Interesting how important spirituality can be to human mental health - whether in the form of ritual or chanting or meditation/prayer. Even in the secular world, there is a sort of movement that accepts religion despite its lack of consistent explanation for what we perceive in the world. I like this podcast and this particular episode that discusses about the 'creation of God' in human society: https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/creating-god/
I do! Definitely he looked up to and learned some things from Swedenborg, so I inherently respect him, and what I've heard about him is quite wild and enticing. The closest I've gotten to his writings, though, are Kant's Dreams of a Spirit Seer - incidentally a fun and under-read work of the master. Are you a Swedenborg fan?
Yes. Also, Kant and Emerson were more religious, like critical theory, and Thoreau - Humboldt their opponents (systems theory). I knew you would be reading Kant.
"Though he came to repudiate the Romantic or rationalist holism of Coleridge and Emerson, he was equally uncomfortable with the sort of unimaginative and unfeeling empiricism of the academic scientific establishment. Instead, influenced importantly by the work of the German naturalist, Alexander von Humboldt, Thoreau adopted a sort of middle way between Romantic idealism, on the one hand, and Baconian empiricism on the other (Walls 1995, pp. 94-130). Facts were crucial for Thoreau but only insofar as they were conceived as part of a larger spiritual and ecological whole. "
Thanks, Angelina, for sharing this article! I really enjoyed it, for the description of Thoreau's empiricism given in part in the passage you quote, as well as the way it situates his work religiously. For instance, helpfully describing his thirst for nature ("a thirst for closer communion - for actual contact - with sacred reality") and bringing together and making sense of some of his ecstatic moments and showing how they inform his writing. Thanks for sharing this
Interesting how important spirituality can be to human mental health - whether in the form of ritual or chanting or meditation/prayer. Even in the secular world, there is a sort of movement that accepts religion despite its lack of consistent explanation for what we perceive in the world. I like this podcast and this particular episode that discusses about the 'creation of God' in human society: https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/creating-god/
Remember when Emerson was banned from Harvard? Part of the tradition of Swedenborg. Back to nature.
I do! Definitely he looked up to and learned some things from Swedenborg, so I inherently respect him, and what I've heard about him is quite wild and enticing. The closest I've gotten to his writings, though, are Kant's Dreams of a Spirit Seer - incidentally a fun and under-read work of the master. Are you a Swedenborg fan?
Yes. Also, Kant and Emerson were more religious, like critical theory, and Thoreau - Humboldt their opponents (systems theory). I knew you would be reading Kant.
https://utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/uram.26.2.88
Page 105
"Though he came to repudiate the Romantic or rationalist holism of Coleridge and Emerson, he was equally uncomfortable with the sort of unimaginative and unfeeling empiricism of the academic scientific establishment. Instead, influenced importantly by the work of the German naturalist, Alexander von Humboldt, Thoreau adopted a sort of middle way between Romantic idealism, on the one hand, and Baconian empiricism on the other (Walls 1995, pp. 94-130). Facts were crucial for Thoreau but only insofar as they were conceived as part of a larger spiritual and ecological whole. "
Thanks, Angelina, for sharing this article! I really enjoyed it, for the description of Thoreau's empiricism given in part in the passage you quote, as well as the way it situates his work religiously. For instance, helpfully describing his thirst for nature ("a thirst for closer communion - for actual contact - with sacred reality") and bringing together and making sense of some of his ecstatic moments and showing how they inform his writing. Thanks for sharing this