290.
November 12, 2024 (14256)
Let’s sum up the work I’ve done over the last 28 days while studying Cicero. I’ve read On Duty, On the Republic, On the Nature of Gods, On Divination, On Fate, Tusculan Disputations, The Orator and some of Cicero’s speeches. I did a comparative analysis of these books in English, Russian and Latin, examining various concepts like “summum bonum”, “summum malum”, “virtus”, “dedecus”, “dolor”, “honestum”, “cognitio”, etc. I’ve listened to multiple lectures on the Roman Republic, the best of which were the series by prof. David L. Kennedy. I also read many articles on wikipedia, examining the relationship between Rome, Carthage and Greece, as well as the period called the Crisis of the Roman Republic (133–44 BCE) and its key players like Marius, Sulla, Pompey and Caesar.
It took me two weeks to write and memorize the lecture, after which my interest in Cicero was in decline. Moreover, I was distracted by prof. Dave’s attack on Sabine Hossenfelder and paid a lot of attention to their fight on youtube. Plus, some clownish political commentators like N. Ferguson and international relations scholars like J. Mearsheimer grabbed my curiosity from time to time, adding to the volume of cognitive noise. Yet, despite all of that, I’ve preserved the commitment to the task of studying Cicero up until this very day, and most of my thinking still revolves around him. All these 28 days, I was building a Ciceronian identity in my mind, teleporting him from ancient Rome and setting on the contemporary psychopolitical stage. The questions like, “What would I do?” and “How would I think?” if I were an upgraded version of Cicero helped me reach many remarkable insights.
With respect to the lecture, I think it’s a masterpiece of a kind the Russian language has never seen before. Ten more lectures like that, and it’s going to be impossible to ignore my work and simultaneously call oneself a philosophically educated person in Russian. Will I be able to write ten more lectures like that? We’ll see. The next target is Descartes.
November 12, 2024 (14256)
Let’s sum up the work I’ve done over the last 28 days while studying Cicero. I’ve read On Duty, On the Republic, On the Nature of Gods, On Divination, On Fate, Tusculan Disputations, The Orator and some of Cicero’s speeches. I did a comparative analysis of these books in English, Russian and Latin, examining various concepts like “summum bonum”, “summum malum”, “virtus”, “dedecus”, “dolor”, “honestum”, “cognitio”, etc. I’ve listened to multiple lectures on the Roman Republic, the best of which were the series by prof. David L. Kennedy. I also read many articles on wikipedia, examining the relationship between Rome, Carthage and Greece, as well as the period called the Crisis of the Roman Republic (133–44 BCE) and its key players like Marius, Sulla, Pompey and Caesar.
It took me two weeks to write and memorize the lecture, after which my interest in Cicero was in decline. Moreover, I was distracted by prof. Dave’s attack on Sabine Hossenfelder and paid a lot of attention to their fight on youtube. Plus, some clownish political commentators like N. Ferguson and international relations scholars like J. Mearsheimer grabbed my curiosity from time to time, adding to the volume of cognitive noise. Yet, despite all of that, I’ve preserved the commitment to the task of studying Cicero up until this very day, and most of my thinking still revolves around him. All these 28 days, I was building a Ciceronian identity in my mind, teleporting him from ancient Rome and setting on the contemporary psychopolitical stage. The questions like, “What would I do?” and “How would I think?” if I were an upgraded version of Cicero helped me reach many remarkable insights.
With respect to the lecture, I think it’s a masterpiece of a kind the Russian language has never seen before. Ten more lectures like that, and it’s going to be impossible to ignore my work and simultaneously call oneself a philosophically educated person in Russian. Will I be able to write ten more lectures like that? We’ll see. The next target is Descartes.
291.
November 14, 2024 (14258)
For the next 34 days, I’m going to be working on a lecture dedicated to Descartes. This is the third lecture in my series of lectures about psychopolitics. The previous two were dedicated to Machiavelli and Cicero, respectively. Yesterday, only four people attended the last lecture, which says something about the place where I live. The interest in great thinkers is not highly developed here, despite the fact that one of the greatest Russian thinkers, Tsiolkovsky, lived and taught right in this city a century earlier. We have a state museum named after him, a street, a few statues, a university. Yet, I never met anybody who would be able to name one of the books he wrote, not to say anything about what’s written there. But I met people who probably thought I was rude by pointing this out to them and recommending his very short philosophical work, The Universe’s Monism. Perhaps, iirc, only one person read it, following my recommendation.
Back to Descartes. As with my second lecture, this one I’m going to make in the form of a poem. Most of what I know about Descartes comes from the lectures and articles made by other thinkers, whom, as I move on in my studies of psychopolitics, I feel less and less inclined to rely on. I tried to read one of Descartes’ books (the only one available in the city’s biggest library) in 2012, but quickly got bored and abandoned it for the ten volumes of Goethe’s collected works, nine of which I read, so to speak, in one shot before getting bored again and shifting to Marx, Fichte, Feuerbach and Schopenhauer.
I’m going to employ my psychopolitical framework, reading Descartes’ original works (in English and Russian translations), doing regular meditations and composing a new psychopolitical poem. Here is what I came up with today:
Чем знаменит Рене Декарт
И зачем его изучать?
Вопрос, так сказать, на миллиард.
С чего бы этак начать?
Декарт, словно Зевс, воплощенный в быка,
Развел Европу на два языка.
(Make sure to learn various meanings of the word “разводить” before translating it with the help of AI).
November 14, 2024 (14258)
For the next 34 days, I’m going to be working on a lecture dedicated to Descartes. This is the third lecture in my series of lectures about psychopolitics. The previous two were dedicated to Machiavelli and Cicero, respectively. Yesterday, only four people attended the last lecture, which says something about the place where I live. The interest in great thinkers is not highly developed here, despite the fact that one of the greatest Russian thinkers, Tsiolkovsky, lived and taught right in this city a century earlier. We have a state museum named after him, a street, a few statues, a university. Yet, I never met anybody who would be able to name one of the books he wrote, not to say anything about what’s written there. But I met people who probably thought I was rude by pointing this out to them and recommending his very short philosophical work, The Universe’s Monism. Perhaps, iirc, only one person read it, following my recommendation.
Back to Descartes. As with my second lecture, this one I’m going to make in the form of a poem. Most of what I know about Descartes comes from the lectures and articles made by other thinkers, whom, as I move on in my studies of psychopolitics, I feel less and less inclined to rely on. I tried to read one of Descartes’ books (the only one available in the city’s biggest library) in 2012, but quickly got bored and abandoned it for the ten volumes of Goethe’s collected works, nine of which I read, so to speak, in one shot before getting bored again and shifting to Marx, Fichte, Feuerbach and Schopenhauer.
I’m going to employ my psychopolitical framework, reading Descartes’ original works (in English and Russian translations), doing regular meditations and composing a new psychopolitical poem. Here is what I came up with today:
Чем знаменит Рене Декарт
И зачем его изучать?
Вопрос, так сказать, на миллиард.
С чего бы этак начать?
Декарт, словно Зевс, воплощенный в быка,
Развел Европу на два языка.
(Make sure to learn various meanings of the word “разводить” before translating it with the help of AI).
292.
November 15, 2024 (14259)
In his Discourse on the Method, Descartes states, “My aim here is not to teach the method that everyone must follow for the right conduct of his reason, but only to show in what way I have tried to conduct mine.” In the same book, he makes other dubious claims, for example, that it (the book that contains 60 pages) “might seem too long to read at once” or that he has “never presumed his mind to be any way more accomplished than that of the common man.”
The book was published in the midst of the Thirty Years’ War, a few years after Galileo was condemned for teaching a new science. Descartes had to pretend that he was a useless idiot, though it was clear from his letters that he was driven by the intention to become the greatest thinker. Here is what he writes to Mersenne in 1641: “These six meditations contain all the foundations of my physics. But please do not tell people, for that might make it harder for supporters of Aristotle to approve them. I hope that readers will gradually get used to my principles, and recognize their truth, before they notice that they destroy the principles of Aristotle.” In terms of physics, Aristotle at that time was “the philosopher”; whoever tried to undermine his authority in Latin could easily end up being burned like Bruno. Yet the evidence that the earth was spinning and revolving around the sun was no longer possible to deny.
