Seneca was indeed just like every Christian leader after him: not a loyal adherent of his own teachings. I made that point already in my article. Again, no difference. The pagans and the Christians were just alike in this regard.

But Beard is wrong about beggars. Indeed, her claim is illogical. There could not have been ubiquitous reports of there being beggars, if begging never worked. If they all starved, there wouldn’t be any. But we know there were. So someone was giving them food or cash. And all our sources that discuss the matter, report everyone agreed on moral obligations to give beggars coins or bread; it was so fundamental, the sources indicate shock that anyone wouldn’t do that.

But indeed being a slave was better than being a beggar, for many at least. Slavery was actually a job. You’d be paid in free medical care, clothing, room and board, possibly even an education funded by your owner. If you were already educated, a slave position could actually be rather posh, and substantially improve your social status and influence. It’s no surprise many would prefer it to begging in the streets. But alas, a lot chose the begging instead. As the sources all show. Which, again, means beggars didn’t starve.

I should note that selling oneself into slavery wasn’t in fact the only option. The industrious would attach themselves as a client to a patron. They’d receive money, meals, possibly a room, and other benefits, in exchange for being a lackey. The entire Roman social system was built on the client-patron relationship and it was the number one form of work-for-welfare in the Empire. And then there was the usual option besides even that: getting a job (most commonly, as a laborer, always in demand; or apprenticing to a craftsman).

Beggars were thus more usually infirm or insane, just like today. Thus they couldn’t get work or a cliency. And might not have even been able to sell themselves into slavery, for want of anyone who’d buy them. Although the evidence shows the Roman economy easily employed the disabled. And there was no cure for the insane; so I suspect the typical beggar was either insane or in between securing any of the other options and thus securing gap funds until they got a better situation. Both conditions the pagans had sympathy for and readily tossed coins to, as the sources attest.

Mary Beard, Professer of Ancient History at Cambridge University, England, in her TV doc about Rome said that beggars in Rome would starve due to lack of charity. The only way to avoid this fate would be to offer yourself as a slave. And we know that slaves were often thrown out by their masters when they ceased to be young and physically attractive. Sexual satisfaction being one of a slave’s main functions for their masters. See Mary Beards TV series on Rome,(2016). Beard also appeared on the BBC radio 4 programme “In Our Time” earlier in the year in a discussion about Seneca. She said that there was a dichotomy between Seneca’s noble and high minded philosophy, and the fact that he was a slave owner in Ancient Rome. A criticism that could apply to any of the classical moralists, probably including Aristotle.

I think Nietzsche had some interesting things to say about “Truth,” and inspired others that had interesting things to say about “Truth:”

“Contradiction” reminds me of textual hermeneutics.

There is, of course, the message the author intended, like in Moby Dick where we learn about the tragic nature of revenge.

But, as Derrida pointed out (“There is nothing beyond the text”), there may also be unconscious themes that the author didn’t consciously intend, but she accidentally put in the text nonetheless.  Moreover, there may be a “trace” of something in the author’s text that may contradict (“contra dicere in Latin,” “speak against”) the author’s project, such as the way Aristotle may have detected the hint of something in Plato’s texts that threatened to overthrow Platonism. Or, how an author’s moral message may be tainted by hints of bigotry.

And texts can be inherently ambiguous. So there can be a plurality of interpretations of the same text, while some interpretations “speak against” others, with no real ground for deciding between them: eg., Jesus as apocalyptic prophet, or charismatic healer, or Cynic philosopher, or Jewish Messiah, or prophet of social change, or mythical celestial being, or zealot. Each faction of interpreters point out that their model explains the available evidence, and that their model can effectively explain away any supposedly recalcitrant evidence.

Hermeneutics are humbling processes that remind us of human frailty. And that’s a good thing. Untold tragedy has happened in human history because people have acquainted “truth” with “certainty.”

Certainty, as Nietzsche showed, is a psychological state, not a guarantee of truth. Everyone has had different points of view about things they once were “certain” about, such as Dr. Bart Ehrman’s fundamentalist youth changing into a liberal perspective of the academy.

