What matters to you is defending your Christian neoplatonist reading of Plato. — Fooloso4
Socrates does not explicitly deny the existence of gods, — Fooloso4
Of course he did not demonstrate that! — Fooloso4
You keep forgetting that Strauss is a political philosopher with controversial views, not a scholar of Plato. — Apollodorus
And that is what strauss picks up — Protagoras
The Iranian example is a good one. But I think plato would have wanted a more expansionist version. Like the US or the UK. — Protagoras
And I'm sure his models were used by the later Greeks and Romans as you say — Protagoras
But of course,the top boys think they are all "gods"in the making or actually "gods"....
Just witness modern culture... — Protagoras
They don't need to be Gods. They exist within the Good, the One or the Unmoved Mover, just like thoughts or ideas exist in the human mind. — Apollodorus
I tend to believe that he wrote for educated intellectuals, i.e., a relatively small social and economic class who, as stated above, included philosophers with an interest in religion and religious people with an interest in philosophy. — Apollodorus
I don't understand your [Apollodorus] passion to have the last word on the subject. — Valentinus
When you see an argument, the first thing you do is google who is against it. — Valentinus
The question is what the good thing is. — Valentinus
That is a more "Straussian" perspective than I take. The esoteric versus exoteric argument relates to political arguments about an "intellectual" aristocracy. Strauss also is not a "secularist" that in your other writings are identified as "Marxist." — Valentinus
Solmsen shows how the emergence of an intellectual class in Plato’s time had resulted in religious beliefs becoming a subject of philosophical discussion.
But the trend to question religion was accompanied by an opposite trend (in addition to allegorical interpretations) to present arguments and theories as a theoretical foundation for theology, thus not to deconstruct religion but to reinforce it with the help of reason. — Apollodorus
I don't understand your passion to have the last word on the subject. If the meaning has been completely worked out, there is no need to read texts themselves. It is like an Hegelian synthesis that puts the pin into the last butterfly of a species. When you see an argument, the first thing you do is google who is against it. It is all dead for you. — Valentinus
In the Republic he banishes the gods from the just city and replaces them with Forms — Fooloso4
However, an Athenian artisan or sculptor who made images of Gods did so because he believed in the Gods represented by the images.
Were this not the case, then all the artisans and sculptors of Greece who made divine images and those who commissioned the images, including the city of Athens itself, would have been atheist liars and frauds pretending to be religious. I think even you can see the absurdity of your claim.
Socrates made literary images of divine beings or metaphysical realities he believed in. Therefore, he was not an atheist. — Apollodorus
Plato only banishes poets and artists who make irreverent references about the Gods. This isn't the same as "banishing the Gods". — Apollodorus
So, if anything, he replaces the Gods with one supreme and transcendent Deity. — Apollodorus
But he insisted that Socrates was tried for atheism. — Apollodorus
speech about gods, that is, theologia, will be the creation of the founders of the city — Fooloso4
He replaces the gods with the Good. He does not call the Good a god. — Fooloso4
I don't have to insist on it, just read the Apology. I've already cited the relevant passages. — Fooloso4
Well. if there is "speech about the Gods", then presumably there are Gods to speak about. — Apollodorus
Plato compares the Good to the Sun. The Sun is a God in Greek religion. — Apollodorus
Right, so there you go again. — Apollodorus
because I make new Gods — Apollodorus
You might presume so, but in making stories about the gods does not entail the existence of gods. — Fooloso4
And Plato's philosophy is not Greek religion. Your failure to see the difference is why you cannot understand Plato's philosophy and see only religion. — Fooloso4
Right, there you go again, ignoring the text. (26c) — Fooloso4
Like the poets, he is a maker of images without originals. Or do you think the Olympian gods or any other gods they made actually existed? — Fooloso4
Making stories about the Gods may not entail the existence of Gods, but it may entail belief in the Gods described in the stories. — Apollodorus
The only alternative is to assume that the story makers, and by implication Plato, are liars which is absurd IMHO. — Apollodorus
... they speak lies like the truth ... (Theogony 27)
The statement "you do not believe in Gods at all" is not the charge on which Socrates is being tried, it is an allegation that Meletus makes during the trial. — Apollodorus
Poets don't always make images without originals. — Apollodorus
