Comments

  • Sophistry

    I don't know what has not been revealed.
  • Sophistry

    There are interesting points of comparison and contrast between Plato's 'idea of the good' and Aristotle's use of 'final causes'. Declaring they are identical, and that that fact is obvious to anyone who has done enough reading is an odd abandonment of a thesis. It is a kind of solipsism.

    Apart from specific claims, it seems to me that the role of the dialectic is important to keep in mind as both Plato and Aristotle have their own ways of recognizing and using it.
  • Sophistry
    The distinction between good as a benefit and evil as harmful to a being leads Socrates to demand the following from Glaucon:

    “I granted you the just person’s seeming to be unjust and the unjust person’s seeming to be just, because you two asked for it. Even if it wouldn’t be possible for these things to go undetected by gods and human beings, it still had to be granted [612D] for the sake of argument, so justice itself could be judged in comparison with injustice itself. Or don’t you remember?”
    “I’d surely be doing an injustice if I didn’t,” he said.
    “Now since they have been judged,” I said, “I’m asking on justice’s behalf for its reputation back again, and for you folks to agree that the reputation it has is exactly the one it does have with gods and human beings, so that it may carry off the prizes it gains and confers on those who have it for the way it seems, since it has also made it obvious that it confers the good things that come from what it is and doesn’t deceive those who take into their very being.” [612E]
    “The things you’re asking for are just,” he said. “So will you give this back first,” I said, “that it doesn’t escape the notice of the gods, at least, that each of them is the sort of person he is?” “We’ll give it back,” he said.
    “And if it’s not something that escapes their notice, the one would be loved by the gods and the other hated, just as we agreed at the start.”
    “There is that.”
    “And won’t we agree that everything that comes to someone loved by the gods [613A] is the best possible, at least with everything that comes from the gods, unless there was already some necessary evil for him stemming from an earlier mistaken choice?”
    “Very much so.”
    “Therefore, in accord with that, the assumption that has to be made about a just man, if he falls into poverty or diseases or any other apparent evils, is that these things will finally turn into something good for him while he lives or even when he dies. Because someone is certainly never going to be neglected by the gods when he’s willing to put his heart into becoming just and pursuing virtue [613B] to the extent of becoming like a god as much as is possible for a human being.”
    “It’s not likely anyway,” he said, “that someone like that would be neglected by his own kind.” “And shouldn’t we think the opposite of that about an unjust person?”
    “Emphatically so.”
    — Plato, Republic, 612c, translated by Joe Sachs
  • History of ideas: The Middle Ages - Continuity thesis or Conflict thesis?

    Thank you for directing my attention toward Blumenberg. After having searched for his writings, I am going to read some his work on fables, myths, and metaphors. If I get where he is coming from, the importance of the St. Francis story is not historical as an event but emblematic of what people considered possible and real. The barriers between life and death, the natural and the miraculous were less solid than for us as a culture of shared understanding.

    I am curious which particular school of Gnosticism Blumenberg is referring to. There are many variations, as can be seen here. In the various ways that evil came into being, the role of the Demiurge is primarily that of the 'Craftsman'. This is the same agent in Plato's Timaeus who assembled creation. How 'tricky' he was considered to be varied greatly amongst Gnostic theogonies. Plotinus militated against the Gnostics because they said the world was a place that required salvation. As he said in many places: "No has the right to find fault with the constitution of the world for it reveals the greatness of intelligible nature."

    Gnosticism did not simply evaporate but was vigorously erased by the Church as much as it was in their power to do so. The discovery of the Nag Hammadi in 1945 brought the Gospel of Thomas into view. The writing does have some connections to Gnostic thinking and some of that language is found in the Gospel of John as well. What really pushed it out of the canon must be the absence of the Passion/Resurrection narrative along with Jesus's instruction to look to James to lead them after he is gone. That is not exactly the vibe the Church Fathers were hankering for.
  • Ukraine Crisis

    Yes, one might suppose the level of destruction might disrupt the vision of a negotiated space.
    I suppose we will have the luxury of determining the limits afterwards. Forensics work best on dead people.
  • The New "New World Order"

    Yes, I just agreed with that.
  • The New "New World Order"

