Uccisore wrote:I voted the latter option. It seems we're going to get some fringe benefits of Spacey's outing as finally the Hollywood pedophile scandal is starting to drop. If Spacey's movies didn't exist and he never became an actor, Hollywood would still be Hollywood.
Fixed Cross wrote:Uccisore wrote:I voted the latter option. It seems we're going to get some fringe benefits of Spacey's outing as finally the Hollywood pedophile scandal is starting to drop. If Spacey's movies didn't exist and he never became an actor, Hollywood would still be Hollywood.
Just with a shittier body of work.
Omar made a really good point recently, I think it was Omar.
It is well known that Sokrates was a child molester, and Omar added that Plato was likely one of his victims.
Now, the thoroughly unsound and uncouth philosophy of Sokrates, as well as the absurdly cosmetic platitudes of Plato, can be understood as amounting to nothing more than a perverse mating call.
(I use the term child molester as that is the used term now for people with Sokrates' sexual behaviour.)
Uccisore wrote:Fixed Cross wrote:Uccisore wrote:I voted the latter option. It seems we're going to get some fringe benefits of Spacey's outing as finally the Hollywood pedophile scandal is starting to drop. If Spacey's movies didn't exist and he never became an actor, Hollywood would still be Hollywood.
Just with a shittier body of work.
Omar made a really good point recently, I think it was Omar.
It is well known that Sokrates was a child molester, and Omar added that Plato was likely one of his victims.
Now, the thoroughly unsound and uncouth philosophy of Sokrates, as well as the absurdly cosmetic platitudes of Plato, can be understood as amounting to nothing more than a perverse mating call.
(I use the term child molester as that is the used term now for people with Sokrates' sexual behaviour.)
Sure, and in a century or less a bunch of philosophers will be disregarded because they weren't vegans. Seems like a dangerous game.
Fixed Cross wrote:It is well known that Sokrates was a child molester, and Omar added that Plato was likely one of his victims.
Now, the thoroughly unsound and uncouth philosophy of Sokrates, as well as the absurdly cosmetic platitudes of Plato, can be understood as amounting to nothing more than a perverse mating call.
(I use the term child molester as that is the used term now for people with Sokrates' sexual behaviour.)
So interestingly, the OPs question can be extended now. I think Sauwelios has resigned from ILP for now, and he tends to very much disagree with me about Sokrates, so I will include a disclaimer stating that I don't expect S to agree.
Mitra-Sauwelios wrote:Fixed Cross wrote:It is well known that Sokrates was a child molester, and Omar added that Plato was likely one of his victims.
Now, the thoroughly unsound and uncouth philosophy of Sokrates, as well as the absurdly cosmetic platitudes of Plato, can be understood as amounting to nothing more than a perverse mating call.
(I use the term child molester as that is the used term now for people with Sokrates' sexual behaviour.)
So interestingly, the OPs question can be extended now. I think Sauwelios has resigned from ILP for now, and he tends to very much disagree with me about Sokrates, so I will include a disclaimer stating that I don't expect S to agree.
Have I resigned from ILP? Yes and no. The Sauwelios account is now defunct, as far as posting is concerned at least. I just hadn't found a reason to post on this new account yet.
Where did you get the idea that Socrates was a child molester? You say it's well known, but I'd never even heard of it. Do you mean simply that the whole ancient Greek institution of pederasty might be considered institutionalised statutory rape by today's standards?
Apart from this, what you say about Socrates and Plato doesn't really affect me, because I, contrary to you, distinguish between their exotericism and their esotericism.
Fixed Cross wrote:I only care about the text as it exists.
As you know by now I am not and will to ever be able to even listen to what one man says about what another man means when he says something. My instincts do not allow it. You need to understand that this is literal, not exaggerated. I am not able to even consider these things seriously, it goes right against my most important tastes.
So you will have to quote Plato to convince me that things you say pertain to Plato. Unless you reveal to me directly some evidently intended meaning, I can not indulge. I cannot, even if I wanted to, which I don't, as I am very proud of my disposition.
Mitra-Sauwelios wrote:Fixed Cross wrote:I only care about the text as it exists.
But "the text" does not exist. Only interpretations exist. Even the versions of the texts that have come down to us are interpretations (hence "versions").
