No, it's not since so many people's views on freedom of choice vary and clash, and many people want more than just freedom of choice. They want safety, security, culture, health and many other things.

Thanks for the info.

↪Thanatos Sand Heidegger seems to possess all of Nietzsche’s conceit but none of his wit or talent for self-criticism.

Another unfounded statement that shows you never read it. And you said it was impossible to understand (meaning you couldn't understand it), so you can't say anything about what it says.

Heidegger himself seems to be filled with pride everytime he has found a complicated and forbidding formula and then treats it as if it had been delivered by an oracle.

The only one filled with pride is you as you are attacking a great work because it was too hard for you and you couldn't read it. So, we're done. I won't read anymore of your unfounded nonsense.

No, it's impossible for you to understand, as millions have understood, valued, and taught it. Thanks for proving you never read it; your post stinks of ignorance and hubris.

Being and Time
— Beebert
It's easy to define Heidegger in terms of other philosophers, but harder to define N or K in terms of others.

Firstly, that has no bearing on the quality of their works. The fact Heidegger was able to integrate the works of such brilliant varied philosophers as Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Nietzsche, Eckhart, and even Kierkegaard into his work is an accomplishment in itself the other two didn't approach.

Secondly, Nietzsche wasn't a professional philosophy scholar; he was a Classical Studies master, and Kierkegaard was a Lutheran minister well-studied in Hegel, so their projects were much different than the Philosophy/Medieval Theology scholar, Heidegger.

That's a childish unfounded claim that shows you probably never read it.

It depends on what you define as moral rights and how binding they are across nations and cultures. You should make those points clear.

[quote"]No, because much of morality is centered on tailoring harmful individual acts on other individuals and society."

"That's merely the inevitable caveat to freedom of choice... "
[/quote]

No, much of morality is centered on tailoring harmful individual acts on other individuals and society; that is the matter and focus of the philosophy, not just a caveat to freedom of choice.

Goodbye, Andrew. Your last post, like most of your posts, display a decided lack of education in both biology and contemporary scientific and human scientific studies in human sexuality.

Since I have no interest in teaching you further, I will no longer read any more of your posts.

In the evolution thread I was challenging whether we needed the word animal at all and you were defending it's indispensability as a classification. Yet Judith Butler seems happy to dispose of the biology of gender or sex for viewing gender as a performance.

So? Animal is an indisputed classification. I'm sorry you never took biology in high school. Sex and gender are openly-debated terms in the scientific community. I'm sorry you don't grasp the difference.

Do you support this stance in contradiction of your advocacy for a concrete definition of animal?

That's an erroneous loaded question. Not impressive.

I defended the idea of words as power tools and constructs.

You defended your incorrect usage of words. Apparently, you never took English class either.

It would be helpful Thanatos, if you could present an argument from one the thinkers you mentioned and show how it will or could improve life.

It would be helpful, Andy, if you realize that many people have many different definitions of "improve life." I've already shown how people have used the ideas of those philosophers for human and social progress. So your question is just trolling.

I appreciate some of what I have read concerning Foucault but Has he been applied in a radical way?

Many times by many marginalized groups.

I am not keen on what I have read from Butler Which seems to be typical left wing bias and word games.

You haven't taken the time to actually read her stuff beyond a paragraph, so I don't care what you're keen on concerning Butler.

LOL. He was tried for contesting technical aspects of the Summa (a charge from the rival Franciscans), and he won his case. So, try again.

If he had ever said Christ was an agent, he would have been toast.

He believed that the Christ is a kind of agent.

No, he didn't, that would have made him an Arian heretic, and he would have been excommunicated and possibly worse the moment he wrote it, said it publicly, or told another Dominican that. You're just making this stuff up now.

God is the ground of being. He's an example of how a person can be a Christian and also be what in Spinoza's time was called atheist.

Sorry, that was not how Eckhart saw it. Again, that would be a rejection of both the Trinity and the Summa Theologica. He did neither. If you're just going to make this stuff up, there's no point in continuing.

And indeed the use made of slaves and of tame animals is not very different; for both with their bodies minister to the needs of life.
Aristotle, Politics

Fascinating....

You have proved my point Thanatos Sand.

I have proven nothing but what I wrote in my last post, Andrew4Handel.

