Comments

  • Emotional Intelligence

    Well, I have been in an lot of situations where people were relying upon their EQ to trump the group running on their IQ.
    Both skills need preparation and experience to become a part of what is happening. I am not sure if balance between these sorts of things was more natural in the past.
    I always counted it as something we continue to fail at.
  • Nietzsche's notion of slave morality

    You were challenged to explain your point of view as expressed by your comment.
    You expressed the thought that you were not understood by way of the reply.
    So, is the following discussion an argument about an agreed matter of discussion or two ships passing in the sea, with little to say about each other than they noticed the passing of the other.
  • Nietzsche's notion of slave morality

    You aren't being challenged upon what you actually said. I like to see some recognition that what I asserted was understood by any who would object.
  • Nietzsche's notion of slave morality

    Leave it be. There is no wrestler on the other side.
  • Nietzsche's notion of slave morality

    Regarding pity, Nietzsche argued it was a form of contempt when expressed in certain registers. The idea has certainly been used in a condescending fashion in different contexts. Nietzsche's contempt for the contempt is not an argument against the idea.

    The quality is no longer easily identifiable.
  • Nietzsche's notion of slave morality
    It's likely Nietzsche would have thought the Nazi's a bunch of tossers and cowardly conformists.Tom Storm

    It is not only likely but something expressly directed against the immediate ancestors of the Nazis:

    In the Genealogy of Morals, he says:

    All honor to the ascetic ideal insofar it is honest! so long as it believes in itself and does not play tricks on us! But I do not like all these coquettish bedbugs with their insatiable ambition to smell out the infinite, until at last the infinite smells of bedbugs; I do not like these whited sepulchers who imitate life; I do not like these weary played-out people who wrap themselves in wisdom and look "objective"; I do not like these agitators dressed up as heroes who wear the magic cap of ideals on their straw heads; I do not like these ambitious artists who like to pose as ascetics and priest but who are at bottom only tragic buffoons; and I also do not like these latest speculators in idealism, the anti-Semites who today roll their eyes in a Christian-Aryan-bourgeois manner and exhaust one's patience by trying to rouse up all the horned-beast elements in the people by a brazen abuse of the cheapest of all agitator's tricks, moral attitudinizing (that no kind of swindle fails to succeed in Germany today is connected with the undeniable and palpable stagnation of the German spirit; and the cause of that I seek in a too exclusive diet of newspapers, politics, beer, and Wagnerian music, together with the presupposition of such a diet: first, national constriction and vanity, the strong but narrow principle "Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles," and then the paralysis agitans of modern ideas. — Translated by Walter Kaufman, 3rd essay, section 26
  • Nietzsche's notion of slave morality

    Well, Nietzsche hated Nazis along with "Christianity."
    See the Genealogy of Morals for details.
  • Plato's Phaedo
    Is what we have read so fr a lie-to-children or Wittgenstein's ladder? Is Socrates engaged in pedagogy, or is this a necessary logical step in the argument?Banno

    The dialogue of Cratylus approaches your question from a particular point of view. Cratylus claims names are natural entities while Socrates argues that they are assigned values. The argument is not rancorous. Cratylus won't be climbing the ladder with Socrates. Pedagogy is dispensed sparingly.
  • Has this site gotten worse? (Poll)

    Maybe he will come back and tell us.
  • Has this site gotten worse? (Poll)

    Terrapin Station brought me up to speed about many different kinds of arguments that I was not aware of before he made them.
    On the other hand, there was little I wondered about that he wondered about.
    People are interested in different things.
  • Plato's Phaedo

    Perhaps we can discuss that if we move on to The Apology after this (which would seem a logical progression.)Wayfarer

    The hatred of logos is a big part of this dialogue. At the beginning of Phaedo, there is a proposal that that the trial would be played out again amongst those assembled. To that extent, doesn't the topic of corrupting people fall within the parameters of the dialogue under discussion?
  • Plato's Phaedo
    Socrates didn't tend to care much about prudence. He expressed admiration for Sparta in the middle of a devastating war. He managed to irritate the crap out of most Athenian citizens.

    I think it's more likely we're taking in Plato's flair for poetic expression.
    frank

    Perhaps that is the case. On the other hand, the dialogue begins with Socrates trying "bodily" music composition to satisfy what his daemon might be requiring from him. That and the calls for phronesis are at odds with the harsh division between the body and the mind in many of the arguments.

