/lit/ - Literature

>>9269493

you can't.

that purpose and goal is mine, and i am much further along it than you will ever be.

accept the fact that you will never be the first in your generation, especially if you are gleaning your reading lists and understandings from /lit

>>9042212

>would you mind expanding upon this idea here?

yeah sorry, i was unclear on that point. so, basically i am interested in this idea of the "principle of plenitude" (see arthur lovejoy: https://www.amazon.com/Great-Chain-Being-Study-History/dp/0674361539/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1485836274&sr=8-1&keywords=the+great+chain+of+being).). the idea is basically that the diversity of entities in the world is 1. a necessary condition, and 2. insofar as it is a necessary condition, it is also the best possible condition. so diversity is first appreciated on a horizontal basis: think the animism of the jesuits, e.g. "god in all things." but then add to this the will-to-power: while the diversity of all things is still good, things are no longer considered equal. now you have the naturalization of hierarchy: that i dominate you is sanctioned by the entire worldview, which means that the people at the top take care of the people at the bottom, who sustain the people at the top: the hierarchy perpetuates itself through time as part of the "great chain of being." i will simply quote lovejoy on this point:

he describes a "conception of the plan and structire of the world which, through the Middle Ages and down to the late eighteenth century, many philosophers,most men of science,and, indeed,most educated men,were to accept without question--the conception of the universe as a 'great chain of being,' composed of an immense, or--by the struct by seldom rigorously applied logic of the principle of continuity--of an infinite number of links ranging in hierarchichical order from the meagerest kind of existents, which barely escape non-existence, through 'every possible' grade up to the ens perfectissimum--or, in a somewhat more orthodox version, to the highest possible kind of creature, between which and the Absolute Being the disparity was assumed to be infinite--every one of them differing from that immediate above and that immediately below it by the 'least possible' degree of difference" (lovejoy, p. 59)

you can see how this worldview, which is essentially the neo-platonism of the medeival era (augustine primarily, but also some aquinas and the "moral economy," and by extension aristotle), laid the groundwork for justifying slavery, feudalism, even the domination of the bourgeoise--not to mention, and to the point, nietzsche's split between the overman and final men.

>>8981479

i can't tell for sure, but is this one continuous image, or have you spliced several pictures together? like is this the wall i'm greeted with upon entering your apartment?

>>6862754