Our discussion about passion was hurled onto the metaphors of nephesh and neshamah. Nephesh, according to A-G, is the thought-mechanism of the animal soul and the source for Marxist thought, and neshamah, the as the source from which conservatism derives power from Truth revealed to the spirit. The one source leads to relativity, the other submits to higher purposes and yielding moral absolutes.
This last metaphor, I suppose, could be in some way analogous to Scruton's tradition.
I cautioned against the usefulness of this ordering and I will tell you why. The placement of these two sources, in a sort of opposition between an "us" and "them", does not answer whether these two sources belong to the same orders, as if they belong to the same genus. Sure, they are here conveniently found together, even beginning with the letter n.
The metaphor of these two sources was furthermore complicated with the body soul dichotomy, the supremacy of common (or public) reason, as distinct from the private I presume. All of this then is found to come together in a master receptacle called the consciousness, some central nexus that lies passive to a monolithic and ubiquitous nature, or reality, which is something I don't believe.
I do believe right understanding here makes all the difference in our attempts to communicate. The unique understanding of Plato led him to record the Gorgias and suggest ways of realizing dialogue after failure. It provides a unique answer that has not yet been discussed.
Of course this is only FR, but I suspect all of you consider yourselves as a cadre of significant members, always devoted to aletheia with every sincere motive.
Through all this confusion, I extent my mortal hope that the best and brightest could slug it out and leave "them" alone to their happily chosen perdition. : )
The placement of these two sources, in a sort of opposition between an "us" and "them", does not answer whether these two sources belong to the same orders, as if they belong to the same genus.
I really did not mean to cause such a ruckus, I was just offering a suggestion on how to communicate or promote conservatism to the general public.
Every human has his own nephesh and neshamah tugging at him in opposite directions. His free will determines which way he will turn - one moment he can be liberal, the next conservative. But, IMHO, he will trend in one direction or the other depending on whether he seeks gratification or completeness. In other words, it's not "us" and "them." The battle is within each of us.
This is moot to the debate of political philosophy. But perhaps you will find the distinction useful when attempting to promote conservatism to the inattentive and disinterested public.
On the point of communication, which interested all of us, I really think that confusion about the orders of monism, dualism, as well as kinds and genus is the one of the greatest cause for disrupted dialogue (the other is egoism, willfulness, or other such hubris--an ordering all the same).
Yes, confusion reigns but as noted earlier, most are not interested and so we must "count them out". To characterize this (and find an excuse for borrowing from one of my all-time favorite movies, Bull Durham), it's like a Martian talking to a Fungo.
Our discussion about passion was hurled onto the metaphors of nephesh and neshamah. Nephesh, according to A-G, is the thought-mechanism of the animal soul and the source for Marxist thought, and neshamah, the as the source from which conservatism derives power from Truth revealed to the spirit. The one source leads to relativity, the other submits to higher purposes and yielding moral absolutes.
This last metaphor, I suppose, could be in some way analogous to Scruton's tradition.
I cautioned against the usefulness of this ordering and I will tell you why. The placement of these two sources, in a sort of opposition between an "us" and "them", does not answer whether these two sources belong to the same orders, as if they belong to the same genus. Sure, they are here conveniently found together, even beginning with the letter n.
Here I would agree and disagree. I find the contrast useful and meaningful beyond the surface level in terms of its correspondence to reality because Man does have an animal, material aspect (which to me is not a negative, but more on this at some other time, perhaps) and a spiritual one (not obvious only because of pervasive popular cultural propaganda). My criticism would be that the characterization of Man cannot and should not be forced into such small and limited and thus inappropriate boxes. What we are is much more, qualitatively. The dichotomy is too pat and the words are woefully insufficient. But then, any either/or set of alternatives is too pat.
The metaphor of these two sources was furthermore complicated with the body soul dichotomy, the supremacy of common (or public) reason, as distinct from the private I presume. All of this then is found to come together in a master receptacle called the consciousness, some central nexus that lies passive to a monolithic and ubiquitous nature, or reality, which is something I don't believe.
