# Ecmandu's No Fool
**URL:** https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/ecmandus-no-fool/39983
**Category:** Discussion
**Created:** [April 21, 2015, 3:03pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/ecmandus-no-fool/39983 "2015-04-21T15:03:43Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Carleas](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/Carleas)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2015, 3:03pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/ecmandus-no-fool/39983/1 "2015-04-21T15:03:43Z")
[The debate](http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=187922).
[The challenge](http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=187879&start=125#p2537332)
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### Author:  [@phyllo](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/phyllo)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2015, 3:40pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/ecmandus-no-fool/39983/2 "2015-04-21T15:40:47Z")
Since Ecmandu can be shown to be a fool in some comparative sense and not a fool in another sense, the debate seems to hinge on demonstrating this :
“nothing Worthwhile to contribute to Philosophy”
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### Author:  [@phoneutria](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/phoneutria)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2015, 3:44pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/ecmandus-no-fool/39983/3 "2015-04-21T15:44:07Z")
In b4 Uccisore folds.
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### Author:  [@Orbie](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/Orbie)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2015, 4:24pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/ecmandus-no-fool/39983/4 "2015-04-21T16:24:33Z")
If Ecmondu’s can assert that he may be crazy, to abide by rules, which are contradicted and subverted by the ad hominem of the very debate, then, he may probably safely assert that he is no fool.
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### Author:  [@phyllo](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/phyllo)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2015, 4:28pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/ecmandus-no-fool/39983/5 "2015-04-21T16:28:12Z")
> [@Orb](#):
>
> If Ecmondu’s can assert that he may be crazy, to abide by rules, which are contradicted and subverted by the ad hominem of the very debate, then, he may probably safely assert that he is no fool.
Ecmandu is arguing that Ecmandu is a fool.
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### Author:  [@phyllo](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/phyllo)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2015, 4:32pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/ecmandus-no-fool/39983/6 "2015-04-21T16:32:00Z")
> [@Ecmandu](#):
>
> Oh I broke the forum rules… I just saw the big red thing on the top of the screen… delete my posts here Carleas. I went back and checked other debates to see if they did this before and they did, so that’s why I posted here. Even though they got away with it, maybe the rules were different for other debates, sorry Carleas.
Yeah, don’t post here until after the debate.
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### Author:  [@Orbie](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/Orbie)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2015, 4:34pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/ecmandus-no-fool/39983/7 "2015-04-21T16:34:46Z")
Well then then it seems there is no argument, unless his saying it may rather point to his acting the fool. In which case, certainty takes a dive to a very low level of probability. In which case, again, there can be no argument. Only he can know for sure.
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### Author:  [@iambiguous](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/iambiguous)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2015, 4:36pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/ecmandus-no-fool/39983/8 "2015-04-21T16:36:00Z")
Just out of curiosity, is this debate basically just an exercise in irony?
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### Author:  [@phyllo](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/phyllo)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2015, 4:44pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/ecmandus-no-fool/39983/9 "2015-04-21T16:44:49Z")
I found this to be interesting:
> [@](#):
>
> In book six of the Republic, the question arises about why philosophers have a bad name in the city. The common view in Athens was that the only reason Socrates lived till he was seventy was that the common folks could not tell the difference between a fool and a philosopher. They seemed indistinguishable. Both fools and philosophers spoke of equally outlandish things. Thus, the philosopher was perfectly safe so long as most city-dwellers took him to be merely mad, deranged, or babbling.
>
> Robert Lynd (1879–1949) was an Irishman who lived much of his life in England. He wrote an amusing essay, “On Not Being a Philosopher,” in It’s a Fine World (1930). I found it reprinted in a collection called Great English and American Essays (1960). The essay is charming. It begins when the author overhears someone in a hotel restaurant ask another patron whether he had “read Epictetus lately.” On reflection, Lynd realizes that, in fact, though he had Epictetus on his book shelves at home, he had never read the famous slave philosopher (d. 135 A.D.).
