Yeah, you figured it out. And I see.

Knarc Rettib, with a silent K of course.

Why John? So plain and boring.

Gross.

Well, I'll be damned. You dun dodged an ethical and a legal quandary, my friend.

But is it ethical for you to do so? It seems you likely had to actively search out such a file, as opposed to it falling into your lap.

Nils with the Googling work. (Y)

I read a short story by Evelyn Waugh recently, which I was pleasantly surprised by. I might explore his other fiction at some point.

Is the violation of copyright law part of the human predicament?

Hehe, clever.

Come on guys; it's not hard to figure out.

You are equivocal and vague in your usage of the terms, except perhaps by "corporation," you mean bogeyman. — Hanover

Nah, I'm not.

Unless that was an off-hand, unpublished remark, I would suggest finding the paragraph/page/book from which that quote is taken and finding out for yourself. I don't know why you would expect anyone here to have the answer. I might be the only poster on the forum who has even heard of or read anything by Ortega y Gasset!

If that's your definition of proof, why are you then not a skeptic?

Your criticism seems now to be that the good is not perfect. Well, so what? I don't claim that capitalism is a perfect system or that it can't devolve into baser systems. I simply think it's better than all other alternatives thus far on offer.

thus perfectly competitive markets naturally decay — Agustino

Then I return to my original point! They decay into something other than capitalism.

Seems like a capitalist will hate the free market, and love the monopoly. — Agustino

Sure. In a sense, some capitalists, as owners and investors of capital, are monopolists, but capitalism would prevent them from being so.

In part, yes.

Why is monopoly anti-capitalist? Every business seeks a monopoly of one kind or another. — Agustino

Because capitalism supports free markets and to have a monopoly is to prohibit others from entering the market.

Also, the leftist equivocates on the word capitalism, in that he will use this word to describe what is in fact corporatism, corporatocracy, or crony capitalism (I prefer the first of these terms). Your attempt to assert that I am equivocal on the use of terms like "monopoly," "corporation," and so on isn't warranted because these terms can be used in a non-legal sense.

you don't like unscrupulous companies, large or small and regardless of corporate status — Hanover

You still miss the mark. My opposition to them rests not on my mere dislike of them but on account of their opposition to capitalist principles, which I already accept.

I'm not seeing a difference between "proving God to exist" and "giving very compelling reasons for believing in God." The latter statement just reads as a more wordy restatement of the former. The question of whether the proof is inductive or deductive seems irrelevant. A proof is a proof.

It's not all corporations that you don't like, just big ones, and it's not just big corporations you don't like, but just big businesses regardless of corporate status, and it's not all big business you don't like, just certain ones, namely the ones you don't like. It's also irrelevant to you whether the business is a monopoly. You don't like some even where there's competition. — Hanover

Boy, you sure claim to know an awful lot about me based on a few relatively casual comments I made on this topic above. This reads as a series of straw men, so let me disabuse you of your ignorance. There are plenty of large corporations I like and plenty of small ones I don't like, and vice-versa. Corporatism, in the sense I am using the term, can include entities that are not technically corporations, but the same logic applies to them: I have no personal preference for the size of a business or organization. I care about whether it conforms to what I take to be basic principles of capitalism, which I am generally in favor of.

you doubtfully have any problem with the mom and pop restaurant down the street — Hanover

That depends on the restaurant.

you might have a problem with the Dyson vacuum company — Hanover

I have no opinion on it because I don't know anything about it.

you might dislike Wal-Mart — Hanover

I like Wal-Mart and even shop there.

you might like your local power company, despite it being a monopoly and not having any competitors — Hanover

My local power company is a cooperative owned by farmers, so this isn't really relevant.

what you don't like are those companies who do distasteful things, which has nothing to do with their corporate status and nothing to do with how many competitors it might have — Hanover

No one likes companies that do disgraceful things, myself included. It seems you're trying to be overly technical when reading the terms I have employed in order to accuse me of being "hopelessly vague, equivocal, and ambiguous," when I think it was obvious the sense in which I used them.

why should we care about answering this question? — Agustino

For one thing, classical theism is in jeopardy. To claim that God can be proven or believed to exist, despite not knowing his essence, becomes a nonsensical distinction if existence isn't a predicate.

Corporate behemoths do actually control the allocation and distribution of large amounts of capital in order to generate new production — Agustino

But they often do so through monopoly and government subsidy. No one is saying they're communists, but they're certainly not capitalists.

