[lbo-talk] Creativity and Thuggishness

Charles Brown cbrown at michiganlegal.org
Tue Sep 6 10:19:21 PDT 2005


andie nachgeborenen >

Why does European/American
> philosophy trace its roots
> only to the Greeks ?

I don't know why you focus on philosophy, but since you ask, we don't. We also look to the Germans, the French, the Austrians, the Poles, and lots of medeivals from all over the place.

^^^^^^^^^^

CB: "Philosophy" is a Greek word, which is telling on this topic.

There were no German, French, Austrian or Polish contemporaries of the originating Greek philosophers. Those countries, of course, didn't exist then. The Middle Ages is , of course, a distinct age post-ancient Greece and Rome. Pretty elementary stuff.

Andie: Why not India or China or Japan? Well, fo far as I can make out from my limited reading, the Japanese and Chinese were not into what we call philosophy, the construction and critique of abstract arguments about topics not informed by the special sciences. The Indians, so far as I can tell, were, I don't know why we didn't connect with them. But it wasn't anti-dark-skin racism -- the most honored philosophers of the middle ages included many Arabs anf Africans (like St. Augustine). I don't see what this has to do with ALexander.

^^^^^^^ CB: Nonetheless, the ancient Greeks , in philosophy's own version of itself, have a special originating role, again, in part demonstrated by the word "philosophy".

Alexander was a student of Aristotle. They are leading figures in the florescence of Greek civ, according to elementary history of Western Civ.

As far as I can tell, anti-dark-skin racism doesn't arise until the last 500 years with capitalism.

^^^^^


>
>CB:- The idea is that the concept of imperialism today
> has roots in the
> imperialism of Alexander.

Andie: That is the most idealistic in the bad sense anti-Marxist dumb-ass thing I have ever heard from you.

^^^^ CB: Well, that's a compliment if that's the most dumb-ass thing I ever said, because what I said isn't dumb-ass in the least, but is very smart. It's not idealist either, in the sense that Marxists use the concept. Imperialism and war originate with class divided society in the Marxist idea. Alexander as an early major representative of imperialism is part of the _history_ that shapes modern imperialism. Marxism's (historical materialism) position is that capitalism is a historical system. Its specific characteristics are in part determined by the history of Europe and its historically derived ideology. This is a specific aspect of capitalism's being a historical, not natural system.

^^^^

You think he was the first conueror?

^^^^^ CB: What I'm arguing doesn't rely on him being the first conqueror. It is that he is, for the modern West, the legendary "great" conqueror of his period. He emblemizes conquest and imperialism as a sort of origin myth character for Western culture. A Hollywood movie about him just came out this year or so. How many other conquerers from that period do they have fresh movies about today ? There are children's books about him. I read one as a child. He is not just another conqueror from ancient times in the elementary schooling of the West. Alexander is a modern legend, and he has much cultural and symbolic modern significance

^^^^^^

You think he was Western? A concept that would have been totally incomprehensible to him.

^^^^^^^ CB: Yea, he is appropriated by modern makers of the concept of the West, which traces its roots to the Greeks. The fact that the Greeks didn't conceive of themselves as "Western" is not the critical point for Alexander's or the Greeks significance for today. The important fact is that modern Western historical ideology traces its roots to Alexander and the rest of ancient Greek civ. This idea impacts the actions of modern Western imperialism in serving as an ideal for it.

^^^^^

He was the Greak King of Persia; He belongs to the history of the Near East, Central Asia, and North Africa. And he has nothing whatsoever to do with imperilaist, the highest stage of capitalism, in any Marxist sense.

Jks ^^^^^^^

CB: He has to do with imperialism in general, not only the imperialism with specific characteristics in the twentieth-twentyfirst centuries. His epithet "great" is meant to refer to his "great" imperialist accomplishments.



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