Re Plato essay

[Bled Welder]

One other thing, in passing, I'm obviously on an email rampage today, which
reminds me, an old, old friend, my age we just go way back, he wrote me,
out of the fucking blue, a couple days ago, normally (go figure!) I write
and hassle him with shit and he just kindly responds, but I gave up on him,
then a two, three months later, he wrote me.  And I have to respond, I want
to, I love the guy, but I can't find his mail.  I guess, I guess, because I
remember the mail, and I know his mail address, I could just respond
without his mail.  Or is there some other deeper reason I'm not
responding...?

Fuck it, he's a lunatic.  Actually he's not.  He's what in America is
called, kickass fabulous perfect guy who everyone adores.  But he knows
what Truth is, and he knows an overman when he sees one..  Plus we've known
each other for 25 years.  When you drop acid with a guy and hit bongs the
size of cars, with him, and discuss the horseshit of Christianity, and the
meaninglessness of existence, then both come to believe that planets move,
and are conscious, you know, this shit becomes ingrained.

What was i on about. Oh, Plato.  Imagine, I have this in my brain now,
imagine looking into Plato's eyes.  After, 2300 years later.  Sitting down,
at his table.  And looking into his eyes.

Who *was *he?  Who was Aristotle?  Who was....Imhotep?  Who was Alexander?
 Why did Alexander go to the Oracle of Amon, in Siwa?  Why did he die at
the age of 33?  Why, this is loony, but why are there 33 degrees to the
Masterclass?  Why do Fifths, and Octaves, *never meet*?  Why is there that
division, 1.0136, the Comma of Pythagoras, *everywhere*, in the Giza
plateau?

Why do Americans refuse to believe this?  Something about *mass hypnosis?*

On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 9:33 PM, Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>wrote:

> Well, I still consider the Republic an exercise rather than a
> prescription. Plato again shows how dialectic follows the course of
> divisions in search of universals and the greatest good. I'd have to look
> in his eyes and hear him say he wanted to keep the women and children
> separate from the men to actually believe he meant that as a prescription.
> Then there is his ranking of vocations, in which politicians are ranked
> somewhere below the outhouse seating. In all, I think he successfully
> showed that pure reason leads both to absurdity and to valuable insight.
>
> On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 1:34 PM, Markekohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> Plato is worth a lot of words. but some of them MUST be that he was a
>> crypto-fascist ( or worse) in The Republic and he wanted to banish writers
>> and other artists cause they made citizens think, roiled emotions and
>> otherwise brought chaos to that Republic.
>>
>>
>> Sent from my iPad
>>
>> On Jan 21, 2013, at 1:41 PM, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> > 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.
>>
>
>
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