This serves to emphasize the wisdom of the greatest of sages, Popeye the Sailor Man. "I am what I am" he proclaimed, dispensing with "that" as a mere redundancy, expressive of nothing more than faux doubt of the kind Descartes indulged in. But he added "and that's all that I am." Thus, he not only affirmed his existence, but disdained to speculate regarding his nature, being and destiny. He is Popeye, singular and manifest!

I have a feeling you might interpret him more charitably when I tell you he really hated Heidegger, philosophy and all. — Jamal

A remarkably perceptive fellow, then, after all.

His primary targets in this area were instrumental reason, bureaucratic thinking, and science and technology that considers only means, not ends. This is a critique of modernity from within, in a spirit of self-critical enlightenment, rather than an instinctive conservatism or a reactionary attitude. — Jamal

That's a far more interesting perspective, I must say.

Maybe, but the German student movement at the time was more than just that, even if—as Adorno says somewhere—it was partly that. There was police violence and an attempted assassination from the state, terrorism from the students (the Red Army Faction came out of it). It had a specific character and happened for specific reasons, rather than just students doing their thing. — Jamal

I may be thinking too much of the American experience of the 1960s. Our student rebels of that time are probably all Republicans, now. Some are probably even lawyers, God help them.

Far too long ago to remember well, really. I recall that we were forced to read Plato's Republic and Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions when Freshmen. I don't know why. I suspect it was believed that if we were willing to read such books, we could be induced to read most anything and believe it to be rewarding in some undefined sense. And so we did.

What is particularly fascinating and at first glance puzzling about this is that he identifies the wild, empty, and irrational pseudo-activity of the students with the increasing “technocratization of the university”. What could he have meant? — Jamal

I'm unfamiliar with him, but I suspect this is another example of the technophobia we see in some philosophers. Just a guess, really. I also guess that academics sometimes think, mistakenly, that their students are more than privileged, self-important brats indulging themselves in various ways while they can do so in a more or less safe environment, one in which they're unaccountable for the most part. Just guessing, as I say.

Therefore, justice does not equate with a system of law. — Tobias

You would think this should be obvious, but it isn't, even to some lawyers. O.W. Holmes, Jr. famously noted that we have courts of law, not courts of justice. Some say he made this point to a young lawyer appearing in court: "This is a court of law, young man, not a court of justice." I like to think he did. It's one of my favorite quotes about the law, though I'm also very fond of this one by John Marshall: “The acme of judicial distinction means the ability to look a lawyer straight in the eyes for two hours and not hear a damned word he says.” I think most lawyers know there are judges who have this ability.

So, I think it follows that efforts to define justice as if it equates to the law are misguided. There is no "justice system." I'm inclined to the view of the Stoics that justice is, properly speaking, a virtue. It applies to how we act in our relations to others. Fairness to and respect for others are characteristic of just action. For the Stoics, justice is part of acting according to nature, so I suppose that they may be said to consider it as based on natural law, a theory which they had a part in creating.

I can't stop myself from asking if Chomskybot will participate. Sorry.

I mentioned it because it deals with Plato's friendship with Dion and the events in Syracuse.

Here is a good article on what he was doing there. — Fooloso4

Thanks for the reference. Sidebar, though relevant--ever read May Renault's The Mask of Apollo? I think her Alexander-worship is excessive, and she treat's Aristotle too harshly (in other works) but she's one of the best writers of historical fiction I've ever read.

Plato pointed to the attitude that philosophy is useless, but he did not attempt to make it useful. — Fooloso4

Whatever was he doing in Syracuse, then? Better to say he never succeeded in making it useful.

I've been grateful to Heidegger, nonetheless, since my earliest philosophical studies in the late '70s for his monumental oeuvre as a/the paragon of how NOT to philosophize - or think-live philosophically (as Arendt points out) - as manifest by the generations of heideggerian obscurant sophists (i.e. p0m0s e.g. Derrida, Baudrillard, Lyotard, Rorty et al) who've come and gone in and out of academic & litcrit fashion since the 1950s ...
— 180 Proof — 180 Proof

I like this. Well said.

As I've said, I'm listening to the book mentioned in the OP. There's a good deal left to listen to. I think its persuasively makes a case that there is a relation between H's political/social ideology and his philosophical works. The author professes to admire H for his efforts to provide the philosophical foundation for an alternative to nihilism and angst which, it appears, was rampant in European philosophy before Being in Time.

