Am I a naughty Mormon boy if I like Nietzsche?

[Robert F. Smith]

On 7/2/2017 at 7:36 AM, Honorentheos said:

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I can't agree less with this. The Mormon religion tells you what the meaning of life is, and this is the same for all people as dictated by the Church which claims it comes from God. It isn't about creating meaning out of the self which would include countless meanings, countless expressions of self. The true world theory of Mormonism is central to explaining this meaning. Mormonism has a name for this shared purpose to life and how the fallen world we are in fits into the true world theory - the plan of salvation. If a person intuits that there is something off with this approach they are not encouraged to look into their own will to reason and find out why, instead they are taught to conform and recognize truth is confirmed by being aligned with the leadership and scripture.

A lot of Mormons may indeed accept this vertical (top down) belief, but it does not accord with the urging by Brother Brigham to find out for one's self what the truth is, nor with David O. McKay's advice to meditate:

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“I think we pay too little attention to the value of meditation, a principle of devotion. … Meditation is the language of the soul. It is defined as ‘a form of private devotion or spiritual exercise, consisting in deep, continued reflection on some religious theme.’ Meditation is a form of prayer. …

“Meditation is one of the most secret, most sacred doors through which we pass into the presence of the Lord” (Man May Know for Himself, compiler Clare Middlemiss [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1969], 22–23).

 

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................................................. it appears to me that for the Mormon to attempt to make Mormon thought conform to Nietzsche's philosophy or align Nietzsche's philosophy to Mormonism requires distorting or hacking away at both to the point they are not recognizable. One only assumes one is still talking about Mormonism or about Nietzsche's philosophy because one began from that premise not because they remained consistent.

Thank you for exploring this issue in learned and reflective fashion -- even if your conclusions miss the point.

Edited July 10, 2017 by Robert F. Smith

[mfbukowski]

OK here at last is the infamous Rorty quote which I oppose and to keep it on the OP it mentions Nietzsche.

What more could anyone want?

Quote

 

On the view I am suggesting, the claim that an "adequate" philosophical
doctrine must make room for our intuitions is a reactionary slogan, one
which begs the question at hand.  For it is essential to my view that we
have no prelinguistic consciousness to which language needs to be adequate,
no deep sense of how things are which it is the duty of philosophers
to spell out in language. What is described as such a consciousness is
simply a disposition to use the language of our ancestors, to worship the
corpses of their metaphors. Unless we suffer from what Derrida calls "Heideggerian nostalgia," we shall not think of our "intuitions" as more 
than platitudes, more than the habitual use of a certain repertoire of terms,
more than old tools which as yet have no replacements.

I can crudely sum up the story which historians like Blumenberg tell
by saying that once upon a time we felt a need to worship something
which lay beyond the visible world. Beginning in the seventeenth century
 we tried to substitute a love of truth for a love of God, treating the
world described by science as a quasi divinity. Beginning at the end of
the eighteenth century we tried to substitute a love of ourselves for a
love of scientific truth, a worship of our own deep spiritual or poetic
nature, treated as one more quasi divinity.

The line of thought common to Blumenberg, Nietzsche, Freud, and
Davidson suggests that we try to get to the point where we no longer 
worship anything, where we treat nothing as a quasi divinity, where we 
treat everything - our language, our conscience, our community - as
a product of time and chance. To reach this point would be, in Freud's
words, to "treat chance as worthy of determining our fate." In the next
chapter I claim that Freud, Nietzsche, and Bloom do for our conscience
what Wittgenstein and Davidson do for our language, namely, exhibit its
sheer contingency. 

 

P 21-22 Contingency Irony and Solidarity

In Mormon terms he is trying to do away with spirit-to spirit communication, a task at which I think he fails 

Note that this passage pretty much summarizes Mormonism

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 Beginning at the end of the eighteenth century we tried to substitute a love of ourselves for a
love of scientific truth, a worship of our own deep spiritual or poetic
nature, treated as one more quasi divinity.

And I suppose this would also oppose all of Romanticism including Schiller.

Does anybody get it now??

 

Edited July 9, 2017 by mfbukowski

[USU78]

7 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

OK here at last is the infamous Rorty quote which I oppose and to keep it on the OP it mentions Nietzsche.

What more could anyone want?

P 21-22 Contingency Irony and Solidarity

In Mormon terms he is trying to do away with spirit-to spirit communication, a task at which I think he fails 

As if it were possible to succeed in such a venture.

BTW, does he know he comes off as a smartallecky 15 year old cynic?

Edited July 9, 2017 by USU78

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, USU78 said:

As if it were possible to succeed in such a venture.

BTW, does he know he comes off as a smartallecky 15 year old cynic?

I agree, no, he clearly had that trait his whole life.

Only child, like me. 

