Comments

  • Is life amongst humanity equal?
    @john27

    Isn’t it by means of the microscope?
  • Is life amongst humanity equal?
    @john27

    With what tool do we perceive a microorganism?
  • Is life amongst humanity equal?
    @john27

    You are the most agreeable person I think I have ever met in this forum, John...

    ...but let me ask you this: do you believe that there are certain concepts that exist? and I don’t mean things like the dragon of your previous analogy, but rather things like “the good” and “the better”, “the more” and “the most”; “the large” and “the small”, etc. Do you think these sorts of things exist and are real and detectable, or do you think they rather don’t exist, are not real and are undetectable?
  • Is life amongst humanity equal?
    @john27

    So, the mathematics that allows us to know that there is a center of the universe—would you agree that it is not a different mode of detection, because, theoretically, we could stand at the universe’s center, and perceive by means of physical instruments that everything else lies apart from us —even though we could never practically do this?
  • Is life amongst humanity equal?
    @john27

    Would you say then that there is a means of detection that is different from the either aided or unaided sensory sort of detection?
  • Is life amongst humanity equal?
    @john27

    So for example, though it is scarcely conceivable that anyone could ever journey to the center of the earth, or even send a probe there, we know that its center exists, and is detectable, even though we cannot detect it.
  • Is life amongst humanity equal?
    @john27

    By “”naturally” I suppose you mean directly by means of our unaided senses of sight and hearing etc., but I didn’t mean that when I said detectable; I meant rather to include any means of detection, including echo location, the microscope, telescope, and any other means that is artificial, ie., aided by man-made instruments.

    Including these sorts of aids in detection, would you agree that what exists and is real is detectable, and what doesn’t exist and is not real is undetectable?
  • Is life amongst humanity equal?
    @john27

    Then what is real exists and what exists is real.

    Can we go further and say that what exists and is real is detectable, and that what does not exist and is not real is undetectable?
  • Is life amongst humanity equal?
    @john27

    Since you appear to assert that the dragon you imagine does not exist, and that its image in your mind does exist, are you willing to withdraw your objection to

    anything that exists is real, — Leghorn

    since it is clear that the image of the dragon is real and exists, while the dragon itself is not real and does not exist?
  • Is life amongst humanity equal?
    I would disagree solely on the point that assumes that anything that exists is "real", per say. For example, knowing that dragons don't exist, I create an image of a dragon in my mind. That image exists; so would the dragon exist? — john27

    Do you say then that the image of something is the same thing as what it is an image of? In your example, is the image of the dragon the same thing as the dragon itself?
  • Is life amongst humanity equal?
    @john27

    Would you agree that whatever is real exists, and that whatever is not real does not exist, and that, similarly, anything that exists is real, and anything that does not exist is not real?
  • Is life amongst humanity equal?
    I guess the main question to our discussion would be to assess whether the soul is truly different from the body.
    14h     — john27

    I agree.

    Having read your posts in this thread I can see that you are a materialist, and by that term I mean that you are are a reductionist: you want or tend to reduce all phenomena to what is physical or material. That this is an error on your part, or on the part of anyone else so inclined, I will attempt to prove...

    ...and I was about to embark on a diatribe proving that immaterial things are real, but I checked myself; and I hesitated because I realized that I had often done so before in this forum without persuasion, that I have always failed to persuade by such means. This led me to consider a different approach: if you are willing, I would like to question you Socratically, ie, through what is called dialectic.

    In dialectic there are two ppl, a questioner and an answerer. They needn’t remain the same throughout the dialectic: sometimes the questioner invites the answerer to ask the questions, and sometimes the answerer demands to become the questioner. Likewise, sometimes the questioner demands that the answerer ask him questions, or the answerer declines to answer any further questions. In other words, they can switch roles at any point as long as both agree to do so.

    If you are willing to engage in such a dialectic with me, I will ask you a question to initiate it. There are no “rules” to the game, just the “honor system”: yes-or-no questions should be answered with a “yes” or “no”; if the answerer thinks “yes” or “no” is insufficient to answer the question, then his answer should be as short as possible in explanation of that caveat...

