Up@dawn 2.0

Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Socrates & Plato

Quiz, Sep 9/10
podcast

1. (T/F) For Socrates, a conversation that ended in everyone realizing how little they knew was a failure.

2. (T/F) For Socrates, wisdom consists in knowing lots of facts.

3. Plato's parable of the cave was intended to illustrate the distinction between appearance and reality, and to introduce his Theory of ______.

4.Does M.M.McCabe prefer to teach by lecturing Socratically?

5. Who said Eros is the search for your other half?

6. What's good about Plato's concept of Eros as contemplation of the Form of Beauty, according to Angie Hobbs? OR, What's bad about it?


DQS:
1. Do you think the point of conversation is mainly to demonstrate that you already know what you're talking about, or that someone or other in the discussion does? How else might it be possible to think about philosophical conversations?

(If you're discussing politics, religion, ethics, metaphysics, science-vs.-superstition, or some other Big Question, do you presume that one of you is right and everyone else is wrong? Do you consider that you all may be partly right and partly wrong? Do you expect to gain from such conversations or do you shun them? What would Socrates say?)

2. Can an ignorant person be wise? Can a knowledgeable person be ignorant?

3. Do you think ordinary life is a misleading appearance, and reality something most of us fail to perceive? Why or why not? How should we go about seeking to discover reality, if it is in fact elusive?

4. Do you like sitting and listening to long speeches, sermons, and lectures? Do you get more out of them than you do from conversations with your peers? What do you see as the benefit or the deficiency of Socratic dialogue?

5. What's your definition of love? Are you looking for your perfect match? What makes for a good marriage or relationship?

6. Do you like Plato's concept of Eros as Perfect Disembodied Love? Why or why not?
==
Western philosophy began well before Socrates, but we'll leave the pre-Socratics to themselves for now and pretend that Socrates was indeed the first (western) philosopher. We'll also soft-pedal Bertrand Russell's judgment (later shared by Izzy Stone) that the Platonic Socrates is "dishonest and sophistical in argument... smug and unctuous... not scientific in his thinking... [guilty of] treachery to truth" and so on. If the esteemed Socrates-as-paragon and personification of intellectual integrity ("I'd rather die than give up my philosophy" etc.) didn't exist we'd have had to invent him. Perhaps Plato did.

In the southern part of Europe is a little country called Greece… the Greeks have lived in it for more than three thousand years. In olden times they believed that before they came to the land it was the home of the gods, and they used to tell wonderful stories


And then Socrates came along to challenge some of those stories. (There actually were some important pre-Socratics like Thales and Democritus already challenging what everybody knew, but we’re jumping ahead in our Little History.) And that’s why, from a western philosopher’s point of view, the Greeks matter.

The old Parthenon must have been lovely, but I think ours is prettier nowadays. And btw, our Parthenon's city ("The Athens of the South") is hot (as in cool) lately.

[There's a new theory about the old Parthenon, btw. "Horses and riders, youths and elders, men and women, animals being led to sacrifice: What is the Parthenon’s frieze telling us?"... more]

Socrates, from Alopece, near Athens, asked a lot of questions. Like Gilda Radner's Roseanne Roseannadanna. Like Bertrand Russell:

Bertrand Russell ‏@B_RussellQuotesJan 31

In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.

Did curiosity kill the philosopher? No, a narrow plurality of 500 jurors did. (His unrepentant attitude during sentencing didn't help, either.) They convicted him of "impiety" (atheism) and corrupting the youth of Athens. One more reason I'm lucky to live in the 21st century: I don't like hemlock. I'm like Woody Allen, that way. (But if shocking new allegations are true, hemlock may be too good for him.) Steve Martin (did I mention that he was a philosophy major?) had a go at it too. Here's a good Discussion Question: what would you do, in Socrates' cell?


