The subject is subjected to the social insofar as it cannot coherently arrange itself in opposition to it, or at least in opposition to its failings, because it has internalized conflicting psychological forces that prevent a coherent response. And a society that systematically protects its failings at the expense of its subjects is antithetical to the notion of meaningful human progress. — Baden

This makes sense to me as how I am caught up in process and processes where the 'identify' I experience appears. I have no idea how to compare that with experiences of identity that seem to come forward on their own account.

I don't present that as an argument against some kind of completely 'objective' narrative but do feel something has been left out.

Since he's more expert than you, you're not really in a position to judge whether the inclusion of these developments is meritorious or mistaken. You can only decide who to believe and you don't have sufficient expertise to do so on technical grounds. — Isaac

Arguments based upon authority are the weakest kind.

I never referred to the Ukrainians as "soulless" - that's a misrepresentation of my argument and a tasteless one at that, aimed specifically at framing me as anti-Ukrainian. — Tzeentch

I did not mean to represent your argument as a matter of intent.

You have yet (to my knowledge) to represent the Ukrainians as choosing to fight for their own reasons rather than at the behest of others outside the country. My charge is purely a deduction from that observation.

Your point is well taken that the influence factor from the U.S. and Russia is not equivalent in terms of coercion and punitive consequences. I read Smoleńsk and Dutkiewicz to be saying that the U.S. helped prevent a repetition of the Lukashenko effect rather than manufacture a coup. The authors are looking at it as a local struggle with different lines of support. In their efforts to acknowledge a center of gravity in Eastern Europe, they look back at a history of sometimes being helped and not helped by nations in the 'West'.

From that perspective, seeing wars as proxies fighting in the service of others is a self-fulfilling prophesy. And that leads to your observation:

It is pretty insane to think that Ukrainians defending their country against Russian invasion are merely doing someone else's bidding. — SophistiCat

Agreed. I am interested in how the zero-game perspective is accepted by default. The authors of the article are challenging the notion that nations following their interest in other places render these conflicts to be only about them.

Seen (heard) them twice before. They keep circling into their own groove.

If what Leibniz and Descartes presented are apologies of sorts, are you seeking for something else?

So, what sort of verification would compel you to take these charges seriously?

If you want people to take you seriously here, you'll need to take the strawmanning down several notches. — Tzeentch

How is my comment an example of the strawman argument? You charged that the Ukrainians have to accept one set of conditions or another. You say that neither possibility involve choices they are making for themselves. You pour crocodile tears upon them with:

It's not a matter of agency. It's a matter of power, which they have comparatively little. It's unfortunate, but that's the way the world works. — Tzeentch

It doesn't get more imperial than that.

I am still curious if you have a particular objection to Lough's actual argument.

Which particular statement of Lough's are you referring to? Or are you only responding to my description of it as a point of interest?

The Ukrainian people have been given a choice - fight or surrender. That's all the influence they have in this war. — Tzeentch

Many of them have expressed that as their choice. Your version of them as soulless puppets is as dismissive of their agency as any version of colonial right you charge being exerted by other states upon them.

Danke — Agent Smith

Never read him. Or her.

On a more serious note, didn't Leibniz present the possible as the restraint applied to perfection? Sort of along the lines of "this sucks, but you should see what didn't happen."

I just realized that I had not provided a link to the first article. I edited to fix. Here it is again: https://newrepublic.com/article/165603/carlson-russia-ukraine-imperialism-nato

What makes sense to me in both articles is that the simplicity of there being only a U.S. position or not leaves out important parts of how the war developed. The criticism of the U.S. is fair on many levels but it often becomes too U.S centric in itself. Everything between Washington and Moscow becomes flyover country. So, the following paragraph points to an element studiously avoided in Mearsheimer's argument:

This is crucial when it comes to understanding the current war. However tempting it might be to analyze it in terms of a proxy war between NATO and Russia, Ukraine is an active participant in this historical process. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Ukraine several times attempted to assert and defend its westward course, including in 2004 and in 2014, both times to great resistance on the part of the Kremlin. There is no point in denying that the West actively intervened in this. But so did Russia.

Beyond not accepting the zero sum game of the Great Powers argument, the merit of Lough's approach is that he considers developments between Europeans left out of the U.S. centric narratives. He also raises the question of how promises made to the USSR relate to one of the nations that appeared after it dissolved. I don't know if Mearsheimer every expressly addressed that.

