Since anomie has been brought to the table

[Joseph Tracy]

ezzzackly.  
On Jan 7, 2012, at 8:42 PM, Ian Livingston wrote:

> "'...[T]he very first foundation of virtue is the endeavor (conatum)
> to preserve the individual self, and happiness consists in the human
> capacity to preserve its self'.... Spinoza's statement rings clear as
> a bell, but it does require elaboration for its full impact to be
> appreciated. Why should a concern for oneself be the basis for virtue,
> lest that virtue pertain to that self alone? Or, to put it more
> bluntly, how does Spinoza move from oneself to all the selves to whom
> virtue must apply? Spinoza makes the transition relying again on
> biological facts. Here is the procedure: The biological reality of
> self-preservation leads to virtue because in our inalienable need to
> maintain ourselves we must, of necessity, help preserve other selves.
> If we fail to do so we perish and are thus violating the foundational
> principle, and relinquishing the virtue that lies in
> self-preservation. The secondary foundation of virtue then is the
> reality of a social structure and the presence of other living
> organisms in a complex system of interdependence with our own
> organism. We are in a bind, literally, in the good sense of the word.
> The essence of this transition can be found in Aristotle, but Spinoza
> ties it to a biological principle--the mandate for self-preservation."
> (Antonio Damasio, Looking For Spinoza, 170-1.)
> 
> 
> On Sat, Jan 7, 2012 at 4:11 PM, alice wellintown
> <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
>> If virtue is activity in accord with one's nature, such actions will
>> give one power and pleasure.
>> 
>> To act in this manner one must face the truth.
>> 
>> The truth may be painful and hard, difficult to get at, but it must be faced.
>> 
>> The truth is knowledge of god.
>> 
>> For Aristotle, Thomas, Spinoza ...suicide is un-natural absence of
>> virtue and thus the suicide is powerless and in the control of forces
>> repugnant to his own nature.
>> 
>> If we act in accord with our nature we are virtuous and happy.
>> 
>> Such actions will be directed by reason and toward a common goal
>> (knowledge of god...).
>> 
>> Moderns killed god, so they can not know god in this sense.
>> 
>> Betran Russell, a modern,  said, "The secret of happiness is to face
>> the fact that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible."
>> 
>> He also said, "The only thing that will redeem mankind is co-operation."
>> 
>> I think Freud, also a modern, said pretty much the same; he thought we
>> humans were just as driven to co-operate as we are driven to make war.
>> 
>> But war, as Richard McKeon, another modern, argued, just makes a
>> bloody mess of things we have to sit down and clean up, together,
>> sooner or later, so war can not be our goal, though it sometimes seems
>> like it is to irrational observers and cranky "historians. "
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> "Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all
> creeds the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the
> trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments
> of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates
> than the simplest urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant