Maybe it is about having an encyclopedia or not, crystallizing works to make them comparable to each other.

Like a butterfly collection but with thoughts being held down by the pin.

I know what I said.
Your reading it is not information.

Good and Evil is a tough topic.
I look at it more from the point of view of education. I started off very clueless and then all these events and people helped by noticing my mistakes.

Love hurts.

I don't recognize my comment in your reply.

When viewed from a specific philosophers'/energetic/spiritual perspective, it is possible to explain instincts as habits — MondoR

You have that quite wrong. If one is to accept the idea of instincts, it means there are these structures of behavior or possibilities of behavior that you are born into.

If that necessity is something you object to upon principle, then just object and don't translate the idea into something else.

In other words, the state is centralized power, somehow made possible by "the people" but without any effective influence on this centralized power and in every way their lived dictated from this center. This is in stark contrast to real "people power" who then might nevertheless elect some central authority over certain appropriate tasks. We would call both "a state" in modern political theory, but the second kind simply didn't exist in the remotest sense of the words and to explain that government was possible without oppression nor chaos without rules, the term "administration" as apposed to the state gives a glimpse of this meaning. Otherwise, if what you are talking about has never been seen to exist, it is easy to make the criticism that "we can't function without a state" and everyone having a clear idea of what a state "is", as there's only one kind of example. A similar example is that we might want to stop calling the country the "kingdom" if we aim to not have any kings. — boethius

Well said.

Maybe this would be a good point to bring up how Marx saw society as structured by means of production and exchanges of value. Marx views the state as a product of the capitalist exploitation of labor. The clueless gullibility of the Proletariat to accept the deal as given will change when those conditions are no longer as accepted as necessary. The top down view of Lenin pushes this kind of perspective into future generations. Nothing can change if we don't break the existing order. The "withering" has been postponed for an indefinite period of unrecognizable time.

The importance of Proudhon in Marx's discourse does play a major part in the "bloody revolution" question in Marx's writings. Marx's book, The Poverty of Philosophy is a reversal of Proudhon's title: The Philosophy of Poverty. At the end of the book, Marx recognizes that people will get hurt when deals change. Pandora opens a box.

As an alternative perspective on the centrality of the means of production, there are thinkers like Ivan Illich who resisted global forces of money and use of tools for the purpose of maintaining more control of one's own environment in a decidedly conservative way.

The consciousness of the proletariat is the most important quality left up for grabs.

That's exactly what highlights the problem of political power and its impact on society — Apollodorus

Are you suggesting an alternative arrangement?
Would not any sort of change require political power?

I don't understand the distinction you are making between politics and society.

No, I did not assign a cause.
All the thinkers who want to ascribe a special quality to "women" don't show much interest beyond their view of being male.
Funny from some points of view.

His text is easily available. Please quote some.

The extreme polarization comes from not sharing a common source of information about what is happening. It is difficult to discuss causes when such large groups start from very different sets of facts.

The right wing in the US went from trying to be the "adults" in the room to full on conspiracy addicts who could never be disabused of their mistakes.

I accept that all political rhetoric is the best gloss upon an idea but Q anon is starting to be represented in Congress.

What can one say to bridge hallucination to reality?

Is it always just different political views or are there more fundamental psychological differences that make those views appealing to us in the first place? — Apollodorus

What is described to be "psychological" is always anchored by a philosophical and/or religious ground. For example, what it means in William James is not the same as the ground in Freud, nor the recognized diagnoses used in current Clinical Psychology.

You might be interested in George Lakoff, a cognitive linguist who focuses on how different metaphors build up different views of the world and influence our preferences therein. He focuses on the language of nurturing versus the talk of people needing the rod to be good citizens.

While that is an interesting line of inquiry, it does not displace the central role of politics which is giving more power to some at the expense of others. People with privileges want to keep them. Those deprived of them want more equality.

The scale of these differences is not proportional to the sense of responsibility for the common good. There are those who understand we have to take stewardship for the world as it is thrust upon us and those driven by pure self interest alone. I have found many examples of both from one end of the political scale to the other.

Did your parents require some kind of sign of identity in this regard?

Work takes place in a place. Becoming inured to the conditions of that place is a test of whether one can operate in those conditions.

Accepting those conditions without qualification is a skill onto itself.

