skells @skells@social.cleverlibre.org

@NBS @midway incestuous is probably a better word

@NBS @midway I've never quite gotten over the fact that the wall street hangs on the words of anyone in this way

understand why it happens but it seems almost blasphemous, if you can use such a word for something as profane/prosaic as markets

@NBS https://yewtu.be/watch?v=3ss-59fi4nM

wanted this for the punchline at the end but the whole thing is just too on the nose for the whole internet marketwatching deal

@NBS it's almost as if people are making money from insider trading

@vriska 37.6 degrees due west

@laurel @Kagekokoro @7 @cully45 @Arkana @MK2boogaloo @clayvaulin @kakkerel @Dicer @Intramuros_ @SuperSnekFriend @GoodPerson @sim @Leyonhjelm

2. What do you think about St. Thomas's critique against Platonism?

One senses a certain rhyme in the course of philosophy, that the protege of Plato would inspire the man who would equal and, to credit Chesterton, overcome Augustine.

As the Hellenism of the Roman Empire began to decay, there was an upswell of popular underground religious cults. This energy flowed into the nascent Christianity and, combined with Roman persecution of the early Christians, was enough to profoundly engage the lower classes. But it took St. Augustine to forge the bonds between the Hellenic Platonism and Early Christianity; this it was that won over the intellectual elite to Christianity.

However it seems that the emergence of Islam, at the same time as the translations of Aristotle from the same, revealed the precariousness of this fault-line between popular Christianity and Augustine's Platonic interpretation.

St. Thomas' critique seems more like a recalibration of the structure of Christian thought to unify these different themes. To return to the question of Faith, it seems that Thomas was born to do this and at the perfect time for it to be accomplished. Chesterton comments, often with a hint of apology, on the fact that Aquinas' temperament or instinct was central to his success. Of this, there is little doubt - he was the man born to solve a riddle that had been developed and prepared for centuries.

@MK2boogaloo @Kagekokoro @7 @cully45 @Arkana @clayvaulin @kakkerel @laurel @Dicer @Intramuros_ @SuperSnekFriend @GoodPerson @sim @Leyonhjelm

1. Apart from being a biography of St. Aquinas, what other themes do you think were central to the book?

- Placing 13th Century Christendom within the contxt of wider society. The opening chapters, showing Aquinas' family as archetypal medieval aristocracy, brought out how heterogeneous and hierarchical this society was; today, although we are more specialised in our vocations, almost all of us fall into some variation of the 9-5 homo economicus; even politicians and billionaires are roped into a somewhat homogenous post-modern secularism. The background of the 13th century threw this into sharp relief.

- Aquinas' virtues of Humility, Faith and Reason:

- Humility is presented somewhat differently to how we see it nowadays. Instead of the cringing obedience and weakness that modern society associates with humility, there is an unassuming air, a respect for one's limits in knowledge and capability, and a sense that one's persepctives and opinions should not be pressed upon others without sufficient justification.

- Faith is something very difficult for us to understand, and it is hard to place within our modern context. In the case of Aquinas it seems to be a gift of divine grace, inborn. It is difficult not to envy this in him. I don't know about you guys, but it almost makes me wish I were Catholic. This is not a simple choice to be made, it seems. Faith is faith - although perhaps Aquinas' aim is to convert?

- Reason, Chesterton argues, is absent from modern discourse, and it is hard to see how things have gotten any better. Systematic application of reason to life, in the service of a single, unitive philosophy, is both incredibly and appealing and seemingly incredible in the world we now live in. From where we stand, Aquinas' time must seem far simpler and perhaps this is some of his appeal; the vast breadth of modern knowledge beggars belief that one man could credibly bring it under his aegis and impose a system. That being said, human life may have changed at the extremes but there is little that is not conditioned by the human condition; there is good reason to use the philosophy of Aquinas, setting questions of religious belief to one side, as a bedrock and foundation for understanding the kernel of life.

@Leyonhjelm @GoodPerson @Dicer @Kagekokoro @laurel @Intramuros_ @MK2boogaloo @clayvaulin @Arkana @kakkerel @sim @SuperSnekFriend @7 @cully45 true, and from the text, Thomas didn't argue away religion, he demarcated the boundary between it and science.

He gave reality it's reality back, where Platonists attempted to take it away in favour of the pure myth, religion or good

@MK2boogaloo @Kagekokoro @7 @cully45 @Arkana @clayvaulin @kakkerel @laurel @Dicer @Intramuros_ @SuperSnekFriend @GoodPerson @sim @Leyonhjelm it would seem that you're restating the idea of the Good, a la Plato, and arguing that St. Thomas moved philosophy away from that.

I'd say that without making a case for *why* we need a mythical way of viewing the world, you're simply asserting Platonism over Thomism

@laurel @Kagekokoro @7 @cully45 @Arkana @MK2boogaloo @clayvaulin @kakkerel @Dicer @Intramuros_ @SuperSnekFriend @GoodPerson @sim @Leyonhjelm I'm finishing it off now as we speak, and will respond to your questions soon

if a nazi tells a good joke do you laugh

@vriska I thought we'd lost you

@sim progress is progress, enjoy it dude

@sim mainly it just makes me jealous

@thatguyoverthere @coolboymew @mangeurdenuage
> speak British English
> devils rectangle

as a Brit I am more proud than offended