Wed Oct 18, 2006

GARY. C. MOORE: - quote:

32. When you have recourse to divination, remember that you do not know what the outcome will be, and you have come to learn it from the diviner; but you do know beforehand what kind of thing it must be, if you are a philosopher. [revised by my version]

This reflects what I just read above in 31 where, if you simply insert  *natural law* for *gods* and *respect for natural law and objective reality* for  *piety*, the words that follow do not at all contradict the substitution. Epictetus simply describes the normal course of nature and man's rational use of it with absolutely no sense of divine miraculous intervention whatsoever. This is where most disputes can resolve down to if both parties are rational, that if logic and objective reality are the only standards of truth, then only certain things can happen regardless of whether you call it *god* or *nature* or *spirit*. For instance, how contrasting to Christian practice is Epictetus statement in 31:


QUOTE
*It is impossible, then, that one who supposes himself to be harmed should rejoice in what he thinks is harming him, just as it is impossible to rejoice in the harm itself.* END QUOTE


GARY. C. MOORE:
There is no *suffering evil* here because there is no *evil*. What is *bad* is a mistake, and suffering mistakes is not full of merit but simply stupid.


RICHARD SANSOM:
Gary, what an excellent way of putting it - well put! But the *mistake* is the abrogation of personal responsibility to see all sides of something - even of *natural law* and its possible ramifications in life.


GARY. C. MOORE:
To truly see all sides of something is extremely difficult but none the less absolutely necessary. It is like on the Stoic lists-

INTERJECTION.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stoic_counseling
http://www.geocities.com/numinism
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stoicschoolofphilosophy
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Epic_Stoics ***
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stoic_practice
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stoics ***

The ones with red asterisks are the ones most active.


RESUMPTION:
They want things in short snippets. But how can this possibly present all sides of the story? It is like my one about rhetoric, one has to understand what it means to the ancients. And as to philosophy, have I already said the following? ---- If your car breaks down, you get it to a mechanic and pay him to repair it. But if you are on the road in the middle of nowhere and your car breaks down, you have no option other than to try to fix it or walk forever with no possible knowledge there will be help to be obtained at all. There are no life mechanics one can trust, though many advertise themselves as such. You either learn to do it yourself or you are screwed.

Now, about my remark about Jud being *delightfully brutal*, it was in reference to his battles on the Heidegger lists. He has an ADMIRER in Marcus Aurelius who said of Aristophanes and the Old Comedy at MED. XI, 6:

QUOTE:
*First of all tragedies were put on the stage to remind you of what comes to pass and that it is Nature’s law for things to happen like that, and that you are not to make what charmed you on the stage a heavy burden on the world’s greater stage. For you see those events are bound to have that ending . . . . After Tragedy was introduced the Old Comedy, which through its INSTRUCTIVE FRANKNESS [my capitals - paidagoogikeen parreessian hexousa, kai tees atuphias ouk axreestoos dia autees tees euthurreemossunees upomimneesskousa] and its reminder by ACTUAL PLAINESS OF LANGUAGE to avoid vanity was not without profit, and this DIRECTNESS Diogenes the Cynic also adopted [Alexander the Great: **What can I do for you, Diogenes?** Diogenes: **Get out of my light.** pros oion ti kai Diogenees tauti parelambanen] with a somewhat similar object. After the Old, observe what the Middle Comedy was like and afterwards with what end the New Comedy was adopted, passing little by little into a love of technique based on imitation [epi teen ek mimeeseoos philotexnian uperruee, episteeson also translated as **which little by little degenerated into ingenious mimicry**]. It is recognized that there are profitable sayings of these authors also, but after all what was the object to which the whole aim of such poetry and drama looked?** END QUOTE



By the way, Richard, I really appreciate the Epictetus quotes ACCORDING TO SUBJECT MATTER!!!! I think it will be very helpful, and if you find more, I would appreciated seeing them! The DISCOURSES is a seemingly simple book like WAR AND PEACE and THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV. Reading the ENCHIRIDION, which you made me do, has shown me that not only is it a well styled literary work in itself, but definitely proves, at least to me, the absolutely superb literary talents of Arrian of Nicomedia! Comparing the two, seeing how extremely different they are, and how different the effect on the reader is, is awesome! Arrian was the first Greek to climb to the top social and political offices under Hadrian, became governor of Cappadocia, a crucial border provinve of the Empire and stayed as governor of that province for twice the length of time normal for a governor, proving Hadrian thought he was indispensable.

