Anicius Manlius Severinus Boetheus: both reason and faith...

[AtlasShrieked]

I have a habit of knocking faith and religion because of how people usually use them. Yet I have very little issue with the basic premise that faith can be used to explain reality.

The weird thing is I found an interest in Boetheus and faith when reading, A Confederacy of Dunces.

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boetheus (c. 480-524) was a Roman philosopher who translated Aristotle and, in so doing, helped spread Aristotelian logic through Europe. He was an important official with the Theodoric, the Gothic king, but after he fell out of favor he was imprisoned and later executed.

While in prison, he wrote what would become his most famous work, Consolation of Philosophy. Although a devout Christian, this book contains no reference to Christian doctrines. Apparently Boethius believed that both reason and faith were equally valid ways of explaining reality and, having chosen to express himself with reason, found no need to say anything through faith. According to Boethius, it is possible to use reason to achieve some measure of happiness and peace, even in the face of adversity and evil.

This work was probably the most widely read and translated work after the Bible for the next millennium, proving to be enormously influential in the medieval Christian community. It is said of him that because he did so much to transmit the learning of antiquity to the Middle Ages, he should be called "the last of the Romans, the frist of the scholastics."

Reason and faith may both be equally valid ways of explaining reality, but unlike Boetheus I see others who may share this belief feeling a need to express themselves through faith in the face of adversity and evil.

How far modern man has fallen from Boetheus. Backwards towards the middle ages.

How many here or anywhere else have read Consolation of Philosophy, the most widely read and translated work after the Bible for a millennium?

...
'Happy is that death which thrusts not itself upon men in their pleasant years, yet comes to them at the oft-repeated cry of their sorrow. Sad is it how death turns away from the unhappy with so deaf an ear, and will not close, cruel, the eyes that weep. Ill is it to trust to

-2-

Fortune's fickle bounty, and while yet she smiled upon me, the hour of gloom had well-nigh overwhelmed my head. Now has the cloud put off its alluring face, wherefore without scruple my life drags out its wearying delays.
'Why, O my friends, did ye so often puff me up, telling me that I was fortunate? For he that is fallen low did never firmly stand.'

 

[AtlasShrieked]

okay, I hate neocons and liberals suck!!!


there, that should get a response, after all we all know we are here to post on subjects that interest us and flames and silliness do not really interest us.


lol

 

[editec]

Stoic acceptance of fate has fallen from favor.

Pure faith is mocked by those who imagine that their faith is founded upon logic and reason.

No I have never read this guy's work.

I'll put it on the list of books I should read if I ever stop wasting my time writing here.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

I do not believe in absolute fate. If Fate runs everything, what point is there to living?

We have Free Will and we have the ability to use it or not.

As for reason. Of course REASON does not require religion. Especially man made churches.

Reason IS. I do not need to even know a God Exists to reason.

However religion can be a helping tool depending on what you are working on.

 

[AtlasShrieked]

Stoic acceptance of fate has fallen from favor.

Pure faith is mocked by those who imagine that their faith is founded upon logic and reason.

No I have never read this guy's work.

I'll put it on the list of books I should read if I ever stop wasting my time writing here.

Stoic acceptance of fate has fallen from favor? Maybe, but was it ever in favor? I think it is situational and I have been stoic about my fate when faced with reality.

Pure faith is so rare I have no idea how it could be mocked, and logic and reason are not really a form of faith.

That one tome, has influenced most all us more than any other secular book any of us have ever read.

There are better books to read on philosophy. I am no expert.

 

[AtlasShrieked]

I do not believe in absolute fate. If Fate runs everything, what point is there to living?

We have Free Will and we have the ability to use it or not.

As for reason. Of course REASON does not require religion. Especially man made churches.

Reason IS. I do not need to even know a God Exists to reason.

However religion can be a helping tool depending on what you are working on.

Boetheus' fate was in the context of being imprisoned for his beliefs. I remember the first time I was being detained (lasted months) and having a stoic acceptance to my fate. It made being a MP (took me out of training at the last minute) in training and being locked up easy if not nothing to struggle with.

I am always fascinated by what people mean when they say we...humans, have free will.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Boetheus' fate was in the context of being imprisoned for his beliefs. I remember the first time I was being detained (lasted months) and having a stoic acceptance to my fate. It made being a MP (took me out of training at the last minute) in training and being locked up easy if not nothing to struggle with.

I am always fascinated by what people mean when they say we...humans, have free will.

Free will means no outside force dictates your life , as in fate. Obviously our choices are going to be dependent mostly on our circumstances. BUT we will always have choices.

You chose to be stoic under the circumstance presented to you. No outside force made that choice for you. Believe me one does not have to be such even in jail.

I want nothing more than to die. Yet I chose to take medication and see doctors that help me control that urge. I chose to mostly not act even when it was over powering to do so. I have a chemical imbalance of some kind that makes me just about permanently depressed. Have had it my whole life. Until 1994 I controlled it and accepted easily living and participating in life. I was a successful Marine GySgt ( something my Naval Doctor told me I should never have been able to do, according to her I should never have survived boot camp.)

