A Lesson of World Religion

The World's Great Church

(The World as One: the central mission of the universal church — John 14:6)

Human Rights Watch

(living enaction in terms of human rights' defense — Matthew 5:38,39)

Amnesty International

(the freedom to voice and engender political will —Matthew 22:20,21)

The University

(the way the ideas align to democratic liberation and spirit — Luke 5:31,32)

World Peace Council

(life above water. the fresh harvest of peace and goodness among nation-states — Matthew 4:19)

The United Nations

(in international aspirations and spirits of understanding and peace, a world of freedom and love, embodied in understanding where we are in civilizational history— an order where each individual person aligns to a given nationality, or a few, while The Universal Human Corpus also takes on a role of global interconnection and harmony, within a global community that is progressively blossoming in regard to its eschatological commensuration of all human rights upheld and cherished by all people. in this new epoch of world chivalry and world understanding and world peace, The Third Millennium, we as the world's people aim to continue carrying out and begetting prudent, thoughtful, and wise movement toward the reproachment of provincial conflicts as we grow in peaceful global harmony properly characteristic of the age of widely abundant, quality, and globally promulgated technology, multimedia, culture, art, and religion, throughout this Good Globalized World — Psalm 121:2,3)

Ω

 [on this webpage, one can come to understand the philosophical scenery and rendering of The World as One]

Ω

A Lesson of World Religion

written by Ben Bussewitz, a selfless and colorfully-laden of mystical-kaleidoscope vision bodhisattva who walks according to loving kindness and truth, great compassion and conviction, perfect aesthetic and ethical taste of penetrating insight and wisdom

The truth about the meaning of the word 'religion' is that it refers to an idea very specific, tangible, concrete, paramount, and complete in and of itself: "Religion Teaches Truths About God."

What is the path of your salty river?

The silt of the Fertile Crescent, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates, was where the earliest living civilization spanned-- the dawn of systematized written signifiers, shared economic harvests, overall government in terms of shared framework for top-down mandate in direction of shared interests and projects, artistic sediments, religious sentiments expressed in terms of togetherness in groups and systemized renderings of our Timeless Deity...  We see this emerged out of a village on one of these earth-constituted-central rivers—[SEE HOW THE WORD OPENS UP]—(Genesis 2:10-14... as illustrated the river-of-life in terms of how original sin wipes clean in terms of dusty-to-pristine, Genesis 2:7, Genesis 2:21-22).  First building a terrain of expansive community in the Noble Firmaments of a village-town called Sumer, and before long, creating with their own hands: cities, an administering governmental bureaucracy and leadership and all their cultural creations and spiritual actualizations, in the light, thereof, the latter, commensurate with from how earliest nomads unraveled unto a villages likewise framework of humble supplications and individually, in their best moments, worshipping God.

Ultimately, they crafted from Gold and the Plasmatic Form of Forms ideas of religious belief, religious community, and religious practice (Matthew 6:19-21).  This is crafted in light of the civilizational crosswords (excuse the play of words), cross-paths, documented in Acts in the early Apostles of the Early Church in a light-lily cross-paths, of the Nation of God and the peoples of the earliest wheat-fields of cherishing the earliest demos (the people) engendering shared kratos (governing) [THE PEOPLE OF THE VILLAGE-GATE-BELONGING RULING IN SHARED FRAMEWORK OF CITIZENRY-ROLES] NATION/CITY-STATE of Athens, joining a shared calling in terms of how they carry out what they carry on unto, the present times, of monotheistic faith.

The people developed shared sense-of-belonging, history, and identity and came to expand all throughout the riveting ebbs and flows between these two archways of turbulent river-flow that brings agriculture and bounty, surplus and harmony.  The first civilization: The great Mesopotamian Civilization came alive.

Genesis 2:14— "The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Ashur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates."

[HEAR THE WORD SPEAK LIGHT LIVING-WATERING SPRINGS]

The silt brought the peoples' harvest to a fertile soil that they bestowed their sowing spades into the ground, and grew their crops, ripened and ate in surplus and happiness of their home abode, clay-dwelling places— after years of nomadic hunting and gathering in close-knit communities.

