I think that this is correct. I would add that Wittgenstein was not interested in just any game that one might play with language, The language-games that interest him are tied to some activity beyond simply playing.

Plato set the bar for knowledge very high. — Wayfarer

It is important to consider what it is knowledge of. Socrates acknowledged that the artisans had knowledge. The knew their materials and how to work with them to produce a product. If asked the could give an account (a logos) of what they were doing and why they did it the way they did.

It is when it comes to what Socrates calls the highest and most important things that we have no knowledge. Self-knowledge is important with regard to this. Socrates said that he knows that he not know. He seems to regard the universe as intelligible, but to either confirm or deny that would be to claim to know something he does not. know.

Since the main topic here is Nietzsche, I will mention that it was Nietzsche who was responsible for the renewed interest in Plato. This is in line with his rejection of Hegel's claims regarding history.

As I see it, hinge propositions are inventions and therefore knowable without reference to the world. They are true by definition and therefore exempt from doubt. — RussellA

A common mistake that is made, I see it here frequently, is to assume that hinges are all of a kind.

Suppose language game A including the hinge proposition "the earth existed before I was born" was replaced at a later time by language game B including the hinge proposition ""the earth did not exist before I was born". As hinge propositions are true by definition, true without reference to the world and exempt from doubt, the previous hinge proposition "the earth existed before I was born" remains true. — RussellA

One can play a language-game that disregards what we know of the world, but it plays no part in the world in which we live, that is to say, the world in which it is false that the earth did not exist before you were born.

A hinge is not true by definition. By definition its truth is not called into question.

This is a court of law, young man, not a court of justice."
--O.W. Holmes, Jr., speaking from the bench during court proceeding. — Ciceronianus the White

And yet the statue of Justice stands as the symbol of law.

Were you ever familiar with that site? — Todd Martin

I was not. But I did discover that philosophy can now be purchased in a bottle.

all the way back at least to a Barry Goldwater speech — Todd Martin

I too found that interesting.

This is all of a piece with his teaching that philosophy is a very personal, as opposed to political, undertaking.. — Todd Martin

Political life had the dual meaning of public life and rule. In the former sense Socrates was very political, spending his time in the marketplace conversing with all sorts. Plato too was political in so far as his work shaped the western world. There is also a distinction between private in the sense of not sharing with anyone and a private group. It is the latter with which Socrates often engaged.

Bloom admonishes us, though the philosopher is psychologically outside the cave, he always remains physically within it — Todd Martin

Does he say what he thinks our status is epistemologically? I am inclined to thing that we are psychologically still under the influence of the image or makers. We are, however, able to choose, at least to some degree, which ones we listen to.

Division after philosophical revolution seems to be a given — Todd Martin

Yes, this seems inevitable. It is true of religion as well. The followers of Jesus, the followers of Mohamed.

I don't think Strauss was suggesting an equivalence. One key difference is Nietzsche's focus on the individual as opposed to Hobbes' sovereign within whom all power lies. The importance of the individual for Nietzsche not a matter of rights but of the power to invent and create.

I am away from my books for the next few weeks and so cannot read the passage in context or any footnotes to passages from Nietzsche.

I will note that potestas is a term from Roman law. "The rights of the sovereign", that is, the lawful power or authority of the sovereign. That power or right is independent of its just or moral application or use. It is in this way "inseparable from moral neutrality: right declares what is permitted as distinguished from what is honorable."

Thrasymachus claimed that justice is the advantage of the stronger. This is different that what Strauss is saying. He is pointing out that the question of potentas and more general power is separate from the question of justice or morality.

In the Will to Power Nietzsche says: “What determines your rank is the quanta of power you are; the rest is cowardice.” That is, a measured amount of power, which supports Strauss' contention that "power can be measured". Based on the quote from Natural Right and History it is not clear if the reference to Nietzsche mat this point is limited to the his use of the term 'quanta'.

