The Symposium - 2017-12-05

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12:44 AM

winterbash2017.stackexchange.com

9 hours later…

9:23 AM

@PhilipKlöcking a beam of sunlight passes through a gap in the curtains in a dark room. It's reflected off dust in the air. Do we see the dust, or the light. You would say we see the light. Because our eyes detect the light. I say we detect the light, but see the dust in the representation of reality created by our brain.

We don't see the actual dust particles. We see it's visual representation. Detecting light is a mechanical, non-perceived process. We conceptualize that light is striking our eyes due to the fact that we perceive images.

So we detect (not see) light with our eyes, we consciously perceive (literally see) visual representations, and deduce (if we are familiar with the visual process) that light is striking our eyes. We see light figuratively, not literally.

Brightness is a visual sensation, it's the representation of the intensity of light striking our eyes. The light we use in light and dark, is not light (electromagnetic radiation )

What you see as arrogance, is confidence. I do/did possess a superior understanding of the visual process. It's obvious to me by your answers, what level of comprehension you have/had. Hopefully you now "see the light". (No pun intended)

2 hours later…

11:57 AM

@ZaneScheepers: Ok, Z ;). How do you pronouce Z in South Africa. Its Zed in the uk, but apparently Zee in the USA.

enthusiasm can sometimes be mistaken for arrogance; speaking for myself, I've often been so enthusiastic about something I've learnt that it came across as lecturing, which with the wrong tone, can sound a bit hectoring...anyway, I don't get so enthused these days so less of a probelm ;).

Thats not really directed at you Z, just a remark thrown onto the chat table.

@ChrisSunami: why not post a short excerpt here?

I mean of your book the Human Future?

@skull patrol: theres a nice little book on street-wise wisdom, its by a guy called Balthasar Morales - the Art of Worldy Wisdom. Sort of a like a pocket book version of Machiavillis prince but more understandable. Apparently Schopenhauer was a big fan.

Balthasar Morales

2

The Art of Worldy Wisdom

12:19 PM

Thanks! @MoziburUllah I'll put it on my "to read" list :-)

Yeah, The Prince was hard to understand.

@MoziburUllah yeah, we say Zed too. My name is pronounced like the Arabic Zaa followed be Ain.

I understand how it can be perceived as a threat to one's pride, resulting in an emotional response. This negatively affects a person's ability to comprehend things, so insulting anyone is detrimental to my cause. It's just that there's no nice way to tell someone they're wrong.

12:35 PM

@skullpatrol: yeah, thats why I gave up da Prince ;).

@ZaneScheepers: if theres no nice way to say they're wrong, at least we can say theres worse and worse ;-). Anyway, I have to address you with your whole name as thats the name on your icon/avatar; funnily enough, I think Zain is an Arabic name!

unless you wanna change it to Z!

Philip Klöcking

1:25 PM

@ZaneScheepers: I guess what you do not seem to (want to) understand, despite repeated statements saying that, is that what you are telling is nothing special, really. Everyone familiar with the philosophy of perception (i.e. basic training in epistemology) knows exactly what you mean. In short, there is nothing "superior" to rub under anyone's nose.

@skullpatrol: All you have to take care of is that the question is specific enough to have a definite answer. When it is about different uses of the word wisdom, it can be helpful to show a minimum amount of research effort (i.e. googling) and phrase it as a reference request as long as there isn't a very specific problem you face

@PhilipKlöcking do we see (consciously perceive) light (electromagnetic radiation) when we shine a lazer beam into our eye?

Thanks, @PhilipKlöcking I'll think more about it :-)

@MoziburUllah how do I change it? I prefer Furyan5 or F5.

Philip Klöcking

@ZaneScheepers: What we perceive in this case is probably blinding brightness and pain, i.e. qualities. Most contemporary epistemologists agree that we can find different descriptions (both qualitatively and quantitatively), but we in effect do speak about something that really has the properties we ascribe in some sense.

In the case of light: It can be viewed as a wave (split experiments), as a particle (light can move paper via impulse), and, through perceptive representation, as a rainbow (prism effect). All these are representations of the very same thing viewed at differently

And all of these are abstracting from other aspects of it

1:53 PM

@ZaneScheepers: I don't know, try asking on meta - that's for admin questions like this; my guess would be to open up another account with that name and merge the too; how you merge I don't know either.

