The Human Animal (Humans)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Monday, August 10, 2009, 13:04 (5583 days ago) @ dhw

I wrote: "If we accept physiological evolution, why can't we accept similar lines of descent in other areas? Since the name Adler is now prominent in our forum, perhaps we should switch from Mortimer to Alfred: could it be that we need to assert our superiority in this way because of some almighty inferiority complex? Or is it a hangover from religion?" 
> 
> Matt asks: "Alfred, as in Whitehead?"
> 
> Sorry, I was trying to be clever. Mortimer Adler wrote The Difference of Man and the Difference it Makes, and Alfred Adler developed the concept of the inferiority complex. - Oh no problem at all, that's a new name to me. I got caught up in Emerson the past few days but I'm interested in quite a bit of early psychology. I'll add him to my list. - Looking at what your wrote again, Mortimer Adler as a pretty strict-seeming Aristotelian/Thomist thinker, a "hangover from religion" is precisely what I think is going on for many people. To me, the thinking that man is different in kind prods no special consideration vs. if man is greater only in degree. Adler takes the "slippery slope" that if we differ only in degree then we cannot condemn the acts of the Nazis in principle. The second side of N's nihilism is based on religion. Asserting that "everything means nothing" because you remove god from the equation is exactly that, and it is exactly this argument I see coming from Catholicism, and M. Adler, only this time its in removing man's "special place" in the hierarchy of things.

--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"