charles gavette wrote:
> This is at heart the very same problem addressed by all philosophies
>and all religions; and for the discussion at hand, this aptly poses the
>question of chaos and order, or the meaning of the Tao, for the early
>Taoist texts.
> The oddity of early Taoist thought was its strange solicitude for
>chaos, its mystically austere passion for confusion.
gilles deleuze wrote:
"the speculative object and the practical object of philosophy as
naturalism coincide on this point: it is always a matter of denouncing the
illusion, the false infinite, the infinity of religion and all of the
theological-erotic-oneiric myths in which it is expressed. to the question
'what is the use of philosophy?' the answer must be: what other object
would have an interest in holding forth the image of a free person, and in
denouncing all of the forces which need myth and a troubled spirit in order
to establish their power? ... active gods are the myth of religion, as
destiny is the myth of a false physics, and being, the one and the whole
are the myth of a false philosophy totally saturated by theology. never has
the enterprise of demystification been carried further ... lucretius
established for a long time to come the implications of naturalism: the
positivity of nature; naturalism as the philosophy of affirmation;
pluralism linked with multiple affirmation; sensualism connected with the
joy of the diverse; and the practical critique of all mystifications." (the
logic of sense, 278-279)
..................................
nathan strait, bucknell university
associative professor of chaosophy
http://coral.bucknell.edu/~strait/