[Have patience with me here, if you will. I've never understood why angst and nihilism were supposedly prevalent in 19th and 20th century Europe, and elsewhere to a lesser extent, and am inclined to attribute it to an overreaction to the perceived failure of Christianity, which resulted in people being deprived of the solace of its busybody, "Big Daddy" God, giving meaning to life and setting rules. So, I'm not inclined to think there was some kind of need H tried to satisfy, if there was one. I may not be accurately describing the author's views, or H's for that matter in this respect]

Assuming the author accurately describes what H wrote, however, he wrote a great deal about Volk, Blut und Boden, Arbeit macht frei. The author thinks this wacky (to me) glorification of Germany, Germans, the German language and culture and corresponding denigration of all other people and nations (especially Jews) is consistent with the entirety of his work and that this would be clearer still if his philosophical works rendered into English, including portions of Being and Time, had not been modified by sympathetic translators.

I haven't read Being and Time; certainly not in its entirety. I've read some of his other, shorter works such as The Question Concerning Technology and it seems to me that it can be inferred from them that he was something of a mystic and romantic. Perhaps that in addition to his rampant Germanophilia accounts for his reference to the "inner truth and greatness" of National Socialism, even in the 1953 publication of An Introduction to Metaphysics.

I think this was located in Arbeit macht frei. — Tom Storm

This charming slogan, which also graced the gate into Auschwitz (part of what Heidi called the "self-annihilation of the Jews" when referring to the Holocaust), is mentioned in the book.

Apart from the political aspect, the question is, is there any evidence
that such readings get the philosophy right? — Joshs

Well, one must read or listen. It seems that the author believes that to be the case. Thus far, the focus has been on Heidi's weird obsession with Volk, Blut und Boden, which seems a peculiarity of German Romanticism, and his belief in the superiority of Germans and the inferior status of everyone else, but especially Jews. Those views are, from what I can gather, more pronounced in the Black Notebooks and his efforts at licking Hitler's boots while Rector at Freiburg, and in letters to various and sundry, but we shall see. The author thinks that Heidi himself believed such scribblings to be part of his oeuvre, and that his previously published work was "sanitized" in some cases by fans.

I'm listening to Heidegger in Ruins. It's interesting to learn that he's become something of a hero among far-right groups in Europe.

Who is to blame? Or are we all equally to blame for different or specific reasons in each individual case - as unique instruments in the chain that lead to the whole/total outcome? — Benj96

The law is the law, and nothing more (or less) than that. It imposes no moral obligations. B is under no moral (or legal, for that matter) obligation to bring legal action. There is no "causal chain."

I can't help but wonder what other subjects taught in institutions of higher education would be subject to similar criticisms. I suspect there are several.

How would living people on Earth see death and killing from this point on? — Captain Homicide

Well, it may cause a problem or two for antinatalists. Would it still be wrong to procreate in all cases if, ultimately, eternal bliss will result? You couldn't be eternally blissful unless you lived for a time in this veil of tears, this house of horrors. Perhaps there'd be a moral obligation to breed like rabbits, so more and more people would die!

I still maintain that this kind of gesture exists. 'I can take you with one hand tied behind my back.' Or I can ride a motorcycle at high speeds without a helmet. Or I can drink mountain man booze. Or I can go without vaccines, without flattery, without apologies, etc. — green flag

Perhaps the Native American practice of "counting coup" would work here.

"Some Celtic warriors entered battle naked - a group which Roman writers called gaestae - and exactly why this is has perplexed scholars. It may be they wished to demonstrate their supreme confidence in their prowess and the protection offered them by their gods." To me it's intuitive to think in terms of pursuit and flaunting of status, something like conspicuous destruction or potlatch. Who can 'afford' to stand most naked, to question most radically ? Is this toxic masculinity? Clearly I'm approaching this in terms of the adoption of a fundamental hero myth. — green flag

According to Polybius they fought naked, at least in part, because they didn't want their clothes to be caught in the brambles. So perhaps their concern was more sartorial than anything else. But I imagine the trousers barbarians wore could be a nuisance in battle, sometimes. It's said they were mercenaries, which suggests their motives weren't entirely heroic.

The idea that acceptance of death results in freedom or least is freeing is ancient. You see it in Lucretius, Epicurus, Seneca and others. But I think the Christian focus on death and its disdain of life as sinful transformed death, making it particularly fearsome; far more than it was for pagan philosophers, making the acceptance of death seem peculiarly liberating.

Thanks for the reference.

As for Heidi, I have only this to say, or rather say again:

Notorious Nazi Heidegger
(Whom Hitler had made all-a-quiver)
Tried hard to be hailed
Nazi-Plato, but failed
Then denied he had tried with great vigor.

Ah. So Christianity didn't become a religion until it was looked upon favorably and sanctioned by the Imperial government. It's certainly an interesting though peculiar perspective.

Not wrong or confused. You have to look at the time of Constantine, who made the formal acknowledgement of the Christian religion around 313 CE. The school of Stoic closed around the first century, I think. (I don't have my books anymore, sorry).

