posted
I went to hear a lecture yesterday, and the speaker spoke about the need for self-contempt. He said that without self-contempt, we cannot have a sense of morality proper. We cannot have a sense of reverence without self-comtempt, and the difference between self-contempt and reverence is the space where morality resides.
He also went on about how modern Americans don't have a sense of self-contempt. They don't understand a moral ought, and that modern American christians are the most aggregious offenders.
I've always considered self-respect the root of all disciple. I rattled off that phrase too quickly, so I doubt it's my own, but after listening to him, I'm starting to understand that there is something to be said for self-contempt. Do you think that we have a sense of reverence, in a properly severe way?
Do you think self-contempt is necessary for morality?
posted
I'd call it humility, not self-contempt. But yeah, I think humility is necessary for moral discernment.
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posted
Can you define "self-contempt" in this context? If it means realistically viewing oneself as an extremely small cog in the universe, and that the universe doesn't revolve around you, then yes I'm all for it.
If it means viewing oneself as worthless and unloveable, and low self-esteem, than I'm not.
posted
Jeniwren, he made a point to talk about self-contempt, not humility, because with humility, there isn't a sense of unquenched striving that accompanies a moral ought.
He made a specific argument that this drive to increase self-esteem is misplaced and awful, and the education should be concerned with cultivating reverance through great art. He came right next to so many truths in this hour and a half lecture that maybe he is right on and I just have figure out how it works.
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Scott,
Reverence, a sense of the superiority of something that is more you than you are. That's weird phrase, but I think that's the sense in which he used the word.
self-contempt, a sense of inferiority with respect to that which you revere, and since the thing you revere is a superior you. A sort of a hostility towards your inadequacy.
posted
I've been on the "moral ought" bandwagon a while. Especially about little things, usually revolving around honest and up-front disclosure and agreement on context (yes, wedding planning has me thinking about this). I know that's not really your main point in this thread, but let me derail. I find that 'ought', in any sort of ethical/existential/free will context, has gone into disuse. 'Ought' has become almost solely a term used in relation to an external condition.
It bugs me. I think we've started to overcompensate for prior long stretches of time where 'can' was severely restricted as a concept, and there needs to be some correction. The correction needs careful consideration, and I think that conservatives in this country, as a homogenous voting block, are not showing signs of this. Then again, liberals, as a homogenous voting block, haven't gotten off the 'can' bandwagon yet...
posted
I think it is necessary. It allows for evaluating oneself appropriately. In order to act around others in a way that promotes the greatest good, we have to see how our interactions affect other people. If we are blind to any harm we might be causing, because we lack any means of seeing ourselves as acting badly or inappropriately, then we will be more likely to hurt rather than help.
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quote:He also went on about how modern Americans don't have a sense of self-contempt. They don't understand a moral ought, and that modern American christians are the most aggregious offenders.
Of course.
Just one more thing for Christians to feel guilty about.
[ March 18, 2005, 02:07 PM: Message edited by: advice for robots ]
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posted
I think "self contempt" can be defined in such a way as to be a necessary quality for moral beings, but "self contempt" as I would interpet the meaning of the phrase isn't necessary.
My dictionary links "Contempt" with "Despise" and defines "despise" as "to disdain or detest, or to look on as negligible or worthless". I think those things are far from necessary to have a sense of true morality. In fact, if you detest yourself, it seems your morality would inevitably become unnecessary martyrdom or self abasement. This route seems to be the way to the morality of the self-flagellants (taken to one extreme), and I reject that view of life.
Personally, I think an honest moral code must include yourself as much as others. In other words, a healthy view of life lends oneself the exact same respect as is deserved by strangers. If you have contempt for yourself, you have skewed the balance.
I think one of the hardest things to do is to take honest joy in your own accomplishments. Most people are slow to share their success or feelings of mastery of something for fear of appearing to brag. Sure, you can take self-worth to the extreme and fall into cockiness, hubris, and disdain of others, but falling to the opposite extreme isn't a healthy safeguard.
