How could anyone emphasize ethics more than Socrates, Plato and Aristotle? — Athena

Well, I was comparing the Roman Stoics (e.g. Epictetus, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius) to the early Greek Stoics, and specifically Chrysippus. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle were not at issue. But at least
in regard to practical wisdom and public life in politics, I would think the Roman Stoics would be superior to that trio in some respects, given the fact that Socrates got himself killed by the Athenians, Plato made a fool of himself in Syracuse and Aristotle for about 8 years was the teacher of Alexander, one of history's greatest autocrats who presided over the slaughter of who knows how many unfortunates in his conquests. Many Roman Senators were Stoics, which led them to oppose the injustices of some of the emperors (and got them killed).

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Perhaps you can give us an example of the greater humanism Rome introduced? — Athena

The Stoic contribution would probably be through Stoicism's conception of the "brotherhood of man." The Stoic Musonius Rufus, Epictetus' teacher, taught the equality of men and women. Aristotle thought all non-Greeks inferior. The Roman contribution would likely be through its law and natural law jurisprudence (an offshoot of Stoicism), and the eventual extension of Roman citizenship to everyone in the Empire.

Would Nietzsche be a good stoic? — Athena

Nietzsche's Amor Fati is thoroughly Stoic, though he never acknowledged that to be the case, to my knowledge. Elsewhere he famously berated the Stoics in one of his many rants.

I do not know what the Romans added or took away from the Athenian effort and I am curious about that change. Why does Roman writing set our understanding of classical stoicism? — Athena

There are some fragments of the writings of the Greek Stoics available, but as far as I know we're aware of them only because they're referred to by others. In addition to Zeno, we have some information regarding Cleanthes (Zeno's successor as leader of the Stoa) and Chrysippus, his successor, and quotes from them. You can find the Hymn of Cleanthes easily enough on the Web. Chrysippus is credited with defending Stoicism against its early critics.

The Roman Stoics are generally believed to have "softened" Stoicism and making it more human, less committed to the perfection of the ideal Stoic Sage. Also, at least compared to Chrysippus whose focus was on epistemology and logic, and the theory underlying Stoicism, the Roman Stoics emphasized ethics and practical wisdom. That emphasis makes it more sympathetic to most.

Stoic "apatheia" is freedom from emotional disturbance, not "apathy" as currently defined. Tranquility was valued, as was equanimity. The period of Roman Stoicism was, in fact, a fairly turbulent one in the Empire, including trouble with the Germanic tribes which kept Marcus Aurelius away from Rome for many years, trouble with Parthia, the onset of Christianity and failure of traditional religion, the rise of the mystery religions; the Bar Kochba rebellion in Palestine. Stoicism had a broad appeal, and its most significant Roman adherents included an emperor and a slave.

Thanks. I'll take a look.

Really? I had no idea. Perhaps he wasn't a philosopher, then.

God's teeth. Only those lacking a sense of humor would complain of irony. As well complain of wit and the witty.

But, now that I think of it, I can't think of a witty philosopher. Wittgenstein, of course, was notoriously lacking in humor.

I think it was part of an anti-metaphysical/quietist movement which continues to this day, and in that sense remains relevant.

Hilarious...you expect me to say what it is that can't be said.
— Janus
Indeed, there might be a sort of catharsis in the realisation that this is not doable, and perhaps the absence of a something to which "ineffable" refers. — Banno

Where there is no thing, there's nothing to address philosophically. There's no object to be known, and philosophy subsists on objects which can be known and described (in words). So, it pretends there is one.

So where does that leave ↪Janus? — Banno

Janus is the Roman god of doorways and gates, also transitions, usually depicted as having two faces, not two asses. But the Romans didn't use js, so in Latin it would be spelled Ianus.

Makes sense...Ciceroni-anus the execrable...or excremental... :joke:
23 minutes ago — Janus

Actually, ianus is the significant part of the appellation, typically used in Latin in adjectives formed from proper names. So, Ciceronianus means broadly speaking someone like Cicero or a follower of Cicero, instead of Cicero's anus. But it's an interesting interpretation.

And here you are! — frank

Ah, but I wasn't summoned, you see. That would require evocation by use of a name, as one would the Lord of the Flies, i.e. Beelzebub, the chief follower of Satan/Lucifer in Milton's Paradise Lost.

Well, that's what I've heard. I've also heard other things about him, which, of course, do nothing to diminish his glory.

