The Philosophers

And of what am I ignorant? Mysteriously you do not say.

What are you even talking about, how does this relate to what I said? Are you high right now?

Ah… yes of course, I should not expect you to actually explain what you mean when you say something, I should of course just know that you mean for me to do a “google search” rather than expect you to actually… know what the fuck you mean when you say something.

Again, not answering the question I asked you.

No thanks, I am not in your Misdirection and Getting High while Performing Acts of Pseudophilosophy 101 course. I don’t need to do any fucking homework assigned by you, all I wanted was you to actually explain what you meant when you said something.

Guess that’s too much to ask.

Great, you found a video that you have not watched yet. And this is somehow more relevant than just telling us what you meant when you said “new modes and orders”.

Ok.

I didn’t say you were ignorant, I said you sounded ignorant. Of what?

  1. That Machiavelli wrote considerably more than just The Prince;
  2. that even The Prince alone cannot be reduced to a simple formula, at least not on the basis of face-value readings;
  3. that insights which are earth-shattering now aren’t necessarily more so than insights that were earth-shattering in the 1500s.

Nope, I wasn’t, nor am I now. I was referring to point 3 above. And the thing about Thucydides meant: wait, didn’t Machiavelli live at the end of the High Renaissance? and wasn’t the Renaissance the rebirth of classical antiquity? and wasn’t Thucydides a major ancient Greek historian, and very much a realist in the “Machiavellian” sense? More on this below.

And I shouldn’t expect you to do any work yourself; you want me to present you with a simple formula, which in my case however must naturally be the result of time-consuming study, not of some face-value readings…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlSv818d1Rk[/youtube] The Office David Brent If You Don’t Know Me By Now

[Note: the previous video was 10. New Modes and Orders: Machiavelli’s The Prince (chaps. 1-12)]

You mean, when I quoted something. Here’s Strauss’s own explanation:

“To our great surprise, Machiavelli identifies immediately afterwards the new modes and orders with those of antiquity: his discovery is only a rediscovery. He refers to the contemporary concern with fragments of ancient statues, which are held in high honor and used as models by contemporary sculptors. It is all the more surprising that no one thinks of imitating the most virtuous actions of ancient kingdoms and republics, with the deplorable result that no trace of ancient virtue remains. The present-day lawyers learn their craft from the ancient lawyers. The present-day physicians base their judgments on the experience of the ancient physicians. It is therefore all the more surprising that in political and military matters the present-day princes and republics do not have recourse to the examples of the ancients. This results not so much from the weakness into which the present-day religion has led the world or from the evil that ambitious leisure has done to many Christian countries and cities, as from insufficient understanding of the histories and especially that of Livy. As a consequence, Machiavelli’s contemporaries believe that the imitation of the ancients is not only difficult but impossible. Yet this is plainly absurd: the natural order, including the nature of man, is the same as in antiquity.
We understand now why the discovery of new modes and orders, which is only the rediscovery of the ancient modes and orders, is dangerous. That rediscovery which leads up to the demands that the virtue of the ancients be imitated by present-day men, runs counter to the present-day religion: it is that religion which teaches that the imitation of ancient virtue is impossible, that it is morally impossible, for the virtues of the pagans are only resplendent vices. What Machiavelli will have to achieve in the Discourses is not merely the presentation, but the re-habilitation, of ancient virtue against the Christian critique. This does not dispose us of the difficulty that the discovery of new modes and orders is only the re-discovery of the ancient modes and orders.
[… S]hortly before the end of Book One, he openly questions the opinion of all writers, including Livy, on a matter of the greatest importance. He thus leads us step by step to the realization of why the old modes and orders which he has rediscovered, are new: 1) The modes and orders of ancient Rome were established under the pressure of circumstances, by trial and error, without a coherent plan, without understanding of their reasons; Machiavelli supplies the reasons and is therefore able to correct some of the old modes and orders. 2) The spirit that animated the old modes and orders was veneration for tradition, for authority, the spirit of piety, while Machiavelli is animated by an altogether different spirit.” (Strauss, Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, pp. 219-20 and 221.)

Compare:

“[T]hose moralists who, like the followers of Socrates, recommend self-control and sobriety to the individual as his greatest possible advantage and the key to his greatest personal happiness, are exceptions–and if we ourselves do not think so, this is simply due to our having been brought up under their influence. They all take a new path, and thereby bring down upon themselves the utmost disapproval of all the representatives of the morality of custom. They sever their connection with the community, as immoralists, and are, in the fullest sense of the word, evil ones. In the same way, every Christian who ‘sought, above all things, his own salvation’, must have seemed evil to a virtuous Roman of the old school.” (Nietzsche, The Dawn of Day, aph. 9, trans. Kennedy.)