“The common man,” who fought for existence and thought in Latin in Descartes’ mind, has never accepted a new science. That’s probably why Descartes cultivated a social role of the greatest thinker in his mind primarily in French. He had to stop thinking in French while he was studying at Jesuit college and the University of Poitiers to master Latin. But then, he didn’t “abandon altogether the study of letters”; he abandoned the study of Latin and began mastering French.
November 15, 2024 (14259)
In his Discourse on the Method, Descartes states, “My aim here is not to teach the method that everyone must follow for the right conduct of his reason, but only to show in what way I have tried to conduct mine.” In the same book, he makes other dubious claims, for example, that it (the book that contains 60 pages) “might seem too long to read at once” or that he has “never presumed his mind to be any way more accomplished than that of the common man.”
The book was published in the midst of the Thirty Years’ War, a few years after Galileo was condemned for teaching a new science. Descartes had to pretend that he was a useless idiot, though it was clear from his letters that he was driven by the intention to become the greatest thinker. Here is what he writes to Mersenne in 1641: “These six meditations contain all the foundations of my physics. But please do not tell people, for that might make it harder for supporters of Aristotle to approve them. I hope that readers will gradually get used to my principles, and recognize their truth, before they notice that they destroy the principles of Aristotle.” In terms of physics, Aristotle at that time was “the philosopher”; whoever tried to undermine his authority in Latin could easily end up being burned like Bruno. Yet the evidence that the earth was spinning and revolving around the sun was no longer possible to deny.
“The common man,” who fought for existence and thought in Latin in Descartes’ mind, has never accepted a new science. That’s probably why Descartes cultivated a social role of the greatest thinker in his mind primarily in French. He had to stop thinking in French while he was studying at Jesuit college and the University of Poitiers to master Latin. But then, he didn’t “abandon altogether the study of letters”; he abandoned the study of Latin and began mastering French.
293.
November 19, 2024 (14263)
Did Descartes think that French was superior to Latin? Did he see himself as “the first modern philosopher” whose way of thinking was supposed to replace ancient paradigms of Greek and Latin? In his Discourse on Method, he says that he has “discovered many truths more useful and important than anything he had hitherto learned or even hoped to learn.” He believes that these truths are “very important and generally unknown to other men.” He boasts that “the satisfaction he obtained from it filled his mind to such a degree that nothing else mattered to him.”
What is he talking about? What are these “certain laws… established in such a way in nature… that after sufficient reflection on them, we cannot doubt that they are strictly observed in everything that exists or occurs in the world”? Oh, yeah, he reinvented mathematics, which nobody knew about in his time, put together algebra and geometry, grounded them in physics and proclaimed himself a new naked emperor of all men of knowledge. He perfected the art of self-propaganda in French to the extent that an assumed entity behind the thinking process (which in psychopolitics we call “language”) no longer needed gods or nature and could stand on its own, deriving everything else – including gods and nature – from itself. Descartes’ response to the peripatetic axiom “nil in intellectu quod not fuerit prius in sensu” demonstrates how anybody driven by the intention to become the greatest thinker places one’s language in the center of psychopolitics, denying the hegemony of other thinkers and their narratives or reinterpreting them from an explicitly superior position. “Neither our imagination nor our senses could ever confirm the existence of anything, if our intellect did not play its part.” He says. Does “our intellect” in this case mean “Latin and French purple prose written by Rene Descartes”?
November 19, 2024 (14263)
Did Descartes think that French was superior to Latin? Did he see himself as “the first modern philosopher” whose way of thinking was supposed to replace ancient paradigms of Greek and Latin? In his Discourse on Method, he says that he has “discovered many truths more useful and important than anything he had hitherto learned or even hoped to learn.” He believes that these truths are “very important and generally unknown to other men.” He boasts that “the satisfaction he obtained from it filled his mind to such a degree that nothing else mattered to him.”
What is he talking about? What are these “certain laws… established in such a way in nature… that after sufficient reflection on them, we cannot doubt that they are strictly observed in everything that exists or occurs in the world”? Oh, yeah, he reinvented mathematics, which nobody knew about in his time, put together algebra and geometry, grounded them in physics and proclaimed himself a new naked emperor of all men of knowledge. He perfected the art of self-propaganda in French to the extent that an assumed entity behind the thinking process (which in psychopolitics we call “language”) no longer needed gods or nature and could stand on its own, deriving everything else – including gods and nature – from itself. Descartes’ response to the peripatetic axiom “nil in intellectu quod not fuerit prius in sensu” demonstrates how anybody driven by the intention to become the greatest thinker places one’s language in the center of psychopolitics, denying the hegemony of other thinkers and their narratives or reinterpreting them from an explicitly superior position. “Neither our imagination nor our senses could ever confirm the existence of anything, if our intellect did not play its part.” He says. Does “our intellect” in this case mean “Latin and French purple prose written by Rene Descartes”?
294.
November 20, 2024 (14264)
Here is what Descartes says about why he wrote the Discourse in French: “If I write in French, which is the language of my country, rather than Latin, which is that of my teachers, it is because I hope that those who use only their unalloyed natural reason will be better judges of my opinions than those who swear only by the books of ancients.”
Is he looking for “better judges of his opinions,” or is he trying to undermine the power of Latin in psychopolitics? Did he have a “clear and distinct” idea of “unalloyed natural reason”? There is no such thing as “unalloyed natural reason.” There are mutually incomprehensible languages that lie in the foundations of different societies developed more or less consistently over the past dozen millennia in the struggle for power over nature. All these languages try to impose their narratives on nature as a whole. All these languages try to make themselves “the masters and possessors of nature.”
Living throughout the Thirty Years’ War, Descartes must have understood that the days of Latin’s hegemony over international, scientific, religious and other types of discourse were numbered. Italian, Polish, German, Spanish, English, French, etc. great thinkers stopped paying tribute to Latin and advanced their own languages as the best guides of “unalloyed natural reason”, making fun of the monolingual Latin thinkers who still believed in the universal (unipolar) supremacy of their language in psychopolitics. Descartes has mastered both French and Latin to the degree that he could see no rivals in either of them. After Galileo’s condemnation in 1633, which made clear that scientific progress in Latin was no more than a dream, Descartes put off the publication of his book on the universe and wrote a discourse about his personal history, explicitly saying that his French was superior to Latin as a guide of “unalloyed natural reason.” But then he seemed to change his mind, and a few years later published his Meditations in Latin. Did he change his mind whenever there was a shift in the balance of power throughout the Thirty Years’ War?
November 20, 2024 (14264)
Here is what Descartes says about why he wrote the Discourse in French: “If I write in French, which is the language of my country, rather than Latin, which is that of my teachers, it is because I hope that those who use only their unalloyed natural reason will be better judges of my opinions than those who swear only by the books of ancients.”
Is he looking for “better judges of his opinions,” or is he trying to undermine the power of Latin in psychopolitics? Did he have a “clear and distinct” idea of “unalloyed natural reason”? There is no such thing as “unalloyed natural reason.” There are mutually incomprehensible languages that lie in the foundations of different societies developed more or less consistently over the past dozen millennia in the struggle for power over nature. All these languages try to impose their narratives on nature as a whole. All these languages try to make themselves “the masters and possessors of nature.”
Living throughout the Thirty Years’ War, Descartes must have understood that the days of Latin’s hegemony over international, scientific, religious and other types of discourse were numbered. Italian, Polish, German, Spanish, English, French, etc. great thinkers stopped paying tribute to Latin and advanced their own languages as the best guides of “unalloyed natural reason”, making fun of the monolingual Latin thinkers who still believed in the universal (unipolar) supremacy of their language in psychopolitics. Descartes has mastered both French and Latin to the degree that he could see no rivals in either of them. After Galileo’s condemnation in 1633, which made clear that scientific progress in Latin was no more than a dream, Descartes put off the publication of his book on the universe and wrote a discourse about his personal history, explicitly saying that his French was superior to Latin as a guide of “unalloyed natural reason.” But then he seemed to change his mind, and a few years later published his Meditations in Latin. Did he change his mind whenever there was a shift in the balance of power throughout the Thirty Years’ War?
