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--------------------- 2635 - PLATO - a dialogue for justice?
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- Plato was born in 428 B.C. in Athens, Greece. His given name was Aristocles but his nickname was Plato, which means “broad” presumably in reference to his build.
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- Athens was a democracy and free speech abounded. But, there is always some politics that intervenes. Socrates would wander the city and speak his philosophy to the common folks. He was trying to get people to examine their own ideas more closely.
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- Socrates maintained that an unexamined life is not worth living. He was executed in 399 on charges of irreverence to Greek gods and corrupting the city’s youth.
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- Plato was in the audience when his teacher defended himself against the charges. The jury voted 280 to 220 for the death sentence. Plato wrote the “Apology” reflecting on the death of his teacher.
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- Plato began writing dialogues, conversations between two people debating philosophical questions. Much of these come from Socrates’ teachings. In 387 Plato founded his school called the Academy.
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- His school offered courses in astronomy, biology, rhetoric, mathematics, philosophy, and political theory. Above the door was written: “Let no one ignorant of mathematics enter here.“ Aristotle was one of the students who entered.
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- Plato’s book the “Republic” gets into the nature of justice. A just man is one in whom every component of personality harmoniously plays its proper role, while reason is paramount. Plato was working on defining a just society when he died in 347 B.C.
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- This Greek is a little hard to read but it is the thought that counts. Plato said in teaching his student:
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- “He who thinks nothing of bodily pleasures is almost as though he were dead“.
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- That is true
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- “What again shall we say of the actual acquirement of knowledge?-- is the body, if invited to share in the inquiry, a hinderer or a helper? I mean to say, have sight and hearing any truth in them? Are they not, as the poets are always telling us, inaccurate witnesses? And yet, if even they are inaccurate and indistinct, what is to be said of the other senses? For you will allow that they are the best of them? “ ( i.e.: Don’t believe everything you see or hear.)
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- Certainly, he replied.
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- “Then when does the soul attain truth? -- for in attempting to consider anything in company with the body she is obviously deceived“. (Take care in examining your own thoughts and the thoughts of others).
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- Yes, that is true.
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- “Then must not existence be revealed to her in thought, if at all?”
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- Yes.
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- “And thought is best when the mind is gathered into herself and none of these things trouble her -- neither sounds nor sights nor pain nor any pleasure -- when she has as little as possible to do with the body, and has not bodily sense or feeling , but is aspiring after being?” (Some of your best thinking occurs in your sleep. It is a good thing to sleep on your thoughts.)
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- That is true.
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- “And is this the philosopher who dishonors the body, his soul runs away from the body and desires to be alone and by herself.”
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- That is true.
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- “Well, but there is another thing, Simmias: Is there or is there not an absolute justice?”
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- Assuredly there is.
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- “And an absolute beauty and absolute good?”
- Of course.
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- “But did you ever behold any of them with your eyes?” (These things occur in the mind, they cannot be written, read, taught, or experienced in a bodily sense. Material possessions, power, money, will not bring them to you.)
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(1) Plato’s view of astronomy was that the spheres of the planets made celestial music. The idea that the heavens only contained perfect circles was considered fact up until Kepler’s time, 2000 years later.
(2) Plato invented the fictitious land “ Atlantis” that adventurers are still searching for to this day.
(3) Aristotle lectured to students while walking about in the garden. Recent studies have shown that overweight American kids could benefit from this teaching technique. Aristotle’s collection of manuscripts became the great Library of Alexandria. His lectures collected into 150 volumes.
(4) Great teachers are not always right. Aristotle believed the heart was the center of life and the brain merely a cooling organ for the blood. Well, on second thought, maybe he was right. He was the first to propose the “aether” which astronomers are just now reconsidering in the “light” of Dark Energy.
(5) Aristotle was convince that the Earth was round because traveling north appeared new stars over the northern horizon, old ones disappeared over the southern horizon.
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- February 27, 2020 651 2635
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--------------------- Thursday, February 27, 2020 --------------------
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