Content:
- Media review: Spartacus
- Continuing break-down of Kant-reading
Media review: Spartacus
Media I appreciate: Spartacus. Superficially this would seem the farthest of likelihood, yet whatever those base characters may be, they are redeemed by any number of virtues.
It might be fairer to begin with the listing of the ostensible detriments. First and foremost, it appears as not much more than a bestial affair; oiled torsos, taught muscle grasping sword and shield, anger burning with sparks of rage, inducing what might the forlorn human condition, war. Cheap sex to clasp attention, like Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumbs; soon consumed and long gone. I could probably say more, but it would only cheapen further what has already been said.
Now, instead, and by contrast, there is much that I appreciate about the show. Obviously.
Language. The best I can describe it is Shakespearean but in modern English. Their aphorisms, gnomic statements, and declarations that are as much to the players as they are to the audience.
Metaphor for Global Americana (I choose this term instead of others, including The West or G20 or whatnot, because the story here involves one gigantic empire, as eternal as it is powerful. Examples for this metaphor include the role of slaves (almost half of the Italian populace were slaves) (America has its lower classes and even better the workers it keeps outside its nation’s borders). On this point it is also outstanding – outstanding were it not identical here and now – how civilized these Roman nobility could be. It’s suggests an unfortunate truth that through history’s growth of liberty and emancipation, people have not gotten better, merely, they are less worse. Another pertinent example, relating to television production, is the way the Romans subjugate other people’s and nations. They may claim to share the empire in all its glory and wealth, and protection too, but none at all of that is seen.
Spartacus, Spartacus, Spartacus. He fought because he had to. He had to fight without regard for the overwhelming odds. Every generation needs one. Sometimes I feel like this one does more than any.
I don’t know what he would look like. Today? Manning? Snowden. Titans walking among men.
[Meta: Next stuff]
Continuing break-down of Kant-reading
The last sentence I wrote about my reading of Kant was:
(1.5) Experience is the product of the senses and the understanding (cf. S20).
(1.5.1) By understanding experience then we can study the judgements that make it possible.
(1.5.2) These judgements are defined by concepts, which in turn can be described by a “Logical Table of Judgements” (S21).
(1.5.2.1) Justifies the table in S24-26.
(1.5.3) The reason for (1.5) is that “The union of representations in consciousness is judgment”.
(1.5.3.1) This allows us to study the science of nature (cf. 1.4.4.3).
(1.5.3.2) Now we can address Hume’s problem of Cause, by first of all realizing that it is as mysterious as Substance. In any case, both are possible because they form the conditions for experience.
(1.5.3.3) Concepts (e.g. Cause) are properties of cognition, and not of (its) objects. Therefore they cannot be derived from objects directly.
(1.6) In S30-32 Kant basically says “Yo, I was right” to Hume, and his other predecessors (including the dogmatic school and the common-sense school. Kant seems to enjoy himself here.
(1.7) There is a limit to knowledge in the noumenon, although there is a temptation that other philosophers have fallen into by transgressing that boundary.