This brings into question the genealogy of the human race.  When God placed us here on earth and we were faced with the question of existence, subsistence, and meaning; "thrown," as French existentialist might argue the truest existentialist moment might have been; what did people face when they were originally placed on our home, Mother Earth.  Did God exhort them, "Be fruitful and multiply!  Tend to nature's great resources.  Cup water in one's hands to hydrate.  Collect berries and other fruits to obtain nutriture.  Always act with empathy and love in the lifeworld"...?  Or did God place us on earth, full of endless possibilities to act and be good, species engendered by accident of a big loud silence of a particle or two imploding, expanding, particles emanating out of in light of the miracle of atoms choices--?-- and the miracle of nature, as we frame it in our present lexicon, the miracle of existence, as some of our visionaries and mystics might deftly speak to, the randomness and arbitrary circumstantial framing of what comes to constitute... everything you mean and are. -- to go back, when man emerges in the infinite-complex, is he and she, the earliest people, -- are placed or thrown?

Ω

A lived and unfolding in every moment of our lives unfolding in terms of your life and all it stands for and all it means... infinite choices at each moment we entered into as the Human Family, and in our radical freedom, we figured out how to dwell on the land, make homage to the gods and goddesses, offer pilgrimages to the holy places, and discern, in the primordial over-reaching, all-arching power of the primordial elements, meaning and purpose?

Placed?  Or "ordered" with advice and direction for how to achieve "the good life," a life of meaning, virtue, happiness, in the light that the Light of the World perceives us as configured to carry our psycho-somatic frames forward in harmony of self and kin and "the others" if we destined her or him to be...?

Thrown vs. Instructed by God?

The 'winners' of civilization write history, but everyone takes part.  We can see world history as developing and enveloping as people carrying out action, with thought and interconnection in terms of communication vested in language and body-signs, empathy and affect as they share their time in their locality, their "place-on-earth," which constitutes an environment, each environment individual and unique yet porous and open to surrounding environments and a system of them, which carry on to ecosystems that enable certain organisms to bear positive result, enjoined to a series of ecosystems, that carry on through hilltops, over mountains, scenic routes, among crags, over the oceans where people roll to the waves that sling and fling.  What is the structure of human history?  The 'winners' surely write their history and have carried it forth through "noblest," oral tradition and written records and how we, in our present day, view the path unbound and unfolded of (what constitutes the meaning, the significance, and how it matters to us) the story of human history-- all the people and all their actions and how that constitutes what is signified in terms of what we refer to "the history of the world," or "world history."

Is this a testament to the thrown or instructed viewpoint? 

The way in which we find ourselves needing to confront this question: we can discern through history pages that the human species emerged, maintained itself and recreated itself during eons in which small communities worked together in hunting and gathering cultures.  Why were they hunting and gathering, rather than utilizing agriculture?  Our wisest answers thus far tell us that humankind had not yet discovered or invented agricultural techniques.  Did instinct tell us to hunt game and eat berries and other natural foodstuffs, much like other animals?  If we did not yet know how to use agriculture to harvest the land, how did we learn to hunt and gather?

Which boils down to the simplest question: when our original human ancestors emerged on this beautiful planet, were they "told" "through revelation" or "communion with God" the ways to survive, flourish, grow, and make meaning?  Or are each of those projects ideas and lived ways that humankind, through something like trial and error, perhaps, had come to achieve on its own accord, with the lack of theistic instruction and, perhaps, minimal theistic support?

Does God exist?

Or, maybe, in terms of a more conformist in terms of how our everyday man and everyday woman (in all the best of what he, in all his great, both in terms of how he introspectively comprehends it and in terms of its constituting into what and how it is, in its essence, in terms of the truth it carries in the universe, engenders and is lived out in terms of all it is, namely, action, thought, and word)... in terms of how the present day normal person verses it in light of our global civilization (a truly globalized world)... what he and she inquires, "sacred or secular?"

