Socrates is dead. He died in 399 BC. No doubt there is nothing left of him, not even his bones, which must have turned to powdery dust a long time ago. Yes, he is certainly dead...

...yet I just read an article in the Times that mentioned his name. It was a quote from Madison, who said that, even if every Athenian citizen had been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would have been a mob. It is clear to me from this that Socrates lived for Madison as the representative of a reasonable man...

...And here’s the funny thing: Socrates has been more alive after his death than he ever was while he lived. Had he never lived and died the way he did, the Republic and Apology and all the other dialogues, and the Memorabilia, would never have been written; the Enlighteners would have never had the foil of Socrates to contend with that was the core of their disagreement with the ancient thinkers.

Finally, it is not even the living breathing Socrates that we encounter in Plato, but the condensed and purified one—ie, the “real” one. For Socrates was more than his flesh. The rest of us will go to our graves as forgetful mortals, for we were never anything true; Socrates will die only when civilization herself perishes.

Yes. That's all, folks! According to The Church Without Christ, the dead stay dead, the lame don't walk, and the the blind don't see. — Bitter Crank

Men who died centuries ago still live for me; and, though lame, I can walk and run and gambol in the Elysian Fields with many a “dead” immortal soul: All I have to do is pick up his book and read it. In order to read it I require eyes and light, but those eyes and that light are not the ones in my head or above it: they’re the ones in my soul...

...for, as Christ taught us, you can have ears and not hear; eyes, and not see.

Sleep is death-in-life. Babies do so much of it because they have only recently emerged from nonexistence; old ppl do it so much because they are rehearsing for the final sleep from which they will not awaken.

Sleeping is part of life — The Opposite

So is death. Nothing that lives doesn’t also die.

From sleep, it's possible to wake up; but from death, there's no such thing as life. — Agent Smith

This is true in one sense; false in another:

It is true that once you die your consciousness of yourself as a living breathing being is gone...but is that all there is to your being? Cannot a being survive his own death in a different way: ie, through his own writings or books written about him? Given that we all must die, wouldn’t we wish for the next best thing to immortality: to be remembered in our own or others writings?

A resolution is a wish. — Primperan

.

A resolution is a decision to do something, not just a wish or desire. Indeed, more than just that, it is a FIRM decision: when one says, “I am resolved” to do this or that, he means that he has made up his mind to do it despite any obstacles.

Analyzing a desire destroys its purpose. — Primperan

If a desire can be said to have a purpose, I suppose it would be to motivate us to acquire what it wants. If my desire to become wealthier takes command of my reason, I might resolve to make more money, and try to come up with the best plan to do that; if, on the other hand, reason fights off the demands of avarice and maintains her highest place in my soul, she might analyze this desire and conclude that pursuit of wealth is not the best way to conduct my life, reject the will of desire, and find wiser counsel to guide me in my actions and living.

I see that I am going to leave the world as bad and silly as I found it and that I have contributed to making nothing change. Every year I propose to be less of a coward and at the end of the year I am still the same. — Primperan

You appear to be averse to analysis, but tell me: how else besides by analyzing and reasoning about your life are you going to extract yourself from perpetual cowardice? Maybe you are content or even happy to be a hopeless existentially tragic character, somebody out of Camus or Sartre—but maybe this is just a guise you can cloak yourself with in order to stomach your own existence—an excuse for your own lack of resolve...

...That you describe the world as “bad and silly” reveals that you have already judged it: that you have exercised your faculty of judgement, which presumes reason and analysis. The clues you have offered as to why you judge the world this way suggest you judge it so because 1) governments are corrupt and need to be changed or replaced by revolutionaries or activists who are willing to risk their lives in this effort, and 2) societies are plutocracies that condemn the masses to a life of poverty and elevate a very few billionaires to a position of ultimate power...

...but these sorts of things have been going on in the world for millennia—and they are not the only things that characterize humanity: if the world is bad and silly, it is also good and noble. My advice to you is to make this year different from all the others and dedicate your life to making the world better and more noble. Since I don’t know you, I can’t advise you on the particulars—but I bet you can advise yourself.

