Reading articles about the influences of Greek myth on the Theros block in MTG, written by people who clearly have no clue about Greek myth, is causing me physical pain.
And the website mentioned in the description. I shit you not, that website has been linked to in one form or another on the wikipedia page for Nike for years. People are quoting it as if it’s an actual source that actually makes sense????
idk if that makes sense at all but my main pet peeve is people mixing up mythology and religion? like. myths, aka the stories, are mythology, but deities are a part of a particular religion, not “mythology”
example: Zeus flooding the earth is a myth (myth of Deucalion). The myth of Deucalion is, thus, part of Greek mythology. Just like the Abrahamic God flooding the earth in Genesis is a part of Jewish and Christian mythology. There are people who believe that those myths happened just as they are told and there are people who believe they are allegories.
but! Zeus isn’t a part of Greek “mythology”. Zeus is a deity of a religion,the ancient Greek religion. If you wouldn’t say the Christian God is a part of “Christian mythology”, why do you do that with Zeus, Ra, Izanagi or Odin? Why do some religions get to be religions while the rest are just mythology?
… I don’t… How exactly are you drawing a complete and clear line between mythology and religion? Like, Heracles defeating the Nemean Lion is mythology but then you have hero cults to Heracles and a whole bunch of shrines in various places because people claimed they Herakles visited there on the way to/from various labours?
Is the Turin shroud mythology or religion?
Are all the relics of martyrs religious or mythic?
I and many others would quite happily refer to them as both.
Zeus is a figure from Greek religion. Zeus is also a figure from Greek myth.
These aren’t mutually exclusive things? It’s not either/or its AND.
I just need everyone to know how much I really, really, REALLY hate Aristotle.
And there are three kinds of hatred for Aristotle, the first being visceral, so called because it rises from the intestines and through the middle of a person, yet never wanes nor increases but remains constant; and the second is called passive, and this occurs when a scholar or reader comes upon the works of Aristotle by chance, without seeking them out of their own volition, but rather confronted with them unexpectedly as a man set upon by bandits along a lonely road, but this sort of anger passes quickly; but indeed the third is active, and this occurs when a person seeks out Aristotle with the particular intention of becoming choleric; this sort of person seeks out the works of Aristotle wherever they may be found so that they might read them and thereby conjure up some bilious reason to cast invective and rebuke upon his theories and observations, and this anger is kept by its possessor at a boil.
Aristotle (and descendants) is a never-healing, festering wound in mankind’s intellectual heritage and an indelible shitstain, still infecting and maiming minds.
Aristotle is The Worst™.
I actually take issue with the description above of the second kind of hatred. Because despite the faulty logic, bullshit justifications, arbitrary self-helping definitions, lack of any kind of rigor or reality testing of ideas and (at best) sloppiness in observations that one meets in Aristotle, he is still presented as an intellectual giant.
Could you explain why you have this opinion?
I’m pretty sure that Aristotle and Plato are actually some of the most poorly understood philosophers in history, perhaps even to a larger degree than Rand. I’m also pretty sure this was a conscious decision on their parts, though.
Plato at one point states (through Socrates, of course) that all books are bad, because a book cannot tailor an argument. He further clarifies, though, that a book could theoretically be worthwhile if it were so complex and multi-layered that it presented many different arguments depending on how it was read, with each type of reading implying a type of person, and that type of reading producing the argument that person needs.
It seems unlikely that Plato would have written so much if he believed his books to be useless, so it seems reasonable to expect that he at least considered the dialogues to be examples of this method.
Some slightly greater evidence for this comes from the regular logical flaws in his arguments. Plato makes a ton of really simple mistakes, often in a context that makes no sense. For instance, he occasionally describes a common type of mistake or explains how an opponent’s argument is wrong, and immediately follows it up with an argument that makes the same mistake. Identifying these failures seems to often reveal alternative views of the argument, or subtexts where it feels like Plato is saying something different to the reader than Socrates is to his debate partner. These cases were noticed independently by several members of my classes before the generalized theory was proposed, also, so at least anecdotally there is reason to believe this is not just fitting the facts to the theory.