    ...are you willing then to engage in a dialectic with me on the topic of whether the soul is different from the body?
  • Is life amongst humanity equal?
    Ethics should be based on physical stimulus. because we are constrained by the practicality of our human shells — john27

    The “human shells” you speak of are our bodies, within which our souls abide, and it is the latter, not the former, that ethics or morality is concerned with.

    We are not constrained by the needs of our bodies. We frequently neglect those needs in order to effect a good greater than that dictated by “physical stimulus”. Tell me how it is “practical” that a soldier go off to war to defend his country and place his physical self in danger? Maybe he can expect, if he survives the war, to get free lunches on Veterans Day, and free hearing aids through the VA, but do you think he is calculating all this when he signs his name on the bottom line?

    As far as the distinction you make between Left and Right politically, that the former’s policy is based on the common currency of the “human shell”, ie, the body, and the latter upon the extra-human potential, I would agree with you. It is clear that not all ppl are created equal, despite Jefferson’s edict.

    And this, I think, is the distinction b/w right- and left-wing politics in our day, whether they pertain to the body or to the soul...

    ..,I leave this for you to ponder and consider, and, perhaps, respond to.
  • The Right to Die
    All of the dead are equal through their death. — Paine

    I would say rather that the dead are unequal according to how they died.

    Would you equate the death of a citizen who died in a mudslide with one who died on the battlefield in defense of his fatherland? Yes, two corpses lie equally exanamite at a funeral, but they got there through very different routes.

    And it is not only in the eyes of the living that they gained or lost honor, but in their own, when they succumbed to death. I suppose the one suddenly taken away by chance mishap had no opportunity to evaluate his life, but the one who chose to go to war in defense of his country was willing to die if he receive the honor, either living or post-mortem, of having been a true patriot.

    I guess what I’m trying to say is that a corpse is equal to a corpse if you just look at them as two dead ppl. But the corpse becomes a symbol of the life that used to be in it, and that has meaning both for that defunct life, and for the lives of those who remain to bury the body.
  • The Right to Die
    I don’t know if this contributes to the discussion, but I think there is a distinction between “true” and “false” suicide.

    A true suicide is committed by someone who is no longer willing to continue living; a false one is committed by someone who is forced to exit life by some external circumstance...

    ...of the latter variety a couple examples come to mind. One is of the alcoholic who has destroyed his liver and been told by the doctor that if he doesn’t quit drinking he will die, yet he continues drinking and therefore dies...

    ...another example of the latter variety might be a woman who has been taken captive and told that if she doesn’t kill herself all her children will be killed...she is handed a gun...

    As an example of “true” suicide, I offer Cato the Younger: he led the Roman Republican army against Caesar in Utica, but when it became clear that Caesar had won, unwilling to become his prisoner of war, Cato disemboweled himself, despite the fact that Caesar was well known for his clemency. In other words, though he could have expected to be pardoned and live, Cato was unwilling to live in a Rome whose republic had been replaced by a dictatorship...

    ...actually, I think Cato was unwilling to undergo the ignominy of capitulating to a tyrant, and was thinking about how posterity would perceive him. Is this any different than the choice Socrates made? He had his well-placed friends who were ready to pay money and spirit him out into exile...but he chose to stay and drink the hemlock brew....

    The ancient examples of suicide—and there are many more I haven’t mentioned, such as Seneca’s—give us a broader view of the matter. @Tom Storm mentions those who were glad to have gotten an intervention. These are the ones caught up in a momentary despair, who are unwilling to live because of some immediate circumstance, and, once saved, are grateful to those who intervened...

    ...but there are others who, like Cato and Socrates, died according to a principle, not some temporary circumstance, and neither succumbed to an intervention, nor abandoned their principles in order to merely stay alive.
  • Is Social Media bad for your Mental Health?
    Apparently you can’t use emojis unless you have given money to the forum. Didn’t know this before now.
  • Is Social Media bad for your Mental Health?
    Sposed to be a crying/laughing emoji inserted in there Tom—but it didn’t take.
  • Is Social Media bad for your Mental Health?
    A hot mess — Tom Storm
  • Is Social Media bad for your Mental Health?
    Just over all be more interactive with the world — TheQuestion

    What if The World is the internet?
  • Is Social Media bad for your Mental Health?
    I don't use social media and have not been on it to find out — Tom Storm

    What do you call The Philosophy Forum?
  • You don't need to read philosophy to be a philosopher
    You did lose me when you started talking about going back to a time of innocence. My vision of the state of awareness I am talking about is right here, in front of us, right now. It's not mystical. It's just look at this. Listen to this. Pay attention. — T Clark

    But the way we look at the world has been determined by modern philosophy. You can hear it’s echoes in the language.

