I mean really?: Socrates the absolute Bitch.

Um, no.

You have had fun writing down your complicated words.

Now address my argument.

Da Vinci is a relative moderner though.

Jesus himself was, if he existed, really interesting, Ill admit that, much more than Socrates. But other than him and a few people who dared to continue thinking rationally, despite the influence of Socrates and Aristotle, (such as Archimedes), I don’t see any value until Francis Bacon, who began to directly look at things again, which Socrates caused man to abandon. (After all, the truth was not what you did with your hand or saw with your eyes, but what the little voice in your head said.)

Meno Look at Socrates against the Classical Age.
His fame occurs during the ruination of Athens, at the end of the Classical age and leading art into the Hellenic age, which is generally considered to be decadent.
The glory lies in the period leading from archaism to mastery, a period of a century - Socrates is already too spoiled to even perceive the concentration, the Titanic effort which nature had pushed through Greek hands in order to produce his environment.

Ill amend this to make clear that I understand that I frame this with a slant- the correspondence of the narratives of art and philosophy warrant this; philosophy is ahead of art, or lets say its most extended avant guard.

For those who do not have the power to discern any argument in the identification of a profane rhetorical lie in a philosophers discourse, I offer this image: I compare Socrates to Andy Warhol.
Both were famous for being famous. “Ah Sokrates, your fame now eclipses that of all the other philosophers”.
What the hell kind of philosopher wants to be around people all the time?

Hi Fixed:

Although I do understand that my immediate lapses of answering may occasionally occur, just got here to Navada, from Seattle via Portland, I barely glanced at Your narrative.

That You deserve a reply. is obvious but its 1:30 am here in Vegas, and will go at it, as soon the demands made on me subside, hopefully tomorrow.

Thanks

I think Socrates or the Platonic socrates we have access to, deserves credit for a style of philosophizing. Where instead asserting a position, he interrogates and deconstructs, so to speak, his interlocuters’ positions. That is, the Socratic method. We’re used to this now, it doesn’t seem so special, but then, that’s because it’s been around since then. Socrates actual positions I am not fond of, but still I think they contribute to the range of options. I also think that neoplatonism still lives on in mathematics and physics in interesting ways. (I am pretty poor at disentangling Plato and Socrates, of course this is in part due to them being entangled by Plato, and then my own laziness).

I actually saw an exhibit of early design work by Warhol (album covers for example) where his actual technical drawing and design skills were involved and he was pretty damn good. From there he became something like a performance artist and I think has some value for that. Some of his experimental films are interesting. AGain, adding to the range, not an end in himself, so for me like Plato/Socrates. Also as part of postmodernism. I am not a postmodernist, however it had to happen, was a necessary balancing correction to modernism and what came before that. Even if I don’t stay there it informs me and I appreciate facets of it in its place.

I suppose what bothered me about Socrates has always been the denied utter smugness or his ‘humility’. Never bought it.

Yeah, me neither.
And, as someone who considers style to be perhaps the most fatefully honest element of any corpus of literature (style betrays the will), I take that objection very seriously.

Yes. Socrates did become famous for the interrogating, quasi non-positive method. But… he continuously makes mischievous manipulative statements in his discourse, in the guise of rhetorical questions. His dishonesty runs far deeper than his fake humility. It pervades his entire method.

Surely there have been people who have interrogated more honestly than Socrates did, and I would say the Sokratic Method is particular to he art of manipulation; “gently” (to the ears of brutes) pushing and guiding the mind of the… victim… towards where he wants it.

I like Warhol too, actually. But I would not trust him with anything whatsoever that is important to me. He is there for display purposes only, like Socrates. Warhol was a hell of a lot more honest in that, a less damaging presence altogether, but I don’t think the man would mind the comparison.

Meno, please report back some stories from that Fata Morgana come to life - what are you doing in Vegas?

As far as heroes are concerned,

I’m my only hero on earth, and that’s not saying much !!!

I suggest you all become your own heroes as well…

It’s not easy, actually, it sucks!

Better than the alternative though!

So you’re saying we don’t need another hero?

Plate called diogenes a ‘Socrates gone mad’, but it’s the other way around, see. Socrates was a diogenes gone mad, because while history portrays him as the shining symbol of honest inquiry and critical thinking, he was already axing dumb questions, really non-questions, because that’s all he had to work with. So for instance when he’s talking about ‘objective knowledge’ of the ‘good’, he’s proceeding from the supposition that Plato’s theory of Forms is true. But it isnt… so the question is dumb… but it looks all profound and shit.

Diogenes, on the other hand, recognized… really as a kind of prototype positivist… the ambiguous nature of the philosophical language of the day and dismissed it all as sophistry.

We know now (well some of us) that diogenes was on to something long before analytical philosophy would wage a full scale attack on anything even remotely resembling platonism.

Now I dont think diogenes got here out of laziness; I dont think his conclusions were arbitrary or lucky guesses. I think he sensed and intuited and thought long about exactly what these brand name philosophers were peddling. And there is a healthy arrogance in diogenes as well. It comes out of the feeling that you’ve duped the greatest thinkers… the irony that you, who lives in a bath tub in an alley somewhere, knows what they’re talking about is bullshit.

The fantastic nobility of diogenes’ soul is caught in action when he waves aside alexander the great. That gesture was so symbolically profound y’all don’t even know. I ain’t even tryna expound on it, neither.

