Hi Ant, dmb, Ron and all, I am following this thread with great interest. I found some interesting things about Plato and his Good as well in Northrop... I think it has some relevance to this discussion as it suggests that Plato's Good has two principles:
'In Plato's philosophy there are two 'ground principles'' as his famous lecture 'On the Good' specifically stated: one, the rational, mathematical,formal principle; the other, the intuitive, immediately apprehended, emotional, aesthetic principle termed 'the indeterminate dyad', or the potentially differentiable aesthetic continuum. The nature of the rational principle is investigated in the Republic, the nature of the emotional aesthetic principle, in the Phaedrus and the Symposium. In the latter books it is called eros, which Jowett renders into English as 'frenzy', 'love' or 'passion'. ...In his dialogue the Timaeus, which brings together the aesthetic, emotional, 'eros' principle of the Phaedrus and Symposium and the rational, scientific logos principle of the Republic, he tells us that the former is the female and the latter the male principle in the nature of things...Failing to make an important distinction, Plato went on quite arbitralily to brand the aesthetic, emotional female principle as evil and the male rational principle as good' (p 58-9). It still interests me as to the reasons why Plato 'encapsulated' this female, (Good) principle (ZMM p373) and associated the male, (Logos) principle with Truth. Was this because the rational, scientifically viable idea of the good was revealed through the investigations in the natural sciences ...'and made articulate in the resultant empirically verified philosophical theory of nature'? In other words, was the male principle easier to 'understand' than the female principle? Because the male side of the good was contingent upon science, and because science proclaimed ultimate truth it is suggested that the basis of this 'good' was 'fixed' and only changed very slowly. Thus this idea of good was adequate to meet ethical and normative social judgements. This, of course has all changed over the past 300 years or so. The basis upon which one can criticise these 'resultant empirically verified philosophical theories of nature' lie in new scientific discoveries. This is important because it shows that it is 'scientific, not moral or religious considerations which force us to reject the Aristotelian/Thomistic philosophy and theology as the correct and adequate idea of the good to be taken as model for solving the scientific, philosophical and cultural problems of our time'. It seems rather that we are now in an era of scientific discovery which has confronted us with philosophical/ metaphysical questions and explanations that seem inadequate to meet precisely the result of these discoveries. In this sense it seems that the shortcomings of the intellectual level is partly due to its inability to fully grasp its own grand-parent level i.e in/organic patterns of value. I find it interesting to note that Plato has thus a two principled idea of the 'Good' and that he labels the 'aesthetic' as the 'female principle' and demotes it in relation to the male principle. I still do not understand why this was done (translated into various religious/ social/ economic PoV's). Was Plato influenced by Eastern philosophy or philosophers? (still Eastern philosophy has incorporated the female principle (e.g Yin/Yang). I hope this is a little coherent and that my questions are clear. Regards Andre (still heavily medicated) Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
