Re Plato essay

[Bled Welder]

My pleasure, master Ian.

On Tue, Jan 22, 2013 at 12:12 AM, Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>wrote:

> 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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