Nick:
F4, which is more important to you, contemplating truth or arguing opinions?
If we are in the cave then we cannot contemplate truth, only what we might imagine it to be.
A minority are able to admit the limitations to this approach and seek to verify through conscious contemplation and conscious efforts to "know thyself."
So, what you mean is not contemplate the truth in the sense that the philosopher in the story does, but rather to contemplate in an attempt to gain the truth. I do not think the two are mutually exclusive and apparently neither do you since you too argue opinions.
You seem to believe that self-knowledge is a matter of retrieving or recognizing or remembering inborn knowledge. I believe that we should listen to ourselves for in ourselves we can find care, compassion, empathy, etc., but I do not believe in the purity of the soul, not all of our desires, for example, should be given free range. I believe that culture is cultivation, that the soul requires weeding and nourishment. This is why we find a discussion of both the just soul and the just city in the Republic. A corrupt city, however, can have a corruptive influence. And so, we cannot simply rely on the city to cultivate the soul. This is not a modern problem or a western problem, it was discussed by Plato and Kongzi (Confucius) and many others. Here good teachers can help us to flourish, and in their absence our growth may be stunted and deformed. There is much more to be said on this but to keep it short, the point is that we cannot rely only on what we are born with or only on what society gives us. Culture is not simply the current state of affairs in society. We must, as the saying goes, cultivate our own gardens. Self-knowledge is about identifying weeds and not allowing them to grow, discovering what is of value and nourishing it. Left solely to ourselves, however, we may not be able to correctly distinguish the weeds from what should be allowed to grow. We all desire what is good but not all that we desire is good. I do not think that knowing what is good is simply a matter of inner attentiveness. Culture, not the Great Beast, provides our teachers. We may be fortunate enough to find some who are living but we are all fortunate enough that culture provides good teachers across the ages in the form of books that are passed down from generation to generation.
The works of Plato aren't to be believed but contemplated including the forms.
You seem to think it is a choice between believing what he says or contemplating on what he says. While I agree that it is not a matter of belief it is not a matter of contemplating abstracted parts of what he says either. If the works are to be contemplated they must, in my opinion, be contemplated as a whole, attending to all that he says in those works. The Phaedrus says this and it is worth contemplating. But even if we try to attend to the whole we are only seeing snapshots of a larger landscape and as he says in the Second Letter, his innermost thoughts are not written anywhere.
People into arguing cannot remember anything and become superficial.
By “this” in the quote from the Phaedrus he is referring to the written word. It should be kept in mind that Socrates never put anything in writing. One of the main problems, according to the Phaedrus, is that a written work says the same thing to whoever reads it. Socrates spoke differently to different people depending on their needs and what was appropriate to say to them. In addition, a written work cannot be questioned. We cannot engage in argument with the author. We cannot raise questions, we cannot ask for clarification, we cannot raise objections that can be responded to, misunderstandings cannot be corrected. A well written work then must anticipate our questions and objections and offer needed clarification. The works of Plato do this in a quite remarkable way. Another problem the text discusses is that prior to the written word it was necessary to learn what was said by heart. We do not usually learn written works by heart (Nietzsche demands it of his worthy readers). We do not know them as well as we should if we are to understand them as best we can. We think it unnecessary because we can always go back to check what is written. We do not pay sufficient attention and focus only on what interests us and thus are not reminded by the text that this is only part of the picture. The works of Plato are in this sense, an imitation of Socrates’ discretion when talking to different people.
As Emile Chartier said: "Two things are aesthetically perfect in the world - the clock and the cat." Alas I am neither.
