sdi: Oil painting of the Heliconian Muse whispering inspiration to Hesiod. (Default)
sdi ([personal profile] sdi) wrote in [personal profile] emmanuelg 2022-06-20 08:53 am (UTC)

You've run into a problem I've come across a lot! Let me see if I can articulate it properly.

I've been studying Neoplatonism a lot lately (first Sallustius, now Plotinus). Three essential axioms of that model of the world are:

1. Deities are always active: they have no passivity within them.
2. All things are caused by deities. There is nothing that we can do "on our own," so to speak.
3. Everything that has a beginning has an ending.

So in that sense, the question you asked, "Is there a deity actively working to destroy the USA?" is tautological—of course there is, and that was the case since the very moment the USA came into existence. But how could one phrase this question in such a way as to avoid the tautology?

A lot of the things I'm interested in turn out to have a structure just like this lurking behind them, so I haven't been able to divine about them—and I suppose that's what's pushed me to study philosophy, since I still want the answers :)

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