Re Plato essay

[Ian Livingston]

Why, thank you.


On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 7:52 PM, Bled Welder <bledwelder at gmail.com> wrote:

> By the bye, your pseudonym is terrific.
>
> "he successfully showed that pure reason leads both to absurdity and to
> valuable insight."
>
> That is money.  If you came up with that on your own, which I trust you
> did, that is well done indeed.
>
> 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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