and yes I did mean Eudemian Ethics. Really found Aristotle underwhelming.
swirlsofhistory posted:Lykourgos posted:"Truly if you do not climb a high mountain, you will be unaware of the height of the sky. If you do not look down into a deep gorge, you will be unaware of the thickness of the earth.
Ancient Chinese wise man didn't know about trigonometry.
I actually thought something similar as I typed it out, and I think what you posted was funny. Yet, it is an exhortation; climbing a mountain and taking in the view has an effect of its own, leaning over a seemingly endless gorge is enough to rouse any soul.
Old words reach across to us, and XunZi captures that strong sense of hope and potential for knowledge that they bear. Archimedes counted the grains of sand on the planet, but I still like to run it through my hands at the beach.
roseweird posted:doesn't anyone want to read bataille
i used to read bataille a lot & i think i made a bunch of bataille posts once but i am not very interested in him anymore sorry roseweird.
Squalid posted:i do roseweird. unfortunately i do not know who that is.
and yes I did mean Eudemian Ethics. Really found Aristotle underwhelming.
Have you read anything else by Aristotle? If not, I am very surprised that you wound up with the Eudemian Ethics; what caused you to pick that audio book? Anyway, I would never recommend Aristotle as an audio book, but you could have done a lot worse than starting with Eudemian Ethics.
In terms of it being an audio book, here is my opinion. Plato is a group of friends, Aristotle is a textbook. We have all read Plato, and it is like you are watching a remarkable conversation. Readers do get annoyed at what people say and want to join in, but that's just testament to how well Plato writes.
Aristotle, like you know, is nothing like that. His dialogues are lost, and what is left is precious but dry. Every sentence he writes is more valuable than gold; specifically, you must reread and think about each sentence. At times I think Aristotle is better than Plato; I heard a quote from a Catholic that "where God is silent, Aristotle speaks". I don't know where that quote came from, or if it was just his own words, but Aristotle is probably the greatest human ever born. Sometimes I think the most valuable ethical/political work is the Nicomachean Ethics, and the most valuable theological work is a section of the Metaphysics.
I have not read all of Aristotle, and we have our disagreements at times, but there is no one that can challenge his breadth of knowledge. He is every bit as valuable as Plato, but the relationship is much different. You must read him, and you cannot start with him; if you want recommendations on how to access him I am happy to give suggestions, but I think you know well enough.
swirlsofhistory posted:Aristotle wrote some good stuff, but as for the rest of the philosophy of antiquity, we should follow Hume's advice and commit it to the flames.
Have you heard the saying, 焚书坑儒 "Burn Books Bury Confucianists"? Was Hume destroying the books for that reason, or did he pretend that the Ancients were outright simple and wrong? If the latter, then have it out; the Classics were written by lords and gentlemen, men of birth and life who had many years of experience and study in their fields long before putting stylus to tablet.
Make a picture of Herakles flexin while saying something like "welcome to the gun show"
Lykourgos posted:If the latter, then have it out; the Classics were written by lords and gentlemen, men of birth and life who had many years of experience and study in their fields long before putting stylus to tablet.
And there's your problem, men of the ruling classes, removed from life of toil, perverting ordinary language to create endless pseudoproblems and metaphysical justifications for their class rule.
swirlsofhistory posted:Lykourgos posted:If the latter, then have it out; the Classics were written by lords and gentlemen, men of birth and life who had many years of experience and study in their fields long before putting stylus to tablet.
And there's your problem, men of the ruling classes, removed from life of toil, perverting ordinary language to create endless pseudoproblems and metaphysical justifications for their class rule.
so you reckon hume was out there by day with his plough, and hewing wood each evening? Is that the minimum requirement for you, literally some measure of dirt under a man's nails?
Men of the ruling classes are not entirely removed from the life of toil; they don't just kick back and eat grapes all day. From Confucius to Plato, these men traversed the known world teaching students and enlightening nobles. Xenophon cut men down and walked home from the edge of the world. Their souls were raised up by the quality of their company, and they dedicated themselves to high concerns of philosophy and/or state. Have you talked to an old criminal lawyer or judge of status, removed from democratic smallness? Do you see how his voice is tempered by the decades? He is valuable, nobles are valuable, for their own reasons.
The freedom from toil you speak of was rather, a freedom from menial servitude. They had toil, they exerted themselves, but it was for different reasons, they were truly high class. They were lords most pure, from the cradle to the grave. That we often lack this is our failing, and their blessing.
Understand it and save yourself a lot of time puzzling over ancient mystics.
NoFreeWill posted:lmao if you think the ancients knowledge or philosophy is applicable to anything other than their lifeworlds. although Heraclitus is ok.
