You say you have criticisms — Joshs

Another thought --

I have not but would like to distinguish between critique and criticism. I'd say what I'm presenting here of Nietzsche is more of a critique -- an evaluation of the limits, strengths, and qualities of a philosophy -- from the perspective of my own reading of Nietzsche. So I'm not saying something like "Nietzsche should have said this because he's wrong here for...", but instead responding to his work in the now, while using his work to read it.

The ubermensch is not a higher man, it is a critique and overcoming of humanism. — Joshs

And I agree with this higher reading of Nietzsche. A commonsense way of putting it -- if we're "Human, all too human", and nihilism is overcome, then post-humanity is the healthier approach.

Another thought that comes to mind is that I don't believe Nietzsche thought himself the overman.

That is what self-overcoming means, not a substantive subject accumulating points, enjoying witnessing the progress in the direction of its increase in health, nobility and mastery. — Joshs

Here I believe we agree. The meaning is there -- but meaning and potency aren't always the same.

Who is this subjective ‘we’ that freely chooses in a Sartrean way to follow or not to follow the normative structures of intelligibility? Does a subject exist first and then choose to participate in normative epistemological or ethical systems? Or are subjects formed as an effect of social practices of subjectivation? Do we follow normative structures or do normative structures undergird, constrain and define the criteria of the ethical good and bad for us prior to our choosing as individual ‘subjects’? That is to say, do we choose the ethical norms that bind us or do we choose WITHIN the ethical norms that produce us? — Joshs

It seems to me that we are the producers of value, and yet because of our thrownness we aren't blank slates in that production, per se -- but also I think there's a creative element to life such that new norms can be created ex nihilo, and frequently are created (and let go).

Who the subjective we that freely chooses is is pretty much the topic of my recent thread -- tl;dr, I don't know, but you're right to pinpoint Sartre as a beginning point (tho there's something in there that I don't like, I'm still working that out too -- it has to do with the emphasis on lack) -- and ultimately I'm tempted to include it in the list of fantasias.

Materially speaking we're individuated with government numbers and names which carry responsibilities and rights as well as by our passions.

But what gets synthesized unto this choosing subject changes with historical circumstance. In our case the capitalist-liberal bearer of responsibility and property. So, properly speaking, this cogito does not exist until it turns of age.

You say you have criticisms, and point out that Nietzsche can be interpreted in many ways. I’m sure you would agree that in order to be fair (and accurate) in your critique, you ned to be acquainted with the way he is read by poststructuralists like Klossowski, Focault, Deleuze, Heidegger and Derrida, who have produced some of the
most influential interpretations of him. — Joshs

I don't think that follows. I think that if I wanted post-structuralists to listen to me then that's certainly the case. And if I wanted to somehow displace Nietzsche in my critique then that'd also be wise to attend to these interpretations.

And, really, I wouldn't mind reading more anyways because that's kind of the whole thing -- just for my own edification and thinking. But for my purposes here the little interpretation is good enough for me. It's basically just Nietzsche on Nietzsche -- don't judge him on the basis of fairness and accuracy, but potency. And in particular I'm interested in popular potency amongst the herd, outside of the academy -- Nietzsche's cultural influence rather than his ideational meanings.

Basically the whole post-subject turn in philosophy is good and interesting for the academy and for people seeking a deeper Nietzsche, but that's not the Nietzsche that takes hold amongst the herd; and probably will never be in a society which emphasizes the individual.

. How, for instance. can one critique identity politics from a Nietzschean point of view? — Joshs

Is it important to do so?

It seems that identity politics would fall to the same criticism of slave morality as Christianity and Socialism, though, yes? That seems to me the most obvious move.

How can one put into question distinctions between the individual and the social, the self and the Other, as reflected in your Levinasian statement that ethics begins with others rather than the state of being or the choices of an individual?

Easy -- "What's up with that distinction? What are you saying?"

Or note how the individual is predicated by the social, or the self is born in the face-to-face of the Other. The distinctions aren't truth-apt or metaphysical, from what I can tell, but phenomenological -- temporary historically actuated concepts that make one able to speak about truth or metaphysics in the first place.

Noting how philosophy can begin anywhere we'd then proceed to drop the distinction and proceed to something else.

BUT -- and this is the important part -- not everyone would come along with us. Some would take another path, and that's what I'm more interested in.

One of the things that's missing in Nietzsche and the virtue-theoretic account in general is its focus on the soul.

What I think is easy to miss in both accounts is where I think goodness actually comes about as a topic in the first place -- ethics begins with others rather than the state of being or the choices of an individual.

I would never claim there is a correct reading of Nietzsche or any other philosopher, so you should pick a side which reveals a philosophical interpretation of Nietzsche that is the most interesting to you, pushes Nietzsche to the limits of his thinking and offers the greatest potential for usefully guiding your understanding of the world. This is what I have done. — Joshs

Yes, that explains why you don’t seem to get much use from his ideas. I wouldn’t either with a reading like that. — Joshs

I think my reading has positive things to offer it; namely, that it cuts out the parts I don't like while keeping the parts I do :D

I'm keeping a rough approximation of his genealogy, for instance, and the master/slave distinction. I keep the notion of the overman because it's the fulcrum around which my criticism rests; empirically speaking Nietzsche can be interpreted in many ways, and the overman which overcomes himself is the overman that never exists (rather than comes about as the future state of post-humanity; or at least, not yet).

But I still get a great deal of use out of his ideas. I'm skeptical of the metaphysical project in general, and so it goes with Nietzsche. (and so the Will to Power)

And I see nothing sick about slave morality, or healthy about master morality. So while I accept the distinction I'm uncertain about Nietzsche's positive evaluation of master morality.

If the world were incoherent and beyond knowledge, we wouldn’t be able to function in it, even on a perceptual level. — Joshs

I'm tempted to go down this rabbit hole, but won't for now. Mostly because the following looks pretty close to what I'm saying.

The world we actually live in provides normative structures of intelligibility, recognizable patterns on the basis of which we can anticipate events, communicate and understand each other. All this without any way of grounding our pragmatic ways of knowing and getting along in a metaphysically certain basis of the ‘way things really are’.
Notions of the good emerge out of our ensconsement within actual contingent contexts of interaction within normatively patterned social practices. That is to say, ways of being. We could say with Heidegger that Being is the event of its myriad ways of being.

Except that I don't think the genealogy of notions of the good justifies the good -- that this is still an "is", and not an "ought"; it only becomes an ought if we are passionate about following the normative structures of intelligibility. This passion comes out of nothing. We are born out of an absurd darkness, a passion ignites a mind and suddenly the world is there for a particular Dasein, and then we eventually dissipate back to the absurd darkness. The "oughts" are fantasias passed on culturally as good-enough approximations that reproduce themselves, and the environment selects which reproductive morality gets to live.

Goodness is both invented and exterior. It's tThe absurd substratum which explains this ever-changing position we find ourselves in with the desire for simple moral truths which are passed on and work, more or less, in spite of being false.

This is absurd because not only do people not have control over what is good for them, what is good for them changes on the basis of no reason whatsoever. If people desired a Master morality then, as you note, they'd be adjusted towards a healthier, gayer existence.