There is no evidence that Socrates did not believe in the metaphysical realities or beings he described or under whose inspiration he believed he was acting. — Apollodorus
Of course the stories are made with the intent that they be believed. That does not mean the person who makes the stories believes that what he makes up comes to life like Pinocchio. — Fooloso4
Do speeches have a double form, the one true, the other false? Must they [children] be educated in both but first in the false? — Fooloso4
do some research on what the term 'atheist' meant as it was used then. — Fooloso4
Socrates does not explicitly deny the existence of gods, — Fooloso4
When it comes to making images of gods they do. Or do you think the gods they tell stories about actually existed? — Fooloso4
The hyperuranion beings if only believed and not known are not metaphysical realities but hypothetical. — Fooloso4
There is no logical necessity for a person who makes speeches about Gods to either (1) disbelieve in Gods or (2) make things up. — Apollodorus
If speeches have a double form, the one true, the other false, then they have one form that is true. — Apollodorus
The onus is on you to show that Plato's speeches about the Gods are false. — Apollodorus
The issue is whether Socrates and Plato believe in metaphysical realities. You have failed to show that they don't. — Apollodorus
After this, he said, when I had wearied of looking into beings, I thought that I must be careful to avoid the experience of those who watch an eclipse of the sun, for some of them ruin their eyes unless they watch its reflection in water or some such material ...
So I thought I must take refuge in discussions and investigate the truth of beings by means of accounts [logoi] … On each occasion I put down as hypothesis whatever account I judge to be mightiest; and whatever seems to me to be consonant with this, I put down as being true, both about cause and about all the rest, while what isn’t, I put down as not true.” (99d-100a)
- L. Strauss, Farabi's Plato, 391The identification of the heavenly bodies with God is said to have been the esoteric teaching of Avicenna
it does not follow that in making the gods the poets did something other than create them. — Fooloso4
Once again, follow the argument. The true form must come later, much later, when philosophy is introduced to those who are old enough and mature enough and properly suited to it. — Fooloso4
No, the onus is on you to read the dialogue. It is clear from the context. — Fooloso4
Once again, a hypothetical is not a reality. — Fooloso4
So I thought I must take refuge in discussions and investigate the truth of beings by means of accounts [logoi] … — Fooloso4
On each occasion I put down as hypothesis whatever account I judge to be mightiest; and whatever seems to me to be consonant with this, I put down as being true, both about cause and about all the rest, while what isn’t, I put down as not true.” (99d-100a) — Fooloso4
Belief in a metaphysical reality is an opinion. — Fooloso4
The dialogues are not about Plato's or Socrates' opinions, they are about the critical examination of our own opinions. — Fooloso4
Plato creates distance between himself and the dialogues. He never says anything in the dialogue. — Fooloso4
To assume that what Socrates says in the dialogues is either a record of what he man's beliefs or a reflection of Plato's own beliefs is an assumption without support. — Fooloso4
Which one can you name of the divinities in heaven as the author and cause of this, whose light makes our vision see best and visible things to be seen?” “Why, the one that you too and other people mean for your question evidently refers to the Sun.” “Is not this, then, the relation of vision to that divinity?(Rep 508a).
This [the Sun], then, you must understand that I meant by the offspring of the Good which the Good begot to stand in a proportion with itself: as the Good is in the intelligible region to reason and the objects of reason, so is this [the Sun] in the visible world to vision and the objects of vision. (Rep 508b - c ).
- L. Strauss, On Plato’s RepublicSocrates and Adeimantus … surely agree as to this, that the gods are superhuman beings, that they are of superhuman goodness or perfection (381c1 - 3). That the God is good is even the thesis of the first theological law. From this it follows that the God is not the cause of all things but only the good ones. This amounts to saying that the God is just: the first theological law applies to the God the result of the conversation with Polemarchus according to which justice consists in helping friends, i.e. sensible men and is not harming anyone … the other theological law asserts the simplicity of the God and is to some extent a mere corollary of the first” (98-99) … those who have come to accept that theology are best prepared for accepting the doctrine of ideas … (121)
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