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United States42778 Posts
On July 26 2017 10:44 mozoku wrote:Show nested quote +On July 26 2017 10:29 KwarK wrote:
mozuku, that's mostly a foundation myth from the 18th and 19th century who knew very little about the classics but knew that an old idea rediscovered sounded way more legitimate than a new idea. For example Greek democracy is a misnomer, a poor understanding of the citizen-soldier dynamic of the polis city state structure, specifically that found in just one polis which was an unusual example of a fundamentally oligarchic system. I can go into more detail if you wish.
The ideas that were subsequently assigned to the classical world would have been unthinkable to them. Even within the classical world these concepts don't have a stable basis. For example Roman citizenship as Marius would have understood it had absolutely no relationship with the Roman citizenship of the Roman Empire, and far more in common with, say, Theban citizenship. What it meant to be a citizen, what rights one had within the state and so forth are not ideas that one can easily pin on the classical world and declare continuity because they lack even internal consistency within their own frame of reference. The question of whether the Socii were Roman was controversial, the Constitutio Antoniniana unthinkable.
The culture that emerged in western Europe was pretty much new. It took the word senate from Rome in the same way the Russian Tsars took the word Caesar, and with about as much understanding of what it meant. It's all rather absurd. Fetishism of classics from a time before historians had learned how to do real history. If the Greeks and Romans (with huge contributions from Enlightenment thinkers) didn't inspire the Founding Fathers, why didn't China or India even consider establishing anything resembling a democracy until the imperial powers colonized them? Or any other Eastern culture that I'm aware of? Why did democracy, rule of law, and individualism only rise in the West? I'm talking about the time before imperial powers arrived in Asia.
Socioeconomic factors. You have to understand that no democrat would have been inspired by the extremely narrow oligarchies of the classical Mediterranean polis structures. The idea of Greek democracy is a misunderstanding of a three decade period in a single Greek city where constant naval warfare made the landless urban rower the foundation of military force. And even then it was simply a wider oligarchy than usual, and indeed was at the head of a repressive empire.
The founding fathers had their own ideas which were spawned by their own unique place and time in history. They made the fundamental mistake of reading history backwards and projected their ideas onto the past and as a result I'm here two centuries later trying to correct that.
Also it's interesting that you mention India. Significant parts of the near East, going as far as Afghanistan and the Indian subcontinent were Hellenistic kingdoms. If your premise was correct then they would be prime candidates for becoming democracies. Definitely Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean. Places like the Netherlands and England were extremely remote, essentially barbarian backwaters, in the classical era and yet it is these places who insist upon their classical roots. If we accept the argument that the classical world spawned the modern world then we have to address the issue of the modern world appearing in the areas least impacted by the classical world.
Imagine if in two thousand years time organized criminals were insisting that they had their roots in the ancient United States, a land founded by Italians wielding tommy guns, fighting the ruthless untouchables in an endless war for control of society and the right to drive fast cars in a circle. That's "Greek democracy".
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On July 26 2017 10:44 mozoku wrote:Show nested quote +On July 26 2017 10:29 KwarK wrote:
mozuku, that's mostly a foundation myth from the 18th and 19th century who knew very little about the classics but knew that an old idea rediscovered sounded way more legitimate than a new idea. For example Greek democracy is a misnomer, a poor understanding of the citizen-soldier dynamic of the polis city state structure, specifically that found in just one polis which was an unusual example of a fundamentally oligarchic system. I can go into more detail if you wish.
The ideas that were subsequently assigned to the classical world would have been unthinkable to them. Even within the classical world these concepts don't have a stable basis. For example Roman citizenship as Marius would have understood it had absolutely no relationship with the Roman citizenship of the Roman Empire, and far more in common with, say, Theban citizenship. What it meant to be a citizen, what rights one had within the state and so forth are not ideas that one can easily pin on the classical world and declare continuity because they lack even internal consistency within their own frame of reference. The question of whether the Socii were Roman was controversial, the Constitutio Antoniniana unthinkable.
The culture that emerged in western Europe was pretty much new. It took the word senate from Rome in the same way the Russian Tsars took the word Caesar, and with about as much understanding of what it meant. It's all rather absurd. Fetishism of classics from a time before historians had learned how to do real history. If the Greeks and Romans (with huge contributions from Enlightenment thinkers) didn't inspire the Founding Fathers, why didn't China or India even consider establishing anything resembling a democracy until the imperial powers colonized them? Or any other Eastern culture that I'm aware of? Why did democracy, rule of law, and individualism only rise in the West? I'm talking about the time before imperial powers arrived in Asia.
It isn't because Western Culture is better. Individualism is not the be all end all. The Rule of law is pretty great, but far from perfect. And the ruling is still out on Democracy. Right now: it works well until it fails completely. We are not the end of human's experiments with governance.
Edit: Kwarks comment about history fetishism is a good way to describe the funding fathers understanding of Rome and Greece.
