Skip to content

A Blog of Bustling Folly

this is a test

learning how to use my phone to post images to the blog. Seems easy enough.

Share this:

Tumblr
Email
Facebook
More

Print
Pocket
Reddit
Pinterest

Posted on June 5, 2022 by patadavePosted in Uncategorized

Post navigation

Previous Previous post: Summer Break

Next Next post: Beach Achieved

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Comment *

Name *

Email *

Website

Notify me of follow-up comments by email.

Notify me of new posts by email.

Δ

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Currently researching Gothic Literature, my kidney, Frankenstein in all its manifestations, and men on television in the mid-1970s.

Search for:

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Email Address

RSS

RSS - Posts
RSS - Comments

Meta

Log in
Entries feed
Comments feed
WordPress.org

Background Info

About

Wipe: A Brief History of Toilet Hygiene

Wipe: A Brief History of Toilet Hygiene by D. M. Davisson

Abderitic

Abdera is a real place. In the western classical era Abderites were the foolish rural counterparts to the cosmopolitan urban Athenians. Notably, Democritus, the laughing philosopher, was from Abdera. Cicero described Abdera as a republic of fools, and it became short-hand for the classical Greeks for the folly of the self-satisfied and petty-minded.

Kant, in his essay “Is the human race constantly progressing?,” argues humanity is obviously constantly improving because a loving God wouldn’t allow humans to degenerate. The worst possible way of understanding human change over time he termed “abderitic.”

(“Retrogression toward wickedness” is moral terrorism, “perpetual progression toward improvement” is eudaemonism, and abderitism is “a perpetually changing upward tendency and an equally frequent and profound relapse.”)

About abderitism he writes:

“This opinion may well have the majority of voices on its side. Bustling folly is the character of our species: people hastily set off on the path of the good, but do not persevere steadfastly upon it; indeed, in order to avoid being bound to a single goal, even if only for the sake of variety they reverse the plan of progress, build in order to demolish, and impose upon themselves the hopeless effort of rolling the stone of Sisyphus uphill in order to let it roll back down again.

…

“…It is a vain affair to have good so alternate with evil that the whole traffic of our species with itself on this globe would have to be considered as a mere farcical comedy, for this can endow our species with no greater value in the eyes of reason than that which other animal species possess, species which carry on this game with fewer costs and without expenditure of thought.”

Kant may have found the idea of abderitism repugnant but I think it captures our experience perfectly. Bustling folly is the character of our species.

Proudly powered by WordPress Theme: Colinear by Automattic.