The Cosmic Context of Greek Philosophy: Part Eight
by Laura Knight-Jadczyk
The Socratic Split
It is actually at this point, the time of
Socrates, that we can note an interesting divergence in philosophical thought,
or so it appears to me. The issue of Archelaus being the teacher of Socrates,
as I have indicated, is a bit controversial because he is never mentioned by
Xenophon, Plato, or Aristotle; thus it is assumed that the story was told in
order to connect the famous philosopher to the Ionian school. Nevertheless,
Diogenes Laërtius, our main source, does invoke the authority of Ion of Chios,
a contemporary of Socrates, that Socrates went with Archelaus on a trip to
Samos.[1]
Archelaus
Archelaus asserted that the principle of
motion was the separation of hot from cold. On this basis, he tried to build
his Theory of Everything. He was also the first who explained that sound was
the movement of air. He also taught that the Sun is the largest of heavenly
bodies and that the universe is unlimited. That is the sum and substance of
what we know about him since, repeat after me one more time: no fragments of
his work survive!
Socrates Redux
As I’ve already stated, we know nothing
about Socrates that hasn’t been filtered through somebody else, mainly Plato.
The problem with that is, while Plato may
have represented many ideas of Socrates fairly accurately, it is widely
acknowledged, and we have already touched on this, that he used the figure of Socrates to promulgate his own ideas the same
way he used Pythagoras, undoubtedly altering their material to suit some agenda
as yet unknown. There are evident conflicts and inconsistencies that exist
between Plato’s accounts and the reports of others such as Xenophon, as well as
between some of the earlier vs. the later writings of Plato himself.
Diogenes’ account is rather scattered so I’ve
assembled a few snippets about Socrates by theme below just to give you a quick
overview of his life, and then I will focus in on a couple of items that strike
me as being revelatory of the Secret History behind Socrates. I’m not going to
cite book and page for every snippet but rather, invite you to obtain one of
those nice, inexpensive, Loeb Library editions of Diogenes Laërtius’ Lives of Eminent
Philosophers. First, regarding the personal habits of Socrates:
He took care to exercise his body and kept in good condition. … He was so orderly in his way of life that on several occasions when pestilence broke out in Athens he was the only man who escaped infection. …
…in his old age he learnt to play the lyre, declaring that he saw no absurdity in learning a new accomplishment. As Xenophon relates in the Symposium, it was his regular habit to dance, thinking that such exercise helped to keep the body in good condition.
I have no idea how the ancient Greeks danced, but I had an image of Antony Quinn as Zorba the Greek when I read this![2]
Besides being an all-around fun guy, Socrates was also:
… a man of great independence and dignity of character, Pamphila in the seventh book of her Commentaries tells how Alcibiades once offered him a large site on which to build a house; but he replied, “suppose, then, I wanted shoes and you offered me a whole hide to make a pair with, would it not be ridiculous in me to take it?” … Often when he looked at the multitude of wares exposed for sale, he would say to himself, “how many things I can do without.”
He showed his contempt for Archelaus of Macedon and Scopas of Cranon and Eurylochus of Larissa by refusing to accept their presents or to go to their court.
There is, he said, only one good, that is, knowledge, and only one evil, that is, ignorance; wealth and good birth bring their possessor no dignity, but on the contrary evil …
That he was not an ivory-tower philosopher,
but, on the contrary, fully engaged in life as the means by which one learns
and grows, is attested by the following:
Someone asked him whether he should marry or not, and received the reply, “Whichever you do you will repent it.”
Which was based on his personal experience;
his wife, Xanthippe, being a famous shrew:
He said he lived with a shrew, as horsemen are fond of spirited horses, “but just as, when they have mastered these, they can easily cope with the rest, so I in the society of Xanthippe shall learn to adapt myself to the rest of the world.”
He was also a man of great heart and
generosity:
Aeschines said to him, “I am a poor man and have nothing else to give, but I offer you myself,” and Socrates answered, “Nay, do you not see that you are offering me the greatest gift of all?”
He also must have made many people angry by
pointing out their lies and hypocrisies:
He used to express his astonishment that the sculptors of marble statues should take pains to make the block of marble into a perfect likeness of a man, and should take no pains about themselves lest they should turn out mere blocks, not men. …
The social control system run by the wealthy elite and their Authoritarian followers went into overdrive against Socrates. Then, as now, one of their weapons was ridicule. Aristophanes, known today as the ‘Father of Comedy’, was a comic playwright during the time of Socrates. His powers of slanderous ridicule were feared and acknowledged widely, and Plato claimed that his defamatory play, The Clouds, was a powerful contributing factor to the trial and execution of Socrates.
