I passionately love Mortimer Adler's and Robert Hutchings' efforts in producing trying to popularize The Great Books collection, and its key, "The Syntopicon." I own 3 complete sets, one of which I gave to my then-home schooled niece. Of the two I still possess, one is in the beautiful black binding which I use as "bookshelf furniture" because the set looks great and it's inspirational and a joy to behold. My other one is a "beater" set in the el-cheapo cloth binding which I bought on Craigslist for $100. That's the one I actually read, use, and annotate. That set bristles with my Post-it Notes and little sticky flags and is more valuable to me than the pristine set in my living room. Alas, many of the works are just too hard (and/or too long and boring) for most people to read more than a few pages, especially given the present state of what passes for our system of public education in the US. Most folks will go about their lives in blissful ignorance of the rich substance in the Great Books collection and its "secret sauce" -- the Syntopicon. Even in the case of those who buy a set of the GBWW, those sets all to often wind up, exactly as Robert Hutchings predicted, having them sit untouched for years on the shelf as little more than decorative furniture. By the way, another strong proponent of the idea of the classics and the great books and great ideas was the late Prof. Rufus Fears, PhD. Many of his courses are available from The Teaching Company and others appear on RU-vid. All are well worth spending time with them.
This guy pretending that god doesn't need a cause, because he really _feels_ that he wants certainty and is prepared to pretend that his own ontology of what is material vs what is essential is somehow categorically absolutely true and not a product of his current prejudices
Again, all I’m pointing out about the deceased above is that he is a pathologically bad man, specifically a raging, covert narcissist. I have corrected his designation since I called him a malignant narcissist. His opera of commentaries nor his erudition are not what I’m attacking. Not one iota of them. It is his promotion of mind control and his unashamed and vicious use of it.
Well, there go my Roger Scruton books into the garbage. Always thought he was a pretentious nit, but it's a revelation to discover he's actually evil. Cheers!
Evil? According to what religious dogma? Something is not evil merely because you fail to understand it. Ironically, attributing wrong motives to people whose actions you fail to understand, has been classified as an “evil” itself, for thousands of years. “Judge not……”. Intolerant. Bigoted….
Well then eventually, he had not mentioned names, names of the people you need to kick out of office (maybe out of the country too) and names of people you aught to beg to accept to rule. He had'nt even provided a vivid discriptions of either, Which means, he provided no solutions. He knew it couldnt be solved backthen, and wisely just spoke theoritically, hinting to future generations to do it (once the opporunity comes). America was in a transition from metocracy to oligarchy backthen, and now America's democracy is giving birth to tyranny. Plato forsees all of that in The Republic
I had the good pleasure of taking multiple classes with Dr. Kreeft. He loved telling this story whenever we didn’t have questions. I miss him dearly since graduating.
This is just a fancy and long winded way of using "but we enjoy it" as an excuse for inflicting unneccessary suffering in another being. If that was a valid excuse then no doubt pedophiles could appeal to the same "reasoning". No, there are plenty of ways to enjoy the landscape and enjoy horseriding that don't involve wildlife being disemboweled by hounds. Genuine drag hunting is one. And one that very few hunts chose to adopt whennthe law was updated almost 20 years ago.
Why not simply admit that you are so irrationally prejudiced that you are determined to dismiss every argument that does not suit you? Foxes inflict suffering and “disemboweling “ on an average of 6-10 smaller animals per day. Every fox “saved” is a vast amount of suffering inflicted…. and your hatred of fox-hunting and desire to see it banned is equally “unnecessary”. Ironically, the natural predator and biocontrol of the Red Fox is the Grey Wolf. Having removed wolves from Britain, humans are now responsible for a superabundance of Red Fox and the consequent decimation of small animal species and ground-nesting birds. The closest analogue to the Grey Wolf is another species of large canine. Not only is predation by dogs the most natural form of control, but it produces the best outcome in that it selects the old and unfit, thus keeping the population healthy. It is also arguably the most humane. No dog-caught fox escapes wounded - as can happen in shooting - or dies slowly in convulsions - as happens with poison. Even your rant about “disemboweling” is focused on what happens after the fox is dead. Veterinary studies have shown that the primary causes of death are dislocation of the Atlas Joint (C1 vertebra) or crushing of the thoracic cavity, both of which lead to insensibility and death in seconds. Why being eaten after death is such a signal evil , remains unexplained, especially when those who object to it have no objection to foxes doing exactly the same thing to thousands of other creatures. Or perhaps you should admit that you just don’t like to see humans enjoying themselves.
9:01 Metaphysical model of intellectual activity 11:33 Intellectual thought is a kind of real being to which self-manifestation belongs essentially 11:50 Intelligibility is a genus of being 17:54 Intelligibility is convertible with intellectuality 19:35 Immaterialized (abstracted) actually intelligible stone (for example) is nothing other than someone's intellect in actuality 23:25 The intelligible is the intellect itself as actualized
For me, Scruton is nothing more than a pamphleteer, because he literally only wrote pamphlets. Superficial works of shallow and quick reading for immediate consumption and good use on barbecues and bar tables. His research, if any, is very weak and the general content of the work, in my opinion, is only useful for creating internet courses. Just it! The Scruton books I read were: Fools, Frauds and Militants How to be a conservative Conservatism and...Beauty: a very short introduction The first 3 are really nothing more than pamphlets. Beauty is part of the series: A Very Short Introduction. Pocket books giving a brief introduction to a topic. Like that failed Vide collection: O Mínimo Sobre. Beauty confirms something that should not be forgotten: the Liberal’s vision of beauty. He is a hedonist, therefore, he seeks beauty for himself, for his pleasure, his fulfillment and perhaps to make the world better (cough cough). What bothered me most was the praise for pornographic works, in which the author describes how ok, after all, it is not a real person posing with legs open in a newsstand magazine or onlyfans of life, it is a realistic work of art and there contains beauty. Scruton coomer detected. The documentary follows the line of the booklet, obviously. The ending is terrible. 100% liberal. The sense of beauty goes a long way. Hedonistic to the core. Therefore, I recommend Prof.'s special on beauty. Carlos Nougué. Carlos Nougué >>>>>>>> Scrotun Furthermore, I will no longer waste my precious time in 2024 with these tired authors. Died (literally). Leave that rubbish to the Anglos (imagine being bri'ish).
