thom space

Well here is a person who is not the most likely of people to draw my attention. But wait, if you stop and think you might remember that he died a failure, and failures are my favorite type of people to write about. They are just such inspiration. Wait you might have the feeling that I am not being entirely truthful in the way that I am telling this story. Didn’t Augustine basically found the modern Latin and protestant churches? well yes I guess he did. But he still died a failure.
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Plotinus the original Neoplatonist, which is a bit of an oxymoron because essentially what he did was to rehash the work that was done by Plato, assumed that there were several levels of being 1) the ONE (or the good, as he like to call it) 2) the “nous” (reason) 3), the soul or souls 4) the world perceivable by the senses 5) all matter (i.e. the cause of all evil)

Why Plotinus is important despite his utter dorkyness is the fact that Neo-Platonism has had a very large influence on the world. Most notably the effect of Neo Platonism was felt at the beginning of the medieval period when the confluence of Greek thought i.e. NP was incorporated into Christian doctrine by Augustine in order to give Christianity more rational credence.

I think that the hierarchical structure of being established by the Neoplatonists is illegitimate. The reason I say so is because the world begins and ends with what we perceive as subjects, not with what is revealed to use by a Rational system. What I mean by this is that the world is only available to use through our senses, we don’t have any thing else to go on other than the information that is provided to us through them. How this phenomenon discounts the NP structure of being is by way of the fact that the NeoPlatonist system assumes that there is more to life than what we make it, it assumes that reality is somewhere else, hidden in an an “idea” that can only be accessed with the abstract power of reason.

Reason has it’s limits, for instance, reason can not determine the base Reason for everything or anything. Reason hangs upon the assumption that there is a natural “Reason” for things to be. I say that there is no, absolutely no, justifiability in this stance. the only thing that we, as humans, are left with is the actuality of the events of or own existence, we can describe an event as it happens and give it a corresponding meaning but we can never give something legitimate meaning based upon a Rational appraisal of an it, because if we honestly accept the absurdity of reality (i.e. its baselessness’) we find that everything is meaningless. Which takes me back to my original statement that the world begins and ends with what we perceive as subjects, based upon our experience of reality, not upon an abstract notion of what exist in a world of ideas and reason. Word up G.

Today is somewhat of a special day for me. I am going to be participating in one of the oldest and most distinguished activities known. I will be selling glow sticks and sparkle sticks for a 25% cut on the beautiful Cape Cod. Yes, yes, I know that it is hard to believe, but it’s true. I don’t know how I get so lucky. However I would be happy to sell advice for 25% of what you’d expect. It’s a bargain. Righty O.

As I read more and more Philosophy and get a feel for it greater scope I can’t help but realize that it is teeming with ironic twist. This is something that I am sure my father would be skeptical about, because he always questions the use of Irony whenever he encounters its use, which is in itself somewhat Ironic given the topic on which I am now commenting.

Elis of Pyrrhon, other wise know as Elis the founder of the school of Sceptics, made a very large contribution to Philosophy, but it was not entirely his school of thought. Rather, the largest contribution Elis made was in the preservation of major Hellenistic thought through his rigorous quotation while he was attempting to undermine them for being to positive. If it had not been for the rigorous quotation almost all Hellenistic philosophy would have been lost to history.

I think that it is sort of funny that this man was so Skeptical that he paid no attention to the anything in the world because he was not sure that any thing was really there, as a result he had his lackeys run around with him all of the to make sure he didn’t get hurt. It seems a small bit in consistent (and perhaps dishonest) to not trust the appearance of the real world enough to pay it heed, but to trust it enough to allow other people to pay it heed for your own benefit. I just don’t buy it.

On another note the Title of the book that contains most of the Hellenistic quotation is pretty cool:

Pros dogmatikous (.Against the Dogmatists.)

I am going to try and use the blog as a legitimate tool in furthering my education. I think that the idea of having my thoughts and notes/meandering open to the potential of public scrutiny will encourage me to be more resolute in making sure that my thoughts are cogent and not necessarily absurd/silly ( Not that I don’t think most things are absurd/silly but that is a different post all together). I have come to the conclusion that if I don’t use blogging to a somewhat productive end, I will be doomed to waste a great deal of my time playing with it. and I would hate for that to happen yep that’s right.

