Lady Liberty

6:01 AM | BY ZeroDivide EDIT
Article by Grace Powers

When Frederic Bartholdi unveiled his colossal sculpture of the Statue of Liberty in 1886, spectators wanted to know who the masculine-featured diva was that served as his model. Was she his mother? His wife? His mistress, perhaps?  Some speculated that she was the Egyptian goddess Isis, Mary Magdalene or the Biblical Whore of Babylon.

Others argued that Lady Liberty wasn’t a lady at all, but a man in drag. Bartholdi took the secret of her identity to his grave....but he left behind evidence.

HER BODY
    Bartholdi shamelessly copied three designs from other sculptors for his American monument - one for her body, one for her pedestal and another for her head.  His first copied design was the Colossus of Rhodes built in 304 BC as a celebration of freedom. Like the statue of liberty, it rose to the same height from head to toe and loomed over the entrance to another busy harbor on the island of Rhodes. The Statue of Liberty’s radiating crown with its seven giant sun-ray spikes is a carbon copy of the Rhodian sculpture built in honor of the Sun God, Helios. His seven rays symbolized the seven seas and seven continents over which he ruled. It took twelve years for the sculptor, Chares of Lindos, to build his giant ‘wonder of the ancient world’. Fifty-six years later, the island of Rhodes was struck by a violent earthquake that shook the giant off his feet and cast him down like a child’s toy into a broken and ruined heap.

HER  PEDESTAL
     To build the pedestal, stairway, observation deck and torch, Bartholdi copied another ‘wonder of the ancient world’ - the four hundred foot tall Pharos lighthouse of Alexandria, Egypt which had been commissioned by Ptolemy I, in 290BC. Tourists could climb up to the observation platform at the first le vel and continue climbing to the very top of the tower where a smaller balcony showcased the breathtaking panorama of sea and sky.  For 1500 years, it stood on Egypt’s island of Pharos in Alexandria Harbor.  The multiple mirrors at the top of the lighthouse reflected sunlight during the day. At night, its leaping flames licked the star studded sky and guided seafarers into Alexandria harbor.

HER HEAD

  To create his American Statue, Bartholdi used the same mystery woman that he had sketched for his failed Egyptian statue.
THE FAME
      Investigative reporters in America had a reputation for digging up dirt on people. Bartholdi feared they would dig up his dirty little secret that the Statue of Liberty was a recycled version of his failed Egyptian statue. To cover up the truth, he altered the robe and hairstyle on his American statue and added spiked rays emanating from her crown like the Colossus of Rhodes.

       Bartholdi built a four-foot clay miniature model first, then a complete nine foot tall (2.85 meters) cast in plaster, followed by four more proportional enlargements until it had grown to one-fourth the size of his planned masterpiece. With each increase in size, nine thousand mathematical calculations and measurements had to be painstakingly made.

      Freemason Gustave Eiffel designed and engineered the intricate skeleton for the statue using four gigantic steel supports as the main structural framework.  Eiffel’s claim to fame was his phallic 984-foot tall Eiffel Tower of iron and steel.  By 1876, Liberty’s thirty-foot long arm traveled to the United States with Bartholdi and turned him into a household name across America. Once Americans learned that they would be able to climb up to the balcony of the sky high torch for a mere fifty cents and gaze at the million dollar view of New York harbor, they were sold on it. The gleaming copper head also went on display creating an even bigger sensation but not big enough to solve the unending problem of raising the money to complete it.

THE LIE
       The American press turned ugly.  Reporters tore into Bartholdi like a pack of pit bulls when they discovered that the Statue of Liberty was a dusted off version of his rejected Egyptian statue. “The Statue is not a statue of liberty at all,” they protested. “It has nothing whatsoever to do with liberty!”

