FM> We still face, daily, the problem posed by Plato in his CONSCIOUS myth
 FM> of the judgement - what do you do with the "souls" that are NOT curable.
 DM> Tolerate them if you can ...terminate them if you can't...! That would
 DM> be my simple of it.............................!
   The termination is (grin) built-in).  As for the "waiting room" (centuries
later symbolized anew as "purgatory" in the Christian culture) well, the
testing determines whether or not the "soul" is "curable."  
 DM> Did Plato later answer his own question? Which of his works is the above
 DM> mentioned "CONSCIOUS myth of the judgement"? located in.
   _Gorgias_ has the best rendition.  Plato was a master artist so the myth 
f
the judgement is (where else) toward the end.
   Did Plato answer the question??  The myth of the judgement IS the 
uestion.
Can it claim to be true?  Well, does it fit the truth of the soul as it is
experienced in its search for order?  One might well ask: "If immortality is
uncertain then why not just take a chance, live for hedonistic pleasures and
nothing else.  What could one lose if there is another chance.  But how
stringint IS that second chance - and IS there a second chance.  
   Obviously the "many" tend not to worry about it.  Ever wonder why 
olitical
order is so difficult to achieve?  That is what Plato meant by
"immoratalizing."  It's also close to what Paul meant by it but Paul, of
course was led into an eschatological extravaganza - a region Plato avoided 
y
sticking close to reason and the tension of the experience "here."  
 DM> As I pick up on some limited perusals of Plato, I "think" I see a mix
 DM> of a not always consistent "searcher". To start with, did he actually
 DM> consider the oracle at Delphi a legitimate/true source of information?
 DM> AND did he really believe that the "political lie" was a valid tool in
 DM> politics? Realizing that people are mind-fixed in their own time and
 DM> also change their views over a lifetime, I may have read beyond good
 DM> background perspective and reasoning.
   
   David, if you attempt to make Socrates and Plato into modern
fundamentalists who might "believe" or "disbelieve" you'll never understand
much of what either was thinking.  I assume you that by "political lie" you
are speaking of the "Big Lie" mentioned in _The Republic_.  Did you not see
the irony in the context of that "Big Lie" which was part of a myth?  The 
Big
Lie" as Voegelin observes is the "Supreme truth" that "all men are brothers."
Did you really know all of this and were just pulling my leg?  Socrates said
that people kept reporting to him that the Oracle said that he, Socrates, was
the wisest man in all Athens.  He went around asking questions to ascertain
whether or not the Oracle were true.  He found that it could not be so 
ecause
HE certainly didn't know many of the answers but in the quest he also found
that the people he encountered weren't "wise" either although the virtually
sparkled in their "possession" of wisdom which they freely dealt out to
everybody else.  The _Laws_ is Plato's withdrawing into the riper wisdom he
truly DID love and contains the marvelous symbol of God as the puppet player
and humans with the responsibility to give the "golden cord" a bit of a nudge
it might need.  In the _Laws_ there are no more philosopher-kings, not 
ecause
the symbol was invalid but because there aren't enough philosopher kings.  In
the _Laws_ Plato speaks, not through that "most just man, Socrates" but
through an "Athenian Stranger" who is making his way with two companions
"toward the sun" on Crete (site of origins) and on the way formulating the
"second best polis" as a constitution for a colony (as the Greek poleis
regularly had to do).
Sincerely, 
                                     Frank
                                                                              
                                                       
                                                                              
                                                       
--- PPoint 2.05
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