    I acknowledge the difference but there is the legitimacy that is conveyed by having the Patriarch shake pom-poms for Putin's agenda.
  • The New "New World Order"

    Yet when you look at the Imports map, you notice that even together they are a fraction of the imports from South Korea. In fact Russia isn't important as a trading partner for China.ssu

    In regards to what is at stake for China to invade Taiwan, look at that map to see how much China imports from Taiwan.
    China already has the problem of cutting their nose to spite the face because of the importance of Taiwanese investment along with its place in the supply chain for their products. Invading Tiawan won't transfer their market share to China, especially if the invasion destroys infrastructure on the scale of the ongoing leveling of Ukraine.
  • History of ideas: The Middle Ages - Continuity thesis or Conflict thesis?

    Augustine synthesized a Neo-Platonist view of the cosmos with the Pauline vision of a world torn asunder by the struggle between good and evil where miracles appear. The experience of natural events was not separated from why miraculous things happen. This lead to many different accounts of experience. The importance of personal visions and hearings stood side by side with the image of an ordered creation. We live in the vestibule between the inner and the outer. This can be seen in the life of St. Francis of Assisi, described by St. Bonaventure:

    As it stood above him, he saw that it was a man and yet a Seraph with six wings; his arms were extended and his feet conjoined, and his body was fixed to a cross. Two wings were raised above his head, two were extended as in flight, and two covered the whole body. The face was beautiful beyond all earthly beauty, and it smiled gently upon Francis. Conflicting emotions filled his heart, for though the vision brought great joy, the sight of the suffering and crucified figure stirred him to deepest sorrow. Pondering what this vision might mean, he finally understood that by God’s providence he would be made like to the crucified Christ not by a bodily martyrdom but by conformity in mind and heart. Then as the vision disappeared, it left not only a greater ardour of love in the inner man but no less marvelously marked him outwardly with the stigmata of the Crucified.

    I don't know how the loss of geocentricity relates to the end of peoples' time in the vestibule One could argue that it brought the human more clearly into view. Places where the natural and the 'supernatural' were separated allowed a person to decide for themselves whether they were awake or living in a dream.

    I had never heard of Arnobius before. He sort of built the first Skinner Box. Is Blumenberg saying this experience is the result of failing to 'repel Gnosticism'?
  • What are you listening to right now?
    Put on your red shoes and dance the blues

  • Sophistry

    I get the part about no guarantees. I don't think promises are what is on offer in the Theaetetus text. We don't know much about what is going on. We do have lots of data about bullshiting ourselves and others.

    Just before the part I quoted, Theodorus was wondering how much better the world would be if we weren't so stupid. I took Socrates' response to be an agreement with the statement if one accepted the difficulty involved for everyone who tries to act on the observation. And the first step is to say it is not stupid to try.
  • The New "New World Order"

    I was looking at the connection as way for the autocracy of the regime to be seen as serving the culture of the believers. Whatever sincerity may or not be involved, the appearance of service can be a strong element of social control. Putin seems to have been successful at getting others to think he wants what they want. The extremity of this action pulls the drop cloth off that action. The grinding destruction of what was supposed to be saved is not going back in the box before Pandora returns.
  • Sophistry
    Which planet?Agent Smith

    The dialogue continues to say the one we are living on, seeking the good as much as possible or suffering the cost of not trying.

    Sophistry, is it pre-philosophy or post-philosophy?Agent Smith

    The dialogue of that name says this at the end:

    The art of contradiction making, descended from an insincere kind of conceited mimicry, fo the semblance-making breed, derived from image making, distinguished as a portion, not divine but human, of production, that presents a shadow play of words---such are the blood and lineage which can, with perfect truth, be assigned to the authentic Sophist.