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On July 26 2017 08:34 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On July 26 2017 08:13 WolfintheSheep wrote:On July 26 2017 07:55 Danglars wrote:On July 26 2017 07:40 WolfintheSheep wrote:On July 26 2017 07:22 Danglars wrote:On July 26 2017 07:06 WolfintheSheep wrote:On July 26 2017 06:35 Danglars wrote:On July 26 2017 06:23 WolfintheSheep wrote:On July 26 2017 06:09 KwarK wrote:On July 26 2017 05:49 Danglars wrote:
[quote]
Now that you understand I'm more than just "but Hillary," would you mind commenting on the matter at hand. I see a lot of talk about issues I see resolved in the Mueller, House, and Senate investigations of Russian interference. My post was on new allegations from the chair of the senate judiciary committee. I saw some reason to hope people that want Trump held accountable for anything revealed from the investigations to cheer Grassley on in these new revelations. Show that the powerful are still subject to the rule of law. If you show by word that you're only interested in Trump, and I mean look at your post without a word of the two-page letter, we're at an impasse now for discussing a current event. Am I misunderstanding what you were trying to express by It should come as a welcome development for people that thought the Trump Tower meeting was absolutely unethical. because it seems an awful lot like you were trying to talk about the Trump Tower meeting? See, you thought discussions with Danglars was a loop, and got caught in his flow chart instead. You're currently at the "Discussion isn't going in the direction I want" step, which leads to the "Read better, it's your fault I'm not understood clearly" retort. How very meta of you. You're quite familiar with "ignore all that, what about this!!" But every time I think you're going to debate, I read another contrafactual "That's a...pretty dumb view of history you have there." But your claim to fame is hacking out summaries, like saying GH is "I know nothing about politics but I'm still better than all of you." Maybe one day you'll return to debating instead of wondering how you can butcher everybody's opinions and then attack the altered form of them. If you think my statement are counterfactual, you are more than welcome to dispute them. That would be how a debate starts. Like the bolded quote, which was questioned and responded to, and eventually reached a point of understanding, if not agreement. Almost like a discussion. I wasn't quite expecting such an unironic defense of "that's a pretty dumb view of history you have here" style of debating, but you do exceed expectations. Maybe you and I can take as our launch pad "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" Anyways, next time you want to debate merits instead of these meta "I don't like how Dang writes stuff," I'm all ears. Maybe start with the actual quoted tweet that Kwark went off the rails on ... Grassley's letter. Well, how about some points that were already brought up but were never responded to: 1) What was the intended comparison between that letter and the Trump Tower meetings? 2) The letter is a Senate Committee request for an investigation into a person. Which of these questions have been substantiated, and which are being asked because there are no answers? I didn't want to insult your intelligence by basically rereading the letter. But as you wish. The allegation is collusion between Clinton allies and foreign government officials, based on testimony given to various news outlets. Similar to other Trump aspects, a foreign agent working to undermine the Trump campaign did not register under the foreign agents registration act. Trump is accused of similar and this should be an easy corollary to people genuinely concerned with justice beyond just seeing Trump taken down a peg. The letter itself contains Politico, the Financial times, and other outlets reporting, as well as connected groups forced to register under FARA by the Justice department. If you know how to google, you may find these references, many of which were originally footnotes in the letter, on the internet. Specifically, would you be concerned if Ukraine (instead of Russia in the case of Trump) colluded with the DNC and Clinton campaign to hurt the Trump campaign effort, or is this just normal oppo for you. I don't honestly recall how militant you were on the ethics of using foreign government officials for opposition research. So, this was whataboutism, because true or untrue, the allegations against Alexandra Chalupa, and collusion with the DNC, have no direct effect on the investigations into the Trump Tower meetings? And regardless, again, this is a Senate Committee request for information on why the DOJ has not investigated or taken certain actions in regards to Alexandra Chalupa. So are you wanting to compare why there is an investigation into members of Trump's team, and not one for Chalupa and associated parties? Or is this is a hypothetical "if these allegations are true and an investigation begins"? Nonsense; we should celebrate together that elites are being exposed. I'll bring the beer. Second, why ask about the connection and proof if all this is just pretense to declare whataboutism? You could save me a lot of time debating merits if you see no reason to investigate other campaign misdeeds if they don't involve sinister dealings by Trump. Whataboutism is such a dodge and you're better than that (or ought to hold yourself to a higher standard). I stated and restate now that both investigations involving unethical oppo should continue apace. I don't see any obstruction of investigation yet, and if you'd like to see both found out, there's no logical inconsistencies in your argument. It doesn't fit your narrative, but try to understand this is a net win for everyone. Trump doesn't get off, Clinton doesn't get off, so cool your head and remember that not all your political opponents need to be smeared to have a nice discussion.
I'm asking about the connection to Trump Tower because you made the connection. Simple as that. If you don't want to talk about it, then don't bring it up in the first place.
And you're jumping to a lot of conclusions, for someone who proposed debating merits. I have not said that an investigation into Alexandra Chalupa is warranted or not, because frankly, that kind of speculation is fluff for the time being. A Senate Committee wants the DOJ to respond to multiple points. The DOJ, as far as I know, has not done so yet.
Which, again, is why asked why this was brought up as a topic of discussion. Did you want to compare it to the ongoing investigation into Trump's team? Or did you want to discuss the hypotheticals of if Chalupa did conspire with Ukrainian officials, if she did so while informing the DNC, and if the DOJ has an investigation into it?
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On July 26 2017 10:53 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On July 26 2017 10:44 mozoku wrote:On July 26 2017 10:29 KwarK wrote:
mozuku, that's mostly a foundation myth from the 18th and 19th century who knew very little about the classics but knew that an old idea rediscovered sounded way more legitimate than a new idea. For example Greek democracy is a misnomer, a poor understanding of the citizen-soldier dynamic of the polis city state structure, specifically that found in just one polis which was an unusual example of a fundamentally oligarchic system. I can go into more detail if you wish.
The ideas that were subsequently assigned to the classical world would have been unthinkable to them. Even within the classical world these concepts don't have a stable basis. For example Roman citizenship as Marius would have understood it had absolutely no relationship with the Roman citizenship of the Roman Empire, and far more in common with, say, Theban citizenship. What it meant to be a citizen, what rights one had within the state and so forth are not ideas that one can easily pin on the classical world and declare continuity because they lack even internal consistency within their own frame of reference. The question of whether the Socii were Roman was controversial, the Constitutio Antoniniana unthinkable.
The culture that emerged in western Europe was pretty much new. It took the word senate from Rome in the same way the Russian Tsars took the word Caesar, and with about as much understanding of what it meant. It's all rather absurd. Fetishism of classics from a time before historians had learned how to do real history. If the Greeks and Romans (with huge contributions from Enlightenment thinkers) didn't inspire the Founding Fathers, why didn't China or India even consider establishing anything resembling a democracy until the imperial powers colonized them? Or any other Eastern culture that I'm aware of? Why did democracy, rule of law, and individualism only rise in the West? I'm talking about the time before imperial powers arrived in Asia. Socioeconomic factors. You have to understand that no democrat would have been inspired by the extremely narrow oligarchies of the classical Mediterranean polis structures. The idea of Greek democracy is a misunderstanding of a three decade period in a single Greek city where constant naval warfare made the landless urban rower the foundation of military force. And even then it was simply a wider oligarchy than usual, and indeed was at the head of a repressive empire. The founding fathers had their own ideas which were spawned by their own unique place and time in history. They made the fundamental mistake of reading history backwards and projected their ideas onto the past and as a result I'm here two centuries later trying to correct that. Also it's interesting that you mention India. Significant parts of the near East, going as far as Afghanistan and the Indian subcontinent were Hellenistic kingdoms. If your premise was correct then they would be prime candidates for becoming democracies. Definitely Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean. Places like the Netherlands and England were extremely remote, essentially barbarian backwaters, in the classical era and yet it is these places who insist upon their classical roots. If we accept the argument that the classical world spawned the modern world then we have to address the issue of the modern world appearing in the areas least impacted by the classical world. Imagine if in two thousand years time organized criminals were insisting that they had their roots in the ancient United States, a land founded by Italians wielding tommy guns, fighting the ruthless untouchables in an endless war for control of society and the right to drive fast cars in a circle. That's "Greek democracy".
