Serenade after Plato’s “Symposium” – Leonard Bernstein
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Tag: 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
July 30, 2016
up my idiosyncrasies – Plato
“The School Of Athens“ (1510-1511)
_____
he sounds just like you, my friend said,
who’d bought me the works of Plato,
for C***mas maybe, or my birthday, or
maybe just because he knew I’d very
much appreciate them
we were reading him together, as is
always my inclination, his Meno
according to my calculations,
Socrates was doing most of the
talking, with Meno, a Sophist
acolyte, a school of philosophy then,
prove anything by using the right
arguments
lawyers, of course, ensued, politicians
and rhetoric, the art of proving anything
by using the right arguments
philosophy had reached a structural,
indeed an existential, impasse, why,
they therefore wondered, philosophy
wherein it entered a phase of moral
speculation, Stoicism, Epicureanism,
Scepticism, Cynicism, and can you
blame them, theories about the
stars, the moon, the world, even
matter itself, had become so
questionable, was it fire, air, water,
atoms, at its source, who knew
I thought so too, I said, and told
him that Plato’s were the first
texts I studied in philosophy when
I entered university, that’s where I
learned to talk like that, philosophy
from the scratch, as my German
teacher would’ve said, which is to
say, from its very beginnings,
whence I could view, I figured, the
evolution of received wisdom in
Western culture
I was young then, the young have
such dreams
my father had been agnostic, ever
asking questions, though we were
being raised Catholic, my sister
and I, on account of our mother
tongue, our entire community,
having been historically linked
with that religion, and cause my
parents wanted us to be educated
in French
an existentialist crisis would
eventually follow, I intuited, as
indeed it did, so I majored in
philosophy
Socrates taught me to ask
questions, that no one had
all the answers
Plato, usurping his master’s voice,
created the paradigm for our present
version of a Divinity, and Its Paradise
there is an ideal version of any
item we might consider, he spouted,
an ideal table, for instance, exists
of which every material table is an
imperfect example
to virtue, love, beauty, truth, he
applied the same principle, which
early erudite Catholics, Augustine,
Thomas Aquinas, for instance, and
others, despite rejecting all of the
other Greek cultural achievements,
appropriated in order to bolster their
impression of God, the ideal of the
Ideal
this lasted uncontested for just
over a thousand years
for a thousand years our salvation
had been extraterrestrial,
supranatural, this, our very,
perhaps only, existence, an
imperfect reflection of somewhere
else an ideal, a mere simulacrum,
we were, a metaphor
Socrates had only asked questions,
what is virtue, what is justice, what
is beauty, truth
Plato presumed to have known the
answers
Aristotle is making a comeback,
whose method, in opposition to
his contemporaneous forebear,
was much more like Charles
Darwin‘s, working from the facts,
which proved then, and are
proving still now, to be multifarious,
diverse, astonishing, and nearly
enough to make you believe in
God/dess again, this time, however,
through the back door
or in a multiplicity, a panoply, a
very pavilion, even, of natural
deities, otherwise known as
angels, for better or for worse
God/dess bless, or angels
Richard
January 23, 2014
“Meditations”, Book 3 – Marcus Aurelius
“If thou workest at that which is before thee, following right reason seriously, vigorously, calmly, without allowing anything else to distract thee, but keeping thy divine part pure, as if thou shouldst be bound to give it back immediately; if thou holdest to this, expecting nothing, fearing nothing, but satisfied with thy present activity according to nature, and with heroic truth in every word and sound which thou utterest, thou wilt live happy. And there is no man who is able to prevent this.”
