Daily Archives: November 5, 2021

Epistemological philosophy advanced by Karl Popper

Critical rationalism is an epistemological philosophy advanced by Karl Popper on the basis that, if a statement cannot be logically deduced (from what is known), it might nevertheless be possible to logically falsify it. Following Hume, Popper rejected any inductive logic that is ampliative, i.e., any logic that can provide more knowledge than deductive logic. So, the idea is that, if we cannot get it logically, we should at the least try to logically falsify it, which led Popper to his falsifiability criterion. Popper wrote about critical rationalism in many works, including: The Logic of Scientific Discovery(1934/1959),[1] The Open Society and its Enemies(1945),[2] Conjectures and Refutations(1963),[3] Unended Quest(1976),[4] and The Myth of the Framework(1994).[5]

Critical rationalists hold that scientific theories and any other claims to knowledge can and should be rationally criticized, and (if they have empirical content) can and should be subjected to tests which may falsify them. Thus claims to knowledge may be contrastingly and normatively evaluated. They are either falsifiable and thus empirical (in a very broad sense), or not falsifiable and thus non-empirical. Those claims to knowledge that are potentially falsifiable can then be admitted to the body of empirical science, and then further differentiated according to whether they are retained or are later actually falsified. If retained, further differentiation may be made on the basis of how much subjection to criticism they have received, how severe such criticism has been, and how probable the theory is, with the least probable theory that still withstands attempts to falsify it being the one to be preferred.[6] That it is the least probable theory that is to be preferred is one of the contrasting differences between critical rationalism and classical views on science, such as positivism, which holds that one should instead accept the most probable theory.[6] The least probable theory is preferred because it is the one with the highest information content and most open to future falsification.

Critical rationalism as a discourse positioned itself against what its proponents took to be epistemologically relativist philosophies, particularly post-modernist or sociological approaches to knowledge. Critical rationalism holds that knowledge is objective (in the sense of being embodied in various substrates and in the sense of not being reducible to what humans individually "know"), and also that truth is objective (exists independently of social mediation or individual perception, but is "really real").

However, this contrastive, critical approach to objective knowledge is quite different from more traditional views that also hold knowledge to be objective. (These include the classical rationalism of the Enlightenment, the verificationism of the logical positivists, or approaches to science based on induction, a supposed form of logical inference which critical rationalists reject, in line with David Hume.) For criticism is all that can be done when attempting to differentiate claims to knowledge, according to the critical rationalist. Reason is the organon of criticism, not of support; of tentative refutation, not of proof.

Supposed positive evidence (such as the provision of "good reasons" for a claim, or its having been "corroborated" by making successful predictions) does nothing to bolster, support, or prove a claim, belief, or theory.

In this sense, critical rationalism turns the normal understanding of a traditional rationalist, and a realist, on its head. Especially the view that a theory is better if it is less likely to be true is in direct opposition to the traditional positivistic view, which holds that one should seek theories that have a high probability.[6] Popper notes that this "may illustrate Schopenhauer's remark that the solution of a problem often first looks like a paradox and later like a truism". Even a highly unlikely theory that conflicts with a current observation (and is thus false, like "all swans are white") must be considered to be better than one which fits observations perfectly, but is highly probable (like "all swans have a color"). This insight is the crucial difference between naive falsificationism and critical rationalism. The lower probability theory is favoured by critical rationalism because the greater the informative content of a theory the lower will be its probability, for the more information a statement contains, the greater will be the number of ways in which it may turn out to be false. The rationale behind this is simply to make it as easy as possible to find out whether the theory is false so that it can be replaced by one that is closer to the truth. It is not meant as a concession to justificatory epistemology, like assuming a theory to be "justifiable" by asserting that it is highly unlikely and yet fits observation.

Critical rationalism rejects the classical position that knowledge is justified true belief; it instead holds the exact opposite: that, in general, knowledge is unjustified untrue unbelief.[7] It is unjustified because of the non-existence of good reasons. It is untrue, because it usually contains errors that sometimes remain unnoticed for hundreds of years. And it is not belief either, because scientific knowledge, or the knowledge needed to, for example, build an airplane, is contained in no single person's mind. It is only what is recorded in artifacts such as books.

William Warren Bartley compared critical rationalism to the very general philosophical approach to knowledge which he called justificationism, the view that scientific theories can be justified. Most justificationists do not know that they are justificationists. Justificationism is what Popper called a "subjectivist" view of truth, in which the question of whether some statement is true, is confused with the question of whether it can be justified (established, proven, verified, warranted, made well-founded, made reliable, grounded, supported, legitimated, based on evidence) in some way.