Aristophanes claimed to be writing for an intelligent and discriminating audience, and used psychological intimidation tactics to coerce them to his view by declaring that they would be judged according to their reception of his plays. He regularly boasted of his originality as a dramatist, yet his plays reveal little more than his conservative, authoritarian perspective by consistently espousing opposition to new influences in Athenian society such as that of Socrates.[3] Aristophanes’ depiction of Socrates as “a clown who taught his students how to bamboozle their way out of debt” is an interesting remark as we move into the ideas of the Cynics and Stoics, all of whom come across as very Gurdjieffian[4] and against whom similar charges were made.
Aristophanes also attacked Socrates in his
plays for “making the worse appear the better” through his art of
argumentation. Demetrius of Byzantium does, indeed, tell us that, frequently,
due to his vehemence in argument, other men would attack him in rage, hitting
him with their fists and tearing his hair out. I’m not so sure that this had to
be due to vehemence in argument as to being so obviously right that the
hypocrites he was exposing fell into foaming-at-the-mouth fury! One is
certainly reminded of the story of Jesus defending the woman accused of adultery
by writing on the ground with a stick. He was probably listing the similar
crimes of her accusers as Socrates would have done. Demetrius further reports
that Socrates was despised and laughed at, yet bore all this ill-use patiently.
What we can extract from this is that Socrates was apparently one of the most
formidable rhetoricians who ever lived, though we have no surviving texts. We
are told by Diogenes that during the reign of the Thirty, he was ordered to
stop teaching “the art of words”, but I think he was confused. It was after the Thirty were overthrown by
Anytus and his pals that he was ordered to stop teaching and was subsequently
executed for refusing to do so. It does indeed sound like what happens when
people try to speak truth plainly. And speaking the truth is, apparently, then
and now, what the wealthy elite and their control system cannot tolerate.
Anytus could not endure to be ridiculed by Socrates, and so in the first place stirred up against him Aristophanes and his friends; then afterwards he helped to persuade Meletus to indict him on a charge of impiety and corrupting the youth.
The indictment was brought by Meletus, and the speech was delivered by Polyeuctus, according to Favorinus in his Miscellaneous History. The speech was written by Polycrates the sophist, according to Hermippus; but some say that it was by Anytus. Lycon the demagogue had made all the needful preparations.
The affidavit in the case, which is still preserved, says Favorinus… ran as follows:
“This indictment and affidavit is sworn by Meletus, the son of Meletus of Pitthos, against Socrates, the son of Sophroniscus of Alopece; Socrates is guilty of refusing to recognize the gods recognized by the state, and of introducing other new divinities. He is also guilty of corrupting the youth. The penalty demanded is death.”
Since we’ve already noted that Athenian
‘democracy’ was actually a mob ruled by propaganda produced and promulgated by
the wealthy (as it is in our own day), the outcome of the trial is not a
surprise. Plato was not even allowed to speak in Socrates’ defense. The mob was
worked up and…
Sentence of death was passed… he was put in prison… To one who said, “you are condemned by the Athenians to die,” he made answer, “So are they, by nature. (But some ascribe this to Anaxagoras.) … When his wife said, “you suffer unjustly,” he retorted, “Why, would you have me suffer justly?”
… and a few days afterwards drank the hemlock, after much noble discourse which Plato records in the Phaedo. When he was about to drink the Hemlock, Apollodorus offered him a beautiful garment to die in: “What,” said he, “is my own good enough to live in but not to die in?”
So he was taken from among men… He died in the first year of the 95th Olympiad at the age of seventy. … Of those who succeeded him and were called Socratics, the chief were Plato, Xenophon, Antisthenes … and not long afterwards the Athenians felt such remorse that they shut up the training grounds and gymnasia. They banished the other accusers but put Meletus to death … and no sooner did Anytus visit Heraclea than the people of that town expelled him on that very day. Not only in the case of Socrates but in very many others the Athenians repented in this way… Euripides upbraids them thus in his Palamedes: “Ye have slain, have slain, the all-wise, the innocent, the Muses’ nightingale.”
Ancient and modern commentators have
formulated two possible motivations for Anytus’ role in Socrates’ trial:
1) Socrates constantly criticised the 'democratic' government of which Anytus was a leader. Anytus may have been
concerned that Socrates’ criticism was a threat to the newly reestablished
democracy.[5]
2) Socrates taught Anytus’ son and Anytus
perhaps blamed Socrates’ teachings for poisoning his son’s mind or taking him
away from the career path his father had set for him. Xenophon has Socrates
forecast that the boy will grow up vicious if he studies a purely technical
subject such as tanning. Xenophon also tells us that the son became a drunk.[6]
I would also like to note that Anytus was reportedly a lover of the young Alcibiades, former ward of Pericles, a playboy and later a general of Athens. His relationship with Socrates will be discussed further on.