Well, we still can't say in terms of how we all agree, but in terms of the most advanced philosophical and philosophy of religion-based frameworks and how they can agree, we can see in light of this day of shared action in terms of how we feel we are related to the whole world and we view it in terms of our understanding of where we view ourselves in terms of our self-identifying as constituting a holistic-embeddedness part in the whole of, in light of how nations interact through diplomats, we can see, and in terms of how some people travel all around the world, lots of countries they visit and make home in some of them... and in light of this, and this shared understanding in terms of the tension of one's understanding their commentary of society both in light of how it is all fitting together and in light of how they personally are living in terms of their most important-- big decision, big decision... it is our thesis which unfolds and is supported by both these competing and cooperating (and in terms of this thesis, interdisciplinary) schools... where we stand in terms of how its summed up in terms of your life and the history of the world and where we are in the present moment: we are at the cross-path of a inchoate, nascent what we will see unravel in terms of where we are in how the Whole hangs together and relates to the church's stance and philosophy's stance in reflection of such: a theocratic, global democracy constituted through all of us, in our present day and age, our present time, the twenty-first century of the global citizen and the liberated man/the liberated woman constitutes in terms of his carrying out of his citizenry in light of his 'talk,' (a great concept and idea, in light of how it enables and engenders this lived framework, of citizenry, in this thusly understood framing and sharing of what is seen as the future horizons of how a truly actualized theocratic, democratic world government and world democracy, in light of academia's and from the U.N., the ASEAN, to the World Council, to all individual world governments best can speak for how it is most likely, in terms of likeness of our tools of Global Governance, and in the likeness of how the church carries out that responsibility in humility and humble meekness of those that are called upon God to present themselves, in their thanking of God--myself, one of those-- for how our Father in Heaven in terms of promising us we shall inherit the earth, to reference the Beatitudes, and to expand that portion of the church to moreover encompass, those of us who are meek of the faithful personhoods of the People of the Book, who are also persecuted for our righteousness, as we see our forefathers who paved the way for us, in terms of this present age, our great prophets of the World's Great Faiths, preceded us were also prosecuted, in terms of who we are in terms of greater meaningfully-significant and God-imparted 'primacy,' and also in terms of, by our virtue God-willing and the Will of God, in light of our, the meaningfulness and, our, ourselves and God's understanding of all our time's best understood as carried forth in light of him in our understanding and relationship with him, our, our presence with God, Our Father, in each of our days and our shared understanding of submission and good obedience, and also... the greater righteousness in terms of our lived paths, which personify in our personal relationship with God great faith and faithfulness and good lives in terms of how they are ethically and also in terms of our meaningful projects and love of Jesus framed... our 'superior' meaning, our, rather, calling in which he leads us, the meek of the People of the book, to have mandate, levers to enact that mandate, and meaningfully (in terms of all meaning can mean) authority as opposed to the all the rulers and authorities of the earth...

Matthew 5:20-- " For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven."

Matthew 5:48-- "Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."

to view credentials:

[fin]

a poem:

LXXXIV.

written by Ben Bussewitz

I Love You, Jesus.

I Love You, Lord.

I Love You so,

with all my mind, heart, and soul.

I Love You with

all I am,

all I'll become,

and all I've ever been,

with all my body,

and all my strength,

and all my salvation,

and all my livelihood and spirit.

I Love You, God,

each and every day,

every single moment,

Lord, Heavenly King.

You are so good,

in all Your awesome ways.

You are so beautiful,

utterly amazing.

You are so holy,

You are the light of the world.

You are the love of the world.

I am so grateful for Thee.

I Love You, God,

mind, heart, soul.

I Love you so,

and I always will.

I Love You, Immanuel,

with all that I am.

You are pure Love,

the way, the truth, the life.  You are amazing.

You are so wonderful,

Holy, Awesome Jesus Christ.

You are my Savior.

To You I devote my life.

To You I give all of me.

You are King of Everything.

You are the source of all my breath.

And you saved me.

Lord of Land, Sea, and Sky,

Higher than Most High,

Holy, Awesome God,

the main attraction of Paradise,

You are beautiful, so beautiful.

I cannot comprehend

the depths of Your beauty,

beauty that is awesome,

beauty that is glorious,

beauty that is amazing,

beauty that is fabulous,

Beautiful Lord, You saved me.

And I completely Love You

with all I am.

I Love You forever

on Earth and in Heaven.

Lord Jesus Christ,

Heavenly, Awesome King,

I am a child of light,

because Your Love and goodness saved me.

You saved me, Holy Jesus,

by dying on the cross,

that my sins might be expunged,

and I might know Your Love.

You rose, Glorious King,

from the tomb on the day,

There was darkness without You here,

then light came overpowering.

Because I have faith in You,

I know I am saved.

I know You will be with me forever.

My knowledge of this is truly great.

It is truly great because it is the good news,

the best news in the world,

that You saved Your children of sin,

when You came down to the Earth.

