Posted on 12/26/2003 4:58:06 PM PST by Federalist 78
On the birthday of Christ, it is appropriate to compare Jesus with four Westerners who influenced the mental development of the world.
The Athenian philosopher Plato was admired at Western universities throughout the millennium of their existence. Plato ascribed his wisdom to Socrates, who was generally considered, among the educated in the West and Russia even in the 20th century, the wisest person who ever lived, the sage of sages.
Published in 1987 by Professor Allen Bloom was a study entitled "The Closing of the American Mind." What is the cause? American universities do not pay sufficient attention to Plato and Socrates.
The best-known book of Plato-Socrates, written by Plato, since Socrates did not write but expressed himself orally, describes the ideal State and hence is entitled "The State," mistranslated into English as "The Republic," though "republic" is a Latin, not Greek, word that appeared after Plato’s death.
The ideal State of Plato-Socrates resembles the tyrannical Sparta, a mortal enemy of Athenian democracy, but this ideal State of Plato-Socrates is far more Spartan than Sparta. It is a countrywide cattle-breeding farm on which pedigree human cattle are raised.
Men and women live separately, and a man and a woman, selected by the proper authorities to produce pedigree progeny, meet only for this "pairing" or "coupling," the resulting child being taken away from them for proper collective upbringing and education – provided the child satisfies the pedigree standards; otherwise, the child is destroyed. If it is born without the due pairing or coupling authorization, it is destroyed ipso facto then and there.
If someone is so sick that he or she cannot work, he or she should not be treated, but should be allowed to die as not fit for survival. If alive, he or she will mar the pedigree purity of the human cattle as a whole. The weak, the sick, those unable to work must die off and thus make the pedigree human cattle as a whole stronger and healthier.
About 23 centuries after Plato, an English clergyman studying nature and named Darwin discovered that man had evolved from the monkey. All the more reason to breed human cattle on a countrywide cattle-breeding farm (or a zoo?). Darwin’s contemporary (and disciple!) Nietzsche contended, with triumph, that man is the most predatory animal, a super-beast, a "bestia."
The Romans used to say, "Man to man is a wolf." But wolves have not been especially noted for attacking one another. On the other hand, a Mongol army, a pack of Mongols, would attack a city and, unless it surrendered, the attackers not only killed its entire population but also smashed all the buildings into stones so small that it was impossible to find that the city ever existed.
If wolves could invent and write down proverbs, a wolf, wishing to put down wolves, would say: "Wolf to wolf is a man."
Marx invented not a ruthless war of nations or religions, but a ruthless war of classes. The rich are the enemy. The rich do not surrender. The rich should be destroyed. As sung in "The Internationale," the anthem of communism, "The entire old world of coercion we will raze to the ground." As the Mongols razed to the ground a city that would not surrender.
Christ was born to a Jewish woman, named in English "Mary"; grew up as a Jew; spoke, read and wrote no language except Hebrew; lived his life and died in a Jewish country and had only Jews as disciples.
According to Luke 2:47, when Jesus was 12, Mary and Joseph discovered the boy in the Temple (in Jerusalum), "sitting among the Teachers" – the rabbis. Jesus was a prodigy, matching at 12 the Teachers of 40 or 80: "Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers."
Jesus did, indeed, become, when he was "about thirty years old" (Luke 3:23), a Teacher, teaching his disciples not within orthodox synagogues but in the streets and the bosom of nature. Jesus said that he was not to "abolish the Law and the Prophets [that is, Judaism], but to fulfill them." (Matthew 5:17).
To put this into modern lay language, it can be said that thus a scientist of genius does not abolish the science created before him, but "fulfills" it. Accordingly, the Christian Holy Bible consists of the Judaic (Hebrew) Old Testament Christ knew so well already at the age of 12, and the New Testament Christ created, to "fulfill" the Old Testament.
What was it that Christ created to "fulfill" Judaism?