It's possible, just possible, that when someone like xDaunt says "Greeks" he means Plato and Aristotle, and possibly some pre-Socratics. I don't think anyone here believes that the Greek peninsula was a democratic paradise with inalienable rights. Augustine and Aquinas and every Enlightenment thinker were reading Homer, Plato, and Aristotle, not going on archaelogical digs to reconstruct daily life in Boeotia. And yet you've gone on a multi-page rant about how heterogeneous "the Greeks" really were. I just don't think that was an issue until you decided to try and embarrass someone who wasn't really even talking about that.
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On July 26 2017 10:53 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On July 26 2017 10:44 mozoku wrote:On July 26 2017 10:29 KwarK wrote:
mozuku, that's mostly a foundation myth from the 18th and 19th century who knew very little about the classics but knew that an old idea rediscovered sounded way more legitimate than a new idea. For example Greek democracy is a misnomer, a poor understanding of the citizen-soldier dynamic of the polis city state structure, specifically that found in just one polis which was an unusual example of a fundamentally oligarchic system. I can go into more detail if you wish.
The ideas that were subsequently assigned to the classical world would have been unthinkable to them. Even within the classical world these concepts don't have a stable basis. For example Roman citizenship as Marius would have understood it had absolutely no relationship with the Roman citizenship of the Roman Empire, and far more in common with, say, Theban citizenship. What it meant to be a citizen, what rights one had within the state and so forth are not ideas that one can easily pin on the classical world and declare continuity because they lack even internal consistency within their own frame of reference. The question of whether the Socii were Roman was controversial, the Constitutio Antoniniana unthinkable.
The culture that emerged in western Europe was pretty much new. It took the word senate from Rome in the same way the Russian Tsars took the word Caesar, and with about as much understanding of what it meant. It's all rather absurd. Fetishism of classics from a time before historians had learned how to do real history. If the Greeks and Romans (with huge contributions from Enlightenment thinkers) didn't inspire the Founding Fathers, why didn't China or India even consider establishing anything resembling a democracy until the imperial powers colonized them? Or any other Eastern culture that I'm aware of? Why did democracy, rule of law, and individualism only rise in the West? I'm talking about the time before imperial powers arrived in Asia. It isn't because Western Culture is better. Individualism is not the be all end all. The Rule of law is pretty great, but far from perfect. And the ruling is still out on Democracy. Right now: it works well until it fails completely. We are not the end of human's experiments with governance. Edit: Kwarks comment about history fetishism is a good way to describe the funding fathers understanding of Rome and Greece.
Is there a culture that you would rather live in and be a part of than Western culture?
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United States42778 Posts
On July 26 2017 11:06 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On July 26 2017 10:53 KwarK wrote:On July 26 2017 10:44 mozoku wrote:On July 26 2017 10:29 KwarK wrote:
mozuku, that's mostly a foundation myth from the 18th and 19th century who knew very little about the classics but knew that an old idea rediscovered sounded way more legitimate than a new idea. For example Greek democracy is a misnomer, a poor understanding of the citizen-soldier dynamic of the polis city state structure, specifically that found in just one polis which was an unusual example of a fundamentally oligarchic system. I can go into more detail if you wish.
The ideas that were subsequently assigned to the classical world would have been unthinkable to them. Even within the classical world these concepts don't have a stable basis. For example Roman citizenship as Marius would have understood it had absolutely no relationship with the Roman citizenship of the Roman Empire, and far more in common with, say, Theban citizenship. What it meant to be a citizen, what rights one had within the state and so forth are not ideas that one can easily pin on the classical world and declare continuity because they lack even internal consistency within their own frame of reference. The question of whether the Socii were Roman was controversial, the Constitutio Antoniniana unthinkable.
The culture that emerged in western Europe was pretty much new. It took the word senate from Rome in the same way the Russian Tsars took the word Caesar, and with about as much understanding of what it meant. It's all rather absurd. Fetishism of classics from a time before historians had learned how to do real history. If the Greeks and Romans (with huge contributions from Enlightenment thinkers) didn't inspire the Founding Fathers, why didn't China or India even consider establishing anything resembling a democracy until the imperial powers colonized them? Or any other Eastern culture that I'm aware of? Why did democracy, rule of law, and individualism only rise in the West? I'm talking about the time before imperial powers arrived in Asia. Socioeconomic factors. You have to understand that no democrat would have been inspired by the extremely narrow oligarchies of the classical Mediterranean polis structures. The idea of Greek democracy is a misunderstanding of a three decade period in a single Greek city where constant naval warfare made the landless urban rower the foundation of military force. And even then it was simply a wider oligarchy than usual, and indeed was at the head of a repressive empire. The founding fathers had their own ideas which were spawned by their own unique place and time in history. They made the fundamental mistake of reading history backwards and projected their ideas onto the past and as a result I'm here two centuries later trying to correct that. Also it's interesting that you mention India. Significant parts of the near East, going as far as Afghanistan and the Indian subcontinent were Hellenistic kingdoms. If your premise was correct then they would be prime candidates for becoming democracies. Definitely Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean. Places like the Netherlands and England were extremely remote, essentially barbarian backwaters, in the classical era and yet it is these places who insist upon their classical roots. If we accept the argument that the classical world spawned the modern world then we have to address the issue of the modern world appearing in the areas least impacted by the classical world. Imagine if in two thousand years time organized criminals were insisting that they had their roots in the ancient United States, a land founded by Italians wielding tommy guns, fighting the ruthless untouchables in an endless war for control of society and the right to drive fast cars in a circle. That's "Greek democracy". It's possible, just possible, that when someone like xDaunt says "Greeks" he means Plato and Aristotle, and possibly some pre-Socratics. I don't think anyone here believes that the Greek peninsula was a democratic paradise with inalienable rights. Augustine and Aquinas and every Enlightenment thinker were reading Homer, Plato, and Aristotle, not going on archaelogical digs to reconstruct daily life in Boeotia. And yet you've gone on a multi-page rant about how heterogeneous "the Greeks" really were. I just don't think that was an issue until you decided to try and embarrass someone who wasn't really even talking about that.
