The Sophists focused on the making of money and teaching what they thought was good; We know Socrates didn't like them very much. — Dermot Griffin

With the exception of money making, and it should be pointed out that Socrates accepted financial help from his friends, what distinguishes Socrates from the Sophists? Doesn't Socrates teach what he thought was good? It is worth noting that Socrates, at the time he lived, was regarded as a sophist. In Plato's dialogue Sophist the distinction is made questionable.

Socrates was accused at trial of making the weaker argument the stronger. This is taken up in the Republic where the strength or power of an argument to persuade is of central importance. Also of central importance is political power - the question of who should rule. This extends to the question of the politics of the soul - what holds power over the soul. The power of persuasion is not limited to the power of argument. The stories of the poets/theologians play an important role as well. Only those stories that are approved and invented by the philosopher kings are allowed. A decisive power grab.

It is simply not true that:

... philosophy (and the humanities in general) is broken down to the advocacy of the position of meaning or power ... — Dermot Griffin

They are not separable. For most of us, both ancient and modern, the art of living is not something that can be practiced cloistered and removed from the demands and necessities of life.

The problem is that you (plural) don't know whom you're up against and you don't even care to find out what it would take to win against them. — baker

What would it take to win against them?

Merit hiring was practiced by the ancient Greeks which led to a revolt with the Hebrews who wanted to maintain their system of jobs depending on heritage, not merit. — Athena

According to the article you cited:

Seleucid King Antiochus IV Epiphanes launched a massive campaign of repression against the Jewish religion in 168 BCE.

What is the source of the claim that the revolt was in response to a threat to their system of jobs depending on heritage, not merit?

But that’s what he said in the preceding sentences to the one you quoted. — NOS4A2

He lied to them and you and the rest of the Trumpsters believed it. But he knew he had lost the election.

And yes, he wanted Congress to makes a stink about certification ... — NOS4A2

But he did not simply want Congress to a make a stink. He wanted his patriotic warriors to prevent certification of the results of a legitimate election. Even if he is unable to believe the results the attempt to prevent certification after all legal options have failed is a crime.

We can’t certify a fraudulent election. — NOS4A2

The standard fallback position. There is no evidence of a fraudulent election. Trump's own people told him that.

His legal attempts to overturn the election all failed. As did his previous illegal attempts.

Are you now admitting that when he said "we cannot let that happen" he was in fact advocating that they do something to prevent certification?

he never advocated anything of the sort. — NOS4A2

What did he mean when he said "we can't let that happen"?

For the third time:

The attempt to prevent certification of the election is lawless action. — Fooloso4

That is what he sent them there to do.

When he said:

And we can't let that happen.

that is a call for action to prevent it from happening. Walking down the street and cheering on the senators and congressmen does not prevent certification.

That’s just not true. — NOS4A2

What is just not true? All the quotes are from the speech. He said:

You will have an illegitimate president. That's what you'll have. And we can't let that happen.

He said:

This is not just a matter of domestic politics — this is a matter of national security.

He called them "patriots", these "warriors".

He said at the end of the speech:

So let's walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.

Once again:

The attempt to prevent certification of the election is lawless action. — Fooloso4

How does one fight like hell by peacefully walking down Pennsylvania Avenue? Trump may be stupid but he is shrewd enough to not spell it out any further.

Here are the two elements of the Brandenburg Test:

The speech is “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action,” AND
The speech is “likely to incite or produce such action.

The attempt to prevent certification of the election is lawless action. In the January 6th speech he said:

You will have an illegitimate president. That's what you'll have. And we can't let that happen.

At that point what could they have done in a peaceful manner to prevent Biden from becoming President?

How were these "patriots", these "warriors" to respond to this:

This is not just a matter of domestic politics — this is a matter of national security.

By walking down Pennsylvania Avenue?

The modern period is defined by the success of applying mathematics to the world, and over time Plato gets inverted. Now there is no problem with the world, it exemplifies perfect mathematical beauty, but with the the mind.
— Count Timothy von Icarus

Perhaps a relevant aspect of the inversion - I'd say contra Plato's anamnesis, that we are all born ignorant and we are all going to die only somewhat less ignorant.

(Not that I know much about Plato's thinking that hasn't come from secondary and tertiary sources.)
@Fooloso4 — wonderer1

Since I was flagged I'll jump in. Much is made of the Forms, but they are posited as hypothetical, and inadequate as explanations. They are “safe and ignorant” (Phaedo 105c). An adequate explanation is in need of physical causes as well.