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posted
Scott, His bit was that the wisdom of life teaches life, and that great Art, and he had very specific views on what constitutes great art, is an intensifier of life. Great Art puts us in the presence of something that is more full of life than we are, and through attending to that presence, we learn. Education should be the opening of the mind to the presence of life. He talked about the pain and joy and primordial longing and excess and contradiction wonderfully harnessed by the law-like structure of the written word, and even more expertly done in the epic poem.
To tie this back to OSC, I Hart's Hope is a piece of great art. East of Eden is a work great art. But I don't know that he'd agree with any of those judgements. We are getting far a field.
Advice for Robots: He had a great respect for mideval Christians, those who felt the reverence and lived in constant and necessary fear of making the wrong decision, or indecision, and being cursed to eternal damnation.
posted
I think one's ability to respond to "great art" (which in itself is an extremely subjective phrase) comes from the life that one has within oneself. In other words, the response you have to something you find deep and beautiful speaks as much if not more to the amount of life and depth and beauty you have within yourself to be called forth as it does from any innate teaching that art itself can do.
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posted
I have a very big problem with the use of "contempt" in this way. There are very few people I would think deserve my "contempt" and if I could honestly lump myself into that few, I might as well commit suicide. I think basic morality is born of fairness and any "higher" morality is born of compassion and love. Compassion and love can lead to self sacrifice, but using even self sacrifice as a starting point seems unhealthy to me. Using self-contempt as a starting point seems downright perverse.
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posted
Now is "Great Art" subjective because we can't agree, or is it essentially subjective. I think it's the first one.
BJ, he sees science as wrong-headed way to make intelligible what doesn't give itself to intellect alone. In other words, what makes the story of Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel powerful are not that we can trace our DNA back to them. What seperates a family from four people sitting in a room is nothing that science can teach us.
Rochfoucald said it well when he said, paraphrase, "We would no nothing of love unless we had read a story about it." I don't think it's that simple, but I do think there is an intensifying aspect to a good story.
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It's funny, Karl, he mentioned compassion specfically yesterday, and how compassion is the presence of pain. HE said it is pain. I don't quite understand, but he mentioned the fact that newspapers put pain on the front cover. Pain in all of its forms. Like I said, I don't get exactly how compassion is pain, but the guy is considered, so I'm going I may send him an e-mail and see if I can get an answer.
posted
Irami, may I recommend Gary Thomas' book "Sacred Pathways"? It is patently Christian in orientation, but Thomas's discussion of nine pathways of reverence to God may resonate with you. In particular, the Sensate path, which discusses loving God (or experiencing reverence) through the senses -- including experiencing great art and music may really ring a bell.
I'm primarily a sensate, fwiw. Experiencing great art, for me, shows me how small I am, and how great God is. Exceptional music does the same thing. Fine literature too. Thomas himself is least a sensate, so his empathy for that path is pretty minimal. He's more a naturalist and an intellectual. Being outside and studying really brings him to reverence.
The point of the book is that everyone experiences reverence differently, and that the same path doesn't fit all people.
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posted
Exactly Karl. I mean if something that is supposed to be "Great Art" doesn't resonate in your inner being, and you don't feel anything at all for it, even after study, other than the driest academic knowledge. I don't believe you are automatically morally deficient.
posted
Your guy has completely missed the point of science. If science is dry and boring and not beauty and awe, there's something wrong. It has nothing to do, necessarily with understanding interpersonal interactions, it has everything to do with realizing you *are* just a speck in the universe which is what the dude was going for. Somone who can't stand in awe at the beauty and intricacy of the structure that is DNA, is equally as morally deficient as someone who can't appreciate Great Art.
The handy thing about “can” is that it can be argued, proven, and legislated. It’s hard to argue “ought” without assuming a common set of morals, and that’s a big stumbling point in a large, diverse society.
I would tend to give “ought” to the conservatives, but it does have a lot of liberal in it. But that’s based on my own idea of “ought.” I don’t think I fit into Irami’s lecturer’s elite set of people who conform to non-offender status.