“Meditations“, Book 3, 12
_________
the idea of the virtuous man, or the
interpretation of Marcus Aurelius of
such a person, goes back of course to
Socrates by way of Plato, 427 – 347
B.C., who’s ideal was primarily
political, what to achieve within a
political order, rather than a private
meditation, an advice rather than
a contemplation as in Marcus
Aurelius, 121 – 180 A.D., 550,
not inconsequential, years later
other moral perspectives meanwhile
applied, Epicureanism, for instance,
notably, after which the stranglehold
of Christianity produced not philosophy
but dogma, for a subservient and,
biblically labeled, fallen people,
nearly fifteen hundred years spent
trying to figure out how many angels
fit through the eye of a needle,
essentially, how many irrationalities
could prove the existence, and
authority, of a mandated God
René Descartes inadvertently in this
very quest, but not before 1637, put
an end to that, introduced a new, and
revolutionary, perspective, “I think,
therefore I am“, which put the individual
instead of the Church in the driver’s seat,
this, if it didn’t bring on the Renaissance,
at least gave it a significant push
but because of his famous scientific
method, studies afterwards in what
we now know as the humanities
became more empirical than
specifically moral, how do we
perceive rather than how do we live
according to what is right or wrong,
Nietzsche‘s “Beyond Good and Evil“,
1886, reoriented that investigation,
as it happened, ominously, in an age
where any kind of god had become
irrelevant, Beethoven would be
transformed into a Hitler, an
uncomfortably fateful Übermensch,
Superman
now philosophy is concerned with
language, what do we mean when
we say what do we mean, and can
anybody understand that
our closest moralist, our modern day
Marcus Aurelius, is at present Miss
Manners, whom I wholeheartedly
recommend
as well as, of course, Marcus Aurelius
Richard
psst: Miss Manners‘ question and answer
format, incidentally, is not at all unlike
what Plato does in his Socratic dialogues,
she just has a larger, more flip audience
March 27, 2013
Nemo – “Ennead I” by Plotinus (16)
____________
Date: Sat, 23 Mar 2013 22:47:05 +0000
To: Richibi’s Weblog
From: comment-reply@wordpress.com
Subject: [New comment] “Ennead I” by Plotinus
To: Richibi’s Weblog
From: comment-reply@wordpress.com
Subject: [New comment] “Ennead I” by Plotinus
Richard,
As I said at the very beginning, you are “sensitive”, and I was right, because you rightly perceived that I was becoming impatient. My apologies. Patience is not my forte. 🙂 However, you have not “touched a nerve”, as this is by no means an emotional discussion from my pov. I have no intention to “vehemently reject” your position (after all it is yours not mine), but only to share my perspective, including what I perceive to be irrational arguments.
Here are the two statements you made;
” I, and the “demented” Nietzsche, incidentally, equally fervently mistrust, even deem fundamentally impossible”,
“I do not profess to “know what Nietzsche believes or “fervently mistrust[s]‘”.
Is that not a self-contradiction?
You say that you’re making an interpretation. But, what is knowledge but an interpretation? A translation from the concrete and the objective to the abstract and subjective, just as we translate a work of literature from one language to another? By interpreting Nietzsche to yourself, you gain a rational understanding of him, and by interpreting him to others, you share that understanding.
I think an important distinction should be made between a) the belief in the existence of Absolute Truth” and b) the belief of one’s monopoly of the Absolute Truth. You seem to be passionately rejecting b), which is quite understandable. But Platonism is not b) but a). It does not claim monopoly of the Absolute Truth, but instead, Plato and Socrates both exhort their listeners to pursue Beauty, Goodness and Truth, to pursue virtue, to be the lover of wisdom, which is the literal meaning of “philosophy”,
According to Einstein, this pursuit of the Absolute Truth is also the guiding principle of the scientists. Without this passionate pursuit of the truth, we would never discover that the earth is not flat. Now think about this: Can you still insist that it is uncertain whether or not the earth is flat, that it is impossible to have a rational understanding of the shape of the earth?
You argue that uncertainty makes people less likely to kill. But most people who kill are not driven by belief in the Absolute, but by their lust for pleasure, wealth and power. Some may kill in the name of Truth as a disguise for their ulterior motives, but it would be unfair and irrational to blame the Truth for their acts.