295.
November 21, 2024 (14265)
Let’s look at two powerful metaphors Descartes employs to push forward his conception of science. One of them is the metaphor of a journey, which he talks about in the following manner. “I could not choose any one person whose opinions struck me as preferable to those of others, and I found myself forced, as it were, to provide for myself my own guidance. But like a man walking by himself in the dark, I took the decision to go so slowly and exercise such caution in everything that even if I made very little progress, I would at least be sure not to fall.”
Another metaphor is that of building a house. Here is how he uses it to talk about science: “Just as it is not enough, before beginning to rebuild a house in which one lives, to do no more than demolish it, make provision for materials and architects, or become oneself trained as an architect, or even to have carefully drawn up the plans, but one must also provide oneself with another house in which one may be comfortably lodged while work is in progress.”
He also insists that “his project has never extended beyond wishing to reform his own thoughts and build on a foundation which is his alone.”
Apparently, he forgets that the languages he uses (French and Latin) to build his science belong to no one in particular, evolving throughout thousands of years. Whenever he wrote (and thought) in French, he was guided by the French grammar and its great thinkers with whom he struggled for power over this language, building a metaphysical house that was supposed to cast a shadow over other houses built out of French. When he wrote in Latin, he was guided by the Latin grammar. He fought with an army of other great thinkers united by the purpose to make Latin the most powerful language in psychopolitics. Was there any “I” behind his thoughts except “sicut cadaver”?
November 21, 2024 (14265)
Let’s look at two powerful metaphors Descartes employs to push forward his conception of science. One of them is the metaphor of a journey, which he talks about in the following manner. “I could not choose any one person whose opinions struck me as preferable to those of others, and I found myself forced, as it were, to provide for myself my own guidance. But like a man walking by himself in the dark, I took the decision to go so slowly and exercise such caution in everything that even if I made very little progress, I would at least be sure not to fall.”
Another metaphor is that of building a house. Here is how he uses it to talk about science: “Just as it is not enough, before beginning to rebuild a house in which one lives, to do no more than demolish it, make provision for materials and architects, or become oneself trained as an architect, or even to have carefully drawn up the plans, but one must also provide oneself with another house in which one may be comfortably lodged while work is in progress.”
He also insists that “his project has never extended beyond wishing to reform his own thoughts and build on a foundation which is his alone.”
Apparently, he forgets that the languages he uses (French and Latin) to build his science belong to no one in particular, evolving throughout thousands of years. Whenever he wrote (and thought) in French, he was guided by the French grammar and its great thinkers with whom he struggled for power over this language, building a metaphysical house that was supposed to cast a shadow over other houses built out of French. When he wrote in Latin, he was guided by the Latin grammar. He fought with an army of other great thinkers united by the purpose to make Latin the most powerful language in psychopolitics. Was there any “I” behind his thoughts except “sicut cadaver”?
296.
November 22, 2024 (14266)
Reading Descartes Discourse (written in French) and Meditations (written in Latin) in the English translation, it’s clear that Descartes has in mind two distinct readers to whom he addresses his thoughts.
In the Discourse, he talks down to the reader, whom he also attempts to convince that he (Descartes) is the greatest thinker of all time. Flattering “the common man”, whose “good sense” is supposed to be no different than that of any great thinker, including Descartes himself, he then says, “When I cast a philosopher’s eye over the various actions and undertakings of mankind, there is hardly a single one that does not seem to me to be vain and futile.” After that he shows off how he was able to conduct his mind by his own principles, how much joy he got from it, how many truths – very important and generally unknown to other men – he discovered, etc. etc. He denounces everything he learned while studying Latin, saying, “As soon as I reached an age that allowed me to escape from the control of my teachers, I abandoned altogether the study of letters.”
All of this is very fun to read. He talks about his personal history and, multiple insults notwithstanding, forces the reader to appreciate the narrative, eliciting sympathy and sometimes even admiration. His assumed superiority does not at all come out as offensive.
In his Meditations, he is much more careful. Here he talks not to “the common man”, who doesn’t understand Latin, but to those “teachers” from whose control he seemingly escaped. Here we have a bunch of tedious arguments – vague and ambiguous – piled up on top of each other by which he demonstrates his piety, even if he deduces the Latin version of God from his own (a thing that thinks) existence: “I see that there is manifestly more reality in infinite substance than in finite, and therefore that in some way I have in me the notion of the infinite earlier than the finite – to wit, the notion of God before that of myself.”
This is what happens when two languages fight for power over one’s mind while there is a serious tension between societies based on these languages, and one has to choose which one of them to advance in writing.
November 22, 2024 (14266)
Reading Descartes Discourse (written in French) and Meditations (written in Latin) in the English translation, it’s clear that Descartes has in mind two distinct readers to whom he addresses his thoughts.
In the Discourse, he talks down to the reader, whom he also attempts to convince that he (Descartes) is the greatest thinker of all time. Flattering “the common man”, whose “good sense” is supposed to be no different than that of any great thinker, including Descartes himself, he then says, “When I cast a philosopher’s eye over the various actions and undertakings of mankind, there is hardly a single one that does not seem to me to be vain and futile.” After that he shows off how he was able to conduct his mind by his own principles, how much joy he got from it, how many truths – very important and generally unknown to other men – he discovered, etc. etc. He denounces everything he learned while studying Latin, saying, “As soon as I reached an age that allowed me to escape from the control of my teachers, I abandoned altogether the study of letters.”
All of this is very fun to read. He talks about his personal history and, multiple insults notwithstanding, forces the reader to appreciate the narrative, eliciting sympathy and sometimes even admiration. His assumed superiority does not at all come out as offensive.
In his Meditations, he is much more careful. Here he talks not to “the common man”, who doesn’t understand Latin, but to those “teachers” from whose control he seemingly escaped. Here we have a bunch of tedious arguments – vague and ambiguous – piled up on top of each other by which he demonstrates his piety, even if he deduces the Latin version of God from his own (a thing that thinks) existence: “I see that there is manifestly more reality in infinite substance than in finite, and therefore that in some way I have in me the notion of the infinite earlier than the finite – to wit, the notion of God before that of myself.”
This is what happens when two languages fight for power over one’s mind while there is a serious tension between societies based on these languages, and one has to choose which one of them to advance in writing.
297.
November 24, 2024 (14268)
While Latin and French struggled for power over Descartes’ mind, there was also the struggle for power between Catholics (the Latin-speaking elites) and Huguenots (the French-speaking elites) over France.
Descartes was born in a province of Touraine, a few years before the Edict of Nantes was issued by Henry IV. This edict put an end to the period known as the “French Wars of Religion”, which lasted from 1562 to 1598. During this period, Henry converted from a Huguenot to a Catholic back and forth several times, following the political arrangement of a situation. Among many other things, he is famous for the phrase “Paris is worth a Mass”.
Touraine was the so-called “contested territory” where neither Catholics nor Huguenots were able to win the majority. Descartes must have heard many stories about the bloody 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s as he grew up.
When Henry IV was assassinated in 1610, his wife, Marie de’ Medici, held power until their son, Louis XIII, exiled her and executed her followers in 1617. He shared power with Cardinal Richelieu. In 1635, they opened the Academie Francaise, the principal French council for matters pertaining to the French language that had the duty of acting as an official authority on the language. Richelieu died in 1642; Louis XIII, a year later. They were replaced by Cardinal Mazarin and the Sun King, Louis XIV, whose reign lasted 72 years (1643-1715). Mazarin died in 1661, and, for the subsequent 54 years of France’s golden age of absolutism, no checks and balances were found in the country.
In 1618, Descartes joined the Protestant Dutch States Army. He then served the Catholic Duke Maximilian of Bavaria and took part in the Battle of the White Mountain near Prague in 1620. From 1628 to 1648, he lived in the Dutch Republic, avoiding socialization and focusing almost entirely on thinking and his studies. However, the dynamic of power relations between the languages he employed (or was employed by) to think reflects, to a large extent, the dynamic of power relations between the Latin-based and French-based societies.
