Montesquieu, Cartas persas

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Arcadia
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Montesquieu, Cartas persas

Post by Arcadia » May 19th, 2007, 10:51 am

where in the hell I will find that?

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Arcadia
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Post by Arcadia » June 27th, 2007, 8:24 pm

"if you don´t know how to find a book I doubt how you will govern the university". It wasn´t a happy statement... really.

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Post by e_dog » September 21st, 2007, 12:23 pm

did ya findit? what have you learned about Montesquieu?
I don't think 'Therefore, I am.' Therefore, I am.

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Arcadia
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Post by Arcadia » September 21st, 2007, 6:14 pm

yeah!!! a friend found a cheap edition in Buenos Aires and I fotocopied it!!

learn? I enjoyed reading some of the letters. And I found that the narrator depicted the horror in the harem world but his depictions and narrations about the western world were how can I say it... lightier, funnier (even the depiction of the spaniards -the most outsiders it seems for the frenchs- including the Inquisición facts). I also liked to read the considerations about "the other", universalismo and relativismo written by Todorov in relation with this text and Montesquieu essays. Nothing more, nothing less... I guess :wink:

Totenkopf

Post by Totenkopf » September 22nd, 2007, 10:16 pm

Ich liebe montescrew!

Sort of machiavellia-lite for
the belle-lettrists of nadaville

Serio they were all
little conniving phucks
roody guilianis
of say
the last 2500 years.

Voltaire sort of starts something
new. Candide in the pubic schools.
hey Ms O Gruntnee
who vas
Pangloss agin"
ahyeahhhhhhhhhhhhh

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Post by e_dog » September 23rd, 2007, 11:52 am

"Voltaire sort of starts something
new."
Oh, but, the Enlightenment is so . . . passe!
I don't think 'Therefore, I am.' Therefore, I am.

Totenkopf

Post by Totenkopf » September 23rd, 2007, 2:54 pm

Yeah to some, postmods, or biblethumpers (or koranthumpers) it is.
I simply don't agree man with that postmod-marxist line of thinking (disputed even by some leftists) that Enlightenment thinking is inherently rightist or elitist, imperialist, whatever-ist. Voltaire I read as a moderate-liberal (and secularist), but not opposed to political and economic reform. There were more leftist Enlightenment thinkers such as Diderot, Rousseau, and the french encyclopedists. Hume and even Jefferson are to me more valuable than most of what follows. Kant is Enlightenment, isn't he?


Voltaire's nemesis Rousseau seems more populist: and postmods seem to follow the Rousseauian line----read a bit about French Rev. you would agree the sans cullottes--sons of Rousseau--and even the supposed "liberal" jacobins following Robespierre were as bloodthirsty as the rightists and monarchists, right? The crazy two-headed Miss Dialectica (or whatever analogy you want for links und rechts) has blood and entrails dripping from both of her mouths......

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Post by e_dog » September 24th, 2007, 2:38 pm

my use of italics around passe was meant to be sarcastico.

course the Enlightenment rocks, Rousseau no postmodern, he, more a totalitarian, but sure, i'd say Roby's even more bloodthirsty than the monarchists, they aren't really thirsty for blood, just wine.... people's justice, yes indeed.

No Rousseau, no Marx. No Hume, no Kant, no Kant no Hegel no Marx. so yes, R and H are good fellas, pre-history to Marx. on the other hand, TJ is just an old slave-owning, raping, hypocrite, nothing much of value there that he didn't lift or dilute.

Bakunin said it best, contra Tommy-boy. Not separation of church n state, but the destruction of both church and state.
I don't think 'Therefore, I am.' Therefore, I am.

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Arcadia
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Post by Arcadia » September 24th, 2007, 4:22 pm

Cándido was funnier than Cartas Persas!... (but I guess you weren´t talking about that...). No idea how was the reception of Candide in its times. It seems Cartas Persas was well known and also caused a little polemique. Yeah...with old texts the work to try to contextualize them could be hard or extremely simplificado. It´s always a risk.

talking seriosly:

toten-k: "I simply don't agree man with that postmod-marxist line of thinking (disputed even by some leftists) that Enlightenment thinking is inherently rightist or elitist, imperialist, whatever-ist." I´m curious, name some of the authors!.

e_dog: maybe I´m more slow at these hours than usual... who´s TJ?

toten-k:" The crazy two-headed Miss Dialectica (or whatever analogy you want for links und rechts) has blood and entrails dripping from both of her mouths......" wow, strong image!!! and it´s a she and a miss!!! :wink:
some not-dialectik philosophies you like?

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Post by e_dog » September 25th, 2007, 12:37 am

TJ = Thomas Jefferson
I don't think 'Therefore, I am.' Therefore, I am.

Totenkopf

Post by Totenkopf » September 25th, 2007, 12:15 pm

English and french aristocrats-and intellectuals-- owned slaves for centuries. The Marquis de Arouet, aka Voltaire (one of Jefferson's intellectual mentors) most likely owned slaves, or at least indentured servants. Read Padover's bio. TJ in fact put into effect a law banning the further import of slaves into America.

