Journeyman1 Sophists

[kavaris]

In the journey towards understanding things like "Mythology" and "Philosophy", the first part to this would ~in the best case scenarios~learning about "Philo", "Sophy", and who the "Sophists" were, to sortve preface w/, what is to be — a journey towards history and the right way to initialize or investigate such a name in the first place. Does that make sense to yous? And do yous agree? i think so. Lets get it.

p.s. If anything, it is just a means~by which we can get everyone started looking at Greek again, as its like, theres so much there, and so many ideas to be explored. And theres also things that we dont all fully understand, as far as them having evolved so extraordinarily over the years (its only been 2+ millennium, ya know?)

 

Edited March 4 by kavaris

[kavaris]

I shouldve made this clearer, as I didnt really explain "Philosophy" and the Sophists. So i made an Album of sorts ~ a timeline ~ or way of listing things chronologically, as I also believe "Mythology" is an important part of this story, given how you have Plato, as well as every other Greek figure using a "mytholological language" - Plato often extending that language, like that of the language around the Eleusian mysteries (compare & contrast to, et caetera)

Thats something for yous to think about, but anyway, here's the list im talking about, to better elucidate on Philosophy and The Sophists, Philosophy predating the Sophists, who overlap w/ Socrates, which then leads to Plato defining "Philosophy" (This list has embedded in it BOTH the timeline and the purpose/reason; p.s.You should just think of Theology as fundamentally just "Questions on Divinity" among what it begins to be referred to later on)

Lasting aspirations in Philosophy:
\*\* i. Philosophy for the interpretation of Theology/Mythology (starting w/ the natural philosophers ~6th century BCE)
\*\* i. Philosophy as a word to describe the immersion into "istemi" AND/or "truth" (Socrates overlaps w/ the Sophists, though the Sophists are said to have come before Socrates, see next)
\*\* i. Philosophia = "love of wisdom"; Sophists = "a wise man" or expert teacher~a different root from that of "sophia" in Philosophy → And the Sophists appearing ~5th century BCE)
\*\* i. And lastly, we have Plato (taught by Socrates) making "Philosophy" an explicit, well understood idea, Philosophy as the ultimate reality, Philosophy as a Way of Life
Last episodes in Mythology:
\*\* i. Chronological "last myth": the Trojan War and its aftermath
\*\* i. Genealogical "last age": the Heroic Age
\*\* i. Historically "last myths": Philosophical and literary myths (Ovid)

Note: This is not to exclude the investigations into Greek figures and the wide array of episodes and professions in Ancient Greece, Alas im just giving you the sortve, left half of the onion, wherein you can put it together with the right half on your own.

Edited March 13 by kavaris

[kavaris]

Another reason why myth and biblical study, etc., is so important is because, when you look at the parallels in everything, sometimes our first thought/initial inclinations brings us towards, "This name contains that figures name, so it must be that thats who it is...", except that, containment ≠ identity—which is to say, in mythology especially, you have layers of containment (this name contains that name, and that name is in the same context as this) And at first glance, it feels like theres alot of interrelated things going on, making it like an impossible web of relations. So basically, the first point to understand is how, containment doesnt automatically mean that thats what something is... The Hebrew Jeshua has Yahweh saves (us),  it doesnt mean that~now that weve found Yahweh in his name, that Jeshua must be Yahweh. If that was the case then every single name in Hebrew and Greek Septuagint is talking about Yahweh, wherein characters are talking, but they are really talking to Yahweh AS Yahweh. You could just make a book that said "Yahweh spoke to hiself for 4,000 years, up to his birth, crucifiction, and resurrection", like... That is to make a point about the traps people fall into when learning about such things. Mythology even more so, it has some serious and hard to interpret layers, which by finding your own system or methods, can help in going bout said layers in an orderly & scholarly manner, that is fair to what we know thus far, what we can say for sure. Also, you want to specify what is speculation, cause technically ALL of it is speculation if you do a rough boildown, so finding a system to separate it all is important, but that goes back to what i said in regards to method.

p.s., thats why its important to look into mythology, simply because, without truly understanding it and having deduced some \*method of interpretation, we are immediately faced w/ incomplete and scattered information in regards to whats going on, and then when we go to reference it, we are identifying all these stories in a jumble/heap of names+relations, and suddenly its like, none of it makes sense. Surely the act of speaking and writing the myths and verses, etc. was to make sense of something/someone (or something abstract that they had in mind around something they didnt understand theirselves), nd finding out why is itself important to do it justice.

