Philosophy Thoughts About Daphne

I did good at philosophy at high school!

2012

The idea of the logos (Heraclitus); people should follow the universal or the logos; the idea of her as the unmoved mover (from Aristotle), one substance, the unchangeable (Hegel in his The Phenomenology of the Spirit though he does not say this is expressly her). The closer one gets to her in her two attributes that we a priori know of, namely, space and time, the closer we get to perfection. Only she is perfect, though, and she is perfect in these two attributes and to an infinite amount of the a posteriori attributes as well.
Nobody can become perfect though we can get closer to perfection through experience in life and the way we treat these experiences, and the interpretation and application of morality are key. People will get a clearer idea of the world through experience by their different interpretations of things, and in a sound mind this interpretation leads to both practical and purely intellectual principles.

She is perfect and is also the highest good; she is an absolutely free being. Since we are her creation, she has made us free as well though some people do not know this. We have to shape our own destiny in existence, but without the idea of her this destiny encounters many difficulties, namely, in finding a meaning for life. Those who are disloyal to her I maintain have no direction, and only when they become aware of her fully can they attain a higher state of mind. She gives people hope and meaning and is the unmoved mover. It is a necessity that nothing precedes her; nothing came before her.
If something came before her then, therefore, something created her, which is more powerful than her. Unless the being who created her had only one attribute, which was to create her. But then where would all the other ineffable attributes of her come from? Therefore, she necessarily exists as the one prime substance. She is more perfect than this creation or equal to it, for her creation cannot be greater than eternally lucky because this would be absurd. She is eternally lucky, but it is only one notion.
As one notion, it is only one of many notions based on her being eternally lucky belonging to her. There must be so many other notions because in that one notion she expresses that she in part consists of thought and thoughtfulness, so she has as many thoughts as Confucius's and the different sages' fortune cookies would demand, and I love hearing them whenever I go to Chinese restaurants. The freedom of human beings means that they can create their own destiny: this means that their destiny is not predetermined. Essence does not come before existence, and we must shape our essence once we are born.
It is true that people are shaped in the family as children, but only partly. We have to make our own decisions, which obviously nobody else can make for us. Therefore, morality is obviously important, a morality of natural right where the individual decides what is right and just. Therefore, it is important for an individual to cultivate his achievements and to develop rigorously his mind towards reaching a state of perfection, where he or she can decide by natural right what to do.
She gives us freedom, but the freedom requires that people work towards a telos, or end. An acorn's end, or goal, is to become a tree, while a person's end is to attain a greater perfection and thereby praise her. The word is sacred, so people should find out as much as possible about words and sentences. People must also visualize what people say because in a fashion the written and spoken word are the same. This natural right might go against modern mores, but who is to say that modern mores are at all acceptable to the virtuous her.
There has been much question about where she came from: Thales said water, Heraclitus fire, and so on. Modern science posits the Big Bang, yet who is to say?  Since the only way for finite human beings to characterize her is by a general anthropomorphism, who knows, therefore, what the nature of her is suspended, as it were, from our senses and sensuous intuition. Then there is the issue of Plato's forms, and in this is a specific though metaphysically abstract, ineffable existence behind the normal subject-object paradigm. Although the forms are equal to the universal or the logos (Heraclitus), one cannot see her through eyesight but can catch a glimpse of her in the word, but it is possible to see the beauty and majesty of her in nature, as it is the purpose of her and nature and humanity to show itself in its true colors, to show itself alive and flourishing.
Nature reveals itself, and I maintain that in doing so it shows off the grandeur of its benefactor. Still, much more can be known of her than from what we see or hear or smell. Human beings are special creatures, though still creatures at that, who naturally as infants (because they cannot speak or think in words) discern more than is in time and space though what manifold and multifarious indeed infinite, special things can be discerned in time and space. It even seems as if from the notion of a starting position of a view of reality of the green plant and mammals, which grows miraculously somehow, we would have the capacity as humans in time and space to see everything therein though this is obviously impossible to do.
To live for truth often clashes with some people, and they revile him for having such a virtuous soul. The Greeks also reviled Socrates for his teachings, poisoning him with hemlock in the end. All the Greeks wanted from him really was that he would stop "corrupting the youth," but not tending carefully to the youth and the souls of the world (Gaia) is him giving up everything.  Socrates, never giving up, had his own natural right and the search for certainty and truth, and died for it. The notion of aporia, knowing that one does not know anything.
Descartes says cogito ergo sum, and, although he brings up the idea that there might be some sort of demon tricking us into thinking that we exist, he discounts this idea. No such possibility of this demon existing causes the proposition cogito ergo sum is attested to by many philosophers after Descartes as a proof of each individual existence.
