Perspective and Reality

[Nick_A]

F4

Nick, once again you show a significant lack of reading comprehension. First a few words about the quote from Nietzsche. The “great contempt” is not a contempt for happiness but of “your happiness”, that is, Christian happiness. It stands in contrast to “ my happiness” a happiness that “ought to justify existence itself.” You quote Nietzsche yet his perspective is opposed to yours. He does not condemn the pursuit of please. He condemns Christianity for its condemnation of pleasure. He rejects “objective truth”. He is responsible for perspectivism.

As a secularist you are closed to the idea of the overman or the philosopher king with a quality of being greater than your idol the Great Beast. You must diminish them so they can show the proper respect.

Nietzsche is simply saying acquiring the will to power requires abandoning wretched contentment. It is a psychological condition that transcends Christendom or man made Christianity. What could possibly make you think this tendency is limited to Christendom or man made Christianity?

Whether or not there is such a unity is “beyond the boundaries of human understanding”. Plato describes a “rational cosmic order” “based on conjecture and speculation”.

Of course. A person isn’t born a philosopher king. They have to become one. It requires acquiring knowledge of the GOOD, the will to power, and the conscious understanding making it possible to abandon this power in service to the greater GOOD. Only certain people are capable. There is nothing wrong with being a guardian, It is just a lower quality of being than a philosopher king. As we are, we can only consciously contemplate the rational cosmic order. Sometimes it opens us to intuitive reason leading to understanding beyond the limits of linear dualistic reason.

Plato largely confines himself to the depiction of the good soul and the good for the soul, evidently on the assumption that the state of the soul is the condition of the good life, both necessary and sufficient to guarantee it.

The good life is not the life of the unity of inner soul and the cosmos simply because, as the article says, we are not capable of knowing the whole. Hence:

The soul already knows. It just must turn to the light. The outer man attached to the shadows on the wall cannot be free to turn. When the inner man turns, the outer man can follow.

The good life is defined by the state of the soul.

In terms you might understand he takes a practical view with regard to the Great Beast. Plato’s position is, as I have said before, fundamentally at odds with your own. Plato is not advocating transcendence but reason. If, as the microcosm, we are to be in harmony with the macrocosm this can only be attained to the extent that our lives are governed by reason. It cannot be what you have referred to as “top down reason” simply because we cannot start at the top. To claim that we can is unreasonable. The human perspective is not from the standpoint of knowledge of the whole.

But the reason of a philosopher king leads to a quality of being capable of grasping wholeness impossible for the Beast. As we are we cannot be governed by reason. We are hypocrites and in opposition with ourselves. Our emotional states are dominated by negative emotions cheapening reason into strictly pragmatic egoistic concerns. The philosopher king and those who have opened to the third direction of thought are capable of top down reason. Esoteric work simply means efforts to enable the appetites to serve top down reason with the emotions awakening to the objective values which give reason the experience of “meaning.”

The overman, the ultimate in horizontal human psychology as compared to the philosopher king, the ultimate following the vertical path of human being leading in the direction of the GOOD. Can you imagine a group of secularists arguing this. Lord have mercy.

[fooloso4]

Nick:

As a secularist you are closed to the idea of the overman or the philosopher king with a quality of being greater than your idol the Great Beast.You must diminish them so they can show the proper respect.

That’s a load of crap. What ideas I am open to or closed to has nothing to do with what Nietzsche said. That you did not understand him has nothing to do with what I am open or closed to. That Nietzsche rejects objective truth and advocates perspectivism has nothing to do me.

Nietzsche is simply saying acquiring the will to power requires abandoning wretched contentment.

You really do not know what you are talking about. Saying no to Christian contentedness is not the will to power. It is the first stage of the “three metamorphoses” from Zarathustra.

It is a psychological condition that transcends Christendom or man made Christianity. What could possibly make you think this tendency is limited to Christendom or man made Christianity?