As you know by now I am not and will to ever be able to even listen to what one man says about what another man means when he says something. My instincts do not allow it. You need to understand that this is literal, not exaggerated. I am not able to even consider these things seriously, it goes right against my most important tastes.
I can understand this insofar as it means simply taking something on authority. Now Lampert, for example, has some authority for me in that he knows much more (though not necessarily deeper in all respects) of the subject than I do, and can demonstrate as much. Ultimately it's a matter of demonstration, not of authority: a matter of rational argument, for example. He consistently shows hidden meanings, in many philosophers of prime note. Ultimately, _I_ decide whether I find him convincing. I usually do.
So you will have to quote Plato to convince me that things you say pertain to Plato. Unless you reveal to me directly some evidently intended meaning, I can not indulge. I cannot, even if I wanted to, which I don't, as I am very proud of my disposition.
Well, do you remember the time, a few years ago in your apartment, when I opened one of your Loeb editions of Plato at random and happened upon the word--and sentence, a reply by Socrates to what his current interlocutor has just said--kalôs? This was translated as "True", but means "Beautifully/Nobly [said/spoken]"...
Fixed Cross wrote:Mitra-Sauwelios wrote:Fixed Cross wrote:I only care about the text as it exists.
But "the text" does not exist. Only interpretations exist. Even the versions of the texts that have come down to us are interpretations (hence "versions").
That only lowers my evaluation of what is supposed to be said in the text.
As you know by now I am not and will to ever be able to even listen to what one man says about what another man means when he says something. My instincts do not allow it. You need to understand that this is literal, not exaggerated. I am not able to even consider these things seriously, it goes right against my most important tastes.
I can understand this insofar as it means simply taking something on authority. Now Lampert, for example, has some authority for me in that he knows much more (though not necessarily deeper in all respects) of the subject than I do, and can demonstrate as much. Ultimately it's a matter of demonstration, not of authority: a matter of rational argument, for example. He consistently shows hidden meanings, in many philosophers of prime note. Ultimately, _I_ decide whether I find him convincing. I usually do.
Its not so much about authority, it is only that I am too aware of interpretational integrity - i.e. of the structural integrity that is projected into the text by the interpreter. Much more so even the usual failure of an interpeter to draw out the entire structural integrity of the authors meaning.
It seems to me that you are reading yourself into Lampert reading himself into Plato.
I surely read myself into Nietzsche - that is precisely what I felt privileged to do when I first read him. Hence also why I would never allow anyone else to come between him me. I sensed and sense that no one understands him more closely than I do. This is my personal interpretation, of course.
So you will have to quote Plato to convince me that things you say pertain to Plato. Unless you reveal to me directly some evidently intended meaning, I can not indulge. I cannot, even if I wanted to, which I don't, as I am very proud of my disposition.
Well, do you remember the time, a few years ago in your apartment, when I opened one of your Loeb editions of Plato at random and happened upon the word--and sentence, a reply by Socrates to what his current interlocutor has just said--kalôs? This was translated as "True", but means "Beautifully/Nobly [said/spoken]"...
Yes. It was pleasant going over a bit of Greek, is what I remember most about that.
But what are you pointing to here?
I was then and am now in agreement that to read the original text is really the best thing.
I was not aware then that there is even doubt about that original text, though - that only fortifies my understanding of Socrates and Plato as representing a ghost-realm.
Fixed Cross wrote:Mitra-Sauwelios wrote:That only lowers my evaluation of what is supposed to be said in the text.
Why? Because your opinion of Plato is so low you think any change to what he wrote can only make it better?
It seems to me that you are reading yourself into Lampert reading himself into Plato.
I surely read myself into Nietzsche - that is precisely what I felt privileged to do when I first read him. Hence also why I would never allow anyone else to come between him me. I sensed and sense that no one understands him more closely than I do. This is my personal interpretation, of course.
It (scholarship) is like science: at some point, if you keep getting consistent results, it becomes reasonable to assume the thing you're investigating is actually consistent. Of course, you could, like Hume, keep rejecting such conclusions as induction, but that's basically solipsist.
