@platosfootnotes

“The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato” -A.N. Whitehead

Joined June 2020
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Nolan’s Odyssey is a shockingly conservative film, in that it clearly yearns for a better antebellum period. It also takes seriously the idea of profaning the gods’ law. But it is not Homer’s Odyssey.
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Also, it’s a great example of the difference between a “complicated” man and a man “of many twists and turns.” Nolan’s Odysseus is indeed complicated—conflicted over the war and his journey. But he’s not very “twisty,” the kind of man who would intentionally screw with a cyclops
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A lot of poetry simply cannot imagine life outside the author’s point of view. One could easily imagine a more interesting poem about someone knifing the tree in an attempt to leave his mark on the world….
Krista Diamond@KristaDiamondJul 4
This one too:
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and thereby sacrificing some beauty in nature. In his attempt to interact with and become master of sublime nature, he cheapens it. This idea both takes the knifer seriously and maintains the idea that carving a tree harms something good.
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But, of course, this poem has no real interest in what it’s like to be the defacer. It’s simply a lecture in purple prose.
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Any visual depiction of Helen—or for that matter any person said to be the most beautiful alive—will necessarily disappoint. The thought of her will always be much more powerful.
Daniel Mendelsohn@DAMendelsohnNYCMay 17
What’s so interesting is that—given the key role her beauty played in the Troy myth—there is no detailed description of what Helen of Troy looks like anywhere in Homer (or even in extant Gk tragedy, apart from —if memory serves—something about her hair in Euripides’ “Orestes”).
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I’m not saying that originalist scholarship or originalist lawyering is particularly good. But the critique that “lawyers aren’t historians” has always felt odd to me. The critique reads to me as a complaint that originalists simply aren’t originalist enough!
Kevin Baum@kevinbaum013Mar 30
Lawyers are not trained historians. Originalism is largely and remains largely bullshit. The hubris that backs it leads to nonsense arguments that ignore the plain, unambiguous language of a statue. These professors want to will more bullshit in furtherance of their careers.
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more replies
After all, that last statement argues for a “living” view of language by reference to the views of those who set that language down. Thus, if those people had set down a “dead” view of that language, that would then be the meaning of that phrase.
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Also, I don’t think the OP is blind to these concerns. I have just heard other people talk like that, and this post was a good opportunity to rather quickly address what I see as an inconsistency!
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I think people are talking past each other: Most frame this debate as about incentives. “The atheist lacks incentives outside personal preference to be moral,” the theist says. True. But the same may be said of the theist—his personal fear of divine retribution guides his belief.
wanye
@xwanyex2 Nov 2025
This is the tamest, most obviously true thing I have ever posted
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The real debate, to me, is whether the content of morality actually can change. The atheist does have incentives—social pressure and personal tastes—to act morally. But the theist likely finds this an insufficient morality because social pressure and personal taste are fleeting.
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So the theist claims that the atheist has no incentive to follow a set morality. Which is hard to argue: if the atheist can act morally only with reference to changeable incentives, then the particulars of morality can change.
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For some people, the money is beside the point. They have an ambition to be great, and material comfort cannot compare (for them) to the thrill of industry. For others, they have a singular goal that they must accomplish through business. Still others just like money.
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Some of this, I think, is that teachers of the humanities do not treat the subjects with the rigor they deserve.
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However, a truly bright student excels at all the subjects.
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Genuine question—what is a prof supposed to project if not expertise and authority? I respect letting students have opposing ideas and profs taking a back seat in classroom discussion. But in a college setting, I expect to have expert guidance to help me grow intellectually?
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Not an attack on the prof above—just not sure what’s wrong with a student wanting guidance? And perhaps that’s not what the prof means by “expertise & authority.” But not sure what else it could mean.
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Perhaps it means giving the student “right answers” that she can mechanically apply. But, even then, the prof should use expertise (in a nice way) to explain why that approach fails.
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