    For example, when we speak of our “values”, we are using a term that was given prominence in the modern German (Weber, I believe) philosophical conception of “the fact-value” distinction, which argues that there are no moral truths, just different and equal “values” to morality assigned to it by different ppl. So when someone says, “These are my values,” he means that these things are what he holds to be true, and that they cannot be denied validity, because he believes them, and no rational argument can be levied against them, for they are outside the purview of rational analysis.

    Similarly, when we speak of our “rights”, we are echoing a term drawn from Locke’s conception of political philosophy, and which has suffused its spirit into all modern liberal democracies. It has become instinctive to say, “I have my rights!” and everyone knows in his gut what that means—but it is not an ancient sentiment. To a pre-modern man, the idea that everyone has inalienable rights would have been quite laughable. Ancient societies were hierarchical and heterogeneous, filled with slaves and serfs, commoners and noblemen. Before the rise of modern philosophy, her concern was how to survive; after Machiavelli, she became a political activist, ultimately changing the very political phenomena, the ancient variegation of society, that her adherents, the philosophers, had always studied...

    ...it’s similar to that famous paradox of modern physics, where the very light you use to illuminate your subject—the electron in this case—disturbs the object of your study. So, by meddling in politics for its own benefit, modern philosophy altered the face of society, suppressing some aspects of it (the ones that held traditional privilege) while raising others up to supreme ascendancy (the ones that had traditionally been oppressed)...

    ...and you have to ask whether the traditional heterogeneity in society—the kings and queens and noblemen—was really gotten rid of in favor of the man (“person”, now) who is equal to every other person. For we see still great inequality in society, based now on wealth rather than on family. Yet the many still revere a prince or queen, and follow Harry and Megan, or William and Kate, etc, as though they were epitomes of excellence...

    ...There are many multi-billionaires, however, that have hardly ever been heard of: they are not nearly sexy enough. They own tech companies and buy up conglomerates and ride high up the Fortune-500, but the ppl want (and have always wanted) a man who is socially prominent: who hits the most home runs, puts a rocket into space or gets elected President. The need for heterogeneity and hierarchy has not died...

    ...but all this is just prolegomena to what I ask you now: when you say...

    I’d like to put forth the hypothesis that I don’t need no stinking Kant, or Hegel, or Schopenhauer, or Kneechee, or any of those guys. I have expressed my skepticism about western philosophy many times before on the forum. Rather than being defensive about it, I have decided to raise laziness to the level of sanctified philosophical principle. Stop reading, arguing, writing, building little intellectual kingdoms out of the sand of your benighted psyches. Just pay attention. To the world and to yourself — T Clark

    ...are you sure that you are not looking through the lens of their eyes when you look upon the world?
  • You don't need to read philosophy to be a philosopher
    Here's my way of seeing it - Awareness comes first, then philosophy. You have to know the world before you can use philosophy. — T Clark

    This is the same teaching Allan Bloom made so many times, guided by Leo Strauss: a common-sense awareness of the phenomena is necessary before you can go beyond the common-sense world and begin to philosophize.

    But the common-sense phenomena have been obscured by philosophy herself, for she transformed that world for her own benefit. Who understands what it means to be a gentleman anymore? or who can understand the impulse of an Alcibiades who, when his stingy manager objected to the amount of goods his master was offering a visiting dignitary, ordered that twice that amount be brought out? (cf Plutarch)

    It is refreshing to hear someone like you bemoan the “grey network” of modern philosophy and its terminology that I and you and some others are put off by, but you can’t just go off into a solitary place alone and recover the true essence of things. You have to feel the need to go back to the time when and before philosophy was born, to recover a lost innocence, when men wondered...when they first became perplexed, or were amazed by the movement of the heavenly bodies, or recoiled against the rule of noblemen, etc.

