Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Chili · 03-10-2013, 10:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Philia is often translated as "friendship." There are people who claim that men and women can't be "just friends" without a sexual overtone, for which the Greeks had another word (or two).

Philia says:

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As Gerard Hughes points out, in Books VIII and IX Aristotle gives examples of philia including:

"young lovers (1156b2), lifelong friends (1156b12), cities with one another (1157a26), political or business contacts (1158a28), parents and children (1158b20), fellow-voyagers and fellow-soldiers (1159b28), members of the same religious society (1160a19), or of the same tribe (1161b14), a cobbler and the person who buys from him (1163b35).

So it sounds like philia would most often be man to man, but not always.

The argument exists that eros is opposite to agape, wherein eros is selfish, protective, jeaulous, has an opposite in hate; is consumer related as if it is about the gate of Eden while agape is inside Eden and actually bleeds for suffering souls.

Let me add here that eros so is illusion that pertains only to the human condition, and so with all ilusion gone the opposites of attraction are also gone that for the Greeks meant that philia became a sign of prestige in evidence of their so called sage impotence. Opposite this is that in modern days it is a sign of prestige that males as much as die with a hard on to prove their worth as male instead of man.

stephan huller · 03-10-2013, 10:47 PM

How can anyone argue that the longer Marcionite gospel of Mark which added the mystical doctrine of Empedoclean philia to the narrative is not at the core of Clement's system - and thus Marcionite Mark is 'secret Mark'?

Chili · 03-11-2013, 09:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stephan huller

How can anyone argue that the longer Marcionite gospel of Mark which added the mystical doctrine of Empedoclean philia to the narrative is not at the core of Clement's system - and thus Marcionite Mark is 'secret Mark'?

It sounds right to me of which also the signs are in the times, as I wrote in my commentary, wherein the effervescent dick is worshiped and not the fleeting Y that left the scene and now ferility clinics must do the job for us.

It is wherein philia has replaced eros and so is where friendship is sought and also is enforced by Civil Law in our new Material World, where on the flip-side agape went 'poof' instead of being be future to unfold in its creative kind of way to renew the world, that so must come from inside the womb of man to unfold each generation anew.

To 'renew the world' is with a mandate of its own, which here is to subdue the world it knows instead of the world around us that we see with the naked eye and plunder it. So in essence we must be a slave to our own world to subdue and master it, and not subdue other people to be a slave of us.

The problem with philia is that friends have things in common, and if that is true, it also means that they have nothing to offer to each other that so reduces the vivacity of their dream and soon live like a dreamer without a dream to live, that we call the adolescent period, which is very prominent in our modern West these days on account that.

Be it known here that the increasingly prolonged adolescent period we know is a modern phenonon, we call it, because we know it is real but do not quite know why . . . in the same way that a scientist cannot explain the source of his own 'major' just as to poet cannot critique the 'poem' he wrote, wherefore then philosophy is king, or a poem would not be the art of the artisan. This so now makes life itself an art, and a prayer to live out without a spoken word.

So now to pray in a closet is not hide in there to pray, but be the closet in the freedom of your life (and just go to church for confess your sins and leave them there and then go West again to sin some more).

In Biblical terms it is wherein our temple tramp (we call here Eve) has lost her charm that so removes argosy from life as the essence [that] precedes vision that drives execution.

It is how Culture Eats Vision for the Materialist in opposite to the Idealist for whom Essense Precedes Existence and he actually lives the unfolding future that he sees and continues to see in the dream he lives that is fed by the infinite source that drives him (here back to Plato's Seventh Epistle again that we call Communion with the Saints wherein culture feeds vision).

Culture is potent. It is like a wild card in a deck that will either enable and support, or it will impede and sabotage of which, for example, the popularity of "Romeo and Juliet" testifies as a barometer of the 'well being' of a culture as a whole, via its members in the particular as they identify with it, or not. And yes, this is all observed and recorded evidence for us to know.

andrewcriddle · 03-11-2013, 02:25 PM

Clement does I think believe in friendship philia between husband and wife. See Stromateis book 4 chapter 20

Quote:

The woman who, with propriety, loves her husband [philandron], Euripides describes, while admonishing,- "That when her husband says aught, She ought to regard him as speaking well if she say nothing; And if she will say anything, to do her endeavour to gratify her husband."

And again he subjoins the like : "And that the wife should sweetly look sad with her husband, Should aught evil befall him, And have in common a share of sorrow and joy."

Then, describing her as gentle and kind even in misfortunes, he adds: "And I, when you are ill, will, sharing your sickness bear it; And I will bear my share in your misfortunes."

And: "Nothing is bitter to me, For with friends [philwn] one ought to be happy, For what else is friendship [philon] but this?"