    Is that how you are asking if it is pre or post philosophy?
  • Sophistry

    MU's explanation does not touch upon his claim regarding knowingly doing evil. Consider the following regarding intentions which obviously are the source of a world of suffering:

    Evils, Theodorus, can never be done away with, for the good must always have its contrary, nor have they any place the divine world, but they must needs haunt this region of our mortal nature. That is why we should make all speed to take flight from this world to the other, and that means becoming like the divine so far as we can, and that again is to become righteous with the help of wisdom. But it is no easy matter to convince men that the reasons for avoiding wickedness and seeking after goodness are not what the world gives. The right motive is not that one should seem innocent and good--that is no better, to my thinking, than an old wives' tale--but let us state the truth in this way. In the divine there is no shadow of unrighteousness, only the perfection of righteousness, and nothing is more like the divine than any one of us who becomes as righteous as possible. It is here that a man shows his true spirit and power or lack of spirit and nothingness. For to know this is wisdom and excellence of the genuine sort; not to know it is to be manifestly blind and base. All other forms of seeming power and intelligence in the rulers of society are as mean and vulgar as the mechanic's skill in handicraft. If a man's words and deeds are unrighteous and profane, he had best not persuade himself that he is a great man because he sticks at nothing, glorifying in his shame as such men do when they fancy that others say of them, They are no fools, no useless burdens to the earth, but men of the right sort to weather the storms of public life.
    Let the truth be told. They are what they fancy they are not, all the more for deceiving themselves, for they are ignorant of the very thing it most concerns them to know--the penalty of injustice. This is not, as they imagine, stripes and death, which do not always fall on the wrongdoer, but a penalty that cannot be escaped.
    — Plato, Theaetetus, 176a, translated by F.M. Cornford

    I would type in more but have to do some chores to shore up my righteousness.
  • The New "New World Order"

    The significance in the context of this invasion is the similarity of Putin's embrace of the Russian Orthodox Church to the Falangists who used the Roman Catholic Church to bring legitimacy to their fascism.
  • The New "New World Order"
    To be honest now that I think of it, I find it hard to fathom how any society can survive such loses/sorrow and find a way to continue on.dclements

    It is difficult for me as well.

    Whatever one might make of the brutal methods of the USSR, Putin's close connection to the Russian Orthodox Church should not go unnoticed.

    That element does not come into play with bombing Syrians and Chechens of another faith. It is front and center of the message of what is going on in Ukraine.
  • Pascal's Wager

    A full reading of the Pensées shows the wager is not simply placing a bet on a yes-or-no proposition but is a reflection of the human condition in which change is possible. It is not bound up with reciting a creed but looking for guidance in the circumstances of our lives. From that perspective, fear is one of things that has to be understood:

    We are not satisfied with the Ife we have in ourselves and our own being. We want to lead an imaginary life in the eyes of others, and so we try to make an impression. We strive constantly to embellish and preserve our imaginary being, and neglect the real one. And if we are calm, or generous, or loyal, we are anxious to have it known so that we can attach these virtues to our other existence; we prefer to detach them from our real self so as to unite them with the other. We would cheerfully be cowards if that would acquire us a reputation for bravery. How clear a sign of the nullity of our own being that we are not satisfied without the other and often exchange one for the other! For anyone who would not die to save his honour would be infamous. — Pascal, Pensées, 806, translated by A.J. Krailsheimer
  • Sophistry
    None whatsoever. I thought you would know (better). It's your theory.Agent Smith

    He has made the same claim before, along with the same reluctance to actually support it.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    Hey, when a country invades another, u would expect that common people would support the defending country and chastise the invading one. This doesnt seem to be the case here.Pussycat

    How so?
  • The New "New World Order"

    The Trump wing of the GOP gets it ideas from Steve Bannon's fusion of identification politics in the U.S with a foreign policy based upon weakening the EU.

    Tucker Carlson is merely the lipstick on the pig.
  • The New "New World Order"
    To be honest I'm not so sure either, but my guess is that Taiwan has been threaten for decades now by China of a possible invasion where as Ukraine it has been only a few years that this has been going on.dclements

    The historical background of the conflict in Ukraine needs to include Stalin's starvation of the country, where the agenda to destroy the Kulaks was combined with exerting central control over the 'Soviets.' It should be remembered that Ukraine was the kick off of the Holocaust, where the Nazi idea that Jews were behind Communism became a rule of engagement in Operation Barbarossa. The USSR only recognized a general loss of "innocent people" rather than a specific genocide after the war.

    The policy of erasure and denial of people in Ukraine has been a Cheka legacy since the Bolshevik revolution.

    With the politics of the Cold War leading to the Iron Curtain and the formation of NATO, Putin has taken up the language of ultranationalists to deny Ukrainian nationality now that the USSR and the Warsaw Pact no longer exists. Putin forgot to hold a referendum in Ukraine on the matter.

