Originally posted by Iacchus32 We have the "effect" all around us, which is external. But, if this is the extent of our focus, how does it belie the "cause," which is internal? Life itself is nothing but subjective, which is say, if we wish to find meaning in life, then we must look within. Doesn't that make the least bit of sense?
Whereas the materialists will say, there is no meaning to life, we are just here. Now you tell me which makes more sense? ... and, which sounds outright foolish?
What is the point to doing anything in this life if it doesn't mean anything?
You have an absolute talent for misrepresenting materialism and science. Where does science/materialism say such a thing?
There is a purpose in our life, cause we are the very beings, that determine and define purpose for ourself, unlike rocks, and planets and stars, and the universe, which does not have that kind of subjectivity. To be alife is meaning in itself, cause it is a struggle to be and remain in life, that is what billion of years of evolution can tell us.
But science is neither prescribing people how to find purpose and meaning in life, since that is a personal matter. Science can only say something meaningfull as our biological nature and drifts is concerned, or whay our psychological behaviour is considered.
It is theism on ther other hand that gives a false meaning to people's lifes since religion is based on an alienated self-consciousness. That is what is trouble some, cause religion defines a false meaning to someone's life.
" (...) Hunger is a natural need; it therefore needs a nature outside itself, an object outside itself, in order to satisfy itself, to be stilled. Hunger is an acknowledged need of my body for an object existing outside it, indispensable to its integration and to the expression of its essential being. The sun is the object of the plant — an indispensable object to it, confirming its life — just as the plant is an object of the sun, being an expression of the life-awakening power of the sun, of the sun’s objective essential power.
A being which does not have its nature outside itself is not a natural being, and plays no part in the system of nature. A being which has no object outside itself is not an objective being. A being which is not itself an object for some third being has no being for its object; i.e., it is not objectively related. Its being is not objective.
A non-objective being is a non-being.
Suppose a being which is neither an object itself, nor has an object. Such a being, in the first place, would be the unique being: there would exist no being outside it — it would exist solitary and alone. For as soon as there are objects outside me, as soon as I am not alone, I am another — another reality than the object outside me. For this third object I am thus a different reality than itself; that is, I am its object. Thus, to suppose a being which is not the object of another being is to presuppose that no objective being exists. As soon as I have an object, this object has me for an object. But a non-objective being is an unreal, non-sensuous thing — a product of mere thought (i.e., of mere imagination) — an abstraction. To be sensuous, that is, to be really existing, means to be an object of sense, to be a sensuous object, to have sensuous objects outside oneself — objects of one’s sensuousness. To be sensuous is to suffer.
Man as an objective, sensuous being is therefore a suffering being — and because he feels that he suffers, a passionate being. Passion is the essential power of man energetically bent on its object. (...)"
" (...) The way in which consciousness is, and in which something is for it, is knowing. Knowing is its sole act. Something therefore comes to be for consciousness insofar as the latter knows this something. Knowing is its sole objective relation.
It [consciousness] then knows the nullity of the object (i.e., knows the non-existence of the distinction between the object and itself, the non-existence of the object for it) because it knows the object as its self-alienation; that is knows itself — knows knowing as object — because the object is only he semblance of an object, a piece of mystification, which in its essence, however, is nothing else but knowing itself, which has confronted itself with itself and hence has confronted itself with a nullity — a something which has no objectivity outside the knowing. Or: knowing knows that in relating itself to an object it is only outside itself — that it only externalises itself; that it itself only appears to itself as an object — or that that which appears to it as an object is only itself.
On the other hand, says Hegel, there is here at the same time this other moment, that consciousness has just as much annulled and reabsorbed this externalisation and objectivity, being thus at home in its other-being as such.
In this discussion all the illusions of speculation are brought together.
First of all: consciousness, self-consciousness, is at home in its other-being as such. It is therefore — or if we here abstract from the Hegelian abstraction and (put the self-consciousness of man instead of self-consciousness) it is at home in its other being as such. This implies, for one thing, that consciousness (knowing as knowing, thinking as thinking) pretends to be directly the other of itself — to be the world of sense, the real world, life — thought surpassing itself in thought (Feuerbach)[51]. This aspect is contained herein, inasmuch as consciousness as mere consciousness takes offence not at estranged objectivity, but at objectivity as such.
Secondly, this implies that self-conscious man, insofar as he has recognised and superseded the spiritual world (or his world’s spiritual, general mode of being) as self-alienation, nevertheless again confirms it in this alienated shape and passes it off as his true mode of being — re-establishes it, and pretends to be at home in his other-being as such. Thus, for instance, after superseding religion, after recognising religion to be a product of self-alienation he yet finds confirmation of himself in religion as religion. Here is the root of Hegel’s false positivism, or of his merely apparent criticism: this is what Feuerbach designated as the
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/feuerbach/works/future/future1.htm#21b" — but it has to be expressed in more general terms. Thus reason is at home in unreason The man who has recognised that he is leading an alienated life in law, politics, etc., is leading his true human life in this alienated life as such. Self-affirmation, self-confirmation in contradiction with itself — in contradiction with both the knowledge and the essential being of the object — is thus true knowledge and life.
There can therefore no longer be any question about an act of accommodation on Hegel’s part vis-à-vis religion, the state, etc., since this lie is the lie of his principle.
If I know religion as alienated human self-consciousness, then what I know in it as religion is not my self-consciousness, but my alienated self-consciousness confirmed in it. I therefore know my self-consciousness that belongs to itself, to its very nature, confirmed not in religion but rather in annihilated and superseded religion.
In Hegel, therefore, the negation of the negation is not the confirmation of the true essence, effected precisely through negation of the pseudo-essence. With him the negation the negation is the confirmation of the pseudo-essence, or of the self-estranged essence in its denial; or it is the denial; or it is the denial of this pseudo-essence as an objective being dwelling outside man and independent of him, and its transformation into the subject. (...)"
Source: Marx in
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/hegel.htm"
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