Status Updates From Understanding Plato

I think this is good enough. I'm not interested in the ideal polis, theory of Forms, or the nature of knowledge.

Life is a preparation for death. Death is the liberation of our soul from the constraints that we know as feelings. The body is constraining our path. We have to undergo a process of purification. It is by pure intellectual thinking, devoid of senses, that is what the philosopher's life ought to be.

Plato had a stage where he was on the influence of Pythagoreanism, which is reflected on his book Meno. The conclusion that learning is recollection, and this recollection occurs because the soul recollects the knowledge he had acquired in previous life, is Pythagorean. But this stage of Plato's marks a problematic phase, for, how can we know it's true? For it to be true, an argument of reincarnation has to be argued

Sophist, rhetor, tryrant: the anti-philosophers. The philosopher is the one who inquires truth, and preferring ignorance than error and delusion; prefers punishment so as to correct him if he was in error. The philosopher is obstinate, not in indulging in his ignorance, but in enquiring.

One could say the early dialogues, while addressing many things, are nonetheless describing a method of questioning particular to Athenian school and to show the power of rational argument in philosophical discourse. The result surprisingly is a massacre, stripping bare their untested pretensions. Most of our educated men might be baffled if they are subjected to this practice.

Plato was an Athenian and lived in the power struggle of Athens and Sparta. Athens suffered massive defeat in the war, their democracy was abolished, its Walls was to be collapsed, and their new government was to be selected with anti-democratic people. But the democracy revolutionary force restored the order. It also sentenced Socrates to death. This is the catalyst for Plato to abandon politics and study philosophy

So in college, philosophy wasn't my thing, I thought it quite boring actually. My classics group just read Meno & I really was unable to contribute much in the discussion. Now we are on to Phaedo; so I saw this book in the used book store & thought it might help jump start me! Not too dry thus far.