>
> Lynd, curious man that he was, decides to make up for lost time. He figured that “wisdom was found in books.” If you found a book and read it, you would become wise. Reading was a shortcut or bypass to living the experience of becoming wise. But it did not seem to work that way in practice. He read Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, the great Stoic philosophers. He still found that he did not much follow their advice.
>
> Now the Stoics did not like to be disturbed in their souls. They longed for a peaceful life, tranquility. They showed their mastery of fate, chance, and pain by remaining imperturbable before them. This indifference allowed them, it is said, to be calm even in the worst of conditions—storms, robberies, sufferings, earthquakes, or betrayals.
>
> But, as Lynd observed, it is rather human to be annoyed at little things. The Stoic philosopher tells us to be patient when you have to ask a waiter “for a wine-list three times.” Lynd thinks the purpose of the waiter is to wait on table. The unperturbed and uncomplaining philosopher may wait there all night for the waiter to show up. But the ordinary bloke begins raising his voice after ten minutes and calls the manager after fifteen. Which is the superior philosophy—the one that notices little things (or big things) or the one who doesn’t notice much of anything?
>
> “Nearly everybody is agreed that such men as Socrates and Epictetus were right in their indifference to external things,” Lynd writes. “Even men earning £10,000 a year and working for more would admit it. Yet, while admitting it, most of us would be alarmed if one of their dearest friends began to put the philosophy of Epictetus into practice too literally. What we regard as wisdom in Epictetus we should look on as insanity in an acquaintance.” Philosophy, in other words, is not too practical.
>
> Lynd, like Machiavelli, is worried that all the noble ideas are but “dreams,” impossible to put into effect—admirable perhaps, but of no real purpose. Lynd at least thought the problem is that we wanted to be wise without making any effort to be so. We could just read something and, lo, we would become wise, sort of effortlessly.
>
> If Socrates was not right, Lynd observes, he was the “greatest fool that ever existed.” And if he was right? Do we really mean that little things should not bother us? The trouble with the Stoics of whatever era, including our own, is that their indifference to pleasure and pain is a species of pride. The idea that a human being cannot or should not be affected by what happens to him from chance or with pain is the suspicion that our bodies are not real, not part of us or of the universe. We are to be temperate, to be sure, to rule our pleasures and pains. Aristotle, as usual, had it right. The problem is not the existence of pleasure or pains itself.
>
> Our senses are avenues to reality for us to know. We are to know, and yes, enjoy, everything that is according to its own proper being. There can be no rejection of the world that is not, at the same time, a loving of the world.
>
> The Christian view of the Incarnation does not mean that we love the world by escaping from it or denying it. We keep the world by loving it and living in it in an order that sees the good of things even in their limitations. We meet the goods of our universe by knowing their limits. Thus we know what they are, what they are not; what we are and what we are not. This understanding too was called “foolishness,” as Paul tells us in one of his letters.
>
> In the end, it is not really such a good idea not to be a philosopher. The real issue is what kind of philosophy we embrace. If we embrace one that makes us totally immune to the events of the world, we are hardly worthy to live in this world. Still Socrates was right: “It is better to suffer evil than to do it.” Before we can do this suffering, we must first know what is evil and what is good. If we do not make the effort to know this difference, it really does mot make much difference what we suffer or what we enjoy
[kirkcenter.org/index.php/boo … ver-lived/](http://www.kirkcenter.org/index.php/bookman/article/the-greatest-fool-that-ever-lived/)
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### Author:  [@Orbie](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/Orbie)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2015, 5:29pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/ecmandus-no-fool/39983/10 "2015-04-21T17:29:33Z")
who is debating whom?
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### Author:  [@phyllo](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/phyllo)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2015, 5:33pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/ecmandus-no-fool/39983/11 "2015-04-21T17:33:29Z")
This is the statement:
Proposed: Ecmandu is a Fool with nothing Worthwhile to contribute to Philosophy.