But factually people desire slave morality. So this tale of the overman doesn't do much for the herd.

I think the question of why one ought to do that which is good is a tautology. — Joshs

I agree. :D

But then everyone gets confused on what that tautology implies when we go about doing things.

Yes, Nietzsche can be read in many ways. The same is true of any great philosopher, and I would add that natural scientific paradigms are interpretable in as many different ways, but the abstractive nature of vocabularies in the physical sciences masks this diversity. But if you are arguing that there is no consistent substantive set of philosophical ideas that we can locate in his work, then I side with Deleuze, Foucault , Derrida, Heidegger and others who differ with you. — Joshs

Why?

I see no reason to pick a side.

I'm not against a Deleuzian reading; but if asked how I understand the text then I'm going to point out the Nietzsche is purposefully kalaidescopic, and master morality remains neutral to any particular preference.

Though I think there are misreadings -- like the fascist reading -- I don't think the the post modern reading is the correct reading because there isn't a correct reading.

Which means that master morality can "slot in" various ways that human beings want it to, and slave morality is the bad kind of morality, whatever the morality being thought of at the time is (Christianity, Socialism, Scientism, etc.)

In addition to not saying Nietzsche is an egoist, I'm not saying that he's wrong because science says it's so. I'm noting how I don't agree with Nietzsche, however, yes.

What people like is freedom from domination by others, but also freedom from inner chaos. Seeing the world as incoherent is just as imprisoning as being repressed by external authority. — Joshs

How do we ascertain that?

If the world is absurd, incoherent, beyond knowledge then there's no point in arguing over what the world consists in and we can skip straight to the point: rather than making metaphysical theses which implicate a particular ethical frame we can just talk about the good, rather than being.

The old fact/value distinction I've been relying upon to give an against the grain reading of Aristotle is the same one I'm relying upon in giving an against the grain reading of Nietzsche. While I find the dithering of the distinction interesting -- just like I find the denial of The Subject interesting -- it seems to have a way of applying all over again.

So this freedom for intelligibility from the vantage of one’s own perspective requires a world that is made recognizable, and such recognizability is a product of discursive , languaged, conceptual interactions within a social milieu. This makes us free within the systems of discursive rationality that we participate in, until the not where we become the victim of someone else’s interpretation of ‘slavish morality’, sovereign law of nature or doctrine of ethics. We are not forced into a way of understanding the world in a top-down fashion by the ‘collective’. Rather, such systems of rationality flow from one person to the next in our practices, and each interaction changes the nature of the system is some small fashion.

Eventually, a segment of the community can begin to diverge from the larger group such that they see what was formerly acceptable as repressive and unethical. What Nietzsche taught writes like Foucault and Deleuze was that it is possible el to insert oneself within a system of rationality such that one can be open to catalyzing and accelerating the transition from identified repressive structures. It’s not a question of telling people they should be unhappy with their current system of rationality, but of showing them how they can better prepare themselves when it inevitably collapses. Master morality amounts to this eternal vigilance and preparation for self-transformation in the face of suffering.

To emphasize -- I like this reading very much. I think it's a good reading of Nietzsche, rather than a degenerate reading like the fascist reading. I'm not opposed to this so much as sticking to my criticism that Nietzsche doesn't answer the titular question -- why ought one do that which is good?


Does master morality always lead to an eternal vigilance and preparation for self-transformation in the face of suffering?

I think, rather, that suffering is as valorized as the other forces which lead one out of nihilism.

And, all the same, it does seem you agree that Nietzsche prefers master morality over slave morality, yes?

Again, how are you understanding health and nobility for Nietzsche? It is not about a ‘constant striving’. Who is doing the striving? A self? Doesn’t striving imply a pre-existing purpose or aim on the basis of which to strive? — Joshs

The healthy and the noble are those who follow the way of the overman. They are...

..beyond good and evil because it constantly erases and displaces its history, and with it previous standards and principles of morality. — Joshs

They are the tablet breakers. They aspire to heights beyond; the mere enlightenment self is a concept. I'm not casting Nietzsche as an egoist, though that he can easily be read this way is a point in my favor in pointing out that he is unrealistic.

What I think is true of Nietzsche is he presents a kaleidoscopic mirror. The aphoristic approach makes it such that there is no true Nietzsche at all -- there are perspectives on Nietzsche, like Deleuze's, and there are other perspectives which read him more as a modernist. There isn't a true perspective so much as a perspectival truth. This applies to Nietzsche as well, such that there is no true reading of Nietzsche -- there was a Deleuzian reading of Nietzsche, and there was a fascist reading of Nietzsche, and there's the historical reading of Nietzsche, and there's the intentional reading of Nietzsche, and there's the leftist Nietzsche, the Christian Nietzsche, and the analytic Nietzsche, and the silly reading of Nietzsche which ought be included in the ever updating persona that is the new Nietzsche.

Nietzsche is a philosopher which can be read as giving mastery to many different preferences -- I think he purposefully contradicts himself in such a way that to insist on a reading is to already agree with his perspectivism because now you've adopted one of the perspectives he has presented.

So, what say you? Does Nietzsche prefer master morality or slave morality?

I have no qualms with defining slave morality by the ascetic ideal. I'm noting that people like the ascetic ideal. They want to be sick. They desire slavish morality.

If we follow the ascetic ideal then nihilism is a natural consequence. I'm contending that's not so bad after all, and the Nietzsche's heroic effort to save morality fails because when it's dissiminated it comes back to the very things he wants to overcome -- the reading at large is individualistic. Power is a craving from an individual standpoint to engage in the same old moralities which are nothing but economies of pain.

The overman would be beyond good and evil and overcome himself -- but we are merely human, and so the book is not for us. It's a philosophers' ideal which is good for reflection, and so I've been maintaining unrealistic for the question of ethics.

Sure, if we weren't animals born from an amoral process which allows us to be vicious or kind because both of these dispositions are needed for reproductive fitness then maybe there'd be some titanic conflict of forces we cannot help but participate in which brings us beyond good and evil.

But all is atoms and void, not pathos. We come from an absurd darkness and so we will return. So I find the various metaphysical theses of Nietzsche to be imaginative ways of overcoming the absurd nihilism staring him in the face -- hence the perspectivalism, the attack on truth, etc.

But what if people just didn't care about this higher reading of Nietzsche, and stuck to the sick truth of transcendent goods which they only do because it's good? What does "remembering" Nietzsche's true meaning matter? And given the emphasis on potency doesn't that indicate a kind of failure of overcoming The Subject, of becoming post-man or after the death of man?

The ubermensch is not a higher man, it is a critique and overcoming of humanism. Not the elevation of man after the death of God , but the death of man. Not self-improvement but self-overcoming. As Foucault put it

“As the archaeology of our thought easily shows, man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end.

