XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien
From: Taemon@zonnet.nl
On 23-6-2014 18:50, Paul S. Person wrote:
> On Sun, 22 Jun 2014 23:18:11 +0200, Taemon wrote:
>> On 17-6-2014 19:22, Paul S. Person wrote:
>>> Perhaps, having once achieved Old Age, the World Mind will stay in
>>> that condition forever. Lucky us! To be forever in a state where
>>> "freedom" (as "shown" in the /Philosophy of Right/) consists in doing
>>> our duty -- to the State. Teach people /that/ for 200 years and "I was
>>> only following orders" begins to sound like a valid defense against
>>> any charge.
>> That does sound like the free will concept as explained to me by some
>> Christians. You know, the kind in which if you use your free will to do
>> something else then God wants you to, you'll end up in Hell. (Chorus:
>> "But he loves you!")
> That would be an excellent satire, if it weren't all too typical of,
> as you say, some Christians.
Sadly.
> Ever notice how what "God wants you to [do]" is invariably identical
> with what /they/ want you to do? This is always a bad sign.
Usually it's about things that hurt people. Mainly female and gay
people, you know the drill. Well, I guess otherwise we would do it
"freely" and we wouldn't need "God's will"... I'd better stop here. I'm
teetering.
>>> It just seems a bit ... coincidental ... that these highly-educated
>>> and highly-cultered philosophers should always end up supporting the
>>> exact same social/ethical/political situation they would have
>>> supported had they been unlettered peasants.
>> Absolutely. Intellectual cowardness. Well, I guess in a perfect society
>> it would be the right conclusion but I dare put forward the idea that
>> their society wasn't, in fact, perfect.
> Perfect in their own minds, at least.
That must be a happy state of affairs.
>>> I mean, what is the point of all that education if you end up in the
>>> same state with it as you would have been without it?
>> Well, education is its own reward. If you're rich and independent, that is.
> A great deal of education can be very interesting indeed, but not the
> sort of nonsense put out by Kant or Hegel or others like them.
Haha :-) I always hear these names spoken with such respect. But as I
said, I'm not one for philosophy (except for modern natural philosophy)
so I know very little about what Kant said and nothing about what Hegel
said. I'll take your word for it.
Then again, studying nonsense can be enlightening too. Partly because
one learns how not to think, partly as debunk training and partly
because opening new paths in thinking makes it easier to open up more
new paths in thinking.
Still, I'd like something more entertaining for that.
Well, I actually agree with that.
> I'm currently reading Hegel's view on Greece (his view on Egypt was
> quite something).
Tell me about Hegel's view on Egypt.
> One interesting tidbit: just as he treats the Bible as fact, so does
> he treat Homer -- at least, in terms of the basic story (he does not,
> IOW, insist that the gods and goddesses actually existed). IIRC, the
> entire story was later believed, by the highly-educated,
> supremely-cultured elites, to be a fairy tale, and Troy non-existent
> -- until Schliemann dug it up. OTOH, he speaks of "Homer" as a real
> person, whereas the current opinion, IIRC, is that he was a college of
> bards. At least for the /Iliad/; Robert Graves, following a theory by
> Samuel Butler, wrote a novel, /Homer's Daughter/, exploring the theory
> that the /Odyssey/ was written by a young woman (in effect, Nausicaa).
>
> Such are the vagaries of the upper extremes of "education" and
> "culture".
I thought that was rather interesting.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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