Consider the comment by Thrasymachus on 343. In this longer passage, he is attempting to pose a point against Socrates' claim on the just and justice. I wanted dissect this passage a little more. Do you agree with the claim that Thrasymachus makes when he says that the 'just man everywhere has less than the unjust man' (343c)? I know that Socrates disagrees but the question is interesting to focus on. It is almost like saying that the evil profit more than the good - a sort of pessimistic look on the world. Likewise, if there is no such thing as true justice, how can we even know that the unjust profit more than the just? Also do you believe that someone can be 'truly just'? I feel like true justice is like saying that there is a way to be truly perfect. We cannot concretely define justice, so I am not sure how one can be truly just

Moral Isolationism

Over the past two days I have been reviewing Midgley's article "Trying Out Ones New Sword". In her article, she makes the claim that Moral Isolationism is not a concept that is forced upon cultures, rather it is a position that people maintain due to respect of another's culture. She maintains that if we did not make moral judgments, we would have no framework of our own policy and make no judgments of our own actions. Personally, I see this in relation to reading Plato because one of the levels of thinking about his works is from a historical and contextual background. Having read Midgley's article, I can say that it may help to keep in mind that we may be subject to the influence of moral isolationism. We try to not make judgments about the culture of the Athenians instead of thinking critically about it and creating our own judgments. That said, I think this class is brilliant at seeing past moral isolationism and creating constructive criticisms about our culture in comparison to Athenian culture. When it comes to a review of the historical background, we tend to remain open to it, but overall I think that it is important to keep the idea of moral isolationism in mind so we do not fall complacent to it.

If you would like to read Midgley's article here is the PDF link:

http://www.ghandchi.com/IONA/newsword.pdf

Harmony

On Wednesday we brought up a question that was in my opinion one of the most interesting questions we had discussed during Phaedo. Can an idea be created from nothing? I've been thinking about Matt's example of Harmony and whether or not beings with no hearing can still create harmony. After thinking about this question I do believe that those beings could create harmony..but they would not conceptualize it in the same way. Their sense of harmony might be discovered like Matt said, through vibrations but it wouldn't be the same. This begs another question for me: Is harmony universal or do we all think of it differently? I feel as though those beings who cannot hear might think of harmony that is different from us. Overall, yes they found harmony without hearing which would make it possible to create something without having prior knowledge of it but is it different from our harmony? If it is different, how can we say that they discovered harmony? To me it is a circular pattern. To ask someone "what is harmony?" ends up being the same circular argument as our discussion on how to define piety. I guess I am still struggling about how to not end up in a circle...but maybe that is the point

Interesting Translation

I often try and find some different translations of the dialogues and today while looking though Googles extensive archives I found this neat translation of Plato's Lysis in Dutch! I know I do not know Dutch but I just thought it was great! Here is the link if any of you are interested:

http://www.arsfloreat.nl/documents/Plato-Lysis.pdf

Incorrect Analyses of Plato

For my blog post this week I would like to discuss the idea of the psyche in Phaedo. There are many analyses online that focus on the idea that in Phaedo there is direct mention of the "soul". I feel like this may be a product of the Jowett translations. People automatically assume that when Socrates and the others are discussing immortality, they are discussing their souls. To me it is interesting how wide spread this misconception is because there is really no believe in a soul in ancient Greece as we discussed in class. However it seems to be such a widely spread idea that Socrates was discussing the afterlife in a monotheistic religious way. I find it rather amusing, given that our idea of the afterlife is largely based off of christian ideology. I knew that Benjamin Jowett tainted much of Plato's translations, but I had no idea how wide spread the misconception was. It is also interesting to me because I find myself having to really rework my thought processes while rereading this text. It is so easy to just automatically assume that when someone talks about death and moving on after death they are discussing Heaven and Hell but that is why it is crucial to dive into the culture of the text and not look at it through your own culture.