On Oct 26, 2006, at 12:39 PM, Chris Doss wrote:
> I haven't conceptualized it much. Off the cuff I would
> say subjective religious experience, the experience of
> feeling the presence of God, the kind of thing
> catalogued by William James.
Or it could just be the "oceanic" feeling described by Freud, or Ferenczi's thrill at ur-memories of the womb. The feeling is no doubt real, but attributing religious content to it is just sad men making angels of the sun, to paraphrase Wallace Stevens.
> I've had those kinds of
> experiences and I'm not even religious, in particular
> when listening to Beethoven. Beethoven's Ninth is like
> Distilled Essence of the Deity.
No, it's a piece of music written by a very talented human. I love Beethoven more than just about anything else on earth, but his music never makes me think of god.
Speaking of the 9th, what about that weird Turkish march that interrupts the Ode to Joy? Zizek claims it's an ironic self- deconstruction of the text's hymn to universal brotherhood.
Doug