    Maybe all that time in fetters messed with his old modus operandi.
  • Plato's Phaedo
    Which raises the question, maybe not relevant to this particular passage, why Socrates was accused of atheism, if he saw himself as a disciple of Apollo. But let's park that for now.Wayfarer

    It would seem that no amount of deference to the gods will free Socrates of the "hatred for logos" that sees him as the corruption of youth.
  • Plato's Phaedo

    In 85B, Socrates likens himself to the followers of Apollo but speaks for himself at the same time.
  • Plato's Phaedo

    The text includes an unnamed authority after the reference to Apollo.
  • Plato's Phaedo

    Plato brings an intimacy that is special to the dialogues. A chance to be there when they were.
  • Plato's Phaedo
    I've read elsewhere of a later argument, I think from Islamic philosophy, that says that if the universe was of infinite duration, then everything that could happen, being of finite duration, would already have happened.Wayfarer

    As a side note, Nietzsche argued for a version of this in his doctrine of Eternal Recurrence. So, arguing for the infinity rejected by others. Also a part of rejecting what he saw as "Socratic"
  • Plato's Phaedo

    One reason the role of Cebes is odd is because Plato is not there. Which is pretty strange given that we would not know Socrates without Plato.
  • Has this site gotten worse? (Poll)

    I don't know what my perception means for myself. I had certain interests when I started here, they have changed. I reacted in certain ways when I started, I have changed.
    What you look for as a helpful discussion probably is in motion over time. What do you wish to see more of?
  • Plato's Phaedo

    The focus you bring to what Cebes agrees to despite the inconsistencies between the particular arguments is interesting. Cebes also changes the subject when pressed beyond his willingness to just agree. His mention of "knowledge as recollection" in response to Socrates at 72a is a dodge:

    If there were not perpetual reciprocity in coming to be, between one set of things and another,
    revolving in a circle, as it were-if, instead, coming-to-be were a linear
    process from one thing into its opposite only, without any bending
    back in the other direction or reversal, do you realize that all things
    would ultimately have the same form: the same fate would overtake
    them, and they would cease from coming to be?'

    It is fair enough to say that Cebes' reference to what Socrates argued for before is germane to the discussion but it is not a response to Socrates' statement in the moment.
  • Plato's Phaedo

    In regards to the Enneads by Plotinus, that book is an ordering of reality in relationship to the One. It is a system that attempts to be consistent to itself. The semantics and concern are much different than the character of Plato's Dialogues where the conversation goes where it goes.
  • Plato's Phaedo
    I think this section important - his pleasurable release from painful tight chains.
    Death might be seen as a welcome release from the physical body with all its discomforts.
    The pain of life v the joy of the afterlife ?*
    There is a separation. Not here a mingling as felt by Phaedo.
    Amity

    That release on the last day of his life is important. The inclusion of Xanthippe gives sharp relief to her charge that one last party is planned with his friends. The friends' concern about the subject of death is mixed up with the realization that they won't have Socrates to animate them any longer.

    Pardon the lateness of my reply. I am working in meatspace presently so I will participate in a delayed fashion.
  • Plato's Phaedo

    Yes, especially in the contrast with the "bodily" perceptions, διανοία is used.
    As a matter of expression in Greek, the use of "δια" to nous and logos are not far away from the nouns and verbs by themselves.
  • Descartes & Evolution

    Your approach of comparing one kind of super simplicity with another is interesting. The survival of the "fittest" has been presented as adapting to the environment along with other "adapters" The complexity of codependency in Ecology is mind blowing. To have the resulting species be seen as winners in some kind of contest does not advance an understanding of the interrelationships. Simply being able to reproduce is not a value by itself.

    The adaptation was thought to have happened during an organism's lifetime by Lamarck. The opposing idea is that genetics keeps putting out these different models at birth and some make it or don't because they "fit" or not. Whatever is going on is probably a bit of both. Accepting that aspect of evolution is a country mile from any kind of certainty.
  • “Thou shalt love the Lord and thy neighbour”: a Reconsideration in Philosophical Perspective

    The perspective reminds me of a self-dense axiom. Try not to offend people.
    Sometimes you have to push buttons. But don't do it without regret and uncertainty.
  • How important is our reading as the foundation for philosophical explorations?

