a writer is a person who writes
a fisher is a person who fishes

>>24128443
Your attempts at cropping your hair and muttering barbarian euphemisms in flattery mean nothing to me Alcibiades. I'm reminded of Euripedes that you must have heard all of this yourself and not from me.

sophistry will get you no where. Express your true feelings or play a fool

>>24128443
Ah, utilitarianism is much better. Upvoted.

>>24128443
Sure is better than Mill's utilitarianism. I swear, he sets up a distinction between good pleasure and low pleasure only to never actually explain what these are.

>>24128443
Gay nerd shit, nobody who regularly has sex with young women cares about thjs crap, massive cope

>>24131248
Go back to r9k, incel

>>24128464
There’s a clear, material definition of these activities. Whereas virtue is a Platonic idea at best. It’s no different than me saying “a blorgfarghu is a person who blorgfarghues”.

>>24131248
I used to read a lot more philosophy in my 20s when I had regular sex with young women.

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>>24128443
Read MacIntyre's "After Virtue," what is meant by "virtuous" in English today is pretty divorced from the virtues of virtue ethics. Virtue ethicists point this out and develop it, but I get the feeling you haven't actually read many or any of them.

>>24132522
Have you even read the Ethics?

There is no material, discernible difference between profligacy, generosity, and greediness? No discernible difference between rashness, courage, and cowardice? Is there no material difference between temperance and gluttony or drunkenness? No clear difference between being wrathful or sullen and having a proper balance?

There are no epistemic virtues? Nothing that makes someone a good learner, good teacher, or good scientist?

The virtues are those excellences that are conducive to human flourishing, the key ones being: prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice, and then faith, hope, and charity. Seven virtues and seven liberal arts, nearo.

Virtue ethics in particular helps explain the intuition that it is better to enjoy what is truly good rather than simply being continent and doing it despite hating it. Human flourishing does not consist in hating what you do.

It also explains why flawed people sometimes seem like good role models. So, for instance, young men looking up to characters like Tony Montana, Tyler Durden, etc. These characters aren't devoid of the virtues, some they have in spades. They just lack crucial ones, which is why they need all sorts of things to be happy, while Laozi, St. Francis, St. Paul, Boethius, Socrates, etc. are all thriving and happy with nothing or even when imprisoned and facing death.

And it helps explain why it is better for us to be better. For instance, someone could complain that Jeffrey Epstein would have been very happy if he was never exposed or caught, so virtue doesn't matter. But of course Epstein had some virtues, else he would not have made billions and made so many friends. Yet surely he would have lived a better happier life if he preferred meaningful romantic relationships, a healthy marriage and spiritual partnership, above coercing adolescents into sex.

The virtuous man is more immune to fortune. So Dante and Boethius are happy in exile, and write enduring prose and verse under death sentences, and yet Epstein, when he loses his wealth, sex, and status, is driven immediately to suicide. The virtuous man becomes more free, and so is free to live into his principles. Like Socrates or Origen, he cannot be coerced.

Ignorance also limits freedom, and for the ancients and medievals science was itself a virtue.

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>>24132522
Perhaps you can explain how none of these can have any "material definition," or definiteness. Seems to me that cowardice and the like manifest very visibly in the world around us, in fiction, and in history. Likewise, one can hardly walk about and not see the results of gluttony, avarice, or licentiousness.

>>24132583
Good effort post anon. Thank you.
Epstein didn't kill himself though.

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[1] For they reasoned unsoundly, saying to themselves,
"Short and sorrowful is our life,
and there is no remedy when a man comes to his end,
and no one has been known to return from Hades.
[2] Because we were born by mere chance,
and hereafter we shall be as though we had never been;
because the breath in our nostrils is smoke,
and reason is a spark kindled by the beating of our hearts.
[3] When it is extinguished, the body will turn to ashes,
and the spirit will dissolve like empty air.
[4] Our name will be forgotten in time
and no one will remember our works;
our life will pass away like the traces of a cloud,
and be scattered like mist
that is chased by the rays of the sun
and overcome by its heat.
[5] For our allotted time is the passing of a shadow,
and there is no return from our death,
because it is sealed up and no one turns back.

[6] "Come, therefore, let us enjoy the good things that exist,
and make use of the creation to the full as in youth.
[7] Let us take our fill of costly wine and perfumes,
and let no flower of spring pass by us.
[8] Let us crown ourselves with rosebuds before they wither.
[9] Let none of us fail to share in our revelry,
everywhere let us leave signs of enjoyment,
because this is our portion, and this our lot.
[10] Let us oppress the righteous poor man;
let us not spare the widow
nor regard the gray hairs of the aged.
[11] But let our might be our law of right,
for what is weak proves itself to be useless.

[12] "Let us lie in wait for the righteous man,
because he is inconvenient to us and opposes our actions;
he reproaches us for sins against the law,
and accuses us of sins against our training.
[13] He professes to have knowledge of God,
and calls himself a child of the Lord.
[14] He became to us a reproof of our thoughts;
[15] the very sight of him is a burden to us,
because his manner of life is unlike that of others,
and his ways are strange.
[16] We are considered by him as something base,
and he avoids our ways as unclean;
he calls the last end of the righteous happy,
and boasts that God is his father.
[17] Let us see if his words are true,
and let us test what will happen at the end of his life;
[18] for if the righteous man is God's son, he will help him,
and will deliver him from the hand of his adversaries.
[19] Let us test him with insult and torture,
that we may find out how gentle he is,
and make trial of his forbearance.
[20] Let us condemn him to a shameful death,
for, according to what he says, he will be protected."