[Honorentheos]

3 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

A lot of Mormons may indeed accept this vertical (top down) belief, but it does not accord with the urging by Brother Brigham to find out for one's self what the truth is, nor with David O. McKay's advice to meditate:

 

Thank you for exploring this issue in learned and reflective fashion -- even if your conclusions miss the point.

I've been largely observing the discussion in this thread since I felt the case was sufficiently made that Mormonism is a true world theory of the type Nietzsche largely built philosophical opposing argument against that include the concept of the ubermensch and the eminence of life and will. I've been keenly waiting for some agreement on the role of culture in the guiding or priming of the individual that gives the form to the meaning they might personally give to their own experiences. Still waiting to see where that goes. I thought I'd step out given Clark had offered up an example of the elephant that I contrasted with the teaching about race which was opposed for being controversial and less definite than an elephant. It was amusing given the description "controversial and subjectively defined" is easily be how an outside observer may describe the results of a survey of a wide spectrum of random people's views on the LDS cultural teachings about spiritual experience. So, I hold his reaction showed it to be an even better analog than I had first anticipated.

But regardless, I'm interested in seeing where the conversation between those who claim LDS belief goes before fully jumping back in. MFB tempted me with the detour into the aesthetic but that's a side issue to the much more important one of cultural normalization of the individual experience, IMO.

Edited July 10, 2017 by Honorentheos

[USU78]

15 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

I agree, no, he clearly had that trait his whole life.

Only child, like me. 

Rorty on Rorty:  

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My sense of the holy is bound up with the hope that some day my remote descendants will live in a global civilization in which love is pretty much the only law.

A true believer in John Lennonism, apparently.  I remember seeing vid of Lennon and a CofE bishop on a Brit talkshow.  The bishop was very kind, seeking common ground.  Lennon was sour, insulting, dismissive, and cruel.  I haven't had much interest in Lennon or his music since I saw it.  And I was very much a child of the '60s, and that included perseverating over Pete Best vs Richard Starkey.

Rorty seems an odd duck.

[mfbukowski]

2 hours ago, USU78 said:

Rorty on Rorty:  

A true believer in John Lennonism, apparently.  I remember seeing vid of Lennon and a CofE bishop on a Brit talkshow.  The bishop was very kind, seeking common ground.  Lennon was sour, insulting, dismissive, and cruel.  I haven't had much interest in Lennon or his music since I saw it.  And I was very much a child of the '60s, and that included perseverating over Pete Best vs Richard Starkey.

Rorty seems an odd duck.

He is arrogant as h___ but very much speaks for secularism today- in fact he is kinder than many toward religion.  He has defended religion-like beliefs and was quite a critic of Dennet and those who think like him, those who are strict foundationalists with unexamined assumptions like SOME on this board who do not really understand postmodern epistemology.  Unfortunately this video is long and incomplete, cutting off the conclusion, but I will post it anyway so you can listen or jump through spots or ignore it- at least it will be available

His wife was raised Mormon and is a philosopher in her own right.  In this video he defends a fictitious woman who is intellectually sophisticated, and who is a practicing Catholic.

I am not saying she was active at all, but certainly Rorty was familiar with the Mormon milieu.  Loyd Ericson was friends with this philosophy teacher who was actually asssigned to visit Mary Rorty.  https://works.bepress.com/scott_abbott/58/

He here shows the difference between science and religion and becomes a defender of religious belief in the right context- and I believe that my beliefs actually fall within that context and though I do not care for his opinion either way, because quite frankly I came to these conclusions myself before finding Rorty, primarily from Dewey, I think Rorty becomes a good spokesman as an atheist himself who is the main prophet of postmodernism who nevertheless accepts that religion is a perfectly "intellectually acceptable" way of seeing the world

Here is a quote from a review of his book The Future of Religion https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007QXW7SW/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Quote

 

Though coming from different and distinct intellectual traditions, Richard Rorty and Gianni Vattimo are united in their criticism of the metaphysical tradition. The challenges they put forward extend beyond philosophy and entail a reconsideration of the foundations of belief in God and the religious life. They urge that the rejection of metaphysical truth does not necessitate the death of religion; instead it opens new ways of imagining what it is to be religious -- ways that emphasize charity, solidarity, and irony. This unique collaboration, which includes a dialogue between the two philosophers, is notable not only for its fusion of pragmatism (Rorty) and hermeneutics (Vattimo) but also for its recognition of the limits of both traditional religious belief and modern secularism.

In "Anticlericalism and Atheism" Rorty discusses Vattimo's work Belief and argues that the end of metaphysics paves the way for an anti-essentialist religion. Rorty's conception of religion, determined by private motives, is designed to produce the gospel's promise that henceforth God will not consider humanity as a servant but as a friend. In "The Age of Interpretation," Vattimo, who is both a devout Catholic and a frequent critic of the church, explores the surprising congruence between Christianity and hermeneutics in light of the dissolution of metaphysical truth. As in hermeneutics, interpretation is central to Christianity, which introduced the world to the principle of interiority, dissolving the experience of objective reality into "listening to and interpreting messages."

