I see nothing wrong there but the price of freedom good or bad and that includes the right to free speech which allows a racist a bigot to express himself.

Have you intervened merely to defend the United States Declaration of Independence or do you have something to say about the tension between legal equality and real inequality?

And what has free speech got to do with it?

As the Declaration of Independence clearly grants every person the right to freedom (equally) and that includes the freedom of speech though not made explicit but implied in that excerpt.

So what?

so what ? You asked what that’s got to do with freedom of speech and I explained that it’s inextricably linked to the idea of liberty and freedom.

Of course I’m defending it, do you wish to suggest an amendment to it ? Go ahead.

Maybe lay off the booze before your next post.

T Clark Yes, good point and I see that. But it’s not enough is it? That a country beset with racism was founded on egalitarianism might prompt us to wonder if there’s something wrong, or at least deficient, with that founding idea. — Jamal

If you think there’s something wrong or deficient with the Declaration of Independence feel free to amend…I shall wait.

Yes, good point and I see that. But it’s not enough is it? That a country beset with racism was founded on egalitarianism might prompt us to wonder if there’s something wrong, or at least deficient, with that founding idea. — Jamal

I don't think there's anything wrong with the idea. It's the failure to live up to it that's the problem. It still forms the foundation of my understanding of morality.

Fair enough. I have no wish to trigger sensitive Americans so I’ll retreat from this conversation.

Coward

That’s a bit rude. If you had actually engaged with what Adorno was saying then I’d be happy to debate it, but it’s pretty clear that you’re in a possibly drunken frenzy, and I have no time for that.

T Clark gave a very good rebuke of it which I agreed with.

I didn’t mean to be rude at all…I was hoping you’d express yourself without worry of triggering any perceived sensitivities

This is a thread in which we announce what we’ve been reading and sometimes talk about it. I posted an interesting quotation from Adorno, which is what @T Clark replied to. If you have no interest in that quotation then I’m not interested in a discussion. I certainly have little interest in discussing your Declaration. It came up, and I replied, not unreasonably.

T Clark gave a very good rebuke of it which I agreed with. — invicta

My comment to @Jamal0544 was not a rebuke at all. It was a substantive response to a substantive post.

A substantive post which turned out to be a rebuke of Adorno’s verbose complaint regarding equality and difference.

Btw, I did read Jamal’s Adorno quote in its entirety something didn’t quite sit right in what he was advocating. I even almost composed a reply to it.

You then came along with the Declaration of Independence which was the perfect response to adornos complaint.

I guess everything is hunky dory then. Well done.

My apologies if my tone seems somewhat abrasive…I think I need a beer

Fair enough. I have no wish to trigger sensitive Americans so I’ll retreat from this conversation. — Jamal

Looks like unjustified arrogance.

I think I need a beer — invicta

You’ve had enough already.

Looks like unjustified arrogance — frank

That’s my middle name.

That’s my middle name. — Jamal

I knew it!

God: An Anatomy by Professor Francesca Stavrakopolou

Stavrakopoulou’s thesis is that even during the six centuries over which the books of the Old Testament were written, the immense physicality of this wilder divinity was being erased, not least under the sway of Platonism. “Reverence rather requires . . . an allegorical meaning,” Clement of Alexandria wrote around the turn of the second century CE, expressing a scholarly distaste for the experiential and somatic that remains highly influential. Translators, too, have long sanitised the text, privileging the abstract and metaphysical over the corporeal. But this more primal, vital Yahweh can be reconstructed from scattered passages in the Bible which still retain warm traces of his divine materiality.

Whether such a founding idea has merely not been lived up to, as you say, or else is in some way wrong or deficient is a difficult question that I’d need to spend some time on. I think it’s both.

My reply to your citation of the Declaration was an initial reaction. I’m not disavowing it but I’m not ready to debate it, at least not here. The Adorno quotation made me think, and the Declaration didn’t seem like a satisfactory response (although it was an appropriate one). I have some ideas around this issue, particularly the contradiction between the French Declaration of the Rights of the Man and of the Citizen and the attempted suppression of the Haitian slave revolt—which is a similar issue—but I wasn’t prepared for a debate about it. Can I go now?

Can I go now? — Jamal

You provided a quote. I provided a relevant response. I didn't see it as a disagreement, just a different perspective. That's as far as I intended it to go here in the "Currently Reading" thread.

À la recherche du temps perdu #4: Sodom and Gomorrah
by Marcel Proust

:cool:

How did you find #3?

I'm finding everything uniformly good. Three seemed a little dense with the catalog of characters and titles, but I think it reflects that world. As I mentioned elsewhere, the Habermas I'm reading analyzed exactly the nature of the salon as a forum for the meeting and melding of the aristocratic and plebian\creative spheres and ideologies, it was rewarding to read them in parallel.

That’s a fascinating connection I hadn’t thought about.

The Island Of Extraordinary Captives - Simon Parkin

The British have detained in concentration camps the very people we found it necessary to detain.

Where are those much-vaunted democratic liberties of which the English boast?

HITLER, 1940

Spinoza: Practical Philosophy
by Gilles Deleuze