[Jar]

Originally Posted by FlorenceArt

Oops, yes, hello and welcome Jar. I put your question aside last night because I didn't have the time to answer it, and I almost forgot to do it

Thank you for welcoming.

However, what I did see and didn't like in Plato's rendering of the dialogs was the insistence on a higher truth, and on an eternal life where we are supposed to get our rewards for living according to higher principles...

With this your first post is comprehensible to me. I do not share your attitude and I even admire people who believe there are things worth of dying. I do not think Sókrates drank poison with thought of reward in future life or anything like this. In Rist's Stoic philosophy there's a definition of wisdom as a harmony of thinking and doing...

I didn't call Socrates a christian, I said that some chistians "tried to make him an honorary christian" because they recognized similarities between their beliefs and his. Namely the belief in an afterlife where we are rewarded for our good deeds, and the contempt for this life that we do have.

Sorry I misunderstood.


I used the word theory in its modern sense, I don't think Plato did it, it's my interpretation. Art is a word from Plato, and yes it has a different meaning from the one we generally understand, but I believe that when we say "the art of medicine" or "the art of cooking", we are still reasonably close to the meaning Plato had in mind. I may be wrong of course. I still believe I understood Plato's meaning about the difference between medicine and cooking, whether or not I got all the nuances of the word correctly. Do you disagree?

I am not sure here. The meaning of philosophy stands on astonishment or surprise over nature of things, that we now see in a different light. Did Plato compare or measure "cooking" and "medicine", or did he just try to explain why to use the word "art" for cooking and not for medicine? It suggests that some people had used word "art" for medicine. Why? And why it is not propriate usage?

Thanks, I'll look it up

Still even here Sókrates isn't shown as a bad character; I do not want you to be disappointed...