/lit/ - Literature

Do people actually succeed in anything by following the "man up" and "just do it" advice? I'm starting to think there's nothing else that really works, although it seems to good to be true.

>"I swear guys, poetry is fucking evil and corrupts the soul"
>writes a poetic account of Socrates' last days

>>6876775
I have noticed that many in my generation (I'm 19) appear to derive pleasure from external affirmation of experience, rather than experience itself. An obvious example of this can be found in the drinking parties, like those by Agathon. People are essentially manufacturing experiences for the sole purpose of sharing them. The trend also manifests when men exercise at the gymnasiums, where it seems that they are more pleased by viewing another person or themselves exercising than actually exercising. Are gatherings of manliness the primary cause of this, or has it simply brought it into a more apparent light?

If Plato lived today do you think that he would still believe in innatism?

>why is /lit/ the most intellectual board
>why can't /tv/ address film the same way you address literature??

What makes a person beautiful?

>>5276560
don't thank me thank this guy

>There you come to first principles, like a true votary of the goddess Athene.

/lit/

What we should do is try to break the debate down to see the way that it SHOULD have gone if the two speakers were proper Platos.

The moderator starts off by saying: "Chomsky, what's this idea of human nature you have?"

Chomsky goes on a long-winded explanation about how humans acquire language, and suggests that because there is little "data" in the child's environment, the child must have some built-in biological "schematic" that can turn a poverty of data into a wealth of expression or "creativity". So right away I think so many problems have been created by Chomsky not correctly questioning the notion of human nature. Rather than trying to understand what he means by the phrase "human nature" he throws up the sophist's smoke of terminology, "environment", "data", "schematic", "creativity"; not only have we not got any closer to understanding what human nature is, but now we have all these new words that we don't understand.

What is the content of Chomsky's argument? How would we summarize it? Can we put it into a clear syllogism?

Major Premise: if a human is more than the sum-total of data that he receives from his environment, then human nature exists.
Minor Premise: a human are more than the sum-total of data that he receives from his environment (and he uses the example of the acquirement of language to demonstrate this premise).
Conclusion: human nature exists.

Well, so human nature exists, but that doesn't really tell us what human nature is. So, what is it? In order to understand what human nature is according to Chomsky, we have to understand words like "data", and "environment".

Foucault's response is to say that he's distrustful of the phrase "human nature" because words/phrases are invented ad hoc for practical purposes. So Foucault is suggesting that "human nature" is not something real but is just a name. If I'm not mistaking Foucault is trying to make a nominalist argument whereas Chomsky is trying to make a realist one. So the debate is really over nominalism and realism and the use of language.

Someone pick up the thread I'm running out of things to say.

What would Plato think of National-Socialism?