According to Bartley, some justificationists are positive about this mistake. They are nave rationalists, and thinking that their knowledge can indeed be founded, in principle, it may be deemed certain to some degree, and rational.

Other justificationists are negative about these mistakes. They are epistemological relativists, and think (rightly, according to the critical rationalist) that you cannot find knowledge, that there is no source of epistemological absolutism. But they conclude (wrongly, according to the critical rationalist) that there is therefore no rationality, and no objective distinction to be made between the true and the false.

By dissolving justificationism itself, the critical rationalist (a proponent of non-justificationism)[8] regards knowledge and rationality, reason and science, as neither foundational nor infallible, but nevertheless does not think we must therefore all be relativists. Knowledge and truth still exist, just not in the way we thought.

Non-justificationism is also accepted by David Miller and Karl Popper.[9] However, not all proponents of critical rationalism oppose justificationism; it is supported most prominently by John W. N. Watkins. In justificationism, criticism consists of trying to show that a claim cannot be reduced to the authority or criteria that it appeals to. That is, it regards the justification of a claim as primary, while the claim itself is secondary. By contrast, non-justificational criticism works towards attacking claims themselves.

The rejection of "positivist" approaches to knowledge occurs due to various pitfalls that positivism falls into.

1. The nave empiricism of induction was shown to be illogical by Hume. A thousand observations of some event A coinciding with some event B does not allow one to logically infer that all A events coincide with B events. According to the critical rationalist, if there is a sense in which humans accrue knowledge positively by experience, it is only by pivoting observations off existing conjectural theories pertinent to the observations, or off underlying cognitive schemas which unconsciously handle perceptions and use them to generate new theories. But these new theories advanced in response to perceived particulars are not logically "induced" from them. These new theories may be wrong. The myth that we induce theories from particulars is persistent because when we do this we are often successful, but this is due to the advanced state of our evolved tendencies. If we were really "inducting" theories from particulars, it would be inductively logical to claim that the sun sets because I get up in the morning, or that all buses must have drivers in them (if you've never seen an empty bus).

2. Popper and David Miller showed in 1983[10] that evidence supposed to partly support a hypothesis can, in fact, only be neutral to, or even be counter-supportive of the hypothesis.

3. Related to the point above, David Miller,[11] attacks the use of "good reasons" in general (including evidence supposed to support the excess content of a hypothesis). He argues that good reasons are neither attainable, nor even desirable. Basically, Miller asserts that all arguments purporting to give valid support for a claim are either circular or question-begging. That is, if one provides a valid deductive argument (an inference from premises to a conclusion) for a given claim, then the content of the claim must already be contained within the premises of the argument (if it is not, then the argument is ampliative and so is invalid). Therefore, the claim is already presupposed by the premises, and is no more "supported" than are the assumptions upon which the claim rests, i.e. begging the question.

William Warren Bartley developed a variation of critical rationalism that he called pancritical rationalism.

Argentine-Canadian philosopher of science Mario Bunge, who edited a book dedicated to Popper in 1964 that included a paper by Bartley,[12] appreciated critical rationalism but found it insufficient as a comprehensive philosophy of science,[13] so he built upon it (and many other ideas) to formulate his own account of scientific realism in his many publications.[14]

Continue reading here:

Critical rationalism - Wikipedia

Life is a precious gift, undoubtedly. Without a manual however, making the most of it or better yet, serving its purpose can be a tad difficult. And because of this, we stagger through triumphs and mistakes that ultimately come with lessons that help us glide through the next step of our existence and eventually, life itself.

Othniel Pilipili, an entrepreneur, engineer and systems builder says life has taught him that many barriers to achieving what is meant to be achieved by a human subject always start with a simple thought (either innate or from senses). And since a simple thought can be developed innately, it follows that the origin of success (or its personal metrics based on ones purpose) is designed by oneself.

This has led him to always double check what he knows, to learn and unlearn, and always compete with himself as he wrestles daily to win over life defects that he says are not always obvious in social environments.

Every good thing in life comes at a cost.

He says, life has taught me that constantly resetting myself to my default settings (by challenging my knowledge, belief systems or aspirations, knowing of course that unknowing is not the same as not having known and bias can use this weakness) is a design powerful enough to reduce stereotypes, hasty generalisations, stress, unhealthy peer pressure and unhealthy competition with other people from the past, the present or the future.

In the current information age, its easier to get caught up in the daily, self-transcendent automatic experience and lose sight of life in its original sense. I consider it failure if by 11:59PM every day, I either did nothing new or I have no reason for having done what I did besides everything being just a predesigned system that I walked through, he says.

His life is run on both rationalism and empiricism, valuing the power of innate thoughts and deduction while highly considering external inputs to create a reality thats worth living.