The answer to why Nietzsche rather than Hegel might have something to do with the difference between their understanding of history.

we cannot say that the hinge propositions of any particular language game are beyond doubt.
— Metaphysician Undercover

I agree - as Grayling wrote in section III "As OC stands, it stands defeated" — RussellA

As I understand it, it is not that they cannot be doubted but rather that they are not doubted. They cannot both be doubted and serve as hinges. It is not as if they stand alone, as if one could be doubted and all else would remain the same. It is the case, however, that from time to time there is a major shift such as the Copernican revolution where some hinges are not only doubted, they are rejected as false. It was not simply a matter of accepting that the earth revolved around the sun instead of the sun revolving around the earth and our understanding of everything else remained the same.

Nietzsche on human nature and history:

Nietzsche's rejection of human nature is the rejection of an essential nature, a teleology, an actualization of the human form or kind.

In The Uses and Abuses of History Nietzsche talks about first and second natures. Our first nature is our "inherited customary nature". Eventually this is rejected. In its place

"We cultivate a new habit, a new instinct, a second nature, so that the first nature atrophies."

This cycle repeats itself, every

"...first nature was at one time or another once a second nature and that every victorious second nature becomes a first nature."

It is for this reason Nietzsche says:

"This is the specific principle which the reader is invited to consider: that for the health of a single individual, a people, and a culture the unhistorical and the historical are equally essential."

"With the phrase “the unhistorical” I designate the art and the power of being able to forget and to enclose oneself in a horizon with borders; “superhistorical” I call the powers which divert the gaze from what is developing back to what gives existence an eternal and unchanging character, to art and
religion. Science (for it is science which would talk about poisons) sees in that force, in these powers opposing forces, for it maintains that only the observation of things is true and right, the scientific way of considering things, which everywhere sees what has come into being as something historical and
never as something eternally living. Science lives in an inner contradiction against the eternalizing powers of art and religion just as much as it hates forgetfulness, the death of knowledge, when it seeks to remove all limitations of horizons and to hurl human beings into an infinite sea without frontiers, a sea of light waves of acknowledged becoming."

@Tom Storm

All of this sheds light on the question of the death of God.

...thinkers like Leo Strauss who charge Nietzsche with being an "historicist" rather than someone who recognizes the "discovery of nature." — Valentinus

Nietzsche had an enormous influence on Strauss. If you are interested see the transcripts of his lectures on Nietzsche:

https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/L/bo26955789.html

Here is the abstract from Laurence Lampert's Leo Strauss and Nietzsche:


The influential political philosopher Leo Strauss has been credited by conservatives with the recovery of the great tradition of political philosophy stretching back to Plato. Among Strauss's most enduring legacies is a strongly negative assessment of Nietzsche as the modern philosopher most at odds with that tradition and most responsible for the sins of twentieth-century culture--relativism, godlessness, nihilism, and the breakdown of family values. In fact, this apparent denunciation has become so closely associated with Strauss that it is often seen as the very core of his thought. In Leo Strauss and Nietzsche, the eminent Nietzsche scholar Laurence Lampert offers a controversial new assessment of the Strauss-Nietzsche connection. Lampert undertakes a searching examination of the key Straussian essay, "Note on the Plan of Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil." He shows that this essay, written toward the end of Strauss's life and placed at the center of his final work, reveals an affinity for and debt to Nietzsche greater than Strauss's followers allow. Lampert argues that the essay comprises the most important interpretation of Nietzsche ever published, one that clarifies Nietzsche's conception of nature and of human spiritual history and demonstrates the logical relationship between the essential themes in Nietzsche's thought--the will to power and the eternal return.

Edit: It was Nietzsche who taught Strauss how to read and write between the lines.

In my opinion the disjunction is between saying and doing rather than thinking and doing. What I do may be independent of what I say, but not of what I think.

