From: Elizaphanian (elizaphanian@tiscali.co.uk)
Date: Sat Feb 08 2003 - 13:09:34 GMT
Hiya Squonk, (welcome back - you still seem incorrigibly rude, but that's
your style and you're free to choose it)
Plato is our main source for Socratic method - whether we call it irony,
elenchus or dialectic I think you're being Jesuitical about the distinction.
(In other words, do you mean that the dramatic form of dialogue was Plato's
invention? Agreed. Is the mode of philosophical argumentation invented by
Plato? I disagree.) Plato's views on the good came later - they were
attempts to answer what Socrates had started. My point is about the Socratic
beginning; to be specific, the search for definitions of ethical terms.
The Athenian polis was run by such thugs that lovers of free speech flocked
there from all across Greece. The real thugs were the pro-Spartan autocrats
who overthrew the democracy, who took sustenance from the Socratic attack on
Athenian values, and who were the cause of Socrates' trial. IMHO Socrates
bears some responsibility for the subsequent execution.
The Platonic conception of love involved taking children away from their
natural parents and teaching them to deny the body, focussing instead on the
intellectual ascent to the Forms. Ultimate source of all totalitarian
societies - that's why the Nazi's welcomed study of Plato in their
textbooks.
Sam
"I am not altogether on anybody's side, because nobody is altogether on my
side, if you understand me... And there are some things, of course, whose
side I'm altogether not on; I am against them altogether." -- Treebeard
> Hello there,
> Socrates used elenchus and not dialectic. Dialectic is Plato's invention.
> The good cannot be defined and this is explicitly stated by Plato in The
> Republic.
> However, the good is the source of everything and as such begins to sound
> like Quality; it is those later thinkers who wished to use the
transcendent
> for their own social purposes that cause perturbation and despair.
> The Athenian polis was run by thugs, and Plato simply wished for these
> individuals to love each other. He wished for them to 'beget in love'
visions
> of how things ought to be when we look the absolute in the face and
delight
> in its presence.
>
> Squonk.
>
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