I’d be interested to see his retort to the argument from species overlap, in that it is true that the only question we have to them is how are we to treat them; those born with severe mental disabilities would be a prime example. No doubt he might make use of the ‘they’re human’ point, but it does push against some other points he makes throughout the talk (and it is an interesting talk). I think the most viable place for criticism would be in what being human is supposed to mean (or what it has to mean to be of any use here). Some supporters of Williams style views have seemingly taken to the view that humanity / species is to be understood as a folk concept as opposed to something objectively true of ‘humans’ for example Christopher Grau. The term human then seems to resemble certain views about things like race, both understood as social constructs rather than something true of (and within) ‘humans’. This poses a challenge on its own in that folks like Singer based their views on things true of individuals (such as sentience). I think this poses a possible answer the Williams’ concern of the regress of wondering that if the human prejudice is in fact a prejudice, where might we be able to stop? Perhaps we could stop as characteristics of individuals? It’s at least a possibility. But I think by far, the most damning criticism (if true) would be a form of human error theory; which much like moral error theory, posits that if such things as ‘humans’ were to exist they would need to possess something of an Aristotelian necessary natural essence (see species essentialism); but that since such an essence doesn’t exist (which is thought to be correct by a vast majority of biologists save for those like Devitt who argue for a ‘new species essentialism’) that humans don’t really exist. This is not to say ‘we’ don’t exist, just that we are not ‘human beings’. Someone ‘being human’ being morally important would not just be indefensible, but completely false; it would be akin to saying that your neighbour has moral standing because she is a witch when witches don’t exist. Human error theory is obviously completely unintuitive (but so is much of the rejection of essential natural kinds, especially for things like gender, sex, race, and here, species). But I do find myself coming back to it again and again, especially because it seems to count as good evidence to think that in various morally important respects, those whom we consider as ‘other species’, ‘other animals’ ‘lesser animals’ or ‘not one of us’ are actually well and truly one of us. Looking at the power of dehumanisation it becomes apparent how strong the feeling of someone being ‘one of us’ is (even regardless of one’s views about metaethics). This view is also unavailable (at least through Williams ideas) to those who think that humans (and other things) matter in and of themselves as supposed to them mattering to us and that’s it. For example, folks like Parfit or other moral objectivists who endorse views of sort that affirm creatures like human beings (amongst others) are ends-in-themselves as opposed to just ‘ends-to-us’. As a moral objectivist myself I’m not a fan of Williams’ ‘unenchanted universe’. But it is interesting to point out how Williams’ rejects what we might call the human prejudice in an objectivist picture, though that may be because he can’t see anything as important in and of itself in the objectivist picture and in this way the rejection of the human prejudice isn’t special. His point about the tension between humans are part of nature and humans are also above it in the sense of moral capacities is mistaken if we assume that “human” is just being short changed for “moral agent” and being a moral agent is not an essential human thing; aliens could be moral agents, some ‘non-humans’ could become agents (if they aren’t already) and some humans aren’t moral agents. We can thus hold onto this ‘humans are part of nature’ view without giving up this idea that humans who are moral agents are relevantly different to the extent that they can have obligations to other agents and non-agents. I also have some serious troubles with his alien thought experiment, though I must admit they are very clever and thought provoking. But for one thing, it’s not clear how benevolent aliens could threaten to wipe us out of existence because it would be better overall. But if we were to be ignorant of why we would deserve such a fate, surely these aliens as benevolent as they are would be happy to explain this to us; if they didn’t it would be clear that we would be perfectly permitted to be on ‘Team Earth’. Perhaps the existence of humans threatens all that is truly good in the universe, though if the ‘why’ part was spelled out for us, it’s not clear that we should remain on Team Earth or stay. Surely we are capable of self sacrifice for much larger schemes than ourselves as individuals. This supposed sacrifice of Earth (if such a thing even could be morally required, which I doubt very much in the first instance, meaning benevolent aliens by definition couldn’t threaten to wipe us out) could seem to be very much the right thing to do, it it weren’t, then it’s not clear how benevolent aliens could threaten us with annihilation and actually be benevolent. To use an analogy, imagine these aliens come down and know of everything you want and how to get them, imagine they tell you to get on their space ship so you can go into space so you can help them destroy the Earth. I think you may rightly oppose this line on the grounds that you either reject that such aliens clearly don’t know what you want, or they need to spell it out before you come to know how it is in your greatest desire to destroy the Earth. Surely Williams doesn’t think that you ought to always save all possible forms of humanity, we may be (or become) quite despicable. We may destroy our planet and try to invade other peaceful worlds filled with other people. See Avatar for inspiration here. This doesn’t derive the total destruction of the ‘human race’ but it does strike me as powerful reasons to drop my ‘Team Human’ banner if all humans were act horribly to others.
I believe Chalcedon did not give us a Jesus according to the Bible. It gave us a Jesus who paradoxically has fully human and fully God. But this gave us in reality a Nestorian Jesus, with two centers of conscience. This is not correct. He had one center of conscience. He was the Logos, God, made into a man who did miracles by the Father's power, and not his own. He was still God in his spiritual identity and so was worthy of worship. He was the only begotten of the Father. Now he has the fulness of the Godhead bodily.