I mean, sure, an interpreter will always put _something_ into the text that wasn't originally there--even if the text has come down to him completely intact, like Nietzsche's (published) writings have to us, but I find it quite preposterous to presume that, if a writer had intended his writings to mean something specific, it's impossible for others to more or less get his intended meaning. Even Nietzsche himself, who (great-grand)fathered this interpretational supremacy, wrote:
"Another characteristic of the theologian is his incapacity for philology. By philology one should here understand, in a very general sense, the art of reading well,—to be able to read facts without falsifying them by interpretation, without losing caution, patience, subtlety, in the desire for understanding. Philology as ephexis in interpretation[.]" (Ein andres Abzeichen des Theologen ist sein Unvermögen zur Philogie. Unter Philologie soll hier, in einem sehr allgemeinen Sinne, die Kunst, gut zu lesen, verstanden werden,—Tatsachen ablesen können, ohne sie durch Interpretation zu fälschen, ohne im Verlangen nach Verständnis die Vorsicht, die Geduld, die Feinheit zu verlieren. Philologie als Ephexis in der Interpretation[.]--Nietzsche, The Antichrist, section 52, my translation.)
You weren't aware of the critical apparatus? The books of antiquity have all partly or completely dissolved, if not been burned and the like; we depend on the copies and copies of copies (etc. (etc.)) that were made in the meantime.
What I'm pointing to is that even a random opening of a random volume of Plato yields an ambiguity: the word in question was quite rightly translated as "true", because that's what Socrates' interlocutor (or (some of) those who were listening to them speak) would have understood by it, as (would) Plato's general audience. And yet it clearly does not literally mean that--and (Plato's) Socrates was quite keen on the literal meaning of words. (Compare also his telling someone that the idea in question was "terribly good"--and insisting to the confused recipient of that "compliment" that it was really a compliment... These examples are just from the top of my head; I haven't even consulted Lampert or Strauss yet.)
Jakob wrote:Mitra-Sauwelios wrote:Fixed Cross wrote:That only lowers my evaluation of what is supposed to be said in the text.
Why? Because your opinion of Plato is so low you think any change to what he wrote can only make it better?
Listen, first of all you need to realize that my opinion of Plato is low because all he wrote that I have read, I find to be nonsense, pompous, hypocritical, disgraceful and just generally un-earthly and decadent.
The only mildly good quality I see in him is Socrates' vile wit. Which I think is funny, in the capacity of being indicative of his aggressively ignoble and ungrateful nature.
So when I then learn that there isn't actually a text of Plato that is undisputed,
So when I then learn that there isn't actually a text of Plato that is undisputed, I come to think well, maybe it is a function that the noble town of Athens was able to produce such Wretch.
This is my thinking, phrased as undiplomatically as I can.
I am not stating that he dis not exist, just that the more I learn of the context wherein his writings exist, the more my consistent low esteem of him makes sense to me.It seems to me that you are reading yourself into Lampert reading himself into Plato.
I surely read myself into Nietzsche - that is precisely what I felt privileged to do when I first read him. Hence also why I would never allow anyone else to come between him me. I sensed and sense that no one understands him more closely than I do. This is my personal interpretation, of course.
It (scholarship) is like science: at some point, if you keep getting consistent results, it becomes reasonable to assume the thing you're investigating is actually consistent. Of course, you could, like Hume, keep rejecting such conclusions as induction, but that's basically solipsist.
Its new to me to have it suggested that Id have anything do with Hume. I will attempt to quickly forget this suggestion. Hume is a jealous buffoon, as Ive always said, precisely for his idiotic way of questioning science, which is pure out of jealousy of Newton.
Science selects very narrowly: it acknowledges these things that can be isolated and repeated in isolation.
As such , it arrives at nuclear physics, which is proven valid through technology.
It is a very narrow aspect of the world that science can measure - only those instances of being that can be isolated and repeated. A very limited number of portions of existence apply here, but the ones that do are very powerful.
What is being selected intimately is a type of human action. The scientist is the product of the selection, along with the tools he makes.
So the end product of the selection you are doing is -- you, and your empirical powers drawn from your isolation process.
That s literally all that can be said to be real, as resulting from your investigations.
So that is what I prod you for - empirical results. Power.
There is to other criterium to see if your criteria make sense or not.
I do urge you to address this question directly and not deflect it, rephrase it so that it seems to become a question to me.