[21] Thus they reasoned, but they were led astray,
for their wickedness blinded them,
[22] and they did not know the secret purposes of God,
nor hope for the wages of holiness,
nor discern the prize for blameless souls;
[23] for God created man for incorruption,
and made him in the image of his own eternity,
[24] but through the devil's envy death entered the world,
and those who belong to his party experience it.

>>24131248
Men who fuck attractive young women care. I guess you fuck ugly young women

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>>24131248
>>24132531
>>24132670
>Freedom, living a good life, and being a good person mean making your dick feel good!!!

Well, it's probably not just this, right? The whole manosphere and pick up artist community seem to indicate it's also about validation and status. Power too.

Sex, being one of the last things not fully commodified, becomes an elusive marker of status and validation. But of course manosphere, PUA, etc. thinking ends up denigrating woman until she is no longer capable of offering real validation, nor is the man so indoctrinated capable of being a good husband. It's Hegel's lord - bondsman dialectic as applied to sex by de Beauvoir. And this is not a recipe for the good life, hence the key figures of these movements seeming to be perpetually unhappy.

Everything becomes transactional, and in this everything is reduced to power relations. This is St. Augustine's critique of Rome as a "commonwealth" trickling down to even the most intimate of human relations.

Of course, the pursuit of wealth and of wealth as a mark of status remains quite as popular. So too does an obsession with image and status in general. The pursuit of sensuous pleasures, not so much. Perhaps this is an improvement, a general motion from the sins of the appetites to the sins of inappropriate passions, but perhaps not since the latter tend to motivate people to more vile acts of violence and fraud.

Whereas the man who has clothed himself in virtue, been washed in grace, knelt in penitent humility, and then risen garbed in the armor of faith, holding the sword of truth, and crowned in righteousness covets nothing. For he already possesses what is truly best. And he fears nothing because he knows that what one cannot lose is most important, while the gifts of fortune must all fade away.

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>>24132583
>Epstein, when he loses his wealth, sex, and status, is driven immediately to suicide

>>24133338
>>24132601
Should have seen that one coming. But you get the point, lots of rich, high status people, men having lots of sex, etc. crumble when fortune turns against them and kill themselves or become drug addicts, etc.

St. Francis and Laozi are sublime in the wilderness. Socrates, Boethius, and St. Paul are happy in prison. Origen and St. Maximus do not renounce their principles even as they are tortured and maimed, and when St. Polycarp is told he will burn he says "it does not make sense to become something worse once one has become something better."

>>24128443
Most of post Socratic philosophy is a meme until post modernism. Because yeah you're right virtue is defined by the beholder and these retards didn't have the balls or the sense to see that

>"A horse is a horse, correct?"
>"Surely so."
>"And we all agree that the sky is best described as blue?"
>"Verily."
>"And sometimes it feels good to eat too much on a feast day, am I right?"
>"Of course!"
>"Well then everything else I said is an indisputable fact."
>"Socrates, dear friend, you have bested me. You are truly the greatest thinker of our time!"

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>>24135497
>"Goodness just springs from the mind of man uncaused!"
>"Man and his language are the sui generis creator of all value and meaning. Let's just take radical voluntarist Protestant theology and swap man in for God. Based!"

Postmodernism is sophistry.

>>24128443
gaylord fagrates

>>24132583
>And it helps explain why it is better for us to be better. For instance, someone could complain that Jeffrey Epstein would have been very happy if he was never exposed or caught, so virtue doesn't matter. But of course Epstein had some virtues, else he would not have made billions and made so many friends. Yet surely he would have lived a better happier life if he preferred meaningful romantic relationships, a healthy marriage and spiritual partnership, above coercing adolescents into sex.
This is a huge cope. I'm not saying you're wrong, but it is a cope with no further basis to it. Epstein could have been caught and *still* have been, overall, happier. Whether you believe it or not makes no difference to me. But at least entertain the thought. The choices one makes in life doesn't boil down to a simple risk-analysis of pleasure or even happiness. Ethics has to be beyond that or else nothing good is for the sake of the good.

>>24132670
He has sex with children actually

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>>24136527
The good is for the sake of the good. Man's highest happiness lies in the summon bonum, and the bonum vitae, the good life, is the life spent seeking the highest good. As MacIntyre puts it, the "good life for man is a life spent seeking the good life for man, and the virtues are those straights that make such a search possible and successful."

So, consider here why Aristotle makes the life of contemplation the highest human good in Book X of the Ethics, even though he certainly acknowledges that the good life can be active (similarly, the contrast between Martha and Mary in medieval thought, e.g. The Cloud of Unknowing). St. Thomas' section on the human good in the Summa Contra Gentiles is a good example too.

For, even the atheist must acknowledge that ataraxia, henosis, hesychasm, enlightenment, illumination, etc. are states of the human being, desirable states that allow one to be less dependent on mutable, earthly goods. Nor is universal benevolence and love a source of violence and crime.

The question, is of course, not whether a degenerate like Epstein can attain some modicum of pleasure if good fortune allows, but whether they can achieve the highest good. But the higher human goods are bound up in communal good—marriage, parenthood, spiritual mentorship, patriotic citizenship, etc.—and the degenerate excludes himself from full participation in these through his very outlook and orientation. The sin is the punishment, sin as the Augustinian incurvatus in se, curving inwards on oneself, no longer transcending what one currently knows and desires, the given of what we already are, in search of what is truly best, but rather settling for what one already has and is.

