Happy 750Th Birthday John Duns Scotus

I've never heard of the **** either, but apparently he is approximately 750 years old today. Nobody knows exactly when he was born, however he was born in the town I am moving to in a few days as it so transpires.

Supposedly quite an influential fellow, and apparently he influenced the philosophies of Decartes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duns_Scotus

 

What... are those "Gang Signs" he's doing with his hands?

 

Duns-know... (see what I did there)

I noticed that too. Like I say, I know fuck all about him. Could be just picking a maggot out of his thumbnail.

It's a bit like the Illuminati sign isn't it.

 

Thought I would do the boring bit!
He actually sounds quite cool!

http://www.ewtn.com/library/MARY/SCOTUS.htm

 

The Illuminati make signs?





I thought they paid someone else to do that for them....

 

It's a really nice part of Scotland I'm moving to, never ever been there before in my life. Looking forward to learning about the history and getting to know the local area.

 

Yeah, it looks a bit like a vagina

 

Well put me in front of a mirror quickly please!!!!!!

 

He was a Franciscan, so I am sure it is no coincidence.

 

he's playing the worlds smallest violin

 

very slowly..

 

I bet his friends called him "scrotus".

 

I thought he was doing a kamehameha.

 

St Thomas Aquinas made the first existential argument, long before existentialism, that only God has essence and all other things have existence. (Existentialism holds that existence rather than essence is the ground of being.)

Scotus responded to St. Thomas that essence is simply the other side of the coin from existence. "The two are but different ways in which the mind lays hold of the existing thing."

This created one of the first stalemates in philosophy between essence vs. existence, mind vs. body, or nonphysical vs. physical.

I think these stalemates have always been resolved in a way that enabled philosophy to move to a higher level. As you said, Scotus helped influence Descartes who gave birth to the Modern Age. Or, for example, when Berkeley stated that all phenomena (of all that exists) is merely perception and only mind is real, and Hume responded that we can't even know that mind is real so only material existence is all that is real, the resulting stalemate left philosophy, and the early Modern Age, stuck in a state of crisis---until Kant came along and presented the combined argument that we create our own reality through the perceptions of phenomena that we have, and therefore we cannot understand the material world in itself, but only the reality we create of it. Through this argument he was able to separate science from the fetters of the Church (and thus science and the Modern Age was really able to take off).

The problem is that the resolution has always favored the existence/body/physical side of the argument. We therefore find ourselves at the logical end-conclusion of the Western religious and philosophical tradition: An overly objective world based almost entirely on an assumption of material reality. There is no underlying substance, no essence, no soul.

We have no more stalemates, yet we find ourselves in a philosophical crisis. Without an essence or nonphysical side to reality, we have a world without meaning, without value, and without truth----in other words we are living in the Age of Nihilism. By ignoring the essential/spiritual/nonphysical side of the argument, we were able to pretend that it did not exist, but rather than it going away, it only exagerated the need for the physical side to be deconstructed. We have lost all authenticity.

You may argue that there is meaning and truth in science. But existentially, when meaning and truth are socially constructed, what real truth and meaning is there in a world filled with anti-science? Liberals regularly demonstrate to each other how uneducated, stupid, and gullible conservatives are. Meanwhile, conservatives regularly demonstrate to each other how uneducated, stupid, and gullible liberals are. In the dualistic world we live in, they cannot both be right.

Here in America, the political satirist, John Oliver, in the July 24, 2016 Episode of This Week Tonight, did an excellent job of demonstrating that the narrative of our Republican Party is based, not on facts, but on feelings, with the hidden narrative being that Candidates/politicians can create feelings, to which, feelings equal facts, and therefore, candidates/politicians create facts. What authenticity can facts have, if they are created by our politicians, or by feelings, or even by social constructs?

Or you might argue that, of course there is value-----yes but in the Modern World intrinsic value is meaningless, and the only value that has meaning is an abstract market value----a market value that fluctuates with the market, the economy, supply and demand, and even social context. Marx recognized this, but where he was mistaken is that he assumed that it was a dynamic of capitalism, rather than the industrialized world, and that he assumed it was related to production vs. consumption, rather than to the objectification and commodification of all values.

Today, against the dualistic context of the Western Zeitgeist, nothing is true, nothing has value, nothing has meaning, and therefore everything becomes meaningless and absurd. Without the deconstruction of existence/body/physical into essence/mind/nonphysical, all of our reality is deconstructing----and philosophy is squirming and struggling in its final death throes.

More than ever, we need a new Scotus. We need someone to breathe new life back into philosophy. We need someone to stand up and say---"Yes, there is intrinsic value to all of reality--because being IS grounded in essence!"