I’ll be doing a little more about this in my next post.

You use the term “meaning” and “meaningless” quite a bit, so I would like to explore the ideas further. How can we differentiate between perceived meaning and real meaning? I’ll use your statement of “If there is a fundamental unity of reality” as an example. The unity of reality may merely be a perception, a method of which our minds try and interpret an actually chaotic world. The meaning we derive from this perception of reality would be false. This is not to say that things would be meaningless, but that it is impossible to accurately derive meaning.

I’ll use “The physical and metaphysical world are complementary. If you rid of one, the other becomes unintelligible.” as another example of the difficulty I am having. This argues from a point of view that accepts that what we see is not already unintelligible. If the perception changes, and we accept that what we see may already be unintelligible, then it becomes possible to separate metaphysics from physical reality. Thus, what we find intelligible due to the melding of metaphysics and physical reality, always has an air of nagging doubt about it.

This relates to the problem of nothingness. Arguing that “from nothingness, nothing comes” supposes that there is something there to begin with. If there is nothing to begin with, then our inability to grasp nothingness doesn’t remove the fact that nothing is there. The appearance of meaningfulness in nothing is simply that, an appearance. Just as a perception of unity does not mean unity is there, a perception of meaningfulness does not mean that meaning is there.

I find myself having this problem with a number of statements in your post. “Man, being a rational being, can give something a purpose at least for himself.”, seems as if it can be replaced with, “Man, being a rational being, can give something the perception of purpose, at least for himself”. When you say, “if in the end I have not impacted reality itself apart from myself, then I cannot believe there is meaning.”, we can assume that you can still believe there is meaning in spite of whether or not meaning exists.

To summarize, “how could we say that there is a reasonable connection we could make between bees and honey?”, can be replied with, “We can’t say that there is a reasonable connection between bees and honey, only the perception of a reasonable connection”.

I didn’t respond because he wasn’t addressing me. If you don’t address me, why should I respond?

Mr. Itch;

I have sorely wanted to read Buber, but as of yet I haven’t gotten around to those sorts of studies. Right now its some apologetics, Heidegger, and Lord of the Rings.

I rarely read philosophy anymore. I left all my books with a friend in Boston after I dropped out of grad school and moved back to Europe. He informed me a couple of years ago that most of them were mildewed beyond salvation. Didn’t phase me too much. I’m only saddened by the loss of Buber’s I and Thou. If you haven’t read that, I highly recommend it. (Get Walter Kaufmann’s translation. His introduction does an excellent job of whetting the appetite. I’ve inspired myself. It’s only ten bucks; I’m ordering it now.)

“I find Socrates maxim about knowing nothing to be more and more true the more I add to my knowledge.” I get more ignorant the older I get, and it gets worse (or, from a Socratic point of view, better) the older I get. Experience humbles, but only upon reflection — another good use for philosophy.

Re: discovery of your blog. Typed “Catholicism” into WordPress.com’s search engine. Simple.

I was hoping that you would respond to Everett and not just ignore him! I really agree with what he said and I would like to hear your response =]

At the very least, my knowledge of myself gives me reassurance that my convictions aren’t things I received from culture uncritically. I see philosophy’s role in my life to do just that; make me less of a fool.

Those people who like to think they know philosophy tend to demonstrate their ignorance when they think they’re being their wisest (my own Mr. P.N. situation involves someone believing that there was something profound about suggesting that reality is at heart absurd). On the other hand, knowing more only seems to lead to an understanding of how little we know. I find Socrates maxim about knowing nothing to be more and more true the more I add to my knowledge.

Mr. Itch, I’m curious, how did you happen upon my blog?

Now, what to do about it? In you, I see a lot of myself at that age: a certain frustration with the world at large for not taking life seriously, an irritation with people for refusing to equip themselves for rational thought. Perhaps it’s a form of arrogance — it was with me. Like Mr. P. N. above, I was made mostly of nonsense, but my intentions were good. I guess the only thing to do is wait. You’re young yet.

Be careful of putting too much emphasis on philosophy. It’s a tool, not a means to an end. I realized that one frosty evening when I was doing grad work in philosophy of religion at Boston University. Heading into the theology department’s main building for a seminar on F. Schleiermacher’s On Religion: Speeches To Its Cultured Despisers, I saw a homeless man making his bed for the evening in a cardboard box by the building. The image haunted me throughout the seminar. It was part of the reason I dropped out of the program three months after that: a Ph.D. in philosophy = one enormous castle in the clouds. At least that was my conclusion…

To note again, my intention wasn’t to parade my intellect; rather, I’m just grappling with the problem of realizing I understand something better and how to relate my understanding to someone who doesn’t have my sort of mind in place already. I don’t think discussing that honestly in the way that I see it is wrong; in fact, I think it would be wrong to pretend the situation is anything other, because then there would be no hope to rectify the problem because you can’t solve a problem you don’t (or refuse to) understand.

I suppose my identifying the problem of philosophy club (though if it wasn’t meant to be about philosophy, why call it philosophy club?) has more to do with my experience of my peers in general, and the club is just my experience condensed into one meeting.

So what is the solution? Since it would be impossible to convince everyone to take philosophy classes in college (and take them seriously as well), I’ll just have to relearn how to relate my ideas in layman’s terms, meaning lots of examples.