Plato's Democrat
Friday, March 31, 2017
Friday, March 17, 2017
One of the scary thought that occurred to me while reading and discussing the fifth part of the Republic is how slowly feminist ideas seem manifest and travel. The fact that these ideas were brought up over 2,000 years ago and still we don't have an equal society is insane. And it begs the question, will we ever, as a species, get to a point where woman are truest equal worldwide? Or is there always going to be a fight? What do you think?
Friday, March 3, 2017
One of the ideas we played with in
class is the fact that Athenians would often sprout lines of prose during a
conversation rather than offering an original thought. Like most of Plato’s
knowledge I feel like this happens a lot in our culture, especially with
politics. Our political system has become incredibly polarized, so much so that
people on either side could never imagine considering the other party legitimate.
A big part of this seems to come from the news and media that we consume.
People only ever look at news sources that back up their belief because that’s
what makes them feel smart. They get to listen to Tomi Lahren rant and rave
about democrats and it makes them feel better about themselves. I’m not trying
to say you should go out and bookmark breitbart “news,” but I do think people
should start to be more critical about the information they are absorbing.
Rather than waiting for someone like Trevor Noah to boil down a new law for you
go out and actually read the law. Don’t take other peoples word for it.
Certainly the media can guide you in the right direction but I think it’s important
for us as people living in a free society to exercise our right to be informed
and make decisions on our own.
And I think that is what Plato was
trying to get at. Rather than parroting what someone else tells you is right,
go out and find what is right.
Thursday, February 16, 2017
One of the ideas I couldn't shake while reading Meno is the impact genetics could play in regards to natural ability and general tendencies. Obviously, Rosalin Franklin wasn't around to teach Plato all about DNA or the science of inheritance and the level of randomness that comes with it. I think one could argue that to a degree people can be born virtuous in that their genetic makeup can sway them towards having a virtuous nature. And of course kids aren't replicas of their parents (that'd be weird) so a virtuous father can give birth to a scoundrel son. What do you think? Do you think it is possible that the recalling of past knowledge could be simply attributed to the genes rather than a cosmic coincidence allowing people to recall things from before their time.
Thursday, February 2, 2017
Thursday, January 26, 2017
While discussing Euthyphro in class it became blatantly
obvious that one of the hardest things to pin down in a translation was the
tone of the dialogue. For most literary works tone is built very intricately by
choosing extremely precise words, but we are not really reading Plato’s words.
And because we were all reading different translations we were all finding
subtle discrepancies in the tone that impacted the way we took the text. My
version was extremely palatable compared to Bloom’s and this meant I interpreted
the conversation to be far more lighthearted than some of my classmates. This difference
also gives the text a new sort of life, because a hundred different versions
can have a hundred different subtle differences, meaning that Plato’s dialogues
can be read and reread an untold amount of times while still being fresh and interesting.
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