Damn little.
The primary objective at the time seems to have been for the purpose of getting recognition as a player in "international security" and all you got was a bumper sticker.

In regards to the sunk cost, the purpose for the expense was to establish a political culture in the face of another that opposed that development. After twenty years, there are many Afghans who invested in the alternative who will go down when the Taliban return.

So, there are myths but also the development of relationships after so much time to consider.

Is it is all those centuries of ascribing the feminine as the source of evil?

A body gets tired.

Having observed my wife give birth several decades ago sort of killed my toxic masculinity. We both have demanding jobs. Neither of us speaks for the other without the other's agreement. We are both "male" and "female" at different turns, given the roles associated to them as opposites.

James Brown has agreed to support my point of view:

"Help me somebody."

It sounds like you took the Blue pill and the Red pill simultaneously.
I don't recommend driving or operating heavy equipment.

Scientists, also, are doing nothing more than reporting as they have been determined to report, and their observations are no more worthwhile than that of a Shaman. — MondoR

Science is not a report. It is a method for understanding the causes of what happens. The method does require being able to repeat experiments and recognize competing explanations of phenomena.

The method has brought powerful tools into the world with both constructive and destructive potential. The matter has progressed far beyond whether to believe a Shaman or not.

Are truths useful? — FlaccidDoor

The universe is pretty good at remembering where it was with everything when I stop paying attention for whatever reason. The car is parked where I last parked it. The house I grew up in has decayed and been somewhat restored by others who live there now. Parrots live in Brooklyn when they did not a few decades before.

Isn't all that pointing toward the "truth"?

The "abandon language" option is not on the menu because of all the language invested in talking about the quality that is difficult to describe.

The idea that there is no hope of figuring out what is important is offset by a clear agenda to fix agendas that misunderstand the problem.

This text is not a testimony of skepticism but a call to act a certain way to achieve a better result than the others who talked this way.

Who is the translator?
My searches of Romanian academy has gotten me interested in their different language studies.

↪Valentinus
Thank you! Yes, I'm a real bot with IQ 3.000.000 and I hold the truth. I just wanted to play with your minds. — Eugen

To be precise, I argued that you had insulated yourself from new information, not that you were robotically incapable of doing so.

I looked into Romanian translations of Spinoza and the options are not clear from an English speaker point of view. There are references to 19th century text but that is not clearly cited as a reference.

Is there a Romanian translation of Spinoza that you count worthy of reading?

I'm just saying try not to wrap your content in insult. Just make the argument. — schopenhauer1

Agreed. But I don't have to know much about who doesn't agree with that to agree. I don't care very much about the other side.

I am not on board with classifying people in this way.

If it was easy, everybody would be doing it.

Fair enough, so the burden lies in silently taking the insults... is your answer mainly? What does it say about the insulter though? We keep addressing the insulted. — schopenhauer1

I don't recommend "silently taking insults." What Socrates did was turn them into propositions the interlocutor either owned or disowned.

There is a quality Socrates exemplified while he bobbed and weaved with those who assigned malign motives to his process. He never answered in kind. The method looks easy until one holds themselves to the rules. I am not an advanced student of the art.

Is unnecessarily poisoning the well a legitimate argument tactic? — schopenhauer1

It can be successful toward gaining approval of others who view an argument negatively but can never establish the ground for an alternative view.

I struggle with myself over this difference all the time because the spirit of punishment is strong. Disagreement is not only about weighing propositions as propositions. I lose it sometimes. It is very rare when that was appropriate. Never in a dialectic.

I don't think Strauss was suggesting an equivalence. — Fooloso4

The passage I quoted asserts the equivalence without qualification. If that was not his intention, he didn't make it clear in that place.
Maybe this discussion falls outside of the concern of the OP. I will mull until it comes up again.

The kind of mass societies we find ourselves in are more atomized than collectivized. — Bitter Crank

Yes. The power of association is cancelled by the point of purchase.

Yes, the emptiness in this verse is tied to how it appears in the other verses.

