So hello all and welcome to the second session of the man who knew nothing from neurodiversity to practical schizophrenia and we have a couple of presentations today and we also have a new participant and so I'll pass the microphone over to Reza but after that perhaps we can do an introduction and then go on to presentations. Thank you so much. And again, I apologize for being late. So today we continue with cynicism and hopefully, but I'm not really optimistic about it, we might actually get into stoicism.
But first I want to talk a little bit about some of the pitfalls of cynicism and how we can in fact avoid them by looking into two different directions from which cynicism actually America as a barbarian philosophy, essentially, and also as a doctrine of self-mastery that Antistethen talks about. The barbarian side of things actually comes from, from any of you know anything about Anarcharsis, the Escaitian philosopher. And you know the
Escaitians were infamous for being barbarians. And that of course came not really from the Greek thinking that they are barbarians, because Greeks literally called anyone who is outsider And then there was a name for it, Etruria. Anyone who's outsider or not, Greek, a barbarian, they actually reconsidered that maybe they should tone down this whole idea of barbarity with regard to outside civilization and only apply it to Escaitians, precisely because they borrowed this theme from the Persian empire, were in fight with Escaitians of the Black Sea.
and up of the Caspian Sea. So we will talk about an acarsis today a little bit to kind of shed light on some of the more critical themes of cynicism, which as I mentioned, it would be good to look at these precisely because even though I mentioned last time that, you know, to an outsider who looks into the history of philosophy, cynics can come off as individualists of the highest kind. But I mentioned that why they are not individualists in the first
session. Today I want to say that, you see, they might be individualists, but we should see the context of the individualism in cynicism. It's not the kind of, they are not Epicureans, even though they share some elements with Epicureans, but they are not really individualist par excellence. So Alex, would you be able to introduce yourself if you have a microphone? Sounds like she says I don't have... Okay, okay. Reza, can I ask you a question before you move on from barbarians are not individualists?
No, I didn't say that barbarians are not individualists. I said that the barbarian philosophy by way of an Akarsis actually rectifies some of the individualistic traits of cynicism. It's essential to understand where cynicism comes from in the historical context. Can you clarify a bit of the differences between, I don't want to say barbarian philosophy, but barbarianism by way of anacharsis from the Epicurean type of individualism, which which is perhaps maybe not the best labeled individualism.
Maybe Epicureanism has its own sort of qualia seeking pleasure as the driver, but perhaps just more distinction, if you can. Distinction between two exactly. Anarcharsis's barbarian philosophy by way of anarcharsis versus Epicureanism. Yes, probably it's too early to even talk about Epicureanism, but let me say what they meant by barbarian philosophy. So the story goes like this, as I mentioned, Greeks by way of the Persian ideology were extremely
pessimistic, skeptical about Eskylian race. Obviously, they represented something of what today you might not Roma people, the kind of ideologies about civilizations and to use inappropriate term gypsies. No, Escaitians were more like Western America, Wild West. Those of you who are familiar with the notion of hell on wheels. They were bandwagon houses.
Essentially, they don't have a nation. They don't have an actual territory. David Kasher, Ph.D.: They are vagabonds, but the vagabonds who are somehow it's perceived from the, you know, for example, the city estates of Greece, that they're always bringing disease, misery, prostitution, so on and so forth, because they don't have respect for etiquette, right? David Kasher, Ph.D.: There are always basically interpreted as constantly engaging with soliciting, basically transgressing
conventions, etiquette, even their speech is, when they are talking Greek, is considered to be broken. And they carry these kinds of wagons as their house. And basically, they sell stuff. They have carnivals as they move, if they are not attacking a civilization, if they are peaceful. So the concept of the barbaric philosophy It's actually coming from the Ascytians, not from the Greek philosophers. So even though Greeks think of them as barbarians,
but the term barbarian philosophy or the barbaric philosophy actually comes from the Ascytians, essentially from Anikarsus and his fellow Ascytians. There is actually a phrase, if I remember it correctly, He says that, you know, we call ourselves barbarian philosophers or barbarian sages, not because we are coming from the outside, but we have lived too long in Greece. It's a swipe at the Greek civilization as ultimately barbaric. And that's the twist here.
So that comes back to this idea that for Anacharsis, it is an absolute duty to go to a civilization Gernot Wagner- And confront with its predicaments and its sense of privilege head on from within. Gernot Wagner- So that's that's basically the concept of barbaric philosophy. Gernot Wagner- The art critics and critics of civilization, so to speak, that you can see this also with
cynics with Diogenes of Sinope, that they basically, it's not merely the point, the point of cynicism doesn't bottom up at individual self-mastery. Individual self-mastery in fact is valorized to the extent that it's supposed to serve a very disciplined practical not theoretical practical critique of civilization and its norms its social conventions
So if I remember correctly, I mean, it was like two weeks ago, we talked about the role of rhetoric in cynicism, that their rhetoric is not sophistic. They use sophistic rhetoric in order to challenge basically what they say, the stifling theoretical or a logic of an ordinary Greek philosopher. We also talked about the main mission of a cynic, the so-called defacing the coinage or defacing the currency.
So, um. It looks like we have a question here from Alex Leon. Sure. So she asks, the practical dimension of the cynic thought is one that requires the very society and norms it defaces, though. So does it not in a fundamental way maintain or preserve that very society and its civilized ways? Okay, I think, in a sense, yes, but I would say that, let us, for example, say something
like this, does, for example, Marxist-Communist hypothesis, by criticizing and giving a critique about the system of capitalism, does it actually preserve capitalism? So the same thing can we said about the cynics. Obviously for cynics, it's not that they say that there is something outside of society, just like Marx that doesn't believe that there is something outside of capitalism. In fact, they try to show that socialism, sorry, society, civil society,
hasn't gained its true consciousness yet. The point of cynicism, the practical point of cynicism, is to elevate the civil society by word to a society which is civilized by practice, by deeds. The same thing that can be said about capitalism for Marx, that capitalism is communism. It's just that its communist aspect is yet not part of its self-consciousness. So what is communism really? It's just the self-consciousness of capitalism for Marx.
The same thing for a cynic, that a good society is what you might call to be the unconscious of a civil society. Something that should be brought to the consciousness, not by simple theorization, but by deeds. Any observation on this front? We could say that there are what Goodman calls finitely differentiated,
not just cognitive, but world options, essentially, and that one can never make a decision outside of this database of options? That's a good thing. It's just that you just simply don't make up any awards. That would be just ridiculous from the standpoint of philosophy. Right. practical or theoretical. Any kind of world that you make is the recognition of an already cognized world. Right. That's why for me, it doesn't seem like cynicism is really an aggress or drifting
away from civilization. It seems instead like it's an effort to establish a practical basis by engaging with the most elementary forms of reasonable or rational practice, which might seem to be a kind of repudiation of your civilization, but in fact, it's simply laying the most basic framework and then it can kind of move up from there in terms of a practical society. Yeah? Yeah, it's just like, I mean, I mentioned this too. we will probably go and look at it a little bit at some point when we have just laid out the basics, looking at Hegel's critique of cynicism and stoicism.
