Care for and value those who are seeking the essence of existence, doubt those who have found it. Still, they might be true.
Essence of learning
Humans are not able to do what we cannot do. Yet, the essence of learning is to do what we cannot do.
Listening to Bach
I wonder why I don’t teach the notions of cosmic connections. Not by praising, but by showing sensus communis through history or facilitate in a way humans are able to sense the oceanic feeling as Romain Rolland named the phenomenon. I don’t believe in the behavioristic reduction of human existence to a product of the environment. When Freud finalized the work of Descartes, by removing the soul for our life, what was left is a mechanical view of existence and athestic methodes dominates our search for truth. For the moment I sit by my computer, listening to Bach, breathing cosmic particles, experience essence of existence.
Essence of Ethics
The essence of ethics is the relation between human and existence.
A modern paraphrase of Arne Garborg’s poem published (1903) in a reading book for children age 7-14.
AI has no value in itself. You cannot eat it, drink it, or wear it.
You could have a pocket full of AI, and starve, thirst, or freeze to death – if there was no food, drink, or clothing to be had.
AI is far from the greatest good, not the second greatest either. But it is a great good for those who use it wisely.
For AI can give you a lot of information and draw conclusions, but it cannot give you everything
You can get income, but not gluttony,
diagnose, but not health,
soft beds, but not sleep,
information, but not knowledge,
conversations, but not friendship,
charade, but not honesty
fun, but not joy,
servants, but not fidelity,
gray hair, but not honor,
quiet days, but not peace.
Solutions, but not moral practice
Belief, but not faith
Remember, the surface of life can be expressed by AI, but not the core of life
Dialectic between love and truth
Humanism is the very content of our culture, which goes back as far as our history reaches, and which rests with all its weight on two pillars, on two fundamental principles, one with roots in Athens: “Man, know thyself”, it has freedom and truth as its prerequisite and consequence. The other with roots in Jerusalem: “Man, forget thyself”, and its content is love.
The process of knowing (erkjenning)
Gadamer criticizes Kant for limiting taste to aesthetic judgments. He sees taste as part of the process of knowing. When we read or see an action that we perceive as true, it awakens emotions inside us. The love of truth is an impulse. It is in the emotions or in our heart that we seek truth and the truths that we cherish and refine are all full of emotions.
It is not just about love as the force towards truth, but just as much that the truth we aknowledge is loving. It wishes us well, it is worth preserving.
When we interpret history, it is not just a matter of presenting history as it actually was, but at the same time expressing the history that gives value to our life. We enjoy Plato because there is something in his text that is of value to our life. Thoughts experiened as true, provide value for those who seek a good life
The process of knowing (erkjenning) contains ethics and aesthetics and not just logic. These are not three independent factors. An essential truth must be both logically valid, ethically good and aesthetically pleasing.
The senses, emotions and morality are central to the ability to interpret.
The essence of education
In “Crisis of Education” Hannah Arendt says: “[…] the essence of education is natality, the fact that human beings are born into the world”. If the essence of education is natality, natality as a condition is both a possibility of a new beginning, but also a a deep dependence of the world and ancestors. There is no education without a world and a tradition to be shown and there is no natality without the possibility for the new generation to inevitable renewel.
“it seems to me that conservatism, in the sense of conservation, is of the essence of the educational activity, whose task is always to cherish and protect something the child against the world, the world against the child, the new against the old, the old against the new.” (Crisis in Education)
Two forms of phenomena
There are two forms of phenomena. Material phenomena and spiritual phenomena. The latter are the phenomena that exceed the limits of what we can know, that break our limits, that are not part of our physical world, but that exist in our spiritual world. Just as we can only talk about loving, but we cannot learn to love. These can only be recognized through the use of the human inner spiritual world, and known as a sensibility.
The essence of quality
The essence of quality is spirit. Spirit is the dark quality of matter. This is the normative experience of a good life.
We do not do quality, we live in quality. We are spirit and there are spirit in the world.