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Valentinus

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It is a buzz kill but you have to accept that you just weren't invited. I left when it turned out that there were no virgins being offered. The brochu...
May 01, 2019 at 15:16
So, asking about the use of something called "metaphysical" is on par with a problem of how we use language to describe something. There cannot be a p...
April 30, 2019 at 00:17
Saying: "What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence" is pretty enigmatic. I would not presume to follow such a remark with an exegesis of...
April 29, 2019 at 23:58
Didn't Wittgenstein turn those questions into other questions? He never dismissed them as presented.
April 29, 2019 at 23:34
I take your point regarding the importance of presuppositions to any developed argument but isn't the OP more open ended than that? Now perhaps you ar...
April 29, 2019 at 21:46
Reflection is where we try to understand our desire to understand. You see, you are meeting Plotinus half way. Hmmmn, pizza sounds good right now.
April 29, 2019 at 15:06
Saying "thought itself" is a metaphysical statement. In so far as you framed the question as "do we need metaphysics", that cannot help but ask if it ...
April 29, 2019 at 14:40
Because the desire to understand is itself information of a kind. The theory of the intelligible as an integral component of what exists is an express...
April 29, 2019 at 14:08
Expressing the matter as a need is metaphysical in so far as the question recognizes that there are agents and they want to understand what the hell i...
April 29, 2019 at 00:43
The banality of evil was not presented as a doctrine. Arendt presented the trite affect and emptiness of Eichmann in the context of her analysis of to...
April 25, 2019 at 15:42
From a task point of view, my work experience suggests to me that people don't actually perform acts simultaneously but some are agile at switching jo...
April 21, 2019 at 22:24
In: On sex  — view comment
Long term relationships are odd. Tolstoy said that what was the easiest sort of thing to understand but he was wrong. Desire does not explain itself. ...
April 18, 2019 at 23:57
Arguments against "planning", in the economic sense, are made in the "tribal" register used in your narrative. Hayek, for example, was not a Libertari...
April 17, 2019 at 00:22
Tomorrow, then. I will try to represent.
April 15, 2019 at 01:02
In: .  — view comment
You got to read Hegel.
April 15, 2019 at 01:00
Active enough?
April 15, 2019 at 00:58
Are you familiar with Aquinas's argument for Just War?
April 15, 2019 at 00:58
Have you read the City of God?
April 15, 2019 at 00:57
My grammar?
April 15, 2019 at 00:53
Well, my reading of the City of God does not fit with the idea of just war. Does that add up to a different God? If the relationship is so much depend...
April 15, 2019 at 00:48
Popes have a tough job. Management is a scam. I would direct your question to Augustine or Aquinas. They carried the water. There have been other deve...
April 14, 2019 at 23:52
There are lots of separations between the "political" versus the "ethical" in Greek philosophy. They were consumed by the topic. All of them.
April 14, 2019 at 23:36
Matters of taste are things we are least likely to share. It is clear that you do not share the same criteria of excellence as has been expressed by t...
April 14, 2019 at 23:23
In: .  — view comment
I am curious as to whether you have read Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. He more or less says that the dynamic between master and slave was the engin...
April 14, 2019 at 21:49
Well said, In regards to your first question, I was born in 1956 and can report that my generation bears a lot of responsibility regarding complacency...
April 14, 2019 at 21:27
One thing that can not be interpreted are experiences that either happen or not. We want these experiences that make other questions mute. The rest is...
April 12, 2019 at 00:21
One way to approach the idea is through time. Hegel presented the spirit as something that lived both as a possibility and as an agent of history. In ...
April 11, 2019 at 23:30
I like Aristotle for marveling that a translation was made at all (especially in De Anima). His confidence that it conveys something essential is base...
April 11, 2019 at 22:30
The old fashioned objection to ad hominem arguments is not based on whether they are accurate or not in regards to any description of the interlocutor...
April 09, 2019 at 02:02
Point taken. More of a guiding action than a waving away. The fly could see all the motion either way.
April 08, 2019 at 00:56
So, you read the fly as representing yourself in the bottle. I think of it more as a way to not just keep repeating certain problems. Not because they...
April 08, 2019 at 00:19
One teacher I had while reading Wittgenstein pointed out that shooing the fly out of the bottle is not an event if you don't own the both the bottle a...
April 07, 2019 at 23:34
That is unfortunate. I did not get the impression while wrestling with him that he was solving all the problems in so far as they could be solved. He ...
April 07, 2019 at 22:55
It may be good to remember Goldwater at this juncture. He claimed to want a certain set of progressive values while also claiming that the social engi...
April 05, 2019 at 02:12
Marx did call for class struggle. But your list of 'central conditions' leaves out the most important one: The way we make things shapes how we live w...
April 05, 2019 at 00:11
The first thing to consider, in my mind, is the focus in On Sense and Reference upon distinguishing the form of identity of a=a from a=b. Toward that ...
April 04, 2019 at 21:43
Whoa, I did not say it was stupid. I don't happen to agree with this pastor's rhetoric although I understand what is intended by its use. Do you have ...
April 03, 2019 at 01:44
This pastor is speaking rhetorically in regards to the use of the word "religion" in order to express a religious thought.
April 03, 2019 at 00:52
What am I supposed to look up? Pastors who say they are not religious? Maybe you could link to one thing that you would like to challenge.
April 02, 2019 at 00:36
I presume you are referring to me saying that arguments repeat themselves. Your statement is true in some respects but may be worth challenging in oth...
April 02, 2019 at 00:31
On the plus side, the discussions here have given me many different ways to look at things and talk about them. I have read a lot of new authors becau...
April 01, 2019 at 22:39
How does this point not just become one person calling another person a moron? It it good to explicate contradictions. Contradictions are the meat and...
April 01, 2019 at 02:01
Who is saying it is not a religion? I don't get it.
April 01, 2019 at 01:25
I had a long struggle with smoking and quit. Everyone is different and the register of addiction may be correct in many senses without touching the wo...
March 30, 2019 at 21:12
Well, one approach has been to distinguish the City of Man from the City of God as Augustine did. Since then, what had been talked about in the contex...
March 30, 2019 at 20:22
Your project is pretty darn challenging. Maybe it would be good to look at "winning" and "losing." The effort to get beyond Thrasymachus' view of just...
March 30, 2019 at 19:39
Don't they need each other? Being clueless about what is happening usually involves a deficit in either or both experiences. If what marks a capable o...
March 30, 2019 at 19:12
Yeah, I have seen this.
March 29, 2019 at 00:34
This observation regarding "many souls" that make up an individual is something that stands in stark contrast with Nietzsche's use of egoistical expre...
March 28, 2019 at 23:40
One way to think about it is the distance between writers and readers. The writers strive to make the words their own. Readers compare writers, ever u...
March 28, 2019 at 22:52