It is true that people have used the arguments of justification to support terrible acts. Christianity became a dominant idea through violence, both physical and rhetorical.

The Christain idea also brought up various renouncements of that power. The element of personal testimony has long since been a thorn in the sides of dogma, however it is expressed.

Outside of saying what happened versus what did not happen in history, the arguments between sincere belief are our inheritance.

So, are you arguing that such discussion is no longer necessary? The past is a mistake and the future is ours?

I greatly appreciate the differences between how people endure loss.
But the loss is its own thing, a life, of a kind.

Refusing to admit defeat to someone demanding it is different than our struggles as persons with ourselves. The idea of withholding judgement of others comes down to this singularity. I cannot lift the stone, much less cast it.

You have not yet entered any of the discussions you have started.

In this one, you assume the only purpose of 'freedom of speech' is to avoid conflict. That is something one might argue if convinced that was true.

What is your argument for this opinion?

is not a metaphor a comparison between a minimum of 2 terms, concepts, etc. — jancanc

If one states the terms being compared, is that not more like an allegory? Plato's allegory of the cave places our experience of knowing and ignorance side by side with an image that is meant to correspond with it.

The use of metaphor is more of a direct predicate. Like Eliot saying: "We are the hollow men, leaning together, headpiece filled with straw." How will one compare that identity with another?

Great transitions in that song.
James Dewar is still the missing limb for me.

Robin Trower is pretty good.

I love this concert:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wkkscG08So&t=2382s

Le Rochefoucauld described education as a second self-love. For many years, I thought his observation was mostly a precautionary tale against taking our 'egoistic' forms of expressions too seriously. There was also recognizing an element of disdain for those who proposed surpassing the ego as something that could be done as a matter of engineering.

But I have come to understand his statement is also a form of gratitude. Education is reading and listening carefully; maybe teaching a few things. Another opportunity.

Ultimate concerns are preoccupied with existential problems raised from living life itself and trying to find meaning in it. The most prominent ultimate concerns consist of life, death, nothingness, and meaninglessness. I would also like to lump into one of the concerns is finding something aesthetic in accompanying one's journey through life. — Shawn

I understand the idea that we have problems without bringing them upon ourselves. One could say that the examination finds us, not the other way around. Such a formulation seems to be at odds with the expression, 'the unexamined life is not worth living.' How the idea is understood leads to very different points of view.

If it means one can chart the difference between the 'speculative' and the 'practical' with confidence, problems formed by asking for them is a pastime, comparable to playing bridge or throwing darts. If the difficulties we face keep leading us to places where nothing can be distinguished from each other, the need for context is not a luxury.

From that perspective, your list already has crossed the line you draw. We all know the fear of death but speculate about death because reports on that subject are not reliable. We struggle to understand meaning against the backdrop of confusion as a given in our condition. It is not like we had a proper lexicon at one point in time but it was snatched away from us. The problem can be ignored. The value of doing that against not doing that could be framed as a measure of worth, but any sort of comparison gets back to the difficulty tim wood observed. The absence of a measurement is not one of the possible measurements.

And the matter of aesthetics is a clear crossing of the line because simply liking stuff requires no reflection. Once one starts having problems with preferences, what is the place where these preferences are comparable? Why do other people want stupid things? Why are all my problems so annoyingly joined together with all these other people?

I figure the notion is not bound to various explanations of what might be true but asserts that a particular experience reveals the truth.

The problems surrounding such a proposition are many. But the idea itself seems simple enough. The assertion is that one is presented with the truth, and it is readily misunderstood as such.

So, not an argument against a possibility but a problem with possibility as such.

In supposing the Evil Deceiver, Descartes is presenting a counter to the logic of Anselm where we can only conceive of what we are given the ability to conceive. So, if there is a limit to the utility of doubt, it has to be approached from a different starting point than something like: 'we are not the source of our ideas.'
The purpose of having a method is that we actually are the source of some ideas.

I don't know what an 'equality movement' is.

I do know what principles of equality regarding access to opportunity, equal application of the law, and restraining the concentration of power to a self-selected group of the favored looks like. None of those principles are based upon an assumption that everyone is equal in their abilities or potential to improve their condition given the chance.

What they do assume is that a system based upon providing outcomes purely based upon different standards of measure are inherently prejudicial and suppress the ability of people and groups of people to make their own way amongst others. Upon that basis, communitarians and libertarians both have problems with authority of a kind that ranks outcomes by edict.

From that perspective, the problem of preserving free speech is how to keep the topic upon what should be counted as an authority more than worrying about whether differences between people are permitted to be expressed.

