141–150 of 160 posts
I read HN because it's the only place on the Internet where a link to a Wikipedia page on Nicomachean Ethics could hit the #1 position.
Is HN the only place that happens? Has anyone found another site that has a lots of well organized quality intellectually stimulating content?
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Yes! Socrates and Aristotle both sound very anti-democratic. Thucydides explains why.
To what extent is democracy just re-branding of the concept of letting the popularity contest winner run things? Though at face value the unpopularity of winners (and near winners) makes this seem counter intuitive, but that may be explained by the extent that our sense of popularity can be and is being manipulated. As such, democracy would seem a very unpalatable outcome. Better than the alternatives they had, but l…
Not all democracies are created equal, and the Churchill quote is a grand feat of equivocation that paints many different systems as if they were a single immutable institution.
Athenian democracy was a direct democracy where any citizen could get up and talk. Where officers were needed it mostly used a lottery system [0] instead of elections precisely because they were afraid that elections just become a popularity contest that favors the incumbent oligarchic interests.
Generals were an exception because they had to be skilled at war. Handling money was also a skilled profession, and favored the rich so that the money could be recovered from their estate in the case of embezzlement. Politics, on the other hand, was not seen as a skilled profession, and what was important was loyalty to democratic ideals.
Looking at the quality of politicians we have and the power of entrenched oligarchic interests in our society, it really makes me appreciate the wisdom of the ancients.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy#Officeholde...
Aristotle's Ethics is indeed a foundational text. To simplify things greatly, there is basically only one alternative to it: Nietzsche. As Alasdair MacIntyre explains (the erstwhile Marxist, now Catholic, who helped revive virtue ethics with his book After Virtue ), "the underlying structure of [Nietzsche's] argument is as follows: if there is nothing to morality but expressions of will, my morality can only be what…
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Philosopher kings are mentioned in Republic, which didn't necessarily represent Socrates' views. Generally I think he believed that someone with the relevant skills should run things as opposed to anybody and everybody (as in a true democracy) in the same way you wouldn't just want anybody attending to your healthcare, but a physician.
That was not a practical policy recommendation.
Aristotle's Ethics is indeed a foundational text. To simplify things greatly, there is basically only one alternative to it: Nietzsche. As Alasdair MacIntyre explains (the erstwhile Marxist, now Catholic, who helped revive virtue ethics with his book After Virtue ), "the underlying structure of [Nietzsche's] argument is as follows: if there is nothing to morality but expressions of will, my morality can only be what…
From an evolutionary perspective there are some objective morals, the most obvious being incest (simple genetics) and cold-blooded murder (mix of genetics and whatever dynamics give rise to human altruism, which is at the root of our specie's survival fitness). Unfortunately, the universe defies simple, categorical distinctions. Kant's categorical imperative superficially comes closest to capturing the above examples…
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From an evolutionary perspective there are some objective morals, the most obvious being incest (simple genetics) and cold-blooded murder (mix of genetics and whatever dynamics give rise to human altruism, which is at the root of our specie's survival fitness). Unfortunately, the universe defies simple, categorical distinctions. Kant's categorical imperative superficially comes closest to capturing the above examples…
Although viable offspring and stable communities are pretty natural choices for moral goods, a preference for the long term over the short term that predicates them is still a subjective decision.
Are there objective moralities? Yes, if you qualify what objective means--e.g., approximately universally manifest preferences among humans. The particular morals, or at least the simplest aspects[1], will then tend to fall naturally from that.
But if our benchmark of objectivity is something completely abstract, then objectivity is unlikely to exist. Pure math allows us to create infinite universes with consistent rules, yet only one of those universes can exist in any physical sense. As long as you can pick from those non-existent realities (which is pretty much what philosophers do), then you can always rebut any claim of universality, objectivity, etc; or even, conversely, assert objectivity of a finely detailed morality by simply predicating a claim on your universe of choice (see, e.g., Social Darwinism).
[1] We don't have a good track record of fully comprehending biological determinants, especially as applied to human behavior. The interplay of culture and biology is extremely complex, and we suck at even identifying which is which, let alone inferring anything complex from the distinction.
For those interested in a grand overview of history of philosophy (the ideas themselves and the people behind them), this is a worth-reading classic: A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_History_of_Western_Philosoph...
Just bear in mind that Russell was very biased in favor of Analytic philosophy, so you're not going to get much from him on the Continentals. Like many other Analytics, he seriously misreads Nietzsche, and he doesn't even mention Heidegger, Husserl, Sartre, or Foucault. I like Russell, though. He's clear and eloquent, writing well on the subjects he does appreciate and understand.
It was written during WWII, before Foucault had published anything. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have been a fan, though.
Anyone rememer how that New Yorker piece describes HN as a place full of performative erudition?
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you believe that the notion of free will is specious, even partially in significant cases of vice Don't mix your modalities. It's possible to reason in terms of free will and decisions between right and wrong; or in terms of causes and effects, from mental illness and broken childhoods through to poverty and criminality; but separately. The problem with reasoning in just one modality or the other is that you miss wha…
I appreciate what you're saying, but I think you might be mixing modalities. Considering that free will may be a pleasant deception doesn't necessarily lead to blaming externalities instead of changing a bad situation. The concept of blame as it is usually expressed depends on the belief in free will. The person whose free choices led to an outcome bears the greatest responsibility. Assigning blame to others is there…
I don't see how this works. The biggest reason is that if everyone is personally responsible then noone is responsible; this is pretty well established in psychology, with diffusion of responsibility.
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Nothing. I am not saying they weren't geniuses. I am merely pointing out that there is insufficient evidence for a definite conclusion either way. Cf. Shakespeare. Yes, he was a genius, but not nearly so much of a genius as many people often claim, because a lot of people confuse "Shakespeare is our earliest surviving recorded source for a lot of features of the English language" for "Shakespeare single-handedly inve…
There is a very clear heritage of the ideas of those Ancient Greek thinkers which have moved and influence world history. So I'm befuddled how you don't see sufficient evidence, nor what constitutes such sufficiency for genius? I highly recommend you read Arthur Schopenhauer's essay On Philosophy at the Universities : https://archive.org/stream/23341891SchopenhauerParergaAndPar... It is a persuasive essay that, no ma…
Yes, there is. But that is a very different thing from having very clear evidence that those ideas originated uniquely in a specific small set of brains whose owner's names are recorded. "This person's writings have a clear influence on history" is a very different claim from "This person was the very first person to ever think the thoughts that he wrote down."