I liked reading "City of God" by Augustine. In it, he relates other trinities and suggests that the Christian Trinity is the apex of all trinities. Philosophies had the idea of trinity before it became widespread.

I have always found that going back to the beginning clarified so much. Plato is not hard to read......ok, he is as hard to read as you are prepared for him to be. You could read him as a kid and glean so much. You can read him as one with a PhD and still glean so much. Much of the foundation of thought comes from Plato. I am very fond of him. I started with him as a kid and then went and studied a lot, but always come back to either Homer or Plato. No matter how much I read, I find the clarity and simplicity (simple profundity or profound simplicity) of these two often to take my breath away.

That is the book! It is very interesting, I must say.

Dang! That was very succinct and clear. I loved it! The jello is sticking :-) I will be musing on this over time to separate the two. Consciousness scares me. I have actually been freaked out by it to the point of near panic attacks. I don't like the idea that all my experiences make m y consciousness because like everyone else, I have much in there I wish I could excise. I can cut off my finger, but not a whit of my consciousness. In fact, if I cut off my finger, I would remember that for the rest of my conscious life. My consciousness bothers me.

Damn skippy.

Haha!! You nailed it. If this won't convince him, nothing will.

You are a smart kid to see that philosophy in the hands of teens can lead to a load of consequences. But it can for adults, too. One guy was so into Plato, he walked off a cliff. He did this not because he was distracted, but because he was so focused. He walked off on purpose to get to the next life.

Earthly things are important because you have to eat. That is the grand turd in the punchbowl, so to speak. The need for food has caused wars to start, wars to stop, has been used as leverage, sieges to starve people out, women who are locked in bad situations (men as well).......if you wander around the world for a while, you might get fed but when you are in your thirties and hungry, and lined up for food stamps that the govt can with-hold or give on a whim.......

The bottom line....food, clothing, rent......these things are not longer even affordable so you have to spend s a little time of your life lining up a way to get these things so you can go off and do what you like at intervals (vacation time) and then all the time (in retirement).

Otherwise, it's grind away to the end. ,

Your post is brilliant and wise. You nailed what I was getting at. Thank you. What keeps you going? You may have found a turn around, but some changes are not reversible.

I loved and hated what you said about the polis not arranged to help people adjust, but to languish.

I am not alone in Hades, I see. Shades of others wander around lifeless, husks of their old selves........

Thank you for you insight. Maybe one day I will be allowed to re-enter.

That is true! My mother told us how she solved a complex geometry problem whilst asleep! :-) I am still quite bothered of changes in fortune and how we don't seem to get up to speed on the new life. It can be anything......illness, divorce, etc etc.......What part of us won't accept....is it based in Memory? We remember? I cannot pinpoint it.

Yes. Can you point me to a work you feel would address this? I have read what I would consider a significant amount, but not all, of course. I read Hegel which I liked and started me thinking more about it. I also read The Soul Machine which was really good. I did not finish that, so that might be my best bet? It's a newish text, so it would have current research. I would value any you can suggest, too. Thanks!

This is a great topic! Augustine talks a lot about God and Time in City of God. I cannot possibly describe it as he did. He says that God was before Time so always was in time, of course. His ideas of time stopping for us all was really scary. That is his basis for eternal Heaven and hell.....that time stops and you are trapped in timelessness.

City of God by Augustine is a great read. I hope you do read it! I agree with Valentinus. It's a huge work and would be impossible to take a piece here and there. It is done, of course, as Valentinus did it :-) But the work is seamless and Valentinus summed it up quite well with , "It would be misleading to see the matter as being addressed fully in a single place."

I take it in historical context. We can glean a lot from secular ancient texts that put the Bible in perspective.

It did not always carry an onus. In fact, the ancients often lauded it. Think of Decius Mus and Cato. Every other treatise by Seneca gushes about the wonders of Cato's suicide. Half the philosophers in Diogenes Laetius' text suicide when they are "done." Diogenes the Cynic talked of many women hanging from trees. There was nobility in it if done right, at the right time, for the right reason.

On the other hand, St Augustine pleads for the women who had been violated by the visigoths NOT to end their lives.

Those are just a few , scant examples to display that there have been many views and voices over many, many years.

No. I usually feel worse than the next guy. I also have a keen sense that any of us could be bad....really bad.....given the right set of circumstances. I don't believe the retractions about the Milgram Experiment. I do believe people can be made to be bad. So I tread carefully with any scrap of goodness I have and feel quite lucky to have it.