    As a modern engineer, you have had to deal with a lot of modern science, and a lot of modern politics. How are you to make your way through such a maze? The two are connected, intertwined in a way that is unsolvable...unless you go back to the beginning, and try to retrace the path, and understand how we got to the impasse that we’re at.
  • Philosphical Poems
    Love is the love of Jesus, God. Takes away blame, easy peasy. — T Clark

    That is my biggest caveat against evangelical Christianity: all you’ve got to do is “repent” of your sin, which means you can sin all you want to...as long as you repent soon afterwards!...

    ...and as long as you confess belief in Jesus, you are saved, however much you may sin. James knew much better: “faith without works is dead.” And Jesus preached much better too. You may cry “Lord, lord,..” I did this or that in Your name, to gain significance among the faithful, but He replies, “I never knew you.”

    It would just be more interesting, psychologically, philosophically if the love of each other, the love of other people, the love of other people for you, could take away blame. That would take some thought. — T Clark

    Love your neighbor as yourself. How many who confess their faith in Jesus turn their backs on their neighbors? fail to stop for the guy carrying a gas can down the road?
  • Loners - the good, the bad and the ugly
    I would say a loner is someone who “tends” to be alone, whether they prefer it or not @hypericin.

    @tim wood, I would say it is obvious that a person who is alone is not obviously a loner. They may be rather someone who is ordinarily gregarious, but is forced into isolation through circumstance.
  • Why being anti-work is not wrong.
    sure, you can opt out of work but the consequences will eventually be starvation, homelessness, hacking it in the wilderness and dying a slow death, MAYBE free riding (making it other people's problem), or outright suicide. Of course everyone cannot free ride otherwise even more dire consequences for the whole system of (used) workers. — schopenhauer1

    Would you say homelessness is a form of free-riding? It can be, when a man panhandles, begs for his money or food, but it isn’t necessarily so...

    ...I once knew a man who said he used to be homeless, and to get his meal he waited for a certain supermarket to throw their expired meat into the back dumpster, and after they were gone he would fetch it out and cook it over a campfire. That is certainly not freeloading...

    ...I knew another man who did the same thing in back of a posh restaurant: he waited there till they threw all the uneaten food out, then he swooped in to fetch it out of the trash. He thusly enjoyed the finest shrimp linguini and chicken alfredo at no cost—other than the effort of leaning over into the dumpster.

    As for the man who begs for his bread, is he so despicable? so miserable? Cannot men who possess mansions and yachts afford to give a man who has nothing to eat a loaf of bread? Is this really unfair? Can we really know that a man who would rather beg for his bread than earn it is contemptible?

    Maybe he is willing to buck the system and undergo what we consider shameful behavior because he has a more exalted sense of the dignity of life. Is he any more contemptible than a factory worker who earns a decent wage and supports his family and sends his kids to school, but is a sycophant to his boss? brown-noses in order to curry favor?
  • Why being anti-work is not wrong.
    I disagree with this premise:

    you can opt out of work but the consequences will eventually be starvation, homelessness, hacking it in the wilderness and dying a slow death, MAYBE free riding (making it other people's problem), or outright suicide. — schopenhauer1

    You paint all these things to look like dire consequences when not all of them are. I think everyone would agree that starvation is a bad thing, but is it obvious that homelessness is? Some ppl actually choose homelessness, I think, as a solution to the forced game of life you speak of. Have you ever been homeless? I haven’t, but I’ve considered the possibility, and it’s certainly scary to anyone who has never experienced it.

    We grow up well-fed, decently clothed, warm and dry in our cozy homes. We watch daddy go off to work, and on our way to school look out the window of the car or school bus and see ppl on the street in shabby clothes, unkempt, with long disheveled hair and beards, pushing along a cart full of their possessions, and we are fascinated by them—till daddy tells us they are “homeless ppl” that are down on their luck or just plain sorry and miserable.