     Also the Stadler book I am reading on Arrian states that the Xenophon version of Socrates was highly appreciated by the Stoics, though they loved Plato’s Socrates as well. I have not run across a judgment by the Stoics of Aristhophanes’ Socrates that Kierkegaard loved so much. What I remember of my pathetic attempt to read Xenophon on Socrates was, *HOW TRIVIAL!!!!!* Very practical, all too much down to earth. You might research him. I am obviously prejudiced. It does not necessarily mean reacting violently to someone else's *bad* - at first you correct them, showing their actions are against their own self-interest - THEN you leave them alone to their self destruction, if possible, and reflect how you yourself have made the same mistakes and thought the same way - and then, here is the kicker, if your life is just a meaningless blade of grass merely enjoying this moment of life as much as possible THEN so is every one else's and THIS means *Kill the son-of-a-bitch if he is a real problem.*

RICHARD SANSOM:
The only thing wrong in that last part is this: I do not see Epictetus saying that we are all alike in regards to our actions and reactions - as you suggest. What we [should] feel about ourselves in relation to others is: we are who we are, and they are who they are, and we have no cause or right to label them in any way.


GARY. C. MOORE:
The point is, PREMISES, PREMISES, PREMISES. We all act logically and appropriately from our premises, but few even really know clearly what their premises are!!!!!!

     You do not sacrifice your life for someone else's as the highest moral act. The Stoic sees stupid as stupid, period. Sacrificing oneself for any reason would be the height of irrationality. Epictetus says in the DISCOURSES one should enjoy one's life like being at a banquet, and when the banquet is over, leave. This is not just something that applies uniquely to oneself but is a judgment of the value of all human - and divine - life. You might enjoy my company but my life is no absolute value to you at any cost. Stupidity maybe a person's right but it is never a virtue.


RICHARD SANSOM:
I am not sure about the above. Does it not depend on what one feels about themselves in regard to things like sacrifice?


GARY. C. MOORE:
NO *feeling*, just what you truly know and have examined objectively


RICHARD SANSOM:
If he is saying, as I believe he does, that self-honesty and self-obedience is paramount, then if one feels,

GARY. C. MOORE:
NO *feels*. You are suppose to have AND KNOW your guiding principle, why it is in your best interests, and abide RIGIDLY ONLY to that!!!!
****

RICHARD SANSOM:
. . . for whatever reason,

GARY. C. MOORE:
*Reason*, yes, but this should be taken strictly and literally, that is, you seek to understand their *reasons*, not feelings. See chapter 42. *Feelings* are merely the results of the reasons which are the basic premises one has accepted. And without logically examining those premises, your *feelings* are going to lead you to do things you discover you do not *like* at all!!!! No is no relativism in Stoic morality, that is, IN PRINCIPLE!!!! See chapter 30 how *social relationships* determine our situational, existential morality and *feelings*. It is presented as - If you accept such-and-such, then you MUST act in such-and-such a way!! It is a choice! You CHOOSE to be bound by such rules! They are neither necessarily bad or good, but if you make a promise, an agreement, then you MUST abide by it!


RICHARD SANSOM:
. . . their morality is best for them, that morality can encompass various kinds of sacrifice - if given honestly and without bravado.

GARY. C. MOORE:
This is perfectly true, BUT IS ACTING IN SUCH A WAY LOGICALLY CORRECT ACCORDING TO YOUR TRUE SELF-INTEREST? Epictetus, as in chapter 42, understands people act consistently from their unexamined premises. What he is saying is, If one thoroughly, honestly, nakedly examine those premises, you will find you come to the same conclusions as I do because MY conclusions are based solely upon NATURE and its RATIONAL LAWS! That is, they are not really *my* conclusions at all but simply the examined nature of simply being human.


RICHARD SANSOM:
I must ask: What IS stupidity, in this context?

GARY. C. MOORE:
Acting upon unexamined premises, OR as Socrates said it, *The unexamined life is not worth living*.

RICHARD SANSOM:
At the first of the document, he says that one has control over certain things and no control over other things, which makes perfect sense. I would venture that, regarding *stupidity,* this translates as behaving contrary to this thesis - i. e. acting as if you HAD control over domains that you cannot have control over, and/or going against the things you DO have control over - i. e. giving such control over to other people or institutions.