Your question clearly shows that you have not read Zarathustra. If you read it and can understand it even at a rudimentary level you will see clearly that he is talking about the overcoming of Christianity. It is the overcoming that our time in history requires of us. This is basic stuff. Your quoting Nietzsche without knowing even the basics shows just how pretentious you are.

A person isn’t born a philosopher king. They have to become one. It requires acquiring knowledge of the GOOD, the will to power, and the conscious understanding making it possible to abandon this power in service to the greater GOOD. Only certain people are capable.

And this shows your blindness. The article plainly states that “the attainment of the requisite knowledge [is] beyond the boundaries of human understanding”. The material you quoted is discussing the late dialogues and is contrasting what is found in them to the earlier dialogues. There is no discussion of philosopher kings in the late dialogues. The philosopher king appears only in the Republic, nowhere else in the whole corpus of Plato. In previous discussions I pointed to key passages in the Republic showing that it is dialectic, that is, reasoned speech, not transcendent experience, not rememberance of what one learned while dead, and not some other level or quality of reason that enables knowledge to the extent that we can know. And that knowledge falls far short of the Forms, short of the Good itself.

As we are, we can only consciously contemplate the rational cosmic order. Sometimes it opens us to intuitive reason leading to understanding beyond the limits of linear dualistic reason.

First of all, the passage says nothing about a distinction between two kinds of reason or an understanding that is available to humans that is not human understanding. What it says is that the rational cosmic order “is based on conjecture and speculation”. Second, unless you possess an understanding that surpasses human understanding your perspective remains a human perspective. You cannot contemplate the rational cosmic order, you can only contemplate what you imagine that order to be. You are contemplating a product of your own imagination.

The soul already knows. It just must turn to the light.

This is in direct contradiction to what the passage you quoted says. The problem here is that your Christian Neo-platonism does not square with what the article says. You could not see that and now you must make claims based on your Christian Neo-platonism and pretend they are in concert with the article.

But the reason of a philosopher king leads to a quality of being capable of grasping wholeness impossible for the Beast.

More evidence that you can only see what you want to see. According to the article you quoted, it is not possible for human beings to understand the rational cosmic order. When the article says that “Plato's late works do not show any willingness to lower the standards of knowledge as such”, this means that knowledge of the whole is not attainable for human beings, that human wisdom is knowing that you do not know. You, Nick, are ignorant of your ignorance. You are not capable of emotional detachment. You are emotionally attached to your image of a reality you have no knowledge of.

[vegetariantaxidermy]

I've found that I am a very different person from decade to decade so I now relate to a lot of insane crap that other people go in with that I used to embrace.

Our young and disturbed "friend" here, Nick, is a great example. Twenty-five years ago I would have probably sided with him against me of today in our "debates". I ran hard on my emotions as he does, also with a hair trigger temper and deep sense of romanticism about reality with distaste for the "clinical" powers that be.

I also fervently believed in God as a child and I know what it's like to feel that that is the sacred truth that must be awed and respected. I later was very keen on Buddhism, and still like aspects of it. I routinely believed that alternative medicine was not largely quackery. I believed some conspiracy theories. I wanted so badly for there to be bad guys to blame for everything.

Today, what I see in the world is basically the usual dynamics of nature applying to humanity. The re-formation of the Earth's surface by "humanity" is problematic for us as affected individuals, but for mine the whole situation with humans and the Earth reeks to high heaven of a standard natural process. This drama of intelligent beings humans dominating a world and emerging into something new has probably happened, and been refined, many times beforehand in the universe. Like all development - gestation, metamorphosis, maturing and ageing - you have periods where there is rapid development into an emergent form after a long period of relative stability.

In other words you are a fickle and shallow flibbertigibbet with no integrity.

[Nick_A]

F4

It is a psychological condition that transcends Christendom or man made Christianity. What could possibly make you think this tendency is limited to Christendom or man made Christianity?