Edited March 15 by kavaris

[kavaris]

Another important dialogue for getting started on Philosophy and The Sophists is The Phaedrus ~ as Plato tries to re-frame "the area/study of rhetoric" (which is the most common area of study for sophists and students and thinkers alike at that time) but its to rebuild it on philosophical foundations.

Im startin to write my own thing on Philo/Myth, suffice to say now that, this video gives a fair introduction as well, as although its on Norse Mythology, the beginning captures the idea quite well, and how the tradition of myth had been lost...

And consider the following, though it must be revised, as it is my attempt at a direct and formal foreword on Mythology, Philosophy, to demonstrate where one can start to describe Why you also need Mythology when we talk about Philosophy, or anything else...

One should note, how everyone who holds or pursues a notion of "truth" differs in their notion of truth. And this is to say then that Mythology is sometimes at a more fundamental level than "truth", whereby the intention of the Philosopher should not be geared towards truth in all cases, and sometimes the discussion of "tradition" and other subjects with regards to Mythology is sometimes at a lower and more noteworthy level in the context of descanting. And consider that the distillation of truth is one road, and the "istemi" that points to something undefinable is just that; That which is undefinable, ergo "Mythology" is one's attempt to describe the undefinable.

But this is not to say, once again, that the -istemi of a subject and the "truth" of the matter dont coincide at some point or to some degree, its just that we often find ourselves making distinctions and descriptions, where we are left with multiple roads~All of which would require "names for a road" to know what street you are on, or what street you are not on (hopefully yous would agree)

Edited March 16 by kavaris

[kavaris]

So i have yous started w/ maybe the best introduction to Philosophy imagineable lol (thats me being pontifical)

In any case, now i want to go down the rabbit hole, to get to something that specifically treads upon Philosophy itself, and i found this perfect compendium of sorts, the deluxe edition of The Story on Philosophy, which is a multi-volume compilation of Books on such matters, by Will Durant

(note, this is only one direction, the boy band~into philosophy, as i know how many directions one could go)

I wont go into who he is, or much of whats going on (as its really like a "walkthrough of history")  BUT thats actually germane to the, call it, a partridge in a bevy of other partridges up in their pear trees,  as it gets to the bottomline of what i want to say right now~The hard-boiled philosophical questions. And that is  @20:00-21:00 somewhere around there  he brings up "The Sophists";  He calls them "traveling teachers of wisdom", who looked within, and upon their own thought and nature, rather than looking out upon the world of things.

He also brings up Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) who wasnt a Sophist, because hes drawing an analogy between debates v. modern thinkers. Anyway, im getting off topic describing what he says, as yous can listen to it for yourselves (listen to it a hundred times, thats why its there).

Here's the point i want to graze: The Sophists, and how they were divided into two "groups of thought"... ... Before i lay them out, lets first turn it into two bulletpoints (bp), so yous can see them clearly, because its a really good point, and one that we might want to dwell on, specially if only to refer back to~that is~until getting to  the bottom of the sea,  so to speak (And feel free to speak freely and naturally on the following; Oh and also, it is likely necessary to reinsert women into this conversation of course _, as im quoting Ancient periods, " as is ")

** One side said — "Nature is good... And civilization is bad... By nature, all men are equal, becoming unequal only by class-made institutions; And that law is an invention of the strong to chain and rule the weak"

** The other side said — "Nature is Beyond good & evil... That, by nature, all men are unequal; And that morality is an invention of the weak to limit and deter the strong. Power is the supreme virtue and desire of man. And that, of all forms of government, the most wise and natural is Aristocracy.

Theres a middle ground to unity~when it comes to nature & civilization, isnt there? (And this is a question i will come back to). Because, as yous know, many things can divide us, and so we must ask, What can thus unite us? In some sense, both sides are wrong because they're starting from a shallow idea of nature.