      By  trivializing the facts, Bartholdi bobbed and weaved, ducked and side stepped the accusations. “My Egyptian statue for the Suez canal ended then and there. Any resemblance it may have had to New York’s Statue of Liberty is purely coincidental”, defended Bartholdi in broken english. The American press didn’t buy it. They reported that the French sculptor had outright lied to the American people when he told them he had fashioned only "one" terra-cotta model for the Suez Canal project.  In reality, he had made five!  All of them were prototypes of the future Statue of Liberty, some with a torch or lantern in her left hand, some with it in her right hand.  In all of them, she is wearing a long Greek chiton (χιτών). Over the chiton, she is wearing another garment, called the himation (ἱμάτιον).

Bartholdi had already admitted on record that the model for the Egyptian project was an Egyptian woman. His earliest 1870 model with the torch-lifting pose was the most damning evidence. It proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the American statue, ‘Liberty Enlightening the World’, was a dusted off version of the aborted Egypt statue, ‘Egypt Bringing Light to Asia’. Both were colossal, robed, torch-bearing women serving as lighthouses, both were sited for key points astride major world waterways and both passed their ‘symbolic messages’ from one continent to another.

       To further Americanize his recycled Egyptian statue, Bartholdi added the date of the American Declaration of Independence onto the cover of the book held in the statue’s left hand - July IV MDCCLCCVI.  No one asked why the date was written in ancient Roman numerals.  No one clued in to the connection between Lady Liberty and the ancient Roman goddess ‘Libertas’  which is latin for ‘Liberty’.

PIGGYBANKS OF AMERICA
        Because of the stellar costs of the French gift to America, the brotherhood decided that French and American citizens should foot the bill. French citizens would pay for the statue.  American citizens would pay for the pedestal and foundation. Masonic brothers from both France and the United States formed a fund-raising committee called the Franco-American Union.  By the time Libertas was ready to be shipped from France, little progress had been made on the other side of the Atlantic. Controversy continued to swirl over the origin of the statue and its mammoth costs.

Some American citizens had the good sense to ask, “why does the gift’s pedestal cost as much as the gift itself and why should we foot the bill for our own gift?”  Americans living outside of New York considered it New York's statue. "Let New York pay for it!" To make matters worse, the wealthy French and American elite were allergic to the word ‘non-profit’ and wanted no part of the costly ‘non-profit’ project.

       Public apathy in America became almost as monumental as the gift itself.  By 1884, after years of pedestal fund-raising, only $182,491 had been raised.  The fundraising committee brainstormed the idea of a public lottery. They pried open public wallets   with prizes that included two works of art by Bartholdi himself.  In another scheme, they sold signed clay models of his statue to both the French and American public. By the end of 1879, about 250,000 francs (approximately $750,000 U.S.) had been raised but ‘completing her’ in time for America's 100th anniversary was an impossible dream.

      Lady Liberty’s trip to America had to wait until she had a pedestal to stand on. In the meantime, she was grounded in Paris.  Joseph Pulitzer, a Jewish multimillionaire and owner of the American financial newspaper, The World, saw a golden opportunity to increase the size of his newspaper circulation. “Let us not wait for the millionaires to give this money,” said the multi-millionaire. “It is not a gift from the millionaires of France to the millionaires of America, but a gift of the whole people of France to the whole people of America." Pulitzer’s World newspaper circulation surged by almost 50,000 copies and  single-dollar donations from grandmothers and pennies from the piggybanks of America’s schoolchildren began trickling in.

STRANGE RITUALS
      By the time pedestal construction got underway, work had to be delayed until the cornerstone was laid in strict accordance with Masonic rituals.  By American tradition, cornerstones of major public and private buildings like the Washington monument had to be "consecrated" first with full Masonic rites and ceremony.  The tradition began in 1793 when Freemasonic U.S. President George Washington personally laid the cornerstone of the Capitol Building with the assistance of the Masonic Grand Lodge of Maryland.

