PHILOSOPHICAL NOTES

1. PRE-SOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY in current times

  1. The Pre-Socratics are THALES, EMPEDOCLES, XENOPHON, PROTAGORAS, PARMENIDES, CALLICLES, MELISSUS, ANAXIMENES, DEMOCRITUS, HERACLITUS, ANTIPHON, ANAXIMANDER, ANAXAGORAS, PYTHAGORAS, GORGIAS, and ZENO. A list that reflects how much the GREEKS allowed free THOUGHT and the discussion of IDEAS without them being stolen, adulterated, and reproduced outside the CONTEXT in which they originated.
  2. What is BEING to us currently? Being is TRUTH. In a GENERATION concerned with external APPEARANCE, where there are more gyms than cultural centers, it seems that man has chosen NON-BEING, the opposite; non-being weak, non-being honest, non-being reasonable, etc.
  3. Empedocles believed in two FORCES: LOVE and CONFLICT. In love, things united, while in conflict, they separated. This was a continuous PROCESS in NATURE. Empedocles speaks of how the WORLD seems to walk toward conflict and adds METEMPSYCHOSIS, that is, the transmigration of SOULS — which he calls DAIMONS, or SPIRITS of deceased people who had not gone to the place of the just; and are forced to wander through HUMANITY reincarnating. What we have to understand is whether the current world is heading toward love, or toward conflict; and whether it is worth continuing with a conflictive world. Therefore, Empedocles assumes that the world is sometimes one and sometimes many.
  4. Parmenides was the first to announce a complete ARGUMENT: from the truth of the PREMISES follows the truth of the CONCLUSION. He separates what "is" from what "is not", something that in LOGIC is quite correct, because by choosing one PATH, one cannot take the other as truth. Therefore, only "is" exists and nothing more. It makes no difference to say that something is or is not. This echoes a bit of HEGELIAN logic. It is tempting to think of Parmenides' argument of "is" as being the same as "exists", this ONTOLOGICAL truth can be conceived in ST. THOMAS AQUINAS when he cites ST. AUGUSTINE who says "being is", therefore, in fact, it is not possible to equate existing with being. It behooves us to choose between whether something is or something is not; if it is, then it already exists; otherwise it can still exist in some way. We want, in our JUDGMENT of the world, to make things in such a way that CHANGE is as apparent as possible; for example, this is blue, that is green; this is white and that is black. For Parmenides, however, this is not part of REALITY. Parmenides seems then to mean that reality is a coherent whole, while what we see is what reality "seems" to us to be.

NATURE of IDEOLOGY

Ideology is something whose DEFINITION requires certain DIMENSIONS, being therefore, not a unidimensional CONCEPT; but, multidimensional. The concept of ideology encompasses five dimensions. They are:

  1. COGNITIVE: KNOWLEDGE and BELIEF;
  2. AFFECTIVE: FEELINGS and EMOTIONS;
  3. VALUE: NORMS and judgments;
  4. PROGRAM: PLANS and ACTIONS;
  5. SOCIAL: support GROUPS and COLLECTIVITIES.

In the cognitive dimension, ideology requires a WORLDVIEW, which can be MYTHOLOGICAL. Mythological not in the sense of truth or lie, but in the sense of something that is at least acceptable as reality.

ARISTOTLE

NICOMACHEAN ETHICS

  1. We have as a GOAL, in everything we do, the GOOD. Everything has a goal: MEDICINE has HEALING as a goal; the FARMER has FOOD; the SCULPTOR, the ARTWORK.