What is "the examined life"?
In another thread about the importance of psychology, I stated that the examined life is of importance to Socrates in that it may lead to various terms that lead to a better life. Such terms can be called, "enlightened", "rational", "virtuous".
Yet, without context these terms are ambiguous in terms of living an examined life. If we to take what Socrates said as important to ourselves, then what does it mean to live an examined life, as surely it is to our benefit to do so?
Do you think it boils down to ethics again? How so?
Yet, without context these terms are ambiguous in terms of living an examined life. If we to take what Socrates said as important to ourselves, then what does it mean to live an examined life, as surely it is to our benefit to do so?
Do you think it boils down to ethics again? How so?
Comments (380)
I think I left it too straightforward. When living the examined life what ought one be concerned about it? One's place in the world or their intelligence or their wealth?
Or more technically, what kind of analysis or even methodology should a person incorporate when doing this examination? Isn't it really psychoanalysis?
Contemplation seems to be the natural arising thought in regards to the issue. So, what kind of contemplation?
Yes, but I'm assuming your a little older than the inquisitive few youngsters around here for them to not want to commit mistakes in life and make it a fun one at the same time.
What would you tell them to work on to live an examined life?
A few years ago I bought and read a book by Stephen Grosz, called, 'The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves'. It was mainly a collection of psychological case studies, with the author being a psychoanalyst. I think that the idea of the 'examined life' is an approach which begins from the starting point of the importance of self knowledge, which incorporates aspects of psychology and, as @DingoJones points out, the centrality of reflection. This can be seen as a starting point for philosophy, including ethics, but with an emphasis on understanding the self, and subjectivity being at the core.
It goes back to Socrates, but has moved on into psychoanalysis and cognitive behavioral therapy, as well as counselling. I remember having some counselling when I was an adolescent by a pastoral counsellor, who used to keep stressing that, 'You have to lose yourself to find yourself'. But, when he went on further, I found this counsellor's philosophy was about the importance of losing one's own individuality in order to conform. I came to the view that finding one's own pathway, even though it often involves getting lost, or facing obstacles, can be extremely important, as both a psychological and philosophy quest.
I guess to apply reason, draw conclusions by taking small steps and to maintain an open mind but not so open your brain falls out.
And to just stop and think. Stop and think often.
There are a couple of philosophical works on ‘the metaphysics of morals’. One is by Kant, it’s the central text of his deontological ethics. Another is by Iris Murdoch, which I’ve been informed of on this forum, but haven’t yet read. But the question is, why does the subject exist? Why should morals be a matter of metaphysics?
I think the short answer is that it involves the requirement to ground morality in something other than one’s personal or cultural beliefs. It involves questions of whether there is a real good, independently of one’s opinions about it, or cultural beliefs about it. And it’s a surprisingly hard question to answer without falling back on ‘I believe that…’
I’ve been participating in the thread on the Phaedo, which is one of the dialogues concerned with this question, set in the hours leading up to Socrates death. The subject is the immortality of the soul and various objections to it by Socrates’ interlocutors. The point for this thread in particular, is in Socrates’ attempts to discern the reality the ideas of the good and the beautiful. This in turn is animated by the belief that things are naturally arranged for the best - the form of the good is the underlying rationale for why things are this way.
In such dialogues, the examination of one’s assumptions, what you will accept to be true, is the basic task of philosophy. It can be presumed not to do that, is to live heedlessly, carelessly, unknowingly. But the key point is, in Platonic terms, this is grounded in an acceptance of a real good, understood as the idea of the good, in harmony with which the philosopher seeks to live.
The examined life seems to me to be about something a 20s person is not concerned about at their age. It seems more aligned with a concern about ones future instead of past nowadays. I would say that the advice you got doesn't necessarily mean that much apart from the need to analyze yourself after being situated in the world after one comes to understand one's place in it. To navigate requires, I think, a need to see past immediate needs and wants, and instead do a cost benefit or even game theoretic analysis. That's how I governed my own life as seeing under the guise of common rationality where I would successfully be able to perform the needs required. Testing for intelligence seems important...
Well, yes, isn't this Kant all over again?
Quoting Wayfarer
Kant could come up with much. But, an intelligent chap might say that utilitarianism does away with this by incorporating axiology into the hedonic calculus of the substituting for "I believe that..." with "It's of preference to do... (xyz)"
Quoting Wayfarer
But, the concern of the good must come first, no?
I'm not sure how to go about this. It seems to me something someone would say of an animal or domesticated pig.
Nice.
Tangential perhaps but I come at this from 30 years of working in the area of addiction and mental health services. A key responsibility for sustaining any worker who is supporting people in crisis - suicidal ideation, sexual abuse, substance misuse, psychosis- is reflective practice. The worker who doesn't examine their own assumptions about themselves (their understanding of meaning and culture for instance) while they assist others may (amongst other problematic end results) succumb to burn out. This leads to harm as the worker projects their own issues upon the client. You are there to do 'good', not work through your own needs on others. In short; examining yourself - being aware of the systems you and the person you are supporting are in, and the beliefs that underpin your choices and actions - is just as beneficial to others as it is to yourself.
A pig would just squeal or oink itself out of a situation. A squeaky wheel gets the grease as they say.
Jumping off the deep end, some downtrodden antinatalist folk will say that living itself is painful and ought not be promoted. What kind of life is that?
Quoting Wayfarer
:up: :up:
This isn't as simple as an acceptance of the good as through observation but was cultivated through the academia and supremely by the noetic faculties of one's mind. Children had to be reared and drilled to see this through their own intellect or noesis and understanding.
What I suppose what we have nowadays is the practice of aesthetical judgment by a unit of value that encompasses axiology. And to drive this home is that we have an idiocy in determining a common consensus of the good nowadays, by this method.
There's a term in Indian philosophy, 'viveka' which means 'Sense of discrimination; wisdom; discrimination between the real and the unreal, between the self and the non-self, between the permanent and the impermanent; discriminative inquiry; right intuitive discrimination; ever present discrimination between the transient and the permanent' [sup] 1 [/sup]. This is strongly reminiscent of the discussion of the discernment of the Forms in the Phaedo.
The difficulty modernism has with such ideas is caused by the lack of recognition of universal ideas. As a consequence, ideas are subjectivised and relativised - they are always someone's ideas, either society's or yours or mine. As such, they're always veering close to what Platonic philosophy would categorise as opinion. ('Oh yeah? You say it's that? Well, I say it's this.') Whereas, in modern thinking, those things that are *not* matters of opinion, are only those things that are amenable to measurement and quantification by way of the natural sciences.
Russell has a good discussion of the character of universal ideas:
[quote=Betrand Russell, The World of Universals; https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5827/5827-h/5827-h.htm#link2HCH0009]It is largely the very peculiar kind of being that belongs to universals which has led many people to suppose that they are really mental. We can think of a universal, and our thinking then exists in a perfectly ordinary sense, like any other mental act. Suppose, for example, that we are thinking of whiteness. Then in one sense it may be said that whiteness is 'in our mind'. ...In the strict sense, it is not 'whiteness' that is in our mind, but 'the act of thinking of whiteness'. The connected ambiguity in the word 'idea' ...also causes confusion here. In one sense of this word, namely the sense in which it denotes the object of an act of thought, whiteness is an 'idea'. Hence, if the ambiguity is not guarded against, we may come to think that whiteness is an 'idea' in the other sense, i.e. an act of thought; and thus we come to think that whiteness is mental [and so, particular to one or another mind, 'only in the mind']. But in so thinking, we rob it of its essential quality of universality. One man's act of thought is necessarily a different thing from another man's; one man's act of thought at one time is necessarily a different thing from the same man's act of thought at another time. Hence, if whiteness were the thought as opposed to its object, no two different men could think of it, and no one man could think of it twice. That which many different thoughts of whiteness have in common is their object, and this object is different from all of them. Thus universals are not thoughts, though when known they are the objects of thoughts.[/quote]
So you can see how this plays out in modern thought: what had been previously accepted as universal ideas, which formed the basis of standards of morality, now become privatised, subjectivised, and relativised, because there's no analogy for them in much of modern philosophy. Meanwhile the only real basis for public standards are then thought to be provided by the sciences, which, however, due to the 'is/ought' divide, can't directly play a role in adjuticating such issues. (Not that it stops a lot of people from trying.)
My interpretation of "an examined life" is 'unlearning misery as a way of life', as an endless, sisyphusean task (i.e. self-overcoming).
Yes, insofar as the function of ethics is reflective inquiry into (as well as empirical studies and artistic expressions of) practices which prevent increasing or reduce misery (harm, dehumanization) of others in order, more likely than not, to prevent increasing or reduce one's own misery. Thus, Hillel the Elder's "That which is hateful to you, do not do to anyone" (Confucius also expressed this centuries earlier) whereby "hateful" is synonymous with harmful.
Quoting Shawn
Paying attention to one's own biases and assumptions as a matter of course first and foremost. And also refrain from being an asshole on that account.
Cultivate solitude :death: and solidarity :flower: against misery / injustice in whatever forms as much as each day allows or requires; which is easier said then done, of course, although helped considerably by simply living now-here (traveling light, going slow, sleeping easy).
Domesticated pigs don't examine their lives. Does that make the pigs' life not worth living? The pig doesn't think so as it keeps on striving to live and avoid harm and stress instinctively.
Examine one's life is only something humans do, but as shown by the pig, has no bearing on whether or not a life is worth living or not.
Define "ethics". If ethics encompasses how you treat others besides just yourself wouldn't that mean that you'd need to examine everyone else's life to know if their life is worth living? And for those whose life that you determine aren't worth living, what do you do with the results of that examination?
I feel it more boils down to one's own value in life, rather than ethics. Depending on the value of one's life, the idea, nature and act of examining will be formed more clearly.
The question I was considering was whether the unlived life is worth examining. Of course animals live their lives; consider the question I asked earlier: What could it mean to say that an animal doesn't live its life?
Animals probably don't examine their lives, either, so that begs the question; are their lives worth living? That question seems irrelevant to the life of an animal, since to ask that question would be to examine their life, which we assume they cannot do.
Now we seem to have arrived back at the first question: is an unexamined human life worth living?, What if the examination interferes with the living? Then the life is not even lived, much less worth living. What if a life is both lived and examined? That would seem to be the richest possibility.
Quoting Shawn
If ethics consists at its most basic in the question: How should I live? then it would seem that the questions of whether the unexamined life is worth living and whether the unlived life is worth examining are indeed ethical questions.
They're silly questions. I interpret "unlived" to mean non-existent, as in to examine a life that doesn't exist. It doesn't make sense to say that one can not live one's life as you are always living your life, even when examining it.
Quoting Janus
The question assumes that a unexamined life isn't worth living. All you have to do it point to the billions of organisms that don't examine their lives and each continues to strive to live. From there, you should be asking to who, or what, is any particular life worth living. I don't see why any life's worth should be determined by some other life's examination, as if that was their life instead of the one that they have. Should you be determining whether some life, other than your own, is worth living or not, examined or not?
Quoting Janus
I would have to ask, what qualifies as a proper examination?
The second question is another silly question as I pointed out before, you are always living your life, even when examining it. Human beings are inquisitive and examining nature to figure out how it works is as much human behavior as rolling around in mud is a pig's behavior.
Well, you could pick up a cheap women's magazine, and find there instructions on how to contemplate one's life, how to examine it, but you'd probably disagree with the criteria for examination listed or implied there. You could also look into the Catholic method of the Daily Examen, and find it lacking, or too tendentious.
The idea of the "examined life" is that is is examined by particular criteria, but which are not universal.
Its the thought that counts.
If he had said, "the untested life is not worth living" would it have been any clearer to anyone? One pontificates to ones hearts content on a philosophy forum about what is right and what is rational, and what is wise. Test it against your life! Bet the farm on your philosophy! That's how I understand the examined life. Test your pacifism in a conflict, and if it sustains you there, it is worth something, and if it falls by the wayside when life gets difficult then it is worthless. Or your courage, or your wisdom or your intelligence or whatever... The Socratic politic was tested in court, and the value of his his life was proved by his death. A life of ease is never tested, and thus never [s]valued[/s] evaluated.
You would need to have some familiarity with the existentialists and phenomenologists to understand what it could mean to fail to live your life. You strike me as someone who has read little philosophical literature and on account of that fails to show much nuanced understanding, and is thus given to making inapt comments.
The most universal criteria for examining whether or not you are living your life is the question of whether or not you have the courage to own your fears and failings, and do your best to overcome them. It is, as Jaspers put it, "the loving struggle to become who you are".
That is a tough measure. But there it is.
Quoting Janus
So it is your position that existentialists and phenomenologists are the ones that determine whether any life is worth living? Is this who examines your life to make this determination?
I think reading too much philosophical literature is a waste of time, as most of it is just obfuscating for the purpose of selling books. I find that thinking logically is all that is needed and for that, reading computer programming books and trying your hand at computer programming would do you well, or else you fail to show much reasonable understanding, and thus given to asking silly questions.
Ohhhkay. This confesses much. :zip:
The fact that you are disagreeing with logic as necessary component of reasonable discourse, or conflating the use of logic and being programmed, confesses much.
Well I hate to bring up a methodology by name being hammered out (upon) elsewhere, but the examination (contemplation) of ordinary thresholds and procedures (criteria) in contexts, for, as an example: an excuse, teaches us about ourselves (our actions) and how we take responsibility and avoid it, etc. The further argument, by Wittgenstein among others, is this makes one a better person, or able to see (be enlightened as to) where our part comes in (what virtue is). Socrates, unfortunately, was only looking for one (kind of) answer, rather than necessary for each practice (concept) in its own way.
And your misread of the post you were replying to stated that not reading to much, as opposed to not reading at all, philosophy is a good thing. My point, that your post doesn't address, is that philosophy itself has made the assertion that most of the problems in philosophy are the result of a misuse of natural semantics.
"Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language."
Wittgenstein
https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/09/take-a-wittgenstein-class-he-explains-the-problems-of-translating-language-computer-science-and-artificial-intelligence.html
Tell that to yourself next time when you're hungry.
This sounds like something out of an American self-help book, and certainly not universal.
I'm taking a snippet from the Apology that you're referencing:
What do you gather from that about the unexamined life?
The lesson I take away, in contrast to an unexamined life (of common sense), is that the "examined life" isn't worth living for a poor man who also lacks the good sense to shut up and ignore his voices when it's appropriate – wise – to do so (re: good sense e.g. Aristotle fled Athens, Galileo recanted before the Holy Inquisition).
This is very general. You could say this same thing about Hitler and about Mother Theresa, for example. Or the Dalai Lama. They all live(d) examined lives.
You could, I wouldn't.
Note I said "most universal" not 'only or absolutely universal'. I meant universal in the sense of general. Do you have a criticism of those criteria, instead of a caricature? Can you outline alternatives that are as or more universal?
I had or have a lot of sympathy for the idea that Socrates was simply too idealistic, but I think I have become more sympathetic to Socrates, over time. After all, if you are an old man who has no money and knows you will continue to aggravate [s]the youth[/s] against the established order, no matter where you go -- and you know that silence, on your part at least, is not attainable (cuz the gods/goods told ya it's good to talk about what's good) -- then perhaps it is better to die, because you realize that no matter which city you go to you will end up the same. Might as well die now, as a martyr, than later, as a prisoner.
Viveka in the Greek tradition is diakrisis.
In Plato’s Sophist it is compared to the acts of “sifting”, “straining”, “winnowing” and “separating” and it is the basis for purification of body and soul:
For Socrates (and Plato), the examined life is a constant examination of our beliefs and actions for the purpose of establishing what is true, good, and just.
Awareness of justice or righteousness (dikaiosyne) enables the philosopher to always act in ways that are good for himself and others.
And the faculty by which one distinguishes between what is right and what is wrong is diakrisis, “judgement”, “discrimination”, “discernment”.
Both “righteousness” and “discrimination” passed into the Christian tradition. The Church Fathers taught that “discrimination is a kind of eye and lantern of the soul”, “mother of the virtues and their guardian”, “queen among the virtues”, etc.
:rofl:
I was simply reiterating a point made by a philosopher, something that you say that I need to read more of. So you're saying that Witt is making hasty generalizations, when other philosophers, like Russell, praised Witt's statement that I quoted as
"the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived, passionate, profound, intense, and dominating."
So now Russell and Witt are philosophically sub-literate spaghetti coders? Who needs to read more or less philosophy again?
"I think everyone should learn how to program a computer because it teaches you how to think".
-Steve Jobs
I leave it to you argue with the likes of Wittgenstein, Russell and Jobs because you simply can't be depended on to be consistent and intellectually honest.
Then it begs the question of what is truth, morality and justice? That is something that needs to be examined. If they are subjective aspects of our consciousness then it is impossible to always act in ways that are always good for yourself and others. What you consider good might not be examined and interpreted in the same way as someone else. Just the fact that there are so many people in the world that believe that their personal examinations of their life indicates that it would be good and righteous to tell others how to live their lives and define for others what is good and righteous. Many people aren't happy unless they are able to dictate to others how to live their lives.
Philosophers make a lot of statements that sound nice, but fall apart when examined and integrated with the rest of what we know and don't know. I think Dennett calls them "deepities".
Good point. The Eleatic Stranger in the Sophist says:
The Stranger does not care about what is good or just. His concern is only with regard to how these things are the same or different. He neglects what Socrates considers the most important distinctions. Such indifference makes the philosopher indistinguishable from the sophist. And yet, the Stranger himself frequently makes the same distinctions he says of are no concern.
Well, doing what is good for oneself and for others is the general idea. What this means in practice remains to be determined in each particular instance.
However, to begin with, it means acting in accordance with established custom, laws, etc. Athens had a legal system. Murder, theft, adultery, perjury, slander, blasphemy, etc., were punishable by law. So, moral conduct was not subjective.
Examining your beliefs and actions would mean first of all looking into whether your actions are in accordance with law and custom, that is, in accordance with what is generally held to be right, just, or good. Beyond that, everyone has to use their intelligence, knowledge, and power of discrimination to decide on a case to case basis.
The alternative to acting in ways that are good for yourself and for others is either (1) to act selfishly or (2) act in ways that are bad not only for others but also for yourself.
The Stranger's method abstracts from value, it treats such differences as the same. Socrates too uses this method, but Socrates' divisions are not the same as the Stranger's. The method of division can treat different things as the same as well as things that are the same as different. The question then is in what way these things are the same or different and with regard to what?
What the method cannot do is evaluate. It cannot distinguish good from bad, just from unjust, noble or ignoble. The examined life requires more than a method of division. In fact, without consideration of the good and just and noble, division itself can lead to doing what is bad and unjust and ignoble.
I agree. But I think Socrates' problem was not so much aggravating the youth as was annoying the old :smile:
Why not? I summon you to clarify your criteria for what type of examination counts as proper examination, and what doesn't.
Because your earlier formula is too general, it applies both the likes of, say, Hitler, and to the Dalai Lama.
You need to be more specific, so that your formula cannot be applied to what would generally be considered cases of psychopathology.
Quoting Fooloso4
Exactly.
Now, the question is, what in particular is good, just, and noble.
Correct. You need to start from a general principle that you then apply on a case-to-case basis to particular situations as evaluated on their own merits.
Socrates (or Plato) chose to start from the idea of the Good from which flow truth, order, justice, beauty, etc. This isn't a bad start, if we think about it. It certainly isn't "skepticism" or "nihilism".
You summon me?
Quoting baker
Socratic philosophy is not formulaic. It is about the development of phronesis.
Quoting baker
And that is why it cannot be reduced to a formula. Each case, each particular, must be examined as to whether it should be regarded as such. But this cannot be done with also questioning what the good, and just, and noble are. Socrates was not satisfied with what is said to be good, just, and noble, he spent his life inquiring about such things.
Quoting DingoJones
I agree.
BTW, I am new here and I wanted to "upvote" your comment, so I clicked the flag icon, thinking I would be asked something or select an option. Nothing of all that. It just geyed out! I searched the place to find its meaning but in vain. What is it used for? I hope it does not mean something bad!
The flag is used to bring a post to the attention of a moderator, for when you notice someone breaking forum rules.
:100:
Ah, finally! Thanks. So it is a "bad" thing, i.e. a report on something considered bad!
I clicked on it only to see what it is and hopefully upvote your post. I expected to be asked something and be able to cancel it if it was a mistake! And the effect was the opposite! And it was too late. I couldn't "unflag" it! Horrible! They don't even mention anything about flagging anywhere! What administration is this?
Can you tell me please how can I remove/cancel this stupid and false flagging?
Thanks again.
Dont worry about it, it just brings a post to mod attention so they will have seen my flagged post and most likely ignore the flag after reading the post and seeing no rules breaches.
Thanks. That's better!
Now, since, as I understand, you are a moderator, how can one upvote a post (topic or comment)? I mean just upvote, w/o replying/commenting.
Im not a moderator. I think the up vote feature has been disabled.
OK. Thanks, @DingoJones!
Why shouldn't his count as an "examined life"?
What are the assumptions based on which it is assumed that someone like Hitler did not live an examined life?
I want you to spell out the assumptions you're working with. Ie. your assumptions about what it is that makes a life "examined".
I see now you meant 'universal' in that sense, not as in 'most present in various lists of criteria for how to examine one's life'.
Those seem to me to be two different questions. I do not think I can enumerate the assumptions I am working with, but they include the assumption that questions take priority over any answers that come up with and that both the questions and answers should remain open to revision. What makes a life examined is the continued practice of examination and the correction or amendment my thoughts and actions and attitudes when it seems appropriate.
Appropriate to what, by what standards?
Unfortunately, I don't know anything about Hitler's methods of self-examination. Assuming that he did spend quite a bit of time in self-examination as you say, it may perhaps be concluded that his self-examination was either insufficient or otherwise in some ways deficient. I would be unable to say more at this point without additional info, and I don't want to make things up.
So, the case may be that his life was not unexamined per se but only not rightly examined. That's the whole point of dikaiosyne or righteousness in Plato, to do things, including self-examination, rightly and in tune with the Just and the Good.
At any rate, the statement, "each case, each particular, must be examined as to whether it should be regarded as good, and just, and noble, and this cannot be done without also questioning what the good, and just, and noble are", sounds pretty nonsensical to me.
If you were to start questioning what the good and the just are every single time you had to think, say, or do anything, you would probably run the risk of developing a severe case of schizoaffective disorder or something of that nature.
Socrates' philosophy may not be formulaic, but when you spend all your life "inquiring about the good, the just, and the noble", then I think you must come to some conclusions, however provisional, and you must develop some principles and guidelines of proper conduct. Otherwise the whole enterprise would be a total waste of time if not worse.
