Platonism?

Whether one agrees with Plato's idealism or not, almost all questions posed on Western philosophers were raised by Plato, and a modern philosopher (Whitehead) said that all of Western philosophy was but a footnote to Plato..

If I understand him correctly, that's what Dyslexia is talking about when he says that Plato is responsible for the downfall of Wetsern civilization. (I think Whitehead is correct, btw.)

Everything has two sides. Idealism is sometimes noble, and sometimes yields evil things. I prefer noble aspects of Plato's idealism.
One should avoid vulgar idealism, which ignores human limitations on knowledge and inteligence.

now this is what I think of as an interesting conversation, no one is bashing anyone and there is a divergence of views (mine probably the most divergent) however tis all in good fun and allows me to explore my own thoughts as I try to clarify them for others. I'm thinking this is a most welcome use of internet forums. let's keep it up fellows( and fellowines).

Val, the pathology may be that "everthing" must have a definition, and that every defilnition must have an objective referent (a thing). The latter sounds like the ontological proof of God. If we have a concept of Him, He must exist. I have a concept of unicorns but can't seem to find one.

Satt. I remember (glory be) Whitehead's statement that all of Western philosophy is but a footnote to Plato. What I don't remember is whether he was praising Plato or denigrating Western philososphy.

I agree, Dys. This series of disagreements has been delightful--so civil.
I must point out that Plato's Idealism (ideation-ism) is not very similar to the perspective of German Idealism (which is not monolithic itself). When Schopenhauer asserted "The world is my idea" he was not saying that my idea(s) of the world is a rough reflection of the Great Designer (The architect of meaning posited by Plato).

Very civil indeed, let's keep it that way.

The identification of the 'noumena' vs. the 'phenomena' is, I think, crucial for metaphysics. That thing about if thinking about a concept means that it exist thing I would disagree with.

uh oh please lets us not go into the dark night of metaphysics, surely the ramifications of Plato are more than enough to fill this plate.

uh ho, I think I may have skated out onto the thin ice here, let me back up a bit, I do not offer to repudiate reason but, as in the words of T. S. Eliot, offer a fear for the "dissociation of sensibility." which leads me to repudiate Reason as offered by Plato. How would Plato's rhetoric methodolgy deal with modern issues, say of human cloning or euthanasia; how would Plato reconcile societal efficiency between Hitler and H Truman? Would or even could, Plato offer a dialogue on the value of individual freedom vs the needs of the state? Oh well, I could wander about aimlessly on this but for now I regress (and repent?) carry on in good cheer and I shall make an honest attempt to restrain my vigor (though mute I cannot promise)

I havn't read Plato's Republic. Does he discuss in that work the freedom of the individual and the needs of the state? Anybody?

It's pretty long. He talks about justice, reality, government, but I can't recall ever reading about individual freedom. What I know is that there are three levels (?): citizens, warriors, and Philosopher Kings. You might think that the philosopher kings would have wealth and stuff, but no says Plato, the philosopher kings must be poor so that the citizens would not attempt to be kings in order to gain wealth and power. The warriors are there to protect the people ( I don't think he discuss about wars). The laws would be virtuous, etc. I'm not too clear on this too.

There is clearly a portion which shows that Plato highly valued freedom of individuals.
You can check out the term "freedom" in the following chapter of Republic..

Socrates-Ademantus

and then the arrogance of Plato's elitism comes shining through with this Plato feels that a just city depends on having every person fill their proper role, and the fulfillment of roles leads to a class system. The ruling class, auxiliary class, and the rest of the society are compared to gold, silver and iron. This is not to say that the classes are not all important in the society of the Republic, but they are definitely of differing levels of societal value. If you tried to tell Plato that Athens should abolish slavery, he'd think you were crazy. Who would do all the work? How could all the great democratic philosophers of the Golden Age of Greece do their philosophizing without leisure time? No, to Plato, slavery was 'right' and 'natural'.

Dys
Have you read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"? One of my favorite books. I thought it representated a dialoque between Plato and Aristotle.

