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Socrates in the works of Plato did have examples, and some down right terrible examples too...He was not always right,

and they were very right to kill him...

And the people were correct in taking his students as evidence of the poison he spread...

His logic in regard to human beings, the Herd as he called them was cold and cruel...

Life is abstraction... We would not know the first part of it if we could not get the idea of it...It is the abstraction of abstraction that confuses people, the inability to find the common sense to something and explain it in practical terms..

Better call your granny...

---------- Post added 04-17-2010 at 12:27 PM ----------


Socrates in the works of Plato did have examples, and some down right terrible examples too...He was not always right, and they were very right to kill him... And the people were correct in taking his students as evidence of the poison he spread... His logic in regard to human beings, the Herd as he called them was cold and cruel...

Pyrrho;153211 wrote:

Who have you read who is always right? And certainly, kennethamy never said that Socrates/Plato was always right.

A good reason why philosophers should resist pronouncing on politics as philosophers is because we almost always suffer a limited vision of current events... There are points in Plato where Socrates offers arguments in support of murder of democrats or removal of parents from children on a vast scale, and the people in audience do not question that nonsense in the least... It was rigged...

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Wow. So, the crime of speaking is deserving of death, according to you.

Athens prided itself on its liberty, and so killing Socrates was a crime against their own self perception...It made him a Martyr when he was hardly a man... His friends, in the Thirty Oligarchs, the pro Spartan minority of anti democrats stole to finance their oligarchy, killed democrats, and forced the exile of many, and if you can believe Plato, Socrates went about his business preaching social poison... It would have been just if his tongue had been cut out...

Look in our own time at how long it has taken to end cigarette advertizing when that is a true gateway drug... Look at the political lies that can be told in public, over a public owned utility, the public airwaves, and no one is held accountable... That is a crime... People are injured...Society is injured by every false statement made when it is upon the facts that they must govern...

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Do you seriously believe that they all did as he told them to do?

Obviously not, if you believe Plato; that he told them the herdsman would be judged by the size of their flock, which they were about decimating...

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People are like sheep, and follow the herd. Milgram's experiments have shown that Socrates was right about people. If people would actually think for themselves, we would all be a lot better off, but there is little chance of that actually happening.

I suppose that you think that this is connected with my post in some way. Some people think that logic is cold and cruel. But, after all, that is merely their personal response to it. Logic itself is of course, neither. It is merely what it is. There is a story about Harry Truman that illustrates this: At an election rally he was slamming the Republicans, and the crowd was cheering Harry on. They were saying, "Give 'em hell, Harry!". Truman replied: "I don't give them hell. I only tell them the truth, and they think it is hell!" Socrates only gives logic, and you think it is cold and cruel.

What does that mean, that people are like sheep??? Does it mean that all we do to sheep we may do to men??? Upon what superficial similarities will you not reason???

The fact was, and always will be, that when economic equality is lost in a society that political equality will go by the boards... The middle classes joined the rich in disenfranchising the poor, the Demos, until their own rights and welfare was threatened -because there is no natural limit on tyranny except the people...

We are social and political animals...In this, Aristotle was correct... And it is so because only a whole people can present a creditable defense against other peoples determined to have what is theirs...But the first defense must be made against ones neighbors who will, if they see themselves as more worthy, or more intelligent, find in that presumption the excuse they need to plunder their society... It is when societies become divided between the rich and the poor that they are then swept off the pages of history and heard from no more... The rich winning over the poor is only a prelude to the whole society being won over by powers fresh and fair for whom equity has true meaning...

So; two points: The people are the law... And, an equal and free people can defend itself from other free people as those empoverished and already made slaves cannot...

---------- Post added 04-18-2010 at 08:32 AM ----------


It may be that Socrates in the works of Plato offered examples, but many of his examples were not worth spit, so that fact does not make the use of Socrates as a giver of examples worth consideration except as a bad example...And I am only agreeing with Nietzsche there, that Socrates' logic was cold... And I hate to find myself in agreement with Nietzsche anywhere...Socrates might well have done better sticking to the general, and forgetting the particular...Socrates is a lesson that one cannot justly apply logic to moral reality... Logic is for physics, of the physical world...

