/lit/ - Literature

>>18179546
Hahahaha you think those aren't political and philosophical?

>>15651785
Hobbies. Something like a sport or craft that has you in regularly meeting with the same group of people is the way you make new friends. Well, for most people the process is having friends introduce them to their friends and so on, but that isn't an option for everyone. I think friendships is basically a factor of:
>proximity
>shared interests
>personality
The more in common, the better. Structured hobbies get you proximity with regularity and at least one shared interest, so after that it is just personality and closing the gap on the other two. You may not make friends, but you should at least make acquaintances. It also gets you meeting quite a diverse group of people. You just need to go outside.

>>15297991
yes, i only read non-fiction and poetry. I consider religious texts and mythologies non-fiction.

>>14450224
kys normalfag
>>14449349
I'm drinking some beer, eating chips and watching Doremi, fren. Here's to another decade in the Kali Yuga, thanks for nothing demiurge

>>14407915
This contract must necessarily be of a theological character, as it is the result of God’s billiards forming a certain structure. The contract must be reciprocated, which precludes the possibility of a direct contract with god; “To make contract with god is impossible, but by Mediation of such as God speaketh to, either be Revelation supernaturall, or by his Lieutenants that govern under him, and in his Name: For otherwise we know not whether our Covenant be accepted, or not. And there-fore they that Vow anything contrary to any law of Nature, Vow in vain; as being a thing unjust to pay such Vow. And if it be a thing commanded by the Law of Nature, it is not the Vow, but the Law that binds them”. What this means is that the Sovereign—either a monarch or a parliament—is automatically God’s lieutenants through its act of creation by the social contract, and the ONLY legitimate authority in regards to religious character. This is what I mean by transferring the Divine Right of Kings to the Divine Right of Nature: rather than being imbued the right to rule under God through a religious institution, the Sovereign is granted the right to rule under God by the State of Nature.

that's all of it relating to hobbes. even though they are tangentially related, i think the answer is in there. hobbes' arguments work from a purely naturalist metaphysics, but hobbes himself was not a materialist in the modern sense. at least, in my interpretation.

>>14359512
>I only read political philosophy books.
literally me
>You know you're allowed to have some fun with reading, right?
there is nothing i find more interesting than politics and society. in politics the highest highs and lowest lows of the human spirit are realised, humanity and inhumanity vie for control of people's lives and futures. passions are inflamed, people band together towards a common cause, to fight for ideals, and, through collective effort, make them a realty. i think politics is really something quite beautiful, even if it has fallen into ill-repute in recent times. the grand story of the human condition stretching from mesopotamia to the modern day is more captivating to me than any work of fiction.
call me a faggot all you want, that's simply how i feel.

Experiences at the book depository

>go to book depository
>decide to check out the live purchases map
>Australia is mostly self-help and pop-psy
>Singapore is the worst kind of business books
>Hong Kong is surprisingly patrician
>Ireland is mostly plant books
>Norway is a bunch of books about happiness
>UK is pop-non fiction
>Israel is mostly pop-sci
>US rarely pops up but when it does it is absolute dog-shit books

>Weber
>Fencing
>The Laws of Imitation
>Bernaysian Democracy

>>12171010
OKay, here we go. I can't actually remember what i say in it but i'm sure it's good.

>Is Hobbes' vision of the Common-Wealth compatible with a secular society?
>Bearing in mind most of his main ideas are set out in chapter 42 (in the "of a Christian Common-Wealth" section) is it possible to have a sovereignty-based state without an overtly Christian dogma underpinning its structure?

Firstly, I’m not sure why you would think that most of Hobbes’ main ideas on “the common-wealth” are set out in chapter 42. But it’s an interesting question nonetheless. This may be a little meandering but I do think that to answer this question we need to have a broad understanding of Hobbes and his project first. In short, I do think that Hobbes’ conception of sovereignty is compatible with a secular society, however it is unlikely that Hobbes believed that such a society could exist. His goal was the subordination of religious authority under civil authority through the joining of both. Hobbes’ arguments for natural law is essentially a way of giving civil power a religious authority beyond the possibility of church interference by claiming them to be the “dictates of God through nature” (De Cive, 6). Contractualism is likewise used to secure civil authority above religious. The commonwealth is just the contract between all members of the society to lay down their arms and submit to a sovereign. The sovereign is just the representative of the people through this contract. Though the laws of nature drive people to make this contract, and though these laws of nature are said to be the product of God, they are ultimately just “a Precept, or generall Rule, found out by Reason, by which a man is forbidden to do, that, which is destructive of his life, or taketh away the means of preserving the same” (Leviathan, Chap. XIV, 91). Such Laws are deduced by reason, not divine instruction, and as such do not necessarily require a Christian, or even religious, dogma. They should rather be seen as the essential laws for the upkeep of peace and society.

>>12157769
I think Popper makes the mistake of reading The Republic too literally as a work of political philosophy. The entire premise of the work is to use the republic as an allegory of the soul, something Socrates makes repeated mention of throughout the text. The Republics class structure (Philosopher King, Guardians, Workers) is identical to the Tripartite Theory of the Soul (Wisdom, Justice, Appetite) found in Phaedrus, which suggests that Plato means the structure to be indication of how one should govern their own life (Reason rules Appetite with the aid of Justice). Plato's "noble lie" where he tells of people being made of different metals can be contextualised with a segment from 'Cratylus'
>SOCRATES: Do you know what Hesiod says daemons are?
>HERMOGENES: No, I don’t remember.
>SOCRATES: Do you remember that he speaks of a golden race, which was the first race of human beings to be born?
>HERMOGENES: Yes, I remember that.
>SOCRATES: He says this about it:
>Since this race has been eclipsed by fate,
>They are called sacred daemons;
>They live on earth and are good,
>Warding off evil and guarding mortal men.
>HERMOGENES: So what?
>SOCRATES: Well, I don’t think he’s saying that the golden race is by nature made of gold, but that it is good and fine. I consider it a proof of this that he calls us a race of iron.
>HERMOGENES: That’s true.
>SOCRATES: So don’t you think that if someone who presently exists were good, Hesiod would say that he too belonged to the golden race?
>HERMOGENES: He probably would.
>SOCRATES: Are good people any different from wise ones?
>HERMOGENES:No, they aren’t.
>SOCRATES: It is principally because daemons are wise and knowing (dae-mones), I think, that Hesiod says they are named ‘daemons’(‘daimones’).In our older Attic dialect, we actually find the word 'dae-mones’ So, Hesiod and many other poets speak well when they say that when a good man dies, he has a great destiny and a great honor and becomes a ‘daemon', which is a name given to him because it accords with wisdom. And I myself assert, indeed, that every good man, whether alive or dead, is daemonic, and is correctly called a daemon
And i do think that Socrates' Daemon is a representative of his Wisdom. So being imbued with gold is as much to say that you should be wise and good, and the dictatorship of the philosopher king is as much to say that an individual should be ruled by reason (a very prevalent theme in all of Plato's dialogues). This is what i mean by suggesting that Popper reads Plato far too literally, and it makes his claims to being able to sort Plato's and Socrates' views quite dubious.
There are a myriad of other problems with the book as well.