Kevin Spacey's alleged history: worth it?

Who is next?

Hello Sauwelios,
I think that, on a philosophical level, the world is increased in value by creativity rather than in safety which only increases the number of units of average value. Eliminating Se7en for the sake of keeping young actors safe from an unwanted advance would deny the world a good movie WITHOUT actually making young men safer. If improving his character leads to the destruction of his creativity, which I don’t know how we could know.

It seems to me that a “good” character is not easy to define and thus might not even exist as an object with which we could trade creativity for. It is entirely possible for a man, defined as having good character, to pose a threat to young men. Socrates quickly comes to mind, followed by Plato, probably one of Socrates’ victims. In the news recently, former judge Roy Moore is accused by a few women of sexual misconduct with minors and even sexual assault. This same man fought for the Christian values of his community, thus perhaps considered by most as a man of “good” character.

It seems that the spirit of the protest is one that deals in absolutes. Is good character possible in the absence of will? Plato asked once who was the good man and compared such a being to a person with the ability to do either good or bad. Being good because of the incapacity for bad was not good at all. If so then even wishing for a good character for Kevin would still leave open the possibility of a moral failure here or there. Thus I wonder if even if we gave Spacey a good character if he would not attack a young man down the road. We have to assume he could for the very existence of good. Meanwhile, creating a reality where it would be impossible for Kevin to manhandle the young man would not only deprive us of Se7en (Creativity), but even of the possibility of good character.

Yes, but between the derivation of character and its newly revealed post structural similarity, moral appearance counts for much more, for the reason that there is no quick justification such as is evident in the use of characterization using literally reified, masks, correlating to the actual perceptions of content.
Although what You are saying is correct, it fails on the level of believability of the act being directly suggestive of who resides under the mask.

Modern theatre defines character through the use of action, proving an attitude, albeit a public one, of being superior to mere literal representation, through
the equivocation of the lines uttered with the corresponding acceptance of the masked character is displayed.

The mask in Greek Tragedy and the lines uttered definitely defined the moral content. The only structure it had, was a presumptive totality , without any doubt.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTFJUCfWEhA[/youtube]

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.)

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. Buy I will post it anyway:

Would you choose

  1. Everything as it is
  2. Sokrates had never molested children, and Sokrates body of work doesn’t exist.

I would actually be tempted to choose option 2, not because of the (abject) child molesting but because of my judgment of Sokrates’ work as utterly abject and blasphemous against life.

Sure, and in a century or less a bunch of philosophers will be disregarded because they weren’t vegans. Seems like a dangerous game.

Well it is completely retarded and it will only drain the movements that are about this stuff of power - surely this is another symptom of the violent self-termination of a certain branch of humanity. Other symptoms are transgenderism (self-castration and encouraging of child-castration in schools) and just the general laws prohibiting discernment between biological genders. Surely a that is all preparation for some Great Death.

Im just pushing the semantic game to show where it ends up.

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.

Ah, I am actually relieved you are here to defend him, so I can continue my attack without remorse.

I don’t know what that means here, he just slept with boys, yeah I used a derogatory term. He was a pedophile or ephebophile or what you want to call it -
and I found Omars idea that this influenced Plato very good.

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.

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”).

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.

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]”…

house of cards is a good show

i wish companies would let him act and continue production

the news is plenty enough damage

That only lowers my evaluation of what is supposed to be said in the text.

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.

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.

Why? Because your opinion of Plato is so low you think any change to what he wrote can only make it better?

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.)

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, 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The question being “Where are the empirical results, where is the power, resulting from your investigations?”, I take it. I’ll try to show you a glimpse or two below.

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.

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.

Which does not mean that’s all that character ever does, though.

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.

“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.

Not merely his message, his entire style is weak.
And as we know from N, style is substance.
Style even can be said to be the bone-structure underneath the substance.

I have never acknowledged the esoteric-exotic reading of a philosopher - I find the whole idea far too liberal, to be honest - the idea that one can divine meanings that aren’t literally in a text, and then claim this is what the author really meant - I surely hope I won’t be read in this way as I make an effort to say things straightforwardly in more than one way - but I truly furiously dismiss it if it can even excuse or justify Socrates and Plato, whom I truly regard as the low-points of Greece.

All I ask is that you don’t ask me to value these particular standard of reading the ancients. I think we have far less issues concerning reality, and I think Plato is entirely useless at best when we discuss reality.

I mean this, he is a dirty distraction to me, I really find him very unclean.
Sorry, I can’t continue touching on him, I get physically very uncomfortable.

In any case lets drop him from the conversations between us. It always just costs me time and energy and leaves me frustrated to have wasted my time on that pompous anti-valuer who destroyed beautiful particular Athens.

yes - function should be fiction.

Well he is funny.
But I don’t think the is graceful at all. I find him a boor and an astounding brute, how he infringes on his hosts and runs the self-respect of straightforward people.
What I find funny about him is his extreme rudeness.
His Apology, the whole gist of it, is to me the most powerful sermon against life that the West has produced. this fits with my view of him as a very sick man
There are traces of grace in him, and the manners of a nobleman, but he has the ways and the convictions of a pest-ridden slave.
Granted, Athens at that time was apparently over her peak - even the fact that Socrates was capable of acquiring fame speaks to that.
But to me none of this is any more justified than some Liberal Senator raping a 3 year old and then killing her. It happens, sure. And we affirm whatever has happened. But we can surely want to destroy the forces that caused it to happen.

