>Apropos of our discussion, the following item is interesting as a case study:
>
><http://www.jewishaz.com/jewishnews/020222/ugandans.shtml>http://www.jewishaz.com/jewishnews/020222/ugandans.shtml
Interesting. I don't quite follow why "jews" needed to convert to become jewish. Presumably some kind of technicality, but that isn't important. The important thing is, your mother doesn't have to be "Jewish". Since one can convert. So we can rule that out as a useful definition. Perhaps the implication of the motherhood definition is that one cannot get out of being "Jewish" quite so easily? That is, sharing the religious dogma isn't crucial.
---
>If you insist on a set of necessary and sufficient conditions that
>must be strictly, I guarantee you that you will end up with the
>conclusion that there are no groups, just individuals with sets of
>p! roperties.
I wouldn't go that far. Property is social and so are shared beliefs and customs. I'm just saying that it should be possible to define what those shared understandings are. Obviously its a bit harder to explain it to people who don't share any of the shared understandings of course.
> For a conclusive demotion of this position, read the first few
>chapters of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, following the chpater
>on Sense Certainty. (Really!) I think the section is called
>Perception. jks
There's this:
THE TRUTH WHICH CONSCIOUS CERTAINTY OF SELF REALIZES
Unfortunately it seems to be composed entirely of passages like the following:
Since we started from the first immediate unity, and returned through the moments of form-determination, and of process, to the unity of both these moments, and thus again back to the first simple substance, we see that this reflected unity is other than the first. As opposed to that immediate unity, the unity expressed as a mode of being, this second is the universal unity, which holds all these moments sublated within itself. It is the simple genus, which in the movement of life itself does not exist in this simplicity for itself; but in this result points life towards what is other than itself, namely, towards Consciousness for which life exists as this unity or as genus.
Which, to be charitable, appears to be some form of code. Or perhaps the rantings of someone who has lost his wits. Are you making some kind of joke, what possible purpose could be served by reading several chapters of this kind of gibberish?
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20030502/bfeb800f/attachment.htm>