A quickly passing philosophical thought
by Bob on August 17, 2007
I wrote this back in December 2005. Perhaps it still has merit.
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If someone claims to be a philosopher, or professing such, one either is totally unaccepting of the terms, is an iconoclast, and does what Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus) or likely even Nietzsche did, and break with the terminology which was too confining which happens in many disciplines. Hence "Beyond Good and Evil" and the like.
If someone is more mainstream, they must follow or at least acknowledge the usual points of reference in discourse.
Saying that moral and ethical matters boil down to ethics is off-kilter, and almost sophistry.
Of course there are moral issues, and ethical issues, as can be correctly pointed out by example.
As long as we buy the brand name, we have to wear the labels.
Buy an off-brand or roll-your-own if you don't like the accepted notions and nomenclature.
By many great geniuses over time, Aristotle is considered a "failed" student of the great Plato, in that he mis-understood the essential spiritual message of Plato and became mechanistic. I have read much if not all extant fragments and works of both, or close to it.
The Syllogistic (from Prior and Posterior Analytics) of Aristotle has helped and hindered humanity. It pre-saged the mechanistic logic needed for today's computers. Now people are largely mechanistic.
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Now time to get back to Jean Cocteau and his 1934 play "The Infernal Machine", one of his greatest plays. Definitely appropriate.