I picked Hitler as an extreme example of someone who, by popular opinion, went horribly astray, but who, at the same time, cannot be said to be someone who was merely a robot without any self-awareness. For example, he carefully prepared his speeches and public appearances, and we can infer from that that he examined his life.
But the Nazis did believe that what they were doing was good, just, and noble.
Exactly. In the examination of one's life, there must be constants and variables, there can't be only variables. And the constants must not be mere meta things or generalities, in order to serve as a meaningful basis for self-examination.
Yes. The eternal search for truth, beauty, goodness. I agree.
Quoting baker
I've read a number of biographies of Hitler (whatever that's worth) and it does appear clear that Hitler spent many thousands of hours contemplating the classic themes - hence his obsession with culture, art, music, architecture, health, nobility, race. He might have been less than assiduous when it comes to reflecting upon 'goodness' but I believe he thought that this plans would lead to a greater good.
It would be strange for a person to pursue what they genuinely believe is bad. It's not clear it's even humanly possible to deliberately pursue the bad for the sake of the bad (to be differentiated from doing some bad things in the pursuit of the greater good).
It is not a matter of standards, but of consideration of the consequences for the well-being of myself and others. There is, however, always the possibility that I get it wrong, that what I thought would be of benefit caused more harm than good.
In order to measure these things empathy, compassion, and care are needed. In addition, self-knowledge is essential. Self-knowledge requires being honest with myself, knowing what I want and expect from myself, what I value, and what my motivations are.
Absolutely correct. This is why I do not believe for a moment that Socrates was a "skeptic" or "nihilist" and I believe that the likes of Leo Strauss and other anti-Platonists are simply delusional. On the contrary, I think what emerges from the dialogues is the image of a principled man who knew exactly what was right and what was wrong and always acted in accordance with what is good, as far as possible.
As for the Nazis, they may have believed that what they were doing was right, and some of the things they did may even have been right. But at the end of the day it is a matter of balance. Socrates believes in divine judgement in the afterlife and punishment or reward in accordance with one's actions as explained in the Phaedo. So what matters is the balance of your actions. If they were more bad than good, then you get judged and punished accordingly, period.
This is why for Socrates the first and chief concern in life should be for the highest welfare of the soul.
The soul must be made pure, virtuous, and wise, and this is done by ignoring material things as far as practicable and by developing the virtues of self-control, courage, prudence, righteousness, discernment, etc. And this means acting according to certain moral principles.
When you need to act, you act according to some principles, guidelines or rules. You don't act according to doubting and questioning unless there is something wrong with you. You act according to what you and your fellow citizens believe to be right. It may still turn out to be wrong, but that's the best you can do. You use right opinion (orthe doxa), reason (episteme), and personal experience (gnosis) to determine the best course of action. And hope for the best :smile:
Yes. I think the main reasoning there was political rather than ethical. And if it is true that Stalin was preparing to invade Germany, then the German leadership was in a very difficult situation indeed. True, he did declare Jews and others enemies of the state, but Stalin did exactly the same with anyone that disagreed with him or that he suspected, rightly or wrongly, of disagreeing with him. It doesn't make sense to condemn one evil and condone another. This itself would be an unexamined thing to do according to Socrates and Plato.
Socrates did not frame it in terms of constants versus variables but of knowledge versus opinion. We do not have knowledge of the just, noble (beautiful), and good, we have opinions. We must act on our opinions. The mistake that Socrates sought to correct was in assuming that one's opinions are not opinions but knowledge, and thus not subject to critical examination or correction.
:up:
I also had the idea that opinion, doxa, concerned mainly the sensible realm whereas knowledge, noesis, concerned the realm of the ideas. Am I mistaken in so thinking?
Not only that, but if all opinion, including opinion about opinion, is to be perpetually doubted, questioned, and inquired into, no criteria are available on which to do that, and all results or conclusions are to be doubted, questioned, looked into, and dismissed as "opinion", then is there any point in pursuing this supposedly "examined life" or are we on the road (or shortcut) to a situation where we need to be examined by others?
I think some of the confusion comes from zeroing in on "examined" -- and that said confusion is, if not resolved, at least addressed by the apology. The examined life is something pursued by Socrates, so the life of Socrates gives us the context within which we can infer what might be meant by the examined life.
Correct. Plato's dialogues provide plenty of pointers as to what an examined life may amount to in practice. The problem seems to stem from some people's insistence that everything is worthless or at least questionable opinion, and that "Socrates knows nothing" and "Plato says nothing".
This overstates the problem.
Quoting Wayfarer
Those opinions that seems most likely to be true.
Quoting Wayfarer
We live in the visible realm. Questions about how we ought to live are about the visible realm. The intelligible realm is about hypotheticals unless one has attained knowledge of the Forms. Socrates denied having such knowledge.
If they're true, they're no longer simply opinion.
If nor opinion then what?
I think the target of Plato's skepticism is what you designate 'the visible world', which is often referred to as the domain of sense. One aspect of problem of knowledge in Plato's philosophy was that the sensible domain comprises entities which are themselves not proper objects of real knowledge, because they're mutable and subject to decay. As the goal of reason was to discern that which is not mutable and subject to decay, then empirical knowledge was limited as a matter of principle. The grounds for this, given in the Meno, is that one's soul existed in past lives and knowledge is transferred from those lives to the current one. Whereas the ideas were originally acquired in a former state of existence, and are recovered by anamnesis (un-forgetting). The claim is that one does not need to know what knowledge is before gaining knowledge, but rather one has a wealth of knowledge before ever gaining experience. Which is why Platonism is a rationalist philosophy.
Quoting Fooloso4
How would you, for instance, distinguish that claim from positivism? Do a priori truths inhere in the visible realm? Moral principles? If so, where? Are they to be understood as the products of evolution? Etc.
My nascent understanding is that clearly h. sapiens evolved according to the outline of evolutionary anthropology (notwithstanding that it is constantly being re-written), but that in reaching a certain threshhold, denoted by the acquisition of language, imagination, art, and so on, then h.sapiens realises 'horizons of being' that are not reducible to purely biological or evolutionary terms. There's nothing specifically in Darwinian theory which accounts for that, or anticipates it (which was also the view of the co-discoverer of natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace).
Modern naturalism tends to reductionism, because it will only admit that for which there is an actual or possible scientific explanation, thereby shutting out entire domains of being. Kind of the opposite of anamnesis - instead of un-forgetting, it's re-forgetting. (Hence the expression 'marooned in the present'.)
Absolutely correct. They are right opinion, orthe doxa, which can be used as right guidance, orthe hegesia in our actions. Like knowing the road to Larisa without having been there. So, definitely a form of knowledge:
Incidentally, Socrates in the Phaedo says that we must have got the knowledge of the Forms before we were born (75d) and that we lost this knowledge in the course of being born, but by using our senses we start regaining it (75e).
And he mentions the Forms of Largeness, Health, and Strength, that through training we get closest to knowing them (65d-e) and that by separating ourselves as much as possible from the physical body and sense perceptions we will “hit upon reality” (66a).
So, though higher Forms like Justice, Goodness, and Beauty (65d), are more difficult to grasp, it seems that other Forms such as Largeness (or Magnitude), Health, and Strength, are easier to access and may serve as a model for gaining insight into the others.
A discussion of the distinction between conviction (faith) and knowledge from the early Buddhist texts:
[quote=Pubbakotthaka Sutta;https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn48/sn48.044.than.html]The Buddha: "Sariputta, do you take it on conviction that the faculty of conviction, when developed & pursued, gains a footing in the Deathless, has the Deathless as its goal & consummation? Do you take it on conviction that the faculty of persistence... mindfulness... concentration... discernment, when developed & pursued, gains a footing in the Deathless, has the Deathless as its goal & consummation?"
"Lord, it's not that I take it on conviction in the Blessed One that the faculty of conviction... persistence... mindfulness... concentration... discernment, when developed & pursued, gains a footing in the Deathless, has the Deathless as its goal & consummation. Those who have not known, seen, penetrated, realized, or attained it by means of discernment would have to take it on conviction in others that the faculty of conviction... persistence... mindfulness... concentration... discernment, when developed & pursued, gains a footing in the Deathless, has the Deathless as its goal & consummation, whereas those who have known, seen, penetrated, realized, & attained it by means of discernment would have no doubt or uncertainty[/quote]
Bolds added. The issue is, in secular culture, there is no criterion for such an understanding - if it can't be validated with reference to science, then it's categorised as 'mere belief', regardless of the distinctions made within the traditions themselves. There's no modern or secular equivalent for the distinction.
There are indeed no universal criteria available. If there were all sufficiently thoughtful people would agree with one another, because the universal criteria would make the metaphysical truth self-evident. What we do have are more less well-cultivated senses of plausibility; it's not an exact science, to be sure. So, when it comes to people's metaphysical beliefs, it's more a matter of taste than anything else.
Their being true is not a matter of opinion, but our believing that they are true is. In other words we cannot know with certainty what is true. Socrates' lesson is to learn to live with knowing that you do not know.
To exclude "entire domains of being" which do not explain anything sufficiently enough to provide reliable, unique, predictions is methodological discernment (i.e. defeasible reasoning) and not "reductionism". The (scientific) naturalist seeks to explain the explicable nuggets she extracts from steaming piles of the inexplicable.
Does not sound very rational to me. The myth of recollection is fraught with problems. A few quick points: The theme of the Theaetetus is knowledge but there is no mention in the dialogue of a theory of Forms or of recollection. In the Republic neither the story of the ascent from the cave to transcendent knowledge of Forms or the method of dialectic includes anamnesis. In the Apology Socrates says that neither he nor anyone else has knowledge of higher things. In the Phaedo the soul might in the next life that of an ass or an ant.
[Edit: See also the Apology where he claims to not know sufficiently about the things in Hades.(29b) Not knowing the things in Hades undermines the myth of recollection.]
Quoting Wayfarer
You asked about the divided line. He makes a clear distinction between the world we live in and the world of Forms.
Quoting Wayfarer
That depends on whether you buy into the myth of recollection, but even there the knowledge gained in a previous life includes experiential knowledge.
Quoting Wayfarer
That depends on what you regard as a moral principle. As I understand it, they would be hypothetical, things we regard as just, noble/beautiful, and good. But absent knowledge of the just, noble/beautiful, and good what we may take to be a moral principle may be wrong.
Quoting Wayfarer
You have moved far beyond Socrates and the examined life. We are social animals. As such we have certain capacities for living together.
This passage shows the author chasing a mirage, "a 'difference' that makes no difference". What could having no doubt or uncertainty be other than conviction?
I agree. Socrates' knowledge of ignorance is not simply a matter of knowing that he is ignorant, it is knowledge of how to live without knowledge of what is "noble and good".(Apology 21d)
I really do understand that. Platonism, ancient philosophy generally, existed in a master-student relationship. The teacher passed down understanding of principles many of which can't be written down, or for which the written texts are simply digests or mnemonics. So they provided a structure around the 'steaming piles', they had a 'topography', if you like.
I think I mentioned the other week, an excerpt from the Pierre Hadot entry in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
[quote=Askesis of Desire; https://iep.utm.edu/hadot/#SH5a]For Hadot, famously, the means for the philosophical student to achieve the “complete reversal of our usual ways of looking at things” epitomized by the Sage were a series of spiritual exercises. These exercises encompassed all of those practices still associated with philosophical teaching and study: reading, listening, dialogue, inquiry, and research. However, they also included practices deliberately aimed at addressing the student’s larger way of life, and demanding daily or continuous repetition: practices of attention (prosoche), meditations (meletai), memorizations of dogmata, self-mastery (enkrateia), the therapy of the passions, the remembrance of good things, the accomplishment of duties, and the cultivation of indifference towards indifferent things (PWL 84). Hadot acknowledges his use of the term “spiritual exercises” may create anxieties, by associating philosophical practices more closely with religious devotion than typically done (Nussbaum 1996, 353-4; Cooper 2010). Hadot’s use of the adjective “spiritual” (or sometimes “existential”) indeed aims to capture how these practices, like devotional practices in the religious traditions (6a), are aimed at generating and reactivating a constant way of living and perceiving in prokopta, despite the distractions, temptations, and difficulties of life. For this reason, they call upon far more than “reason alone.” They also utilize rhetoric and imagination in order “to formulate the rule of life to ourselves in the most striking and concrete way” and aim to actively re-habituate bodily passions, impulses, and desires (as for instance, in Cynic or Stoic practices, abstinence is used to accustom followers to bear cold, heat, hunger, and other privations) (PWL 85). These practices were used in the ancient schools in the context of specific forms of interpersonal relationships: for example, the relationship between the student and a master, whose role it was to guide and assist the student in the examination of conscience, in identification and rectification of erroneous judgments and bad actions, and in the conduct of dialectical exchanges on established themes.[/quote]
I know you subscribe to many of the ideas in ancient philosophy yourself, but that you want to firewall off anything that you categorise as 'religious', for just the reasons given in that passage.
So all these debates, whenever I pop up with these kinds of ideas, notice how immediately it gets characterised as a religious apologist trying to convert the pragmatic-scientific. That is simply the cultural dynamics that I'm seeking to explain, the background to the 'secularism vs faith' debate. Secular culture, as far as I'm concerned, is a great achievement, but it's place is basically to provide a framework within which one is free to practice any religion or none; It's not actually anti-religious, which is nevertheless how it's interpreted by a lot of people. (Like, there's a movement in Australia to remove the question of religion from the Census, which is typical of 'crusading secularism'.)
I will acknowledge that my own philosophical quest has activated in my psyche some of the tropes and archetypes ('samskara') originating from my own cultural and spiritual history, which is obviously Christian. But at the same time, I am trying to be critically aware of those elements in myself.
I maintain, there is something to understand, some forgotten wisdom, that has been lost in translation to the one-dimensional worldview of secular culture. You can call that religious belief, but I think there's more to it than that. And I hope you can see that i am genuinely trying to be as honest and forthcoming as I can be.
Quoting Fooloso4
I understand that. As I said, it's difficult to find any way of rationalising that against the modern secular worldview.
My belief is that many of these ancient myths symbolise truths about the human condition, in terms that were intepreted according to the prevailing culture. Of course the world is not supported on the back of a giant turtle nor do the planets revolve in crystalline spheres. Nowadays the myth of recollected knowledge might be reconceived in terms of heritable understanding that accumulates and is passed down generation to generation (as Noam Chomsky seeks to do). But there's something in that process which is not explicable in purely genetic terms, which I don't think can account for such things as (for example) artistic genius or musical prodigy, and there is indeed 'more in the world than our philosophy has ever dreamed of.'
Quoting Fooloso4
Taking into account 2, 500 years of intellectual history since.
That's an important point so often sidestepped.
If you don't mean to be an apologist for any religion or "otherworldlyness", or any kind of claim that there is some special "hidden" knowledge which can be directly accessed by the spiritual elite, then there would be nothing for the pragmatist to complain about. But you certainly do seem to be making such claims.
I agree with you that secular culture should not interfere in people's private choices in regards to religion, but if people make elitist claims to esoteric or religious knowledge on public forums, then they should expect some pushback.
Also, why should the question of religion not be removed from the census? The question is already put as 'optional' anyway. Does the census ask about your political persuasions or literary preferences, for example?
I am. As we discussed with Reconstructo, whatever he calls himself nowadays, a few months back:
[quote=Edward Conze, Buddhist Philosophy and it’s European Parallels; http://www.thezensite.com/ZenEssays/Philosophical/Buddhist_philosophy_conze.htm] The "perennial philosophy" is in this context defined as a doctrine which holds [1] that as far as worthwhile knowledge is concerned not all men are equal, but that there is a hierarchy of persons, some of whom, through what they are, can know much more than others; [2] that there is a hierarchy also of the levels of reality, some of which are more "real," because more exalted than others; and [3] that the wise men of old have found a "wisdom" which is true, although it has no "empirical" basis in observations which can be made by everyone and everybody; and that in fact there is a rare and unordinary faculty in some of us by which we can attain direct contact with actual reality--through the Prajñ?p?ramit? of the Buddhists, the logos of Parmenides, the sophia of Aristotle and others, Spinoza's amor dei intellectualis, Hegel's Vernunft, and so on; and [4] that true teaching is based on an authority which legitimizes itself by the exemplary life and charismatic quality of its exponents.[/quote]
Quoting Janus
Of course. But I still think there’s a critical way of debating such ideas. Philosophical enlightenment, as referred to by Conze above, really is a faculty, and it really has been on the whole, forgotten. There’s not even a word for it in current English. There are clear historical reasons for that happening, in my view. But as I said, notice the way that it is invariably re-framed as if I’m a Christian evangelist. When Thomas Nagel published Mind and Cosmos in 2012, he got a lot of the same - ‘a friend to creationism’ he was called by the secular thought police, even despite his self-declared atheism. See, he apparently entertains ideas that atheists are supposed to despise. (Not for nothing that Richard Dawkins called Lloyd Rees ‘a quisling’ when the latter received the Templeton Prize.)
There’s a dialectical process underlying all of this - thesis (orthodox Christian belief), antithesis (Victorian atheism), and an emerging synthesis, which is a combination of ‘systems theory’ in science, and post-secularism in philosophy - enactivism, phenomenology and so on. Emphasis on ‘religious experience’, instead of just accepting the prescribed dogmas. That’s what I’m trying to work towards.
Well then, why is your "religious experience" relevant in public discussions of philosophy or natural science? As far as I'm concerned "religious experience" independent of (though not necessarily without or uninformed by) "prescribed dogmas" is mysticism. Why not be silent about that which one cannot speak of intelligibly, rationally or objectively? Why eff 'the ineffable' so promiscuously, sir?
Quoting Wayfarer
:100:
:up:
I think you meant Lord Rees. Lloyd Rees was an Australian painter.
A further point about secular culture. The right to practice a religion of choice (provided practitioners do not attempt to force their religion on others) is indeed inherent in it. It is the right not to practice a religion that is, not everywhere but in certain quarters, under threat due to religious indoctrination by parents and teachers, and peer pressure within certain cultural enclaves.
As to so-called higher knowledge; there is no way to independently establish its provenance. Even if you thought you directly saw the nature of reality, and knew the truth about "life, the universe and everything" how could you ever be sure you were not deluding yourself. And even if you were not deluding yourself, how could you convince anyone of the truth of your claimed knowledge without it being that they shared the same insight? And why is it that so-called sages all through the ages have disagreed about the truth regarding life and death (reincarnation vs resurrection, or karma vs divine judgement, for examples).
How could such sages disagree if they were able to directly see the truth in a way that is independent of their cultural biases? That's why I say enlightenment is more of a disposition; a letting of of personal fears and egoistic concerns which stand in the way of living fully than it is the source of any determinable knowledge about anything. It is a knowing how, not a knowing that in my opinion. And of course it has great value as such, and anyone who has achieved such a disposition will certainly be charismatic.
Yeah him sorry. Lord Martin Rees. I bought his book, Just Six Numbers, which I'm pleased to report is stultifyingly dull.
Quoting Janus
Yeah lookout, they're coming for you!
Quoting Janus
You remember the elephant parable.
The situation is complicated by modernity, by the proximity of all of the world's cultures and forms of knowledge rubbing shoulders in the Global Village.
Quoting Janus
I don't expect to, but I hope I can be of some use to those with similar inclinations.
Sources include the SEP article on Divine Illumination. It's not very good, in my opinion, but at least it's there. ('For most people today it is hard to take divine illumination seriously, hard to view it as anything other than a quaint relic' - copy that.) Another couple of fragmentary sources are the Wikipedia entry on higher consciousness and enlightenment (the latter is an index of sorts). Also the Wiki entry on nous (philosophy) :
1. This distinction is often contested here.
2. Hence the central role of universals.
3. Which is what I think 'divine illumination' was supposed to have been connected with.
Correct. I think it is essential to understand that philosophy in general has been theistic from its very beginnings in Ancient Greece until recently. Atheistic or anti-theistic philosophy in the West became dominant only recently, from the 1800's to the 1900's with the spread of Marxism, Darwinism, materialist scientism, and Stalinism.
The atheists and anti-Platonists (here represented by Strauss & followers) are now attempting to erase theistic philosophy from the history and memory of mankind. One of their standard tactics is to artificially divide Platonism into separate segments like "Socratic", "Platonic", and "Neoplatonic", after which they declare these to be totally distinct and mutually incompatible.
This tactic leads the anti-Platonists, Platonophobes, or Plato-haters to dismiss anything Platonists say about Socrates or Plato with standard remarks like "Socrates knows nothing" and "Plato says nothing".
Another irrational technique is to insist that Plato should not be interpreted through Plotinus and other Platonists who had direct access to the Greek Platonic tradition, but through Maimonides who learned about Greek philosophy through Arab philosophers living in Spain!
The reason the Platonophobes choose Maimonides as the sole legitimate interpreter of Plato (aside from Marx, Lenin, and Stalin) is that he employed an esotericist interpretation of Greek philosophers according to which they have "hidden or secret teachings", in particular, of a subversive political nature, that only they, the Maimonidists and Straussians, know how to read and correctly interpret.
And this is why it is absolutely imperative to preserve, revive, and promote the memory of the Platonic heritage at all costs.
Plato in antiquity was referred to as "the divine Plato", precisely on account of his metaphysical teachings that were thought to have been divinely inspired. "Illumination" or photismos is central to the Platonic tradition precisely because it describes the elevation and expansion of consciousness that follows "purification", katharsis, and culminates in enlightenment proper or "deification", theosis in which the philosopher attains the highest states of experience, knowledge, and existence.
I don't agree with the use of that word 'theistic' in this context. It opens up all kinds of arguments about 'who's God?' or at least, whose version of God. And the historic relationships of theistic religions have hardly been a testament to heavenly peace. I agree that traditional philosophy has a concern with what is called in Western religions 'salvation', and what is called in the East 'liberation' or 'mok?a', but that is not always or exclusively conceived in theistic terms; Jains, Buddhists, and Stoics were not 'theistic' in that narrow sense, but all were soteriological paths. It's arguable that Plato and Aristotle were not 'theistic' in a Christian sense but they were subsequently assimilated into Christian apologetics, obviously without much chance of representing themselves when that happened. (I do recall reading that Proclus, who did live in the Christian era, had a 'cold disdain' for Christianity, notwithstanding that his ideas were also to be assimilated, or appropriated, by later Christians.)
I haven't read Leo Strauss - mind you, there are enormous numbers of authors I haven't read - but I did look up the SEP entry on him after your comments about him. He's obviously a complex thinker with a large opus, so I wouldn't want to rush to judgement, but I did notice this passage in his Wiki entry:
Which seems a fairly moderate attitude to me.