November 24, 2024 (14268)
While Latin and French struggled for power over Descartes’ mind, there was also the struggle for power between Catholics (the Latin-speaking elites) and Huguenots (the French-speaking elites) over France.
Descartes was born in a province of Touraine, a few years before the Edict of Nantes was issued by Henry IV. This edict put an end to the period known as the “French Wars of Religion”, which lasted from 1562 to 1598. During this period, Henry converted from a Huguenot to a Catholic back and forth several times, following the political arrangement of a situation. Among many other things, he is famous for the phrase “Paris is worth a Mass”.
Touraine was the so-called “contested territory” where neither Catholics nor Huguenots were able to win the majority. Descartes must have heard many stories about the bloody 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s as he grew up.
When Henry IV was assassinated in 1610, his wife, Marie de’ Medici, held power until their son, Louis XIII, exiled her and executed her followers in 1617. He shared power with Cardinal Richelieu. In 1635, they opened the Academie Francaise, the principal French council for matters pertaining to the French language that had the duty of acting as an official authority on the language. Richelieu died in 1642; Louis XIII, a year later. They were replaced by Cardinal Mazarin and the Sun King, Louis XIV, whose reign lasted 72 years (1643-1715). Mazarin died in 1661, and, for the subsequent 54 years of France’s golden age of absolutism, no checks and balances were found in the country.
In 1618, Descartes joined the Protestant Dutch States Army. He then served the Catholic Duke Maximilian of Bavaria and took part in the Battle of the White Mountain near Prague in 1620. From 1628 to 1648, he lived in the Dutch Republic, avoiding socialization and focusing almost entirely on thinking and his studies. However, the dynamic of power relations between the languages he employed (or was employed by) to think reflects, to a large extent, the dynamic of power relations between the Latin-based and French-based societies.
298.
November 25, 2024 (14269)
Descartes is mostly famous for introducing the mind-body problem and creating what is now called “Cartesian Dualism”. Contemporary philosophers, like John Searle, who take Descartes out of historical and political context and blame him for all “philosophical disasters” that happened in the following centuries, usually miss an important lesson of an epic scale. Every student of psychopolitics may quickly notice that one of the main controversies shaping Descartes’ mind is which language to use for thinking. He must have been aware that the power of his French was not equal to the power of his Latin. Viewing himself as “the greatest thinker of all time” and struggling to destroy the influence of Aristotle, who for centuries held this title, Descartes fought for power over two languages. He fooled himself into believing that he “devoted his life to the cultivation of his reason”, whereas, in fact, he cultivated French. Whether he was aware that the days of Latin’s hegemony were numbered is uncertain. Whether he consciously tried to undermine this hegemony is also hard to tell. It’s important to keep in mind that in his time, Latin was almost as powerful as English was in the beginning of the 21st century, and even after the condemnation of Galileo, it was reasonable to believe that Latin’s future is bright and glorious.
To better understand Descartes, it’s necessary to examine the four periods of the Thirty Years’ War. Roughly speaking, the first period took place in Prague and was over at the Battle of White Mountain, at which Descartes himself was present. Catholics defeated Protestants. Then, in 1625, Denmark got involved in the conflict on the Protestants’ side, and military operations moved to the north. In 1630, Sweden invaded Germany to defend the Protestant cause. Finally, in 1635, France, which previously supported Sweden economically, engaged in the war. Although France was officially a Catholic state, it also fought on the Protestants’ side, being guided by strategic interests related to the balance of power. In 1648, the Peace of Westphalia brought an end to this war, severely weakening the power of Latin and marking the ascendancy of French, German and other languages in psychopolitics.
November 25, 2024 (14269)
Descartes is mostly famous for introducing the mind-body problem and creating what is now called “Cartesian Dualism”. Contemporary philosophers, like John Searle, who take Descartes out of historical and political context and blame him for all “philosophical disasters” that happened in the following centuries, usually miss an important lesson of an epic scale. Every student of psychopolitics may quickly notice that one of the main controversies shaping Descartes’ mind is which language to use for thinking. He must have been aware that the power of his French was not equal to the power of his Latin. Viewing himself as “the greatest thinker of all time” and struggling to destroy the influence of Aristotle, who for centuries held this title, Descartes fought for power over two languages. He fooled himself into believing that he “devoted his life to the cultivation of his reason”, whereas, in fact, he cultivated French. Whether he was aware that the days of Latin’s hegemony were numbered is uncertain. Whether he consciously tried to undermine this hegemony is also hard to tell. It’s important to keep in mind that in his time, Latin was almost as powerful as English was in the beginning of the 21st century, and even after the condemnation of Galileo, it was reasonable to believe that Latin’s future is bright and glorious.
To better understand Descartes, it’s necessary to examine the four periods of the Thirty Years’ War. Roughly speaking, the first period took place in Prague and was over at the Battle of White Mountain, at which Descartes himself was present. Catholics defeated Protestants. Then, in 1625, Denmark got involved in the conflict on the Protestants’ side, and military operations moved to the north. In 1630, Sweden invaded Germany to defend the Protestant cause. Finally, in 1635, France, which previously supported Sweden economically, engaged in the war. Although France was officially a Catholic state, it also fought on the Protestants’ side, being guided by strategic interests related to the balance of power. In 1648, the Peace of Westphalia brought an end to this war, severely weakening the power of Latin and marking the ascendancy of French, German and other languages in psychopolitics.
299.
November 26, 2024 (14270)
Let’s reinterpret the mind-body problem from a psychopolitical perspective.
I’m a body that is part of the larger body called the world. I’m also a language that is a part of the larger “body of knowledge” called psychopolitics. My body is mortal; its days are numbered. Today is the 14270th day of this body’s existence, and it’s aware that every new day brings it closer to death. My language, on the other hand, survives the death of my body and may endure as long as it is going to be relevant. My language is also my body – though I might call it “mind”, “reason”, “soul”, “spirit”, “intelligence”, “consciousness”, etc. I identify with everything I’ve thought, written or said, with the thousands of foolish statements I made while chasing the idol of “nosce te ipsum”. My recorded personal history – the ultimate refinement of folly – counts more than 5,000 days. Potentially, it has a chance to survive not only the death of my body but also the death of the two languages (Russian and English) I mastered over these days if it’s going to be translated into new languages that will dominate psychopolitics in the future.
The idea of “unalloyed natural reason” used by Descartes to lay down a foundation for his metaphysical castle doesn’t signify anything beyond the physical realm. He needed to break up with Latin. He saw what happened to those who dared to challenge the greatest Greek and Latin thinkers. He was aware that if his Latin gained enough power to threaten the existence of social institutions based on the authority of these great thinkers, he wouldn’t be able to reach “the perfect peace of mind he was seeking.”
Luther translated the word “barbarian” as “not-German”, which had serious consequences after his language was adopted as the standardized version of German across the Holy Roman Empire.
Descartes turns a French thinker into a thing that has an ultimate judgment over what exists and what doesn’t exist.
Whether the mind controls the body or the body controls the mind is a misleading question. Instead we have to ask, “Which language controls our thinking, who are the greatest thinkers of this language and who are their rivals in other languages?”
November 26, 2024 (14270)
Let’s reinterpret the mind-body problem from a psychopolitical perspective.
I’m a body that is part of the larger body called the world. I’m also a language that is a part of the larger “body of knowledge” called psychopolitics. My body is mortal; its days are numbered. Today is the 14270th day of this body’s existence, and it’s aware that every new day brings it closer to death. My language, on the other hand, survives the death of my body and may endure as long as it is going to be relevant. My language is also my body – though I might call it “mind”, “reason”, “soul”, “spirit”, “intelligence”, “consciousness”, etc. I identify with everything I’ve thought, written or said, with the thousands of foolish statements I made while chasing the idol of “nosce te ipsum”. My recorded personal history – the ultimate refinement of folly – counts more than 5,000 days. Potentially, it has a chance to survive not only the death of my body but also the death of the two languages (Russian and English) I mastered over these days if it’s going to be translated into new languages that will dominate psychopolitics in the future.
