Announcing Rheinsberg: Frederick the Great discussion post 10

[cahn]

So for anyone who is reading this and would like to learn more about Frederick the Great and his contemporaries, but who doesn't want to wade through 500k (600k?) words worth of comments and an increasingly sprawling comment section:

We now have a community, rheinsberg, that has quite a lot of the interesting historical content (and more coming regularly), organized nicely with lots of lovely tags so if there's any subject you are interested in it is easy to find :D

Comments

Re: Henri de Catt

[mildred_of_midgard]

In Catt's defense, Fritz has changed his mind twice before, and people do, and he also represents Fritz as being motivated to question his convictions by the desire to see his recently deceased mother and sister again. Which is the kind of emotional thinking that many people do.

That said, no, I didn't believe Catt before (partly, I admit, because of my own biases which run counter to his, but partly because he was my only source on this and his wishful thinking motivations were writ large in red ink), and I don't believe him more now (with even better reason).

In any case, all hail rheinsberg! and also your continuing education that is making you more and more able to be an active participant in these discussions! \o/

Re: Henri de Catt

[cahn]

Huh. Interesting. When did he change his mind?

(Yay Rheinsberg! :D )

Re: Henri de Catt

[mildred_of_midgard]

Much earlier, when he was in his mid twenties (the younger people are, of course, the more fluid their religious/spiritual beliefs). As we saw in the Suhm write-up, he went from not being sure he had an immortal soul, to being convinced by Wolff via Suhm's translation in 1736 that he did, and then just a couple years later, after reading more widely of skeptical philosophy, switching to definitely not believing in an immortal soul.

I don't see any evidence that he changed his mind or even had uncertainty after 1740; that reads like 100% wishful thinking on Catt's part. Especially since so much of his argument is "Well, *I* think he sounded uncertain, mostly because he sounded so extremely certain and vehement that I don't think he'd keep arguing with me unless he wanted to be convinced."

Riiiight. Works both ways, Catt. Maybe you're uncertain, did you think of that? No, of course you didn't.