I agree with you that the religious or spiritual aspect of Platonism is often deprecated in today's culture, and also with the general outline of the philosophical path as a path of illumination, although I think the only real Platonism in that sense that is preserved today is probably associated with Eastern Orthodoxy (Incidentally, this is a homepage for an interesting contemporary Platonist theologian, Alexander Earl, in case you're interested.)
But I am also mindful of the fact that this is a philosophy forum in a secular culture, and that such rhetoric will often generate more heat than light. I too am critical of the shortcomings of liberal individualism and the philosophies of the Enlightenment but I personally would rather try and express those criticisms in a rather more circumspect way and being mindful of the prevailing cultural norms.
I tend to use "theistic" in the sense of "not atheistic" and "spiritual", if you will.
Gerson defines Platonism as consisting of antimaterialist, antimechanist, antinominalist, antirelativist, and antiskeptic elements that predate Plato but were brought together and systematized by Plato and later Platonists.
Another important fact to bear in mind is that Plato does have a theology. However, Plato's theology and "theism" are of a particular form in that they are based on a hierarchy of metaphysical entities or realities from the Gods officially worshiped at Athens (the Olympic Gods), to the cosmic Gods (Sun, Moon, etc.) to the Good or the One. Plato's supreme deity has two aspects, an anthropomorphic one represented by the Maker of the Cosmos and a higher, non-anthropomorphic one, represented by the Good/the One.
The goal of Platonism is knowledge which in its highest form is self-knowledge, self-realization, or self-recognition in which the conscious self or soul realizes its identity with the Universal Consciousness which is ultimate reality.
The process that leads to the highest state consists of three basic phases or stages (1) purification, (2) illumination, and (3) deification or unification.
There are several methods or paths of achieving this: (1) philosophy proper based on intellectual training and contemplation (theoria), (2) religious and devotional practices (theourgia), and (3) the mystery traditions (mysteria).
Depending on the individual's psychological makeup and stage of intellectual and spiritual development, any one of the above paths may be more suitable or effective than the others. In ideal circumstances, a qualified teacher or guide assigns the philosopher to one path or the other. But all three ultimately lead to the same goal and may even be used concomitantly with one another.
It follows that though to some Platonists "God" or the supreme principle is pure universal consciousness or something that is indescribable, unfathomable, etc., to others it may be the Maker of the Universe, or indeed, one of the cosmic Gods such as the Sun. This is why it is rather difficult to describe Platonism as "not theistic" particularly in view of the fact that Plato's works are very much about divine realities. But we must, of course, understand "theistic" in the Platonic sense.
Whilst it is true that we live in a "secular" world with strong anti-theistic tendencies, we must, as far as possible, try to understand Platonism on its own terms. But this is just my opinion.
As the Wiki article goes on to note, the nature of the distinction between nous and "the processing of sensory perception, including the use of imagination and memory, which other animals can do" was and is a highly contested topic. The following passage is particularly focused upon:
As Aristotle goes on to develop the differences between perception and thinking in Chapter 7, he says the following:
With these set of conditions being put forth as an explanation of our experience, "divine illumination" seems to be the only light bulb around.
Wikipedia and Aristotle may say many things. However, just because they say something, it doesn’t follow that Plato and Platonism are wrong.
The soul’s intelligence operates on different levels from sense perception to emotions to discursive thought to non-discursive (or intuitive) perception. Socrates in the Phaedo says very clearly that true knowledge and experience of reality is attained when the soul is alone by itself and gathered into itself without body, sense perceptions, or anything else apart from pure reason:
Divine illumination comes from the fact that the Forms are divine and that contemplation of them by means of pure reason (logismos) or intellect (nous) logically leads to the inner illumination (photismos or ellampsis) of the soul with the light of truth. This is why the soul must turn away from the body and the material world, and look on the intelligible world of realities that are divine like itself:
I was replying to Wayfarer's reference to the meaning of nous as used by Aristotle. There are various ways to understand the text. I merely offer one of them. Perhaps you read the text differently.
I am very familiar with your view of Plato due to your constant repetition of the interpretation. If it is the only thing you have to say about anything brought up in regards to the matter, perhaps you should post your own thread where the discussion of your views can properly monopolize all discussions made therein.
Well, I don’t think it is “my view” or “interpretation” in this case at all. Divine illumination is a key element of Greek philosophy in general and of Platonism in particular.
Divine Illumination - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Socrates makes it very clear that perception in the sensible realm is due to the light of the Sun that illumines the material world, and knowledge in the intelligible realm is due to the light of truth that emanates from the Good of which the Sun is the offspring:
The text itself says that.
Note the bolded part.
The difference is between knowing things for oneself, or taking for granted that someone else knows.
I think the problem stems from seeing Plato and company through modern secular eyes, as skeptics, giving them more skeptical credit than they're due, when in fact it would be more appropriate to see them as religious preachers.
This is outrageous, and the section you refer to does not support it.
Don't you find it odd that people who supposedly were so skeptical about their own abilities to obtain proper knowledge, nevertheless had so much to say, with utter certainty, about gods and ideas and a number of other things?
Is it not more likely that their apparent skepticism about themselves was just a rhetorical device, a didactic device, or an exaggeration for the sake of humility, or some combination thereof?
The same pattern can be seen in religious preachers who love to point out how flawed and faulty man is, how flawed and faulty they are. And yet, somehow, despite all those flaws and faults, they were able to choose the right religion and figure out what The Truth is??
I think "religious preachers" is a bit exaggerated. Plato, in any case, is working with religious ideas that were already current at the time. Like other Greek philosophers, he is simply trying to make those ideas acceptable to thinking people by supporting them with rational arguments. He was perhaps more successful than others, which is why his ideas were later embraced by Christians.
Plato's idea of the Forms was already present in latent form in Greek culture, religion, and language. Plato's theory is a logical development of existing elements. Unfortunately, those who are incognizant of the cultural and linguistic background jump to the conclusion that it was an arbitrary "invention".
Similarly, Socrates does not reject religious beliefs, he merely wants thinking men to examine their beliefs and only accept those that can be supported by reason. This has led some to misconstrue him as a "skeptic" on "nihilist".
In reality, I think some of Socrates and Plato's views are compatible not only with monotheistic traditions but also with Hinduism and perhaps even Buddhism. His idea of "examined life" certainly seems generally acceptable, with some modifications.
You have copied and pasted your view once again.
I am not arguing one way or the other about your statement.
I was talking about how Aristotle uses the word nous.
My understanding is that the OP is about Socrates and how concepts like "enlightened", "rational", "virtuous" can be defined in the context of the Socratic "examined life":
Quoting Shawn
How can we discuss Socrates' concepts without referring to his statements in the dialogues???
You are easily outraged! The quote is with regard to his ignorance. His knowing how to live in the face of his ignorance is what the examined life is all about.
This doesn't answer the question. If there were some determinable truth about "life the universe and everything" which was directly and infallibly knowable when one reaches the requisite level of consciousness, then all the sages everywhere who had reached that level of consciousness would agree with one another as to that truth. But this is patently not the case.
As I said, I don't deny that enlightenment in the sense of letting go of all egoistic concerns is possible, or that this would be a profoundly transformative state; what I deny is that achieving that state will let anyone see any absolute metaphysical truth. If you believe that is possible, then fine, but you should be intellectually honest enough to acknowledge that believing that cannot ever be anything more than a matter of faith, even for those who may have reached the ego-less state of being.
This is a philosophy forum and if you want to claim that extraordinary knowledge is possible then it is incumbent on you to explain how that extraordinary knowledge could constitute knowledge in any sense that could be justified by logic, reason or empirical evidence.
From everything I have seen of your responses in these discussions I believe that you are not prepared to be honest about this; instead you behave like a politician, refusing to give a straight answer.
Quoting Wayfarer
You allude to mysterious "arguments" that all of us moderns have "forgotten". Well, here's your chance; just what are these arguments; explain them for us and let's see if they stack up under scrutiny. Perhaps they have been forgotten because as the understanding of logic and valid reasoning has advanced (and it has advanced) it has been seen that such arguments actually do not stack up at all.
I predict you won't be able to rise to the challenge just as it has been every other time we have reached this point in discussion. But, I am prepared to listen with an open mind if you try. On the other hand if I think I see a weakness in the argument of course I will point it out. That's what this forum is all about isn't it? Aren't we all here to learn, and to let go of arguments that we may be attached to if we are shown that they fail to pass muster? If you don't think that's why we are here, then what do you think? Are we here to find a guru?
I am not establishing a limit to what can be discussed in the dialogues.
My comment was a specific response to a particular statement. If it is not worth engaging with, just ignore it.
Yes, I realized that the first is conviction that someone else knows and the second is conviction that oneself knows. Still both just amount to conviction.
I think this is a useful point - false modesty and the frailties of human decision making are often used as a kind of cover for crass dogmatism.
Interesting. I have not read about enlightenment traditions for decades. Is it not meant to include an awakening or illumination simultaneously with ego diminution? If not, it would hardly seem to count as enlightenment.
Sure it is meant to include an awakening. To be free of ego and it's delusions would be to wake up. But the further claim is that the awakened sage knows the truth about life and death. I say that they may be convinced that they do, but that would only be on account of their lack of understanding of what knowledge consists in. Just because they may be awakened in the sense of free from ego, it doesn't follow that they could know what is unknowable. If, when we die, we utterly cease to exist, then we could never know that. If when we die consciousness and experience somehow continues, which is not logically impossible, then we could never know that until it happens. So the egoless sage, since she hasn't died yet, cannot know the truth about death. She may have a feeling of utter conviction that she does know, but that is still conviction, not knowledge.
Quoting Tom Storm
What if your ego does not change size? One would neither have to make it bigger to get somewhere or punish something for it becoming smaller. If that is the case, wouldn't perceiving the condition be an advance over whatever one thought before that?
I personally don't accept that anyone is free of ego. It's more how the ego is managed. Or stage managed...
Noted.
I meant to say getting "free of a condition" is not the only register for understanding or "enlightenment", if you will.
Yes, I am not arguing against it being part of the myth; it is the fact that it is part of the myth, and that the idea cannot be counted as knowledge that I am arguing.
I don't know if anyone can be entirely free of egoistic concerns, but I don't know that they cannot either, so I am allowing, for the sake of argument, for the possibility. I do believe that, to the extent that one could be free from egoistic concerns, that that would be the most profound transformation people may be capable of experiencing, because their whole orientation to life would necessarily become radically different than the ordinary.
I still don't understand why it's a distinction that is so hard to make. And the sentence you just read - 'why is it like that?' - that is characteristic of reasoning, is it not? And it has little or nothing to do with sensory perception. When you read that and formulate a response, your mind will search through memory, cases, examples, instances. That is an ability unique to rational intelligence.
The passage you quote addresses a larger issue, which is the immortality of the soul, or what faculty of the soul lends immortality. But I don't think that is necessary to simply establish the distinction between reason and sensation, or to ground the claim that humans possess a faculty of reason which other creatures don't (although apparently this is a highly controversial claim nowadays.)
Quoting baker
Plato went to enormous lengths NOT to preach. To see him as a preacher is an injustice to his memory. His dialogues are models of reasoned persuasion. They sometimes contain exhortations and obviously have a religious aspect to them, but characterising him as a preacher looses the very real distinction between philosophy and religion. I think we tend to characterise it like that, because we tar anything religious with the same brush.
Quoting baker
If by 'people', you mean those who speak through the Platonic dialogues, many of their utterances were not at all marked by 'absolute certainty'. There is much weighing up, arguments for and against, doubts raised and not always dispelled. Plato himself is very diffident in respect of his arguments about philosophical ultimates. He's no tub-thumper. Of course for subsequent generations Platonism became absorbed into the Christian corpus, and then it began to assume a dogmatic character that it originally didn't have.
Quoting Janus
I'm familiar with 'the conflict argument' - that, because 'religions' disagree with each other, then only one of them is right, or more likely all of them are wrong. That too I see as an echo of Christian triumphalism, the idea that the Christian faith has a monopoly on truth, and also the logic that arises from that, via the opposition of exclusive and exhaustive truth claims.
But the reality is far more complex than that. Allow me to quote Albert Einstein - 'I am not an Atheist. I do not know if I can define myself as a Pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. May I do not reply with a parable? The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe. We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects.' Obviously his particular genius was scientific, but the point I want to call out is the 'vastness' of the problem. It's not a simple matter, and not amenable to simplistic analysis.
From a religious pluralist:
[quote=John Hick, Who or What is God; http://www.johnhick.org.uk/article1.html]The basic principle that we are aware of anything, not as it is in itself unobserved, but always and necessarily as it appears to beings with our particular cognitive equipment, was brilliantly stated by Aquinas when he said that ‘Things known are in the knower according to the mode of the knower’ (S.T., II/II, Q. 1, art. 2). And in the case of religious awareness, the mode of the knower differs significantly from religion to religion. And so my hypothesis is that the ultimate reality of which the religions speak, and which we refer to as God, is being differently conceived, and therefore differently experienced, and therefore differently responded to in historical forms of life within the different religious traditions.
What does this mean for the different, and often conflicting, belief-systems of the religions? It means that they are descriptions of different manifestations of the Ultimate; and as such they do not conflict with one another. They each arise from some immensely powerful moment or period of religious experience, notably the Buddha’s experience of enlightenment under the Bo tree at Bodh Gaya, Jesus’ sense of the presence of the heavenly Father, Muhammad’s experience of hearing the words that became the Qur’an, and also the experiences of Vedic sages, of Hebrew prophets, of Taoist sages. But these experiences are always formed in the terms available to that individual or community at that time and are then further elaborated within the resulting new religious movements. This process of elaboration is one of philosophical or theological construction. [/quote]
If you study comparative religion, as I did, there are discernable principles and commonalities. Huston Smith wrote in his introduction to Forgotten Wisdom, twenty years after he wrote The World's Religions (originally published as Religions of Man), that he came to understand the "core" worldview common to all religions.
That "core view" is this: there are "levels of being" such that the more real is also the more valuable; these levels appear in both the "external" and the "internal" worlds, "higher" levels of reality without corresponding to "deeper" levels of reality within. On the very lowest level is the material/physical world, which depends for its existence on the higher levels. On the very highest/deepest level is the Infinite or Absolute, depicted (paradoxically) in many different ways.
Far from showing that all religions are somehow "the same," Smith in fact shows that religions have a "common" core only at a sufficiently general level. What he shows, therefore, is not that there is really just one religion, but that the various religions of the world are actually agreeing and disagreeing about something real, something about which there is a real matter of fact, on the fundamentals of which most religions tend to concur while differing in numerous points of detail (including practice).
Of course any two religions therefore have much more in common than any single religion has with materialism. In fact one way to state the "common core" of the world's religions is simply to say that they agree about the fallacy of materialism.
And of course, you are free to say, as you're likely to, that you don't believe it. But I still agree with him, that there is a fact of the matter, which is occluded by the constitution of modern culture.
Quoting Janus
If indeed through this 'awakening' one realises an identity beyond birth and death, then what could possibly exceed that? That is why there are references to 'eternal life' or 'Life' capital-L. This is mostly represented in mythological form, which has degenerated, in popular culture, to Christmas-card images. But what if there is a core of truth? I mean, for example, the immortality of the soul is precisely the subject of the Phaedo, which has been subject of another thread. And speaking of threads, this concern is a thread which runs through all world cultures and philosophies.
Quoting Janus
:ok: Quite right. It's as simple, and as difficult, as that.
You are probably in the right place at the right time then :grin:
But you are right, enlightenment or illumination does imply some form of diminution of the ego, at least in the Platonic tradition. The ego or individual self is illumined by the Cosmic Intellect or the Good and is submerged and "taken over" as it were by it, similar to the flame of a candle in strong sunlight.
According to some, enlightenment is sudden and total, whereas according to others it is a gradual process that even continues after death.
I think @Janus is making a valid point. The "egoless sage", since she hasn't died yet, may indeed not know the truth about death. However, that depends on how we define enlightenment. If it is a special state that facilitates paranormal knowledge, then there is a logical possibility that there would be some prescient knowledge of afterlife.
You, through Einstein you are making my point for me: "The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe."
Quoting Wayfarer
I did and continue to study comparative religion, mostly on my own and some at Uni. I started reading eastern philosophy and zen and Daoist literature when I was 16. I was fascinated by the idea of enlightenment until my late 30's, and practiced mediation daily for more than 18 years. I know there are commonalities. Why would there not be? The experience of ego diminishment or dissolution which can be had through meditation, the arts and psychotropics is familiar enough to me, and why would there not be commonalities, even cross-culturally, with such experiences, just as there are with psychedelic experiences? None of that entails that what is felt, no matter with what degree of conviction, is actually knowledge of any metaphysical truth.
Quoting Wayfarer
I have enjoyed such experiences both with meditation, psychedelics and with the arts and in nature.They are peak experiences to be sure, but they are basically affective experiences. If you try to explain what great truth you feel, that you may be utterly convinced, you are seeing at such times, you find you cannot do so; which means that there is no "knowledge that" to be had there. These are heightened states of awareness, altered states of consciousness, they tell us nothing certain about the meaning of life or what, if anything happens to our consciousnesses after death, no matter how much we might feel they do.
Actually I'll retract what I said there somewhat; we cannot know that they are telling us anything true about the meaning of life or death, no matter how much we might be convinced that we do. I want to repeat again though, that I see nothing at all wrong with having faith in those convictions, but intellectually we are bound, I believe, to recognize that they are still and always will be articles of faith, not of knowledge. And this is very important because this is how fundamentalism, the proud conflation of faith with knowledge, is avoided.
I agree with this; it may indeed be so; all I have been arguing is that we cannot know that it is.
I don't think the distinction is hard to make. Aristotle goes to a considerable effort to distinguish them himself. But he also insists upon them being in the same universe. De Anima tries to frame what that world is like if the differences are understood as living in one place together even we don't know how that works exactly.
Quoting Wayfarer
The passage does address immortality but in a starkly different way than making it a matter of our faculties. We are not in a great location to say how the "separable and eternal" relates to individual experience. The scope of Aristotle's view is trying to grasp how the individual relates to universals. Humans are like other living beings in that regard, despite how different we may be in other ways.
You may be bound to see it that way, but I don't concur. Just because something can't be quantified and measured, doesn't mean that it can't be known. But nevertheless we have quite bit of common ground, so maybe that's as much agreement as we're going to arrive at!
There are, in various cultures, terms for higher knowledge - for example Jñ?na, Abhijna, Prajñ?p?ramit?, Vidya (from Indian philosophy); gnosis, noesis (from Platonism). These conceptions have been obliterated in Western culture, which is why we can't recognise them. We have no reference cases for them, so to us they can only appear as statements of feeling or faith. That's my take on it.
My take is different. I think we don't recognize gnosis, noesis and so on as 'knowledge that' because 'knowledge that' should be determinably communicable and transparently justifiable. They would qualify, according to my understanding, perhaps as 'knowing how', but I think even more aptly as what I call 'knowing with', which I think of as the knowledge of familiarity in the biblical sense as expressed in (loosely paraphrased) " and a man shall know his wife and they shall become as one flesh".
It is in this sense that we, for example, know the world in the "alethic" sense, as the world is "unconcealed" as Heidegger would say in the "clearing" that is Dasein. I think this alethic understanding of knowledge is behind Heidegger's priveleging of poetry in his later philosophy. I enjoy reading poetry and I also write, and there is definitely something revealed in poetry; something in a sense that is known. I'd say the same for literature in general and the visual arts and music as well.
Correct. I'm not sure about the implications of "cannot know" though. Possibly, "do not know" is somehow less strong and more impartial. And, of course, it applies either way.
But, more generally, I think we were trying to establish how Socrates (or Plato) viewed things and then see how the discussion develops from there.
What about the pre-Socratics? They were decidedly anti-mythos in seeking to replace mythos with logos and thereby marginalizing (or even in some cases eliminating?) "the gods". Philosophy begins with reasoning about (wonder at) phusis and cosmos as a departure from theogony – Thales, Pythagorus, Democritus, Parmenides et al. Not theo-centricity at all, but logo-centricity – even the Socratics down to the Neoplatonists and Stoics.
Roman Catholicism co-opts Stoicism and Neoplatonism, and brings about (or accelerates) and prolongs the Dark Ages yadda yadda yadda such that philosophy, etc has been striving the last few centuries to liberate thinking itself from blinkered vestiges of apologetic scholasticism, perhaps going to extremes on occasion, in order to recover that inaugural, pre-Socratic fire of logos stolen from mythos-cum-theologia. And by "pre-Socratics" I mean the ancient Greek era of thought that is lucidly meditated on in the incomplete Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, which does not confuse the archaic with the 'mystical' or religious, rather than constipated Heidi's fetishistic oracular '"history" – arch?, to apeiron, al?theia – "of Beyng"' mystagogy.
I don't know - give it another 20 years, I suspect the endless and insufferable Marvel movie franchise will spawn a world faith and provide us with a range of post-postmodern Gods and realms worthy of the classical age. Some of us will be longing to get back to Neo-Platonism.
I definitely agree with this. The fact that there is no scientific definition or proof of something, does not mean that it does not exist. There are powerful emotional states like love, for example, that seem to have no precise scientific definition. Science cannot even adequately define consciousness, let alone paranormal states of it.
Going back to Socrates, if we are to be consistent about the "examined life", then we need to look into the issue of enlightenment more thoroughly and, at least from my own researches, it seems that certain mental training techniques like concentration, meditation, and contemplation, in which as Socrates says, the soul or consciousness is "all by itself and gathered into itself," and undisturbed by the body-mind complex, do lead to certain states of mind or consciousness where some rather interesting things are experienced, including an extraordinary sense of peace, joy, and mental clarity and alertness.
This, of course, does not constitute proof of soul, immortality, afterlife, or God. But it does prove that there are states of consciousness that are not normally experienced and only in certain very specific circumstances. Nor can these states be transmitted or even described to others. If nothing else, this suggests that we should not dismiss things just because science cannot find them and put them under the microscope.
Exactly. In some cases.
As I have said many times before, and as long shown by scholars like A E Taylor (Plato: The Man And His Work) and others, Plato not only has a theology, but positively criticizes and even mocks atheism.
The main problem stems from the fact that when modern readers read Socrates' statements, for example, they fail to recognize that the Sun for Plato is a God and that the Good is likewise a form of deity, simply because Platonic deities do not conform with mainstream concepts of God. In other words, the dialogues are not viewed through the perspective of 4th century BC Athens but 21st century CE Chicago which are worlds apart geographically, culturally, and chronologically.
