[HN Gopher] My Pal, the Ancient Philosopher
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My Pal, the Ancient Philosopher
Author : HR01
Score : 37 points
Date : 2024-12-18 13:46 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (nautil.us)
(TXT) w3m dump (nautil.us)
| pedroigor91 wrote:
| This philosopher's name wouldn't work in Brazil...
| the-chitmonger wrote:
| I tried looking up what Mengzi might mean in Brazil (or
| alternatively, in Portuguese) and couldn't find anything. Would
| you mind elaborating?
| t-3 wrote:
| Possibly from https://www.dicionarioinformal.com.br/mengar/ ?
|
| Just an aside, it's really bizarre that it's transliterated
| as Mengzi in the article. IMO, it would be much better to use
| the translation (Master Meng) or the far more common and more
| recognizable Mencius (which is at least mentioned).
| SalmonSnarker wrote:
| > Just an aside, it's really bizarre that it's
| transliterated as Mengzi in the article.
|
| Scholars over at least the last 15 years have been trending
| towards preferring Mengzi and Kongzi over Mencius and
| Confucius. Meng Zi is "Mengzi" not "Mencius"
| tyrust wrote:
| Thematically related recent piece about how Machiavelli and Du
| Bois had a similar perspective:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42127895
|
| Also, early this year I read Pigliucci's How to Be a Stoic. In
| that book the author often references that he had "conversations"
| with his "friend" Epictetus.
|
| All this to say: there might be something to this practice of
| befriending the dead.
| nchmy wrote:
| The best quote I know of on this topic comes from my first
| philosopher pal, Seneca. I've spoken with him and others on a
| daily basis for over 10 years - far more than I speak to living
| humans.
|
| He's impossible to quote, because nearly every sentence is
| quotable. But here's an excerpt (the opening sentences of the 3rd
| paragraph are what came to mind, but the rest is excellent).
|
| ---
|
| You should rather suppose that those are involved in worthwhile
| duties who wish to have daily as their closest friends Zeno,
| Pythagoras, Democritus and all the other high priests of liberal
| studies, and Aristotle and Theophrastus. None of these will be
| too busy to see you, none of these will not send his visitor away
| happier and more devoted to himself, none of these will allow
| anyone to depart empty-handed. They are at home to all mortals by
| night and by day.
|
| None of these will force you to die, but all will teach you how
| to die. None of them will exhaust your years, but each will
| contribute his years to yours. With none of these will
| conversation be dangerous, or his friendship fatal, or attendance
| on him expensive. From them you can take whatever you wish: it
| will not be their fault if you do not take your fill from them.
| What happiness, what a fine old age awaits the man who has made
| himself a client of these! He will have friends whose advice he
| can ask on the most important or the most trivial matters, whom
| he can consult daily about himself, who will tell him the truth
| without insulting him and praise him without flattery, who will
| offer him a pattern on which to model himself.
|
| We are in the habit of saying that it was not in our power to
| choose the parents who were allotted to us, that they were given
| to us by chance. But we can choose whose children we would like
| to be. There are households of the noblest intellects: choose the
| one into which you wish to be adopted, and you will inherit not
| only their name but their property too. Nor will this property
| need to be guarded meanly or grudgingly: the more it is shared
| out, the greater it will become. These will offer you a path to
| immortality and raise you to a point from which no one is cast
| down. This is the only way to prolong mortality - even to convert
| it to immortality. Honours, monuments, whatever the ambitious
| have ordered by decrees or raised in public buildings are soon
| destroyed: there is nothing that the passage of time does not
| demolish and remove. But it cannot damage the works which
| philosophy has consecrated: no age will wipe them out, no age
| diminish them. The next and every following age will only
| increase the veneration for them, since envy operates on what is
| at hand, but we can more openly admire things from a distance. So
| the life of the philosopher extends widely: he is not confined by
| the same boundary as are others. He alone is free from the laws
| that limit the human race, and all ages serve him as though he
| were a god. Some time has passed: he grasps it in his
| recollection. Time is present: he uses it. Time is to come: he
| anticipates it. This combination of all times into one gives him
| a long life.
| kragen wrote:
| Can you ever be a philosopher--a lover of wisdom--without loving
| those you have learned that wisdom from?
| rramadass wrote:
| Nice article. I had always held that Philosophy was an immensely
| practical discipline but bottled up by academia (after the
| scientific revolution) in meaningless debates/pointless
| nitpicking thus emasculating it of its vital essence. Philosophy
| was meant to be practiced, adjusted and modified for "Real Life"
| within a Worldview with certain inviolable core principles. Some
| books that i have personally found illuminating are (in no
| particular order);
|
| 1) _Epictetus ' Handbook and The Tablet of Cebes: Guides to Stoic
| Living_ by Keith Seddon - The author takes Epictetus's
| "Enchiridion"
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enchiridion_of_Epictetus) and adds
| detailed commentary to it thus giving you a deeper understanding
| of its practical philosophy. "The Tablet of Cebes"
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cebes#The_Tablet_of_Cebes ) is an
| allegorical tale of the structure of Life and the interplay of
| various factors affecting it; absolutely beautiful and one of my
| favourites.
|
| 2) The article's mention of Mengzi's "sprouts" reminds me another
| chinese text _Caigentan_ aka "Vegetable Roots Discourses"
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caigentan). Two good translations
| are the one by Robert Aitken/Daniel Kwok and the other by William
| Scott Wilson.
|
| 3) Hindu philosophy has multiple schools. One of the most ancient
| schools whose fundamental ideas have been taken into and modified
| by other schools is _Samkhya_
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samkhya). The beauty of this
| school is the way it defines and structures everything both
| material and non-material and distinguishes them from the "True
| us/self" (i.e. Consciousness/Awareness) into one unified
| framework. A good (and relatively easy to understand) translation
| of one of the main texts is _The Essence of Samkhya Karikas: The
| Foundation of Yoga Philosophy by Damini Dalal._
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