       It rained cats and dogs on August 5, 1884, the day of the private cornerstone ceremony.  The elite guests boarded a boat draped with the red, white and blue flags of France and the United States. The vessel ferried approximately one hundred Freemason members of the Grand Lodge of New York, U.S. civic officials and the visiting French Masonic Grand Officers to Liberty (Bedloe's) Island.   A United States Army band played the French National Anthem, "La Marseillaise," followed by "Hail Columbia" which named “the band of brothers joined” in its lyrics.

MYSTERY BOX
     The cornerstone was laid on the raised northeast corner of Liberty’s pedestal with the same trowel used by Masonic President George Washington.  Masonic men in black lowered a mysterious copper box inside the cornerstone containing a collection of strange mementos; twenty bronze medals of Masonic Presidents including Washington, Monroe, Jackson, Polk, Buchanan, Johnson and Garfield, a portrait of sculptor Bartholdi, a list on parchment of the Masonic Grand Lodge officers and a medal commemorating the erection of an Egyptian obelisk in Central Park at 81st street.  Like the Washington monument, obelisks are tall, narrow, needle-like monuments built in honor of the Egyptian sun God ‘Amen’ (also spelled ‘Amun’ or ‘Amon’) meaning ‘the hidden one’.

No one questioned why a medal commemorating the erection of an Egyptian obelisk was placed inside the box.  After the cornerstone was found to be square, level and plumb, the Freemason Grand Master applied the mortar and the stone containing the Masonic box of strange mementos was lowered into place.  The Grand Master struck the stone three times with a gavel and declared it duly laid. Then the elements of "consecration" were presented - corn, wine, and oil known to be the "master's wages" in the days of Hebrew King Solomon.


Skepticism

7:33 PM | BY ZeroDivide EDIT
Skepticism or scepticism (see spelling differences) is generally any questioning attitude towards unempirical knowledge or opinions/beliefs stated as facts,[1] or doubt regarding claims that are taken for granted elsewhere.[2]
Philosophical skepticism is a general philosophy that requires all information to be well supported by evidence.[3] Classical philosophical skepticism derives from the 'Skeptikoi', a school who "asserted nothing".[4] Adherents of Pyrrhonism (and more recently, partially synonymous with Fallibilism), for instance, suspend judgment in investigations.[5] Skeptics may even doubt the reliability of their own senses.[6]Religious skepticism, on the other hand, is "doubt concerning basic religious principles (such as immortality, providence, and revelation)".[7] Scientific skepticism is about testing scientific beliefs for reliability, by subjecting them to systematic investigation using thescientific method, to discover empirical evidence for them.

Definition[edit]

In ordinary usage, skepticism (US) or scepticism (UK) (Greek: 'σκέπτομαι' skeptomai, to think, to look about, to consider; see also spelling differences) refers to:
  1. an attitude of doubt or a disposition to incredulity either in general or toward a particular object;
  2. the doctrine that true knowledge or some particular knowledge is uncertain; or
  3. the method of suspended judgment, systematic doubt, or criticism that is characteristic of skeptics (Merriam–Webster).
In philosophy, skepticism refers more specifically to any one of several propositions. These include propositions about:
  1. an inquiry,
  2. a method of obtaining knowledge through systematic doubt and continual testing,
  3. the arbitrariness, relativity, or subjectivity of moral values,
  4. the limitations of knowledge,
  5. a method of intellectual caution and suspended judgment.