Holy, Perfect Father--

to think You were here

living amongst us sinners,

well it is so wonderful,

it is so wonderful that You would even care

about us lowly sinners, and--to think--You care so much.

You Love all people so greatly.

Holy and great is Your Love.

You turned water into wine.

People reached out and touched Your robe to be healed.

You raised Lazarus and a widow's son from the dead.

Lord Jesus, You are holy miracles.

You healed the blind and the crippled.

You healed the mute and the ill.

Merely by having faith in You,

they overcame their ailments.

You traveled far and wide, dear Lord,

carrying out the work of Your Father.

From Luke 9:58 we can ascertain

some understanding of how You walked.

"Foxes haves holes,

and birds of the air have nests;

but the Son of Man has

nowhere to lay his head."

Lord, I will follow You,

wherever it is You lead,

across the Earth, high and low,

my eyesight right in front of me.

Lord, I will serve You,

worship You, and praise You always.

I have five loaves of bread and two fish,

with that I believe You can feed more than 10,000.

Lord, the truth is

once all people walk with faith in You.

there will be complete peace on Earth,

because we'll all repent from sinning.

That is the truth--

You build Your children to perfection.

You purify our hearts.

You bring us life everlasting.

Lord, You are here with us,

ubiquitous by the Holy Spirit.

All the air is filled with Your Love.

Everywhere is Your divine presence.

Because of this,

I am never alone.

You dwell in my heart

and bring peace overflowing.

Because of Your holy presence,

every single person

is so abundantly blessed

beyond their wildest fathoming.

Lord, You have taught us

that we are meant to spend our time with You.

We know that because of the wisdom You

bequeathed unto Your beloved Martha and Mary.

There is nothing more pleasant and peaceful than

passing my time in calm, composed prayer

basking in the Love and grace of You, my Savior,

and I do this all the time, everywhere.

Were the question to be posed,

not for an instant would I hesitate

to answer that You, Jesus Christ,

are my very best friend.  Your Love is endless.

Yes, Jesus Christ, You will be with me forever.

This I fundamentally believe.

Not for a second, not for a moment, will You leave

from being inside, all around, and in front of me.

Lord, I am so grateful

that Mary anointed Your feet

with a pound of precious perfume made from pure nard.

Lion, Lamb.  Your awesomeness and holiness outweighs everything.

Someday, Holy, Awesome God,

I pray in earnest to Thee--

please take into consideration my humble supplication--

May I see Thy ethereal, divine eyes in Heaven, Precious, Wonderful Jesus?

Lord, I Love You.

I Love You so much.

You are so incredibly good, God.

You are pure, holy Love.

You are completely perfect.

It is amazing and true.

And in You, Jesus Christ--

I put all my faith in You.

How I Love You so, dear Lord.

How I Love You so.

You gave me life and saved my soul.

I am eternally grateful.  How I Love You so.

Thank You so much, Jesus,

for being so amazingly good,

for Loving me so greatly.

Thank You so very much saving me, Amazing God, Heavenly King.

Ω

Ben Bussewitz

Ancient Philosophy 678

Open Christian University, South Africa

28 May 2025

The Magnanimous Philosopher

[in the living memory of Aphrodite]

