One may object : 'Oh but my dear blogger, how misguided you are! Ancient Greek, as its own kingdom and portal into antiquity, should be better respected with its own spot in the wheel of the internet!' To such foes who reek of esoteric sterility, I have only one thing to say: you can only start living through a negation of your unhealthy obsession with 'respecting the past'. Nietzsche has a lovely essay that you should read entitled 'On the Use and Abuse of History for Life'. Before hasty readers condemn me of name dropping, let me add something substantive to this reference. In the essay just mentioned, Nietzsche questions the value of studying history for its own sake; someone studying history as an end in itself could live far less eudaimonically than an ahistorical individual. I think that, while there is a clear distinction between the problem at hand and historiographical dilemmas, there is a grain of truth that can be reaped here. A blog should have a strong and coherent narrative; this would be aided by opening up the field to the many nutrients of life- not those that simply tickle our historical fancy for its own sake! History is a means and not an end! I'll use the Greek if it has value for the task at hand.
In one of my first posts, the one where I embody the ethos of a platonic apologetic, I speak of the value of studying Plato as a means of avoiding the problems of the past! I only recently became aware of the utter foolishness of such a position. To the common position of 'those who don't study history are destined to repeat it' I propose the following conjecture: those who study history for its own sake are destined to repeat its failures. The distinction made by Karl Popper between the historical type and the social engineer type is crucial here. Many apologetics, if I may say so, -as it does take an apologetic type to defend the value of platonic discourse- talk about Plato as important because of the type of questions he asks: 'What is Justice, the Good, the just state'. While these questions are valuable, they are only so as a showcase of the fictions humanity has created for itself. A social engineer type would ask 'We may have these concepts of justice, good, state. But I ask you: what are they worth?'. Plato however, as a historicist, does not ask this, and instead takes the value of these questions for granted. Negation should be a term embraced by philosophers. Alas, the word preserving is much more valued it seems.
So there it is. A new methodology. Why negation as today's word? With every negation there is something built! May the disposal of an old way of doing things give way to the Uberblog! Let us walk over the Unterblog! Godspeed my fellow adventurers!