[1] Diogenes Laërtius, ii. 23.
[2] Do check out Anthony Quinn doing Zorba’s dance here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeNsr_nQEfE
A great performance here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ip-XQ1FJ3rE
and here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlNtTMJAQpg
You can spend hours watching
different versions and imagining Socrates in the scene!
[3] Aristophanes: The Clouds,
trans. Dover, Intro. page XIV.
[4] Karl Popper treats the Socratic problem in his first book of The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945).
[5] Burnet (1924) Plato: Euthyphro,
Apology of Socrates, Crito.
The key to understanding Heraclitus, however, lies in acknowledging that to his mind, the higher world and our world are much more intertwined than modern conceptions of the cosmos allow.
In such a cosmology, we exist both in the physical world and the higher world simultaneously. What we see in the physical world is an expression of the higher world and its higher, intelligent order: the Logos. We can learn how to discern the higher world and live according to its principles, but we cannot see it directly. To perceive it, we need to develop the capacity to see the unseen. As such, this view isn’t too dissimilar to Paul’s ideas about living according to the spirit, as opposed to living according to the flesh — the latter corresponding to Heraclitus’ “rude souls” that are unable to perceive the Logos.
P.S.2. Uploaded "Photon states on loops" that I was writing today. Featuring POVM measures at the end!
We must fight not just to resist the encroachment of evil, but actively for the cause good."
More here: "Demonic Nihilism": The Zombies Have Invaded, ROBERT W MALONE MD, MS, AUG 8
"There is, he said, only one good, that is, knowledge, and only one evil, that is, ignorance"
ReplyDeleteI love it! But the knowledge must be applied. By application it is tested. And when the knowledge is applied, its application must be based on the knowledge of good and evil. One should learn how to predict consequences and how to learn from mistakes. Knowledge should never be used for destructive purposes - which requires even more knowledge.
As for ignorance - ignorance of oneself is particularly destructive.
À propos applied knowledge: I have found a very interesting paper:
ReplyDeleteAndrei Khrennikov and Irina Basieva
NeuroQuantology | September 2014 | Volume 12 | Issue 3 | Page 324-336
Quantum Model for Psychological Measurements: From the Projection Postulate to Interference of Mental Observables Represented As Positive Operator Valued Measures
Abstract: Recently foundational issues of applicability of the formalism of quantum mechanics (QM) to cognitive psychology,
decision making, and psychophysics attracted a lot of interest. In particular, in (Khrennikov et al., 2014) the possibility to use of the projection postulate and representation of “mental observables” by Hermitian operators was discussed in very detail. The main conclusion of the recent discussions on the foundations of “quantum(-like) cognitive psychology” is that one has to be careful in determination of conditions of applicability of the projection postulate as a mathematical tool for description of measurements of observables represented by Hermitian operators. To represent
some statistical experimental data (both physical and mental) in the quantum(-like) way, one has to use generalized quantum observables given by positive operator-valued measures (POVMs). This paper contains a brief review on POVMs which can be useful for newcomers to the field of quantum(-like) studies. Especially interesting for cognitive psychology is a variant of the formula of total probability (FTP) with the interference term derived for incompatible observables given by POVMs. We present an interpretation of the interference term from the psychological viewpoint. As was shown before, the appearance of such a term (perturbing classical FTP) plays the important role in cognitive
psychology, e.g., recognition of ambiguous figures and the disjunction effect. The interference term for observables given by POVMs has much more complicated structure than the corresponding term for observables given by Hermitian operators. We elaborate cognitive interpretations of different components of the POVMs-interference term and apply our analysis to a quantum(-like) model of decision making.
And these POVM measures are also important in the photon's localization problem puzzle that I am involved again now (for a while).
For some reasons the US Army is also interested in these POVM (positive operator valued measures)
Delete"Quantum measurement with a positive operator-valued measure"
Howard E Brandt
US Army Research Laboratory, 2800 Powder Mill Road, Adelphi, MD 20783, USA
J. Opt. B: Quantum Semiclass. Opt. 5 (2003) S266–S270
Updated the "Photon states on loops" file.
ReplyDelete@Mike, if Mike Baillie and others are to be believed, the Western Roman Empire was truly destroyed by overhead comet explosions, fire, plague, etc, beginning about 536 CE. That is to say, it was reduced to near Stone Age conditions, while Byzantium was more or less untouched.