@Primperan

I would have included Navalny among the brave dissidents you mentioned; a true patriot, willing to risk his very life for a free Russia. But there have been very many such brave souls down through history: Socrates, and the Gracchi, and Cato the Younger spring to mind.

I just wish to live in peace with myself. — Primperan

But if I understand what you are saying, the acquisition of this personal “peace” will be bought with the sacrifice of your peaceful—yet cowardly—existence for one of political activism, turmoil and fear, and perhaps even danger of losing the very life you wished to live peacefully.

You seem to have forced us into recognizing an ambiguity in the concept or notion of what peace is: is peace a placid existence, without fear of pain or strife, knowing we will always have a roof over our heads and plenty of good food, etc.? Or is peace the inward knowledge, the conscience, that we lived correctly and did the right thing always, even if it entailed sacrificing a tranquil life for one of turmoil, danger, anxiety and pain?

Just a few more remarks, concerning the homeless...

...Those whom we call “homeless” aren’t always lacking a home: their home is oftentimes the outside world they choose to live in, for various reasons. I myself have never been homeless, but I have lived among many that have been themselves, and they proved to be a very colorful and entertaining bunch, full of illustrative tales...

...one fellow, a native of St. Augustine Florida, told me a story of how he witnessed a homeless man down there pull shrimp linguini out of the dumpster of the poshest restaurant in town, hold it up for all to behold, and cry, “Now I have found a trove of treasure up in here!” I doubt the original consumer of that dish felt the same way about it...

...another fellow, who had camped out in the woods behind a Food Lion, told me how he waited there every Tuesday for them to throw out the expired meat: then he would fish it out, take it to his camping site, and cook up the “best fillet mignon you ever tasted” over a can of Sterno.

I don’t doubt that many who end up homeless do so out of necessity, and suffer the greatest shame for having come into those straits; nevertheless, I know that many others find that homelessness is their natural home, and would not choose to live in any other way—especially in the approved way of “earning a decent living,” etc.

A pen is not properly classified as a weapon (like a sword), so nobody expects to be stabbed in the neck with one. — Merkwurdichliebe

But that is not how a pen is mighty, Merky, as you well know. It’s because swords can only destroy individual bodies, whereas writings can transform collective souls.

I sometimes fall asleep when I get stoned also. — Merkwurdichliebe

I suppose that is why I have forgiven you: your unparalleled humor.

just don't post hateful/prejudiced BS and you're fine, same as virtually any other forum or board. — Seppo

But that’s exactly what I did Seppers: I wrote a story that contained a lot of that sort of stuff: racist/sexist/homophobic sorta stuff...

...now I see that you have been on here a lot less time than me, so you may not be as familiar as I am with the parameters here, and I guess you will not have the same problems I’ve had with the mods here, so that it is to the credit of your continuity— but if you were to somehow express an opinion that—well, I can glean from your post that that won’t be the case!

As a general matter, we don't render declaratory judgments, meaning there must be an actual case in controversy for us to rule. That means we don't entertain hypotheticals and then declare some sort of binding precedent. What we do is when there is an actual case, we read the rules and we interpret them, relying to some extent upon the way they were interpreted before.

To do otherwise would result in our continually responding to "what ifs," which we don't have time for, and which often wouldn't be helpful anyway because actual cases have all sorts of nuances that have to be considered. — Hanover

Isn’t this a summary of the judicial philosophy of the Supreme Court of the United States of America?... but the members of that court have no individual fiat: they must vote as a jury, and convict only according to a majority opinion. In this forum however, each member of the court has the power to impose capital punishment non-unilaterally.

To state (by proxy) something bannable through a famous philosopher's words gives you no protection from banning. Whether that philosopher be Heidegger, Schopenhauer, Aristotle, Nietszche or whoever. All would have been banned themselves for espousing Nazism, sexism, slavery, and/or misogyny if they chose to do so here. Neither being famous nor hiding behind someone famous gives you protection from the rules. — Baden

Let’s fill out the list a bit: Plato, Zeno, Epicurus, Epictetus, Lucretius, Cicero, Seneca, Maimonides, Ariovistus, Marcus Aurelius, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Rousseau, Pascal, Tocqueville, Kant, Hegel, Weber, etc, etc, etc...not to mention the philosophers better known under a different title, like “epic poet” or “play-write”, who were really philosophers, like Homer or Vergil or Milton or Shakespeare: THOU SHALT NOT AGREE WITH ANY SENTIMENT OF THE PHILOSOPHERS THAT IS NOT APPROVED OF BY THE OPINION OF ANY SINGLE MEMBER OF THE PHILOSOPHY FORUM’S MODERATORS, UPON HIS JUDICIOUS REVIEW OF YOUR STATED SENTIMENT.