Well, I disagree. Ancient Greek mythos is not the same as Modern English myth. It is simply an account or narrative intended to illustrate an argument. A Platonic mythos has several levels of meaning and one of its purposes is to evoke in the reader thoughts, emotions, or attitudes that are more complicated to convey by other means.
The Platonic mythos doesn't "eclipse" philosophical thought or logic at all, on the contrary, it stimulates dialectic and inspires the reader on many different levels. If all you can see in Plato is a steaming pile of nonsense, then you may benefit from considering that beauty (or pile of steaming as the case may be) is in the eye (or head) of the beholder ....
Parmenides proem begins with a mythical journey:
With Plato too there is a concern with both truth and opinion, the unchanging and changing, logos and mythos. Plato's writings should be seen in light of his contentions with the poets and sophists. (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-rhetoric/) Both address "the opinions of mortals in which there is not true belief". In other words, persuasion is not intended to replace opinion with truth. Its function is twofold.
First, to change opinion, not replace it. The intention of the noble lies in the Republic are not to mislead. The myth of the metals is considered to be both necessary for the city and beneficial. The myths of the soul in the Phaedo too are beneficial. Plato may think it is good that mortals be of the opinion that are fixed, eternal truths accessible to the few, but that does not mean that it is true that there are Forms.
Second, to guard against misologic. Plato employs mythos in the service of logos. Reasoned argument has its limits. On the one hand it does not lead to knowledge of the whole, and on the other it does not persuade those who are most fixed in their beliefs about such things as gods and an immortal soul that their opinions are not truths. It makes use of myths to alter prevailing mythologies.
That's bizarre. Nothing in what he says suggests he had such ignorance. Rather, that like a good boy scout, he was dead sure of right and wrong, good and bad.
But did he arrive at his certainty about those religious ideas by those same rational arguments with which he's trying to persuade thinking people?
Which is all the more reason to suspect that he did not arrive at his certainty about those religious ideas by those same rational arguments with which he's trying to persuade thinking people.
So he was doing something similar as Descartes in his Meditations?
But why should we accept them?
From the Apology:
When there is a power differential between two people, we cannot talk of reasoned persuasion anymore, then it's preaching.
I don't find preaching irksome, I just want things to be called by their name. Yes, that's plebeian, but so am I.
Quoting Wayfarer
Not I. I have my own reasons. I think philosophers are generally given way too much credit and assumed to be more different than religious preachers. It seems that in a mad rush to create a world and society of their own, secularists have adopted some old thinkers for their secular purposes, while downplaying the actual religious agendas of those thinkers. Like Descartes, for example, that Trojan horse.
No, I mean people like Socrates who goes on saying how little he knows -- and yet he's so sure about so many things!
It's more likely that this is just for show, the Socratic method. Not real doubt or uncertainty.
I think you're painting the ancients as more rosy, egalitarian, skeptical, humble then they really were.
Oh come on. These are just exaggerations in the name of humility, not statements of factuality.
And this is a statement of your assumptions.
You said:
Quoting baker
Each of his statements suggests he had such ignorance. How do you reconcile these statements being made in the name of humility with the part where he says he is wiser than everyone else? What do you make of his changing the oracle's saying that no one is wiser than Socrates to Socrates' claiming that the oracle declared that he is the wisest? (21b) Those are two different claims.
Are you practicing your Buddhist sophistry, sorry, debating, skills on us? :grin:
Logic was just emerging and every system of rational thought is based on the elements available in the current culture of the time. Plato simply made use of what he had at his disposal. What would you have liked him to do, invent everything from scratch?
The Forms are a type of universals. First, in Greek religion, the Gods were personifications of natural phenomena, states of mind, human occupations, moral values, etc., that served as a form of universals that enabled Greeks to organize and make sense of the world they lived in.
Second, the Greek word for Form, eidos, means “form”, “kind”, “species”. So, it makes sense to speak of a particular x as being a form or kind of a universal X.
Third, Plato follows the reductivist tendency already found in Greek philosophy, and in natural science in general, that sought to reduce the number of fundamental principles of explanation to the absolute minimum, hence the “first principle” or arche of the earliest Greek philosophers.
So, the Forms are consistent with Plato’s explanatory framework which is hierarchical.
Fourth, it is an undeniable fact that all experience, for example, visual perception, can be reduced to fundamental elements such as number, size, shape, color, distance, etc. that constitute a form of natural universals.
Fifth, it is a common feature of the Greek language as spoken at Plato’s time to form abstract nouns by adding the definite article to the neuter adjective. Thus the adjective “good”, agathos, which is agathon in the neuter, becomes the abstract noun “the good”, to agathon. This enables the Greek philosopher to speak of “the Good”, “the Beautiful”, or “the True”. Plato was making philosophy and logic for Greeks, not for non-Greek speaking people.
Sixth, eidos comes from the verb eido, “I see” and literally means “the seen”, “that which is seen”. This reflects the fact that for Greeks in general and for Plato in particular, to know was to see, thus knowledge or wisdom being a form of mental looking or seeing. Which is why in Plato, invisible realities are seen with the “eye of the soul”.
So, when Socrates talks to Meno or Simmias about Forms, it makes perfect sense to them.
Quoting baker
No one says that we should. But if we are trying to reconstruct what Socrates meant by examined life, etc., we need to look into known states of consciousness that are in agreement with Socrates' statements in the Phaedo and elsewhere.
It seems unquestionable that certain concentration and meditation techniques lead to an experience of peace and calm followed by joy, clarity, and what has been described as something akin to “love”, as well as experiences of "light." I don’t think that people need to have their experiences certified, approved and stamped by scientists, but science seems to agree to some extent:
Meditation: In Depth | NCCIH (nih.gov)
Research has shown that the perception-meditation continuum of increasing arousal of the sympathetic nervous system is not the same as the perception-hallucination continuum.
A Cartography of the Ecstatic and Meditative States - JSTOR
Personally, I haven't seen any evidence of "omniscience" or anything of that kind, but there is some evidence that it isn’t all just hallucination. This is sufficient basis for further investigation.
Socrates relates that he had dreams in which he was ordered to write poems to his master Apollo (Phaedo 60d-e). People have precognitive dreams. How does science explain this?
And if one uses this conviction as a starting point, and then practices accordingly, then -- so the official theory -- one attains the fruits of the Path.
Quoting Janus
How can you possibly know that?
The world of spirituality is a world of hierarchy and exceptionalism. Some people are said to be capable of things that others cannot even dream of.
Actually, he doesn't have to. If he did it, he'd be playing by your rules.
Are you? The world of spirituality operates by its own principles. And if you choose to enter it, you need to bear this in mind, or you'll waste a lot of time.
Your opinions are not supported by the texts. You will never find Socrates boasting of anything.
Quoting Janus
It is deteminably communicable and transparently justifiable within the appropriate cultural domain. Again, that has been replaced in modern culture by science, but science doesn't deal in the realities of being, only that of objects and forces.
Quoting Tom Storm
George Lucas set the precedent.
Even if that were so what is understand to count as knowing in the common sense of "knowing that" is democratic, not cultic or elitist, not confined to a limited world of the arcane and esoteric.
Having said that I remain unconvinced that what you claim there is so. When the zen master certifies the genuineness of the understanding of the acolyte, I think the truth in that is no more transparent and self-evidently determinate than when the critic certifies the greatness of an artwork.
It is seems clear how knowledge is generally justified: either through empirical observation, or logical entailment. The zen teacher's certification of a student understanding falls into neither of those categories, just as the aesthetic judgements don't.
This is not to say that aesthetic judgements or certifications of religious understanding are without value or significance within their worlds, it is just to say that they are not, and can never be, knowledge in the common sense in the common world. In the common world they could only ever have the status of faith and dogma.
All I've been saying is that this purported fact can never be demonstrated in the sense that what is counted as knowledge can.
Quoting baker
I don't rule out the possibility of such capabilities; all I'm saying is that they cannot be demonstrated. If Gautama believes he can remember his past 5000 incarnations, how could that ever be proven? How could even the Buddha know that he is not deluding himself or mistaken?
Quoting baker
That's a silly statement. Philosophy consists in rationally supported argument. I have yet to see any argument explaining why I should believe that the purported truth of what the Buddha believes he knows can be rationally or empirically tested.
Quoting baker
Yes, I know that and I've already explored that world for more than twenty years and found it wanting. Are you happy with the world of spirituality, and if so, why would you be wasting your time here in the world of logic, rational argument and empirical justification?
Correct. The supreme example of humility and obedience to a higher reality. Humility and obedience were central to the early monastic orders. Without humility and obedience you were out of the door, on your way, and on your own.
As I've said before, this stance is essentially positivism. You always react angrily against that, but look at the definition:
positivism a philosophical system recognizing only that which can be scientifically verified or which is capable of logical or mathematical proof, and therefore rejecting metaphysics and theism.
Quoting Janus
What if 'the common world' is the mind-created projection of the ego, with no inherent reality?
Anyway, enought argument for the day. I have to go and paint a wall.
“My daily activities are not unusual,
I’m just naturally in harmony with them.
Grasping nothing, discarding nothing.
In every place there’s no hindrance, no conflict.
My supernatural power and marvelous activity:
Drawing water and chopping wood.”
Layman Pang
I'm not going to react angrily against that. I may have reacted impatiently against that in the past because I don't think it is in any sense justified. I recognize way more than can be scientifically or logically verified and I can't understand why you apparently can't see that.
Everything is relevant only within its context, though. Intersubjective knowledge is that, and only that, which can be empirically or logically verified or at least tested. But as I have said many times we can know, in senses of knowing which are other than "knowing that" many other things.We know in this other sense through the arts, music and poetry and religious faith and practice; I have never denied any of that. So, why would you be surprised when I become frustrated and impatient when you apparently misunderstand what I am saying and accuse me of being a positivist?
Quoting Wayfarer
I think there is no reason whatsoever to believe that is true. Even if it were true there could be no conceivable way to demonstrate it. Believing that could not change a thing; you would still be run over and killed by the semi-trailer you stepped in front of no matter how enlightened you are.
I'm OK with humility, but I have no truck with obedience; that is for pets and children.
I agree. But the spiritually unenlightened or unevolved is like a child until he or she has evolved. The children of God (ta tekna tou Theou) must grow to become godlike or Gods. Until that time, they are children who owe obedience to their Father.
The pater familias in Greek and Roman culture was the supreme authority in the house. He was always addressed as "father", not "George" or "Basil" or some other personal name. God himself is addressed strictly as "Father" or "Lord", out of obedience, humility, and respect.
And public servants...
I am happy with the idea of obedience to the "still small voice" of conscience, but I accept no external authority.
Quoting Tom Storm
Thanks for reminding me...an oversight... :lol:
I agree. However, the path of humility and obedience is voluntary. No one was forced to become a monk. There was a trial period during which both the novice and the superiors could make up their mind. And monks were free to leave any time they wanted.
It's only for the select few. So you have nothing to fear :smile:
I would agree that the very concern with wisdom is not overly common, but that is about as elitist as I'm prepared to go on this question. I think discipleship is for those who don't have the capacity/(ies) to inquire and think for themselves and practice in their own way (s); it's valid enough for them, but won't suit a freethinker.
It's not obvious from your comments.
Quoting Janus
No, but you subjectivize it. It is a matter of personal conviction. And I understand that - it's an inevitable consequence of the culture that we live in. I'm not saying you're wrong to think like that. Just to notice it, that's all. What if these forms of higher knowledge really do address a reality, not simply a social or religious convention.
Quoting Janus
Modern naturalism assumes that nature can be understood 'in its own right', so to speak, without reference to God or transcendent causes. That is why the claim that the sensory domain may be illusory goes against the grain; because for modern naturalism, nature is the only reality, the touchstone of reality. But I think that calling our native sense of reality into doubt is what scepticism originally meant. It's not like today's scientific scepticism - that nothing is real except for what can be validated scientifically. It is a scepticism that comes from the sense of our own fallibility.
'Fallibilism' in philosophy of science is that hypotheses are only held, pending their falsification by some new discovery. Actually what I'm saying is not too far from that, but it has a wider scope. I think that ancient scepticism was sceptical about our human faculties altogether - that 'the senses deceive', or that the world given to common sense is not as it seems. (And that, in turn, is not far removed from the Hindu intuition of m?y?, which, although arising in a different culture, was likewise a product of the 'axial age' of philosophy.)
At issue, is the question of epistemology: what is real? What I started out by saying, is that the setting of Plato's philosophy presumes that there is a real good; Socrates presumes that the world is in such a way that 'things will turn out for the good' (Phaedo 99b-c). Perhaps it's naive, perhaps it's superseded, but that is what's at issue. That is why the question of 'what is good' turns out to involve metaphysics (cf Wittgenstein: 'Ethics are transcendental').
I get that what I'm saying is controversial, goes against the grain, and so on - really do. Just exploring these ideas, and thanks for at least entertaning them, even if they're a bit far out. And I recommend Paul Tyson's book, De-Fragmenting Modernity, to those interested.
I think that's a sound summary. The naturalists I know mostly don't think that the sensory domain is necessarily a true refection of the world, just that it is the most consistently reliable one available to human beings. Naturalism/physicalism is a spectrum of beliefs which, like politics or religion, has a fundamentalist arm and a progressive/reformist one.
The problem with introducing Gods or transcendent causes as potential collaborators in our understanding of 'truth' or 'reality' is that this just adds further mystification since neither God or the transcendent can readily be defined or understood (enlightened sages and visiting messiahs notwithstanding). Or even agreed upon. If we think senses are fallible, try giving conceptual shape and words to the numinous and the ineffable. Have fun meditating.
I've spent a little time in the company of Donald Hoffman's thesis on the nature of reality which is kind of relevant to this discussion. I find it strangely compelling but of course its focus is on the potential flaws inherent in assuming the natural world is real while it provides no solutions I could find as to what reality actually may be and why it matters. And Hoffman's math are beyond me.
I wonder if so much speculative metaphysics is useful and whether or not this is a distraction from the fact that we do seem to have evolved to identify and happily work within a particular version of reality (contested though its parameters might be) that we are right to be skeptical about but can only ignore at our peril. But that's a different matter.
You mean what if these forms of personal conviction really are higher knowledge of reality? My question is how that could ever be demonstrated or known to be true. How could you ever demonstrate that you know that to be true as opposed to believing it to be true?
So, I am not at all denying the possibility. And I am also not claiming that people ought not believe such things; but merely that they should be honest to both themselves and others and admit that it is a question of faith not knowledge (in the sense of being 'knowledge that' or propositional knowledge at least).
That's why I keep going back to the point about classical philosophy and, I suppose, theology. I think they have perfectly consistent and sound methods of, shall we say, facing up to the transcendent. That's what Ifind in Thomist and neo-Thomist (mainly Catholic) philosophers, and in some Orthodox theology. Having said that, I don't feel an affinity with the Catholic religion, but it's probably true that I sense a kind of gravitational pull from Catholicism, or maybe it's from pre-modern Christian philosophy, generally. But my belief is that there was a real, lived metaphysics up until late Medieval times, and that it's been forgotten. The effects of forgetting it is that it can't even be spoken about nowadays, it's like something from another culture altogether. Understanding it is like forensic history. (Check out this blog post).
Quoting Tom Storm
But I don't think Darwinism *is* a philosophy as such. It's a biological theory, and sound, as far as I can tell, although there's an awful lot of ferment going on in respect of epigenetics and so on. But whenever this is said, and it's said a lot on this forum, I can't help but feel that it's putting Darwinism in the place of religion. We have an afternoon radio presenter in Sydney that i've listened to for years, and I've heard him say more than once, when interviewing subjects about topics related to evolution, 'God or Darwin, depending on what you believe', as if they are competing theories.
I don't for once second doubt that h. sapiens evolved more or less in line with what paleontological anthropology says. I remember when I studied pre-historic anthropology, having this moment of epiphany, that those ancient ancestors who somehow survived the last Ice Age are actually us. That was just me, back then, coping, raising children, making a living. (Hey it's a lot better now.) I grew up with Time Life books on evolution and biology, and have never had any reason to doubt them. But that doesn't mean we're simply 'the products of evolution', as if we were simply the accidental by-product of a meaningless series of biochemical happenstances - frozen accidents, as Dennett says. The contrary of that is not creationism or intelligent design, it's more a matter of de-constructing the philosophical presuppositions that underpinned the 'scientific revolution' in the first place. One of the major factors in that, was the rejection of what in Aristotle's philosophy was 'Aitia', 'cause' in the sense of 'the reason why things are as they are'.
[quote=Richard Dawkins]Why we exist, you're playing with the word "why" there. Science is working on the problem of the antecedent factors that lead to our existence. Now, "why" in any further sense than that, why in the sense of purpose is, in my opinion, not a meaningful question. You cannot ask a question like "Why down mountains exist?" as though mountains have some kind of purpose. [/quote]
From the perspective of Darwinian naturalism, species only have one real purpose or rationale, and that is, to propogate. And that's why the only kind of philosophy that Darwinism can provide support for is some form of utilitarianism. Which is sound, as far as it goes, but from my perspective, it's not far enough.
Quoting Janus
Fair enough, I can live with that, although the suggestion of 'mere belief' chafes a bit.
Funny you should say that because I deliberately refrained form using the terms merely believing or merely faith. Faith and belief are incredibly important in human life (as there is really so little of what is most important to humans that we can be certain of). If people don't arrogate to themselves the idea that their faith or beliefs are, or could be, propositional knowledge then they will be far less likely to condemn, fight with or even kill others for disagreeing with them. As you are probably tired of hearing me say, I think the conflation of faith with knowledge is precisely what (not inevitably of course!) leads to fundamentalism and egregious and gratuitous conflict.
I can see that you think that and you argue it well. I guess I can't quite get on board but I am happy to keep mulling over it.
Quoting Wayfarer
Nor do I. It's a context and one that does rest upon metaphysical foundations (shaky or otherwise) that the nature of reality can be understood by us, etc.
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't know that we can tell if this is true or not. When I think of 'the examined life' I always come back to the idea that there is only so much examination is actually possible.
Quoting Wayfarer
Your assessment may be true and obviously it doesn't reflect how lives are experienced. Can it actually be demonstrated that, for instance, thrilling to a Mahler symphony can't happen if naturalism is true? (lets leave Nagel and Chalmers out of this one).
Well, I can't see what kind of adaptive utility it provides. Can you? I often think that musical prodigies, in particular, are very difficult to account for from a biological perspective - unless you want to suggest that such abilities are like peacock's tails or a kind of superfluous effervesence. Part of this is due to the historical circumstances sorrounding Darwin and his place in Enlightenment philosophy. As I've mentioned many times, Russel Wallace was inclined much more to spirituality, whereas Darwin was very much a product of the 'Scottish Enlightenment' (along with the likes of Adam Smith and David Hume).
I think there is a naturalist argument for, if not religion, then spirituality in a more generic sense but probably I'm tapped out for the day, got to attend to household stuff.
I'm not generally given to simply posting agreement, but I really wanted to highlight this to avoid it being lost in the weeds. It's crucial, I think, to the whole slew of discussions where physicalism is pitted against anything from idealism to religion. Beliefs are absolutely fundamental to who we are, the importance of the narratives we use to navigate the world and give purpose to our actions cannot be overstated. there's nothing 'mere' about belief, no-one is relegating propositions by labelling them as stories rather than facts. In many ways, they're being elevated in importance over something as mundane as a 'fact'.
In a similar vein, to demote them to 'facts' about reality is to remove their beauty, make them dull and lifeless, as if following some dry algorithm of rational thought will yield the answer to 'life the universe and everything' like a maths sum.
That book was called The Unknowable.
It was by Simon (Semyon) Frank, a Russian Orthodox philosopher. I must admit, I couldn’t follow all of the arguments in it, but I was highly impressed by the means by which it came into my hands, which seemed oddly appropriate, in light of the subject matter.
And I was also most impressed by the aphorism which appeared on the fly-leaf of the book, apparently a translation from some script I didn’t recognise, but which, translated, sounded very like a statement from Ch’an Buddhism. ‘The unattainable is attained by non-attainment’.
I might go back and read that book again. If I can find it.
//looked up his entry on Wikipedia. Note this charmingly badly parsed paragraph at the end of the entry (it reads better if you imagine it being read aloud in a Russian accent):
Just love that. :heart:
Well, IMHO there is nothing wrong with disagreement.
You are right that there is only one path to wisdom in a Christian context as there is only one path in Platonism, Hinduism or Buddhism. You can't walk on more than one path simultaneously. You may draw inspiration from other paths where absolutely necessary but you need to choose one path as your mainstay otherwise you may end up confounding yourself.
There are many ways to the top of the mountain but you can only ascend by choosing one. Some form of commitment is necessary. Too many cooks spoil the broth, etc.
But I think we agree on the rest.
This is not to diminish the value of belief and faith, but rather to examine the relative importance of belief and knowledge, or, as the case may be, the absence of knowledge. Whether it is better to accept as true without knowledge or accept as true that one does not know. The problem with the former is that to accept as true without knowledge leaves us open to indiscriminate acceptance of all kinds of things as true, and if true then further inquiry becomes an attack on the truth.
A couple of comments on transcendence in the Tractatus and the good in Plato.
Transcendence is not entry into some realm beyond ordinary experience. It is, rather, what is outside the bounds of facts and logic.
At 99c Socrates says he does not know the good itself as a cause. This leads directly to his "second sailing" in search of a cause. (99d). That is by way of hypothesis. What is easily missed is that he is never able to give an account of why it is best that things are as they are. Note that the cause of his not fleeing at 98c-99b is the choice he made regarding what he thought best. That the whole acts in an analogous way is an assumption that is not examined. It assumes that what the jury decided and what he then decided is all in accord with the whole because in both cases it was determined that this was best. But surely what is best is not always the same as what seems to be best.
The problem is clearly stated in the Republic:
The good then cannot be the cause of the whole since the whole obviously contains things that are bad. He goes on to say that by the good he means what is good for us. (379c) There are things that are good for us and things that are not. The search for the good is the search for the human good, that is, of determining what is and is not good for us.
I agree with what you say there that there is only one path for the individual, but paths may cross another and even more so as they approach the top of the mountain which would mean, in this 'climbing the mountain' analogy that one could change paths, while obviously still remaining on that one unique individual path.
What if one finds one's own path, avoiding the beaten tracks
And what if one goes back down the mountain and then climbs again? :wink:
Or what if each culture has it own unique mountain to climb?
Yes, they might even converge, becoming one path.
Quoting Janus
Entirely possible. But it would be still one path.
Quoting Janus
One goes up again by the same or a different one path.