So why does he make such extensive use of them?

The problem is that one who does not “allow that for each thing there is a character that is always the same" will “destroy the power of dialectic entirely” (Parmenides, 135b8–c2). Something like the Forms underlies (hypo - under thesis - to place or set) thought and speech. Perhaps Plato intends here to reconcile Parmenides and Heraclitus.

Socrates references Anaxagoras, who says that it is Mind that directs and is the cause of everything. In Socrates' discussion of this he shifts from Mind as prior to what is ordered to how his own mind makes sense of and orders things.

Nietzsche's quotes are from BGE 17. On first reading it may seem that he is denying that there is an "I" or individual. He is not. What he is denying is an interpretation of what that is.

This is easier to understand if we look an earlier section:

Boscovich has taught us to abjure the belief in the last thing that "stood fast" of the earth--the belief in "substance," in "matter," in the earth-residuum, and particle- atom: it is the greatest triumph over the senses that has hitherto been gained on earth. One must, however, go still further, and also declare war, relentless war to the knife, against the "atomistic requirements" which still lead a dangerous after-life in places where no one suspects them, like the more celebrated "metaphysical requirements": one must also above all give the finishing stroke to that other and more portentous atomism which Christianity has taught best and longest, the SOUL- ATOMISM. Let it be permitted to designate by this expression the belief which regards the soul as something indestructible, eternal, indivisible, as a monad, as an atomon: this belief ought to be expelled from science!

(BGE, 12)

But if we stop there we will not understand him. He continues:

Between ourselves, it is not at all necessary to get rid of "the soul" thereby, and thus renounce one of the oldest and most venerated hypotheses--as happens frequently to the clumsiness of naturalists, who can hardly touch on the soul without immediately losing it. But the way is open for new acceptations and refinements of the soul-hypothesis; and such conceptions as "mortal soul," and "soul of subjective multiplicity," and "soul as social structure of the instincts and passions," want henceforth to have legitimate rights in science. In that the NEW psychologist is about to put an end to the superstitions which have hitherto flourished with almost tropical luxuriance around the idea of the soul, he is really, as it were, thrusting himself into a new desert and a new distrust--it is possible that the older psychologists had a merrier and more comfortable time of it; eventually, however, he finds that precisely thereby he is also condemned to INVENT--and, who knows? perhaps to DISCOVER the new.

(BGE 12)

What he is rejecting is the notion of a thinking substance. The soul is not something we have. In his refinement of the soul-hypothesis Nietzsche posits a “soul of subjective multiplicity”. This solves the problem of the seeming mystery of a thought that comes when it wishes rather than when I wish. It is not that the thought has some kind of independent existence and comes to me from elsewhere, but simply that there is not something within me, an “I” or “ego” or “little ‘one’” that is the agent of my thoughts. This is not a denial of agency, it is a denial of something within me, some substance or soul-atom that is the agent.

↪Fooloso4 I do not disagree with anything you said but find an issue with the connection between inheritance and family position determining one's lot in life. — Athena

Yes, this is a serious problem. Do you have any solutions?

Complete lies. — NOS4A2

You, Trump, and the mage faithful have rendered the term 'lie' meaningless when you use it. Except when you think you might win points for yourself and the cult of Trump.

I said I seek argument for its own sake, ie, not for the sake of winning or persuasion. — NOS4A2

No. This is what you said. In full:

I enjoy it. I seek argument for its own sake. I get to test my intuitions against some fairly heavy criticism, and so far so good. If I wanted consensus and adulation I'd join Truth Social.

Why does it hurt so much to see a dissenting opinion? — NOS4A2

And this is what it was in response to:

Doesn’t being a laughingstock who gets repeatedly embarrassed get tiresome?

That’s less a question for you than for the forum. Why do people like this go on? What’s the point? — Mikie

Like Trump you say something then say something else to modify it. As if you did not say what you said and said something else all along. And like Trump you attempt to hide behind your words when your actions tell a different story.

Yes, I seek argument for its own sake, — NOS4A2

If you seek argument for the sake of your education and growth then you do not seek argument for the sake of argument. Except it is evident that you actually do argue for the sake of arguing. It is then evident that what you do is pointless. Round and round.