As an entrepreneur, software engineer, systems engineer, psychologist, data scientist, digital marketer, poet and evolutionary psychology champion, I identify myself with living based on fundamental truths from either pure deductive logic or empirical approaches rather than swimming in the subjective world or that of analogy, he notes.

Pie Kombe a reflexologist believes that everything in life costs and that one needs to make sure they make a choice of what they can afford and to never give up.

Anything is possible. Enjoy the process because the destination alone is never satisfying. Take it one day at a time, be courageous and always give your best even to the smallest task, he says.

He also emphasises that proper living is that where you never forget to balance work, social life and your mental health, Dont try to be a hero. We are all trying in this life, love yourself more.

For Ines Reine Ishime, a designer, life has taught her that if an opportunity is on the table, you should grab it because if you dont, it wont come back and you will live with regrets.

She lives everyday with her favourite quote: Plus tard il sera trop tard. Ta vie cest maintenant, loosely translated as later it will be too late. Your life is now.

The best approach to living life fully for me is: pray, be kind to others but remember that your happiness also matters. So, do whats best for you and dont let societal labels get to you.

Life is not all about choices

Octave Vuguziga a mechatronic engineer believes life doesnt have a formula- life is a school and always teaches us lessons either bad or good.

Never give up, when you know what you are doing is right, but you are not sure if youre going to make it or want to give up because its too difficult, thats the time to persevere, persist and patience on what you want to do. Many things might happen in between, take them as challenges because there is no success without failure, he says.

Be humble and keep God in all your activities. Life becomes easier with this and you live fully, he notes.

From scratch, you can be someone you dreamt about: I personally was lazy when I was younger but I learnt to push myself. People will throw stones at you. Dont throw them back. Collect them and build an empire: I found these words written somewhere but they really inspired me. They reflected how people mostly do bad things in life, but its wise not to react the same.

Pilipili accentuates that his philosophy for life is not a choice, rather identification as he continues to shape his purpose in life.

He thinks its more productive to be guided by independent truths verifiable by science or deduction than daily normal configurations in social, family, academic or professional settings.

The universe is almost 14 billion years old. I was born just recently on June 16, 1995, and the universe will continue its course until the word until will stop making sense in trying to draw a timeline for time itself. When I reflect on this, it only makes me respect existence and do the best from my human abilities to live it fully for me and for future generations, he notes.

He adds that the best approach to live life fully is trying your best not to live it as we know it; A normal human life process includes being born, playing with other kids, going to school, looking for a job, starting relationships, getting married, having and raising kids, taking care of thy parents, retiring until the dusk is kissed. You follow that path and you will hardly encounter anything new, Pilipili shares.

Try something out of the ordinary: do something that we have objectively established, that its not based on internal biases. Avoid admiration or external influences to a significant extent, it can all start with something very simple and obvious such as going to the office using another street, mindfully doing something we know we have no passion for, or tracking down the actual reason you eat oranges etc.

Simple tasks can help uncover biases or routines that are not helpful to maximising the small number of years that history and biology have proven us individually to have on this earth.

dmbabazi@newtimesrwanda.com

Read the original post:

What philosophy has shaped your life? - The New Times

Supplied

We tend to love those who don't play ball, such as Tom Cruises Maverick in Top Gun. But how do we respond in the Covid environment?

OPINION: Most of us love rebels and underdogs. Begrudging the conformity that's necessary to survive in any human community, even a liberal democracy deluding itself with buzz words like 'diversity', we make heroes of those who don't play ball. It's no coincidence that Tom Cruise became a star playing a Maverick, that Clint Eastwood's Harry turned him into a 'dirty' icon of Nixon's 'silent minority' or that the most famous figure in 20th century popular culture was Charlie Chaplin, an outsider tramp vilified on-screen and off.

Movie star rebels tend to lack specific causes. They operate more as escape valves than flash points. In the social and political arena, the stakes are higher. Immortality beckons for martyrs. Che Guevara had a face that launched a billion t-shirts. John Lennon imagined a world beyond the one that shot him.

Arguably, no rebel is as brave or as a foolhardy as the conscientious objector in time of war. To stand against the collective effort of your country to combat a force identified as a common foe requires reserves of strength well beyond that of those willingly conscripted. In World War I, New Zealanders who took such a stance were often declared insane. Looking at transcripts of their trials today, over a century later, the opposite seems true. The Waikato didn't lack for clear-headed farmers capable of reading the international situation, of identifying a meaningless, European, colonial bloodbath and wanting no part of it.

