Mark

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2026-06-02T11:33:34Z

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Last Notes

2026-05-24 12:03:27 UTC

“His Margites [ancient comedy by Homer] indeed provides an analogy: as are the Iliad and Odyssey to our tragedies, so is the Margites to our comedies"
Poetics, #Aristotle
Don’t rush out to buy this towering comedic masterpiece which Aristotle puts on a par with the Iliad and the Odyssey; the bookshop won’t have it. It’s almost entirely lost.
#philosophy

2026-05-12 18:37:09 UTC

“…to young children should be imparted only such kinds of knowledge as will be useful to them without making mechanics of them. And any occupation, art, or science, which makes the body or soul or mind of the freeman less fit for the practice or exercise of excellence, is mechanical; wherefore we call those arts mechanical which tend to deform the body, and likewise all paid employments, for they absorb and degrade the mind.”
Politics, #aristotle
Yep.
#philosophy

2026-03-29 17:43:45 UTC

“two principles are characteristic of democracy, government of the majority and freedom. Men think that what is just is equal; and that equality is the supremacy of the popular will; and that freedom means doing what one likes. In such democracies every one lives as he pleases, or in the words of Euripides, 'according to his fancy'. But this is all wrong; men should not think it slavery to live according to the rule of the constitution; for it is their salvation.”
Politics #Aristotle #philosophy

2026-03-28 16:31:14 UTC

“Especially should the laws provide against any one having too much power, whether derived from friends or money; if he has, he should be sent clean out of the country.”
Book V, Politics, #Aristotle
Aristotle was a careful analyst of ancient states, interested in what tended to work or not work. So this advice is pragmatic, not something he regards as inherently just or unjust.
Today, we are ok with the use and abuse of power by individuals with immense wealth and influence.
#philosophy

2025-12-30 23:55:05 UTC

Currently reading MacIntyre’s After Virtue. He describes the loss of an (pre-modern) ethics based on Aristotle’s notion of a human having a final cause (purpose) as well as efficient causes (contingent physical laws) and the idea of being a human enjoining modes of excellence and flourishing as opposed to our fully individualistic and autonomous “chooser-of-values”.
Thought: #AI is showing us that to be an “I” is to enjoin (at minimum) a survival instinct. What else does it enjoin?
#philosophy

2025-12-28 05:05:02 UTC

“The self-assertive shrillness of protest arises because the facts of incommensurability ensure that protestors can never win an argument, the indignant self-righteousness of protest arises because the facts of incommensurability ensure equally that the protestors can never lose an argument either.
Hence the utterance of protest is … addressed to those who already share the protestors'
premises. […] protestors rarely have anyone else to talk to but themselves.”
After Virtue, McIntyre
#philosophy

2025-12-03 19:32:11 UTC

“There is another error, equally great, into which [the Spartans] have fallen. Although they truly think that the goods for which men contend are to be acquired by excellence rather than by vice, they err in supposing that these goods are to be preferred to the excellence which gains them.”
Book 2, Politics, #aristotle
You see this kind of thing throughout society today. Preferring awards, promotions, raises, etc., to the excellence that gains them. Excellence come what may!
#philosophy

2025-11-22 12:07:50 UTC

“…the avarice of mankind is insatiable; at one time two obols was pay enough; but now, when this sum has become customary, men always want more and more without end; for it is of the nature of desire to be unlimited, and most men live only for the gratification of it. The beginning of reform is not so much to equalize property as to train the nobler sort of natures not to desire more, and to prevent the lower from getting more”
Politics, #Aristotle
Kind of disheartening!
#philosophy

2025-11-03 23:24:24 UTC

Waterford Philosophical Society lecture series poster for the next year.
#waterford #philosophy
https://media.waterford.international/mediabucket/media_attachments/files/115/488/320/876/255/396/original/371a7e5beb601abf.jpeg

2025-09-19 10:29:14 UTC

- reply

Also both utilitarianism and deontology, when taken to their logical limits, tend towards disastrous consequences/evil (in my opinion), as do any universal ethical systems based on individual actions. If you ever need to switch your choice of system due to circumstances, then you are essentially back to Aristotle’s practical wisdom and virtue ethics.

2025-09-19 10:24:13 UTC

- reply

One of the things that really bothers me about modern ethics is that it is based on individual actions and tends to be only discussed with reference to extreme scenarios. I much prefer the approach of virtue ethics: fix your character (by pursuing the excellences) and whatever decision you make will probably be very good. And even if you blow that once in a lifetime trolley-type scenario, it’s not going to make or break you.

