Nick A said:
You don't want to admit your failings. OK, your choice.
excuse *me*, but where exactly do you get off coming in here and lecturing me? who made you the king of everyone? i don't remember getting that particular memo. what total arrogance.
When I get final confirmation that this site is restricted to secular Interfaith, then I will leave. Until then, I will defend transcendent Interfaith. Appreciating the human condition in the contest of religious and human psychological potential I will agree is not a subject for secular Interfaith that glorifies itself.
this distinction that you draw is not one which is recognised by anyone here that i know of apart from yourself. you have so far failed to define "secular", let alone "transcendent interfaith", nor, as far as i am aware, do you get to determine the terms of engagement on this board. that is for brian to decide (and, to a lesser extent, the moderators) and, so you know, people who have arrived here and attempted to turn it into a soapbox for their particular cult, sect, idol or indeed self-declared prophethood have not lasted long. nor do the missionaries, evangelists and other people who think they know better than everyone else what is good for everybody.
Appreciating the human condition in the contest of religious and human psychological potential I will agree is not a subject for secular Interfaith that glorifies itself.
well, if what you mean by "transcendent interfaith" is about being breathtakingly patronising to people that don't see eye to eye with you about how we're all missing what it's *really* about, then i suggest you might like to set up your own website to preach from. that is not what interfaith.org is about.
Long before, however, her wish to partake in the suffering of the distressed led her to a life-style of extreme austerity.
personally, i would have thought a more moral response would be to try and actually *alleviate* the suffering of the distressed. sounds to me like rock stars sleeping rough for a night in order to sympathise with the homeless.
The historical "double stain" on the Church that Simone Weil denounces originates in the fact that Israel imposed on Christian believers the acceptance of the Old Testament and its almighty God
the historical ignorance here is staggering. israel "imposed" NOTHING on christianity. when christianity split off from judaism, it TOOK what it wanted and ditched what it didn't, so this statement is clearly balderdash.
its universal redemptive mission, the Church became from its very beginnings heir of Jewish nationalism
meaning what, exactly? how was this alleged jewish nationalism actualised in any recognisable form?
Correspondingly, Simone Weil stresses that the rejection of idolatry does not presuppose a positive belief in the one God, but just the refusal to identify the divine with power.
if you mean not worshipping power as Divine, we would agree and so would most religions. if you mean worshipping the Divine as powerful, there is certainly a place for that and to deny the power of the Divine would be futile.
Simone Weil regarded Jewish nationalism as a variety of the "idolâtrie sociale" [social idolatry] at work in the illegitimate self-assertions of the Roman Empire
what, you mean like when the roman empire destroyed jewish nationalism, razed our Temple to the ground and slaughtered hundreds of thousands of my people, sending the rest into exile? is that what you're referring to?
Simone Weil's view of the Hebrew Bible is in fact much more nuanced than most of her critics seem prepared to acknowledge.
to ascribe anything at all of value to the "hebrew bible" without acknowledging G!D's Divine Name (the Tetragrammaton) is illogic of the highest order.
While the Hebrews in pre-Exilic times did not worship God as the Good, and, in consequence, were not able to distinguish between God and the devil
RUBBISH. we don't *have* a devil and the figure of
ha-satan is not to be understood as such. as for not worshipping G!D as "the Good", that is a christian, dualistic idea which we reject. G!D Is All, Creating both ideas of good and evil, which are concepts with meaning for humanity.
those living after the Exile introduced in their narratives insights deriving from Chaldean, Persian and Greek wisdom that contradicted the idolatry inherent in their past beliefs.
if anything, imports from chaldea and persia at least did precisely the opposite. i don't think you (or simone weil) actually understand the relationship between greek and jewish thought at all, you're being completely flummoxed by its mediation through christianity.
Thus, Simone Weil praises the Book of Job as "une pure merveille de vérité et d´authenticité"[32] [a pure marvel of truth and authenticity]
which means what, exactly? she liked it? well, whoop-de-doo.
and characterizes Daniel as "le premier être pur"[33] [the first pure (human) being].
conveniently ignoring any of the patriarchs, or moses. in particular the characterisation of jacob as "ish tam" is important here.
She further asserts that the prophet Isaiah was the first one to bring "de la lumière pure" [pure light] and that some of his "paroles fulgurantes"[shining words] concerning the Suffering Servant urged her to believe.
in which case, she's been as misled as anyone else who thinks that the "suffering servant" is anyone but the people of israel. i am still astonished at just how much of a clanger this is. as for it being "pure", on what basis does she assert it and on what basis does she define "purity"? not on her knowledge of hebrew, that's for sure.