Those whose refusal to take part in a conflict is grounded in genuine pacifism hold a special place in the history of civilisation. The clearest New Zealand example has unfortunately been obscured by politics and murky denials. When the Moriori met in 1835 to debate a response to the invasion of the Chatham Islands by Taranaki Maori, they elected to remain true to the pacifist ideals of their ancestors, declaring "the law of Nunuku was not a strategy for survival, to be varied as conditions changed; it was a moral imperative". Enslavement and genocide followed.

READ MORE:* Worse than Covid: The effects of past disease outbreaks still being felt* Covid-19: Two arrests and more likely at anti-lockdown hkoi * Formal complaint against anti-vax lawyer lodged with the Law Society* Covid-19: Dozen complaints to IPCA over police not making lockdown protest arrests

STUFF

There are 10 ingredients in the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine. A microchip is not one of them.

Today, the world is at war with Covid-19. Medical and social advancements in the fight ensure that the future of our species is not at stake but it is still a matter of life and death. Case numbers rise by the day. Vaccinations will dull the impact but more fatalities are inevitable.

In this context, how are we to respond to those opposed to vaccination and/or those who gather in large prohibitive numbers to express resentment against social restrictions designed for the common good? Are these rebels free spirits, worthy of our admiration, the equivalent of conscientious objectors? Should we politely agree to disagree, a response all too rare in today's divided political landscape? Should we take our lead from a constabulary more than willing to accept dissent, who would rather stand around taking photographs of a crime than act to prevent it?

Christel Yardley/Stuff

The very act of gathering in large numbers for Covid-19-related protests imperils others, Swainson says. Pictured are protestors at Claudelands Park, Hamilton.

I would argue there is an important distinction to be made between respecting the right to protest and respecting the protest itself. The former is essential in a free society. The latter requires a judgement call. It is exactly like religion. A democracy must enjoy religious freedom but don't ask me to respect religion itself, two centuries or more after the Enlightenment. Let us progress on the strength of science and rationalism, not continue to be mired in superstition and idolatry.

Superstition and idolatry and an unhealthy dose of social media paranoia inform protests that reference high concepts like 'freedom' but only on the most superficial of levels, ignoring any sense of collective responsibility. Protesters are like petulant children, throwing their toys around after being made to go to bed early. Judging by one recent photo, they are children who have overdosed on the cult film V for Vendetta, wearing Guy Fawkes masks, either playing out anti-authoritarian fantasies or celebrating November 5 somewhat early.

RICKY WILSON/Stuff

Brian Tamaki has been charged over his involvement with recent protests. Hes pictured leaving the Henderson Police Station after his arrest for breaching his bail conditions.

Brian Tamaki ranks as the biggest child of the lot, even if his preference for black shirts and aggressive rallies and demagogic rhetoric brings to mind a certain Italian dictator who was always on top of the train timetables. One can only assume that our judicial system is carefully avoiding making this antipodean Mussolini a martyr to his meaningless - or rather self-serving - cause. How else can we explain a wet bus ticket response to sequential offences and bail violations?

A unique problem of Covid-19-related protests is that the very act of gathering is at once an act of defiance and behaviour that imperils the existence and well-being of others. To rally in large numbers verges on the suicidal. If protesters were just playing with their own lives there would be a certain Darwinian poetic justice to it all: let them literally die for their convictions, improving the gene pool. Unfortunately, super-spreader protest events threaten the rest of us as well.

It is also dismaying how debates around the Covid-19 response have spilt over into a wide range of other political issues. Sensitivity to historic injustices has somehow informed a contrary determination to ignore contemporary expert advice. You wonder at the sanity of a Murupara kaumtua who refuses Pfzier on the grounds that it must inferior to other vaccines because the Crown recommends it. Might not it be more useful to recall Mori lives lost a century ago and use the vaccine that is at hand to prevent a recurrence? And what of the hkoi that set out from Rotorua, somehow travelled through level 3 Waikato, only to force a stand-off at the Auckland border? Whatever grudges and grievances this lot harbour, no cause is advanced by such stupidity.

New Zealand proved itself big enough in time of war to countenance those of conscience who resisted the martial spirit. If it proves itself big enough again to accommodate those who selfishly detract from efforts to suppress Covid-19, these rebels command no respect.

See more here:

In the war with Covid, rebels who risk spread don't command respect - Stuff.co.nz

Breadcrumb Trail Links

Author of the article:

Publishing date:

The announcement last week that Pope Francis may be planning a visit to Canada to apologize for the Catholic Churchs involvement in the abuses committed against Indigenous children in residential schools prompted a reflection on the state of the church today. The simple fact is that the churchs influence in the world is now at its lowest ebb since the early days of Christianity.

