From: "John Foster" <borealis-AT-mercuryspeed.com>
Subject: Re: Spirit versus Character
Date: Sun, 12 Jan 2003 10:04:31 -0800


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Spirit versus CharacterHey Kenneth,

I like very much what U wrote here. Spiritual is an over-used term to explain just about everything from pure mentation to leaving the earthly realm. For me the spiritual has a specific meaning. In short spiritual means 'passage' and 'leaving behind' something much like a young child progresses from the fascination with toy cars and dollies to the fascination with real cars and real dollies/action heros, and then ultimately returns back to a fascination with toys again (as in antique road shows).

Spiritual means to 'pass' beyond a stage in life, thus it is not a term that is the antimony of the 'material' realm at all...but rather an exercise much like passing through a pass in the mountains of a high place. Spiritual thus is 'embodied' in life as the 'elevation' of the self beyond self, ie., leaving behind something, 'getting over' the rough and unhewn, embracing a new reality, entering a new heaven and a new earth ( in practice this is simply a transformation at the propositional - attitudinal level).

Therefore the spirit is a definate 'yea saying' rather than a 'nay saying' or bickering stance. It is equivalent to an all out affirmation. Of course character is what ever is consistent in a leader, even if the leader is only there to lead himself in solitary situations. To have character is therefore to lead, but leaders can lead toward final dissolution the spirit (no need to supply examples here). To have spirit is to affirm what is great and good or that which is 'granted' and 'given' by either God or Nature (depending on personal preference here). An Heideggerian attitude is therefore to affirm peak/new plateau experiences as necessary for spiritual growth (discarding childhood objects for a time), and the embracing of new forms of 'object permanence'  - to use Piaget's terms.

chao

john foster

PS. I might be in Arizona soon. Maybe we can have coffee and donuts at Tim Hortons (Canadian invention taking off in the US now) or watch sun set. It sets in the west out Ur way does it?
  Subject: Spirit versus Character




  Spirit and character.-Some reach their peak as characters, but their spirit is not up to this height, while with others it happens the other way around.


  Nietzsche-GS 235


  -------------------------------


  this aphorism seems to me to 'characterize' the difference between jud and rene, jud is strictly a character, the character who, seeking his depths, encharactorizes everyone else in his own image, with never even a filigree of any sense of the spirit entering on the horizon of that low and plot-centric cockneyeyed world of the staging of the acting, and heidegger cannot be glimpsed in terms of character put first, character is nothing to him and spirit is not everything in him it is the only thing, and if you have none of it in yourself, then you will see nothing of it in heidegger, merely a pennies in your hand 'by the book' rote literal and extremely gross distortion of who he was - - - seeing only what you can see, only a "tommy" mirror like yourself - - an insensitive man of the riddle and pun just out for a good time thru encharacterizing the role of "the ye olde wrecking yard" character - - a denizen of the self-righteous sewer - -


  nothing elevates with you, so


  go somewhere else,


  Kenneth

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Subject: Spirit versus Character

Spirit and character.-Some reach their peak as characters, but their spirit is not up to this height, while with others it happens the other way around.

Nietzsche-GS 235

-------------------------------

this aphorism seems to me to 'characterize' the difference between jud and rene, jud is strictly a character, the character who, seeking his depths, encharactorizes everyone else in his own image, with never even a filigree of any sense of the spirit entering on the horizon of that low and plot-centric cockneyeyed world of the staging of the acting, and heidegger cannot be glimpsed in terms of character put first, character is nothing to him and spirit is not everything in him it is the only thing, and if you have none of it in yourself, then you will see nothing of it in heidegger, merely a pennies in your hand 'by the book' rote literal and extremely gross distortion of who he was - - - seeing only what you can see, only a "tommy" mirror like yourself - - an insensitive man of the riddle and pun just out for a good time thru encharacterizing the role of "the ye olde wrecking yard" character - - a denizen of the self-righteous sewer - -

nothing elevates with you, so

go somewhere else,

Kenneth