[MD] The Truth of Symbol part 1 - Joseph Campbell (Demanding Evidence part 2)

[david buchanan]

Mary said to Steve:
...a new idea popped into my head (new to me anyway).  If we can agree that Western Civilization is built on the idea of the self as supreme and eternal; that all monotheisms are based on that, then it seems pretty clear to me that a religious fundamentalist is simply someone who has taken this notion to its logical conclusion.

dmb says:
That's how James saw it. In the essay titled "Does Consciousness Exist" he says, basically, that the Cartesian subject is a modern, quasi-secular version of the christian soul. (You might be surprised to learn how religious the modern philosophers were. Newton was way into alchemy and otherwise thought physics was the study of God's laws, for example, and Descartes needed God to escape his solipsism.) In that essay James denies that there is any such substance or entity. Instead, he says, consciousness is not a thing or an ontological reality but rather a function within experience. 



 		 	   		  
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