/lit/ - Literature

I've come to think of effortposting as something closer to broadcasting than discussion. And as such, better suited for a medium other than imageboards. Finding a decent reply is like fishing, but the impermanence of threads makes it so you can only leave your lure in for a few moments. And from experience, it is unlikely to get a bite. So if you're just writing for output without expecting dialogue, for the process of writing rather than the result, it would be better to find a place with more permanency and reach. Which i plan to do.

I think i'm going to retire this identity and take a break from /lit/ till at least next year, then maybe try something new. New interests and new avenues which still need quite a few months of reading before they begin to bear fruit. But, quite distinct from what i started with so it would be better to have a clean cut and lose any vestigial expectations. Something less exegetical, less affected, (hopefully) more interesting and more dialogic.
Or, God willing, i find a replacement and don't return at all. But it's best to keep one's expectations level.
In anycase, adieu.
>See you next week etc. ect.

Reading under an umbrella to keep my dog dry because she won't stay in the shelter i made for her unless i'm there.

>>16552286
It was the duty of each male adult citizen of the city state to fight in wars (mostly between city-states). There were further laws mandating that the richer aristocratic families must make material contributions in the forms of ships and city walls. Most military equipment was personally owned by citizens. It wasn't until Macedonian hegemony that you had professional armies in Greece, before that everyone was practically a citizen militia who only soldiered seasonally. You could as well ask why modern managers, poets, playwrights, politicians, lawyers turned into a bunch of pussies—there isn't the same socio-political organisation. It wasn't by virtue of philosophy that they chose to soldier, but by duty to their polis. With larger states and larger agricultural yields came greater divisions of labour and the surplus to support professional armies, hence the need for philosophers to be soldiers vanished.
You still had the occasional figures like Descartes, Ferguson, and Neitzsche who were soldiers and philosophers, Machiavelli may have fought also, and some figures in the American and French revolution (Saint-Simon, Hamilton, Paine). And then later again during the mass warfare of WWI and WWII you get a few more, mostly Analytics from my knowledge: Wittgenstein fought in WWI, Ayer was part of MI6 in WWII, John Rawls fought in the pacific theatre, Davidson was a Navy Gunner. I'm sure there are some continentals that participated in resistance movements in France and Italy though.
It is really only when large portions of the population participate in war that philosophers do also. But you can attribute that to a wider net being cast than any particular characteristic of philosophers. I'm sure if another major war broke out that required a levée en masse, you would see plenty of philosophers fight in it.

>>16466338
It seems fairly obvious. There are some things that are only possible through the preclusion of others. The freedom to breed (livestock, I assume) results in overpopulation, which results in overtaxating and the mutual destruction of the land. In order to have the freedom, then, to use the land at all there must be limits on who and how much can breed— that is, the necessary precondition of its use is a limit on it's use. So while it seems like a curtailment on freedom, it in fact increases freedom through allowing sustainable farming to occur at all, much in the same way laws against theft allowed greater freedom of property through allowing property to exist at all. While generally true, his idea of freedom is in a vague marco sense—certainly not "personal liberty"—and applies little to the actual people living on the commons as then gained no portion of the enclosed land and either had to become farm labourers or were driven towards the city to work in factories. They had right to cry out because their liberties were being stripped from them.

>>16399733
>>16399803
State of Nature arguments aren't anthropological claims. Both Hobbes and Rousseau at least say so explicitly, and Locke was following in the same tradition. The State of Nature is a hypothetical used to elucidate fundamental political, moral, and psychological concepts free from the complications of contemporary societal conditions. They are demonstrating justifications for government which in turn bound and inform their purview.
It's like saying Rawls is wrong because the veil of ignorance doesn't exist; it has no bearing on his argument.

>>16387186
I'm not sure if paradoxes exist abstractly beyond being types, but not as a special abstract object (if that makes any sense). Paradox's seem to me rather to be a variant of contradictio or reductio—an informal logical error. For example, we don't suppose a sorites paradox commits us to bald people with full heads of hair. Rather, we suppose that there is something wrong with our idea of vague objects if it leads to such an absurd or contradictory conclusion.
I also don't understand what point you're making with Leibniz's Law and empiricism and idealism. They don't seem to be identical in the first place. Firstly i'm not sure if theories are identical to their extension. Secondly, i'm not sure if the world they would be describing actually would be identical; surely there are some objects that have different properties. Depending on you're type of idealist, they could think the entire world is simply qualia; an empiricist would not think that, but rather they are material beings. Therefore, the world-states they're describing aren't identical (if the theories are correct). Though i'm not sure if this is what you're trying to argue.

>>16378316
All i'm saying is be careful who you extend your generosity to.

>>16371695
It was an off topic thread about Joe Rogan. If he was new around here, he should have read the sticky. When confronted by the fact that he was off topic, he was recalcitrant. It is especially important to teach uppity newfags what is or isn't allowed so they don't shit up the catalogue any more than it already is. That you admit the thread was shut down before it had time to develop discussion betrays your statement about good discussion in the OP. At best you could say there was potential for good discussion, but that could be said about almost any thread, even the JK Rowling spam.
For /lit/ to continue to be a place with even the potential of good discussion, freeriders have to be dealt with. That means crossboarders who don't read but want to harvest opinions from those who do need to be show the door or told to Start with the Greeks.
There are plenty of off topic threads relating to things I've wanted to discuss, but I realise that indulging my own wants would be destructive to the board in the long run, so I abstain. I hope you will have the foresight and self-restraint to do the same.

Return that book. Ignore the anons of poor character itt saying you're an idiot if you don't steal it. They have no pride nor sense of justice and would as soon whore themselves out if they thought it could make them a buck. Don't succumb to temptation.

Patrician taste.

Am I a pleb for liking Invictus? It feels kinda LARPy.