My compulsive defense of Trump correlates well with my opposition to his enemies. — NOS4A2

Of course it does! But he already has more than enough high paid lawyers who do a much better job of defending him than you do. Whether they will all actually get paid is another story.

I think our disagreement is mostly a matter of terminology. As I understand it, a thought experiment is hypothetical. Something that can be entertained while one sits comfortably in his armchair. Your quote is from aphorism 341 of The Gay Science, "The Heaviest Burden". It begins:

What if a demon crept after you into your loneliest loneliness some day or night, and said to you ...

Although this is a hypothetical: "what if ...", what the demon says is not posed as a hypothetical, but as something existential. Something that speaks into your loneliest loneliness. It is the thought that acquires power over you, the thought that transforms you. I do not think a thought experiment has this power. We think about if from a safe distance. I don't think as a hypothetical it has this power over us.

It's a method. The end is one's own education and growth — NOS4A2

So then, it is not arguing for the sake of argument. You often seem to forget this.

The truth is, though, that this does not square with your compulsive defense of Trump.

Still all seems like a thought experiment to allow a certain amount of freedom to the person who understands it. — Vaskane

Describing it as a thought experiment seems too detached. It is without the struggle:

Courage also slays dizziness at the abyss; and where do human beings not stand at the abyss? Is seeing itself not – seeing the abyss?

Courage is the best slayer; courage slays even pity. But pity is the deepest abyss, and as deeply as human beings look into life, so deeply too they look into suffering.

I agree.

From The Three Metamorphoses”.

Aye, for the game of creating, my brethren, there is needed a holy Yea unto life: ITS OWN will, willeth now the spirit; HIS OWN world winneth the world’s outcast.

I think part of the answer to the riddle or enigma of the eternal return is "the moment", the "gateway", the "abyss". Whatever was and will be we stand at the moment of the abyss. We have limited knowledge of what was and limited or no knowledge of what will be. Here, now, we must decide, we must act, we must move toward what will be. For us now it is all new.

How does one advance his thinking if he refuses to subject his beliefs to the grindstone of argument? — NOS4A2

The question is: to what end? If the end is arguing for the sake of arguing, then there can be no advance, just endless argument.

That's because a child hasn't formed decisions yet which decide (kill off) all other outcomes. — Vaskane

But given the eternal return all those outcomes have played out a countless number of times.

And given the eternal return there is nothing new in the revaluation of values. All have occurred countless times before. All that elevates man will in time drag him down. All values are ephemeral, transitory, changing. All are of equal value so why the "sacred yes' to these and not others when in time the sacred yes must become a sacred no?

I don't give a fig about dates. I do eat Froot Loops though. My education in philosophy is solely through cartoons, but I don't limit myself to the classics such as Looney Tunes and Rocky and Bullwinkle.

I seek argument for its own sake. — NOS4A2

That is shallow, frivolous, and unphilosophical. It is the reason why Plato reserves the practice of philosophy for those who are mature enough to approach it seriously. Argument for argument's sake is for sophists and children.

I get to test my intuitions against some fairly heavy criticism, and so far so good. — NOS4A2

This is a good example of the problem. If your intuitions are reflected in your arguments then your inability to see when and how your arguments have failed is the result of arguing for the sake of arguing. It is as if you want to play chess and think that you have not lost when checkmated because you continue to move pieces around.

Because you do not take words and arguments seriously you are not taken seriously.

For some negative attention is better than no attention.

Some regard the lack of approval as a sign of superiority. They understand what others do not.

Some get some kind of satisfaction from trolling. This may be a due to one or both of the above.

Eternal Recurrence for Nietzsche is more of a thought experiment — Vaskane

I would say that it is more than a thought experiment. The eternal return is a riddle. One key to reading that riddle the problem of creation. If all is eternal return then there can be no creation, but above all Zarathustra wants to create are creators. This is why the child is an essential part of the metamorphosis of the spirit:

The child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a self-rolling wheel, a first movement, a sacred Yes.

There are some passages that seem to affirm the eternal return and others that seem to deny it.

Oy. Your cardiovascular system may not be too thrilled with that routine. — Joshs

Feh! What doesn't kill me makes me stronger.

I need to rest up now. And I need to do something about the orange dust on my keyboard. But that can wait. I just don't seem to have the energy now.