Wouldn't that be making my point, not his, then? That if Augustine, Aquinas, and xDaunt are all fundamentally failing to understand the context and content of what they're reading then we surely cannot conclude that their ideas are Greek, rather than their own. No more than we would conclude that the ideas of someone in two millennia built on the struggle between the matha and the untouchables were a continuation of American culture.
But I don't think that's what is happening either way. I don't think that xDaunt is referring to an incredibly specific section. I think xDaunt has simply fallen victim to the myth and genuinely doesn't know that he's repeating nonsense.
Western culture is a product of its own distinct historical factors, mostly socioeconomic, nor a reemergence of a fabled past. Humans just like putting a story behind stuff.
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On July 26 2017 11:10 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On July 26 2017 10:53 Plansix wrote:On July 26 2017 10:44 mozoku wrote:On July 26 2017 10:29 KwarK wrote:
mozuku, that's mostly a foundation myth from the 18th and 19th century who knew very little about the classics but knew that an old idea rediscovered sounded way more legitimate than a new idea. For example Greek democracy is a misnomer, a poor understanding of the citizen-soldier dynamic of the polis city state structure, specifically that found in just one polis which was an unusual example of a fundamentally oligarchic system. I can go into more detail if you wish.
The ideas that were subsequently assigned to the classical world would have been unthinkable to them. Even within the classical world these concepts don't have a stable basis. For example Roman citizenship as Marius would have understood it had absolutely no relationship with the Roman citizenship of the Roman Empire, and far more in common with, say, Theban citizenship. What it meant to be a citizen, what rights one had within the state and so forth are not ideas that one can easily pin on the classical world and declare continuity because they lack even internal consistency within their own frame of reference. The question of whether the Socii were Roman was controversial, the Constitutio Antoniniana unthinkable.
The culture that emerged in western Europe was pretty much new. It took the word senate from Rome in the same way the Russian Tsars took the word Caesar, and with about as much understanding of what it meant. It's all rather absurd. Fetishism of classics from a time before historians had learned how to do real history. If the Greeks and Romans (with huge contributions from Enlightenment thinkers) didn't inspire the Founding Fathers, why didn't China or India even consider establishing anything resembling a democracy until the imperial powers colonized them? Or any other Eastern culture that I'm aware of? Why did democracy, rule of law, and individualism only rise in the West? I'm talking about the time before imperial powers arrived in Asia. It isn't because Western Culture is better. Individualism is not the be all end all. The Rule of law is pretty great, but far from perfect. And the ruling is still out on Democracy. Right now: it works well until it fails completely. We are not the end of human's experiments with governance. Edit: Kwarks comment about history fetishism is a good way to describe the funding fathers understanding of Rome and Greece. Is there a culture that you would rather live in and be a part of than Western culture?
Assuming I had the same socioeconomic status? Japan isn't bad. China is not some hellscape. South Korea is fine. India is cool. I'm not going to take a deep dive into the Middle East, but that has more to do with instability than culture. I don't know much about Africa, but I bet there are a few places there that are not terrible.
Edit: my wife agrees that if our standards of living with similar, any country that is warm and isn't a dictatorship.
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On July 26 2017 10:51 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On July 26 2017 10:47 Nyxisto wrote:
Especially in the context of this natural law discussion you should probably talk of 'American' instead of 'Western' culture because The rest of the West for the most part has moved to more positivist systems.
Natural law has a heavily religious and Lockean touch to it that was never really relevant in modern Europe. And where do you think that the concept of positive law came from?
positivist conceptions of the law / authority are much older than both Christianity or the West, legalism has a long tradition in countries such as China. Or today Singapore. The latter is probably a good example of a prosperous country that rejected 'western' views of laissez-faire Locke-like democracy. (and Christian religion)
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On July 26 2017 08:04 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On July 26 2017 07:57 Plansix wrote:On July 26 2017 07:51 xDaunt wrote:On July 26 2017 07:47 Nevuk wrote:On July 26 2017 07:07 xDaunt wrote:On July 26 2017 07:05 Nevuk wrote:On July 26 2017 06:59 xDaunt wrote:On July 26 2017 06:52 Plansix wrote:
The new racism is just the old racism rebranded. Cultural criticism is the new benevolent racism. None of this shit is new, just the wrapper people put around it. So you don't think that there are legitimate differences between and amongst Western, Arab/Muslim, and Chinese cultures, and thus no grounds on which to make qualitative judgments about each? I feel like the US has more in common with Muslim culture than it does with Western European culture And why is that? I suspect that with a little introspection, you are going to find that your feelings are quite unfounded. Extremely high valuation of religion in society, religion being required to hold public office, deep taboos about sexuality, valuing religion over facts, replacing science with religion in education (thanks Texas), politicians constantly paying lip service to religion, etc. Mostly in how religious the US is. See, you're missing the forest for the trees. Let me reorient you to the defining characteristics of Western culture that I laid out last week: Let's start with a broad definition of Western culture, which would include traditions of individual liberty, inalienable rights, political plurality, rationalism, and the rule of law (I'd throw Christianity in there as well, but I'm not sure that we need to go down that rabbit hole yet). Which of those does Iran share? Which of those are under attack by the left? I could make an argument that all of them are under attack by the Left to at least some degree. As a reminder (and as is demonstrated by the responses that we are seeing in this thread), it is the Left that has developed the nasty tendency to reject Western culture outright. But for discussion purposes, I think that the most egregious examples would concern political plurality and the rule of law.
If you want to claim that something needs defending, you should put more effort into first explaining how or why it's under attack, and why that's bad. Instead, people have spent the last few pages talking about Rome and Greece, rather than how "western culture" is under threat to begin with.
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On July 26 2017 11:11 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On July 26 2017 11:06 IgnE wrote:On July 26 2017 10:53 KwarK wrote:On July 26 2017 10:44 mozoku wrote:On July 26 2017 10:29 KwarK wrote:
mozuku, that's mostly a foundation myth from the 18th and 19th century who knew very little about the classics but knew that an old idea rediscovered sounded way more legitimate than a new idea. For example Greek democracy is a misnomer, a poor understanding of the citizen-soldier dynamic of the polis city state structure, specifically that found in just one polis which was an unusual example of a fundamentally oligarchic system. I can go into more detail if you wish.
The ideas that were subsequently assigned to the classical world would have been unthinkable to them. Even within the classical world these concepts don't have a stable basis. For example Roman citizenship as Marius would have understood it had absolutely no relationship with the Roman citizenship of the Roman Empire, and far more in common with, say, Theban citizenship. What it meant to be a citizen, what rights one had within the state and so forth are not ideas that one can easily pin on the classical world and declare continuity because they lack even internal consistency within their own frame of reference. The question of whether the Socii were Roman was controversial, the Constitutio Antoniniana unthinkable.
