Interesting Take on Socrates' Last Words

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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“Asklepios was known as the “good physician,” who so loved others that he lost his own life bringing others back from the dead.”

Christians one up the Asklepians by calling Jesus the Great physician. The inversion of values that Nietzsche morns begins with Asclepius.

Philosophers are responsible for the state if the world insofar as they occupy the position of what Plato terms “the watchers”. They do this by framing the world according to the ideals without which the people perish as people. When philosophic imagination fails, so do the people. This leads to the question: “Who will watch the watchers?” This has been the function of critical philosophy in the modern world. But, the question of sources is always there. Where do we draw a line? Verifiability was debunked. Falsifiability? Scientism locks up the key to knowledge so the watchers can’t be watched.

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And who will watch the watchers’ watchers? Sounds like turtles all the way down.

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In short, Socrates/Plato because he launched Platonism, and Machiavelli because he launched scientific Modernity (in order to take down Christianity, which is Platonism for the people).

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What about Thales? It seems like he started the whole thing. Doesn’t that make him responsible for the people responsible for our problems? Maybe humanity would be better off if we all listened to Howard Stern?

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Or one can take a “the buck stops here approach.”After all, from your point of view, you are the center of consciousness. You can try to assume a “view from nowhere” but that view will be limited by your imagination.

Thoughts are viewed by the conscious intellect in the Vedantic equivalent of the “Cartesian theater.” The individual intellect results from karma or DNA under the conditions of local environment. Of course, quantum physics throws a wild card into that mechanistic picture.

“No man is an island,” social phenomena with their ethics and politics have the veridicality of the cogito for the individual. “Hell is other people.” Enter the spirit of Asclepius/Jesus to heal the world.

Now the Vedantists teach that when society reaches a low moral state, God incarnates as a light to the dark world. Thus Krishna and Buddha and Jesus and Ramakrishna were born. The transhumanists may be looking to AI as the next avatar/savior of humanity. Those given to prayer can petition the Almighty that it be a healer like Asclepius or Jesus and not a destroyer like Hitler or Stalin. The latter are what the people fear, and their fears are what the politicians manipulate. So, where are the watchers and the watchers of the watchers? The night is far advanced; midnight is almost upon us.

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It’s only 2:57 pm where I’m at.

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It was rather Homer who started the whole thing: Socrates/Plato was kind of Homer’s Machiavelli in the history of philosophy. My “Tutorial in Platonic Political Philosophy” is still roughly accurate (though I now understand considerably more about Alfarabi, Maimonides et al. and, ironically, about the Counter-Enlightenment—Romanticism, Pragmatism, Existentialism, Post-structuralism, Postmodernism, etc.):

‘[O]riginally, Socrates was no political philosopher but a natural philosopher, like Thales of Miletus. This is the Socrates who is sharply criticised by the oldest of our three direct sources, the great comic poet Aristophanes. In his comedy, The Clouds, Aristophanes depicts Socrates as a sophist, a scientist of the Greek enlightenment. About this enlightenment, Lampert writes (in his forelast book): “it actively schooled the best Athenian young in a lightly veiled skepticism about the gods while mocking ancestral or paternal submission to them and counseling its students on just how to make the best use of the piety of others.” This is precisely Aristophanes’ reproach of Socrates, and in fact Socrates, from that time on, begins his so-called “second sailing”. His first sailing was his journey into the clouds, that is to say, his quest for the true nature, or true cause, of natural phenomena. His second sailing is his return journey, his return to the earth, to the world of men.’
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/a-tutorial-in-platonic-political-philosophy/45536/1

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Well, my question was how is Socrates et al. responsible for global warming, AI, and nuclear war? I’m not so sure that’s been answered yet. Are you saying that any and everyone associated with the scientific tradition is responsible for global warming, AI, and nuclear war? Or what do you mean by “responsible”?

