Brigid Delaney's diary - Philosophy books
How can we shift the bad vibes that seem all around? Be OK with being wrong and don’t have an opinion on everything.
How can there be real change in society when people don’t listen to each other or have an empathetic approach to other positions? — Guardian
The great Roman Stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius said almost 2000 years ago: “You always own the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you can’t control. These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone.”
Leave them alone! — The Guardian
The opinion becomes tied to the ego, your opinion becomes you – and so an attack on your opinion is an attack on the very fibre of your being. So, vigilant and anxious, you must defend opinion as you would defend yourself. This then creates a binary: people who agree with you are good and people who disagree are bad. By leaving things alone, by not getting worked up, we are not adding to the toxic load of disagreement, hate and fury online, which of course seeps into people’s real life. — The Guardian
But breaking bread with people you disagree with and disagreeing civilly is a crucial step to understanding different points of view and sharpening your own rhetorical skills, convictions and capacity for persuasion when arguing your own corner. — The Guardian
There is also a time to take a stand. Taking a more conciliatory approach to other views doesn’t mean accepting, say, injustice, fascism or climate change denialism. — The Guardian
As Plato might say: "opinions" (doxa) are the currency of sophists that, like Monopoly money, doesn't cash out at the supermarket or in philosophy. Aporia are, after all, coins of the realm (agora): — 180 Proof
I assume philosophizing is more engaged than just 'politely exchanging opinions'. — 180 Proof
Although I might just check up on Marcus Aurelius...again... — Amity
It is in our power to have no opinion about a thing, and not to be disturbed in our soul; for things themselves have no natural power to form our judgements.
Accustom thyself to attend carefully to what is said by another, and as much as it is possible, be in the speaker's mind. — Internet Classics Archive - The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
The reason not to have an opinion on everything isn't inability to control it (I have no power to control anything in the world beyond my own actions, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't have opinions), rather it's that our knowledge is incomplete, and most things aren't worth having an opinion about. I have no opinion about your team or Chet & Tiffany's latest fragrance, because they don't interest me, not that that's necessarily a safeguard against others' fixations: No, I didn't see the match.... No, really.
The worst is being confronted by people with an "opinion" that isn't their own, it's just lifted from their PM or preferred party, media commenter or online "feed". If you think I really must know your opinion, at least have one rather than regurgitating someone else's and imagining that's good enough: it really isn't. Having no opinion is better than having someone else's: I used to scoff at "don't knows" in polling, but now I respect their honesty and thoughtfulness - most of the the others don't know either, they're just going with their tribe or winging it.
Talking is better than shouting, and I've had productive conversations with people (online and in the real world) on issues where their views are radically opposed to mine - but that takes goodwill on both sides, something that's been in ever shorter supply in the age of Mr Angry. But I don't really need people in my immediate social life with obnoxious views or with whom it's impossible to discuss topics, I want people who aren't out to make the world even worse and who can sustain a civilised and perhaps occasionally interesting exchange.
Plato’s views on love are a meditation on Socrates and the power his philosophical conversations have to mesmerize, obsess, and educate.
1. Socrates and the Art of Love
“The only thing I say I know,” Socrates tells us in the Symposium, “is the art of love (ta erôtika) (177d8–9). Taken literally, it is an incredible claim.
Are we really to believe that the man who affirms when on trial for his life that he knows himself to be wise “in neither a great nor a small way” (Apology 21b4–5) knows the art of love? In fact, the claim is a nontrivial play on words facilitated by the fact that the noun erôs (“love”) and the verb erôtan (“to ask questions”) sound as if they are etymologically connected—a connection explicitly exploited in the Cratylus (398c5-e5).
Socrates knows about the art of love in that—but just insofar as—he knows how to ask questions, how to converse elenctically. — SEP: Plato on Friendship and Eros
Hammond suggests that Marcus only advocates the penetration of others' minds all the better to identify their deficiencies.
Also that Marcus just as often dismisses others' thoughts as a distraction.
(Other sections cited as evidence). — Amity
Hammond should have spent more time playing with his organ. Get it? Tee hee. — Ciceronianus
You shouldn't act to please others or win their admiration; you shouldn't disturb yourself if they think ill of you. Just be virtuous, regardless of how you're perceived by others. — Ciceronianus
Remind me Ciceronianus - what is to be virtuous? — Amity
*Again, not to get too academic but in practical ways relating to philo conversations... — Amity
To converse elenctically — Amity
Hammond should have spent more time playing with his organ. Get it? Tee hee. — Ciceronianus
That of Gregory Hays or Robin Hard. They're more modern translations. Hard's contains correspondence between Marcus and Fronto, his rhetoric teacher, which are interesting. — Ciceronianus
I know who to ask, but will Fooloso4 respond? — Amity
What does that even mean?
