For those who recognise what they have done, guilt becomes a badge of honour. — TheWillowOfDarkness

:-! >:O At least you are funny! Imagine - the rapist's rape becomes a badge of honour for him! Who would have thought!

Yes there are different kinds of knives, but they all have the purpose of cutting. — Agustino

This is not entirely true for a start; some knives are designed for spreading. In any case knives are designed to cut a variety of different materials, just as humans are designed to flourish in a far greater variety of different ways, and that is the point your lack of subtlety fails to recognize.

But what is not up to question is that lust is bad, and chastity is good - regardless of the differences that exist between people. Regardless. — Agustino

This is a superficial understanding of Aristotle. He advocated a mean in between extremes. If lust is one extreme and chastity is the other, they are both vices and the mean, or virtue, lies in between.

For each virtue there are thus two corresponding vices, one of excess and another of deficiency. So, for another example, the virtue of courage has the the twin vices of rashness and cowardice.

And Aristotle, to my knowledge never advocated chastity. This is a later Christian add-on, via Augustine and Aquinas.

As to your having a very beautiful body and being a very good writer; even if those are true, so what? That you have an unwarrantedly high opinion of your own qualities, abilities and wisdom seems to be a far more significant fact about you. Anyway, I don't reckon much of any value will come from prolonging this 'conversation', perhaps when it comes to your future pontifications, I'll be phronetic enough to lean more toward the vice of abstinence, than the vice of indulgence.

BTW, I think your writing abilities and wisdom would lend themselves to writing some kind of 'How To' kind of book, along the lines of How to Win Friends and Influence People or Think and Grow Rich; that would seem to be about the right level; an ability for any serious philosophy is certainly not evident; not at this stage of your development, at least.

Not the rape, the guilt over the rape-- the realisation of the wrong etched into the eternity of history. The understanding of an immorality which cannot be undone or resloved.

Certainly not you, that's for sure. You want to pretend the sin doesn't exist from the personal point of view. I mean you just read understanding one has committed an eternal sin as valuing the sin-- something to be avoided at any cost.

To value realising the evil which has been done is not to value the sin. It's to value understanding that irreversible evil has been done.

This is not entirely true for a start; some knives are designed for spreading. In any case knives are designed to cut a variety of different materials, just as humans are designed to flourish in a far greater variety of different ways, and that is the point your lack of subtlety fails to recognize. — John

Yes it is entirely true for the simple reason that we call a knife a knife because it is an object designed with the function of cutting. Even the knives which spread - they are also designed for cutting, for example butter. And yes, each knife may fulfil this grand purpose on different materials, and in different circumstances. Same for people. People just like knives have an over-arching purpose, which holds true of all human beings.

This is a superficial understanding of Aristotle. He advocated a mean in between extremes. If lust is one extreme and chastity is the other, they are both vices and the mean, or virtue, lies in between. — John

I wasn't explaining Aristotle's conception there, but an Aristotelian one. The Aristotelian tradition is larger than just Aristotle.

And Aristotle, to my knowledge never advocated chastity. This is a later Christian add-on, via Augustine and Aquinas. — John

But Aristotle did have the virtue of chastity, only that he didn't separate it. He held it to be within the virtue of continence.

As to your having a very beautiful body and being a very good writer; even if those are true, so what? That you have an unwarrantedly high opinion of your own qualities, abilities and wisdom seems to be a far more significant fact about you. Anyway, I don't reckon much of any value will come from prolonging this 'conversation', perhaps when it comes to your future pontifications, I'll be phronetic enough to lean more toward the vice of abstinence, than the vice of indulgence.

BTW, I think your writing abilities and wisdom would lend themselves to writing some kind of 'How To' kind of book, along the lines of How to Win Friends and Influence People or Think and Grow Rich; that would seem to be about the right level; an ability for any serious philosophy is certainly not evident; not at this stage of your development, at least. — John

:-! Yes - I think you should work on your conversation skills - when you clearly can't recognise a fictive example, used for illustrating a concept, and you jump to unwarranted conclusions about your interlocutor's character, that is quite shameful of you sir, and I don't think you have any right, given such track record of horrible judgements, to comment on anyone's philosophical skills. Get your conversation skills in order first before you worry about philosophy - perhaps by reading Dale Carnegie yes.

To value realising the evil which has been done is not to value the sin. It's to value understanding that irreversible evil has been done. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Not the rape, the guilt over the rape-- the realisation of the wrong etched into the eternity of history. The understanding of an immorality which cannot be undone or resloved. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Yes - I appreciate such a valuation, and I think that's good. I was thinking for a moment that you thought they should treat it as if it wasn't something wrong, something to be ashamed of. Yes - the man who is proud of his guilt over having done a crime, that is a good thing!

Then you should make it more clear if you are not referring to what you think are your real qualities; I am not a mind-reader. Clarity is the foundation of any conversational skill.

In any case my judgement of your philosophical acumen is based on many, many posts of yours I have read. I cannot think of any good philosopher who was a proselytizer. You are a proselytizer, ergo....

Even if it were accepted that knives have only the function of cutting and not other functions, for instances, of spreading, carving or marking; the analogy between a human being and a knife is pretty lame; because it is obvious that the former have a vast range of functions, which cannot be sensibly subsumed under any one overarching purpose, as those of a knife my be. That said, even the idea that a knife's overarching purpose is cutting is dubious. Cutting is not essential to the function of spreading; a knife can scrape butter, for example, just as a finger can and then spread it; nothing we could rightly refer to as cutting need be involved.

If you think humans have one overarching purpose then why don't you tell us what it is. (unfortunately my phronesis appears to have abandoned me already, and I am leaning again towards indulging you rather than abstaining). :-}