Obviously for Hegel, self-consciousness is a practical matter. It's a matter of practical achievement, right? So self-consciousness of civilization can also be said from a scenic perspective is a matter of practical achievement. And that's, you need to have different phases of spirit or geist to be capable of building this, you know, this civic society which is fully conscious of what it is and what it can do.
Another thing that I forgot about... Okay, maybe someone should say something. My apologies, I'm still kind of trying to breathe from that running. So we also have a couple of presentations that need to happen at some point. Yes, okay. How about the presentations? I can actually gather my thoughts here. So there's Lenka and Ekken. I don't know who would like to go first. I'm happy either way. my presentation really consists of Hegel's critique and Marx's departure from Hegel on this point.
But anyway, I mean, I don't need to go first. It depends, I think, on what the other presenter is presenting. Historically, we could perhaps situate it. Whatever, I'm okay with whatever. Yeah, but I have, it's basically Foucault. Nothing much more. So I don't mind going first or second. Sure, sure. I mean, I mean, it doesn't make any difference really. I'm going to catch you at some point anyway. I will go first in order to get the ball rolling. so to speak. Exactly. No problem. Okay, so I'm speaking about John Sellars and Stoicism,
but I mean, John Sellars' book doesn't only deal with Stoicism, it begins with the cynics, and it particularly looks at the lived philosophy, you know, I mean, of course, we look at Socrates and Socrates' death as recounted by Plato, but also recounted by others. And we can consider the lived philosophy. And I'd also like to return to this point, but make a note of it now, how for Hegel, this devalued Socrates' philosophy insofar as he thought that philosophy proper must be removed from the here and now of an individual's life and developed into an abstract
system. For Hegel, in the case of the cynics, philosophy was preserved almost exclusively in biographical anecdotes and aphorisms. So Hegel was quite dismissive. And Hegel's position is then you know, reflected by Bernard Williams, Aristotle's critique of Socrates, of course. But then it's refuted by Nietzsche, it's refuted by Foucault's Entrepreneur of the Self, it's refuted by Deleuze's practical philosophy and transcendental empiricism in some way. So I would say Deleuze occupies both sides of this lived philosophy or abstracted system through his micro sociologies, but I'm not going to talk about the list.
It's the only note about it. Compared to the cynics' negative account of nature, the Stoics undoubtedly had a more positive content in living in accordance with nature, which for the Stoics was identified with living in accordance with reason. So we already have this notion of reason as opposed to what we said last week is a dialectic between nomos and physis, between norms, laws, and nature as a natural system. For the Stoics, nature is identified as reason.
This is an interesting change to that dialectic we had prior, because either reason is now something that is outside of the rules governing law and norms, or it is something that neither can be subsumed by this earlier dialectic. So the significance of the philosopher's beard, I'd like to speak about this because this is an interesting note in Sellars. So there's this notion that philosophy was conceived of as primarily a matter of actions rather than words. And that a philosopher's actions might well be a more accurate indication of their position, philosophical position, than anything they have to say. I think that this is perhaps, you know, reflected in the new center's ethos even.
And it's something we think about quite a bit when thinking of political action. But this idea of an individual's beliefs being matters of deeds, not words, became prominent in 5th and 4th century Athens and associated with Socrates, who had the beard. Forming part of the rejection of sophistry, we saw with the Peripatetics or Sotelian philosophers or the Epicureans that the true Stoic philosopher is, and this is according to Arius Degmus of Alexandria, sick, endangered, disgraced, and yet happy, the beard being a marker of all of this.
Now, I don't know how many mirrors, minutes, beards and minutes, one I have left, but I would like to touch on the, you know, I mean, Hegel's self-consciousness as a matter of practical achievement, but one that is abstracted. So, I mean, there's a critique of Hegel and Marx that also makes this point quite explicit, because, of course, for Marx, who is a Hegelian, but a Hegelian of the lived philosophy. it's here that you know in the critique of Hegel's philosophy in general in particular
that Marx identifies in Hegel the apex of this fallacy the point of philosophical climax where there's an expenditure of animality that's exchanged for the teleological arrow of Geist So transcending the expenditure of rational idealist insistence, triumphing materiality and nature, this is central for formulating a true politics, a politics of the non-human, a politics of a post-capitalist vision of society and its socialist response or communist response from Marx.
So, you know, it's in a sense, Hegel's immaterial teleology of the transcendent world spirit, which exceeds the lived philosophy, is what resettles Marx's critique of Hegel. So there is, I think, a line of distinction that we could, of course, make between defacement of the cynics and then stoic philosophy. But the lived facet is central to the political ethos that we find in Marx for infinite revolution, etc.
I will leave Tikkun and Foucault to the second presenter, but regardless of how we may critique this French tradition of lived philosophy, entrepreneur of the South and such, of course in Tikkun and Julian Coupat and Tarnac 9, there was an effort, one that perhaps also in Italy at the time of lived philosophy qua anarchism from blocking railways to explosive devices in train cars and such. Is this a return or is this something
fundamentally different than the lived philosophy of Diogenes, you know, urinating and defecating in public masturbation and such. I think this is an interesting question, one to which I do not have a response, but one that resettles the... Just to interrupt you for a joke. I'm done. He never uses the word masturbation. He says rubbing the belly. Go on. I mean, that was a presentation. I think it's an interesting way to recast masturbation as rubbing the belly because... There is a reason for it.
Yeah, I want to hear the reason. The reason for it is that he tries to discuss that there are certain kinds of human desires, certain kinds of human hungers, to be more precise, which are simply illusory and can easily be satiated by such trivial means. But there are unfortunately certain kinds of human hungers that require practice, systematic practice. So he says that whenever I am in need, I rub my belly. You know, obviously a sexual reference.
