marjoram_blues wrote: ↑Sat Sep 23, 2017 11:24 am
Greta wrote: ↑Sat Sep 23, 2017 6:27 am
Nick_A wrote: ↑Sat Sep 23, 2017 5:21 amI do resist with logic which is why it is annoying.
I wish you did use logic.
Perhaps the difficulty here is that a delusional disorder with a chronically persistent idea, or conviction, CAN be logically constructed and internally consistent.
Any attempt to contradict the belief results in hostility and may increase the level of tenacity.
The concern of others is not appreciated. Indeed, the very opposite.
Not amenable to reason, perhaps the question needs to be asked whether we are helping or harming the individual concerned.
I did not enjoy my emotional response in a previous thread, nor calling him an idiot for continuing in his quest. However, his determination to continue in a similar vein in any and all threads is disturbing.
I am not sure that encouraging more of the same is helpful to anyone concerned.
That is why I hope that a decision is taken to limit this output.
This post is not an example of impatient intolerance based on any religious attitude - just a particular point of view; correct or incorrect. Take it for what it is and not what is delusionally imagined.
Why not learn why you re compelled to react as you do. Consider how this prof explains the death of Socrates. He was guilty of denying the gods. I am denying the Great Beast as God. Socrates was guilty of corrupting the youth of Athens or the supremacy of the community established by the state. I argue for the idea the heart of Man requires what the state cannot offer Man so is a higher good. Obviously this is intolerable for advocates of the supremacy of the state.
You are just experiencing what the majority of those in Athens did at the time. I am questioning the supremacy of the Beast as well as the reasoning being used to defend this commununal belief in its superiority over the needs of individuals striving to awaken to a human perspective the state cannot understand. Secular intolerance, if Professor Paul Cartledgeis is right, serves to justify and reaffirm the imagined supremacy of the state
If I were not cursed out like this it would mean that there is nothing to learn from the death of Socrates. That would be as extreme an anti-philosophical position as possible.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... study.html
By Simon Johnson
8:00AM BST 08 Jun 2009
Through the centuries, historians have portrayed the 399BC trial as a travesty, with Socrates forced to face charges invented by his ignorant fellow citizens.
He was found guilty of "impiety" and "corrupting the young", sentenced to death, and then required to carry out his own execution by consuming a deadly potion of the poisonous plant hemlock.
But, in a new study launched today, Professor Paul Cartledge has concluded that the trial was legally just and Socrates was guilty as charged.
Prof Cartledge said: "Everyone knows that the Greeks invented democracy, but it was not democracy as we know it, and we have misread history as a result
"The charges Socrates faced seem ridiculous to us, but in Ancient Athens they were genuinely felt to serve the communal good."
Historians have traditionally claimed that Socrates' open criticism of prominent Athenian politicians had made him many enemies, who used the trial to get rid of him.
Socrates was made a scapegoat for a series of disasters to strike Athens, including a plague and major military defeat, it has been claimed.
But Prof Cartledge pointed out that many citizens would have seen these events as a sign that their gods had been offended by undesirable elements.
He argued that Socrates, who had questioned the legitimacy and authority of many deities, fitted the latter description.
With the gods clearly furious and more disasters perhaps just around the corner, Prof Cartledge said that a charge of impiety was seen not only as appropriate, but in the public interest.
The professor's study also concluded that Socrates essentially invited his own death. Under the Athenian system, in this kind of trial a defendant could suggest his own penalty.
Socrates first joked that he should be rewarded, and eventually suggested a small fine but his jurors did not see the funny side and passed the death sentence.
"By removing him, society had in, Athenians' eyes, been cleansed and reaffirmed," Prof Cartledge concluded.
The study is included in the professor's new book, Ancient Greek Political Thought in Practice.
