:rofl:

Whew... thanks. This was the next best thing to getting my arguments regarded / noticed / acknowledged.

Tobias, I essentially said the same thing several pages ago that you said here. I expect Banno to give you a sophisticated and cajouling answer... and my thoughts earned from him this:

I just hope that my comments here won't be ignored.
— god must be atheist

I've read them. I've not seen anything in them to which i might reply. — Banno

Why is this? If A=B, and A precipitates C, then should B not precipitate C?

If you care to check them, my arguments were posted mainly on page 3 of this thread.

↪Tobias Tobias, I essentially said the same thing several pages ago that you said here. I expect Banno to give you a sophisticated and cajouling answer... and my thoughts earned from him this: — god must be atheist

I do not know. I address that paradox here, but I agree with Banno that it is of little concern to the text as a whole. I like the paradox Banno referred to and it might be considered in its own right, but detracts from the text. Probably Banno did not answer you because he saw so many points being made about free will, most of them having nothing to do with the text, that he did not answer you. Do not get worked up over it, people choose what they engage with. My argument on the paradox is for me also a side note, as I think it is for Banno. I think it has to do wit the way the thread went instead of with your argument.

Why is this? If A=B, and A precipitates C, then should B not precipitate C? — god must be atheist

No, it shouldn't. If I (A) precipitate you, and I am reborn (B) in a next universe then C is in the middle.

No, it shouldn't. If I (A) precipitate you, and I am reborn (B) in a next universe then C is in the middle. — Cornwell1

Wow. I am speechless.

Thanks for your reassurance.

Heidegger writes to Hannah (a burning love affair):

"Everything should be simple and clear and pure between us. Only then will we be worthy of having been allowed to meet. You are my pupil and I your teacher, but that is only the occasion for what has happened to us."

Teacher and pupil. Master and servant. Free will gone. How could he join a party condemning jews, while Hannah was jewish? And he was married! His Zeit and Dasein in the world seem pretty banal to me. The banality of evil.

Just don't take Banno too seriously, and neither me, for that matter. We all have a free and determined will. Hannah wanted other people to take hers into consideration too. Sovereignty caring for Sovereignty but at the same time needing each other to be Sovereign. Sovereignty can't live without others to be independent of.

Just don't take Banno too seriously, — Cornwell1

not a problem, Cornwell, nobody else does either. I just am miffed that it's reciprocal.

"It is the contention of the following considerations that the reason for this obscurity
is that the phenomenon of freedom does not appearin the realm of thought at all, that neither freedom nor its opposite is experienced in the
dialogue between me and myself in the course of which the great philosophic and metaphysical questions arise, and that the philosophical tradition, whose origin in this respect we shall consider later, has distorted, instead of clarifying, the very idea of freedom such as it is given in human experience by transposing it from its
original field, the realm of politics and human affairs in general, to an inward domain, the will."

How do you not read this as saying the Greek view was superior and the concept of will was a mistake?

She's wrong because the arguments against freedom of the will (nobody tops Schopenhauer there) are all purely logical. All you can do with a purely logical argument is map out the way we think. You can't use it as an ontological proof. Those arguments can't be used to reduce our everyday experience to "nothingness" as she says.

So one can't wish for something without deciding and moving to obtain it? I desire chips, but I've not the will to get up and go to the shop. — Banno

Looks like you desired to stay home, not chips.

The line that urged the thought upon me was "it must appear strange indeed that the faculty of the will whose essential activity consists in dictate and command should be the harborer of freedom". — Banno

"Dictate and command" what - the self? Are you saying that the self dictates and commands the self? What is the will in relation to what it is dictating and commanding?

Dictate and command" what - the self? Are you saying that the self dictates and commands the self? What is the will in relation to what it is dictating and commanding? — Harry Hindu

I'll give you a hint: they're the same thing.

Hence I agree with your "Only if we establish relationships towards others that are free, might we be free." — Banno

Yet all you did was redefine what dictates and commands - from "will" to "others". What is about others the makes me free when I think of others I think of their goals and how they may either promote my goals or hinder them.

The SEP says Augustine's will is basically self control. He was reacting against Manichean fatalism. — frank

The opposition to the Manichean view was to establish the culpability of the individual for evil in the world:

The will, however, commits sin when it turns away from immutable and common goods, toward its private good, either something external to itself or lower than itself. It turns to its own private good when it desires to be its own master; it turns to external goods when it busies itself with the private affairs of others or with whatever is none of its concern; it turns to goods lower than itself when it loves the pleasures of the body. Thus a man becomes proud, meddlesome, and lustful; he is caught up in another life which, when compared to the higher one, is death. — St. Augustine, book 2, 19, translated by Benjamin and Hackstaff

The idea of self-control as not being ruled by external or internal compulsion is more of a Stoic idea.
That difference is the point of Arendt saying:

Yet the Augustinian solitude of "hot contention" within the soul itself was utterly unknown, for the fight in which he had become engaged was not between reason and passion, between understanding and Thumos, that is, between two different human faculties, but it was a conflict within the will itself. And this duality within the self-same faculty had been known as the characteristic of thought, as the dialogue which I hold with myself. In other words, the two-in-one of solitude which sets the thought process into motion has the exactly opposite effect on the will: it paralyzes and locks it within itself; willing in solitude is always velle and nolle, to will and not to will at the same time.

