Jim Barcelona's Philosophy and Food Blog

The eighth Philosopher's Carnival was on Monday. A little too late on my part - I know. Check out the results at enwe's meta-blog.

This is from Book III.89 from the Peloponnesian War:

The next summer the Peloponnesians and their allies set out to invade Attica under the command of Agis, son of Archidamus, and went as far as the Isthmus, but numerous earthquakes occurring, turned back again without the invasion taking place. About the same time that these earthquakes were so common, the sea at Orobiae, in Euboea, retiring from the then line of coast, returned in a huge wave and invaded a great part of the town, and retreated leaving some of it still under water; so that what was once land is now sea; such of the inhabitants perishing as could not run up to the higher ground in time. A similar inundation also occurred at Atalanta, the island off the Opuntian Locrian coast, carrying away part of the Athenian fort and wrecking one of two ships which were drawn up on the beach. At Peparethus also the sea retreated a little, without however any inundation following; and an earthquake threw down part of the wall, the town hall, and a few other buildings. The cause, in my opinion, of this phenomenon must be sought in the earthquake. At the point where its shock has been the most violent, the sea is driven back and, suddenly recoiling with redoubled force, causes the inundation. Without an earthquake I do not see how such an accident could happen.

Descartes believed that divine creation was more like procreation than just a builder sort of activity. Siris quotes the responses to the 5th objection to support this view of Descartes. It's noted that:

"I found the insistence that procreation is a better analogy for creation than production an interesting one."

Me, too, because with this view of creation flesh is redeemed.

The Latin poet, Horace, wrote "Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit..." "Captive Greece took captive her savage conqueror." (Epistles II,i,156) An interesting passage in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy illustrates this:

"In 155 BC Athens sent a delegation of three philosophers (Stoic, Academic skeptic, and Peripatetic) on an embassy to Rome--no Epicurean was included, perhaps because Epicureans refused on principle to participate in public affairs. Their teachings caused a sensation among the educated. The Skeptic Carneades addressed a crowd of thousands on one day and argued that justice was a genuine good in its own right. The next day he argued against the proposition that it was in an agent's interest to be just in terms every bit as convincing. This dazzling display of dialectical skill, together with the deep seated suspicion of philosophical culture, generated a conservative backlash against all Greek philosophers led by Marcus Porcius Cato (the Censor)."

By the time of the emperor, Marcus Aurelius, (fl. 161-180 AD) stoicism was the philosophy in vogue.

This sort of delegation should be compared with the delegation sent by the United States to Soviet Russia in 1959 where the famous Kitchen Debate between Nixon and Kruschev occurred.

The famous, or infamous exchange went something like this:

Khrushchev: "If I don't know everything you don't know anything about communism except fear of it."

Nixon: "There are some instances where you may be ahead of us, for example in the development of the thrust of your rockets for the investigation of outer space; there may be some instances in which we are ahead of you -- in color television, for instance."

When the Romans backlashed against Greek philosophy, the issue at stake was "What kind of man would the new, Greek ideas produce?" The argument between the Russian and the American wasn't so much over sorts of human being or political systems but over what sorts of technology to produce. Marx should be called to mind, for he wrote that the aim of production in the ancient world was man, whereas in the modern world the aim of man was production.

Skepticism produced, so we have it from Sextus Empiricus, doctors.

Stoicism seemed to produce men with a cosmopolitan outlook. Marcus Aurelius said that as far as he was Marcus his home was Rome, but as far as he was a man, it was the world. Stoicism also seemed to produce men who were indifferent to hardship and tranquil in the face of life's challenges. Stoicism was probably the sort of philosophy suited to a soldier.

What sort of human being does philosophy produce?

There's a copy of the Stoic Manual by Epictetus on-line. It starts off with a simple distinction: thins in our control and things not. It's worth the read if you're going through a difficult time.

The Grove on Fillmore has a really delicious Lasagna Bolognese, and the latte I had with it, creamy and foamy, made for a pensive hour thinking about the production of society.

According to Marx, the ancient world aimed at producing human being. Wheras the modern world aims at production for the sake of wealth.

I looked at the activity of computer science, today, and asked, "What sort of human being does it produce? What sort of wealth?"


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Happy New Year!

I'm having trouble typing this because a car hit me on Thursday. I can only type w/my left hand.

Apparently Colonel Gary Brandl of the United States Marine Corps commented: 
"The enemy has a face. It is Satan's. He is in Fallujah, and we are going to destroy him."

Wow! I thought the dark one was somewhere in the Whitehouse? C'mon, share your thoughts.