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

For centuries, the Catholic Church was one of the great pillars of western civilization. It built magnificent cathedrals and monasteries throughout Europe. It established the first great universities. It provided health and education services to the poor. It ran great estates that were a significant part of the agricultural economy of many countries. Its leaders, cardinals and bishops, were trusted advisers to kings and queens and occupied major ministerial positions. A long succession of popes played a major role in European politics. And its missionaries spanned the globe, bringing Christianity to peoples in Asia, Africa and the Americas. No other institution was more influential in the progressive westernization of the world at large.

Over the centuries, the church suffered two major blows to its power and prestige. The first was the Great Schism of 1053, which saw an irreversible split between the sees of Rome and Constantinople. The result was the creation of what came to be known as the Eastern Orthodox churches, with headquarters in Constantinople, Athens, Antioch, Cairo, Moscow and Kyiv. These churches remained essentially true to the doctrines of the Catholic Church but ceased to recognize the Pope as their leader. This split did irreparable damage to what had until then been a largely united Christendom. The second blow occurred in the 16th century with the Protestant Reformation. The Protestant reformers took exception not only to many of the corrupt practices that had become evident in the church, but also to many of its doctrines. There emerged from this movement a variety of denominations, including Lutherans, Calvinists, Anglicans, Presbyterians and Baptists. These denominations solidified their presence in Germany, Britain, Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries and from there spread their wings to the New World, where they spawned yet more new churches, such as Mormons and Shakers. The once total domination of the western world by the Catholic Church thus came to an end.

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

But the Catholic Church rebounded from these setbacks with the Council of Trent, the Counter Reformation and the birth of the Jesuit order of priests, who came to be known as the shock troops of the Pope. The church managed to maintain its dominant position in countries such as France, Italy and Spain. And it, too, spread to the New World. All of the countries of Latin America became predominantly Catholic, and Catholicism remains the largest single Christian denomination in the United States and Canada. In the United States, the church established for itself an enviable position in higher education with universities such as Georgetown, Fordham, Notre Dame and Loyola. And Catholic leaders such as Cardinal Spellman of New York and Father Hesburgh, the president of Notre Dame University, became highly respected national figures in the United States. The church scored a notable breakthrough with the election of the first Catholic president in the history of the United States in the person of John F. Kennedy in 1960.

The glory days of the church were already beginning to be numbered, however, in the 1950s. Hundreds of thousands of Catholics left the church over its positions on birth control. They were simply not prepared to kow-tow to the churchs strictures or injunctions to have ever larger families. This flight from the pews was to grow exponentially over the decades. Women in Europe and North America became increasingly disenchanted with the churchs total domination by men. Religious and lay women began to demand a greater role in the government of the church. When their demands were steadfastly resisted by the church hierarchy, many went into overt opposition. One byproduct of this is that the recruitment of women to the religious life has dwindled to a trickle. Most nuns today are distinctly aged, and numerous convents have been closed down. Nuns in the classroom or on hospital wards are now as rare as hens teeth.

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

If the recruitment of nuns has dwindled dramatically, so, too, has the recruitment of new priests. Parishes in Europe and North America are all suffering from a shortage of clergy. Churches that once had two or three priests on staff are now reduced to sharing one priest among two or three parishes on Sundays. Many churches have had to close down because of the shortage, and not only in remote rural areas. One of the main reasons for this is that the church has steadfastly refused to allow priests to marry. Thousands of ordained priests have jumped the wall for this reason alone. (A perfect illustration of the problem is to be found in the Grand Seminary in Montreal. Once home to some 400 recruits to the priesthood, it is now reduced to less than 40 and has had to shut down its grand building on the slopes of Mount Royal.)

The closure of churches is not attributable solely to the shortage of priests. In one church after another, congregations have grown older and many parishioners have died off. The remaining parishioners can no longer afford the costs of maintaining their churches. (The most obvious local example of this phenomenon is to be found in what was the Church of the Good Thief on King Street West. It is a magnificent old stone church dating back to the 19th century, but which now carries the sign closed at its front door.) This decrease in the size of congregations is attributable to many factors, including growing materialism and the advances of rationalism and secularism in the modern world. Many young people simply feel no attachment to religion and are not inclined to go to church solely because their parents did. In short, the church is greying and aging in many western countries.

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

The latest challenges confronting the church are to be found in the multiple revelations regarding the sexual and physical abuse of children perpetrated by members of the Catholic clergy. Over the past 20 years, there has been an outpouring of such revelations in one country after another. Church-sponsored and government-mandated commissions of inquiry have revealed a pattern of criminal activity by literally thousands of priests. And further inquiries have shown the efforts mounted by the Church hierarchy to hide the truth and protect both the perpetrators and the image of the institution. This year alone has been notable for the findings of a commission in France regarding the sexual abuse of thousands of French children by priests over several decades and for the discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves on the grounds of former Catholic-run residential schools in Canada.