GARY. C. MOORE:
But what Epictetus says is that the ONLY thing you have control over is your self - AND what you give assent to, permit to enter into your self as valuable!!!


RICHARD SANSOM:
This being the case, we do have control over our choices of sacrifice - not so?

GARY. C. MOORE:
Perfectly true. What are your premises for doing so?
Does that not take it out of the realm of being stupid, to exercise that control and act as we feel we should act for some personal and defensible reason?
What do you think now, considering my answers? Very interesting and compelling discussion, this!

                                            THE STOIC NOTION OF TIME.

GARY. C. MOORE:
Jud Evans will be interested in this if I can write it quickly before going to work. It is about the contrast between time in the Stoics, most explicit in Marcus Aurelius, and time in Paul’s Christianity and Heidegger.


*** It comes, off the top of my head, from Paul Hadot’s book on Aurelius, THE INNER CITADEL, but I have already noted many passages attesting to this in my reading from first page to last of the MEDITATIONS. At first, it seemed Aurelius’ point was merely that, since the central crux of moral decision, that is, assent, is whether to judge indifferent sense impressions, the death of one’s child for instance, as good or bad or let them stay indifferent - even though they may have an initial uncontrollable shock value - so that they do not control, overwhelm our rational state of mind that should be maintained at all costs. Although this is accurate, none the less the Stoic emphasis on the present amplifies in that, fundamentally and never to be forgotten, man lives within nature and as a natural being is determined in his actions and the past and future are destined which, in Epictetus’ primary terminology at the beginning of the ENCHIRIDION means they are not in our control and are therefore basically indifferent objects or concepts. Regarding them as such attains the same end as I have argued before that they do not exist but not ending with the same conclusions.


*** QUOTE:
*For Destiny, there is neither future nor past, but everything is determined and definite . . . Walking is ‘present’--that is, it belongs to me currently--when I am walking. The past and the future, by contrast, do not currently belong to me. Even if I think about them, they are independent of my initiative and do not depend on me. Therefore, the present has reality only in relation to my consciousness, thought, initiative, and freedom. It is these which give it a kind of thickness and duration, which in turn is linked to a series of unities : of the meaning of the discourse which I utter, of my moral intention, and the intensity of my attention.
END QUOTE, pages 136-7

GARY. C. MOORE:
This, then, might be seen as providing a kind of ‘space’ in which ‘freedom’ of assent or non-assent can operate in a sense purely relative to Natural determininism.]. When Marcus speaks of the present, he is always talking about this durative present, which has a kind of thickness. Clearly, it is within this present that I situate the representation which I am having at this moment, the desire I am feeling at this moment, and the action which, at this moment, I am performing. It is also this ‘thick’ present, however, which I can lessen by circumscribing it and delimiting it in order to make it more bearable . . . . We have seen how Marcus compared life to songs and to dance. Songs and dance are made up of units--notes and movements--which have a certain thickness, however slight it may be. Now, a succession of unreal entities can never be put together so as to give rise to a dance, a song, or life. Moreover, when Marcus speaks of the present in terms of a point within infinity, we can tell from the context that he is still talking about a lived present which has a certain thickness . . . He is affirming--in a very scientific way, so to speak--[the world’s relative smallness within the immensity of the Whole, and not their non-existence. Once again we are dealing with the method of ’physical’ definition.*


The Stoic notion of the insignificance of death gets a different slant here as being in the determined future completely out of our control whereas in Paul and Heidegger the problem of death is of such great intensity it must be solved either by a faith in an afterlife or an overcoming in a fundamental presupositionless choice which can dissolve any real basis to any kind of moral action leaving it up to the whimsy of personal feeling and private history. The Christian and Nazi purview gives the future a great sense of dread, importance, and even grandeur whereas the Stoic concentrates on one’s individual, physical present, and diminishes even that to a mathematical point of nothingness, of no importance whatsoever making all dread of death and its grandeur seem foolish.