What Mr. Baden doesn’t recognize is that there is a distinction between being famous and being great...

That’s what I was trying to reveal in my story: a tale of a man who wants “to be like Mike,” like the popular man he encountered at university. My protagonist is a selfish opportunistic soul who thinks greatness lies in how many “thumbs-up” he can get; how much money he can get out of that to enjoy gustatorial pleasures like steak dinners and cigarettes he doesn’t have to roll...

...he eventually gets “banned” by a judicial court for not just espousing, but actually acting out on his “insensitive” opinion. But his actions are really the result of jealousy, not racism: he envies the Kenyan runner’s fame.

I wrote this story, in part, as a test: to see how a misogynistic and racist fiction would be acceptable to the tyranny of moderation here, and—lo and behold!—it was accepted!

But why was it accepted? Why was I not told by Mr. Baden, “Your story is too full of racist and misogynistic sentiments; therefore, I must reject it,” or, “You’re banned: for racist and misogynistic content”? I dunno...

...but my advice to you, dear reader of this post, is that if you want to express an opinion that might be construed as racist or sexist or misogynist or—whatever—in this forum, just be sure to couch it in a fiction: then it will be overlooked.

My resolution is to find something that interests me. — john27

What has interested you in the past, John? Yet it apparently fails to interest you now: do you have any idea why?

How do you intend on going about finding a new interest? Do you have a plan of attack?

The primary writing is sparse and influenced and or preserved by later writers. — Paine

I am very familiar with this from Seneca: his quotes of Epicurus are sometimes the earliest examples known, for no work of Epicurus has survived to the present—they were all lost in antiquity—though he is said to have written over 80 books; yet the works presumably lay in their entirety before the eyes of that late Roman author.

I would be more than happy to literally translate any fragmentary passages from either Greek or Latin literature you encounter in your reading. I’m no scholar, but I’m pretty smart, and I have applied years to learning to read these languages—Latin especially.

Also, you shouldn't confuse physical violence with verbal abuse because it leads to ethical dilemmas. They differ qualitatively as was proven in the classic line: "sticks and stone may break my bones, but words will never hurt me". — Merkwurdichliebe

How do you square that with the classic line, “The pen is mightier than the sword”? because written words are more potent than spoken ones? as in the classic line “Say it, forget it; write it, regret it”?

Still, I’d rather have sticks and stones thrown at me than be thrust through with a sword. After all, when Steven was stoned, the Bible says he fell asleep.

@Mp202020

Actually, there is much relevance of sports to philosophy. Right now as I speak there is a debate going in American football about the “fake slide”: when a quarterback, instead of passing or handing off, runs the ball himself, and, during the run, when he sees he is about to be tackled, instead of sliding to a halt and being down, fakes the slide, fools the defender, and runs around him...

...Now, I don’t know how much you know about American football, but when the quarterback slides you’re not supposed to hit him—it’s one of those modern rules to protect a vulnerable player’s head. So he’s supposed to slide, and you’re supposed to respect that...

...but what if he takes advantage of your respect and disrespects it by a fake and then runs around you for a touchdown?...

...lotsa ethical considerations here!

My resolution is to read the writers before Socrates (in the Greek tradition) more carefully. — Paine

Do you mean the pre-Socratics? or rather Homer and Herodotus and the play-writes?...or both? and do you mean in translation or in the original?

And get this old frame to perform better. — Paine

Do you mean physically, through therapy and/or exercise?

In the first the emphasis is on becoming a virtuous person. In the second, on following moral rules. In the third, on the results of one's actions. — Banno

Wouldn’t a virtuous person follow moral rules and therefore do things that result in morally correct actions? Your trinity seems to me to really be a unity.

