Re: Real Ghosts and other Guilty Pleasures
Posted by:
Kyberean (IP Logged)
Date: 19 January, 2009 02:35PM
ArkhamMaid:
Nietzsche was no metaphysician, and he hated any sort of otherworldly philosophical rationalizations, to be sure, but I actually think that CAS would have found Nietzsche an ally. I say this because each was skeptical of the very categories of human thought and the human senses to conceptualize accurately any form of reality. One of my favorite CAS quotations is, "“All human thought, all science, all religion, is the holding of a candle to the night of the universeâ€.
JoJo Lapin X:
You are absolutely right that there is no such contradiction, and Lovecraft himself is a perfect example of that fact. Of course, Lovecraft is also an example of someone who is much more open-minded regarding outre' phenomena than the average scientist or philosophical materialist. Lovecraft would have insisted that anomalous phenomena were material in nature, but he was very open to the likelihood that such phenomena exist, even if they are beyond our present means of detection.
I understand Lovecraft's observation regarding materialists and horror, but, as I think I argued in another long-dead thread here, Lovecraft's assertion is debatable. For instance, three of the four "modern masters" whom Lovecraft cites in his essay (M.R. James, Machen, and Blackwood) were believers in the supernatural, whereas only the fourth such "master", Dunsany, shared Lovecraft's skepticism and materialism.
Edit: ArkhamMaid, you and I were posting the same observation about Lovecraft simultaneously!
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 19 Jan 09 | 02:37PM by Kyberean.