Quoting Janus
The same one-path method will apply. :smile:
One of the characteristics of Buddhism is just the emphasis on meditation and cultivation of the spiritual life. I think that has been generally lost in Western culture and indeed it's one of the reasons for the upsurge of interest in Eastern culture since the beginning of the 20th century. Obviously 'enlightened Buddhas' are few and far between - there's some doctrinal formula which actually spells that out! - but individuals may still realise insight through these practices.
Consider the well-known text Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, by Shunryu Suzuki (founder of the San Francisco Zen Center.) The book is a collection of Dharma talks by him on the principles of S?t? Zen meditation. Since reading it, a few of the phrases in it have always remained with me: 'practice with no idea of gain'; 'In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few'; 'What we call "I" is just a swinging door which moves when we inhale and when we exhale.' And many others.
I practiced along those lines for quite a few years, mainly because the philosophy of S?t? Zen is quite approachable for Westerners. Through that, there are moments of insight - 'kensho', in Zen terminology - but, as Jack Kornfield's book title says, 'after the ecstacy, the laundry'. I mean, life goes on, it's not the escape from reality that perhaps my younger self had hoped for! Nevertheless if you practice it - and really Zen meditation is neither easy nor entertaining and very easy NOT to do - then those insights can become integrated into your outlook. Through that you can begin to understand the meaning of those teachings in a kind of embodied way. Does that mean I am enlightened? Perish the thought! Diamond Sutra:
'Strictly speaking', Suzuki-Roshi would say, 'there are no enlightened people, only enlightened activities'.
Does that amount to knowledge, or rather, what kind of knowledge does that imply? As I was discussing above, Buddhists call that jñ?na, 'discriminative wisdom' (which is not to make any claims that I possess it!) But such principles can be realised through practice and may be known in that intuitive sense.
As regards the idea of the Forms, it seems to me that most analytic and 20th C philosophy doesn't 'get it'. But it lives on, in a practical way, in philosophies derived from Thomism. Thomist and neo-Thomist philosophers have maintained Aristotelian realism down through the centuries. (I first heard of the neo-Thomism of Jacques Maritain through God, Zen and the Intution of Being which provided a bridge between Zen Buddhism and Aquinas.)
However, in general, it would be difficult to follow too many different paths at the same time, for the simple reason that each path requires a certain amount of dedication, time, intelligence, and energy.
Were this not the case, people would make better and faster progress the more paths they followed. Yet this does not seem to be so.
We may compare it with learning a foreign language. Would we learn faster by focusing on a single language, or by learning a few other languages at the same time?
In other words, the pick-and-mix mentality prevalent in modern society and particularly in the West may not ultimately produce the desired result. On the contrary, it may turn into a habit that leaves us forever dissatisfied and always on the search for something new.
The doubt may arise as to whether we are "missing" something if we do not constantly try this or that method or path and that doubt may ultimately prove to be a false friend.
The very fact that people turn to non-Western traditions because they have no knowledge of what Western philosophy and spirituality have to offer suggests that they are acting out of ignorance. And this may not be a good start to begin with.
Meditative practice for the sake of practice is not the same as meditative practice as a means to the end called enlightenment. The terminology, especially in translation, is problematic but there is still the expectation of transformation, of sight and insight.
Quoting Wayfarer
Is that something you know or something you believe can be attained?
Quoting Wayfarer
What does 'get it' mean? Platonic Forms were hypotheticals.
Quoting Wayfarer
This is not Plato's Forms.
Correct. Some fail to understand the Forms - and Plato himself - because they make no effort to do so. Or for some psychological reasons.
The fact is that transcendence and immanence in Plato are not mutually exclusive. The Forms are present in their instances in the same way universals are present in particulars. They are simultaneously transcendent to and immanent in the particulars.
By definition, the universal that is present in many particulars is (1) immanent in the particulars and (2) other than each and all of them, and therefore transcendent to them.
A colored object is apprehended by the eye but color itself is apprehended by the mind. The universal “color” is not a figment of imagination or mere concept, it is a real, intelligible thing. The Form cannot be merely “one-over-many”, it also is “one-in-the-many”.
The misunderstanding arises from erroneously thinking of the Forms in spatial terms. But, clearly, the Forms being incorporeal are not separated from their instances by some dividing line that exists somewhere in space. The Forms are “other than” the sensibles but not “spatially separated” from them.
This is why Socrates compares the Good with the Sun (or Sun God) who is immanent in the visible world. And why, with training, the Forms can be grasped by the soul in extrasensory perception.
If you commit to the formal practice of sitting meditation, you can definitely learn things from that. That is why 'mindfulness' has become a big deal. Now, it's not to say it's a panacea, as it's definitely not; it ought not to be forgotten that 'right mindfulness' is only one aspect of the Buddhist eightfold path.
So, through those practices, I believe I attained a greater degree of equanimity, and a loosening of self-centredness. Does this mean I'm a 'perfectly enlightened Buddha'? Of course not! There are still many uncertainties, obstacles, doubts and hindrances. There might be all of my life.
Quoting Fooloso4
They are what became of the idea of the Forms, after having been criticized by Aristotle, and developed by the subsequent tradition. The most long-lived version of that is hylomorphic dualism, the duality of matter and form, which is preserved in scholastic philosophy and neo-Thomism.
[quote=Ed Feser, Think, McFly, Think;http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2012/08/think-mcfly-think.html]
As Aristotelians and Thomists use the term, intellect is that faculty by which we grasp abstract concepts (like the concepts man and mortal), put them together into judgments (like the judgment that all men are mortal), and reason logically from one judgment to another (as when we reason from all men are mortal and Socrates is a man to the conclusion that Socrates is mortal). It is to be distinguished from imagination, the faculty by which we form mental images (such as a visual mental image of what your mother looks like, an auditory mental image of what your favorite song sounds like, a gustatory mental image of what pizza tastes like, and so forth); and from sensation, the faculty by which we perceive the goings on in the external material world and the internal world of the body (such as a visual experience of the computer in front of you, the auditory experience of the cars passing by on the street outside your window, the awareness you have of the position of your legs, etc.).
That intellectual activity -- thought in the strictest sense of the term -- is irreducible to sensation and imagination is a thesis that unites Platonists, Aristotelians, and rationalists of either the ancient Parmenidean sort or the modern Cartesian sort. [/quote]
You see there the remnants of the Greek concept of intellect as 'nous', that which recognises the real. This kind of understanding was mainstream in Western philosophy, up until the early modern period, when it was displaced by Cartesian dualism - the rest is history.
Quoting Apollodorus
There are very few Western sources for 'traditional wisdom teachings'. Speaking of scholastic philosophy, the only place you were likely to learn that was having it beaten into you in a Catholic school, and they have hardly been models of enlightened education, in my opinion.
The reason Eastern teachers and teachings made such a big impact in the West is obviously a huge question, but Zen and other forms of Buddhism, Advaita and various yogic disciplines really answer a need which the 'scientism' of mainstream culture, and the dogmatism of the mainstream churches cannot.
Having learned something about those schools, I'm now able to better recognise the wisdom of the Western tradition, but it has been practically obliterated in mainstream Western culture itself.
:fire:
I agree that the need is there. However, yogic disciplines include yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara, dharana, dhyana, samadhi (and others), that take years to learn and practice. How many Westerners are there that actually practice or even understand all of them?
And the reality is that there are more fake “gurus” than genuine ones and the same applies to “students” of yoga who go on a “yoga retreat” somewhere for a few months to one year and come back with a “certificate” or "diploma" and with the expectation of being treated as “yoga teachers”.
Unfortunately, in many cases (though by no means all), it becomes a pseudo-spirituality (or ersatz religion) that is just a form of materialism by another name.
It's not like Gautama cares what you think about him and his abilities. You know, just like you --
Quoting Janus
In that case, you're still in the positions of victim or martyr in relation to spirituality.
Thanks for the laugh!
Getting involved in philosophy, I've learned that there is no such thing as philosophy without ideology.
Quoting Wayfarer
To understand this, we need to go back a bit from Mahler, to the music of the Classical period, notable composers being Mozart and Beethoven. The music of the Classical period delivered via music the classical worldview. This is exemplified, among other things, in the three-partite way the movements of a Classical piece are typically ordered: the first is a cheerful one, the second is sad, disappointed, the third is a moderate, leaning toward the optimistic, but not cheerful -- neither the cheerfulness of the first nor the sadness of the second. (The structure is adopted accordingly for musical forms that have more than three movements, but the overall ordering is the same. Also, some Classical composers, esp. Beethoven, broke this order in the initial movements, but ended Classically.) Such is the Classical spirit.
This differs notably from the Romantic spirit (and many later developments) where pieces don't end on a moderate note, but in sadness or aporia. Compare, for example, the final movements of Beethoven's 5th symphony and Tchaikovsky's 6th.
People have always directly or indirectly managed their emotions through music (and this is its adaptive utility). And via managing their emotions, their worldview.
(And as for Mahler, specifically: Without a formal music education, it's hard to grasp the sheer effort that goes into his music, so musically uneducated people tend to be overly pathetic about it. If they manage to listen to the pieces in full at all, heh)
We are children of the State to whom we owe obedience. Or the State beats it into us.
Quoting Janus
It is said that the spiritually advanced are generally beyond any "very bad karma" happening to them. Rumor has it that an enlightened person could, in fact, step in front of a semi-trailer, but the semi-trailer's engine would fail or its brakes malfunction and block just in time for the semi-trailer to stop before it would hit the enlightened person.
:fire: :fire: :fire:
And these people make more money in leading one retreat than you do in a year. Or ten years.
Not negligible.
Meh. Those folks mastered the art of humility.
It is the mark of a plebeian mind to take things literally, to take them as if they were said straightforwardly, and not, perhaps, diplomatically.
And suffering is the prerequisite for nibbana! For nobody gets to nibbana unless they've suffered first.
Not just interpreted, but this is how the "spiritually advanced" so often behave.
There's a reason why that meme of Trump's head being photoshopped onto the body of a Theravada monk took hold.
God can incarnate in all kinds of forms. The incarnation that Christians prefer is just one of many.
Why would you need to demonstrate it?
If one had truly come to a spiritual attaiment, that would be the one knowledge, the one attainment that one would not feel the need to demonstrate to others.
So what are you? The arbiter of other people's reality?
Quoting Janus
Yet freethinking won't necessarily stop you from falling into an abyss, or save you from it.
Freethinking is no guarantee for success, in any field of endeavor.
But what is the use of "understanding the meaning of those teachings in a kind of embodied way"?
You said elsewhere you have attained a "greater degree of equanimity, and a loosening of self-centredness" through your practice. I don't doubt that. But what is the use of those attainments?
Yes. I would have thought human emotional connection to sound and beat helped to build our original impulses. Not hard to see how sounds of nature, bird song and animal calls (representations of threats and pleasures) would have led to music which allowed us to intensify our sense of the numinous, hence chants, sacred song and hymns. And Mahler.
These things are culturally specific, though.
For example, we can't relate to Indian or Japanese music the way the natives do, the way they intend it.
As interpreted by which conductor?
This, however, points at the inherent unfairness of the situation.
So God created mostly scrap?? In his infinite goodness and wisdom, he chose that most of his creation should go to waste??
Of course. Like so many things.
Quoting baker
Depends on the recording - I'm not a connoisseur.
Sorry - stupid thing to say. What I mean to say is that the benefits of meditation don't have any utility beyond themselves. If you are practicing for some advantage or utilitarian reason, then 'you are doing it wrong'.
Some of them, yes.
Quoting baker
1. God can do as he pleases.
2. Even scrap may serve a good purpose.
3. There is always the possibility of reincarnation.
Some influence is entirely conceivable. But I think it is in order to bear in mind a couple of things.
Business in India used to be done by the commercial class or caste (though even sannyasi orders were known to be engaged in commercial activities). But now everyone is into it and even yoga isn’t what it used to be. It has become a multi-billion dollar business even in India.
The other thing is that a lot of “yoga” is just a Western fantasy. The Indians will know exactly what kind of “customer” you are and will sell you anything you want. If they don’t have it, they will find, make or invent it for you on the spot.
In a way, it may be said that whilst India has “spiritualized” the West, the West has modernized, westernized, commercialized, and "despiritualized" India.
Sure, a lot of it turned out to be bullshit - I never did the Transcendental Meditation training, although I was taught a similar technique elsewhere - but I was embarrassed by the ‘yogic flying’ fiasco that came out of their so-called 'University'. The first Ashram I spent time at was later exposed as one of the worst instances of child abuse in the Australian Royal Commission into that sorry history. So I’m very well aware of the scams, the failures, the fake gurus. But nevertheless, I learned something through that encounter which I wouldn’t have learned otherwise.
For a great and insightful essay into that, see Cults and Cosmic Consciousness: Religious Vision in the American 1960’s, Camille Paglia - it’s a great read and by no means gilds the lily.
Writing in 2003, the conclusion says:
If anything, that's only gotten worse. ('Snobbishly secular' sure rings a bell around here, don't it?)
Her recommendation:
*Paglia is five years older than me
Which more or less exactly describes the curriculum I've followed since about the late 1970's. Still at it.
There are laws we have to obey or face the consequences, of course. But the state doesn penetrate into every corner of our lives; at least not where I live anyway. experience.
"But it turns out you only have to hop a few feet, to one side, and the whole huge machinery rolls by, not seeing you at all". Lew Welch.
Quoting baker
Yeah, rumour....or fairy tales for children...
Right, and that's exactly all I've been saying; that such knowledge is not demonstrable, even to oneself.. no matter how sublimely confident and perfectly convinced one might be that one possess such knowledge.
It might turn out, at death, that one was correct, if consciousness survives death, but no one could know it in advance, and you could never know it was anything more than a lucky intuition in any case. At least if you turned out to be wrong you'd never know, could never be proven to be wrong. I have no argument with anyone who feels so convinced they know something as to not entertain even the shadow of a doubt, provide they don't seek to impose their beliefs on others, or expect others to be convinced by their personal conviction and profession of certainty.
Quoting baker
If you don't want to think freely, but would rather have other's impose their thoughts on you then you are at least free to do that. It's up to you. At least be honest and admit to yourself at least if not to others, that there is no possibility of absolute rational certainly, or certainty of any truth, even if certainty of personal conviction is possible
When I first went to India to look into all those claims of special knowledge (not very long ago actually) the first thing I instinctively noticed was how good Indians were at reading Westerners' every single thought and feeling, by watching their body language, facial expression, the way they dressed, moved, talked, everything. So I decided to turn it around and watch them instead. It didn't take me long to discover that almost without exception they were very clever actors who knew how to put on a show and how to answer (or not) questions in a way that suggested "superior" or "hidden" knowledge, fully aware that this was what Westerners expected.
To my surprise, even supposedly seasoned foreigners like Australians and Israelis got easily taken for a ride .... :smile:
But I agree that genuine spiritual teachers, though few and far between, do exist. And I continue to hold traditional texts like Shankaracharya's Brahmasutra Bhashya and the Bhagavad Gita in high regard. They are in no way inferior to Plato or Plotinus.
Or maybe 'examination' of life is really just a hidden attempt to control it to alleviate your irrational doubts towards it.
It may well be that in certain cases.
However, true examination is not motivated by "irrational doubts" but by the rational desire to live in harmony with a higher reality and to be your true self.
You don't need 'examination' for that. Only surrender.
Different souls or minds exist on different levels of awareness, experience, and being.
Some can surrender to a higher reality and always be and act in unity with it.
Others need to practice self-examination in order to ascertain whether and to what extent they have surrendered, until they have overcome all doubt and uncertainty.
And others practice 'self-examination' as a form of neurosis or obsessive compulsion and surrender to that instead.
By “Bhagavad Gita” I really meant Abhinavagupta’s Commentary on the Bhagavad Gita (Gitartha Samgraha) in the Advaita tradition.
Abhinavagupta's Commentary on the Bhagavad Gita (Gitartha Samgraha)
In terms of yogic practices (concentration, meditation, contemplation, etc.) my favorite is the Vijnanabhairava Tantra.
Vijñ?na Bhairava Tantra – Wikipedia
It doesn't boil down to Ethics. The general gist of the Socratic dialogues is that philosophers should evince a humility of thought. His whole ish is that the truly wise recognize what they do not know, which is just about everything. It's effectively a form of skepticism, but, as Plato is our source for Socrates, it's difficult to say as to what he actually thought.
For me, though I am loathe to cite this philosopher, it's all about authenticity. People should just cultivate veritable ways of life. The "examined life", then, is what you create in order to do so. It necessitates coming into a relationship with one's experience of the world that is genuine.
There's a certain degree of pretense to Sartre's notion of false consciousness, though. No person who waits tables wants to be doing so. The purpose of the act is to cope with having to settle for a life that you believe to be beneath thy star. Cultivating such acts becomes pathology in its own right to a certain extent, but his assumption that most people, i.e. those who don't have the privilege of writing philosophical texts, live inauthentic lives is only indicative of a certain prejudice on his part. The Parisian cafes probably had a better social ecology than the bars in the city that I live in, but there are still existent arbitrary social orders that arise within any given cultural climate.
By the same token, however, he's spot on. Within the service industry, there's an archaic wisdom that, if you are asked to stay until seven-thirty after being scheduled from noon to four, you should clock out at 7:55 P.M. on the dot, quite deliberately. That only makes sense to do the first time you do it. Otherwise, you're just setting yourself up to never get out of having to wait tables for the rest of your life.
Of course. Aside from parallels in theory, what Greek and Indian traditions have in common is that they are practice oriented.
And distinguishing true teachings from false, or what is true from what is untrue, is central to the practice of both. Hence the stress on diakrisis in the Greek world and on viveka in next-door India.
Personally, I started reading Plato in my early teens (which I believe is the best age to do it) and I always remembered Plato’s warning about false teachers such as the Sophists.
Interestingly, whilst flicking through the Indian shastras and agamas I found similar caveats including detailed descriptions of what constitutes a true teacher. Of course, if one applied the prescribed criteria to modern “gurus”, nearly 100% of them would fail to pass the test!
Returning to the OP topic, I think Plato’s equation of true philosophy to unwavering adherence to righteousness (dikaiosyne) and wisdom (phronesis) is a good definition:
Being and acting in unity with one’s own higher self and with the higher reality of which the soul is a part, is the very essence of Platonic thought and practice.
As is evident from the text, the Platonic Way or “Upward Way” is “the Way of Righteousness and Wisdom”.
By definition, "way" is something one walks on, not merely thinks about. "Upward" similarly suggests direction and therefore movement.
And Greek odos “way or method followed” is the equivalent of Sanskrit sadhana, “method of (spiritual) practice”.
His words were a defence of freedom of speech and thought. The quote was a reason he gave for refusing to hold his tongue. By censoring yourself you are unable to discourse about virtue and approach the greatest good of man.
Eh?
I'm saying that it is not at all likely that he arrived at his certainty about those religious ideas by those same rational arguments with which he's trying to persuade thinking people.
Instead, he was more like religious people usually are: born and raised into a religion, and then only later on developing justifications for their religious choice and knowledge.
Thank you for the summary! However,
But just like ordinary religious people nowadays, Plato et al. didn't arrive at their certainties by doing concentration and meditation techniques, did they?
I find it more likely that they were born and raised into their religion, and then later on propped it up with fancy explanations and justifications. As is common for religious people.
And Beethoven said God inspired his music. I wouldn't make too much of such declarations; I see them primarily as culturally specific way of professing humility, gratitude, justification for making art.
One should meditate etc. for the purpose of the complete cessation of suffering. Granted, it is said that up until the point of stream entry, one cannot be certain whether one is on the right path or not. Still, even prior to that, one's practice should bear some results by which to judge whether one is heading in the right direction or not.
Sappadasa.
Then we shall pay him back in his own coin.
Quoting Apollodorus
Well then India wasn't all that spiritual to begin with, eh.
If one is "sublimely confident and perfectly convinced", then no further demonstration is necessary.
How can you possibly know that?? To rightly say what you're saying requires omniscience!!!!
So the real issue is about feeling offended by other people's pride, confidence, and certainty?
Oh, come on, this is false dichotomy you're operating with. Either think for yourself, or have others impose their thoughts on you. This is so impoverished!
I myself am not much of an optimist, but even I don't believe that humans relate to eachother only in a competitive and adversary way.
To say nothing of how your view requires epistemic autonomy, which is highly problematic in and of itself.
What a strange thing to say, your very claim undermines itself.
Well, no one is born in a cultural vacuum, are they? Least of all educated people like Plato. Of course Plato made use of the materials available to him in the particular cultural context of his time.
However, it is important to understand that Plato did not blindly adopt the religious beliefs of Athenian society. On the contrary, he introduced a new theology with the cosmic Gods ranking above the Gods of mainstream religion, and a supreme non-personal God above the cosmic Gods.
Plato's introduction of the Forms and, above all, the Form of the Good clearly elevates religion above personal Gods. In fact, contemplating the Forms requires no religious beliefs whatsoever. Even atheists can do that.
And, of course, there is a strong probability that Socrates did practice some form of contemplation or meditation. It would seem strange for someone to advocate the contemplation of metaphysical realities and not practice it themselves.
The Symposium (220d-e) certainly relates how Socrates one morning remained standing motionless and absorbed in thoughts until next morning when he prayed to the Sun after which he went on his way, and that this was a habit of his. It is not difficult to imagine him in that state of contemplation or inner vision in which the soul has ascended to and entered the realm of the pure, the everlasting, the immortal and changeless where it dwells in communion with the realities that are like itself. See also Phaedo:
So he did something similar as, for example, Christian theologians did and do: Adopt a religious foundation and build on it. I see nothing special about this.
But can atheists do it in a way that will have the same positive, life-affirming results as when religious people contemplate the Forms?
My personal experience is, they can't. Without that religious foundation that had to be internalized before one's critical thinking abilities developed, contemplation of "metaphysical realities" doesn't amount to anything.
But what is meant by "contemplation of metaphysical realities"?
[i]I meditate on your precepts
and consider your ways.[/i]
Psalm 119:15 (NIV)
Does it not simply mean 'to obey religious decrees' and all the "contemplation" and "reflection" are really just about bearing in mind the extent and the details of the religious decrees?
I don't think it includes contemplating the possibility that the "metaphysical realities" might not be real at all.
But the method, the method of this absorption is not known to us! And this method is crucial for understanding what exactly it was that he was doing when "standing motionless". I can "stand motionaless" but I will have ascended to the realm of the pure as much as a mole hill. Because I don't have the method.
Of course, I agree with that, and there’s plenty of commentary on it, but what I’m resisting is the utilitarian tendency to treat everything as a means to an end. As the Western tradition puts it, rather than seeking reward through virtue, virtue is its own reward.