>>24136603
>Man's highest happiness lies in the summon bonum
And this is guaranteed by...?
>good life for man is a life spent seeking the good life for man,
And the highest good is thus the good of man? So, as in, mankind as a whole? Or for a certain man? What is this man? I've seen men of all kinds, but not man.
>So, consider here why Aristotle makes the life of contemplation the highest human good in Book X of the Ethics, even though he certainly acknowledges that the good life can be active
It's good that you brought up Aristotle's NE. Aristotle raises at one point phronesis to be the highest good, but then at another point contemplation. They are in conflict as they study completely different things.
>For, even the atheist must acknowledge that ataraxia, henosis, hesychasm, enlightenment, illumination, etc. are states of the human being, desirable states that allow one to be less dependent on mutable, earthly goods. Nor is universal benevolence and love a source of violence and crime.
What makes them desirable?
>The question, is of course, not whether a degenerate like Epstein can attain some modicum of pleasure if good fortune allows, but whether they can achieve the highest good. But the higher human goods are bound up in communal good—marriage, parenthood, spiritual mentorship, patriotic citizenship, etc.—and the degenerate excludes himself from full participation in these through his very outlook and orientation.
But even these higher goods are still worldly like degenerate hedonism. You make a categorical mistake linking the preserves of ascetic monks (ataraxia, hesychasm, etc.) with those of stakeholders (marriage, citizenship, etc.) while excluding the rank hedonists.

Again, I'm not saying that these aren't admirable. I'm telling you that you have a self-circular and question-begging approach to the good life. It will not bode well if you forget that you're holding onto these goods as a matter of faith. Jeffrey Epstein may very well have had enough pleasure to be worth even his ignoble undoing and thus the "risk-benefit analysis of doing good things" approach may be a foolhardy and self-defeating cope.

>>24136557
you LITERALLY can't write good literature if you don't do this

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>>24136669
It's not question begging. I mentioned my sources. No, I'm not going to lay out an entire ethnical theory in a 4chan post, but neither does writing "question begging" make it so. Aristotle starts from a definition, not an argument. The good is just what is choiceworthy, what things strive towards. The identity of what is best proceeds through careful dialectic.

"Believe that you might (eventually) understand," perhaps, but not blind faith. Whereas you seem just as committed to a blind faith approach of:
>Thou shalt not say having your life revolve around raping young girls is worse than any other approach to life.

Why not? Must we accept the modern notion that "skepticism is the first principle of philosophy." But this leads to all sorts of ridiculous conclusions, particularly when one gets to arguments from underdetermination. "Words never refer to anything," (Quine), "causes don't exist" (or exist in any explanatory sense, Hume, Russell, etc.), "individuals don't exist" (Hume, Nietzsche, postmodernism), "we don't exist and experience anything" (eliminativism, radical empiricism), "there is no way to ever know if you're following a rule" (Wittgenstein), "induction and so all of the empirical sciences is unsupportable and so based on blind faith," (Hume, etc.), "it is impossible to communicate with others who do not share the same beliefs as you, and impossible to know if anyone shares the same beliefs as you (some interpretations of Quine, Wittgenstein, etc.), "all knowledge is based on what is unknowable," (Wittgenstein, Rorty, etc.), "it's fine to appeal to things with brute fact explanations whenever it suits us, things happen 'for no reason at all,'"(much physicalism), nothing is truly true or false, but rather "true" is just a token in language games and means nothing more than the use of the token in some system (deflationism), "different contradictory truths are equally true because each field is a hermetically sealed magisterium,", etc., etc.

Wisdom or sophistry?

Only with such skepticism in play does one have to ho and hum over : it is bad for children to have mercury in their food," or "maybe the BTK killer lived just as good a life as St. Francis?"

But if philosophy is "the love of wisdom," is this sort of doubt wise? How can one love what one declared that one does not and can never know? As St. Augustine points out, even if Sophia herself presents herself to the skeptic, he is forced to deny her that he might be "wise" in withholding judgement. This is Hegel's "fear of error become fear of truth."

discord mod thread

>>24136726
>It's not question begging. I mentioned my sources.
You don't understand the argument. The sources are also question-begging, as well as your use of the arguments lifted from those sources.

You failed to answer any of the other massive contradictions I pointed out, and instead you irrelevantly rambled on about skepticism, so I guess this conversation is finished then. Thank you for your two cents and fifth-rate virtue ethics.

>all these pseuds who think the eudaimonia of virtue ethics is the same thing as pleasurable affective states
Dead board.

>>24136750
That's basically where we're at.
>I cited some dudes I barely understand, that means I'm not question-begging
fucking lol

>>24132591
>NOOOO STOP FUCKING LADYBOYS ALL THE FUCKING DAY THAT'S NOT VIRTUOUS!
I don't care

>>24136759
I’m not part of your argument and I think both of you are retards.

>>24128443
You can't define virtue propositionally for a similar reason to why you can't give an instruction manual for having a successful romantic date.

>>24136852
Okay Mr. Know-It-All.

>>24136743
Please point out where the question is begged. Simply saying it isn't an argument.

>>24136921
Fair enough, I appreciate that you're giving it a second trial. I will be clearer.
>>24136603
>The good is for the sake of the good.
This is already a problem. But I'll give it a pass because imho it's a cheap shot. We want to unfold what the good means.
>Man's highest happiness lies in the summon bonum, and the bonum vitae, the good life, is the life spent seeking the highest good. As MacIntyre puts it, the "good life for man is a life spent seeking the good life for man, and the virtues are those straights that make such a search possible and successful."
This is where the train leaves the tracks. e.g. Man's happiness is in the highest good, the highest good is what is good for man [thereby lowering it], the idea that happiness and good are correlated at all, etc. If you don't have an answer for this, then:
>The question, is of course, not whether a degenerate like Epstein can attain some modicum of pleasure if good fortune allows,
... is a cope. And it doesn't matter if you cite other thinkers if the arguments still remain the same. All you would have done is export the problem of question-begging from your own arguments to their arguments, and the problem remains.