The death of man implies the death of the subject and the ego. Nietzsche writes:
The 'I' (which is not the same thing as the unitary government of our being!) is, after all, only a conceptual synthesis - thus there is no acting from 'egoism’… The concept of the 'individual' is false. In isolation, these beings do not exist: the centre of gravity is something changeable; the continual generation of cells, etc., produces a continual change in the number of these beings… “…mixing in the concept of number, the concept of subject, the concept of motion: we still have our eyes, our psychology in the world. If we eliminate these ingredients, what remains are not things but dynamic quanta in a relationship of tension with all other dynamic quanta, whose essence consists in their relation to all other quanta, in their 'effects' on these - the will to power not a being, not a becoming, but a pathos-is the most elementary fact, and becoming, effecting, is only a result of this. — Joshs

But does he overcome humanism, after all? Does the subject fade with Nietzsche's positive project, or does it resurface? It seems to me to resurface -- the "I" is a synthesis, one isn't acting from ego, but rather towards what is noble, healthy, flourishing. But we remain human all the same. We remain couched in our individuality.

Just what is "healthy" about the constant creation of value over the holding to a principle? I see no reason to reject principles just because they lead to nihilism.

Nietzsche's sickness appears to me to be a perfectly viable ethical frame. I don't see how it's a sickness -- I think it's just a matter of preference.

Further, I think you're showing just in what way Nietzsche's solution to the problem of ethics is unrealistic. I haven't said that his is an egoism. I see Nietzsche as a dreamer who dreams of a healthy existence, and so he feels a certain disdain for that unhealthy existence. It requires a constant striving, whereas humanity stays about neutral ethically speaking -- they want similar things now as they did back then. It is my belief that we are animals -- I am a materialist -- and nothing more than that.

Surely you agree that Nietzsche prefers the healthy and noble master morality, yes?

I can see describing our masters as slaves, and slaves as masters -- the master/slave distinction has to do more with why someone does something. Any given action can be justified within a master or slave frame -- the master donates to causes out of a sense of beneficence, because they desire that cause to flourish. The slave donates to causes out of a sense of fear, because it's "the right thing", or it follows the rules.

I see the description as helpful as a descriptive frame. I'm skeptical of the valorization of master morality over slave morality, though -- so in the Deleuze quote he's saying that master morality is the good morality and slave morality is the bad morality of the people who are in control of our society.

But Nietzsche's solution to this problem strikes me as pretty unrealistic. For one it only applies to ubermensch -- people who act out of a sense of nobility for what is higher in spite of suffering, or even seek out suffering to improve themselves. The slaves can't even strive to this morality; their lesser morality is written by the masters.

Since the ubermensch doesn't even exist -- his book is for all and none -- it's very much a philosopher's solution to the problem of ethics. Further, if we are slaves, then it simply doesn't speak to us.

I think it fair to say, though we can re-interpret master morality in favor of what we care about, that Nietzsche holds contempt for the herd, for socialists, and all their ilk.

Yeah I'm riffing on Nietzsche, though I don't know about the whole "Will to Power" part of his philosophy -- though I think his critical and descriptive project is good to reflect on for the question of ethics and the good -- I don't know to what extent Nietzsche is being sincere in different parts of his writing. Sometimes it feels like it's absolutely ironic to the point that he doesn't intend, but interprets and speaks with the language around him at the time such that he's holding up a mirror.

Also, I think nihilism isn't so bad. And I question the extent to which suffering actually is meaningful. I think of pain as absolutely absurd -- there is no deep mystery or wisdom in pain. It is just a brute absurdity we have to learn to deal with.

And lastly I think Nietzsche valorizes heightened states or excellent persons far too much. While master/slave morality is descriptive I definitely get a sense throughout his writing that he prefers master morality, whereas I'd say I prefer slave morality, and the wisdom of the herd.

Lastly, I'm skeptical of hierarchies, where Nietzsche seems to almost equate hierarchies with value.

Yes, and they would feel the same at random, according to arbitrary desires, so we should expect overlap to be roughly random.

So, supposing human desire is "arbitrary," why then have I never seen people slamming their hands in their car door for fun or having competitions to see how much paint they can drink? People tend to do a very narrow range of the things they could possibly do. Why do hot tubs sell so well when digging a hole so you can sit in a pool of muddy, fetid, cold water is so much easier and cheaper? Why is murder and rape illegal everywhere, but nowhere has decided to make pears or bronze illegal? What's with people going through such lengths to inject heroin but no one ever inject barbecue sauce, lemon juice, or motor oil?

Sure seems like a lot of similarity for something arbitrary. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Much like the rest of life the environmental pressures select for the passions which lead to reproductive fitness. I think something similar happened with societies, except the selection mechanism was justified cruelty -- insofar that a society can justify expansion and cruelty it will outgrow other societies which prioritize kindness and peace because the cruel will outwit the kind, take their stuff, and kill them.

We are the descendents of the barbarians ruthless enough to live.



Also, for each question you pose in order:

People do hurt themselves for fun sometimes.
Just recently people ate tidepods as a challenge.
Hot tubs sell because they are advertised -- though sometimes people seek out the muddy waters for those special minerals.
Murder and rape is not illegal everywhere -- but the preponderance of a legal system I think can be traced back to capitalist and colonial expansion.
And among the small group of people that inject heroin they do it because they are attached to that feeling or cycle -- a passion -- where the others don't provide that feeling.

So then they aren't desired arbitrarily. Science is pursued because it shows us how to do things, indeed, in a certain sense it makes us free to do things that we otherwise could not. At the same time, you also mention wonder. Science is sought for its own sake.

But I'd argue that the desire for truth and understanding is not properly a passion nor an appetite. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Why?

It makes perfect sense to me: Why doesn't everyone enjoy science? They aren't attached to it, or feel a particular aversion to it for one or another reason. The teacher's job who teaches science is to figure that out to the extent that the student can be motivated to learn. If someone fears science because they've been told it's "for girls", for instance, it's important to attempt to assuage that fear. If a person feels frustration because they are unable to pay attention then it's important to accomodate that frustration.

Science is sought for its own sake -- by nerds. But not everyone. The nerds are the ones who are passionate about it such that it seems to have an intrinsic value, where it is done for its own sake; when one is passionate about something like that then it is a thirst that can never be fully quenched. One that maybe could be put to the side sometimes for other things, once one knows that there is no such state as fulfillment, but rather the pursuit itself is the point.

But surely not everyone can be so passionate about the same thing in a functioning society.

In his A Secular Age Charles Taylor does a pretty great job tracing this to the Reformation period and the rise of "neo-stoicism" and the idea of the "buffered self." So, the overlap with homuncular or "Cartesian theater" theories is no accident. Yet this is decidedly not how Plato was received when Platonism was particularly dominant. Aside from Taylor, C.S. Lewis's The Discarded Image does a good job capturing the old model of the porous self:

The daemons are 'between' us and the gods not only locally and materially but qualitatively as well. Like the impassible gods, they are immortal: like mortal men, they are passible (xiii). Some of them, before they became daemons, lived in terrestrial bodies; were in fact men. That is why Pompey saw Semidei Manes, demigod-ghosts, in the airy region. But this is not true of all daemons. Some, such as Sleep and Love, were never human. From this class an individual daemon (or genius, the standard Latin translation of daemon) is allotted to each human being as his ' witness and guardian' through life (xvi).It would detain us too long here to trace the steps whereby a man's genius, from being an invisible, personal, and external attendant, became his true self, and then his cast of mind, and finally (among the Romantics) his literary or artistic gifts. To understand this process fully would be to grasp that great movement of internalisation, and that consequent aggrandisement of man and desiccation of the outer universe, in which the psychological history of the West has so largely consisted. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Cool.