The culture that emerged in western Europe was pretty much new. It took the word senate from Rome in the same way the Russian Tsars took the word Caesar, and with about as much understanding of what it meant. It's all rather absurd. Fetishism of classics from a time before historians had learned how to do real history. If the Greeks and Romans (with huge contributions from Enlightenment thinkers) didn't inspire the Founding Fathers, why didn't China or India even consider establishing anything resembling a democracy until the imperial powers colonized them? Or any other Eastern culture that I'm aware of? Why did democracy, rule of law, and individualism only rise in the West? I'm talking about the time before imperial powers arrived in Asia. Socioeconomic factors. You have to understand that no democrat would have been inspired by the extremely narrow oligarchies of the classical Mediterranean polis structures. The idea of Greek democracy is a misunderstanding of a three decade period in a single Greek city where constant naval warfare made the landless urban rower the foundation of military force. And even then it was simply a wider oligarchy than usual, and indeed was at the head of a repressive empire. The founding fathers had their own ideas which were spawned by their own unique place and time in history. They made the fundamental mistake of reading history backwards and projected their ideas onto the past and as a result I'm here two centuries later trying to correct that. Also it's interesting that you mention India. Significant parts of the near East, going as far as Afghanistan and the Indian subcontinent were Hellenistic kingdoms. If your premise was correct then they would be prime candidates for becoming democracies. Definitely Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean. Places like the Netherlands and England were extremely remote, essentially barbarian backwaters, in the classical era and yet it is these places who insist upon their classical roots. If we accept the argument that the classical world spawned the modern world then we have to address the issue of the modern world appearing in the areas least impacted by the classical world. Imagine if in two thousand years time organized criminals were insisting that they had their roots in the ancient United States, a land founded by Italians wielding tommy guns, fighting the ruthless untouchables in an endless war for control of society and the right to drive fast cars in a circle. That's "Greek democracy". It's possible, just possible, that when someone like xDaunt says "Greeks" he means Plato and Aristotle, and possibly some pre-Socratics. I don't think anyone here believes that the Greek peninsula was a democratic paradise with inalienable rights. Augustine and Aquinas and every Enlightenment thinker were reading Homer, Plato, and Aristotle, not going on archaelogical digs to reconstruct daily life in Boeotia. And yet you've gone on a multi-page rant about how heterogeneous "the Greeks" really were. I just don't think that was an issue until you decided to try and embarrass someone who wasn't really even talking about that. Wouldn't that be making my point, not his, then? That if Augustine, Aquinas, and xDaunt are all fundamentally failing to understand the context and content of what they're reading then we surely cannot conclude that their ideas are Greek, rather than their own. No more than we would conclude that the ideas of someone in two millennia built on the struggle between the matha and the untouchables were a continuation of American culture. But I don't think that's what is happening either way. I don't think that xDaunt is referring to an incredibly specific section. I think xDaunt has simply fallen victim to the myth and genuinely doesn't know that he's repeating nonsense.
Uhhhh what? Do you think Homer really means only one thing? Something that can be reconstructed with enough historical digging? What kind of idiotic statement would it be to say that the US Constitution is identical with Greek democracy? Are not flowering interpretations connected to their root? And are the root and stem not "Greek?"
If your whole point is to say, "No, Aquinas really misinterpreted Aristotle there. The real Aristotle is in no way connected to his thought," you have completely ahistoricized Western culture. Every moment in time is radically different from that which came before and which came after.
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On July 26 2017 11:06 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On July 26 2017 10:53 KwarK wrote:On July 26 2017 10:44 mozoku wrote:On July 26 2017 10:29 KwarK wrote:
mozuku, that's mostly a foundation myth from the 18th and 19th century who knew very little about the classics but knew that an old idea rediscovered sounded way more legitimate than a new idea. For example Greek democracy is a misnomer, a poor understanding of the citizen-soldier dynamic of the polis city state structure, specifically that found in just one polis which was an unusual example of a fundamentally oligarchic system. I can go into more detail if you wish.
The ideas that were subsequently assigned to the classical world would have been unthinkable to them. Even within the classical world these concepts don't have a stable basis. For example Roman citizenship as Marius would have understood it had absolutely no relationship with the Roman citizenship of the Roman Empire, and far more in common with, say, Theban citizenship. What it meant to be a citizen, what rights one had within the state and so forth are not ideas that one can easily pin on the classical world and declare continuity because they lack even internal consistency within their own frame of reference. The question of whether the Socii were Roman was controversial, the Constitutio Antoniniana unthinkable.
The culture that emerged in western Europe was pretty much new. It took the word senate from Rome in the same way the Russian Tsars took the word Caesar, and with about as much understanding of what it meant. It's all rather absurd. Fetishism of classics from a time before historians had learned how to do real history. If the Greeks and Romans (with huge contributions from Enlightenment thinkers) didn't inspire the Founding Fathers, why didn't China or India even consider establishing anything resembling a democracy until the imperial powers colonized them? Or any other Eastern culture that I'm aware of? Why did democracy, rule of law, and individualism only rise in the West? I'm talking about the time before imperial powers arrived in Asia. Socioeconomic factors. You have to understand that no democrat would have been inspired by the extremely narrow oligarchies of the classical Mediterranean polis structures. The idea of Greek democracy is a misunderstanding of a three decade period in a single Greek city where constant naval warfare made the landless urban rower the foundation of military force. And even then it was simply a wider oligarchy than usual, and indeed was at the head of a repressive empire. The founding fathers had their own ideas which were spawned by their own unique place and time in history. They made the fundamental mistake of reading history backwards and projected their ideas onto the past and as a result I'm here two centuries later trying to correct that. Also it's interesting that you mention India. Significant parts of the near East, going as far as Afghanistan and the Indian subcontinent were Hellenistic kingdoms. If your premise was correct then they would be prime candidates for becoming democracies. Definitely Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean. Places like the Netherlands and England were extremely remote, essentially barbarian backwaters, in the classical era and yet it is these places who insist upon their classical roots. If we accept the argument that the classical world spawned the modern world then we have to address the issue of the modern world appearing in the areas least impacted by the classical world. Imagine if in two thousand years time organized criminals were insisting that they had their roots in the ancient United States, a land founded by Italians wielding tommy guns, fighting the ruthless untouchables in an endless war for control of society and the right to drive fast cars in a circle. That's "Greek democracy". It's possible, just possible, that when someone like xDaunt says "Greeks" he means Plato and Aristotle, and possibly some pre-Socratics. I don't think anyone here believes that the Greek peninsula was a democratic paradise with inalienable rights. Augustine and Aquinas and every Enlightenment thinker were reading Homer, Plato, and Aristotle, not going on archaelogical digs to reconstruct daily life in Boeotia. And yet you've gone on a multi-page rant about how heterogeneous "the Greeks" really were. I just don't think that was an issue until you decided to try and embarrass someone who wasn't really even talking about that.