I imagine it's partly mimicking speech ... — frank

Yes, only they do not think they are mimicking, they are speaking. I think they may understand

... before understanding much of it .. — frank

I think they may understand far more than we give them credit for.

When the toddler sees someone point to an apple and hears them say "red", how does she know this does not mean the object pointed to is called red instead of apple? If she already knows "apple" she might be confused or even laugh at the joke of calling an apple a red. If she already knows "colors" then she might know that you are not pointing to the apple but the color of the apple.

The color is not an abstraction, but it not the object, not the apple.

I have a question. If a person believes redness is essentially a linguistic trick, how does that work?

If the toddler sees someone point to an apple and hears them say "red", doesn't the child need to have an experience of redness to associate with the word? — frank

I don't know what you mean by linguistic trick. Red is the name of a color.

What is an experience of red? How does she know it is an experience of red? By comparing it to another experience of red? Does the toddler also have an experience of apple? Are these two different experiences?

I would say the toddler sees this thing she learns is called an apple. She at some point also learns her colors. Being told the apple is red might be part of that process. It might go something like this: she is shown various things - "red wagon", "red shirt", "red crayon", "red apple." Rather than an experience of red I would say she is shown things that are red.

why do we assume that there is one mind per skull? — j0e

I am of two minds about this.

In determining whether, and stating whether, a law exists legal positivism makes no claims regarding whether it is right or just. Whether a law exists doesn't depend on its merits. — Ciceronianus the White

It seems to me that determining whether a law exists is rather straight forward. Interpreting and applying the law, not so much.

If we look at legal practice things are not so clear cut. Consider "penumbra", legal activism, and stare decisis.

I thought you might find interesting. From The New Republic:

To understand the emergence of Trump-supporting Straussianism, it’s important to realize that this group is very different than the Straussians who were influential during the Bush administration. After Leo Strauss died in 1973, his followers divided into two factions, creating the infamous “Crisis of the Strauss Divided.” And the best way to understand the divide between West Coast and East Coast Straussians is through the quarrel between Harry Jaffa and Allan Bloom, who were the respective heads of the rival schools.

Strauss encouraged his students to form tight relationships since frank and intimate conversation among friends was the heart of philosophy. Jaffa and Bloom were very close in the 1950s and early 1960s. In 1964 they co-wrote a book, Shakespeare’s Politics, dedicated “to Leo Strauss our teacher.” But over time Jaffa became involved in grassroots activism in the Republican Party, authoring the famous lines that Barry Goldwater uttered in 1964, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” As he became involved in right-wing activism, Jaffa gravitated towards social conservatism, praising the religious right, appearing on Pat Robertson’s show, and emerging as vocal homophobe (he argued in 1990 that “sodomy is, in the decisive respect, as morally offensive as incest and rape”). This put him in collision with his former friend Bloom, who was a closeted gay man. In a nasty review of Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind (1987) published in the Straussian journal Interpretation, Jaffa wrote that through AIDS “God and nature have exacted terrible retribution” on gays. Bloom died a few years after Jaffa wrote those vile words. Some friends, notably the novelist Saul Bellow, claimed that Bloom had died of AIDS, although this is disputed. What is undeniable is that Jaffa put a homophobic jab in his review with the intent to hurt his former friend.

The disputes between Jaffa’s West Coast Straussianism and Bloom’s East Coast Straussianism can be discussed along philosophic lines: Is America, as Jaffa believes, grounded in ancient philosophy or was the American founding, as Bloom would have it, built on the low but solid ground of early modern philosophers like Hobbes and Locke? Does the survival of America depend on the virtue of the people, as West Coast Straussians believe, or in the maintenance of constitutional norms, as East Coast Straussians believe? But the dispute can also more easily be understood in terms of the familiar social divide in the Republican Party. West Coast Straussians are the grassroots activists, grounded in social conservatism and ultra-nationalist in foreign policy. Sociologically, East Coast Straussians are more aligned with the party elite, and tend to be found in Washington think tanks and serving as career bureaucrats.