Did you read the articles?

I see you refer to the oft repeated John Mearsheimer argument. It has been championed by many commenters on this thread. For me, the most cogent challenges to his view come from writers Jan Smoleńsk and Jan Dutkiewicz. Their article in The New Republic ends with:

Of course, there is no single Eastern European voice and we do not pretend to ventriloquize it. Nor do we offer our own prescriptions; better ones than we could offer have already been given by the Ukrainian, Lithuanian, and Polish left. But any analysis of the current conflict needs to get past a framework that only gives voice and agency to the West and to Russia and start listening to Eastern Europeans, especially since it is Eastern Europe that will be dealing with the repercussions of the current war for years to come.

Here is an article from an author critical of NATO after working there:
Myth 03: ‘Russia was promised that NATO would not enlarge’
He addresses particular points of Mearsheimer's argument. The Chatham House authors are interesting because many have had long experience in commerce and policy in the region.

Why make it a matter of my capacity? That is pure troll.

How about a different thread started with the last post because the topic is different from Stoicism? — Athena

I did not mean to hijack the thread. I just thought that Aristotle was not well represented as a strict Draconian.

You would be the one promoting a cynical nihilism if your argument for why you should spread your propaganda is because the other side is doing it too. — Tzeentch

I merely pointed out that both sides are making "not-so-subtle historical parallels" after you characterized that such language proved a statement was propaganda.

I don't share your view that the incidents being reported are only propaganda. If they are fabrications, that would be a terrible lie, as consequential as it would be if the Russians are correct that the massacre at Bucha was a staged photo op. Hopefully, investigations will bring more light to such incidents.

Where the matter of the application of law concerns this statement:

Aristotle favored Sparta's very authoritarian organization, where ethics is not an individual matter but a state decision strictly enforced. — Athena

the following from Nichomachean Ethics should be considered:

Just acts occur between people who participate in things good in
themselves and can have too much or too little of them; for some beings
(e.g., presumably the gods) cannot have too much of them, and to oth-
ers, those who are incurably bad, not even the smallest share in them is
beneficial but all such goods are harmful, while to others they are ben-
eficial up to a point; therefore justice is essentially something human.
10 Our next subject is equity and the equitable (to epiekes), and
their respective relations to justice and the just. For on examination they
appear to be neither absolutely the same nor generically different; and
while we sometime praise what is equitable and the equitable man (so
that we apply the name by way of praise even to instances of the other
virtues, instead of ‘good’ meaning by epieikestebon that a thing is bet-
ter), at other times, when we reason it out, it seems strange if the equi-
table, being something different from the just, is yet praiseworthy; for
either the just or the equitable is not good, if they are different; or, if
both are good, they are the same.
These, then, are pretty much the considerations that give rise to the
problem about the equitable; they are all in a sense correct and not
opposed to one another; for the equitable, though it is better than one
kind of justice, yet is just, and it is not as being a different class of thing
that it is better than the just. The same thing, then, is just and equitable,
and while both are good the equitable is superior. What creates the prob-
lem is that the equitable is just, but not the legally just but a correction
of legal justice. The reason is that all law is universal but about some
things it is not possible to make a universal statement which shall be
correct. In those cases, then, in which it is necessary to speak univer-
sally, but not possible to do so correctly, the law takes the usual case,
though it is not ignorant of the possibility of error. And it is none the less
correct; for the error is in the law nor in the legislator but in the nature
of the thing, since the matter of practical affairs is of this kind from the
start. When the law speaks universally, then, and a case arises on it
which is not covered by the universal statement, then it is right, where
the legislator fails us and has erred by oversimplicity, to correct the
omission—to say what the legislator himself would have said had he
been present, and would have put into his law if he had known. Hence
the equitable is just, and better than one kind of justice—not better than
absolute justice but better than the error that arises from the absolute-
ness of the statement. And this is the nature of the equitable, a correc-
tion of law where it is defective owing to its universality. In fact this is
the reason why all things are not determined by law, that about some
things it is impossible to lay down a law, so that a decree is needed. For
when the thing is indefinite the rule also is indefinite, like the leaden rule
used in making the Lesbian moulding; the rule adapts itself to the shape
of the stone and is not rigid, and so too the decree is adapted to the facts.
It is plain, then, what the equitable is, and that it is just and is better
than one kind of justice. It is evident also from this who the equitable
man is; the man who chooses and does such acts, and is no stickler for
his rights in a bad sense but tends to take less than his share though he
has the law oft his side, is equitable, and this state of character is equity,
which is a sort of justice and not a different state of character. — Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, Book 5, section 10, translated by WD Ross

It is turned into anti-Russian propaganda when people start referring to "deportations" and "genocides", trying to draw not-so-subtle historical parallels. — Tzeentch

Is not the matter to attend to is whether these events are happening or not?