Also, I noticed how you downplayed whatever excess Epstein must have enjoyed. Maybe he enjoyed a superlative amount of pleasure. You don't know that. This is a problem for your argument. Now, you made your argument implicitly about the sum of pleasure (or the connection between pleasure of happiness) one experiences, and you've reduced the debate to a risk-benefit calculus between two differing strategies. Do you see how this can be a problem?

There is more I can say, but let's begin with this for now.

>>24136669
>How do you know that the very best is better?

Because that's what it means to be the best. The counter argument here is to say that there is nothing that is truly best for man, something you only imply with this sophistry:

>And the highest good is thus the good of man? So, as in, mankind as a whole? Or for a certain man? What is this man? I've seen men of all kinds, but not man.

But if the first post is "begging the question" by assuming that some things are truly better or worse for man, than surely you are doing the same in simply implying the opposite.

But to assume "there are facts about what is truly better or worse for people," must be supported by question begging seems more likely to be itself a sort of question begging: "no, we must assume Hume's guillotine!"

We don't though. Hume's distinction only makes sense given some dubious assumptions. One doesn't need to assume "some things are truly better for man," there is plenty of evidence for this from the senses. Getting abducted, raped, and tortured being "bad for people," seems pretty damn factual. Likewise, "it is bad for animals to get their leg stuck in a bear trap."

>>24136921
>>24136946
>the highest good is what is good for man [thereby lowering it]
*thereby lowering it from something more divine and noble (unless you intend to make man the highest being in the universe, and thus man's good the highest good in the universe)

>>24136948
I don't know what Hume's guillotine has to do with anything I said in my post. The problem is that of what is good for the individual vs. what is good for the whole. You asked about what is good for man. Which man? All of mankind? What is mankind? What if this man and mankind are in conflict?

>>24136946
>This is where the train leaves the tracks. e.g. Man's happiness is in the highest good, the highest good is what is good for man [thereby lowering it], the idea that happiness and good are correlated at all, etc. If you don't have an answer for this, then:

So what, man's happiness lies in that is truly worse instead of what is truly better? I don't get how that can make sense unless you presuppose that there is no fact about what is truly better. It implies that we flourish more when we choose the worse over the better.

Maybe the issue here is taking "happiness" in the deflated modern English sense of "pleasant feelings," but that's not what I mean at all.

>>24136962
It seems applicable in that you are already presupposing a plurality of conflicting goods. Throughout pre-modern thought goodness always applies to unity and the whole, since it is involved in making anything any thing at all. Goals are what unify things such that they are actually distinct beings and not just heaps, bundles of external causes. This is why Aristotle suggests that it is organisms alone that are most properly beings. And Plato gives us the psychological narrative of how a man becomes more fully unified (and so more a self-determining, self-governing whole) through the pursuit of what is truly good and truly best. The pursuit is what makes reason transcendent and ecstatic, not some static attainment.

>>24132606
>TFW you realize that Solomon described contemporary philosophy to a T millennia ago.

>>24136965
>So what, man's happiness lies in that is truly worse instead of what is truly better?
I don't understand where you're drawing that from. I'm not saying that.
>Maybe the issue here is taking "happiness" in the deflated modern English sense of "pleasant feelings," but that's not what I mean at all.
Then what do you mean? There are people who pursue excellence in terms of their skills, their family, their place in society, etc., and yet they still feel miserable. Yet they trudge on.

In your word choice, even if you're referring to "happiness" as the translation of "eudaimonia" and nothing else, there is the implication that excellence leads to feeling good (and not merely realizing the potencies for "doing better" every which way that is latent in one's being). Otherwise, we would say virtue in place of happiness and let it be a burden that hangs over every honest man. There would be no need for this bait-and-switch tactic.

>>24136993
>There are people who pursue excellence in terms of their skills, their family, their place in society, etc., and yet they still feel miserable. Yet they trudge on.
No? Miserable people always kill themselves.

>>24128443
>A virtuous person is virtuous
I mean, that's a self-evident analytic judgement. Of course it's true.

>>24137116
Not at all lol. Maybe today because the average person is mentally weaker.

>>24137257
>Maybe today because the average person is mentally weaker
Source?

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>>24136993
>there is the implication that excellence leads to feeling good (and not merely realizing the potencies for "doing better" every which way that is latent in one's being).

Doesn't it? No doubt, virtue doesn't insulate one from the vicissitudes of fortune, but it can hardly be said that it is better for us to be less excellent, to be gluttonous, cowardly, rash, and imprudent, rather than temperate, courageous, and prudent, etc.

No doubt, unvrituous people sometimes benefit from good fortune. Yet even then, with fame, status, sex, wealth, etc. they seem miserable. How happy is Donald Trump, Justin Bieber, or the Jonas Brothers?

And indeed, a high degree of virtue does seem to insulate one from bad fortune. Does Socrates or St. Paul seem distraught or miserable in prison, facing death?

The counterexample to virtue ethics is not "but bad things happen to good people," or "bad people have good fortune," but rather "it would be better for the same person to be more rash, more wrathful, less loving, less prudent, less wise, more envious, less temperate, etc."

Although, Boethius would add that the "good fortune" of the wicked isn't even true good fortune, since it prevents them from becoming virtuous.

How happy was Gaddafi even before he fell? Or Stalin? Or Saddam? Their biographies make them seem fairly miserable. Musk does not seem to be a happy man either. Yet many people flourish with next to nothing.

I asked my aunt if she still went on 4chan and /lit/ in particular. “No,” she said, “it’s like freshman bathroom graffiti at this point.”

