Dipping into a book by Plato of early Socratic Dialogues yesterday. First impressions:
Watch in awe as our master of reason, in tedious fashion about some inane subject, outsmarts an idiot.
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7 comments:
Yes, I liked a comment in an earlier posting from you: "You're a far higher class of conversationalist than those Plato employed." Perhaps Socrates was just a very intimidating individual (it's known he was v ugly and was remarkably strong anyway) or maybe he was doing something or threatening something awful to them while applying his 'elenchus'. Perhaps people just felt it would be over quicker if they just went along with it.
And while of course not condoning, one might have some sympathy and understanding for the death sentence employed..."look lads, I know it's terrible, but it's our last resort. Life is becoming unbearable. A fellow's afraid to walk the streets without getting accosted by this ugly smartarse, and his lickspittle, that fella with the pen & notebook... Plato? Yeay, that's the chap."
Makes me think of David's death of Socrates, always thought there was something implausible/suspicious about the way eveyone's wringing their hands. Plato (the one at the end of the bed) looks like he's thinking, "God please let him just shut up and drink it".
Wittgenstein thought exactly the same thing. i like Plato's middle dialogues best - Phaedrus & Symposium are more like poetical Borgesian fables than anything else. His animus against poets in the Republic is amusing given how poetical Plato is, when he's good.
You can read his other works with some profit if you imagine the context - that he was writing when philosophy per se didn't really exist. Some of what he said must have seemed astounding then, but just seems pointless now.
I'd guessed the context in that light...alluded to with the watch in awe at the master of reason...that the point of the discussions being a showcase for this marvellous new rational world. I'd probably tie in with the Cynic & Tolstoy piece, regarding a fair degree of scepticism about this brave new world. Slightly related aside- Huxley makes the point in interview that the Corybantic dances would have done an awful lot more for the general well-being than the various philosophers' musings... I'd imagine most academics aren't particularly comfortable with the notion of ecstatic physical/spiritual experience on a dance-floor.
I'm an academic happy to have ectastic experiences anywhere...
Ah but you're obviously a dangerously dysfunctional academic. Some day people are gonna see thru your cover, & then it's back to digging ditches.
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