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Isn’t pantheism the same thing as atheism?
#26
RE: Isn’t pantheism the same thing as atheism?
(March 14, 2021 at 3:01 pm)Seax Wrote: The Pagan Greeks saw lust, hunger, pride, ect. as natural healthy impulses which could get out of hand, and believed that good lay in healthy exercise of them; between the extremes of wantonness and total denial. Moderation and selfcontrol; enjoying food without overeating, sex without becoming a letcher, wine without overdrinking, feeling anger without becoming a slave to rage; this was the Pagan ideal. 

It might be a tad too simple to attribute this to all the pagan Greeks. Greek culture lasted a long time, after all, and wasn't monolithic. But what you say is certainly true of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, which was extremely influential. Plato advocates something similar -- called sophrosyne -- but never quite defines it. It's when your rational soul keeps the appetitive and sensible souls in balance.

Quote:The Christian view is that these impulses are inherently sinful and wicked, and that while moderating them is fine and well, avoiding them completely is even better. The Christian God is thus opposed to nature, and Christianity sees nature as base, if not outright evil. 

No doubt there are Christians that agree with this description. But there are a lot of important ones who don't. 

Dante, for example (following Thomas Aquinas), explicitly models his moral thought on Aristotle. He would agree with everything you attribute here about the pagan Greeks. Dante might cite some special exceptions -- some kind of ascetic saint, for example -- but for the vast majority the natural appetites are made by God and therefore good. He even sees lust as the least bad of all the sins, because it is the most intense love. And sexual desire only becomes sinful lust when you overdo it -- when it causes you to lie or cheat or damage your health.

(March 15, 2021 at 10:30 pm)Ferrocyanide Wrote: ==The problem with that is, how do you measure overeating, lascivity and so on?
It is subjective.

Just because something isn't quantifiable doesn't mean it's too subjective to think about. 

Aristotle says right at the beginning of the Ethics that complete precision isn't possible in every case. In ethics, we just have to do our best.

Basically you know you've gone too far when you've harmed yourself. If you're obese or anorexic, you have a problem with appetite. If you get angry at little things that's bad, but if you don't get angry at things you should get angry at, that's also bad. We have no absolute way of knowing what's best in each case. You just have to work on it.
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Messages In This Thread
RE: Isn’t pantheism the same thing as atheism? - by Duty - March 14, 2021 at 12:58 pm
RE: Isn’t pantheism the same thing as atheism? - by Belacqua - March 16, 2021 at 12:43 am
RE: Isn’t pantheism the same thing as atheism? - by Seax - March 19, 2021 at 12:53 am
RE: Isn’t pantheism the same thing as atheism? - by Alan V - November 18, 2021 at 3:38 pm
RE: Isn’t pantheism the same thing as atheism? - by Alan V - November 19, 2021 at 5:18 pm
RE: Isn’t pantheism the same thing as atheism? - by Alan V - November 20, 2021 at 2:05 pm
RE: Isn’t pantheism the same thing as atheism? - by Alan V - November 21, 2021 at 7:54 am
RE: Isn’t pantheism the same thing as atheism? - by Alan V - November 22, 2021 at 2:37 pm
RE: Isn’t pantheism the same thing as atheism? - by Alan V - November 23, 2021 at 1:29 pm
RE: Isn’t pantheism the same thing as atheism? - by Alan V - November 22, 2021 at 8:43 pm
RE: Isn’t pantheism the same thing as atheism? - by Angrboda - November 23, 2021 at 10:04 am

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