Neither does the Republic. I have a feeling that he didn't recognize that society is for the benefit of the individuals comprising it, not the other way about and I mind a great deal about that. — Ludwig V

The dialogues are a far cry from stating "All men are created equal." There are many contested "histories" looking into how that talk came about. The dialectic did not start there.

But I disagree with saying that the benefits of individuals were not of paramount concern.

The opening dispute in the Republic is over whether the administration of justice is an arbitrary rule disguised as a universal truth. The model of the good city is built from the analogy of a person living the best possible life, not the other way around.

The limits to our knowledge of the Good expressed in the Republic are echoed in the Laws.

The discussion of pleasure in the Philebus is centered on the intersection of universal conditions and the experience of an individual human being.

The resistance to the philosophers as an assault upon traditional values was expressed in many different ways by different authors at the time. Talk about educating children was itself found to be offensive. The Meno gives a taste of that.

My two drachmas. Er, four, to be exact.

It does indeed point to the threshold between public and private aspects, or at least between what should be prescribed and what left up to the parties. (I'm not sure exactly what you mean by the reference to the OP.) — Ludwig V

It seems to me that the acknowledgement of not being able to explain the peculiar alchemy that brings a benefit (both publicly and privately) to children speaks to an awareness counted by Midgley to be a terra incognita for bachelors like Plato.

It's one thing to recommend marrying prudently or at least taking prudence into account. But it's quite another to prioritize the "city" in making the decision. — Ludwig V

The City has the prerogative to expect that from citizens. There is a tension in Plato about how love and friendship occur within this prerogative. The personal dynamic seen in Phaedrus and Symposium is absent in Laws except as horizons.

Observing this tension caused me to recommend The Care of the Self to the discussion. As a "history of philosophy", Foucault directly addresses how ideas about marriage changes through different articulations. It is a condition with a history and future challenges.

He did, however, on Plato's telling have some concern for the welfare of his children. I don't know if there is a correlation with his teachings, but it does seem that he preferred to hang out in the marketplace rather than at home with her. — Fooloso4

There is a correlation in Laws, where the qualifications for a suitable bride is discussed:

So when any man, having turned twenty-five years of age, upon due consideration by himself and by others, believes 772E he has found a bride that suits him personally, and is also suitable for companionship and for begetting children, he should marry, indeed everyone should do so before they turn thirty-five. But first he should be told how to find a suitable and fitting bride, for as Cleinias says, every law should be preceded by an introductory preamble of its own. — Plato, Laws, Bk 6, 772D

The matter of a union beneficial to the City is discussed as a balance of dispositions of the couple as well as the development of the children:

Ath: It’s nice of you to say so. Now, to a young man, from 773A a good family we should say the following: you should enter into the sort of marriage that meets the approval of sensible folk. These people would advise you neither to shun marriage to a poor family, nor chase eagerly after wealthy connections and, all other considerations being equal, always prefer to enter a union with someone who has less resources. For this approach would be beneficial both to the city itself, and to the families involved, since balance and proportion are much more conducive to excellence than unbridled excess. And someone who realises that he himself is too impulsive and hasty in all his actions should look for 773B connections to a well behaved family, whereas someone with the opposite natural tendencies should pursue connections of the opposite sort. And there should be one rule for all marriages: each person is to seek a marriage that is beneficial to the city, not the one that pleases himself. Everyone is always drawn somehow, by nature, to a person who is most like himself, and so the city 773C as a whole develops an imbalance of wealth and character traits. That’s how the consequences we wish to avoid in our own city, certainly befall most other cities. Now to prescribe explicitly, by law, that the wealthy are not to marry the wealthy, the powerful are not to marry the powerful, that the slower characters have to look for marital unions with the quick witted, and the quicker with the slower, would not alone be ridiculous but would anger a lot of people. For it is not easy to appreciate that a city should be 773D blended after the manner of a wine bowl, in which the wine, when first poured, seethes madly, but when it is restrained by the good company of another, more sober god, it forms a good, duly measured drink. Now it is virtually impossible for anyone to discern that this is happening in the case of the blending of children, and that’s why we should omit such matters from our laws. We should try instead to charm each person into placing more value upon the equipoise of their own children, than the marital property equality which is insatiable, using words of reproach to deter anyone who is intent upon marrying for money, rather than forcing them via a written law. — ibid. 772E

The limits of legislation noted here is quite different from the language of the Republic. It does echo the concern for the children's well-being in Phaedo. It also points to the threshold separating the public and private aspects of marriage addressed by the OP.

