I fear that the world will collapse in to irreversible turmoil, thus rendering my attempts to lead a good life entirely pointless.

(Slip Digby is a meat puppet, Mon 14 Sep 2009, 10:54, 1 reply, 16 years ago)

I detect a fight between Aristotle and Camus
A: Not pointless - virtue is its own reward.
C: Not pointless, but absurd.
A: Fuck off.


If only Plato had written dialogues like that...
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Mon 14 Sep 2009, 11:11, Reply)

I referred to Socrates as "Socky" in my translations.
Agamemnon was "Aggy", Odysseus was "Oddy" or "The Man-Slag".
It was also fun to see how many innuendoes I could slip in.

We were set an essay to explain the benefits of writing in dialogue form and how it would help an argument; I wrote an argument for the dialogue form IN dialogue form. Man I'm cool.
( Lampito rise with the moon, go to bed with the sun, Mon 14 Sep 2009, 11:23, Reply)

You're so young
and yet you've managed to climb so high up the nerd scale already.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Mon 14 Sep 2009, 11:36, Reply)

Youknowsit. I'm proud of it.
Oh, here we go. Most likely a waste of thread

Teacher: So, Plato made extensive use of the dialogue form. Do you know why he did so?
Student: I have little idea why. Please enlighten me.
Teacher: Well, imagine you are in the classroom, and I give you a large page of data. I don’t explain any of it to you, but expect you to synthesise it and understand it. Can you understand why that might be difficult?
Student: Certainly.
Teacher: By having a dialogue with the teacher, you are able to ask questions and assemble the information in such a way that it makes more sense. Are we not in agreement?
Student: You speak the truth, but how does that relate to the dialogue form?
Teacher: Rather than being didactic, and providing his listeners with a chunk of knowledge, Socrates works through it with them, which makes it much easier for them to understand. And as a teacher, you do not tell your students the answer, do you? You guide them, provide them with the right information, and steer them through trouble. Am I not correct?
Student: By all means.
Teacher: Furthermore, doesn’t this engage the reader and make it more interesting?
Student: I agree.
( Lampito rise with the moon, go to bed with the sun, Mon 14 Sep 2009, 11:55, Reply)

Clever.
I was always mildly amused at Plato launching his attacks on the drama by means of... um... an essentially dramatic form.

It's like using a TV programme to slag off TV. YOU HEAR THAT, CHARLIE BROOKER, YOU FAT, FATUOUS TWAT?
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Mon 14 Sep 2009, 11:58, Reply)

Have you read the Ion?
"Socrates" slags off Ion for being a...fuck, can't remember, bard in English, it's not quite a rhetor... ah well. But tells him he is not a true artist, just an interpreter of interpreters. That the poet gets his inspiration from the Muses, and interprets it. And in his recital he only interprets what has gone before.

Plato writing as Socrates? Interpreting what has gone before? Eh? Eh? EH?
( Lampito rise with the moon, go to bed with the sun, Mon 14 Sep 2009, 12:04, Reply)

Linda Smith had a nice little joke
based on the idea that Plato was an annoyingly smarmy and meretricious student of Socrates, whom he spent his whole life following around and saying, "Wow! That's a tremendously clever thing to have said! I must write it down!"
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Mon 14 Sep 2009, 12:07, Reply)

But you have to hand it to him.
Socrates never wrote anything down. So much stuff would have been lost.
And you don't know what is Socrates and what is Plato. Socrates could have been a twat; Plato could just be making him make sense.

Or not.
( Lampito rise with the moon, go to bed with the sun, Mon 14 Sep 2009, 12:09, Reply)

Hmmm
At least Plato wasn't above throwing in the odd pun here and there. And he's man enough to admit that most of the dialogues happen at drinking-parties.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Mon 14 Sep 2009, 12:13, Reply)

Unfortunately there is one minor problem with this model
students refuse to take part in the dialogue.

This term I will be mostly bashing them about the head with heavy literature - the Chickenlady model.
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Mon 14 Sep 2009, 11:58, Reply)

Be glad you never had me as a student.
I got quite adept at asking stupid/deep questions to get teachers off track.
Like whether there is an ultimate Form and what the Form of a Form is.
( Lampito rise with the moon, go to bed with the sun, Mon 14 Sep 2009, 12:02, Reply)

I would LOVE to have a student who asks questions!
It saves me from talking at them for nearly two hours non-stop...and I can you, very, very easily.
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Mon 14 Sep 2009, 12:04, Reply)

Are you an English teacher?
I can't remember. Or not sure I ever knew.
( Lampito rise with the moon, go to bed with the sun, Mon 14 Sep 2009, 12:05, Reply)

This term I am mostly an English lecturer
with added Art lecturer thrown in for good measure and extra pay, yay!
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Mon 14 Sep 2009, 12:10, Reply)

oh god so sorry for calling you a teacher!
I'm awfully cackhanded at Art, though I do like that picture of Oliver Cromwell with the bees and the dead lion and the miners and all that sort of shit :D
( Lampito rise with the moon, go to bed with the sun, Mon 14 Sep 2009, 12:13, Reply)

That's okay...I used to be a teacher
but I got tired of constantly being covered in small children's snot.

And undergrads are far, far quieter - generally because they're asleep during morning lectures.
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Mon 14 Sep 2009, 12:18, Reply)

This is a lovely train of thought.
Carry on.

Also, whether there is Formal vice towards which the soul might properly be attracted.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Mon 14 Sep 2009, 12:08, Reply)

Never really got that far with it. But:
"animal" "living thing" "brainmelt"

Also in a similar vein:
Is there a form of an emotion? And ultimately a "perfect" emotion each emotion aspires to be like? And what is it?
( Lampito rise with the moon, go to bed with the sun, Mon 14 Sep 2009, 12:12, Reply)

Aristotle and Camus were not alive at the same time.
Thus rendering your supposed dialogue invalid.

*talks bollox because I can*
( girlinthehole, Mon 14 Sep 2009, 11:24, Reply)

I'm sympathetic to transcendental idealism
and the idea that time and space are categories of the pure understanding rather than things in themselves. Time is nothing to me! Ha!
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Mon 14 Sep 2009, 11:31, Reply)

I love it when you make my brain hurt.

( girlinthehole, Mon 14 Sep 2009, 11:32, Reply)

Be thankful it's only your brain
;)
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Mon 14 Sep 2009, 11:36, Reply)