Hobbes does not base the need for the 'concentration of power' upon the evident virtue of a ruler but upon the fear of violence and a desire for peace between individuals. He says those arrangements between men are not overruled by the covenant between an individual and his maker. In the later portions of The Citizen, Hobbes describes the idea of God as a fiction to be equivalent to saying the natural world has no causes.

There are, of course, many different expressions of monotheism that represent a view contrary to Hobbes.' That makes the unqualified nature of your reference to the idea a misrepresentation of the topic.

Taking a page out of monotheism, people don't mind the concentration of power in one individual, so long as said individual is not just good but all-good. — Agent Smith

That is precisely not true in regard to seeing the realm of a single universal realm as above any organized by men.

Hobbes does not call for the 'sovereign' to direct all the affairs of the citizens, to wit:

15. The liberty of subjects consists not in being exempt from the laws of the city, or that they who have the supreme power cannot make what laws they have a mind to. But because all the motions and actions of subjects are never circumscribed by laws, nor can be, by reason of their variety; it is necessary that there be infinite cases which are neither commanded nor prohibited, but every man may either do them or not do them as he lists himself. In these, each man is said to enjoy his liberty, and in this sense, liberty is to be understood in this place, namely, for that part of natural right which is granted and left to subjects by the civil laws. As water enclosed on all hands with banks stands still and corrupts; having no bounds, it spreads too largely, and the more passages it finds the more freely it takes its current; so subjects, if they might do nothing without the commands of the law, would grow dull and unwieldy, if all, they would be dispersed; and the more is left undetermined by the laws, the more liberty they enjoy. Both extremes are faulty; for laws were not invented to take away, but to direct men's actions; even as nature ordained the banks, not to stay, but to guide the course of the stream. The measure of this liberty is to be taken from the subjects' and the city's good. — Hobbes, The Citizen, Chapter 13, section 15

As a general note on reading Hobbes, it should be observed that ending the natural state of war between men by means of agreeing to the power of the commonwealth does not signal the end of other "natural" activities and rights of Man.

In Plato's Phaedo, the act is wrong because it puts asunder what the divine has brought together. The proposed exceptions to the prohibition are presented as respectful arguments brought forward as a human desire for a different outcome in a particular situation. That is what a human being can do.

But that means humans are also involved with what continues to live. The argument with the divine is leverage of some kind; Not understood before it is applied. Not understood very well after that either.

In the Leviathan, Hobbes argues for monarchy being the best system because it forces the different agencies of government to be answerable to a single source of power. The primary differences between the agencies relate to the work that they do. The alternative to their existence would be the absence of institutions dedicated to the benefit of the public good. Such an absence is described by Hobbes as the natural condition where man is at war with all other men.

This scenario does not provide much of a context for the struggle between 'bodies of government' you describe. Hobbes recognizes that such institutions are liable to corruption in both aristocratic and democratic regimes. But that is quite different from suggesting that the work of government is itself conditioned by the war its acceptance by a society is supposed to avert.

That from improving ones life, life itself becomes a more enjoyable experience, or that you should at least hope for that "in the long run". — Cobra

That makes life sound like some kind of trust fund; Some balance between resources explains outcomes.

But actual optimism is not confidence in a return but persistence in a method; Not knowing if it is all for not.

So, it is like not proving the existence of love. If one assumes it exists, events unfold a certain way. If one does not, other stuff happens.

We always try to gauge what we deserve and what others deserve, but how is any such thing measured objectively? — TiredThinker

I am not sure what the 'we', presented by you amounts to. If you are referring to the laws set up to arbitrate disputes between various claims of right and injury, the possibility that arbitrary decisions will be made without regard to more refined senses of justice is exactly why those institutions came into being.

'We' came to a limit to what could be understood in the dealings between persons and came up with a system to carry on despite that insight not being available to an 'us.'

Your mention of Ancient Greek struck me how lucky we are to have a number of different genres to compare with others over measures of similar and different time. The plays written by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes. The mathematics of Euclid and Apollonius. The poems in different generations going back to oral traditions. The different histories and commentary regarding the 'pre- Socratics.' The style of Thucydides is especially helpful as he wrote for a completely different purpose than other writings that have survived from the precise years of his authorship.

Many other languages permit a contrast of that kind. Sanskrit, Hebrew, Chinese, Farsi, Latin, etc. I am sure I am leaving out many others due to my ignorance. The point is only that such examples are different from inscriptions and examples of writing where there is little to no means of cross reference to other uses of speech.

One difference between N and those Stoics is that N dd not appeal to a cosmic Good as a point of departure.

One of the elements to be observed is that one can prepare for the test(s) by help from people who have studied the exams. I have taken SATs, ACTs, and a GRE without prep and recognize many years later the advantage I would have had if I had cooked the algorithm.