It appears to me that Banno is attacking a strawman.

That is correct, if he shares the opinion of the author that inspired the post. If you go back a page, I think, I present, once more mind you, a series of arguments against the author's position using a series of definitions, a scientific journal on the prefrontal cortex and its function, and refutations that have not even a single time in this thread been addressed by a single person. Give those a look. The will encompasses all possible human action and thought, the body and the will are the same thing, completely inseparable and emerging by way of the same neural network in the brain, which is the body. This whole thread is predicated on fallacy.

Hence I agree with your "Only if we establish relationships towards others that are free, might we be free." — Banno

LOL, if "we" need to establish relationships with "others" that are free, then you're implying that "others" were already free prior to establishing relationships with "we". So what made "others" free prior to establishing relationships with "we" who are not free? Strawmen and infinite regresses are the crux of your argument?

LOL, if "we" need to establish relationships with "others" that are free, then you're implying that "others" were already free prior to establishing relationships with "we". So what made "others" free prior to establishing relationships with "we" who are not free? — Harry Hindu

It's almost as if the domain of freedom requires individuals within that domain to value freedom for that domain to exist... I get the feeling that something along those lines was taken into consideration when Europe overthrew most of its monarchies and the American settlers founded a country predicated on a limited government that recognizes the sovereignty of the individual, the right to be free from force......

How do you not read this as saying the Greek view was superior and the concept of will was a mistake? — frank

Well she surely thinks the connection to the will was a mistake. Perhaps she thinks the Greek view is superior in the fact that they saw freedom as political. However, what she actually thinks about it is not very clear to me. She does not dwell much on it.

She's wrong because the arguments against freedom of the will (nobody tops Schopenhauer there) are all purely logical. All you can do with a purely logical argument is map out the way we think. You can't use it as an ontological proof. Those arguments can't be used to reduce our everyday experience to "nothingness" as she says. — frank

Does she intend to do that? As someone steeped in a phenomenological tradition I doubt that really is her wish. I read it as follows: when we look at ourselves in the first person we see freedom and choice an experience them as such. However, when we take a step back and see ourselves as a body, a third person view, we seem to be under the sway of all kinds of causality. Therefore it is thought itself that leads to tis antinomy. Her approach seems to me to be phenomenological, not logical.

Hence I agree with your "Only if we establish relationships towards others that are free, might we be free." — Banno

It's almost as if the domain of freedom requires individuals within that domain to value freedom for that domain to exist — Garrett Travers

Right. "Others" is just other "we"s.

Right. "Others" is just other "we"s. — Harry Hindu

Stop it, Harry. You can't will that rational assessment freely like that. Others are required to provide that freedom to you in the form of not impinging it with violence, and vice versa.

Teacher and pupil. Master and servant. Free will gone. How could he join a party condemning jews, while Hannah was jewish? And he was married! His Zeit and Dasein in the world seem pretty banal to me. The banality of evil. — Cornwell1

That analysis sounds pretty banal to me. What Heidegger would call ‘Das Man’, a nice pre-packaged normative moralism without any genuine accounting for particulars.

He was a despicable little man, wasn't he? Still, hardly the first 35 year old eager to jump on an 18 year old, and perhaps her being Jewish made the affair more naughtily thrilling to him. The bit about "being worthy to meet" the relationship of teacher and pupil notwithstanding is certainly banal, and of course self-serving.

Does she intend to do that? As someone steeped in a phenomenological tradition I doubt that really is her wish — Tobias

She specifically mentions a number of logical challenges to the idea of volition. Her approach is: this crap is taking place in the realm of philosophy, and this is why: people became ensnared by theology and so fail to see the wisdom of the Greeks (which is actually a Hegelian insight, not Greek, but anyway,)

He was a despicable little man, wasn't he? Still, hardly the first 35 year old eager to jump on an 18 year old, and perhaps her being Jewish made the affair more naughtily thrilling to him. The bit about "being worthy to meet" the relationship of teacher and pupil notwithstanding is certainly banal, and of course self-serving — Ciceronianus

hehaha

The idea of self-control as not being ruled by external or internal compulsion is more of a Stoic idea. — Paine

:up: But didnt the Persians see a grand cosmic choice set before the individual?

Still, hardly the first 35 year old eager to jump on an 18 year old, and perhaps her being Jewish made the affair more naughtily thrilling to him. — Ciceronianus

I don't need to read this shit. Put it on reveal.

But didnt the Persians see a grand cosmic choice set before the individual? — frank

Expound on that, would you? I've never heard of it.

What I think Arendt wants to do is reconceptualize freedom in a non individualized manner. how exactly I do not know but she is making the point that freedom can only exist within a community that fosters it, that gives you something to be free with. — Tobias

Perhaps a community which fosters a desire for it, instead. Free from, would make more sense than free with, I think. I find it hard to conceive of a community which fosters freedom as we think of it now--or at least as I think of it. Perhaps those damn Romantics, with their emphasis on individuality, bear some responsibility for this perspectives. I like to poke at them now and again, as well.

For me though I have the same problem with the analytic tradition, the logic chopping is abhorrent and when they explain it to me in lay terms I think "óhh but could you not have said that clearly?" — Tobias

Fair enough.