Your question clearly shows that you have not read Zarathustra. If you read it and can understand it even at a rudimentary level you will see clearly that he is talking about the overcoming of Christianity. It is the overcoming that our time in history requires of us. This is basic stuff. Your quoting Nietzsche without knowing even the basics shows just how pretentious you are.

http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/5v.htm

According to Nietzsche's Die Götzendämmerung (Twilight of the Idols) (1889), Western philosophers since Socrates represent a degeneration of the natural strengths of humanity. A noble taste for heroic styles of life can only be corrupted and undermined by the interminable debates of dialectical reason. Traditional Western morality philosophy—and the Christian religion in particular—therefore opposes a healthy life, trying vainly to escape unfortunate circumstances by destroying native human desires.

Only perverse tenacity and cowardice, he believed, encourages us to cling to this servile morality, It would be more brave, more honest, and much more noble to cut ourselves loose and dare to live in a world without God. In such a world, death is not to be feared, since it represents nothing more significant than the fitting conclusion of a life devoted to personal gain.
All of this is, of course, a variety of nihilism. Nietzsche insists that there are no rules for human life, no absolute values, no certainties on which to rely. If truth can be achieved at all, it can come only from an individual who purposefully disregards everything that is traditionally taken to be "important." Such a super-human person {Ger. Übermensch}, Nietzsche supposed, can live an authentic and successful human life.

Christendom (not Christianity) was a representation in Nietzsche’s mindset that emphasized weakness. Is contemplation of the Good and compassion a human strength or a human weakness? It is a worthwhile philosophical question.

And this shows your blindness. The article plainly states that “the attainment of the requisite knowledge [is] beyond the boundaries of human understanding”. The material you quoted is discussing the late dialogues and is contrasting what is found in them to the earlier dialogues. There is no discussion of philosopher kings in the late dialogues. The philosopher king appears only in the Republic, nowhere else in the whole corpus of Plato. In previous discussions I pointed to key passages in the Republic showing that it is dialectic, that is, reasoned speech, not transcendent experience, not rememberance of what one learned while dead, and not some other level or quality of reason that enables knowledge to the extent that we can know. And that knowledge falls far short of the Forms, short of the Good itself.

Ideas of a certain quality can only enter society or initially affect the outer man depending on the quality of the psych. Conscious contemplation allows deeper meaning to be experienced by the inner man. Plato’s cave is an allegory describing the truth of the human condition. The soul ascends and then must descend back into cave life so that their collective being can open the conscious path leading out of the cave. The dialectic doesn’t serve self importance. It is a means for anamnesis. It raises the quality of questions and reveals contradictions necessary for anamnesis or intuition for us.

Plotinus wrote that “Knowledge has three degrees – opinion, science, illumination. The means or instrument of the first is sense; of the second, dialectic; of the third, intuition.”
As a secularist, you are a creature of the ground and the ground is limited to the dialectic. Intuition is a product of the vertical third direction of thought that doesn’t initiate with the ground so must be denied. This is the way of the modern secularist. However, those like me are open to what the great minds of the past like Plato, Plotinus, Pythogoras etc. have opened us to. Secularism must be intolerant of this influence since it questions the idolatry of it god the Great Beast and opens us to the reality of the fallen human condition limiting the potential for a human perspective to glorified opinions.

Krishnamurti describes the quality of dialectic you value as the ultimate in objective reason. You do not know yourself so cannot understand why it is so and why it has so much power over you

“Thought is so cunning, so clever, that it distorts everything for its own convenience.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known

[fooloso4]

Nick:

According to Nietzsche's Die Götzendämmerung (Twilight of the Idols) …

Nietzsche’s criticism of Socrates in Twilight of the Idols has nothing to do with your erroneous claims that his criticism of Christianity in Zarathustra is not about Christianity.

Christendom (not Christianity) was a representation in Nietzsche’s mindset that emphasized weakness.

You do not escape the criticism with your distinction between Christianity and Christendom. Nietzsche makes no such distinction.

Is contemplation of the Good and compassion a human strength or a human weakness?

First you cite Nietzsche to support your claims and now when it becomes clear that you misunderstood him you question his claims. Once again you show your misunderstanding. These questions must be seen in their historical context. What was a strength has become a weakness. This is discussed at length in The Genealogy of Morals. The question of what is good is not the question of the Good.