The churchs response to these revelations has been anything but exemplary. Beyond trying to cover up the facts, numerous bishops have gone to court to try to avoid having to provide financial compensation to the victims. Others have been reluctant to share documents and records relating to the events. The past two popes, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, did whatever they could to sweep the matter under the carpet and not face up to its gravity. It has been left to Pope Francis to deal with the issue and the mounting toll that it is taking on the churchs reputation. He is obviously a man of good will who wants to do the right thing, but he seems overwhelmed by the enormity of the task at hand. He has issued several apologies for the actions of the clergy and will no doubt issue more, but these are widely viewed as insufficient by the victims of abuse. In the meantime, Catholics by the thousands are abandoning the church and leaving it a weakened institution.

Louis A. Delvoie is a retired Canadian diplomat who served abroad as an ambassador and high commissioner.

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Read the original post:

The Catholic Church in retreat - The Kingston Whig-Standard

The Trojan Women is a genocide narrative. In this play, the great Athenian dramatist Euripides explores the enslavement of women, human sacrifice, rape and infanticide.

By Chris Mackie

The story of the long struggle for the life of the city of Troy might be thought of as the pre-eminent Greek myth. Extensive narratives of the war are told in the oral traditions of myth and literature, and they also appear very significantly in the material evidence of Greek art and architecture.

The Trojan Women, a play by the great Athenian dramatist Euripides (485-406 BC), was produced in Athens in the early spring of 415 BC. It is set immediately after the fall of Troy and the killing of the Trojan men, when the fates of the royal women and children of the city are being decided by the victorious Greeks.

The grim subject matter and mood of the play in its Trojan setting have a parallel in the Peloponnesian War, which was being fought at the time between Athens and Sparta (431 to 404 BC). The Trojan Women speaks both to the renowned war at Troy, described most famously by Homer in the Iliad, and to the great military struggle taking place in Euripides own lifetime.

If there was a historical Trojan War it was probably fought in the late Bronze Age, perhaps in the 12th century BC at Hisarlik in what is now northwest Turkey. Accounts of the war seem to have been passed on orally, culminating in epic poems that probably date to the end of the 8th century BC and after. The Iliad (c. 700 BC) and Homers Odyssey (dated perhaps to a generation or two after the Iliad) are our two surviving early Greek epic poems on the Troy theme.

But we also know of a series of poems, now lost, called the Epic Cycle, six of which are focused on the Troy saga. All of these offered accounts of different parts of the Trojan War (which in the Greek tradition lasted for 10 years).

Early Greek epics made no attempt to document the historicity of the conflict in a modern sense, not the least because history hadnt been invented when they were composed. History (a Greek word meaning research or enquiry) is a product of later (i.e., 6th and 5th century BC) rationalism and literacy.

As a late 5th century BC Athenian dramatist, Euripides is an heir both to the traditions of oral poetry and mythmaking, and to the rational enquiry of philosophy, rhetoric and history in a broad sense. While Homer was greatly admired by the literati in 5th century Athens, he does represent a world already long gone. (Homers Iliad may date up to 300 years before Euripides Trojan Women as distant a period as the early 18th century is for us.)

Euripides himself (485-406 BC) was still writing into old age, not unlike his contemporary, the tragedian Sophocles (497/6-406 BC), who was still producing plays at Athens into his early nineties! Euripides wrote about 90 plays, of which 18 survive, whereas the evergreen Sophocles wrote more than 120 plays, only 7 of which survive. They often competed at the dramatic festivals, with Sophocles easily the more successful.

Euripides wrote four plays for performance on that day in the early spring of 415 BC, although only The Trojan Women has survived. We know, not the least from fragmentary evidence, that the first three plays were on the Trojan War theme, but they were not a tightly interconnected trilogy of plays, as is Aeschylus Oresteia.

First was the play Alexander, which focused on the earlier life of the Trojan archer-figure Paris, or Alexander, as he is often known. In the myth of Troy it is he who judges the divine beauty contest (the Judgement of Paris), that precipitates the war between Greeks and Trojans.

The second play was the Palamedes, about a clever but rather obscure Greek prince at Troy. The Trojan Women was the third play presented on that day, and was followed in turn by a more light-hearted satyr play called the Sisyphus.

We learn from an ancient source that Euripides plays came second in the dramatic competition of the year 415 BC.

The Trojan Women focuses on a small group of women of the royal house of Troy who await their fate in Greece Hecuba, the widow of king Priam; Cassandra, the prophetess daughter of Priam and Hecuba; Andromache, widow of Hector and mother of the boy Astyanax; and Helen of Sparta, who has to plead for her life from Menelaus, her former husband. The chorus of the play are captive Trojan women.