It’s poorly worded since it contains two parts. It can be rephrased as :
Ecmandu is a Fool and he has nothing Worthwhile to contribute to Philosophy.
Ahhh, you edited. 😮
Ecmandu is arguing the he is a fool and that he has nothing worthwhile to contribute to philosophy.
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### Author:  [@Mr\_Reasonable](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/Mr_Reasonable)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2015, 5:59pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/ecmandus-no-fool/39983/12 "2015-04-21T17:59:52Z")
> [@iambiguous](#):
>
> Just out of curiosity, is this debate basically just an exercise in irony?
Yeah man because everything is irony right?
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### Author:  [@Mr\_Reasonable](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/Mr_Reasonable)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2015, 6:00pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/ecmandus-no-fool/39983/13 "2015-04-21T18:00:26Z")
I feel like he’s already won this debate.
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### Author:  [@James\_S\_Saint](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/James_S_Saint)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2015, 6:19pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/ecmandus-no-fool/39983/14 "2015-04-21T18:19:22Z")
This debate could go in Soooo… many directions…
😆
Can’t wait to hear from Ucc.
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### Author:  [@Peter\_Kropotkin](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/Peter_Kropotkin)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2015, 6:21pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/ecmandus-no-fool/39983/15 "2015-04-21T18:21:49Z")
I really don’t see this “debate” going well for anybody including those reading it.
Kropotkin
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### Author:  [@AutSider](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/AutSider)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2015, 7:26pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/ecmandus-no-fool/39983/16 "2015-04-21T19:26:42Z")
> [@phoneutria](#):
>
> In b4 Uccisore folds.
Yeah, that’s what I thought will happen as well.
> [@](#):
>
> I really don’t see this “debate” going well for anybody including those reading it.
>
> Kropotkin
I don’t see the debate going well for Ec, he should have never accepted a debate in which he doesn’t get to pick neither the topic nor the side, and lets his opponent pick any, and with the outcome of the debate deciding whether he’ll be banned or not. Either he’s overconfident, or a fool, since by his own admission he isn’t all knowing.
Won’t this debate end in a sort of paradox? If Uccisore proves Ecmandu isn’t a fool and bans Ecmandu, doesn’t it make Ec a fool for accepting the debate in the first place? 
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### Author:  [@GreatandWiseTrixie](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/GreatandWiseTrixie)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2015, 7:29pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/ecmandus-no-fool/39983/17 "2015-04-21T19:29:43Z")
In ecmandu’s defense, i’d say that his concept of social stratification and conspicuous consumption is a worthwhile meme to add to philosophy. however he is a fool for believing that brainwashing men to stop flirting with women will save the world from “war and suicide” as he says.
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### Author:  [@phyllo](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/phyllo)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2015, 8:16pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/ecmandus-no-fool/39983/18 "2015-04-21T20:16:52Z")
Philosophy is not like a bank account or bucket where a contribution is a measurable quantity like money or water which is accumulated. What is a contribution to philosophy? What is a worthwhile contribution to philosophy? What is a worthless contribution to philosophy?
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### Author:  [@GreatandWiseTrixie](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/GreatandWiseTrixie)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2015, 10:02pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/ecmandus-no-fool/39983/19 "2015-04-21T22:02:39Z")
> [@phyllo](#):
>
> Philosophy is not like a bank account or bucket where a contribution is a measurable quantity like money or water which is accumulated. What is a contribution to philosophy? What is a worthwhile contribution to philosophy? What is a worthless contribution to philosophy?
money is not measurable, it is an inconsistent mode of trade which can be given in various inconsistent quantities based on mood and culture.
which has more philosophical worth the statement “blablabla” or “the universe is 13.7 billion years old”?
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### Author:  [@phyllo](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/phyllo)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2015, 10:21pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/ecmandus-no-fool/39983/20 "2015-04-21T22:21:59Z")
Ecmandu needs to focus and address the points. Maybe he needs a Snickers bar.
OTOH, this might be a clever tactic showing that his posts are nothing more than worthless babble. In that case, brilliant.
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