Greetings,
Why I am a radical skeptic:
"... It is almost, grumbles Schopenhauer, 'as if our intellect were
intentionally designed to lead us into error'.
"The mind, created by the will [Dynamic Quality] for the purpose of
survival, exists to serve it, and is subservient to it throughout the life of
the organism. This subservience consists not only in that --- in Hume's
well-known formulation --- the ends we pursue are determined by our needs,
desires, fears and so on, in other words by our passions, whereas the concerns
of reason is the relationship of means to the achievement of those ends. It
goes further than this. The will [Dynamic Quality] keeps most of its
operations permanently secret from conscious mind, as we saw in the last
chapter. And it does not allow even the intellect to carry out its task
objectively within its own sphere. Throughout our lives our rational thinking
is all-pervadingly distorted and corrupted by our willing. '_Love_ and
_hatred_ entirely falsify our judgements; in our enemies we see nothing but
shortcomings, in our favorites nothing but merits and good points, and even
their defects see
m lovable to us. Our _advantages_, of whatever kind it may be, exercises a
similar secret power over our judgements; what is in agreement with it at once
seems to us fair, just and reasonable; what runs counter to it is presented to
us in all seriousness as unjust and outrageous, or inexpedient and absurd.
Hence so many prejudices of social position, rank, profession, nationality,
sect, and religion. A hypothesis, conceived and formed, makes us lynx-eyed for
everything that confirms it, and blind to everything that contradicts it. What
is opposed to our party, our plan, our wish, our hope often cannot possibly be
grasped and comprehended by us, whereas it is clear to the eyes of everyone
else; on the other hand, what is favourable to these leaps to our eyes from
afar. What opposes the heart is not admitted by the head. All through life we
cling to many errors, and take care never to examine their ground, merely from
fear, of which we ourselves are unconscious, of poss
ibly making the discovery that we have so long and so often and believed and
maintained what is false. Thus is our intellect daily fooled and corrupted by
the deceptions of inclination and liking.'"
(Magee, Bryan, 'The Philosophy of Schopenhauer, Hardcover', 1997, p. 157)
Little ole me:
I think it better to prefer 'not this; not that' - mental white noise - the
unknowable, indivisible and undefinable. But then, I do like to dance. :-).
Marsha
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