In fact, I wrote a piece about it in the last century- (The Long Beach, California theater mentioned actually did have one broken projector):

A CLASSIC GREEK DINNER
(A spoof of the babblegab of artistic producers and art critics)
By BumbleBeeBoogie - January 1994

She was always slightly out-of-sync, not quite in the main stream. While everyone else echoed the obvious, she seemed attracted to subtle nuances. That's how she became the film critic for Bon Appetite Magazine.

Her first film assignment was "My Dinner With Andre". She viewed the film at a neighborhood theater with one of its two projectors broken, creating five-minute breaks between the reels.

The film's dialogue was brisk and sparkling, with Andre's charisma and raconteurial talent vibrating from the screen. She empathized with his dinner companion, the introverted Wally, the extrovert's classic foil, in the style of Abbot and Costello or Laurel and Hardy. During the reel reloading breaks, when the houselights came up, she began to write her Bon Appetite review:

Andre's eyes followed the candle smoke curling and dancing through the dust beams, shimmering through the rays of the candle flame. It swirled and drifted down to the table where the golden champagne's dying bubbles clung to the sides of the crystal glass as if they were swimmers grasping at life buoys. Their struggle splashed beads of opalescent light across the table to the china plate where the congealed blood from once-juicy, but now cold slices of roast beef puddled; their dried edges starting to split and curl.

Wally sniffed, trying to resuscitate the savory aroma. A glutinous mound of mashed potatoes still held its shape. But the mountain of dun-colored gravy surrendered its hold on the gritty peaks laying defeated in its valleys among the foothills of wilted pale green peas.

Unable to keep pace with Andre's flights of vision, Wally picked at the rose petals that had withered and fallen on the snowy linen. He lifted a heavy silver spoon, tested its weight and examined his distorted image in it's gleaming bowl. Wally leaned forward. His breath whooooshed out the flames of the platoon of candles, standing like sentinels in silver boots guarding the roses, as if he needed to shield himself from the
penetrating glow of Andre's life light.

Embarrassed, his mouth twisted in a pained smile, Wally muttered something about his family responsibilities. He picked at the little beads of candle wax that had spilled from the silver holder, and rolled them into a ball between his fingers. He turned to look at his image reflected in the window lighted by the glowing candle, nervously toying with his food.

What is this verbal game that Andre and Wally are playing with each other, she wondered? From somewhere, in that off-center recess of her mind, she sensed a glimmer of an ancient nuance pulsing in the right side of her brain.

It must be a dialogue between Plato and Aristotle; there's no other explanation. That's why she can't concentrate on the food. What brain cells stored memory of the Plato and Aristotle dialogues? She'd never read the ancient texts. It must be from that other out-of-sync mind, Robert Persig, in his "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"; the book he wrote with the left side of his brain before he killed himself with the right hemisphere.

Then she understood her uncertainty. The mechanics of life were meant to be out-of-sync, the subtleties discovered, the nuances noticed. Casting human relevance aside, she recorded her final comments about the food, noting the dinner ended with Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee and a crystal snifter of swirling amber cognac, and closed her notebook.

On her way home from the theater, she stopped for a Big Mac, large fries, and a medium diet cola.

His elitism is f*** up.

Well, one can read anything you would (or would not) like in Plato..
And one could write a book of a footnote on each aspect in Plato.

His "elitist" views were based largely in part on his beliefs that the average person was not intelligent enough to think for himself, an opinion supported by the execution of Socrates. Plato was against a complete democracy (hence the Republic), and I in many ways agree that most people are not informed enough when making important decisions.

And most of us guys insist on the right to have as much intercourse with inferior women as possible. :wink:

I think it is possible to grossly exagerate Plato's "elitism." His concept of a society based on a class structure which incorporated slavery and readily acknowledged a distinction between social classes was not something that he himself postulated. This was part and parcel of his culture. Social equality as we understand it in the modern West would have been a concept so foreign not only to Plato, but to all of his contemporaries, as to be nearly incomprehensible. Plato's vision, as expressed in The Republic was, in fact, far less elitist than the general norms of his time. He actually envisioned a republic in which the son of an artisan, if gifted enough, could rise to the position of a Philosopher King, i.e. a society where upward mobility from one class to a higher class was at least theoretically possible. That was a far cry from the reality of Periclean Athens.