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>>24137399
Actually, the knock down argument against virtue ethics that runs through claiming that it isn't "good for us" to be virtuous would be to show that, ceteris paribus, it is better for a person if they are rash or cowardly, intemperate and anhedonic instead of temperate, lacking in fortitude instead of possessing it, rash instead of prudent, envious, wrathful, slothful, etc.

But this is a tough case to make because it's obvious that it isn't more conducive to a good life to be these things.

And if one values freedom, then one can also not ignore the way in which virtue is a prerequisite for self-determination and the capacity to do what one thinks is truly best, rather than being ruled over by the appetites and passions, run off by fear, suffering from weakness of will, etc.

Yet it IS good to be free precisely because the person who isn't free cannot have a self-determining happiness. They will be miserable when fortune turns against them.

>>24137399
You are such a fucking dumbass for thinking Plato and Aquinas and whatnot were saying “deep down the wicked man is sad :)”. Paragraphs on paragraphs of pseud posturing.

>>24137399
>Or Stalin?
Stalin was an extremely motivated, intelligent, and learned person. Same as Lenin. Their failings were not because of an excess of vice but rather because power is bloody and communism necessarily required an extremely bloody wielding of power. I often tell college bums that if Lenin and Stalin couldn't attain communism, what chance did they have?
>And indeed, a high degree of virtue does seem to insulate one from bad fortune. Does Socrates or St. Paul seem distraught or miserable in prison, facing death?
I never interpreted Socrates as happy as he was unjustly sentenced to death by his society.
>Doesn't it? No doubt, virtue doesn't insulate one from the vicissitudes of fortune, but it can hardly be said that it is better for us to be less excellent, to be gluttonous, cowardly, rash, and imprudent, rather than temperate, courageous, and prudent, etc.
Okay, but now that we've made explicit that "happy" in this sense has nothing to do with feeling good, we've moved away from any sense of virtue being good for any other reason than virtue is good. Also, comments like:
>And it helps explain why it is better for us to be better. For instance, someone could complain that Jeffrey Epstein would have been very happy if he was never exposed or caught, so virtue doesn't matter. But of course Epstein had some virtues, else he would not have made billions and made so many friends. Yet surely he would have lived a better happier life if he preferred meaningful romantic relationships, a healthy marriage and spiritual partnership, above coercing adolescents into sex.
no longer make any sense at this point in the conversation.

>>24137432
I know I'm arguing the other side, but it is true that Plato did say that the philosopher-king is 729 times happier than the tyrant, and that the tyrant is, deep down, miserable.

>>24137424
>Yet it IS good to be free precisely because the person who isn't free cannot have a self-determining happiness. They will be miserable when fortune turns against them.
The problem is the attempt to control life, even one's self. The more controlling you are, the more unhappy you will be when one is no longer in control.

>>24136474
pic is literally just rephrasing The Republic´s take on vices

>>24137432
First, no one said the wicked are always and universally "sad." I said it is not better for them to be wicked, that they cannot flourish as much while being wicked. No one is "absolutely wicked" because evil is non-being.

Second, Aquinas absolutely does think it is bad "for us" (not just bad in terms of some sort of sui generis 'moral good' unrelated to the human good, a distinction that is alien to his thought) to be wicked. Indeed, all goods are good through the Good, God. There is not a distinct human good and then a Good. Even the good of what merely appears to be good involved the possession/participation with the Good.

Aquinas says this explicitly over and over and one could not have read him and think otherwise because it is stated in explicit terms. This is not surprising, since it's a common view in his time. Boethius, for his part, spends the entire last third of the Consolation explaining why the wicked do not truly benefit from wickedness.

For instance, from the commentary on Job:
>After Eliphaz shows the anxieties of fear which the wicked man suffers even when his is in the state of prosperity, he now speaks about the bitter things by which he is consumed when he has been cast down in adversity

Aquinas also (rightly, IMO) attributes roughly this same thought to Aristotle:
>The Philosopher, too, says of the wicked (Ethic. ix, 4) that "their soul is divided against itself . . . one part pulls this way, another that"; and afterwards he concludes, saying: "If wickedness makes a man so miserable, he should strain every nerve to avoid vice."

>>24137446
>I never interpreted Socrates as happy as he was unjustly sentenced to death by his society.

The Phaedo, which tells the story of his actual death describes him explicitly as happy, and from the very beginning Phaedo describes how Socrates's followers have a "strange mix of pleasure and pain" because they will miss Socrates and naturally fear death, and yet Socrates is not perturbed (and spends his last moments alive convincing them this is better for him that giving into coercion and begging for mercy or escaping). Indeed, his last words seem to indicate that he sees himself as being freed from a disease.

Again, your not knowing the texts well does not make me a "pseud." It is impossible to read something like the Consolation or the Summa Contra Gentiles section on the human good and come away with the idea that these authors think the wicked ultimately benefit from their wickedness.

The main action of the Republic is Socrates explicitly rejecting Glaucon's suggestion that justice is only good in terms of other goods that it brings us, that it would be better to be a man who is merely "seen or thought to be just" then a man who "is just, but is thought to be unjust by others."

Obviously, this entire question is an implicit reference to the life of Socrates himself, who was condemned as a wicked criminal but who was actually just.

