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Ancient Greek terms worth reviving

classicalwisdom.substack.com

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Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving

#121

Post by emporas »

jdthedisciple wrote: post #113
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…

Vouching for saffron, definitely great! Just... not too sure how we ended up here considering the topic of OP.

Well, given our modern understanding of chemicals in the brain, many of the states of mind Ancient Greeks advocated for, can be summarized as: avoid short dopamine hits. The brain really loves dopamine hits, it stimulates electrical activity. I am sure that there is a way, to stimulate electrical activity, without using machines, a natural way to stimulate our brain 1000x and 1.000.000x just by using some kind of food or natural occurring substance. In my opinion that problem will be solved by saffron.

How many people drive their car full speed without being in a hurry? Or how many people eat more than their energy requirements dictate to? I think there is a solution to that, and that is saffron.

Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving

#122

Post by aporetics »

sjaak wrote: post #104

Parrhesia Parrhesia means literally "to speak everything" and by extension "to speak freely", "to speak boldly". It implies not only freedom of speech, but the obligation to speak the truth for the common good, even at personal risk. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parrhesia

Foucault lectured on perrhesia as he was dying.

https://www.amazon.com/Courage-Truth-Government-Lectures-198...

Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving

#124

Post by ilaksh »

Interesting but most of them seem to have English words or phrases that are equivalent. So I don't see this as really substantive. Unless your goal is pretension.

It would be different if it went into a bit of depth on a few of them. But this looks like a list of words to memorize for throwing out at dinner parties or something.

I guess practically speaking that's what most people really want.

Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving

#125

Post by aporetics »

If reading this explainer listicle awakens any curiosity in you, consider taking ancient philosophy course; coming to grips with the foreignness and yet the claim these terms still hold over wester civilization is one way of describing the basic task of such a course.

Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving

#126

Post by jdthedisciple »

komali2 wrote: post #114
jdthedisciple wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true. Often they really do have a better judgement but choose to be offended when called out.

I don't know if we're talking about the same thing, but to me it seems like there's potentially two issues at play here: self control to act in accordance with one's supposed morals, and, the changing of the presumptive morals of a society. For self control, I feel like it's universal human experience to always find this falling short. Throughout history we do things we know we shouldn't, as in, we agree they're bad…

> What examples of people being offended, for being called out for what, did you have in mind?

Just very simple things, like if you were to suggest to someone evidently overweight to perhaps move around a little more or watch their diet, they (or other people for that matter) are likely to call you judgemental and be offended.

Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving

#127

Post by pineaux »

komali2 wrote: post #114
jdthedisciple wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true. Often they really do have a better judgement but choose to be offended when called out.

I don't know if we're talking about the same thing, but to me it seems like there's potentially two issues at play here: self control to act in accordance with one's supposed morals, and, the changing of the presumptive morals of a society. For self control, I feel like it's universal human experience to always find this falling short. Throughout history we do things we know we shouldn't, as in, we agree they're bad…

In my opinion, there is no inherent good or bad when it comes to working or not working. Both are ways to lead a life. If that life is good depends on what you expect from it. You can work and work until you drop and be deeply dissatisfied. And you can just chill, regularly almost starve. But be happy. But most people feel they have the biggest chance for happiness by trying to balance these extremes. Most people tend to lean towards the "work too much" side of things until they drop. We hate people who game the system by not working unless they gamed it in the right way (depends on who you ask).

Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving

#128

Post by jschveibinz »

pyridines wrote: post #112
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…

I've heard a regional English construction for this: "needs X'd". For your examples: - The pull request needs reviewed - The trash needs emptied - The dog needs walked Just one(ish) extra syllable!

Northeast Ohio uses this construction rather than the “-ing” gerund. It took me awhile to change that when I moved to the East Coast.

Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving

#129

Post by kgeist »

Jun8 wrote: post #19

Not a term, but I’ve always found the fact that AG had two terms that map to nothing , e.g. my two favorite sayings: “toi sophoi xenon ouden” (the wise man is foreign to nothing) and “meden agan” (nothing in excess), one of the three Delphic Maxims: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphic_maxims

Ancient Greek has two negation particles:

>Ou is the negative adverb for facts and statements, negating both single words and sentences. Mê is the negative used in prohibitions and expressions of doubt meaning "not" and "no." As ou negates fact and statement; mê rejects, οu denies; mê is relative, ou absolute; mê subjective, ou objective.

The particles are found in the two words for "nothing" you mentioned, ouden/meden. Meden is usually found in imperatives, oaths, i.e. something you want to never happen, while ouden simply states that something never happens.

Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving

#130

Post by jschveibinz »

nologic01 wrote: post #120

While you are at it, consider reviving the term democracy as well. Ancient Greeks didnt just invent it, they thought deeply about all systems of power and their failure modes. Techniques they used feel still a thing from the future for us modern "democrats". For example, take the term ostracism/ostracize . Today the term has degenerated to mean a certain negative cultural phenomenon. For them it was a democratic proc…

Greek democracy was very different, as you suggest. It was not a system of universal suffrage. Only free male citizens with military training (roughly 30% of the population) were permitted to vote.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy

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