Clarification/Follow-up by HANK1 on 10/23/05 9:28 pm:
Ron: Sorry but I'm going to get a little philosophical since you gave me a black star. I'll just say that the "mysticism of feeling and the metaphysics of will are not able to do justice to the penetration of REALITY by intuitive thinking." It should go without saying that my first duty is to God. If Bush is not "doing God's will," God will allow Himself to judge Bush' performance when the time comes. My free-will tells me that I can think what I please. Bush finishes in second place 'down here.' If push comes to shove, I would choose God, of course.
* Excerpt in quote marks from "The Philosophy of Freedom / The Factors of Life"
HANK
Clarification/Follow-up by Choux on 10/23/05 10:44 pm:
Politics is based in reality. God is an imaginary entity whose believers attribute all kinds of non-sense to....primarily, the believers prejudices and ignorance with large doses of fantasy.
Neither religion or politics work is they are mixed together.
My duty is to stand for Noble Ideals whoever is President/ruler/grand poobah/pedophile bishop/Caesar/Tsar/Chancellor/ or assorted powermonger.....
Clarification/Follow-up by Erewhon on 10/24/05 4:06 am:
"Politics is based in reality ... "
Whose reality?
"Political language . . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."
George Orwell
Oh, THATreality!
Arristotle frequently compares the politician to a craftsman. The analogy is imprecise because politics, in the strict sense of legislative science, is a form of practical wisdom or prudence, but valid to the extent that the politician produces, operates, and maintains a legal system according to universal principles, but according to whose universal principles?
The 17th Century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes is now widely regarded as one of a handful of truly great political philosophers, whose masterwork Leviathan rivals in significance the political writings of Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, and Rawls.
Hobbes is famous for his early and elaborate development of what has come to be known as “social contract theory”, the method of justifying political principles or arrangements by appeal to the agreement that would be made among suitably situated rational, free, and equal persons.
He is infamous for having used the social contract method to arrive at the astonishing conclusion that we ought to submit to the authority of an absolute -- undivided and unlimited -- sovereign power.
"Authentic democracy is possible only in a State ruled by law, and on the basis of a correct conception of the human person.... "
Nowadays there is a tendency to claim that agnosticism and skeptical relativism are the philosophy and the basic attitude which correspond to democratic forms of political life.
Those who are convinced that they know the truth and firmly adhere to it are considered unreliable from a democratic point of view, since they do not accept that truth is determined by the majority, or that it is subject to variation according to different political trends.
But, if there is no ultimate truth to guide and direct political activity, then ideas and convictions can easily be manipulated for reasons of power.
As history demonstrates, a democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism." (see GW Bush)
--John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, 1991,
The postulate of the reflection of the ascendancy of democracy on the classical treatises about tyranny in political philosophy -- those of Plato, Aristotle, Xenophon, Cicero, Augustine, and Aquinas -- is that a new form of tyranny is developed in the late twentieth century.
This contemporary form is post-classical as well as post-Marxist and post-fascist, albeit with grounding in classical, medieval, and modern theory.
The location of modern tyranny is not, as in the classics, in the disordered soul of one or a few members of a ruling body. Rather it is located in the many, in the democratic form of rule itself and how it is understood.
The problem, furthermore, is not exactly what we have come to call in the twentieth century "totalitarianism".
The reason for this difference is that totalitarianism, though it had roots in will, was, though sometimes even popular, something imposed, a product of aberrant political art and enforced upon on a people contrary to their full understanding and choice.
Totalitarianism usually had the connotation of "brainwashing" and coerced consent, of Rousseau's "being forced to be free" (see Iraq).
Ironically, democracy in its modern usage has been most often proposed as the best regime, as the one form of rule that would most likely prevent this very tyranny or totalitarianism, but, that this is not always so, is easily seen.
As for 'reality' itself, that is a thing of no substance, an imaginary thing, which each person according to their personal perspective grasps as being the truth and insists that each individual's 'reaity' is the reality for the whole world when it cannot be so.
That is not 'reality,' that is delusion.
You say that I am deluded, and I say that you are deluded.
Now what?
Clarification/Follow-up by HANK1 on 10/24/05 6:19 am:
Clete: At least I got a rise out of you. Why comment on something you don't understand?
Clarification/Follow-up by Itsdb on 10/25/05 9:33 am:
Aton,
Didn't you know? The Utilikilt is all the rage now. :)
Clarification/Follow-up by curious98 on 10/26/05 11:18 am:
Not many ATON, not many... I wouldn't, to start with.
But that does not mean, GOD does not comes first.
We, men do many things we should not, that not only jeopardise our families, but place them in extremely dangerous situations. Like WARS, for instance. And ever since men exist they have never doubted to risk their lives and that of their families in nonsense wars, normally started by people who, in most cases, took good care in personally avoiding the risks involved...
I therefore think than jeopoardising one's family for the cause of God is more rewarding than doing it for some human stupidity.
Curious98
