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/lit/ - Literature

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20293586 No.20293586 [Reply] [Original]

I'm interested in books on any of these things: Thumos, Spirit, Will, Akrasia, and Demoralization.

Thumos = spiritedness. It's the part of the soul concerned with things like honors. It's what animates us and compels us to do things above ourselves. Perhaps, it can be identified with the will.

Akrasia = weakness is of the will. When morale is low, when spiritedness is diminished, when you are exhausted - mentally, physically, spiritually - then you are less able to resist. You are more suggestable. You are more willing to 'go along with things.' This is a state of demoralization.

I think much of political control today is aimed at demoralizing us, i.e. making our will weak, so that we're unwilling to resist. The flame that is our spirited soul is extinguished. We are lesser people. We no longer want anything or willing to make changes or to object to the masses. The result of democracy is absorption in a formless mass and the preservation of the political/elite class. This has secondary consequences: Not only is your willingness to resist damped, so too is your creativity, your desire for personal greatness, your desire to rise above.

Any books on these topics? Or this idea?

>> No.20293596

>>20293586
read Plato

>> No.20293617

>>20293586
Paideia by Werner Jaeger touches on them. Not the direct focus though

>> No.20293623

>>20293586
Yes. The Abolition of Man.

>> No.20294390

>>20293617
>Paideia by Werner Jaeger
Going to order this. Pre-1945

>> No.20294414
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20294414

>>20293586

>> No.20295619

>>20293596
Seconding this, that's what the Republic is all about.

Some commentaries that emphasize thumos in the Republic:

Leo Strauss - The City and Man
Leon Harold Craig - The War Lover
Seth Benardete - Socrates' Second Sailing
Stanley Rosen - Plato's Republic, a Study
Jacob Howland - Glaucon's Fate

Especially the Craig and Benardete books.

>> No.20295624

>>20295619
>>20293586
And I guess almost anything by Nietzsche after the Untimely Meditations? He doesn't thematize thumos and akrasia directly, but he's talking about the situation you're concerned with.