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    Comments on Nicholas Berdyaev's Book (1939) Spirit and Reality
    Comments on Nicholas Berdyaev's Book (1939) Spirit and Reality
    Comments on Nicholas Berdyaev's Book (1939) Spirit and Reality
    Ebook76 pages39 minutes

    Comments on Nicholas Berdyaev's Book (1939) Spirit and Reality

    By Razie Mah

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    About this ebook

    In Spirit and Reality (1939), Nicholas Berdyaev, an Orthodox exile from communist Russia, frequently writes the word "spirit", but rarely pens the word "reality". How should I appreciate this? Here is my guess.
    In Philosophy of Nature (1935), Jacques Maritain presents an argument that allows this reader to construct diagrams of the Positivist's and the empirio-schematic judgments. The empirio-schematic judgment belongs to 'what ought to be' for the Positivist's judgment. So, a modernist poses two judgments at once, a judgment within a judgment. That is totally confounding.
    In this close reading, features of Berdyaev's argument are diagrammed using models developed in the commentary on Jacques Maritain's Book (1935) Natural Philosophy.
    Berdyaev places the Positivist's judgment into a new category-based nested form, polarizing the judgment until it takes the character of a dyad. Berdyaev emphasizes the character of the intellect-noumenal side. Ironically, the Vienna Circle (meeting between 1924 through 1936) celebrates the empirio-schematic judgment-phenomenal side.
    What does this say about the historical moment?
    Surely, between the two world wars, the nature of science is under scrutiny. Yet, inquirers lacked semiotic tools for inquiry. The tools are here. They transform Berdyaev’s argument into something both familiar and novel.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRazie Mah
    Release dateDec 30, 2018
    ISBN9781942824589
    Comments on Nicholas Berdyaev's Book (1939) Spirit and Reality
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      Comments on Nicholas Berdyaev's Book (1939) Spirit and Reality - Razie Mah

      Comments on Nicholas Berdyaev's Book (1939) Spirit and Reality

      By Razie Mah

      Published for Smashwords.com

      2018

      Notes on Text

      This work comments on book by Russian Nicolas Berdyaev, Spirit and Reality.

      Single quotes and italics are used to group words together.

      Prerequisites include A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form, A Primer on Sensible and Social Construction. Suggested readings include Comments on Jacques Maritain's Book (1935) Philosophy of Nature, abbreviated as CJMNP.

      Table of Contents

      The Beast Crouching at the Door

      Maritain’s Model of Positivist Judgment

      What is Real?

      Attributes of the Subjective Realm

      Models for the Subjugation of the Spirit

      Example of Sensible Construction

      Asceticism

      Subjective Evil and Suffering. Objective Sin.

      Purification

      Contemplation

      The New Spirituality

      The Beast Crouching at the Door

      0001 Nicolas Berdyaev publishes Spirit and Reality (1939) when he is 63 years old, a Russian exile in Paris. His residence in that city overlaps with another notable author. Jacques Maritain's book, Natural Philosophy (1935), examines positivist scientific attitudes through the lens of scholastic thought.

      Surely, Berdyaev and Maritain struggle with the same two-faced beast: positivist and empirio-schematic judgments. Talking to a modernist is like speaking to a ventriloquist and a puppet, both at same time. One has history on his side. The other has science.

      0002 A two-faced monster crouches at the door.

      There seems no way to stop it, because its desire is for our desire.

      Each of us wants to be on the right side of history. Who does not believe in science?

      0003 Maritain, trained as a chemist, tries to isolate the beast. But, he cannot separate the two faces. In order to neutralize the scientific facade, Maritain revives natural philosophy. He applies the scholastic approach of three degrees of abstraction to the creature. He configures an optical analogy in which the second degree is viewed through the first and third degrees. He claims that abstraction is visualization. Science is a lens to view the world.

      What a lens it is.

      Natural Philosophy shows that moderns view their world through two interconnected judgments. The relational structures of the positivist and empirio-schematic judgments are not nested. The empirio-schematic judgment occupies the position of what ought to be in the positivist judgment.

      0004 So how the beast devour?

      Noumena organize the positivist intellect, while that same intellect brings an empirio-schematic judgment into relation with a phenomenon.

      The beast devours because, unlike Aristotle’s judgment, the positivist judgment is full of its own righteousness.

      The empirio-schematic judgment - the scientific construction - is what ought to be.

      There is more.

      Models are more real than phenomena.

      History is destiny.

      Science is the truth that destiny reveals.

      0005 In this work of semiotic visualization, I start with Maritain’s model of positivist judgment and imagine that Berdyaev places this relational structure, as an actuality, into a new vessel. He places it into a new nested form.

      This polarizes the triad into a dyad, a dance between subjective and objective. He envisions this interplay as a dynamic expression of a new spirituality.

      0006 In this manner, the monster may be recognized and tamed.

      Or so, Berdyaev imagines.

      Maritain’s Model of Positivist Judgment

      0007 Judgment exhibits a triadic structure. It has three elements (P,Q,R). Judgment is a relation (P) between what is (Q) and what ought to be (R).

      In reflective judgment, categories are not assigned to each element.

      In actionable judgment, categories are assigned. A different category inheres to each element. The assignment permits the actionable

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