On Aug 9, 2010, at 11:56 AM, Jim Devine wrote:
Shane Mage wrote:
Plato (you mean the dramatic character Socrates) argued no such
thing.
I think that "Socrates" speaks for Plato in the REPUBLIC, while in
some of the earlier dialogues, it's more of a matter of Plato's
interpretation of what he remembered Socrates saying.
What is your evidence for that? Anyway, is Socrates "speaking for
Plato" when he says that the "ideal city" can exist only as an ideal
and that the only reason to talk about it is to illuminate, by
analogy, the proper functioning of the human psyche--which is, after
all, the explicit purpose of this particular dialogue?
This "communism" is sort of like that of the Jesuits and other
Catholic religious orders (that I'm familiar with from working at a
Jesuit university)
except for the most crucial point--the equal participation of women
(crucial because it emphasizes the equal integration of the "female
side" of the psyche.
I would guess that a lot of the priestly,monastic, nunnery, etc.
ideals come from Plato via neo-Platonism (which was popular when
Christianity started). But that's only a guess.
not the best guess, considering that all the "neoplatonic"
philosophers were born much more than a century after the death of the
founder of Christianity, "Saint" Paul.
I don't remember what
Plato said about the slaves, but I'd guess they would be part of the
non-state part of the Republic, just as with the Athens of the time.
According to Socrates (implicitly) there would be no slaves, since it
would be forbidden to enslave Greeks and to conduct wars of conquest,
the sole source of
nonGreek slaves.
Shane Mage
"All things are an equal exchange for fire and fire for all things,
as goods are for gold and gold for goods."
Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr, 90
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