If only I had mentioned classical philosophers, and made it clear that I wasn't arguing that Western culture was equivalent to Greek and Roman cultures....
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On July 26 2017 11:19 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On July 26 2017 10:51 xDaunt wrote:On July 26 2017 10:47 Nyxisto wrote:
Especially in the context of this natural law discussion you should probably talk of 'American' instead of 'Western' culture because The rest of the West for the most part has moved to more positivist systems.
Natural law has a heavily religious and Lockean touch to it that was never really relevant in modern Europe. And where do you think that the concept of positive law came from? positivist conceptions of the law / authority are much older than both Christianity or the West, legalism has a long tradition in countries such as China. Or today Singapore. The latter is probably a good example of a prosperous country that rejected 'western' views of laissez-faire Locke-like democracy. (and Christian religion)
Yeah, but Western notions of positive law as implemented in Europe didn't come from the East....
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United States42778 Posts
On July 26 2017 11:22 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On July 26 2017 11:06 IgnE wrote:On July 26 2017 10:53 KwarK wrote:On July 26 2017 10:44 mozoku wrote:On July 26 2017 10:29 KwarK wrote:
mozuku, that's mostly a foundation myth from the 18th and 19th century who knew very little about the classics but knew that an old idea rediscovered sounded way more legitimate than a new idea. For example Greek democracy is a misnomer, a poor understanding of the citizen-soldier dynamic of the polis city state structure, specifically that found in just one polis which was an unusual example of a fundamentally oligarchic system. I can go into more detail if you wish.
The ideas that were subsequently assigned to the classical world would have been unthinkable to them. Even within the classical world these concepts don't have a stable basis. For example Roman citizenship as Marius would have understood it had absolutely no relationship with the Roman citizenship of the Roman Empire, and far more in common with, say, Theban citizenship. What it meant to be a citizen, what rights one had within the state and so forth are not ideas that one can easily pin on the classical world and declare continuity because they lack even internal consistency within their own frame of reference. The question of whether the Socii were Roman was controversial, the Constitutio Antoniniana unthinkable.
The culture that emerged in western Europe was pretty much new. It took the word senate from Rome in the same way the Russian Tsars took the word Caesar, and with about as much understanding of what it meant. It's all rather absurd. Fetishism of classics from a time before historians had learned how to do real history. If the Greeks and Romans (with huge contributions from Enlightenment thinkers) didn't inspire the Founding Fathers, why didn't China or India even consider establishing anything resembling a democracy until the imperial powers colonized them? Or any other Eastern culture that I'm aware of? Why did democracy, rule of law, and individualism only rise in the West? I'm talking about the time before imperial powers arrived in Asia. Socioeconomic factors. You have to understand that no democrat would have been inspired by the extremely narrow oligarchies of the classical Mediterranean polis structures. The idea of Greek democracy is a misunderstanding of a three decade period in a single Greek city where constant naval warfare made the landless urban rower the foundation of military force. And even then it was simply a wider oligarchy than usual, and indeed was at the head of a repressive empire. The founding fathers had their own ideas which were spawned by their own unique place and time in history. They made the fundamental mistake of reading history backwards and projected their ideas onto the past and as a result I'm here two centuries later trying to correct that. Also it's interesting that you mention India. Significant parts of the near East, going as far as Afghanistan and the Indian subcontinent were Hellenistic kingdoms. If your premise was correct then they would be prime candidates for becoming democracies. Definitely Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean. Places like the Netherlands and England were extremely remote, essentially barbarian backwaters, in the classical era and yet it is these places who insist upon their classical roots. If we accept the argument that the classical world spawned the modern world then we have to address the issue of the modern world appearing in the areas least impacted by the classical world. Imagine if in two thousand years time organized criminals were insisting that they had their roots in the ancient United States, a land founded by Italians wielding tommy guns, fighting the ruthless untouchables in an endless war for control of society and the right to drive fast cars in a circle. That's "Greek democracy". It's possible, just possible, that when someone like xDaunt says "Greeks" he means Plato and Aristotle, and possibly some pre-Socratics. I don't think anyone here believes that the Greek peninsula was a democratic paradise with inalienable rights. Augustine and Aquinas and every Enlightenment thinker were reading Homer, Plato, and Aristotle, not going on archaelogical digs to reconstruct daily life in Boeotia. And yet you've gone on a multi-page rant about how heterogeneous "the Greeks" really were. I just don't think that was an issue until you decided to try and embarrass someone who wasn't really even talking about that. If only I had mentioned classical philosophers, and made it clear that I wasn't arguing that Western culture was equivalent to Greek and Roman cultures....
I asked you to make an argument showing continuity and cause and you replied with the word "Cicero". 0/5, must try harder.
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On July 26 2017 11:20 Tachion wrote:Show nested quote +On July 26 2017 08:04 xDaunt wrote:On July 26 2017 07:57 Plansix wrote:On July 26 2017 07:51 xDaunt wrote:On July 26 2017 07:47 Nevuk wrote:On July 26 2017 07:07 xDaunt wrote:On July 26 2017 07:05 Nevuk wrote:On July 26 2017 06:59 xDaunt wrote:On July 26 2017 06:52 Plansix wrote:
The new racism is just the old racism rebranded. Cultural criticism is the new benevolent racism. None of this shit is new, just the wrapper people put around it. So you don't think that there are legitimate differences between and amongst Western, Arab/Muslim, and Chinese cultures, and thus no grounds on which to make qualitative judgments about each? I feel like the US has more in common with Muslim culture than it does with Western European culture And why is that? I suspect that with a little introspection, you are going to find that your feelings are quite unfounded. Extremely high valuation of religion in society, religion being required to hold public office, deep taboos about sexuality, valuing religion over facts, replacing science with religion in education (thanks Texas), politicians constantly paying lip service to religion, etc. Mostly in how religious the US is. See, you're missing the forest for the trees. Let me reorient you to the defining characteristics of Western culture that I laid out last week: Let's start with a broad definition of Western culture, which would include traditions of individual liberty, inalienable rights, political plurality, rationalism, and the rule of law (I'd throw Christianity in there as well, but I'm not sure that we need to go down that rabbit hole yet). Which of those does Iran share? Which of those are under attack by the left? I could make an argument that all of them are under attack by the Left to at least some degree. As a reminder (and as is demonstrated by the responses that we are seeing in this thread), it is the Left that has developed the nasty tendency to reject Western culture outright. But for discussion purposes, I think that the most egregious examples would concern political plurality and the rule of law. If you want to claim that something needs defending, you should put more effort into first explaining how or why it's under attack, and why that's bad. Instead, people have spent the last few pages talking about Rome and Greece, rather than how "western culture" is under threat to begin with.
