Plato’s Gorgias: A Mini-Tutorial
Robert Paul Wolff is preparing to launch a mini-tutorial on Plato’s Gorgias at his blog, The Philosopher’s Stone; yesterday, he provided some background and an introduction to the text. I believe the first post on the text itself will be…
The Gorgias is a good introduction to several concepts important in both Platonic philosophy and Western philosophy in general— what is philosophy good for? what is the difference between philosophy and rhetoric? what is truth?
Seriously, I feel like an idiot. In my essay, I’m analyzing Plato’s use of language in the Phaedrus using Derrida’s idea of “play.” But I don’t really know where to begin because I don’t fully understand Derrida’s point.
From article:
The poll shows that 40 percent of Republicans say they attend church weekly. While 21 percent say they attend nearly weekly or monthly, and 38 percent say they rarely go to church.
Meanwhile of their political counterparts polled, only 27 percent of Democrats who say they go to church every week, 20 percent say they go monthly and 52 percent of Democrats say they seldom or never go to church.
Almost one in five Democrats identify with no religious faith compared to only one in 10 Republicans who feel that way…
Just for good measure, because all of the lefties will cite their “enlightenment” as reason for not believing in God, here’s what a couple of nobody’s said about society and religion:
“Every human society that tears out religion, removes its foundation.” - Plato, 10th Book of the Law
“The most Pious cities and nations have ever been the wisest and most lasting.” - Xenophon, 4th cen. B.C. historian and philosopher
“It’s easier to build a city in the air than to constitute a society without belief in the gods.” - Plutarch, 1st cen. A.D. historian and philosopher
So Democrats aren’t wasting as much time at cannibalistic death cult meetings?
Sounds like a plus to me.
You know your argument has no basis when:
1) You use slurs
2) You quote Bronze and Iron (barely) Age philosophers and think it’s legitimately 100% applicable to 2000 years or more later.While I agree with your first point, by 4th century BC, all Greek societies were well into the Iron Age. None of the philosophers on the list were ever in the Bronze Age.
Oops, totally read the 4th something else on my phone. Don’t even remember what it looked like but that totally wasn’t a 4.
Hahahaha. Plato’s also the one who thought Atlantis was real. Give me a break.
For the love of Anubis, don’t cite Plato or Xenophon out of context. If you really want to say something useful about Plato, read the Laws in its entirety.
And anyway, I think we give these old philosophers too much credit without fully understanding their ideas.
THE GREEKS HAVE GOT THEIR SHIT TOGETHER. ALL OF THE AWARDS. EVERY. LAST. ONE.
I’m Greek, sup.
omg
Okay, so here’s the thing. I took an entire semester on ancient Greek and…
Also, they didn’t think women were capable of romantic OR platonic relationships because they didn’t have the mental capacity. The Greeks weren’t perfect, y’all.
Hi, I’m a macbook DJ and my EP is called ‘Discipline and Pu-niche’
Okay, this is too much.
The Philosophy Bites twitter account is on a really good meme blast right now.
Some highlights…
Dazed and Confucius
Meet the Arendts
Harry Potter and the Reductio ad Absurdum
Apocalypse Mao
A Hume with a View
Call out To the Science lovers:
Come on tumblr, if there’s something I know you can do is raise awareness. Well why not raise awareness for something that literally affects everyone?
Help me expand the number of people interested in everything Science and Astronomy, by reposting this Intro to Carl Sagan’s 1980’s hit series “Cosmos”.Not to sound like an advertisement for a 30 year old documentary but If you’re a person of many questions towards the universe and many of life’s questions viewed through rational eyes, Cosmos is the show for you. Put hate, faith, false certainty to reopen the childhood sensitivity we all had towards discovery and imagination greatly expressed in this and give the documentary a go. Which you can find anywhere from netflix to Hulu, or even my own site here.
If we plan to survive the ever changing present and future from those who seek to take advantage of technology for the sake of commercializing every single aspect of life, leaving the rest of society hungry and famine ridden due to greed. We have to get the notion out that if we are to survive them we need to be smarter, compassionate towards one another as well as our ecosystems. We still have a chance now while all is moderately (being generous with that word) stable to make changes for the sake of our future.
“Up there in the immensity of the Cosmos, an inescapable perception awaits us. National boundaries are not evident when we view the Earth from space. Fanatical ethnic, religious or national chauvinism are a little difficult to maintain when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point of light against the bastion and citadel of the stars.” - Carl Sagan
If this struck you as interesting and you’d like more, you can find a full post on the show’s downloadable links here. It’s also up on Hulu and Netflix (entire series.). Every deserves to watch this. Religious or Not.
Because It really is about time that the rationally stable became outspoken and spread their word. Reblog if You support Science