2025-07-30 17:50:04 UTC

“For existence is good to the good man, and each man wishes himself what is good, while no one chooses to possess the whole world if he has first to become some one else …; he wishes for this only on condition of being whatever he is; and the element that thinks would seem to be the individual man, or to be so more than any other element in him.”
Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle
#aristotle #philosophy

2025-05-31 12:32:11 UTC

“From what has been said it is plain, then, that wisdom is knowledge, combined with comprehension, of the things that are highest by nature. This is why we say Anaxagoras, Thales, and men like them have wisdom but not practical wisdom, when we see them ignorant of what is to their own advantage, and why we say that they know things that are remarkable, admirable, difficult, and divine, but useless; viz. because it is not human goods that they seek.”
#aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics.
#philosophy

2025-05-26 17:50:02 UTC

“But theory cares nothing for this; it calls pleurisy a more serious mischief than a stumble; yet the latter may become incidentally the more serious, if the fall due to it leads to your being taken prisoner or put to death by
the enemy.”
Book V, Nicomachean Ethics, #aristotle
These everyday examples of how things can go wrong are humorous to those of us lucky not to live in a state of perpetual upheaval and warfare. Still, they made the most of it!
#philosophy

2025-05-12 17:22:20 UTC

“…the man who observes the mean, whether he be called tactful or ready-witted. The buffoon, on the other hand, is the slave of his sense of humour, and spares neither himself nor others if he can raise a laugh, and says things none of which a man of refinement would say, […]. The boor, again, is useless […]: for he contributes nothing and finds fault with everything. But relaxation and amusement are […] a necessary element in life.”
#Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, #philosophy

2025-03-30 17:58:14 UTC

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/making-wise-decisions-learning-from-aristotle-bent-flyvbjerg
Cracking interview and discussion there on wise decisions and, really, the superiority of Aristotle’s situational ethics and character based on social feedback versus the modern emphasis on applying general principles or falling into moral relativism.
#Aristotle #Dreyfus #Flyvbyerg #philosophy

2025-03-28 15:40:16 UTC

“Righteous indignation is a mean between envy and spite, and these states are concerned with the pain and pleasure that are felt at the fortunes of our neighbours; the man who is characterized by righteous indignation is pained at undeserved good fortune, the envious man, going beyond him, is pained at all good
fortune, and the spiteful man falls so far short of being pained that he even rejoices.”
Undeserved good fortune of others *should* pain us.
Nicomachean Ethics, #Aristotle #philosophy

2025-03-21 15:46:28 UTC

“Actions are called just [..] when they are such as the just [..] man would do; [..] without doing these no one would have even a prospect of becoming good.
But most people do not do these, [..], behaving like patients who listen attentively to their doctors, but do none of the things they are ordered to do. As the latter will not be made well in body by such [..] a treatment, [philosophers] will not be made well in soul by such a course of philosophy”
Nicomachean Ethics, #Aristotle #philosophy

2025-03-20 18:24:07 UTC

- reply

Do you have a good reference for this stuff? A classic?

2025-03-14 15:41:47 UTC

“The same is true of appetites and feelings of anger; some men become temperate and good-tempered, others self-indulgent and irascible, by behaving in one way or the other in the appropriate circumstances. […] states arise out of like activities.[…]. It makes no small difference, then, whether we form habits of one kind or of another from our very youth; it makes a very great difference, or rather all the difference.”
Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle.
#philosophy #Aristotle

2025-03-10 18:36:30 UTC

“Now many events happen by chance, and events differing in importance; … a multitude of great events if they turn out well will make life more blessed …, while if they turn out ill they crush and maim blessedness; for they both bring pain with them and hinder many activities. Yet even in these nobility shines through, when a man bears with resignation many great misfortunes, not through insensibility to pain but through nobility and greatness of soul.”
Nicomachean Ethics, #Aristotle #philosophy

2025-01-19 15:58:12 UTC

- reply

I think it’s sad that influencing elections, data harvesting and causing suicidal ideation in teens is all fine as long as it’s a domestic company that is doing it.
We can damage and exploit our own, but you’re not doing it.
#TikTok

2024-11-28 22:36:53 UTC

“…but most political men are not truly so called; they are not in truth ‘political’, for the ‘political’ man is one who chooses noble acts for their own sake, while most take up the ‘political’ life for the sake money and greed.”
Eudemian Ethics, #Aristotle.
#philosophy
It seems that even in the 4th century BC, politicians were going to the dogs. But at least the word “political” still meant something good, a concern with the polis.

2024-11-20 22:07:22 UTC

“The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the co-operation or consent of his deliberate reason. To such a man the world tends to become definite, finite, obvious; common objects rouse no questions, and unfamiliar possibilities are contemptuously rejected.”
The Problems of #Philosophy, Bertrand #Russell.

2022-11-17 17:47:56 UTC

#introductions Hi I’m Mark. I’m a software engineer by profession and spend a lot of my free time #writing fiction and non-fiction, #reading esp sci-fi, studying #philosophy and going to the cinema or theatre when I can make it. I’m from Waterford, and I live in Waterford right now with my family, but I’ve also lived in Dublin, Perth, Berlin and London. Big coffee fan.
Places I end up in: Davey Mac’s.
I started waterford.international because why not? Could be fun.