StillTrucking: What does that matter? I find more spirituality in Camus and Einstein than I do in most preachers.
NS: The "matter" is that your title, "Religion from Tolstoy to Camus," refers to "religion," not "spirituality." I do not take them to be synonymous, do you?
ST: I can’t do Keirkegaard lord knows I have tried. Nietzsche is so easy for me, the voice of an Old Testament prophet.
NS: I can understand that, though K's "Fear and Trembling" certainly gets to the heart of an Old Testament issue (Re. Abraham). This book, like Nietzsche's "Birth of Tragedy," is K's most accessible entre into his thought. If you are enjoying Edmund Husserl, I can't see why K would be any problem for you.
Speaking of Husserl and the phenomenological method; I find the method identical with that of mystical introspection, and Husserl's insights into the nature of consciousness itself are identical with that of transcendental mysticism.
"In every way, then, it is clear that everything which is there for me in the world of things is on grounds of principle ‘only a presumptive reality’; that ‘I myself,’ on the contrary, for whom it is there am ‘absolute’ Reality, given through a positing that is unconditioned and simply indissoluble." (Husserl, 'Ideas')
ST: Keirkegaard spider is too subtle for me I suppose.
I am stupid that way.
NS: This I doubt very much! But, be sure to pull the other leg before leaving, so that I won't walk with a list.
ST: But I hope one day I will be able to read him. He asks such good questions. Why do we need preachers in Christendom? I suppose that is what drew me to the Quakers, no preachers.
NS: Far better than that is, 'no religion,' in order to be 'spiritual' instead.
Your position on "preachers" is notably similar to that of Nietzshe's:
"So long as the priest, that professional negator, slanderer and poisoner of life, is regarded as a superior type of human being, there cannot be any answer to the question: What is Truth?"
ST (waxing poetic): Moo Moo Camus
Yes he is the moo for me
NS: You certainly appear able to milk a name.
"We talk so abstractly about poetry, because we are all bad poets." (Nietzsche)
ST: Thanks for taking the time to reply
NS: No need to ever thank a hedonist for seeking his pleasure.
ST: I don't expect my white friends to understand the Jew Nietzsche thing.
NS: Are you a black Jew, like Solomon, who spent too long in the sun? I never misunderstood N so badly that I took him for an anti-semite. I too was once a large fan of his. He, and Dostoevsky, took me to Existentialism, and Existentialism took me to the 'dark night of the soul,' which inturn took me to eastern mysticism, and eventual liberation.
"One has to pay dearly for immorality; one has to die several times while one is still alive." (Fred)
ST: Nietzsche the laxative for my racism.
NS:
I can see how he'd be an excellent "laxative" for most any 'ism' disease.