And North Korea calls itself a Democratic People's Republic. :-}

because I think you're using capitalism to mean what capitalism used to be — Agustino

Which is what it is. Monopolistic corporate behemoths are antithetical to capitalism. Don't fall for the leftist equivocation on this word.

How worse? Not as barebones a meal or like hell? — Heister Eggcart

I don't quite understand the question. I was being slightly sarcastic mind you. The isolated ascetic does no favors for asceticism as a whole, whereas religion can. So the secular ascetic is bad, or at least irrelevant, to asceticism.

The challenge though is to escape the drudgery of capitalism — Agustino

You seem to describe corporatism, not capitalism.

There are better ways to avoid first world problems than by moving to the third world where they have real problems. — Hanover

Let me clarify that I would never suggest such a thing nor deny the negative aspects of primitive life. I prefer civilization and capitalism over and against their opposites.

I find that the sort of work one does is more important than whether one works. The Bushmen are likely satisfied because they don't perceive their work to be drudgery. It's probably harder to be clinically depressed living in their society than for drones ensconced in cubicles in New York or Tokyo.

You mean the Fragments that remain of that? — Agustino

Yes. We don't have titles for his fragments or those of Parmenides, so that's the title scholars have given them.

Why did you pick it? — Agustino

My list reflects those works that I read in full and which influenced my thinking the most. I thought Heraclitus' concept of flux was fascinating, and later I saw some parallels with Schopenhauer's will.

It's surprising that you picked this one. Why so? — Agustino

It thoroughly absorbed my attention the first time I read it, and I found the main character's exasperated protestations and observations conducive to my mood and aligning well with my general outlook on the world. I might not like it as much if I read it now. I don't know.

then I think you've immediately judged the ascetic vitality of nonreligious ascetics to be less full and subsequently inferior — Heister Eggcart

Yes. So much the worse for them.

I doubt that you'd argue that a Sufist ascetic is as equally, robustly ascetic as the Christian, or the Buddhist, or even the Jain, as Wayfarer mentioned — Heister Eggcart

I wouldn't mind arguing this, though. The asceticism of Sufis, Christian monks, Buddhist monks, Jain monks, Hindu sadhus, and so on may indeed be of the same quality. The difference lies in the belief structure that motivates them. One chooses a religion based on determining, as best one can, the truth of that belief structure, not the quality of asceticism resultant therefrom. Though the latter may still be a factor in that decision (and is a large one for me), it can't be the primary one.

Jains are atheist — Wayfarer

This is false, or at least misleading. Jains do not believe in a single, creator god, but they accept the Vedic devas and worship all sorts of deities in a ritualized manner.

Is asceticism a lifestyle, intellectual pursuit, or both? — Heister Eggcart

There is physical asceticism, aimed at reducing the demands of the body, and mental asceticism, aimed at reducing the demands of the mind, so both I guess.

Is there such a thing as nonreligious asceticism? — Heister Eggcart

The more interesting question to me, since there clearly have been a small number of ascetic figures with no identifiable religious commitments, is whether asceticism can flourish only within religion. In other words, do the exceptions prove the rule, that asceticism has vitality only within religious traditions. An isolated ascetic can do nothing to maintain asceticism, whereas an organized institution, like a religion, can.

Their live styles are ascetic by necessity — Bitter Crank

Then they aren't ascetic. Asceticism must be voluntary or else it quickly becomes destructive and immoral, which asceticism isn't in itself.

Heraclitus - On Nature
Parmenides - On Nature
Plato - Dialogues
Kierkegaard - Journals
Marcus Aurelius - Meditations
Spinoza - Ethics
Berkeley - Treatise/Dialogues
Kant - The Critique of Pure Reason
Schopenhauer - The World as Will and Presentation
Camus - The Stranger
The Upanishads

That's eleven, but I notice you cheated too.

Sounds like hell is empty of souls, methinks. If God is love, then I wonder why he is said to keep a record of our wrongs throughout our lives in order to then judge which afterlife we go to. It appears as though God is, in fact, all forgiving, which is a quality I on't think Buddha can match, so Jesus > Buddha. — Heister Eggcart

That should be "mehopes," from a Christian perspective. There's no reason to think it empty or not empty. You simply don't and can't know. Hell still serves as a necessary admonition, though.

That's impossible — Agustino

No, it's not. You don't know their internal state, only God does. Why don't you let him be the judge?

they certainly are not — Agustino

That's not for you to say.

David Bentley Hart. I quoted him.