Do you think we have evolved into another species over the last couple of thousand years? That we don't struggle with issues of political order? Do you think we have a perfect moral system in place and discussion is at an end?
All of that is nonsense. We are people just as the ancients were people. We yearn for political answers just as the ancients did. Morality is eternal and applies whether the year is BC or AD. The progress of the ancients, their experience as humans dealing with humans, their elucidation of moral principles, it is all valuable today just as it was then. There is no escaping it, and indeed we are the ancients, birth and death in turn forever.
Lykourgos posted:so you reckon hume was out there by day with his plough, and hewing wood each evening? Is that the minimum requirement for you, literally some measure of dirt under a man's nails?
Men of the ruling classes are not entirely removed from the life of toil; they don't just kick back and eat grapes all day. From Confucius to Plato, these men traversed the known world teaching students and enlightening nobles. Xenophon cut men down and walked home from the edge of the world. Their souls were raised up by the quality of their company, and they dedicated themselves to high concerns of philosophy and/or state. Have you talked to an old criminal lawyer or judge of status, removed from democratic smallness? Do you see how his voice is tempered by the decades? He is valuable, nobles are valuable, for their own reasons.
The freedom from toil you speak of was rather, a freedom from menial servitude. They had toil, they exerted themselves, but it was for different reasons, they were truly high class. They were lords most pure, from the cradle to the grave. That we often lack this is our failing, and their blessing.
Even those critical of the existing philosophical ideas had to be instructed in them to begin with, and before recent times that only possible for a small minority of privileged men.
I should qualify what I meant by toil by saying that I don't mean physical exertion, or even work, but the practical economic activity that holds up a society, where language is communicative first, and where the philosopher's business of uncovering supposed 'hidden essences' in the world is totally alien and a useless hindrance.
Lykourgos posted:seriously though someone make a banner and I will pay $ to put it on SA or some shit. Promise.
Make a picture of Herakles flexin while saying something like "welcome to the gun show"
im fuckign drunk.ts goddamn chool as hell. ill make somethirng lkater
roseweird posted:that's ok bnw, why did you lose interest in bataille, should i spend my time reading la part maudite? i read an article about it that sounded interesting, and am interested in its interpretation of religious sacrifice, curious what you think tho
bataille pushes this whole spinozist atomism thing that masks a pretty vulgar materialism in the terms of weirdo petit-bourgeois spirituality to cloud his ur-accelerationist shit (emancipation for bataille is allowed thanks to the totalizing expropriation of industrial production, the abstraction of existence to the form of commodity flows being a good in itself, socialism being desirable largely because the bureaucratic state is capable of this industrialization more effectively than bourgeois enterprise). his influence also gave us charlatans like nick land so i guess he is guilty by association to a degree. that and his whole sexual libertinism that is pretty gross to me and might be to you too. i think he just kicks up a lot of dust to hide the edges of his inane political positions and free him from having to hold coherent or rigorous historical investigations. i do think that about most philosophers tho but that especially goes for petit-bourgeois left communists like bataille. tbqh i am not particularly interested in anything remotely approaching pure Theory anymore really. i would suggest reading jose maria sison instead
Edited by blinkandwheeze ()
Lykourgos posted:.custom192772{}NoFreeWill posted:lmao if you think the ancients knowledge or philosophy is applicable to anything other than their lifeworlds. although Heraclitus is ok.
Do you think we have evolved into another species over the last couple of thousand years? That we don't struggle with issues of political order? Do you think we have a perfect moral system in place and discussion is at an end?
All of that is nonsense. We are people just as the ancients were people. We yearn for political answers just as the ancients did. Morality is eternal and applies whether the year is BC or AD. The progress of the ancients, their experience as humans dealing with humans, their elucidation of moral principles, it is all valuable today just as it was then. There is no escaping it, and indeed we are the ancients, birth and death in turn forever.
Actually significant changes have occurred which make their primitive thinking about the state (based anyways on slavery and small population sizes) mostly irrelevant. I am down with the idea that we should have noble ubermensch classes (of which, I of course, and you as a judge in our noble justice system, must be a part) and cultivate nobility, but basing your whole outlook on a bunch of greek dudes who founded the rotting philosophical structure of western civilization is pretty dumb.
postposting posted:how can you erase class when you have none to start with?
better version:
Q: how is the rhizzone like full communism?
A: no class
Superabound posted:whats a bataille
roseweird posted:thanks bnw, that does sound tedious and thinking about it makes me think that probably the ideas i was having about it and reading it were tedious too. i'm probably not gonna read anything by mao either though.
Lead is the parody of gold. Air is the parody of water. The brain is the parody of the equator. Coitus is the parody of crime. Roseweird is the parody of blinkandwheeze.