BERNARD BOVASSO:
If it is not in our control, then fogedaboudit! Or, what you don't know cannot hurt you! This sounds like the Stoic way of overcoming death. Although the means are different than the Christian relation to death the ends are the same. But because the forgetfulness of the Stoic approach is induced, or I would say *forced,* any notion of eschaton is willfully blocked out of mind. No matter how you slice it, this is the approach of the object-seeking extravert, or what W. James chidded as the *healthy-minded* and whose obscured (unconscious) complement is the subject or self-seeking introvert. But because it is unconscious it is extremely dangerous, cruel and deadly when it manifests as was the case with both the Roman and Nazi approach to death. Stoicism, accordingly, would be the polite persona of a killer (of self or other) caricatured by the three monkeys, I see no evil, I hear no evil and I speak no evil. And I thus excuse myself because I am no more than a dot of shit in the face of the unkowable vastness of the universe. But keep an eye on this monkey. It is the same Neitzschean ape who skips over the tightrope or perhaps our own King Kong who climbs to the top of the world quite oblivious to his future. Yet, the Stoic *ape* retains the privilege of the logos spermatikos as complement to the womb of the unknown. In that case, like Fay Wray, the feminine is but an ungraspable circle of nothing whose center is everywhere and its boundary nowhere that was noticeable to the *physiologoi* Anaxamander as *apieron* long before Sophistry and Stoicism came into fashion. Plato later refered to it as *xwpa,* the interior space as complement to topos. Sincerely; Bernard


RICHARD SANSOM:
While I might agree in some sense, that concern and worry over death might, for some, be seen as a waste of time, it is incontrovertible that, having the awareness of impending and inevitable death [as witnessed and experienced from youth onwards] gives one a sense of dread and apprehension that cannot be ignored. While the stoic [a genuine one] might see death as inconsequential in terms of the significance of the moment of living, most folks are not stoics. They fear death; they take precautions [at least many do] against aging and death. I am not at all convinced that this aspect of stoicism is genuine in the way it is presented. Death is not a trivial matter. The terminus point of ones life is the most singular moment of reckoning as to what their life was and meant to them and to others. Facing death is not like facing any other kind of event in ones life. To believe that awareness and concern over ones death is without value or meaning seems foolish and not realistic. Of course I can imagine one who sees it as nothing of value, but surely they are in the minority. I am seventy-three. I do not have that long to live. While the dark figure of death does not darken my every moment, it is there in the shady moments of reflection that intrude from time to time, and I do think on what I have done and not done in life that might be of some value in the sum total of my life – what I have done, who I may have touched, etc. If this means I am no stoic, so be it. If one lives more fleetingly, not caring about these things, then they are, IMO of a different breed of human from me. Other aspects of the stoic attitude are appealing and I embrace them. But death is a special matter, at least for me. If I was forty, I might have a more forgiving attitude in this regard! And I might add -- for the stoic, death might be seen as no more important than picking ones teeth - but it is not the moment of death that is the issue, it is all that has gone before in ones life; if all that is also no more important than picking ones teeth, the life is simply no more important than that. Is that the stoic belief?


JUD EVANS:
I too like Richard have had an awareness of the reality and inevitability of death from a very early age. I agree also that the awareness of impending and inevitable death [as witnessed and experienced from youth onwards] gives one a sense of dread and apprehension that cannot be ignored. I also believe that we should not dwell on death and allow it to become an obsession, but rather *take it in our stride,* which is a rather weak way of saying that we should try to put it in proportion and even be prepared to welcome it should the occasion arise.
 

     Like Heidegger, for a time, in my early twenties, I harboured the supercilious and arrogantly superior belief that because I was aware of this foregone conclusion, which seemed to colour and influence and add an air of romantic, touching, sadness or mysterious idealist morbidity to all my doings and relationships - that  the *others* - those I perceived to be oblivious or perhaps contemptuous of  their inevitable deaths -  were intellectually inferior.


For a few adolescent years it was a wonderfully wistful wallowing in self-obsessed lugubriousness verging upon  weepiness, or perhaps it was no more than ennui at my perception of the seeming reluctance of my fellow citizens to recognise my  self-estimated uniqueness?

       Like most of us I threw off this infantilism, and it was *bonjour tristesse* as I matured and joined the army and became a man, [are we all unconscious Stoics?)

But it seems that the little man Heidegger was an curious exception to this *normal* development of an mature acceptance of mortality?

In his notorious case, his preoccupation with childish concerns might, ( if the puerile content of his writings is any guide] have been associated with the early onset of another form of mortification - a neurological disease picked up as a result of his overly enthusiastic couplings with teenage students, perhaps brought about as a result of his early years in a Catholic Masturbatorium?  

    Perhaps even worse - *sphacelus* - the localized death of living cells (as from infection or the interruption of the blood supply to the systema nervosum centrale, characterised or resulting from an infection of the neurons due to Jesuitical interference and sensorineural poisoning in early youth, or the interruption of healthy blood supply to the rhombencephalon caused by the conjectural constriction of the encapsulated ganglionic neural structure by gangsterish Nazi goons?

