1985-02-26 NSFRI - Plato - Phaedo - A Second Voyage to Delos
Channel: Pierre Grimes and the Noetic Society
Date: 10/03/2018

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 Pierre Grimes and the Noetic Society -- 1985-02-26 NSFRI - Plato - Phaedo - A Second Voyage to Delos
Dialogue(s): phaedo Sections: 99d 99e 100a 100b 100c 100d 100e 101a 101b 101c 101d 101e 102a 102b 102c 102d 102e 103a 103b 103c 103d 103e 104a 104b 104c 104d 104e 105a 105b 105c 105d 105e 107b Topics Covered, Video Highlights, and Notes 3:00 Pierre's questions: What is it in the body that produces illness? What is it in number that makes a number 'odd'? What is it in the body that makes it alive? 6:00 There are 'safe' answers that are not correct according to Socrates, but then there are genuine answers that we do not consider because Socrates has a different idea of 'cause' than we do. 10:00 For Socrates, cause = the condition(s) required for something to be what it is at all. 12:30 Soul (according to the Philebus) is an inherent intelligence which properly orders all the functions of the body. It is the cosmic intelligence in the body. 19:50 99d Reading begins. 24:10 100c Participation is cause. 25:00 100d The communion of absolute beauty: beautiful things are made beautiful through beauty. 28:00 101b What is the reason 10 is greater than 8? The reason is not 2. 29:00 'Cause' in our culture is 'how'. For Socrates 'cause' is condition or reason, the highest principle to explain everything = participation. 'Whatever is to be two must participate in duality, whatever is to be one must participate in unity. ' 30:45 101c There is 'no other way by which anything can come into existence than by participating in the proper essence of each thing in which it participates...' 33:30 If participation is the cause, then to explain that you have to appeal to something higher than that, a higher principle, which would be 'the good', the 'idea of the good', which overflows. 36:15 102d 102e The behavior of opposites toward one another: 'One of two things must take place: either one flees or withdraws when its opposite advances toward it, or it has already ceased to exist by the time its opposite comes near.' Greatness versus smallness, for example, or heat versus cold. 48:00 103e 104a Odd and even. 49:90 104b 'Not only abstract opposites exclude each other, but all things which, although not opposites one to another, always contain opposites, these also, we find, exclude the idea which is opposed to the idea contained in them, and when it approaches, they either perish or withdraw.' 53:20 105b Socrates recapitulates his idea of 'what is a cause'. 54:20 105c 'What causes the body in which it is to be alive?' 55:30 105e 'Then the soul is immortal.' 56:30 How Socrates argues: he does all his work on the structure. Then he brings in his real point at the end, after all his structural and framing analogies have been agreed to. 1:03:00 107b 1:05:30 The metaphysics of participation is the key to the argument. 1:12:30 Barbara on the blackboard, exploring Plato's Greek vocabulary of the voyage. 1:13:21 Barbara's terms on the blackboard, in focus. 1:14:21 Plato uses two unusual terms for the vessel of the voyage. Rather than 'Naus', the common Greek term for a ship or boat, Plato uses 'Ploion' and 'Theorian'. Theoreo: I. To look at, view, behold; to contemplate. II. To view the public games (The Olympian, Pythian, Nemean , and Isthmian Games). Theoreion: A place for observation Theoria: The act of viewing Theoros: I. A state ambassador to an oracle, specifically either the oracle at Delphi or at Delos; II. Or, a spectator at one of the four great Panhellenic Games (see above). 1:16:54 'Theoris' = the boat, a sacred ship, and 'Theoroi' = all the people who go on it. 1:25:30 Thus, in the Phaedo, Socrates is taking the 14 on a voyage of contemplation, a voyage to Delos. (Thanks to BillD for videorecording, and HScottA for title, cataloguing, and above notes) More info: http://noeticsociety.org