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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Taro who wrote (985396)

12/3/2016 6:43:53 PM

From: koan

Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1570940

Over the years I read a lot of their stuff. And I had a whole semester of it in college. They are my heroes, and my mentors. Plato is my favorite person in all of history, with Einstein coming in second.

There were probably hundreds of ancient Greeks pretty much as smart as Plato.Xenophon being but one. There were so many smart people back then but mostly I just remember that they were really smart-lol.

Will Durant who wrote the history of civilization, at the introduction of his book on ancient Greece, had this to say. This is my favorite pros of all times.

"The persistent effort to subordinate fancy to reason is the dominant quality of the Greek mind.

Ergo Greek literature is modern, or rather contemporary, we find it hard to understand Dante or Milton, but Euripides and Thucydides are kin to us mentally and belong to our ages.

This is because, though myths may differ, reason remains the same, and a life of reason makes brothers of its lovers in all times and everywhere-

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Considering that Plato was able to think at that level of sophistication after only a couple hundred years of humans practicing, is pretty amazing. Especially inasmuch as he didn't have modern inductive science to pull from i.e. experimentation.

Personally my favorite from same time is Xenophon, who arguably had quite some influence on Marcus Aurelius as well.
May I assume, that you never read his version "Socrates Defense Speech to the Jury" (Memorabilia IV)? Or any of the previous chapters giving quite a more human description of Socrates.