The only Greek prince to feature as a character is Menelaus himself whose task is to decide on Helens fate now that she has been captured. The cruel decisions of the departing Greek forces occur with Odysseus as a key player, but these are enunciated to the women by Talthybius, a Greek herald.

The women are dispersed as slaves to particular princes throughout the Greek world who have led contingents within the Greek army. The obvious cruelty of this process is added to by the cold calculation as to who will go where.

Thus, the girl Polyxena, daughter of Priam and Hecuba, was supposed to go to Achilles after the war; but seeing Achilles is now dead, she is sacrificed at his tomb.

Hectors wife Andromache goes to Achilles son Neoptolemus because Hector and Achilles were rivals and had a major single combat in battle (told in Book 22 of the Iliad). Hecuba herself is to go to Odysseus a terrible fate, upon which she laments her ill-fortune: it is my lot to be slave to a vile and treacherous man.

Cassandra will go as a sex slave to the lascivious and repulsive figure of Agamemnon, while Helen the face that launched a thousand ships is given back to Menelaus.

Cassandra is murdered with Agamemnon upon their return to Mycenae, whereas Helen is a remarkable survivor upon her return to Greece. We encounter Helen again most especially in Homers Odyssey Book 4, where she has a kind of normal life and marriage with her former husband Menelaus in Sparta.

It is important to remember that the extended story of the Trojan War is a genocide narrative, and that this comes through very emphatically within the play itself (as it does in other Greek literature).

The Greeks did not shrink from describing Greek atrocities perpetrated on the defeated Trojans. Indeed it is a feature of their narratives to focus on Greek cruelty. In the Iliad, for instance, Agamemnon urges his brother Menelaus on the battlefield to kill all Trojans, even the boy that is carried in a mothers womb.

The horrific culmination of the cruelty in the Trojan Women is the killing of the boy Astyanax, the very young son of Hector and Andromache. This occurs within the course of the play itself (off stage, of course). Odysseus comes up with the idea of throwing him from the battlements of the city, and the Greeks even threaten to refuse the burial of his body if the Trojan women dont cooperate with the decision to execute the boy.

Astyanax is a silent character in Homer and in Euripides, but his fate in the aftermath of the war speaks to us about infanticide, much as the fates of the Trojan women do with regard to rape and murder and the enslavement of women in war.

It does seem to be significant too that the only compassion for the women coming from Greek male characters in the play belongs to Talthybius, the (non-aristocratic) herald of the Greeks.

The Athenian audience in 415 BC knew very well the main mythical narratives of the aftermath of the Trojan war and the return home. They would know all about the death of Astyanax and about the return of Helen to Sparta to live again with her husband. They would also know, not the least from the prologue of Euripides play itself, that the Greek fleet will be hit by storms on the journey home on account of the rape of Cassandra by Locrian Ajax at the altar of Athena an unpunished act which occurred prior to the opening of the play.

So the Trojan Women deals with the sharp end of Greek brutality in the war for Troy the enslavement of women, human sacrifice, rape and infanticide.

The graphic violence dealt with in the play speaks to us about the absence of heroism in the narrative of Troy, despite what Homer and the epic poets provided in their earlier accounts.

The focus on womens suffering in the war is in keeping with other works by Euripides, many of whose plays focused on female lives and female suffering in relentlessly male dominated environments.

Inevitably, Euripides play has inspired many later treatments of the Trojan women theme. Two modern conscious responses to the Greek poets are novels by English author Pat Barker, who was moved to write The Silence of the Girls, based around the Iliad, and (most recently) The Women of Troy: A Novel, to hear the voices of the women themselves from Euripides play.

Lucy Hughes-Halletts review of The Women of Troy in the Guardian reiterates the violence of the language in Barkers version: clearly and simply told, with no obscurities of vocabulary or allusion, this novel reads sometimes like a retelling for children of the legend of Troy, but its conclusions are for adults merciless, stripped of consoling, impressively bleak.

Chris Mackie is a Professor of Classics at La Trobe University. This article was published inThe Conversationand is republished under a Creative Commons License.

Read the original post:

Euripides' The Trojan Women An Unflinching Look at Brutality of War - Greek Reporter

Wooofer: Palamas / Wikimedia Commons

Faith and reason are both important; the two complement and correct each other, so that when properly working together, they make sure we are not led astray. Reason helps us purify our understanding of the faith, while faith provides various principles which reason can never provide for itself. Reason can only direct us forward, it can never establish anything in and of itself. It can only develop what has been given to it; it cannot create. If what is given is little, what reason will provide is little. It would be foolish to assume the only truth is that which we can establish by reason alone. This is because we need to give reason its proper foundation, its proper seed. It never knows the truth in and of itself.