Before Constantine, it was a sect, not a religion. They were called the Nazarenes. — L'éléphant

You astonish me!

It's very odd, then, that centuries before Constantine, Pliny the Younger referred to "Christianis" and "Christiani" and "Christo" in his letter to Trajan, inquiring how they should be treated, and Tacitus wrote of "Chrestianos" who were followers of "Christus" who had been executed by Pontius Pilatus. I wonder who they were referring to, really.

I admire your blithe exclusiveness. Not only do you relegate the authors of the Gospels and Acts to non-Christian status, but also the revered Church Fathers Tertullian, Origen, Justin Martyr (called "martyr" because he was martyred, but apparently not for being a Christian), Clement of Alexandria and Ignatius of Antioch (the third bishop of that city, though it seems not a Christian one), all of whom lived and died long before Constantine.

Do you interpret this as an indication of the difference between politics and philosophy? In what way? — Fooloso4

In the way Cicero did. Cicero criticized Cato in his letters for being on occasion harmful to the Roman Republic because of his insistence on acting as a philosopher while acting as a Senator, and on his insistence that all other Senators do the same. If Cato had his way, the Republic would not function.
Plato himself failed miserably in his effort to have Syracuse's tyrant govern in accordance with philosophy.

That is to say, simply, that there's a difference between the politics as practical governance and the practice of philosophy.

No doubt philosophy may have political implications. But this doesn't make them the same in any significant sense.

↪Sumyung Gui Okay, first let's stop referring to Christianity when talking about Stoicism itself. Stoicism had gone out of practice way before Christianity was born.
Are you just confused as to the historical events? — L'éléphant

Really? Jesus supposedly lived in the early first century C.E. (A.D. if your prefer). Paul was born around 5 C.E. and lived until around 65 C.E. Paul, it seems, had something to do with Christianity. The Stoic philosopher Musonius Rufus died in 95 C.E., 30 years after Paul. The Stoic philosopher Seneca was a contemporary of Paul's and was an advisor to Nero, who it was claimed burned Christians after Rome's great fire during his reign. The Stoic philosopher Epictetus died around 135 C.E. Marcus Aurelius was Emperor from 161 C.E. to 180 C.E They were Stoics, you see. Marcus Aurelius referred to Christians in his Meditations. So did the Emperor Trajan in his correspondence with Pliny (Trajan was Emperor from 98 C.E. to 117 C.E. ).

It seems you're wrong. Or just confused as to historical events.

This is, of course, from Plato's Republic. See the quote from Cicero above. — Fooloso4

Cicero knew quite well the difference between politics and philosophy. We see this in his criticism of Cato the Younger (though he admired Cato in some respects). Cato, said Cicero, "gives his opinion as if he were in Plato's Republic, not Romulus' cesspool."

No, there's not. And be honest - you meant to say that religious beliefs are preposterous. Now you're trying to get off the hook on a technicality. — T Clark

Can't let it go, eh?

Basta. As @Vera Mont would say, what we understand to be the case depends on meaning, context and significance. So yes, you're right. Understand that as you will, and I'll understand it based on its meaning, context and significance to me.

It all depends, doesn't it? No use debating about it.

There's a difference between saying certain religious beliefs are less preposterous than others and saying all religious beliefs are preposterous or saying all religion is preposterous. I personally think the belief in an immanent God, who doesn't demand or respond to prayers or worship, doesn't exist "outside the universe", is not jealous, doesn't interfere in human affairs, doesn't assist certain football teams but not others, doesn't miraculously save some people from disasters but lets many others die in them, (one could go on) is far less preposterous than other such beliefs. I would even call it a reasonable belief but for the fact I know its attraction (to me at least) is more the result of a feeling which, though based on my experience, can't be established by reason; can't be proven.

I'm not sure what else to say.

Such a touchy fellow. Your self-righteousness compels me to review what seems hardly worth reviewing but is apparently (and sadly, I think) of great concern to you.

Here's what I said:

I think that certain religious beliefs are less preposterous than others. But I doubt believers care whether they're more or less preposterous to others, and will be unimpressed by any argument that they're beliefs are unreasonable regardless of whether they're told there is no God or that particular beliefs about God are unsupportable. — Ciceronianus

Here's what you said:

I've never thought any religious belief sounded any more "preposterous" than quantum mechanics. If you're in the mood for some pointless argument, there are plenty of reasonable arguments against religion, but preposterousness is not one of them. — T Clark

Then I said:

Quantum mechanics certainly seems strange, but I think the analogy with religion doesn't work. I suspect that those studying QM approach things a bit differently than religious believers. It wouldn't surprise me, though, if it's taken up by religious apologists and claimed by them to support their religious beliefs. It seems that's been the case for a while now. — Ciceronianus