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Socrates et al. is not exactly “any and everyone associated with the scientific tradition”… They launched the philosophical religion, Platonism, that in its most popular form, Christianity, was “the kingdom of darkness Machiavelli and all his successors fought” (Lampert, Leo Strauss and Nietzsche, page 144). And the modern project launched by Machiavelli et al. has been the project of the scientific-technological conquest of nature, which has led to the inventions of computers and nuclear weapons as well as to what I recently described elsewhere on this forum:

‘[T]here’s over eight billion people crowding up the place. And most of those people want to eat meat, as if they were nobility, and they want to drive mostly gasoline-powered vehicles, and take hot showers, and fly across the globe, and surf the internet all day preferably on mobile supercomputers, and order all kinds of luxury commodities mass-produced in large factories with massive greenhouse emissions.’
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/its-too-hot/80334/7?u=zeroeth_nature

As for my “If anyone is responsible”, with its intended ambiguity:

“Fearing that he [Socrates] will bring his genuine friends, the few wise, down with him in this boldest of projects on behalf of wisdom, he in fact offers a prayer, the most solemn of prayers and the only one becoming of a philosopher: ‘I prostrate myself before Adrasteia.’ He prays the prayer of a philosopher compelled to act on the grandest scale not knowing whether he can succeed; he submits himself to Nemesis, the necessity that rules all, knowing the rashness of his deed while judging that necessity itself calls it forth.” (Lampert, How Philosophy Became Socratic, page 311.)

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“And the modern project launched by Machiavelli et al. has been the project of the scientific-technological conquest of nature, which has led to the inventions of computers and nuclear weapons as well as to what I recently described elsewhere on this forum.”

OK. I see what you are saying now. I’ve heard that interpretation before of Western philosophy and science. It’s been around for a while.

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Not to interrupt, but about that ‘eight billion people crowding’ quote. I’d be willing to bet that the outcomes u mention would have happened with or without overturning religion… just becuz the enlightenment, the age of rationalism, the scientific age, that span from the 16th to 20th century, all prepared the way for an industrial revolution that by virtue of its nature (and not what ideological systems surround and define it) would be set on the course that brought us here to the culture of junk commodification.

U could put a pope or an atheist in charge and i think the result was gonna be the same.

Baconian science for it’s own sake doesn’t provide any direction or meaning (as N noted), and only after it is put under a yoke by some dominating power that wants to use it to advance its purposes, does it become dangerous. Unless of course the purposes are good, obviously. But, again, scientific facts don’t show us purposes. Not the kind of ‘purpose’ we philosophers are lookin for.

My only complaint with industrial expansion is that it is currently under the control of powers that aren’t concerned with the effects of the expansion, ecologically or otherwise. Private business isn’t and wouldn’t be concerned with the general welfare of anything… unless that was what it was in business for.

An example of what i mean could be this. Take the eight cylinder gasoline engine. Typically, they produce far more power than is needed by, say, eighty percent of their buyers. And let’s say in seventy years of about a billion people driving an eight cylinder vehicle, a significant amount of carbon emission will occur that will contribute to irreversible effects on the environment, as well as far more gasoline having to be refined and used to power these vehicles.

So then if nobody needed an eight cylinder unless they were doing commercial work or hauling a boat or something, why were they so mass produced and bought by so many people who would have done just as well in a six cylinder vehicle? Becuz nobody’s at the fuckin wheel and thinking about long term consequences. U got a freeforall race between a handful of auto manufacturers to pump out as many unnecessarily large vehicles as possible and convince every middle class suburban home owner that they would look good in one. And i know becuz i look damn good in my Exscalade, saully. Now see, they did that to me. Put it into my head that I’d be a boss if i drove one. Fortunately for me I actually need the 6.2 liter so i can haul a trailer if needed. But i was nonetheless led to believe that I should buy one, and Cadillac couldn’t have known i was gonna need it to pull a trailer. No. They just sell as many as they can to any ol’ body and destroy the ozone layer as a result.

So my point is that various extravagances are abused by free market capitalism. There is nothing conceivable that’s not inconceivable that capitalism won’t try to make and sell to everyone.

Now if people collectively controlled and made decisions regarding these matters with more attention to the environment and the use of products, u can avoid silly little mistakes like the mass production of eight cylinder vehicles.

In a promethean world, a citizen must qualify to own an eight cylinder vehicle, and many things would be taken into consideration upon making that judgement.

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Are you suggesting it’s a misinterpretation? Has it been “debunked”?..

Except in the sense of determinism, human history is not a necessary process! Without the new, free creative acts (again, not in the sense of free will) of individuals, most notably the great philosophers, humanity would most probably not have developed in the direction of modernity…

“Both possibilities—the possibility of a science that issues in the conquest of nature and the possibility of the popularization of philosophy or science—were known to the classics. (Compare Xenophon, Memorabilia I 1.15 with Empedocles, fr. 111; Plato, Theaetetus 180c7-d5.) But the classics rejected them as ‘unnatural’, i.e., as destructive of humanity.” (Strauss, “Restatement on Xenophon’s Hiero”.)

