Philosophy Now Forum

Wyman wrote:Although I agree with you and see your point, you are 'riding my friend too hard' - as Theodorus complained to Socrates' critique of Protagarus in the Theaetetus. That is, I have a soft spot for Plato and although I agree that your psychological critique of Plato's motivations for the Republic could very well be true, here is the other side of the argument.

Well, yes. It's as you were saying to Clinias; there are (at least) two sides to an argument and the solution lies somewhere in the middle. I was only drawing in out the battle lines.

Wyman wrote:What is good for the whole (a society or individual person, for instance), is not necessarily or always good for the individual parts (the appetites and desires, or the iron and bronze). For the good of the whole, it may be best to sacrifice or compromise some of the parts.

Plato as utilitarian, eh?

Wyman wrote:This creates grave moral issues when it comes to a recipe for society and government, which is what you're objecting to.

I don't think it created any grave moral issue for Plato, he was quite explicit about the use of propaganda to mollify the hoi polloi and so successful, that there are still people who believe Atlantis was a real place.

Wyman wrote:But in the individual, sacrificing appetites and desires for the good of the whole does not create such issues, because the parts of our 'self' do not have moral standing.

No, but the parts of society are 'selves'.

Wyman wrote:The stated aim of creating the Republic is to analogize justice in society to justice in the individual. Whether Plato really advocated for such a society is subject to debate.

Archytas, the Pythagorean, with whom Plato had a bond of xenia, had to send a ship to rescue Plato in 361BC when he upset Dionysius II, tyrant of Syracuse, by trying to establish his Republic there. I think he was serious about it.

Wyman wrote:But let's suppose he did so advocate:
The more the 'whole' - here meaning society - is at risk of destruction, the more tolerance there is for sacrificing the liberties of the individual for the good of the whole. That is why armies are not liberal democracies. The city-states of Greece were at constant risk of destruction and enslavement at the hands of their neighbors. Thus, if Plato did fancy his brainchild for how a city state ought to be run, it may not have been only his place in the aristocracy that supplied psychological motivation, but also the much different and tenuous circumstances in which he and his fellow Athenians lived.

I think 'we' are more prepared to have our liberties curtailed or suspended if we believe our society is at risk of destruction, if for instance we are led to believe the enemy is developing weapons of mass destruction, but it is difficult for individuals to accurately gauge that risk. Plato, who had a lot to lose, had few qualms about lying to the population; I wonder how much has changed.

uwot wrote:

Clinias wrote:Karl Marx wanted to abolish the Family because it shows the division of function.

There are much better scholars of Marx than me contributing to this forum, who could perhaps refute that. I simply ask you to cite the passage in which Marx actually says that. Having done that, you could then explain why that makes him typical, any more than the fact that Bob Dylan is a singer means all Jews are singers.

Karl Marx="That the abolition of individual economy (the division of labor) is inseparable from the abolition of the family is self-evident." In "German Ideology".

uwot wrote:

Clinias wrote:Moses Hess wanted to do away with all hierarchy in a society. Hierarchy is "oppresion". Kadmi Cohen wondered why his fellow kinsmen were so against hierarchy.

Hierarchy, when it is dynastic, means that the children of the rich and powerful go to schools that teach them to be rich and powerful, thereby perpetuating a situation in which people who might be better at wielding power don't get the opportunity.

"Thou shalt not covet". That means to covet another's station in life. Nature creates some individuals to excel. In War, aristocracy arises. These are men who are overly courageous, smart, cunning, and natural leaders. When you use the terms "rich and powerful" you are using Marxist terminology. You covet. Nature is aristocratic. Ever watch National Geographic? Nature assigns rank. Christendom with its royalty and aristocracy is the power of the Logos in Nature that hierarchy naturally arose, organically. Nature does not teach egalitarianism.

Clinias wrote:

uwot wrote:

Clinias wrote:Karl Marx wanted to abolish the Family because it shows the division of function.

There are much better scholars of Marx than me contributing to this forum, who could perhaps refute that. I simply ask you to cite the passage in which Marx actually says that. Having done that, you could then explain why that makes him typical, any more than the fact that Bob Dylan is a singer means all Jews are singers.