>>24139084
>non-being.
Not a thing. Evil is a thing, it is the difference of the good. The absence of something still contains a something else. A true nothing would be even more than unintelligible, it would not even be.
>>24139113
>(and spends his last moments alive convincing them this is better for him that giving into coercion and begging for mercy or escaping).
And what good would those options have done? It would have made him into a pathetic figure and in some way would have vindicated the charges against him. The fact that Socrates chose the least worst option does not mean he was satisfied with the broader context in which he persecuted. He's happy with the way he dealt his cards, not with the fact that those cards were dealt to him. Was Socrates happy that he was unjustly sentenced to death? That's an emphatic no. Was he willing to compromise his principles to avoid the sentence, or to avoid the execution of the sentence? Also no.
>The main action of the Republic is Socrates explicitly rejecting Glaucon's suggestion that justice is only good in terms of other goods that it brings us, that it would be better to be a man who is merely "seen or thought to be just" then a man who "is just, but is thought to be unjust by others."
Yes, and it spends 8 books trying and unsuccessfully answering Glaucon's charge, culminating in the just state requiring the elimination of everybody older than child so that nobody has memory of what was prior. The greatest attacks against the impossibility of city-in-speech emerge with the sudden reappearance of the "tamed" Thrasymachus in Book V. You're writing as if everything was tightly-wrapped into a bow by the end and it clearly was not.

>>24139113
Also I did not call you a pseud. That was another person. I even tried to strengthen your argument in response to him.

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>>24132583
>>24136726
>>24136603
>recommends MacIntyre's "After Virtue"
>possible midwit detected
>skim his posts
>"look how smart i am! I know all these guys and terms :))"
>midwit concluded
Man Why do i have to be so effing good at deduction baka baka

also OP, virtue is based but any system trying to describe it minutely in words is beyond cringe fr fr

>>24128443
>they

>>24132591
but anon, why are vices bad?

>>24139452
Simple. Freedom is the highest goal of any man, and vices lead away from that.

> Virtue i s an Idea and nobody can possess true virtue. It i s therefore just as
uncommon to call a man virtuous as it is to call him wise. Everyone tries to
come closer to virtue, as he does to wisdom; but in nobody is the highest
degree attained. We can conceive of a mean between virtue and vice, a
state of mediocrity, consisting only in the want of either. Virtue and vice
are positive things. Virtue is an aptitude, on moral principles, for overcoming
the inclination to evil. Holy beings are not virtuous, therefore, since
they have no inclination to overcome; their will is adequate to the law. The
man who is not virtuous is not yet vicious on that account; he is merely
lacking in virtue. But vice is something positive. The want of virtue is
mediocrity, but the contempt for moral laws is vice. Mediocrity consists
merely in not obeying the moral law; vice, however, in doing the very
opposite to it. The former is a negative thing, the latter a positive one. So
there is a great deal that falls under vice.

> In regard to his vices, man can go astray in two directions, that of
baseness, or brutality, where by violating duties to his person, for example,
he demeans himself below the beasts; and that of wickedness, or devilry,
where a man makes it his business to pursue evil, so that no good inclination
survives. So long as he retains a good disposition, and the wish to be
good, he is still a man; but if he commits himself to wickedness, he
becomes a devil. The state of vice is one of enslavement under the power
of inclination. The more a man is virtuous, the more he is free. He is
obdurate, if he has no wish to become better. The fellowship of virtue is
the kingdom of light, and the fellowship of vice the kingdom of darkness.
However virtuous a man may be, there are tendencies to evil in him, and
he must constantly contend against them. He must guard against the
moral self-conceit of thinking himself morally good, and having a
favourable opinion of himself; that is a dream-like condition, very hard to
cure. It arises when a man tinkers with the moral law, till he has fashioned it to suit his inclinations and convenience.

t. kant

>>24139129
> true nothing would be even more than unintelligible, it would not even be.
Yes. Hence evil as non-being in the Doctrine of Transcendentals.


>But bad things happened to Socrates.
Again, the counter example to virtue ethics is not "bad things happen to good people," but rather "it would be better for this same person to have been less wise, less prudent, more gluttonous, more licentious, more wrathful, more slothful, etc."

And a strong counter argument would be one that shows that, on average, ceteris paribus, it is better to be gluttonous, cowardly, rash, licentious, etc.

You keep falling back into a strawman of "if virtue ethicists are right than the wicked cannot experience any pleasure." Actually, this is quite the opposite of what they say. Concupiscence is a major challenge for man; he pursues lesser goods because they bring some pleasure with them.

There is, of course, the argument that "all fortune is good fortune," that Boethius presents, but this has to be understood in a very particular way and you're not going to understand it while still hung up on straw men like "Socrates can still catch a cold or get hit by a car, therefore virtue isn't choiceworthy!"

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>>24133338

>>24139787
Tranime website, sister

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>>24139541
>Freedom is the highest goal of any man, and vices lead away from that.
but anon, why is freedom good?

>The state of vice is one of enslavement under the power of inclination.
this isn't really argued, it's just stated. on what grounds do we assume that vice enslaves one to one's inclination? can one not do something vicious, then go on to do something virtuous?

furthermore: is freedom not the ability to do as one wishes? if one wishes to do something vicious, is the prohibition of vice not an abridgement of one's freedom?

>>24140546
>Bored anon trying to play devils advocate
look if u dont get it, u dont get it. There is nothing wrong with that, just dont waste somebodies time trying to play smart :^)

>>24139649
>Yes. Hence evil as non-being in the Doctrine of Transcendentals.
But evil is intelligible. There is a world full of it. If evil is unintelligible then the worse is also unintelligible and thus there is no difference between better and worse.
>"it would be better for this same person to have been less wise, less prudent, more gluttonous, more licentious, more wrathful, more slothful, etc."
Better by what metric? There is such a saying that ignorance is bliss. Unfortunately, you've slowly let go of the metric that you established in your first post, which was a vague sense of pleasant feelings and well-being as indicated here >>24132583, only to backtrack later.