Another element to consider is that many intellectuals are talented in ways that make a standardized format difficult to perceive. They start assigning possible values to answers meant to be discarded out of hand. They know they are supposed to reject certain answers immediately but are not happy with the choice as a choice. People who are not afflicted with that propensity blow right past the others and finish the test on time.

I realize my remarks are not any help in regards to current debate. But my emphasis on testing is a different matter from standardizing curriculums. The different arguments I have seen have not done a great job of separating the issues.

Edit to Add:
As for proponents against universal curriculums, Ivan Illich put that forward as his criticism of modern society.

Vulnerable means, in my book, to be deprived of all means of escape/relief - there's nothing you can do (amor fati) and so :grin: and bear it! — TheMadFool

That expression is at odds with Nietzsche saying life keeps happening despite the entropy. The cups keep getting filled over. We have no idea why.

And what do you make of all the language surrounding freedom from bad science and sick thoughts? He does not replace all that with sunshine. That absence is part of his proposition, if you could make it a sentence, the sentence would have been written.

If evil is the creative element you describe, it doesn't need anything from anybody. it is either observed with acuity or misunderstood.

Celebration and worship are directed toward what won't survive without attention and love.

The interest in 'identity theory' (google it, I didn't know about it until it was pointed out to me) is that the duality that anchors our epistemology is not necessary any longer if states of the brain are whatever the 'real' as a one-to-one correspondence could possibly entail.

The element about the idea that most interests me is how the proposal could be tested. If what is said to be Two is actually One, won't I need a Third to arbitrate?

There is no doubt I am viewing the matter through my own peculiar view of the world.

I meant no offense. The comment was put forward as an alternative reading of Nietzsche and Pascal to your interpretation.

Nietzsche spoke specifically against the 'punishment of self' Pascal applied to himself. I am not aware of any remarks by N regarding Pascal's wager. Leaving aside my reading of Pascal in the context of Christian expression, what text of Nietzsche exemplifies the grin and bear it quality you hear?

Would you have preferred he write in a different style? — Joshs

That is an interesting question. He was clear that if someone wanted to do better, then do better. That is as honest a response I can imagine.

Point taken. He was a writer of his time taking on the challengers as they appeared.

But I think there is a geometric element in his rhetoric that endeavored to show what the reverse of conventions produced. I don't read N as someone so simple to think he could just reverse what was commonly held and be accepted as someone trying to do serious work.

A lot of the language demonstrates elements beyond specifc propositions. Something like, 'you say reverence has to be couched in such and such a language. Well, this is what it sounds like if I use the exact opposite means of expression.' Nietzsche was a pretty astute student of the use of 'egotism' in European literature. It seems strange to me to read his use of the form without a grain or two of salt.

So, sincere? Yes, to a fault. Unaware of that quality as a matter of rhetoric? Very unlikely.

I think some of the style comes from growing up in a dour religious household.

As you can see, the moment you think of the this and now as not ideal, you open the doors to Pascal's wager. You can't have one without the other. Hence, my statement, "perfectly good real opportunity". — TheMadFool

When you put it that way, the 'now' sounds like a description of a Bed and Breakfast one reports visiting without enthusiasm. It was okay for the night but not anything to celebrate.

Nietzsche is asking for one to put oneself in a vulnerable position by choice. The bird he held in his hand is free to fly away. He seeks a verification that may not happen. That is why he keeps talking about being courageous.

On Pascal's side, the risk being taken on by his interlocutors has already been accepted. These people have deferred the sufferings for their sins upon some kind of existence they have already abandoned. They are numb and suspicious. Pascal proposes a period of accommodation rather than call for people to fall on their knees in fright. Those cards have already been played.

Yep. Throw away a perfectly good real opportunity for an infinitely better but imaginary one. Reminds me of Pascal's wager. — TheMadFool

I would not describe it as a 'perfectly good real opportunity.' Perhaps you are aware of this, but Nietzsche specifically called out Pascal as the poster child of how a great talent can be misled by morbid ideas (more in N's notebooks than actual books).

On Nietzsche's side, one is risking a lot. The desire for certainty is not any kind of promise it will be met. Honesty is the wager.

On Pascal's side, the wager is not even a gamble. There is nothing to lose if you shove your chips across the board. The casino is an illusion. You are not here.