Karl Marx="That the abolition of individual economy (the division of labor) is inseparable from the abolition of the family is self-evident." In "German Ideology".

Fair enough; that only took two and a half weeks. Explaining why that makes Karl Marx typical of Jews is the tricky bit; knock yourself out Clinias.

Clinias wrote:"Thou shalt not covet". That means to covet another's station in life. Nature creates some individuals to excel.

What an odd thing to believe. What if I were to put it this way? Nature has made me sharper witted than you. By your reasoning, you should shut the fuck up and accept your station.
Nature, as you will doubtless, albeit slowly demonstrate, isn't like that.

Clinias wrote:In the Protagoras (§342a-343c), Socrates says:
“The most ancient and fertile homes of philosophy among the Greeks are Crete and Sparta, where are to be found more sophists than anywhere on earth. …they pretend to be fools.”

Then, he explains their methodology of hiding their wisdom and ends the paragraph with this:

“And in these states there are not only men but also women who are proud of their intellectual culture”.

-Unfortunately,
they are not the only ones. On some other forum, an atheist woman complimented herself - and her correspondant - because of their own culture...
I think that so long one is proud of his own (culture, or something else), the reason is that this same person is not gone far enough (in this domain).
I oppose the simply people with culture (even large as it is (relatively) often the case) to the scholars. As I understand the last one, he does not necessarily has as much culture (as the first), but is at least gone deep and maybe around of a theme. (For me, he is the real intellectual.)

-In a not so restrictive way, I opposite social culture - usable to communicate or more than that - and the personal culture. I understand in this way, that to be eclectic is not necessarily the same as knowing a "lot".

For me, the first way of an extended culture can almost consist in being open to any (deeper or not so deep) "knowledge", what can result in a way in being symbolically a waste bin.
The second way is I think not so large, but deeper. It consist in thinking your own concepts again and again, until you have reach a "sufficient" step of coherence. Not only some basical concepts, but some analogies between different knowledges.

I try for myself to access the second way. By example, when I find a book - as of Nietsche - knowing he is atheist, and the other fact that it took a lot of time for me to become protestant after a sceptic period, I know that I won't read such a book. What doesn't mean to be close to other way of thinking, but simply, if it doesn't correspond to my heart, I prefer not to continue.

But nowadays, being more sure of myself, I like a lot being questioned about my convictions, although a lot of people don't like this.

Clinias wrote: Philosophy was started by the Doric Greeks. In 2007, I wrote a paper "Doric Crete and Sparta, the home of Greek philosophy" and it seems to be a whole lot of skepticism out there. I wrote a followup:

The Case of the Barefoot Socrates

I am hoping this settles the case. If philosophy is about first causes--shouldn't philosophy know its own origins?

-I was about to answer that the origin was in the brain, but it wouldn't have been accurate enough to estimate a date, and would be a circumlocution around the origin of thoughts...

-Formally, to qualify some philosophy, we would have to consider at least several people (a society), to let the person B qualify the person A as being such a philosopher.

But if B is not a philosopher, what's going on ?

I remember at the passage, the Bible as qualifying the wisdom of humain as more crazy than the madness of God... I don't want to proselytize, but I think this is a good metaphor of what happen to A and B here before...

Or if the human is not qualified to qualify himself as philosopher, it would mean that the way of thinking should be seen "factually" (I don't like this term) as in the (technology) progress.

And this is where I would like to mean:
I think - believing a physicist of the name of Fritjof Capra (himself quoting Bohr and Oppenheimer) - that the Ancients of the Orient were maybe, or surely philosopher a (lot of) time before the Ancient Greeks.

We can suspect that some knowledge could have travelled from Orient to Occident, following the Silk Road.

The invention of the canon powder in China could have been the summit of an iceberg, which could consist of a pro-chemisty non only carthesian, because of the attitude of the orientals in not separating the diverse domains of knowledge, and called alchemy (if there was ever one).

The purpose of Capra, consist to mean that the occidental specialization has lead to rapid progress, but... it appears that arrived to corpuscular physics, the re-discover the antique oriental wisdom, quoting a proverbe as:

When you tell about something, you miss it.