@Banno

Well, I must admit that your categories are a bit perplexing, especially deontology: the study of the advantageous or needful (?). Also, it seems to me that this aspect of virtue ethics:

Those who show self control will be more capable of looking after themselves and others. — Banno

could as well have been subsumed under “consequentialism”.

There - the three main ethical views in summation. — Banno

Sorry: I’m rather slow. What are the three main ethical views?

That is also in relation to others. All of your examples are — DingoJones

Give me an example of how your behavior that is ostensibly with regard to your own self doesn’t affect other ppl.

any behaviour that involves others invokes ethical consideration.

All of which leaves open the issue of how one is to make such considerations. — Banno

So how would you consider the obesity example? Ought one to avoid obesity in order not to corrupt his children’s health, damage his friends’ furniture or overburden taxpayers?

That's a funny notion: beasts making ethical objections. — Merkwurdichliebe

Well, ole Merkywurdy! Haven’t seen your name pop up in here in a long time. I assumed you had gotten yourself banned.

I wouldn’t be surprised if you kicked a dog when nobody was looking, ‘cause you once verbally abused openly in this forum in the most vulgar tones an old woman I described who was wearing a mask in the supermarket in the early days of the pandemic.

@john27 and @Banno Y’all seem to me to have raised an interesting question: how much is our behavior toward ourselves a matter of ethics?

I may love food and eat so much I become obese. This seems a matter of personal choice, but it is a poor example for my children’s health; if I recline on another’s couch or sit in his chair I am prone to break it; and my obesity is likely to lead to a lot of medical conditions that burden hospitals and cost taxpayers money.

I may wish to be a pauper, but then I am not contributing to the economy by buying things, and the health of our economy is a moral imperative for the nation.

I may cringe at having a needle stuck in my body— and what is more personal than your own body?—but if I don’t get vaccinated, I put at risk the health of everyone else I come close to.

@john27

According to the ancient philosophers, the human soul is divided between reason and the passions. It is said to be an “economy” because they all dwell in the same “house” or οίκω, that of the body (brain).

Reason is one: she only wishes to know the truth according to nature; the passions are many, and have many names: lust wishes to get the greatest pleasure from sex; avarice wants to gain the most money; anger wants to get revenge; fear wants to escape danger at all cost; pride wishes to be indebted to no one etc, etc...

...for the ancient philosophers, reason ought to rule the passions: when lust desires flesh, reason says, “sex is for the propagation of the species”; or when avarice desires money, reason says, “money is ambiguous: it is both wealth and the means to wealth”; or, when anger wants to get revenge, she says, “that tooth you require for a tooth will not replace the lost tooth”; or, when fear imagines terrible possibilities, she, reason, says, “what you fear is only in your imagination: wait until the sword come to your door; then have a plan ready to either oppose or flee it.”

In this way reason, wielding her peculiar force, keeps her house in order by suppressing the inclination of the cohabitant passions whose desires, if left unchecked, would throw this whole little society of the soul into disorder. For the passions are naturally at odds with each other, and, if left unbridled, war against each other for supremacy.

Mediocrity however is already innately a part of my character. Why would I take effort to change, when I can simply apply what I have? — john27

And I suppose there are souls, perhaps your own, born to mediocrity—then why are you attracted to a philosophy forum? I suppose, since you are avowedly mediocre, that you don’t hope to enlighten us with your superior wisdom; and I suppose that since you can apply what you already have that you don’t seek any extra wisdom from me or anyone else in here...

...maybe you are incorrigibly mediocre. Maybe, when you live long enough to finally experience great adversity, a crisis in your soul, you will take it in stride and “go with the flow” and admirably adapt—but it will only be because you really don’t care that much, not because you were able to apply any great principles of wisdom to your plight:

Perhaps I wouldn't be able to fully overcome a great adversity, however so long as I can manage it averagely, that would be ok with me. — john27

The application of reason takes effort-a will, or a want to overcome. Mediocrity however is already innately a part of my character. Why would I take effort to change, when I can simply apply what I have? Perhaps I wouldn't be able to fully overcome a great adversity, however so long as I can manage it averagely, that would be ok with me. — john27

Let’s parse this statement: “The application of reason takes effort—a will or a want to overcome.” Are you aware of the ancient “economy of the soul”? That the soul is divided into a dwelling together of reason and the passions?

