Serenade after Plato’s “Symposium” – Leonard Bernstein
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Category: Socrates
September 22, 2020
Serenade after Plato’s “Symposium”,
Eryximachus, interestingly, advises
Aristophanes to make himself sneeze,
July 16, 2017
on courage
“Socrates”
__________
following in the footsteps of Socrates,
who, I agree with the Oracle, has been
ever the wisest man, one whose example
I’ve followed since first hearing of him, let
me query, what is courage
a tentative definition would have one
stating that courage is a determination
to overcome danger
but to use my own example, being called
courageous for surviving an aneurysm,
would this instance have qualified
where was my determination, apart from
waiting, submissively, for the axe to fall,
or to not fall, I felt no fear, merely time
passing, not an ounce of determination
but what of those others who endure
the pain often associated with dying,
agony, is that not a kind of enforced
courage
so did I qualify
an aneurysm swells the blood vessels
to the brain as the brain heals, but
meanwhile the heart pumps a rhythmic
tattoo on those passages rendered
more tender, so that a throbbing
anguish is ever drumming its drill
upon the cerebrum of the sufferer
perhaps I did qualify
but Socrates brings up an interesting
objection, can animals be brave, it
would seem not, therefore courage
requires self-consciousness, whether
or not it is defiant or compliant
and what about defiance before a lost
cause, is that courage or doomed
bombast
Aristotle adds to the mix the notion
of a noble cause, not merely an
instinctive, however, in the event,
morally prompted, position
so what is courage, you tell me
I say that you know it when you see
it, the courageous act defines the
word, not the other way around,
much like flowers are the result of
their own efflorescence, not the
manifestation of a preset Ideal
you are the measure of your own
words
for better or for worse
Richard
psst: it is interesting to note that
according to the Bible, in the
beginning was the Word,
John 1:1, a convenient tool
to impose order
April 6, 2017
Aristotle, an objection
“The School Of Athens“ (1510 – 1511)
_______
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
August 11, 2016
to Socrates – on monotheism
“The Sacrifice of Isaac“ (1598)
________
by very definition, the inevitable
result of monotheism, Socrates,
is war, if there is one authority it
will eventually be opposed by a
contrary, however picayune,
however trivial, opinion, see the
Protestant Reformation, see Islam,
for instance, now
after which there is disintegration
before Christianity, there were gods,
a pantheon of them symbolically
alive among the rivers, the trees,
the mountains, read Ovid for an
exhilarating description, wars were
waged for territory, not conscience
Judaism, the religion of the Jews,
evolved for their own existence a
deity, Yahweh, who was their one
god, disdainful of foreign others,
an uncharacteristic attitude among
other religions then, becoming one
of the very first monotheistic, and
consequently existentially
compromised faiths, if not the
first
the intent was to rally ideological
support among its adherents so
that they could protect the lands
homes, as they would have it, a
sanctification of the territorial
principle
their Bible, the Torah, a vengeful
work, and the basis for the
Christian Old Testament,
demanded of its followers
unblinking and cruel allegiance,
the sacrifice of Isaac, for instance,
a father required to sacrifice his
own son, however might it ‘ve
been at the last minute averted by
the intercession of an angel sent
by that very Lord
Christ came along to turn the other
cheek
which didn’t last long
indeed Montesquieu, an early
philosopher of the French
Enlightenment, tells of the
King’s librarian of Chinese
texts, who had been converted
to Catholicism in China, but
who was nonplussed upon his
arrival in Christian France to find
that the French did not do onto
others as they would have them
do unto themselves, nor did they,
more catastrophically, turn the
other cheek
for that matter see what Christian
Europe did to the Americans
Christ’s own followers, once they’d
achieved political prominence, after,
admittedly, 300 years of persecution
by the prevailing Roman authorities,
set their own deity, God, on high,
indeed beyond the rivers, the
mountains, the trees into the very
ineffable, the inscrutable abstract,
and squelched any opposition for
the next thousand and some years,
the philosophical underpinnings of
which was the work of your
contemporary, Plato, Socrates, his
ideal of the Ideal
Augustine signed those recalibrated
papers with his “City of God“, it took
the Renaissance to make a dent in its
armour, and another several centuries
to declare the Christian God dead,
Time magazine in the ’60s, on the
heels of Nietzsche‘s nihilistic
pronouncement some 70 years earlier,
that God had exited history
what we are left with, Socrates, is every
wo/man for hirself, therefore the Age of
Human Rights, for better or for worse,
otherwise many of us would’ve been
guillotined, burnt at the stake, stoned
to death, by now
what do you think
I’ll bet I can tell, you think that every
wo/man owes allegiance to what s/he
believes in, even to inexorable death,
however impractical, unfortunate, or
fateful, if your exemplary life has
anything to say about it
cheers
Richard
August 5, 2016
to Socrates
__________
The way to gain a good reputation
is to endeavour to be what you
desire to appear” – Socrates
having lost faith in the natural
philosophers, Thales, Anaximander,
you turned to more introspective
speculation, what is virtue rather than
what is the world
but thereby you ran right into the wall
of the word, which had been there from
the very beginning, but so intimate as
to not be able to see the forest for its
trees
what is virtue, you wondered, but
got caught up in the fray of, even
conflicting, opinions, making it
clear that everyone had a different
answer, what could that mean
it could only mean that virtue was in
the eye of the beholder, not as your
disciple Plato would have it, that we
all partook of an ideal Virtue, never
real, a theoretical abstraction merely,
but serving nevertheless as its
authoritative standard
but who would’ve set that standard,
you would’ve asked, never stopping
at so fragile a conclusion, setting the
tone for proper philosophy, however
ill the lesson ‘s since been learned
the proper answer to any and every
question is ultimately another
question, that is the true lesson of
philosophy, an observation, sir, to
Richard
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