Philosophical skepticism[edit]

Main article: Philosophical skepticism
In philosophical skepticism, pyrrhonism is a position that refrains from making truth claims. A philosophical skeptic does not claim that truth is impossible (which itself would be a truth claim), instead it recommends "suspending belief". The term is commonly used to describe philosophies which are similar to philosophical skepticism, such as academic skepticism, an ancient variant of Platonism that claimed knowledge of truth was impossible. Empiricism is a closely related, but not identical, philosophy to philosophical skepticism. Empiricists claim empiricism is a pragmatic compromise between philosophical skepticism and nomothetic science; philosophical skepticism is in turn sometimes referred to as "radical empiricism."
Western Philosophical skepticism originated in ancient Greek philosophy.[8] The Greek Sophists of the 5th century BC were partially skeptics.
Pyrrho of Elis (365-275 BC) is usually credited with initiating skepticism. He traveled to India and studied with the "gymnosophists" (naked lovers of wisdom), which could have been any number of Indian sects. From there, he brought back the idea that nothing can be known for certain. The senses are easily fooled, and reason follows too easily our desires.[9] Pyrrhonism was a school of skepticism founded by his follower Aenesidemus in the first century BC and recorded by Sextus Empiricus in the late 2nd century or early 3rd century AD. Subsequently, in the "New Academy" Arcesilaus (c. 315-241 BC) and Carneades (c. 213-129 BC) developed more theoretical perspectives by which conceptions of absolute truth and falsity were refuted as uncertain. Carneades criticized the claims of the Dogmatists, especially supporters of Stoicism, asserting that absolute certainty of knowledge is impossible. Sextus Empiricus (c. AD 200), the main authority for Greek skepticism, developed the philosophy further, incorporating aspects of empiricism into the basis for asserting knowledge.
Greek skeptics criticized the Stoics, accusing them of dogmatism. For the skeptics, the logical mode of argument was untenable, as it relied on propositions which could not be said to be either true or false without relying on further propositions. This was the regress argument, whereby every proposition must rely on other propositions in order to maintain its validity (see the five tropes of Agrippa the Sceptic). In addition, the skeptics argued that two propositions could not rely on each other, as this would create a circular argument (as p implies q and q implies p). For the skeptics, such logic was thus an inadequate measure of truth and could create as many problems as it claimed to have solved. Truth was not, however, necessarily unobtainable, but rather an idea which did not yet exist in a pure form. Although skepticism was accused of denying the possibility of truth, in fact it appears to have mainly been a critical school which merely claimed that logicians had not discovered truth.
In Islamic philosophy, skepticism was established by Al-Ghazali (1058–1111), known in the West as "Algazel", as part of the Ash'ari school of Islamic theology, whose method of skepticism shares many similarities with Descartes' method.[10]
In an effort to avoid skepticism, René Descartes begins his Meditations on First Philosophy attempting to find indubitable truth on which to base his knowledge. He later recognizes this truth as "I think, therefore I am," but before he finds this truth, he briefly entertains the skeptical arguments fromdreaming and radical deception.
David Hume has also been described as a skeptic.
Pierre Le Morvan (2011) has distinguished between three philosophical reactions to skepticism. The first he terms the "Foil Approach." According to this approach, skepticism is treated as a problem to be solved, or challenge to be met, or threat to be parried; skepticism's value according to this method, insofar as it is deemed to have one, accrues from its role as a foil contrastively illuminating what is required for knowledge and justified belief. The second he calls the "Bypass Approach" according to which skepticism is bypassed as a major concern of epistemology. Le Morvan advocates a third approach—- he dubs it the "Health Approach"—- that explores when skepticism is healthy and when it is not, or when it is virtuous and when it is vicious.

