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Unfolding Nature Shop: Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order

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Alain de Benoist - On Being a Pagan
    #26139141 -

Recently discovered the work of French writer Alain de Benoist. I'm halfway through his 1981 book "On Being a Pagan" right now and really digging it. The book isn't about being a pagan in a literal sense, btw.

Just wanted to post a passage and see what you think about it:

"The world only hides one thing, and that is that it has nothing to hide. It is sufficient unto itself for its own unveiling. Meaning only appears as the result of the representations and interpretations man may give it.... this is not to say the universe is doomed to absurdity. There is no meaning a priori, but man can create meaning according to his will and representations. This power is one with his freedom, because the absence of any predetermined meaningful form is for him equivalent to having the possibility for all forms, the absence of a univocal configuration to the possibility of every operation."

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Re: Alain de Benoist - On Being a Pagan [Re: garrettdeasy]
    #26139515 -

Vanity as self-evident priori is substantial enough to give evidence of hidden things; ergo the first sentence in that passage is false.

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Re: Alain de Benoist - On Being a Pagan [Re: Buster_Brown]
    #26139589 -

It's not surprising that it was in a book on paganism. In the West the official religious line was that the world was created for us, and that we were the center of everything.

Learning about Deep Time, losing geocentrism, and the increasing knowledge of the sheer size of the universe blew that away. So now we're one species in a small sliver of time on a planet orbiting a medium yellow star, in one arm of an average galaxy.

Nothing we do matters on that scale, so we're free to create our own meaning. Seems reasonable to me.

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Re: Alain de Benoist - On Being a Pagan [Re: Buster_Brown]
    #26139627 -

I'm not a math surgeon, could you explain that in less technical language

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Re: Alain de Benoist - On Being a Pagan [Re: garrettdeasy]
    #26144442 -

Seems like a rather transparent criticism of Camus (unless there's some context I'm missing). I don't mean to talk too much shit about Camus, dude definitely made some good points (and was sexy af), but I fully agree with that quote you posted. The lack of any cosmically-defined meaning to existence doesn't make it hypocritical to adopt a meaning of your own, imo.

I should check that book out, I've been meaning to read more philosophy.


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"We cannot command nature except by obeying her."

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Re: Alain de Benoist - On Being a Pagan [Re: Buster_Brown]
    #26144451 -

Buster_Brown said:
Vanity as self-evident priori is substantial enough to give evidence of hidden things; ergo the first sentence in that passage is false.


I'm not sure if I fully understand what you're saying. Are you saying that vanity exists a priori? Even if you reject materialism, surely you must concede it's possible vanity is a result of our material biology.

Especially given the nature of our evolution as social creatures and the fact that humans often respond well to self-aggrandizing individuals (high school jocks, anyone?), I find it very hard to take vanity alone as proof of hidden cosmic meaning.


--------------------
"We cannot command nature except by obeying her."

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Re: Alain de Benoist - On Being a Pagan [Re: turbulentflow]
    #26144681 -

I think my assumption will bear up under analysis given that all that may be motivated by vanity may not be material at present.

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Unfolding Nature Shop: Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order

General Interest > Philosophy, Sociology & Psychology
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