Aristotle, from Nicomachean Ethics 3.5 "Still they are themselves by their slack lives responsible for becoming men of that kind, and men are themselves responsible for being unjust or self-indulgent, in that they cheat or spend their time in drinking bouts and the like; for it is activities exercised on particular objects that make the …
Continue reading "A knot in Aristotle regarding training, character, ends"
Either, I am total owner of my body, my talents, and I have a right to the employment of both in work (which requires exclusive room to move in time and space), or someone else is at least part owner. To the degree that someone else is part owner of my body, my talents and …
From Kant: "A man who notices that he is being observed or scrutinized will either appear disturbed (embarrassed), and will therefore not be able to behave as he really is, or else will conceal himself because he does not want to be known as he really is." (from Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, …
Continue reading "A conundrum for the one aiming at self-development"
Plato in Theaetetus-- "Socrates: ...And do you accept my description of the process of thinking? Theaetetus: How do you describe it? Socrates: As a discourse that the mind carries on with itself about any subject it is considering...when the mind is thinking, it is simply talking to itself...So I should describe thinking as discourse, and …
Continue reading "Plato and Kant on thought as self-discourse"
"In short, prayer is autologue validated by religion; whereas hallucination is autologue invalidated by psychiatry. (From pg. 13 of The Meaning of Mind). There is so much to think about here. On the offense taken by the religious. Relax, it is not that we are not talking to another. It is that to the degree …
Appearance is in some sense everything. But appearances change. So, appearances are unstable. Reality often refers to either what is causing the changes in appearances or that which appearances come to rest in. Such reality can be broken into two categories: not-essence and essence. Anything changing is changing both because of what it is fundamentally …
Spiritualism, as I mean it here, demands talk about the inexpressible. Materialism, as I mean it here, limits talk to the more technically expressible. I get the concerns of both. The Materialist can't do without the inexpressible. The Spiritualist needs admit the poverty of talk about his object. Both need to get to work. But …
Continue reading "No longer put off by materialism or impressed by spiritualism."
Pierre Hadot is worth a read on Ancient Philosophy. His meta-thesis is that for the ancients (Greece and Rome) philosophy was the combination of a choice of life and a discourse. This makes ancient philosophy different from contemporary philosophy which has let go of form of life requirements and continued merely as discourse. He examines …
Continue reading "A note on Kierkegaard and Plotinus through Hadot"
Jesus says it, and we know how he was interpreted by Paul and by later followers. It is an exclusive designation as far as that tradtion goes in its tendency. Epictetus says it. If only one could be properly convinced of this truth, that we’re all first and foremost children of God, and that God …
The practical life is a life full of limitation and finitude and so requiring work. In limitation and finitude are the the possibilities of negation, absence, not-it. This absence or lack is that in which lies the category of death which also includes the ultimate rest (or absence of work). Add to limitation the feature …
