Typh0n
clever fool
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I came across this article last night and felt like sharing. It's from a site on Norse mythology and religion, the content is thus directly connected to the topic.
The Mead of Poetry - Norse Mythology for Smart People
The article is divided into three parts, the first decribing a Norse myth about how Odin acquired the mead of poetry. The second examines how our modern society understands knowledge as being something that can only be attained through reason/logic, how this differs from the ancient Germanic understanding of how knowledge was gained. This second part is the part I have quoted here. The third part examines the relationship between subjective and obejctive knowledge and how this is understood in our society, as opposed ot that of the ancient Germanic people. I suggest reading the whole thing. I have quoted the second part of the article below to emphasize this aspect of the topic.
I'm personally a big believer in reason and logic, but perhaps it isn't everything. If the Greeks sought to replace the "inspired" mode of acquiring knowledge for the fact it wasn't fosetring equality and democracy, what are the implications of saying that one accepts the "ecstatic" or "inspired" state of consciousness as ameans of acquiring knowledge? Indeed, this seems so alien to us, as rational postmodern westerners, we cannot imagine what its consequences on society would be too well.
Thoughts?
The Mead of Poetry - Norse Mythology for Smart People
The article is divided into three parts, the first decribing a Norse myth about how Odin acquired the mead of poetry. The second examines how our modern society understands knowledge as being something that can only be attained through reason/logic, how this differs from the ancient Germanic understanding of how knowledge was gained. This second part is the part I have quoted here. The third part examines the relationship between subjective and obejctive knowledge and how this is understood in our society, as opposed ot that of the ancient Germanic people. I suggest reading the whole thing. I have quoted the second part of the article below to emphasize this aspect of the topic.
The Origin of Truth and Knowledge
As entertaining as this tale is, it’s also extraordinarily rich in themes that reveal some of the most important differences between the worldview of the pre-Christian Norse and other Germanic peoples on the one hand and the worldview of modern society on the other. The first of these differences we’ll consider has to do with where thoughts come from.
In the modern world, we take it for granted that we arrive at our beliefs through an active process over which we have total control. We call this process “reason.†But any logical proof has to start with an assumption – that is, a statement for which one can’t offer any proof, but rather simply accepts on its own merits. This is so because of the “problem†of “infinite regress:†for every statement one attempts to validate rationally, an additional statement must be added to the chain to support that first statement, a process which can only continue infinitely if the process isn’t stopped somewhere. When and why do we stop this process, then? When can we know when we’ve hit upon an idea that’s so sound that it would be superfluous to question it?
René Descartes, the seventeenth-century French philosopher who was one of the foremost prophets of the modern, rationalistic worldview, held that some truths are simply self-evident and cannot be called into question. Tellingly, the principal notion that Descartes pointed to as a self-evident truth from which other truths could be deduced was, “I think, therefore I am.â€
But no truth is self-evident. If there were such a thing as a self-evident truth, everyone, everywhere, would already believe in it, and argumentation would be unnecessary.
“I think, therefore I am†rests on especially shifty ground in this regard. “I think†– how many assumptions are embedded within these two little words! For one thing, “I think†presupposes “I am,†not the other way around; in order for me to have agency in the thinking process, I must first, of course, exist. Even more importantly for our purposes here, “I think†presupposes that my thoughts come from myself and not from anyone or anywhere else. History is brimming with people who have held diametrically opposed views on the ultimate origins of thought. Take, for example, the words of the twentieth-century German philosopher Martin Heidegger, who wrote, “We never come to thoughts. They come to us.â€[9]
Evidently, Descartes’s “self-evident truth†is anything but.
In my opinion, Heidegger overstates his case. Some parts of the thought process we can rightly ascribe to ourselves. But his larger point, that there are parts of the thought process over which we don’t have control, mirrors the indigenous Germanic perspective on thought very nicely.
As the tale of Odin’s theft of the Mead of Poetry shows, the pre-Christian Germanic peoples held that the kinds of visionary insights that can make a person into a true poet or scholar – the kinds of insights that can form the basis of a logical proof – come from Odin.
The fact that this gift is symbolized by mead is far from random. One of the central rituals of the pre-Christian religion of the Germanic peoples was the sumbl (Old Norse) or symbel (Old English), which was centered around the drinking of alcohol to induce a state of ecstasy. It was held that one can more readily perceive truth in this inspired state, when one finds it hard to not be utterly honest with oneself and others. In this ritual context, the drinker is closer to the gods and to the sacred realities that undergird the profane reality of everyday life than when one’s inner faculties are bound to the kind of cold, dispassionate mindsets that we in the modern world prize.[10]
Our modern preference for detached analysis is no accident, and has a traceable history of its own. Prior to roughly the fourth century BCE, the view that truth came in rare flashes of ecstatic insight (what we today might call “aha! momentsâ€) was the norm, at least amongst the European peoples of the period, and likely across much of the rest of the world as well. This esteem for the rare and special came under heavy criticism among the Greeks, however, who linked these preferences to a hierarchical social structure that many wanted to replace with something more egalitarian and democratic. Because of this preference for the common and mundane over the elite, the Greeks – including extremely influential philosophers such as Aristotle – began to turn away from inspired thought, seeking to replace it entirely (or at least largely) with the kind of detached analysis that most people today hold to be the sole legitimate means of uncovering truth. The Greeks’ reasons for doing so weren’t really rational, but rather human.[11]
To be sure, the ancient Germanic peoples no doubt held that a more sober, analytical mode of thought had its place as well. But the thoughts that they arrived at through such means were secondary and profane, and derived from the thoughts that were given to them during fleeting moments of ecstatic insight, in much the same way as the contents of any logical proof are derived from an initial assumption that cannot itself be logically supported.
In light of the failure of the rationalistic worldview to account for the origins of the life-determining assumptions that form the basis of any and all thought, might it not be wise to concede that the heathen Germanic people were on to something?
I'm personally a big believer in reason and logic, but perhaps it isn't everything. If the Greeks sought to replace the "inspired" mode of acquiring knowledge for the fact it wasn't fosetring equality and democracy, what are the implications of saying that one accepts the "ecstatic" or "inspired" state of consciousness as ameans of acquiring knowledge? Indeed, this seems so alien to us, as rational postmodern westerners, we cannot imagine what its consequences on society would be too well.
Thoughts?
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