Category: Plato
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Plato’s Cave and the Garden of Eden
This is a revised entry from over five years ago. I re-post it to solicit the comments of the Opponent and anyone else who can provide some enlightenment. I am not a theologian, but theology is far too important to be left to professional theologians. …………….. An archeologist who claimed to have uncovered the site…
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Plato on Thales and the Thracian Maid
Paul Manata reminded me of the source of the story about Thales and the servant girl from Thrace. "Thales was studying the stars and gazing into the sky, when he fell into a well, and a jolly and witty Thracian servant girl made fun of him, saying that he was crazy to know about…
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Socratic Reflections on Election Day
Excellent
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Sunday Morning Sermon: Awareness of Death as Cure for Existential Drift
Our tendency is to drift through life. If life is a sea, too many of us are rudderless vessels, at the mercy of the prevailing winds of social suggestion. Death in its impending brings us up short: it forces us to confront the whole of one's life and the question of its meaning. Death is…
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Plato on Trump
Channeled through Andrew Sullivan.
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I Feel a Little Guilty . . .
. . . at deriving so much intellectual stimulation from the events of the day. It is fascinating to watch the country fall apart. What is a calamity for the citizen, however, is grist for the philosopher's mill. Before he is a citizen, the philosopher is a "spectator of all time and existence" in a marvellous…
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Simone Weil in the Light of Plato: Notes on Phaedo 83
To understand Simone Weil, one must understand her beloved master, Plato. So let's interpret a passage from the Phaedo dialogue, and then compare it to some statements of Weil. At Stephanus 83a we read, "…the perceptions of the eye, and the ear, and the the senses are full of deceit." (tr. F. J. Church) The…
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Thomas Merton on Plato’s Phaedo
Thomas Merton, Journals, vol. 4, p. 57 (10 October 1960): The superb moral and positive beauty of the Phaedo. One does not have to agree with Plato, but one must hear him. Not to listen to such a voice is unpardonable, it is like not listening to conscience or nature. Absolutely right.
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Plato’s Great Inversion
Our long-time friend Horace Jeffery Hodges kindly linked to and riffed upon my recent quotage of a bit of whimsicality from the second volume of J. N. Findlay's Gifford lectures. So here's another Findlay quotation for Jeff's delectation, this time from Plato and Platonism: An Introduction (Times Books, 1978): It is not here, we may…
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Roberto Rosselini’s Socrates
It was my good fortune to happen across Rosselini's Socrates the night before last, Good Friday night, on Turner Classic Movies. From 1971, in Italian with English subtitles. I tuned in about 15 minutes late, but it riveted my attention until the end. It is full of excellent, accurate dialog based on the texts of Plato that…
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To Doctor Empiric
When men a dangerous disease did 'scape Of old they gave a cock to AesculapeLet me give two, that doubly am got free From my disease's danger, and from thee. Ben Jonson (1753?-1637) from Epigrams and Epitaphs (London: Faber and Faber, 1977), p. 27. At the very end of the Phaedo, having drunk the hemlock, Socrates is…
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Callicles Anticipates De Sade
At Gorgias 492, tr. Helmbold, the divine Plato puts the following words into the mouth of Callicles: A man who is going to live a full life must allow his desires to become as mighty as may be and never repress them. When his passions have come to full maturity, he must be able to…
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What It Takes To Be a Man
Plato, Phaedrus 249: "to be a man one must understand the content of a general term."
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R. M. Hare on Plato
Here.