I’d seen videos from the same course before, so I already knew the guy was a Mansfieldian-Straussian. Anyway, this is precisely what I meant by your sounding ignorant, and my thinking you do that on purpose. On your primary forum you call yourself Thrasymachus, after all;

“On three different occasions, Strauss noted what Alfarabi held to be fundamental in Plato’s correction of the way of Socrates: Plato added ‘the way of Thrasymachus’ to the way of Socrates (‘Farabi’s Plato’ 382-84; PAW 16-17; WPP 153). […] Thrasymachus is an actor; his initial anger at Socrates is calculated, he plays at anger to create anger, to anger others against the object of his own feigned anger–Socrates. […]
By play-acting anger at Socrates, Thrasymachus exhibits the city’s real anger at Socrates (78). […]
Thrasymachus’ art is ‘concerned with both arousing and appeasing the angry passions of the multitude.’ […]
How can the philosopher rule Thrasymachus? By showing that his advantage is best served by making his art ministerial to philosophy.” (Lampert, Leo Strauss and Nietzsche, pp. 146, 147, 148, and 151.)

Even with your sarcasm–the lowest form of wit–, you present yourself as what your feminists would call a troglodyte. [At this point I did vapourise, and decided to keep both my drafts of what was to immediately follow–even though they were written in reverse order, and the second was supposed to supplant the quote.] Yet apparently, all this is ministerial to Value Philosophy.

“[T]he political action of the philosophers on behalf of philosophy has achieved full success. One sometimes wonders whether it has not been too successful.” (Strauss, What Is Political Philosophy?, page 127.)

Homer, Plato and Machiavelli were ultimately too successful, which was the reason Plato, Machiavelli and Nietzsche, respectively, had to step in.

“Founding is continuous: that great Machiavellian lesson is carried forward by Strauss. Defense of what was well founded requires subsequent foundings, introductions of great novelties in the service of the original founding.
And how does the continuous founding now display its necessities?” (Lampert, op.cit., pp. 144-45.)

Is my task indeed to be Knight Sauwelios?

“Nietzsche distinguishes our Vornehmheit from Greek Vornehmheit: modern, post-Christian virtue is superior to ancient Greek virtue, Nietzsche argues, precisely of what our particular ‘extraction, origin, birth’ bequeathed to us, namely what our religion, the tyranny and discipline of our religion, bred into us.” (op.cit., page 113.)

This goes for our Machiavellian religion as well as for our Platonic religion.

“Knowing the inevitability of masks, Nietzsche chose to weave his own, the mask of a rash truth teller whose unguarded speech would make him seem an immoralist, a devil, the mask of a super-Machiavelli. That mask, and the vehemence with which its terrible contours would be traced by those who took it to be more than a mask, inevitably assigned a task to his friends, advocates bound by the beauty and rigor of his writings to see eventually that the mask masked its opposite, a new teaching on good and bad by something approaching a god.” (Lampert, Nietzsche’s task, pp. 301-02.)

Nietzsche, Machiavelli, Plato and Homer were all such noblemen. But I suppose the question, in this context, shall be: is Fixed Cross? The way I understand it, his self-valuing logic of being is most elegant; but I thought it was superior to my “rational value of valuation” precisely because it’s about self-valuing through other-valuing; yet on the same page of this thread as I’m responding to, Fixed Cross wrote:

A direct self-valuing is illogical, irrational. This may not be a problem, but it does mean there is no meaningful difference between the non-being which cannot enforce itself (see e.g. http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?p=2684189#p2684189) and the self-valuing. As I wrote recently:

"In the beginning there was nothing,
And it didn’t like itself,
So it started dreaming up this Other
Most unlike itself.

“The nothing as self-disvaluing One? The Other then indeed as self-valuing–many. Logically.” (http://pathos-of-distance.forumotion.com/t17p50-what-is-the-will-to-power#346)

Likewise, Crowley writes:

“Love may best be defined as the passion of Hatred inflamed to the point of madness, when it takes refuge in Self-destruction.” (Little Essays toward Truth, “Love”.)

The self-valuing logic of being is itself valued into being by the self-valuing logician. How does it take this into account? Will Philosophy does so through and in the willing of eternal recurrence.

I propose a circle with an infinite diameter.

What, pray tell, is a “direct self valuing”?

I surely disagree that “in the beginning there was nothing”.
In the beginning there at least must have been a beginning, logically speaking that is, not thus per “direct self-valuing”, whatever that is. Logically, there never could have been nothing. But illogically speaking I suppose I can say “nothing exists” and well, make illogical sense.