I mean, sure, an interpreter will always put _something_ into the text that wasn't originally there--even if the text has come down to him completely intact, like Nietzsche's (published) writings have to us, but I find it quite preposterous to presume that, if a writer had intended his writings to mean something specific, it's impossible for others to more or less get his intended meaning. Even Nietzsche himself, who (great-grand)fathered this interpretational supremacy, wrote:
The point is not about understanding the writers intended meaning, but of taking the privilege to explain it in other terms than the writer, without a disclaimer that this naturally becomes ones own writing.
Self-valuing, and all that. Standards, structural integrities, these speak through all interpretations and translations.
"Another characteristic of the theologian is his incapacity for philology. By philology one should here understand, in a very general sense, the art of reading well,—to be able to read facts without falsifying them by interpretation, without losing caution, patience, subtlety, in the desire for understanding. Philology as ephexis in interpretation[.]" (Ein andres Abzeichen des Theologen ist sein Unvermögen zur Philogie. Unter Philologie soll hier, in einem sehr allgemeinen Sinne, die Kunst, gut zu lesen, verstanden werden,—Tatsachen ablesen können, ohne sie durch Interpretation zu fälschen, ohne im Verlangen nach Verständnis die Vorsicht, die Geduld, die Feinheit zu verlieren. Philologie als Ephexis in der Interpretation[.]--Nietzsche, The Antichrist, section 52, my translation.)
Yes, reading well is necessary. But Nietzsche never takes the step you make - in that he relays the results of his good reading as if it is the same as what he has been reading.
He is infinitely more prudent there than you are - he rarely quotes, and when he does, he quotes short passages and without added interpretation.
He thus takes an opposite standard to yours - namely, my standard.
I too only quote others to illustrate my own points; I don't talk to illustrate quotes I take from other people.
I find the proper, aesthetic, clean method is to stat ones own thoughts, and then add a quotation of a person that demonstrates that ones thinking has some precedent. It does not involve opening up and dissecting what another has wrote. I find that uncouth and ineffective.
You weren't aware of the critical apparatus? The books of antiquity have all partly or completely dissolved, if not been burned and the like; we depend on the copies and copies of copies (etc. (etc.)) that were made in the meantime.
So perhaps Plato is even an Islamic invention?
In any case all this corroborates the validity of my always-held tastes and standards: Homer, Sculpture, and Architecture - that is what is truly Greek - worthy of admiration.
What I'm pointing to is that even a random opening of a random volume of Plato yields an ambiguity: the word in question was quite rightly translated as "true", because that's what Socrates' interlocutor (or (some of) those who were listening to them speak) would have understood by it, as (would) Plato's general audience. And yet it clearly does not literally mean that--and (Plato's) Socrates was quite keen on the literal meaning of words. (Compare also his telling someone that the idea in question was "terribly good"--and insisting to the confused recipient of that "compliment" that it was really a compliment... These examples are just from the top of my head; I haven't even consulted Lampert or Strauss yet.)
Well precisely, Socrates was keen mostly on twisting peoples meanings. In fact that is all I have ever witnessed that character do.
And in all of this Socratic analysis of yours, I honestly only ever see a certain aspect you, and never even a glimpse of Greekness... nor the aspects of you that I know as dangerous, powerful, capable of conquest... or as Greek.
I suspect that your philological efforts would find equal or better results in studying the Talmud, which is a body of work specifically intended to reflect human interpretation of other humans interpretations of a final infinitely receded All-Truth - this is not meant as insulting, as Talmudic study is a very powerful means, it yields results: the power of the Jews is such a result. The Talmud essentially is a tool to perpetuate the tradition of critical reading.
To me, the question is not; what does this ancient source mean? But: what do I mean?
And when I read Nietzsche, all too often Ill tink: ah but of course, this is exactly what I mean.
Then it turns out that, because I mean what he means, but am a different entity, I need to phrase it in an entirely different and more powerful way, because otherwise it would literally amount to less than nothing.
If I proceed to expres Nietzsches meanings using derivatives of Niezsche's powers (language), I only take away from Nietzsche.
One should only seek to exhaustively interpret "God", i.e. the meaning of the world, never another human.
Other entities can by definition not be understood in universal terms. Because they all have their particular partial-logic that keeps them from being infinite/no-thing.
But now I am getting esoteric.