Nietzsche applied to himself the name "anti-Christ." He used to say that Christianity is the worst evil in history. Had Jesus been an essayist, able to see his opponents for 20 centuries ahead and five centuries behind, he would have called himself anti-Plato, anti-Nietzsche, anti-Darwin and anti-Marx.
The first and the last (in the social hierarchy or in Plato’s opinion) may be the last and the first (in human value). If you are rich, give away your wealth to the poor. Do not resist evil with equally evil or more evil evil. Blessed are not the strongest fighting men, but the weak (such as women and children), the meek, the suffering, the poor, the unfit for survival, and they need thy compassion, pity and help.
Of course, for example, the notion of charity looms large in Judaism. But Christ made it a critical spiritual need, as did Nietzsche when he protected a horse against blows with his own body (see below).
To the four opponents, Christ would have said:
What happened in the fourth century is as strange as Nietzsche’s attempt to protect a horse with his own body. The Roman Empire, obsessed with power, including wars of expansion, and with wealth, including wars of acquisition of wealth, adopted the teaching of Christ after three centuries of Christian persecution, beginning with the crucifixion of Christ.
How did Christianity change Christendom? Wars continued, but there appeared a Christian-aristocratic knighthood, chivalry, rules of war – while two Chinese colonels published at the close of the 20th century the book "Unrestricted Warfare," denying any rules. Infectious microbes were discovered in 19th century Europe, which has not, however, waged bacteriological war.
Christendom never practiced Mongolic, Chinese, Nazi or Soviet mass exterminations, though the British Empire came close in its imperial zeal, helped by Herbert Spencer, who coined the phrase "the struggle for the survival of the fittest," used by Darwin as basic to his theory of evolution. Spencer argued that the British were the fittest for survival, and a high death rate among colonial nations merely contributed to the pedigree health of the human race.
Charity became a common notion, as it was in Judaism. Many Americans do not understand that "democratic socialism" and Christian Socialists in Europe had nothing to do with Marx. The word "socialism" came into use in France and England soon after 1825 and had been probably coined by Auguste Comte, a mathematician and the founder of sociology (also his word).
What has been called in the United States "social benefits," "social security," "welfare," etc., can also be called socialism, which sprang from the same Judaic-Christian notion of charity. The manifesto that Marx and Engels published in 1848 was entitled "The Communist [not Socialist!] Manifesto" and proclaimed a world proletarian revolution – that is, a world class war to seize power all over the world. They condemned peaceful socialism, stemming from the Christian notion of charity, and Christianity itself as enemy devices to delay a world proletarian revolution.
Lenin and his Bolsheviks, or Communists, persecuted the Russian democratic socialists as their worst foes, traitors and criminals.
As for sociology, even after the death of Marx and Engels, the orthodox Marxists (in Soviet Russia and post-1949 China, for example) considered it a "bourgeois pseudo-science" up to the 1960s!
The suspension of Christianity in Lenin’s Russia and Hitler’s Germany, as well as the advent of Marxism in Mao’s China, led to class or ethnic mass exterminations, with the implication that human beings can be exterminated the way animals are, for human beings are animals that should be bred like cattle, and the war for survival must be as ruthless as unrestricted warfare in the two Chinese colonels’ recent book.
Well, Jews of that time did not speak Hebrew - they spoke Aramaic and Greek (Latin was used mostly in the Western part of the Empire).
#59 may be of interest to you.
The author is not leaning on Bloom; he's criticizing him in a way for placing the greatest of emphasis on the Greeks. This is a Christmas piece that castigates the excesses of modernism, whether before or after Christ.
I agree with you The Republic should not be attributed to the historical Socrates, but that error is incidental to the meaning of the piece.
In the course of Western Civilization, there have been two trials ending in a sentence of death imposed upon two individuals later deemed grossly unfair and unjust by the verdict of history. One trial was that of Jesus Christ, the other that of Socrates.
Of course, it can be said with justification that each man steered a course that ended with a fatal termination from the power structure of the time.
It was Jesus' destiny.
It was Socrates' choice.