The dialectic doesn’t serve self importance. It is a means for anamnesis. It raises the quality of questions and reveals contradictions necessary for anamnesis or intuition for us.

That is nonsense. Dialectic, as it was used by Plato, means simply reasoned speech. Contradictions, unless they can be resolved, lead to aporia not anamnesis or intuition. They indicate that we have reached a limit. Despite what you say, you are unable to acknowledge that human beings are limited in their knowledge and understanding, that human wisdom is knowledge of our ignorance. You prefer the myth of anamnesis and think that is a courageous attitude, but it is cowardly. It is an unwillingness to face death and unanswerable questions, an unwillingness to contemplate our cosmic insignificance. Plato is quite clear about this in the Phaedo. You prefer the “charms” he provides there to ease “childish fears”. This, he says, is what separates those of his followers who are suited for philosophy and the pursuit of truth and those who take refuge in just so stories.

Plotinus wrote …

This is always your fall back position. Compound the problem by introducing what someone else said. You cannot escape the fact that you have not understood Plato or Nietzsche by bringing in someone else you do not understand.

This is the way of the modern secularist. However, those like me are open to what the great minds of the past like Plato, Plotinus, Pythogoras etc. have opened us to.

Another load of crap. I have been trying to discuss Plato by paying careful attention to the texts of Plato. While it is clear that he provides plenty of opportunity for flights of fancy he makes clear that the imagination must be subject to reason, to dialectic. Mythology is not philosophy. Conjecture and speculation are just that. They do not “open” us to truth, but at best to what might be. It is not that I am not open to what might be but rather that, unlike you, I do not mistake what might be for what is.

[Harbal]

unlike you I don't pretend to be one of the beautiful people

I'm not pretending.

[Nick_A]

unlike you I don't pretend to be one of the beautiful people

I'm not pretending.

You don't pretend it, you assert it through your condemnation of those you don't believe are as beautiful as you. You mistakenly believe you are the man of the hour, the tower of power, too sweet to be sour, the reflection of perfection, and the number one selection. You believe you are the superstar with the authority to condemn others who you believe do not match your beauty. Egoism unchained.

[Harbal]

You don't pretend it, you assert it through your condemnation of those you don't believe are as beautiful as you. You mistakenly believe you are the man of the hour, the tower of power, too sweet to be sour, the reflection of perfection, and the number one selection. You believe you are the superstar with the authority to condemn others who you believe do not match your beauty. Egoism unchained.

All I can say is that I'll do my best to live up to the high bar you have set for me.

[Nick_A]

F4

Cutting through all the BS, our essential difference is between your secular beliefs of one level of reality (below) and my universal beliefs in levels of reality (above and below.)

The allegory concludes with:

[Socrates] And now shall we consider in what way such guardians will be produced, and how they are to be brought from darkness to light, -- as some are said to have ascended from the world below to the gods?
[Glaucon] By all means, he replied.
[Socrates] The process, I said, is not the turning over of an oyster-shell, but the turning round of a soul passing from a day which is little better than night to the true day of being, that is, the ascent from below, which we affirm to be true philosophy?
[Glaucon] Quite so.

As a secularist you believe in manipulating the darkness so as to better serve the Beast. As a universalist I know what is meant by ascending from below into the light above. I agree that this is true philosophy. We do not understand each other since we begin with different premises.