@PhilipKlöcking thanks Philip for the wonderful description of what we perceive and the explanation of what light is. Now can you answer my question please!

Philip Klöcking

2:13 PM

@ZaneScheepers: First sentence. Nobody perceives electromagnetic radiation other than through technical devices that filter out all information but that what is included in our description of electromagnetic radiation.

@MoziburUllah: One can change one's display name in one's profile, under the "Edit profile & Settings" section

@PhilipKlöcking thank you. So when I turn on the light in a dark room, I don't see light, I see the objects which reflect light. This allows me to deduce the presence of light. I can never directly perceive light.

2:32 PM

Does anyone know any good philosophical jokes?

Actually bad ones will do too ;).

How many philosophers does it take to change a light bulb?

@ChrisSunami: an infinite number - 'cos they're all busy arguing about how to change it!

"And after all, what is change really?"

"Are we morally justified in imposing our value judgments on the bulb's decision not to light?"

@ChrisSunami: it's the penny change when I hand over eight pounds to buy some cigarettes at the local shop. Prices are just extortionate here in London.

;).

To light or not to light - that is the question!

To delight or not to delight - that's another question.

What light through yonder window breaks? Tis the comprehension that reality is conception, not perception.

2:43 PM

La singe c'est dans les arbres - ce n'est pas une question.

Philip Klöcking

@ZaneScheepers: IF I were a scientific realist, i.e. someone that believes that the world fundamentally is exactly how we measure it and there is nothing but the entities insofar we can measure them "objectively", I would say nobody ever perceives actual electromagnetic radiation. But for scientific realists, perceptual qualities are a mysterious thing anyway; they cannot really talk about them.

Les arbres c'est dans la singe - c'est quoi!

@PhilipKlöcking then I move to strike the word visible, from the term visible light, as vision is a product of perception. Plus it confuses the common folk.

I'm common and I'm confused...

Lol, you're always confused. But I love you anyway 😁

2:48 PM

Someone said that confusion is the beginning of wisdom...

Who said it I don't know.

@ZaneScheepers: were you born and brought up in SA?

Then you are the wisest of us all.

Yup. Born and raised

Johannesburg?

And no, I don't have a pet lion 😂

Cape Town.

Ok. I wasn't going to ask about lions but tigers.

I don't suppose you haven't got one of those either?

Lol, no. My pet elephant hates tigers.

2:52 PM

Good answer ;).

@chris sunami:What can you say to a man whose got a pet elephant?

Philip Klöcking

@ZaneScheepers: The problem is that being a consequent conceptualist, the whole distinction makes less sense since everything becomes a representation, which includes "electromagnetic radiation". It is just a different representation of the very same thing, perceptual representations having the special property of including qualia (as do e.g. representations in dreams).

Gotta make like I'm working. Catch you guys later.

Ok, cheerio!

@PhilipKlöcking: makes sense, that's what I was struggling over when I was thinking about being a painter whose primary response is to the qualia of colour, and as a physicist who was interested in the representation of light as an electromagnetic phenomena.

@PhilipKlöcking that's why we don't know we're dreaming, while we're dreaming. We comprehend that vision is the result of actual physical stimulation of our senses by objectively existing electromagnetic radiation

When I wake up from a dream, I know I'm dreaming; but whenever I have a lucid dream I don't think my real life is a dream.

I once had a lucid dream where I was standing in an empty city road except everything was tinged in the colour red and I was annoyed by this and kept blinking, thinking something had got into my eye.

Philip Klöcking

2:57 PM

@ZaneScheepers: The physicist knows about this world only through representations as well. He is just abstracting more stuff from the phenomenological access to the world we all share.

There was another dream that was really strange; it was like daylight had broken and then I opened my eyes; I wondered afterwards whether I had watched myself waking up.

Philip Klöcking

Descartes takes his date, Jeanne, to a Michelin-starred restaurant for her birthday.

The sommelier hands them the wine list, and Jeanne asks to order the most expensive Burgundy on the list.

