CW: Pederasty

How many of them do you think would start talking about how much they love boys the moment a greek brings it up?

  • TreadOnMe [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    11 days ago

    The idea that Marx is somehow less of a debate lord and less influential on the modern era than St. Thomas Aquinas is extremely funny to me. What is he gonna do, go over the eschatology of angelic beings?

    • ChestRockwell [comrade/them, any]@hexbear.net
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      11 days ago

      Aquinas is truly a fucking travesty. I’d take Martin Luther for that price, but my god, what a pathetic list.

      I said it elsewhere here, but Augustine mogs Aquinas in every way that matters, incredible the original creator didn’t recognize this.

    • trenching_tool [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      11 days ago

      i remember seeing a Thomas Aquinas philosophy book in a book store once and feeling curious enough to get it. I bought it, went across the street to read it, and returned it in like 15 minutes. I apologized perfusly, and explained that the book was incomprehensible drivel. They laughed. They were cool.

      • TreadOnMe [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        11 days ago

        I was once told that I needed to read the Summa Theologica in order to restore my belief in Catholicism because, and I quote, “It is the most logical document on Religion that has ever been created.”

        I think I got three chapters in before I kinda just petered out because not only is it not really logical, but I realized that it was essentially one gigantic fanfiction on how all of his favorite ancient authors are actually all talking about the same thing, which just happens to be how Catholicism is the one true religion. How convenient.

        It was probably extremely impressive for him to draw so many correlations between disparate authors and concepts in a time period where the average literacy rate was essentially non-existent for the vernacular, and extremely limited to the upper class for Latin. That said, his philosophy is pretty fucking dog shit.

        • Sleepless One@lemmy.ml
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          11 days ago

          I had a theology teacher in high school who kept hyping up the Quinque Viae as some undeniable proof that god exists.

        • novibe@lemmy.ml
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          11 days ago

          This is pretty unfair. Not that his work is “true”. I mean it’s metaphysics…

          But he didn’t say all ancient thinkers were actually Catholics (in the way the church was Catholic at Aquino’s time). It’s more that “god” was more like what ancient philosopher’s believed the universe or the origin of reality to be, than what the church said god and jesus were.

          That god was an ineffable totality.

          Dude was basically a panpsychist. We take it for granted now cause that’s a pretty common take for modern christians. But at the time it was pretty heretical.

          Like if you compile his beliefs on god and the universe, dude does NOT sound like a catholic at all. Except if you count the super heterodox times of the first few centuries CE, where there wasn’t really a dogma stablished yet.

          He sounds like Einstein or something tbh. Who wasn’t a christian.

          • TreadOnMe [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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            10 days ago

            Dude literally has entire arguments with the lists for the hierarchies of angelic and demonic beings, forgive me if I am not exactly going to equate him to one of the best physical minds of the twentieth century. By saying that ‘He sounds like Einstein.’, is quite literally doing the same thing that he does to Aristotle to him. I do not think they actually thought the same way, though there are some threads of throughline just simply due to the fact that they both exist within the Western tradition of thought.

            I am not saying he thought that Aristotle was a Catholic, I am saying that he absolutely discards and disregards areas of those philosophies that directly contradict Catholic doctrine. I am of the opinion that he is fundamentally incorrect about their compatibility, with both the Augustinians and Averrioists being far more on the money about what the implications of the philosophy lies. You can learn far more by reading about St. Thomas than reading St. Thomas imo.

            His real contribution is that reason is at least equal in its revelatory power to faith. However, much of his reasoning is usually incredibly strained and the substantial metaphysical application is fairly well annihilated by both David Hume and Kant’s Critique on Pure Reason. He isn’t as logical as he thinks he is, which to be fair to him, he seems to have recognized later in his life as he never actually completed the Summa Theologica, saying “All I have written seems like straw to me.”

            That said, Catholicism has always been extremely heterodox in terms of it’s belief systems, as long as you did not threaten the political and social authority of Church, which St. Thomas always went out of his way to affirm. He does not appear that heretical within the larger tradition.

    • woodenghost [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      11 days ago

      Tbf the scholastics did turn debates (disputationes) into a highly formalized game. Aquinas wrote his major work in that debate format and had almost as much of an impact on Catholic theology as his primary influence, Ibn Sina.

      • TreadOnMe [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        11 days ago

        I was aware, however, the kind of shit posting that Marx was up to is far more akin to modern discourse as opposed to any kind of formalized disputation game. So many as a philosophy debate team Aquinas might be more valuable lol.

        • Sleepless One@lemmy.ml
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          11 days ago

          I don’t know much about Augustine besides that he used to party hard before he found god. Would he synergize with the Marxes as well as Rand or Hegel?

    • CodexArcanum@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      11 days ago

      Was thinking exactly this as well, but set it up like a game of Secret Objectivist. Will the Marx-hive figure out there’s a traitor amongst them?

      Actually, this could be a fun party game. Everyone is randomly assigned a philosopher and must argue their point of view, try to guess who they are.

    • alexei_1917 [mirror/your pronouns]@hexbear.net
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      11 days ago

      Those are good. Incredible characterization of Marx every time he shows up… yeah, he throws the table and yells “revolution”, but… have you read him? He might well do that in at least some of those scenarios! Guy founded the damn International!


      This user is suspected of being a bear. Please report any suspawcious behaviour.

  • Dialectical Idealist@lemmygrad.ml
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    11 days ago
    • Marx because obviously.

    • Hegel to give him a chance to react to Marx. Thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis or whatever.

    • Aristotle because Marx claimed that he rightly recognized the commensurability of objects of different use-value but never reached the theory of abstract labor because Greek society was based on slave labor. Not sure how Aristotle responds there.

    • Kant because his idealism would stir the pot. He argued that there are no material conditions that can justify revolution, as the existing state embodies the right to rule and a revolutionary maxim does not satisfy the categorical imperative.

    • Foucault because I’m curious as to whether he thinks conditions are fundamentally different under communism or whether oppressive power structures remain.
        • Dialectical Idealist@lemmygrad.ml
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          10 days ago

          I expect philosophers to be hypocrites (and that doesn’t make them wrong) but Kant was flat-out racist.

          The same genius who devised the theory of transcendental idealism, and made room for our noumenal freedom and religious belief, also argued for a hierarchy of races with white Europeans seated firmly at the top. Really puts a bad taste in your mouth.