Fooloso4

I agree. Engaging them in discussion and reading what they have to say to others decreases that risk, but it is possible that their thinking is so far...

There are, as I see it, three related issues here. The first is a fruitful misunderstanding of the text that takes on a life of its own. The second, a...

I know it's a big quote, but I think it's good stuff. What's your take on it? When I took classes with Gadamer at Boston College all of this was put a...

What I had in mind here was not the authors but the discussion of the authors. Cut through the jargon and it becomes clear that they have not really u...

I might agree with the, but that depends on what you mean by "lots of books" and in what period of time. It also depends on what one means by reading ...

It has been my experience that those who rush do a poor job of reading. Their heads are full of ideas but they do not take the time to think through t...

You underestimate the ancients. Panpsychism is an ancient concept. Even the term itself if from the Greek From the SEP article on panpsychism:

The ancients made the distinction between body and soul. According to Aristotle man has a rational soul. Descartes used the terms mind and soul interc...

I started reading Jaffa's review but decided not to force myself to continue. It contain a great deal of rhetoric but is wanting in reasoned argument....

2. However much I learn about the objective world I can never know what it is like to be a bat. However much I learn about the objective world I can n...

I think it is much more valuable to learn to read a few books, slowly and carefully. Too often philosophy is tread as if it were merely information, a...

Yes, there is always more reading to do.

I have not read the essay yet. I just checked to see how much of it is included. There is a gap of a few page here and there but it appears that the b...

Yes, but I think he is also challenging traditional assumptions about man and reason.

I will sidestep the theory of speech acts and say that hinges are not limited to what we say. From earlier posts:

I have no belief in the supernatural but I do recognize the power of myth and the imagination.

I posted this the other day. From Stanford: "The term ‘proposition’ has a broad use in contemporary philosophy. It is used to refer to some or all of ...

Again, I have not looked at it in its larger context but from what you presented the topic is physical power, not its use. As such, power is morally n...

According to Wiki (with reference footnotes):Lady Justice (Latin: Iustitia) is an allegorical personification of the moral force in judicial systems. ...

I think that this is correct. I would add that Wittgenstein was not interested in just any game that one might play with language, The language-games ...

It is important to consider what it is knowledge of. Socrates acknowledged that the artisans had knowledge. The knew their materials and how to work w...

A common mistake that is made, I see it here frequently, is to assume that hinges are all of a kind. One can play a language-game that disregards what...

And yet the statue of Justice stands as the symbol of law.

I was not. But I did discover that philosophy can now be purchased in a bottle. I too found that interesting. Political life had the dual meaning of p...

I don't think Strauss was suggesting an equivalence. One key difference is Nietzsche's focus on the individual as opposed to Hobbes' sovereign within ...

I am away from my books for the next few weeks and so cannot read the passage in context or any footnotes to passages from Nietzsche. I will note that...

As I understand it, it is not that they cannot be doubted but rather that they are not doubted. They cannot both be doubted and serve as hinges. It is...

Nietzsche on human nature and history: Nietzsche's rejection of human nature is the rejection of an essential nature, a teleology, an actualization of...

Nietzsche had an enormous influence on Strauss. If you are interested see the transcripts of his lectures on Nietzsche: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp...

In my opinion the disjunction is between saying and doing rather than thinking and doing. What I do may be independent of what I say, but not of what ...

Yes, only they do not think they are mimicking, they are speaking. I think they may understand I think they may understand far more than we give them ...

When the toddler sees someone point to an apple and hears them say "red", how does she know this does not mean the object pointed to is called red ins...

I don't know what you mean by linguistic trick. Red is the name of a color. What is an experience of red? How does she know it is an experience of red...

I am of two minds about this.

It seems to me that determining whether a law exists is rather straight forward. Interpreting and applying the law, not so much. If we look at legal p...

I thought you might find interesting. From The New Republic: To understand the emergence of Trump-supporting Straussianism, it’s important to realize ...

I want to follow up on this. Earlier you said: If the controlling authority, however improbable we may hope it is, decides to reject the law as it is ...

It is not, as or as I know, a term used by Plato. Here is the passage. " ... the power to learn is present in everyone's soul and that the instrument ...

I am always glad to hear that. I think that was an interesting development. Students of Strauss split between those who stayed out of politics and tho...

This assurance is not as comforting as it once was. There are those with considerable influence who are right now working to get the states to call a ...

So doe this mean that when the US Constitution says: "Congress shall make no law ..." this really means it shall not do so unless or until it can if i...

With that thought in mind I will have trouble sleeping tonight. Yes. The laws themselves are, of course, the laws of men - by men for men. (I use the ...

What the Greeks understood by 'reason' is not what the term came to mean for us through modern philosophy. Anaxagoras said 'nous' (mind or intellect) ...

There is an irreducible tension between Socrates and the city. His fealty is to philosophy, the examined life. It was in this sense trans-political. B...

How does this square with the claim that "We are a nation of laws not of men"?

I do not think Socrates had a concept of a higher authority. He had a concept of "what seems best". He used the word 'logos' to mean to speak, to disc...

I forget this one: Plato's Parmenides: The Conversion of the Soul, by Mitchell Miller. I read it some years ago. He pays careful attention to the deta...

Peter Kingsley has some interesting things to say.

Nietzsche said something to the effect that creators destroy. In some ways Nietzsche and Socrates are the same in that they undermine the foundations ...