The Freudian term “sublimation” has come to be used carelessly for two relationships between high and low, relationships which are not only different but even opposite to each other. I illustrate with sex, his obsession.
Kant thought we could either give the law to ourselves, which he called autonomy, or accept a law imposed from outside, which he called heteronomy. In this view, autonomy is freedom, but heteronomy is bondage. What does the picture leave out?
A churchgoing colleague explained to me once that his personal rule of faith is to believe whatever doctrine is the most “uplifting.” He tells me that he finds it more uplifting to believe in reincarnation than in death, judgment, and resurrection, because it “gives us as many chances as we need to get it right.”
The warlords, satraps, and barons of ancient times visited cruel burdens upon the underclass, but there was a natural limit to what they could do. Though a man could be treated like a dog, in the end a man was a man, and a dog was a dog.
"If I cannot be certain, then what is the use of thinking or believing anything?" ... is an evasive way of saying "Since I cannot be God, I refuse to be man." -- Mary Shideler, Theology of Romantic Love
Philosopher David Benatar made ripples several years ago with his book Better Never to Have Been. The author maintains that in view of the pain, disappointment, anxiety, and grief of life, our parents did us harm by bringing us into existence.
“There is a thought that stops thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped. That is the ultimate evil against which all religious authority was aimed. It only appears at the end of decadent ages like our own ....
“Man, by a blind instinct, knew that if once things were wildly questioned, reason could be questioned first ....