When dealing with theological matters, those who have little to no experience in spiritual matters, therefore, can be led astray if they think that all they need to do is believe what they can reason out for themselves. This is because they pridefully discuss matters which are beyond them and their experiences. They dont know enough to make sound arguments. St. Gregory Palamas understood this, which is why he was often critical of those who engaged theology. All they did was make rational arguments based upon uncertain, sometimes erroneous, premises. Or else they engaged scholarly studies, which could serve them some good if they read and believed the right things, but without spiritual experiences, without a way to judge scholarly arguments, they could easily be led to believe the wrong conclusions, especially as such studies encourages them to focus merely on what they can reason and think such activity, by itself, is enough. But it is not enough for they will not be able to know the truth in this fashion: Someone who has faith in his own reasoning and the problems which it poses, who believes he can discover all truth by making distinctions, syllogisms and logical analysis, can neither know the things of the spiritual man directly, or believe in them.[1]

Truth is not established through logic; logic only helps us delineate and discuss the truth which we have come to apprehend. We cannot create the truth. We cannot prove the truth through logic. The truth, ultimately, is not revealed through such arguments; arguments only help us in our understanding of that truth. If we do not have some experience of it ourselves, then our rational arguments, no matter how sound they are, will leave us wanting. Start with the wrong premises, and logic will lead you to the wrong conclusion. It is for this reason why Palamas said that for every word, every argument which we could make in favor of the truth, someone else could provide arguments against it:

Every word, it is said, argues with some other word. But what word can argue with life? We think that it is impossible to know yourself by methods of distinction, argument and analysis unless you free your nous from pride and evil by laborious repentance and active asceticism. Someone who has not worked on his nous by these means will not even know his own poverty in his domain of knowledge. [2]

Only those who have, with their mind, apprehended the truth will be able to discern which arguments best represent that truth. It is pride which makes us think we can, through reason alone, prove the truth. How do we expect to do so when those truths transcend the human intellect to comprehend? We can apprehend it. We can experience it. But we must not, out of pride, think we can invent irrefutable arguments which will lead people to hold the same belief as we do. Our experiences will differ. Our apprehensions will differ. Our relationship with the truth will differ. What Palamas suggests is that we must find a way to lead people to share in our apprehensions, to share in our experiences (or to have faith in them, if they cannot have them themselves). Then, our arguments will help them, not because those arguments will prove what we know, but because they will help elucidate and explain what it is we have apprehended in common. This is why Palamas, in arguing against pure rationalism, would employ all kinds of arguments in favor of what he had to say; their purpose is to persuade people to follow after him, to share in his experiences, so that they can perceive and apprehend the truth for themselves (or to realize and understand better what they have already experienced). Thus, like many before him, he suggested what is most important is what we do. How we live out our lives reveals the truth better to others than if we tried to reveal the truth to them through arguments alone: As for us, we believe that the true doctrine is not what is known through words and arguments, but what is demonstrated in peoples works and lives. That is not only the truth, but the only certain and immutable truth. [3]

Palamas did not deny the value of theological science, but he understood its limitations. He wanted all who would engage it to be humble. Faith is important, and so if a person accepted, without experience, what others truly have experienced, they do a good thing. Nonetheless, if they try to add to it arguments from reason without first having an experience of the truth itself, their pride will have them stray from the truth. But because of their faith, they will not stay as far as those who would try to use reason as the sole foundation for their knowledge. Such people tend to apply it skeptically to all things, until at last, either all they have is nothing but pure skepticism, or they will have seen through the limitations of reason and so find themselves capable of using it properly, not expecting to prove all things through it, but rather to elucidate those things which they have come to know or believe. This connects with his greater theological enterprise, because Palamas tells us that what we come to believe is what we see and experience of the truth as it presents itself to us; that is, we know God, not through Gods essence, nor by what we can deduce about it through our reason, but by Gods activities, the uncreated energies of God. For it is those energies which reveal what we can apprehend of the truth for ourselves.

[1] St. Gregory Palamas: The Triads: Books One. Trans. Robin Amis (Wellington, Somerset: Praxis, 2002), 103 [This is from the complete translation of the first book, which is not otherwise found in in the Westerns of Spirituality Volume of the Triads that I normally use].

[2] St. Gregory Palamas: The Triads: Books One, 104.

[3] St. Gregory Palamas: The Triads: Books One, 104.

Stay in touch! Like A Little Bit of Nothing on Facebook. If you liked what you read, please consider sharing it with your friends and family!

Read the original:

Reason, Arguments, And Truth | Henry Karlson - Patheos