Casuistry

4:59 PM | BY ZeroDivide EDIT
Casuistry (/ˈkæʒuːɨstri/), or case-based reasoning, is a method in applied ethics and jurisprudence, often characterised as a critique of principle- or rule-based reasoning.[1] The word "casuistry" is derived from the Latin casus (meaning "case").
Casuistry is reasoning used to resolve moral problems by extracting or extending theoretical rules from particular instances and applying these rules to new instances. The term is also commonly used as a pejorative to criticize the use of clever but unsound reasoning (alleging implicitly the inconsistent—or outright specious—misapplication of rule to instance), especially in relation to moral questions (see sophistry).
The agreed meaning of "casuistry" is in flux. The term can be used either to describe a presumably acceptable form of reasoning or a form of reasoning that is inherently unsound and deceptive. Most or all philosophical dictionaries list the neutral sense as the first or only definition.[2][3][4] On the other hand, the Oxford English Dictionary states that the word "[o]ften (and perhaps originally) applied to a quibbling or evasive way of dealing with difficult cases of duty." Its textual references, except for certain technical usages, are consistently pejorative ("Casuistry‥destroys by Distinctions and Exceptions, all Morality, and effaces the essential Difference between Right and Wrong").[5] Most online dictionaries list a pejorative meaning as the primary definition before a neutral one,[6][7][8] though Merriam-Webster lists the neutral one first.[9] In journalistic usage, the pejorative use is ubiquitous[10][11][12][13] and examples of the neutral usage are not found.[14]

Examples[edit]

While a principle-based approach might claim that lying is always morally wrong, the casuist would argue that, depending upon the details of the case, lying might or might not be illegal or unethical. The casuist might conclude that a person is wrong to lie in legal testimony under oath, but might argue that lying actually is the best moral choice if the lie saves a life. (Thomas Sanchez and others thus theorized a doctrine of mental reservation, which developed into its own branch of casuistry.) For the casuist, the circumstances of a case are essential for evaluating the proper response.
Typically, casuistic reasoning begins with a clear-cut paradigmatic case. In legal reasoning, for example, this might be a precedent case, such as premeditated murder. From it, the casuist would ask how closely the given case currently under consideration matches the paradigmatic case. Cases like the paradigmatic case ought to be treated likewise; cases unlike the paradigm ought to be treated differently. Thus, a man is properly charged with premeditated murder if the circumstances surrounding his case closely resemble the exemplar premeditated murder case. The less a given case is like the paradigm, the weaker the justification is for treating that case like the paradigmatic case.

Meanings[edit]

Casuistry is a method of case reasoning especially useful in treating cases that involve moral dilemmas. It is also a branch of applied ethics. Casuistry is the basis of case law in common law, and the standard form of reasoning applied in common law.

Morality[edit]

Casuistry takes a relentlessly practical approach to morality. Rather than using theories as starting points, casuistry begins with an examination of cases. By drawing parallels between paradigms, or so-called "pure cases", and the case at hand, a casuist tries to determine a moral response appropriate to a particular case.
Casuistry has been described as "theory modest" (Arras, see below). One of the strengths of casuistry is that it does not begin with, nor does it overemphasize, theoretical issues. It does not require practitioners to agree about ethical theories or evaluations before making policy. Instead, they can agree that certain paradigms should be treated in certain ways, and then agree on the similarities, the so-called warrants between a paradigm and the case at hand.
Since most people, and most cultures, substantially agree about most pure ethical situations, casuistry often creates ethical arguments that can persuade people of different ethnic, religious and philosophical beliefs to treat particular cases in the same ways. For this reason, casuistry is widely considered to be the basis for the English common law and its derivatives.
Casuistry is prone to abuses wherever the analogies between cases are false.

History[edit]

Casuistry dates from Aristotle (384–322 BC), yet the zenith of casuistry was from 1550 to 1650, when the Society of Jesus used case-based reasoning, particularly in administering the Sacrament of Penance (or "confession").[15] The term casuistry quickly became pejorative with Blaise Pascal's attack on the misuse of casuistry. In Provincial Letters (1656–7)[16] he scolded the Jesuits for using casuistic reasoning in confession to placate wealthy Church donors, while punishing poor penitents. Pascal charged that aristocratic penitents could confess their sins one day, re-commit the sin the next day, generously donate the following day, then return to re-confess their sins and only receive the lightest punishment; Pascal's criticisms darkened casuistry's reputation.
It was not until publication of The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning (1988), by Albert Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin,[17] that a revival of casuistry occurred. They argue that the abuse of casuistry is the problem, not casuistry per se (itself an example of casuistic reasoning). Properly used, casuistry is powerful reasoning. Jonsen and Toulmin offer casuistry in dissolving the contradictory tenets of moral absolutism and the common secular moral relativism: "the form of reasoning constitutive of classical casuistry is rhetorical reasoning".[18] Moreover, the ethical philosophies of Utilitarianism(especially preference utilitarianism) and Pragmatism commonly are identified as greatly employing casuistic reasoning.