I already did do this. You're just missing the context. This all began with a discussion that Igne and I had regarding an article that discussed attacks on Western culture by the Left.
And what's happened over the past several pages has just reinforced my belief that my original instinct to limit the conversation to Igne was correct.
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On July 26 2017 11:25 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On July 26 2017 11:19 Nyxisto wrote:On July 26 2017 10:51 xDaunt wrote:On July 26 2017 10:47 Nyxisto wrote:
Especially in the context of this natural law discussion you should probably talk of 'American' instead of 'Western' culture because The rest of the West for the most part has moved to more positivist systems.
Natural law has a heavily religious and Lockean touch to it that was never really relevant in modern Europe. And where do you think that the concept of positive law came from? positivist conceptions of the law / authority are much older than both Christianity or the West, legalism has a long tradition in countries such as China. Or today Singapore. The latter is probably a good example of a prosperous country that rejected 'western' views of laissez-faire Locke-like democracy. (and Christian religion) Yeah, but Western notions of positive law as implemented in Europe didn't come from the East....
No, but positivist law is clearly not uniquely Western, and especially in the US has a historically tough stand. The idea that we're all rational individuals equipped with Gods rights and so forth is fairly unique and American and not that dominant in most other places. This of course always surfaces in the endless free speech debates, and lately in debate about the British kid.
If anything the discussion between US citizens and other guys on this forum shows that common 'western heritage' doesn't exactly mean very much.
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United States42778 Posts
On July 26 2017 11:20 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On July 26 2017 11:11 KwarK wrote:On July 26 2017 11:06 IgnE wrote:On July 26 2017 10:53 KwarK wrote:On July 26 2017 10:44 mozoku wrote:On July 26 2017 10:29 KwarK wrote:
mozuku, that's mostly a foundation myth from the 18th and 19th century who knew very little about the classics but knew that an old idea rediscovered sounded way more legitimate than a new idea. For example Greek democracy is a misnomer, a poor understanding of the citizen-soldier dynamic of the polis city state structure, specifically that found in just one polis which was an unusual example of a fundamentally oligarchic system. I can go into more detail if you wish.
The ideas that were subsequently assigned to the classical world would have been unthinkable to them. Even within the classical world these concepts don't have a stable basis. For example Roman citizenship as Marius would have understood it had absolutely no relationship with the Roman citizenship of the Roman Empire, and far more in common with, say, Theban citizenship. What it meant to be a citizen, what rights one had within the state and so forth are not ideas that one can easily pin on the classical world and declare continuity because they lack even internal consistency within their own frame of reference. The question of whether the Socii were Roman was controversial, the Constitutio Antoniniana unthinkable.
The culture that emerged in western Europe was pretty much new. It took the word senate from Rome in the same way the Russian Tsars took the word Caesar, and with about as much understanding of what it meant. It's all rather absurd. Fetishism of classics from a time before historians had learned how to do real history. If the Greeks and Romans (with huge contributions from Enlightenment thinkers) didn't inspire the Founding Fathers, why didn't China or India even consider establishing anything resembling a democracy until the imperial powers colonized them? Or any other Eastern culture that I'm aware of? Why did democracy, rule of law, and individualism only rise in the West? I'm talking about the time before imperial powers arrived in Asia. Socioeconomic factors. You have to understand that no democrat would have been inspired by the extremely narrow oligarchies of the classical Mediterranean polis structures. The idea of Greek democracy is a misunderstanding of a three decade period in a single Greek city where constant naval warfare made the landless urban rower the foundation of military force. And even then it was simply a wider oligarchy than usual, and indeed was at the head of a repressive empire. The founding fathers had their own ideas which were spawned by their own unique place and time in history. They made the fundamental mistake of reading history backwards and projected their ideas onto the past and as a result I'm here two centuries later trying to correct that. Also it's interesting that you mention India. Significant parts of the near East, going as far as Afghanistan and the Indian subcontinent were Hellenistic kingdoms. If your premise was correct then they would be prime candidates for becoming democracies. Definitely Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean. Places like the Netherlands and England were extremely remote, essentially barbarian backwaters, in the classical era and yet it is these places who insist upon their classical roots. If we accept the argument that the classical world spawned the modern world then we have to address the issue of the modern world appearing in the areas least impacted by the classical world. Imagine if in two thousand years time organized criminals were insisting that they had their roots in the ancient United States, a land founded by Italians wielding tommy guns, fighting the ruthless untouchables in an endless war for control of society and the right to drive fast cars in a circle. That's "Greek democracy". It's possible, just possible, that when someone like xDaunt says "Greeks" he means Plato and Aristotle, and possibly some pre-Socratics. I don't think anyone here believes that the Greek peninsula was a democratic paradise with inalienable rights. Augustine and Aquinas and every Enlightenment thinker were reading Homer, Plato, and Aristotle, not going on archaelogical digs to reconstruct daily life in Boeotia. And yet you've gone on a multi-page rant about how heterogeneous "the Greeks" really were. I just don't think that was an issue until you decided to try and embarrass someone who wasn't really even talking about that. Wouldn't that be making my point, not his, then? That if Augustine, Aquinas, and xDaunt are all fundamentally failing to understand the context and content of what they're reading then we surely cannot conclude that their ideas are Greek, rather than their own. No more than we would conclude that the ideas of someone in two millennia built on the struggle between the matha and the untouchables were a continuation of American culture. But I don't think that's what is happening either way. I don't think that xDaunt is referring to an incredibly specific section. I think xDaunt has simply fallen victim to the myth and genuinely doesn't know that he's repeating nonsense. Uhhhh what? Do you think Homer really means only one thing? Something that can be reconstructed with enough historical digging? What kind of idiotic statement would it be to say that the US Constitution is identical with Greek democracy? Are not flowering interpretations connected to their root? And are the root and stem not "Greek?" If your whole point is to say, "No, Aquinas really misinterpreted Aristotle there. The real Aristotle is in no way connected to his thought," you have completely ahistoricized Western culture. Every moment in time is radically different from that which came before and which came after.
