Wow. I never expected to find an argument about Plato and Socrates in a thread with this subject line.
There's much to comment on, but in short I agree mostly with Shane. The view you note below, Jim, about the development of Plato's own thought in the dialogues is, I believe, less in favor than it once was, and would probably be considered contentious, if not simply outdated. There's something intuitive about it, but that isn't really good argument or good evidence, especially in the case of Plato, who, for all his faults, is very complicated (oh, wait, that's not a fault?!?). Trying to figure out "what *Plato* thought" is a fool's errand, imo. Much more interesting and fruitful to just work with what we get in the dialogues and learn what lessons we can from them. Plato's *influence* is a separate matter. I think that to pin Christian chauvinism on Plato or neoplatonists is pretty difficult to do, also. Much more likely, imo, to be Stoic (there's a very substantial recent study of Paul and Stoicism). But then, I think Paul gets a bad rap here, largely because of what I believe are interpolations of later tradition into I Corinthians. I think it's really in the late first century and early second century Christian writings that the misogyny really comes into full force. Leaving aside the I Timothy material, you see it also in other doctrinal and ecclesial writings from that time. Although a lot of the more open gnostic stuff is from about the same time (although of course there's a strong androcentrism in gnosticism). On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 1:36 PM, Jim Devine <[email protected]> wrote: > That's not evidence, but it's hard to imagine books like the REPUBLIC > as reflecting Socrates' opinions, since (as I understand it) Plato > created them from whole cloth after Socrates' death. I distinctly > remember the prof saying that Plato's early dialogues were reports of > actual Socratic discussions but then Plato ran out of discussions to > report and created the convention of having a fictional Socrates as > the main character to express his own thoughts. If I remember > correctly, other authors followed this convention for awhile. >
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