The man of ethical action, that is, the political man, and the man of ethical contemplation, that is, the philosophical man, are seen as two differing archetypes of virtuous lives that a person of reflection is capable of carrying out and achieving, according to Aristotle.  The former of the two can be characterized as a life of “magnanimity,” a lifetime spent implementing good actions on a grand scale during which one does not consider the fruits of those actions, either to bring about honor or to elevate status or material wealth, but rather, in engendering meaningful, beneficial change and betterment in itself, he arrives at greater joy as a response to the good of acting according to virtue.  The philosopher, on the other hand, can be seen as a person of “wonder,” as Aristotle maintains that philosophy begins in wonder and continues in wonder; in Ancient Athens, when the city-state had its festivals, we could see all types of people conglomerating together for different purposes: the players in the theater acted on stage, often to accomplish more success, the officials of the city, often to show that they are well-to-do and helping substantially with the order of the city-state, etc.  And the philosopher would also head there, more selflessly though, immersing herself or himself in deep wonder and amazement and awe and all, without privileging or even paying mind to how the social opportunities there might spark a more successful life.  The festivals in Ancient Greece were a great place for wondering. Ultimately, one wonders, where does wondering lead?  What is the aim?  What is the strategy and results of all this pondering?   Socrates famously said: “The unexamined life is not worth living.”  When we philosophize, which starts in wonder, continues in imagination, amps up in reflecting and introspection, and ultimately leads to synthesis and great understanding of life and wisdom— when we philosophize, we are heading toward “an examined life,” a life of meaning, value, truth, and love. The philosopher virtuously abides by a lifetime of enjoying the goodness and joyfulness inherent in attaining knowledge and wisdom and accompanying its accrual.  Now, I have presented the two archetypal figures that Socrates states are the best kinds of lives.  One can see that these two types of lives, the ethically-driven, magnanimous man who contributes widely to society and the contemplative man who is a philosopher, these are not mutually exclusive.  To solve the seeming contradiction: one can both build upon, grow from and pursue the ways of being characteristic of each, and, in fact, perhaps “the magnanimous philosopher” is the best way to be, the politically-driven and successful man who also wonders and cherishes his or her values, meaning, ideas, spiritual insights, wisdom, and so on.  This idea that putting together a philosopher and some type of charity-driven, kindness-laden politician or ruler is central in Plato’s The Republic, as Plato shines light on what it means to be a philosopher-king, and rule over the city wisely, beneficially, and for the good of the whole body-politic.

Aristotle purports that the magnanimous man—the virtuous political man— he responds in the proper way to doing good deeds, that he attains a wholesome and enjoyable emotional response for doing the right thing.  This can be brought about by attaining the prudence of ethical action— seeing why a certain action opposed to another decision can be perceived as a good, proper way of acting in its terms of its ethics.  Also, it can be brought about by quite regularly carrying out ethical behaviors, as this creates a sense of ease in committing to those actions and a greater happiness that results from acting for the benefit of other people as doing so becomes defined by a sense of habit.  In both these senses—prudence of ethical action and a sense of habit accompanying these actions that aims toward a wholesome, meaningful goodness—knowledge, wisdom, and discipline are key.  We can see from this analysis that the centerfold consideration for the way one acts who is the ethical-man, according to Aristotle, is based on selfless goodness, rather that driven by self-gain.  This hearkens back to the most renowned Hindu literature, the Bhagavat Gita, when the Hindu god Krishna, who is considered to be the Preserver God, according to most practitioners of the Hindu faith, consoles a young warrior, Arjuna, and coaxes him along the insights for how best to act in his difficult, trying situation.  The kingdom was divided and Arjuna had to fight against his own family in battle or surrender to an unjust cause.  He was torn and did not know what to do.  During this dialogue, Krishna maintains, “Be intent on action, not on the fruits of action; avoid attraction to the fruits and attachment to inaction!”  Throughout the dialogue, indeed, Krishna, as is shown here, indicates to Arjuna not to get lost in what is “in it for him” or how the results of his actions spell good or bad consequences for him, but instead, focus on the selflessness of action.  This understanding of being in an impossible situation in terms of how complex, grave, and earnest it is, yet searching for one’s higher moral-truth and being submissive to that which she or he holds sacred and carrying forth wisely and prudently and piously— the magnanimous man, as we see, does not attend to the fruits of the action, but embarks on the actions for the best of his co-citizens and according to his selfless mentality.  In this interpretation of the magnanimous man, we see he is confronted with difficult decisions, which he acts upon with reason and kindness and benevolence, and moreover, in difficult situations, when the cards are even twisted against him, he is able to maintain good momentum forth in his goodness of ways and days.  But to delve deeper into this archetype that Aristotle lays out of the political man driven by ethical action, one can see that the philosopher has a keen insight into and inclination for the abstract kinds of good that are characteristic and necessary for the magnanimous man, both in terms of choosing and acting on a decision while facing hard choices, and in terms of running across complex and convoluted and strange events and being able to fulfill the wisest course of action.  Would we not all agree that the philosopher’s love and knack for wisdom would assist the magnanimous, ethical character according to his pedigree?