I don't understand the underlined portion. What is it you don't believe? That consciousness is real? Or that it is central? Or what? And why?
I do believe right understanding here makes all the difference in our attempts to communicate. The unique understanding of Plato led him to record the Gorgias and suggest ways of realizing dialogue after failure. It provides a unique answer that has not yet been discussed.
I would like to hear it discussed. The implications of this statement, though (and I do not intend to put words in your mouth), seem to be that it is possible to communicate in all instances with all people and that perfect communication would lead to right action. I believe that both assumptions, if they are being made, are absolutely and demonstrably false.
Of course this is only FR, but I suspect all of you consider yourselves as a cadre of significant members, always devoted to aletheia with every sincere motive.
This raises my hackles. Should it? You are here, voluntarily, discoursing. And presumably learning. I sincerely doubt you will learn more or better in "the university". You find yourself here among some exceedingly sensitive, deep, accomplished and open-minded thinkers (betty boop comes readily to mind). In the university you will find the first 3 but not often the 4th, and that is a critical difference.
Through all this confusion, I exten[d] my mortal hope that the best and brightest could slug it out and leave "them" alone to their happily chosen perdition. : )
I suppose I would say that the brightest is not necessarily or always the best (by any stretch) and that I, for one, would not admit to much, if any, confusion.
You wrote, “confusion about the orders of monism, dualism, as well as kinds and genus is the one of the greatest cause for disrupted dialogue (the other is egoism, willfulness, or other such hubris--an ordering all the same).” You worried that use of the Kabbalist (sp?) “metaphors” of nephesh and neshamah might muddy up the waters of discourse: “The placement of these two sources, in a sort of opposition between an ‘us’ and ‘them,’ does not answer whether these two sources belong to the same orders, as if they belong to the same genus.”
Plato draws dualistic distinctions; he speaks of body and soul. But he also had a myth that accommodates the view of one common humanity, a vision of unity. That was the myth of the divine puppeteer, and the “golden” and “base” cords that animated the actions of the human “puppets” – where the golden cords could draw the individual human soul into a divine life “in the fullest measure that human nature can admit.” The way I look at it, the terms nephesh and neshamah refer to propensities in an individual human soul to respond to either the pull of the “golden,” or the pull of the “base.” And I think this is within Alamo-Girl’s description of those terms. (I hope she will let me know if that’s not the case.)
You later wrote: The metaphor of these two sources was furthermore complicated with the body soul dichotomy, the supremacy of common (or public) reason, as distinct from the private I presume.
I don’t presume that. I’ll take the body-soul duality the way Plato saw it. More on that in a minute.
All of this then is found to come together in a master receptacle called the consciousness, some central nexus that lies passive to a monolithic and ubiquitous nature, or reality, which is something I don’t believe.
Well, I don’t believe it either, cornelis. Consciousness is not some kind of passive nexus mediating “a monolithic and ubiquitous nature.” That was Callicles’ entire argument, in a nutshell – wouldn’t you agree?
The unique understanding of Plato led him to record the Gorgias and suggest ways of realizing dialogue after failure. It provides a unique answer that has not yet been discussed.
Let’s take a look at this “gorgeous” work. The mise en scene: Callicles invites Socrates to his house, where the eminent guest of his hospitality, the great “rhetorician” Gorgias, has been holding forth all afternoon to a very large company of other invited guests. Socrates particularly wants to meet Gorgias, because he has a few questions he wants to ask of this famous and highly esteemed figure. We soon learn that what Socrates had in mind is the test of the statement or postulate: It is better to suffer evil than to perpetrate it.
Fast forward. (Lurkers, please go read the dialog. I promise to put up the link presently.) Socrates is able to maneuver Gorgias into total silence, on the basis of the logical inconsistencies of Gorgias’ argument. The only way that Gorgias had left to him to assert his position would have required him to say out loud the most despicable and “base” things about human nature and the general constitution of reality. So he presently clammed up.