A Secular Age is one of thems that's been on my mind as something that could be interesting, but it's thickness is intimidating for someone like me -- I know it'll be interesting, but I'm bound to disagree with a lot of it. :D

I don't think I've taken up a side of chaos or wallowing -- just the same old boring technique of reading the books, thinking about them, talking about them with others, and rethinking about them, and retalking about them, and . . . :D

Thank you :).

Socrates, the hero of the Platonic corpus, is executed by a mob though. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Socrates is the embodiment of the myth -- not quite a God, but somehow higher than average or corrupt people.

He chooses to be executed by a mob because reason guides him that way. -- drinking doesn't effect his ability to think, and cold weather didn't effect him. Even when given an escape route to continue to live his life he dies by his own rational choosing; the apology could have been given in a manner which might have eased Socrates' punishment, but he chose to speak the truth to who he knew would execute him all in the service of the Good of the city due to the light of reason.

Isn't the question rather whether or not people can be more or less unified, more or less free? Plato, and those who follow him don't have many creating himself out of the aether. The polis, the social whole, in particular looms large, and we might suppose that societies themselves can be more or less free to actualize their goals (and to have choice-worthy goals).

This seems like more a counter to a strawman version of Plato to be honest. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Probably so -- Plato's a deep thinker and there's always a way to reflect out towards another, more charitable interpretation.

But it seems a popular image, at least -- the Rational Being Controlling Emotion. The Charioteer Guiding. There's a part of the image that I like -- that one is along for the ride -- but the part that I do not like is the idea of a charioteer choosing. Taken literally it's a homuncular fallacy -- we explain the mind by assuming a minded person within the mechanism of the mind.

Plato himself doesn't commit this, I don't believe -- it's a myth, for crying out loud! All of Plato is mythic!

But look to the popularity of the stoics to see how popular the image of the Rational Man Controlling His Emotions is.

Science has no teleology? Might it have something to do with knowledge, perhaps? The germ theory of disease and antibiotics aren't progress in medicine?

I don't find that plausible.

When people debate over the causes of global warming or of the collapse in bee populations, aren't they interested primarily in accuracy and truth? And can't explanations of the world be more or less true?

There is a direction for progress right there, unless you want to say 16th century science is no more accurate and true than 21st? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Nope, I don't believe science has a teleology. If it did -- towards truth and accuracy, say -- it wouldn't be so hopscotch as it is. It's clear to me that truth and accuracy are important to any field of knowledge because we like it to be so, and furthermore, that it's not just truth and accuracy that guide scientists or wonderers of the world. There's wonder. There's greed. There's pride. Desperation. Usefulness.

Basically a whole host of desires.

That doesn't counter truth and accuracy. But it demonstrates how rational discourse is motivated by very human passions rather than Reason.

Reason is the referee. Passion is why we do it. When their powers combine we get Captain Rational ;)

So an advance in medicine tells us a little tiny bit about the world -- it does not increase the accuracy of our world-picture, or our ontological understanding of the world. Studies about global warming and bee-populations are about global warming and bee-populations, not The World.

And why are people impressed by what they are impressed by? Why are people impressed by flying machines or satellite internet? — Count Timothy von Icarus

The economy -- these are useful for war, agriculture, production, etc.

Presumably, what impresses people and what we take to be the goals of the sciences, the productive arts, etc. is not arbitrary. If it was arbitrary, then no man should agree with any other about what those goals should be. Yet that isn't the case.

I don't think that follows --

if it were arbitrary people could agree insofar that they feel the same.

Right, and you can write off almost anyone before 1960 for supporting Jim Crow or colonialism. And future generations will like as not write us off for eating meat. But you could just as well write off people today because they wear clothes made by impoverished child workers in southeast Asia or use phones and computers packed with rare earth metals mined by slaves, and buy groceries harvested and processed by migrant workers who are often treated on par with ancient agricultural slaves. People have been remarking on the lack of a real difference between slavery and wage slavery since at least Cicero, who was well acquainted with both.*

(And I should note, the idea is not that earning a wage is slavery, but rather that the two can become virtually indistinguishable. For instance, the economic system in late-republican Rome, the growth of the latifundium and massive influx of slave labor, made the material conditions of slaves and many freedmen employed at large estates materially indistinguishable and led to people oscillating between both statuses based on good or ill fortune and an ability to keep up with debts). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Have I written off Plato and Aristotle in this in saying they are good to read? I'd say this is just part of reading the text -- there's the with the grain reading and the against the grain reading, and you can kind of pick and choose which reading depending upon how the arguments strike you.

They're masters of philosophy, but human for all that.

As for the future generations: I don't mind the idea of a future harsher judge of myself. I'll be dead, and maybe the world will be better. Also I don't have any qualms in pointing out the present day conditions of slavery in the world -- I don't think things have gotten very much better since the days of Plato.

A few things, sure. But in terms of Good? Are human beings really any better today than they were when Plato was writing?

I don't think so.

I'd say it's question begging sophistry (in precisely the way Plato frames sophistry). To make the distinction is to have already presupposed that there are not facts about what is good. Now, thanks to the theological issues I mentioned earlier in this thread, such a position was already common by Hume's time. It went along with fideism and a sort of anti-rationalism and general backlash against the involvement of philosophy in faith (and so in questions of value), all a century before Hume.

Hume argues to this position by setting up a false dichotomy. Either passions (and we should suppose the appetites) are involved in morality or reason, but not both. Yet I certainly don't think he ever gives a proper explanation of why it can't be both (univocity is a culprit here of course). For most of the history of philosophy, the answer was always both (granted, Hume seems somewhat unaware of much past philosophy, and his successor Nietzsche seems to get his entire view of it from a particularly bad reading of the Phaedo and not much else from Plato).

It's sophistry because it turns philosophy into power relations and dominance. Hume admits as much. "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions” (T 2.3. 3.4)." This is Socrates fighting with Thacymachus, Protagoras, and that one guy who suggests that "justice" is "whatever we currently prefer" in the Republic (his name escapes me because he has just one line and everyone ignores him, since, were he right, even the sophists would lose, since there is no need for their services when being wrong is impossible). The only difference is that now the struggle is internalized. This certainly goes along with Hume (and Nietzsche's) view of the self as a "bundle of sensations" (or "congress of souls"). Yet, Plato's reply is that this is simply what the soul is like when it is sick, morbid.

Just from the point of view of the philosophy of language it seems pretty far-fetched. Imagine someone yelling:

"Your hair is on fire."
"You are going to be late for work."
"You're hurting her."
"Keep doing that and you'll break the car."
"You forgot to carry the remainder in that calculation."
"You are lying."
"You didn't do what I asked you to."
"That's illegal."
"You're going to hurt yourself doing that."
"There is a typoo in this sentence."

