tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post4803010020823361808..comments2024-03-28T15:45:47.867+00:00Comments on Bruce Charlton's Notions: What is Love? Not cohesion but PolarityBruce Charltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-47463443530779406012017-09-05T16:48:06.474+01:002017-09-05T16:48:06.474+01:00@Igude - Barfield cncluded that Jung retained mate...@Igude - Barfield cncluded that Jung retained materialist metaphysics, which created contradictions in his system - I agree. Jung is a halfway house, but not the full thing, and therefore he can be confusing unless moved-on-from. Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-1489381191031694052017-09-05T15:47:16.809+01:002017-09-05T15:47:16.809+01:00I too struggle with the word Love in Christian the...I too struggle with the word Love in Christian theology. A Christian mystic friend of mine quotes Eckhardt thus: Love is stronger than Death, harder than hell. Death separates the Soul for the body, but Love separates all things from the Soul. She then adds "I know no other way to grow toward God; terribly painful, but potentially very fruitful if you are prepared to pay the price in soul blood." <br /><br />In the end one is stripped of everything - there is only God. It is not a small thing to accept that. Again Eckhardt gives a clue when he says there is a place "deeper than Hell, and here I sit me down." It is at some point like that in the process of this life that divine Love just might make all things possible. Anyhow that's the way I tend to think of it - for what it is worth. lgudehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12774491337993415578noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-54931253837723616432017-09-05T15:26:32.088+01:002017-09-05T15:26:32.088+01:00Well, I am not sure I follow the twists and turns ...Well, I am not sure I follow the twists and turns of your particular argument here - some parts better than others, but the general problem of monism and dualism goes back to the day at about age 8 that my father explained to me that some people - philosophers - said that everything was really one big thing. I decided right then I wanted to be monist!. Things, of course, have gotten more complicated since. I encountered the idea of opposites at university, which I take as similar to what you call polarity. One evening as I was washing my hands in a cheap dorm room hand basin that had separate hot and cold water taps and no plug I observed that what was wanted was warm water but what was delivered was hot and cold together that chilled and scalded one's hands simultaneously. I recognized that the experience connected to the problem of 'the opposites'. That experiencing opposites was being torn in two directions simultaneously and life was definitely not a lukewarm experience. Hot and cold together. Case one is that we unarguably have this life and it is equally unarguable that we are going to lose it. Case, two, after a lifetime of thought, seems to be the tension between the individual and the group. Since that cold starry night I have understood the opposites in Jungian terms, and am only now beginning to study Coleridge and Barfield. Jung sees the opposites as something we live through and experience and finally come to terms with in the process of human growth. The opposites lie at the centre of his psychology of maturity and coming to terms with them is the road to wholeness. At the end of the process is the inner marriage between one's masculine and feminine nature. Also a major turning point in Jung's thought was his encounter with Taoism through Wilhelm's Secret of the Golden Flower which is a Taoist Alchemical text that had a profound effect on Jung and marks the dividing line (1928) between his earlier work and his mature work. Taoist metaphysics are of course based on a whole divided into masculine and feminine, Yin and Yang. It is hard to say across the differences in our intellectual background precisely how these ides and your discussion are parallel but I suspect they are profoundly parallel. lgudehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12774491337993415578noreply@blogger.com