Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Mon Feb 14, 2022 2:34 pm
Belinda wrote: ↑Mon Feb 14, 2022 12:25 pm
Nick wrote:
IMO the person capable of both inductive and deductive reason (objective facts and objective values) when they become balanced, is worthy of the term MAN and can leave the prison of Plato's Cave
And should such persons make the laws that the chained slaves have to live with?
But what are those 'laws'? On one hand (I gather) you suggest that consciousness and awareness are bound by legal, social and cultural laws (as law is normally defined). But my understanding of Plato, and thus Plato's Cave and the larger sense of it, involves the understanding that if man is bound, it is not so much surrounding law that binds him, though that is certainly an aspect, but rather issues of awareness and self-realization. So in Plato (cf the Seventh Epistle) the issue is not exclusively jurisprudential, but philosophical-spiritual.
However, you are right that in a sense those who are aware of the meaning of entrapment in the situation described by Plato in his metaphor, and as did Plato himself, must describe, and do describe,
the ways and means out of entrapment. Again in the Seventh Epistle there is as much discussion of the political system as abusive tyranny -- which must be overcome, overthrown and renovated -- as there is of what Plato considered to be the object of philosophy : an
internal event [341c]
There does not exist, nor will there ever exist, any treatise of mine dealing therewith. For it does not at all admit of verbal expression like other studies, but, as a result of continued application to the subject itself and communion therewith, it is brought to birth in the soul on a sudden, as light that is kindled by a leaping spark, and thereafter it nourishes itself.
Now, in my study of Christianity, from a Catholic angle (which is the real and true angle from which research should begin and effectively can only begin), I clearly discern that if there
is a method enunciated and explained, the function and purpose of the methodology is, in fact, to liberate the entrapped soul. Essentially, the purpose of liturgy is to 'lift up' that one who is bound down into entrapment which is to say trapped in sin. And sin (in my view) must be defined as all that keeps one bound down. I do not think there is any more true and accurate statement about what Christianity is or what it proposes as what I have just explained. Again, it is also expressed in the 16th chapter of the Bhagavad-Gita: we face a duality. We either make a choice to align ourselves with upward ascending currents; or we do nothing; or we align with currents that go down. All of these involve the will.
Now one interesting thing is that when one considers the moralists and the ethicists that expound a Christian philosophy, one must simultaneously consider and talk about those who resist, counter, object to, create arguments against, and in general oppose the project of ascent. That is where the notion of 'rebellion' arises. So from a Platonic philosophical perspective, which is also a political perspective, the social structures and the jurisprudential systems must be examined carefully and rationally. And they must be renovated and overturned if they are inhibitive to all that is conducive to social and spiritual development. Is there any more clear message in Plato? The two are not divided off from each other, they run parallel.
Just as the City is (potentially) undermined by malefactors, which is of course what political corruption entails, so there is a correspondence to the corruption that goes on in an individual -- in any one of us. In fact we must I think start from the premise that *corruption exists in us*. And our individual and personal corruption has ramifications. But then so does our reformation, our self-improvement.
My experience examining the more old-school Catholic-Christian doctrine is that it focuses on the individual and proposes to the individual that there are ways to live that liberate and free-up; and there are ways to live that do the opposite. It is a question of being exposed, conceptually and intellectually, to the entire problem. The thing is that it all has to be designed to the understanding and the strength and capacity of the lower common denominators. And that is where *legal constraint* enters the picture. Just as a person must become aware of the jurisprudential law and social regulations, so on another level must that person become aware, at the very least, of the consequences of errors, bad choices and sins on other levels.
So if Man is seen, and indeed how can Man not be seen? as a creature who in social situations is in need of all manner of different restraints, defined limits, defined sense of duty and obligation, as well as defined consequences for violating the rules, it of course logically follows that the same applies to man's spiritual world, to man's inner world. The law must be defined. But who will do it? Who can do it?
There has to be a figure of authority. And the authority has to be based on reasoning. And reasoning, in this sense, is based on long familiarity with the myriad ways that people can and will go astray. And the reasoning is also based on the possibility of grasping transcendental principles. This is very basic stuff.
Except that we must -- and this is my opinion -- accept and understand that we are in times of revolutionary nihilism (a term employed by Eugene Rose). What does that mean? Well, that is of course where the real conversation takes place. It has to do with overturning 'rules and regulations'. It has to do with 'undermining rational structures'. It has to do with undermining authority and also hierarchies that have developed in which philosophically oriented men have defined why *law* has validity and what function it serves.
Now the other part of this is that *modern culture* with all of its systems, technology, persuasive tools and platforms -- really the entire spectacle of our modern world -- offers to the soul an escape from what previously were the defined and accepted limits of what consciousness should apply itself to. We are now on the threshold, literally! of the Metaverse. A metaverse is forming, and perhaps has been formed, around us. And the first probes, as it were, are being inserted into our physical and psychic selves. The question is: Who accurately sees what is going on? Who accurately and fairly describes it? And if they can describe it, what do they recommend as a way to, let's say, counter it?
So here again we go full circle. We are now back again at the beginning. The issue is man's entrapment and what it means to be entrapped. And right alongside that question is that of What does it mean to be *liberated*?
) I would find you merely explaining how it is that you wound up in your peculiar, personal, philosophical locality. A set of decisions, no? I would also expect it to be factual that wherever you stand, wherever you have arrived, is within a general posture, if not a pose, that is nihilistic. Is the reference to nihilism admissible in discourse from your perspective? Is nihilism a 'disease'? or the a cure of correctable perceptual problem?