From: "Andy" <as-AT-spelthorne.ac.uk>
Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 09:32:06 +0000
Subject: Re:The decline of anarchism


> From:          "Dave Coull" <d.y.coull-AT-dundee.ac.uk>

> Carpo asked
> 
> >What the heck is a "didactic?"   
> 
> Does it have something to do with "prophylatic" ?
> I don't know what that means either  -  not just
> kidding, seriously I don't, though I have a pretty 
> strong suspicion it may be some sort of laxative. 
> I suppose I ought to look both words up in the dictionary. 
> Could a didactyic be some sort of laxative used by 
> the late princess Di in pursuit of anorexic skinniness?
> 
> Okay Andy, you used the word  -  what does it mean?
> 
>
> Dave
> 

I'm not falling for this set up. This is entrapment. If I tell you 
what didactic  means, you will be able to accuse me of being 
didactic, and I may be the victim of a smug Holdenesque QED.

On the other hand, maybe I should take my punishment like a man.

Didactic:

from the Greek didasko [teach]

1intended to instruct especially excessively
2morally instructive
3work containing a political or moral message to which aesthetic 
considerations are subordinated.

[Collins]

It was a great tradition in Greek and Latin poetry especially, and 
would have been used by early philosophers with libertarian 
tendencies [You can find some references in bits of Rocker, but 
there's a good short chapter in the Peter Marshall book] - we know 
this from fragments. The Epicureans are occasionally mentioned as 
pre-cursors of libertarian thought, but often dismissed in comparison 
to the Cynics or Stoics, but Lucretius c. 60B.C. wrote de rerum 
natura [on the nature of things] which is a massive didactic poem 
which rants against superstition and attempts to see the universe in 
rational scientific terms [atoms and space etc]. This was an early 
attempt to free personkind from religion and is available as a 
Penguin Classic.

So I'm didactic as well.


Andy
_as