Would it be fair to say that you’re resistant to the itself rather binary conclusion of the linked article petunia?
In a sense. More directly, I find myself resistant to the positing of Sartre as an ideal example of atheism - as I've mentioned, there are suspicious traits of Christian framings left in his work. I'll admit that it's a somewhat unconsidered position on the man, more visceral than intellectual. I have a deep love of Nietzsche, which leaves me rather critical of people who take up his ideas and 'run them back to the church'.
I think you make an interesting point about whether or not we can lump the two positions (if we can generalise two positions) together, either as opposition or as points on the same track. It's difficult to judge how we can contemplate different realms of discourse in context of one another.
Disclosure - I have not read any Dawkins, so all of what I say about him is based on second-hand tellings of his stuff. I understand that his aim in attacking religion is political - he sees religion as The Big Baddy and wishes to remove it from society by making everyone realise that science is the Right Thing to Follow. Is that right?
I suppose the position taken in the blog is that all talk of Atheism is one and the same thing, so some Atheists are more 'true' Atheists than others - some go deeper into the implications of a lack of a God than do others.
This is a position that I can agree with to some degree. I think it's important that if one takes a position, one understands what that position means. If I claim to be a feminist, but continue to tell my girlfriend that she probably shouldn't work towards career X because her gender just isn't very good at it, I'm obviously not being a very good feminist. In the same respect, a person who claims to be Atheist should work to find the hidden assumptions that frame their thought and are based on the existence of a God.
Dawkins can still claim to be an Atheist - he doesn't believe in God. Fine. But what if he is claiming that God should not be considered a foundation for our Laws, Learning, Worldview, etc, as I beleive he is? It leaves him rather open to attacks such as that in Lenin's Tomb. I'm reminded of an excellent Colbert report where Colbert was interviewing a senator who was pushing for the ten commandments to be hung up in US courtrooms. Colbert asked the senator to list the ten commandments and the senator couldn't get past four...
There's a tricky problem of authenticity when a person turns their views to the public forum. If a Pop scientist comes along to attack religion, he will obviously be open to the points that atheism has been done before, and thought through a lot more effectively than other people. But that's kind of true of everything Pop.
It's sort of like posting a blog attacking Oasis's lyrics because the Surrealist movement did nonsense words years ago, backed it up with a lot of theory and really properly Understood what they were doing. It's obviously all true, but what's the point?
Which is what you said, really...
you might need to consider Sartre’s philosophy in relation to Kant... “I can’t take that kinda hurt”
Likewise. Another philosophical phobia of mine.
I’d love to hear further thoughts on “the proper meaning of such a position” by which I assume you mean the full ramifications of the “Death of God”, because I don’t know if anyone’s got that one sussed yet.
It's a subject that I find fascinating, though I apologise that my wording ('the proper meaning') gives the impression that I have it All Worked Out...
As you've already said, the loss of fixed meaning is the main point of 'God is Dead'. As the point upon which all philosophy post-Descartes fixed the ability of certainty, we are left with a framework of language and meaning which is totally dependent on socio-historical structures. There is no 'true' meaning behind anything, but only interpretation.
Added to this is the loss of telos or arche upon which to orient 'the human project'. As Sartre agrees, we cannot have any moral truth without God - we must make our own choices. These choices are not in line with any Grand Scheme of things; there is no eternal reference upon which to judge our actions. For Sartre, this is a great cause of anguish - if we do not have this frame of reference, yet wish to retain some sense of ethico-moral 'goodness', we must remain in the dark to the desired 'truth' of our actions. Nietzsche saw the fear in such an ethics, but saw a 'way out' in self-affirmation. His myth of the eternal return of the same can be read as a parable to bring about an understanding of a morality without God-as-reference - it forces us to choose our actions based upon what we want to happen.
An interesting thing about the Death of God is that it does not deny God, just claim His end. It could almost be claimed of Nietzsche that the Genuine Existence of God is irrelevant to his philosophy - the important fact is that the process started by God has come around and killed itself. When the search for Truth and the Good forms its own apparatus of destruction - scientific enquiry, logic etc, when taken to their conclusion delimit their own posibilities, we see that the Platonic-Christian tradition has been nihilistic all along, aiming itself to a dead God.
But I'm obviously still just retreading the ground that Nietzsche wrote. It's interesting to see the mention of him in prophetic terms because, in some respects, it seems as though he saw a turn in the thought of the Western world that is still working its effects. As you rightly say, these things are still getting worked out.
It's hard, if not impossible, to actually say what the 'proper meaning' of such an 'event' is. The obvious reason is that, as it represents the destruction of Meaning as previously understood, we can't really speak of 'The Meaning', but can only show various splinters given up by the theory. In detroying telos, the Death of God can only be a recurring moment in which we are always forming and reforming reference and interpretation. Inside this moment, we can choose to affirm the Death or deny it - a Yes or a No.
So maybe what I meant was that a 'proper meaning' of the Death of God would be a turn to affirmation of life without fixed guide - life as a flux without its eternal signified hovering outside of it. When I say that Sartre failed to understand this, I see his humanism as an attempt to create a new God (in the sense of a 'centre of meaning') within Man, whether that God be located in man's Special Power of free will (thus making him immune to the causality of ugly nature) or within Man's unperturbed Consciousness. He still seems to be grabbing towards a certainty which was only ever provided by a Dead God. |