The lively dialogue that concludes this volume, moderated and edited by Santiago Zabala, analyzes the future of religion together with the political, social, and historical aspects that characterize our contemporary postmodern, postmetaphysical, and post-Christian world.

 

The words "post christian" were the words of the reviewer- 

Break open the piggy bank, download free kindle software, and invest 13 bucks and give it a read and suddenly I think, for better or worse, you will understand that he is basically a softy toward religion with a lot of bravado and ego.   But of course I do not understand people like that at all.

 

[clarkgoble]

Quote

His wife was raised Mormon and is a philosopher in her own right.

I think she still is. At the time of the Dialogue interview I think she was a Sunday School teacher. That was a while ago of course - about 8 or 9 years ago. I got the impression both her kids had left the church though.

Patricia said,

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So, I think that Dad’s belief, his hope, was that he would protect us from becoming reactionary fundamentalist Christians by being exposed to, inoculated by, a fairly benign church experi- ence. We did have a positive church experience. We left it, but we left it with some good memories.  

 

Edited July 10, 2017 by clarkgoble

[mfbukowski]

7 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

I think she still is. At the time of the Dialogue interview I think she was a Sunday School teacher. That was a while ago of course - about 8 or 9 years ago. I got the impression both her kids had left the church though.

Patricia said,

 

Fabulous- thanks so much for this I had not seen it.  I remember my first date with my wife- the first real Mormon I had met, I had to know more about eternal progression and she was floored that I saw it as a humanist self-improvement idea taken into eternity.  McMurrin was the first "Mormon" book I had read except for the scriptures.

Great stuff!!

I think this kind of thing will just flabbergast the critics hereabouts, that this alleged atheist could have such views about Mormonism.   Thanks again

 

[Honorentheos]

17 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Fabulous- thanks so much for this I had not seen it.  I remember my first date with my wife- the first real Mormon I had met, I had to know more about eternal progression and she was floored that I saw it as a humanist self-improvement idea taken into eternity.  McMurrin was the first "Mormon" book I had read except for the scriptures.

Great stuff!!

I think this kind of thing will just flabbergast the critics hereabouts, that this alleged atheist could have such views about Mormonism.   Thanks again

 

I know quite a few a-religious types who were initially intrigued by the concept of exaltation as initially explained. I've yet to know one who, upon getting into the meat of it, remained intrigued.

[hagoth7]

Beautiful Life.

Mercy River.

[hagoth7]

On 6/30/2017 at 1:37 PM, boblloyd91 said:

..However he also strikes me as a German Korihor with his discussion about relying completely on the self. I was curious what those here on this board who are philosophically inclined think of Nietzsche. Is he hazardous to spiritual health? Or can something be gained from studying him?

Depends entirely on who you ask.

https://www.amazon.com/Global-Mormonism-21st-Century-Neilson/dp/084252696X/ref=sr_1_sc_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1499829916&sr=8-2-spell&keywords=global+moronism

I happened to pick up a copy of this over the weekend for reasons unrelated to the OP. One of the chapters has some extremely harsh things to say about Nietzsche, and about those who recommend his teachings. 

I haven't formed an opinion yet...

Edited July 12, 2017 by hagoth7

[DJBrown]

I have not followed this topic at all.  But I will respond to the OP:

I think the quotation from Nietzsche which is most often interpreted as being anti-religion is his famous statement that "God is dead."  But his point was anything but anti-religious.  He recognized that Western Civilization had lost its foundational reliance upon religious ethics.  He was not make a metaphysical claim that a supreme being did not exist.  It was an observation that Western societies had abandoned the Judeo-Christian ethos for Darwinian thought.  And he predicted, very accurately, that Western Civilization would pay a steep price.  The 20th century proved him right.

I do not necessarily believe that any person is 'naughty' for studying Nietzsche.  I think, like all things, it is a matter of balance and perspective.  As Elder Ballard would say, "give the Lord equal time." 

Edited July 12, 2017 by DJBrown

[clarkgoble]

On 7/11/2017 at 1:55 AM, mfbukowski said:

McMurrin was the first "Mormon" book I had read except for the scriptures.

Great stuff!!

I think this kind of thing will just flabbergast the critics hereabouts, that this alleged atheist could have such views about Mormonism.  

Actually I'm flabbergasted you'd like McMurrin. I'd have thought you'd hate it. (I think it's ridiculously weak - Given's Wrestling with the Angel is everything McMurrin seemed to be trying to do, but Givens actually pulled it off)