I'm disappointed to not find https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anasyrma on the list.
Ancient Greek terms worth reviving
51–60 of 247 posts
Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving
#52I'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.
I mean they have to live with the dissonance within their soul at the end of the day. Which I think Socrates was getting at with regards to how it can end up teaching what is actually in their best interests.
Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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."
Indeed. For a different angle on the nuance, you will often see the gerundive translated as "worthy of". Miranda, worthy of beholding. Amanda, worthy of love.
Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
We are descended from chimps in the same way that I am descended from my cousin.
Edit: I'm realizing this could be a language barrier. "Descendent" is the inverse of "ancestor". A descendent is directly downward in lineage from an ancestor.
Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving
#55my favorite of this is Episteme - i spend a lot of time thinking about how we know what we think we know, and wish that more people did as well before mouthing off completely incorrect or unexamined beliefs (esp not understanding when the dependencies under which they are true, are no longer true).
p.s. TIL that Odysseus was forced to be a sex slave for 7 years?
Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving
#56I'm fond of polis, which we do use as part of words like metropolis but not on its own. It's the word for the Greek city-state but also means the citizens or social fabric. It's why we have the two sayings "Man is a political animal" and "Man is a social creature." They are different translations of the idea that "Man is a creature of the polis."
> citizens or social fabric
Consider "polity".
Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving
#57These 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…
On the subject of grammar, Greek grammar (ancient? I assume this one has carried into modernity) has a handy construction I like in the form of the particles μέν and δέ, used to highlight counterpoint/point through something closer to grammar than word semantics. You might see it translated as "on the one hand x, on the other hand y" or "while x, y" or "x, but y", in English, it loses a lot of its punch. Like the verbal act of holding your hands up to demonstrate in a gesture the balance of the ideas.
Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving
#58I'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.
yes when I put this one they seemed to like it here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35562728
Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving
#59These 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 "required" or "to have an obligation to". Thus, for example, we are morally obligated to love our children. But "love" here is not meant in the desiring sense of love (eros, another Greek word) in which one desires something for one's own objective good, or even in the modern squishy sense of having fleeting pleasant or affectionate feelings for. Rather, something like agape (still another Greek word) is meant as parents raise their children primarily for the good and benefit of the children and the common good, not their own self-interest or their own pleasure, even if those elements are present or result secondarily (i.e., the pleasure of selfless acts is not the motive behind selfless acts for that would render them no longer selfless and the pleasure or liberty from self that could follow would not obtain).
Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving
#60[flagged]
Yeah the author doesn't really explain why he thinks partiachy and slavery should 'totally make a comeback'. Thanks for making it clear.