Philip Diaz-Lewis

🧵: my field is ancient Greek philosophy and its impact. Aristotelianism, Platonism, Stoicism, and Thomism. I both use Thomism to argue around contemporary issues, and investigate how ancient thought in general has influenced later eras. Articles added as they are published.

Multilingualism is about more than just communicating with more people or reading more texts. Every culture has its own biases, and perspectives it does and doesn't allow. Having more than one language lets you break out of the curated ghetto of your own cultural sphere.

@bernardtjoy 'Will'?

The basic will inherit the earth.

@James_II_1688 To the point that even WoO, the definitive anti-gallique, wore this court uniform, dictated from Versailles. Isn't that cosmic irony.

Leaders 300 years ago. Louis XIVs France was the peak of fashion.

Some depressing anecdotes in here. Yes, bookstores are booming. But maybe because they are “elite” third spaces (?) Ppl buying books to show status. Buying books w fancy covers. Buying coffee and tote bags. A Bookstore Boom in a Time of Literacy Decline lithub.com/a-bookstore-bo…

@drsjcostello The modern mind has been conditioned by centuries of nominalism and mechanism to disassociate concepts from reality. Many have a big difficulty in understanding how something with intelligibility and universality can exist outside the mind.

If the concept (mental construct) is the finger pointing at the moon, the Form is the moon. Calling a (Platonic) Form a ‘concept’ is like calling the sun ‘my idea of light’.

So if I just take pictures of book covers and post them here, people will assume I've read them? Is that how it works?

@duncanreyburn Another thought along these lines is that truth, as something objective, will eventually make itself known, if even to a minority. It might take a while, since humans absolutely love their shadow puppet cave, but inevitably someone will escape and see the sun.

A certain state of peace is discovered when you stop thinking of truth predominantly as something you can hold and consider it as more that which holds (or ought to hold) you; it is more about love and participation than about absolutely rigid epistemological clarity.

@InuitKodiak IMO lots of these cars are designed to flash money or make the driver feel big, rather than to be practical or look good.

@nonnullis02 I find the hindquarters unseemly 🧐

Thoughts on the aesthetics of the Nuvolari?

This thing flatters me too much.

Philosophy: Augustine makes human physical imperfection a light for acquiring knowledge, through Christian Platonism. Can Thomas Aquinas do something similar through Aristotle? I argue that he can, through his doctrines of intentionality and abstraction. cambridge.org/core/services/…

🧵: my field is ancient Greek philosophy and its impact. Aristotelianism, Platonism, Stoicism, and Thomism. I both use Thomism to argue around contemporary issues, and investigate how ancient thought in general has influenced later eras. Articles added as they are published.

Historical reception: the thought of Louis XVI, the last ancien regime king of France, remains obscure. Yet his schoolboy notes survive from his tutelage in the 1760s. I argue that reading them, one finds an Augustinian-Platonist current. tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

@MDLordBaltimore @invitinghistory You see, this interests me because I always wish to know how people who work with incomplete historical texts manage to piece together their readings. Part of the method of imitating a master until it sticks.

@nonnullis02 @invitinghistory To a degree, using the documents that survive for the people that surrounded the Calvert’s. One of the best surviving records is the book The Trail of Lord Baltimore, which is the court record from his rape trial… Frederick Calvert kind of soured the title for a while.

It is very right that I should labor to make a people happy who contribute so much to my happiness; I am now going to give myself up to this entirely. –Louis XVI to the comte de Maurepas,in a letter written after his coronation.

@MDLordBaltimore @invitinghistory That's unfortunate but not uncommon. How have you managed to work around the lack of sources?

@nonnullis02 @invitinghistory The 6th Baron Baltimore, Frederick Calvert was a scoundrel, and whored around. He had a number of children, but none with his wife, so the title died out. I think the kids that did inherit didn’t feel any duty or responsibility to preserve anything.

I've come to think that the problem of universals is a better rule for sorting philosophers into camps than historical period labels like 'medieval', 'enlightenment', or 'romantic'. E.g, the epistemology of Goethe is closer to Aristotle than any of his romantic contemporaries.

@MDLordBaltimore @invitinghistory Is there any ideological reason for the neglect? Usually when important figures are this neglected, it's because they're inconvenient for one or other historical narrative.

@nonnullis02 @invitinghistory Frederick revealed to the representative what he had left of the family documents were in a crate in their greenhouse. The state of Maryland had to buy the documents from the family, and what survived are in the archive in Baltimore.

@MDLordBaltimore @invitinghistory His student notes do survive though, and are probably the best primary source as to his ideology. I've published an article about this in a journal. Here praying that you manage to do the same for the Calverts, if they really are this sadly neglected.

@MDLordBaltimore @invitinghistory That's sad though not entirely unlike Louis' case. He destroyed many of his papers in 1791 after the failed flight to Varennes. Then when the mob stormed the Tuileries in 1792 they destroyed whatever remained of his personal notes and reflections, which his minister said existed.