Subj : Extent of the Torah
To   : Frank Masingill
From : Curtis Johnson
Date : Tue Oct 24 2000 11:21 pm

 
 CJ> I would pay really good money to send Todd back in time for a
 CJ> dialogue with Socrates.
 
 JV> As would I.  Todd would call Socrates' questions hateful and
 JV> refuse to answer them, then he would ask Socrates silly
 JV> questions and Socrates would roar with laughter... and Todd
 JV> would run away, yelling all the while, "You're a hateful
 JV> little man."
 
 CJ> Yep.

 FM> Actually, the response of Plato's Socrates to preaching was
 FM> quite standard and repeated in more than one of the dialogues.  He
 FM> first professed shock that in Athens of all places a man should not
 FM> be considered free to speak his thoughts.  This would be followed by
 FM> a plea (grin) for HIS freedom to walk away until the companion in
 FM> debate had agreed to cease forthwith his preaching (he called it
 FM> "speechmaking."   That, of course, is what, in the Gorgias finally
 FM> brings the second-rate intellectual rogue, Polus, into a debate
 FM> which is, of course, over his head.  Callicles, who takes up the
 FM> cudgels KNOWS that such will not work so he takes up HIS position
 FM> from the standpoint of one who is "in the know" of what Socrates is
 FM> REALLY up to and accuses SOCRATES of being what Callicles REALLY is,
 FM> i.e., a dishonest intellectual.  Once again there is the theme of
 FM> "mend your ways" or dire things may happen to you from the
 FM> Callicles, the sophisticate who is "in the know" of everybody's REAL
 FM> intentions and has in the background the basic sophistic theology
 FM> that "nothing exists; if it exists it cannot be known; and if known
 FM> it cannot be communicated" which Plato reports as "no gods exist; if
 FM> they DO exist they care nothing for man and if they care about man
 FM> they can be bribed" and turns against it HIS type of theology which
 FM> ran "the gods DO exist; they DO care about man, and they CANNOT be
 FM> bribed by attempting to provide them with a share of the profits."  

 FM> Of course, we know the end of the story.  Neither Socrates
 FM> nor Jesus will agree to "mend their ways."  The culture is pretty
 FM> demanding!!!  

	Yes, part of the appeal in the Dialogues is the dramatic 
appeal in the intellectual chess.



--- Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 [NR]
 * Origin: America's favorite whine - it's your fault! (1:261/1000)

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