I could get a brain tumour or go mad or get a serious head injury to make me violent or an illness I can't handle or the wrong med, etc....... The possibilities are endless.

I am good now. Yeah! But better than anyone? No.

People do seem to get bored in their 50's but by 80, they are all perked up again. Maybe forgetting that people are boring makes them exciting again?

In my opinion......

The consciousness seems to me an invisible and parasitical organ. It does not even exist, really, and yet it causes more harm than good. It has exploded and can almost be tracked from Socrates who first began to discuss the idea of thoughts as apart from mere reactions. The idea of Reason.

We don't manage it well at all. It is the core of mental illness, not the brain, and one of the reasons why it's so hard to treat mental illness. How can you fix a broken consciousness? A consciousness begins at birth and retains all experiences and interprets them in various ways.

We are not even in control of it. Don't think about Pink Elephants! Stop obsessing! Don't eat that cake! Stop thinking about that married crush you have!

No one killed themselves because of their brain. It's been the consciousness telling them to do so.

Constant chatter 24/7, never shuts its trap.

What is peace? Being asleep and away from that monster.

It's so bad, they now think we will be AWARE we are dead!! Even when the brain shits off.

<shudder>

It's a disastrous tumour that can't even be seen.

I am reading Theaetutus and wondering the same. I am perplexed by our inability to change, really.

I know people have changed, but they think they have more than they have. Brain injury changes people. Drugs change people, that is true.

But people just willing to change without any additional feature? I have not seen it and not sure it's possible other than entropy. Change from bad to good? I have not seen it. If you have, that's awesome.

I think Euclid of Megara founded the school you are speaking about. (Not the geometry guy).

Good question. So if it's legal in State X and illegal in State Y.........is it wrong to do it in State Y.

I say No. It is not wrong. I have no philosophical defense at all. It brings health benefits to an INSANE system which would rather addict people onto expensive and deadly substances to profit a bloated and morally corrupt Industry (Big Pharma).

To me, it's like asking if it's wrong to free a slave. No, it's not wrong. Even if it's illegal, it's not wrong to free a slave.

Where pot is legal, people who have been enslaved to Big Pharma are getting freed.....to the tune of 1.6 million less doses A DAY!!! Yes, a day.......

Bring on the pot...............free someone today.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/04/02/598787768/opioid-use-lower-in-states-that-eased-marijuana-laws

Hegel, maybe? Phenomenology of Mind?

Why, thank you! It's nice to be here.

This is a great question. The antonym to ἀκρασία is ἐγκράτεια. Both are based in κράτος, meaning power. One without and one with. I do agree that thumos may be able to provide the strength, but I also think the ancients saw all around them people who were grossly dysfunctional. Just like today. Probably most were dysfunctional. Not everyone had the luxury to "work on their issues." This is why philosophers tended to hang around kings (Seneca/Nero, Aristotle/Alexander, Plato/Dionysius, etc) and why Diogenes laughed at them. He said they were slaves to kings.

So I think if it takes a king's money to be able to reach ἐγκράτεια, I am screwed. I find that self control is so much easier in some certain situations than others. Health, vocation, family support, financial security,etc. How many of us could ever be like Diogenes? Where life could hammer us and we still have the same steel will as before?

So I do believe ἐγκράτεια and ἀκρασία are byproducts of Fate. You may fight to preserve the one over the other for a while, and you may make it to the end! But, depending on where you live, the forces around you, etc etc etc......it seems more and more a crap shoot.

Much of Christian thinking evolved. Early Christians were not daunted by such similarities because they were so well known.

See Augustine's City of God, Book 11. Therein, he treats of the Trinity and expounds on earlier versions of philosophy which mirrored such threefold attributes (Greek: Physical/Logical/Ethical and Latin: Material/Rational/Moral). This is a striking example of how early Christians felt about previous thought fitting into Christian logic.

The early Christians felt these ideas culminated in the existence of Christ. The idea of secret agendas came when people forgot the original ideas and misunderstood how well known they were to everyone.

I do think the translation is correct (of λόγος) because earlier ideas of λόγος are similar. Of course, we can never know because the meaning of words change so much over time. Certainly modern Christians can never know the very loaded meaning of that word because it's hard to find philosophers anywhere these days, in church or out of it!

But λόγος was a core, as other posters have mentioned, of so many philosophies that the Christians almost had to address it if they wanted to maintain any validity. Christians would perhaps say this means λόγος really is important and God wanted us to understand that concept so intensely that he sent us Christ. But atheists, perhaps would say it was just a spin to make Christianity more acceptable.

Good discussion. I think I will like it here.