ChristopherColumbus
Master Don Juan
If you are to take this 'Don Juan' thing seriously, you have to examine yourself, and ask what your particular 'worldview' is. Because I take it that the Don Juan is critical of the way in which the mass of men live their lives, and therefore must think.
Worldviews - the ways in which we interpret and understand the world - tend to be either 'vertical' or 'horizontal' in nature. The vertical view is interested in virtue [virtus; maleness, worth, from vir - man, where we also get the word virile]. Here the task is to look up and aspire toward the rational ideal. This is a fundamental instinct springing from our rational desire [will]. We are the Anthropod, the animal that looks up. This is aristocratic in nature in that only a few are capable of it, or have acquired the modicum of material means required to pursue it [the importance of enough]. It is concerned more with excellence than equality; with the will [rational desire] than some representation of a base 'reality'. It does not settle for the base, but looks to overcome that in striving for the summit of human experience.
Contrast that with the modern penchant for always looking down toward some underlying base reality as an explanation [and justification] for our actions.... that is, in so far as one is curious and not distracted 24/ 7 by mass/ social media. But this thought can also be an alternative form of media to be consumed; one doesn't think for oneself, one subscribes; thought becomes a fashion as it is manufactured for the mass mind.
Some might say that the pursuit of virtuous ideals is unrealistic, that the ideal is removed from reality. But that is to beg the question - to look at it from the perspective of realism. Rather we should suspend our disbelief [bracket our own belief for a moment] thereby enabling ourselves to engage in another worldview. The idealist has no ignorance of reality; indeed, he sees it for the chaos it is, and chooses to superimpose an intelligible order on it as opposed to seeing some intelligible order beneath it. This is the difference between humanism and naturalism. Where naturalism is reductive to 'Nature', humanism is a kind of super-naturalism.... super as in overcoming... it's lineage can be traced from Plato to Nietzsche. Take Eros for example. At the base level it is pornography, but at the peak Eros has been sublimated into something like poetry. There is a spectrum, and gradations within it, spheres within spheres, multiplicity in contrast to simplicity, synthesis counter-balancing analysis, the world as Cosmos instead of our own small cogito.
Just a thought.
Worldviews - the ways in which we interpret and understand the world - tend to be either 'vertical' or 'horizontal' in nature. The vertical view is interested in virtue [virtus; maleness, worth, from vir - man, where we also get the word virile]. Here the task is to look up and aspire toward the rational ideal. This is a fundamental instinct springing from our rational desire [will]. We are the Anthropod, the animal that looks up. This is aristocratic in nature in that only a few are capable of it, or have acquired the modicum of material means required to pursue it [the importance of enough]. It is concerned more with excellence than equality; with the will [rational desire] than some representation of a base 'reality'. It does not settle for the base, but looks to overcome that in striving for the summit of human experience.
Contrast that with the modern penchant for always looking down toward some underlying base reality as an explanation [and justification] for our actions.... that is, in so far as one is curious and not distracted 24/ 7 by mass/ social media. But this thought can also be an alternative form of media to be consumed; one doesn't think for oneself, one subscribes; thought becomes a fashion as it is manufactured for the mass mind.
Some might say that the pursuit of virtuous ideals is unrealistic, that the ideal is removed from reality. But that is to beg the question - to look at it from the perspective of realism. Rather we should suspend our disbelief [bracket our own belief for a moment] thereby enabling ourselves to engage in another worldview. The idealist has no ignorance of reality; indeed, he sees it for the chaos it is, and chooses to superimpose an intelligible order on it as opposed to seeing some intelligible order beneath it. This is the difference between humanism and naturalism. Where naturalism is reductive to 'Nature', humanism is a kind of super-naturalism.... super as in overcoming... it's lineage can be traced from Plato to Nietzsche. Take Eros for example. At the base level it is pornography, but at the peak Eros has been sublimated into something like poetry. There is a spectrum, and gradations within it, spheres within spheres, multiplicity in contrast to simplicity, synthesis counter-balancing analysis, the world as Cosmos instead of our own small cogito.
Just a thought.
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