Thanatos Sand I wasn't educated by Jesuits, but I read Bernard McGinn's book about Eckhart. Eckhart did not believe that God is a person.

Then McGinn was wrong, if he actually said that. Firstly, Eckhart never stopped believing that Christ was also God, so he was definitely a person, there. And Eckhart never rejected the Summa Theologica that said that God was the essence of personhood.

Oh, yes, he was a devoted Dominican. He just investigated what "Personal God" meant in a neo-Aristotelian way.

The more mystical Christians are, the less they tend to believe in a personal God.

As someone educated by the Jesuits, I can tell you that is not the case, and you certainly haven't shown any support for that claim. Christian mystics tend to see God in more spiritual, more Romantic ways and more through personal experience than church experience, but they do not reject a personal God or the Godhead.

I tend to think of mystics of all types as having fundamentally similar outlooks. God is an underlying creative force... something like that.

This is wrong, too. Not only do mystics vary differently within the same religion, they definitely differ from mystics in other religions. Christian mystics do not reduce God to an underlying creative force, and neither do Jewish mystics either. Kabbalists definitely believe in God/Jehovah.

but the image of Abraham in Fear and Trembling is one any mystic would understand.

Maybe, but so would many non-mystic Christians, Jews, and Muslims.

Sorry.. you're right, I should have noted it. My thought processes tend to be a little amorphous.

No worries. It's late in the week; it happens.

What is the standard dogma about divinity? The belief in God? Kierkegaard did not reject that. And a leaning towards mysticism doesn't preclude that either, as Meister Eckhart believed in God as well.

What exactly do you mean by leaning toward mysticism? Because if it is a rejection in a belief in God, Kierkegaard didn't lean towards that.

Since that's a specific usage, you should probably note that. How exactly was Spinoza an atheist?

No, Kierkegaard was always a believing Christian/Lutheran. His attacks were on its tendencies towards A-Romantic dogma and institutions stifling the individual experience of Spirit and History. In this he saw them similar to Hegel's historical dialectics he despised so.

Thanks, man. It took me a second reading to get that...:)

Yes, but wouldn't Kierkegaard be saying it in a Thomist sense, as all things point to God in their own way, while Nietzsche would eschew such spiritual foundationalism?

Being and Time is, in essence, a reading of Nietzsche and Hegel, and a reinterpretation of Husserl, through a Medieval theologian sensibility.

No, because much of morality is centered on tailoring harmful individual acts on other individuals and society.

There are few things less intellectual or philosophical than judging a thinker, particularly a brilliant one, on one paragraph.
— Thanatos Sand

I was not judging her whole output I was just highlighting the problem of the inaccessibility of ideas deemed radical (or otherwise). Continental philosophers have sometimes deliberately written in a convoluted manner as a stylistic choice.

And again, that's a mistake to claim inaccessibility of ideas based on one paragraph. It's intellectually and scholastically lazy, the opposite of radical thought. And no continental philosophers have purposely written in a convoluted manner. That's what people who have difficulty reading their work erroneously say.

If someone is starving in a poor country or struggling on the breadline in affluent country or behaving stupidly and damaging the environment and other lives how much time have we got to decipher this prose?

Sorry, many people including myself read it very well and teach it very well. You only say it needs to be deciphered because you have difficulty reading it and haven't even really read it. Again, that's lazy scholarship that is counter to radical thinking.

I am not saying these philosophers have nothing to offer or that they cannot be be profitably adapted and adopted but that doesn't mean you can't have campaigning and immediately accessible philosophy.

Most philosophers aren't immediately accessible. I guess you want to get rid of Kant, Hume, Aquinas, Hegel, Nietzsche, Marx and most other philosophers. .

It seems non philosophers have been more powerful than philosophers at causing moral change. They simply demanded change and highlighted cruelty. It is easier to ignore or dismiss a position if it is presented in an elongated over analytic style.

Sorry, no non-philosophers accomplish anything without keen thought and solid theories, and the best, like Martin Luther King, are always well-read on some philosophy, and usually high philosophy. And you call it elongated because it is elongated to you. To say it actually is, when you've barely read any of it, is pretty solipsistic. You clearly don't think much of philosophy and philosophers. So, why are you here?

