March 21, 2020
PHILOSOPHY IS COOL
Plato (428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) has completely surprised me with his liveliness and literary skill, along with the socially-accepted pederasty used as an exemplar when Athenian aristocrats discuss love in his "Symposium." It all started for me with Philosophy Without Gaps, a gigantic survey of world philosophy (except Chinese) in hundreds of podcasts, run by Professor Peter Adamson of King's College, London since 2010. https://historyofphilosophy.net/home/ This amazing source promises to keep me interested for many months of viral isolation. And going over them twice will not be too much. If one agrees with Plato/Socrates that philosophers should run the world I can't think of a better way to get up to speed than these podcasts - either to evaluate world leaders or become one yourself. And it doesn't have to be the whole world - just the world around you.
About 30 twenty-minute sessions have taken me through the Pre-Socratic philosophers (as mind-boggling and stimulating as contemporary quantum physics) into Plato/Socrates. Finally, Prof. Adamson's summary of how Alcibiades praised Socrates at the end of Plato's Symposium made me want to read the original text of that speech. And that was a real blast! As good as anything in theater on the highest level.
I refer you to the text of the Symposium which can be reached at https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/symposium/section13/ in summary or full text. In full text (well worth reading) Alcibiades' speech comes at the very end.
A general article on the Symposium is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symposium_(Plato)#Alcibiades
As for the ancient Greek practice of pederasty, Wikipedia has a comprehensive article tending to show it was not an unregulated exploitative sexual practice. One interesting fact is that the fathers of the boys who were in relationships with older men would sometimes appoint slaves to look after the interests of the boys - and those slaves were known as pedagogues. How's that for the derivation of a word we use for "teacher?" See, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pederasty_in_ancient_Greece
Conclusion: Don't underestimate the ancients. Don't overestimate the contemporaries.
END
No comments:
Post a Comment