"I think not!" exclaims an indignant Descartes, and *POOF* he disappears.

This one actually is kinda funny

There's a book that I'd read sometime ago and that I recently reread; it's called No God but God by Reza Aslan whose an Iranian-American and he wrote about a tradition where the prophet Muhammed had described prophetic revelation was like the dawning of the day; I hasten to add, that I'm not comparing myself to the prophet or suggesting that I had some kind of revelation; it just made me think and rethink.

@PhilipKlöcking: well, it made me smile ;).

@PédeLeão: Hi, how are you doing?

Philip Klöcking

@MoziburUllah: A description that made a deep impression on me was actually written by Theodor W. Adorno and linked to revelation and its sublimity. It is the last section of his Minima Moralia

@PhilipKlöcking: is it short enough to post here?

Philip Klöcking

3:09 PM

Finale. - The only philosophy which can be responsibly practised
in face of despair is the attempt to contemplate all things as they
would present themselves from the standpoint of redemption.
Knowledge has no light but that shed on the world by redemption:
all else is reconstruction, mere technique. Perspectives must be
fashioned that displace and estrange the world, reveal it to be, with
its rifts and crevices, as indigent and distorted as it will appear one
day in the messianic light. To gain such perspectives without

@PhilipKlöcking: Beautiful and moving. Redemption is a word I associate with Christianity rather than Islam. But then again, I think Islam in the West is poorly served by the writing on it; it always seems to be removed from the thing itself, the religious inspiration; maybe I should look a bit harder.

That knowledge must be first wrestled with is something that chimes with me. For some reason, recently I've been thinking of dividing knowledge into a horizontal dimension where movement is easy; and a vertical dimension where it is hard, very hard.

Maybe it's the physicist in me ...

The word velliety is new to me; I just looked it up, and it means a wish or an inclination that is not strong enough to lead to action.

And the world with its rifts and crevices - very much so.

3:25 PM

@MoziburUllah I'm fine. How are you?

@PédeLeão: I'm pretty good; just procastinating over an errand which I ought to do but rather hoping it can be left till tommorow; but I was saying this to myself yesterday...

@PédeLeão: am I right in thinking that you're based in South America?

@MoziburUllah Yes, I live in Brazil. Am I right in thinking that you live in Great Britain?

@PédeLeão: You're right. I'm was born and brought up here. I live in London now but my youth was spent in one of the industrial cities in the North. Lots of snow then. Little now.

I kinda miss the snow...

I spent a week in London. I thought it was very expensive, but I enjoyed looking around. I especially liked the British Museum.

I don't care for the snow much. I prefer warm weather.

@PédeLeão: London is outrageously expensive. I like sunny weather too ;).

3:33 PM

You should come visit us in Brazil!

The British museum is wonderful.

Is that an invitation?

Sure. You're welcome here.

My sister lived in South America for a few years and she loved it.

Which country?

It's actually getting to be pretty dangerous here. Crime is getting out of control.

In Chile. She visited others - Argentina comes to mind. I don't know if she visited Brazil. I'll have to ask her.

And thank you for the invitation.

3:37 PM

I'll give you my email if you want to get in touch.

I've always heard that crimes been a problem in South America. Gangs, drugs and so on. Luckily it didn't scare her off.

Sure; are you ok with posting it here? Some people don't like posting email addresses on public platforms; but I don't see anyway around it.

The police here are lacking resources to do anything, and it seem that the criminals finally realized that's it's open season.

I'll leave it in a comment and delete it later. I'm searching for a post where you left a message.

Ok. Good idea.

OK. You should have received a comment.

I'll check now...

Ok. I've got it. Thanks.

3:44 PM

Sure.

Whose in charge of Brazil these days. I don't follow South American politics closely I'm afraid.

I ought to know this at least though...

at least this though...

The President's name is Temer. I kind of thought the way he got into office was less than honest. The impeached the former president for something that was almost trivial, and she was probably more honest than the people who were fighting for her impeachment.

My wife follows politics much more than I do because I'm not a Brazilian.

And she is.

Do you travel much?

I used to. Mostly in Europe and India.