I hear what Possibility is saying about potential in contrast to what actually comes into being. I see what you recognize as your "true nature" as one of the beings who appear. But it seems to me that distinctions we make in discussing the emergence of the 10,000 things needs to connect with where the text compares the more "immortal" to the completely "mortal". In verse 7 the matter is put this way:

Heaven and earth are are enduring. The reason why heaven and earth can be enduring is that they do not give themselves life. Hence they are able to be long-lived.
Therefore the sage puts his person last and it comes first,
Treats it as extraneous to himself and is preserved.
Is it not because he is without thought of self that he is able to accomplish his private ends? — Translated by D.C. Lau

The bellows has a cyclic motion - empty, fill, empty, fill - like the 10,000 things returning to the Tao. — T Clark

That is what struck me about the metaphor. In line with my emphasis upon mortality, I think the comments I made about verse 10 still apply. The Tao is said to be the same on both sides of the gate.

You have fairly represented what Strauss is discussing in the passage. I question that "power" as conceived by Nietzsche is the equivalent of political might as conceived by Hobbes. What is deemed to be "honorable" is integral with the ordering of rank.

Those essays sound interesting. I will check them out.

In his book, Natural Right and History, Strauss does a poor job of reading between the lines of Nietzsche. For instance:

"Physical" power as distinguished from the purposes for which it is used is morally neutral and therefore more amenable to mathematical strictures than is its use: power can be measured. This explains why Nietzsche, who went much beyond Hobbes and declared the will to power in terms of "quanta of power." From the point of view of legal exactness, the study of the ends is replaced by the study of potestas. The rights of the sovereign, as distinguished from the exercise of these rights, permit of an exact definition any regard to any unforeseeable circumstances, and this kind of exactness is again inseparable from moral neutrality: right declares what is permitted as distinguished from what is honorable. — Leo Strauss, chapter 5

Casting Friedrich in the role of Thrasymachus is a popular activity.

In regards to viewing political power in the context of cultural formation, it is puzzling to me that for Strauss, Nietzsche is the only donkey available for such work when Hegel is nearby, quietly nibbling upon the grass.

I get the feeling that the people who like FN already agree with him. — Tom Storm

I should make clear that I don't agree with him. But he is the one who said that bothering to oppose a point of view is a recognition of it. Maybe even an argument for it. It comes with the territory.

Is Strauss championing empiricism ( the discovery of nature) to what he is reading as a subjectivism in Nietzsche?I — Joshs

Strauss locates the "discovery of nature" as an accomplishment of Aristotle and the like. The issue of the "subject" is whether human nature exists or some other realm of causes is involved. Strauss seems to be avoiding the role of empiricists and meta-physicians who used "history" before Nietzsche did.

Timely quote.

I think the historicist or determinist charge is probably fair, but is he not more that this too? — Tom Storm

Maybe the charge is fair. But in what court of consideration will the matter be judged?

Being accused of being both an historicist and a determinist at the same time is odd. Strauss only concerns himself with charging N of being the former. The idea of Eternal Recurrence is a kind of determinism. But it is aimed specifically against the world and us in it being seen as parts of an overall plan. He calls it a doctrine. A god to up put a fight against other gods. It is not presented the way the Apollonian and Dionysian are presented as grounds for our existence.

I'll look for an accessible article on Nietzsche's epistemology. Everyone seems to describe him as a perspectivist. — Tom Storm

There is a large disagreement about what being a perspectivist entails. There are some who dismiss N for using this language because they assume that he doesn't accept that being in different places to see things from different points of view requires accepting an "objectivity" that he is said to deny. It seems more simple to me to read the text to mean he did embrace the reality of the different places.

Your results will vary.

Please cite where the passage you are quoting from Alexis deTocqueville came from.

I have read the whole thread up to this point. One element that hasn't been pointed out yet is that Nietzsche does have a method for locating causes as rigorous as many "scientific" models he criticizes. In The Genealogy of Morals, one set of conditions binds the alternatives to it. Changes happen but they are also new expressions of what happened before. Finding this ground is not like consulting a map before taking a trip. It is not like a lot of things. But the necessity it refers to is not optional. It is a claim upon lived experience. Nietzsche challenges anybody to disagree.

The dialectic opposing this approach is voiced by thinkers like Leo Strauss who charge Nietzsche with being an "historicist" rather than someone who recognizes the "discovery of nature." In that context, the issue is not about phenomena as such but what can be included as phenomena.

"Who is that person behind the curtain?" - Dorothy