I see the Lord of the Flies has made an appearance, despite my restraint, which was all for nought. Or should I say "Nothing"? But perhaps it's to be expected that where the ineffable is a topic, the execrable must be summoned.

All we can do is strive to use words to better understand the nature of morality, surely not a futile philosophical undertaking. — RussellA

By referring to "the nature of morality" you identify it as a thing, and so are trapped into thinking of it as if is one. Why should we do that?

You are I think right about the flies. — Banno

I wonder--who would be the Lord of the Flies? Could it be...but no, I won't say the name.

But isn't it just those things that we cannot express well in words, such as justice, ethics, morality, honour, wisdom, etc, that are exactly those things which we should strive to express well in words?
3 hours ago — RussellA

I would say no, if you mean arriving at all-inclusive definitions of that they are; treating them as objects which can be definitively described, objects of knowledge if you will.

. Folk suppose that since there are things that are done rather than said, there must be something that is unsayable. — Banno

Those folk are, I think, among the flies referred to by Wittgenstein. But so are those who think it possible, and necessary or somehow beneficial, to categorize everything, like that relentless categorizer Aristotle. That, of course, requires the use of words. But there are things that we cannot express in words well, or accurately, or adequately and using words to express them (which we do all the time; which philosophers do all the time) is futile and worse "bewitching" as Wittgenstein might say. As to such things, we're better off remaining silent.

Perhaps the answer has to be that there is not anything about which we cannot talk. — Banno

Well, I think that's certain. That's not to say that's to our credit or benefit, though. I think Wittgenstein wasn't claiming there were subjects we couldn't talk about. Instead, I think he was saying that there are subjects we shouldn't talk about because by doing so we let "language go on holiday" or are bewitched by it, and do not gain by doing so.

How would they know they want to read something the don't even know exists? — Vera Mont

They'll know what their parents and the parents of others, and their teachers, think that they should or should not read quite readily. Banning or trying to ban books doesn't tale place in secrecy at that level. And media and social media will make such information readily available.

As for my schooling, we read what was typically read in so-called "English" classes at that time--some Shakespeare, some Dickens, Catcher in the Rye (for some reason), some Jack London, some Conrad, even some Dostoyevski, some books I can't easily recall but the titles of which I'd no doubt recognize if confronted with them. But schoolwork is schoolwork; it's to be tolerated, it doesn't inspire. I did quite well, but learned to appreciate great works of prose and poetry not when in school, but out of it.

Of late, some state legislatures have banned certain textbooks from their public schools, not on the grounds of inadequate or incorrect information but on the grounds of inappropriate subject matter. — Vera Mont

I think you'll find that most banning or challenges take place through local school districts or governments. Given the peculiar fascination with and dread of sex in our Great Republic, my guess would be that most books proscribed have to do with sex.

There are bans, and bans. Those addressed to what children are required to read will inevitably arouse the suspicions of parents, and the state (here at least) has little interest in acting contrary to those suspicions. Some bans are worth fighting, some are not.

Before you despair, consider--while in school, particularly in elementary and high school, how many books which you were compelled to read as a student influenced you in any significant respect? I doubt there were many. I likewise doubt that any banned book students are compelled (told by a teacher) to read would greatly influence a student. If they want to read them, they'll find a way to do so regardless of any ban. If they don't, reading the books will probably be considered just another dreary chore.

The one apparently advocated by Wittgenstein was to simply remain silent about the ineffable. — Banno

My belief is that he was telling philosophers to remain silent about it. If only they would. He was too clever to think that the clergy or theologians would stop their hooting and honking.

Another of my (presumptively wise) beliefs is that where communication with others is concerned, art is the only means by which we may describe what we call the ineffable, however uncertainly. That would include poetry, but the use of words in poetry for that purpose is to imply, to suggest, to evoke.

Oh, leave science alone. For that matter, leave medicine and law and art and anything else there is a claimed "philosophy of" alone. I think it more than likely scientists, lawyers, doctors, etc. get along quite well without philosophers or philosophy, and seldom think of either (I can assure you of that where lawyers are concerned, in any case). What does it say about philosophy that philosophers, though, think so much about scientists, doctors, lawyers, artists, etc. and what they do?

It's largely intellectuals that change history. — Gregory

I think that's an exaggeration. Intellectuals largely influence other intellectuals, who then write history in which their fellow intellectuals loom large.

I wonder how many have heard of, let alone read, this "book that broke the world." Or Hegel, for that matter. The pretensions of philosophy...