Judith Butler was famously awarded a bad writing prize and other criticism for this piece of writing.

There are few things less intellectual or philosophical than judging a thinker, particularly a brilliant one, on one paragraph...even if you did get the punctuation right.

To me a radical philosopher should say things that are logical and coherent and approachable to be of real value or motivation.

The radical philosopher Butler does the first two all the time. But "approachable" is a subjective term, and philosophers shouldn't dumb down for those unable to approach their works because of poor education, poor reading skills, or slow thinking.

Why is the world so dysfunctional? I think bad individual and social philosophy is a big cause

Judith Butler is an excellent individual and social philosopher. If you read her actual work, you would see that.

This is from the page you pinned:

Darin Barney of McGill University writes that:
“
"Butler's work on gender, sex, sexuality, queerness, feminism, bodies, political speech and ethics has changed the way scholars all over the world think, talk and write about identity, subjectivity, power and politics. It has also changed the lives of countless people whose bodies, genders, sexualities and desires have made them subject to violence, exclusion and oppression."[48]

Scintillating response. You should ask for your GED-tutoring money back...:)

This hasn't come close to happening, as millions of Americans are rejecting and protesting against Trump, and he has some of the lowest opinion ratings of any president in history.

The Sanders/Progressive movement is another indicator this hasn't happened as people are rejecting corrupt, corporate politics as usual and are demanding integrity and commitment to working for Americans from their elected officials.

A much larger portion of the human population used to want to 'know the truth'. Intuitively, the reason why is obvious. Now, many would rather not know. Others don't care about all that, because they believe that they'll be fine without knowing it. Some know but do not want others to know, etc, etc...

This is merely your unfounded opinion.

However, it is a post truth world, because dishonesty and insincerity used to be much more widely considered unacceptable. Monetary corruption in government used to be considered unacceptable. Politicians lying used to be considered unacceptable. News media peddling known falsehoods used to be considered unacceptable. Elected officials deliberately peddling known falsehoods used to be considered unacceptable.

No, it is not a post truth world, and everything you said to back up that claim is unfounded and untrue.

It used to be the case that the evidence currently at hand would be more than sufficient to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that one Paul Manafort was/is a Russian operative.

No, it didn't.

That may still be the case.

That is true.

If it is not, then nothing would.

That makes no sense at all.

Those that view the evidence and arrive at any other conclusion are the ones required to justify that conclusion, for the evidence speaks for itself, bearing witness to the contrary.

No, those that view the evidence and arrive at the conclusion that Manafort is a Russian operative are the ones required to justify their conclusion.

When one enters into a philosophical debate, s/he volunteers to justify and/or ground any assertions made.

That's funny, since you've failed to do that over and over.

Refusing to answer pertinent questions is grounds for dismissal.

LOL. First of all, you never ask pertinent questions, and secondly it doesn't say that in the forum rules at all.

In order to know what one is talking about when discussing what reporting is true and what reporting is not the participant must first know what sorts of things can be true/false and what makes them so...

And yet you commented on it when you have know idea what sorts of things can be true/false and what makes them so. Ironic...:)

There are several contributors here who represent an attitude that Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and the DNC, are the root of all evil in US politics, and possibly the world .
— Wayfarer

That seems a rather purposeful misrepresentation of our positions here, Wayfarer,
— Erik

we're not in a "Post-Truth" world; were in the "same-lack-of-Truth-we've-always-had world.
— Thanatos Sand

George. W. Bush lied about Saddam Hussain having WMD's, leading to a disastrous Iraq War.

Obama straight-up lied about having the NSA unconstitutionally monitor our phones when he knew perfectly well they were absolutely doing so.

Reagan lied to the country about taking money from Iran weapons deals to finance the horrendous Contas.
— Thanatos Sand

The fact you see these lies as better than Trump's is pretty sad.
— Thanatos Sand

Sorry, Wayfarer, this interesting collection of partial quotes doesn't back up your ridiculous claim above at all. In fact, they just help prove how it's completely ridiculous.

For those who wonder about the aforementioned preservation, I want only to bring your attention to how the Russian investigation progressed. Initially there was scant but solid evidence that Russian operatives were involved in attempting to influence the election. I mean, some of the people who were in Comey's sights were long known to be acting as Russian operatives(literally by decree). That is, some were already under investigation.

