On 8 July 2010 14:56, Luke Bergen
<lukeabergen@gmail.com> wrote:
Really? Where do you see that the x1 can be properties? jbovlaste says:
Word: vrude [jbovlaste]
Type: gismu
Gloss Word: virtue
Gloss Word: virtuous
rafsi: vud vu'e
Definition: x1 is virtuous/saintly/[fine/moral/nice/holy/morally good] by
standard x2.
Notes: Holy/saintly (= cesyvu'e). Virtue the attribute is "ka
vrude".
I think we can talk about whether or not the quality of an action are virtuous:
lo ka do sidju mi cu vrude
The quality of you helping me is virtuous.
lo nu do sidju mi cu vrude
The event of you helping me is virtuous.
Note the "Notes". From what you're saying about the book, it sounds like the title is talking about the ideas of virtue and evil, not people who behave virtuously/evily.
Right, and that {lo vrude} and {lo palci} can mean behaviours is my opinion. Even in English we can talk about whether or not an abstract concept such as someone's "life" is "virtuous" (OED has an example of this usage).
As I have mentioned on several occasions before, I think a person or anything we usually consider as 'individual' is fundamentally an abstraction. We call something "a car" not because it essentially "is a car" but because things (the steering wheel, the sheets, the tires, etc.) practically "do car" at certain times; at other times someone might call it "a house" because the things "do house". So "a car" is a label for an event or state of things car-ing. The same for persons. {do} in the following sentences refer to different abstractions:
do bajra
do badri
do bajra je badri
The first {do} refers to the whole of bones, muscles etc. forming a run-able physical body; the second {do} refers to the brain system capable of generating the experience of sadness; and the third {do} refers to both abstractions. In every case, {do} is not to be found as a concrete existence.
Can we think of a person without having an idea of an event/state/property that formulates that person (including a mere image of their face, which itself is a state of a nose, eyes, etc. forming a pattern)? I don't think we can. But we also like to think of each of ourselves as an individual entity with its own permanent existential center rather than as a phase in the flux of events. We say "you", not "you-ation" or something like that; "You are virtuous", not "A you-ation is virtuous". Nevertheless, we cannot say "You are virtuous" without referring to a particular decision making process in a brain or to an external action or other modes of event, since these are what define "you" itself.
In short, there aren't really "people who behave virtuously/evily" but "people that are virtuous/evil thoughts or behaviours" (just for now I'm ignoring the falsehood of the virtuous/evil dichotomy that Nietzche criticizes). The jbovlaste definition doesn't have to explicitly enforce this radical perspective, but neither should it preclude it by saying "vrude"s x1 cannot be a NU sumti.