The Russians are employing the language of "not-so-subtle historical parallels." Are you promoting a nihilism where nobody is talking about anything?

Aristotle favored Sparta's very authoritarian organization, where ethics is not an individual matter but a state decision strictly enforced. Sparta won the war. Why? Why would Aristotle favor Spartan authoritarianism? — Athena

Which text from Aristotle supports this view?

What you have not provided support for is your statement:

Russia has moved Russian-Ukrainian orphans out of the Donbass territories Ukraine has shelled and to the safety of Russia. But that is neither kidnapping nor genocide — Lambert Strether

I agree that the emergence of classical Greek thinking was a conscious recognition of nature where beings are understood to have come into being according to what they are.

I don't share your confidence that the logic of history is a path from the purely theological to the purely secular. If one is to see history as having a telos, that perspective becomes a theory of the human condition of the sort Hegel developed. That sort of dynamic is interesting to me and has merit in making models but I am not convinced by it as a theory of the world above all others.

Whatever verification you ask for from the Ukrainians should be required of the Russians whose account you refer to as factual. Your rhetorical question is a nice bit of agitprop.

The Ukrainians' accounts do not count as any kind of evidence for you. What sort of verification of their experience would be meaningful for you?

While you acknowledge that the Russians have not provided any evidence for their account, you take it as the narrative to be proved otherwise. The Russians do admit that they adopt these children without proof of their origins.

It is difficult for me to respond to many of your ideas because my experience with these various texts has been more along the line of trying to see a point of view I did not understand rather than forming a cogent view of history and the history of philosophy. I don't know what is happening.

Proof is going to be difficult to establish from Russian documentation and witnesses until after the war.

There are many reports of Ukrainian parents trying to get their kids back from deportation as seen here: Ukrainians struggle to find and reclaim children taken by Russia.

I read your version of the story at Tass but it is does not match reports from Kherson by medical professionals and their families working to prevent Russians from taking their orphans. Several paragraphs from one article:

But residents say even more children would have gone missing had it not been for the efforts of some in the community who risked their lives to hide as many children as they could.

At the hospital in Kherson, staff invented diseases for 11 abandoned babies under their care, so they wouldn't have to give them to the orphanage where they knew they'd be given Russian documents and potentially taken away. One baby had "pulmonary bleeding", another "uncontrollable convulsions" and another needed "artificial ventilation," said Pilyarska of the fake records.

But moving them around wasn't easy. After Russia occupied Kherson and much of the region in March, they started separating orphans at checkpoints, forcing Sahaidak to get creative about how to transport them. In one instance he faked records saying that a group of kids had received treatment in the hospital and were being taken by their aunt to be reunited with their mother who was nine months pregnant and waiting for them on the other side of the river, he said.

You can find similar reports from other occupied areas. While you work the search engines, I suggest looking into the career of Ombudsman Maria Lvova-Belova.

In any case, please point to sources beyond the Russian government-controlled media to tell a different story. It will make it more interesting.

Correct: As reported by many sources, Russia’s abductions of Ukrainian children are a genocidal crime.

Perhaps you can provide a source that proves this reporting is fake news.

I see your rings of power and raise you the Borg:

Lavrov delivers a bid for peace:

"The enemy is well aware of our proposals for the demilitarization and denazification of the regime-controlled territories and the elimination of threats to Russian security from there, including our new territories (the DNR, LNR, and the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions)," Lavrov said, repeating false accusations of Nazism against Ukraine used by Moscow in an attempt to justify its invasion.
"There is just one thing left to do: to fulfill them before it's too late. Otherwise the Russian army will take matters into its own hands.
"With regard to the duration of the conflict, the ball is now in the court of Washington and its regime. They can stop this futile resistance at any moment."