As a direct result of someone who is already known to be working as a Russian operative(by decree) being hired by the Trump campaign, that results in possible collusion, and as such warrants furthering the investigation into one Paul Manafort. During Manafort's brief tenure working directly with Trump, Sessions, Michael Flynn, Steve Bannon, and the rest the Trump team, the Republican National platform underwent quite the remarkable change. Very few reports were produced. Even fewer people were aware of the aforementioned direct evidence that had already been gathered by the American intelligence community.

The change was the most favorable one possible to Russia and her best interests. A connection is quickly drawn between the meddling and Manafort and the platform change.

This is a lot of unfounded conjecture. There has been no establishment of Russia and Trump's campaign causing the RNC platform to undergo remarkable change, which it didn't. And there certainly is no evidence showing the Russians hacked the election at all, much less in collusion with the Trump campaign.

Creative doesn't make the best arguments, if he even makes them, but he can whip up some wild stories.

Trump wins.

Yeah, because the Hillary campaign worked with CNN to pump up Trump during the primaries, Hillary Clinton was a terrible, unlikable candidate, and she ran a terrible campaign that ignored and lost the Rust Belt.

Barack Hussein Obama used the powers bestowed upon the office of the presidency of the United States of America to have as many intelligence officers as legally possible to have their hands upon whatever evidence had been previously gathered.

Barrack Hussein Obama unconstitutionally monitored our phones and lied about it to us. He's not trustworthy.

Trump fires Comey.

Yeah, and Hillary and members of her campaign wanted Obama to fire Comey when he was investigating her.

Trump, for obvious reasons draws attention to himself... I mean he is an attention whore if I've ever came across one.

So, are many politicians; Bill Clinton was one of the worst: just ask his wife who was furious at him for it during the campaign. It proves nothing of his colluding with the Russians to tamper with the election.

I find Thanatos to be the most clear-headed and honest participant in this debate. He obviously doesn't like Trump the man, and I'd imagine (based upon his very progressive positions outlined in other threads) he likes his political agenda even less.

I appreciate that, Erik. And it's true: I do not like Trump, his reactionary political agenda, or continuation of the war on Syria. But we need to focus on and fight the terrible things we know he's doing, and all the establishment Dems and MSM want to focus on is what he might have been doing without solid evidence even backing that suspicion.

There's a bit of deliciousness hereabouts...

A hallmark of the post truth world, as has been noted ad nauseum, is to distract attention away from importance and towards trivial bullshit. This move is realized with several means. The thread will bear witness to this, as an astute reader ought see by now.

Yes, and for that trivial bullshit, all one needs to do is read Creativesoul's banal and/or erroneous posts.

In real life...

The American nation is on the verge of constitutional crisis. That is the root.

Obama foresaw what he left unsaid. I thank him for preserving the evidence, and history will look upon him favorably regarding that matter.

In real life, Creativesoul is being alarmist and hysterical. Obama had the NSA unconstitutionally monitor our phones and lied about it to the country. If you're looking for an actual constitutional crisis, look there. Thanks to Edward Snowden, an American hero for exposing Obama's lies.

↪Thanatos Sand Actually it is prescription drugs like opioids that are killing 10s of thousands of people each year and hospitals that are killing hundreds of thousands, making hospitals after cancer and heart disease.

Sorry, prescription drugs doesn't even cause 10 percent (if that) of the illnesses or diseases or physical ailments needing medical treatment. So, you make another pointless non-sequitur.

So in a sense staying away from hospitals is a good lifestyle practice right after eating veggies and fruits.

LOL. Man, you are seriously ignorant and kooky, as well terribly callous. So, we're done; I've wasted too much time on you already.

I won't be reading any more of your posts.

Thanatos Sand Wars use to be great money makers for government and the top 1% but nowadays healthcare is much more lucrative. Tens of $trillions and growing. And it's people such as yourself who serve as unpaid marketers for this money-making machine.

No, it's people like you who serve as unpaid marketers for the money-making machine called the insurance industry. I want the government to put our taxes to work, do its job, and take care of its citizens. You actually want children to die instead of that...which is sociopathic and offensive.