Interesting article, though I feel that I am missing important context if I don't read through your other works. I think most people see virtue and vice as a line from right to left, with perfect virtue on one side and perfect vice on the other. Instead, I picture it as a line with perfect virtue in the middle and vice on either side.
Consider pride and humility. If you are too humble, you will lack the confidence to act with conviction. Too much humility makes us servile, how can you stay virtuous if lack of confidence allows you to put the beliefs of others before your own? Standing up for what you believe in requires confidence and pride. On the other hand, too much pride leads to overconfidence and too much value in your own stock. You disregard others and inflate your imagined self-worth. Too much pride is a vice, but so is none at all.
Reminds me of my favorite bit of Deleuze and Guattari - Treatise on Nomadology - The War Machine. (This is also where they talk about Go being rhizomatic, as opposed to Chess.)
Priests and normies are enforcers of taboo and ritual, while the transgression of taboo and ritual appears to be a source of power of kings (seen in the anthropology of premodern kingships). So power can stem from vice, which overlaps with taboo many times (eg the killings of Duterte). The archetypal good king kills the dragon that the priest continues to sacrifice to (transgression of an evil ritual).
I’m tempted to post “death to tyrants” and leave it at that. I assume all this language about “kings” and “emperors” and “reversing the iron law by force” isn’t meant to be taken literally, but this is giving me bad vibes, like reading some alt-right blog. Is there some better metaphor to use?
>How?
Clearly an eccentric wizard needs to pop out of the woodwork, unlocking their innate goodness and hidden potential with cryptic hints.
Interesting article, though I feel that I am missing important context if I don't read through your other works. I think most people see virtue and vice as a line from right to left, with perfect virtue on one side and perfect vice on the other. Instead, I picture it as a line with perfect virtue in the middle and vice on either side.
Consider pride and humility. If you are too humble, you will lack the confidence to act with conviction. Too much humility makes us servile, how can you stay virtuous if lack of confidence allows you to put the beliefs of others before your own? Standing up for what you believe in requires confidence and pride. On the other hand, too much pride leads to overconfidence and too much value in your own stock. You disregard others and inflate your imagined self-worth. Too much pride is a vice, but so is none at all.
How do you view Virtue-Vice as a paradigm?
Excellent series of articles! I think you're pointing to something important, and that's influencing things other than just governance, see for example this article about Buddhism and Stoicism: https://ataraxiaorbust.substack.com/p/nietzsches-lens-the-decline-of-buddhism
Reminds me of my favorite bit of Deleuze and Guattari - Treatise on Nomadology - The War Machine. (This is also where they talk about Go being rhizomatic, as opposed to Chess.)
Priests and normies are enforcers of taboo and ritual, while the transgression of taboo and ritual appears to be a source of power of kings (seen in the anthropology of premodern kingships). So power can stem from vice, which overlaps with taboo many times (eg the killings of Duterte). The archetypal good king kills the dragon that the priest continues to sacrifice to (transgression of an evil ritual).
I’m tempted to post “death to tyrants” and leave it at that. I assume all this language about “kings” and “emperors” and “reversing the iron law by force” isn’t meant to be taken literally, but this is giving me bad vibes, like reading some alt-right blog. Is there some better metaphor to use?