Another way to frame the divide is on the issue of regime change. Strauss, like Plato, was fascinated by the founding of regimes, and his students clearly believe that the key to politics is to have power at the moment of creation. For the East Coast Straussians, regime change is a matter of foreign policy, as witness the failed attempt to democratize the Middle East by force under Bush. For the West Coast Straussians—perhaps shaped by Jaffa’s Crisis of the House Divided, a seminal and brilliant work on Abraham Lincoln as a revolutionary thinker—regime change begins at home.

In a 1959 critique of the book in National Review, Willmoore Kendall prophetically argued that Jaffa’s celebration of Lincoln could give license to celebrations of new Caesars who claim to be avatars of the popular will. Readers of Jaffa’s book, Kendall warned, needed to be wary...

...lest Jaffa launch them, and with them the nation, upon a political future the very thought of which is hair-raising: a future made up of an endless series of Abraham Lincolns, each persuaded that he is superior in wisdom and virtue to the Fathers, each prepared to insist that those who oppose this or that new application of the equality standard are denying the possibility of self-government, each ultimately willing to plunge America into civil war rather than concede his point.

Kendall was wrong on one point. He feared that an America too beholden to the ideal of equality would see a rise in political extremism. But with West Coast Straussians supporting Trump, we see that Jaffa’s license to political extremism can be used just as easily by those who oppose equality—and Kendall’s warning of a new Caesarism has been fulfilled.

https://newrepublic.com/article/137410/pro-trump-intellectuals-want-overthrow-america



I would add one thing. Some of Strauss's most notable students, Stanley Rosen and Seth Bernadette for example, perhaps influenced by Socrates, stayed out of politics all together.

Where the law applies equally to all, including members of the controlling authorities, it's possible to contend that the laws govern us all. — Ciceronianus the White

I want to follow up on this. Earlier you said:

The law is a system of rules adopted by or which were adopted by a controlling authority or authorities in a nation or society ... — Ciceronianus the White

If the controlling authority, however improbable we may hope it is, decides to reject the law as it is now written and practiced and institute new laws favorable only to its sovereignty, ignoring the rights and well being of its citizens, then this would be entirely lawful. In so far as that is the case legal positivism seems to rest on the assumption that might makes right and justice is the will of the stronger.

That is a reference to 'metanoia' is it not? — Wayfarer

It is not, as or as I know, a term used by Plato. Here is the passage.

" ... the power to learn is present in everyone's soul and that the instrument with which each learns is like an eye that cannot be turned around from darkness to light without turning the whole body. This instrument cannot be turned around from that which is coming into being without turning the whole soul until it is
able to study that which is and the brightest thing that is, namely, the one we call the good." (518c)

The reason I have not yet responded to you is because our debate caused me to feel the need to do some research first: — Todd Martin

I am always glad to hear that.

it seems to have inspired Republican American politics of the late 90s — Todd Martin

I think that was an interesting development. Students of Strauss split between those who stayed out of politics and those who became politically active. They are often referred to as East Coast and West Coast Straussians, although it is not a strictly geographical split. The west coasters centered around Harry Jaffa, Claremont College, and the Claremont Review. They are generally well read and argumentatively capable, but I have nothing positive to say about their brand of conservatism.

So, it's very unlikely. — Ciceronianus the White

This assurance is not as comforting as it once was. There are those with considerable influence who are right now working to get the states to call a convention.
https://www.commoncause.org/resource/u-s-constitution-threatened-as-article-v-convention-movement-nears-success/

So doe this mean that when the US Constitution says: "Congress shall make no law ..." this really means it shall not do so unless or until it can if it so chooses?

I prefer to think that we are a nation of lawyers — Ciceronianus the White

With that thought in mind I will have trouble sleeping tonight.