As far as I know the clinical reports of his self-imposed incarceration in a local nut-house [as the avenging allied tanks rolled into Freiburg] have never been released?  If they have, and any Heideggerian thurifer has a copy, [perhaps as a feature of their atriumic household cultic-corner shrine?] I would be most interested to read an account of the symptoms [apart from the obvious one of badly-soiled underpants heavily stained green with half-digested sauerkraut] and study the professional clinical opinion in the records of the mental asylum as to the origins of his madness, and whether the psychological disturbance was genetical or the result of existential experiential contamination?

What is certain is that Heidegger elevated the realisation of death and the need for constant reminders of the fact as one of the qualifications or provable prescient prerequisites necessary for acceptance and enrolment into his ragged *Regiment of the Damned* also known as *Deutschland's Daseinic Death's-Head Demoralisers.*

Those lumpen elements (i.e. practically the rest of the world's population] stupid enough not to realise they were doomed to die were excluded from membership of the elite corps of his creepy cognescenti.
What the fanatical fool did not realise, is although the masses do not stick fridge-message-magnets to their ice-boxes with messages such as: *The end is nigh* - *Death comes to all of us!* etc.,  the awareness of death is societally ubiquitous throughout all cultures, and this awareness is reflected in such terms that ABOUND both in everyday natural-language communication and in ALL literary genres.

Here are a few from 72,000 such terms about death gleaned from just ONE website:

We are strong, when we have made up our minds to die.
You can't take it with you,
We are all destined to die  - can a few days of life equal the happiness of dying for one's country?
The field of doom bears death as its harvest.
We must pronounce him fortunate who has ended his life in fair prosperity.
And she, after swan-like singing her last and dying song, lies beside him, her lover. But when once the earth has sucked up a dead man's blood, there is no way to raise him up.
Death is easier than a wretched life; and better never to have born than to live and fare badly.
Of all the gods only death does not desire gifts.
For it would be better to die once and for all than to suffer pain for all one's life.
Look! this flesh how it crumbles to dust and is blown!
Should I not hear, as I lie down in dust, The horns of glory blowing above my burial? Life, in my estimation, is a biological misadventure that we terminate on the shoulders of six strangers.
It's not that I'm afraid to die, I just don't want to be there when it happens.
Love is sinister, is mean to us in separation; makes our thin bodies thinner.
This fellow Death lacks me It is not death therefore that is burdensome, but the fear of death.
Accordingly, death is a harbour of peace for the just, but is believed a shipwreck for the wicked.

What the cowardly ghoul Genosse Heidegger and his fellow benighted  Bedouin's of *Being*   were doing was manipulating the simple-minded - putting the frighteners on naive fools - by employing the age-old, evil Christian cozenage - trafficking in the fear of death. 

He was in effect nothing more than *God's Leading Banquet-Pooper.*

BERNARD BOVASSO:
But do you leave by your own choice or because the banquet is over?


GARY.C. MOORE:
Dear Bernard, That is an extremely good point! *Common sense* would say only because you have to to escape bad circumstances, but in the passage in Epictetus about life as a banquet - and other places where one complains that life is not what it is cracked to be, that is, one's life compared to a house filled with obnoxious smoke, Epictetus says several times, Well, you don't like it? The front door is wide open! He seems to be quite casual about it on the same level as, Do you want to have cake or ice cream for desert, Do you want to live or die?

BERNARD BOVASSO:
Yes, that would be the *common sense* for the greater population endured of a slave psychology and circumstance. They have no choice but to cut and run from the master and the pain of their circumstance. But for the independently elite minority (the *masters*) life is compared to a banquet and with which Epictetus identifies himself, even as he was of slave origin. In that case the slave would have the option if not necessity to leave the banquet (*Life*), i. e., cut and run, whereas the self-achieved stoic master must leave only when the *banquet* is over and life is at end, or anticipated as such. There is no choice in the matter because the banquet (life) is both cake and ice cream and its end is equivalent to death. In the same spirit the achieved Roman Stoic would, as if quite casually, also open his veins at his life banquet's end as easily as he induces vomiting at the banquet of life to extend the pleasure of gluttony or overindulgence in life.

