To be is to be contingent: nothing of which it can be said that "it is" can be alone and independent. But being is a member of paticca-samuppada as arising which contains ignorance. Being is only invertible by ignorance.

Destruction of ignorance destroys the illusion of being. When ignorance is no more, than consciousness no longer can attribute being (pahoti) at all. But that is not all for when consciousness is predicated of one who has no ignorance than it is no more indicatable (as it was indicated in M Sutta 22)

Nanamoli Thera

Saturday, February 15, 2020

You shouldn’t say that

For years, all over Europe, discussion has been increasingly suppressed in the name of “political correctness.” Someone deviating from the mainstream is not shown with reason why he is wrong, but is merely told, “You shouldn’t say that.” What lurks behind this is a relativism regarding truth. To assert the truth is considered intolerance, although the opposite is true. Making an assertion of truth means subjecting one’s opinion to discursive tests. If there is no truth, then no such test  can exist. Consequently, discussions are just veiled power struggles in which an opinion is not true or false, but dominant or deviant, and the latter of the two brings ostracism. Naturally, the truth does not arise from discourse; it is only tested by it. Even before this test, it is true and intuitively convincing.

Robert Spaemann
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)