It's great to go somewhere where you can speak the language...

I only went to Europe twice, and the second time hardly counts. I also spent 12 hours in Frankfurt, but I was mostly sleeping.

It's probably best to sleep through Frankfurt ;).

Are you from the USA originally then?

3:54 PM

I thought it was a beautiful city from what I saw. I walked along the river a little.

Yes, I'm from the US.

Do you speak Hindi?

I speak Bengali which is close; it's like the difference between Spanish and Italian.

They do have a different alphabet but it looks familiar.

Amar nam Mujibur = My name is Mujibur.

I imagine that it would be difficult to learn to speak it.

I like languages, but European languages are plenty hard for me. I don't think my memory is as good as it used to be.

Learning to read it is not so hard as the written language is phonetic; it's written how you should speak it; but sure learning to make the right sounds is difficult.

Do you speak Spanish?

Or should I say Brazilian?

I speak Portuguese, but it's so close to Spanish that I can read Spanish with little difficulty.

El cerveza esta sobre la tabla is about as much as I know.

It's supposed to mean the beer is on the table. I'm sure I've got it wrong!

3:59 PM

In Portuguese: A cerveja está na mesa.

Mesa - that's it!

I have to go now. My wife is waiting to eat lunch. Até mais!

Ate mais! See you later!

4:40 PM

in Lounge<C++> on Stack Overflow Chat, 2 hours ago, by nwp

I'm surprised that there is no ethics.stackexchange.com.

Has anyone proposed that ethics.stackexchange.com should be an alias for philosophy.stackexchange.com? I can't find anything on meta and I think it is worth considering.

Philip Klöcking

5:25 PM

@nwp: sounds like a reasonable idea. mind posting something on MSE?

I'm not really on philosophy and afraid I get yelled at for missing something obvious. I would prefer if someone else did that.

But I can see how people on philosophy never have that problem because they know philosophy.se exists while people from outside know the problem but have no connection to philosophy.se.

Philip Klöcking

@nwp np, I will post a question

btw there seem to be "ethics" tags in interpersonal skills, workspace, academia, and philosophy

Maybe add that besides the domain when you open the hamburger menu and search for communities and type in "ethics" that philosophy should appear.

I think philosophy is the general ethics site while the others need ties to another specific topic and in that case people already know where to go.

Philip Klöcking

5:53 PM

0

Q: Adding ethics as an alias for philosophy?

Ethics is a pretty broad field. In fact, there are ethics tags in IPS, Workspace, Academia, and, of course, philosophy. Considering that philosophy is usually the department where ethics is taught and researched actively as a field, a person who tries to figure out where to post a question on et...

feature-request alias

1 hour later…

6:59 PM

@nwp: you shouldn't be yelled at for asking about the obvious...but I get where you're coming from.

7:09 PM

@nwp: wheres the 'hamburger menu'?

Top right next to review queue and reputation and inbox.

1 hour later…

user61389

8:25 PM

@nwp we already have a problem with new users asking "Is it ethical to do X?", because these are not well-formed, answerable questions. Questions on ethics typically mention a specific framework or compare different frameworks. An alias Ethics.SE would support the misunderstanding that we subjectively discuss ethical problems here, I think.

Do you think the problem is bigger than the regular referral issues?

For example people get redirected from codereview to stackoverflow because codereview only reviews working code while stackoverflow handles buggy code. Except they sometimes still get shut down because they didn't follow the rules because they didn't make a minimal complete verifiable example to reproduce the error.

Not providing a reproducible example and not specifying the ethics framework seems very similar.

Which isn't exactly an argument. If it doesn't work for SO that doesn't mean we need to also make it not work for philosophy.

The point is that reading and following the rules of the target site is expected and specifying an ethics framework seems like a fairly straightforward requirement.

Except that as a non-philosopher I wouldn't be able to name even one, so maybe some more guidance would be required if the site wanted to address general ethic questions.

Philip Klöcking

Problem is that on one hand, applied ethics actually is part of academic philosophy and there is a vast literature and one the other hand, those questions tend to be settled rather by vote than having a definite answer and many positions are considered.

This makes it potentially a bad fit for the se format

Do you have "primarily opinion based" as a close reason?