What Nietzsche rejects in the expectation of an afterlife is that it avoids our responsibility to decide for ourselves what to value or discard in this one. Note how having an intellectual conscience is demanded without qualification:

2
The intellectual conscience. - I keep having the same experi-
ence and keep resisting it every time. I do not want to believe
it although it is palpable: the great majority of people lacks an
intellectual conscience. Indeed, it has often seemed to me as if
anyone calling for an intellectual conscience were as lonely in
the most densely populated cities as if he were in a desert.
Everybody looks. at you with strange eyes and goes right on
handling his scales, calling this good and that evil. Nobody
even blushes when you intimate that their weights are under-
weight: nor do people feel outraged; they merely laugh at your
doubts. I mean: the great majority of people does not consider
it contemptible to believe this or that and to live accordingly,
without first having given themselves an account of the final
and most certain reasons pro and con, and without even· trou-
bling themselves about such reasons afterward: the most gifted
men and the noblest women still belong to this "great majority."
But what is good heartedness, refinement, or genius to me, when
the person who has these virtues tolerates slack feelings in his
faith and judgments and when he does not account the desire
for certainty as his inmost craving and deepest distress-as that
which separates the higher human beings from the lower.
Among some pious people I found a hatred of reason and
was well disposed to them for that; for this at least betrayed
their bad intellectual conscience. But to stand in the midst of
this rerum concordia discors and of this whole marvelous
uncertainty and rich ambiguity of existence without questioning,
without trembling with the craving and the rapture of such
questioning, without at least hating the person who questions,
perhaps even finding him faintly amusing-that is what l feel
to be contemptible, and this is the feeling for which I look first
in everybody. Some folly keeps persuading me that every human
being has this feeling, simply because he is human. This is my
type of injustice. — The Gay Science, translated by Walter Kaufmann, Book One, paragraph 2

I was misled by fate which I read as passively, stoically, resignedly accepting whatever it is that comes your way without resisting (rebelling). — TheMadFool

Are you familiar with the doctrtine of eternal recurrence that N proposed as the antithesis to depicting life 'here' as some kind of test for another life? The idea is not presented as a desiderata. It is presented as an unavoidable medicine if one is to reject the other pharmaceuticals on offer.

The element of what Nietzsche refers to as 'Socratic' (that Nietzsche objects to) is the separation of the realm of becoming from the realm of the eternal in a way where it is said that the former is built upon the structure of the latter.
Nietzsche depicts the delight in the 'given' objectivity of our experiences as secretly relying upon the reliance upon a 'given' eternal condition underlying the chaos we try to make sense of. An article of faith is being treated as a living god. So, it is a really good mask because it has a mask for its mask-i-ness. The world stands before me like a bowl of breakfast cereal.

Regarding the inheritances of cultural legacies, Nietzsche describes 'Christians' stealing the idea of the eternal from the 'Socratic' vision for their own uses. Whatever was going on with Jesus was accepted by N as the last expression of a message barely heard. N described Jesus as the last Christian. But that interesting element is only a side note to how little worth 'cultural legacies' were regarded by N. The way people used/use those legends to develop 'identity' for themselves receive the greatest scorn.

The above is presented for the purpose of noting that N wrote the Genealogy of Morals, not the Science of Morality. Exploration versus Explanation.

I appreciate your focus on attention. As a young person, I liked what I liked as an immediate response to music but learned a lot from people drawing my attention to how time, anticipation, and sounds coming together worked in very different performances. Coming to recognize when musicians were really playing together helped me open up to what had not been in my experience before.

So, do you think that the continuity of memories, often formulated as 'identity', is illusory? — Jack Cummins

I don't know if is an illusion or not. Our condition is especially good at fusing experiences with accounts given about them. A thoroughly skeptical point of view does not start from a more objective point of view, free from this problem of singular perception. The view requires accepting our experience is outside of what is really going on.

And that seems unlikely. Why would such a condition be more possible than others?

Humanity scares the crap out of me.
I do think our shared experiences of being human is more evident than many other things. Is 'faith', in this context, an acceptance of a certain kind of report or an anticipation of some result?

Are you saying that Gosar fantasizing about the death of a colleague is part of a protest against a tyranny of civic conventions imposed by a group who reject some other set of civic conventions?

That is an excellent brief, counselor.

Some of the problem involves how attempts to clarify relationships get taken for other things.
Hume and Kant swatted the same flies (or at least very similar flies) but disagreed about how little could be known about why they hung around. Kant wanted to say we could talk more about that than Hume did. It is an ironic development that an attempt to say we can know more about what happens is a step away from the subject (or object). Descartes presents some of the same odd disproportion between intent and consequences. Reading the Discourse upon Method beyond the money shot reveals a thinker deeply involved with experience, thankful that he had some.

That is an interesting perspective about the limits of what can happen in a corporate environment.
But the vulgarity being embraced in this case is done with the assumption that that environment could never be breached by such incitements as performed by Gosar, etcetera. You can have your cake and sell it on Ebay at the same time.

The distinction you make between 'genuine beliefs' and the merely 'hypothetical' suggests a kind of disassociation that I have not observed between different psychological models. They all seem hell bent on 'saving the phenomenon' they capture.
So, from that point of view, Aristotle is not modelling a methodology but the way we make claims for them.