One element to note is that the phrase "social contract" was coined by Rousseau. Applying that idea to what Hobbes was saying overlooks the "I won't kill you if you don't kill me" deal Hobbes was talking about.

Please link to the collection.

What do you think about it?
Are you reading the Leviathan or something else?

Have you read Hobbes?

Are you writing a college essay?

I like the idea of an art of partnership. But the themes you mention seem to me to be more about what partnership should be than what it is. Would that be unfair? — Ludwig V

Results do vary. I have had enough good fortune to say it is true. I have had enough bad fortune to deeply appreciate what "lack of care" is like. One of the virtues of Foucault's book is that he constantly attends the consequences of things going south.

There is that matter of expectation to consider regarding bachelors' options, but one interesting element of Foucault's analysis is that couples have more power than singles in shaping the possibilities in particular places. Having patrons or an institution to help a single makes a big difference.

I also like it a lot. But commitment is tricky. I don’t think one can do it in advance. No matter what ceremony is supposed to establish the commitment, it needs to be maintained, or perhaps performed from day to day and even from hour to hour. If and when circumstances change, it may need to be renewed – life throws things you did not sign up for at you. — Ludwig V

This reminds me of Foucault, who speaks of the "art of partnership" in his Care of the Self. Foucault traces the changing ideas about marriage from the Classical writers to contemporary thinkers. One theme he develops is how the reciprocal nature of companionship leads to its own recognition of the "solitary" as a matter for care. Respect for the other strengthens the union in the business of the world as well as personally improving the life of the mate.
The book argues that the "art of partnership" has its own life in the different ethical standards it works within. But it does not live outside of those.

In terms of being a bachelor, Foucault depicts them as being less restrained than married men but still living in the fabric of the social reality continued through marital life. Not too many accounts of bachelorettes tripping the lights fantastic, however.

Curiously, Dostoevsky didn't refer to religious themes in this novel. I can say the plot is 'secular' if we compare it with other of his works. — javi2541997

I think of the difference between the religious and the psychological as a dynamic that plays different roles in different novels. When comparing The Idiot to The Brothers Karamazov, for instance, the differences collide but never resolve into a single measure of experience. The psychological, by itself, does not have all of the same problems.

The interviews with people who were recused from the current Trump trial are interesting. Finding the limits to one's own objectivity is such a New York City thing.

Thank you for the considered response. I agree that there is a departure from Russell and Frege in the work but see it from a different angle.

I, too, am working, so will elaborate when free.

Regarding perception, the NYC entrepreneurial set of Trumpsters do expect a direct benefit from tax changes in one fashion or another. Moves to change how LLCs operate and the Democratic effort to develop new corporate taxation make these folk nervous. Efforts to make the IRS more effective is also muttered about.

Well, I was reporting perception, not actual policy on taxes. I take your point on the cost of trade wars.

The culture wars issue sounds more like offering rhetorical support. — Relativist

Not sure what you mean by that, but many people are invested in that view of conflict. I have a lot of family in Texas who are mostly concerned about those issues.

From my encounter with Trump voters, in my family and work life, there is a difference between those who are mostly concerned with having the least amount of taxes charged against them as possible and those who want more control of cultural institutions. I have met people who want both of those agendas but plenty more who do not care about the other side of the politics.

The case is about attempts to squash negative accounts before the election. The law involved concerns efforts to change perceptions of the electorate through illegal means. What actually happened sexually no longer matters.