http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/allegory.html

[Socrates] Then, I said, the business of us who are the founders of the State will be to compel the best minds to attain that knowledge which we have already shown to be the greatest of all-they must continue to ascend until they arrive at the good; but when they have ascended and seen enough we must not allow them to do as they do now.
[Glaucon] What do you mean?
[Socrates] I mean that they remain in the upper world: but this must not be allowed; they must be made to descend again among the prisoners in the cave, and partake of their labors and honors, whether they are worth having or not.
[Glaucon] But is not this unjust? he said; ought we to give them a worse life, when they might have a better?
[Socrates] You have again forgotten, my friend, I said, the intention of the legislator, who did not aim at making any one class in the State happy above the rest; the happiness was to be in the whole State, and he held the citizens together by persuasion and necessity, making them benefactors of the State, and therefore benefactors of one another; to this end he created them, not to please themselves, but to be his instruments in binding up the State.
[Glaucon] True, he said, I had forgotten.
[Socrates] Observe, Glaucon, that there will be no injustice in compelling our philosophers to have a care and providence of others; we shall explain to them that in other States, men of their class are not obliged to share in the toils of politics: and this is reasonable, for they grow up at their own sweet will, and the government would rather not have them. Being self-taught, they cannot be expected to show any gratitude for a culture which they have never received. But we have brought you into the world to be rulers of the hive, kings of yourselves and of the other citizens, and have educated you far better and more perfectly than they have been educated, and you are better able to share in the double duty. Wherefore each of you, when his turn comes, must go down to the general underground abode, and get the habit of seeing in the dark. When you have acquired the habit, you will see ten thousand times better than the inhabitants of the cave, and you will know what the several images are, and what they represent, because you have seen the beautiful and just and good in their truth. And thus our State which is also yours will be a reality, and not a dream only, and will be administered in a spirit unlike that of other States, in which men fight with one another about shadows only and are distracted in the struggle for power, which in their eyes is a great good. Whereas the truth is that the State in which the rulers are most reluctant to govern is always the best and most quietly governed, and the State in which they are most eager, the worst.
[Glaucon] Quite true, he replied.
[Socrates] And will our pupils, when they hear this, refuse to take their turn at the toils of State, when they are allowed to spend the greater part of their time with one another in the heavenly light?
[Glaucon] Impossible, he answered; for they are just men, and the commands which we impose upon them are just; there can be no doubt that every one of them will take office as a stern necessity, and not after the fashion of our present rulers of State.
[Socrates] Yes, my friend, I said; and there lies the point. You must contrive for your future rulers another and a better life than that of a ruler, and then you may have a well-ordered State; for only in the State which offers this, will they rule who are truly rich, not in silver and gold, but in virtue and wisdom, which are the true blessings of life. Whereas if they go to the administration of public affairs, poor and hungering after the' own private advantage, thinking that hence they are to snatch the chief good, order there can never be; for they will be fighting about office, and the civil and domestic broils which thus arise will be the ruin of the rulers themselves and of the whole State.
[Glaucon] Most true, he replied.
[Socrates] And the only life which looks down upon the life of political ambition is that of true philosophy. Do you know of any other?
[Glaucon] Indeed, I do not, he said.
[Socrates] And those who govern ought not to be lovers of the task? For, if they are, there will be rival lovers, and they will fight.
[Glaucon] No question.
[Socrates] Who then are those whom we shall compel to be guardians? Surely they will be the men who are wisest about affairs of State, and by whom the State is best administered, and who at the same time have other honors and another and a better life than that of politics?
[Glaucon] They are the men, and I will choose them, he replied.
[Socrates] And now shall we consider in what way such guardians will be produced, and how they are to be brought from darkness to light, -- as some are said to have ascended from the world below to the gods?
[Glaucon] By all means, he replied.
[Socrates] The process, I said, is not the turning over of an oyster-shell, but the turning round of a soul passing from a day which is little better than night to the true day of being, that is, the ascent from below, which we affirm to be true philosophy?
[Glaucon] Quite so.

[Harbal]

As a secularist you believe....

Idiot!

[Nick_A]

The ancient idea of "As above, so below" is an excellent example of the difference between the secular mind and the universal mind. Consider the Emerald Tablet as an expression of the universal mind. It is nonsense for the secular perspective which limits itself to the senses but common sense for the universal perspective and its necessary levels of reality creating above and below..

There are many translations but with the same meaning

http://www.sacred-texts.com/alc/emerald.htm


From Jabir ibn Hayyan.