But unfortunately, no matter how much I rub my belly, it can assuage my hunger for food. All right. Would we like to go on to Lenka's presentation now? Okay, I don't have the camera on because it's glitchy once I try. but so I didn't read all the Desdemons book
and I read Foucault again on Parisia so so unlike other Greek notions relating to the truth Parisia doesn't depend on correspondence between natural forms or identities but speaks of or rather directly depends on power relations and consists in piercing them as artificial and like positively speaking what is natural and true doesn't demand naming but living so even though it has some characteristics in common with other Greeks
through notions about truth for example the Heideggerian Aletheia which is about unraveling and yeah disclosing it is nevertheless qualitatively different mainly because it is unobstructible from the problem of power and it almost seems that without power there wouldn't be Jews. I don't know this is like overstatement and I'm not sure if yeah so Foucault defines few characteristics of Parisia and first one is frankness which means like etymologically it
means to say everything. He says everything he has in mind. He doesn't hide anything but open his heart and mind completely to other people. And then interesting question is, if the Parastasian say what he thinks is true or does he say what is really true? And this is Foucault to my mind, the Paristatiata says what is true because he knows that it is true and he knows that it is true because it is really true. He is not only sincere and says what is his
opinion but his opinion is also the truth. He says what he knows to be true. It appears that Parisia in the greek sense can no longer occur in our modern epistemological framework and it is difficult to imagine like total coincidence between belief opinion and truth so how is this coincidence secured it is secured by moral qualities of the speaker and secondly how this is manifest is in speech it's not about like mental experience or
rational rules it's about manifestation which takes place in the speech and another obvious question would be if the speaker can be certain that what he believes is in fact true and Foucault says that this question is completely foreign to Greeks it just like wouldn't even occur to them well because it's so so deep down like localized in the situation that there's no space for asking about certainty. Last two characteristics are yeah the situation the speaking of the truth is dangerous for the
speaker and he deliberately places himself by telling the truth in the danger because yeah the situation of paresthesia is situation of asymmetric power relation and lastly the speaker doesn't say just any truth but is critical precisely of the power hierarchy itself. He shows the person in power, their dependence on the power, their hypocrisy, pretentiousness, etc. Yeah, and this is why Foucault was focused on that because his motivation is to
see her origins of critical attitude to truth which he opposes to analytics of truth. And this Greek Parisiia is very different from Kant's critique because they didn't believe in any universal ahistorical faculty of knowledge but what would Foucault call regimes of truth. So, so Parizea is not act of the like critical aspect of Parizea is not about delimination
or securing of reason, but rather it is tactics of transformation of the regime of truth. And then Foucault says the desire to do is in fact desire not to be governed in such and such way so when we think of truth in this yeah what it meant for cynics it's not motivated by desire to know to be certain or anything like that but rather desire to be free and the desire to make the others free as well. Well, and then Foucault goes on to problematization of Parisia,
which is simultaneous with the crisis of Greek democracy. When there is no constraint to ways how to affect the people and persuade them for one's cause, cheap, bad Parisia appears. it's vulgar, irrelevant, aggressive, et cetera. But the problem is that democratic society is conditioned for Parisia, because of course, authoritative regimes have no interest in anyone criticizing them. So, cynics were thinking a lot about the figure of a king in this crisis of democracy.
A king who is wise enough to know that in the sake of freedom he needs a friend telling him the truth. And they think of themselves as of kings as well quite often. and this is an interesting point where truth and Parisia split in a certain sense because for example cynics criticize a figure of megalopsychos who prefers truth to opinion so it's like now it's two different things, truth and opinion and this figure is courageous only rationally because he is not willing to stand for his truth, his opinion, but out of fear he desires some secure
universal truth which would be independent of him. And yeah then what happens like in Foucault's writing and also with coming of Stoics is that attention is turned to techniques of self so that the selves can perceive this true which is already something different than opinion and then I have I have here. Yeah, some other positive definition of truth
in this Parisiatic situation, which I think I important. So the truth is local. It's not about relativity of the truth, but truth of the relative as Deleuze would say, I think it's a good example. And each situation has its own criteria. It's not that they would be irrational. It's just awareness that imposing universal rules at the situation can be reductive, et cetera. And also I think it's important to say that the truth can't be, it's not
banal, it's not trivial, it's not exactly the same as the child saying that the king is naked because it's usually quite sophisticated and metaphorical and yeah not trivial. And if there is like, if we really want to try to generalize what the truth would be for Senex, I would say that desire to possess nature and reduce it to loss is not truth,
it's like yeah desire to empower yourself against something it's always yeah false and leads to hypocrisy so that's it and then i have some questions we can think about if does it necessarily mean to be true once we are free and if critical attitude is necessarily better for making people for yeah for emancipation and liberation of the public than analytical attitude and then yeah then there is
this question whether this Foucault writing is meant as a statistical mobilization of intellectuals or whether he's like too constructivistic and it actually has the opposite effect um well that's it thank you so much langar fantastic fantastic both you and i can excellent excellent presentations. Really fantastic. Well, I actually, you know, I can say something and I open
it to other people's. It was actually interesting for me that you brought up Heidegger, Heidegger's idea of disclosing you see i don't think that heidegger ever understood the meaning of practical self-consciousness i mean this is i don't want to make a jab at poor marty but nevertheless this is This is a guy who goes to the Black Forest, makes a hut, and he actually carves out Teutonic
cue symbols on his water well. We are not talking about merely the Nazi Heidegger. are talking about a kind of person who really thinks that he can simply go off the radar with regard to society. For him, the concept of disclosing, you see, of course, the concept of of disclosing is for Searle, he tries to turn this fundamentally theoretical concept, Alava Searle, into a practical one. And to that extent, he falls in the trap of a really bad reading
of Socrates. Simply, if you disclose you have made a practical point, I would say that neither Plato, as a theoretical disciple of Socrates, and the cynics, as a practical disciple of Socrates actually believed in such a thing. That's one. Two, as I mentioned last time, the concept of truth in cynicism is very much like a precursor to the concept of truth in pragmatism.
like when you read pieces by Charles Sanders Peirce or even Brandon. So yes, this has a fundamental pragmatic connotation. However, two things here. One, we should understand the notion of Parisia to speak free was not really a democratic thesis from their perspective.
You should understand that all cynics were very suspicious of democracy. I really, I mean, so when we are talking about democracy, it's not that, you see, you should understand in Athens, back then, there were two concepts of democracy. Carl Friedrich, are any of you familiar with the works of Carl Friedrich? Carl Joachim Friedrich.
I really do suggest his works, particularly his reading of Kant and Hegel. So Carl Friedrich, first of all, was an expert in denazification. after World War II. And he tried to kind of look at Nazis, including Heidegger, specifically Heidegger, within two concepts of democracy. Of course, his version was also bad because it was like Kittlerian, anti-democratic thing.