When you agree with Nietzsche about anything, you should be afraid, very afraid. I don't understand what it means to say that logic is cold (or hot, for that matter). As Oliver Wendall Holmes wrote, "Logic is logic, that's all I can say". Socrates told us that "we must follow the argument wherever it leads". Are you saying that where the argument leads to a displeasing place, we should not follow it, but deviate to Florida? Truth may be unpleasant, but Hell is a hot place, and it is even more unpleasant.

I think that Socrates was quite successful in applying logic to moral reality. What would you suggest as the alternative?

A good reason why philosophers should resist pronouncing on politics as philosophers is because we almost always suffer a limited vision of current events... There are points in Plato where Socrates offers arguments in support of murder of democrats or removal of parents from children on a vast scale, and the people in audience do not question that nonsense in the least... It was rigged...

...

Athens prided itself on its liberty, and so killing Socrates was a crime against their own self perception...It made him a Martyr when he was hardly a man... His friends, in the Thirty Oligarchs, the pro Spartan minority of anti democrats stole to finance their oligarchy, killed democrats, and forced the exile of many, and if you can believe Plato, Socrates went about his business preaching social poison... It would have been just if his tongue had been cut out...

Look in our own time at how long it has taken to end cigarette advertizing when that is a true gateway drug... Look at the political lies that can be told in public, over a public owned utility, the public airwaves, and no one is held accountable... That is a crime... People are injured...Society is injured by every false statement made when it is upon the facts that they must govern...

What does that mean, that people are like sheep??? ....

Pyrrho;153585 wrote:

Where are these arguments for murder of which you speak? I suspect you have been reading someone who hates Plato and has misrepresented him, rather than Plato himself. In the case of separating children from parents, this is discussed in the Republic, and it only applies to the ruling classes, not to ordinary people, or, in other words, not to the majority of the people. The reason for the separation of children from parents with the ruling classes is this: Parents very often are prejudiced in favor of their own children, and Plato did not want a hereditary monarchy in which the stupid and evil children of the leaders got power simply by being the children of those in power. If you look at the later history of Europe during the middle ages up to the 19th century or so, you can find plenty of examples of monarchs who were unworthy of rule, but got their positions due to who their parents were. So Plato was quite right about this being a problem.

I think your argument is filed with holes... For a guy like Socrates, clearly anti Democratic to only apply his social cleansing to the ruling class is nonsense; and what of that...I have been a Marxist much of my life and still balk at the liquidation of the rich... I hung with some rich folks the other night and the remarkable thing was, always was to my mind how nice they are while the unwashed masses are not just stupid, but in every way often seem to deserve their fates... They are not fun, not just, not virtuous; and it is easier to justify their liquidation than to justify the liquidation of the rich who when raised without want beating them about the face are very noble in their appearance and behavior... I think this is what Socrates was seeing, that the best, those who know are that because they were from birth blessed with the ease to improve themselves and their lot in life...You do not get that he was talking of culling the herd??? What lines make you think he was not???

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Following that line of thought, everyone preaching a false religion ought to be executed, and everyone with a false view of politics who speaks out ought to be executed. So you are suggesting no freedom of religion and no freedom of speech (obviously). You are suggesting a total fascist state.

Every person should take into consideration the welfare of the society, and those who enrich themselves at the expense of the society should be held accountable...Look at the trepidation with which Copernicus broached the subject of the sun centered universe, dedicating his paper to the Pope, and only at an advanced age when he could be hurt but little by a backlash... The truth is but a moral form, and it is the duty of all people to make a point of telling the truth, and it is no ones duty to make an ass of themselves, or to get themselves killed over a point not worth a single life...There is truth as a moral form, and there is truth as a social form, and truth, peoples perception of truth is very difficult to change and very dangerous to try to change...That is the fact going in... What Copernicus had that Socrates had not was a physical universe he could point to as representing his truth, though not exactly... Socrates had mere prejudice...And since his prejudice helped to justify the deaths of many, hundreds, or perhaps thousands during the thirty Oligarch... Consider that behind all social forms are moral forms, and the belief in ones morals as absolutes has justicified a lot of bloodshed over the years... Was any of it justified??? Not one more so than Socrates, not on the facts as charged, but for the obvious connection between himself and the pro-Spartan Oligarchs...It was guilt by association, and people are convicted every day for the crimes committed by friends...

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You evidently did not read the link, or you would know precisely what I meant. People engage in herd behavior, and follow leaders in an unthinking way. For more on this, read the link I provided previously.