Harbal
H: There you go again, Nick, distorting things out of proportion. The passage I quoted simply did not have the ring of truth about it, I seriously doubt his account of events. I'm not calling him a "charlatan", I don't know anything about him, I'm merely saying that no matter how much you admire someone you should still use your own judgement, nobody is faultless.
N: What is so odd about a prof asking a group of exceptional students about their important question? It seems very reasonable to me. It may be more appropriate to ask a regular kid of today who their favorite rap artist is but these were exceptional kids.
N: The whole point is that these ideas are not original. Modern secularism has influenced society to forget them in favor of arguing superficial secular goals.
H: Goals such as what?
N: Secularism concerns itself with life in Plato’s cave. It argues how life should be lived in Plato’s Cave. Those like Plato and Plotinus remind us that ultimate reality including human meaning and purpose doesn’t originate in Plato’s cave but at a level of conscious reality beyond the psychological confines of Plato’s cave. A secularist argues politics in the quest to bring about collective stability. Those whom Plato and Plotinus have philosophically moved know that without the awareness of human conscious potential on a large scale, collective stability is impossible other than through slavery.
N: Can you appreciate how offensive it is for a young woman who actually has felt Plato, who has read Book V1 of the Republic and is strirred by the Divided Line and inspired to objective contemplation? She would be rejected by modern Woman’s philosophy.
H: No I can't appreciate it. I have no idea what Book V1 of the Republic is about and I very much doubt if a significant number of young women have any idea either.
N: You are probably right but what of this minority who strive to be complete women and not just fashionable twerking machines serving the state through their buying habits and arguing about gender rights. I support this minority.
N: Suppose one young female student on this site reads one of my Simone Quotes and reads up on her out of curiosity. She may realize that there is more to a woman’s philosophic potential than arguing about gender rights. I would call that a good thing.
H: Did Simone not believe in gender rights?
N: As a social activist Simone supported the balance between obligations and rights.
As a Christian mystic she was aware of human obligations that transcended arguing rights
“One cannot imagine St. Francis of Assisi talking about rights.” ~ Simone Weil
N: Can we respect the questions of the heart or are we doomed to just the perpetual argument about questions of the mind
H: I don't know but I don't think people are any different to how they've always been. You seem to be saying we've lost something but the fact that Plato said what he did all that time ago suggests it has always been this way.
N: Consider societal values and how they have changed. For example:
"The depravity of man is at once the most empirically verifiable reality but at the same time the most intellectually resisted fact." Malcolm Muggeridge
"The orgasm has replaced the Cross as the focus of longing and the image of fulfillment."
― Malcolm Muggeridge
Is this really progress or has the collective lost something? Is the denial of reality and glorification of the animal really a sign of human progress?
The philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote that all our questions of human reason and speculation combine into three questions: "What can I know? What ought I to do? What may I hope?" (Critique of Pure Reason, 1787)
When critical thought cannot answer these questions and when they become Too intense, they become questions of the heart inviting a quality of contemplation which bypasses binary logic.
