Re Plato essay

[alice wellintown]

How do we or how should we read Plato?
As a younger lady, I read Plato and thought that Socrates was just the
badest badass of all the philosophers. He has nija moves and can punch
holes in a locamotive faster than a falling building in a single
bound.

Of course, I hadn't even studied a handful, when I became convinced
that Aristotle was, as the famous phrase sez, "the philosophers
pholosopher."  And, when I discovered that the "Socrates" of Plato's
dialogues was but a shadow of the real philsopher, the great old greek
with the buff physic, with the bumps and lumps and pecs of an American
footballer, pointing to the heavens under the brass lamp hangind in
the museum down the block, well...and when I discovered that
Aristotle, who actually cared about getting the ideas of others in the
history of ohilosophy right, unlike Plato, who distorted and reduced
their ideas to punchingbags, well, but then, I began to see that logic
was riddled with problems and that often itz driving force is getting
things right, or winning the day....and I decided that success was not
a very good way of going about evaluating what was valid....and that
what follows from beginning, or in the beginning, and moves to the
heavens often involves a great Fall, and, as I was raised by
Jesuits...I began to think that what comes at the end of days may
make valid what we put away as childish things, though these will be
valid enough in their time, for everything there is, of course a time,
the whole determining the parts or the other way about. But this, even
though I always suspected those Jesuits, for who didn't suspect them,
of putting to much on a transcendence they, half-agnostically preached
bu did not care to calculate the graces of...and anyway, a unified
theory or theories smacks of conspiracy...and so, after losing my
cherry, I decided to consider the preterit again, so back to
Aristotle, sort of, only this time I would focus on the losers. Yes,
dialctic is certainly Not about winning the day, in fact, itz not even
against the day, but about losing, losing one's position, one's
struggle against the other by taking turns at talk. Or better song.
The battle of songs or poems.

I hope that the President and the Congress will try a little Plato in
the coming years. But first, they shall need to surrender the idea
that winning is a win, that a win-win is about dialogue. The pragmatic
American, however, is essentially a student of Aristotle. So were all
our Metaphysical Club members, pragmatists, but, there is, in the very
Principles of the American, something Creative. This nis something
Plato would ban and Aristotle would turn into a vocational school for
the Booker T Boyz in the hood, but this Creativity is what makes of
us, we the people, we Americans, the most innovative people in
history.

Now if only we can elect someone who believes this is more than mere rhetoric.

Did enjoy that poem, though a halmark ripp-off of Walt.


> Mm. Ages since I read Pirsig. Interesting idea for an argument, though, I
> admit. It was my impression that Pirsig mostly got Plato pretty wrong, in
> that Plato, like his teacher, was all about the nature of dialectic and what
> might be gained in terms of human understanding through mastering the
> method. Was writing down those examples of dialectic inquiry useful in
> expanding human understanding? Was it useful in expanding the manipulation
> of human understanding? Was it to posterity a gift and a bane alike? Maybe
> it depends on who reads Plato, and how.