I am complete skeptic when it comes to Plato

Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

Said one skeptic about another. Both must be read skeptically, and this in the original Greek sense of skeptis. In light of their irony and esotericism.

Comfort, routine and the mundane sound pretty good to me. — Tom Storm

Me too. These days my self-overcoming amounts to disrupting my routine of sitting on the couch watching cartoons and eating Cheetos to moving to the recliner watching cartoons and eating potato chips.

Are you any flavour of theist sir? — universeness

No.

I am just trying to confirm whether or not you are simply making academic/technical/philosophical points or you are supporting your own or the theistic worldview of others. — universeness

I am interested in the interpretation of texts. What these texts say about the gods is a reflection of what they say about man and In turn they have influenced how we have come to see ourselves. Genesis 1 says that God made man in their own image. I say that man makes gods in their own image.

But a theological discussion should also take into consideration the other root. Two texts to be considered are Plato's Euthyphro and Aristotle's Metaphysics. Both put philosophy above the claims of the theologians and do so by pointing to the limits of what we know, which falls short of knowledge of first things.

Another is the revolution of Modernity in the work of Bacon, Descartes, and others. Until quite recently all educated westerners read and knew the Bible. The theologians read it piously, the philosophers impiously. Theirs is a program for the perfectibility of man. To will without error. In other words, to make man into a god. What separates men and gods in Genesis is overcome.

I can't remember if you have already declared yourself theist or atheist. — universeness

I am pistically atheist and epistemically agnostic. Lacking knowledge I make no claims about gods but I am not uncertain in terms of what I believe and how I live.

But the need for the Overman seems to be born out of the condition the Last Man to me. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The last man is, as the name indicates, is one out of which nothing is born.

From Zarathustra's prologue:

Alas! There cometh the time when man will no longer give birth to any star. Alas! There cometh the time of the most despicable man, who can no longer despise himself.

Lo! I show you THE LAST MAN.

“What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?”—so asketh the last man and blinketh.

The earth hath then become small, and on it there hoppeth the last man who maketh everything small. His species is ineradicable like that of the ground-flea; the last man liveth longest.

Fukuyama's only point is that the Last Man prediction seems to have missed something. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Fukuyama's thesis it that history has come to its end. This stands in stark contrast to Nietzsche's notions of self-overcoming and the eternal return. Whatever his idea of the last man is, it is not Nietzsche's.

Are we talking about the lineage and 'birthrights' (a far more controversial term) of real historical people or invented characters who appeared in ancient fables? — universeness

I am talking about the stories in the Hebrew Bible.

Birthright is controversial. The stories I mentioned are a rejection of the practice.

Do you think the Moses fable is the first story about unification in human history? — universeness

I don't.

We have been exchanging and inventing such stories since our days as hunter gatherers. — universeness

Yes. Stories told and heard along trade routes as well.

There is no evidence of any significance at all, that the Moses character, as described in the bible, was ever a real person. — universeness

I agree.

Is there any character from the bible that you believe 100% existed and did exactly what the bible describes they did? — universeness

No. I do not read the Bible stories as if they were history.

From a source we might not expect:

If you have a room which you do not want certain people to get into, put a lock on it for which they do not have the key. But there is no point in talking to them about it, unless of course you want them to admire the room from outside! The honorable thing to do is put a lock on the door which will be noticed only by those who can open it, not by the rest.

— Wittgenstein Culture and Value

So why must the philosopher rule? — Count Timothy von Icarus

As I understand it, it is not that they must rule but that they do. Perhaps the quote in context sheds light:

THE REAL PHILOSOPHERS, HOWEVER, ARE COMMANDERS AND LAW-GIVERS; they say: "Thus SHALL it be!" They determine first the Whither and the Why of mankind, and thereby set aside the previous labour of all philosophical workers, and all subjugators of the past--they grasp at the future with a creative hand, and whatever is and was, becomes for them thereby a means, an instrument, and a hammer. Their "knowing" is CREATING, their creating is a law-giving, their will to truth is--WILL TO POWER. --Are there at present such philosophers? Have there ever been such philosophers? MUST there not be such philosophers some day? . . .

(BGE, 211)

Nietzsche's political philosophy is an inversion of Plato's. Both are concerned with the politics of the soul, and in that sense works of psychology. For both Plato and Nietzsche the question of who is to rule is of central importance. For Plato it was the poets who ruled. For Nietzsche it is Christian Platonism.