Irami, I wonder what your lecturer thinks of the concepts of repentance and mercy.
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posted
I disagree with this notion that one should look down on themselves as a guiding factor in morality.
I think people take on the roles they assign for themselves to a large extent. I think if a person believes themselves to be a good and moral person they will strive to remain a good and moral person.
This goes beyond morality as well. If you think you're smart, you will strive to BE smart. If you think you are strong, you will strive to BE strong.
And while this can all be taken too far and lead to unjustified arrogance (especially without a philosophical core) if you concider yourself stupid, weak, immoral and worthless it WILL become a self fullfilling prophecy.
The gentleman who gave your lecture was full of caca de vaca.
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posted
Jeni, the guy went on a tirade about how mediocre art seeks to produce some sort of affect on the listener. To evoke something, and that in that way is sort of pornographic. *gets notes* I have written down, "The pornography of pain."
Since I have my notes out, he said that our absence of reverence is showed through our disregard of language and history, properly understood. I don't understand language and history properly understood, but I don't think it's the same way we currently use those terms.
Advice for Robots, He said, "vulgar American Christianity today..." He almost spat out the word vulgar. Take it as you'd like.
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This guy was opinionated as heck, but in an honest way. There was something considered about him, as if he was as hard on himself as he was on the audience.
Here was the thrust of his talk. Art is only possible by the breaking of the revealed heart. If it's not possible in our modern age, it's because we don't have a sense of reverence/self-contempt to be broken, because once we have the sense of reverence, then we will strive necessarily always fail-- because if we succeed, then the disappears as the ought only exists in the future and the is is always inferior to the ought-- and that is growth and life.
quote: Main Entry: vul·gar Pronunciation: 'v&l-g&r Function: adjective Etymology: Middle English, from Latin vulgaris of the mob, vulgar, from volgus, vulgus mob, common people 1 a : generally used, applied, or accepted b : understood in or having the ordinary sense <they reject the vulgar conception of miracle -- W. R. Inge> 2 : VERNACULAR <the vulgar name of a plant> 3 a : of or relating to the common people : PLEBEIAN b : generally current : PUBLIC <the vulgar opinion of that time> c : of the usual, typical, or ordinary kind 4 a : lacking in cultivation, perception, or taste : COARSE b : morally crude, undeveloped, or unregenerate : GROSS c : ostentatious or excessive in expenditure or display : PRETENTIOUS 5 a : offensive in language : EARTHY b : lewdly or profanely indecent synonym see COMMON, COARSE - vul·gar·ly adverb
lol, I'm thinking he was down at meaning 4 or 5 and for got about the previous three meanings.
I also got a mental image as I read that, of the Steel pre-fab construction churches, semi-eyesores that now dot the landscape, because buildings are so expensive. I am wondering which he would view as more important: the interactions between the people inside the building, or the lack of beautiful stained glass windows and stone and mortar surroundings? I realize he'd probably say that the people who were willing to put up an ugly church were too plebian to begin with and that's where the problem started.
posted
Vulgar American Christianity aside, I wonder how those concepts fit into his framework. It seems to me that we are all possessed of a reverence for something but that we don't always act accordingly.
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quote: I don't think it's the same way we currently use those terms.
I would tend to agree with you. And then I would point out that speaking in code, to an audience that doesn't get the code, is pointless, stupid, and vain.
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quote: He had a great respect for mideval Christians, those who felt the reverence and lived in constant and necessary fear of making the wrong decision, or indecision, and being cursed to eternal damnation.
Good gravy. He's holding up the obsessive attitude of mideval catholics toward sin and damnation as necessary?!?
"Bah, who is talking about framework. If we are to take ourselves seriously, we must cast off this idea of framework." I asked him a question and he told me to read Augustine's Confessions. I don't know what he thinks. That's not true, he thought that we were all woefully inadequate to be people because we are living in a Western world, and we were never schooled in the differences between Christian metaphysics and Greek metaphysics, and are thereby inadequate to think on the world today. That said, I went to a used bookstore and picked up a copy of the Confessions. I'll tell you all how it goes.