But nevertheless, he fleshed it out sufficiently. He thought that Germany, at the onset of World War II, really was dealing with the same questions that the city-estate of Athens was dealing at the time of Socrates with regard to the question of democracy. So there is one idea of democracy, which is kind of, you can call it basic democracy, like literally democracy as the telus of a society, right? Which Socrates was absolutely hated that idea. Socrates was completely against this democratic
idea. Then there was a good democracy. Democracy is simply a means to better ends. It is not itself good. It's merely necessary. For something to be necessary, it is neither bad nor good. But if you you confuse what is necessary with what is sufficient, then you are definitely in the business of evil. And that was his, he tried to say that, okay, national socialism actually
So people think that Nazis are anti-democratic. No, they were truly democratic in the basic sense of democracy, not in the good sense of democracy. So they try to propagandize this idea that democracy is good in itself. No, it's just simply necessary. That's it. And Carl Friedrich associates Heidegger's reading of democracy as the premise of him joining national socialism, as in contrast to Socrates, who makes a very delicate distinction
between these two senses of democracy. So maybe you should say something, all of you, and then I will build on Lenka's presentation a little bit more with regard to the question of truth, uncertainty, what kind of truth we are talking about, so on and so forth. I have a sort of a comment about, you know, I mean, my comment is a bit more relative
to Hegel and Marx, but also sort of... So there's this notion in Marx that capitalism is the quasi-physical realization of a philosophically postulated universe in the vein of Hegel's idea of conquering nature by way of its annihilation. It's yielding a transformation into the idea in and for itself, into the self-realization of the absolute. is how I would sort of merge both my... There is something here Ekin, I don't think, you see, this is I would say a kind of Kojephian idea of reading of Hegel. Hegel never actually talks
about conquering nature at all. The word annihilation is used in the translation though. I'm pretty sure there's maybe not the word but annihilation no in what sense in in Marx's critique of Hegel's philosophy in general and in the German ideology the word annihilation reappears twice when describing the idea in and for itself nature I'm not sure, but if this is Marx's re-rendering of Hegel, it certainly appears in Kosciusz, yes. But I mean, the concept of natural, that which is natural as a telos is undoubtedly
part of Hegel's idealism, no? So it is really hard to say. Surely Hegel is a theological finger at the end of the day, right? But Hegel is quite actually very careful to not fall into Aristotelian teleology, right? And Marx actually is very careful to not misread Hegel as an Aristotelian, right? The thing is that, very interesting, that the absolute is the unity and identity of the opposites.
So it is not as if, he says, you see, this is the thing, he doesn't want to fuse nature and thinking. such that, for example, you can say that nature becomes thought or thoughts become nature. No, that's not, absolutely, that's not Heiko. He actually never uses, even in English translation, when you look at it, some translators are quite careful about this. This is not a fusion. It's not as if two things merge and two things become one. You see, the absolute is the integration, not the fusion, between thinking and nature.
Neither of them gets annihilated. It's just that they form what you might call to be a comprehensive integration. Reza, just to ask a quick question, maybe to help ease the transition into discussion of the other presentation. I came across this quote in this book entitled Between Foucault and Derrida by Eubaraj Aryal. And Aryal says, quote, in effect, in Parhichia, there is no dialectic. What do you think of this take on Parthesia? Yes, Parthesia is absolutely not dialectic.
It is not dialectic. As I mentioned, and cynics also never understood it as dialectic in any sense, not even dialectic in a kind of Platonistic Hegelian sense. They didn't even understood it as what you might call to be a rowdy, yet nevertheless, good chat among people who think differently. No, Parisia for cynics was as simple as that. Parisia for them was substitute to the idea of democracy, as Greeks had it, which was
basic democracy, the bad democracy, to the extent that they thought Parisia as a springboard to shine the light on people's assumptions. That was it. It was merely a necessary thing, a springboard, a platform, not really a goal or end in itself. Cynicism's end in itself, as I mentioned to you, is two things. one, self-mastery, and two, the practical ability to bite any fortune or opportunity
that comes your way. So that's actually very interesting from a scenic perspective. So when we are talking about Parisia, Parisia actually, as I mentioned, and Lenka also talked a little bit about it with regard to truth, you can think about pragmatism. So within the pragmatism, all truths are contextual, right? is a matter of dialogic, so to speak. It, however, should not be equated with mere dialogic or dialogue among interlocutors or rivals. So if this is the case, you can think about
Parisia as a certain thesis about speech and language, in which language the ultimate function of language, or not the ultimate, the most basic function of the language is uncertainty. You always begin with uncertainty in your beliefs. Sounds more like a hypothesis than a thesis. Because once you say thesis, now I'm starting to think in terms of dialectics. Yes, yes. Yeah, okay, let's, my apologies for using the wrong word.
Maybe claim or proposal to that extent. Reza, the process, So it is on the basis of a conversion, that the process of establishing regimes of truth, to use a Foucauldian term, or a Socratic dialogism. It's what in Socrates, it's . It's a practical expression first. And then there's a binding, a primordial friendship between speakers and Parisians. And this seems to also have a dialectical element
because not only is it a strong and constitutive bond between the person speaking and what he says opens and the effect of the truth through the speaker, but also the effect of the wound of truth. The truth that arises out from the effects of the truth. or the effects of the wound in this case. Parisia is always painful in practicing it. There is always the Parisias to courts risk. And in particular, the risk that in the case of Solon, the city as the whole may consider him mad, as in Socrates, a city that- Yeah, I understand what you are saying. And this is actually quite clear in Foucault's Courage of Truth.
You see, for both cynics and Socrates, Truth was not a theoretical matter. Truth is the moment that you dispose yourself, become susceptible and make other people also susceptible to what might arise through the course of this interaction. So it's a practice, a practice that always comes with a cost, usually death. I mean Seneca, those of you who have read plays of Seneca, which I really do suggest
because Seneca was one of the greatest writers in history, not just great philosopher. And this is really the main theme of all Seneca's plays, that the cost of truth as practice, such that people can rise above from their dogmas to something else, is always blood. someone's head being cut off, someone being mutilated, so on and so forth.
Okay, maybe we should have a break, as Alex was talking about. So let's have a break and then we reconvene. All right, we'll return in five minutes then. uh yeah that's that's great you You like to begin
Who me? Yes. Well, I don't know anybody can see Yes, so So, yeah, the question of uncertainty is really interesting. And the way that cynics literally plug the idea of uncertainty into the idea of a speech, perfect speech, which is perasia, but of course this is not a theoretical thesis you see as i mentioned last time the idea of uncertainty is of a practical importance to them not of a theoretical importance
so everything is uncertain even language then what? So all of this stuff about uncertainty, which is the core idea of cynicism, is marshalled toward the second most important, in fact beyond self-mastery, idea of cynicism, which I mentioned is the fact that self-mastery doesn't happen until and unless we can turn
any sort of whim of nature into an opportunity. First, you have to delete certainty in order to gain mastery over yourself and nature. That's quite a Promethean idea, cynicism. And I mentioned, I remember I read a quote from Hipparchia of Maronia, but also Diogenes of Sinope or Diogenes of Larchius, they all have this kind of Promethean idea, which really distilled into one heroic figure, almost to the point of caricaturization.