Am I warm?

Yes, if you don’t agree, you become a specimen who receives a free psychoanalysis including pigeonholing with a helping of stigmatized labeling followed by categorical demonization. Of course, you get what you pay for :confused:

A valuing of itself directly. Consider what I quoted from you:

“My gift to mankind is the power to value his own valuing directly, without requiring a pre-existing object of valuing, a value. The objects are functions of the valuing, they are valued into existence.”

Now to be sure, I took that to mean something it does not necessarily mean. Man’s valuing his own valuing directly can mean his valuing (A) his valuing (B) of food directly, for instance. Or it can mean that the different men that comprise mankind value (C) each other’s valuing (D) directly, even if valuing D is itself in turn the valuing (D) of other men’s valuing (C) of valuing D. But I took it to mean man’s valuing (E) of valuing E directly. This is what I call a direct self-valuing.

Well, I don’t mean chronologically or even causally, but logically. In that sense, for you too there seems to be nothing, or non-being (no-thing, not-a-being) in the beginning: you start with the idea that there is something rather than nothing because non-being cannot enforce itself.

Fixed Cross: Powers? Who am I, Stan Lee? Let’s give it ago…

S - no, that is not actually where I start. I start with being, which I use as a criterium (power) to demonstrate why there is not nothing. That is to say, I don’t perform any miracles of producing (or tracing) something from nothing.

I see where you came from with the other thing though.

But my conception of a valuing which is valuing valuing directly actually relates not to the beginning, but to the end, the triumph of nature. In fact you were the one, a few years back, who successfully focussed on this aspect, the philosopher as the peak of natures accomplishment.

You then tied this to your esoteric understanding of Eros. That was some good stuff.

Number 6 - Believe it or not, but value ontology actually feels like a “superpower”. It places me beyond the existing human orders of power.

And I think such new, superhuman power is required to even deal with the death of god.

Meaning Im one of the very few who are actually coping with reality. Reality sans God requires superheroism.

If God is dead he must be resurrected , and resurrection is merely the effect of selective - pan-psychic focus, by minimum of two participants.

1 man is merely stranded on an island of his own construction , where only a mirror of the other can be seen, which he mistakes for another. Friday may be only a wishful appearance.a phantom and a mirage.

Not that he may eventually not come around,

Say the sceptics and the doubters, and those filled with the fear of transmutation.

To live without the consolation of “God” and, thereby, the possibility of redemption is not for everyone, to be sure. I stand with Ivan Karamazov: If I must accept a child’s tears as part of “His” divine plan, then the price of the “eternal salvation of the soul” is much too great. To play devil’s advocate (no pun intended): If an infinite being such as “God” actually exists, I would assume that both “He” and, by extension, “His” divine plan are well beyond the grasp of our finite minds. Perhaps, if our minds were not so constituted, “His” plan would make perfect sense and appear perfectly logical. I am reminded of Descartes’ argument: If the knowledge of God is in our finite minds, then God must have placed it there (how else could it have gotten there?) - thus, God exists. This is certainly clever, and not without a certain charm (much to Descartes credit)…but no. The study of history, or just a quick look around, tells me all I need to know. One pays a price for being an atheist. If this were not so, there would be far more them.

Meno, my friend: God is dead, and we must nail his coffin shut. He had his chance…and he blew it.

He?
You seem to be a bit skeptical about the dead part. Otherwise, why the nails in the coffin?

Agreed.

And where this is not the case, it is illogical to assume there is such a plan.
Not to say that all illogical beliefs are unjustified.
But “eternal salvation” seems a cheat, a cop-out, a disappointment, a “doozy”, far from divine.

Divine is Dionysos, the very opposite of eternity; the escape from time, the revelation of the true moment. That is, the moment as violent rapture, not as blissful stretching void. I think the Buddhist void is what served as a template for the fantasy of heaven.

As many have pointed out, Descartes’ quoon (a new word I just designed for this sort of thing) is also an argument for the validity of our knowledge of the Purple Wombat, the Unicorn, the 88-armed elephant, etc -
Descartes had his moments, but this wasn’t one of them.

Cute, Meno. He, she, it, nails, no nails - it’s all the same…a monkey could have done a better job.

Cross: Don’t forget Spiny Norman.

How ever:

Ok Christ was merely a man, albeit a smart one, and for him to counter with,

: Blessed are those who can believe without seeing - to say that in the time , when there was no knowledge of the difference between seeing and understanding, ergo to see ,may have been coincidental to understanding, seems incontravertible and frankly almost impossible.

May be, that too simplistic formulae, which got him into trouble in the first place.