That's not the point. I haven't argued against people being sublimely confident and perfectly convinced. They would feel no need for demonstration to be sure. But their sublime confidence and perfect conviction is no good rational reason for anyone else to believe what they are so perfectly convinced of.
Quoting baker
How could you possibly know that consciousness survives death before you have died? You might say via remembrance of past lives. But how could you know those memories are accurate or are actually memories at all and not some other phenomenon like tapping into the so-called akashic records or whatever? We don't even know for sure if our own fairly distant memories in this life are accurate or factual rather than fantasized.
Quoting baker
We are discussing a particular context here; beliefs about the nature of life and death. What other alternative could there be apart from thinking about it carefully, weighing all the evidence, such as it can be, and deciding for yourself versus believing what someone else tells you because you believe they are enlightened or whatever?
And it's not true that "epistemic autonomy" is required, whatever that could even be. All that's required is the resolve to weigh the "evidence" and decide for yourself, and take no one else's word as to what you should believe, just on account of thinking they have access to some 'knowledge' that lesser mortals cannot access.
Quoting baker
It's one thing to say that what I said "undermines itself" and another to fail to explain why you think that. That complete rational certainty is not possible does not entail that people cannot be absolutely convinced of anything, if they are blind, willfully or otherwise, to the fact that complete rational certainty is not possible.
Oh, like the idea of doing yoga in order to "improve" one's "sex life" or "business negotiation skills".
The horror, the horror!
How can you classify something as "corruption", when you don't know the original?
Nobody said it was. Why would/should it be?
Because you have attained some higher knowledge that allows you to know such things.
I don't know whether consciousness survives death or not. My issue is with the form of your argument: you're making definitive claims about things you admit not to know.
You wouldn't make claims about the number of red socks in Tom's sock drawer before looking into Tom's sock drawer. But why make claims about, in this case, consciousness after death, as if you would fully understand the matter, even though you haven't died yet and even though you don't have some higher knowledge that allows you to know such things.
It's not like there is an actual need to decide about such things! Nobody is putting a gun to your head or a knife to your throat forcing you to decide one way or another.
Whence this need to decide about whether there is consciousness after death??
You're saying, with complete rational certainty, that complete rational certainty is not possible. And you don't see a problem with that?
Plato bridged the gap between the religion of the masses and the philosophy of the intellectual elite. This is what his theology does. It offers the less spiritually advanced a path to higher intellectual and spiritual experience.
Quoting baker
Not religious but moral and intellectual foundation. Religion is about belief (pistis) which is OK in the lower stages, but by definition, Platonism goes beyond religion or belief to the stages of reason (dianoia) and inner vision (noesis).
Religion is about obeying and worshiping the Gods. Philosophy, i.e., philosophia, is about desire or love of wisdom, it is the all-consuming desire to transcend your present condition and experience of yourself and of life.
Plato is about intelligence and transcendence. The Platonic Way is the Upward Way (he ano odos), the Way of Righteousness and Wisdom, i.e., the way of moral conduct and spiritual insight, the ascent that takes you from where you are (wherever that is) to the highest.
Religion serves the purpose of preserving order and ethical conduct in society. It also inspires us to think of something higher but beyond this it is left behind and philosophy, i.e., intellectual and spiritual training takes over. Plato is totally committed to intelligence. What distinguishes humans from inanimate objects is intelligence. Intelligence is what defines us. To deny intelligence is to deny who we are and makes no sense. Philosophy is knowing oneself and knowing truth, and the two are ultimately identical.
Quoting baker
There are of course different forms of contemplation (theoria), some involve contemplation of scriptural passages, others involve contemplation of the cosmic Gods, Forms, or the One.
Quoting baker
For Plato, what the contemplative (theoros) contemplates (theorei) are the Forms, the realities underlying the individual appearances, and one who contemplates these atemporal and aspatial realities is enriched with a perspective on ordinary things superior to that of ordinary people (A W Nightingale, Spectacles of Truth in Classical Greek Philosophy: Theoria in Its Cultural Context).
The Symposium speaks of contemplating the Beautiful (211d) and the Republic of contemplation of the Form of the Good (517c-d).
But, ultimately, the metaphysical realities are you. Of course you contemplate the possibility that the lower aspects of yourself such as body and mind might not be real, but you cannot doubt that your higher self, which is identical with the realities you are contemplating, is eminently real. The closer you get to the realities you are contemplating, the more you experience yourself as your true self. It is like the centers of two circles that get ever closer to one another until they occupy exactly the same space and position and become one. Focusing, centering, and grounding yourself in a higher and more stable reality.
Quoting baker
The method is known if you read the dialogues carefully. The Phaedo and the Republic tell you exactly what it is. The Good or the One is the ultimate telos of philosophical life. The One is to the intelligible world what the Sun is to the sensible world. Hierarchy of Light, Sun, Intelligence, Reality, One.
The process involves unification, concentration, interiorization, elevation, and expansion of consciousness.
This is what the Forms are about. If you follow them they take you to the One.
There are different stages of experience and realization, accomplishment, or perfection and, therefore, different methods and stages of practice.
As stated before, there are several methods or paths of achieving the goal: (1) religious and devotional practices (theourgia), (2) the mystery traditions (mysteria), and (3) philosophy proper based on intellectual training and contemplation (theoria). Religion is only necessary where required by the practitioner's level of intellectual and spiritual development.
Philosophical practice begins with the cultivation of virtues (self-control, courage, wisdom, righteousness). Self-control and courage lead to indifference to material things and physical and emotional needs, and overcoming fear of death.
The verb meletao, “to take thought”, “meditate”, also “practice” is used by Socrates with reference to “practicing dying” (Phaedo 67e). Of course “dying” here does not mean literally dying but being “dead” to the material world, body, sense perceptions and everything else aside from the soul and pure reason:
Depending on your stage of intellectual and spiritual development, if the stages of spiritual progress are purification (katharsis), illumination (ellampsis), oneness (henosis) then contemplation or meditation on light is a logical first step. Light dispels the inner darkness, empties and purifies your mind and sanctifies it in preparation for the inner vision of the light of consciousness.
Plotinus says:
- Awaiting the Sun: A Plotinian Form of Contemplative Prayer
Among methods, Plotinus also enumerates learning about the Good by analogies, abstractions, understanding, upward steps toward it, purification and cultivation of virtues by means of which one becomes at once seen and seer, and the Supreme is no longer seen as an external:
But you need to go through the purification stage to insure that you are psychologically and morally stable and strong, otherwise any metaphysical experience can throw you off balance and do more harm than good.
If the philosopher is intellectually and spiritually not ready, then they must revert to the preparatory practices, otherwise they are wasting their time.
There cannot be demonstrated to be any such higher knowledge, though. Even the person who purportedly has such knowledge cannot be sure (as opposed to feeling sure) that it is true knowledge. It's a conviction that things are a certain way; if things turned out to be that way it just means that the conviction would have turned out to be in accordance with reality.
The problem is that no one could ever be sure of that being the case. Knowledge as it is normally understood is always uncertain, and consists in there being found no good reason to doubt, and that what we believe is also true. But the latter is what is always rationally uncertain.
If you wanted to be strictly accurate there is no possibility of certain knowledge that anything is the case, so really humans don't have propositional knowledge at all, they just have beliefs. That said of course within limited contexts we can be said to know things for certain, like I know I am sitting here typing on a laptop, or I know it is raining because I can see the rain falling and things getting wet.
Quoting baker
That's a silly comment, given what Ive been arguing. I've been using that as an example; I'm not claiming the individual should decide one way or another. That's a matter of faith, of personal conviction, and up to the individual. I sometimes doubt you even read what I've written. I'm not even saying someone should not follow what some purported sage has to say; just that doing that is not an example of thinking for yourself, but rather of allowing someone else to do your thinking for you.
People are sometimes surprised to hear that Platonism involves contemplation and meditation. However, concentration, contemplation, and meditation are central practices in traditional Platonism and they are clearly described in the dialogues.
For example, in the Phaedo, Socrates says:
The confusion arises in the mind of the modern reader due to the fact that nowadays such practices are associated with Eastern traditions. This is a fundamental mistake that leads to a misunderstanding of the whole Platonic project.
In particular, the popular association of contemplation and meditation with Eastern traditions results in the unfounded assumption that such practices can be performed exclusively in the “lotus” or padmasana posture associated with those traditions.
The truth of the matter is that sense-withdrawal, concentration, contemplation/meditation can be practiced in any position or situation.
For example, the Vijnanabhairava Tantra, a 7th century Sanskrit text says that meditation can be done whilst lying down and about to fall asleep; traveling on horseback or carriage; moving one’s body; looking at the sky or landscape, etc:
In the same text we also find a very Plotinian (or Platonic) meditation on light:
There seems to be some kind of affinity between light and consciousness that is also apparent from Socrates' comparison of knowledge, truth, and the Good with the Sun (Rep. 509b). Visualization or contemplation of light seems to stimulate the mind into entering higher states of consciousness. Even exposure to physical light, e.g. sunlight, can stimulate the brain and have a positive effect on moods, inducing states of calm and focus, and enhancing memory and learning, i.e., intelligence.
So, it seems that looking at light is like intelligence looking at itself as in a mirror. But this can be properly grasped only through practice and by detaching ourselves from body, sense-perceptions, and thoughts, exactly as indicated by Socrates, in order for the soul to perceive things that are pure and immortal like itself (Phaedo 79d).
At any rate, Socrates’ emphasis on sense-withdrawal, concentration, contemplation, wakefulness, sobriety, his imperviousness to extreme cold and heat, the fact that he is always awake, alert, and sober, his habit of being absorbed in thoughts for long periods of time, all indicate practices and mental states akin to those described in Eastern traditions. And, whilst yoga postures do not seem to occur in Ancient Greece, philosophers did engage in physical and even military training, thus providing a balancing counterweight to intellectual effort and training.
Certainly, Plotinus is unlikely to have been seated in a yoga posture when he was swept away on a vision of inner light. And similar experiences are recorded in the monastic tradition of early Hellenistic Christianity.
For example, the 4th-century CE theologian Evagrius Ponticus (De Oratione) counts visions of inner light as indicative of spiritual progress, and these are sometimes explained as the nous, the soul’s organ or faculty of contemplation and insight, seeing its own light in an experience where the distinction between subject and object or knower and known subsides to give way to an experience of oneness (henosis).
Of course, the process of ascent, the Platonic Way Upward, is ongoing. It must be continued to the ultimate telos or end.
So? There is no need for such demonstration.
How can you possibly know that??
How can you possibly know it's merely a conviction?
You're taking for granted a measure of uncertainty and human incapacity for knowledge. You could be overstating the case, taking for granted that humans are necessarily thusly incapable. All in all, you are making definite claims about things you yourself admit to not having certainty of.
Perhaps I need to adjust my style and be less colloquial.
My point is that you're presenting the matter in either-or terms, while I think that the decision as you put it forward is not even necessary. It's avoidable, much if not most of the time. For the most part, we do not actually need to decide whether what someone claims is the truth or not.
It seems that most people, when they hear a claim, have the impulse to decide whether it is true or not, to decide whether the person is lying or not, or trying to deceive them or not. I contend that much if not most of the time, this is not necessary at all, and it would be a waste of energy and time to investigate each and every claim. Many, if not most claims that one hears in one's life, can be put aside without deciding about them, without this having any negative consequences for oneself.
Thank you, but I have to unplug the computer and all electronic devices now, because we have a storm coming.
I am saying that it could never be demonstrated that anyone could know anything absent empirical evidence or logical self-evidence. If someone thinks they directly and certainly know something without any such evidence, how could that ever be demonstrated to be the case, even to themselves? You say it doesn't need to be demonstrated, and of course someone who is 100% convinced that they have such knowledge it doesn't need to be demonstrated, meaning they don't feel in need of any demonstration. Are you saying it is possible that their purported knowledge could be infallible?
Even if it were possible for humans to have infallible knowledge of things without empirical evidence or logical self-evidence, I would still claim that they could not know that they know; they could only feel (possibly) 100% sure that they do, and conviction, no matter how strong can never be be a guarantee of truth.
In any case even if, for the sake of argument, it be granted that it is possible that someone could have infallible knowledge of the true nature of reality, what possible relevance could it have for the rest of us who could have no way of knowing that their knowledge is infallible?
As always, Plato returns us from the flights of imagination to our life here and now.
The problem is:
We are "in the body's company". Accordingly, as long as we are human beings, knowledge is nowhere to be gained. Separation from the body, to the extent it is possible while alive, is taken by some to mean asceticism. But Socrates in not an ascetic. Eros, as can be seen for example in the Symposium, is of fundamental importance to him. Rather than asceticism he advocates phonesis as the way of minimizing the distractions from philosophy. We should not overlook the fact, as we are told (60a), that Socrates, a seventy year old man, has a young son.
The examined life is not about stories of death and transcendent realities, it is a matter of self-knowledge, which means knowing that we do not know anything about such things. And so, we do not know if these are "likely stories" or "if they happen to be true". They are images on the cave wall, and when mistaken for truth bind us more securely to the cave wall.
The same applies to those who claim that having a son precludes one from contemplating metaphysical realities but not from talking all day long about them. Their inability to see the absurdity of their claim is all too characteristic.
But nothing beats those who imagine that Plato wrote books for the sole purpose of teaching ignorance and "aporia" .... :lol:
Plato did not "teach" ignorance and aporia. These are things that one must come to know on their own. The problem is, as Simmias says in the Phaedo:
Not knowing is not the goal, it is the condition within which one begins to philosophize. What is sought is the best and least refutable “human accounts”. But it is a way that is fraught with danger. And so, Socrates tells stories in the guise of "some divine account" for those who are unable to navigate the dangerous waters. Stories that will guide them in their ignorance of their ignorance. Stories that are grabbed hold of like a life saving raft, as if they have become privy to "metaphysical realities".
Regarding religious considerations, the core of the Platonic project is encapsulated in several statements in the dialogues such as the following from the Republic:
The phrase “upward way”, ano odos, indicates that Platonism is a process of vertical progress that takes the philosopher through a hierarchy of realities ranging from the human experience to ultimate truth, and that the means of entering it are righteousness (dikaiosyne) and wisdom (phronesis}, i.e., ethical conduct and spiritual insight.
However, if we encounter Gods or other metaphysical entities on our way to the highest, we will know this as and when it happens. So, we need not be overly concerned with the Gods.
Plato has a hierarchy of divine entities consisting in ascending order of (1) Olympic Gods, (2) Cosmic Gods, and (3) Creator God who is the Good or the One. The One is the unfathomable and indescribable Ultimate Reality, and the goal on which the philosopher must fix his mind.
All we need to know about the One is that it has two aspects, one in which it looks as it were “inward” and has no other experience than itself, and one in which it looks “outward” and sees the Cosmos which is the One’s own creation.
Now, supposing someone, e.g. a Greek, is a religious person, they may choose to worship the Olympic Gods by going to the local temple, or simply reciting a hymn or prayer to them at home. If one is not religious or does not believe in the Gods, one obviously need not worship or pray to them. But it may still help to acknowledge the Gods on a different level.
For example, starting with the astronomical facts, if you are facing north, you have the Sky above and the Earth below, the setting Moon in the west is to your left and the Sun rising in the east is to your right. By picturing that arrangement in your mind, you organize your inner world, and put yourself in touch with a larger reality. The simple acknowledgement of Sky, Earth, Moon, and Sun, already has a psychological and spiritual effect on your psyche.
In Jungian terms, you may create a mental mandala consisting of an outer circle described by the twelve Olympic Gods representing the heavens with the twelve houses of the zodiac and twelve months of the year. Inscribed in the outer circle, you visualize a square with Sky, Earth, Sun, and Moon on its four sides. Inside the square, you visualize the ocean with the Island of Paradise (the Island of the Blessed) in the center, and think of yourself as being there.
You can make it as detailed and intricate as you want, though it is best to keep it as simple and as realistic as possible. In any case, the purpose of visualizations of this type is to place the meditator in the right frame of mind, i.e., to facilitate detachment from everyday external surroundings and induce a state of consciousness in which new forms of awareness and experience may be explored. The rest is a matter of practice, always following the basic sense-withdrawal, concentration, and contemplation pattern.
The point I am making is that contemplating the Forms, e.g. the Good or the One, is an essential element of Platonism and Socrates repeatedly speaks of the need for the soul to look at intelligible or metaphysical realities “alone on its own” whilst turning away from the world of appearance (Phaedo 79d). But this is something that actually transcends religion. It is a highly flexible and adaptable procedure that can be practiced by anyone, including atheists and Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, Muslims or Jews, and using cultural elements from any tradition.
The only one who is imagining that view is you yourself. Nobody that I know of characterizes the unfolding of the Dialectic to be antithetical to contemplation of an ultimate reality. Plato's many profiles of how we are bound by opinions involves comparing it to an experience of knowledge that we wish for. Nowhere is it claimed by Socrates that seeking knowledge while recognizing the difficulty of doing so is stupid.
Socrates does, however, argue strenuously against those who do. The objection to Thrasymachus frames the scope of the Republic. The call to not accept ignorance as a final condition are the closing words of Socrates in the Gorgias:
Now that we have properly located your vision of cowardice and despair as coming from you, and not from any of your interlocutors, you can also take ownership of your claim that the life of discourse, so eagerly enjoined by Socrates, is actually a front for a group seeking mystical communion with the real. Because, if Socrates is only pretending to be ignorant, the entire process of the Dialogues is a sham.
Good try. Or, perhaps, not so good.
From what I see, some claim that Socrates could never have contemplated metaphysical realities (1) because he had a young son and (2) because the realities he was talking about don't exist ....
In other words, having a young son prevented Socrates from contemplating metaphysical realities, but not from endlessly talking about them, or from drinking poison.
And, anyway, the inquiry "leads to aporia". So, it's all crystal clear then :smile:
You make several good points. Recognition of our ignorance is the essential condition for philosophy. Following Thrasymachus, Gorgias, and other sophists, there are two frequent but diametrically opposed mistakes that are made. The first is that we cannot overcome our ignorance and so rhetoric and other more forceful means of persuasion are taken to be ends in themselves. The second is that our ignorance is overcome by what we are told, that knowledge can be put in the soul.
It is ironic that some claim to take what is said in the dialogue at face value and yet ignore Socrates' profession of ignorance. The reason, I think, is clear. If Socrates is ignorant regarding the things above and the things below, namely, Forms and Hades, then nothing he says about such things can be taken at face value; and so, the illusion that one has become knowledgeable based on what the dialogues say about such things cannot be maintained.
Quoting Valentinus
Exactly, and this is why some will never even begin to understand Socratic philosophy.
It is never clear whether you are incapable of understanding what is said, or if you just imagine that your argument will appear to be persuasive if you deliberately misrepresent what is said.
The point about his son has nothing to do with "metaphysical realities", it has to do with how we are to evaluate what he says about pleasure and the body and the extent to which they interfere with philosophy.
Contemplation of "metaphysical realities" is not contingent on the existence of such. To contemplate does not mean that one sees the Forms or whatever your imagined "metaphysical realities" are. It is a movement toward rather than from what is hoped to be seen.
That's great. However, it seems to contradict the claims of your alter ego:
Quoting Fooloso4
Socrates, in other words, is supposed to have died an "ignoramus". So, what hope do the rest of us have??? :grin:
The only ignoramus here is you! What seems to you to be a contradiction is not.
You only see my comment through the lens of your ongoing argument with Fooloso4. I am not talking about that.
Your comments about ignorance relate to how to make sense of what Socrates is doing when he talks about ignorance. You have made a number of comments that emphasize a mystical experience in relationship to reality. If the ubiquitous discussion of ignorance in Plato is not really an admission of ignorance, what is one to make of all that talk? It is not about what Socrates knew or not. We will never know. But your model of Plato does not explain the discursive environment Plato was trying to create.
I challenge you to answer my question without reference to what other people might have said.
I fail to see on what basis you can do that when you never care to answer my questions.
Plus your comments seem to be indistinguishable from @Fooloso4's own statements.
Yes, I do emphasize a "mystical" experience in relationship to reality, but only because this seems to be the logical conclusion to inquiry into abstract realities, and because this is the mainstream interpretation of Plato.
In contrast, your and your alter ego's interpretation makes no sense to me whatsoever. There seems to be an excessive focus on "Plato's dialogues' ending in aporia" that explains absolutely nothing.
To begin with, I don't think that lack of knowledge can serve as a basis for action as taken by Plato. Would Plato found a school if all he had to teach was "ignorance and aporia"? As tradition has it, Plato sailed to Syracuse in an apparent attempt to promote his political philosophy there. I very much doubt he did this on the basis of ignorance and aporia.
Plato's discursive environment simply aims to encourage readers to examine their beliefs and accept those that make most sense when placed under rational scrutiny. Anything else is just the imagination of anti-Platonist aporeticists and esotericists.
I can accept that some readers may see dialogues like Euthyphro as ending in "aporia", but where is the "aporia" in other works like the Republic or Laws???
I answer your questions when they are directed to comments I make. I don't when they refer to arguments you are having with others. The paucity of the former has come to my attention.
Quoting Apollodorus
How does that encouragement relate to the insistence that we know much less than we think we do? Is the emphasis upon ignorance a ruse being employed by someone who knows the answers?
There are certain sets of opinions Socrates did not want other people to keep having. He made great efforts to undermine the basis for them. He was killed for questioning some traditional points of view. Your description does not capture the element of struggle on display in many dialogues.
Quoting Apollodorus
As discussed before, we have not established a shared meaning for the term. I agree that different dialogues end very differently. The term is only useful if it compares one kind of statement to another. If we cannot agree upon that difference as matter of description, then insisting upon its meaning will not help illuminate the differences of how the dialogues are read.
In the context of my challenge, that issue returns to asking what the point of all these differences amount to.
Well, you are systematically siding with @Fooloso4 and your own comments are indistinguishable from his.
Here is one of your staple comments:
Quoting Valentinus
My question was, if philosophical inquiry leads to aporia, then why would anyone engage in philosophical inquiry?
The way I see it, and this is the traditional view, philosophy is a quest for knowledge.
According to Socrates, knowledge of higher realities can be acquired only by looking into them with the soul alone by itself.
Therefore, the true philosopher (or lover of wisdom) practices "dying" which is separation of the conscious soul from the body and the material world (Phaedo 67e). (Obviously, as far as possible and for the duration of a particular session of intense inquiry.)
It isn't my fault that Plato has Socrates make those statements. I am simply following those statements to their logical conclusion.