And you know who that person is, Seneca. This is why Seneca is both hated and loved. Like for example, when you read John Seller's Art of Living, he's extremely dismissive Seneca and he goes for Epictetus because of his cosmic difference and simply dismisses Seneca as just being a heroic pimp. You know, the word pimp in Greece was not a pimp in today's world. It's someone who just has too much exuberance. Shows up a lot.
So perhaps Lenka, would you be able to repeat your two questions and some people and I can talk about it before we move forward? Yes, just a second, I think I forgot them. Yeah, there is this issue whether some people think Foucault is too constructivistic, so they don't believe it can work as a politization of intellectuals.
Yes, but you also talked a little bit about Kant, right? Yes, because he has this... I mean, when we are thinking of the terminology of critical attitude, then Hubald goes on with Kant, which is different critique, but still he places it on the side of... like Kant and Cynics on the critical side on the analytics of true Yeah, sure, sure Any person wants to say something before work?
Alex had a comment, but I'm not sure if her audio is working yet Alex is just trying to tell us that our microphone is not working But I'm sure it's working. Can you hear me? Yes, I know. Can you hear me? Yes. It's good to have you here. Oh, good. Hi. Hi. Do you want me to rephrase what it was that I was saying before, Alex? Sure, absolutely. Well, I've lost the chat transcript, but I'll try to piece it together. But I'm actually not interested in talking about that anymore. I actually, I'm sorry, I did want to not to be like a dour revivalist or to be tedious or anything. No, you are not. Right. Just the notion that we were kind of circling around before on uncertainty, uncertainty, and contingency,
which you're putting at the basis of, you know, the radicality of continuing radicality of cynicism, is interesting to me when we start thinking actually about their conception of nature, which was fascinating because it seemed to fall kind of closer in line to what Aristotle had to say about nature. I think he called her the good housekeeper, right? The oikonomos agathos. Yeah, you know like the conscientious wife just taking care of all her little babies. Our father actually had this idea that you know the housewife should always remain in the kitchen. It's the telus of the housewife, you know, for our
father. But for cynics it's not. A housewife for a cynic is more like the second wife of Socrates, you know, that she might be a housewife, but she's also the one who kicks your butt in public and pour, you know, basically dirty water on your head. She's also essentially like useless as a political animal, correct? Right? She doesn't actually participate in the polis. So she's not really a citizen. Yeah. So she kind of just is a cozy outside that is actually structuring of the inside which is interesting because that's kind of what the cynics are themselves they're domesticated uh you know wild men in some ways
right i don't know what i just have a question about the you know ever present certainty of divine providence you know that comes through nature in the cynic you know worldview right to be honest with you well this is a really a good question and it's really hard from a historical perspective to answer this with confidence because to the extent that cynicism was never turned into a proper philosophical doctrine, there were so many people who at that age considered themselves to be cynics
and identified with cynicism. So you get those people who believe of nature as a kind of divine, and you get agnostics, And then you also get pure rationalists. So cynicism was never from a historical perspective, even at the onset of this movement, was a unified movement. It was basically made of different kinds of actors with fundamentally different ideas about the role of nature or for that matter truth.
For example, Hipparchia and her husband were rationalists. Diogenes was an agnostic. Antisteasin was, again, a rationalist. Anarchasis was more on the side of what you might call to be a revolutionary. But there were so many other cynics like Shios and so on and so forth who were more on the
side of nature as a divine problem, in the way that you mentioned it. It's really hard to create a coherent story about cynicism. All we can do is talk about the basic principles of cynicism, but not what you might call to be the broad map of cynicism. because there is no such a thing as a broad math for cynicism, because it wasn't really philosophy as a means of theorization. It was simply, as I mentioned, philosophy by deeds.
To the extent that they didn't care about theory, about making things precise, This is actually something that Anacarsis tells to Solon, who's considered to be the father of Greek democracy, really, a lawmaker, a statesman, a poet. He laughs. So basically, the thing is that this guy shows, like, imagine that me coming from Shiraz, Iran. You don't know me.
And I suddenly come to America, knock at your door. I ask you that you have to give me an accommodation. So this is exactly what he did to Solon, who was extremely famous, extremely influential back then in Athens. And so they become friends, and he reads Solon legislation of the Athenian law, the formation. This is the archaic Greece. And he starts to have this laughing fit. He says,
This is all bullshit. The kind of democratic laws that you are making are like spider webs. They can catch small animals, but never the big ones. A big animal cuts right through it he's meaning rich people so there is these kinds of you know all these kinds of basically conflicting attitudes toward the notion of truth democracy nature, reason, even social conventions.
That's why I don't want to talk about cynicism as a great doctrine, but merely as a placeholder for certain kinds of ideas. Because if we go to try to conclude what cynics were, we're most probably making a historical mistake. This was completely clear even to cynics back then. They knew that they are so different.
Questions? Thoughts? Anything? Swearing? Heckling? I just have a note. have a note I think like why Foucault like them so or like thought it's important to remember them is in this interview or interview um intellectuals and power that that thing when he talks with the last about like yeah duties of intellectuals and their public role then they say that the intellectuals role is no longer to place himself somewhat ahead and to the side in order to express the stifled truth of the collectivity rather it is to struggle against the forms of power
that transform him into its object and instrument in the sphere of knowledge truth consciousness and discourse yes so this is yeah like very cynical right This is actually very interesting and this is why I asked you Lenka about your inclusion of Kant. So it is actually interesting the role of Kant between Plato, for example, if he was alive at the time of the death of Socrates. So people usually think that he would have
taken the side of Plato. But this is not really true. He most probably have taken side with cynics. Because you see, the ultimate idea in Kant shall not be and should not be searched within the critique of pure reason, namely the thesis about objective knowledge and epistemology. But in other works, I think the ultimate idea of Kant, and I take side of Carl Friedrich on this,
was the making of the common man. It's famous that, you know, so Kant was a clockwork, right? He goes to Konigsberg. He never leaves Konigsberg. He lives, he lives, not leaves, lives in Konigsberg and every at six o'clock, he's basically moving through the streets and stuff and people are, he's so clockwork that people actually try to tune their clocks based on Kant's movements. Okay, but Reza, you're missing something very important about this, which is that
Kant was not an early riser by nature. He had to have his servants rouse him. It took him like at least like an hour or two to get up in the morning and his servants had to be like making him very, very strong, I don't know, tea or coffee or something. Yes, no, I completely am aware of it. My story is very different. Even though with the background of servants and so on and so forth, He actually misses one day of his clockwork habits. Do you know what that day was? When he reads Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emil or the education. Precisely because Rousseau was this practical guy
who is all for the common man. And Kant says that I want to read Rosso so many times that his beautiful prose becomes so ugly to me, such that I can finally deal with the nitty grittier stuff behind his philosophy. And this was really one of Kant's main ambition in his philosophy, to understand the bildung of a common man. Not theorization about epistemology, not about nature, objective knowledge, so on
so forth, but the Bildung, the building of the Kahn man. And to that extent, Kant never broke away from Rousseau. And Rousseau, surprisingly, was a great reader of cynics. But still, like, Kant is more trying to describe the common man than to make him free, no? Sorry? That Kant is, like, to me, Kant was always more about describing the common man than
trying to make him free. Yes. Does not the transcendental decision make the common man free to philosophize? I mean, this is quite freeing. This is something novel. Well, I think that, you see, Kant, I wouldn't say that he was merely describing the common man. He, you know, Kant always is philosopher of the conditions of possibility of X or Y, right? So, he tries to say, what is the condition of possibility of being a common man? Like, what is the condition of possibility of having an objective knowledge, a la transcendental deduction? Well, his answer is that the condition of possibility of common man is that
that practice always trumps theory. Maybe Kant was not a practical philosopher, just like Socrates, but nevertheless he's making a thesis, which is quite Socratic. And perhaps also saying, by what right, answering kind of, by what right do we engage in the right practice or in practice?