I chose by free will to live or die. I chose to get up every morning and participate to a small extent in life. Religion helps me at times with my choices. Sometimes though it feeds my problems too. There is no puppet master pulling my strings.

My survival is partially dependent on my medications. But even that is by CHOICE. I do not have to take those medications. I do not have to go see my doctors every week.

 

[AtlasShrieked]

Free will means no outside force dictates your life , as in fate. Obviously our choices are going to be dependent mostly on our circumstances. BUT we will always have choices.

You chose to be stoic under the circumstance presented to you. No outside force made that choice for you. Believe me one does not have to be such even in jail.

the stoicism I spoke of comes from acceptance. Do not confuse that with weakness for it is my observation that the weak of will and mind and spirit often fight when acceptance is the better choice or is needed. This is because the weak cannot face things and lack critical thinking faculties. Survival is all, but at what cost? How we survive matters as much as how we live and choose to live.

I want nothing more than to die. Yet I chose to take medication and see doctors that help me control that urge. I chose to mostly not act even when it was over powering to do so.

I have a chemical imbalance of some kind that makes me just about permanently depressed. Have had it my whole life.

It has also been my observation that people who say they want to die really just want the pain (whatever that is) to stop. It is like smokers or drunks or drug addicts. They mostly do not want to kick the habit as much as they want the bad things that come with the habit to go away. That is why I think the failure rate for quitting and recovery is so high.

When people truly want to quit, they quit, and having been around suicide both failed and successful, I can say people who want to die, die.

I wonder what you are experiencing. I am of the opinion that depression breeds more depression and that certain forms of talk therapy only feed the beast without addressing the overriding issue

Drugs? I did a few drug therapy regimens for mental/psychological reasons that came with an infection of the brain and another medical physical issue ---seizures of the temporal lobe. I viewed the regimens as a way to help me navigate the way back to 'normalcy' and that is what (some debate it) has happened.

I feel chemical reactions in the brain can sometimes be manipulated or suppressed without drugs. I used drugs hoping it would give me the extra power in controlling the reactions and withdrew slowly: drugs used/viewed as training wheels.

I know a few very depressed people and they depress me.

good luck.

Until 1994 I controlled it and accepted easily living and participating in life. I was a successful Marine GySgt ( something my Naval Doctor told me I should never have been able to do, according to her I should never have survived boot camp.)

See? I wonder if your naval doctor is just telling you what you want to hear? I wonder what other doctors would say?
I mean NO disrespect at all.

I did the whole psyche test routine, neurologists, etc. I even looked into OCD and manic depression at one time and got a few of the the docs I went to to admit they thought most of it was hooey. but...

lol

If you see a psychiatrist it is different than a therapist which is different than a psychologist, which is different than an analyst. (at least in these here parts)

almost forgot lcsw...but I have an intense alergic reaction to social workers of any kind.

I chose by free will to live or die. I chose to get up every morning and participate to a small extent in life. Religion helps me at times with my choices. Sometimes though it feeds my problems too. There is no puppet master pulling my strings.

My survival is partially dependent on my medications. But even that is by CHOICE. I do not have to take those medications. I do not have to go see my doctors every week.

you situation is not that unusual and neither is your treatment,.

how old are you?

 

[Ravi]

I do not believe in absolute fate. If Fate runs everything, what point is there to living?

We have Free Will and we have the ability to use it or not.

As for reason. Of course REASON does not require religion. Especially man made churches.

Reason IS. I do not need to even know a God Exists to reason.

However religion can be a helping tool depending on what you are working on.

Another reason to despise Islam. Allah wills it, how fatalistic and hopeless can you get?

 

[AtlasShrieked]

ahhh, but one can be stoic without being a fatalist?

 

[manifold]

How many here or anywhere else have read Consolation of Philosophy, the most widely read and translated work after the Bible for a millennium?

Looks like a worthwhile read. I'd never even heard of it, thus piling on yet more evidence supporting my thesis that the more I learn the less I seem to know.

 

[editec]

Stoicism and fatalism are not at all the same thing.

From Wikipedia:

Stoicism teaches the development of self-control and fortitude as a means of overcoming destructive emotions; the philosophy holds that becoming a clear and unbiased thinker allows one to understand the universal reason (logos). A primary aspect of Stoicism involves improving the individual&#8217;s ethical and moral well-being: "Virtue consists in a will which is in agreement with Nature."<SUP class=reference id=cite_ref-Russell_1-1>[2]</SUP> This principle also applies to the realm of interpersonal relationships; "to be free from anger, envy, and jealousy",<SUP class=reference id=cite_ref-Russell1_2-0>[3]</SUP> and to accept even slaves as "equals of other men, because all alike are sons of God."<SUP class=reference id=cite_ref-Russell5_3-0>[4]</SUP>
The Stoic ethic espouses a deterministic perspective; in regards to those who lack Stoic virtue, Cleanthes once opined that the wicked man is "like a dog tied to a cart, and compelled to go wherever it goes."<SUP class=reference id=cite_ref-Russell_1-2>[2]</SUP> A Stoic of virtue, by contrast, would amend his will to suit the world and remain, in the words of Epictetus, "sick and yet happy, in peril and yet happy, dying and yet happy, in exile and happy, in disgrace and happy,"<SUP class=reference id=cite_ref-Russell1_2-1>[3]</SUP> thus positing a "completely autonomous" individual will, and at the same time a universe that is "a rigidly deterministic single whole".
Stoicism became the foremost popular philosophy among the educated elite in the Greco-Roman Empire,<SUP class=reference id=cite_ref-4>[5]</SUP> to the point where, in the words of Gilbert Murray, "nearly all the successors of Alexander [...] professed themselves Stoics."<SUP class=reference id=cite_ref-5>[6]</SUP>

