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From Revolution to Reconstruction: Presidents: Thomas Jefferson: ...
It is fortunate for us that Platonic republicanism has not obtained the same favor as Platonic Christianity; or we should now have been all living, men, women and children, pell mell together, like beasts of the field or forest. Yet `Plato is a great Philosopher,' said La Fontaine. But says Fontenelle `do you find his ideas very clear'? `Oh no! he is of an obscurity impenetrable.' `Do you not find him full of contradictions?' `Certainly,' replied La Fontaine, `he is but a Sophist.' Yet immediately after, he exclaims again, `Oh Plato was a great Philosopher.' Socrates had reason indeed to complain of the misrepresentations of Plato; for in truth his dialogues are libels on Socrates.
Evolution and Dissemination of the Parental Liberty Doctrine ...
In reciprocal letters to Jefferson, John Adams was equally critical. He said the "philosophy" of Plato was "absurd," Letter from John Adams to Thomas Jefferson (June 28, 1812), in Letters, at 308, berated Plato's concept of "a Community of Wives, a confusion of Families, a total extinction of all Relations of Father, Son and Brother," Letter from John Adams to Thomas Jefferson (September 15, 1813), in Letters, at 377, and observed that "Plato calls ['Love'] a demon," Letter from John Adams to Thomas Jefferson (October 10, 1817), in Letters, at 522.
In his most telling observations, Adams described his meticulous study of Plato's writings, expressed delight at knowing that Jefferson shared the same "Astonishment," "disappointment," and "disgust" with Plato, and then concluded as follows:
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 . . . . Nothing can be conceived more destructive of human happiness; more infallibly contrived to transform Men and Women into Brutes, Yahoos, or Daemons than a Community of Wives and Property . . .
After all; as long as marriage exists, Knowledge, Property and Influence will accumulate in Families.
Letter from John Adams to Thomas Jefferson (July 16, 1814), in Letters, at 437.
Thoughts on Government by Professor Ellis Sandoz
A good government, Adams insists, must be an "empire of laws" and not of men so that justice and not passion is the basis of order–as Aristotle taught in Politics, Book III.
….This time we hear John Adams the elder-statesman writing to his old comrade and (as he said) fellow "Argonaut" of the Founding Thomas Jefferson in 1813, one in Quincy and the other in Monticello, retired ex-presidents with their political differences finally put aside. The heart of the revolutionary American community lay, Adams wrote and Jefferson did not disagree, in the universally accepted "general principles of Christianity" shared by everyone, by which he chiefly meant the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount, and in the "general principles of English and American Liberty, in which all those young men united [who fought the Revolution], and which had united all parties in America, in majorities sufficient to assert and maintain her Independence. Now I will avow [Adams continued], that I then believed, and now believe, that those general Principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the Existence and attributes of God; and those principles of liberty are as unalterable as human nature and our terrestrial, mundane system."
Notes On "Thus Spake Zarathustra" By Anthony M. Ludovici.
In morality, Nietzsche starts out by adopting the position of the relativist. He says there are no absolute values "good" and "evil"; these are mere means adopted by all in order to acquire power to maintain their place in the world, or to become supreme.
"Zarathustra" is my brother's most personal work; it is the history of his most individual experiences, of his friendships, ideals, raptures, bitterest disappointments and sorrows.
Am I understood?...The overcoming of morality through itself-through truthfulness, the overcoming of the moralist through his opposite-THROUGH ME-: that is what the name Zarathustra means in my mouth."
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).
...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.
First word of The Laws is THEOS. Go Figure.
Unfortunately, these two books are almost completely ingore by the education institutions of this nation.
It is one of the major tragicities of our time.
Unfortunately, these two books are almost completely ingore by the education institutions of this nation.
It is one of the major tragicities of our time.
This may have been the hidden poison in Western civilization. In the West, conservative and traditionalist Christians have long held the notion that 'classical education' consists of sending their children to universities to learn Plato and Socrates. Then they're surprised when their children come home espousing socialism and homosexuality.
Ahem, I am sorry but socialism is not related to Christianity, but a distortion and an evil extention of charity through government. As this communist would say: " I do not want charity business but social justice."
1. Charity in Christianity is handed out to those who are charitable to themselves: i.e. help those who want to do good, i.e. but do not help those who ask you to help them party or sniff drugs. Socialism makes no difference as to whom receives the help. Government is not about sanctioning morality but productivity at best, and, then, not even so, because the productive tax payer is not encouraged by the welfare system it views with suspicion and on which it has little control.
2. When the socialist government owns the means of production, how can one distinguish a punishing government from one who hands out jobs? If a felon wants to revenge against government, then, as an employee of government, the felon can sabotage the workplace. On the other hand, if private and public are separated, if the punishing entity differs from the job handing entity, we do not have such criminal Marxist subversion of government possible. One becomes his own government and jurisdiction with his own private and local public means to oppose government in legal checks and balances. In Judeo-Christianity this is called "let my people go" or the "crucifiction", all selfinsulation from sin and taking the fall for future generations' sake and salvation, as opposed to a socialism which enslaves and destroys any hope of slavation, separation and washing of past sins and evils, a new improved world at every generation. The way the socialists plan things for everything precludes people from learning from their mistakes. People only make mistakes that the state views as mistakes and live in a world completely disconected from reality and real mistakes, but mistakes as seen by the state.
3. Also the planification nature of socialism implies the same deal as Plato, whereby the state of life is enforced philosophicaly and can only be argued philosophicaly through superliterate "proofs" in all virtuality that are not related to reality. Compare that to Christ's more optionable and market oriented idea of a virtualy private government you choose, who said "you will know them by their fruits", and one sees quickly how results and free choice beats any proof or any enforced philosophy that precludes choice and real life testing of those choices - if ever those choices are difficult and may lead one to personal catastrophy, taking the fall is the idea. Compare the tenured professor who has no respect for the poor with gut instincts and no education but who through goodness and instinct is able to survive and build an empire of his own to become rich. This is the result of true charity vs. philosophical self defeating alibis and human laboratory experiments to do harm to others. One is responsible for himself and is his own lab, let not others be involved with such experiments against their will or through "scientific" deceptions and alibis.
Last but not least, Darwin forgot to see that there is some contradictions between Darwin's evolving generations through a spontaneous genetic modification with Pasteur's own hard work at proving that spontaneous generations simply do not exist. Infection is the main mean of adaptation and multiplication and diversity, not spontaneity of life. Proving the spontaneity of life on Earth has been attempted, but it has been less than convincing. In fact this all important subject is completely ignored by Darwinists, who instead emphasis genetic modification of things already existing, and who ignore D'Embricourt's work on the existence of a strange attractor in Chaotic type Darwinist evolution.
Darwin was an anarchist pre-communist who promoted full Brownian type chaos to explain evolution, while the existence of design and chaos with strange attractor has been reversed engineered in many processes and good matching models of evolution.
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