How did Faust trick the devil ? Single handedly, unending of any advocate? This main fissure in the pan psychic tapestry of humanity , does have mysterious signs written all over it.

Karamazov’s doubt ,his no repudiation in this respect, is based mainly on the very slim degree of differentiation available. Saint Ansolm is still reconsidered , and I don’t know the source , and is probably equally a thoroughly drastic upward slope.

"It’s not God that I don’t accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return Him the ticket.” Sounds like a repudiation to me. Anyway, a bold statement, nevertheless. Shows a bit of dash.

Re Christ: If he existed, he’d be utterly appalled. “The last Christian died on the cross.”

Mitra-Sauwelios

Why so many words here and what are you actually saying? I may be wrong but it seems as though nothing concrete has been said with the above. It is like a dog chasing his own tail.

Perhaps man valuing his own value directly, simply put, is having the confidence and the faith to know what is real and true to him and following that with, according to him, is right action.

There aren’t many words there, but precisely as many words as were needed. You are wrong: it was just too complicated for you to follow, even though I spelled it out (hence the “many words”). I’ll try again, though.

Suppose I value a certain food F–for instance the mackerel I just ate. Then we can speak of “my valuing F”. Now like “Saully’s mackerel” (F), we can also write “Saully’s valuing F” (G). My valuing F is itself something different from F, namely G. Now I can also value G, and we can give my valuing G the symbol H. Note that G = B and H = A; I just used different symbols so as not to confuse you.

Now in the previous paragraph, the only member of mankind I’ve spoken of is myself (I), but there are other members–Jakob, for example (J). I may value Jakob’s valuing (K), even if K is itself in turn Jakob’s valuing of my valuing (L) that valuing of his. Note that K = D and L = C.

Lastly, I may value M, where M is precisely my valuing of M. How? Well, VO teaches that all beings are self-valuings. I take this to mean they are other-valuings. I, for example, am a valuing of other beings. These latter beings include my mackerel (F) and Jakob (J). Now obviously, Jakob may in turn value me as well (so may my mackerel, but this is less obvious, as we’re talking about mackerel the food, not mackerel the fish, to adapt a distinction made in The Cleveland Show). When, not if, this is the case, I’m among other things a Jakob-valuing, and Jakob is among other things a Saully-valuing, so I’m also a Saully-valuing-valuing. More precisely, I’m a direct Jakob-valuing, Jakob’s a direct Saully-valuing, so I’m a direct Saully-valuing-valuing and thereby an indirect Saully-valuing myself, i.e., an indirect self-valuing (namely, by being a direct other-valuing).

Okay, you start with “something exists”, and then ask “what’s it about that something that makes it keep existing?” Right?

Can you be a bit more specific about that, so I may be able to dig it up?

The philosopher as the peak has to do with the eros for eros, yes, but especially with the will-to-power to will-to-power. As Strauss writes:

“The will to power takes the place which the eros–the striving for ‘the good in itself’–occupies in Plato’s thought. But the eros is not ‘the pure mind’ (der reine Geist). Whatever may be the relation between the eros and the pure mind according to Plato, in Nietzsche’s thought the will to power takes the place of both eros and the pure mind. Accordingly philosophizing becomes a mode or modification of the will to power: it is the most spiritual (der geistigste) will to power; it consists in prescribing to nature what or how it ought to be (aph. 9); it is not love of the true that is independent of will or decision. Whereas according to Plato, the pure mind grasps the truth, according to Nietzsche the impure mind, or a certain kind of pure mind, is the sole source of truth.” (Strauss, Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, “Note on the Plan of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil”.)

Now I have contended that the esoteric Plato did understand that there was (most probably) no pure mind. But this may be why Plato, like Nietzsche, taught the recurrence:

“If the will of an individual human being, say of Nietzsche, is to be the origin of meaning and value, and that will manifestly has a cause, the only way out in order to save his position is to say that this will is the cause of itself: eternal return.” (Strauss, lecture of May 18, 1959.)

This peak is far from being a direct self-valuing: it is the peak precisely because it values itself through ninety zillion years of other valuings:

“If Nietzsche had one teaching, it was his teaching of eternal recurrence. This was the notion that time be a circle, that all that happened had happened before and would happen again an endless amount of times. But this was precisely the teaching that Kylie found hardest to bear: Nietzsche would be born, live, and die again, then there would be ninety years of white noise, and then she herself would be born, live, and die again, followed by ninety zillion more years of white noise, after which Nietzsche would be born again… But wait, did that not give her an opportunity to communicate with him? Could she not speak to him across ninety zillion years, even as he spoke to her across ninety?” (The Cosmic Love of Kylie Springtime, Chapter 1.)