He was “snub-nosed, podgy, shabby and a bit strange,” says our text. "He was ugly," says podcastee Mary McCabe. But brilliant and charismatic too, as gadflies go. Said he had nothing to teach, but those around him (including young Plato) said they learned plenty from him, especially how

to discuss with others in this open-minded, open-ended way that allows them to reflect on what they think and us to reflect on what we think, without dictating, without dogma, without insistence, and without imperative... to be true to themselves: to be sincere about their beliefs and to be honest... and to have some respect for their companion.

If that's not good teaching, what is?

The annotated and hyperlinked Last Days of Socrates is a gripping and inspiring tale, whether or not its hero was really as heroic through all the days of his life as Plato and his other admirers would have us believe. The honored pedestal version of this gadfly remains a worthy ideal for philosophy.

"Plato, they say, could stick it away..." -they being Monty Python. And the late great Hitch sang it too, sorta. But Plato was a serious and sober fellow, in Reality, usually capitalizing that word to distinguish it from mere appearance. The everyday world is not at all what it appears to be, he said. If you want Truth and Reality and the Good, get out of your cave and go behold the Forms. He seemed to think that’s what his hero Socrates had done. I’m not so sure. But read the relevant Platonic dialogues telling the tragic and inspiring story of the last days of Socrates and see what you think.


He also had interesting thoughts about love and eros, as expressed through his constant dialogue character "Socrates" (who may or may not have spoken faithfully for his martyred namesake) in Symposium. Angie Hobbs says Plato rejected Aristophanes' mythic notion that we all have one unique other "half," formerly parts of our hermaphroditic spherical selves, that would complete us and make us happy. But he defended a view some of us find equally implausible, the idea that the true and highest love spurns (or spins upward from) particular persons and embraces the Form of Beauty.


The Form of Beauty "is always going to be there for you," but on the other hand "it's never going to love you back." Unrequited affection is hardly what most of us think of as Perfect Love. There's a myth for you. This really was an early foreshadowing of the phenomenon recently deplored in the Stone, our modern turn to abstraction and virtual experience in lieu of immediacy and reality and touch. ("Losing Our Touch", nyt). Reminds me, too, of Rebecca Goldstein's Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away.

We romantics (as Angie Hobbs pronounces herself, and as I confess to being too) should know better than to seek a perfect match. We should know better than to think that any enduring relationship can be wholly free of "pain, fragility, and transience." Those are inevitable parts of the story and the glory of human (as against Ideal, Platonic, Perfect) love, no? Just ask Cecil the Butler about Sidney Poitier.

One more thing about Plato, that will be important for understanding how his pupil Aristotle came to differ from his teacher: the famous Allegory of the Cave from Book VII of Plato's Republic.

12 comments:

  1. Anonymous10:19 PM CDT

    (8) Karol Saleh
    when i was reading about the true happiness by Aristotle, he said "this brings out well his idea that happiness is not just a matter of how you fell. Happiness in this sense is your overall achievement in life, something that can be affected by what happens to others you care about." it explain that happiness not depends on small things but it depends with your overall achievement in life. always work hard to make your life have some happiness. and this i always do.

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  2. Anonymous1:43 PM CDT

    Eli Price
    I think it's odd of Plato to develop his Theory of Forms, and then go on to establish his model for Athenian society in The Republic. For someone who thought life was equivalent to shadows dancing on the wall, he seemed quite sure that he, as a philosopher, deserved to hold absolute power by force over the citizens of Athens. Banning artwork as false interpretations of reality, contradictory to Forms? Sounds like he was exempt from his own rules. While I enjoy reading about his ideas, some of his logic seems overtly self-serving.

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  3. Socrates had a very different way of thinking when it came to the meaning of love and its importance in life. The value of certain things are different in every person, and it is interesting to hear how others can make you think outside the box.

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  4. Haley Harwell3:38 PM CDT

    Section 12. In our group (Mikey, Vanessa, and myself), two of us decided that you can be ignorant and be wise, and one of us decided that you can't. To me, ignorance isn't a negative term, it's just acknowledgement that you don't know about something but you're willing to learn.