The idea of “unalloyed natural reason” used by Descartes to lay down a foundation for his metaphysical castle doesn’t signify anything beyond the physical realm. He needed to break up with Latin. He saw what happened to those who dared to challenge the greatest Greek and Latin thinkers. He was aware that if his Latin gained enough power to threaten the existence of social institutions based on the authority of these great thinkers, he wouldn’t be able to reach “the perfect peace of mind he was seeking.”
Luther translated the word “barbarian” as “not-German”, which had serious consequences after his language was adopted as the standardized version of German across the Holy Roman Empire.
Descartes turns a French thinker into a thing that has an ultimate judgment over what exists and what doesn’t exist.
Whether the mind controls the body or the body controls the mind is a misleading question. Instead we have to ask, “Which language controls our thinking, who are the greatest thinkers of this language and who are their rivals in other languages?”
300.
November 27, 2024 (14271)
In his Principles of Philosophy, Descartes, from the very beginning, compels us to “doubt everything that we can doubt.” He boasts that he himself doubts the existence of his own body and everything that it perceives through the senses. He says that the senses sometimes deceive us and, therefore, can’t be trusted. The only sure thing appears to be the mind that is thinking. For Descartes, “the knowledge of our mind is not simply prior to and more certain than the knowledge of our body, but it also more evident.” Those who disagree “haven’t done their philosophizing in an orderly way, and haven’t carefully enough distinguished the mind from the body.” A thought means “everything that we are aware of as happening within us, and it counts as ‘thought’ because we are aware of it.” All our thoughts might be wrong, but the fact that they are ours and that we’re doing thinking is, for Descartes, beyond doubt.
Many great thinkers struggled with this assertion, trying to refute Descartes’ “immediate certainty”, “absolute knowledge” or “thing in itself” as “I think” was dubbed in other languages. The most famous reply to Descartes, probably, comes a few centuries later from Nietzsche who calls him a “harmless self-observer” and insists that his formula contains “a contradiction in adjecto”. This reply can be found in the first chapter of Beyond Good and Evil, and although it’s apparently done in “a disorderly way”, it blows up the foundation of Descartes’ metaphysical castle as if it were “nothing more than sand and mud.” French grounded in Latin doesn’t withstand an attack from German grounded in Greek.
But let’s forget about Nietzsche and raise a doubt about our own language. Our principles of psychopolitics also demand, quantum fieri potest, doubt everything. What if an “evil genius” (or, as we say today, “an army of great thinkers of rival languages) deceived us to believe in something that makes no sense? What if our language as a whole doesn’t make any sense? What if English doesn’t make any sense? From a perspective of any other language it surely doesn’t. Are we free to learn to think in a new language?
November 27, 2024 (14271)
In his Principles of Philosophy, Descartes, from the very beginning, compels us to “doubt everything that we can doubt.” He boasts that he himself doubts the existence of his own body and everything that it perceives through the senses. He says that the senses sometimes deceive us and, therefore, can’t be trusted. The only sure thing appears to be the mind that is thinking. For Descartes, “the knowledge of our mind is not simply prior to and more certain than the knowledge of our body, but it also more evident.” Those who disagree “haven’t done their philosophizing in an orderly way, and haven’t carefully enough distinguished the mind from the body.” A thought means “everything that we are aware of as happening within us, and it counts as ‘thought’ because we are aware of it.” All our thoughts might be wrong, but the fact that they are ours and that we’re doing thinking is, for Descartes, beyond doubt.
Many great thinkers struggled with this assertion, trying to refute Descartes’ “immediate certainty”, “absolute knowledge” or “thing in itself” as “I think” was dubbed in other languages. The most famous reply to Descartes, probably, comes a few centuries later from Nietzsche who calls him a “harmless self-observer” and insists that his formula contains “a contradiction in adjecto”. This reply can be found in the first chapter of Beyond Good and Evil, and although it’s apparently done in “a disorderly way”, it blows up the foundation of Descartes’ metaphysical castle as if it were “nothing more than sand and mud.” French grounded in Latin doesn’t withstand an attack from German grounded in Greek.
But let’s forget about Nietzsche and raise a doubt about our own language. Our principles of psychopolitics also demand, quantum fieri potest, doubt everything. What if an “evil genius” (or, as we say today, “an army of great thinkers of rival languages) deceived us to believe in something that makes no sense? What if our language as a whole doesn’t make any sense? What if English doesn’t make any sense? From a perspective of any other language it surely doesn’t. Are we free to learn to think in a new language?
301.
November 29, 2024 (14273)
Descartes talks about three degrees of reality: minimum, middle and maximum. He also distinguishes between formal and objective realities. Ironically, the notion of “objective reality” describes the realm of ideas. As far as ideas represent something else and can’t exist on their own, they have the “objective reality” which they depend on. Modes (ideas, shapes, colors) have the minimum degree of reality because they rely on substances to exist. Finite substances (bodies, minds, planets) are the things that can exist independently from anything else; they have the middle degree of reality. Infinite substance (God) has the maximum degree of reality. The idea of a man has the minimum degree of reality on the formal level (since it is an idea) and the middle degree of reality on the objective level, since a man is a finite substance. A man (as an object) has the middle degree of reality on the formal level and has no objective reality at all. The idea of God has the minimum degree of reality on the formal level (once again because it is an idea) and the maximum degree of reality on the objective level, because God is infinite substance. And God as such has the maximum degree of reality on the formal level and no objective reality, according to Descartes terminology. By the idea of God, he understands “a substance that is infinite, independent, all-knowing, all-powerful, and by which he himself and everything else have been created.”
To dismiss Descartes simply because he had strange dreams and tried to prove the existence of God is as smart as dismissing everyone who now writes in English from the perspective of the 25th century or whenever this language loses its power and drowns in the waters of Lethe. English, now, is arguably the most powerful, independent, all-knowing (as most of its subjects believe) language that has created, to a certain extent, everyone who’s capable of reading this text. Is there any “objective reality” which the existence of English depends on? Shouldn’t we rather say that every word we use to “categorize, describe, and communicate about the world around us” has as much “objective reality” in it as Descartes’ God? There is no objective connection between words and reality. All languages (English, Chinese, Russian, etc.) create their own realities, forcing us, humans, to accept them as rational, truthful, objective and so on.
As for “transcending linguistic boundaries and biases,” using one language to turn off one’s inner dialog in another – to stop thinking and talking to oneself – is one of the most powerful (but also radical and dangerous for one’s mental health) techniques in terms of gaining power in a second language and figuring out what psychopolitics is and how it works.
November 29, 2024 (14273)
Descartes talks about three degrees of reality: minimum, middle and maximum. He also distinguishes between formal and objective realities. Ironically, the notion of “objective reality” describes the realm of ideas. As far as ideas represent something else and can’t exist on their own, they have the “objective reality” which they depend on. Modes (ideas, shapes, colors) have the minimum degree of reality because they rely on substances to exist. Finite substances (bodies, minds, planets) are the things that can exist independently from anything else; they have the middle degree of reality. Infinite substance (God) has the maximum degree of reality. The idea of a man has the minimum degree of reality on the formal level (since it is an idea) and the middle degree of reality on the objective level, since a man is a finite substance. A man (as an object) has the middle degree of reality on the formal level and has no objective reality at all. The idea of God has the minimum degree of reality on the formal level (once again because it is an idea) and the maximum degree of reality on the objective level, because God is infinite substance. And God as such has the maximum degree of reality on the formal level and no objective reality, according to Descartes terminology. By the idea of God, he understands “a substance that is infinite, independent, all-knowing, all-powerful, and by which he himself and everything else have been created.”
To dismiss Descartes simply because he had strange dreams and tried to prove the existence of God is as smart as dismissing everyone who now writes in English from the perspective of the 25th century or whenever this language loses its power and drowns in the waters of Lethe. English, now, is arguably the most powerful, independent, all-knowing (as most of its subjects believe) language that has created, to a certain extent, everyone who’s capable of reading this text. Is there any “objective reality” which the existence of English depends on? Shouldn’t we rather say that every word we use to “categorize, describe, and communicate about the world around us” has as much “objective reality” in it as Descartes’ God? There is no objective connection between words and reality. All languages (English, Chinese, Russian, etc.) create their own realities, forcing us, humans, to accept them as rational, truthful, objective and so on.