...or any other such statements. There are all fact claims. They are all normally fact claims people make in order to spur some sort of action, and this is precisely because the facts (generally) imply oughts. "Your hair is on fire," implies "put the fire on your head out." And such an ought is justifiable by the appetites (desire to avoid pain), passions (desire to avoid the opinions of others related to be disfigured or seen to be stupid), and reason (the desire to fullfil rationally held goals, which burning alive is rarely conducive to).

At least on the classical view, the division is incoherent. There are facts about what are good or bad for us. To say "x is better than what I have/am, but why ought I seek it?" is incoherent. What is "truly good" is truly good precisely because it is desirable, choice-worthy, what "ought to be chosen" (of course, things can merely appear choice-worthy, just as they can merely appear true). Why should we choose the most truly choice-worthy? We might as well ask why we should prefer truth to falsity, or beauty to ugliness or why 1 is greater than 0. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Part of what philosophy does is seek the truth. I think that in seeking the truth we find out that the myth of the charioteer is a fantasy born of the ancient's preoccupation with invulnerability -- the invulnerable man could guide the horses, the truly great man would be in control of the self, etc.

However I think what we learn from psychology is that people do not control themselves in this manner. There isn't a charioteer that's part of the soul, but rather, this is an image to aspire to that no one achieves.

This is because we are human. It's our finitude.

What this doesn't do is say there are no facts involved in moral decisions. Rather, in order to make an inference with an "ought", one needs a passion to connect the fact to the "ought". There is no "normal situation" which these statements sit within wherein they can be generically evaluated as usually this or that way -- or, rather, we can but all it really says is "This is what I think", or "Where I come from, this means that"

Nor does it turn philosophy into a power struggle. It's an honest appraisal of what makes the philosopher tick: a love for wisdom. The philosopher isn't any less human than anyone else, they just care about reason more than most do. Were it a power struggle then reason wouldn't be the tool being used. Guns are better at that than words.

In the 19th century there were many competing theories of heat and electromagnetism. There was phlogiston, caloric, aether, etc. Are we best of returning to the specific, isolated theories, or looking at how what is good in each can be unified?

You might say "but the natural sciences are different, they make progress." And I would agree. It's easier to make progress when one studies less general principles. Yet they don't always make progress. Recall the Nazi's "Aryan physics" or Stalin's "communist genetics." The natural sciences can backslide into bad ideas and blind allies. It is easier for philosophy to do so. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Heh -- I would not say that the natural sciences make progress in any way which differentiates it from the other disciplines of human beings. Human beings continue to engage in various practices, and they change based upon what those human beings care about and do. Theatre has advanced from a previous period, and yet it has no ultimate teleology towards which it should strive. Likewise for science, and philosophy.

Progress is a measure of how impressed people are with a series of events, rather than a thing which happens.

In that vein it seems to me that going back to Aristotle as if he knew the good is definitely a step back. If someone owned slaves I sort of have to take what they have to say about goodness with a grain of salt -- we clearly have different priorities.

Maybe "of affairs"?

The "Nihilsum" represents a state that defies conventional logic by existing in a realm between what we establish as being and non-being — mlles

Seems we must conclude it's a representation of a state.

There are two ways to go here. On the one hand we could say that ancients and moderns both ask what is good, but the moderns also do something that the ancients did not do (and that this breaks the supposed discontinuity between them). On the other hand we could observe that for very many moderns, asking what is good is a pointless and otiose question (Michael and Amadeus are two clear examples of this). — Leontiskos

I choose path one.

What then?

I'm not sure there are ancients who are as explicit as Hume -- so I'm saying he's making an advance in ethical thinking in pointing out how is/ought frequently get conflated as if they have the same import.

The important thing to note that I think might be misunderstood is that this doesn't mean we can't be moral beings -- one interpretation of Hume's ethical theory is that morality is real, and justified by the passions.

So he's attacking a sacred cow of the philosophers, but he's not jumping in to declare a fallacy or something like that.

On it's face, this idea that there is strong continuity between ancient and modern ethics is false. I think you may be conflating it with a different contention, namely the claim that ancient remedies cannot solve modern problems. — Leontiskos

I think I am, though I have some theories in the background -- that are mostly feels at the moment -- which ought be set aside. I think I can still defend my position, though. Hume's clarification is an advance in thinking because it was a point of confusion which could hide arguments prior to him. Also, the fallacy is only to list a fact as a value -- Hume links values to facts through passions.

It's because it's through the passions that his theory is controversial -- but it can be argued to be a (kind of) realism.

Even J's approach seems to challenge this continuity, for he thinks that Kant's view is uniquely correct. If Kant's view is uniquely correct and is not a continuation of earlier moral philosophy, then how could Kant be continuous with earlier moral philosophy? — Leontiskos

I've been reading along but not that closely.

What say you to this @J ?

"Ancient and modern ethics are continuous/similar because they both ________." — Leontiskos

...ask, "What's good?"

This view of a continuity between ancient and modern ethics is similar to what I’ve been saying to Count T, if you’ve been following that conversation. — J

I have! And I agree.

I agree that the disagreements among ancient ethical systems may be evidence for this view. Even more striking, to me, is the fact that ethical discourse—and disagreement— has gone on, right into the present. If ethical truth had indeed been achieved in the context of virtue ethics, the continued dispute about it would need some explaining.

I think the idea is something like modern thinking broke us off from ancient thinking to such a point that modern thought has lost the fundamental truth of philosophy -- wisdom -- in place of whatever it is pursuing right now (the idea here being that the ancients have a kind of "time tested" wisdom)

I don’t remember — does MacIntyre offer some account of why things went so downhill? Why did Western culture end up in this “Canticle for Liebowitz” situation?

It's been entirely too long since i've read to remember the specifics of his account. I remember it turned me onto naturalistic virtue-theoretic moral realism, and a lot of my arguments in this thread are a result of reading up on that.

Well, for this you need metaphysics to explain why the Good is a principle and why we should think it is a unified principle.

Do Stoicism, Platonism, Aristotelianism, Christianity, Taoism, Confucianism, and Epicureanism all have totally different views of what is good? It doesn't seem to me that they do; there is a lot of overlap. So, we might assume some unity there. — Count Timothy von Icarus

We might, and it would look plausible -- but that is kind of the point I'm disputing here :D.

Which isn't to say that synthetic accounts are wrong -- I'm fine with synthetic accounts and attempts to reconcile positions. They're just as interesting as why someone may want to divide from a position.

The sense I get is that good is as commonsensical as eating bread when hungry, at least if we go back to the ancient world prior to modern philosophical inventions that cause confusion.

That seems too rosey to me -- and looks like MacIntyre's thoughts in After Virtue, at least by my memory, which is why I've been saying I think this is an overpromise. His book is great for highlighting the importance of virtue-theoretic approaches, but I don't think that the ancient mind is so different from the modern mind that modern philosophy cut out some inner wisdom that the ancients possessed. I think they're scrambling in the dark just as much as any of us are.

