From: "cwright" <cwright-AT-21stcentury.net>
Subject: Re: AUT: religion and culture (response to tahir)
Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2001 20:18:01 -0500


Small note, since I have been reading Korsch:

Marx did realize philosophy and in the process surpass it.  However, Marx
never ceased to take the questions posed by philosophy seriously, hence his
constant return to Hegel at major points in his life.  The whole trend which
chooses to simply ignore philosophy is not better than those who want to
claim Marxism as a philosophy.  The real suprecession of philosophy will
come with the supercession of the social relations between human beings
which alienate us from ourselves, from each other, from nature.  At that
point, and only at that point, will philosophical questions become
meaningless.  in the meantime, we have to take philosophical questions
seriously, but we answer them philosophically at our own risk (ie we answer
them as if resolution of contradictions was resolvable in our heads, in
theory or taking the point of some a priori first principles from which we
can 'objectively judge reality').

As for religion, see my earlier post.

Cheers,
Chris
----- Original Message -----
From: "commie00" <commie00-AT-yahoo.com>
To: <aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: Sunday, June 24, 2001 1:42 PM
Subject: Re: AUT: religion and culture (response to tahir)


> before we go much further here, i want to say that i tend to think of
myself
> as an atheist / materialist, and my interest in certain religious
> philosophies comes from an atheistic point of view which recognizes
> gemeinwessen as a material source / possibility. what i find particularly
> interesting about many religious philosophies from asia (taoism, buddhism
> and sects of hinduism) is that they are atheistic in their philosophy
(that
> is: there is nothing "spiritual", in the western sense, about them --
> regardless of the new age hogwash), and that their philosophy is being
borne
> out by current scientific research, particularly in quantum / complextity
/
> chaos / pattern studdies. asian "mysticism" is being demystified.
>
> > I'm a bit surprised at these pro-religious esponses,
>
> not sure if you were refering to me or not, but i didn't think my was
> response was so much "pro-religion" as pointing out that religious thought
> is more complex than i think you were allowing. there is a rich diversity
of
> thinking going on under the rubric of "religion" which would satisfy your
> requirements for, essentially, the realization and suppression of
religion.
>
> some examples of stuff i find interesting is not only the materialist
> understandings of buddhism and taoism (which, as i pointed out, can be
> easily understood as one-in-the-same with marx's gemeinwessen), but also a
> branch of catholic theology called (i think) "process theology", which
> understands "god" as the material (process-tial) sum of all living matter,
> and therefore consciousness. that is, it posits an atheistic understanding
> of god, as contradictory as this may seem. (a good way to understand this
> notion of god can be found, i think, in hoftdetter's _godel, escher, bach_
> which creates a notion in which "GOD" stands for "GOD over djinn" [this
> comes out during one of the achilles / tortoise dialogues which includes
an
> encounter with a genie], and thus is an infinite progression / regression,
> which has nothing to do with some "spiritual" being.)
>
> but even with all of this not-withstanding, the revolutionary thinking and
> activies of liberation theologists should be enough to dispell,
practically
> speaking, the notion that religious thinking and action disables
> revolutionary thinking and action.
>
> regardless, even posing things in terms of philosophy is not enough since
i
> think marx was getting at the realization and supression of philosophy as
a
> whole (including religious philosophy) thru practical action. the fact
that
> "religious" people are participating in such activity, in my mind, is a
the
> practical realization of this supression / realization, regardless of
their
> philosophical background.
>
>
>
>
>
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