[lit-ideas] Re: The 'Near-Eastern' influences on the Greek philosophy, sc...

  • From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Fri, 9 Apr 2004 12:28:17 -0700 (PDT)

--- Scribe1865@xxxxxxx wrote:
> In a message dated 4/9/2004 1:57:31 PM Eastern
> Daylight Time, 
> omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx writes:
> *Mathematics, architecture, astronomy, medicine etc.
> would hardly qualify as 'sunstroke religion.' As to
> metaphysics, it is not obvious that the Greek use of
> the rationalist method there enabled them to arrive
> at
> a better understanding of ultimate reality than is
> expounded, say, in the Bible or in the Kuran.
> Granted we're maybe all too soaked in myth to rise
> above it for long. 
> Yet you seem to have arrived at precisely the point
> of contention here, To 
> take the Bible, the Koran, or any other book as a
> guide to ultimate reality is 
> to cede to another authority without question or
> honest inquiry that which is a 
> specifically individual experience. 

*Oh, come on. Do you really trust yourself to
understand the ultimate reality ? If so, why not
dispense with the Greeks, too ?

> To paraphrase Emerson in Self-Reliance (cut)

*Why do you need Emerson - aren't you supposed to
express a purely individual opinion ? This mantra of
self-reliance seems to me to be just that, just
another mantra. 

It is hybristic to think that human powers, especially
those of understanding, are anything but extremely
limited. Mine certainly are - it's late here and I am
tired. Gotta go to sleep.

O.K.

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