[lbo-talk] My Aristotle rant, was: Re: Glenn Beck breaks down in tears, blubbers on-air AGAIN

Chris Doss lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com
Fri Mar 20 19:08:19 PDT 2009


My specialization in grad school was Aristotle and his relationship to Heidegger, so I have bizarrely strong feelings about this. Plus, which is rare for people who make claims about ancient philosophy, I actually read Greek (don't even get me started on my parallel rant about silly "Leninists" who don't read Russian and "Maoists" who don't know Chinese).

Aristotle's world was completely different from ours, and the questions he posed were also completely different from ours. Aristotle does not have an epistemology (the closest thing to one is not in the logical works, but in Peri Psukhes, a work that influenced Heidegger enormously BTW, sections of Sein und Zeit basically being rewordings of it). He does not have a "theory of knowledge" or an "ethics." He is not a "rationalist," since, like, Athenian Greeks had no idea of "reason" or "ratio," which are Roman and post-Roman concepts. "Logos" is not "reason." "Reason" is about deducing stuff. "Logos" (from "legein," "to gather") is the ability to articulate the structure of the world as it presents itself. This is why logos deals with doxa (the way the world presents itself, especially to "the wise"), whereas "reason" does not. Arisototle over and over again makes arguments based on the premise that "people believe this to be true, therefore there must be

some truth in it," which is absurd for a modern person who believes in a subject/object dichotomy (there is no "subject" in Aristotle).

PS. Aristotle translators: "eudaimonia" does not mean "happiness." Happiness is a feeling. Eudaimonia is the state of being a good person, the kind of person other people look up to. You can be the happiest slave in the universe and you will not be eudaimon.

Rant over.



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