As for “transcending linguistic boundaries and biases,” using one language to turn off one’s inner dialog in another – to stop thinking and talking to oneself – is one of the most powerful (but also radical and dangerous for one’s mental health) techniques in terms of gaining power in a second language and figuring out what psychopolitics is and how it works.
302.
December 1, 2024 (14275)
To figure out what Descartes is doing, it’s necessary to know with whom he struggles for power over Latin and French. The common view, which is widespread in English and Russian, is that his main opponent was Aristotle. There is no doubt that Aristotle made a huge impact on Latin, but it’s important to remember that he wasn’t a Latin thinker. Another conventional wisdom tells us that Descartes struggled with skepticism, even though he is regarded as one of the greatest “doubters” of all time. Perhaps two great thinkers who fought for power over his mind were indeed Aristotle and Montaigne, another great skeptic. However, it’s plausible to say that the greatest Latin thinker is Cicero, and apparently he also views himself as an Academic skeptic. Since Descartes attempted to establish himself as the greatest thinker, and since he recorded his thoughts in Latin, it’s fair to say that his main opponent in Latin could have been Cicero.
A skeptic is someone who doesn’t subscribe fully to anybody else’s description or explanation of the world and “suspends judgment” when he is forced to provide one’s own. If Aristotle is right, Plato must be wrong. If Plato is right, Aristotle must be wrong. As far as they both can’t be right at the same time, who am I to tell what the world is and how it works? That’s a Ciceronian position. In On Duty, Cicero says, “As other schools maintain that some things are certain, others uncertain, we, differing with them, say that some things are probable, others improbable.” Descartes, on the other hand, is looking for knowledge that “presents itself to his mind so clearly and distinctly that he would have no occasion to doubt it.” However, he is not interested in “suspending his judgment.” He is interested in developing a method that would allow him to say, “Plato is wrong; Aristotle is wrong; I’m right; and ye, skeptics, go to hell; you’re not stopping me.” So is “this item of knowledge – I’m thinking, so I exist – the first and the most certain thing to occur to anyone who philosophizes in an orderly way”?
December 1, 2024 (14275)
To figure out what Descartes is doing, it’s necessary to know with whom he struggles for power over Latin and French. The common view, which is widespread in English and Russian, is that his main opponent was Aristotle. There is no doubt that Aristotle made a huge impact on Latin, but it’s important to remember that he wasn’t a Latin thinker. Another conventional wisdom tells us that Descartes struggled with skepticism, even though he is regarded as one of the greatest “doubters” of all time. Perhaps two great thinkers who fought for power over his mind were indeed Aristotle and Montaigne, another great skeptic. However, it’s plausible to say that the greatest Latin thinker is Cicero, and apparently he also views himself as an Academic skeptic. Since Descartes attempted to establish himself as the greatest thinker, and since he recorded his thoughts in Latin, it’s fair to say that his main opponent in Latin could have been Cicero.
A skeptic is someone who doesn’t subscribe fully to anybody else’s description or explanation of the world and “suspends judgment” when he is forced to provide one’s own. If Aristotle is right, Plato must be wrong. If Plato is right, Aristotle must be wrong. As far as they both can’t be right at the same time, who am I to tell what the world is and how it works? That’s a Ciceronian position. In On Duty, Cicero says, “As other schools maintain that some things are certain, others uncertain, we, differing with them, say that some things are probable, others improbable.” Descartes, on the other hand, is looking for knowledge that “presents itself to his mind so clearly and distinctly that he would have no occasion to doubt it.” However, he is not interested in “suspending his judgment.” He is interested in developing a method that would allow him to say, “Plato is wrong; Aristotle is wrong; I’m right; and ye, skeptics, go to hell; you’re not stopping me.” So is “this item of knowledge – I’m thinking, so I exist – the first and the most certain thing to occur to anyone who philosophizes in an orderly way”?
303.
December 3, 2024 (14277)
Let’s try to translate word by word the first principle of Descartes philosophy. Veritatem inquirenti (truth seekers), semel in vita de omnibus (once in life about everything), quantum fiere potest (as much as it is possible), esse dubitandum (to be doubted). Quoniam infantes nati sumus (Since infants born we are), et varia de rebus sensibilibus iudicia prius tulimus (and various about things sensible prior judgments took), quam integrum nostrae rationis usum haberemus (than integrated our reason is used habitually), multis praeiudiciis a veri cognitione avertimur (many prejudices from true knowledge divert), quibus non alter videmur posse liberari (to which no other seems possible free), quam si semel in vita de iis omnibus studeamus dubitare (than if once in life about these all studied to doubt), in quibus vel minimam incertitudinis suspicionem reperiemus (in which even minimal uncertainty suspicion found out).
Now, let’s try to put it all together. Truth seekers! Once in life, doubt everything as much as possible. Since we are born as infants and form judgments on various sensible things before our reason can be fully developed and properly used, many prejudices led us away from true knowledge, and there is no other way to free ourselves from them unless once in life we doubt everything we have studied in which even a little suspicion of uncertainty can be found out.
Once again, it’s important to remember that Descartes started doubting everything at the same time when the Thirty Years’ War broke out in 1618. At the beginning of this war, Latin was arguably the most powerful international language. When the war ended in 1648, the unipolar moment of Latin’s hegemony was over, and it will not take too long before Latin is dead. If Latin is Julius Caesar, doesn’t Descartes’ French play Brutus?
December 3, 2024 (14277)
Let’s try to translate word by word the first principle of Descartes philosophy. Veritatem inquirenti (truth seekers), semel in vita de omnibus (once in life about everything), quantum fiere potest (as much as it is possible), esse dubitandum (to be doubted). Quoniam infantes nati sumus (Since infants born we are), et varia de rebus sensibilibus iudicia prius tulimus (and various about things sensible prior judgments took), quam integrum nostrae rationis usum haberemus (than integrated our reason is used habitually), multis praeiudiciis a veri cognitione avertimur (many prejudices from true knowledge divert), quibus non alter videmur posse liberari (to which no other seems possible free), quam si semel in vita de iis omnibus studeamus dubitare (than if once in life about these all studied to doubt), in quibus vel minimam incertitudinis suspicionem reperiemus (in which even minimal uncertainty suspicion found out).
Now, let’s try to put it all together. Truth seekers! Once in life, doubt everything as much as possible. Since we are born as infants and form judgments on various sensible things before our reason can be fully developed and properly used, many prejudices led us away from true knowledge, and there is no other way to free ourselves from them unless once in life we doubt everything we have studied in which even a little suspicion of uncertainty can be found out.
Once again, it’s important to remember that Descartes started doubting everything at the same time when the Thirty Years’ War broke out in 1618. At the beginning of this war, Latin was arguably the most powerful international language. When the war ended in 1648, the unipolar moment of Latin’s hegemony was over, and it will not take too long before Latin is dead. If Latin is Julius Caesar, doesn’t Descartes’ French play Brutus?
304.
December 4, 2024 (14278)
What does Descartes have in mind when he uses the phrase “veritatem inquirenti”? Who are these veritatem inquirenti? Does he have any vivid and clear idea of them? He writes his Principles in Latin, so supposedly he addresses them to the ruling international class of Latin thinkers. These thinkers, obviously, believe that they have a right to school thinkers of all other languages on how to do international relations. Although Descartes wasn’t a political realist, he probably could have seen that popular arguments about the causes of the Thirty Years’ War were equally dubious in both Latin and French and as incompatible as free will and predestination.
As the war reached its final phase and France was directly involved in fighting against Rome, more and more Latin thinkers doubted the validity of their political cause in this war. One the one hand, they believed that their language was the most powerful, scientifically advanced and socially developed among the rest; on the other hand, they saw how many troubles it created while trying to keep other languages down for more than a century since the rise of the printing press. Descartes methodological doubt allowed these thinkers to escape heated historical debates and fixate their attention on geometrical abstractions that weren’t affected by space and time, applying them to the realm of physics.