Certainly Nietzche was a genius and contributed an important diagnosis of modern man's predicament, as did Kierkegaard. Ah, but as far as writing prescriptions, that seems not to be the forte of these academicians.
...Some Parts of [his writings] . . . are entertaining . . . but his Laws and his Republick from which I expected the most, disappointed me most. I could scarcely exclude the suspicion that he intended the latter as a bitter Satyr upon all Republican Government . . . ... John Adams to Thomas Jefferson
If only I had been a liberal arts major, I'd have known about this to have a source to cite!
But I've ruminated on the matter, and come up with a way by which anyone might convince himself it's likely truly the author's intent.
First, read Lysis. Look at Socrates the character in a satirical light. He is a vain old pedophile, trying desperately to manipulate in wicked ways for petty reasons. He even pretends he is his own son, in a hopeless attempt to convice the boys that he isn't old! As you read Socrates' lines, imagine his voice as a mix of Chrales Nelson Riley and Tim Curry's Dr. Frankenfurter from Rocky Horror Picture Show. Read it: it's obviously a comedy!!! Very clever at times.
After that, reread The Republic, with an eye for the absurd, it will certainly present itself to you. Some of the characters' silliness may not be as obvious in our culture as it was in Plato's time and place, because there could be allusions to stereotypes that are somewhat different.
The reasonings are silly throughout, and they lead to absurd or meaningless conclusions.
Socrates, IMO, was *lampooned* by Plato in many of the works that, ironically, are taken as serious philosophy by many influential intellectuals in our day. It's actually pretty funny in itself, like the Star Trek episode where the book about Gangsters in the 1930's was accisentally left on a planet wth a young culture. When Kirk and the crew go to check in on them, they had adopted it as a sacred book and were living their lives gangster-style.
I'm making the secular case that much of Plato was written with the intent to make you laugh!
Plato portrays Socrates over and over as a pretentious, sardonic old chicken-hawk fag who spread smart-sounding confusion and stupidity wherever he went. Socrates was a Sophist, and The Republic makes fun of him and the way in which others gullibly aquiesce to his sophistry.
Maybe I was lucky to have read the translated works directly, without much exposure to the analyses of others first. It's been obvious to me, since the first time I read The Republic, that it was written as comedy.
I fear that, in 2,000 years, there may be an influential school of family psychology based on the scripts to the show Married with Children.
They say that democracy is the worst kind of government, other than for all the others. Christianity appears to be the same kind of deal; it starts to look better, the more you examine the available alternatives, including communism, evolutionism, J-slam, I-slam, Scientology, paganism, the democrat party and/or whatever else.
However, I agree with you that much of Plato was written with the intent to make you laugh! The way Socrates annihilates everyone is like the Harlem Globetrotters against the Washington Nationals.
I thought of Giordano Bruno being burned at the stake.
First word of The Laws is THEOS. Go Figure.
Yes, and a bit uncut with "I am making the secular case . . ." How, pray tell, does one make a secular case for humor???? Nietzsche extradited humor along with the Big Cheese.
Here you refer to the father of existentialism as well as another(FN)who many believe was an existentialist
Personally I do not follow Plato as much as FN who had 2000 years of human history to add evidence to his analysis and philosophy.
IMHO the Presocratics doe not receive enough attention, esp. Heraclitus, Parmenides and Democritus.
Aristotle was serious. He claims it as the better and humane disposition in the Nicomachean Ethics. We could never say that the Nicomachean Ethics was written as comedy.
But it can hardly be said about Plato's works either. If you want comedy, Aristophanes comes closer, but his rivalry with Plato even lends seriousness as an undercurrent.
No, it can't be said of Plato, because Plato was aware of the requirement of both the serious and unserious.
Plato knew how little people understood this and how much he wanted them to understand it.
At the close of the Symposium, after everyone has had their say and most of his friends have left, and its near dawn, and Socrates begins to speak of the importance of both the serious and the unserious, that is when his last remaining friends fall asleep.
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