     There you see the ambiguity of the *Stoic,* or elitist Masters and the slave majority and which dual personality Epictetus suffers unto himself. His greatness is that he manages to admit it and in effect virtually unburden himself of formal identifications in both the stoic mode and that of the slave. The balance, of course, is unbalanced since the greater weight for cutting and running is of the slave majority, the  *have nots* whose real motive for cutting and running is to achieve the stoic sublime of the *haves.*

GARY.C. MOORE:
This is a completely different mind set, one we certainly should get use to in a world overrun by useless people - but then who is not? - amongst whom we necessarily number. Everyone, as Sartre would say, is superflous, lives a superflous life, and I certainly think, considering the sparce and deciplined life he lead, unconcerned for public status, well, more or less, he qualifies as a Stoic whereas Heidegger certainly does not.

BERNARD BOVASSO:
I would disagree. Heidegger is more stoic than stoics would like to believe. On one hand he is subscribed to the elite masters of Nazi stoicism and on the other to the slave psychology invested in Jews or what the masters believed made Jews an inferior majority. This is, of course, revealed in Heidegger's compulsively prolonged love affair with a Jewish woman and reflects the love/hate of the German masses elevated to the mass elitism of the *superman,* that constellates itself as a collectively unconscious worship of a *Sophia* (wisdom) goddess. This relation is also reflected in the Hebrew *Shikinah* as the womb vessel containing the immanence of the Godhead. In that case the majority of Israelites are endured of a slave affectation in relation to an invisible and unapproachable Master who in fact covets (hides) the womb space of Mater Sophia, i. e., mother wisdom. For the ancient Greeks this mother wisdom was invested in Athena, the brain daughter of Zeus, i. e., born out of his fractured skull whose mother was Metis, the mind of Zeus. The mother goddess in all is the secret, *lethe* Heidegger would say, wisdom *vorstelung* for Hebrews, Greeks and then Islam (as the Ka_aba). The colossal Nazi hatred of Jews is in fact part of a trans-historical love affair denied and thus evoked as hate. Such was the case with Heidegger as it was for Roman Stoics who inherited the worst part of the Greek Sophists (*man is the measure of all things*). Accordingly, Epictitus does not stand much above Heidegger simply because both fancied themselves as Sophists evolved and separated from the peculiar affection Plato/Socrates had for Lady Diotima, a priestess of the Eleusinian (Feminine) Mystery Religion. In the cases cited, *mother wisdom* must be subverted as *Sin* as was called the Ka_aba, but which doubles as the meaning of meaning purloined by the *Man of Mind.*

In any case, Gary, stay well and suffer, as in my case, the curse of old age: of not knowing when the banquet is over.

BERNARD BOVASSO:
……The colossal Nazi hatred of Jews is in fact part of a trans-historical love affair denied and thus evoked as hate. Such was the case with Heidegger as it was for Roman Stoics who inherited the worst part of the Greek Sophists (*man is the measure of all things*). Accordingly, Epictitus does not stand much above Heidegger simply because both fancied themselves as Sophists evolved and separated from the peculiar affection Plato/Socrates had for Lady Diotima, a priestess of the Eleusinian
(Feminine) Mystery Religion. In the cases cited, *mother wisdom* must be subverted as *Sin* as was called the Ka_aba, but which doubles as the meaning of meaning purloined by the *Man of Mind.*

RICHARD SANSOM:
Your remark: * The colossal Nazi hatred of Jews is in fact part of a trans-historical love affair denied and thus evoked as hate* should be explained. The Jews were
*loved* for their money, and hated for – what? Being Jews – the chosen people? Are you suggesting that Heidegger, who presumably loved Hannah Arendt, was in a
*love/hate* bind that also engulfed the Nazi hierarchy? In what way was the *love* unrequited – or what was really going on? The Jews seemingly were content [conditionally and more or less!] to live and be productive and successful in pre-war Germany and elsewhere. Could it not be much deeper and more complex than a love/hate condition? The Diaspora of the Jews indicates that they were scattered at least in part by their continuing disenfranchisement [not to mention their own selective, self-imposed disenfranchisement] among the social and political milieu within the host nations. Why did such things occur? I am not asking these questions rhetorically – I really want to know.

Regarding Hannah Arendt, she is a fascinating character. Her book: The Life of the Mind, [Harcourt, Brace, Jovanocich edition] is a good read on its own merit, as influenced as it is [must have been?] by her lover, and in no small part by Kant. I must respect her intellect, if I often disagree with her conclusions..