@john27

How old are you, John—if I may ask—?

@john27

Would you say then that this sentiment you expressed earlier in the discussion...

I would have to confess that yes, I am terribly infatuated with mediocrity. It has consumed me, by a large margin. — john27

...is far beyond you now—now that you perceive that a human being, through the application of reason, can overcome the greatest adversities that fortune might inflict upon him?

A more philosophical approach would move toward the premise as the matter of interest. — Paine

This is the premise, isn’t it?:

An individual subscribes to an idea or philosophy due to their personal biases and intuitions. — clemogo

This is my experience too—for the most part: most ppl read what they want to hear. But I am also aware that there are a small group of ppl who come to philosophy and ideas because they are dissatisfied both with what they already accept, and with what they see and hear in the world around them...

...they sense that there is something more and better, and if their desire is strong enough, and their wit sharp enough, it invariably leads them to search outside their own time and place for something better...

...This other place and time can only be found in the old books; for we cannot read the future ones, and those good thinkers who lived and died in the past persist in their writings, or in the accounts of their speeches and deeds by contemporaneous or later good writers...

...Is it not more plausible that the millennia of writings that are—mirabile dictu—still available to us from the past, contain the thoughts of men who are superior to us; we who are confined to this tiny little moment of time? We object, and submit our advanced knowledge in opposition to their rudimentary knowledge; and, yes: I agree that, down through the centuries, man has learned a lot that is superior to, say, Democritus or Aristotle or Kepler, etc...but what about knowledge of the human things?...

...regarding those, have our modern state-of-the-art social sciences shed more light on the human soul than did Moses or Solomon, or Homer or Plato? Why, the very notion of “mind” or “soul” have gone the way of the old authors, who till only yesterday accepted them as a priori concepts. Every day a new disease or “syndrome” is recognized and given an acronym and diagnosis and therapy. The latest I heard of (NYT) is called “Prolonged Grief Disorder”, or PGD...

...which was very well known to the ancients. The classic example is the widow of the sailor who never returned from the sea: every day to the end of her life she goes out to the end of the dock and gazes out to sea to see if her long-lost lover will return that day. My grandmother wrote—every day—a letter to my grandfather, her husband, after he died of a heart-attack...every day, till she herself expired...

...today that is considered to be pathological and in need of therapy; to the ancients, it was considered the ultimate example of marital piety. Who was correct?...

...The answer to such questions as these is what can animate any future philosophy.

Just finished Voltaire’s Candide (Adams edition). This paragraph made me think of this forum so well, I thought I would reproduce it here:

“While Candide, the baron, Pangloss, Martin, and Cacambo were telling one another their stories, while they were disputing over the contingent or non-contingent events of this universe, while they were arguing over effects and causes, over moral and physical evil, over liberty and necessity, and over the consolations available to one in a Turkish galley, they arrived at the shores of Propontis and the house of the prince of Transylvania. The first sight to meet their eyes was Cunegonde and the old woman, who were hanging out towels on lines to dry.

“The baron paled at what he saw. The tender lover Candide, seeing his lovely Cunegonde with her skin weathered, her eyes bloodshot, her breasts fallen, her cheeks seamed, her arms red and scaly, recoiled three steps in horror, and then advanced only out of politeness...”

How can then a feather be a rock? — john27

Unlike the rest of nature, dear John, a human being can transform him- or her-self into a different creature through the use and force of reason. After all, what is impossible for “...the particular being that can know the universal, the temporal being that is aware of eternity, the part that can survey the whole, the effect that seeks the cause”?

While there is a universal constant, In essence each object/person is individual? — john27

Let me express it a bit more picturesquely...

...Some ppl feel they have lost their very selves when they lose their hair, or their money, or their job, or their aged parent, or their pinky finger, or their record collection, or their house or job or 25-week-old fetus, etc, etc. We might call them snowflakes or “light as a feather”, for the slightest loss throws them into the greatest turmoil...

...On the other hand, once in a great while we witness ppl like Stilbon, who lose everything short of their life, like Job did, yet continue on with the greatest equanimity, never feeling as though the loss of all their family or property or fatherland or sight and hearing, etc, detracted one iota from their identity. These ppl are like rock or lead or steel, and their fall conforms most closely to the “universal constant”.

