Nick_A wrote: ↑Sun Oct 15, 2017 2:23 am
It’s a frustrating time to be a fan of Plato. Public intellectuals routinely misrepresent him, and it’s hard to find courses that can unveil the richness of insight and meaning which the best thinkers of twenty-three centuries, from Plotinus to Iris Murdoch, have discerned in his dialogues.
I’ve verified by experience that this is true. The modern intellectual trend is the glorification of specialization and fragmentation and comparing fragmentary knowledge or facts scientifically. Those like Plato inspire us to open our minds and hearts to the wholeness of the big picture through the experience of intuition.
Where analysis is the use of conscious reasoning, Intuition is defined as the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning. Fragmentation pulls us down into details while intuition inspires us to the experience of a quality of wholeness that reconciles rather than analyses fragments. This raises the question of what is lost through the obsession with fragmentation and specialization. Jacob Needleman offers food for thought in his book: “The American Soul:”
Our world, so we see and hear on all sides, is drowning in materialism, commercialism, consumerism. But the problem is not really there. What we ordinarily speak of as materialism is a result, not a cause. The root of materialism is a poverty of ideas about the inner and outer world. Less and less does our contemporary culture have, or even seek, commerce with great ideas, and it is the lack that is weakening the human spirit. This is the essence of materialism. Materialism is a disease of the mind starved for ideas.
Throughout history ideas of a certain kind have been disseminated into the life of humanity in order to help human beings understand and feel the possibility of the deep inner change that would enable them to serve the purpose for which they were created, namely, to act in the world as conscious individual instruments of God, and the ultimate principle of reality and value. Ideas of this kind are formulated in order to have a specific range of action on the human psych: to touch the heart as well as the intellect; to shock us into questioning our present understanding; to point us to the greatness around us in nature and the universe, and the potential greatness slumbering within ourselves; to open our eyes to the real needs of our neighbor; to confront us with our own profound ignorance and our criminal fears and egoism; to show us that we are not here for ourselves alone, but as necessary particles of divine love.
These are the contours of the ancient wisdom, considered as ideas embodied in religious and philosophical doctrines, works of sacred art, literature and music and, in a very fundamental way, an indication of practical methods by which a man or woman can work, as is said, to become what he or she really is. Without feeling the full range of such ideas, or sensing even a modest, but pure, trace of them, we are bound to turn for meaning.
So Plato has become old fashioned and the depth and meaning of his contribution is now only recognized by a relative few who have not yet become disciples of fragmentation. Can collective human being survive this loss or are we doomed to destroy ourselves through technology and materialism as the necessary consequence of the loss of the quality of ideas offering the experience of awe and meaning those like Plato have introduced into the World?
Part of the problem is Western Logic's inability to accept "the circle" as an inherent and unavoidable aspect of the reasoning process. A strict linear approach inevitably leads towards fractation and division. The line is strictly an absence of structure when taken in its own respect for it simply is spatial seperation.
The problem of Western logic, as a process of continual individuation, can be observed even within what it deems as the "fallacy". Take for example the "appeal to authority fallacy" where the argument is not viewed as strictly logical if it strictly appeals to an authority. The problem occurs if that one were to reflect on this "fallacy" that fallacy itself is an extension of authority from academic philosopher's. In this respect it commits to a regressive circularity and in itself is false by its own merits for the fallacy in and of itself is a fallacy leading one to inevitably admit that the argument from authority is necessary. However is the fallacy wrong? Does the reference to authority alone give a "whole truth"? In a seperate respect the fallacy is correct.
In these respects we can observe that not only a circular reflectivity observes the structure of an axiom, and either denies of affirms it, but simultaneously gives it the ability of "self-reflection" as a form of individuaton in one respect and a "part of many in a seperate". The western concept of individuation results in an inherent multiplicity that contradicts any form of unity. However that multiplicity in itself is an extension of "the one" and in itself is "one".
Take for example the mathematical example of 1. It is unity. 1 reflecting upon itself in turn reflects 2, 3, 4, etc. unto infinity. It may be observed that:
a) 1 is unity
b) from the unity comes many, with the many fundamentally being composed as structural extensions of the unity.
c) This multiplicity into infinity inevitably results back to a unity again through infinity.
d) 1 and infinity are synonymous for 1 maintains itself through infinite reflection which: continual maintains itself, other structures as extension of itself, and 1 and these structures as infinity which is equivalent to "1".
One could use another example in that of the philosophical argument. An axiom is presented, we will call it A. In order to justify Axiom A a linear form of reasoning to axiom B. This linear progression from A to B in turn justifies A. However the process must be continued unto infinity. The problem occurs is that Axiom A and Axiom B are strictly paradoxes, in the respect that they must be accepted as circular rationality...no different than a line which exists between two or more points. The line can only exist if and only if it is a reflection from a point. In this respect, all "linear" rationality is strictly a reflection between points. This reflection between point, for the linear argument to maintain any form of stability, must in turn be infinite; therefore all linear arguments are strictly a reflection of infinite points.
The problem occurs as the infinite reflection of points in turn forms itself into a point because:
a) The point is strictly an infinite set of points.
b) All infinity is stable by nature and in this respect inevitable must reflect the most stable spatial structure: The point.
c) The line in dependent upon infinite progression and in this respect infinite flux. Infinite flux cannot exist on its own as it is unstable; therefore any observation of flux exists if and only if thier is infinite stability for flux cannot exist without stability. In these respects an infinite line exists if and only if their is an infinite point, with the line being a deficiency in structure (or approximate) of the point.
d) All infinite linearism inevitably results in a infinite division of space as infinite curvature. This infinite curvature inevitably results back to circularity.
e) Considering the infinite line exists through an infinite propogation of points, linear reasoning results in an infinite number of circular rationales as "axioms" or "points". This infinite progogation of points, as points reflection upon both themselves and eachother inevitably leads back to 1 point.
f) I can go further but you get "the point". We can observe these natures in the behavior of the physical universe through the "wave-particle duality" where it is fundamentally just "points" (particles) reflecting to produce waves as lines between points (even the nature of curvature, as a gradation of the circle is striclty points reflecting points, as the circle itself is "infinitely" reflecting points.
The socratics, specifically Plato, put a high emphasis on geometry that inevitably constitutes not only the physical universe but the very nature of "logic" itself. In these respects Plato, who was also a student of Pythagoras in the respect that he attempted to acquire as many of his texts as possible, rooted all "being" in the observation of "geometry" which is the observation of "space". Considering the nature of even observation itself is rooting in space, through geometry, all acts of observation equate to space folding upon itself to form the point.
From the nature of points, and circular reasoning, we are simultaneously able to maintain "truths" through the act of self-reflection (in both subjective and objective terms as space curving upon itself) while simultaneously discovering and manifesting further truths through the propogative nature of the point. Circular reasoning does not, in any way shape or form, inhibit the progression of knowledge...it simply allows for its stability. Linearism does not allow for this stability and inevitable results in the fractal nature we observe within not only science but specifically philosophy itself.
I would argue that Plato is not only more necessary than ever, through the stable self-reflective capacity of geometry, but his proxy teacher Pythagoras. Ironically Pythagoras, as arguably the first philosophy is created the name "philosophy", gained all his knowledge through his travels observing the world's religions and mystery schools. In this respect, philosophy and science, is rooted in the spiritual aspects of man and cannot or should not seperate spirituality from it.
You have the problem of the duality between the transcendentalist and empirists solved through this observation of geometry considering Pi is a transcendental number.