Then you said:

Of course they do, but that wasn't the question on the table. You weren't talking about the methods, mindset, approach, or beliefs of scientists studying quantum mechanics. You were talking about QM's preposterousness. Now you're trying to change the subject. — T Clark

Then I said:

In fact, I said nothing at all about QM being preposterous. I said it "certainly seems strange." You said QM is preposterous, and apparently feel it's as preposterous as religion, if not more preposterous than it is. If that's what you believe, so be it. I merely think QM and religion are not analogous. — Ciceronianus

Then you said:

No, that was me. I claimed that believing in God is no more preposterous than quantum mechanics. You have yet to address that argument. — T Clark

Again (and again, and again, and again) that is not the question on the table. You made a glib statement about religion being preposterous. I made a comment in response. You have yet to respond to my comment. — T Clark

Now, pause and perpend. I never said that religion is preposterous. I never said QM is preposterous.

I really don't care if you think they're both preposterous. Never having said either was preposterous, I don't feel inclined to debate whether or not or to what extent either may be preposterous. You may pontificate on those issues to your heart's content, though. But I was responding to the claim that atheism supports religion and the suggestion in the OP that the religious should be confronted with what seems problematic with their beliefs rather than merely the denial of God's existence. In doing so, I pointed out that I didn't think it mattered how preposterous religious beliefs may be to the believer.

Then you began harping on the preposterousness of both religion and QM. I said I didn't think they were analogous and you became apoplectic, demanding a response to your claim that they were both preposterous.

"Bad philosophy" forsooth. Read what you comment on, from time to time.

No, it doesn't depend on the myth. It depends on one's understanding of the myth, its meaning, context and significance.
Just as belief of* any particular scientific theory depends on one's understanding of it.
* of, not in — Vera Mont

Yes, yes. Giant muddy sea turtle, big bang...it all depends.

While the scientists operate by different rules and glean their information from different sources than the mystics, a creation myth doesn't sound more impossible than a big bang. — Vera Mont

Ok. I would think it might depend on the myth, though. But for all I know the world may have come about from the piling of mud on the back of a large sea turtle.

Of course they do, but that wasn't the question on the table. You weren't talking about the methods, mindset, approach, or beliefs of scientists studying quantum mechanics. You were talking about QM's preposterousness. Now you're trying to change the subject. — T Clark

In fact, I said nothing at all about QM being preposterous. I said it "certainly seems strange." You said QM is preposterous, and apparently feel it's as preposterous as religion, if not more preposterous than it is. If that's what you believe, so be it. I merely think QM and religion are not analogous.

Maybe Gnostic Christianity, but that sounds more like Neoplatonism. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well, Christianity through the years has borrowed heavily from neoplatonism. It's one of the ingredients in the vast hodgepodge, or stew, that is Christianity.

I've never thought any religious belief sounded any more "preposterous" than quantum mechanics. If you're in the mood for some pointless argument, there are plenty of reasonable arguments against religion, but preposterousness is not one of them. — T Clark

Quantum mechanics certainly seems strange, but I think the analogy with religion doesn't work. I suspect that those studying QM approach things a bit differently than religious believers. It wouldn't surprise me, though, if it's taken up by religious apologists and claimed by them to support their religious beliefs. It seems that's been the case for a while now.

Agree? — Art48

I think that certain religious beliefs are less preposterous than others. But I doubt believers care whether they're more or less preposterous to others, and will be unimpressed by any argument that they're beliefs are unreasonable regardless of whether they're told there is no God or that particular beliefs about God are unsupportable.

Does it not sometimes make one feel powerless or at worst nihilistic in the face of it? — invicta

Only if you're inclined to disturb yourself with what's entirely beyond your control. I'm too much of a Stoic to do that. What could be more pointless?

Where would you consider more appropriate? — Art48

I'd prefer that there will come a day when there will be no further reference to an "external world" anywhere, anytime, if what is meant is some place apart from us that we can never "really" know. But we're so infected by the belief that there is a world "out there" that it's unlikely that blessed day will arrive.

There's something comical about presuming to give lessons of this kind on YouTube. I wonder what people really are seeing when they watch this video. Just a representation of a representation made by a representation of something the representation believed was represented, I suppose.

We're in the world. We're part of reality. It isn't something separate from us, that we observe. But this is old stuff.

What, then, is the point of asking "What's the point?"?

Well, they are good Christian soldiers in the war against humanism, which like Communism seeks world domination... — Tom Storm

Yes, but I wonder if they feel they must demonstrate, somehow, that conversion to Catholicism has made them better advocates (or apologists) for God than Anglicans can be. Justifying their Papism, in other words. I'm a cynical fellow.