ReplyDeleteAs I read through the piles of books on the archaeology, history (assumed and reasonably reconstructed from data), and especially the input from the sciences such as astronomy, geology and genetics that should accurately parallel the archaeology and history, but usually doesn’t for all the reasons we’ve discussed so far, in order to collect the material for this series of volumes, the one thing that became increasingly apparent was that, over and over and over again this planet has been bombarded by various types of impacts, the most common being the overhead comet fragment airburst of the Tunguska type. These events have repeatedly brought cultures, nations, even civilizations, to their knees. Dark Ages are inevitably the result, and then, when human society begins to recover, myths are created, religions are born, or re-born with twists and distortions, and always and ever, the facts of the previous era of destruction are covered up in veils of metaphor and allegory.
Quote
The end of the Roman Empire witnessed horrors and dislocation of a kind I sincerely hope never to have to live through; and it destroyed a complex civilization, throwing the inhabitants of the West back to a standard of living typical of prehistoric times. Romans before the fall were as certain as we are today that their world would continue forever, substantially unchanged. They were wrong. We would be wise not to repeat their complacency. Endquote (Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization (Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 183.)
This comment is split into two parts since it is a translation of a recent news article and is too long for a single comment. I want to make the point that such dark ages as I've mentioned can come again at any time.
ReplyDeleteBegin quoted article:
A new threat to Earth: a meteor swarm of Taurids is approaching and we'll be in the midst of it in 9 years!
The Earth is facing a new threat from outer space - the "meteor swarm of Taurids". This is a vast cloud of debris left after the collapse of a comet, which can cause catastrophic collisions. Researchers warn that in November 2032, the Earth will pass right through this swarm, which could have serious consequences.
The Earth will pass right through the meteor shower, which quite possibly caused the Noah's Flood and wiped out North America and Europe.
A swarm of Taurids is the remnants of a comet that fall into the Earth's orbital path and cause meteor showers. However, the Taurids are an unusually large cloud of debris, probably associated with comet 2P/Encke. Scientists believe that these fragments may be the cause of catastrophic events on Earth that occur once every 1,000 years.
The Earth passes relatively close (at a distance of about 30,000,000 km from its center) to a swarm of Taurids twice a year. These events trigger the Beta Taurids meteor shower from June 5 to July 18, followed by the Northern and Southern Taurids meteor showers at the end of October. These events are not dangerous yet, but the proximity of the Earth to the epicenter of the flow is critically important, because, according to forecasts, our planet will pass directly through the "swarm of Taurids" in November 2032. There are reasons to assume that we should be ready for something serious...
Historical evidence confirms the danger of a swarm of Taurids. He was probably responsible for the famous "Tunguska Event" in 1908, when a huge area of the Siberian forest was destroyed. And it was just one rather large fragment from the wreckage of the Taurid swarm. It is also believed that the Taurid swarm may be associated with the Ice Age 11,000 years ago and the fall of the Tagish Lake meteorite in Canada. It is not difficult to imagine what will happen when our planet enters the main stream.
Considering all the discussions about the Sun’s twin and its ramifications, that article is stunning to say the least! I’ve been rereading the Wave series and just passed the discussion about the number 9 and its meanings, which seem appropriate since with each passing year things could definitely get rockier. I was considering the last session regarding calling off the pandemic and the undergrounders and with this article I get the feeling the elite are going to be desperate to relieve the earth of a lot of its citizens considering how frightened the populace will be when things really start heating up.
ReplyDeleteAs to the Gurdjieff comments, I think when Ark spoke to Henry Tracol, I was thrown off. The “Food for the Moon” discussion, the Evil Magician, meeting with a medium. Hmmm, maybe he decided or was counseled about it. Until Ark’s conversation, Tamdgidi’s book made sense. The people of earth are hypnotized, how do you wake them up? I think James Web ‘s book caught me off guard with Some of Gurdjieff’s behavior. But it’s like you pointed out, he didn’t consider himself initiated. Plus there had to be a big push by 4th STS to push him astray.
The series of articles are highly informative and I love rereading them to catch all of the intricate details. The comment that the Iron Age started because of all the meteorites on the ground was something I hadn’t even considered and then you have to wonder how much was available to be able to have an Iron Age! Before I joined the forum I had never read about comets and meteors, especially when it comes to philosophy, mythology and religion. It makes so much sense. It’s really been covered up. All of the missing manuscripts, the burning of the great libraries.
Ark’s paper looks interesting. I don’t think I’ve seen photons and cognitive psychology combined before. And the Army is interested?
"Ark’s paper looks interesting. I don’t think I’ve seen photons and cognitive psychology combined before. "
DeleteSo far the connection is only by the common ancestors. But I am on the way to make the connection direct.
New update of the "Photon states on loops" file.
ReplyDelete