And my evidence is that they didn't agree. Conceptually Christianity and Epicureanism is easier to divide, though there's the funny bit of timelines -- but historically even the Stoics and Epicureans disagreed and competed over students, and they were contemporaries in the ancient world with the concerns of the ancient world and a fuller philosophy behind their thoughts to "ground" the ethical answers.

It's all really good stuff. I just don't think the moderns tripped across a problem of their own invention, but rather that the problem was alive and well in ancient times -- it just didn't have the clarification yet. The ancient mind distinguished between facts and values, in which case the conceptual resources are there to construct the naturalistic fallacy, the open question argument, and all the stuff Moore brought up about the meaning of good.

Certainly, the Patristics didn't seem to think "the philosophers," had a totally different idea of goodness from that of Christianity. "All truth is God's truth," after all. Sometimes Pope Francis's: "All religions are paths to God. I will use an analogy, they are like different languages that express the divine." is taken to be an arch post-modern hersey, but it's simply the same Logos universalism that has been around since the Church Fathers, and which is enshrined in the Catechism (also, better apologetics than calling people infidels or pagans). — Count Timothy von Icarus

I remember seeing Pope Francis calling communists Christians, and I couldn't help but laugh.

We are Christians when not in power, and just as good as Satanists when the fascists are in power, deserving of death.

Good apologetics, as you note -- but I don't think it's true.

We can make good political allies, depending upon the circumstances, but I don't think good is that all-encompassing.

Presumably, there is some way to decide between "is statements," else knowledge is impossible. And there are also arguments that we might say warrant more of less credence, while being far from certain. — Count Timothy von Icarus

For the Epicurean there are two ways -- the evidence of the senses, and the lowering of anxiety. Knowledge is a tool for human beings.

One of the parts of the four-part cure says something like "The Gods do not care about your actions/There are no magic powers in the world" -- it applied equally to people who tried to live their life to appease gods as well as to people who would sacrifice animals, etc., to gods. These are viewed as superstitions which do nothing but cause anxiety, and we need look no further than our senses to see this is so.

But, really, I think the "is-statements" of the ontology are selected on the basis of how well they fit into the ethical frame. Similar so for Stoicism, and all the ancients: the metaphysical structure is a painting of the ethical core that justifies the ethical core as if it were an object of knowledge.

The issue of "choice" to me is simply embarking seriously on any ethical life and the life of philosophy itself. As St. Augustine and St. Anselm say, we must "have faith that we might understand," since no practical theory of the ethical life will be fully apparent to us at first glance. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think what it shows is that facts and values are different. Even with the interplay between what a creature is and values -- it's not a philosophical mistake to note that people choose different things in similar circumstances. The facts being the same, they choose differently. So we cannot just point to the facts -- there is bread -- and pretend we've also said "If you are hungry then you ought to eat bread" because we said it in a conversation with a hungry person. Some people, even when hungry, don't eat. It could be a hunger strike, or a neurological disconnect which prevents the person from acting on the physiological signals of hunger, or a fast -- and when you place the bread in front of them they will not eat because they do not believe "If you are hungry then you ought to eat bread"

Also, I feel I should note that no one in the classical tradition says that everyone should be contemplatives. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is why I said I thought you are taking a vertical perspective -- you're looking up the ladder to climb to higher heights. Which is also why I brought up the ubermensch -- it's very much in that vein if I want to bring up a horizontal perspective, one which is towards the horizon and amongst the herd that we are all a part of.

If the contemplative life is what is best, and the contemplative life is not for everyone, then not everyone will have what is best.

That's fine for a cadre of masters passing on wisdom.

But I'm looking outwards, and also I have no pretense to being a part of such a monastic life -- I see the tower from the outside.

Which, obviously, I like the products of the tower and am in their debt. So that life is not my target.

On a related note, St. Palladius's "Saying of the Desert Fathers," opens with a story like this. Three saints are together and leave to go do good in the world. One is given the gift of healing and heals. One is given the gift of teaching and teaches. They do this for many years. Yet both eventually grow discouraged because death and dishonesty still abound in the fallen world.

The last saint went out to the desert to pray for the world in solitude. Years later, the other two come to join him, both beaten down by the world. He tells them to stir the well he has dug and look inside. They do, and all they can see is the clouds of dirt, a sea of small granules obscuring everything.

He tells them to wait, and an hour later asks them to look again. This time they can see clear to the bottom, and the light of the Sun is clearly reflected, allowing them to see themselves.

"So it is with the spirit is the moral." To see both the light of God and the inner self requires stillness, hesychasm. But the other moral is that even the hermit ends up helping people, and it's the same way in St. Athanasius' St. Anthony the Great and other hermit stories. There is no fully contemplative life, it's always active as well, because eros leads up and agape pours down. — Count Timothy von Icarus

And I'd say that contemplatives are good -- insofar that the contemplative is enjoying that life, ie., is not filled with anxiety in the pursuit. The part Epicurus would point out about the ecstasies of spiritual life is that these are the "middle ground" pleasures -- not necessary but a natural pleasure (sex is another pleasure that falls into this category). So insofar that one's pursuit of these goods doesn't incur anxiety they are fine, but if you're anxious because you're not having enough sex then your attachment to sex is the cause of your pain and you ought to attend to that desire, lower it, so that you can remain calm.

The bit I'm targeting is that it's the best life -- it's the best life for contemplatives, but not for not-contemplatives. For Epicurus he was something like a doctor of the community; and just like the dentist is important he was important, but a little more influential given that he worked on the souls of people rather than their teeth.

But, once the job is done, Epicurus is no more a master than the student. They are on equal terms. If they want to pick up the trade then they can study, but that doesn't make them a better person -- the lack of anxiety is the highest good, not the ability to cure people.

I want to finish Sartre's section on temporality before I respond, but I've had to restart a few times and at least want to pass along that you've helped me think through these thoughts, so thanks.

A preview of my thinking is that Sartre and Descartes aren't as much in conflict as I was initially thinking, given your reading.

People refuse to accept that the Earth is round, they deny the germ theory of infectious disease, they think floride in their water is a mind control technique, they disagree about what the value of 1/0 should be, or if something can simultaneously both be and not-be in an unqualified sense. Rarely, if ever, do demonstrations in any sense "force" people to see the correctness of some view. — Count Timothy von Icarus

To place bread in front of someone who is hungry does not involve me in any "oughts", just "is's," and yet we know exactly what the person will do. The common person knows why: you ought to eat when you are hungry. — Leontiskos

I think that, like so much of Hume's thought, the Guillotine relies on question begging. Hume is a diagnostician, seeing what follows from the assumptions and prejudices of his era. But ask most people "why is it bad for you if I burn out your eyes, or if I burn out your sons eyes," and the responses will be something like:

"If you burn out my eyes it would be incredibly painful and then I would be blind, so of course it wouldn't be good."

The response: "ah ha! Look, you're tried to justify a value statement about goodness with facts!" and the idea that what is "good" doesn't relate to these facts is prima facie ridiculous here. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The choice I laid out was between Christ and Epicurus as an obvious counter-example from the ancient world of two ethical doctrines of thought which conflict. Both of them rely upon is-statements.

