“The School Of Athens“ (1510 – 1511)
Raphael
_______
upon reviewing my Socrates, Plato, and
Aristotle from a series of university
lectures I’ve been following, I came upon
a discovery so egregious, I couldn’t
believe I hadn’t seen it before, the old
story of the forest and the trees, I guess
upon hearing that the Oracle at Delphi
had replied that it was Socrates to those
who’d wondered who the wisest man
was, Socrates, abashed, began to seek
out wise men to disprove the Oracle,
but whenever Socrates asked of them
what is virtue, what is justice, what is
knowledge, for instance, the answers
were always inconclusive, they always
seemed to depend on perspective –
virtue, justice, knowledge were in the
eye of the beholder – though Plato
later putting in his own definitions
called them Ideals, a chair partook,
for instance, of an overarching
chairness somewhere, as did indeed
virtue, knowledge and justice, which
inferred another ideal universe
contiguously, of which our own
universe supplied only imperfect
renditions
you can hear the seeds of Heaven and
God already in all of that, way before
Christianity, not to mention Original
Sin
it also suggests an implacable order
Socrates wouldn’t’ve liked that
but Aristotle, with a much more critical
mind than Plato’s, less speculative, more
akin to Socrates’, less autocratic, more
inquisitive, begins to try to define,
nevertheless, abstractions, virtue,
knowledge, justice, as though they
indeed existed as ideals
this is putting the cart before the horse,
I thought, in the form of a revelation
an instance exists in the act of creation,
a physical transformation produces a
flower, the flower doesn’t happen
because of the word
a human example
for surviving an aneurysm once, someone,
to my astonishment, had called me
courageous, I’d been, I thought, only
surviving, not an inch of courage, not
even a millimetre
courage, I surmised, is in the eye of the
beholder, it is not at all a template, an
absolute, in my experience
Aristotle goes on to define a host of
Virtues, indeed 11, which come out as
essentially his Eleven Commandments,
on, in fact, courage, among others, all
essentially, and appropriately, moral,
thereby creating the moral realm of
our Western world
Jesus followed
and of course God and Heaven
which, of course, still prevail despite
sound, sober objections
as though we could know
why is this important
because, I think, we must remember
that our assumptions are only that,
and often they’re based on only what
we’ve been told, which is already a
step away from incorrect
interpretation
in the world of false news, check
your references, check your very
words, our lives, it isn’t too much
to say, I believe, depend on it
not to mention our own personal
moral code, our soul, our purpose
for being, which every wo/man
must oversee for hirself
if one has the courage
Richard
Richibi's Weblog 