    Taiwan emerged on the other side of this Cold War dynamic as a resistance to Communism. The situation is very different in economic terms because China is integrated with production on a global scale where Russia is a big player in only a few industries.
  • Thoughts on the way we should live?

    One way to look at it is to ask if you are good company for yourself. Being alone is a pleasure and a form of suffering. I am not sure about those differences for myself and thus am doubly reluctant to say how things should be for others.

    So, one may be living like a monk and not realize it. Or living in some other way without looking at it. What is perception and what is fooling oneself?
  • Jesus and Greek Philosophy
    if, as per the NT text, Jesus was the Son of God, then (a) he would have spoken fluent GreekApollodorus
  • Jesus and Greek Philosophy
    Nonsense. Whether divine or not, Jesus would have used the language that had the widest currency at that point in time and spaceApollodorus

    But you just argued that Jesus had to have known Greek on account of him being the Son of God

    as per the NT text, Jesus was the Son of God, then (a) he would have spoken fluent Greek and (b) it would have made sense for him to use the universal language of the time in order to spread a universal messageApollodorus

    You use the divine to explain capacity and motivation. And then you abandon that argument to justify your thesis on historical grounds again. It is not so much a species of circular reasoning as it is a mobius strip.
  • Jesus and Greek Philosophy
    The way I see it, much of biblical scholarship seems to be stuck in the 1940’s when Israel was controlled by Marxists and there was an effort to dismiss early Christianity as a minor Jewish sect with links to the Qumran scrolls.Apollodorus

    Well, this goes some way toward explaining what you meant by calling some scholars 'anti-Christian'; You were referring to secular Jews. Perhaps you could cite examples of such influence and motivation.
    The origins of historical research in Jesus' life go back at least 200 years. How does your narrative fit into that?

    Moreover, if, as per the NT text, Jesus was the Son of God, then (a) he would have spoken fluent Greek and (b) it would have made sense for him to use the universal language of the time in order to spread a universal message – which, incidentally, is precisely why Greek was chosen as the language of the Gospels.Apollodorus

    If you are going to appeal to the divinity of Jesus to say that he would not be bound by any historical condition he found himself in, then it is meaningless to argue for any historical condition being more likely than another. Joe Mello is at least consistent on this point. If one believes that the words and actions of Jesus was accurately recorded and relayed to us is a matter of faith, all questions regarding their veracity has been solved for all time.
  • The New "New World Order"
    My observation was not to claim alignments with Putin are all of a piece or of a party.

    Gerhard Schröder is now getting a lot of criticism for his support. As a promoter of a certain kind of economy, his close connection to Putin is no longer connected to what centrists policies will be in the future.

    The interests of national identity politics is not bound by the same language of win-win markets. You call them 'fringe' but they represent divisions that have been underway for some time. Russia itself is divided in that way.

    My question is where will that kind of language go now that the level of violence in Ukraine has overturned the notion it is only an argument at a soirée.
  • The New "New World Order"

    In regard to the EU, it will be interesting to see how the Far Right parties will respond to the attack upon Ukraine. There has been support for Putin from them for the last ten years or so. As Foreign Policy article puts it:

    Calling the West’s response to the love affair between Putin and the far right an overreaction greatly underestimates the extent to which the Kremlin and its state-controlled media use support of European politicians to legitimize Moscow’s explicitly anti-western foreign policy agenda: far-right politicians not only vote for pro-Kremlin policies in the EU parliament, they also take part in election observation missions — most notably the referendum for the annexation of Crimea and the “elections” in Ukraine’s Russian-controlled “people’s republics.” The Russian media uses these events and far-right leaders’ visits to Moscow to tout European support for Putin. Even Le Pen was an unknown in Russia until the Ukraine crisis and her outspoken public support for Putin. Now she is paraded as proof that there is some support for Putin’s policies in Europe.Alina Polyakova
  • What are you listening to right now?
    Seeing/Hearing them this week:
  • Ukraine Crisis

    Yes, the message about neo-Nazis is not a reference to antisemitism. Putin's version of national identity is more along the lines of the Falangists in Spain than a celebration of Stalin's atheistic republic. Putin has much support within the Russian Orthodox Church. It is more of a civil war in the fashion of Franco than a model of an imperium.

