Capitol Hill Blue Forums Misc. Topics Ain't This America What is distinctive about American art and letters

Which is why I've alwaya believed Aristotle to be far superior to Plato.

Nah. Just another form of Nazi-like thinking. Sort of like people who cough shouldn't be allowed outside.

Am I a baiter, or am I just someone who is trying to get people to think in something other than clichés?

You know, for there to be a baiter, there must be someone who is baited.

If people would just calm down and look dispassionately at the pros and cons of a matter, the intellectual life of the human race would be more aesthetically pleasing.

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`he's really not saying anything you haven't already said, nu-man.

"Musical modes are nowhere altered without changes in the most important laws of the state."
--- Damon of Athens [quoted in Plato's Republic]

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perhaps you really are sincere in your endeavors nu-man, which really makes it all the more disturbing.

How percipient of you to realize this truth.

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Of course, rock and roll was hugely influenced by British performers - some of whom were influenced, in turn, by American blues - but I think there would be a bit of an uproar in Great Britain if Americans were to take all credit for the art form.

You know who I'm talking about - bands like, oh, the Rolling Stones, and the Kinks, and those other guys (there were four of them, but really they had so little input that it's no wonder I can't think of the name...)

You should remember that Plato was the teacher of Aristotle.

To write about one or the other being superior to the other is a singularly unproductive way of thinking --- they are not really comparable. They were, in general, pursuing different purposes.

All my life I have heard so much blither about Plato! If only people would actually read Plato, rather than parroting the clichés they have heard about him!

People seem to be determined to misunderstand the Republic! Plato had his political ideas, but the Republic should be viewed primarily as an extended metaphor, as a disquisition upon the proper ordering of the individual human soul. For cryin' out loud, Plato himself says this as clearly as anyone could:

"{Glaucon and the rest] wanted to arrive at the truth, first, about the nature of justice and injustice, and secondly, about their relative advantages. I told them what I really thought: that the enquiry would be of a serious nature, and would require very good eyes. Seeing then, I said, that we are no great wits, I think that we had better adopt a method which I may illustrate thus: suppose that a short-sighted person had been asked by some one to read small letters from a distance; and it occurred to some one else that they might be found in another place, which was larger, and in which the letters were larger --if they were the same text, and he could read the larger letters first, and then proceed to the smaller -- this would have been a rare piece of good fortune!

Very true, said Adeimantus; but how does the illustration apply to our enquiry?

I will tell you, I replied; justice, which is the subject of our enquiry, is, as you know, sometimes spoken of as the virtue of an individual, and sometimes as the virtue of a State.

True, he replied.

And is not a State larger than an individual?

It is.

Then, in the larger, the quantity of justice is likely to be larger and more easily discernible. I propose therefore that we enquire into the nature of justice and injustice, first as they appear in the State, and secondly in the individual, proceeding from the greater to the smaller and comparing them."
--- Book II, 368D

But no harm done unless the baitee is gullible enough to bite.

If that means to make no judgments at all, I completely agree. But since the second part of that sentence is a judgment, I guess that's not what you meant.