Andrew Criddle

Chili · 03-11-2013, 05:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stephan huller

The answer is - 'no we're not saying that Jesus was gay.' But whatever Jesus was in the beginning was adapted to the beliefs, practices and doctrines of Greek philosophy - hence the heretics are all philosophers (= 'gnostic' is only a philosophical term).

Yes, but gnostic is not the same as Gnostic wannebe's who are look-alikes in their deprivation of the gnosis they are chasing. Philosophy means love of wisdom and not seeking wisdom as outsider yourself.

Chili · 03-11-2013, 05:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by andrewcriddle

Clement does I think believe in friendship philia between husband and wife. See Stromateis book 4 chapter 20

Quote:

The woman who, with propriety, loves her husband [philandron], Euripides describes, while admonishing,- "That when her husband says aught, She ought to regard him as speaking well if she say nothing; And if she will say anything, to do her endeavour to gratify her husband."

And again he subjoins the like : "And that the wife should sweetly look sad with her husband, Should aught evil befall him, And have in common a share of sorrow and joy."

Then, describing her as gentle and kind even in misfortunes, he adds: "And I, when you are ill, will, sharing your sickness bear it; And I will bear my share in your misfortunes."

And: "Nothing is bitter to me, For with friends [philwn] one ought to be happy, For what else is friendship [philon] but this?"

Andrew Criddle

Nice lines and she will do his crying for him too.

stephan huller · 03-11-2013, 09:19 PM

"Well, when we teach philosophy in France, at the beginning of every academic year, we recall this etymology. We remember that philosophia in Greek means the love or friendship towards Sophia which is wisdom but also cleverness or skill or knowledge. So then we ask what is Philia - what is love or friendship or desire? In this way, we begin defining philosophy on the basis of this etymology."
Derrida, Jacques and Nikhil Padgaonkar (Interviewer.) "An Interview with Jacques Derrida." in: Web Archive. (Last update

March 17, 1997.

stephan huller · 03-11-2013, 09:26 PM

Derrida points out that this model of friendship prefers the same to the other – the friend is the same and not the other in this philosophical tradition. Since the friend is a 'model' of the self, friendship (philia) actually has a structure. The friend is the reflection of what he desires, but, since he can only desire things which he lacks, which he has been deprived of, then before that privation friendship must have been linked to what is oikeios (familiar). Oikeios is an adjective which means that 'which is one's own, personal, even intimate and interior, as well as that which is close, from the parent or the friend or the compatriot', it stems from the Greek noun oikos, which means the hearth, the familial lodgings, the home. The logic and the structure of a relationship of the one and the other, the original and the copy. The friend is our ideal image and he resides close to the hearth. http://books.google.com/books?id=szH...%2C%22&f=false

stephan huller · 03-11-2013, 09:30 PM

Derrida interview:

Quote:

Let me make just a single scholarly reference to Aristotle, who says that there are three types of friendship. Firstly, the higher friendship is based on virtue and it has nothing to do with politics. It is a friendship between two virtuous men. Secondly, the friendship grounded on utility and usefulness, and this is political friendship. Third, and on the lower level, friendship grounded on pleasure - looking for pleasure among young people, Aristotle says. So you see that we have a concept of friendship which is and is not political. The political friendship is one kind of friendship. One of the questions might be, to put it in a very everyday fashion, should we select our friends from among our political allies, should we politically agree with a friend to enter into friendship, is it necessary, are politics and friendship homogeneous? Could we have a friend who is politically an enemy and vice versa, and so forth? In Aristotle again you have this idea that the quest for justice has nothing to do with politics, you have to go beyond or sometimes betray friendship in the name of justice. So, there are a number of problems in which you see love - not love, but philia or friendship playing an organising role in the definition of the political experience.

Then what I try to do - I'm looking at my watch - is to follow the thread of the paradoxes between friendship and politics, to look for a prevailing canonical model of friendship which in our culture form the Greeks to now, in Greek culture, in Roman culture, in Jewish, Christian and Islamic culture, has been dominant, has been prevailing and hegemonic. What are the features of this prevailing hegemonic concept which could be politically meaningful and politically significant? I don't want to homogenise of course - this concept is not a single homogeneous concept, it is not exactly the same in Greece, in the Middle Ages, and today, but there are some permanent features, and it is this set of permanent features that I try to discover, to analyse, to formalise from a political point of view.