But regardless of what Descartes meant by veritatem inquirenti, after his method acquired enough power to be celebrated by men of knowledge throughout the world, it was also appropriated by all sorts of guslighters to make fools of each other, undermining the authority of the queen of sciences.
Now Descartes is called “the father of modern philosophy,” and his conviction that he would replace Aristotle in the hierarchy of the greatest thinkers of all time has been confirmed by veritatem inquirenti. And although he himself was replaced very quickly by English (Newton), Dutch (Spinoza) and German (Leibniz) thinkers, we (veritatem inquirenti?) shouldn’t dismiss him as a harmless self-observer whose absolute knowledge turned out to be the emperor’s new clothes.
December 4, 2024 (14278)
What does Descartes have in mind when he uses the phrase “veritatem inquirenti”? Who are these veritatem inquirenti? Does he have any vivid and clear idea of them? He writes his Principles in Latin, so supposedly he addresses them to the ruling international class of Latin thinkers. These thinkers, obviously, believe that they have a right to school thinkers of all other languages on how to do international relations. Although Descartes wasn’t a political realist, he probably could have seen that popular arguments about the causes of the Thirty Years’ War were equally dubious in both Latin and French and as incompatible as free will and predestination.
As the war reached its final phase and France was directly involved in fighting against Rome, more and more Latin thinkers doubted the validity of their political cause in this war. One the one hand, they believed that their language was the most powerful, scientifically advanced and socially developed among the rest; on the other hand, they saw how many troubles it created while trying to keep other languages down for more than a century since the rise of the printing press. Descartes methodological doubt allowed these thinkers to escape heated historical debates and fixate their attention on geometrical abstractions that weren’t affected by space and time, applying them to the realm of physics.
But regardless of what Descartes meant by veritatem inquirenti, after his method acquired enough power to be celebrated by men of knowledge throughout the world, it was also appropriated by all sorts of guslighters to make fools of each other, undermining the authority of the queen of sciences.
Now Descartes is called “the father of modern philosophy,” and his conviction that he would replace Aristotle in the hierarchy of the greatest thinkers of all time has been confirmed by veritatem inquirenti. And although he himself was replaced very quickly by English (Newton), Dutch (Spinoza) and German (Leibniz) thinkers, we (veritatem inquirenti?) shouldn’t dismiss him as a harmless self-observer whose absolute knowledge turned out to be the emperor’s new clothes.
December 22,
18:00,
Innovating Cultural Center.
This time, we discuss R. Sapolsky's lectures on neurophysiology.
To participate, it's necessary to watch as many lectures as possbile and be ready to talk about the brain and its functions for two hours.
Registration:
https://leader-id.ru/events/537389
18:00,
Innovating Cultural Center.
This time, we discuss R. Sapolsky's lectures on neurophysiology.
To participate, it's necessary to watch as many lectures as possbile and be ready to talk about the brain and its functions for two hours.
Registration:
https://leader-id.ru/events/537389
Leader-ID
English Science and Literature Club
Бесплатные мероприятия и коворкинги в вашем городе. Leader-ID помогает работать, учиться и находить единомышленников.
English Science and Literature club🤓✍️📖 pinned «December 22, 18:00, Innovating Cultural Center. This time, we discuss R. Sapolsky's lectures on neurophysiology. To participate, it's necessary to watch as many lectures as possbile and be ready to talk about the brain and its functions for two hours. Registration:…»
305.
December 9, 2024 (14283)
Is there something more in Descartes’ “res cogitans” than a mere denial of “res extensa”? Descartes rejects the idea of “empty space”. He says that wherever there is an extension, there is always something. No vacuum. Yet, he believes that his mind is somehow located outside of the extended substance and has magical power to causally affect bodily movements. Why does Descartes cling to this dualist framework? Why does he need the mind to be distinct ontologically from the body? Is he motivated by the fear of death? Did he “convince himself so completely that nothing else was in his power other than his thoughts”? Was “this conviction along sufficient to prevent him from having any desire for anything else”?
There were many philosophers who dedicated their lives to thinking, but how many of them believed (or fooled themselves into believing) that they were just “thinking beings” – res cogitans – and nothing else?
There are all of these people competing with each other for having more stuff, more property, women, men, children, social connections – and this guy comes along and says, “I have my thoughts; they are more valuable than everything else anyone can have; I get more and more every day; no one among the greatest thinkers of all time has as vivid and clear thoughts as I have; and there is no way to take them away from me since I’m beyond space and nothing can hurt me.” Sure you can own the entirety of the extended world, but who cares about it? On the other hand, I, Descartes, own my thoughts and do not depend on anything to exist. My body is going to be dead sooner or later, but whoever is going to think along the same lines in the future, this thinking thing, quod ordine philosophando cogniscimus, I’m going to be it. It’s going to be me. Even if I forget Latin and French and don’t pay much attention to geometry and cosmology, as long as I identify with a thinking thing and as long as there is going to be at least one person who thinks, I’m going to be it. It’s going to be me. I, you, he, she – it’s all one and the same thinking thing. Can you dig it?
December 9, 2024 (14283)
Is there something more in Descartes’ “res cogitans” than a mere denial of “res extensa”? Descartes rejects the idea of “empty space”. He says that wherever there is an extension, there is always something. No vacuum. Yet, he believes that his mind is somehow located outside of the extended substance and has magical power to causally affect bodily movements. Why does Descartes cling to this dualist framework? Why does he need the mind to be distinct ontologically from the body? Is he motivated by the fear of death? Did he “convince himself so completely that nothing else was in his power other than his thoughts”? Was “this conviction along sufficient to prevent him from having any desire for anything else”?
There were many philosophers who dedicated their lives to thinking, but how many of them believed (or fooled themselves into believing) that they were just “thinking beings” – res cogitans – and nothing else?
There are all of these people competing with each other for having more stuff, more property, women, men, children, social connections – and this guy comes along and says, “I have my thoughts; they are more valuable than everything else anyone can have; I get more and more every day; no one among the greatest thinkers of all time has as vivid and clear thoughts as I have; and there is no way to take them away from me since I’m beyond space and nothing can hurt me.” Sure you can own the entirety of the extended world, but who cares about it? On the other hand, I, Descartes, own my thoughts and do not depend on anything to exist. My body is going to be dead sooner or later, but whoever is going to think along the same lines in the future, this thinking thing, quod ordine philosophando cogniscimus, I’m going to be it. It’s going to be me. Even if I forget Latin and French and don’t pay much attention to geometry and cosmology, as long as I identify with a thinking thing and as long as there is going to be at least one person who thinks, I’m going to be it. It’s going to be me. I, you, he, she – it’s all one and the same thinking thing. Can you dig it?
306.
December 16, 2024 (14290)
I conducted another poll and handed out three hundred flyers to people on the street. If it helps to attract new “veritatem inquirenti” to my lectures, I have to prepare a special introduction. I’m going to start off by saying that I’ve been running the philosophy club since November 2021. For the first two years, we worked with a variety of subjects like metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, epistemology, ontology, etc., studying them independently and meeting once a month to have a discussion. One month, we studied a certain topic; the next month, we picked up a certain philosopher: Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Bacon, Hume, Wittgenstein, etc. In the second part of 2023, we focused on Chinese philosophy, studying Confucianism, Daoism, Legalism and Buddhism, as well as such thinkers as Zhu Xi and Zhuang Zhou. I became obsessed with the Chinese language, studying it for eight hours a day in August and attempting to shift my thinking to it in September by writing my diary exclusively with Chinese characters. It caused a “cognitive overdose”, making me unable to focus on anything for the next couple of months. Then, I revived my power and decided to write a book, dedicating to it the entire year of 2024. Simultaneously, I decided to focus on the study of international relations. At the philosophy club, for the first five months of 2024, we got through realism, liberalism, socialism, constructivism and postmodernism. Later, I suggested delving deeper into realism by studying its great thinkers. This suggestion was rejected, and nobody showed up to the club’s meetings during the summer. So, basically, I talked about Morgenthau, Waltz, Mearsheimer and Hobbes just with myself. Meanwhile, in September, I finished writing the book and changed the format of the meetings. Instead of forcing everyone to learn a certain topic, I announced the course of lectures dedicated to the concept of psychopolitics, which I developed in my book. I made a commitment to study a number of thinkers and examine their work from my linguistic paradigm. And now, here we are. This is the third lecture. The first two were about Machiavelli and Cicero. This one is going to cover the philosophy of Descartes.