I’ll refrain from discussing the Catholic Church, partly because to me this discussion is about Platonism, and Christianity is not Platonism (though they share many similar aspects), and partly because I’m not associated with the Catholic Church and frankly don’t know enough about it to say anything useful
first of all let me raise a glass to our conversation,
a toast that it might live long
and thank you for your continued respectful and
penetrating participation, I will endeavour to as
assiduously hold up
that said, we get into, as I see it, the question
posed by Wittgenstein, an obstacle of the
most impenetrable sort, the egregious
unreliability of language, what do you mean
when you say something, and how does that
synch with the other guy’s interpretation of it,
or, indeed, girl’s
your meat could be my poison, my Plato,
your Proust
indeed which one of us is right about this,
is Plato a saint or a sinner, a boon or a
blight
though Proust, of course, would remain
unquestionably and irreversibly here,
ever, surely, for both of us, a benefactor
of positively Promethean, natch,
proportions
what has become here then of the
Absolute, gone up in a whiff of, just
as insubstantial, smoke, the exhalations,
note, of a fully material mens sana,
sound mind, which can be nothing
without the enveloping corpore sano,
sound body
should there, in the instance, however,
be a One, an Absolute, we would not, nor
can anyway ever, from our intrinsically
divergent perspectives, be able to, in
any meaningful way, know It
more practically and topically, when
my mother had her living room walls
painted, my blue was her green, or vice
versa, in either case adamantly, trying
both of us to eke out from each other
concessions to a position, undyingly,
each, though ever politely, both, held,
a model accommodation, which is to say,
without the often attendant bombs
we remained puzzled, however, each,
ever, by insidious, and inescapable,
doubt, who saw the right colour
there is a technical solution to my mother’s
wall, I know, but only after great psychological
adjustment, even torment, will the blue think
his or her visual impression another colour
and who is mistaken
or can some people be ever right,
and ever wrong
this, incidentally, is the central problem
of philosophy, not just our own central
topic
and its resolution the central problem
of politics
in this instance when her cataracts were
removed, her blue became green, or vice
versa, I’d have to be in her apartment, I
can’t remember which colour, right now,
it was I saw, another philosophical
conundrum, but surely, you get the
picture, interpretation is highly
subjective, and porous
which is why Science requires absolutely
unanimous approval, if you’ll forgive this
metaphorical only use of that prickly
adverb here, to determine Its still
fundamentally ever tenuous theories
we’ve even only recently deconstructed
even time,
or Time
now there’s a God for you, Giver of context
however, even there, It would appear arbitrary,
there may be another Reality beyond our
particular three-dimensional Plato’s cave
but I digress
my misuse of the word “know” in citing
my apparently contradictory statements,
is at fault, I can never know, I can only
interpret, with custom we have come to
accept our suppositions as fact, and hope
that everyone else will do the same, which
we mostly do, except when we have wars
because of some intractable position,
where someone has set a price on his, her
incontrovertible, but still fundamentally
arbitrary, opinion, even of ownership,
family structure, interpersonal affairs,
like this one
but we are talking with only air, no
concrete certainty
I believe Nietzsche, in other words, to
have thought my thoughts, or I, rather,
to have incorporated his, but that is only
my understanding of it, which surely I
propound, though I might quite possibly
be wrong, but, Nemo, I can’t remember
the last time I was, I could check, I keep
a tally
scientists, I believe, are indeed seeking
always to know, perfecting their idea of
Reality, but Truth can only be the sum
of all things we think It is, nothing else,
nothing more, after all what other entity
that we know knows anything at all
about It, about Truth
we can only think there is a Real out
there, and make the best of It, the rest
is, Shakespeare again,
“…………………………………. such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.”
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.”
lines 156 -158
cheers ever
Richard
March 6, 2013
Nemo – “Ennead I” by Plotinus (6)
Date: Sun, 3 Mar 2013 20:54:23 +0000
To: Richibi’s Weblog
To: Richibi’s Weblog
From: comment-reply@wordpress.com
Subject: [New comment] “Ennead I” by Plotinus
Subject: [New comment] “Ennead I” by Plotinus
Hi Richard,
Actually Plotinus posited a memory model that might be quite similar to yours if I understand you correctly. There are three components in this model, the object stored in our memory, our act of remembering as if retrieving an object from storage, and the activated/retrieved image of the object in our mind. To answer your friend’s retort, we are all three components combined, though most prominent in the second component.