Philip Klöcking

8:41 PM

Sure

user61389

@nwp Yes. We can easily handle these questions by closing them (what is it, a couple a week?), but it would be better if we wouldn't get them in the first place. It's just not nice for people to be shut down. And it's not nice for us to have to repeat the same and go into discussion with these people over and over again.

I believe teaching people that an ethics framework is required to answer ethics questions objectively is a worthwhile goal. It might even add people to the site and offering people an alternative to ethics=opinion would be worth the effort of having to keep closing questions and referring them to the ethics framework help site.

user61389

The experience is that people get annoyed by it and either leave or discuss it, get angry and leave. I agree that it would be good if these people would learn to ask different questions, but it just doesn't seem to happen in practice.

But that is the outside view. If you say that people who don't know that ethics is a branch of philosophy will not have enough understanding of ethics frameworks to ask a proper question then I guess not appearing when ethics is searched for is a reasonable way to keep the site clean.

user61389

8:58 PM

That is my expectation, and that is why I'm not thrilled about this proposal. On the other hand, this is a low-volume site, the community is handling the amount of bad questions quite well, so we might as well try and see what happens.

Literature often discusses ethical questions without a formal background in philosophy, its how I was introduced to ethics at school.

user61389

Kate's suggestion seems good to me. No idea how such a change should be made though :)

9:14 PM

Sounds like a sensible suggestion.

9:24 PM

Can't we shunt it to some stack exchange guy who fix the source; it shouldn't be difficult for them to do; it'll be just a matter of just editing some list.

If we don't like it they ought to be able to put it down pretty quickly.

No harm in trying it surely?

@MoziburUllah ell.stackexchange.com/questions/224/…

(philosophy "joke")

@ChrisSunami: (laughs). Its not one I've come across before. Its pretty funny.

There's another with the Dalai Lama behind a burger joint; and someone buys a burger and he asks for change. And he says 'the change is within'.

Also this (mild language warning) friesian.com/no-shit.htm

2

I remember a paper copy of this one being passed around my high school back before the internet was invented... :o

Thats some funny s***!

:) @ your joke

9:30 PM

@ChrisSunami: hows it going?

I didn't know you were writing a book.

Oh yeah, I've been working on it 20 years now

but this year it's going to be finished

I'm in the final stages, God willing

Its either really lengthy...or really dense!

Inshallah!

:)

It is lengthy --hopefully not TOO dense

Whats it on - everything?

Yes and no

9:32 PM

Well, I'm envious; I've always wanted to write a book.

At one point it was going to be about everything, but at some point you have to draw the line

The time in came from having to find an appropriate way to talk about it

lines are drawn in sand...

The theme of it now is staying human in an increasingly technological world

I'm using cutting edge technology as an opening for talking about the continued relevance of very old philosophy

For example, the simulation theory takes us back to Descartes, and before him, Plato

Interesting topic, especially since some people are talking about a post-human world.

Right, a main theme of my book

I'm rushing to get it published before the Singularity occurs! :)

Here's another joke for you: sunnyskyz.com/funny-jokes/20/…

9:36 PM

I keep quiet for a moment and burst out laughing ;).

I was a big fan of Sherlock Holmes.

I liked the old black and white version with Basil Rathbone. The BBC would do reruns.

The books are really great too.

Why not post an excerpt here?

Well the book's in a funny place, I think it would be better to post something publicly either earlier or later. But I would like to get @JosephWeissman's opinion --he actually works for a philosophy publisher. He mentioned be interested in it the last time I mentioned it, but I never heard anything back from him after that.

Yeah, I recall reading his profile said that now.

Did you study philosophy for your degree?

Yes, undergrad and coursework for a masters

I could never write a thesis my department liked, but a lot of that work is being recycled into this project

I'm just an amateur. I've read a few books.

Sounds like a friend of mine and her thesis work on an Iraqi poet. She's decided to turn it into a book.

I have a lot of complaints about academic philosophy, but it does teach you to think and write rigorously

9:52 PM

Join the club. I can't say I enjoyed my experience of it. I never liked classrooms much. Too much silence with the sound of scribbling pens.

