/lit/ - Literature

>>17902131
Bain you say?

I'm new to philosophy and I wanted to write a short critique of Socrates. Do you think my arguments against him are valid? What should I change and improve upon?
>mistaken assumption that rational = useful = good
many institutions may appear irrational and arbitrary on the surface but the society unknowingly benefits from their existent, this is kind of analogous to Hayekian concept of dispersed knowledge
>mistaken assumption that perfecting and purifying use of language and dialectic reveals some deeper and fundamental truth about the world
this is related to my first objection, in the dialogues Socrates constantly interrogates the way ordinary people use language in order to prove to them that they have no clue what they are talking about. at the same time he seems to believe that all things would be settled if we were to agree on the meaning of words. but this implicitly assumes that there would be a sort of one-to-one correspondence between this purified language and the structure of the real world and it seems to me that there is nothing to warrant this belief
>lack of realism
Socrates doesn't really care about how his ideas would have to be implemented and whether the potential benefits wouldn't be outweighed by the costs. given that his theory is morally constraining in many ways one would expect the people to react violently against it further adding to the impracticality of it
>mistaken assumption about the inherent rationality of humans
this ties to the objection concerned with lack of realism. Socrates is only concerned with what is rational whereas practical life and realism would dictate that one should take irrational behaviour just as seriously as rational behaviour. in other words in a society full of irrational people it is irrational to be rational.

There is literally no way of grounding inherent human dignity and value of human life in materialism. It's impossible for a materialist to meaningfully criticize the Holocaust.

Why do Marxists venerate the martyrs of working class movements when they're materialists and as materialists they believe that death is neither a positive nor negative because you simply cease to experience the world? It seems that there's no way to ground inherent dignity of human beings in the materialist project. Also, if materialists are correct and there's no afterlife then what business do I as a venture capitalist have in advocating for a Marxist utopia?

I'm trying an experiment here.

Recommend the most based amd redpilled fantasy book that you anons know.

After that, I want to read the most cringe and bluepilled fantasy book that you anons know.

I want to see the best and worst of the genre.

>>16626781
>bain

What are some good books about the CIA?

What are some good books about the CIA and how it operates?

>>15191794
Darth Bane?

>>14614508

Watts kind of looks like CIA

>>14465541
He's a big guy.