I think, unless I read the cynics completely wrong, I mean, by saying that one should live, that nature is fundamentally uncertain, it is not only a claim that one must abandon the certainty of the city, but also that that certainty is fundamentally illusory, isn't it? It's a given. It's a given. Yes. Exactly. Yes. Yes, completely. But in relationship to nature, it is in some sense also illusory, is it not? And it becomes, perhaps as in Kant, like a matter of freeing the human from the dogma, isn't it?
Yes, yes, yes. No, I completely agree. This is... So I don't think that there is that much of a difference between Kant and practical philosophy of, for example, Socrates, Cynics or Stoics. It's just that Kant's David Vogelpohl's main idea is to expose what is always given and immediate. And Hegel actually builds on it. And Hegel is like the goddamn arch nemesis, arch nemesis of the
giving so hegel's idea is that if you see or you perceive something as immediate then perhaps you should reach for your revolver my apologies to make gobbles goggles, jokes. That's not good for me. I can get cancelled for this but it's good. Allow me one minute. I need to check my soup. My apologies.
There's always the stew with you. No, soup. This is time I said soup. I didn't say a stew. We'll be back in two minutes then. The new Werner Herzog documentary with Gorbachev. Apparently Gorbachev was likened to Goebbels too by a German president who was the German president immediately prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Who was the German president? East.
Please do feel free to say something while I'm trying to find my notes. How's the soup? Oh, well, it was almost burning. So, you see, as I mentioned to you last session, so,
Without the proper contextualization about cynicism, we can either see them as these revolutionary transgressives against the dullness and the barbarity of society, a civil society, or as pure individualists. I think that these are both bad readings of cynics. Even we basically can agree on the fact that cynics were not all the same.
Nevertheless, they had certain kinds of principles, undergirding principles. And to that extent, we should really look at these undergirding principles. I mentioned two things, self-mastery and the critique of civic society. Not to topple it, but rather to give it its proper consciousness. This is extremely important to understand, as again I mentioned last time, their enmity
with norms or social conventions does not amount to disregarding or disavowing social conventions, just like their critique of society, civic society, does not amount to a kind of penchant for annihilation of civilization. And to that extent, we cannot call them individualists.
It's just that cynicism, just like a stoicism, should be understood as a method, in their terms, as a comprehensive method, but as a method to deal with what we are encountering with here and now, society, nature, family, parentship, wealth, power, so on and so forth. So it's really important to not basically simply think about the idea of self-mastery in a scenic way
as what can be called haphazards experiments in individualism. No, there is a great plan for that. The plan is as simple as that. give society itself consciousness. Questions before I move forward? Can I ask something here? Sure, absolutely.
Good, good. Yeah, it's interesting to note that one of the maxims too attributed to Diogenes was that exile makes one a philosopher, which is almost a direct inversion of what Socrates said about philosophy, right? That philosophy or the act of philosophizing makes one an exile or worse, right? Makes one dead, you know, presenting that to the state. And so the question of individualism for me might kind of hang up around that inversion, which some might see as putting the cart before the horse and maybe fetishizing the role of the philosopher as a subversive before the philosophy itself
and its subversion contained inside of it, right? That might also constitute maybe some of the charges of the apoliticism of the cynical stance, even the activity, right? is that creation of the philosopher before the philosophy through the alienation. Yes. I think, as with you, I think what you are mentioning here is more of a historical take on cynicism. When we read fragments, surviving fragments from cynics and also basically the takes by
their peers, probably a hundred or two hundreds after them, I don't think that that is really the case though, precisely because for them the idea of a philosopher is just a practical idea of philosophy, nothing more nothing less. So of course they do valorize the idea of a philosopher, but philosopher for them is merely the embodiment of certain kinds of principles that should be taken by heart, should become the flesh of someone. So for them, for example,
it's not that you first become a philosopher and then a vagabond. They both come at the same time, to be cosmopolitan, according to Diogenes or Anarcharsis, is the very, basically, prerequisite to be capable of talking about the world in the broadest possible sense. I don't think that ancient cynics put the cart before the horses.
I think that whether for the good or for the better or for the worse, they allied a distinction between the cart and the horse. Cardi horse. Yes. Which is also what? Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Alex. Well, it just seems to me that that's sidestepping the question to a certain extent, because there's this sort of, the idea that the principles could be embodied in an individual is already presuming something about the nature of the conduct of somebody as an individual, that they're not constituted by a community, which enables them to have a certain
manner of conduct. So I'm not sure that that quite answers this question. Yes, but you see, Alex, the kind of individual that they have in mind is what you might call to be a practical vector. So you see, this really, the cornerstone of cynicism. So they They don't say that other people don't have or don't share their ideas. It's just that they are simply ideas on paper. They think of a person, particularly a philosopher, as what you might call to be an aggravating
Vector of practice. Because for them practice, the deed is important. Everyone can have an opinion about this or that, principles which undergird those opinions, but that's not really important to them. What is important to them is that person, by virtue of being an agent, should accelerate, should highlight and accentuate the practical side of things, and what is agency, if not a practical matter. Philosopher, for them, is simply an avatar of a person who has come to this conclusion,
that practice, an ascetic practice, is what distinguishes not a philosopher from a common man, but distinguishes deeds and practical self-consciousness from mere opinion. Sure. I mean, it seems like we're kind of getting back to this problem of the endogenous and exogenous factors in conduct and on virtue and so on. But it's like the idea of an agent seems to require that there's all of these external factors which enable me to act in a certain way.
