Ciceronianus

I wonder how many have heard of, let alone read, this "book that broke the world." Or Hegel, for that matter. The pretensions of philosophy...

I read a pretty good amount of Frantic Freddie's work during my increasingly distant youth. I think that his writing is largely narrative and emotive,...

Well, we may differ on our definition of "understanding" and what it entails. We're largely creatures of habit, and what we interact with is in most c...

Interesting. We agree on this. But we disagree on whether we can know everything. I think the problem with most of the traditional "problems" of philo...

"Nice" yes, but I'm not certain about "fair." But alas, the universe isn't beholden to us to us in any sense. We're merely a very small part of it. As...

Well, my point was that pondering whether or not that may occur is idle. But we're tiny little creatures on a tiny little planet in a tiny little sola...

Truth, schmuth. Why care about what "truth" is or search for its definition? We're aware through experience and observation that in life the most accu...

Its own Jesus, too, I believe. I wonder if this is characteristic in cases where writings are considered, perhaps not necessarily sacred, but subjects...

Well, we shouldn't forget that Christianity borrowed a good deal from Platonism, and later Neo-Platonism.

Your Plato sounds a lot like Dewey. All judgments and conclusions subject to revision, based on new information, the results of experiment and inquiry...

You're right. I mixed all those Ds up. And I certainly agree that Plato didn't make a tyrant a philosopher. But I think Plato was being an advocate in...

Thank heaven. Come now. I've been a lawyer for a long time. I recognize a cross-examination of a very friendly witness; I've done more than a few. In ...

Oh, yes. Fascism as well. Stalin, it seems, was very intelligent and well educated for his time and place. He was also a poet, or he wrote poetry in a...

Yes. There, I said it. The Jews, though exclusive and intolerant, didn't demand that everyone be Jewish. In fact, it seems they weren't all that happy...

And to Tango! Let's talk about how philosophy is like the Tango.

Yes, if you kill yourself, you die. If you play chess and resign (unless you resign by dying), you don't die. That's because, despite what was maintai...

The One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, you mean. It has those four Attributes, as was decided in 381 C.E. or A.D. The various schisms in Christ...

I don't understand. You're not forced to play chess for fear that (lest) you'll kill yourself?

But that's the case with games, as well. When you resign (e.g., in chess) the game is over--you're out. You may play chess again, but in that case you...

No complaining, please.

Oh, but you can. So says Epictetus: “Remember that the door is open. Don’t be more cowardly than children, but just as they say, when the game is no l...

Certainly not. I'm not at all sure, though, that there are many who claim that people should have children under any circumstances, because it's moral...

The child makes no such argument. Antinatalism as I understand it is absolute in its condemnation. Depending on age, a child may wish it hadn't been b...

Ah, another post about antinatalism. That, in itself, is an argument in its favor in a sense. Not only do its adherents maintain that to live is to su...

Christianity, for the most part, denigrates the world of which we're a part (and sometimes even deplores it). What's truly important isn't this life, ...

Well, it was a dispute among brothers, which led to bloodshed, but Remus wasn't killed by Romulus. The dispute was over where the city to be known as ...

All good points. I've read that there was some effort to convert Gentiles to Judaism during the Empire, but nothing extensive. Frankly, I have no idea...

Well, no, not really. No "J" in Latin, you see. So it became "Iesus", derived from the Greek spelling, in turn derived from the Aramaic and Hebrew for...

We spend so much time wiping our behinds, I don't see how we can't know that we each have one. If, then, we each have a behind, it follow there's alwa...

Well, there's bound to be fewer leftovers given excessive food consumption, so perhaps excessive thinking isn't that much of a problem. In any case, l...

You're right, as I was taking too narrow a perspective. What I was thinking of was the debate whether the change of roles in society, as you describe ...

For me, these issues have little interest beyond their implications for the law. Any qualms people may feel due to religious beliefs, or political or ...

An excellent point. In which case, the Stoic and Epicurean insights I thought were being repeated are instead being perverted, and used for an entirel...

Ancient pagan philosophers made similar statements in recommending the proper way to live centuries before the gospels were written. As guidance in th...

If only Lewis had died in that train wreck, too.

Poor old Lewis. If only he had died in that train wreck, too. Can't delete, alas.

I always figured Moses was a Roman. Well, as much as he was a prince of Egypt, anyway.

A genuine word of God would, I think, be very big if written, and very loud if said.

Example of irony: Yes. That's certainly ironic.

The appeal to equal treatment is a common dodge indulged in by those obviously better off and better treated than others, who resent being reminded of...

If it has nothing to do with Heidegger, or phenomenology, or antinatalism, or God, it's presumed not to be philosophy in this place. It's your burden ...

I tend to think of billionaires, and persons of great wealth, as equivalent to gluttons or hoarders in circumstances where food and resources are unav...

That of Gregory Hays or Robin Hard. They're more modern translations. Hard's contains correspondence between Marcus and Fronto, his rhetoric teacher, ...

Very Socratic of you. From the Stoic perspective (more specifically from the IEP which gives a decent summary, I think: The Stoics elaborated a detail...

As Hadot and others have noted, what we call The Meditations is an example of Stoic practice; reminding oneself of Stoic maxims and their application ...

"What is religion?" said jesting Ciceronianus; and would not stay for an answer.

So you doubted you were posting your response to my post when you responded? You were unsure you were doing so--perhaps because you were uncertain you...

Do you really think that if we're not absolutely certain about something we're uncertain about it, i.e. that we can't rely on it, that we're doubtful ...

If we're part of the universe, there is no "external world." There's just the world, and we're part of the world. If you seek absolute truths which ar...

I just object to the notion that humans aren't part of the universe, i.e. that we're apart from it in some sense. It's a view which I think fosters, a...