Naturalism and Puberty
As Lessing and Schiller taught, the goal of a human's education is to establish the most delicate balance and harmony between all of his faculties -- between sense and intellect, between duty and inclination -- to transform animal sexuality into human sexuality, and to allow instinct to give way to choice with regard to what is true, good, and beautiful. Sensuousness, according to Rousseau, must be generalized and drawn away from the particular so that, from selfish, pragmatic concern, it becomes the most natural bridge to participation in an ethical community and the disciplined, independent, and free use of reason. Inclination is not to be extirpated from man's life but rather placed in the context of all of his creative, political, and intellectual endeavors. Since the time of Plato, wise men have noted that sexuality must become intertwined in the most complex way with the higher aspirations of the soul, thereby giving rise in man to an erotic thrust toward knowledge.
Yet in our day and age there are many from whom this balance is missing, for whom the erotic and the intellectual are kept separate, and so they do not experience this longing for sublime transcendence. Many of them are accomplished in one way or another, yet their souls long ago defaulted to the flat, featureless, and gray standard of our day, which imagines education to be merely a form of rote specialization. The world is nothing more than what presents itself to the senses, and their conception of reality is devoid of all imagination or ideal.
The philosophical naturalist is one of these flat, gray souls. Whereas the early moderns like Locke imagined that natural science would serve the greater ends of humanity through the production of industrious men, the avoidance of pain, and the marginalization of the idle and quarrelsome, today's naturalist wishes to deflate philosophy itself, along with all the spiritual aspirations of humanity, and make the domination of nature equivalent to truth itself. Yet this results in the eradication of the meaning of truth itself, which is why pragmatism is often the upshot of this narrow and immature worldview. Where truth is nothing more than expediency and mere sensuous gratification, the ends of man are reduced to the current demands of the market for specialists and technicians.
At some point in his early intellectual development, the philosophical naturalist was like a pubescent boy experiencing an erection for the first time, yet in the absence of proper tutelage from a hoary and wizened mentor or a patron deity, the excitement confused and consumed him. As Kant and Hegel taught, education requires that the knowledge of the sensible world be incorporated into the complete project of human civilization, thereby providing a proper stepping stone for man to contemplate the supersensible realm. Yet what for an independent and enlightened man is the sprout that germinates into the plant is for the naturalist the whole plant itself. Natural science is not merely one stone in the edifice of human knowledge for him; it is the whole and standard of human knowledge itself. In the absence of any organic, spiritual amalgamation of man's endeavors, naturalism becomes the dominant and exclusive paradigm of all philosophy.
Yet in our day and age there are many from whom this balance is missing, for whom the erotic and the intellectual are kept separate, and so they do not experience this longing for sublime transcendence. Many of them are accomplished in one way or another, yet their souls long ago defaulted to the flat, featureless, and gray standard of our day, which imagines education to be merely a form of rote specialization. The world is nothing more than what presents itself to the senses, and their conception of reality is devoid of all imagination or ideal.
The philosophical naturalist is one of these flat, gray souls. Whereas the early moderns like Locke imagined that natural science would serve the greater ends of humanity through the production of industrious men, the avoidance of pain, and the marginalization of the idle and quarrelsome, today's naturalist wishes to deflate philosophy itself, along with all the spiritual aspirations of humanity, and make the domination of nature equivalent to truth itself. Yet this results in the eradication of the meaning of truth itself, which is why pragmatism is often the upshot of this narrow and immature worldview. Where truth is nothing more than expediency and mere sensuous gratification, the ends of man are reduced to the current demands of the market for specialists and technicians.
At some point in his early intellectual development, the philosophical naturalist was like a pubescent boy experiencing an erection for the first time, yet in the absence of proper tutelage from a hoary and wizened mentor or a patron deity, the excitement confused and consumed him. As Kant and Hegel taught, education requires that the knowledge of the sensible world be incorporated into the complete project of human civilization, thereby providing a proper stepping stone for man to contemplate the supersensible realm. Yet what for an independent and enlightened man is the sprout that germinates into the plant is for the naturalist the whole plant itself. Natural science is not merely one stone in the edifice of human knowledge for him; it is the whole and standard of human knowledge itself. In the absence of any organic, spiritual amalgamation of man's endeavors, naturalism becomes the dominant and exclusive paradigm of all philosophy.