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posted
I'm trying to figure out what makes reverence for Great Art so morally superior to reverence to a Great Car (one so out of reach that you'll never own, like a Shelby Cobra)or reverence to a Beautiful Person, which is basically what causes paparrazi to make money, or reverence of a sports team, like the Red Sox.
I think that different people probably have equivalent amounts of reverence for each of those things.
AJ
(and the more you quote of this dude the more he sounds like a pretentious holier than thou snob. Because the fact is we ARE people regardless of how "prepared" he thinks we are to BE people. He can't change the facts.)
quote:Here was the thrust of his talk. Art is only possible by the breaking of the revealed heart. If it's not possible in our modern age, it's because we don't have a sense of reverence/self-contempt to be broken, because once we have the sense of reverence, then we will strive necessarily always fail-- because if we succeed, then the disappears as the ought only exists in the future and the is is always inferior to the ought-- and that is growth and life.
Translation: I am justified in being an art snob.
I don't know if I'm following this. You left out some key words when you typed. Did he go into why and how modern society has lost its reverence/self-contempt?
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posted
Those things do not intensify life, as what it is to be life. Maybe cars should take their moral cues from cars, but people, as they are baseball players should take their cue from the Red Sox, but the root of all of that, something that intensifies human life as human life is the subject of Great Art.
quote:Here was the thrust of his talk. Art is only possible by the breaking of the revealed heart. If it's not possible in our modern age, it's because we don't have a sense of reverence/self-contempt to be broken, because once we have the sense of reverence, then we will strive necessarily always fail-- because if we succeed, then the ought disappears as the ought only exists in the future and the is is always inferior to the ought-- and that is growth and life.
I left out the word ought. For the most part, I think a lot of snobs have points, at least the honest ones do. Then again, I find relativism appallingly inadequate.
posted
I read Augustine's confessions when I was 14 or 15. Maybe I was too young to properly appreciate it at the time. I did it on my own, no directed study or anything, but at the time, I couldn't figure out why he bothered writing it all down. It didn't seem very useful to me.
(I was interested in Augustine because he was the patron saint of animals.)
posted
If he thinks reading The Confessions is going to help anyone sort out the differences between Christian metaphysics and Greek metaphysics he’s deluded. It was discovering Christian neo-Platonism that led to Augustine’s conversion.
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posted
The beauty in cars, if they are beautiful is something that an human Artist put into it. And god help you if you get around a Red Sox fan and tell them that winning the World Series didn't intensify humanity in Boston.
(or are you saying they *do* come under his Great Art heading?)
He asked the audience what "redemption" meant and nobody knew. People mumbled hazy answers, but nobody knew with a sense with clarity. He then said "earning back our freedom from the service of sin," and went on to talk about the poverty of our education.
BJ, I don't know if they do. I know that he would say "No," and probably compare them to a horror movie, but I don't know.
posted
It is indeed sad if a group of college students don't know at least some meaning of the word "redemption."
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I don't think anyone sitting in that audience wanted to speak up and give a definition of redemption, for fear of being told to go read Augustine's Confessions. I'll bet the manner in which he asked the question just screamed You don't know, do you, you bunch of college idiots! I don't think I would have raised my hand.
I'm surprised this guy gave such a straightforward definition of redemption.
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posted
OK, then I must have just happened to read Agustine's Confessions during my Francis of Assisi phase and the two happened to overlap. I can't imagine myself, at that age, mixing the two. I was much more anal retentive then than I am now. And for those of you who think I'm bad now, imagine me a decade ago!
posted
Reverence is merely an excuse to remain ignorant. Which is acceptable if comparing ones own capabilities with God's. But the only reason that the lecturer advocates that others hold self-contempt within themselves is cuz he's a bloomin' narcissist who wants to be revered while remaining a slothful idiot.
posted
The idea of combining Francis and Augustine is causing me to waver between giggling and head-exploding. Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
dkw, that was also the phase where I was seriously considering a nunnery, because I really wanted to be in a monestary, but that wouldn't work given my gender. I also read some stuff by Maria Von Trapp, the real one, who only married the guy because after prayer and consideration the Mother Superior told her it was the "Will of God" and she wanted to follow God's will for her life, more than she wanted to stay a nun. Her entire life in her own writing was so focussed on following God's will, and actually living it, it blew me away far more than the jungle missionary stories I was raised with.