As Heidegger said, truth is more primordially seen as “aletheia,” which is not just “correctness,” but more originally (with the alpha privative, “a-letheia”) “unconcealed,” or “revealed,” or “exemplary,” like when we speak of someone going out of their way to help us that they are demonstrating what it means to be a “true” friend.

Before there can be truth as “correctness” (the agreement of a proposition with a state of affairs), there must be “a-letheia,” “un-hiddenness.” For instance, before 1+1=2 is “true” for a child, it must be “revealed” with manipulatives that when you group one thing with another thing, you get two things.

And, as Heidegger said, there is a “giving” to truth (“Es gibt Sein,” in German). Anyone who has stayed up all night trying with futility to solve a problem, when suddenly the answer “comes to them,” knows this (Eureka! I’ve found it – in Greek). The phenomenological experience of truth is more than just sheer effort, because there must be a revealing and a finding of what is given. Even today people in the Arts still speak of their’ ‘Muse,’ and if the muse isn’t inspiring you, it’s a wasted night of writers block.

For Socrates, the journey of Truth is one where you follow your guiding perspective to the point where it reaches an “aporia,” a block in the path, and so you need to revise your guiding perspective.  One of the clearest examples of this in modern times Is the long journey of a fundamentalist to overturning their worldview and becoming secular.

What do others think belongs to the essence of Truth?

THANK YOU! That’s what I was thinking about (Moral Ontology and Divine Command Theory). Sam Harris had the debate with him which I think he did a great job!

I’ll read those articles tonight 🙂 Thanks again!

He is. And he uses that argument disingenuously all the time.

But what he means is that how you know x is true is different from what physically makes x true. So, proving that an atheist can figure out what’s moral, is not evidence that what’s moral isn’t made so by God (somehow or other); nor is it evidence that what’s moral can be so without God (i.e. that it would still remain true in a godless world).

And sometimes atheists do confuse those things. Or don’t really know how they get any of their moral opinions to be true. Or even give up and throw up their hands and admit no moral statements are true. But sometimes they know full well that what they are deducing, is being deduced entirely from godless physical facts, which means no other facts are needed for them to be true. See my article on Divine Command Theory and my older article on The Ontology of Morality for more on both points.

They didn’t demonize wealth and power any more than many pagan philosophers did. The Christians didn’t introduce anything new.

And Nietzsche was not that great a philosopher; even worse an anthropologist or sociologist or political economist. So I wouldn’t be citing him on scientific facts that are studied by actual scientists. (Contrast what modern anthropology says: Element 29, On the Historicity of Jesus, pp. 159-63.)

You also need to unpack what you think this statement of his even means. For example, if it’s that the rich are often blind to the plight of the poor, notice I quote Aristotle saying exactly that. More clearly and expertly than Nietsche did. And thousands of years earlier.

As to Christian history, the Christians may have begun as a movement among the poor, but by the time it acquired political power it was just another top-down elitist philosophy that defended social and economic stratification, and defended the power of the powerful, just as almost all philosophies before it.

That means when we hear Christianity’s most ardent defenses of the virtues of poverty, it was by then coming from the wealthy educated elite, who were thus defending income disparity, in order to shut down any attempt by the poor to argue they deserved more. Christian leaders were thus not giving voice to the values of the poor. They were trying to scotch them.

Speaking of morality. I’ve heard a (flawed) argument from WLC about morality. Not only does he believe god is not bound by moral duties (Whatever he commands is good) which can mean slaughtering people. WLC said in responding to a question; “Don’t confuse moral ontology and moral epistemology”. What does that even mean? How morality is and ‘how’ we get our morality? In other words, morality changes over time with cultural progress, but HOW we got it is by god?

Basically he is putting the cart before the horse. Assuming god (An unproven hypothesis) as the answer?

I just think he is the most dishonest apologist out there. Using big words to fool the audience in thinking he knows what he’s talking about.