Hence the thesis that the Last Man is the father/womb of the Overman. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Is this Nietzsche' s thesis? Aren't they two different outcomes?

Are gods not a far bigger source of division rather than unity? — universeness

Yes. But the issue is lineage and birthright.

See the discussion above about Moses and the god of their fathers : https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/864423

The story of Moses is a story of unification.

Do you deny he had contempt for slave morality? — schopenhauer1

This needs to be seen within its historical context. It was a way of self-overcoming. It turns inward and makes its weakness into its strength. Their inwardness led to their power. Rather than impose rule on the world they learned to impose their will on themselves and rule themselves. Nietzsche saw this as a great advancement for mankind.

This overcoming now threatens to be man's undoing.

the only thing I got for why Rand got it wrong was that she was “resentful”. — schopenhauer1

Nietzsche and Rand had different notions of what it means to be an individual. Rand held to Liberalism's claim of the sovereign individual. Nietzsche thought that only a few are capable of becoming individuals. Rand grounds man on the low value of individual rights. Nietzsche held to the possibility of a higher man. Something achieved not given.

I think the story was created to stop people from sacrificing their sons to a god. — Athena

There may be some truth to that, but the story is not a prohibition against human sacrifice. If others are to be like Abraham it would be by not withholding their sons from sacrifice. (22:16) It was God who stays his hand and provides the ram. For Abraham to have made this substitution himself would have been to fail to demonstrate his faith and obedience.

I don't think they take them literally — Athena

This presents a slippery slope. Even if the story is not taken literally, does this mean that they would
believe that God does not speak to man, that the Law and Commandments do not come from God?

For me, the importance of lineage plays a role in believing Abraham was a real person. — Athena

I agree, but it is not simply a question of lineage but birthright. Cain is the firstborn of Adam and Eve, but the lineage goes through Enoch. Ismael was Abraham's first son, but Isaac inherits.

The eldest son has the birthright but time and again in the Hebrew Bible stories the younger son steals it. Esau was Isaac's firstborn but Jacob deceives his father and inherits. Brothers are often the source of division rather than unity.

Jordan Peterson very wisely said, and I am paraphrasing here, that we may not always know the truth, but we know when we're being dishonest ... — GRWelsh

I think it is often the case that we do not know when we are being dishonest, especially to one's self about our self.

I think that some who have been caught in Trump's web of deceit have moved almost imperceptibly to a position of holding his lies as truth. From small seemingly harmless and insignificant things to greater lies claiming to be the truth. A counterbalance to what the Trump propaganda machine has told them are the big important lies.

I feel like philosophers themselves can be more or less culpable in how their work ends up perceived. — Count Timothy von Icarus

In Nietzsche's case it is a question of perceived by whom. He does not want to be understood by just anyone who reads him. His explicit about this. Perhaps being aware of the fact that a philosopher cannot control how he will be read, he attempts to have control over how he will be misread.

Our highest insights must–and should–sound like follies and sometimes like crimes when
they are heard without permission by those who are not predisposed and predestined for
them. The difference between the exoteric and the esoteric, formerly known to
philosophers–among the Indians as among the Greeks, Persians, and Muslims, in short,
wherever one believed in an order of rank and not in equality and equal rights –….
[consists in this:] the exoteric approach sees things from below, the esoteric looks down
from above…. What serves the higher type of men as nourishment or delectation must
almost be poison for a very different and inferior type…. There are books that have
opposite values for soul and health, depending on whether the lower soul, the lower
vitality, or the higher and more vigorous ones turn to them; in the former case, these
books are dangerous and lead to crumbling and disintegration; in the latter, [they are]
heralds’ cries that call the bravest to their courage. Books for all the world are always
foul-smelling books.

Beyond Good and Evil, 42 (aph 30)

Rand is the natural outcome of Nietzschean thinking as applied in a more stringent way. — schopenhauer1

I don't think so. As with other influential thinkers throughout history, his work has been taken and twisted in different ways. Rand claimed that the individual owes nothing to society.

Nietzsche says:

THE REAL PHILOSOPHERS, HOWEVER, ARE COMMANDERS AND LAW-GIVERS

(BGE, 211)

He might agree that the individual owes nothing to society, but that is because, and here he agrees with Aristotle, magnanimity is about who one is rather than what one owes. One cannot be both magnanimous and resentful.