What this is meant to highlight is that just because you have some is-statements -- a "What is it for this kind of creature to be good?" -- that doesn't remove the conflict found in modern philosophy, from here:

I do think this is a problem modern ethics creates for itself. It tends to be more rules based (an after effect of the Reformation and theologies that precluded any strong role for human virtue). Even as the theology has crumbled, the structure has often remained. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Even if we switch from rules or consequences to the development of character due to the kind of creature we are there is still the question --

Why should one, in the general sense, do good is much harder for me to answer than why the good is attractive. — Moliere

"Because it's good for you", sure -- but which one?

It's easy to say that I'm an Epicurean because Epicurus is attractive to me. But it's much harder to generalize that to some general person.

I'd say that everyday people's reasoning about ethical matters is subtle, and recognizes the distinction between what is and what should be, and that the hungry person will agree that they eat the bread because they desire the bread rather than because the bread is there.

Actually, from the Epicurean point of view, it could be argued that the herd's ethical reasoning is too subtle -- what plagues people are these ideas which cause anxiety, and so the ideas must be removed so that the person can attend to the simple and obvious pleasures of life rather than fretting over what they have no control over.

I'm not particularly sure what you're expecting, someone to decide for you? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Oh no, nothing like that. I'm laying out how there's a choice at all -- so the move from modern ethics to ancient ethics doesn't get around the various trappings of modern ethics because we can still isolate different ways of thinking, even in the ancient world, and so the subject must make a choice. The question "Why ought one do what is Good?" is still meaningful even with a richer philosophy to draw from in answering questions -- it's not some failing of modern ethics to point out that this is so.

Basically Hume's guillotine still chops.

Is the idea that anyone who affirms a certain ethics or metaphysics shall become perfected by it if it is "the right one?" But this runs counter to the philosophy underpinning many systems of ethics. Epictetus claims most "free men" are, in truth, slaves. Plato doesn't have everyone being easily sprung from the cave. Christ says at Matthew 7:22-23:

"Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’" — Count Timothy von Icarus

The idea is that virtue cannot be taught, and therefore is not a knowledge. When the ethical philosophers throw up there hands at the masses and declare themselves the truly free ones and the rest of the world deluded by vice I tend to believe we've stumbled upon an ethical transcendental argument -- the only possible way we can be good is....


But if there is more than one virtuous life -- aside from the contemplative life, or the life of the politician, or the life of the family -- then the lawlessness of the Other is the Other's true freedom. They are free from the ethicists desires and following their own.

Attempting a summary -- the ancients are good to read but don't provide all the answers to what goodness is. And even if we study the philosophers that doesn't mean we know more about goodness than someone who has not studied. It could be the reason we're so interested in ethics is because we're terrible at it, and the person who is good at it has no need to study.

Maybe for many of the Stoics, and arguably for Aristotle, but I think what ataraxia normally describes is just the lower stages of the "beatific vision." — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'd say the most notable exception is Epicurus, who would argue that the "later stages" are fine for contemplatives who want to live the life of the mind, but his task is to teach ataraxia because he has found it beneficial to himself.

And by that metric, at least...

I'm not sure if I get what you mean here. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I mean that not many people achieve ataraxia in the Christian way of life. Some do, but I don't see it as any more or less than any other way of life. From what I see Christians are about as anxious as the rest of humanity, which leads me to believe that they do not have a special knowledge about what is good according to the Epicurean way of life.

This all by way of making the point that we can follow others in valuing virtue-theoretic approaches, but I don't see the virtue theorist as escaping any of the problems which deontologists or consequentialists or specifications therein deal with -- that this is something of an overpromise. The ancients are interesting because they give us a point to reflect from but they don't overcome the problem of choice -- which is to say, should I follow Christ, or should I follow Epicurus?

If all is atoms and void and there is no afterlife and God doesn't care how I live my life then surely the highest good is to be content with the unfolding of being no matter which way it goes because we have very little control. Or, at least, I'd put it to you that this is a different good from the Christian good, which relies upon the promise of everlasting life (be it tomorrow or now): The Epicurean cautions against such thoughts because they aren't knowable in the first place, and since the Gods care nothing for us it's clear that Christ couldn't have walked on this Earth -- there never was a God that became man. The Gods are already perfect unto themselves and do not concern themselves with our life. This is just another case of human beings wanting to be more than what they are, which puts them into a state of anxiety for not achieving what they cannot be.

Basically I think the reason the Stoics are read more now is because it got along with Christianity in its hatred of the body, while Epicurus wrote a material and bodily philosophy that has little patience for desires which lead one to be anxious.

I feel like there is a wealth of evidence from the psychology literature to support the notion that virtue (or some instrumental approximation of it) can be taught, or that education is conducive to virtue. But, since virtue is self-determining, no education ensures virtue. Alcibiades has Socrates as a teacher and it doesn't save him from vice.

Overall though, I think the effects of mass education, as poorly as it might be implemented, are still a huge net positive. For one, it makes societies more self-determining, more able to reach collective goals. Certain desirable social systems are unworkable without most citizens having some sort of education. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I have no doubt that we can look at where our students are at now -- A -- and devise ways to help them grow and learn -- to become B.

I think education a good, but I'd separate it out from the topic at hand.

My point is more that we have to decide what B is.

So if we have a cohort of young people who have only known growing up and we need to turn them into soldiers then there are a set of steps we can take which will produce measurable outcomes whereby we can assert whether or not pupil 1 has or how they have become B.

We are all connected to one another, so I do not doubt that education can influence people.

But I think of this as a vertical point of view, whereas I'd emphasize a horizontal point of view -- there are some people for whom the life of the mind catches on and they are quite happy with it.

But can everyone do that?

I don't think so.

And how is everyone doing that isn't living up to this ubermensch, or doesn't even acknowledge the value of the path towards something greater?

Because it's the herd that I'm most concerned with. And I think that's where the good truly begins anyways.

But the achievement of ataraxia is what's truly eudemon, no?

I think that the virtuous approach can define itself with respect to modern moral philosophy, taking up a stance like Anscombe's Modern Moral Philosophy.

But I don't think that by offering a coherent account of goodness synthesized with a whole philosophy that it escapes choice. It's just another framing device that then falls into similar conflicts.

The whole idea of the classical education, so well defended in C.S. Lewis' The Abolition of Man, is that virtue can be taught. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is what I'm skeptical of. Not in principle, but certainly in practice. We need look no further than the success of the Catholic church to realize that the program doesn't teach us to be virtuous -- else the society would have no need for rituals of cleansing.

But as it is it's basically set up with the belief that no one can achieve the good. What good is that good?

Tell me if I'm understanding your reading of Descartes:

You're saying that the ascent towards God through the ontological argument is a necessary rhetorical device for the learned of his time.

But Descartes' actual position, coming from -- is that certainty comes from himself. God isn't necessary for knowledge, but rather there's a certain ascent from the certainty of him as a thinking thing, along with the others after he reaches that certainty, to his willing, his sensing, etc.

