Ancient Philosophy 🦉 Seeking that holy disease
Minerva, OH
Joined August 2015
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If you like Homer and you like literature, you will enjoy this. It’s short and an unexpected take on a familiar episode from The Odyssey.
Odysseus Unbound: A Homeric Retelling
~1000 words
By H.L.
Ancient Philosophy🦉 retweeted
Johns Keats, in the Annus Mirabilis of 1819, when he was 24:
◦Ode on a Grecian Urn
◦Ode on Indolence
◦Ode on Melancholy
◦Ode to a Nightingale
◦Ode to Psyche
◦To Autumn
◦ St. Agnes’ Eve
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I know there are a lot of people here who pray. My best friend’s husband was taken to the hospital today and they were told he has maybe a week left. I don’t want to go into detail but they have three children, their youngest is 13 and the oldest is in college and flying home to be there. It’s unbelievably difficult and it’s hard to even know what to say, but I do believe prayer is powerful and can give comfort and strength where there is none, which they need so much.
Ancient Philosophy🦉 retweeted
Included in this discussion are meticulously detailed connections to:
— Machiavelli, Hobbes
— Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero
— Nietzsche, Rousseau, John Adams and Edmund Burke
Ancient Philosophy🦉 retweeted
Here I discuss the meaning of logos, “cause” and the forms. At issue is the possibility or impossibility of a non-contradictory teleological physics
I also discuss the relation of that to “cause” in Aristotle and “modern natural science”
Ancient Philosophy🦉 retweeted
Ignorance is often taken as the opposite of knowledge in Plato. And this is true — one must first not know in order to learn, and without learning there is no knowing. Yet this comes with a qualification. What we know has been there all along, this is the Doctrine of Recollection.
Perhaps there is a necessary corollary for ignorance. One must have a purchase on one’s own lack of knowledge. “I know that I know nothing.” When one comes to recognize one’s own ignorance, offers and holds it up steadfastly in the light of day of one’s own conscience, then and only then is knowledge possible.
This first step toward knowledge is knowledge of the self and unless one recognizes the self in its ignorance, dragging this awareness along as one learns, then no knowledge is possible. All real knowledge is a relationship of the individual as an awareness of himself and the object of his knowledge. One must have known all along that he was in ignorance; it is his ignorance that dons the mask of knowledge as he comes to know.
Ignorance is often taken as the opposite of knowledge in Plato. And this is true — one must first not know in order to learn, and without learning there is no knowing. Yet this comes with a qualification. What we know has been there all along, this is the Doctrine of Recollection.
Perhaps there is a necessary corollary for ignorance. One must have a purchase on one’s own lack of knowledge. “I know that I know nothing.” When one comes to recognize one’s own ignorance, offers and holds it up steadfastly in the light of day of one’s own conscience, then and only then is knowledge possible.
This first step toward knowledge is knowledge of the self and unless one recognizes the self in its ignorance, dragging this awareness along as one learns, then no knowledge is possible. All real knowledge is a relationship of the individual as an awareness of himself and the object of his knowledge. One must have known all along that he was in ignorance; it is his ignorance that dons the mask of knowledge as he comes to know.
Ancient Philosophy🦉 retweeted
Reasons for anonymity online:
1) It draws attention to what is said, rather than to who says it. (Cp. celebrity accounts which utter the most banal stupidities and garner millions of likes).
2) It protects voices from politically unpopular speech in left-captured institutions such as academia, especially those in tenuous, junior positions.
3) There is a great philosophical and political tradition of the practice—Plato, Kierkegaard, American Founders, among others.
4) It diminishes the incentive to enlarge one's personal identity as some kind of brand or other ego-centric endeavor.
5) It protects against various forms of attack which could lead into personal and familial and professional life.
6) It allows a voice for that which is speculative or otherwise not entirely endorsed by the *real person* but not entirely disavowed either, an experimental outlet.
Ancient Philosophy🦉 retweeted
I'm David Noe. 34+ years teaching Greek and Latin, to everyone from children to scholars at Cambridge, Harvard, and Princeton.
My beginners' course reads Familia Romana line by line: speaking, reading, and full grammatical precision. Start any day: latinperdiem.com/product/llp…
Ancient Philosophy🦉 retweeted
On a related note, if you loved Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata and want to work on your Ancient Greek using the Italian Athenaze text, you can download it for free here:
lib.undercaffeinated.xyz/get…
PS: The link works and isn’t sketchy — I tested it.
Humans desire to stand out and to fit in, at the same time. What happens with that tension could be said to account for all human activity.
Ancient Philosophy🦉 retweeted
Plato’s solution to men not marrying was a substantial fine proportionate to wealth for every year a man was unmarried beginning at age 35, and a social penalty of being treated as an outcast by his younger peers. Laws 774
Listening to a podcast rightly critical of AI’s destructive influence on learning and then the first ad, delivered by the host himself, is for an AI company.
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The religious practices and beliefs of the director of the upcoming maladaptation of The Magician’s Nephew.
In evaluating someone, I prefer to read a person’s soul rather than the titles on their bookshelves.
Edgar Rice Burroughs and George Macdonald are two examples of poor writers who were great authors.
It is like holding a conversation with a very ugly old man, hard to look at, but he has so many stories you cannot help but listen.
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Ancient Philosophy🦉 retweeted
The great secret to getting a lot of things right (and a lot of things wrong) is to write a lot of things.