07.09.09
Higher powers??
Comment on Kant, freedom, science, and modernity
James said,
July 8, 2009 at 7:40 pm ·
I understand the point about trying to reinterpret the Judeo-Christian myth of a “higher power” directing history, but I’m really asking what relevance this has for the average person. This likely isn’t going to comfort the schmuck who is laying in the ICU dying of cancer. I’m certainly not advocating some confused “supernatural” beliefs, but these religions are not going to go away unless there is some viable replacement for the average person’s concerns (birth, death, relationships, etc.). Reading a little Kant is not likely to help.
I am in a tough spot here. I introduced the idea of the Discrete Freedom Sequence into the second edition of WHEE, but I can see that noone has understood what I am saying. I am working on the fourth edition, maybe it will become clear!!
I find that alarming: it is possible to be totally misunderstood. What to do??? Since noone will give me any feedback, I have to guess how to proceed, and after reading comments such as these from last night, I get at least some sense of where the problem lies.
The Discrete Freedom Sequence is a pattern of historical data connected to a larger pattern of data, called by me the ‘eonic effect’. This pattern suggests empircally the way in which the ‘evolution of freedom’ is realized in history and as an evolutionary process.
Debates over freedom are fine, but what we are talking about here is the empirical reality of the modern liberal revolution (and the ancient Greek birth of liberalism) and its relation to what the eonic model defines as ‘the eonic evolution of civilization’.
Debates over the idea of freedom (apparently Hucklebird is puking up some right-wing junk thinking on the dangers of freedom) are fine, but if you study the eonic model you notice the distinction of macro-action and micro-action.
I am talking about freedom in relation to macro-action. Freedom in relation to micro-action can result in all sorts of interpretations.
But the principle issues at the birth of liberalism are, religious freedom in civil society, freedom of speech, freedom as autonomy in a rational ethics (Kant), etc…The idea of freedom bifurcates and becomes chaotic, and also many conservatives are keen to undermine its meaning, even as capitalist economists are keen to claim the full meaning of the word for libertarian economic set ups.
The basic core interpretation of freedom is best seen in Kant’s challenge and resolution of the problem of causality and freedom in his critical system. But there are other approaches.
Note, higher powers: I have very occasionally descended to using the phrase ‘a higher power’, presumably one acting in history, in this blog, when discussing the Old
Testament. I regret doing so almost at once, and I don’t use the phrase in WHEE. I am not referring to ‘god’, but at the same time I am not satisfied with the reductionist history derived from Darwinism that is now trying to figure out what is going on in the Biblical saga. The point is merely that history, and by implication evolution, shows evidence of something acting on a different scale. The eonic effect makes that clear, using its own concepts in the eonic model.
I am not reinterpreting the Judeo-Christian myth. I am independently discovering historical evidence of something that might throw light on the confusions of the Old Testament (or the history of Indian religion, for that matter).
In any case my usage of the phrase ‘higher power’ is probably closer to that of the Old Testament prophets than that of current religion!!!
Whatever the case, we cannot detect this higher power, only its effects, e.g. in the Axial Age. It is not ‘Jehovah’. OK?
James said,
July 10, 2009 at 10:28 am
Thanks for clearing it up. I think the main problem with the book is that it throws too many new ideas at you at once…the result, sensory overload.
Darwiniana » The eonic model vs Darwinian oversimplifications said,
July 10, 2009 at 1:15 pm
[...] Comment on Higher Powers James said, July 10, 2009 at 10:28 am · Thanks for clearing it up. I think the main problem with the book is that it throws too many new ideas at you at once…the result, sensory overload. [...]