To converse elenctically...especially on a philosophy forum? — Amity
You came to the right place, for I too am an expert on love. — Fooloso4
The article compares Socrates' claim in the Symposium with his claim in the Apology, but it is not only the seemingly contradictory claims but the occasions during which he made them that should be considered. Being on trial in a court of law and a contest of speeches about eros are very different occasions requiring different ways of speaking. — Fooloso4
This contest mirrors that of the contest between philosophy and poetry. It is the poets who claim to be experts on love. For Socrates to claim to be an expert in the presence of highly regarded poets was both surprising and provocative. In addition, Socrates was not, as it is commonly understood, an erotic man. — Fooloso4
But how different are Socrates' claims in the Apology and Symposium? As Socrates says in the Symposium, eros is the desire for what one does not possess. Philosophy is erotic in that it is the desire for wisdom. It is Socrates' lack of knowledge, as professed in the Apology, that is the basis of his knowledge of eros, the desire to know. — Fooloso4
Knowledge of ignorance is not simply recognizing one does not know. Socrates' "human wisdom" is a matter of the examined life, of how best to live in the absence of knowledge of what is best. The "art of love", ta erôtika, is the art of living. Since we all desire what is good, the art of living cannot simply be the philosophical life. — Fooloso4
In the Phaedo Socrates says that philosophy is the practice of death and dying, the separation of body and soul. The joke here being that the only good philosopher is a dead philosopher. More serious is the question of the relationship between life and death, body and soul. I have discussed this here — Fooloso4
We are not souls temporarily attached to bodies. We are ensouled bodies. One thing not two. Desire does not cut along the distinction between body and soul. Since we know nothing of death, preparation for death turns from unanswerable questions of death back to life, to how we live, here and now. — Fooloso4
What does that even mean?
To converse elenctically...especially on a philosophy forum?
— Amity
In the cited article Reeve defines it as "how to ask and answer questions". We may ask, in turn, what is the goal and what is the result of such inquiry? Socrates used it to demonstrate that one does not know what he assumed to know. This may lead to quite different results - anger, shame, resentment, or, as Socrates hoped, the desire to know, to a dissatisfaction with opinions. But this, in turn, can lead to a dissatisfaction with philosophy itself, to misologic, when it fails to provide the answers expected of it. — Fooloso4
Philosophy is often treated as the art of argumentation - making arguments that attempt to be least vulnerable to attack, while attacking opposing positions. The limits of argument, however, are not the limits of philosophy. It is here that the "ancient quarrel' between philosophy and poetry is reconfigured. This is why the dialogues often turn from logos to mythos. The promise of dialectic in the Republic, the use of hypothesis to become free of hypothesis is itself hypothetical. The image of transcendence, from opinion to the sight of the Forms, is just that, an image. The mythic philosopher of the Republic who possesses knowledge is no longer a philosopher, that is, one who desires to know. The philosopher, like the poet, is an image maker. — Fooloso4
How best to live in the absence of knowledge of what is best. That is the question.
The examined life provides the answer? — Amity
To give serious consideration to different views on e.g. what constitutes philosophy. — Amity
What made you bring that into this conversation about opinion? — Amity
Misology is defined as the hatred of reasoning; the revulsion or distrust of logical debate, argumentation, or the Socratic method.
Is that what you mean?
Basically, people expect answers or solutions from philosophy. When it fails to deliver certainty, then they see no use for it. Indeed, it is despised as a waste of time. Navel-gazing? — Amity
Plato or Socrates used dialogue to question assumptions on which opinions are based? — Amity
Th-th-th-that's all folks. — Porky the Pig
Opinions, are they then utterly useless? No, not if you wanna know how a person thinks, what a person knows, who s/he breaks bread with, and so on. — Agent Smith
What does that even mean?
To converse elenctically...especially on a philosophy forum?
— Amity
In the cited article Reeve defines it as "how to ask and answer questions". We may ask, in turn, what is the goal and what is the result of such inquiry? Socrates used it to demonstrate that one does not know what he assumed to know. This may lead to quite different results - anger, shame, resentment, or, as Socrates hoped, the desire to know, to a dissatisfaction with opinions. But this, in turn, can lead to a dissatisfaction with philosophy itself, to misologic, when it fails to provide the answers expected of it. — Fooloso4
Th-th-th-that's all folks. — Porky the Pig
Without opinions TPF would be an arid desert. — Amity
It's how we cut into them that's interesting, don't you think? — Amity
You wot, got no Youtube video? — Amity
Metanoia! — Agent Smith
Like this young fellow once asked my views on a certain scenario that involved a beautiful flower dead center in a nest of vipers. The objective: Retrieve the flower without getting killed. — Agent Smith
So, did you show how to appreciate the flower in the moment.
Or did you cut the vipers down... — Amity
I want some of that. :cool:
Although.
I think I might have had a slurp before... :chin:
Best wishes :pray: — Amity
It was rhetorical! He didn't expect an answer. I didn't provide one; too dumb! — Agent Smith
5. Rhetorical Questions –> Who could doubt the prominence of this rhetorical device? (Sorry, I’ll stop.) Using rhetorical questions in arguments is extremely common, as it represents the author’s inability or laziness to flesh out the counter-argument in question. Dennett recommends we look for an unobvious answer to it and surprise our interlocutor with it so as to defuse the power of the rhetorical question. — Philosophy In Seconds - Dennett's Anti-Thinking Tools for Better Thinking
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