The ancient philosophers saw from a unique point of view, or perspective. Heraclitus thought that fire was her, that it made up everything, but Thales thought that arche of things was water, like with Poseidon (Heraclitus would put more stock in Helios more than likely). This lesson can be learned in morality that from a once chaotic mind much creativity can be found and therefore there is much potential for a masterpiece to be born. Indeed, the modern science of chaos theory shows in the formation of fractals from chaos the greatest uniformity.
Fractals are able to be shown as beautiful works of art whose shape is entirely predicable, but whose origins were from utter chaos. Indeed, according to the ancients (Ovid's The Metamorphoses), after chaos came love, or the bringing together of chaos from the first of the gods. I have a dreamy idea of her, and that she exists for us as the highest comfort and healing reflects on our own mentality, disposition, inclination, and essence of mind. She is pictured as a human being both by the ancients (the mother goddess) though conversely it could be argued that she was an element like fire for the ancients and the moderns.
Maybe, as in Liebniz's Monadology, the present dimension or world we live in is the best of all the possible worlds, picked by her as the best of the worlds or dimensions out there; she was so wise that she created human beings, and they are able to see her greatness. She and her kindness magnifies mankind by allowing them to see her and by implicitly letting mankind know that it is her creation. To be a creation of an infinite being thus exalts mankind and inspires people with a meaning for their lives. Some people wonder why she created man, who is such an erratic creature, and she certainly gave to man free will and reason.
We have found reality to consist of atoms. Even the ancient "atomists" guessed this and so the "atomists" come closer to the nature of matter than any of the other ancients, it seemed, as this view of matter still holds sway today though it seems more like today that the nature of reality is even closer to nothing than made up of atoms. There is also the interesting and opinion that reality is made up of fire, like Heraclitus had thought (like with the quark-gluon plasma). Modern science has found subatomic particles called quarks, which make up atoms.
Is she the world or is she more than the world? Pondering this, if the essence of substance is found, will this also tell the nature of her in its entire essence? Nietzsche says that we come to a notion of her first because we dream, and it is also true that we come to a notion of her through our reading, for example, fantasy books though in less powerful impression. Thus the soul is divided from the body. There is the question of how she relates to us when we are asleep: it seems as if in sleep we no longer have the conscious responsibility of natural right of morality.
In sleep, we are not responsible for our actions, whereas every action when we are awake we are responsible for, and she will judge us on. Perhaps our dreams tell us something about her, as we seem to be in pure bliss, adventure, and etheriality in dreams. Then there is the question of whether she dreams. Some people might posit a humorous thought that reality is only a dream of her and that when she wakes up the world will vanish. Still her dream must be based on some reality as ours is, so when she wakes up, we will most likely still be here.
A universal might indeed exist for the mind, the logos.  But this may die, too, when the person dies. So, it might be said that the world was created for an individual's life, but when the life of the individual dies, all of not only himself but all of the world dies with him. It is also possible for a death of the soul before the actual person physically dies, and in this way we say that one is in despair or that he has lost his soul or that he is dead to the world. But with the actual death of the body, not only is the truth of the world destroyed, which is possible in despair, but more than that the sensuous world is destroyed, also.
Plants and trees strive and reach out their tendrils and green leaves and gray branches in their own way of simple growing that makes it that when they grow older in outward appearance of magnificent beauty they become younger in years in their elemental souls. The beauty of exciting growing sometimes, likewise, makes one younger with branching-out years. Whatever their external position in life, loyal attachment to her renders them internally buoyant, allowing them to hug a life preserver in the ocean. Knowledge and acquaintance of her company naturally inspires one to grow in life.
Even plants strive, and even inorganic things, like crystals and amber, seem to strive as they persevere in their existence and beauty throughout time despite erosion and the threats of external changes. Since she is eternal this striving makes sense, and in this notion one gains a new understanding of life and how everything imitates her in growing and sustaining.

Everything cannot, however, show her as she truly is, though, as humans do not have the full capacity to know her, and everything which we know to be everything is indeed covered in a human body, or else we would not be able to understand it.   We can thus learn a lot from nature about ourselves. It seems absurd that she should be anything other than eternal if we reflect on how plants grow. If she were finite, then there would be nothing on the earth, no plants and no people to view them. The earth would be empty, with no humans, therefore, to grow themselves also. Her honorable dreams hug me for a striving, health, and vigor of my life, and in my soul I am eternally in her debt (!) for her great love and strength.
Finally, Socrates says to look beyond the outward: "Those with the best reputations seemed to me nearly the most deficient, in my investigation in accordance with the daimon, while others with more paltry reputations seemed to be men more fit in regard to being prudent." (P.70 Apology).