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Deleted. Question wasn’t to me lol.

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I don’t know if it’s been debunked or not. I just remember the idea floating around when I was studying philosophy in college. And many ideas I was exposed to have been hashed and rehashed, confirmed, or overturned and the process seems to continue ad infinitum, flipping back and forth, one way or the other, depending upon who you listen to.

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The decision to try and crush Christianity’s spiritual tyranny was made well before the Enlightenment etc. All those things, very much including the Industrial Revolution, were launched as means to that end. But it’s true that the Industrial Revolution may by its very nature be set on this course, as you say. It is, then, like a domino whose very nature it is to fall when hit by another domino. The first domino, however, was pushed over by Machiavelli et al., who themselves were not dominoes (except in the sense of determinism, of course).

But Baconian science was from the very beginning under the yoke of a power that wanted to use it to advance its (good) purposes: that power being Machiavelli et al., to whom Bacon very much belonged. Their chief purpose was to make the world free for philosophy again or to keep it free for philosophy.

Indeed. And I’ve been thinking about that recently. I’ve been reminded of this passage:

“In passages deeply influenced by Nietzsche, he [Max Weber] analyzes the state as a relation of domination of man by man, founded on legitimate violence—that is, violence that is considered to be legitimate. Men inwardly accept being dominated if they have certain beliefs. There is no more foundation to legitimacy than the inner justification the dominated make to themselves in order to accept the violence of those who dominate them. These justifications are, according to Weber, of three kinds: traditional, rational, and charismatic. Some men submit because that is the way it has always been; others consent to obey competent civil servants who follow rationally established rules; and others are enchanted by the extraordinary grace of an individual. Of the three, charismatic legitimacy is the most important. No matter what conservatives may think, traditions had a beginning that was not traditional. They had a founder who was not a conservative or a traditionalist. The fundamental values informing that tradition were his creation. The tradition is the continuing half-life of the charmed moment when a happy few could live on the heights of inspiration with the creator. Tradition adjusts that inspiration to the ordinary, universal motives of man, such as greed and vanity; it routinizes the charisma. It is what it is because of that original impulse. So charisma is the condition of both the charismatic and the traditional legitimacies. It is also the splendid form of legitimacy. The rational is not informed by charisma, and the civil servants—bureaucrats—are therefore unable to make real decisions or take responsibility. They cannot, as we would say, determine the broad outlines of policy or, put more classically, establish ends. Mere competence can only serve already established goals and decide according to the established rules. It must be at least supplemented by charismatic leadership in order to be pointed in the right, or any, direction. So again charisma comes out on top. Value creation, the activity that writes the table of laws by which a people is constituted and lives, is, as Nietzsche tells, the nut in the shell of existence.” (Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, “Values”.)

Bloom draws Weber’s conclusion:

“The prophet becomes the pure model of the statesman—with very radical consequences.” (ibid.)

But Nietzsche’s Zarathustra is, as Heinrich Meier has shown, basically one long attempt at answering the question whether “Zarathustra” be a prophet or a philosopher. And the final answer is that he’s a philosopher. But what Meier has not grasped is the way in which “Zarathustra” overcomes the need for charisma—which, “as Weber knew perfectly well, is God-given grace” (ibid.)—i.e., revelation… How can reason overcome the need for revelation? How can it create values, how can it establish ends?

“Natural right in its classic form is connected with a teleological view of the universe. All natural beings have a natural end, a natural destiny, which determines what kind of operation is good for them. In the case of man, reason is required for discerning these operations: reason determines what is by nature right with ultimate regard to man’s natural end. The teleological view of the universe, of which the teleological view of man forms a part, would seem to have been destroyed by modern natural science.” (Strauss, Natural Right and History, Introduction.)

If we have a goal, reason can tell us what brings us closer to it and what doesn’t. But man’s natural end in its classic form is reason itself!:

“Islamic philosophy shared the ancient view that man is a special kind of being; that his ability to reason—his power to know himself and the whole—is the activity that marks him as different from other animals; and that reasoning is therefore the ultimate purpose of his existence.” (Muhsin Mahdi, Alfarabi and the Foundation of Islamic Political Philosophy, page 16.)