Others may think that Socrates and Plato are either ignoramuses of fraudsters whose only teaching is "ignorance and aporia".
This is why communication between the two sides is impossible and there is no point in getting upset over it. I don't see Plato or Socrates getting upset over anything :smile:
Before you ask that as a general question, what is the role of difficulty in any particular inquiry? In the Republic, Socrates expresses uncertainty if he has adequately depicted the Good. He expresses doubts about whether Justice has been properly represented. The problems he marks out are boundaries he cannot get past at that moment.
How do those expressions of doubt relate to your question about the motivation to pursue questions?
So what? Socrates (or Plato) explains things as best he can in a small book that addresses many different issues. I don't think this is a reason for anyone to go on a doubt or "aporia" trip.
Questions are raised, some are well answered, others less so, but at the end of the day life goes on. The point is that the Republic does NOT end in or lead to aporia.
The topic was raised in the context of asking you to explain why Socrates put so much emphasis on the limits of knowledge when you suggested that something else was the intent of the enterprise.
Your efforts fail to support your thesis.
I have no idea what you mean by aporia if it is something that is supposed to exist outside of arguments where the term has a role.
I haven't got a thesis. I simply read what Plato writes and follow Socrates' advice to make up my own mind instead of listening to Straussian aporeticists, esotericists, and skeptomaniacs.
And, as I said, the Republic does not end in or lead to "aporia".
The claim to the effect that "philosophical inquiry leads to aporia" is spurious and unfounded IMHO.
If if were true, it would make philosophy worse than science and pretty much useless. And that's why we must disagree.
You still haven't explained what the purpose is for emphasizing how ignorant we are if Socrates actually knows the truth.
I gave examples of the aporia Socrates encountered in the Republic. I have no idea what you think the word means. It seems to be an imaginary condition you imagine other people to be experiencing rather than a description of uncertainty about what is being said.
Noted.
I mistook your claim that Socrates actually knows what he claims not to know to be your thesis.
An easy mistake to make, under the circumstances..
Well, the mistake or misunderstanding is entirely yours. As I said before, you can try actually reading what people are saying, for a change. :smile:
Anyway, I fail to see why I would need to explain something that is perfectly obvious.
Plato is not saying that he knows the truth, he is simply suggesting the WAY to the truth.
Socrates explains it in very clear terms. He even uses the term “hunt” with reference to non-physical realities.
The philosopher, i.e. lover of wisdom or seeker after knowledge, can hit upon reality only by hunting down each reality alone by itself and unalloyed (Phaedo 66a).
How do we hunt down (thereuomai) an animal? By following its tracks until we see it. Alternatively, we lie in wait until it appears in our field of vision.
Similarly, we follow the Sun’s tracks or reflections in water, etc., then follow its light, and, when our eyes have become accustomed to its brightness, we can look straight at the Sun itself (at least for a brief time) and see it as it is in itself (99e).
The same is true of the Forms. We follow their tracks in the images of particular objects of perception, we look into the truth of arguments about them, and when we have sufficiently trained our mind to become receptive and alert, we can start looking into the Forms themselves, by using thought alone by itself and unalloyed, and separated as far as possible from eyes and ears and virtually from the entire body (66a).
Plato does no more than to put us on the right track. The Truth-hunting has to be done by each lover of wisdom or seeker after truth, personally.
Likewise, the decision to go on the hunt is entirely for the individual to take. Plato puts no obligation on anyone to look into higher truth. People can still be good citizens and enjoy a life of peace and happiness by being righteous and wise.
Platonism offers something to everyone, including materialists. And those who like to find their supreme satisfaction in doubt, “aporia”, and similar things are at liberty to do so.
At any rate, I think we are more likely to arrive at truth by actively hunting for it than by perpetually questioning things and living a life of self-imposed ignorance, uncertainty, and doubt.
But isn't the life of Socrates one of actively hunting for the truth by perpetually questioning things?
The passage of the Phaedo you are referring to is part of an argument that the soul can only know the truth after the death of the body. To that extent, it does not support your vision of a school where one is trained by the Sifu to learn inner secrets for daily life.
Quoting Apollodorus
Perhaps you could provide support for this statement. It seems to run counter to the very method of inquiry by means of division that Socrates insists upon.
I have demonstrated previously that your use of "aporia" is a part of your private lexicon which means it cannot be affirmed or denied by others.The arc of your use of the term resembles the following:
Ralph: Unlike you, Alice, I do not fall into a coma when I finish reading Jane Austen novels.
Alice: I don't fall into comas after reading Jane Austen novels.
Ralph: You were in a coma, how would expect to remember it?
As I said, your comments are indistinguishable from Fooloso4's incomprehensible pronouncements.
Socrates is teaching others how to rationally examine their beliefs.
As for himself, he says:
He did not perpetually question whether to take poison. He had made up his mind from the start and he explains to Simmias and Cebes why it is the right decision.
I think there is a marked difference between Socrates' hunt for intelligible realities and the obsessive-compulsive disorder of the skeptomaniacs and aporeticists. :smile:
You once again resort to opposing what you purport others to mean rather than engage in statements as they are presented to you.
The passage of the Phaedo you quoted is an essential element in the method he employs when questioning things and opinions.
Quoting Apollodorus
How could that observation possibly inform the discussion we are having about the accessibility of ultimate truths?
Quoting Apollodorus
I suppose there is a marked difference between the hunt for intelligible realities and the toy soldiers you have put on the grass to stop the hunt. But you aren't making any distinctions between that hunt and statements made by actual interlocutors. You have built a box where you deposit all challenges to your view. Socrates would not have been impressed by such avoidance to risk and error.
As already stated, I can see no difference whatsoever between your statements and those of your alter ego Fooloso4.
Besides, if you were consistent about your practice of perpetually questioning things, you would start by applying it to yourself, no?
But you seem to be applying it exclusively to others.
I think Socrates would have strongly disapproved .... :grin:
If you make a statement, and two people notice the contradiction between that statement and others you make, does that turn the two persons into a single being? What a peculiar idea! But your thought experiment bears no relation to engaging in the contradictions involved in any particular discussion.
You brought the Phaedo passage into our discussion to support your view that we can experience divine truth through proper training in our lifetime. I observed that the text does not support your thesis. Fooloso4 has pointed out other contradictions between your statements regarding the passage you refer to and other statements you made in other discussions.
The reason for this similarity between your statements being challenged in different discussions could be explained by the fact that Fooloso4 and I are Siamese twins who were separated at birth.
He went on to become the Dean of Oxford University while I am an inmate in a Texas penitentiary, quarrying limestone under a relentless sun. The similarity of our language comes from the lullabies our nursemaid sang as we suckled upon our respective breasts.
Or maybe that is all an accident and the reason for the similarity is that we both have read enough Plato to notice the contradictions in your statements independently of the other.
All I can say for sure is that my question of why Socrates talks so much about his and our ignorance when you say he actually knows the truth has been left untouched by you.
Hmmm ... Very interesting.
As a matter of fact, when I said "alter ego" I did not mean it literally. But now that you point it out, it must be said that:
You and Foolo joined the forum at the same time.
You hold identical beliefs.
You share the same anti-Platonist (and anti-Christian) commitment.
You use identical language and arguments.
Both of you have mysteriously studied Strauss, a non-entity in the field that few people have heard of, but have never heard of top scholars like Gerson and Sedley, etc.
And you always attack Foolo’s interlocutors when he can’t extricate himself from his own nonsense ….
I think your description of "intellectualism" fits anti-Platonists very well.
Socrates, Plato, and Greeks in general, were practical, down-to-earth people. Yes, they liked thinking about and discussing things, but at the end of the day, their thoughts had a practical application.
This is why I doubt very much that Socrates was the skeptic and nihilist that anti-Platonists like to see in him.
You have no idea what I believe. That you think I have revealed that because I support one reading of Plato over another is the height of authoritarian fancy. Who fucking made you in charge of assigning identities instead of letting people decide for themselves who they are or what they think?
Calling me an "anti-Platonist" is a judgement you have made about my intentions because you are not able to defend your reading of Plato when I challenge it. There a number of ways to read Plato. From my point of view, you are the one who is trying to turn it into something it is not. That doesn't make you an "anti-Platonist." You are just another person who has a mistaken understanding about what is being discussed.
As for the rest of your paranoid account, I will only remark upon the relationship between primary texts of authors and the secondary texts that wrestle with their meaning. A sincere study of primary text can and is helped by looking at secondary texts. The way you describe it makes it sound like a reader is infected by ideas upon learning about them. If somebody is going to defend a certain reading by appeal to a secondary source, one still has to make their own stand about what is meant. Otherwise, one has deferred the discussion to other people and assumed the position of an interested bystander. Your emphasis upon the differences among secondary texts is not going to help you establish credibility as someone who is capable of reading the text on their own.
.
Well, well, your true colors are finally starting to show. Do you always get upset in unison with Foolo on the other thread? Or is it just another curious "coincidence"? Maybe you are twins, after all …. :grin:
Fact is, I never said you should be an anti-Platonist. What I said was that you seem to share the same anti-Platonist commitment as Foolo:
Quoting Apollodorus
As I said before, you are not paying attention and you seem to be far too emotional and angry to be a true philosopher IMHO.
Anyway, what you are saying is that I can’t tell people who they are or what they think, but you can tell others who they are or what they think. What shall we call that then, hypocrisy or something else?
Finally, you can’t really expect me to answer rhetorical questions that are just obvious straw men designed to distract attention from the issue at hand, can you?
The point I was making was that you keep asking me about the need to perpetually question everything but you never seem to apply that to yourself. You apply that exclusively to others, and I think this goes against everything that Plato teaches. "Examined life" means in the first place examining your own beliefs, emotions, etc.
I think it is a matter of balance. As Socrates puts it in the Phaedo:
Of course people should examine their beliefs, thoughts, emotions, etc., at least to some extent. As a matter of fact, we already do this, even without philosophy. But not go overboard and turn that into some kind of compulsive disorder.
At the end of the day, we can't just spend our lives doubting this or the other. Life requires that we take action and we can do that only on the basis of what we think is the best course of action. I don't see how doubt and uncertainty can serve as a basis for meaningful and active life.
Quoting Apollodorus
You may be right there. I must say I wrestle with this one but it doesn't keep me up at night. I inhabit the quotidian.
That's probably the right idea. I've got the feeling that even Socrates wouldn't question that :wink:
It has been amusing to spar with you over your Karate Kid version of Plato. But now that you are using it to determine who is Christian or not, it is time to take the matter more seriously.
First of all, Socrates questions ideas and develops the best opinions he can in each of his inquiries. That is what he is saying in the Phaedo about what he calls true and what he calls false. He operates with those sets of opinions but doesn't say that operation is the equivalence of knowing the truth. He doesn't abandon his opinions from one day to the next but doesn't say they amount to the end of his inquiries.
The vision of a Socrates who cannot say what anything is from one day to the next is entirely an invention of your own making. He expresses a lot more certainty about some things than others. When he encounters sophistry, he doesn't agonize over whether his perception can be trusted or not.
What you have done, in your version of Plato, is to take this realm of better opinions and equate them with knowledge that requires no further verification. What it means for Socrates to question everything is that having the best opinion one can establish does not mean it is free from the need for verification. If any opinion did rise to the level where it could stand above all the contingencies that went into forming it, that starts to sound like knowledge.
One of the many problems that appear after collapsing the two realms into one is that it turns Socrates' declarations of ignorance into a pretense. Now if it is a pretense, does that mean it works like the "noble lie" in the Republic? That would be a nefarious vision I can scarcely imagine. It would turn Socrates' demand for righteousness, based upon seeking the Good, into some agenda he is hiding from us.
When I challenge you to defend your idea that Socrates is only pretending to be ignorant, you reply by insisting that Socrates is not a skeptic who is unable to affirm or deny anything. My previous efforts to explain that such a character is not my understanding of Socrates' endeavor has fallen upon deaf ears. But the problem with your view is not addressed by your definition of my view. Your version of Plato turns the distinctions Plato is making into a meaningless puree of theological goo.
Your fixation with this is keeping you from taking the challenges presented to you seriously.
I am the one who brought up this problem of a Socrates who pretends. I am the only who is arguing about it now.
What upset me was the way you characterized my arguments as "anti-Christian." You can trust that my efforts to undermine the criteria for your judgement will be coming from me and me alone.
Complete nonsense. Your phobia of religion seems to make you totally blind to my numerous statements to the effect that religion in Platonism is not necessary for the attainment of knowledge:
Quoting Apollodorus
Quoting Apollodorus
So, sorry to say this, but you are talking to your own aporetic and confused imagination ....
Have a nice day.
I have no phobia regarding religion. On the contrary.
I am addressing the problem with your Socrates who pretends to be ignorant. How you rank the various components of your cosmogony is meaningless if one removes the central distinction in Plato's philosophy separating opinion and knowledge.
Unfortunately, Socratic skepticism has been misrepresented in this discussion. If it is to be understood, it must be distinguished from other forms of skepticism. Two points:
Socratic skeptics make no claim about what can be known, it is rather, an awareness of what is not known.
Second, it is not a claim that extends to any and all kinds of knowledge. It does not lead to a paralysis of action or an inability to make decisions. We act and make choices, but when it comes to such things as what is good or just or noble, we do so on the basis of opinion not knowledge. The Socratic skeptic, however, does not simply settle for whatever opinion she happens to hold or has been told to hold. If there is transcendent knowledge, she is aware that she in not privy to it.
She knows she knows nothing of the soul separate from the body, but she does not simply leave it there. She questions what happens to our understanding of a human being when we divide him in two and regard only part of him, the soul, as who or what he is. She questions whether it makes sense to think that knowledge can only come from the soul apart from the body, apart from the ability to see and hear and feel. Apart from desire, for desire for Plato includes the desire to know. The location of desire, in the soul or in the body, differs in different dialogues, as, for example, the Republic, Phaedo, and Phaedrus. In some of the dialogues the soul is said to be immortal, but in the Timaeus, the soul of human beings is mortal. In addition, although in the Phaedo the soul is said to be immortal, the question of what happens to Socrates when he dies is not raised. If the soul becomes that of an ass or an ant then it is no longer Socrates' soul. Socrates, it would seem, is dead. Plato leaves it up to us to sort all this out as best we can. It is a serious mistake to take what is said in one place or another as the truth when what is said is contrary to what is said elsewhere.
As part of the examined life, she examines her opinions and the opinions of others. But such examination can only be done on the basis of opinion. The Socratic skeptic remains open to revising her opinions when it seems best to do so in light of reason and what seems to be good and true.
If you think that was elegant you should see me do interpretative dance. I do all the major philosophers.
I want to see your Heidegger dance first, just to test your interpretive powers...
Appropriately enough, in this case the dance is as inelegant as his writing. It's got a good beat though, if you like ponderous marches.
Well, this is why people quit philosophy, no?
Through the Socratic method, under the guidance of the teacher.
Quoting Apollodorus
Not at all. The above claim probably best describes many people's experience with philosophy, namely, that it "goes nowhere".
Quoting Apollodorus
Provided we take for granted that Plato knows and take him as our teacher.
[i]"And what is the result of stress?
There are some cases in which a person overcome with pain, his mind exhausted, grieves, mourns, laments, beats his breast, & becomes bewildered.
Or one overcome with pain, his mind exhausted, comes to search outside, 'Who knows a way or two to stop this pain?'
I tell you, monks, that stress results either in bewilderment or in search. This is called the result of stress.[/i]
AN 6.63
How are we to hunt for the truth, if we do it in some kind of vacuum, with no teacher or guide?
And how do we know whom to turn to to help us in our search?
Note how our notion of truth probably entails some kind of relating to others, however "thinking for ourselves" we might otherwise believe ourselves to be.
I think that those who feel that Plato's philosophy "goes nowhere" either misunderstand philosophy or fail in their efforts for some other reasons.
According to Plato, we already have knowledge of higher realities acquired in past lives.
We learn philosophical teachings from more knowledgeable and experienced people.
We intuitively know which philosophical teachings are correct, and when properly put into practice, they awaken our innate knowledge of higher realities.
When the soul contemplates metaphysical realities, it may be temporarily separated from the material world, but it is increasingly in communion with the metaphysical realities that are like itself (Phaedo 79d).
The more the soul advances on the Platonic Way Upward and its knowledge and consciousness expand, the more it is in unity with other souls, until oneness or union (henosis) with the One has been achieved.
Now, the question is how come some people are bothered by this. (For they are bothered, given the extensive critical communications on the topic).
For your own part, you already have an explanation for this: they are spiritually inferior to you.
For their part, I'm not sure. It could be many things -- envy, feeling threatened, bewilderment. It's something I've been keenly trying to figure out.
For Plato, knowledge acquired through reason (episteme) is higher than belief (doxa), and knowledge acquired through personal experience (gnosis) is higher than knowledge acquired through reason.
However, right belief (orthe doxa) can serve as right guidance (orthe hegesia) that takes us to higher forms of knowledge (Meno 97b).
Unfortunately, even in Plato's time there were false philosophy teachers (Sophists) whom Plato warns against in his dialogues.
Why some seem to find the right teachers and others don't, is an interesting question. On Plato's scheme of spiritual evolution, it may be the case that some are (1) not sufficiently evolved or ready and/or (2) not discerning enough to find the right path.
But that doesn't mean that people shouldn't make an effort. By definition, the Platonic philosopher is one who loves knowledge and wisdom and actively seeks after it. And as the saying goes, "seek and you shall find" .... :smile:
You did not list simply disagreeing with the interpretation.
Assuming that criticism is only a result of a bad reaction to a manifestly true account is the rhetoric of an apologist, not of a critical thinker who judges for herself.
It is a matter of his rude disregard and intolerance for views on Plato that differ from his own. The moderators have seen fit to delete many of his posts. He insists not only that his beliefs about Plato and Platonism are true and others thereby false, but that he must have the last word. He deliberately misrepresents the views of those who see things differently, and disparages influential scholars he had not read because of such things as when they were born and because they had academic associations with "socialists", not knowing they are critical of socialism.
I do not envy or feel threatened or bewildered by his derivative interpretation. If is run of the mill. The kind of thing you find in any introductory text. There are, however, scholars doing what is in my opinion much more interesting, imaginative, and insightful work. They are able to make sense of each part of the dialogue as part of the whole. They are able to show both where the dialogues connect to each other and where they differ. In my opinion one must understand both the whole and the parts and not just take parts out of context.
When I was first introduced to Plato I was very much attracted to the idea of mystical, transcendent truth, and paid little attention to Socrates' claim of ignorance. In time it began to occur to me that I knew nothing of such transcendent truths. Following the work of highly regarded scholars I came to see Plato in a very different light. Rather than imagining I was in the process of escaping the cave, I came to realize I was seeing the images that Plato was casting on the cave wall, and like the other prisoners, mistaking images for the truth.
People can leave their jobs, wives or husbands, or move to another city or country. There is nothing different about quitting philosophy.
However, I think it is worthwhile taking into consideration that only some of Plato’s dialogues end in aporia, not all of them. In fact, most of them do not.
Besides, Platonism has been extraordinarily successful. From Antiquity to Late Middle Ages and beyond, it was the philosophical system.
Of course, people do not need to agree with everything that Platonism says. But if they find Platonism unsatisfactory, I think it would depend on which aspect of it they disagree with. In my experience, it often boils down to some misunderstanding or misinterpretation.
The question was how come some people are bothered by Platonism (their extensive critical communications on the topic being evidence of being thusly bothered).
If they are simply disagreeing with the interpretation, why the extensive communication?
I am continually reminded of the story from the Buddha's first encounter with another person after he attained enlightenment. Namely, so the story, after he attained enlightenment, the Buddha wanted to tell people about it. So he told the first person he met on the road, "I am the rightfully self-enlightened one." The man shook his head, said, "May it be so" and went his way.
What I want to know is this: How come more people aren't like this man?
There's a similarity to this in Early Buddhism: In Early Buddhism, the basic prongs of the practice are sila, panna, samadhi (morality, wisdom, concentration).
A similar sentiment can be found in Early Buddhism regarding the efficacy of the practice.
A similarity to this can be found in Hinduism. A hierarchy of gods, the notion of a Supreme Deity (I'm a bit rusty on this by now).
What a bizarre claim!!
Yes, similar can be found in Early Buddhism (e.g.).
Further: frames of reference.
I do not recall hearing about such a thing in any Dharmic religion that I know of, though.
Similar can be heard from, say, the Hare Krishnas. I see no point in trying to go into who borrowed (or stole) whose ideas. I also think that the similarities could possibly be only superficial and overrated, and not some kind of evidence that the process is true/real.
Not everything in Platonism needs to have an equivalent in Dharmic religions. However, there are parallels. For example the Indian concept of consciousness generating cognition by means of nama and rupa is not very different from the Platonic concept of name (onoma) and form (eidos).
The question as to who borrowed from whom is irrelevant.
And no, it doesn't prove anything. The only valid proof is personal experience and this may well be subjective and distinct from other people's. This doesn't necessarily mean it's just imagination.
Quoting baker
Why is that so bizarre?
But he never walked that path himself, did he?
This is crucial, because if he never did what he instructs others to do, then on the grounds of what should we trust him and his advice?
But can a person have this moral and intellectual foundation without first being religious?
Indeed. But can one do those preparatory practices outside of religon?
We have no means of determining this with 100% certitude. But contemplation of higher realities was advocated by Aristotle and other members of the Platonic school and it seems safe to assume that this was put into practice at least to some extent.
Ultimately, it comes down to personal experience. If the practice of contemplation leads you nowhere, then you may discontinue it any time. But most forms of meditation seem to have some effect. You may not become "omniscient" or "enlightened", but you may still achieve a sense of calm, focus, clarity, enhanced memory, and in some cases it may lead to lucid dreaming and other states of consciousness that you did not experience before.
Quoting baker
Quoting baker
I believe that one can. Perhaps not in all cases, but a lot of people seem to have a sense of what is right and what is wrong, fair, just, appropriate, good, etc. through upbringing and education, and perhaps through innate psychological tendencies, and independently of religious beliefs.
We may compare this to a natural belief in goodness and ability to discriminate between right and wrong, etc. that may be useful when traveling abroad. You need to possess certain attributes to avoid getting into trouble and to make the journey successful. The same is true of journeys to different states of consciousness and realms of experience.
Oh. This seems rather mutual.
When you put it this way, spiritual advancement is sometimes indistinguishable from mental illness. This is cause for alarm.
Remember, they sentenced Socrates to death for failing to live up to the religious standards of their jurisdiction.
That is a very good question.
The Buddha in the story did not follow up: " "I am the rightfully self-enlightened one" with "while you are an ignorant clod whose proximity to the temple of the only Truth is a stench in the nostrils of the Creator."
