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Ancient Greek terms worth reviving

classicalwisdom.substack.com

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Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving

#41

Post by setgree »

adverbly wrote: post #13

I've always liked "akrasia" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akrasia > Weakness of will to act against one's own better judgement. It's everywhere in modern society, and I'd love to see it called out more.

Jon Elster’s ‘Ulysses and the Sirens’ is about akrasia, more or less; in situations where we know we are likely to act against our own best interests, how do we credibly commit ourselves to doing the right thing, like Ulysses binding himself to the mast? One of the best social science texts I ever read

Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving

#42

Post by [deleted] »

emporas wrote: post #39

As a Greek, living in Greece i second most of the terms. Know thyself (γνώθι σαυτόν) is a big one as well. Ancient Greeks were masters of psychology, i.e. what kind of animal humans are. Are we a good creature by nature or a bad one? The more we study chimps the more we realize that we, as their descendants, are pretty vicious as well. Education by our parents, schools and social circles play a big role, to keep in c…

[deleted]

Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving

#43

Post by zabzonk »

emporas wrote: post #39

As a Greek, living in Greece i second most of the terms. Know thyself (γνώθι σαυτόν) is a big one as well. Ancient Greeks were masters of psychology, i.e. what kind of animal humans are. Are we a good creature by nature or a bad one? The more we study chimps the more we realize that we, as their descendants, are pretty vicious as well. Education by our parents, schools and social circles play a big role, to keep in c…

> The more we study chimps the more we realize that we, as their descendants

we are not descended from chimps

Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving

#44

Post by jjtheblunt »

zabzonk wrote: post #43
emporas wrote: post #39

As a Greek, living in Greece i second most of the terms. Know thyself (γνώθι σαυτόν) is a big one as well. Ancient Greeks were masters of psychology, i.e. what kind of animal humans are. Are we a good creature by nature or a bad one? The more we study chimps the more we realize that we, as their descendants, are pretty vicious as well. Education by our parents, schools and social circles play a big role, to keep in c…

> The more we study chimps the more we realize that we, as their descendants we are not descended from chimps

To disambiguate, you mean we are evolutionary cousins, i think

Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving

#45

Post by zabzonk »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #44
zabzonk wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The more we study chimps the more we realize that we, as their descendants we are not descended from chimps

To disambiguate, you mean we are evolutionary cousins, i think

we certainly share a common ancestor with chimps - exactly when the two current species diverged is a bit murky: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimpanzee%E2%80%93human_last_...

Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving

#46

Post by tenebrisalietum »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #37
pjungwir wrote: post #25

These are great suggestions. Adding these words to your own internal vocabulary is totally worth it for self-reflection. Less seriously, a grammatical construction I wish we had in English is the Latin future passive participle, typically ending in -ndus, -nda, -ndum. It means that something needs/ought to be done. For instance "Amanda" is "she who must be loved." So if someone asks you why your feature isn't in prod…

> For instance "Amanda" is "she who must be loved." This is probably a joke but it still is an absurd category to think about. How can anyone be compelled (by what force?) to love someone else?

Must can mean "inevitable" as well as "required."

Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving

#47

Post by emporas »

zabzonk wrote: post #43
emporas wrote: post #39

As a Greek, living in Greece i second most of the terms. Know thyself (γνώθι σαυτόν) is a big one as well. Ancient Greeks were masters of psychology, i.e. what kind of animal humans are. Are we a good creature by nature or a bad one? The more we study chimps the more we realize that we, as their descendants, are pretty vicious as well. Education by our parents, schools and social circles play a big role, to keep in c…

> The more we study chimps the more we realize that we, as their descendants we are not descended from chimps

What's our closest relative animal, not gone extinct, which is alive in the world today, if not chimps?

Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving

#48

Post by zabzonk »

emporas wrote: post #47
zabzonk wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The more we study chimps the more we realize that we, as their descendants we are not descended from chimps

What's our closest relative animal, not gone extinct, which is alive in the world today, if not chimps?

that does not mean we are descended from them

Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving

#49

Post by thenerdhead »

I've been listening to Dr. Michael Sugrue's lectures on Plato, Socrates, and the Dialogues, and many of these words tend to come up often. I like his descriptions best. His one on arete would challenge this definition of "excellence of any kind" to be one of a specific kind. He uses an example of a horse trainer striving towards arete to become the best moral "techne"(technician) based on the knowledge they continuously seek.

Specifically:

To make a distinction between technē and arete, the value of technē is the end product while arete values choosing the action that promotes the best moral good.

Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving

#50

Post by emporas »

zabzonk wrote: post #48
emporas wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's our closest relative animal, not gone extinct, which is alive in the world today, if not chimps?

that does not mean we are descended from them

Indeed it doesn't mean that, you are right. We share so many genes, so loosely speaking, we are their descendants. Which we are not, but for all practical purposes, we can approximately find correlations between our species, and that one, better than any other.
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