Up@dawn 2.0

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Friday, February 1, 2013

Hail Cicero!

I may have come across in CoPhi yesterday as hostile to the Stoics. I’m not hostile, just sometimes impatient with what seems their occasional surrender to circumstance when what’s really demanded is a fight. They’d say that’s an emotional judgment, and that we need to pick our fights with the greatest deliberation. A fight with Nero wasn’t going to save Seneca’s own skin, true enough, and it wasn’t going to look good in the philosophy books alongside a lifetime of counsel against anger and futility.

 But lying down and dying at the behest of a crazed despot doesn’t look so good either.

 Anyway, I still think Roman philosophy in general gets a bad rap and Cicero in particular is way underrated. He’s also underrepresented in our Little History. Jennifer Hecht rectified that a bit in her Doubt: A History...

(Continues at Up@dawn)
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HUMANIST READING LIST. A couple of you yesterday asked me if I could suggest further reading on the general theme of secularism, humanism, secular humanism, etc. Off the top of my head I suggested The Humanist Manifesto and Bertrand Russell's "A Free Man's Worship." His "Why I Am Not a Christian" is also essential reading on this theme.William James's "Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life" too, and John Dewey's A Common Faith.

Another good and recurring source is the New York Times philosophy blog The Stone and its weekly links update.

And if you're on Twitter, I suggest you follow @brainpicker and @philosophersmag and (sometimes) @Beingtweets  (But remember what Brian Cohen said, too.)

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2 comments:

  1. Anonymous11:07 PM CST

    http://youtu.be/CYv6GlcFGF0

    ReplyDelete
  2. Rose11:31 PM CST

    Food For Thought,

    Turning to Turnbell author of "The Forest People", a study of pygmies in the jungles of Africa. Pygmies being one of the oldest known people dating back to the time of the Egyptians. He lived with the people for many years of differences of time, going to the forest at times but returning to the villages for work as the land is governed over by others of different cultural, economic, and historical background creating differences in interaction social but not necessarily emotionally or spiritually. When asked to explain their beliefs in a higher being as often times in other cultures distinctions between religion and life are not made still taking this into account, the response,
    "How can we know... we can't see him; perhaps only when we die we will know then we can't tell anyone. So how can we say what he is like or what his name is? but he must be good to give us so many things. He must be of the forest. So when we sing, we sing to the forest."
    Another study by Ferm, of "Forgotten Religions"
    more particularly study of ancient mystery religions of Greece,
    describing Dionsyian Rites, when women of the time, who were ardent worshipers, would drink heavily then go to the mountainsides and scream of dancing wildly, they were referred to as "maenan" or mad ones, and believed to be possessed by Dionysus.

    "The magic of that wild revel was felt even by nature: "The hills, the wild things all, were thrilled with ecstasy." -(Euripides)

    The belief in taking in wine, the devotee was taking in his body the god himself. Drinking increased what was called "divine mania" which brought nearer the desired with union with divinity."
    -(Ferm)

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