Yes, TJ had some slaves--as did Washington (and other FF's); they were reportedly treated well (and life on an American plantation was often quite preferable to what a captured slave might have faced in Africa). He made some efforts towards abolition. Jefferson was also a great architect, not a bad writer, an inventor, fluent in Latin and french. TJ was a secularist opposed to theocracy; he also opposed the Tory finance schemes of wannabe Baron Alex. Hamiliton, and Hamilton's favorite Tory judge, John Marshall, against whom he fought for years.

The Sally Hemmings scandal remains a bit controversial. She appears to have been his mistress for a time. So? We weren't there, and the typical marxist accusations seem a bit petty and hypocritical. Indeed, Jefferson supported the jacobins in the French Rev., though taking issue with the Reign of Terror and Robespierre (most of the yankees in fact considered Jefferson a leftist)

Now, Stalin and Mao: those were slave owners and sugar daddies. Mao had dozens of concubines to return to after he and the Red Army had finished liquidating a few hundred thousand peasants.

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Arcadia
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Post by Arcadia » September 25th, 2007, 2:02 pm

thanks for the info!! :!:

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Post by e_dog » September 25th, 2007, 5:01 pm

"Yes, TJ had some slaves--as did Washington (and other FF's); they were reportedly treated well (and life on an American plantation was often quite preferable to what a captured slave might have faced in Africa). He made some efforts towards abolition."
i.E. HE WAS A HYPOCRITE. Forget the Founding Fuckers, at least those wit slaves. That's really white of them to grant their slaves a luxuriouis slave's life on tha plantation, better than old Afric.
"wannabe Baron Alex. Hamiliton"
one thing can be said on behalf of Hamilton is he at least had the balls to fight in the War, not just write about it and get others, poorer men, to fight for them, as most of the Revolutionary leaders, like TJ, did.
"The Sally Hemmings scandal remains a bit controversial. She appears to have been his mistress for a time. So?"
Was she or was she not his slave? But then.
a slave cannot be a "mistress" she was raped or at least sexually harassed as we might say.

Wonder why antiMarxists think saying stuff about Stalin is a complaint against Marxism? Stalin was a fascist, period. He no more a Communist than Bush is a republican, in the traditional classical sense. Mao, who knows what concubines he had? Sounds like orientalism to me. Or slander.
I don't think 'Therefore, I am.' Therefore, I am.

Totenkopf

Post by Totenkopf » September 25th, 2007, 5:19 pm

You sound even more Xtian and moralistic than what's-his- name doing his Martin Luther chant. For most leftists, some ancient Bourbon decadent slaveowner is acceptable and sexay, while an American who had a few slaves is not. THAT's hypocrisy. Moreover, Arabs have been trading slaves off the east coast of Africa, and southern asia for centuries, as have the Japanese. But that's generally not discussed on the PC blogs, nor are Stalin and Mao.

I doubt Jefferson killed anyone, or ordered people killed. If he did it's probably less than 10 or so. How many people did VI Lenin kill, or order to be killed? Tens of thousands. Yet Lenin is taken to be a hero, and TJ a villain.

Jefferson had moral failings. So have countless other leaders and intellectuals. Those failings (or even hypocrisy to some extent) do not negate his other numerous accomplishments. As far as the Hemmings scandal, I generally don't believe pop-history anyways, and so do not know what happened--neither do you. He probably took Hemmings, a mulatto girl, as mistress after his wifey died. She was of age, supposedly. Shocking!

Besides, I doubt you could provide a compelling argument for your sense of objective "Justice". OK, let's agree to the proposition that "slavery is wrong" (evil, immoral, injust, etc.). But proving that to be a "true" statement is a completely different matter, as anyone who ever made it through a few paragraphs of Hume well knows (perhaps you recall ye olde fact/value distinction).

Sad when even the left--or Bakuninists!---- have become biblethumpers..............Amen, bruthurrr. Wonder, ...... work n power...............

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Post by e_dog » September 25th, 2007, 5:33 pm

"doubt Jefferson killed anyone, or ordered people killed. If he did it's probably less than 10 or so. How many people did VI Lenin kill, or order to be killed? Tens of thousands. Yet Lenin is taken to be a hero, and TJ a villain."
Try, the Revolutionary War?! Think more than 10 people got wasted in that one. TJ wrote the Preface. He ain't no villain, just an antihero. A hypocrite.
efferson had moral failings. [...] Those failings (or even hypocrisy to some extent) do not negate his other numerous accomplishments.
Like what? he copied some architecture? He copied some Lockean philosophie? He freed his slaves after they had worked his whole life?

Wheres tha bible in this? fFor all i know the bible condones patriarchs screwing slave girls. Leftist politics doesn't. As for "proving" that slavery's wrong: if you have to be convinced by logical demonstration, then you're a hopeless case, not the position that slavery's wrong, Hume would agree to that, methinks.
I don't think 'Therefore, I am.' Therefore, I am.

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