Essentials that mean life and death these days - not at all just dry "academic" debates, notions to be dissected, dust to be brushed off old books...

For starters, to kick us off....

Philosophy of History by Hegel:

P. of H.

§ 21

(...) we may affirm that the substance, the essence of Spirit is Freedom. ... philosophy teaches that all the qualities of Spirit exist only through Freedom... It is a result of speculative Philosophy, that Freedom is the sole truth of Spirit.

Spirit, contrary to Matter, may be defined as that which has its centre in itself. Matter has its essence out of itself. Now this is Freedom, exactly. For if I am dependent, my being is referred to something else which I am not; I cannot exist independently of something external. I am free on the contrary, when my existence depends upon myself. This self-contained existence of Spirit is none other than self-consciousness -- consciousness of one's own being. It involves an appreciation of its own nature, as also an energy enabling it to realise itself; to make itself actually that which it is potentially.

The Orientals have not attained the knowledge that Spirit -- Man as such -- is free; and because they do not know this they are not free. They only know that one is free. But on this very account, the freedom of that one is only caprice; ferocity -- brutal recklessness or passion, or a mildness and tameness of the desires, which is itself only an accident of Nature -- mere caprice like the former. -- That one is therefore only a Despot; not a free man.

The consciousness of Freedom first arose among the Greeks, and therefore they were free; but they, and the Romans likewise, knew only that some are free, -- not man as such. Even Plato and Aristotle did not know this. The Greeks, therefore, had slaves; and their whole life and the maintenance of their splendid liberty, was implicated with the institution of slavery: a fact moreover, which made that liberty on the one hand only an accidental, transient and limited growth; on the other hand, constituted it a rigorous thraldom of our common nature -- of the Human.

The German nations, under the influence of Christianity, were the first to attain the consciousness, that man, as man, is free: that it is the freedom of Spirit which constitutes its essence. This consciousness arose first in religion, the inmost region of Spirit; but to introduce the principle into the various relations of the actual world, involves a more extensive problem than its simple implantation; a problem whose solution and application require a severe and lengthened process of culture.

The History of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of Freedom; a progress whose development according to the necessity of its nature, it is our business to investigate.

In this context one can say many a praise to a martyr - in terms of sacrificing oneself for others and so forth... BUT! The essential Aristotelian quality of freedom/free Human being, however - having the purpose of one's life within oneself - is NOT there!!!

As we clearly see, for instance today, the kids [and older people] are recruited from those that haven't much to loose, those that can be manipulated, used as pawns quite easily... Especially with some regular payments [blood money] to the would-be-martyr's impoverished family; then 70 virgins awaiting in "Heaven" [funny how one needs those when one is elevated to the place and exists only as spirit] and so on...

Shoot... as it were... :D

If you wanna read a GREAT and RELEVANT interview, which can open up quite a debate and enrich [in a variety of ways], influence our other similar threads - read this, then:

Habermas interview

Pour yourself a nice drink and close all the other windows, chill and enjoy the music of the soul! The best mind we have today, in an interview form, so easier to follow and understand... Topical, too!! Yanks, EU, UN, human rights, conflict resolution, structures and processes that liberate and include, rather than unilateral nonsense we see today... etc. etc. etc.

Still a bit demanding [he is a philosopher, after all! :D] but immensely enriching and worthwhile!!

The soul yearns for opening of doors/horizons, new perspectives, sorting out of the world according to best possible principles Humanity has and he can surely do that and IS doing it in this interview!

Don't just skim it - it's worth the effort and time needed!

Enjoy!

And another thread or three I shared a few things with the rest in the best spirit -also not found... Vanished... And I worked on those... booo-hooo...

Some comments remain but no main threads...??

How and why, please? No comprende...

Me from Barcelona...

A newbie

http://www.gutenberg.org/

http://www.worldebookfair.com/

http://worldlibrary.net/

http://www.britishlibrary.net/ - fancy this, BL open to the great unwashed...

http://catalogue.bl.uk/F/?func=file&file_name=login-bl-list

http://www.yui.ru/books/ - or even this sort of thing...

Informative websites...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/

http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/study.htm

http://www.intute.ac.uk/socialsciences/lost.html

Some of the greats...

http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/~ppp/Kant.html - Kant on the web

http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/~ppp/K1texts.html#I - Kant archive

http://philosophy.eserver.org/kant/what-is-enlightenment.txt - a very special little text!!!

http://www.hegel.net/en/sitemap.htm - what a scorcher!!! :D

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/ - from "Who thinks abstractly?", a very jolly, short text written to amuse Fichte, Schelling, Goethe etc. - onwards...