@john27

Do you see any similarity, John, between the different sorts of objects that fall through the atmosphere and the sorts of ppl that endure loss differently?

Uh...I don't think so? Drag is an essential component to understanding free fall after all, I would think... — john27

The mathematical equation for an object in free fall is: distance=1/2 of acceleration times time squared, isn’t it? If drag is an essential component to understanding free-fall, why is there no consideration of it in the equation?

@john27

Isn’t it true, John, that if we were to investigate the laws that govern falling bodies, we would do better to observe the heavier ones and eschew the lighter ones, since the latter are more prone to the interference of the drag on them of the atmosphere?

In a vacuum, yes, they would hit the ground at the same time. — john27

But we were talking about bodies falling through the air, weren’t we? That’s why you agreed earlier that a rock would hit the ground before a feather if both were dropped from the same height at the same time:

Isn’t it true that a rock or steel ball-bearing or lead weight dropped at the same moment as any feather would hit the ground before the feather did? — Leghorn

Yes that is true. — john27

And isn’t this true because the force of the drag of the air on the feather quickly becomes equal to the force of the gravitational pull on it, whereas the drag on the rock takes much longer to equal the pull of gravity on it?

They both conform to the principle equally. — john27

If that were true, the rock and feather would both hit the ground at the same time after being dropped at the same moment from the same height, wouldn’t they?

@john27

And which of these: the rock or ball-bearing or lead-weight, or rather the feather, do you think conforms most closely to the accepted formula of falling bodies?—that a falling body falls to the earth at the rate of 9.8 meters/second squared?

@john27

Isn’t it true that a rock or steel ball-bearing or lead weight dropped at the same moment as any feather would hit the ground before the feather did?

@john27

How are velocity and acceleration “much too personal”??

@john27

So if I’m understanding you John, first we drop feathers of different sorts, measure velocities and calculate accelerations and come up with an average for feathers; then we drop rocks of different kinds, measure velocities and calculate accelerations, and come up with an average for rocks; then we repeat this with other sorts of bodies: maybe snowflakes and steel ball-bearings, etc., then take the average of all these averages and proclaim this to be the “true average”—is that what you are saying?

@john27

So it wouldn’t matter whether we dropped rocks or feathers? as long as what we dropped was of similar material?

A comparison of averages would be taking 50-55cm in width rocks, that are all made up of the same thing. — john27

Rocks? Why rocks? Are they the average material that things are made of? Why not foam or feathers? Are they not equally representative of falling bodies?...I myself have seen more feathers fall from the sky than rocks! Why not then drop different sorts of feathers rather than rocks and take measurements?—maybe from a blue jay and a robin and a chickadee; and a crow and a buzzard and a hawk. They’re probably about the same size and weight...roughly.

In my opinion (partly due to my mediocre position), we should undoubtedly perceive something on its average, rather than its substantial outliers. — john27

So if we wanted to understand falling bodies, for example, we should take a bunch of representative examples of common everyday things, maybe different kinds of balls: a tennis ball, ping pong ball and bowling ball for example; and maybe a piece of lead or steel, and a piece of wood or foam, etc, and drop them from different heights and record the time it takes for them to hit the ground, then take the average and try to understand free-fall from an analysis of that?

My main point is that our knowledge of past cultures passes through the shapes and forms of each generation back until you have reached the culture you wish to study. You can't skip centuries and millenia to peer into a civilization. Ergo, older cultures will be harder to correctly understand — Gregory

This seems to me the statement of yours that best encapsulates your argument. Would you agree, Mr. Gregory?

The future of immortality lies not in corruptible flesh, but in the incorruptible hard substances of the android. The android will incorporate an artificial intelligence that is superior to man’s, and that is more resilient to the “rust and moth” that destroy earthly possessions: when his physical being is crushed, nevertheless his incorporeal being, his “soul”, ie, all the data that constituted his “self”, will remain safe inside the “cloud”, and can therefore be implanted into a new physical body...

...whether these future androids replace or reproduce us remains to be seen: it all depends upon whether we retain control over them and subjugate them to our purposes, or whether they subdue us and supplant our souls with their own.