrich Schleiermacher, finally understood his theological thought and position...first encountered some near four decades past in a class at Duke.

no one will have noticed or course. few understood if they had. and how few can appreciate a scholar's smile?

saving God, or avoiding a void?

with 40 years of periodic readings in religion(s) and theology(ies)...
often it seems rather less true that theological writings are an explication, or even apologetics, than an attempt now some centuries old, to save God.
or worse...
avoid a void

lost in the words

even if God is there to be found...
most get lost in the words...
especially if seeking in the thick ancient and new-growth forests of theology, religious studies, philosophy...with their conflicting maps and criss-crossing paths

??

how many -- who -- people have come to wonder if the ? has an interesting origin, and social and cultural history?

Don Quixote in Giza...

encountering the Sphinx...

no angels above...

not being able to look to any caring God for consolation with even his very real periodic physical suffering and his meaning of seeking...Nietzsche -- after "Darwin" -- seems to have tried to look from the animal below (and in) man upwards not to any angelic or Platonic delusions, but to a kind of nonetheless noble surpassing of man: the Übermensch

which universe of discourse

it is within the university rather than the universe that most try to think about the world and life, especially since the last quarter of the 19th century.
(if in places like California it is rather New Age bookshops)

enthusiastic?

choose your god wisely

Mt. Sinai... Mt Tabor... Sils Maria...

Nietzsche...creating a replacement for the Christianity he had disbelieved and rejected...

not Mt. Sinai on the Peninsula, nor Mt Tabor, nor Mount of Olives...but Sils-Maria Switzerland

 "6,000 feet beyond man and time"

and a BBC documentary on Nietsche:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuxDMEDF6Vs

Personal, Confessional Bibles?

"Fragments of a great confession" (Bruchstücke einer großen Konfession) à la Goethe's own CV autopsy...

Moses' Pentateuch...

4th-century Holy Bible...

et al

what writer, poet, philosopher, theologian, critic, scientist, essayist..

has not, essentially, written their own?

Boston

international coverage of the events...
but -- bluntly, yet realistically -- who gives much attention to eg Baghdad's regular bombings?

he's a wise guy

where is a leader who feels he must be learned, knowledgeable and experienced to wisely lead a people?
and is such a person electable?

are you a world travailer?

a traveler, a travailer, through history/ies, religions, philosophies, sciences, biographies, ruins, peoples,  places, nations, cultures, mores, minds, ideas...

"oh, its nothing really."

if there is only emptiness, a void, really nothing, hereafter...
then there is nothing really to worry about.
; )

the biblical myths of science

someday, most of the contemporary scientific discoveries in eg atomic physics and astronomy -- about which scientists and encyclopedias are so serious and confident now -- will be seen to have been as mythic as the once-believed and defended stories of the Bible.

thoughts also on reading: Measuring Eternity: The Search for the Beginning of Time, Martin Gorst, 2001.

The Job of a lesson not to be drawn from history

clever, but the below is not the lesson to be drawn from history...
that man exaggerates his knowledge and ability is closer to the facts.
Job 38:4-7, 31-33.

"It almost feels like we're taking our first baby steps as a species, as a civilization, towards actually having a model of the universe that will hold up over the next 500,000 years," proclaimed Perlmutter shortly after discovering the acceleration. He may be right -- the present model certainly paints a coherent picture of the universe we see around us -- but if there is one lesson to be drawn from history, it is that time is a harsh judge. Many theories have had their day in the limelight, only to disappear into the wings when another one appeared. Over the centuries each new generation felt it had found, or was close to finding, the right answer, and it is worth remembering that Ussher was not alone in drawing the wrong conclusion about the age of the universe. Many of the greatest minds in science were equally blinkered, trapped by their own beliefs, or the prevailing assumptions of their day. Newton was every bit as religiously dogmatic as Ussher and fought to reconcile his science with the Bible; Darwin exaggerated the Earth's age to allow enough time for species to evolve; while Einstein was forced to concede that the universe was not static, but expanding -- his "greatest blunder." Given this track record, it seems all too likely that our present picture of the universe is flawed in some way."

-- Measuring Eternity: The Search for the Beginning of Time, Martin Gorst, 2001, p. 291.

individuation

to develop and grow out of the social patterns of a society's customs and mores is neither simple nor common; to grow individually out and "above" its mentality and emotions is even less so.

a "standard candle" of knowledge?

in order to measure the age and size of the universe, a standard for measurement, a "standard candle" was needed, and has been thought to have been found in the "20th century".
but, as learning from the biographies of the history of science in nature theology, natural philosophy, geology, biology, physics, astronomy...shows of the search...
the human mind is not a "standard candle".

-- reflections on Measuring Eternity: The Search for the Beginning of Time, Martin Gorst, 2001.

second-hand music

people understand second hand smoke, but few second-hand music...
which can also pollute the other person

fools' gold

walking by a new high-end jewelry shop in Moscow, with its display of various gold and precious-stoned objects, which people ogle and treat as of some high worth...it really need not be stated that for one searching for some "gold" of truth, insight, understanding, vision...this physical gold, which most assume to worship, is that of fools.

atomic apes

the unembarrassed chest-thumping of nations' leaders and their passive masses about possessing -- or wanting to -- nuclear weapons, should be recognized clearly as a terrifying fact of gnothi seauton. 

two materialisms in Moscow

Marxist
Mall-ist

there are no atheists in...

"there are no atheists in foxholes"...
what about the new malls in Moscow...
did the Marxists or the malls produce more atheists in Moscow?

