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LeoLeloLeo
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The Grecians - noble infants that they were- what Jeremiahs and prophets of the mind itself- upheld a concept of Truth which by the project of the Western Philosophers was forgotten- that of Aletheia; or that which from out of the darkness has come, that which has been beheld, or otherwise that which has been revealed. Klages in Charact. says that it is a general rule of philosophy; that to study something you must be disengaged from it. Philosophy is not a conation, and it is not natural for us to truly question anything, it is not natural for us to exaggerate the pronouncements of Aletheia, as to debate about what has come from out of the darkness, into apparency. Thus the Western Project, in all it's platitude of genus and species, may be signified as an attack upon the conception of Aletheia as Truth, and a means to overcome mere apparency. Lest though you be embarrassed or injured, you would do well to hold off on participating in any thing, rather you would stand off to the side, disengaged from the that which you would want to do, the better to learn the rules therwith, and benefit from what the Stoical doctrine calls pronoia, or foreknowledge and opportunity, or as with Publius Syrus,
Learn to see in another’s calamity the ills which you should avoid.
Or,
He who meditates on other's woes shall in that meditation lose his own, as Timocles says.
Likewise for us Men to understand the world we must disengage from it; and Philosophy is a but a decision to live in mountains, wherever the fountainheads of truth run cold, that is the secret lodging of the mind, our own little world, as Bacon says, the vantage ground of truth, which provides ample pleasure for us in looking down upon the tumults of the world,
To hold, as ’t were, the mirror up to nature.
(Hamlet).
A nature we will never understand, or know in all the grandeur of it's details, but which we may expect things from, for that is the end to all reason, expectation, and prediction, which are all mere artifices framed upon the intellect, to take advantage of it, to foresee the courses of nature, the better to navigate this our life;
Thus in the beginning the world was so made that certain signs come before certain events. 2
(Cicero De Divinatione. i. 118.) (FOR)
The ways of the gods are full of providence.
( Aurelius Meditations. ii. 3.)
Also, if I may paraphrase from my readings of Desiderius: We often times hear the Philosophers railing over the malady of doubt, the venture of their lives, and the folly of human being: yet these feelings, these, if you will, wonts of Truth, are not altogether opposite to our solute, and the open contest of our thoughts, rather, to err, to feel folly, is but to feel human. The lot of our Philosophers have apostatized upon their common sense, and in hopes of comprehending more, given up on what little sobriety and business had been afforded unto their knowledge, in common sense, and yet quietly realize how truly folly it was to have taken upon the steps of Theseus, and the long Athenian road:
It was a saying of Demetrius Phalereus, that “Men having often abandoned what was visible for the sake of what was uncertain, have not got what they expected, and have lost what they had,—being unfortunate by an enigmatical sort of calamity.” 1
(The Deipnosophists. vi. 23.)
And again,
No state sorrier than that of the man who keeps up a continual round, and pries into “the secrets of the nether world,” as saith the poet, and is curious in conjecture of what is in his neighbour’s heart.
(Aurelius Meditations. ii. 13.)
Socrates dictates in the Theatetus an entire repository of logical fallacies, when he should be defining what knowledge is, yet he is often times wont to digress, however sweetly.
Who knows what he means when he says "to you I shall appear smaller, without losing an inch?" If you read Montaigne, in his discourse upon the vanity of words, he tells us of a story, wherein he was told that the job of the rhetorician was to make the little appear great and the great little. The diligent and worthy Rhetorician is by no means accomptable unto the pursuit of knowledge or the truth; rather, his unique profession is quite imaginative, and not so concerned with a mechanism or system as most would think, for all he must do is find a sufficient context, whereby through relations and depictions, he may make a stand for this or that, and defend with his own and equitable discretion, any point that he may wish. Thus the great rhetorician, to test himself, will make a point, and then refute that point, and then himself further repute that refutation. [Depending on the context he has chosen to present an idea in, it will be the more or less acceptable.]
Thus a very choice speech out of the Discourses of Epictetus,
"To a reasonable creature, that alone is insupportable which is unreasonable; but everything reasonable may be supported."
And thus the Rhetorician, like the Lawyer, goes this way and that, as he wishes, aiming for relations, depictions, and context, and moreover, appearances, rather then facts, which do him so very little,
"Everything is soothed by oil, and this is the reason why divers send out small quantities of it from their mouths, because it smooths every part which is rough. "
Natural History. Book ii. Sect. 234.
With any self respect you would,
Talk not to me of schools and trim academics,
of music or sage meetings held at Pylus __
I'll hear no more of them: mere sugard'd words
which melt as you pronounce them. (Alexis)
And yet,
I've harbour'd a he-sphinx and not a cook,
for, by the gods! he talk'd to me in riddles,
and coin'd new words that pose me to interpret. (Strato)
If it be the job of the rhetorician to convince, and to weave what appears to be out of it's quietus in relations, and feign depictions of things, it is surely the job of the great Philosopher to interpret his words: for if truth be wholly out of our reach, it is never out of hand to judge the words of our fellow men, and break up these heavy talkers,
and so as Philosophers and Scientists our jobs are to cast out charlatans and scheme- makers,
what is foreign to makind to abjure.-Damoxenus
to interpret the words of our preachers and rhetoricians, for if it be to their discretion to embolden their ideas as through tricks of their presentation, it is at our own philosophic discretion to judge rather or not the point he makes, however overt and blatant it be, holds any sate upon our daily lives, and providence unto our commutations to and from the market, or in the raising of our children, or sustaining of health, and preservations of our economies.
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