    It’s funny: we watch ppl on tv willingly take only a knife and fire-starter kit and go live for a few weeks in some god-forsaken region of the earth, eating bugs (and being eaten by them!) and worms and killing small animals to stay alive, and we identify with them. Then we see a homeless person on the street, and he is the most alien thing human to us.

    I think it would be good if the government would require—not like in Israel, that every man serve in the military for a year—but that everyone spend at least a month being homeless and on the street. Maybe we would discover that it is not as terrible as we were brought up to believe. Maybe we would find something better in it than the comfortable life that was the only one we knew. At least we would have a taste of what we only knew before, as outsiders, as a terrible thing.
  • Why being anti-work is not wrong.
    But yield who will to their separation,
    My object in living is to unite
    My avocation and my vocation
    As my two eyes make one in sight.     — T Clark

    This sentiment encapsulates the Enlightenment: if poets and philosophers become professors and Nobel-laureats, then their vocation and avocation become one. Then poets don’t have to run about blind and poor, like Homer, singing their epics, and Socrates doesn’t have to hang around in the agora questioning whoever chances along while neglecting his family.

    But it is all too neat and perfect. The truth is that your vocation, ie your job, takes you away from your avocation, ie, what you really love to do. You can take a job doing what you love to do, but the demands of the job will make you hate it—or you will pervert what you love in order that it conform to your job.

    There is no free lunch. Some problems are simply unsolvable—but must be dealt with.
  • An analysis of the shadows
    Hey it's not a grad school symposium, it's a public internet forum, and, I think, one of the better ones of its kind. I often don't agree with what others say, but I generally don't have too much trouble understanding them. — Wayfarer

    Well, I graduated from Podunksville University myself, and we didn’t use big words like epistemology and ontology and such; we talked about the everyday things we had no personal experience of, like gentlemen and cities...

    ...”Strauss merges with the authors he discussed and can be understood to be nothing more than their interpreter. Moreover, while philosophers today speak only of being and knowledge, Strauss spoke of cities and gentlemen.”

    Furthermore in this Internet age, it is a fact of life that one can peruse, graze, click through, all kinds of content, extracts, bits of books, video media, interviews, and try and extract juicy morsels from them. — Wayfarer

    At Podunksville U., we didn’t eat at a buffet, wandering over a dizzying array of tasty delectables and picking a little bit of this, a little of that hoping something would excite our jaded tastebuds. We went to the mess hall, where we were all fed the same damn cornbread and pintos, green beans and taters...it wasn’t very exciting, but it filled our bellies, and didn’t distract from solid study...like grazing a buffet would have.

    We're trying to make sense of philosophical ideas - well, I am, anyway - in such a way that they actually mean something in my non-academic and certainly-less-than-idealised existence. — Wayfarer

    At P.U. we were always taught things that actually meant something to us too, like this letter of Seneca’s: “Nectimus nodos et ambiguam significationem verbis inligamus ac deinde dissolvimus: tantum nobis vacat? iam vivere, iam mori scimus? Tota illo mente pergendum est ubi provideri debet ne res nos, non verba decipiant...Res fallunt: illas discerne. Pro bonis mala amplectimur; optamus contra id quod optavimus; pugnant vota nostra cum votis, consilia cum consiliis. Adulatio quam similis est amicitiae!...Venit ad me pro amico blandus inimicus; vitia nobis sub virtutum nomine obrepunt: temeritas sub titulo fortitudinis latet, moderatio vocatur ignavia, pro cauto timidus accipitur. In his magno periculo erramus: his certas notas imprime...”

    I won’t bother to translate this, since I’m sure you can find, in a Google search on the internet buffet, a better translation than I could produce, if you are interested enough to go to the trouble.
  • An analysis of the shadows
    The problem with these discussions, as with so many in this forum, is that they are so abstract, and use abstruse and abstract terms, like immanent and apophatic, and instantiated, and dyad, and empiricism, and quantitative relations, and on and on ad nauseum. Y’all remind me of the scientists on Swifts Flying Island, who can’t eat their food unless it is cut into geometric shapes, and want to understand a woman’s breast by observing its nipple under a microscope.