Mitra-Sauwelios wrote:Jakob wrote:Listen, first of all you need to realize that my opinion of Plato is low because all he wrote that I have read, I find to be nonsense, pompous, hypocritical, disgraceful and just generally un-earthly and decadent.
Okay, but I think that's a reading on an exoteric level. Plato may very well be criticized for his exoteric message, but the idea behind it, I think, was that the effect thereof was better than the effect of his esoteric message on everyone but philosophers (and philosophers were able to hear through the exoteric one)--and I think that idea was justified true belief.
The only mildly good quality I see in him is Socrates' vile wit. Which I think is funny, in the capacity of being indicative of his aggressively ignoble and ungrateful nature.
So when I then learn that there isn't actually a text of Plato that is undisputed,
Well, I didn't go _that_ far. I'm not sure, there may be texts of his that have survived fully legibly. But this may also be a ridiculous idea. I don't really know anything about the degradation process of papyrus and the like.
So when I then learn that there isn't actually a text of Plato that is undisputed, I come to think well, maybe it is a function that the noble town of Athens was able to produce such Wretch.
I don't understand this sentence. Could it be that your spellchecker changed a word or something?
I do now think I get the gist of what you're saying, though. The thing is, I don't think Plato was Wretch, or that Athens was still all that noble at the time. I don't think Socrates' wit, at least when his esotericism is taken into account, is vile; I think he belongs to the most noble and grateful natures.
Its new to me to have it suggested that Id have anything do with Hume. I will attempt to quickly forget this suggestion. Hume is a jealous buffoon, as Ive always said, precisely for his idiotic way of questioning science, which is pure out of jealousy of Newton.
Well, that's just, like, your opinion, man! I don't think he was jealous, and I don't find his way of questioning science idiotic. As you know, I think solipsism (or, more precisely, "solosomniism") is the thriftiest possible worldview.
I'm usually making an argument. That should be obvious.
I think that's a superficial view of what I do. I _contend_ to have understood what I've been reading, and show that by explaining it in other terms.
He is infinitely more prudent there than you are - he rarely quotes, and when he does, he quotes short passages and without added interpretation.
Maybe, but then again, he wasn't an Xian, whereas I have been a Nietzschean.
I don't think it really matters whether they're your own thoughts or not. What matters is the quality of the thoughts. Not to have one's own thoughts, but to have quality thoughts, that's what matters. But this may be too Socratic for your taste (see below).
But technically, Homer could be an Islamic invention as well as Plato. To be sure, Islam is more Platonic than Homeric (though Nietzsche lists Arab nobility together with Homeric heroes as a noble race with the blond beast at its roots, in GM 1.11), but they could--again, technically--have invented Homer as a foil, to "discredit" pagan Europeans. By the way, Aristotle would be more likely to be an Islamic invention than Plato, as the former depended more on the Medieval enlightenment in the Middle East than the latter for the transmission of his texts.
Socrates was keen mostly on twisting peoples meanings. In fact that is all I have ever witnessed that character do.
Which does not mean that's all that character ever does, though.
If I proceed to expres Nietzsches meanings using derivatives of Niezsche's powers (language), I only take away from Nietzsche.
One should only seek to exhaustively interpret "God", i.e. the meaning of the world, never another human.
But other humans are part of God, and some have been able to interpret it more exhaustively than others--even than you, at least in certain respects and at certain points in your life. To be sure, though, through the self-valuing logic of being, I am become united with God once again, and apparently more lastingly this time. No longer through an avatar, though the avatar is still useful as a symbol.
Other entities can by definition not be understood in universal terms. Because they all have their particular partial-logic that keeps them from being infinite/no-thing.
But now I am getting esoteric.
"All" is a universal term, though.
I will just give you my thoughts now, without supporting any of it. Socrates, as a Sophist, was like a Buddha, an enlightened one. In fact, he was a fuller Buddha than his fellow Sophists, for he understood something they did not, until he enlightened them. What only Socrates understood was that only the fewest were capable of enduring Sophistic enlightenment--that most people would be corrupted by it. These people or their loved ones would then turn against the enlightened enlighteners themselves. This is why Socrates went down, like a Bodhisattva: to enlighten those who were up to it and to keep from enlightenment, or even endarken, those who weren't. (Those who had already started to be corrupted by the Sophists needed to be endarkened.)