    In that sense, maybe it is more like the American Civil War than the conflicts which have consumed that area of the globe for time out of mind.
  • Jesus and Greek Philosophy

    We cannot witness what other people are 'absolutely certain' about. We can witness what is excluded on the authority of such certainty. Paul's vision excluded other views as a denial of his truth. That is different from simply saying other people don't get it. it is the spirit of that sort of condemnation that has called forth Christianity's darkest aspect.
    For myself, the instruction to not judge so as not to be judged is a lesson that does not fit with this view. It is a proposition of physics more than an article of belief.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    For Zelensky to demand a no-fly zone isn't fruitful. It really won't happen and everybody ought to know it.ssu

    I am not sure it is without fruits. Everybody knows it won't happen because of the whole WW3 thing.

    On the other hand, In addition to pressing for as much assistance as possible short of that, it is saying the ground forces are toast without Russia air support. In that respect, the impending decision to bombard cities into submission is an admission that the mission, as purported, is a failure
  • Jesus and Greek Philosophy

    He acted on his own authority when he represented himself as an apostle and direct witness of Jesus. The communities he formed were based upon this role in them. So, in that sense, he spoke with the authority referred to in Matthew in reference to Jesus at the end of the Sermon of the Mount:

    And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes — Matthew, 7:28, RSV

    So, when you say, " The content of one's convictions seems to be secondary to the absolute certainty of those convictions" it seems to me that what is claimed matters. What is being asked from others seems to be central to the differences.
  • Jesus and Greek Philosophy

    The desire to be an effective agent is present before and after the conversion. How that agency is understood is sharply different between the two conditions:

    For I through the law died to the law, that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God; for if justification were through the law, then Christ died to no purpose. — Paul, Galatians 2:19, RSV

    The mantle of authority taken here is not only directed to his speaking for the Son of God as an apostle but to the right to speak of himself as the last Jew. What he surrenders, all others should too. Perhaps in that latter sense of conviction, that he is truly what a Jew should be, it could be said the 'conviction' is the same.
  • Ukraine Crisis

    I think it is too soon to tell.
    Russia in Grozny and Syria has shown what they are capable of.
  • Ukraine Crisis

    I have half agreed with Bacevich on many issues over the years but will gladly help him kick Friedman's kneecaps this time around. Condemnation of the invasion does not require ignoring:

    "This intellectual framing according to which events occurring in proximity to the Rhine and the Danube possess greater inherent importance than events near the Tigris or the Nile dates from the age of Western imperialism. — Bacevich
  • Jesus and Greek Philosophy

    Do you really not see that saying "you boys" is ad hominem?

    You have already admitted you have not explored the texts beyond the interests of your creed. The historical is only what you believe it to be. That is not a contribution in a conversation about the history of Jesus.

    I will leave you with the last word.
  • Jesus and Greek Philosophy
    I pointed out to you boys.Joe Mello

    By their fruits, you will know them.
  • Jesus and Greek Philosophy
    Exactly... That is ironically debating in bad faithschopenhauer1

    It is ironic. Another irony is that your review of the texts supports the following observation made by JM:

    And the greatest thing that influenced Paul’s writing was that he had a special direct revelation of Jesus. From that moment on he wrote with the same authority Jesus spoke with.Joe Mello

    It is not only that Pau's words don't match what Jesus said about the law, Paul describes the centuries of life under it as a bondage that Jews had to suffer for the sake of "justifying the Gentiles by faith" in the Letter to the Galatians 3:6 ff.

    It was the rejection of the idea that a people could live a lie for the sake of the truth that I began to seek for ways to understand the teaching that did not require Paul's testimony.
  • Ukraine Crisis

    The alternative to your view is that the stand-off is beyond any possible bluff by any of the parties with this capacity for destruction.

    It does not permit the articulation of new circumstances. it is a standing wave of the same old shit.
  • Ukraine Crisis

    I took that to mean the guns have already been cocked and aimed long ago.

    Having an opponent remind everybody of that is odd. 'Oh crap, I forgot I could wipe Russia off the map if I punched in the correct code.'