>>24136670
Ok well find a kid then

>>24128464
An atheist is someone who denies his own Self.

>>24141516
Theists deny reality itself to believe in fairy tales

>>24141700
You're utterly clueless about what is a theist, and I am not surprised.

>>24141724
Theists believe in that which can't be seen.
I believe in that which I've seen to have been.
A theist fancies something false and sweet,
As for me--I stand on my own two feet.

>>24140546
>Why is freedom good?
Just consider Hegel's answer. Freedom presupposes happiness because man would not freely choose misery when he is free to choose happiness.

For St. Augustine, the soul that is perfected in Hell is, in a sense, incapable of sin. This is not a limit on freedom, but its perfection, for the same reason that being unable to trip and fall is not a limit on our freedom to walk, or being unable to crash is not a limit on our freedom to drive places.

The core premise here is that things are actually, truly, better or worse. Modern philosophy is so tied to the idea of either moral relativism or a sui generis "moral good" that is unrelated to other goods, that it often is unable to even understand the earlier ethics, despite it being far more coherent. There wasn't such great consensus on ethics not only in the West, but across much of the world, for so long, simply because our ancestors were stupider, or dogmatists. Indeed, your average educated medieval thinker or Renaissance humanist had far more of an education in philosophy, dialectical, and formal argument than your average person with a grad school degree today.

The ancients and medievals believed in facts about "values" (a modern term weighted with the flavor of the market) because the idea that the following statements aren't truth apt is rather bizarre:
>It is bad for bears to get their legs stuck in bad traps.
>It is bad for children to be exposed to high levels of heavy metals.
>Investing your life savings into Enron in 2001 or Bear Sterns in 2008 would have been a bad investment.
>In the 1990s, Michael Jordan is a better basketball player than the average toddler.
>A brand new, working car is a better car than the same model, which has been totaled, is rusted, and is missing half its engine.

Being committed to "there is no fact of the matter here," seems to often require no little bit of indoctrination.

Anyhow, supposing there is a fact about what is truly best, it then follows that no one ever freely chooses the worse over the better. If one chooses the worse over the better one either suffers from weakness of will or ignorance about what is truly best. But weakness of will and ignorance are both limits on freedom.

Such a view doesn't erase particularity. Some things are better for some people. Running is generally healthy, but not if you have a broken leg. There are non-pernicious, common sense instances of limited relativism, contextualism, and particularism. But it will mean that freedom is the self-determining capacity to actualize the Good, not some sort of amorphous potency to "do anything" (which bottoms out in contradiction anyhow, as Hegel shows, since choosing anything is a limit on this sort of "freedom as pure indeterminacy.")

The view where "

>>24135493
You’re right about the Epstein character and story arc for the masses. Too bad he is still alive in Israel.

>>24128443
>argue that Virtuosity is only one thing and is not composed of many things
>start analizing each "part" of virtuosity and dedicating one dialogue to them
>argue that courage is only virtuous if it's done with knowledge, otherwise you wouldn't be brave but a madmen
>argue that wisdom is also knowledge accumulated
>argue that justice is also knowledge
>argue that moderation is algo knowledge
>"Yeah a virtuous person is virtuous because they are, I don't have a single idea why"
Come on OP, you can do it!

>>24141781
>Just consider Hegel's answer. Freedom presupposes happiness because man would not freely choose misery when he is free to choose happiness.
why would freedom intrinsically lead to happiness? why would freedom lead someone to even know the difference between misery and happiness? this premise is so loaded up in false presuppositions that even a toddler having just been stopped by their father from stumbling off a ledge could point out how self-evidently retarded it is

>>24141833
Anon, that post even points out that ignorance has generally been seen as a limit on freedom. Your response amounts to "but how could someone be free supposing they aren't actually free?"

The point isn't particularly obtuse. Supposing someone is free to make themselves, that is supposing they know what will actually make them happy (i.e. overcoming ignorance as lack of freedom), free from weakness of will (also a limit on freedom), and from external constraints, they will choose to be happy as opposed to choosing to be miserable.

Even Milton's Satan must say "evil be thou my good." It doesn't make any sense to say "evil be thou evil *for me*" and then to pursue it.

Now of course, people sometimes face difficult tradeoffs due to external constraints. But external constraints are themselves a limit on freedom. If someone is free to be happy without tradeoffs why would they arbitrarily decide for misery instead? Why ever choose the truly worse over the better?

>>24128443
That's why you need God

>>24141944
>you
Who are you talking to? No need to project if you, personally, are unable to devise a moral framework without fear of punishment from an external deity.

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>>24141974
Only in a small set of corrupted theologies is morality dependent on God enacting extrinsic rewards and punishments that will be based on some sort of inscrutable sheer act of will. Such a view is alien to most of Christian history, or in the Pagan "God of the Philosophers," and only appears in the Reformation following several dubious philosophical moves such as:
>The univocity of being and denial of the Analogia Entis
>Nominalism
>A redefinition of freedom solely in terms of power/potency, such that "only doing what is good," was seen as a limit on divine freedom.
>The aforementioned also makes any freedom for creatures a limit of divine freedom and leads to Calvinistic thought.
>Forgetfulness of the Doctrine of Transcendentals, which led to guys like Luther positing that an unbridgable chasm of equivocity exists between the divine goodness and any goodness we know.

By contrast to the last, St. Thomas and others declare that anything good, or anything that even merely appears to be good, is good through relation to the Good, participation or possession of the divine goodness.

>>24141781
>Freedom presupposes happiness because man would not freely choose misery when he is free to choose happiness.
if freedom is merely a means to attain happiness, then freedom isn't valuable in itself. rather, we've accepted the utilitarian (i.e. non-virtue-ethics) point that happiness is the ultimate good.

this also assumes that man, at the moment when he chooses, knows what will make him happy. on what grounds do we assume this? often, the opposite seems to be the case.