    Philosophy is not grazing, or picking and choosing from, the various arguments and reasonings or aphorisms of the philosophic traditions. Rather it is delving into the history, the stories of great men of the past and their deeds. We cannot understand Socrates’ higher intellectual notions of the forms until we have understood his relation to Aristophanes, the “wise guy” as opposed to the “wise man.” Aristophanes wrote plays that, though conveying wisdom, had to have popular appeal in order to gain success. Socrates, on the other hand, was not popular, and had no incentive to appeal to popularity. Indeed, his motivation was an appeal to a very few who he hoped might become true companions in his search for the truth.

    For example, to understand logic, we needn’t analyze sets and subsets, etc, in the abstract way it is presented in textbooks. We only need contemplate Themistocles’ answer to the Seriphian, who said to him, “It is not due to your own merit, but because you are an Athenian, that you are famous,” to which Themistocles replied, “I, had I been Serphian, would have made no name for myself; and you, had you been Athenian, would have made no name for yourself neither.”
  • An analysis of the shadows
    Moses, was it Moses?, was extremely displeased by the calf and not at all, in any way, critical about the gold. He had the golden calf destroyed. What a pity. — TheMadFool

    After its destruction he had it melted down and poured into the river, whence he forced the ppl to drink. The gold had been taken from the ears and off the necks of them, whence it had hung as vain adornment, before it was ever fashioned into an idol.

    ...it’s little different from the tale of Midas, who wished all he touched to be gold, then starved when the food he touched became inedible.
  • An analysis of the shadows
    A lot of the problem is the way 'religion' has been defined in the West, since the formation of the Christian Church. Because of the intense emphasis on 'correct belief' (orthodoxy) and the terrible consequences of having opinions deemed to be false (heresy), the secular west has deemed it preferable to walk away from the whole sorry story. — Wayfarer

    I think this history far precedes Christianity, since we know that Socrates was put to death for impiety, and Israelites were condemned for making the golden calf, etc, long before Jesus. Indeed the very word “orthodoxy” suggests Judaism, not Christianity. So it seems to me that it is universally true that primitive and ancient cultures expected the utmost in piety from their members, and imposed the harshest penalties on apostates—even in “philosophical” Athens.

    Are you not, O Viatore, the product of Western rationalism? When you make arguments, are they not based on Western rationality, the thread of rationality that began with the pre-Socratics and extends into the modern reasonings of Hegel, Nietzsche and Heidegger?

    I'm not that interested in political philosophy. What I'm concerned with is an understanding. — Wayfarer

    But the great thinkers who left their writings to us in that tradition were very political—until very recently. To say that you are instead “concerned with an understanding” is too vague to understand. I confess I don’t know anything about Buddhism—maybe I ought to look into it. But to deny an interest in political philosophy is to deprive yourself of an opportunity to understand the materials that constitute the world we all live in—for better or worse.

    You extoll Dharma: is, or was, Dharma, a religion of the ppl, or was it a way of life of only a few priests? Was it ever adopted by the political power, or did it remain an enclave of the few?
  • An analysis of the shadows
    Or can spirituality exist on an individual basis? Or does it rather require the support and participation of the community? If the latter is true, we must either be satisfied with secularism without religion, or accept war along with religion.
  • An analysis of the shadows
    The secular city walls off anything regarded as religious as being essentially an individual matter. That is of course preferable to any form of religious government, but it also leads to an impoverished culture which is technologically advanced but spiritually empty. — Wayfarer

    So how is it then preferable? Because when regimes are founded on their separate gods it leads to war? Would the world be a better place to live if there were no wars and no spirituality?
  • An analysis of the shadows
    And let’s not forget that he was making money from lecturing on Plato whilst at the same time ridiculing his teachings. Without Plato he would have remained unemployed! — Apollodorus

    I don’t remember hearing that Strauss ever became very wealthy. Bloom points out that the modern professorship is the free lunch that Socrates asked for in the Apology. What Socrates only ironically suggested, the moderns made actual and permanent. Bloom also pointed out that Socrates was not a professor, and that we must remember that fact even as we attempt to save the university.