Like I have my capacities only exist in virtue of me having a relationship to a certain environment, to a certain community. and there are many things that I could not do. I couldn't enter into these sorts of communal practices. Yes. It just seems sort of misguided to think of it in terms of the individual. No, no, no. I don't think that they think it like that. You see, this is the whole point. For example, why is that anarcharsis actually is happy to live in Greece? Right? precisely because he thinks that there are certain kinds of factors that empower and enable him to be that kind of sage, right?
So he always thinks about enablement, and he sees Greek civilization as an enablement. But that is the whole point of a cynic. Okay, so for example, nature, society, laws, fooses, social conventions, even trivial etiquettes positively constrain us, empower us, enable us to do things and not others. Yet, for a philosopher, as a vector or an avatar of practical self-consciousness, is that enough? No. Essentially, what they want to do is to show that what can possibly enable you, in the first place,
and you should never simply have a fight with it in the first place, what can possibly enable you might in fact be a myth of immediacy such that you mistake or confuse or confound what has enabled you with your true powers your tendencies. That's the case of cynicism. That they want to accept, and in fact not transgress in the first place, those factors that enable them to do something and not others,
living in a civilized society only to come back and criticize the immediacy of a civil society such that they can reveal a broader set of potencies that might arise from living in a civil society. Reza this to me appears to be a very Hegelian matter and I say this precisely because the point that Hegel's position is reflected in Bernard Williams but also in
Aristotle's criticism of Socrates or refuted in Nietzsche is that philosophy proper must be removed from the immediacy at hand of an individual's life and developed into an abstract system. And this is a means of not just systematization, but of making infinite that which is at hand finite. In fact, there is a section called Beautiful Individuality in the Idealist Such, where Hegel talks about the pulsating heart, how the pulsating heart shows itself over the surface of the human
in contrast to the animal. And this is how it asserts itself as an art that converts every shape to the points of its visible surface, converting spirit into appearance or as Plato says according to Diogenes when thou lookest at the stars my star would I were the heavens and could see thee with a thousand eyes making a production into a thousand eyed Argus where the inner soul and spirit is seen at every point so it's not just you know a deferral of lived philosophy in in hegel and aristotle i think uh but the inner infinitude that still can have like a material presence
the good point really good point fantastic thank you thank you yeah that's that's a really good point yeah but that doesn't see I mean it seems like the actual goal of cynical or a cynicist practice is not to presuppose at any given point in time some sort of infinite capacity going back to what Alexander was saying about the question of endogenous or exogenous capabilities or conduct But it seems as though the question that is invoked, at least for me, by cynicism, is the question of whether or not we are actually aware at any given point in time, what our
inventory of functions are. Yes. I think that's what I meant. Essentially, the move from immediacy to mediasy. Right. So I mean, I think- It's quite a Hegelian idea. So in this sense, I think that I don't find cynicism to be apolitical, but I think the idea is that. It's absolutely not apolitical. Right. So a kind of noetic demos is not political for the cynic. Maybe you have civil society, people can get their opinions, but it's contemplative life. It's not active life. So the question is, the only way that you can actually ascertain the inventory of functions at your disposal is if you subject them to some sort of a source of resistance,
which for the cynics can be offered through nature. And through this kind of source of resistance, what you regard to be your potential capabilities might prove to be inhibited, or they might be emulsified by this process of engaging with it. But it's only by actually subjecting it to the kind of unforgiving engagement with nature as it's defined by the cynics, you can actually identify what you're capable of. It doesn't assume it's infinite. It assumes that you don't actually know. And chance encounters, luck, fortune, engagement with nature, this is how you can actually deal with this uncertainty. I don't think uncertainty and... Yes, since you see, James, the thing, this is something that also,
stoics borrowed from cynics and actually kind of fleshed it out a little bit better uh you know uh more clear you see i don't want to make this metaphor but let us do it you see it is very much like psychoanalytical term unconscious right so nature for them is the unconscious the thing is that you just don't go according to the cynics and simply embrace like schopenhauer
and all the goth people, oh the unconscious, the dark realm beyond. No, no, no. The thing is that these people think of the unconscious as a postulate of our mediated reason, reason, meaning historical reason. And to that extent, if we look at nature, if you look at uncertainty, contingency, I don't know, unconscious, in this, from this perspective, then you can actually come back. So one of the things I want to say is that cynics don't
really give a shit about nature to be honest with you but stoics do stoics don't even do that go ahead they believe in the hedger they believe in hedger do you know what hedgerman is the mind yeah so so it's not that they give about nature as something out there that can like a tyrant dictates something upon us. It's not that they believe in civilization as this pure thing or nature as this pure thing. No. No, no, no. Yes, you're right. Absolutely. Not the pure thing. So, so what they want to do is that they're more like this kind of playful people who say that, okay,
Okay, so, you know, we are all shit and we have all the jazz in the universe, you know, by virtue of knowing reason and all that shit. But let us actually do play a game. The name of this play is conjecturing about the possible constraints of our beliefs, opinions, practices, so on and so forth. And that's really one of the highest points of philosophy.
You see, philosophy doesn't need to go for nature, for the unconscious, as completely disconnected from thought. No, no, no. In fact, philosophy wants to posit the idea of an unconstrained, contingent, nature, uncertainty, I don't know, so on and so forth, unconscious, as a postulate of thought in order to rain down its own ambitions, to highlight its own limits. Only thought can accentuate its limits,
not nature. That is the greatest lesson that can be learned from cynics and also the Stoics. I put myself in the position That by virtue of my doings and my thinking, sayings and doings, I confront myself with certain kinds of constraints. From those kinds of constraints, I begin to renegotiate the scope of what I can do and
what I can say. Reza Sure Do you recall Heraclitus' On Nature? Yes Did you say you hate it? There's a conception of nature here that I think finds itself revived in the way that the Stoic particular to Marcus Aurelius Marcus Aurelius this kind of nature in my book not in the history of philosophy go on
Marcus in the meditations speaks of substance flowing his perception faint of man's life the constitution of the whole body decaying He goes on to speak of how there is a perpetual flow like a river, its activities in continuous change, speed, movements. These are what Marcus underscores that the causes, substance of nature is never near at a standstill, never close at hand. It is in fact the infinite void of past and future in which all things disappear. dissolution is infinitude and though we may be able to be judging subjects it is our engagement
with nature that that we this the our interaction with nature is through perception and cognition is a perceptive faculty that which is changing that seems like a heracleitian idea flux flow etc you know you want me to say about this you want me to share my intimate ideas about Heraclitus yes I don't probably I shouldn't do that I think Heraclitus or Heraclitus as you say it is a total god damn fucking shot there is only one
philosopher and his name is Parmenides. You see, the change in nature, how are you going to actually register it? How do you see the change in nature? By what means? Through what sorts of possibilities? Eliatic doctrine is the only doctrine there is. Oh, so you're a philosopher of eminence now? No, I'm not a philosopher of eminence. But this is the one equals one. This is the ultimate... No, I think that this claim can be interpreted in different ways. But let us not quibble over this issue.