    I agree that good reading involves "being able to step inside the viewpoint of the author as far as that is possible." But I don't subscribe to making the historical context the last word on the experiences. To open oneself up to listen to what is being said, the reader must be addressed directly. Socrates is kicking my ass along with Gorgias'. The jester in King Lear does not have a high regard for my judgements either. Spinoza is appealing directly to me to come to my senses. Kafka says: "I am the problem; No scholar to be found far and wide." You don't get to talk that way if you don't look for one first.

    Regarding interpretation, it shows up too early in the game of reading together. The words are barely formed and they are immediately painted. I am sympathetic to Susan Sontag's Against Interpretation for this reason. We have a lifetime to form opinions. The encounters are few and easily missed.

    I think the project of the dialectic, where we struggle with each other to develop a better understanding, is at odds with the vision of an encyclopedia where the universe has been mapped and everything and every concept is in a place that can be related to each other.
  • How important is our reading as the foundation for philosophical explorations?

    I am raising this question because I was looking at answers in threads which I created and observed such a mixture of people coming from the basis of their reading of others' ideas from reading, and those based on the person's own thoughts. I realise that both are important but I do see it as a tension.Jack Cummins

    In our encounters regarding books we both have read, what counts as a "person's own thoughts" shows up in the different representations of what was said to be said in the books. That sort of thing is often counted as "interpretation" but sometimes it seems different people are reading entirely different texts.

    I read more or less as my work life permits. That changing condition has given me different ways to read. Is it a specification, a menu, a joke, or a poem? The words strike differently at different times.

    I have read a number of books many times over several decades. So, that sense of familiarity and expectation prompts me to listen without having to reproduce it somehow. But the experience has also made me less certain about what is going on. It is still alive.
  • “Thou shalt love the Lord and thy neighbour”: a Reconsideration in Philosophical Perspective

    “Thou shalt love the Lord and thy neighbor”: a Reconsideration in Philosophical PerspectiveApollodorus

    I am not sure what you mean by a "reconsideration. " But the words go like this:
    "Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."

    That is quite a to do list.
  • Marxism - philosophy or hoax?

    Well, the text written by Marx was addressed in your other thread, particularly by boethius.

    The critics of Marx you assembled are only interested in the question of how a revolution plays out.
    There is merit in struggling with what one rejects or finds interesting in his work. Your proposition that it was a rhetorical ruse at its very heart is odd. Such a point of view does not actually give one much leverage to oppose what one might object to.

    If the guy was that flaky in your view, why bring him up at all?
  • The agnostic position is the most rational!?
    In this respect, there are no impartial spectatorsspirit-salamander

    Can one prove that against the other arguments for empirical observations?
    Sounds arbitrary.
  • Marxism - philosophy or hoax?
    I have.Apollodorus
    Then quote the parts you take issue with. I don't see the point in objecting to an argument nobody is arguing with except yourself. Or if there are these other people, quote them as well.

    I have no idea what you are trying to say.
  • Cosmology vs. Ontology vs. Metaphysics

    One of the elements that appeal strongly to me in Aristotle's De Anima is the way either we can talk about our experience of being organisms or not. Maybe it is not the basis for a complete explanation but it captures life trying to understand life in a manner few approaches do.
  • Defining God

    if a thing has no meaning apart from God, yet gives God His very essence, hence his own deity, how then do we avoid utter relativism?Sam Aldridge

    Presuming that God creates the world, there is presumably an intended shape to the circle of life and death we encounter. So worship is in search for that shape, the stamp so firmly pressed into my flesh.

    Your results, of course, will vary.
  • Transformations of Consciousness

    There is a lot of tension between "social aspects of existence and self actualization." I didn't mean to emphasize the "social" so much as to say that satisfying what a person needs makes one less bound to what one is in the habit of assigning to necessity. The previous struggles may not be good preparation for the new ones since narratives tend to have a life of their own.
  • There's No Escape From Isms

    When the shoulders go high, I go low.
  • What is the Problem with Individualism?
    Very well, then.
    Adieu.
  • What is the Problem with Individualism?

    I like the national challenge.
    We do have Johnny Cash singing to prisoners.
    Walt Whitman and the future rappers.
    The odd relationship between Thoreau's and Emerson's writings is a thing.
    The easy swagger of Billy James upon the scene.
    The brutal satire of the twentieth century.

    It is not all cottage chese and cofevfe.
  • Transformations of Consciousness

    One of the elements that has always appealed to me with Maslow's approach is the way that the less one becomes driven by what is lacking, the more one has to do something with the sufficiency. The actualization is all mixed up with working with others. Becoming more capable is like love. It hurts.