0) Balinas mentions the engraving on the table in the hand of Hermes, which says:
1) Truth! Certainty! That in which there is no doubt!
2) That which is above is from that which is below, and that which is below is from that which is above, working the miracles of one.
3) As all things were from one.
4) Its father is the Sun and its mother the Moon.
5) The Earth carried it in her belly, and the Wind nourished it in her belly,
7) as Earth which shall become Fire.
7a) Feed the Earth from that which is subtle, with the greatest power.
It ascends from the earth to the heaven and becomes ruler over that which is above and that which is below.
14) And I have already explained the meaning of the whole of this in two of these books of mine.
[Holmyard 1923: 562.]

[fooloso4]

Nick:

Cutting through all the BS, our essential difference is between your secular beliefs of one level of reality (below) and my universal beliefs in levels of reality (above and below.)

I will ignore your misrepresentation of my beliefs and emphasize what everyone has been saying and you have ignored until now. What you are arguing for is what you believe, only you argue as if it was not a matter of belief but of knowledge.

As a universalist I know what is meant by ascending from below into the light above.

For a moment there I thought you had finally come to your senses and seen the light. To believe is not to know. Anyone who reads Plato’s allegory of the cave knows what is means, at least on the rudimentary level of your interpretation. Once again, if you have not ascended from the cave you do not know what it means to ascend from the cave, you only imagine what it might be. It is something that must experienced and by your own admission you have not experienced it. And yet you go on and on about something you know nothing of.

We do not understand each other since we begin with different premises.

I understand you quite well. You are exactly like Glaucon, unable to follow Socrates but persuaded to agree with everything he says. Xenophon shows him to be dim witted, thinking he knows something about the affairs of the city (Great Beast). Even though he is Plato’s brother, Plato paints a picture of someone easily led astray. Glaucon is not a philosopher and cannot say what true philosophy is.

The image of the cave in the Republic is supplanted by the discussion of dialectic:

So tell what the character of the power of dialectic is, and, then, into exactly what forms it is divided; and finally what are its ways. For these, as it seems, would lead at last toward that place which is for the one who reaches it a haven from the road, as it were, and an end of his journey."
"You will no longer be able to follow, my dear Glaucon," I said, "although there wouldn't be any lack of eagerness on my part. But you would no longer be seeing an image of what we are saying, but rather the truth itself, at least as it looks to me. Whether it is really so or not can no longer be properly insisted on. But that there is some such thing to see must be insisted on. Isn't it so?"
"Of course."
"And, also, that the power of dialectic alone could reveal it to a man experienced in the things we just went through, while it is in no other way possible?"
"Yes," he said, "it's proper to insist on that too." (532e-533a)

Now there are a few points to emphasize here. First, it is, according to Socrates, the power of dialectic, reasoned speech, and nothing else that leads to the truth. It it not transcendent experience or the experience of remembering what you learned when you were dead. Second, Socrates has not reached the “end of the journey”. He does not know what he says can only be known through dialectic. All that he can offer are images of what the truth looks like to him, and since he does not possess the truth he says he cannot really insist that it is as it looks to him.

Once again, Socrates knows that he does not know. He presents a salutary image to Glaucon. He turns Glaucon’s soul around from its concern in Book I for what is to his own advantage, to a consideration of what is good for him by way an image of the good itself, virtue, and the soul ruled by reason. What you and Glaucon do not see is that Socrates is simply replacing Glaucon's opinions with others that are of greater benefit to him, the city, and philosophy.

[Greta]

I've found that I am a very different person from decade to decade so I now relate to a lot of insane crap that other people go in with that I used to embrace.

Our young and disturbed "friend" here, Nick, is a great example. Twenty-five years ago I would have probably sided with him against me of today in our "debates". I ran hard on my emotions as he does, also with a hair trigger temper and deep sense of romanticism about reality with distaste for the "clinical" powers that be.

I also fervently believed in God as a child and I know what it's like to feel that that is the sacred truth that must be awed and respected. I later was very keen on Buddhism, and still like aspects of it. I routinely believed that alternative medicine was not largely quackery. I believed some conspiracy theories. I wanted so badly for there to be bad guys to blame for everything.

