Reason and faith

[Guest guest]

Namaste Anandaji,

No quotation only the see above of scholarment,

things are quiet these days(cf.#30179) It is

the case that philosophy is a house of many

rooms and the corridors between them may be

ill lit and so seldom used that the denizens

of those rooms begin to think that they inhabit

different houses entirely. The Greek thinkers

however kept a firm grip on the empirical hoping

to find in the crude ore of multiple instances

the gold of principle. Parmenides is said for

instance to have drawn up laws for his native

city of Elea. Before developing his own philosophy

he had been a follower of Pythagoras who found

his speculations on number confirmed in the

fact of harmony and scale. Aristotle saw

Metaphysics as the science of Being qua being

but yet gathered constitutions for his study

of Politics (158 of them)

and Plato worked through concrete examples which

reflected truth. They were not afraid of getting

their hands dirty literally and metaphorically.

 

It is universally true that the primary intuition

of being is of what the Zen folk call the suchness of

things. Unless you have that you will never

make much of a metaphysician and be able to move

on to a consideration of your own being. Unless

you feel the form of a thing as something that

is superadded on to the pure 'isness' (ousia)

of things then the consideration of substance,

essence, accidents, upadhis will be mere arid

abstraction and vain speculation. We have to

begin from where we are. Don't get stuck and don't

put on your space suit until you need it.

 

Best Wishes,

Michael.