Note that this latter reason is not the mere capacity for using logic—not mere ratio. The Latin translation ratio lacks the key meaning of “speech, word, statement” in the original Greek word, lógos, and this meaning is literally “gathering” (of words or, perhaps, thoughts). As I put it in my open letter to Leonardo DiCaprio almost seven years ago,

‘Reason has been misunderstood as being opposed to revelation. To be sure, the principle that constitutes it is that A is different from not-A, but that’s only half of it. The other half is to then see the unity of the two, the whole that is more than the sum of its parts. Not a divine but a natural revelation’.
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/open-letter-to-leonardo-dicaprio/45177?u=zeroeth_nature

Ratio is only the former half. Lógos is both halves taken together. And man himself as well as the whole, the universe, is such a ‘halves taken together’:

“[T]he mind of man belongs together with his build. They are together as much as the [black] root and [white] flower of the moly. There cannot be a change in one without a corresponding change in the other. […]
It has often been remarked that, while the prephilosophic term for the whole is ‘heaven and earth’, the philosophers call it kosmos, an ordered composite whose structure is intelligible only to the mind but is not apparent to the eye, which cannot go beyond its two most conspicuous parts.” (Seth Benardete, The Bow and the Lyre: A Platonic Reading of the Odyssey, page 86.)

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Can’t have those pesky Christians thinking all they need is to treat the other as self & to heck with manmade law that defies it.

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“As I put it in my open letter to Leonardo DiCaprio almost seven years ago”

1000003032

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The Doomsday Clock…

A moment of historic danger: It is still 90 seconds to midnight

Ominous trends continue to point the world toward global catastrophe. The war in Ukraine and the widespread and growing reliance on nuclear weapons increase the risk of nuclear escalation. China, Russia, and the United States are all spending huge sums to expand or modernize their nuclear arsenals, adding to the ever-present danger of nuclear war through mistake or miscalculation.

In 2023, Earth experienced its hottest year on record, and massive floods, wildfires, and other climate-related disasters affected millions of people around the world. Meanwhile, rapid and worrisome developments in the life sciences and other disruptive technologies accelerated, while governments made only feeble efforts to control them.

The members of the Science and Security Board have been deeply worried about the deteriorating state of the world. That is why we set the Doomsday Clock at two minutes to midnight in 2019 and at 100 seconds to midnight in 2022. Last year, we expressed our heightened concern by moving the Clock to 90 seconds to midnight—the closest to global catastrophe it has ever been—in large part because of Russian threats to use nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine.

Today, we once again set the Doomsday Clock at 90 seconds to midnight because humanity continues to face an unprecedented level of danger. Our decision should not be taken as a sign that the international security situation has eased. Instead, leaders and citizens around the world should take this statement as a stark warning and respond urgently, as if today were the most dangerous moment in modern history. Because it may well be.

But the world can be made safer. The Clock can move away from midnight. As we wrote last year, “In this time of unprecedented global danger, concerted action is required, and every second counts.” That is just as true today.

The many dimensions of nuclear threat

A durable end to Russia’s war in Ukraine seems distant, and the use of nuclear weapons by Russia in that conflict remains a serious possibility. In February 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced his decision to “suspend” the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START). In March, he announced the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. In June, Sergei Karaganov, an advisor to Putin, urged Moscow to consider launching limited nuclear strikes on Western Europe as a way to bring the war in Ukraine to a favorable conclusion. In October, Russia’s Duma voted to withdraw Moscow’s ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, as the US Senate continued to refuse even to debate ratification.

Nuclear spending programs in the three largest nuclear powers—China, Russia, and the United States—threaten to trigger a three-way nuclear arms race as the world’s arms control architecture collapses. Russia and China are expanding their nuclear capabilities, and pressure mounts in Washington for the United States to respond in kind.

Meanwhile, other potential nuclear crises fester. Iran continues to enrich uranium to close to weapons grade while stonewalling the International Atomic Energy Agency on key issues. Efforts to reinstate an Iran nuclear deal appear unlikely to succeed, and North Korea continues building nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. Nuclear expansion in Pakistan and India continues without pause or restraint.

And the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas has the potential to escalate into a wider Middle Eastern conflict that could pose unpredictable threats, regionally and globally.

An ominous climate change outlook

The world in 2023 entered uncharted territory as it suffered its hottest year on record and global greenhouse gas emissions continued to rise. Both global and North Atlantic sea-surface temperatures broke records, and Antarctic sea ice reached its lowest daily extent since the advent of satellite data. The world already risks exceeding a goal of the Paris climate agreement—a temperature increase of no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels—because of insufficient commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and insufficient implementation of commitments already made. To halt further warming, the world must achieve net zero carbon dioxide emissions.