<SUP></SUP>
<SUP>Fatalism has different meansings so I'll just give you a link that might help explain them better than I can:</SUP>
<SUP></SUP>
Fatalism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

The question of free will is an interesting one.

If you accept that your thoughts are entirely the result of activity in your brain, I find it difficult to reconcile that with free will.

If you believe, as I do, that there must be more to the human condition than what we currently understand of the physical universe, then the condition of free will might still make sense....but it has to be a sense in some way that (as yet, knowing what we know of the universe) we rationalists might think of as magical thinking.

My point here is to assume that one has free will, but that we are simply blobs of smart protoplasm which arrived at this state by chance, and that the knowable universe is all that is, is logically impossible.

If we are entirely beings in the physical universe, then our thoughts are as much prisoners of the laws of the physcial universe as that of any inanimate objects which of course suggests that free will is merely an illusion of the equally misleading EGO structure which is cobbled together in our early development.

 

[AtlasShrieked]

The question of free will is an interesting one.

The question of free will is an interesting one.

If you accept that your thoughts are entirely the result of activity in your brain, I find it difficult to reconcile that with free will.

Why? It is the brain that controls thoughts or the processes. Even if the sense of smell sets off a thought, is that not brain activity? If you damage the part of the brain that controls smell then smell will not set off thoughts or memories. New memories based on smells will not be stored because they will not exist in some sense. but they do don't they?

I have no problem believing we stem from 'blobs of smart protoplasm' and am content with that if that is all there is, but I suspect there is more. nothing magical, but more for once something is explained it is hardly magic, although it can still strike awe in us.

We are so simple in our complexity I am sure we will take a very long time to understand it all. We humans have a habit of making assumptions and connections that always seem to get in the way of truth. Simplicity is one of the hardest things for us to grasp. ever wonder why that is? I have and it has me stumped.

With my natural curiosity mixed with my personal and medical make up I have had the chance and reason to question some things like I had never before. I think we are a deluded species. I think awareness of the world around us is hidden by some defense mechanism that keeps us safe...safe being in denial.

The truth is out there, and it is what the christian mystics and monastics and others sought with great effort only to find without great effort what is hidden is revealed if one truly wishes to see---truth.

how's that for a crockofshit?

If you believe, as I do, that there must be more to the human condition than what we currently understand of the physical universe, then the condition of free will might still make sense....but it has to be a sense in some way that (as yet, knowing what we know of the universe) we rationalists might think of as magical thinking.

My point here is to assume that one has free will, but that we are simply blobs of smart protoplasm which arrived at this state by chance, and that the knowable universe is all that is, is logically impossible.

If we are entirely beings in the physical universe, then our thoughts are as much prisoners of the laws of the physcial universe as that of any inanimate objects which of course suggests that free will is merely an illusion of the equally misleading EGO structure which is cobbled together in our early development.

thoughts prisoners? you need help.
you say more about yourself here than you realize. what is IT you seek?

8)

 

[Diuretic]

I'm not insightful. But the other day I was thinking, "what if consciousness is nothing more than the subjective impression of brain function?"

Okay, I admit it, I tend towards nihilism - but only at times.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

What a stupid claim. That because your brain does the thinking you have no free will.

 

[Diuretic]

What a stupid claim. That because your brain does the thinking you have no free will.

Is that for me? Just checking.

 

[AtlasShrieked]

What a stupid claim. That because your brain does the thinking you have no free will.

the stupid thing is you posting a thought without referencing who you are replying to if anyone other than the voices in your head.

 

[editec]

If one accepts the premise that the brain is a physical process, a bio-feedback mechanism if you will (and that is basically the scientific theory d' jure, the brain is basically a pattern recognition machine) then what we percieve as FREE WILL is merely the outcome of inevitable chemical processes with enormous random (read choas theory) possibilities built into it by the nature of those electro-chemical processes.


If one believes that the above description is all there is to it, then FREE WILL is a delusion but a damned convincing one.

I don't actually believe that, BTW, but as yet nobody has advanced an argument which, in my opinion, is superior to that theory.

 

[Diuretic]

And what if what we think is "culture" is actually the product of collective/shared subjective impressions as a result of brain function?

 

[Ravi]

And what if what we think is "culture" is actually the product of collective/shared subjective impressions as a result of brain function?

Like those tribes that ran to higher ground when the tsunami was coming without any kind of notification?