And it is hard to place those. I mean, he gets to make mistakes. it is a developmental tool. What happens if I challenge you like this? The advantage of just asking questions is you can use it as a ‘I have no burden of proof’ method of presenting your own case without having to back it up - Iambiguous bears some similarity to this.

And/or shaming them into thinking they knew something or had reached a rational approach to life or knowledge.

Yeah, I wouldn’t have wanted. Warhol having any responsibility for something or someone I care about.

Haha, you understand my concerns entirely. Awesome. That relieves some of the annoyance. How was it possible that no one was awake enough to notice such basic flaws?

I just logged on after realizing what Soc did was to show us the depths of vanity.
All the rest flows from there. All he did - and the comparison to Warhol.

This in particular speaks to his malice. We know how this works very well in our own times.

Woke up drugged took something very strong and it really put me out.

For me, not to Fix (not a verbal slip) ha ha, it is contraindicative not to place focus, away from personality, as a matter of fact, in that I really place myself in a triple hierarchy of positions.
Ill try to explain my predicament in commenting on how this goes down.

Thinking about Biggie’s version, and similarly I reach out to be unable to view the balance, the ideal that a zero sum kind of architecture implies.
This is a profundity for me, that forthwith has important implications.

The conflicting two part conflict between the a-priori and the a-posteriori forms of acquisition of knowledge, -with that in mind - and the type of solution to the negative aspect of the depleting image of the negative form of an ideologically brought on idealism.

Plato, Socrates and Meno were mere characters in a tapestry of unfolding dramatic cognitive and perceptual awareness, that now, in an era of Warhol, of post modern signatures , reflect, all around in a sort of cignitive miasma -

The centering ‘urge’ which condenses and/or expands, has developed religious undertones, that have moral, and psychological postmodern implications, such that give rise to the parallel indications o.between Leonardo and Warhol.

The aesthetic is at once, implicative of both: the inner’core, and and the outer periphery.

Fixed, the big picture represents an objective evolving connexion of the minor with the major premises. The minor premise come the foreground personality of Socrates within a dual aspect of understanding within the very earliest firm of logical consistency. The major being premise consists with the judgement of Socrates with that of the posterior.

The posterior, or the coming of an understanding, tries to differentiate both, to achieve a systematic retroactive synthesis.

Why did this happen? Why did such a foresight, of an a priori synthetic correspondence become objectively necessary, beginning in with the advent of popular understanding of the age of reason, that impressed upon greater numbers who felt it necessary.

The holdouts diminished significantly , and even now. Those who still are far from overcoming the methods by which su h prejudice should have by now popularly been overcome, present an ironic debate:

Should factual understanding between the focus and the outline been understood by now, and what reason , if any can be given for such sustained epoche that had been existentially presented generations ago?

Plato’s Meno presents the argument thousands of years ago, and the final answer may never be given satisfactorily, because the two forms of the argument , were really sourced out of single ideas.

What wisdom is nowedays, is understood as a multi derived series of questions, bound up with various shades of meaning, that try to set balances which are workable within various organisational structures.

Some understanding of relevant meaning and value derive from more or less substantial families of interpretation, and an understanding configured to try to account for such , may show comparative validity to the cosmical proportions of actual physically demonstrable relativity, that may show the inception of familial meaning of expressions.

That the early expressions appear overtly idealistic, can not at that time, show the possibility of realizing the weakness of ideal structures. That the negative aspects during those early days, can only appear after the span between the Birth of Tragedy and the Twilight of The Gods, give some indication of the stunning shortening of the spatial temporal curvature.

That such curvature that can be understood as that limited scope that The Ring could manifest as a subsisting ideal: suggests the proposition, that questions not only the meaning and validity of a functional necessity , but also, an inducement into the periphery argument, as to why such correspondence should occur and why.

Like I say, “ be your own gods; be the god everyone deserves.”.

Socrates was/is not on this level.

Yup! I’m not a fan of any one’s thought but of thought in general, and admire various aspects of that aspect, that I perceive the phenomena from.

I found most historical figures far more interesting than Jesus and other such types, but that says more about me than it does about them. :-$

Buddha may be more interesting than Jesus, true, because Jesus introduced Buddhism to western man in the dialectical language the could understand.

But the trace of understanding remains on the primordial unified with Buddha, without any requisite primordial intervening variables that the West could understand.

However, can the East rely a propositional reliance on no interve ing variables? As a consequence, can they really understand Buddha, in the sense that requires a transitional object?

Like a baby Buddha they generate, can they claim an objectless transcendence?

Not really either, no…

What’s not to understand? The reason the Buddhas do what they do is evident for All to know… it’s not a secret, and they’re not gods, but men.

I love this thread title, stil… :slight_smile:

MagsJ said:

“Buddhas do what they do is evident for All to know… it’s not a secret, and they’re not gods, but men.”

They are both, neither, or either, depending.

And everything happening is a varied mix, an interplay of situational optics.
The glean optical sheen, and as simply as that description appears to represent a simple yet indescribably complex relational manufacture of possibilities, -that is the key that absolves from guilt or regret.

The limitation to downgrade into a paradoxically motivated aspiration to further inquiry, toward the more liberated search , presents an unwarranted sense of systemic chaos.

But it is not so! Not in a minority opinion, that is.