I would say that it's as simple as that. We literally don't have any sorts of precognition into nature, into how it works, into time, into space, so on and so forth. Everything is built upon the thesis that thinking and being are one. Unfortunately, so many good philosophers have mistaken this idea as if there is a fusion, that one, that being and thinking are just like the same. No, no, no.
When an Eliottic philosopher says thinking and being are one, he means something exact. And what is that? that being is informed by thought, and thought is informed by being. So to that extent, the Aleutic doctrine of Parmenides in Unnature, the poem, is more like this, that we, and he's actually very, very generous to Heraclitus, that we go through
change but that change doesn't come from the whims of nature or time but the determinate modifications or changes of thought. As a rationalist I completely believe in this. I think anything outside of this is pure metaphysical bloatware. What about, oh no someone else please go ahead. Sorry I just wanted to flag that there's 10 minutes till the end of the session as scheduled. I think we should go over.
Okay okay okay. Well we are going to probably, because I was late. Yes. Yeah. So, let me read you a few things I found in my notes. So I talked about the idea of the barbaric philosophy. So this is the actual quote. I have become barbarous, not by being away from Greece for a long time, but by being in Greece for a long time. That's the idea of barbaric philosophy. Then...
Another anecdote. So if you want to hear about the idea of joke, which I talked about in the session, with regard to the idea of rhetoric, how they reappropriated a sophistic rhetoric and turned it into practical jokes against dogmas of society. So Anacharsis says something like that. When a monkey was brought into symposium, this is actually
not from really Anacharsis. It's actually from the superiority of Phusis to Nomos by Athenius. So it is an account of Anacarsus' idea of a good joke versus a bad joke. And you should think about this in terms of what I meant, my joke, a cynic joke, in the last session. He says, when a monkey was brought into a symposium, The Ascythian, Anacarsis, obviously, the Ascythian laughed, although he was sown when the clown
arrived, because the monkey was funny by nature, unlike the practiced comedians. That's a really great lesson about cynicism. You see, the thing is that the good laugh should always be diverted against things by fuses, things by laws, not things by conventions. Because things by conventions are so awkward. some other person might actually make a joke about you as a matter of convention
because you are practicing something that he doesn't actually practice. So that's one. Yeah, the thing that I said. So there is this encounter between Solon. It's actually in Polotark's book. and anacharsis. So the thing is that Solon says,
I marveled at the intelligence of the man. He means anacharsis. And entertain him as a house guest, even though he was busy with public business and drafting laws at the time. His host occupation gives anarchists the opportunity to make another cutting remark, this time about how fruitless is the attempt to control lawlessness and greed through written ordinances, which are no different from spiderwebs,
since they will trap the weak and light what will be ripped right through by the rich and the powerful Salome's answer is less cynical than anarchoises he says people keep agreements when it is not profitable to either one of the parties to violate the conditions. He's tuning, he says, the laws to suit the citizens, so as to show all doing the right thing is better than acting illegally.
Here, the narrator intervenes with foreshadowing. And this is what the narrator says in Plutarch's book. But these matters turned out as anarchoices had reckoned rather than according to Salon's expectation. The brief story is finished with another anarchist story, where he says, while attending the ecclesia,
it's a sort of kind of festivity, he observed that among the Greeks, the wise talk, but the ignorant do the judging. The wise talk. So this is really something that a Escaitian philosopher can say to the Greeks. Why are you all, everyone who talks appears as so wise? It's like this striking thing when Escaitian, and a barbarian enters the city estate of Aten. So he says that, oh my God, everyone that talks in this city is so wise,
but why the fuck? People who actually make decisions about the society are not the people who actually talk wisely. That's one. So this is the thing that Greeks liked Anakarsis for.
Anakarsis, just like cynicism, was merely an outside view of civilization, not an outsider to civilization. You know, he lived in Athens for quite a great deal of years. But the thing is that every civilization, every dogma, every belief, every philosophy, every doctrine require an outside view. The reason that they liked him, because he represented that outside view.
So, and this is kind of like in connection with the idea of the Stoicism, Seneca, Epictetus, and so on and so forth. So they catch him in a party at 3 a.m. He's totally goddamn drunk. And he says, why are you so angry with me? You know, they want to kick him out, like the bouncers, they want to kick him out of the party. He says, why are you so angry with me?
Isn't it the tea-less of drinking wine to get drunk? And from getting drunk to be spiteful and disgusting, I merely performed the whole spectrum of what it means to drink the wine. This comes back to Diogenes Larchius, who says that anarchists believe that the vine has three fruits. One the pleasure, two drunkenness, and three utter disgust.
Actually this sublimates the idea of a cynic, as Diogenes or anarchists had it, that we need to take to the ultimate vices of society to show how stupid these vices are and how we can avoid them. questions and answers and perhaps we should convict some people to the next presentation. Is there any volunteer for the guillotine?
What are the texts that are to be presented on? Does it really matter? Okay, I will send these texts. I would say the second volume of Seneca letters to Lucius is one of the greatest pieces in Roman literature. The second piece that I have in mind is fragments of Epictetus. I will send these, but maybe someone actually wants to, you know... Yeah, I'll do it. I'll do whichever one and so it's done.
uh i think okay you are one who is it next week yep next victim it's a good one i'm excited to hear about this because my philosophy education we did not cover seneca yeah it's it sounds exciting so i haven't read seneca either so looking forward to it In a civil society, we always collectively make a scapegoat. Perhaps, if no one volunteers, we should collectively select someone. Federico has a- Federico, that's right.
I've been turned against the wall. Has the public spoken? Do I really care about public? No, I don't. Okay. Let us, I'm going to come up with some names. Nikki. Sebastian. Sophie? Sophie is always on the red list. You should exercise your democratic vote, otherwise the tyranny will triumph.
You want us to pick someone? Perhaps yourself? That would be suicidal, no? Do we not have two people? I mean, we only need two people for next time, no? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Federico, are you okay with presenting on Epictetus? Yeah, that's okay. That's okay. It will be also an act of kamikaze, but I'll do it. Yes. So who's going to be the next speaker? Please don't let us to be the barbarian civic society.
Are we picking everybody for... Yeah, are we picking for the entire seminar or just for next time? We only have two for next time. We're done. We're done. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I think we're all right at present. But Reza, next time you can pick some more victims. I love that. I love that. I came to this business to pick up victims. Thank you so much for everything. And my sincere apologies for being late. Thanks so much Reza. Bye, thank you. Thanks Reza.