    As for your assertion that Strauss ridiculed Plato’s teachings—I would never believe it—unless it were argued persuasively by someone who doesn’t share your own obvious prejudicial animosity toward him, howevermuch you assert you agree with some of his ideas.
  • An analysis of the shadows
    So, you want me to read what Strauss says or what Bloom says that Strauss says??? :grin: — Apollodorus

    Do you read what Socrates says, or what Plato says that Socrates says?
  • An analysis of the shadows
    In which case why take the trouble to read Plato in the first place? — Apollodorus

    This was not Strauss’ own opinion. From Bloom’s encomium to him: “He was able to do without most abstractions and to make those readers who were willing to expend the effort look at the world around them and see things afresh. He presented things, not generalizations about things. He never repeated himself and always began anew although he was always looking at the same things. To see this, one need only read the chapter on the Republic in The City and Man and observe what he learned about thymos and eros as well as about techne in what must have been his fiftieth careful reading of the Republic.”

    You should read the entirety of this epitaph of Bloom’s to his master, O Deploradore. You might just learn that Strauss was not a man to be so summarily dismissed.
  • An analysis of the shadows
    @Valentinus

    Btw, I think that is the only occasion in the Republic when Socrates refuses to answer to a request of his interlocutor, and the interlocutor doesn’t insist that Socrates comply.
  • An analysis of the shadows
    So, when the Gift of Apollo is challenged on the claim that Socrates has wrapped up his work as an investigator, he treats the idea as blasphemy against his true God. — Valentinus

    This might explain why Deploradorus flinched when I brought up the topic of Jesus. In an earlier thread, I made a comparison b/w Socrates and Jesus, noting that the former accepted his sentence, while the latter didn’t (scene in Garden of Gethsemane). The Deplorable One wouldn’t touch the topic with a ten-foot pole! He objected that I was the one who had brought up Jesus, and that he preferred to talk about Plato on his own terms (which he doesn’t).

    This makes me wonder...is Deploradorus a closet Christian? Does he require that Socrates believe in God because he does?

    When reviewing his posts, a view is revealed of a Socrates who he has passed out of the world of opinion and is basking in the light of true knowledge next to the pool outside of the cave. — Valentinus

    I know what he will bring up to support this belief, O Strongman: he will cite the passage at Rep. 533a, where Socrates responds to Glaucon’s desire to know the power and character of dialectic by saying, “You will no longer be able to follow, my dear Glaucon.” This is proof to Deplorado that Socrates IS basking by the pool outside the cave—just that he is unable to express that experience to mere mortals. How would you respond to this citation?
  • An analysis of the shadows
    Besides, Foolo is a self-described follower of Strauss. Calling his comments "Straussian" should not be offensive to him in any form or shape. If anything, it is your calling him "Morosophos" that should be offensive to him. :grin: — Apollodorus

    I think he would be more offended by you calling him “Foolo” than me calling him Morosophos; indeed, I have called him that very many times, and he has never objected to it, or even referred to it in any way. I don’t think he would ever have chosen the user-name he did if he wasn’t open to such an appellation as I have given him. Indeed, should he ever wish to change his user-name to my nickname for him, it would be both apt (linguistically), and I would be honored.

    As for the nickname I have given you—and it wasn’t my original idea: someone else suggested it—it too is very apt; and not linguistically, but rather because you deplore anything you consider anti-Platonist or Straussian, etc., and ignore patent evidence, like the evidence that I presented to you in another thread: that Plato, in his speech to the citizens who acquitted him, in the Apology, reminds us many times that the things he is relating about the afterlife are only “things said.” I showed you there that his repetitions were not stock formulae, as you suggested, yet you ignored and dismissed that evidence, indeed discounted it as Straussianism, and this proves that you are not open to learning anything from anyone else, but are stuck fast in your own prejudices, and persistent in name-calling.

    You remind me of Thrasymachus; you are bright and knowledgeable and persuasive—but there is something in your soul that is too recalcitrant, too blind to evidence, too entrenched in an already solidified belief-system...

    ...your occasional smiley-faced punctuational emojis tell it all: you are a man of style, of the moment; but you lack weight, true gravitas.
  • An analysis of the shadows
    That's Straussianism though, isn't it? — Apollodorus

    Oh, if it’s “Straussianism”, then it’s bad, eh Deploradore? This is just another example of your ad hominem attacks.
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