That might be the stupidest thing I've ever read by you, which is a high bar. You can't claim that western culture is a product of classical cultures and then, when challenged to demonstrate the links, insist that the reason the two look nothing alike and have no direct links is because one is a "flowering interpretation" of the other.
If I were to claim to a child that a butterfly is a flowering interpretation of a caterpillar they'd demand to see a chrysalis. Show me the chrysalis or go home.
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Brutal but I'm sure a lot of people are thinking the exact same thing. He should have just not shown up.
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On July 26 2017 11:28 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On July 26 2017 11:22 xDaunt wrote:On July 26 2017 11:06 IgnE wrote:On July 26 2017 10:53 KwarK wrote:On July 26 2017 10:44 mozoku wrote:On July 26 2017 10:29 KwarK wrote:
mozuku, that's mostly a foundation myth from the 18th and 19th century who knew very little about the classics but knew that an old idea rediscovered sounded way more legitimate than a new idea. For example Greek democracy is a misnomer, a poor understanding of the citizen-soldier dynamic of the polis city state structure, specifically that found in just one polis which was an unusual example of a fundamentally oligarchic system. I can go into more detail if you wish.
The ideas that were subsequently assigned to the classical world would have been unthinkable to them. Even within the classical world these concepts don't have a stable basis. For example Roman citizenship as Marius would have understood it had absolutely no relationship with the Roman citizenship of the Roman Empire, and far more in common with, say, Theban citizenship. What it meant to be a citizen, what rights one had within the state and so forth are not ideas that one can easily pin on the classical world and declare continuity because they lack even internal consistency within their own frame of reference. The question of whether the Socii were Roman was controversial, the Constitutio Antoniniana unthinkable.
The culture that emerged in western Europe was pretty much new. It took the word senate from Rome in the same way the Russian Tsars took the word Caesar, and with about as much understanding of what it meant. It's all rather absurd. Fetishism of classics from a time before historians had learned how to do real history. If the Greeks and Romans (with huge contributions from Enlightenment thinkers) didn't inspire the Founding Fathers, why didn't China or India even consider establishing anything resembling a democracy until the imperial powers colonized them? Or any other Eastern culture that I'm aware of? Why did democracy, rule of law, and individualism only rise in the West? I'm talking about the time before imperial powers arrived in Asia. Socioeconomic factors. You have to understand that no democrat would have been inspired by the extremely narrow oligarchies of the classical Mediterranean polis structures. The idea of Greek democracy is a misunderstanding of a three decade period in a single Greek city where constant naval warfare made the landless urban rower the foundation of military force. And even then it was simply a wider oligarchy than usual, and indeed was at the head of a repressive empire. The founding fathers had their own ideas which were spawned by their own unique place and time in history. They made the fundamental mistake of reading history backwards and projected their ideas onto the past and as a result I'm here two centuries later trying to correct that. Also it's interesting that you mention India. Significant parts of the near East, going as far as Afghanistan and the Indian subcontinent were Hellenistic kingdoms. If your premise was correct then they would be prime candidates for becoming democracies. Definitely Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean. Places like the Netherlands and England were extremely remote, essentially barbarian backwaters, in the classical era and yet it is these places who insist upon their classical roots. If we accept the argument that the classical world spawned the modern world then we have to address the issue of the modern world appearing in the areas least impacted by the classical world. Imagine if in two thousand years time organized criminals were insisting that they had their roots in the ancient United States, a land founded by Italians wielding tommy guns, fighting the ruthless untouchables in an endless war for control of society and the right to drive fast cars in a circle. That's "Greek democracy". It's possible, just possible, that when someone like xDaunt says "Greeks" he means Plato and Aristotle, and possibly some pre-Socratics. I don't think anyone here believes that the Greek peninsula was a democratic paradise with inalienable rights. Augustine and Aquinas and every Enlightenment thinker were reading Homer, Plato, and Aristotle, not going on archaelogical digs to reconstruct daily life in Boeotia. And yet you've gone on a multi-page rant about how heterogeneous "the Greeks" really were. I just don't think that was an issue until you decided to try and embarrass someone who wasn't really even talking about that. If only I had mentioned classical philosophers, and made it clear that I wasn't arguing that Western culture was equivalent to Greek and Roman cultures.... I asked you to make an argument showing continuity and cause and you replied with the word "Cicero". 0/5, must try harder.
Like I have said a million times, I did. You just ignore it.
I'm a busy man. I'm not interested in wasting time on the insipid. You gave me a bunch of a bullshit responses that weren't relevant to anything that I was saying, and often misconstrued what I was saying. All you deserved in response from me was the flippant.
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On July 26 2017 11:32 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On July 26 2017 11:25 xDaunt wrote:On July 26 2017 11:19 Nyxisto wrote:On July 26 2017 10:51 xDaunt wrote:On July 26 2017 10:47 Nyxisto wrote:
Especially in the context of this natural law discussion you should probably talk of 'American' instead of 'Western' culture because The rest of the West for the most part has moved to more positivist systems.
Natural law has a heavily religious and Lockean touch to it that was never really relevant in modern Europe. And where do you think that the concept of positive law came from? positivist conceptions of the law / authority are much older than both Christianity or the West, legalism has a long tradition in countries such as China. Or today Singapore. The latter is probably a good example of a prosperous country that rejected 'western' views of laissez-faire Locke-like democracy. (and Christian religion) Yeah, but Western notions of positive law as implemented in Europe didn't come from the East.... No, but positivist law is clearly not uniquely Western, and especially in the US has a historically tough stand. The idea that we're all rational individuals equipped with Gods rights and so forth is fairly unique and American and not that dominant in most other places. This of course always surfaces in the endless free speech debates, and lately in debate about the British kid. If anything the discussion between US citizens and other guys on this forum shows that common 'western heritage' doesn't exactly mean very much.
I didn't say that positive law is unique Western. However, positive law as applied in Europe is uniquely Western and evolved from Western concepts of natural law. That's the point.
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EPT