Jefferson's "equality" vs "natural aristocracy"

it would be too unrealistically idealistic to expect the many who American-creedally repeat "all men are created equal" to give much of any thought and discernment to the epistolary dialogue of Jefferson and Adams on "natural aristocracy".

Plotinus & Co.

if Plotinus was truly insightful, then we are truly deceiving our selves

we might say we are lost in medias res

once upon a time: "God willing"

now...chance willing?

Russia Today today?

in the noble tradition of Soviet propaganda: everything is bad elsewhere...

a Moscow moment 40 minutes long (2013)

2013
Moscow has changed dramatically since 2003, since 1993, since 1983...in many ways...

New Arbat's Dom Knigi, the well-known House of Books. (the main book store of Moscow and Russia)
a modest three part purchase.
discover later that the two self selected parts were correct; that part by the bookstore staff member -- who genuinely seemed to want to help -- not.

two days later... ok, return for refund or exchange for the 270 ruble (~$10) purchase.

2013. improved, refurbished, upgraded, modernized...Moscow... Dom Knigi...
a pleasant (!), warm, middle-aged "information desk" woman kindly starts the process helpfully filling in the required 2-page form herself...
"passport information, please"     ?      ("oh no")! (nascent regrets)
"address in Moscow"
then all 'purchase receipt' details filled in by hand...

first form with slight mistake... she rewrites completely.
5 minutes.
second form, slight mistake. rewrites. 10 minutes...

"wait here please"...then disappears towards the original purchase point cashier's desk. 15...20 minutes...

slight error. rewrite third time. still smiling. (meaning, the staff member)

observing the process...now counting...the time...the year...the cost of 270 rubles...
Moscow's main bookstore!!!, 2013!!!... (sms a friend to express astonishment)

finally, all correct. 30 minutes.  ~ : )

papers sent to back room.  : ( !
...35, 36, 37 minutes....

"please, how much more time?"...adding (finally with open frustration) "it has been 35 minutes... Moscow 2013... simple return... two minutes in the US"...
immediate face/attitude change. "you must not expect here what you have in America; if you are going to visit here you must adjust to life here."
"but its Moscow in 2013, not 2003!...been here '15 years'!"

a stray pen mark noticed in accounting -- "a mistake" -- requires an additional document initialed to certify that the first was not invalidated.

her friendliness gone. closed. (~arrogant American?)

now 40 minutes...escorted to money desk..."please give Mr. USA 270 rubles". huffy, curt, hurt. gone.

thenafter (to repair inter-national/-personal/-cultural relations) return to her: "didn't want to offend you, but expected more in Moscow in 2013 in Dom Knigi. hasn't it changed?"
"nyet, it will never change".
"but the store has improved so much in recent years... 2013, not 2003"

animosity gone..."you know, in fact I agree with you" said with an open smile.

Russian openness...friendliness...
and inefficiency, in the center of Moscow. 2013.

sunset story?

needed: a history of the "understanding" of sunsets

that's awful

seeking but cant find:
a history of the meaning/sense, idea of "awe"

devoid revelation on a "Mt. Sinai"?

reading in the details of the biographies and ideas in the history of 19th century agnosticism...
it would perhaps be more convincing if at least someone had had a Mt. Sinai "devoid revelation", or found themselves in a mounting darkness riding to Damascus...

what would be the opposite of theophany?

samsara is for the gods

the 2011 film Samsara...

perhaps it is for the best that the young teen in the next seat was only almost successful quietly extracting and chewing her chips ...

the film was effective in the sense that the scale, be it of the desert dunes, the hundreds of Asian factory workers making irons or eviscerating cattle carcass industrially...the shanty town dwellers...

the scales were appropriately beyond the human...

the feeling of it all, unnerving...
like an unavoidable massacre where no one cares or survives...

samsara is not an idea for humans...
if it be one for any indifferent gods beyond

can't Kant?

how many people, not specialists in philosophy, since he began lecturing and writing, actually understood Kant's "system"?
and if it was (and is?) so important, how can so many have lived, thought and died who either poorly or wrongly understood -- or were completely ignorant of -- Kant's explication of human psychology?

the labyrinth Kant built

attempting to understand how Kant influenced Thomas Huxley's word and idea "agnostic"
have -- over decades -- always found it impossible to fully understand and recall the abstract intellectual labyrinth Kant built.
hopeless?
useless anyway...?

19th century cavemen?

some have gnostically claimed that the 19th century was the/another culmination of the/a Kali Yuga...

however that may ultimately have been, it does seem -- examining the writings, thoughts, biographies...of the time -- that many then were quite convinced and content to consider and dispute 'the wall and shadows of Plato's cave'

shopping with Columbus

Columbus believed that the Paradise before time, was nearby in his; so seemingly and similarly do shoppers today.

sensible Nietzsche?

Nietzsche struggled to make sense of and in the world. reaction then showed this was not a very sensible thing to do.

inner and outer God

Plotinus vs Paley

church and state

compare Constantine the Great and Jefferson in our history

with some horrible inhuman harmony?

treading "holy, sacred ground"...
perhaps blasphemy...

"Auschwitz" and Ennead III.2.15

re: Steppenwolf's Mock(ery)-trial

compare Apuleius' Metamorphosis III

cf. Theatrum Mundi: The History of an Idea, Lynda Christian, p. 47.

terrible truths in a theatrum mundi?

Ennead III.2.15 and Bhagavad-Gita II