>the idea that the following statements aren't truth apt is rather bizarre...
they can be truth-apt without a relation to virtue. i know that you're gesturing at the greeks here: a good knife cuts, a good car drives, a good human achieves eudaimonia, a thing is good insofar as it fulfills its essence. but there are ways to distinguish this kind of intuitive goodness without introducing essence at all.

hume, for examle, would say a knife is good because it is useful, not because it partakes in the ideal form of the knife or expresses the essence of knifehood. why get hung up on these abstractions when we can simply note that we have individual ends, for which certain things are helpful?

>Being committed to "there is no fact of the matter here," seems to often require no little bit of indoctrination.
i haven't committed to any stance. i've simply observed that there are lots of assumptions here, and that you can get a view which is both simpler and pragmatically as good without introducing a new concept like virtue, or "a fact about what is truly best."

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>>24136726
>anon writing this

>>24142818
I don't get this meme

>>24142710
>this also assumes that man, at the moment when he chooses, knows what will make him happy. on what grounds do we assume this? often, the opposite seems to be the case.

damn, it's almost like anon pointed out that ignorance is a limit on freedom. you are very dense.

>>24143334
then anon said two contradictory things, so we must interrogate which of the two, if any, is true

>>24141439
nigga quit on me =(

>>24132802
This guy fucks

>>24143480
I don't see the contraction.

Also:
>hume, for examle, would say a knife is good because it is useful, not because it partakes in the ideal form of the knife or expresses the essence of knifehood. why get hung up on these abstractions when we can simply note that we have individual ends, for which certain things are helpful?

No one thought this. Aristotle, the progenitor of essences, was dubious that artifacts had essences. This is a strawman of realism.

Hume, whatever his other merits, is largely ignorant of past philosophy and simply relies on the popular caricatures of his day. You should not rely on him for an understanding of past thought.

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>>24132802
>Whereas the man who has clothed himself in virtue, been washed in grace, knelt in penitent humility, and then risen garbed in the armor of faith, holding the sword of truth, and crowned in righteousness covets nothing. For he already possesses what is truly best. And he fears nothing because he knows that what one cannot lose is most important, while the gifts of fortune must all fade away.

based

how does one actually attain this though? pls help.

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>>24145050
Every defilement is a like cloud blocking your inner sun.
Reject your animal drives when they ask for more than they require.
Reject your egoistic thoughts for they are merely a hazy representation of what the world truly is.
Strengthen your body with exercise and restraint, so it becomes a servile servant of the mind, and cultivate your soul/inner self by virtuous deeds.

>Heaven is a city on a hill. Hence, we cannot coast into it, we have to climb

>>24145047
>This is a strawman of realism.
alright, then, on what grounds does a realist consider a knife good or bad?

>>24128443
Some people just want to watch the world prosper

>>24145424
Artifacts are judged on the grounds of whether they do what they are supposed to. They are what Aristotle calls "things existing according to craft," and are the products of men's intentions and so are judged by them. So a hunting knife that doesn't cut or a commuter car that won't start aren't good.

By contrast, there are those things that "exist from causes," mere heaps that are just bundles of largely external causes, e.g. a rock or a volume of water that has been placed in a glass but will easily separate. Then there are those things that "exist according to nature," things with natures, essences. So, for instance, divide the water in a cup or split a rock and you just have two volumes and two rocks. Split a cat in half and you have a corpse, substantial change.

The relationship between the good, having goal directedness at all, and unity, being more a distinct whole, is traced throughout the Physics and Metaphysics.

Hume would have it that all desire is either appetite or passion and inherently irrational because he has inherited a deflated vision of reason as mere calculation. Thus, what is "truly good" bears no direct relation to "what appears good," (i.e., what is currently desired). But this redefinition, aside from making ethics incoherent, isn't based on good reasoning. Men do desire to know the truth and what is truly good, and this is a desire of reason. "All men by nature desire to know."

>>24141700
non-sequitur we should evolve from shallow empiricism it's an outdated mode of thought that doesn't align with too many branches of science now like quantum mechanics, chaos theory or relativity.

>>24132583
I'm convinced through most people who have criticized the Greeks either have an entire misread in some way of their philosophies, (sometimes spotty avalibility of information granted in the past), or haven't actually engaged with it at all.

>>24146948
Ethics and the Good seem to be particularly hard for moderns. People seem to pick up on the idea that Aristotelian matter isn't anything like the early modern matter of materialism pretty quickly (a world of matter would imply a world of nothing but potency for Aristotle, which would be nothing at all, obviously wrong). They really cannot wrap their mind around the Good as an analogously predicated principle. People seem to think Plato made the Good the highest because "the best form just be Goodness, what could be 'better!'"

IDK, you'd have to assume our ancestors were quite dumb to think people thought that was a brilliant insight for almost 2,000 years, and that contemporary philosophers at top universities are also pretty dumb for finding it interesting. But people do seem to assume this.

>>24132583
>Epstein, when he loses his wealth, sex, and status, is driven immediately to suicide
lol retard

>>24145475
Not me

>>24146479
>Men do desire to know the truth and what is truly good, and this is a desire of reason. "All men by nature desire to know."
you and i might, but are we sure that this is true of all men? plenty of people i know actively shield themselves from painful truths. others express pride in their own ignorance. how do we account for their apparent desire not to know the truth?

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No I will not abuse my power

The humans must contend with what they are

>>24147823
Yeah a lot of empiricists specifically like Hume and Nietzsche get filtered.

I am virtuous