@PhilipKlöcking: Would you consider Chomsky as an ethicist or is he more of a political figure?

Philip Klöcking

@MoziburUllah: My masters are 100% seminars. Discussion only, plus talks and essays. No lectures. Love it.

Joseph Weissman

Full disclosure: While I've done work for a philosophy publisher (read/reviewed advanced copies of manuscripts) -- my primary vocation is in software

I went to university expecting and looking for discussion. I was a bit disappointed by it. Maybe 'cos its science.

Joseph Weissman

I'd definitely be interested in reading your work @ChrisSunami

Philip Klöcking

@MoziburUllah: Chomsky is a linguist before anything else. He did have something to say in the context of ethics, and most of his later doing is political, i.e. purporting and defending his views.

9:55 PM

@JosephWeissman: Hi there Joseph, hows it going?

Joseph Weissman

Hey, it's really good @MoziburUllah :)

Cool ;).

Joseph Weissman

Wrote this a little while ago after reading the first critique --
some "arrows" for Kant https://fractalontology.wordpress.com/2017/11/07/isocritique/

@JosephWeissman That would be really great :) Please send me an email, my contact info is in my profile

or directly above this line ^

Joseph Weissman

done/sent

9:58 PM

@JosephWeissman: I love the opening: 'how to be a transcendental detective...'

I want to be that!

Joseph Weissman

that was my first 'frame' on the work

i know!!

he talks about 'transcendental clues'

and deleuze says smth about how the best phil is like a detective story or even a scifi novel

Its pretty lengthy but it looks cool. I like the pix at the top. I didn't know Max Ernst painted that.

Joseph Weissman

thanks! yeah that's kind of pointing at this idea of a 'transcendental sun' that i talk about in the paper

the source of the hermeneutic light that makes reason possible

user image

Wasn't Max a surrealist?

Joseph Weissman

seems like it

user image

Philip Klöcking

10:03 PM

@JosephWeissman: Transcendental sun and hermeneutic light reminds me of the Adorno quote I posted earlier this day

Yeah, thats the Max I know...the other picture looked like it was reaching back into archaic archetypes.

Joseph Weissman

galloway has a neat essay "what is a hermeneutic light?" in leper creativity (a little book of essays responding to cyclonopedia)

@PhilipKlöcking: yeah, he does mention something quite like that.

Philip Klöcking

the blog is written in a good style, definitely. I could point at some technical inaccuracies, but that does not really matter since it makes its points and leads a reader to get interested in the text without being overwhelmed, which is not an easy task at all

For the moment, I am happy this place is alive again and there is some actual chat going on. We may grow an actual community some time :D Have to get up in seven hours though, introducing Judo to school kids the first two lessons of the day -.-

The ethics alias question was closed. It provided an answer how to do it. The question of whether it should be done remains though.

Philip Klöcking

10:10 PM

@nwp: Seen that, but I guess I will open a meta post tomorrow asking for approval for a new text and after the vote, contact the team.

gn8

10:25 PM

from Adorno: Knowledge has no light but that shed on the world by redemption

@MoziburUllah Does that actually mean something?

@nwp: I'm not a Catholic so I'm not sure what redemption is, but it does ring true. I pointed out because of Jospehs 'hermeneutic sun', which could be loosely translated as the light of understanding.

@ChrisSunami: how would you explain redemption?

Is it a key term in Christianity?

according to wikipedia: Redemption = the action of saving or being saved from sin, error, or evil.

Its Pandoras box, from which all the ills of the world escaped apart from the last - hope.

It seems like it has a long tradition.

Redmption =~ Hope.

Joseph Weissman

(it's from the last section of minima moralia)

Thats right. entitled Finale.

Joseph Weissman

> The only philosophy which can be responsibly practised in face of despair is the attempt to contemplate all things as they would present themselves from the standpoint of redemption. Knowledge has no light but that shed on the world by redemption: all else is reconstruction, mere technique. Perspectives must be fashioned that displace and estrange the world, reveal it to be, with its rifts and crevices, as indigent and distorted as it will appear one day in the messianic light.

10:35 PM

Any ideas why he titled the work Minima Moralia? Surely it can't mean mininal morals?