Aristotle, along with some later thinkers (including Aquinas and Descartes), has some suspiciously similar cases. One of the more common mistakes made in interpreting Plato is taking the Republic as a design for an actual government, as opposed to a metaphor for the soul. This is a fairly obvious mistake because Plato literally states at the beginning that the Republic is a metaphor for the soul, and there are several aspects of the society that are opposed to other statements given by Plato, as well as facts about the lives of Plato and Socrates. After all, they lived in Athens for a reason. Aristotle, though, when talking about government, discusses how he feels the Republic was a mistake in political theory, despite his great respect for Socrates. Given how close Aristotle was to Plato and Socrates, and how clearly incorrect this interpretation is, I take it as a wink from Aristotle to the people who can see the mistake. Of course he understands Plato, so by lying all he is really proving is that he also knows better than to just show it.
Aristotle also shows the same telltale obvious mistakes which can reveal alternative conclusions . Even when he is not talking about Socrates, he regularly has faults in reasoning that would change the meaning of his argument, and the altered arguments often seem more powerful. Aquinas does this, too. As does Descartes, in pretty much the most obvious way of all. Descartes literally warns the audience that most people won’t understand what he is really saying, and that if you don’t understand him, you will make serious mistakes as a consequence. Because of this, he says, he lies to disguise the parts of his meaning that require stronger understanding, so that only those who will understand them will see those points.
While I have not yet compiled the quotes needed to come to any formal conclusion on this (next year, probably), I definitely believe that there is a long tradition of important philosophers lying so they can better tailor arguments within their works. Without this conclusion, I agree that Plato, Aristotle, and most of their intellectual descendants are sloppy philosophers who do not nearly deserve their status as geniuses. With it, however, they become much more significant and valuable thinkers than they already were.
I will be acting as a student ambassador at the Oxbridge Classics open day next Monday! If you have any questions about studying at Oxford or applications, etc, or you just want to attend some free Oxbridge lectures (from my own tutors), there are still online tickets available! Or, if anybody’s going in person, I look forward to seeing you in Cambridge
I love assassins creed odyssey but I will never forgive it for teaching me the modern greek pronounciation of ancient greek locations…no anglophone scholar takes me seriously when I say “vee-o-tía” instead of beotia… the modern greek just sounds so much better
Me: ah yes, I suffer from imposter syndrome. I feel as if I haven’t earned my place in academia, and that I’m just pretending to be smart…even though I get good grades and my supervisors have great things to say about my work. This is a result of imposter syndrome.
The tiny Ben Shapiro that lives in my brain: Ok, but let’s say hypothetically
anatomical votive figurines are some of my favorite relics that we have from the ancient world. this is partly because i’m very emotional about the longstanding human desire to live a long and healthy life but it’s also because i think it’s VERY funny to imagine being an ancient roman god and people will just not stop giving you carvings of their uteri
new favorite marcus aurelius quote is the one where he’s like “no matter how good of a person you are there will still be people who are happy you died” like thank you marcus i feel better now
funniest thing in plutarch’s life of cato the younger is that when all the other senators realized cato couldn’t be convinced to let them pass unjust laws they straight up just tried to distract him from coming to the senate like some sort of wacky sitcom
Obsessed with the story of Omphale and Hercules. He’s made to wear one of her outfits and carry a spinning needle while Omphale dons all his attributes and dominates him like a true girlboss/malewife duo
Name a more iconic couple
He looks absolutely enchanting in this slutty Chiton and little headdress. Notice the color residue, revealing it to have been a lovely, bright red color. King and queen shit only
In later paintings Omphale is the embodiment of gaslight gatekeep girlboss and Hercules has ✨ impeccable ✨ sub energy but they’re all cowards for not putting him in a dress
Obsessed with the story of Omphale and Hercules. He’s made to wear one of her outfits and carry a spinning needle while Omphale dons all his attributes and dominates him like a true girlboss/malewife duo
Name a more iconic couple
He looks absolutely enchanting in this slutty Chiton and little headdress. Notice the color residue, revealing it to have been a lovely, bright red color. King and queen shit only