My working definition for psychopolitics is that it is a science focused on the question: Which is the most powerful language in international politics, and how has it come to be so? Psychopolitics focuses on great thinkers competing for influence or fighting for power over a certain language. Language is primarily regarded as the product of thinking. Psychopolitics has three levels: personal, where different intentions strive for hegemony over one’s thinking; national, where great thinkers question each other’s understanding of a certain language; and international, where languages enforce their rules on each other in an effort to unite humanity.
December 16, 2024 (14290)
I conducted another poll and handed out three hundred flyers to people on the street. If it helps to attract new “veritatem inquirenti” to my lectures, I have to prepare a special introduction. I’m going to start off by saying that I’ve been running the philosophy club since November 2021. For the first two years, we worked with a variety of subjects like metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, epistemology, ontology, etc., studying them independently and meeting once a month to have a discussion. One month, we studied a certain topic; the next month, we picked up a certain philosopher: Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Bacon, Hume, Wittgenstein, etc. In the second part of 2023, we focused on Chinese philosophy, studying Confucianism, Daoism, Legalism and Buddhism, as well as such thinkers as Zhu Xi and Zhuang Zhou. I became obsessed with the Chinese language, studying it for eight hours a day in August and attempting to shift my thinking to it in September by writing my diary exclusively with Chinese characters. It caused a “cognitive overdose”, making me unable to focus on anything for the next couple of months. Then, I revived my power and decided to write a book, dedicating to it the entire year of 2024. Simultaneously, I decided to focus on the study of international relations. At the philosophy club, for the first five months of 2024, we got through realism, liberalism, socialism, constructivism and postmodernism. Later, I suggested delving deeper into realism by studying its great thinkers. This suggestion was rejected, and nobody showed up to the club’s meetings during the summer. So, basically, I talked about Morgenthau, Waltz, Mearsheimer and Hobbes just with myself. Meanwhile, in September, I finished writing the book and changed the format of the meetings. Instead of forcing everyone to learn a certain topic, I announced the course of lectures dedicated to the concept of psychopolitics, which I developed in my book. I made a commitment to study a number of thinkers and examine their work from my linguistic paradigm. And now, here we are. This is the third lecture. The first two were about Machiavelli and Cicero. This one is going to cover the philosophy of Descartes.
My working definition for psychopolitics is that it is a science focused on the question: Which is the most powerful language in international politics, and how has it come to be so? Psychopolitics focuses on great thinkers competing for influence or fighting for power over a certain language. Language is primarily regarded as the product of thinking. Psychopolitics has three levels: personal, where different intentions strive for hegemony over one’s thinking; national, where great thinkers question each other’s understanding of a certain language; and international, where languages enforce their rules on each other in an effort to unite humanity.
307.
December 17, 2024 (14291)
Now, it’s time to review everything I’ve learned about Descartes over the past 33 days. I’ve read his Discourse, Meditations and Principles of Philosophy, as well as Hobbes’s and Gassendi’s objections to Meditations and Descartes’s replies. Although it seems that I can easily ridicule or make a fool of Descartes while I’m engaging with his texts, I’m not sure I would succeed if he had a chance to talk back. Both Hobbes’s and Gassendi’s objections are quite powerful, yet Descartes handles them in a way that makes their authors look like dumb idiots who have no capacity to figure out what he’s doing and why. I have to admit that I was lazy while reading Descartes, especially in those places where he tries to prove the existence of God. To solidify my understanding, I watched a series of lectures on Descartes’s philosophy by J. Kaplan. As many other philosophers, I think that studying Descartes is worth only for the purposes of making an intellectual exercise in refuting him. Obviously, Descartes’s influence is so pervasive that knowing its source and understanding the basic arguments against those who maintain that they are only and unquestionably “thinking things” saves a lot of time. It’s also interesting to see how Descartes’s framing of the contradiction between “free will” and “predestination” gave rise to a philosophical position of compatibilism. Here, again, knowing Descartes’s arguments and bringing him in when it’s necessary to argue against a compatibilist is a serious advantage. Unfortunately, I had no time and patience to get through “Passions of the Soul” to see firsthand Descartes’s ethical standing, but as anyone who tries to invent a wheel from scratch, here, arguably, he can be dismissed.
Let’s clarify why I’m making this series of lectures. My main objective is to draw attention to my book. I’d been training myself as a writer for nearly 16 years before I decided to write this book. It took me almost nine months to complete it. In my opinion, it’s one of the most important books written in the internet era. It is certainly the most important book for me. It has only 164 pages and deals primarily with the concept of psychopolitics. I postulate that every great thinker is driven by the intention to improve his language, making it as powerful as possible. Since we have great thinkers in virtually all languages, this leads to the security dilemma. When someone like Descartes makes his French more powerful than Cicero’s or any other great thinker’s Latin, it causes the transformation of the entire international system of languages (psychopolitics).
In this series of lectures, I’m attempting to show that psychopolitics provides a better framework for the study of philosophy, sociology, psychology, politics, religion, history, linguistics, literature, poetry – and whatever is happening right now on the internet – than any other framework. I’m not saying that psychopolitics is perfect and has no flaws. I’m saying that it’s one of the most promising sciences of the future. Whoever is interested in making one’s language the most powerful language in the world must pay attention to it.
December 17, 2024 (14291)
Now, it’s time to review everything I’ve learned about Descartes over the past 33 days. I’ve read his Discourse, Meditations and Principles of Philosophy, as well as Hobbes’s and Gassendi’s objections to Meditations and Descartes’s replies. Although it seems that I can easily ridicule or make a fool of Descartes while I’m engaging with his texts, I’m not sure I would succeed if he had a chance to talk back. Both Hobbes’s and Gassendi’s objections are quite powerful, yet Descartes handles them in a way that makes their authors look like dumb idiots who have no capacity to figure out what he’s doing and why. I have to admit that I was lazy while reading Descartes, especially in those places where he tries to prove the existence of God. To solidify my understanding, I watched a series of lectures on Descartes’s philosophy by J. Kaplan. As many other philosophers, I think that studying Descartes is worth only for the purposes of making an intellectual exercise in refuting him. Obviously, Descartes’s influence is so pervasive that knowing its source and understanding the basic arguments against those who maintain that they are only and unquestionably “thinking things” saves a lot of time. It’s also interesting to see how Descartes’s framing of the contradiction between “free will” and “predestination” gave rise to a philosophical position of compatibilism. Here, again, knowing Descartes’s arguments and bringing him in when it’s necessary to argue against a compatibilist is a serious advantage. Unfortunately, I had no time and patience to get through “Passions of the Soul” to see firsthand Descartes’s ethical standing, but as anyone who tries to invent a wheel from scratch, here, arguably, he can be dismissed.
Let’s clarify why I’m making this series of lectures. My main objective is to draw attention to my book. I’d been training myself as a writer for nearly 16 years before I decided to write this book. It took me almost nine months to complete it. In my opinion, it’s one of the most important books written in the internet era. It is certainly the most important book for me. It has only 164 pages and deals primarily with the concept of psychopolitics. I postulate that every great thinker is driven by the intention to improve his language, making it as powerful as possible. Since we have great thinkers in virtually all languages, this leads to the security dilemma. When someone like Descartes makes his French more powerful than Cicero’s or any other great thinker’s Latin, it causes the transformation of the entire international system of languages (psychopolitics).
In this series of lectures, I’m attempting to show that psychopolitics provides a better framework for the study of philosophy, sociology, psychology, politics, religion, history, linguistics, literature, poetry – and whatever is happening right now on the internet – than any other framework. I’m not saying that psychopolitics is perfect and has no flaws. I’m saying that it’s one of the most promising sciences of the future. Whoever is interested in making one’s language the most powerful language in the world must pay attention to it.