Then stepped into the breach one Polus, a disciple, I gather, of Gorgias. In due course, Socrates made short order of him, on identical grounds. Polus presently clammed up as well, and for identical reasons.
Which left the field to Callicles. One gathers he was also a pupil of Gorgias. But he was not as scrupulous in his discernment of moral truth as either of his predecessors in the dispute with Socrates had been.
Of Callicles, what can one say? To my mind, a description of his character is best summed up in these lines from Heraclitus (Plato’s “long shadow,” on Voegelin’s view):
Eyes and ears are bad witnesses/For men whose souls are barbarous.
In Callicles we have a human creature of the 4th century B.C. maintaining with perfect equanimity that all human laws are but conventions, in effect fabricated out of the perceived need by whatever ruling class might hold the reins of power at any given point in time, to support whatever happens to pass for the cultural, political, and economic status quo. To this concept he opposes the idea of “natural law” – which is decidedly not the idea of “natural law” that Christian theology has advanced. The “natural law” of which Callicles spoke was, in fact, the law of the jungle. The law of brute power: the law of “human advancement” at the expense of one’s fellow human creatures. Arguably, it is a kind of “law” of which both Thomas Hobbes and Charles Darwin would have approved. [And then would presumably have had to devise ways -- instantly -- to constrain precisely this behavior, so deleterious in practice to the welfare of human societies down the ages.]
Throughout this dialog, Callicles sneers at, and makes veiled threats against Socrates. And Socrates recognizes the bad faith, the animus towards himself; yet he bears it all in good grace and good humor – despite being well aware of the personal danger he faces in confronting this character. In particular, Callicles was quite prescient in this regard, for he informed Socrates that Socrates might himself be brought up on public charges sooner or later, and have to answer for his “crimes” in due course.
But Socrates is not to be daunted by these veiled threats. Well he understands that, in the end, the final judgment is not man’s to make. And it’s here we have to remember the “dualism” of Socrates/Plato which prefaces, IMHO, the idea of a Unity that can contain the two:
“Death, if I am right, is in the first place the separation from one another of two things, soul and body; nothing else.”...
Socrates further maintains in what follows that, in an improvement by Zeus over the former order of Chronos, human souls are judged “naked,” by “naked” judges.
Which is the very approach or posture taken by Socrates toward Callicles all along. For all of Callistes’ barely contained spite, Socrates was generous towards him in all respects. The suggestion is that Callistes, when he must confront the final judgment, “naked spirit to (fearsome!) naked Spirit” – as inevitably he must, on Plato’s view -- would probably not fare so well, or be so generously treated….
And from the merely human point of view, why should he be, since Callicles thought fit to espouse the following:
“…how can a man be happy who is the servant of anything? On the contrary, I plainly assert, that he who would truly live ought to allow his desires to wax to the uttermost, and not to chastise them; but when they have grown to their greatest he should have courage and intelligence to minister to them and to satisfy all his longings. And this I affirm to be natural justice and nobility. To this however the many cannot attain; and they blame the stong man because they are ashamed of their own weakness, which they desire to conceal, and hence they say that intemperance is base….they enslave the nobler natures, and being unable to satisfy their pleasures, they praise temperance and justice out of their own cowardice.”
Unfortunately, this voice seems to sound a great resonating chord in our own time -- echoing down the course of a couple millennia by now, and yet so timely to the modern ear.
In the discourse of Callicles, you are hearing a case mounted in favor of unaccountable power, of the invasion and usurpation of the sphere of the individual human being, of totalitarian thought and behavior.
Of contempt for all life, human or otherwise. And a rebuke to God Himself into the bargain.
Who needs this sh*t??? What kind of civilized polity can be constructed on Callicles’ stated grounds?
FWIW.