-5\u00a0 61%\u00a0 17%\u00a0 0mph W\u00a0 bar30.64\u00a0 Windchill-5\u00a0 Winter<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waxing Gibbous Winter Moon<\/p>\n
Got out the discussion materials for the religious influence on art session with the docent book club, March 17th.\u00a0 That’s one item finished.<\/p>\n
While I watched first the Patriots beat the Chargers and, then, the New York Giants beat the Packers, I read snatches of material I printed out about transcendentalism.\u00a0 Gotta admit, I’ve had a backward idea of it for a long time, unless I learned it once and forgot it.\u00a0 Always possible, how would I know?\u00a0 Here’s the backward part. I thought the transcendent was about leaping the surly bonds of earth and heading for the Platonic\/Gnostic heavens.\u00a0 Nope.\u00a0 It was about opposing the empiricism and rationalism of John Locke, et al.\u00a0 Transcendental refers to the Kantian notion that there are important a priori <\/em>structures in the mind that allow it to function at all.\u00a0 This rules out the empiricist idea that our understanding (reason) works only on data brought to the mind through the senses.\u00a0 First, there is the mind and its structures like time and space that order and create intelligibility with sensory data.\u00a0 Besides, Kant believed that we can never touch\u00a0 reality, the ding an siche<\/em>, the thing in itself, since all we ever really know are the data our senses bring to us; in other words we (our mind) never reaches the source of the sensory data which are secondary to the thing in itself.<\/p>\n There is, of course, much\u00a0more to the debate and the idea, but getting this\u00a0straight will help as I write a presentation on Transcendentalism for Groveland UU.\u00a0 By happenstance I also read today an article about\u00a0Shinto in the work of Japanese anime artist Miyazaki\u00a0published in the journal, Religion and Popular Culture.\u00a0 The close correlation between Transcendentalist treatment of nature and Shintoism was so obvious it took my breath away. Likewise, if we add Taoism into the mix we have a sort of triad of nature focused faiths that I think speak profoundly to our current reality.<\/p>\n The Giants\/Packers game had my attention the whole way.\u00a0(I read during the commercials.)\u00a0 The two teams played more or less evenly for four quarters, though the Giants looked better.\u00a0 With the score tied at the end of regulation the Packers won the toss and elected to receive.\u00a0 Favre threw an interception, then Eli Manning took the Giants down to the field for a shot at a 47 yard field goal.\u00a0 Tynes, the Giants field goal kicker, had missed two shorter kicks in the fourth quarter.\u00a0 He hit it.\u00a0 And the crowd went wild.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" -5\u00a0 61%\u00a0 17%\u00a0 0mph W\u00a0 bar30.64\u00a0 Windchill-5\u00a0 Winter \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waxing Gibbous Winter Moon Got out the discussion materials for the religious influence on art session with the docent book club, March 17th.\u00a0 That’s one item finished. While I watched first the Patriots beat the Chargers and, then, the New York Giants beat the Packers, I … Continue reading Transcendentalism and the NFL Playoffs<\/span>