You object to the idea of thoughts having their object existence outside our consciousness, but you agree that we’re aware of our thoughts at the same time as we’re aware of our own existence. Is that a fair representation of your position?
If so, thoughts have just as valid an existence in our consciousness as ourselves. Ergo, there are thoughts. 🙂
P.S. People who speculate on this stuff have way too much time on their hands
if I haven’t replied forthwith, Nemo, to your
comment, it is that I found myself with too
little time on my hands to do other things
that required my more immediate, in my
opinion, attention, though I believe time
spent speculating is never a waste of
“way too much time on [one’s} hands“,
where would Plato be, or Descartes, or
Russell, Nietzsche, Proust, yes, Proust,
my most revered lingerer, and the answer
to all my philosophical prayers, but that’s
another story I’m sure we’ll get to, if they
hadn’t dawdled around profundities
and who’s to say we’re not up to the
mark, and who could say we are, but
for conversations that test the waters,
like this one
so I, for one, will deliberate when I get
the chance, which, incidentally, is not a
lot of the time, despite objections that I
might be nevertheless still wasting it
and I return to the fray like a kid to a
very candy shop
thanks
let me point out that Plato would be
proud of us, would’ve been proud of
us, to whose time frame should we
here, do you think, refer, I think Plato
this time could take prominence, if
you’ll allow this playful speculative
divergence
this, our talk, is his Socrates discussing
with his Euthyphro, or his other acolytes,
ephebes, describing the Socratic Method,
Nemo, we’re carrying on the tradition,
which 2500 years later still vigorously
applies
Plato, incidentally, c. 428 BC – c. 347 BC
there are a few problems in your argument,
from my perspective, you say “you agree that
we’re aware of our thoughts at the same time as
we’re aware of our own existence”, but that’s an
extrapolation, I am at the most aware of only
one thought, that thought being that
something is thinking, no more, no less
but reason interjects, applies itself to
consciousness, and concludes that
something has just thought, the element
of time and memory enters the fray here,
but not yet explicitly, they are the
handmaidens of consciousness
if something is thinking, which by the very
act of thinking this I am doing, something
must be doing it, I’ve already conceived of
this consciousness as, for me, irrefutably
real, having had already an impression
of it
whatever other impression I might add to
this composite, however, is arbitrary and
therefore moot with respect to what might
actually philosophically be real
the world and everything in it is in the eye
of the beholder
think about it
thoughts are an extrapolation from all
that we can be sure we know, but all
of it is nothing more than a dream
see Shakespeare
“………………………..We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.”
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.”
lines 156 -158
Richard
March 2, 2013
Nemo – “Ennead I” by Plotinus (3)
having thrilled at the very first moment of an
apparent convergence on the Internet with
a kindred spirit, of the intellect, let me point
out, rather than of the more pressing, for
some, senses, I gurgled out a ready program
of philosophical positions to him meant to
engage and perhaps more profoundly
together ponder
to my delight the conversation took hold
and is ensuing, I thought I’d share
here is the third instalment, the first two are
available on my counterpart’s impressive blog,
“Ennead”, of which to date he’s got three
at the bottom in the comments section,
should you be interested
how, of course, could you not
Richard
_____________________
Date: Sat, 2 Mar 2013 19:19:11 +0000
To Richibi’s Weblog
To Richibi’s Weblog
From: comment-reply@wordpress.com
Subject: [New comment] “Ennead I” by Plotinus
Subject: [New comment] “Ennead I” by Plotinus
Descartes did not prove the existence of “I”. To prove that something exists, you cannot presuppose its existence and say “something” does this or that. In other words, “I exist” is the condition that comes before “I think”, not after. If Descartes wanted to prove the existence of “I”, he made the mistake of circular logic, putting the cart before the horse.Even if we grant that the individual is conscious of the “I”. Does the “I” exist as a part, a mere concept, in his thoughts, just as other people exist as mere concepts of his thoughts, or is there an “I” beyond his consciousness? To borrow the imagery of Plotinus, does the Moon exist as part of the reflection in the water, or does it exist independently outside the water?