If for no other reason, Plotinus is interesting because he would have been the first to object to Augustine co-opting him as the 'best Platonist'. Plotinus saw himself as carrying forward the best interpretation he could make in his circumstances. If somebody told him he was better than Plato, he probably would have lapsed into a coma.

Before looking at Athens as an ideal not attainable to the Romans, consider that slavery was a big part of both societies. Aristotle took it for granted that society was hierarchical. I don't say that to erase differences. There are many. But I am reluctant to invoke Golden Ages after Plato did such a good job of making fun of them.

Silversun Pickups has changed their approach:


Much different than the concerts I went to.

That's a reshash of Descartes' cogito etgo sum. — Agent Smith

That formulation leaves out a critical component. Is one being deceived by design, or can one proceed in the confidence that it would be stupid to fool somebody who is pretty clueless to start with?

And Viktor Bout busts out of prison to run to that end of the field.

Neil Young put it best: "A different story for every set of eyes."

Why does Roman writing set our understanding of classical stoicism? — Athena

I think a lot of that can be credited to the destruction of texts from the closing of the Hellenistic time where we can see many sources are referred to but are now lost.

One of the last to view the Platonic legacy in regard to Stoicism was Plotinus. He wrote polemics challenging Stoics in the Enneads but also included elements that recognized many previous arguments,

This essay by Gerson does a good job of contrasting Plotinus from the 'classical' thinkers: Plotinus On Happiness.

I take issue with his view of a Platonism 'beyond Socrates' but the stuff about Aristotle was helpful to me.

Yes, the Iron Curtain kept events and narratives out of view. It also put a lot of traumas in suspended animation. Dealing with complicity and resistance in each country was delayed when compared to the dialogue in Western Europe. As an American, I have to admit that my education of the region was blank in that regard until I became interested in the Nineties.

Since the end of the Cold War, Russia has participated in the support and encouragement of European and U.S. ultranationalists. Some of that is geared toward normalizing their agendas as discussed here by ORF. The violent and terrorist end of the spectrum can be seen in groups like the Russian Imperialist Movement. The international quality of that group is reflected in reports such as the following from OSCE:

Swedish investigators discovered that Thulin and another accomplice had received weapons training in St. Petersburg from the Russian paramilitary group Partizan. Partizan runs weapons-training courses on behalf of an ultranationalist organization called the Russian Imperial Movement, which has avidly supported Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Russian Imperial Movement was previously designated by the U.S. Department of State as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist organization in April 2020 for providing training for acts of terrorism. Despite the all-encompassing crackdown on domestic civil society groups across Russia, curiously the Russian Imperial Movement continues to operate.

Now, this element does not prove that the nation is ruled by this contingent alone. Russia does go pretty far in letting them think they are calling the shots. The brutality of the rules of engagement does nothing to belie that impression. At some point, actions reveal more than statements of intent.

Solipsism founders on the existence of the image as image.

Narcissus falls in love with his image and does not see the pool. Nor does he see himself as he exists.

Yes, ultranationalists are much alike in their way of identifying themselves through who they wish to expel or worse.

Eastern European nations have the extra twist of having had some of their populations participate in the Shoah. Other groups fought for autonomy against the Red Army or against the Germans depending on who was seen as the bigger threat. Ukraine had the special attention of Stalin before the war when much of the population was starved to death in order to eliminate the Kulaks. The swirling series of conflicting ends defies simple categories. The groups mentioned have a number of overlaps that History still has not resolved.

But to return to your point, Ukraine does have a lot on its plate if it survives.

It is useful to me as well.
If I understand your work life correctly, then the matter relates to what you do as well.
I am just curious, not trying to challenge you.

But not relevant to your practice?

Discourses, Fragments, Handbook (Oxford World's Classics) by Epictetus — 180 Proof

That is the best textual reference. I still like my translations that refer to a 'manual'. How to set up a tent. What to do when the fire conks out. Etcetera.

Some of the tension between different views of the 'real' in Nietzsche's work involve views of natural law.

While noting that what has transpired is a vital testimony to what is happening now, he is very skeptical of the search for laws of the universe in the way Kant, for example, said was given to us to discover.

And yet, N was not claiming Hume was correct in saying causality is only a story we tell ourselves.