In a passage of Lettre à un religieux, for instance, she considers the Song of Songs and certain psalms as untainted by the false idea of God
in which case, she is flying in the face of most biblical scholarship, to say nothing of traditional scholarship.
Simone Weil will even antedate the appearance of emblematic figures of purity and include among them Abel, Enoch, Noah and Melchizedek.
that's probably because she didn't know the sources. remember, noah was "righteous in his generation" - and look at his generation.
In light of these significant nuances, her approach of Judaism, far from being a token of Jewish self-hatred, is indicative of a self-critical intelligence prepared to question generally cherished assumptions for the sake of the truth it relentless [sic] searches.
unfortunately, all these nuances amount to a nothing more than a vast ignorance of the sources involved, let alone of judaism itself rather than a triumphalist straw-man.
In the last resort, Simone Weil's intellectual endeavors are remindful of the anti-idolatrous, self-critical tradition that was grounded by the Hebrew prophets
gosh, it's like this woman was supposed to be the greatest thinker in the history of humanity, what absolute eyewash.
This quality of thought doesn't fit your PC mindset. Your choice.
i think it's more that this quality of waffle doesn't fit the evidence, nor does it demonstrate any kind of insight beyond the most feeble, dated anti-jewish polemic. and of what does this alleged political correctness of my mindset consist? of actually knowing something about judaism, perhaps? in my universe, it is considered advisable to learn something about a subject which one wishes to critique.
The whole point is that the psychological benefits of the law both individually and collectively, requires just such consistency.
to be precise: that's the point the sources and the sages consistently make.
The result of our adaptation to secularism has made it impossible.
the whole of judaism (and, i would argue, any moral code worth the name) is a rejection and negation of that argument.
Those like Simone who are expressing the essence of Christianity see that it is the world that sustains moral hypocrisy. This is why Jesus said the world must hate the message.
if the message is that the world is evil, then it is a profoundly outdated, not to say mediaeval one - and, moreover, a christian one, not a jewish one. for us, G!D Created the world in order that we could exercise moral choice; in the absence of choice, we would remain in an edenic, angelic state. we do not approve of celibacy, asceticism or the negation of the world, because we are here to actually do good in it. if simone weil was unable to accept that as a mission, then frankly i regard her as a great moral coward.
Do you appreciate the meaning? How do you differentiate between life and death?
the meaning of what? i differentiate between life and death in every area of my life, from the food i eat to my interpersonal relations, in every aspect of my moral being - "life and good" against "death and evil". it's not rocket science.
It means something only a very few are capable of. It means to impartially and consciously witness your hypocrisy and acquire the ability to receive external impressions without defensive preconditioning.
more pompous, elitist, pretentious hogwash. any moral regime demands precisely this. i bet you've never studied the "palm tree of deborah", the "path of the just" or just about any chasidic text. it just goes to show it is easy to make sweeping generalisations about a thought system of which you and simone weil are both thoroughly ignorant. in fact, your slack-jawed adulation and puffery on behalf of this rather underwhelming figure comes across as virtually undistinguishable from any tuppeny-ha'penny street-hustler evangelist or cult-huckster i've ever encountered.
my undergrad degree was in french, with a substantial component of dialectics and philosophy. simone weil and camus may impress the hell out of you, but i'm afraid that there are far more interesting, sophisticated and nuanced (not to mention tolerant) philosophical perspectives out there, many of whom know how to enjoy themselves (with the exception of foucault and derrida) and at least a small number of which i will reluctantly admit are french; but this ain't one of them. i suggest you take a correspondence course, or at least buy a copy of bertrand russell's "history of western philosophy"; you appear to have a far more closed mind than i.
Simone is suggesting learning how to question pertaining to something beyond the mundane. Unfortunately it is an ability only a few have.
yes, many people simply find a figure to build a cult of personality around, regardless of whether the figure merits it.
b'shalom
bananabrain
We're not going to throw this story in the dumpster just because it happened two thousand years ago. Moreover, if our religion is about a God we can trust and a personal connection with that God, then it is important that we recognise what such a God has done for us. Christianity is supposed to be something sentimental. Sure, there's a long history of disputes about what is correct or incorrect about the story and concept of Christ, but these are just attempts to forge something concrete and systematic in Christianity. It's where people try to fit Christianity into some kind of model, philosophy or mystical science.