I read a pretty good amount of Frantic Freddie's work during my increasingly distant youth. I think that his writing is largely narrative and emotive, and this makes him difficult to understand, but oddly at the same time it makes it easy to believe him to be sympathetic with particular views, some of them extreme.

But then I'm a fan of quietism in philosophy, and grand statements and proclamations by philosophers (as in Zarathustra) leave me cold.

So no its not possible to know everything that has and will ever occur, just as one cannot know everyone's name on the planet, but it is possible to understand of all of their relationships with one another and inherit good predictive ability. You can apply that ability (that formula) to whatever you want to. You can specialise in whatever you want to know. — Benj96

Well, we may differ on our definition of "understanding" and what it entails.

We're largely creatures of habit, and what we interact with is in most cases familiar and it requires little or no thought on our part to interact with the familiar satisfactorily. Perhaps we may be said to "understand" the familiar and our response to it, in that sense.

We only think when we encounter problems (Dewey again). When we encounter problems we're dissatisfied, and seek to resolve that dissatisfaction. We try to resolve the problems in various ways until resolution takes place. Thus do we learn and acquire knowledge.

Maybe that's what you mean. I'm not certain.

We are in constant transaction, constant exchange with the external world. Give and take, acknowledge and express, observe and project. If we don't accept that fact we simply live in our own internal mental world devoid of external narrative — Benj96

Interesting. We agree on this. But we disagree on whether we can know everything.

I think the problem with most of the traditional "problems" of philosophy is that they look on us as apart from the world (the universe), rather than a part of it. But, I think being a part of it doesn't mean that we know or can fully know all about the world. What we may know is limited by our abilities and the way in which we interact with the rest of the world. And those abilities and interactions, and the extent of the universe with which we interact, are limited.

Both. I think it would be nice if we all related to eachother and our external reality in a similar way. We likely wouldn't feel lonely or depressed or excluded in such a case as this "togetherness". I think it would be fair to expect such a case too. It sounds like a good thing to be a united community. To feel like "us" rather than "me" and "other". — Benj96

"Nice" yes, but I'm not certain about "fair." But alas, the universe isn't beholden to us to us in any sense. We're merely a very small part of it. As some appellate court judge said of his court (I paraphrase): "The Court is not a performing bear, required to dance to every tune litigants play for it." Neither does the universe dance to our tune. We dance to the music it plays. We (some of us, in any case) barely have the wit to recognize that's the case.

I think you're too fond of absolutes. Dewey had a strange writing style, and his wording can be clumsy, but I think he was right when he wrote that "truth" carries too much baggage and is too prone to misuse, and prefer his "warranted assertibility" as a substitute. There can be nothing more to "truth" than being supported by the best available evidence.

So you don't believe that everyone could at some point know everything about how reality works - have a unanimous reality together? — Benj96

Well, my point was that pondering whether or not that may occur is idle. But we're tiny little creatures on a tiny little planet in a tiny little solar system in a moderately sized galaxy that's one among billions of others. I think it's unlikely we'll ever know everything. That doesn't mean we can't make reasonable judgments and conclusions, though.

"If there are infinite ways to be ignorant -(to hold irrational beliefs, delusions etc about reality), then on the contrary pole should there not be only one way to be privy to the truth?" — Benj96

I don't see why that should be the case. Do you mean it would be nice if it was, or that would be only fair?

Truth, schmuth.

Why care about what "truth" is or search for its definition? We're aware through experience and observation that in life the most accurate judgments, conclusions and assertions are those supported by the best available evidence. What constitutes that evidence may vary; new evidence may arise. That's the way of things. Why expect anything more than that, or seek it, let alone try to define it? What else could be "true"--that which everyone would think is the case after everyone knows everything? That's hardly a meaningful or useful thing to spend our time discussing.

It has been said that each generation has its own Plato. — Fooloso4

Its own Jesus, too, I believe. I wonder if this is characteristic in cases where writings are considered, perhaps not necessarily sacred, but subjects of reverence. They cannot be altered, but must be interpreted as needed to provide support of what "each generation" deems significant.

Or do we suppose that as with the gospels, that the idea of "one true Platonic doctrine" is itself fraught? — Banno

Well, we shouldn't forget that Christianity borrowed a good deal from Platonism, and later Neo-Platonism.

Nothing should be simply accepted as Plato's opinion or conclusion on a matter but rather everything should be subject to question and challenge. — Fooloso4

Your Plato sounds a lot like Dewey. All judgments and conclusions subject to revision, based on new information, the results of experiment and inquiry. That's an interesting interpretation, but I think it's an example of anachronism. It seems to me that Plato is a profoundly conservative figure, which perhaps may be expected in a cousin of Critias, one of the infamous Thirty
Tyrants of Athens.