By deciding who is an anti-Platonist along with who is an anti-Christian, the mantle of authority donned by the Gift-from-Apollo involves a structure of judgement far broader than deciding Plato meant to say this or meant to say that.
And what is the place of women in all this?
If it is indistinguishable then maybe this is what it is. But what about the other times when it is not?
I think a key distinguishing factor would be that spiritual advancement is supposed to enhance your mental abilities. Plotinus, for example, is not considered as mentally deficient.
If it has the opposite effect, and it impairs you mental faculties, then it is not spiritual advancement. This is why Platonists like Plotinus learned Platonism from a teacher and had his own school. You need a teacher to give you some guidance.
Anyway, in the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle, who was a long-time disciple of Plato, says:
And, in fact, people do experience various degrees of happiness when they practice contemplation or meditation. This is an undeniable fact. So, I can see no reason why people should get attacked for practicing theoria, dhyana, or whatever you want to call it, if they choose to.
On what grounds should philosophy prohibit contemplation and declare it antithetical to philosophy?
Well, he didn't follow up with that there on the spot, but he elsewhere made very disparaging remarks about people (and that's putting it mildly).
Do you think that because so many religious and other preachers make a point of airing their contempt for other people, this means that a response other than shaking one's head and going one's way is called for?
That would depend on what you mean by that question.
Think in terms of surviving in the modern economy and society at large. Here, critical thinking is mostly a hindrance, and goodness (as understood in humanism) is considered naive.
An argument can be made that a person is far better off in life if they think in superficial slogans, soundbites, black and white terms.
Quoting Apollodorus
But enhance them in what way? You're getting into dangerous territory here, the land of "I do yoga in order to improve my business skills".
On this point, Early Buddhism says that all of one's practice is supposed to be done for the purpose of the complete cessation of suffering.
But in Platonism, the goal is what? Seeing God, the One? It seems rather intangible, in comparison to what Early Buddhism promises.
It's not clear where this is coming from.
It's no secret that the Ancient Greeks held a dim view of women.
Personally, I resent the prospect of taking up the study of Platonism, only to discover later on that people like me are by default disqualified from any higher knowledge.
Well, we don't live in Ancient Greece, do we?
Plus, even in Ancient Greece women could be philosophers and teachers. Don't forget that according to Plato's Symposium, Socrates was instructed in the highest teachings of philosophy consisting in how to attain the vision of the Beautiful or Good, by Diotima, a woman!
This was not in the least surprising as there were many others.
“That women actually participated in philosophic activity comes as a surprise to many. But Gilles Menage (1984, 3) in the eighteenth century names sixty-five women philosophers in the Hellenistic age alone.”
In “Women Philosophers in the Ancient Greek World: Donning the Mantle,” Kathleen Wider “examines women philosophers in the Greek world primarily from the sixth through the third centuries B.C., with a focus on women philosophers during the late pre-Classical period of Greek history (sixth century), the Classical period (fifth-fourth centuries), and during the early stages of the Hellenistic world (late fourth-third centuries).”
“Although precise dates for the women Pythagoreans are unknown, we do know that some of them flourished in the sixth and early fifth centuries B.C. These include Theano, believed to be the wife of Pythagoras and the most famous of these women, as well as Myia, Damo, and Arignote who were probably daughters of Theano and Pythagoras.
Arete was the head of the Cyrenaic school of philosophy after her father Aristippus died in 350. Hipparchia flourished around 328 and is known for the fact that she abandoned a life of wealth and ease to marry Crates and live the simple life of a Cynic. Little is known about Pamphile except that she was a disciple of Theophrastus who headed the Lyceum after Aristotle.”
“The Pythagoreans saw the family as well as the city as a microcosm of the universe and the order and harmony of the universe was to be reflected in the city and family. Women were given an important place in Pythagorean thought and society because they were an important part of the family and were a necessary component in achieving order and harmony within it. Each person within the family was to perform her/his role well and keep her/his place assign ed by nature. The place of woman turns out to be the traditional one of wife and mother, subordinate to and submissive to her husband, but a woman can perform this role well only if her intelligence is developed.”
“Plato had women disciples and Socrates refers to his women teachers … The Stoic Diodorus Cronus who was active about 315-284 had five daughters who were logicians: Menexene, Argeia, Theognis, Artemisia, and Pantacleia.”
Women Philosophers in the Ancient Greek World: Donning the Mantle – JSTOR
The concept of women being "disqualified from higher knowledge" is NOT a Platonic concept. Intelligence is intelligence, whether it happens to reside in a male or female head.
Theano of Croton (6th century BC)
Aristoclea of Delphi (6th century BC)
Aspasia of Miletus (ca 470–400 BC)
Arete of Cyrene (4th century BC)
Hipparchia of Maroneia (4th century BC)
Nicarete of Megara (ca 300 BC)
Ptolemais of Cyrene (3rd century BC)
Aesara of Lucania (3rd century BC)
Catherine of Alexandria (282–305)
Sosipatra of Ephesus (4th century CE)
Hypatia of Alexandria (c. 360–415 CE)
Aedesia of Alexandria (5th century CE)
Theodora of Emesa (5th-6th century CE)
Women philosophers – Wikipedia
For myself, I have made an effort to stay away from disparaging language or assigning labels. In the context of talking about the meaning of Plato's text, I have tried to defend my reading and challenge others without appealing to arguments or agents based upon authority. On the level of honest differences of opinion, the interest in putting forth one view as superior to another does not directly engage the beliefs any interlocutor may have. The dialectic requires a better form of demonstration than simple reports of what each think is true.
Now it can and has been argued that dialogue of this kind is really nothing other than the conflict of competing beliefs. The topic comes up a lot in Plato. Having accepted that this form of demonstration as being worthwhile, I am not presuming my argument affirms or denies a set of beliefs. Apollodorus puts forth a view of the text that does not include a central theme that appears in them. It is fair to ask what that exclusion means for his interpretation.
Quoting baker
I think that depends on whether that contempt remains as a purely personal register or is the basis of denying other beliefs through the claim of authority. When the Christian church, for example, declared a view to be a heresy, it was merely a difference of opinion until the Church acquired the power to hurt people.
I am more interested in the nature of that weapon than whatever opinions are being protected by the one who wields it. When Apollodorus calls me anti-Christian, he has picked up that weapon.
As noted by Pink Floyd: "careful with that axe, Eugene."
Complete nonsense. A discussion is a discussion it is not waging war, not as far as I am concerned, in any case.
It all started when others called me "Neoplatonist", "Christian evangelist", and other names just because I disagreed with them or they disagreed with me.
I have repeatedly stated that I have no problem whatsoever with other people's views. The problem arose when others chose to deny accepted texts or provided fake translations as "evidence" against a mainstream reading and to promote what in the literature are fringe views.
I only complained about your labels when you said this:
Quoting Apollodorus
Your inability to distinguish between your interlocutors is not a problem shared by said interlocutors.
As a matter of fact, the issue was the claim that "philosophical inquiry leads to aporia" to which I raised an objection.
Your response was:
Quoting Valentinus
Note that this was before my comment above and that you said "we" and it looked like you reacted in response to one of my comments to Foolo. I failed to see why you thought there was a need for you to defend him as you did on the thread on Socrates and elsewhere.
Anyway, this is quite irrelevant. People agree on some issues and disagree on others, and that is that.
But I was not defending myself from your claims regarding aporia. I went through many efforts to get your meaning of the word out of my mouth. The cowardice and despair I was referring to is the view you characterize as my view. The property is coming from you and is now something that belongs me.
I did suggest your unwillingness to explain why Socrates pretended to be ignorant was less than valorous.
You may have suggested this, but I had no idea why as I had never claimed that "Socrates pretended to be ignorant". This has never been my interpretation of Socrates!
I never claimed you claimed it. Your view amounts to assuming that to be the case when you do claim Socrates knew the truth. My bringing it up as a challenge is precisely for the reason that your interpretation does not explain the discrepancy. I am not putting words in your mouth. The logic that lead to my challenge comes from me.
Saying that I have an anti-Christian commitment falls well outside the bounds of reasonable discourse.
It does not matter what it seems. The goal is to go above and beyond prima facie appearance and experience, in a constant quest for the highest, until one reaches ultimate reality, i.e. that beyond which there is nothing higher.
What that is remains to be established when and if the highest has been reached.
In the meantime, no matter what you experience in contemplation, you need to go beyond that if you wish to attain the highest. Or, remain, at least temporarily, at a lower level should you prefer this. You do what you are comfortable with.
I do not know what "truth" Socrates knew. My position is simply that he is not as ignorant as some claim he is. In other words, my interpretation of his statement that he "knew nothing" is that it does not refer to everything but only to some things.
The matter I brought up bears no relationship to any claim of ignorance than that made by Socrates himself. I am asking you to defend your view in light of a prominent feature of the text.
The whole "some people claim" groove is a lame form of argumentation. Who cares if you have won an argument in your own mind?
If Socrates' statements are your problem, then I'm afraid you will have to discuss that with him. I can't help you there.
Quoting Apollodorus
Is that to say that your many attempts to say what is being said can be struck from the record?
You, after all, has seen themselves fit to say what is Platonist or not. The role you afforded yourself in the past is not consonant with telling me to work out the texts by myself.
I am saying what the text of the dialogues says.
The whole discussion started when others denied some sections of the text or attempted to read things into the text that are not there.
Other than that, everyone - including yourself - is free to interpret Socrates and Plato any way they choose.
Quoting Apollodorus
You have the opportunity to explain the text as you understand it without regard to what others have said, including myself.
You claim an understanding of the texts that others have got wrong while gracefully extending the privilege to their false opinions to go unchallenged by you because the text belongs to you and your opinion of what is "there" or not. I am tempted to introduce a disparaging remark.
Leaving aside any other problems that such an approach may encounter, you have counted yourself outside of the problem of affirming or denying statements that us lesser beings must negotiate.
My previous comment aside, you still have not explained why Socrates claims to be ignorant when you wish to qualify the statement as not really meaning what it sounds like it means.
That is the only thesis I am trying to address. If it is not worthy of answering, just ignore it.
The text says the following:
1. Socrates does know Greek, he knows his family, friends and other people, etc. In fact, he knows quite a lot.
2. Therefore, he means that some things are unknown to him, not all.
I thought this was obvious. If others believe that it isn't, it's their problem, not mine.
The importance of the statement involves the distinction between opinion and knowledge, as demonstrated throughout the dialogues.
It does not refer to whether he recognizes beings from one day to the next. This has been repeatedly pointed out to you.
Knowing the distinction between opinion and knowledge is part of knowledge. I don't think anyone would argue that Socrates did not know the distinction. :smile:
Wow.
I am arguing for a distinction to be recognized and after pages of you dodging the problem, you now suggest that I am the one denying it because Socrates knows of the distinction.
It is rare when such heights of rhetorical persuasion have been reached by mortal man.
How was I to know that this is what you were arguing???
As already stated, I wasn't aware that this was an issue.
I don't know. How about all the efforts made to bring it to your attention? Or the attempt to separate the problem from other positions you had taken?
After that, how can I know what you are able to know?
As far as I am concerned, there is nothing unclear in that passage. I am not responsible for others.
And why would you bring that to my attention when I had no problem with it?
Nor do you take responsibility for what you say.
In any case, I hope that your lack of accountability to others means you will no longer be claiming who other people are or what they think.
Don't worry, I will follow your example :grin:
Do you mean by dealing with statements as given rather than avoiding challenges they might incur?
Either that, or the other way around, as the case may be :smile: Anyway, have a nice day!
I accept the withdrawal of your arguments from opining what other people might think.
Good night.
Correct. However, "goodness" in the Platonic sense means being good to others and to yourself in every respect. Naivety resulting in harm to yourself is not being good to yourself. Moreover, in the Platonic sense, goodness to yourself and others is accompanied by wisdom. In contrast, naivety is at the most goodness without wisdom, and may ultimately be no goodness at all.
People need to learn how to integrate philosophy with everyday life. It may not always be easy, but if philosophical reasoning and contemplation result in greater clarity of mind, power of discernment, better understanding of others, greater awareness of environmental issues, etc., then it can't be a bad thing.
That might be an interesting question. Without an argument, it leaves your reader to fill in what you have not.
I am done with guessing what other people might mean.
Islam may entail some Platonist and Aristotelian elements but I think it is much closer to Judaism.
I would imagine that Iran likes to see itself as a state modeled on Plato's Republic with an Abrahamic twist, but like most Islamic states it is run by gangsters.
And I doubt that the Taliban even understand the concept of examined life let alone practice it. They are basically bandits using religion as a cover IMO.
This is vague.
Christians can argue that God is always good to people, and that this also means he is good to those who he condemns for eternity. Christians were burning witches "for their own good". The Nazis believed it was for the own good of Jews that they be annihilated.
And so on. There is an endless row of examples from human culture where one person's bad is another person's good.
Hardly any term is as vague as "good".
By modern standards, what would Plato be, in terms of socioeconomic theory? Probably not a socialist, but a capitalist. Can we be reasonably sure that he wouldn't support Trump? Or Hitler? Remember, in ancient Greece, they practiced selective infanticide; unfit or unwanted babies were removed from society. And that was deemed good.
See, this is goodness, in every respect:
Quoting James Riley
Correct. But this is what examination of one's thoughts, words, and actions is for.
Quoting baker
Perhaps we can't be sure that he wouldn't. But we can't be sure that he would either. Personally, I doubt that Plato would have supported Hitler or Stalin. None of them sounds like the ideal philosopher-king to me. Besides, this is all speculation.
Selective infanticide was practiced in Ancient Greece? So, female infanticide is not practiced in Modern India? And abortion is not being practiced all over the world?
To what use, to what end?
Unless one is omniscient, or gifted with enormous self-confidence, then how can one possibly know what is truly, objectively good?
We don't know, exactly, and there is just too much at stake to open ourselves up to a philosopher from a past time and take him as our spiritual master.
We aren't talking about taking Hindus or some other people as our spiritual masters.
Well, if you work on the premise that what is good for some is bad for others, then either (a) nothing is truly good or (b) you just have to decide which option is the best in any given situation and act according to that and to your best abilities.
What other option would you suggest?
Quoting baker
There is no need to take Plato as our spiritual master. He is only a guide that suggests one path out of many. If people know a better path, they are free to take it.
But the true master is the nous, our own intelligence. Our task is to learn to listen what it has to communicate to us. This is the meaning of self-examination.
This is the fundamental problem of Socratic philosophy. We do not have knowledge of the good itself. And yet, we all desire what is good for us, even if we do not know what that is. (Republic 505d) The Socratic task is to the best of our abilities to determine what is best knowing that what seems to be best may not be what is best.
Plato puts a great deal of emphasis on the nature of a person. But this alone is not enough:
To this end, the education of the guardians of the city, from which the philosopher-kings will be found, is primarily in gymnastics and music. (376e)
The question of the good is best addressed, to the extent it is possible, by becoming good, that is, by the development of a soul that is just and beautiful (well proportioned). But, of course, we do not have the standard by which to measure the extent to which we are good. The desire to know the good in order to be good and live a good life, seems to be the best guide available to us.
There is at least one further option, namely, that God is a tribalist, has a chosen tribe, and the objectively good is what is good for that tribe. This is what Jehovah is like, for example. And so that if one has had the misfortune of not being born into that tribe, then one is just doomed to bad things. If such is the case, then your option b above cannot apply.
Other than that, the issue at hand is the resolution of a person's fundamental moral (and other) doubts, which is a complex topic.
This reminds me of a phenomenon we can readily observe among Western Buddhists. Namely, there are Western Buddhists who believe that the Buddha said this
“Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and common sense.”
and that if they act accordingly, they are acting in line with the Buddha's instructions and are on the path to enlightenment.
If, however, one were to inquire about the matter from actual Buddhists, esp. the Asian ones, and from the Early Buddhist texts, they would make it clear that the Buddha never said such a thing, nor that acting in line with that slogan makes for Buddhist practice.
Similarly, I suspect that simply acting in line with one's intelligence is not what Plato would applaud.
For one, it's inevitable that everyone acts in line with one's intelligence, so the idea is a non-starter to begin with.
For two, it's too general. I don't know the details, but I think it's is likely that just like the Buddha mentioned above, Plato, too, actually had very specific activities in mind and had a very specific moral system, and that only acting in line with that particular moral system would count as living an examined life, but not with others.
But when you put it this way, it's so vague that it includes Hitler and Mother Theresa, anyone and anything.
Correct. So, ultimately, it is for the individual to work out a solution. With or without help from others, as the case may be. I think the main thing would be to be honest with oneself and make an informed effort to do one's best.
Quoting baker
But according to Plato the nous does not exist in a vacuum. If we consider that it possesses latent knowledge of the Forms or is otherwise in contact with higher forms of knowledge or aspects of reality, then I think we begin to get a different picture.
Quoting baker
Of course Plato had a moral system. In the first place, there were general guidelines of ethical conduct many of which were reflected in Greek custom and law, e.g., injunctions against murder, theft, adultery, perjury, slander, disrespecting the Gods and your parents, etc.
This was followed by the cultivation of the four cardinal virtues, self-control, courage, wisdom, and righteousness.
The acquisition of higher knowledge came after a period of moral and intellectual training that enabled the philosopher to understand what he was doing and what the way forward was.
In fact, this was the standard procedure in most Greek (and other) traditions and was later adopted by Early Christianity.
The focus is on oneself, on self-examination. One cannot do more than they are willing and capable of doing. Self-deception is a problem and includes a lack of awareness of the deception.
The examined life is not prescriptive. One can follow some set of rules or standards, but what is their origin? Is there a realm of moral truths? Did you discover them on your own? If so, how? Can you know you got it right? Or are they what you are told by some authority? Is obedience to them a rejection of the examined life? Doesn't the examined life include an examination of standards? Does that examination come to an end when one is satisfied that they now have the answer? Or should that satisfaction be examined too?
And yet all ideas of the "examined life" are prescriptive. There exist lists of questions one _should_ ask oneself in order to "examine one's life".
I doubt Plato or Socrates would ever say such a thing, at least they wouldn't mean it in the general sense that your sentence suggests.
If the examined life is prescriptive then there is no need to examine, just do what is prescribed. And yet, some will ask about what is prescribed - Is what is prescribed what is best? Are there other prescriptions that are at odds with these?
Quoting baker
There are? What is on those lists? Where can they be found? Are the questions unquestioned?
But, Baker, if we bear in mind that in Platonism the true individual is the nous, etc. as explained above, then I think there should be less doubt about it.
Unless you have a better suggestion ....
Some examples:
The Catholic examen:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Examination_of_conscience
Naikan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naikan
The questions/items in the High Performance Planner
https://www.highperformanceplanner.com/
The millions of self-help books like this:
https://www.amazon.com/Question-Yourself-Questions-Explore-Reveal/dp/B089J17DN5/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&qid=1631040204&refinements=p_27%3ADave+Edelstein&s=books&sr=1-1&text=Dave+Edelstein
It's not about me having a "better suggestion".
I can't quite put my finger on it, but I have a nagging suspicion that people like Plato would dismiss me as living an unexamined life. While I think that I lead an examined life, I seriously doubt they would. I know Christians and some other religious/spiritual people who tell me, with great ease and a considerable dose of contempt, that I "barely know myself", that I "don't know how things really are", that I "should sit down and finally look at myself", that I'm "not honest with myself (or others)", and so on.
I know first hand what people who advocate "to look inside" tend to be like, and it doesn't fill me with enthusiasm for the project of "self-examination". Too often, I've seen the proponents of the "examined life" simply championing their ideology, and dismissing everything else as "unexamined life". So I've become rather bitter and distrustful for the project of "self-examination".
This is not to say that every proponent of the "examined life" is like this. At this point, I'm just not sure there is an objective, ideologically neutral way to "examine one's life". But that instead, "living an examined life" goes hand in hand with embracing a particular ideology.
In the first sentence of the Examination of Conscience:
Here the moral law is established. The examined life for Socrates does not assume an established moral law. It inquires as to what one should do.
Naikan is about another person not oneself.
The High Performance Planner. Looks like slick marketing to get with the program and become successful.
According to the Introduction of Question Yourself Questions:
The questions asked in the book may be helpful but it is no substitute for living the examined life.
It's peculiar you'd say that. The Naikan questions are about what one did to others, so they are very much a matter of self-examination.
From the link you provided:
This is not a list of questions
Quoting baker
although it can be a part of the examined life, I think Socrates would have many questions to ask in return, including why the examined life should be focused on "this person". One the one hand, he might ask about people in general or the community or city, and, on the other, about oneself - how I live, what I think, what I value.
Well, personally, I tend to take the opposite view. Some (most) people do not do enough examination and others too much. Examination (exetasis) must be practiced in moderation and using one’s better judgement, in order to prevent it from developing into something that we don’t want. In other words, examination needs to be individually calibrated and ideally with a bit of guidance from someone that has some experience and is in a position to offer advice.
Socrates does appear to be an extreme case, but I think this is a false impression caused by his elenctic method and apparent questioning of everything. However, I think this serves the primary purpose of educating others which also seems to be Plato’s objective in the dialogues.
To be perfectly honest, you do not sound like someone who lives an unexamined life, maybe more like a bit of a (self-)doubter, in which case I think Plato may advise you to take it easy :smile: At the end of the day, it is impossible to be absolutely certain of everything at all times and in all places. We cannot live on doubt alone, we need some degree of certitude or even “ideology” or “dogma”, as well as faith and hope (all in moderation).
Socrates himself appears to take the advice of priests, priestesses, poets, and others whenever he thinks that what they say makes sense. And, of course, he listens to the inner daimonion, the “sign” and “voice” that arise in his mind and offer him guidance, for example, by advising him against a particular course of action.
As stated before, the ultimate decision belongs to the nous, to that aspect of the soul that knows and understands and that has an intuition or recollection of what is true, beautiful, and good.
The purpose of examination is not an end in itself, but only a means of reconnecting us with that higher knowledge within us that has direct access to truth. It must lead to introspection and to an inquiry into who or what we are.
This may or may not make sense in the beginning and may not be fully attained in this life (or ever), but with practice a degree of clarity, discernment and insight begins to take hold, like an inner conversion or transformation that leads to a new experience of life and of ourselves. And this in itself makes it worth the effort.
:up:
To me this is also the dark side of philosophy. 'I care about truth more than you.' Socrates can be grating, a self-righteous, falsely modest clown. But maybe that's the game, and we're stuck doing versions of it. Virtue-signaling might come in every flavor but none, which is not to say that all flavors are equal.