April 7, 2009

This is for me to hash out in my brain(S).

You can read this though. You, being Hancock, since no one else (thank goodness) reads this sick little blogduo:furtheringsuccess thing we’ve got going.

Let me start by saying that I think we should learn to be able to justify our sexual tastes and practices.  “Judgment, which was one of the most cherished of the intellectual virtues, has become a vice, which we recognize when we call someone judgmental.  This change may or may not contribute to a more tolerant society, but it surely provides a ready excuse for scanting that most valuable kind of judgment, the judgment of oneself”.

—We’ve got it all, and need neither justification nor encouragement.  all this tends to reduce sexual acts to their bodily and brutish expression and to repress a natural need to celebrate them in speech, while encouraging thoughtlessness about things that are of capital importance.  Such thoughtlessness may seem to make things easy, but it robs us of more than half our pleasure.—

Man responds to two different and powerful appeals in the good and the beautiful, and this dialogue investigates that dualism.

When I first read Eryximachus’ speech about the god of love, Eros, i met it with so much aversion that I had to look into it further.  The first two of the seven speeches (the first 3 being from Phaedrus, a politcal man, Pausania, a lawyer and Eryximachus, a doctor) didn’t have too great of an effect on me.  The first 3 speakers are poor drinkers and turn out to be less erotic.  Speech 4 (Aristophanes), Speech 5 (Agathon) and Speech 6 (Socrates) are from the view of 2 poets and a philosopher.  The last is from Alcibiades (who is in love with Socrates).

I guess we can start from the beginning and work our way to the poets.

Phaedrus focuses on shame—shame being the best motivator for nobility.  But wouldn’t such a concern for the opinion of others be problematic?  I know that too much self-awareness (rephrase! self-doubt in the face of others) leads to self-deception, rejection of reason, and “corruption of pure love of virtue”.  Phaedrus emphasizes the negative, the avoidance of vice rather than the positive—the attraction and charm found in virtue.

But Phaedrus is the youngest and the one who has the greatest sensitivity to drinking, or rather, who is satiated more quickly than the rest. One thing Plato shows through these speeches is how the view of love is very closely woven in with the view of oneself.

Nature is more difficult than Law. Nature is more ambiguous.  Nature must  be studied and reasoned about, whereas a law requires only obedience.

Socrates’ discipline comes not from being unerotic or not possessing the desire. Au Contraire, he is wildly erotic. His discipline indicates that the most unconstrained expressions of desire connected with food, drink and sex must be disappointed if intellectual satisfaction is also to find its place.

….to be continued. dinner calls.

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