What is Oligarchy? The consolidation of power by a dominant minority, whether religious or ethnic, can be considered a form of oligarchy  —

And thats probably what we're hearing from that last side. However yous should notice how we are still arguing about the same thing to this day "... by nature, all men are unequal",  arent we arguing about having equal rights today? Female + male groups together in sports and stuff... How many things are changing because of this fundamental issue?

But taking a closer look, youll see we are still harping on the same problem still, missing the important details in the process. And thats not to dismiss the 19th CE.. or the 20th CE... (the second point is likely someone in Athens~during~within the oligarchy, as it wasnt made clear to me who was suppose to be speaking during that line/passage)

So,  What do yous think?... (?) I'd like to know your opinion. I'll reiterate & rephrase the question at the end, so dont worry.

Know the middle ground, or the Plato route is to put aside both extremes and just ask about the current society or civilization directly,  "Does this society help the soul? And in becoming ordered and just?”

Plato emphasizes similar things (in Republic), where he says that "people are unequal by nature",  though this is not in the crude sense of  "strong dominate weak". He means that people have different natural aptitudes, and some are suited to rule (philosophers), others to defend, others to produce, et caetera (thats how it should be, clearly, otherwise... straight butthole.. like we are living in)

When it says "Nature is beyond good & evil", he's not wrong. Nature doesnt go by the morality play; But it also doesnt really have a voice, or a means of communicating. It also depends on what we mean by "nature" of course. We dont know what nature is saying or doing is my point. Nature is nature. or explicitly said, it could be,

nature = rational structure of the soul

civilization = something that should cultivate that structure

But "nature", however we may define it, is surely "beyond good or evil", or what we would consider.

The passage about "morality being an invention of the weak" isnt a good idea to have, as it then implies "... not having any morality applied~equal to youre own opinion/life", given that its from weak men,   of which our speaker would likely go on to say, he is a strong man (presumably, and in the most extreme case) And in fact, im sure that he would concur that " 'to live'  is to accept / participate in the underlying morality play".

Cause i mean, otherwise, anyone can justify immoral acts (without morality) or as according to this vainglorious individual, assuming he were to go full retraction on morality,  because, it is for this same reason that he himself would justify his own immoral acts to others through this paradigm. Or in other words, to downgrade the morality play, is to invite "immoral" acts into your own play/scene); In conclusion, it is yet another case of this "nestle / fledgling of overconfidence" taking flight, about something he doesnt truly understand at the time. And nor should he/they, given the time they had lived in.

Looking back now @ Ancient Athens, the oligarchy had denounced democracy as an incompetent sham.

Just to give yous a brief summary, in Athens, power was first held by the aristocrats, the city's noble families. These were people born into respected lineages (royalty), often owning land. Also, political authority was concentrated into their hands. Being *best meant being virtuous and well-born, not just rich, and most ordinary citizens had little say in public affairs.

Over time though, wealth began to matter more than birth. Rich citizens could dominate politics even if they weren't from the old noble families. Aristotle called this shift oligarchy, the corruption of aristocracy, because the city was no longer governed by the virtuous elite but by those with the most money.

Aristocracy = “rule by the best” (the virtuous or capable few)

Oligarchy = “rule by the rich” (a corruption of aristocracy, when wealth, not virtue, determines who governs)

^ As Aristotle pioneered the use of the term as meaning "rule by the rich", contrasting it w/ aristocracy, arguing that oligarchy was a corruption of aristocracy.

In conclusion, and as you will hear in the video, there was not much democracy going around for them to be denouncing ~ given that there was only small percentage of "free men" in Athens (the rest, slaves and such) and the point being, its not that different from today, as yous know, and its just a slightly different version of what happened in these Ancient times in Athens.

Q: Now If i could leave yous with one question, it would be going back to the two bp: What is the meaning of nature or what makes "nature and civilization" united, and the civilians of that civilization united?

*p.s. Enjoy the video, as its 5 hours long, and full of interesting stuff.

p.s.s. i did a whole thing on *royal families and unifying the world politically*, but considering how it doesnt really touch on Philosophy (not directly), it would probably confuse everyone. but if yous are ever curious, or if yous ever want to know something on similar topics~on things like Germany/Austria, Italy/Rome, Greece, Philosophy, Mythology and such, just ask

Edited Thursday at 03:04 PM by kavaris