It seems to me with my limited perspective that GW is not in a position nationally to make any sort of claim that Drilling for more oil is a good idea. Did you know for instance that there is really no need to drill for more oil because we can make cars that get much better gas mileage as well as by utilizing alternative energy resources such as wind and solar power. The only reason Bush is pursuing further drilling is because Oil, coal, and car companies are putting pressure on him and congress to ignore those proven energy solutions. When we raise fuel economy standards on cars and trucks to 40 mpg (which is entirely possible with todays technology) we will save 3 million barrels of oil per day as well as reduce carbon dioxide admissions by nearly 60 million tons per year. That is more oil per year, that can be saved given simple conservation measure, than even exists inside of the gulf of Mexico. That is why it is so ridiculous to think of going in and destroying needlessly yet another eco system. Yeah word to your mother.

I think that Epicurism is on the right track in terms of recognizing, beyond it’s central tenant of hedonism, that the truly important things in life are small in scale and are often over looked. I think that there is most likely a forbearance here of many of the thoughts of certain 20th century thinkers, especially those outside of the analytical tradition. however where the Epicureans espoused pleasure as the measure of all things, perhaps it would have been better to espouse honesty and good faith. Well aside from that there are definitely some seeds here. Grow and Grow.

I now know why Socrates was thought to be such a noble character. it’s because he had

“two unshakable premises:

(1) the principle never to do wrong nor to participate, even indirectly, in any wrongdoing and

(2) the conviction that nobody who really knows what is good and right could act against it.”

yep that’s him in a nut shell. party on.

“There is another possible and, in its consequences, real disadvantage to such adaptability; the other animals, tightly confined to the limits set by nature, are crippled almost exclusively by external factors; but man, in consequence of the freedom of choice granted to him through the variety of his gifts, can and very often does cripple and harm himself. All human activities are directed toward the end of a good and satisfactory life. But there are many subordinate aims that are sensible ends only as far as they serve a superior end.”

I don’t know how Aristotle can at once recognize the inherent freedom of persons and then at the same time not see how that limits the ability of them to ever have a being like an animal. He refers to the ability of people and their gifts. Wait I think the I most likely need to understand what he means by “gifts”. he thinks that people have “gifts” or rather that some people are born with more of a proclivity for doing one type of work than another type of work. He contrasts this with the state of animals. Animals he says are limited by there nature to preform specific tasks i.e. ants are divided at birth into Queens, Workers, drowns, etc… and because of this limited nature of animals they always preform their functions exclusively and without deviation. The way that he thinks of “gifts” in the context of people does not seem to mesh with his idea of perfection in people. It seems to me that because he recognizes that people are free and that they are not born with a specific purpose viz and ant but rather only “gifts” or inclinations toward a particular activity, that he should also recognize that because of that freedom people will never be “perfect” and have a specific being viz an ant.

I don’t understand Aristotle’s contradiction here. Oh well, Eventually I will.

Wow I just learned a hard lesson about bloging. Sometimes when you are half way through composing a post the window disappears, and the text vanishes along with it. Six. Well I think that as to what I was attempting to post I will reenter the gist of what I was saying before.

Aristotle and his notion of perfection in people. First I think that if Aristotle is right and we are striving to be perfect, then I have stumbled upon one of my main problems. I am certainly not in the best conditions for reaching the most perfect state possible at Cornell. I do not however think that Aristotle is right. I do think that we strive for perfection, but unlike Aristotle I do not think that we ever achieve it (Still I might not be in the best conditions at Cornell ). I think that the question here is what is meant by perfection. I can say that a rock on the ground in front of me is a perfect rock, because it is being a rock completely. Its being is to be a rock. I can not however say the same thing about a person. A person is never just being a person. I persons being is to be more than what they are at any given time, that is of course until they die and become a thing that is like a rock.

the idea of achieving perfection in people is somewhat contradictory. That is to say that a person who is alive can never just “be” because to “be” would entail a static state of existence, like that of a rock, when people are “dynamic” by the fact that they are alive. So yeah I think that is that. Right on.