Thursday, September 25, 2008
From 9/24: Rehearsing for Death
Though many topics are broached in the Phaedo, the central themes concern the nature of the soul (its relation to the body, whether it survives after death, etc.) and Plato's metaphysical doctrine of the Forms. For Plato, these two themes run together as the soul and Forms share a certain kinship with one another. So let's keep the conversation going as we'll certainly want to talk more about the Forms next week.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
The Gods love it because it is pious; it is not pious because the Gods love it…But if the Gods are a human invention and we impose human characteristics, likes, and dislikes onto the Gods, then it would be more accurate to claim that we, the people, love something because it is pious. And our likes and dislikes in this “world” (whatever example one may make) are only likes and dislikes in our societies – a manufactured world. Wouldn’t man in society have different likes and dislikes than savage man? Savage man really wouldn’t have any preferences beyond sustaining his own life. A house cat may prefer its litter box to be in one corner of a room over another. It may like when it is placed in an open area as opposed to in a crowded corner beneath a sink. But a cat in the wild has no conception of these likes or dislikes; it has no conception of these preferences. We spend our time pondering how things come to be and we wonder about certain questions while failing to see that all this is no more different than mistaking something very artificial for something that exists naturally in nature and then aiming our efforts at figuring out how that thing (that artificial thing) came to exist in nature. Since we fail to establish that what we fill our time wondering about is actually made by us, we acknowledge only that it must have come from somewhere else and train our efforts in a direction in which no answer can be found. We assume there is an answer to “what is piety” and “what is pious” as if piety is something we humans stumbled upon rather than conjured up. The reason why answers exist and why they’re able to be found, with regard to things in nature and the elements of this world, is because they’re things we actually have stumbled upon and did not invent. And so they are things in nature that we see and seek to understand. The other matters which consume our time are things which we invent but which we think existed naturally. So we look for answers and explanations when none exist where we look.
The comparison of Socrates to Achilles throughout the Socratic dialogues and especially in light of his death gives a very different juxtaposition of the philosophical world to the ephemeral world which most men move in. Achilles dies for fame, to be known. Rather than life out a long life unknown, he chooses to die a hero. This is the valor which the Greeks model their lives to. Virtue is, for the most part, found in terms of war. Like Achilles, Socrates chooses to die rather than live and betray an ideal. Socrates dies for philosophy, not valor. This choice, and the reactions of those close to him at his death, shows what the life of a philosopher must be like.
In his death Socrates shows that the life of a philosopher is for something the common man cannot understand. This is shown as his friends weep at his death, while he faces it boldly. Despite what Socrates may have truly believed happens to the body and the soul after death, his brave choice shows there is no place for the ephemeral connection of man to his body and other things of this world for the philosopher. In this way, Socrates is making a last comment on the way Greeks live and their values. He is showing that on which they play importance will only pass away. To truly become someone who will be remembered, you must disregard the values of the civilizations which will pass away and die for values which will have more longevity. As we all well know, Socrates is considered in much higher regard today than Achilles. We do not learn and discuss Achilles’ actions the way we consider Socrates’ ideas, what they mean for our society and the way they have formed our western philosophy.
The Platonic Forms are not true forms. They can not be achieved. These forms are only relative to those perceiving it. They are more like opinions or comparisons to other objects. For example an object can be bigger than another but an object can’t be big. There is always something bigger. Beauty is another example. Something could be beautiful to me, but ugly to my friend. I find this idea amusing but also is hard to digest, because we use these forms in everyday life. We say that something is big or beautiful, but nothing can be big or beautiful. It can only display characteristics of the form described. So when I’m on a date with a girl and I say she is beautiful, I’m actually lying. When my mom sends me money because I spent all my savings on Chinese food and I tell her she is nice, she actually is not. These comments make me sound like a horrible person but it’s true she is not beautiful and my mom is not nice. They can only display characteristics of these traits. For the record my mom beats me with wrapping paper during the holidays.
Socrates’ disdain for the body is a view in which we still see prevalent today in many religious teachings. Socrates saw the body as an obstacle from one achieving one’s goal of possessing wisdom. He felt that the body with all its urges, temptations, needs and fears distracted the soul, which is attached to the body, from staying focused on learning more and truly understanding reality. “as long as we have the body and our soul is fused with such an evil we shall never adequately attain what we desire, which we affirm to be the truth. The body keeps us busy in a thousand ways because of its need for nurture.” (66b). Socrates believed that the soul would only be able to achieve knowing the truth and be able to be in the presence of it when the soul was estranged from the body in death. Christianity has a similar view. The body is viewed as being a playground for temptations to arise, ultimately blocking one from staying focused on matters of truth and faith and therefore can be the downfall causing one to sin, hindering them from being able to enter into heaven. That is anyway until they realize that their temptations need to be repented of and then they can move closer to reaching heaven. In such the same way, the philosopher needs to realize that the body’s temptations are keeping them from wisdom and they need to avoid its desires in order to discover the truth.
The idea of beauty and the Platonic Form of beauty is represented throughout the Phaedo. The Form of Beauty is the quality that all beautiful things share in common—that which makes them beautiful. A beautiful person would then participate in the Form of Beauty by possessing that shared quality that makes things beautiful. The Form of Beauty then is the total of all the beauty in the world, and a person would participate in the Form of Beauty by possessing some of the "stuff" that is defined as beauty for some particular reason. This is an extremely broad idea—that one is considered beautiful because of some “stuff” that is considered beautiful, but with no definite reasoning behind it. Something is just deemed beautiful because someone deems it beautiful—which is not a definite or tangible form. The Form of Beauty seems to only be relevant to the beautiful or those seeking beauty. The idea of beauty seems to also contradict Socrates’ contempt for the body itself. Socrates’ sees the body as a barrier between what one needs to achieve during his or her lifetime. It’s a blockade of our goals and leaves us to fight against temptation and persuasion. In today’s culture, the body itself is directly related to the concept of beauty. Many solely look to the body for a definition of beauty, which although may not be the proper way to gauge beauty, seems to contradict Socrates’ disdain for the body and accept the Form of Beauty.
The part about comparisons really caught my attention. We compare things everyday without thought to this perplexing idea which, I find, to be undoubtedly true. What does this mean? what are the implications of this? there has to be some profound idea that we are all missing. This idea of the forms is a formidable answer, but even that lacks something. The question I pose is this, is it even possible to think of the largest and the smallest?
Post a Comment