I think the claim that we here in God's Favorite Country live in a nation of laws, not men, is founded on the belief that laws, once adopted, apply equally to all people that are citizens of our Glorious Union, including members of the "controlling authorities." — Ciceronianus the White

Yes. The laws themselves are, of course, the laws of men - by men for men. (I use the term 'men' here because it is how the quote is phrased).

What I am questioning is the notion that laws are:

... adopted by a controlling authority or authorities — Ciceronianus the White

This implies that the controlling authorities, whoever they may be, can by fiat make or change whatever laws they see fit. There is a sense in which this is true, providing they have to power to do so. And if they do so, us law-abiding citizens have no choice but to comply.

"Logos" is a Greek word meaning reason, the controlling form of the universe made manifest is speech. — Athena

What the Greeks understood by 'reason' is not what the term came to mean for us through modern philosophy. Anaxagoras said 'nous' (mind or intellect) orders the cosmos. Reason is a Latin term, from ratio, used to translate the Greek dianoia, discursive thinking. It differs from noesis, a kind of direct apprehension or seeing with the mind.

What the logos meant for Heraclitus is controversial. When he says: " ... all things come to pass in accordance with this Logos ...", he might mean that the Logos is the guiding force or he could simply mean that what he is about to tell us is the way things are, the truth. Preceding this he begins: "Although this Logos is eternally valid, yet men are unable to understand it – not only before hearing it, but even after they have heard it for the first time …".

It should noted that the Greek philosophers, in imitation of the Greek poets, placed the authority of what they said not with themselves but with God or the gods.

In the Phaedo Socrates says that he had been drawn to Anaxagoras' claim that Nous orders all things, but was disappointed to learn that he gave only physical explanations and did not say why things should be the way they are, that is, why it is best that they be this way. Socrates was left on his own to discover what is
best, that is, his "second sailing", his recourse to speech.

It is not divine reason made manifest in speech, but rather, human speech attempting to know what is best.

I like Socrates ...

However, I place my fealty first with the land (physical) into which I was born, expanding it then to the Earth, long before I arrive at any tender feelings for the State. — James Riley

There is an irreducible tension between Socrates and the city. His fealty is to philosophy, the examined life. It was in this sense trans-political. Beyond that it is difficult to say where his allegiance was. The problem with thinking his allegiance was to the regime is that it had undergone upheavals and changes in his lifetime. It did not remain the same regime through all those changes. The same problem arises with the law. Having said that, however, it does seem that he was loyal to the city and its laws.

The law is a system of rules adopted by or which were adopted by a controlling authority or authorities in a nation or society ... — Ciceronianus the White

How does this square with the claim that "We are a nation of laws not of men"?

... he did have a concept of a higher authority. We use the word "God" for the higher authority. We could use words like logos ... — Athena

I do not think Socrates had a concept of a higher authority. He had a concept of "what seems best". He used the word 'logos' to mean to speak, to discuss, or give an account. What seems best is what follows from deliberating together, the stronger argument. It is important to see that the result of such deliberation is not absolute. Socrates reminds us of our ignorance. We are human, not divine beings.

I forget this one: Plato's Parmenides: The Conversion of the Soul, by Mitchell Miller.

I read it some years ago. He pays careful attention to the details of the dialogue, which is to say he does not treat it like a discourse or doctrine. It is a Socratic dialogue. Socrates called himself a physician of the soul. At the heart of the discussion of Forms in the Republic there is a turning of the soul.

He also wrote on Parmenides proem. I just found this. https://philarchive.org/archive/MILPAT-4v1

Miller's interpretations do not suffer from the anachronisms often found in modern interpretations.

[Edit: I read the paper. Given the complexity of the subject matter I thought it was very clearly written. I don't know if this is the kind of thing you are looking for though. Unlike Hedley it does not address Parmenides' legacy.

Peter Kingsley has some interesting things to say.