Plato’s theory encompasses both change and immutability. They are incomplete without the other, nay, they cannot exist without the other. This is proven by our own experience. We can observe changes only because we’re using something static as a reference
first of all, Nemo, thank you for this conversation,
I’m finding this exercise very stimulating, not many
have called me on my philosophical positions, not
many, I suspect, having given these positions much
thought in the first place, you are perhaps a kindred
spirit, what a delight
and as such I can only be, respectfully and humbly
ever, forthright
in a Socratic, as it were, contract
this part of Plato, incidentally, is the only part I accept,
his celebration of the Socratic Method, to put words
later into the greater philosopher’s mouth, to me, is
highly unethical, especially to spout with that authority
such drivel
you can tell I don’t like Plato
the flurry of consciousness is the clue, in Descartes,
the moment of realization, the inkling of perception,
that allows us to know that something is behind that,
producing that, without which there would be no
actuality, that something is what we call “I”
interestingly, “Cogito, ergo sum”, the Latin, often used,
translation of the original French, “Je pense, donc je
suis”, doesn’t show an “I” in its very grammar, which
is an apt demonstration of the proposition we are
discussing
if there is conscioussness of something being
I’m finding this exercise very stimulating, not many
have called me on my philosophical positions, not
many, I suspect, having given these positions much
thought in the first place, you are perhaps a kindred
spirit, what a delight
and as such I can only be, respectfully and humbly
ever, forthright
in a Socratic, as it were, contract
this part of Plato, incidentally, is the only part I accept,
his celebration of the Socratic Method, to put words
later into the greater philosopher’s mouth, to me, is
highly unethical, especially to spout with that authority
such drivel
you can tell I don’t like Plato
the flurry of consciousness is the clue, in Descartes,
the moment of realization, the inkling of perception,
that allows us to know that something is behind that,
producing that, without which there would be no
actuality, that something is what we call “I”
interestingly, “Cogito, ergo sum”, the Latin, often used,
translation of the original French, “Je pense, donc je
suis”, doesn’t show an “I” in its very grammar, which
is an apt demonstration of the proposition we are
discussing
if there is conscioussness of something being
conscious, something must be being conscious,
that something Descartes called “moi”, we call
“me”, others call whatever they call it
therefore I am
therefore I am
but I could not have done that without consciousness,
nebulous and indeterminate consciousness, but that’s
all we have, all we’ve ever had
Plato tried to fashion an alternate, paternalistic, I might
Plato tried to fashion an alternate, paternalistic, I might
add, conscience driven, later driven-by-Christian-fear,
reality, somewhere out there, that lasted for all of the
Middle, did I say Middle or Dark, Ages, a good thousand,
count them, thousand, years, conservatively even
speaking
Nietzsche got rid of that, finally, but still all of nearly
Nietzsche got rid of that, finally, but still all of nearly
five hundred years later
oof
where does Plato “encompass[–] both change and
where does Plato “encompass[–] both change and
immutability“, “The Republic” makes short shrift of
that, how is this “proven by our own experience”
I like “We can observe changes only because we’re
I like “We can observe changes only because we’re
using something static as a reference“, where did
you get that, I’ll have to ponder it
but “static” is my stumbling block, in a world
I cannot see as in any way static, autocratic,
unbending
help
read also Ovid
cheers
Richard
but “static” is my stumbling block, in a world
I cannot see as in any way static, autocratic,
unbending
help
read also Ovid
cheers
Richard
psst: I’m putting this thrilling conversation on my
blog, look out for it
Richibi's Weblog 