The whole being protestant thing and converting was a giant obstacle, given my parents, and I was already causing enough of a fracas with them at the time. But I did read a lot of random Catholic stuff at that point in time and came to my own conclusion that Catholics weren't going to hell in a handbasket, much to my Grandma's chagrin.
AJ
(lol, and if I do go back to church, the main contenders are Catholic, United Methodist (though Episcopalian would be kind of a compromise between the two) and ELCA as a runner up possibility. )
quote:Jeni, the guy went on a tirade about how mediocre art seeks to produce some sort of affect on the listener. To evoke something, and that in that way is sort of pornographic. *gets notes* I have written down, "The pornography of pain."
That's bizarre. IMO, mediocre art seeks only to shock the observer for no other purpose than provocation. Great art moves the observer despite himself. Once, I stood for half an hour before a Jackson Pollock original in the middle of Las Vegas. It was one of the most moving experiences with reverence I've had. All of life was in that painting, and I was moved to tears. And I don't like abstract art. Soon after, I read Henri Nowen's book about his experience with Rembrandt's "Return of the Prodigal Son". I could totally identify with Nowen's experience as far as the emotion viewing great art evoked.
The guy sounds really weird.
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posted
Jeni, I felt that way about "American Gothic" I'd seen the painting oodles of times in books, and it seemed to me to be one of the corniest stupidest paintings in existence, and why the heck was it touted as such a big deal.
Then I actually saw it. There is so much *more* to that painting IRL than there is seeing it in a book. It is hard to explain I could have stood there looking at it for hours.
Nowen's book was really good...he saw a poster reproduction of the painting, and was so moved that he had to see the original. This was back in Iron Curtain days, and the original is at the Hermitage. He got a visa to go into Russia and spent, if I remember right, two days straight, just looking at the painting. It inspired him to quit his high paying, prestigious career and go work with mentally challenged adults.
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posted
I've read too much Vonnegut (and agree with too much of it) to believe that Great Art is any more salvation than Great Science. Then again, I'm a romantic in a way, in that I don't see the two spheres as so separate as how they are perceived today.
Sometimes lies (fiction) can be more healthy than truth (facts), but not, or even most lies are. Only those lies that enable you to more truth are healthy.
As far as 'can' and 'ought'. I believe incorporating (within our govt., at least) some amount of 'ought' really isn't that hard. The problem is, in some ways it can look like 'can', and my belief is that there should be as little 'ought' to cover most of the populace, not maximizing 'ought' to those who have the most 'ought's.
You know, I really need to be face-to-face in conversations like this. My thoughts are too unordered in text.
quote:I'll bet the manner in which he asked the question just screamed You don't know, do you, you bunch of college idiots! I don't think I would have raised my hand.
It's a law school class. It's not as if the audience was made up 19 year olds who were shy. For the most part, the class is chalk full of know-it-alls who are chomping at the bit to show off. People started looking at their shoes and notebooks because nobody had a clear conception of the answer.
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I find that 'ought', in any sort of ethical/existential/free will context, has gone into disuse. 'Ought' has become almost solely a term used in relation to an external condition.![[Dont Know]](graemlins/dontknow.gif)
I don't know what he thinks. That's not true, he thought that we were all woefully inadequate to be people because we are living in a Western world, and we were never schooled in the differences between Christian metaphysics and Greek metaphysics, and are thereby inadequate to think on the world today. That said, I went to a used bookstore and picked up a copy of the Confessions. I'll tell you all how it goes.
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