But when that meaning, however inadequate, becomes the worldview of a culture and all institutions and values are built around it for many centuries there may be a magnificent price to pay for its diminution or cessation. — Tom Storm

Nietzsche said something to the effect that creators destroy.

In some ways Nietzsche and Socrates are the same in that they undermine the foundations of their society. In Socrates case too, things were already on shaky grounds.

But the creation of a new worldview owes more to Plato than to Socrates. So what does Nietzsche create and what is left to "the philosopher of the future"? His answer is he creates creators. [Edit: This is from Zarathustra. I don't have time now to find it in the text] He frees the philosopher from the shackles of the past.

When you say that Nietzsche is not anti-science, do you have this group of postmodernists in mind as being truly anti-science ? — Joshs

I don't know.

Do you know of any philosopher who is actually anti-science in the way you mean it? — Joshs

Perhaps Wittgenstein. Although it may be more of an attack on scientism.

So you’re saying apprehension of a universe is not a matter of adequation or correspondence with an independent reality but of construction? — Joshs

I don't know where you got that from anything I said. I am talking about the significance of Zarathustra's "good news" - God is dead. How the death of God relates to the problem of the meaning of life.

Would you say that for Wheeler
the universe is participatory in a materially causal way or in a valuative way?I realize that ‘value’ would have to be fleshed out in relation to notions like intentionality and goal-oriented normativity. — Joshs

Wheeler said "everything is information". Does that fit somewhere in your categories?

I am not arguing that Nietzsche's views are compatible with Wheeler's or some other scientist, but that it would be a mistake to think he was anti-science.

Yes, the notio that the universe is a place Nietwe exist ‘within’ is a realist notion, which I think Nietzsche is implicitly critiquing in the quote I sent you. — Joshs

You seem to have missed the point of what I am saying. The desire to find meaning in the universe is not a linguistic quest. Nietzsche denies that such meaning can be found in the universe. Hence my statement: "The universe has always been meaningless." Whatever meaning we find is a meaning we create.

I can’t imagine any phycisst who would subscribe to Nietzsche’s claim below: — Joshs

I think there is first and foremost a difficult interpretive challenge here. Just a few quick points.

The quote is from Beyond Good and Evil Chapter 2 "The Free Spirit", (36). He begins: 'suppose' or 'assuming' or 'if we assume'. This assumption is followed by a question: "are we not permitted to make the attempt and to ask the question whether this which is “given” does not SUFFICE, by means of our counterparts, for the understanding even of the so-called mechanical (or “material”) world?"

In other words, from the supposed given: "our world of desires and passions" he makes the attempt to understand the world.

There are some noted physicists including John Wheeler who defend the notion of a participatory universe.

What is there outside of the meaning of the term? — Joshs

For those who seek meaning in the universe it means, but is not limited to, questions of purpose, significance, and our place in it.

Yes, and this means he denies that the aim of science should be the attainment of truth, which amounts to a direct critique of modern physics and most sciences outside of perhaps a few branches of psychology. — Joshs

As I understand it, Nietzsche denies transcendent, absolute, unchanging truths. Some contemporary physicists do as well, although others treat the laws of nature as eternally unchanging and immutable.

↪Fooloso4
The universe has always been meaningless.
— Wayfarer

Then how are we able to understand the meaning of the word ‘universe’? — Joshs

Wayfarer was quoting me so I'll respond. The problem is not with the meaning of the term. I suspect you know that.

I am not well versed in the subject of the philosophy of law, but I would think there is a distinction between the law as it is written and the question of what the law should be, that is, the law as it in interpreted and the task of the law maker. But this distinction is not always so clear cut. There are interpretive differences which cannot simply be resolved by pointing to what is written or precedent. There are accusations on both sides today of judicial activism.

What is missing from the speaker's knowledge is evidence for their belief. — RussellA

The evidence of their belief is the fact that they are able to distinguish a red post-box from all else.

But we are now just repeating ourselves.