Aside my gripes about whether or not materialism is good or not, or whether we are a nation of slaves and beggars (for the record, my immediate boss is not yet even 18 years old, and is uneducated, thus providing evidence for this being a nation of slaves) I have been paid recently. The Arabic people that run this particular company use the lunar calendar, not the solar calendar for their pay cycle. As a result, once per year, we are paid twice, which is what appears to have happened recently at that... place (ruled by clowns, circus folk and ignorant fools - this is not Renaissance Italy, evidently).
Anyway, as a result of having spent all night last night (up until 6 AM) rearranging my bookshelves, it slipped my mind to take a book to work. So, I had to rely on my smartphone (which is so very common, not illustrious or erudite, as a true scholar is) and decided to read Cicero's On Good and Evil in Latin, naturally. There was one passage which stuck out, even if my interpretation (which is accurate, actually) differs from the rather good job H. Rackham did of translating this same work. Compare the two:
Marcus Brutus would disagree, both that there is such a thing as an acute kind of person, and this notion for the use of of citizens is not actually useful, and we gladly read the writings of the same kind which remain and will read them. Are these writings which comprise all life to be neglected? For those writings able to be sold, would that they may be these writings which are surely more fruitful. Nevertheless, it is certainly allowed for them to be of value, and those who would read them. However, we esteem this whole question concerning the ends of good and evil, in which so much is more possible, not only what is sought by us, but also what is to have been said in these letters from the singular subject of philosophy, thus we are following it up.
Cicero, On the Ends of Good and Evil 1.4.12 (trans. Latham, 2nd of January, 2022).
Rackham translated it (1916, p.16 [Loeb ed.]), and has a somewhat different take on it, discussing the legal profession and philosophy. Do I, for instance, learn to love a subject which I actually hate? I can't stand bloody sophists, trying to make the weaker argument the stronger, only to let a murderer off the hook, who may do it again (because he or she knows that he or she may get away with it). Yet legal jobs (and a third degree - as though my last two meant absolutely nothing at all!) are where its at. It is not about philosophy, or principles (such important things are given no credence in this servile so-called 'society') but instead about profit seeking, finding a good job (even if that job has absolutely nothing to do with anything you spent twelve years studying towards - optime!). So, I will approach this degree in law, taking my cue from Cicero, Demosthenes, Isocrates, Lysias, Aeschines, Antiphon and all the ancient lawyers (which were actually pretty bloody good, in terms of winning cases).
Max.
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