Leibniz did present a 'universal character' suitable for a principle of sufficient reason to be up to the task of sorting out what things are. Or at least provide a ground for talking about the fundamental elements in a coherent way.

The challenge of the Tractatus begins with separating 'facts' from 'things'. That seems like a clear withdrawal from a "correspondence theory". In that regard, Wittgenstein is taking a step backwards. Regrouping after failed attempts.

What is wrong with assuming the previous statements have been read and understood? Did I leave something out?

Lame response, considering what you have claimed.

So, you have none?

But you claimed that the apparent attempt by T to overturn the election results was a plot perpetrated by Biden. Those are your words. Are your words only something that are claimed afterwards?

I accept your withdrawal from your thesis.

Not even the part where Biden engineered the whole event?

The confluence of efforts to change the electoral votes combined with the support given on the day by T and afterwards, in the form of referring to the participants as hostages, and what not.

It is your narrative. Are you asking me to explain your theory to you?

Contrary to what?

That narrative would have some teeth if the evidence to the contrary was not so obvious to all who observed the incidents as they happened in real time.

Your story will have to explain how that was engineered.

Are you saying that you have never hurt another person for the benefit of yourself?

Never lied to avoid suffering the consequences of honesty?

Never pretended to be who you were/are not?

Never taken what was not yours?

Never broken a promise, made either implicitly or explicitly?

Not supported a loved one when they needed that?

I will presume you get the general idea.

It was pretty darn clever of Joe to get T to call for a protest on that day and send them to the Capitol with people he knew were armed.

The genius of the plot unfurls further when one considers how Joe infiltrated the circle of associations between willing participants in overturning the vote count that day. Fusing the efforts of The Proud Boys with the Electoral Vote Plot while operating as a Democrat is a dazzling display of Bad Boy politics that Roy Cohn would have saluted if he understood it.

No word from the spinning grave as yet.

Interesting. That matter of abstraction puts the focus on what "psychology" is understood to be in the text. Close or far, as it is described.

One element in Descartes' session of doubt that is worth observing is the emphasis on not relying upon what we all experience as the basis of building theories. His own mistaken guesses are exemplars of that sort of thing.
The issues discussed in The Meditations are different from the Discourse on Method. Our world to explore if we are up to it.

I can follow your description of what is happening but the attempt to bring another to be more skillful is its own thing. The truth or falsity of that is not a general idea. It might even be stupid, in many ways.

I was not thinking of the speaking as taboo. Zhuangzi confronts the categorical quality of Confucian expression but does not reject what it is trying to do. Confucius appears as a teacher in the work.

On a practical level, the training leads to a change or not. Perhaps a way to read Zhuangzi is to look at the problem of reporting success and failure. Those words are highly leveraged properties.

Solaris by Stanisław Lem — Jamal

Pretty much the center of imaginary intellects. I love the book and the Tarkovsky movie.

The Taoist practices I try to work at don't frame the quiet as substance or emptiness but as what happens when the chatter stops. My brief encounters with it have changed my expectations. There is a timing to reactions that shape events. I have no idea why. It is like a point of leverage to lighten the energy needed to move something.

So, in Zhuangzi, the problem is shown in our speech but not explained. Even saying that is too much.

Thank you.

A discouraging word in the hand is better than two birds in the bush.

I was excited and surprised that the text challenged my thoughts so directly five decades ago.

I took notes and annotated the text densely back then, noting connections as they appeared to me. I have a different point of view from those days but still receive the benefit of that work.

So, I suggest taking notes of your problems and impressions.

I see how Kierkegaard's argument is using the biblical accounts to build a sort of "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" model of an individual. But the emphasis upon the limits of psychology in the text place it very far from the theory of drives in Freud.

There is, in Kierkegaard, a move against the role of sex as a measure of sinfulness as depicted in the language of Paul.

I don't know what that emoticon means as a proposition. Or the absence of one.