Comment by oersted
1 day ago
> We've been on this pathway since the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755.
What an intriguing thing to say :)
What are you referencing?
1 day ago
> We've been on this pathway since the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755.
What an intriguing thing to say :)
What are you referencing?
It is a bit of a leap, but quite possibly an oblique reference to Voltaire's Candide. He spent some time dismantling the idea that this was the best of all possible worlds (the phrase apparently started with Leibniz) and the Lisbon earthquake featured prominently.
it's the root of "best of all possible worlds" -the secular humanists bootstrapped thinking around doing the best we can here and now, instead of some belief in a future paradise, from the skepticism of gods magninimity which emerged from the Lisbon earthquake: "If god is so good, why did he allow this to happen" blossomed into a range of branching paths amonst the european savants.
The pathways are all there in search. You won't need AI to find them. It's often mentioned in histories of philosophy from Lebnitz onward, he was the last great religious optimist in some ways. Not that there aren't any, but they don't exactly come to mind the way Kant, Voltaire & Rousseau do.