Today, what I see in the world is basically the usual dynamics of nature applying to humanity. The re-formation of the Earth's surface by "humanity" is problematic for us as affected individuals, but for mine the whole situation with humans and the Earth reeks to high heaven of a standard natural process. This drama of intelligent beings humans dominating a world and emerging into something new has probably happened, and been refined, many times beforehand in the universe. Like all development - gestation, metamorphosis, maturing and ageing - you have periods where there is rapid development into an emergent form after a long period of relative stability.

In other words you are a fickle and shallow flibbertigibbet with no integrity.

The forum would be a much better and sensible place without you.

[Nick_A]

F4

The image of the cave in the Republic is supplanted by the discussion of dialectic:

So tell what the character of the power of dialectic is, and, then, into exactly what forms it is divided; and finally what are its ways. For these, as it seems, would lead at last toward that place which is for the one who reaches it a haven from the road, as it were, and an end of his journey."
"You will no longer be able to follow, my dear Glaucon," I said, "although there wouldn't be any lack of eagerness on my part. But you would no longer be seeing an image of what we are saying, but rather the truth itself, at least as it looks to me. Whether it is really so or not can no longer be properly insisted on. But that there is some such thing to see must be insisted on. Isn't it so?"
"Of course."
"And, also, that the power of dialectic alone could reveal it to a man experienced in the things we just went through, while it is in no other way possible?"
"Yes," he said, "it's proper to insist on that too." (532e-533a)

Now there are a few points to emphasize here. First, it is, according to Socrates, the power of dialectic, reasoned speech, and nothing else that leads to the truth. It it not transcendent experience or the experience of remembering what you learned when you were dead. Second, Socrates has not reached the “end of the journey”. He does not know what he says can only be known through dialectic. All that he can offer are images of what the truth looks like to him, and since he does not possess the truth he says he cannot really insist that it is as it looks to him.

Once again, Socrates knows that he does not know. He presents a salutary image to Glaucon. He turns Glaucon’s soul around from its concern in Book I for what is to his own advantage, to a consideration of what is good for him by way an image of the good itself, virtue, and the soul ruled by reason. What you and Glaucon do not see is that Socrates is simply replacing Glaucon's opinions with others that are of greater benefit to him, the city, and philosophy.

You do not appreciate the relationship between dialectic as the pursuit of objective truth and anamnesis as the pursuit of the experience of the GOOD. The dialectic can initiate the quality of contemplation that can open one to the experience of anamnesis. Dialectic reveals truth while anamnesis reveals meaning. Together they promote human understanding which becomes a human perspective for one so fortunate as to be capable of “understanding.” This is what I mean by anamnesis. As a secularist you cannot admit a conscious source for objective meaning so must limit yourself to arguing opinions you call dialectic and conflicting man made declarations of ethics

http://www.john-uebersax.com/plato/words/anamnesis.htm

• According to Socrates and Plato, the most important forms of knowledge come not from instruction, but by a re-awakening of already existing dormant or latent knowledge. This is called anamnesis (an- = un-, amnesis = forgetting, as in amnesia; ).
• Anamnesis comes in the form of "aha!" experiences -- insights, moments of unusual clarity, peak experiences, etc.
• It involves only certain forms of knowledge: moral (e.g., what is goodness?), existential (e.g., what is the authentic 'me'?), spiritual/metaphysical, and mathematical.
• Truths understood by anamnesis, valuable in themselves, also serve as first principles for reasoning about oneself and ones life. Conclusions based on these truths are more certain and correct than those based on false opinion (see epoche), which is typically distorted by desires and fears.
• Anamnesis, thus, leads to a genuine life, whereas false opinion promotes inauthenticity.
• Anamnesis can be elicited by the practice of dialectic.

[Lacewing]

Duh, blah, blah, blah

Hey Nick, you're way off topic. Maybe you should go back and read the opening post. Not every thread needs to be your tiresome platform for your psychotic projections. Everyone else's comments here are okay because they are interesting. But yours are not, so I think you need to get back on topic or start your own thread.