Early modern times[edit]

The casuistic method was popular among Catholic thinkers in the early modern period, and not only among the Jesuits, as it is commonly thought. Famous casuistic authors include Antonio Escobar y Mendoza, whose Summula casuum conscientiae (1627) enjoyed a great success, Thomas Sanchez,Vincenzo Filliucci (Jesuit and penitentiary at St Peter's), Antonino Diana, Paul Laymann (Theologia Moralis, 1625), John Azor (Institutiones Morales, 1600), Etienne Bauny, Louis Cellot, Valerius Reginaldus, Hermann Busembaum (d. 1668), etc. One of the main theses of casuists was the necessity to adapt the rigorous morals of the Early Fathers of Christianity to modern morals, which led in some extreme cases to justify what Innocent XI later called "laxist moral" (i.e. justification of usury, homicide, regicide, lying through "mental reservation", adultery and loss of virginity before marriage, etc.—all due cases registered by Pascal in the Provincial Letters).
The progress of casuistry was interrupted toward the middle of the 17th century by the controversy which arose concerning the doctrine of probabilism, which stipulated that one could choose to follow a "probable opinion", that is, supported by a theologian or another, even if it contradicted a more probable opinion or a quotation from one of the Fathers of the Church.[19] The controversy divided Catholic theologians into two camps, Rigorists and Laxists.
Casuistry was much mistrusted by early Protestant theologians, because it justified many of the abuses that they sought to reform. It was famously attacked by the Catholic and Jansenist philosopher Pascal, during the formulary controversy against the Jesuits, in his Provincial Letters as the use ofrhetorics to justify moral laxity, which became identified by the public with Jesuitism; hence the everyday use of the term to mean complex and sophistic reasoning to justify moral laxity.[20] By the mid-18th century, "casuistry" had become a synonym for moral laxity.[citation needed]
In 1679 Pope Innocent XI publicly condemned sixty-five of the more radical propositions (stricti mentalis), taken chiefly from the writings of Escobar,Suarez and other casuists as propositiones laxorum moralistarum and forbade anyone to teach them under penalty of excommunication.[21] Despite this papal condemnation, both Catholicism and Protestantism permit the use of ambiguous and equivocal statements in specific circumstances.[22]
Alphonsus Maria de Liguori (d. 1787), founder of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, then brought some attention back to casuistry by publishing again Hermann Busembaum's Medulla Theologiae Moralis; the last edition published in 1785 and receiving the approbation of the Holy See in 1803.[citation needed] Busembaum's Medulla had been burnt in Toulouse in 1757 because of its justification of regicide, deemed particularly scandalous after Damiens' assassination attempt against Louis XV.[citation needed]

Modern times[edit]

G. E. Moore dealt with casuistry in chapter 1.4 of his Principia Ethica, in which he claims that "the defects of casuistry are not defects of principle; no objection can be taken to its aim and object. It has failed only because it is far too difficult a subject to be treated adequately in our present state of knowledge". Furthermore, he asserted that "casuistry is the goal of ethical investigation. It cannot be safely attempted at the beginning of our studies, but only at the end".[23]
Since the 1960s, applied ethics has revived the ideas of casuistry in applying ethical reasoning to particular cases in law, bioethics, and business ethics, so the reputation of casuistry is somewhat rehabilitated.
Jesuit Pope Francis has criticised "the practice of setting general laws on the basis of exceptional cases" as casuistry. [24]

See also[edit]

Portal iconPhilosophy portal
↑