@ty-ty, before I fully answer your comment to my Beethoven and Ligeti post, I will introduce an intermezzo in order to clarify where I am coming from.
The Italians have a very important and numerous times emitted expression: secondo me. It doesn't quite translate into according to me or into in my opinion. It's much stronger than that, meaning that the individual is strongly expressing his own view of the matter. Obviously, it is possible that it constitutes a wrong, parcial or totally twisted view, however, it does constitute his own opinion and he feels strongly about it.
When I write about a subject, I express my own opinion, and, sometimes, I am not successful in correctly communicating the meaning I proposed myself to. Even so, I have emmited an idea secondo me, and I will assume it and defend it until I understand that there are arguments to refute what I have offered. Usually, what I offer is a package to be read and contested in its globality and, although I confess that I have, myself, done it to others, I feel strongly against the cherrypicking of sentences or the abstraction of my idea into an wholly different area that I wasn't even broaching.
In the case of this debate, however, I will let myself dwelve into all the discretionary or chaotic derivations that come up and accept your comments as part of a wider discussion. If need be, up to the full body of human knowledge: why are we here? Is there a God? What is the meaning of life? We can go into all those derivations and all that arise in your mind, or mine. I only ask of you one thing, that you also express you opinion in a secondo me fashion.
Sometimes there is the need to point to an author or another to illustrate a point, but I really dont feel it to be reasonable to use someone else's work as a sophistic point to contradict the other. Saying it is so because someone else said it is so is not enough for me. I want to read what goes on in your mind. I already read Popper, Kant, Flecker, Hegel, Platinga and a number of others up to and including Aristotle. What I want to know is what you think, not what Kant said. Kant is dead, we are not. We are allowed to build upon his ideas and even to refute them. We are also allowed to create our own and be wrong about them.
In this spirit, I have decided to translate into English, the words of, secondo me, the greatest Portuguese thinker of the 20th century, that you might not have read, so you can understand where I am coming from and upon what am I building. Stressing, once again, that this post constitutes no answer to your comment and a further one will come next in order to do so. I'm also very happy to make Prof. Agostinho da Silva's ideas known to whoever else happens to read this, so, it's win win.
Enjoy the read:
Seven letters to a young phylosopher, by Agostinho da Silva
My dear Friend, what you need, above all, is not to remember what I told you; never think for me, always think for yourself; be sure that all mistakes, if they are made according to what you thought and decided, are worth more than all successes, if they are mine, not yours. If the Creator had wanted a lot to add you to me, we would not perhaps have two distinct bodies or two distinct heads. My advice should serve to make you oppose them. It is possible that after the opposition you will think the same as I do; but at that point the thought already belongs to you. My disciples, if I have any, are those who are against me; because they have kept in the depths of their souls the strength that truly animates me and that I would most like to transmit to them: that of not conforming.
[…] You have the freedom to decide: you can be a literati, or a rhetorician, or a simple vibrating man, or a philosopher [...]. But be a real philosopher. Try to understand the systems of others before creating your own: if you think a great philosopher is wrong, always think that the mistake is yours: it is beyond doubt that if you have not raised and overcome the easy objection that you raise to him (and perhaps you can only raise easy objections until the end of your life), it is because it has no reason to exist and comes from a mistake of yours. Study fiercely, with clenched teeth, use all your strength, break your muscles: either you master philosophy or philosophy masters you: only those who are strong fall in love; But if you are a sheep before the philosophers, you have only one destiny left: that of bleating. There must be in your combat and at the very first hours such an impetus of attack, such a security of step, that no fortress can resist it; put all your time into your work, go from the simple to the variety, from the special to the total; first win a discipline, only then can you launch yourself into adventures.
Translated by @hefestus 22.02.25
First paragraph:
It's decades ago: while I stumbled through a small universe called university, I encountered two or three main experiences:
a) Others were able to read the same texts as I did (according to the plan of the prof) without having the same harvest as me.
b) There are authors of a giantic power of thought whom I can try to follow but not re-tell in full depth. I can inhale their wisdom and change myself but cannot reproduce it nor re-inforce the impact on friends.
c) It is not possible to gain consense on which authors are high quality and which of them are just mediocre. These different perspectives seem to result from personal values and personal image of mankind. Truth and reality can be regarded as fancy toys rather than basic believes.
This happened to me on my first encounter with epistemology. I was highly interested in this part of knowledge or better philosophy because I came from a strongly fundamental Christian part of my life and was en route to regain control over my thinking. Thus I was very wide open for argues that showed: Reason can't improve God. And why! That was the important thing.
I am deeply thankful to Kant, and that is the main reason to mention his name, be he dead or alive. He is my hero and as my hero he is part of my secondo me as no other is (beside Jaspers ;-) ).
Second paragraph:
Now I thank you very much for insisting on unfolding thoughts by meanings of elaborated posts (or formerly letters) instead of snipping opinions into short messages. I disliked it for myself while doing - out of some fear to take weeks for my next post. But weakly answering instead of weekly is not the solution. So I will be patient with myself and hope on your patience too.
Third paragraph:
[edit]
Now I read Agostinho da Silva. I agree to him (about 98 %, if I may say so). I did not jump into philosophy since I knew or felt: philosophy would swallow me. I observed philosophical writing from afar, and about ten years after my scientific studies I was ready to take approaches to Her Majesty because I had found my personal guide to her realm. Instead of Agostinho da Silva it is for me Karl Jaspers whom I regard to be the greatest German philosopher of the XXth century. He helped me to re-gain my own (and completely renewed) secondo me which had been lost for several years.
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Ok. Thanks for the answer. We are not in a hurry. It's better we take our time. These modern days and technologies has everyone running to get the next message out like their lives depended on it. It does not. Let's do it like the Philosphers of old, that actually wrote letters on paper and had to wait for the mail. Time is important to let the message sink in and for us to process it clearly. :)
Cheers.
My renewed secondo me was way simpler than reading Jaspers. All I really needed was a divorce. :DDDDD
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