The world invested a record-breaking $1.7 trillion in clean energy in 2023, and countries representing half the world’s gross domestic product pledged to triple their renewable energy capacity by 2030. Offsetting this, however, were fossil fuel investments of nearly $1 trillion. In short, current efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are grossly insufficient to avoid dangerous human and economic impacts from climate change, which disproportionately affect the poorest people in the world. Barring a marked increase in efforts, the toll of human suffering from climate disruption will inexorably mount.

Evolving biological threats

The revolution in life sciences and associated technologies continued to expand in scope last year, including, especially, the increased sophistication and efficiency of genetic engineering technologies. We highlight one issue of special concern: The convergence of emerging artificial intelligence tools and biological technologies may radically empower individuals to misuse biology.

In October, US President Joe Biden signed an executive order on “safe, secure, and trustworthy AI” that calls for protection “against the risks of using AI to engineer dangerous biological materials by developing strong new standards for biological synthesis screening.” Though a useful step, the order is not legally binding. The concern is that large language models enable individuals who otherwise lack sufficient know-how to identify, acquire, and deploy biological agents that would harm large numbers of humans, animals, plants, and other elements of the environment. Reinvigorated efforts this past year in the United States to revise and strengthen oversight of risky life science research are useful, but much more is needed.

The dangers of AI

One of the most significant technological developments in the last year involved the dramatic advance of generative artificial intelligence. The apparent sophistication of chatbots based on large language models, such as ChatGPT, led some respected experts to express concern about existential risks arising from further rapid advancements in the field. But others argue that claims about existential risk distract from the real and immediate threats that AI poses today (see, for example, “Evolving biological threats” above). Regardless, AI is a paradigmatic disruptive technology; recent efforts at global governance of AI should be expanded.

AI has great potential to magnify disinformation and corrupt the information environment on which democracy depends. AI-enabled disinformation efforts could be a factor that prevents the world from dealing effectively with nuclear risks, pandemics, and climate change.

Military uses of AI are accelerating. Extensive use of AI is already occurring in intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, simulation, and training. Of particular concern are lethal autonomous weapons, which identify and destroy targets without human intervention. Decisions to put AI in control of important physical systems—in particular, nuclear weapons—could indeed pose a direct existential threat to humanity.

Fortunately, many countries are recognizing the importance of regulating AI and are beginning to take steps to reduce the potential for harm. These initial steps include a proposed regulatory framework by the European Union, an executive order by President Biden, an international declaration to address AI risks, and the formation of a new UN advisory body. But these are only tiny steps; much more must be done to institute effective rules and norms, despite the daunting challenges involved in governing artificial intelligence.

How to turn back the Clock

Everyone on Earth has an interest in reducing the likelihood of global catastrophe from nuclear weapons, climate change, advances in the life sciences, disruptive technologies, and the widespread corruption of the world’s information ecosystem. These threats, singularly and as they interact, are of such a character and magnitude that no one nation or leader can bring them under control. That is the task of leaders and nations working together in the shared belief that common threats demand common action. As the first step, and despite their profound disagreements, three of the world’s leading powers—the United States, China, and Russia—should commence serious dialogue about each of the global threats outlined here. At the highest levels, these three countries need to take responsibility for the existential danger the world now faces. They have the capacity to pull the world back from the brink of catastrophe. They should do so, with clarity and courage, and without delay.

It’s 90 seconds to midnight.

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No, I said they were trolls. You seem to have misunderstood.

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“Of the three, charismatic legitimacy is the most important.”

Incidentally, if the political problems a people are facing are complex and multifaceted enough, they’d not be able to base their admiration of the leader or politician on his policies, values or plans becuz all that is just more of the same promises to lower inflation or secure the border or lower the price of gas or raise employment… things that never get completely done, or done in such a way that nothing substantially better ever comes of it, or done such that they can be undone by the problem becoming even more complex, etc. On that account, the leader’s logos and ethos are indeed less effective than his pathos. If only becuz there can’t be an effective logos or ethos in the rhetorical approach to such problems. Their nature is too complex, over-determined (in althusser’s sense) and ambiguous to discover the essential causes of them. Compound problems, as it were. So yeah what people remember is personality, style, character, swagger, temperament, not the unique and comprehensive solutions to real problems becuz there aren’t ever any.

It’s the cult of personality… the cult of personality.

Duh-nuh-nuh-nuh

DE DUH NUH NUNT
DUH NUH NUH NUNT
DUH NUH NUH NUNT

[pause[

Aks not what your country can do for u…