Do I understand you?

You should want the virtues because they are most likely to make you flourish, and because they help others flourish (which is key to our flourishing and freedom at any rate). You're safest when everyone around you is freer and wants what best for you. If they only do what is good for you because of coercion, then your happiness is unstable because that coercion can break down (and you are not free to remove that coercion without consequences).

As Saint Augustine says: "Thus, a good man, though a slave, is free; but a wicked man, though a king, is a slave. For he serves, not one man alone, but what is worse, as many masters as he has vices." Epictetus, the philosopher-slave, makes a similar point. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I see a problem here.

What we have control over is only ourselves and so even if we pursue the virtues because we want them for flourishing it could be that flourishing in one environment differs from another environment -- so I could pursue a kind of harmony with my fellow men, but supposing I've been thrown into prison unjustly, or I'm drafted to war, then what helps me flourish changes dramatically.

Tyler Durden's flourishing fits within his revolutionary cult and is dramatically opposed to Jack's effete office flourishing; the attraction of Tyler Durden is to someone who feels like the modern male is a mutation which should be rebelled against, which in turn requires a plan to destroy the financial infastructure so that modern men can "reset" and go back to a primordial existene of explicit hierarchal domination -- the man of Tyler Durden isn't opposed to the corporate hierarchies due to domination, but rather because it's not the sort of world Tyler Durden can flourish within.

The interesting twist being that Jack embodies both of these masculinities, the modern effete with tastes in apartment furniture and clever jokes, and the masculine ghost within that wants a primate based society (or what I'd call "The bad anarchy")

So the good man is more free, but the ends of flourishing aren't set -- and the problem comes up again. Why ought one do what's good? (And which vision is good?)

For St. Augustine, a key to moving beyond skepticism is "believing so that we might understand," a view St. Anselm takes up. For a good example of what this entails for practical concerns, suppose you wanted to learn about chemistry. Now suppose you doubt everything your professor and textbook says and refuse to accept it until you have drilled through layer after layer of justification. Will this be a good way to learn chemistry? Probably not. The justifications only make sense in a broader context, and one must have some faith in order to make progress towards actually understanding/knowing—and for Augustine this applies to religious practice as well. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Heh. I've certainly wanted to learn about chemistry and my method was not to doubt what they said. i showed up to class wanting what they knew and had no problem with correcting myself -- that's why I was there.

I think Descartes is coming from a place of learning, though -- he's already gone to the greatest colleges and listened to the most learned men in the world and found them saying uncertain things he's already believed and found wrong.

So, yes, there's something to be said for not doubting, but learning. It's only by learning that we learn how to doubt well, perhaps?

As to the denial of the "I" in the Cogito, who is "smeared out across time and changing," e.g. Hume's replacement of the thinking subject with a "bundle of sensation" or Nietzsche's "congress of souls," there is a good quote I found on this from Eddington's "The Rigor of Angels: Kant, Heisenberg, Borges, and the Fundemental Nature of Reality." I think it's fairly "knock down," and Borges' story "Fuentes the Memorious," is a good example of why. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm not sure how the quote is knock down, or what it's knocking down exactly -- but I'll make guesses and respond:

Hume's notion of the "I" is a bundle of sensations, yes, though I don't think it replaces the thinking subject -- coming to Hume from Descartes we could say that Hume's is a rational psychology of the human thinking subject in res extensa. And Kant's theory is not far from this while still accommodating the cogito within his philosophy, just not like... either of them did.


But I've not denied the cogito, at least I don't think I have. I'm more wondering what we can derive from it, metaphysically or epistemically or whatever.

I agree, but do not think it prima facie. I think all the stuff about God is nothing more than a rhetorical defense to avoid the fate of Galileo. Descartes took his motto from Ovid: — Fooloso4

I think your interpretation likely. It makes sense of why he didn't publish The World, after all.

And I thank you for saying my reading isn't prima facie -- I only want to focus on how, by the text's surface at least, we can conclude God exists. At least necessarily, though I don't know how much Descartes' notion of God -- like Leibniz's -- is really "orthodox" either.


For my part here I think modern existentialism, from Husserl on, has taken from Descartes' notion of the cogito and attempted other things.

I'm a bit mired in a confusion of where I'm going with this, though....

Why should one do that which is good? No, I don't think that good is synonymous with, "something one ought to do". For example, most people would agree that selling all your worldly possessions and donating the money to charity is something that would be good. However, that doesn't mean that one is obligated to do so. Please input into this conversation with your own takes. — Hyper

A good conundrum for myself.

Why should one, in the general sense, do good is much harder for me to answer than why the good is attractive.

For one tempted by the good there is no "Why do what is good?" -- it's a light that brings moths in to burn them up.

No one is obligated by anything in the existential sense -- we are all free to choose.

But you do what is good because that's what you do (at least, as long as it helps others -- there's a darker side to this that hurts others, but that's not what I mean by the good)

Contrary to Descartes' claim, it comes from a lack or want, from a need or desire to improve, to have or be without defect.

With regard to the perfectibility of man, perfect comes from the possibility of avoiding error by limiting what I will to what I know. — Fooloso4

M'kay; I can go with what you say.

Do you agree with my prima facie reading of the Meditations? That Descartes claims to deduce knowledge of God's existence on the basis of the foundation of certainty he finds in the Cogito?

Assuming an infinite time then Descartes could be the source of perfection. However, at the moment that Descartes is writing his argument he surely is not perfect-- the method of doubt is attractive because Descartes knows he has been in error before. In that moment where else would you say the idea of perfection comes from?

When I was still at school, I had the peculiar idea that if I suddenly swapped consciousness with the person walking towards me, AND I also instantly was connected to his or her memories at that moment, then there'd be no way of knowing what had happened. Rather peculiar thing to think, I grant, but at the time it seemed significant. Something about the universality of the experience of 'I'. — Wayfarer

I think that'd count as a higher reality -- some kind of metaphysical structure which connects all the individual minds.

This isn't to say I endorse that, but it'd make sense of the idea: We could wrap the theory up as an explanation for connection between physically disparate minds.

Trouble with identity again. The argument against reincarnation seems applicable here - in what sense was the person in the Irish Cottage the same as jgill? If all they shared was 'I AM', how do we conclude that they are the same? — Banno

Taking up the transcendental lens:

We could conclude the 'I AM' is the same because they referred to the same 'I' who was 'AM'ing.

But in terms of the setup my thought is to mostly copy it exactly because it seems to be working.

If people who voted to participate writing want a topic then this is a good thread for it to be proposed in.

I'm hesitant to restrict it to a topic out front because of how little participation there's been in the past with respect to writing essays. So I'd want to keep it as open as possible to allow people with different interests to submit, unless the participants really want to focus in on a particular topic.

Given that this is the first day in which the idea has been taken seriously as"a thing" I'm good with keeping it as simple as our stupidity can contain.

But there's time for thinking of guidelines along the way in this thread. I wouldn't post the announcement until at least February to ensure we don't conflict with the literary activity.

Sweet. :) Sounds like you'd be a good contributor then. It just took some time for the idea to "catch on"