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Pastimes : Neocon's Seminar Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: gao seng who wrote (434)	4/26/2001 10:35:11 AM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1112

In Plato, direct and clear intuition of the Forms is the result of a long training in dialectic. However, he also recognized a more direct formulation of certain axioms, like those of geometry, without which reasoning could not proceed. Something like the assertions of the Declaration of Independence asserts axioms essential to moral reasoning. Yes, the philosophers mainly had an impersonal relationship to Nature. I think the article you cite is too schematic, although some of it is true or interesting. I am not sure why the author would assert the priority of spiritual needs, since survival must be secured in order to do anything else. Also, what are generally regarded as fairly high civilization, for example the Chinese and Roman, flourished without appreciable philosophical development, along the lines envisaged in the article. In fact, philosophy that was independent of religion hardly existed outside of Greece and its colonies. It is also not quite right to say that Greek philosophy had no practical element. Certainly the post- Socratic schools saw it as one of their chief interests to define the good life, including recommending political improvements, and those with a naturalist bent knew that their researches might be useful in medicine, for example. However, it is true that Truth was the most important thing. I am not clear on what the author means by an emphasis on man's spiritual life. Such an emphasis is almost always diluted in mass religion. Only elites, like monks, are preoccupied with it. Anyway, these are a few thoughts, perhaps I will come back to it later.......