The supreme or sole direct value of Greekness--Homer, Greek sculpture and architecture, etc.--is its most strongly suggesting this enlightenment. After all, what could have more value to one who has transcended himself into God than communicating with like-Minded others? _All_ his encounters are confrontations of God with itself, but most of them are only one way. Time itself moves in one direction, but then all origin myths of such transmissions have at least two in the beginning: enlightened Eve enlightened Adam, enlightened Shiva enlightened Parvati, etc. Nietzsche had to split himself in two to enjoy the pleasure consistently.
To enlighten the strong and keep the weak in the soothing dark: that is the purpose of going down. The reason is the Logos.
Jakob wrote:Mitra-Sauwelios wrote:To enlighten the strong and keep the weak in the soothing dark: that is the purpose of going down. The reason is the Logos.
No, to keep the weak in the soothing dark is to breed pestilence.
The weak must be prodded to fight, so that the ones with the biggest mouths among them will be revealed for what they are.
Jakob wrote:Mitra-Sauwelios wrote:Jakob wrote:Its new to me to have it suggested that Id have anything do with Hume. I will attempt to quickly forget this suggestion. Hume is a jealous buffoon, as Ive always said, precisely for his idiotic way of questioning science, which is pure out of jealousy of Newton.
Well, that's just, like, your opinion, man! I don't think he was jealous, and I don't find his way of questioning science idiotic. As you know, I think solipsism (or, more precisely, "solosomniism") is the thriftiest possible worldview.
And as you know, Ive been looking down on Hume since 2001... good thing I don't have Vertigo!
I do think he was jealous of Newton, and even outraged at the consistency of his findings.
Mitra-Sauwelios wrote:I remember you don't believe in the Big Bang. Of course I also don't believe in it in the sense of "how it all began", but I do, or at least I don't disbelieve in it, in the sense of a thorough change of habits...
My question being, do you think Newtonian mechanics always applies everywhere except where it's been shown not to apply by Einstein and/or quantum physics/mechanics? That thing about Laune I wrote in your challenge thread to me was an allusion to what Nietzsche offered as the alternative to the ER: I think it's quite akin to Objective Idealism:
"The one intelligible theory of the universe is that of objective idealism, that matter is effete mind, inveterate habits becoming physical laws." (Charles Sanders Peirce, "The Architecture of Theories".)
Nietzsche's alternative being that our known world with its mechanistic laws be a whimsical exception (Nachlass Herbst 1881 11 [311-13]).
Jakob wrote:Mitra-Sauwelios wrote:I remember you don't believe in the Big Bang. Of course I also don't believe in it in the sense of "how it all began", but I do, or at least I don't disbelieve in it, in the sense of a thorough change of habits...
Actually this is one of the couple of things James resolved for me: what could that Big Bang have been, given it surely can not have been the origin of existence. Note that physical science, physics, proves that there has been a great bang-like event. I am certainly not some flat-earth moron who denies physical evidence, in fact I am the very contrary, which is why I don't believe some kerosene can melt 400 meter high armed concrete and steel towers and have them neatly collapse all of a sudden in a vertical column at the speed of free fall. It causes strong nausea in me to think people are capable of believing that, like Hollow-Earth theory.
"The one intelligible theory of the universe is that of objective idealism, that matter is effete mind, inveterate habits becoming physical laws." (Charles Sanders Peirce, "The Architecture of Theories".)
I agree with the second part, in that gravity, as is strong-force, is a compound of selfvluing tendencies. But this is unrelated to mind. As I see it mind is certainly not at the ground of anything besides models of thought, but an end product of an organizing process, something signifying and requiring kosmos. Thus, mind itself is sooner "effete natural laws" - to my mind - and its best hope is to rise to become a vigorous extension of natural law - to wake up, and become strong enough to acquire some measure in terms of my mind, which has become the all-measure as I decreed it would in 2016.
The question is not: "are scientific laws objectively consistent with reality?" but: "with which reality are scientific laws consistent?"
As pointed out by Moreno, there are realities which rely on and support very different laws, such as the consciousness of plants. That such consciousness is not an absurd fiction but rather a necessity becomes clear when one understands all acts of life as acts of valuing, which axiom to a science independent from what we call "natural science".
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