It was not that Plato tried to make Dion a philosopher-king but that with the urging and help of Dion to first make the tyrant Dionysius and later his son the king Dionysius II more philosophical. Even if Plato had been more successful in improving their character, this is a far cry from making a king a philosopher. — Fooloso4

You're right. I mixed all those Ds up. And I certainly agree that Plato didn't make a tyrant a philosopher.

But I think Plato was being an advocate in The Republic, not just musing. He may have understood that the terrible state he envisioned wasn't likely to arise, but he envisioned it nonetheless, and not merely as a kind of stalking horse. The quest for certainty is poisonous, and Plato valued certainty and perfection.

Since the topic is not Plato, — Fooloso4

Thank heaven.

Plato, like Socrates, was a zetetic skeptic. — Fooloso4

Come now. I've been a lawyer for a long time. I recognize a cross-examination of a very friendly witness; I've done more than a few. In the case of Plato and his sock-puppet Socrates (I don't think it's believed by anyone that Plato was a stenographer, faithfully recording questions asked of the real Socrates and answers given by him), Plato isn't even examining such a witness; he's asking questions he's contrived and answering them as he pleases. He has points to make and uses dialogue as a rhetorical device to make them.

I understand, though, that after he humiliated himself by trying to make a philosopher-king of Dion in Syracuse, he sensibly abandoned the horrible, nightmare Republic he envisioned, and was not as favorable of a system by which we would be led on forced marches to perfection as he deemed it.

That's to his credit. But Plato was an advocate of certain political and philosophical positions, not merely engaged in an academic enterprise.

You can see how totalitarian systems were influenced by Christianity. Stalin studied to be a priest... go figure. — Tom Storm

Oh, yes. Fascism as well.

Stalin, it seems, was very intelligent and well educated for his time and place. He was also a poet, or he wrote poetry in any case. What would Plato, that Original Totalitarian (OT) but scolder of poets, have to say about that? Perhaps Stalin was the philosopher-king Plato longed for all those years ago. Or perhaps Hitler, the artist.

Certainty is the death of thought, and tolerance, and justice, and mercy, and.....

Is the notion of "one, true doctrine", worthy of persecuting the heretic, a contribution from Christianity? — Banno

Yes. There, I said it.

The Jews, though exclusive and intolerant, didn't demand that everyone be Jewish. In fact, it seems they weren't all that happy with the idea. The pre-Christian pagans of antiquity were quite tolerant for the most part. Rome, for example, were never moved to persecute pagan cults, even welcoming that of Cybele, though it was known to forbid certain religious practices in the city it thought scandalous now and then.

It took Christianity to foster the view that not only is there one true God and one true doctrine but that everyone in the world must believe in that God and that doctrine, on pain of persecution and death. Roman persecution of Christians was haphazard and politically motivated. Christian persecution was relentless and omnipresent, practiced by the various sects which emerged from it, and thus the concept of heresy.

But don't forget that chess is also cooperative. Takes two to play a game. — Srap Tasmaner

And to Tango! Let's talk about how philosophy is like the Tango.

You can play it and if you want to resign, you can move on. You can't do that with the "game of life". Simple, but tragic. — schopenhauer1

Yes, if you kill yourself, you die. If you play chess and resign (unless you resign by dying), you don't die. That's because, despite what was maintained by Bobby Fischer, chess isn't life. But what is tragic about that? Death would be an end to suffering. Continuing to live would mean continuing to suffer. If you resign from a game, you continue to suffer. If you "resign" from life, you don't.

But the Roman Catholic Church is the “One, True Church©.” — Art48

The One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, you mean. It has those four Attributes, as was decided in 381 C.E. or A.D.


The various schisms in Christianity all began, I think, with arguments over whether Jesus was/is God. Some said yes, some said no. "No" was found not to be quite good enough--he had to be God, in some way. So, some said he was a kind of subordinate divinity, created by the one God. Some said he became God. Others said that he really was God--one in being with the Father--having the same substance, not a similar one, so God became man, though not really man, being also God. Come to think of it, there's only one God, but God has three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Ghost (I prefer Ghost to Spirit). And so it all began, all derived from the seemingly foolish attempt to make someone God but at the same time maintain there's one God. Very different from the friendly pagan belief that a man may be or become a god, but so what? One more god among many.