OK, some psychostuff...

http://users.rcn.com/brill/freudarc.html

http://www.mythosandlogos.com/Freud.html

http://www.freudfile.org/

http://www.bibliomania.com/2/1/68/frameset.html - registration needed...

Here are the dissidents:

http://www.freudfile.org/dissidents.html

http://www.freudfile.org/reich.html - Reich in particular!

http://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/index.htm - another most valuable link to an extraordinary opus...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vygotsky

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg - one of the best US psychologists, Lawrence Kohlberg

During a visit to Israel in 1969, Kohlberg journeyed to a kibbutz and was shocked to discover how much more the youths' moral development had progressed compared to those who were not part of kibbutzim. Jarred by what he saw, he decided to rethink his current research and start by beginning a new school called the Cluster School within Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School. The Cluster School ran as a "just community" where students had a basic and trustworthy relationship with one another, using democracy to make all the school''s decisions. Armed with this model he started similar "just communities" in other schools and even one in a prision.

[...]

Kohberg's stages were broken into 3 different levels, pre-conventional, conventional and post-conventional. According to his model it is not possible to regress backwards in stages. It is also not possible to "jump" stages; each stage is has new perspective that is "more comprehensive, differentiated and integrated than its predecessors.

Level 1 (Pre-Conventional)

1. Obedience and punishment orientation
   
2. Self-interest orientation

Level 2 (Conventional)

3. Interpersonal accord and conformity (a.k.a. The good boy/good girl attitude)
   
4. Authority and social-order maintaining orientation (a.k.a. Law and order morality)

Level 3 (Post-Conventional)

5. Social contract orientation
   
6. Universal ethical principles (a.k.a. Principled conscience)

Just some pearls... :)

Here's a copy of an email I sent to my friends, advising them of some good stuff on the net, stuff that can be DL gratis, not just the mind-numbing, conformist/consumerist/waste-my-time Hollywood shite:

Download or watch free films or clips/Skinite ili pogledajte online filmove etc.

Start here, for instance/Na primjer, krenite odavde:

Free films on the net - see or download

It might take you here [results for Chomsky search]/Mozete zavrsiti ovdje [pretrazivao sam site za filmove Chomskog]: Veoh Service [you will need to DL the specific Veoh SW for it!]

So, anything, from Comedy, like "Ali G In Da House" and the new "Borat" online, to Sci-Fi like "Babylon 5" movies, to some serious stuff, in terms of Critical Theory, Current Affairs ["Fahrenheit 9/11", "The Corporation"] and onwards.../Dakle, bilo sto, od komedije, poput "Ali G In Da House" ili novoga "Borata", do Sci-Fi, kao "Babylon 5" filmovi sa Mirom Furlan, do ozbiljnih tema poput Kriticke Teorije, "Fahrenheint 9/11", The Corporation" i nadalje...

Just to add:

Mozilla add-on to D/L videos from loadsa sites like YouTube etc.

Download videos from Youtube, Google, Metacafe, iFilm, Dailymotion, Pornotube... and other 60+ video sites ! And all embedded objects on a webpage (movies, mp3s, flash, quicktime, etc)! Directly!

VideoDownloader adds a small icon on the status bar at the bottom of your Firefox window, and a toolbar button. Just click that and download the video you are watching!

Since we're talking about grabbing videos from the net, here's another one:

YouTube Grabber 1.0.0.1

Everything you need to download and watch YouTube videos on your computer.

YouTube Grabber is a free tool that downloads FLV files from youtube. Simply copy and paste the URL of a video from youtube into the program, press grab OR enter, and the file will be downloaded into the same directory as the program.

FLV Player 1.3.3

FLV Player is based on Flash Player 8 and utilises the default Macromedia FLV Playback component, which uses a slightly customised skin (blue instead of green highlights).

Flash Video Splitter 1.0.0.1

Flash Video Splitter or FLV (the format used to display video in Flash content) Splitter helps to watch .FLV files locally.

Includes:

YouTube Grabber 1.0.0.1
FLV Player 1.3.3
Flash Video Splitter1.0.0.1

4.2MB [not sure if the link bellow still works, please test it or simply search the net...]

The package to DL

So, the first issues that come to mind are:

1. What, if anything, is illegal here?

2. How do these sites operate?

3. Can we be held responsible if we download something in good faith and it transpires it is not there by right?

Cheers!

G