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.
We must agree to disagree, here too.

Since you have become ore resilient and strong, I will also set harsh limits.
I will no longer acknowledge esoteric readings, only quoted text - and I will not discuss philosophers I don’t take seriously.
This because I will be needing my time for the development of real philosophy — advancing VO, which clearly, and unlike any of these previous philosophies, works to ennoble.

I am now officially a Philosopher King, having effected, again unlike philosophers before me, the enlightenment of others. I have succeeded in taking philosophy beyond mere love of wisdom into actual wisdom.

Whenever you do, I am pleased. As you argue exceptionally well.
Whenever you assume that there is given value in Plato or Sokrates, I object.

I did not mean to suggest there is no merit in your method, but I mean to stress that quoting N on the subject isn’t appropriate as Nietzsche himself never quotes at length, and certainly never dissects other peoples texts to find hidden meanings.

He just says, in his own words, which are the most powerful words in the world, what is the case as he sees it.
This, and only this, is what I regard ad philosophy.

And only when you are being challenged in your setting other minds before your own, are you tempted to make your own statements. So I keep challenging.

Quoting is always going to be good and necessary, as here H says what I want you do I’ve up to consistently, I think this is your translation:

Thunderbolt steers all things.

This points to direct influence.

Yes, and I like to read quotes. I just don’t like to be asked to interpret them like you do.
I only care to read in the natural tendencies of my own mind. There are no higher or better tendencies.
What I read is what is meant to be read.

The distinction just doesnt apply to me. My thoughts are always of high quality. Which is why I like to have thoughts.
The same goes for Nietzsche: he evidently loved thinking.

How, if one doesn’t have a standard of ones own (ones own thoughts) is one to determine the quality of the thoughts of others?

Even though this thought occurred as I wrote that, I dismissed it immediately on the basis that style reflects power and substance directly.
Homer is far more powerful and substantial than any islamic text or person has ever been, and with twenty abysses of infinite depth and width between. But Socrates is quite the same sort of quality as Islamic banter.

And that in turn does not mean that it’s not all he ever does.
But granted, he also lies of his own devices and speaks his own blasphemies against life.

I wonder by the way what you think of Nietzsches rejection of Socrates and Plato -
It is clear in any case that you are not obedient to him and eek your on path, you insist that Socrates has worthy even if he goes directly against Nietzsche - so in a funny way, the convinces me that you don’t really believe Plato either… you just invent the Socrates you need for your own purposes.
This is sooner a vote of confidence than an accusation, even as you will disagree that you are doing this.
I can simply not value you valuation of Socrates, I can’t take it literally. I see him too far below you. Socrates could never have been my friend, though he would have begged like a dog.

H A I L !

Yes. Which is why I said “now I am getting esoteric”; meaning, now I start to contradict myself and ramble; now my discipline in formulating is slipping.

I really don’t see any of this in Socrates, nor do I find this course of action noble; it seems to me that enlightenment here simply means death, and that the opposite also simple means death.

Yes. And I don’t believe in “the Self” but in a polis of wills, anyway. For me the duality isn’t necessary as relevant as general plurality.

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.

Well, to be sure, even in my esoteric view (of which I think Nietzsche, by the way, had gleaned too little to value Plato the way I do), the Platonic strategy did indeed eventually breed pestilence (Christianity). Then again, I think that always happens eventually: thus the Homeric strategy led to the situation that in my view necessitated Platonism, and the Machiavellian has led to the current situation. And I do actually think simply keeping the weak in the dark will not do at this point.

“[…] The Tibetan Book of the Dead, where the departed soul is described as shrinking in agony from the Pure Light of the Void, and even from the lesser, tempered Lights, in order to rush headlong into the comforting darkness of selfhood as a reborn human being, or even as a beast, an unhappy ghost, a denizen of hell. Anything rather than the burning brightness of unmitigated Reality—anything!” (Huxley, The Doors of Perception)


Zeus and Semele

Awesome picture.

I do not agree that Homer is what led to decay, just as I do not think it is the sunrise that leads to night. Its is eventually followed by night, but I don’t see all lines of progression as a causal chains. The causes aren’t in the progression, but the progression has a set of causes which is shared by all the instances in that progression.

Compare: If I kick a ball, the kick will be the cause (to my mind, I don’t do infinite regress) of all revolutions and displacement of the ball, rather than that instance (x,y,z: 1,1,1) is the cause of instance (x,y,z: 2,2,2).

What led to the night? The ending of the day, or the depletion of forces. Or: the revolution of the orbs. But not the light itself.

But I agree to your deeper, more urgent points about sickly entities scurrying away from the light, and I think there is no alternative now to Thors Hammer. The light will be seen for what it is: power. And the dark will know itself as the opposite. But it already knows itself as such, which is why it has always been spreading malice and sickness wherever the light enters.

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]).