The philosopher is a lover of beautiful things.  As one that wonders, the philosopher falls upon great ideas, and extends and works with these ideas to come to even greater ones.  These beautiful things that the philosopher loves, such as beauty in itself, goodness in itself, and love in itself, he is able to discern through active, thoughtful contemplation, during which he thinks about what it is these ideas, objects, and actions entail and takes hold of such meaning.  During his trial in the city-state of Athens in which he was accused of corrupting the youth and insulting the Greek pantheon of gods and goddesses, Socrates, in his defense, showed he was wiser than his fellow citizens.  In The Trial and Death of Socrates, Plato depicts Socrates as stating:

“For my aim is to persuade you all, young and old alike, not to think about your lives or your properties, but first and foremost to care about your inner self. I tell you that wealth does not make you good within, but that from inner goodness comes wealth and every other benefit to man.”

During the trial, Socrates argues that Athenian citizens take up refuge from the hardships in life by their social status, wealth, reputation, but, as he says, these are all fleeting and investing in them, he continues on to indicate, is indicative of an “unexamined life.”  Socrates extorts the Athenians to “care about [their] inner self,” and in this way, Socrates shows that he is “wealthy” on the inside, as “goodness” translates to more inner-beauty, more inner-knowledge, a greater ethical-drive.  With the knowledge of such beautiful things one can carry out beautiful means and beautiful ends.  In this way, armed with this kind knowledge and wisdom, both the philosopher and the virtuous political man, the “magnanimous” man, are able better to hone their action and to be insightfully and intuitively discerning about how they carry out that action.

There is a tension here in that Aristotle claims both that the magnanimous man leads the best life and that ‘he does not take to wondering’— as we can see that the philosopher tends to take to wondering, and as we can see that Aristotle is a philosopher, totally in control of his own fate, his own torch-bearer; and furthermore we can see that Aristotle considers the act of philosophy to be a good in itself and to have a sense of purpose, and due the fact that in another passage in Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle names the contemplative life as the greatest life.  How can we reconcile this tension?  Philosophy—it is indisputable—begins in wonder, but perhaps the great philosopher can find fulfillment in the objects, the ideas, that result from such wondering, and no longer “take” to wondering, no longer be distracted and diverted to his motley ruminations, and rather, feel fulfillment in what his wondering has already brought him to possess, the great knowledge and wisdom he has at his disposal to continue to contemplate, share while conversing or writing, and use to guide his other various, actions—and just at particular times, in his leisure, continue to endlessly wonder.  When one finds the meaning of life, the Persian carpet or the purple pen, one has sufficiently wondered for wondering to have taken hold of holding him steady in happiness and fulfillment, all her or his days.  It is the Ultimate Good that sows a seed in us, within our very human nature, to discern the Ultimate Good and to act in accordance with the Ultimate Good, which is the ultimate end goal of all philosophy that begins in wonder and responds according to wonder—the Ultimate Good being God, and the ultimate good being deep and wise knowledge of God along with the response to this knowledge that brings about an reconstruction of the self internally and in how one behaves.  With this deep and wise knowledge of God seated within the constituent self, the great philosopher is able to attain fulfillment by the joyful tree his virtuous wonder and the Pure Spirit has tended to and cultivated, with fruits to share and harvest that will bring about life-changing spirit and attitude and love.  With this at hand, the philosopher can become “the magnanimous philosopher” by imbuing much greater goodness in both his contemplation and actions, by means of his deep, wise knowledge and love for God, bringing his contemplation and actions to greater, more beautiful means for greater, more beautiful ends.

Everyone has a basic understanding that they want to be a good person, whether that is in carrying out good, virtuous actions, or it is in a more self-interested idea of attaining power, or the more innocuous pursuit of achieving ‘happiness,’ which might be conceived of according to the concept of attaining the ‘good life.’  The concept of ‘good life’ which she or he comes to might be in response to various environmental stimuli and responses along with the person’s personal analysis, value-judgements, and conclusions, insightful or myopic, superficial or wise, based on such.  Understanding of the ‘good life’ might also be in line with Immanuel Kant’s idea of the a priori element of reason, giving light to what he calls the Categorical Imperative, which can then guide noble action and experience.  Whatever the case may be, it is clear that wise, deep knowledge of the good and of God can bring about actions that are more prudent, wise, and thoughtful.  Therefore, the basic dispositions 1) of a philosophic mind and personhood and 2) to not attend to the fruits of action, but rather, to attend to joy engendered by implementing noble ideals— requisite to the ability to carry out the extent of the beauty, goodness, and love, both in means and in ends, that the “magnanimous philosopher” is capable of bringing about.