oliver > Recent Status Updates

Had some time this evening for a quick read of Book 1 section 1.

Book II & III Finished.

Further along then I thought I was!

Socrates begins to censor Homer’s works for depicting the gods as deceptive and for inspiring amoral attitudes into the children. My mother was quite like Socrates when she banned me from watching Spongebob in my youth. (p.s: found a new copy of the Republic to read) > p.149

Finished Book 1.

Got the book wet in the resort pool in Punta Cana. Half of the pages I've read so far are either crunchy or separating form the binding agent on the spine. Plato uses strawman arguments far too often but is nonetheless a charming orator. (lvi + 53)

A more interesting chapter I have just finished: Class Bases of the Tudeh Party

(pp. 329) - The last two chapters have been the more illuminating. Bringing the concepts formed throughout the pages of the book towards a contemporary analysis of existing Western social attitudes towards the “Orient”, Islam, Arabs, etc. seems to be what the previous chapters were building towards all this time.

The preliminary sections were pretty good for contemporaneous context and for outlining Plato’s arguments and positions found throughout the text. Enjoying the dialogue format. Easy & entertaining to read through so far.

The preliminary sections were pretty good for contemporaneous context and for outlining Plato’s arguments and positions found throughout the text. Enjoying the dialogue format. Easy & entertaining to read through.

(255) Made progress on the way to Austria

Almost done part 2, taking notes on Said’s elucidation that Western writing assumes a perspective of objectivity or passivity when interacting with other cultures whereas in actuality these perspectives are burdened by subjectivity and bias like any other.

Finished section on Tudeh Party

Generally a regular take on Hungarian history so far, but it seems to be focusing on important aspects of the culture so far. Uralic origins, Etelköz, raids around Europe, transition from nomadic to a monarchic feudal state, adoption of Christianity, and so on…

Finished first chapter on the plane to Europe. Particularly fascinated by the Lion analogy.

Was not expecting literary criticism to be such a heavy focus, but not an unwelcome surprise. I appreciated how the preface quotes from Disraeli & Marx were both integrated into the introduction of the book.

All the linguistic philosophy, theory of mind, passages on Sartre, and hermeneutics (Gadamer) chapters were very interesting.

Marx is very passionate about the necessity for a Polish state

Ludwig Wittgenstein is more creative than a lot of these other so-called philosophers.