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  5. Anonymous3:46 PM CDT

    #12 kali recorder Lucus score keeper Kaitlin moderater
    No one is without Scott and smart people can be cocky

    ReplyDelete
  6. (8) Janet Peoples.
    My definition of love where your completely faithful and will do whatever for who family or whoever you are in a relationship with. The perfect match to me is where you love everything about that person and would do anything to keep them happy. You work through everything and never give up. To make a marriage/relationship to turn into something good is to be completely honest and faithful with the other person. You go out of your way to make that person happy.

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  7. Anonymous9:18 PM CDT

    #11 mw 4:10-5:35
    sierra cox, rushdi alltasah, arol zague, grady burnham, and brad parsley.
    our groups combined to discuss how we view love, we discussed how love is one of the strong emotions and that there are different types of love. we also continued to say that love can be presented in loyalty. love is something that you want to be forever and can devastate you when gone. We also had another discussion about the soul. We came to the conclusion that your soul could be an energy and how it can lead you to what truly interest you in life. a statement we thought that could describe what our soul really stood for was "you stand for something or fall for nothing."

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  8. Anonymous9:28 PM CDT

    Mariem Farag #12
    2. Can an ignorant person be wise? Can a knowledgeable person be ignorant?
    It's extremely difficult, and can even be merely impossible, for an ignorant person to be wise. Wisdom requires an open-mind and understanding of differences around us. Wisdom is huge, and unfortunately, many of us lack wisdom. It is not impossible for a knowledgeable person to be ignorant. As a matter of fact, many well educated people are extremely ignorant. No amount of knowledge can prevent ignorance. You can't change someone that cannot see anything wrong with their ignorance. Ignorance is such an ugly characteristic to have, and it can never be cleared up if one has not realized its affects on society.

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  9. karol saleh section 8.
    5. What's your definition of love? Are you looking for your perfect match? What makes for a good marriage or relationship?
    Love can be defined as you always take care of someone and always try to makes him/her happy. The only thing that a good relationship must have even with marriage is respect and love. Without this two things, even you tried hard, it wouldn't work.

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  10. (#8)
    1. Do you think the point of conversation is mainly to demonstrate that you already know what you're talking about, or that someone or other in the discussion does? How else might it be possible to think about philosophical conversations?
    I believe in most conversations people think that their stance on a topic is correct, so yes they automatically think that they know what they are talking about, but the desire to hear someone's opinion is present too. Even though we may believe the other person is incorrect in their stance within the conversation, we enjoy the discussion aspect and in the end even turning the other person's perspective around. Other ways to think about philosophical conversations would be the different approaches people use to discuss their topic. Also, the person's tone and relating that to wether the person is there is persuade someone or just give a statement.

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  11. (#8 TR)
    • Elsbeth
    • Kyler
    • Morgan
    • Nicholas
    • Whitney

    5. What's your definition of love? Are you looking for your perfect match? What makes for a good marriage or relationship?

    Our group came to a very solid consensus of what love and marriage are. We all believed that there isn’t really someone out there for everyone. Elsbeth talked about a coworker’s ideal person (some of those ideals he doesn’t even adhere to) and how if someone didn’t meet his standards he would just end it right there. We agreed that love is very hard to define, if it has a definition at all. Love is a feeling, but even that can’t last forever. Once that initial “honeymoon” phase ends both members need to have a common place. I know for myself that is my number one thing I am looking for, I enjoy certain activities and having relations with someone who doesn’t is unappealing. From conversations in the past with people in my generation the far majority share the same ideals, whether that is the progressiveness of millennials or a consequence of our parents’ relationships is up to debate. It very well could be both!

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  12. (#8) In response to DQ5, I think that love is defined as a feeling of attachment to a person(s). This goes beyond the idea of sexual attachment and leans more towards the bigger picture of emotional attachment. As far as what makes a marriage or relationship "healthy," I would have to say trust and genuineness. I am definitely NOT looking for my perfect match right now as I am only 20 years old! But hey, who knows?

    ReplyDelete

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