So, what are they? To be very, very, very rough: first of all the model of this friendship is a friendship between two young men, mortals, who have a contract according to which one will survive the other, one will be the heir of the other, and they will agree politically - I give a number of examples of this. Which excludes first of all friendship between a man and a woman, or between women, so women are totally excluded from this model of friendship: woman as the friend of a man or women as friends between themselves. Then the figure of the brother, of fraternity, is also at the centre of this canonical model. I show this of course through a number of texts and examples. Brotherhood, fraternity, is the figure of this canonical friendship. Of course this concept of brotherhood has a number of cultural and historical premises. It comes from Greece, but it also comes from the Christian model in which brotherhood or fraternity is essential. Men are all brothers because they are sons of God, and you can find the ethics of this concept in even an apparently secular concept of friendship and politics. In the French Revolution this is the foundation of the Declaration of the Rights of Man. Fraternity was the object of a terrible debate in France at the time, and fraternity appears, between equality and liberty, as one of the foundations of the republic. So, you have to deal here with what I would call a phallocentric or phallogocentric concept of friendship. Which doesn't of course mean to me that the hegemony of this concept was so powerful that what it excluded was effectively totally excluded. It doesn't mean that a woman couldn't have the experience of friendship with a man or with another woman. It means simply that within this culture, this society, by which this prevalent canon was considered legitimate, accredited, then there was no voice, no discourse, no possibility of acknowledging these excluded possibilities. http://hydra.humanities.uci.edu/derrida/pol+fr.html

stephan huller · 03-11-2013, 10:55 PM

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After what we have said, a discussion of friendship would naturally follow, since it is a virtue or implies virtue, and is besides most necessary with a view to living. For without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods; even rich men and those in possession of office and of dominating power are thought to need friends most of all; for what is the use of such prosperity without the opportunity of beneficence, which is exercised chiefly and in its most laudable form towards friends? Or how can prosperity be guarded and preserved without friends? The greater it is, the more exposed is it to risk. And in poverty and in other misfortunes men think friends are the only refuge. It helps the young, too, to keep from error; it aids older people by ministering to their needs and supplementing the activities that are failing from weakness; those in the prime of life it stimulates to noble actions-'two going together'-for with friends men are more able both to think and to act. Again, parent seems by nature to feel it for offspring and offspring for parent, not only among men but among birds and among most animals; it is felt mutually by members of the same race, and especially by men, whence we praise lovers of their fellowmen. We may even in our travels how near and dear every man is to every other. Friendship seems too to hold states together, and lawgivers to care more for it than for justice; for unanimity seems to be something like friendship, and this they aim at most of all, and expel faction as their worst enemy; and when men are friends they have no need of justice, while when they are just they need friendship as well, and the truest form of justice is thought to be a friendly quality.

But it is not only necessary but also noble; for we praise those who love their friends, and it is thought to be a fine thing to have many friends; and again we think it is the same people that are good men and are friends.

Not a few things about friendship are matters of debate. Some define it as a kind of likeness and say like people are friends, whence come the sayings 'like to like', 'birds of a feather flock together', and so on; others on the contrary say 'two of a trade never agree'. On this very question they inquire for deeper and more physical causes, Euripides saying that 'parched earth loves the rain, and stately heaven when filled with rain loves to fall to earth', and Heraclitus that 'it is what opposes that helps' and 'from different tones comes the fairest tune' and 'all things are produced through strife'; while Empedocles, as well as others, expresses the opposite view that like aims at like. [Nichomachean Ethics 1155 a25]

How can anyone argue that the if the heretics had a longer Gospel of Mark which incorporated Empedocles that the philia of Empedocles wasn't homosexual or homoerotic? After all Empedocles defined philia in terms of "like aims at like.' After all the Philosophumena also says that the they prohibited heterosexuality (marriage, child rearing).

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03-10-2013, 10:47 PM	#12
stephan huller Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: seattle, wa Posts: 9,337	How can anyone argue that the longer Marcionite gospel of Mark which added the mystical doctrine of Empedoclean philia to the narrative is not at the core of Clement's system - and thus Marcionite Mark is 'secret Mark'?

03-11-2013, 09:19 PM	#17
stephan huller Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: seattle, wa Posts: 9,337	"Well, when we teach philosophy in France, at the beginning of every academic year, we recall this etymology. We remember that philosophia in Greek means the love or friendship towards Sophia which is wisdom but also cleverness or skill or knowledge. So then we ask what is Philia - what is love or friendship or desire? In this way, we begin defining philosophy on the basis of this etymology." Derrida, Jacques and Nikhil Padgaonkar (Interviewer.) "An Interview with Jacques Derrida." in: Web Archive. (Last update March 17, 1997.

03-11-2013, 09:26 PM	#18
stephan huller Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: seattle, wa Posts: 9,337	Derrida points out that this model of friendship prefers the same to the other – the friend is the same and not the other in this philosophical tradition. Since the friend is a 'model' of the self, friendship (philia) actually has a structure. The friend is the reflection of what he desires, but, since he can only desire things which he lacks, which he has been deprived of, then before that privation friendship must have been linked to what is oikeios (familiar). Oikeios is an adjective which means that 'which is one's own, personal, even intimate and interior, as well as that which is close, from the parent or the friend or the compatriot', it stems from the Greek noun oikos, which means the hearth, the familial lodgings, the home. The logic and the structure of a relationship of the one and the other, the original and the copy. The friend is our ideal image and he resides close to the hearth. http://books.google.com/books?id=szH...%2C%22&f=false

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