Joseph Weissman

Wiki has some good context on the redemption theme:

> The book acknowledges its roots in the "damaged life" of its author, one of many intellectuals driven into exile by fascism, who, according to Adorno, are "mutilated without exception". But as one of its aphorisms reads, "The splinter in your eye is the best magnifying glass."

> So, as splinters left over from the smashed mirror of philosophy, the book's fragments try to illuminate clues as to humanity's descent into inhumanity in their immediate surroundings. A kind of post-philosophy working against the "untrue whole" of philosophy proper, Minima Moralia holds fast to the Judeo-Christian-Enlightenment vision of redemption, which it calls the only valid viewpoint with which to engage a deeply troubled world.

> By bringing the "Messianic light" of criticism on a landscape of consummate negativity, Adorno attempts to "project negatively an image of utopia."

Minima Moralia: Reflections From Damaged Life (German: Minima Moralia: Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben) is a 1951 book by Theodor W. Adorno and a seminal text in Critical Theory. Adorno started writing it during World War II, in 1944, while he lived as an exile in America, and completed it in 1949. It was originally written for the fiftieth birthday of his friend and collaborator Max Horkheimer, who had co-authored the earlier book Dialectic of Enlightenment with Adorno. The book takes its title from Magna Moralia, a work on ethics that was traditionally attributed to Aristotle, though modern...

That the 'world is full of rifts and crevices' is something that I full-heartedly agree; I'd add cliffs too; some people jump off them, fall, or pushed.

Joseph Weissman

the title is a play on aristotle

The Magna Moralia (Latin, "Great Ethics") is a treatise on ethics traditionally attributed to Aristotle, though the consensus now is that it represents an epitome of his ethical thought by a later, if sympathetic, writer. Several scholars have disagreed with this, taking the Magna Moralia to be an authentic work by Aristotle, notably Friedrich Schleiermacher, Hans von Arnim, and J. L. Ackrill. In any case, it is considered a less mature piece than Aristotle's other ethical works, viz. the Nicomachean Ethics, the Eudemian Ethics, and Virtues and Vices. There is some debate as to whether they follow...

Ah ok, its like a riposte or an addendum to Aristotle. Makes sense now.

Joseph Weissman

the 'minimum ethics' of the capitalist life-world

10:38 PM

Probably an addendum.

Joseph Weissman

might be one reading

Yeah, like zero-point ethics.

Adorna admired Greek culture from what little I've read of him. He was mourning the loss of that he foresaw in the coming century. He's right about that.

Hannah Arendt wrote a short bio of Adorna in her book Men in Dark Times.

She's another writer I admire. Very lucid.

I wonder how redemption is seen in the other two monothiestic tradtions - Judaism and Islam. Was Adorno jewish?

Joseph Weissman

yes

maybe not actually? his father was an assimilated jew who converted to protestantism

Arendt was an assimilated jew for three generations.

Joseph Weissman

right, i'm not sure how much that mattered really -- it seems like this would've been enough to ensure difficulties with work etc

(yeah september '32 his right to teach was revoked)

10:46 PM

I think Arendt left Germany for similar reasons.

There must have been some residual anti-semitism in America too. I remember reading in Feynmans book of anecdotes how he had to get around a Jewish quota', or something like that.

At MIT.

Joseph Weissman

yes, there were definitely jewish quotas at many universities in the US

When did that stop?

Was that something the civil-rights era brushed away too?

Joseph Weissman

yes -- hopefully, at least on any formal level as university policy

Numerus clausus

Numerus clausus ("closed number" in Latin) is one of many methods used to limit the number of students who may study at a university. In many cases, the goal of the numerus clausus is simply to limit the number of students to the maximum feasible in some particularly sought-after areas of studies. However, in some cases, numerus clausus policies were religious or racial quotas, both in intent and function. == Modern use == The numerus clausus is used in countries and universities where the number of applicants greatly exceeds the number of available places for students. This is the case in many...

Its something that they shared with Russia. I read a bio of Edward Frankel Love & Math, now an American mathematician; and he described a similar policy. He had to go study in a more technical university when his interests were more advanced.

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