@@> Plato (Gorgias dialog) [Great Books of the Western World translated
                             by Benjamin Jowett]
 
  Just finished working my way through  "Gorgias" as you suggested
  (some parts reread several times for clarity). As I would note no
  claim to "Plato" scholarship  I may have derived impressions some
  bent far away from center!
 
  OVERALL "EFFECT": Plato [nit-picker] imaged as an absolutist man of
  "doctrine", contriving logic, *cutely*, while feigning friendly with
  his created rhetorician puppets. I actually felt sorry for the abject
  roles they (Gorgias, Callicles, Polus and Chaerephon) had to play at
  the mercy of his (Socratic mask) condescensious reasoning.   Had Plato
  been born 500 years later, it would NOT be hard to imagine him as a
  fundamentalist-ic Christian. I can only guess what Christianity would
  have achieved (and I believe did to some extent) had his notions and
  elfish talents been *more* employed in its sale.
 
  In one of his typical absolute passages-        (nonsense logic)
    "Soc. And if they are opposed to each other,
  then like health and disease they exclude one
  another; a man cannot have them both, or be
  without them both, at the same time.         "
 
  NT Jesus ".....a man cannot have two masters.." (nonsense logic)
 
  DOCTRINE !!!
  [470] "Soc. Yes , indeed, Polus, that is my doctrine;
  the men and women who are gentle and good are also
  happy, as I maintain, and the unjust and evil are
  miserable."
 
 Although Plato's overall reach can "sometimes" be interesting, I was
 often a bit short of air. I found his four arts discriptivness of
 "rhetoric" using a soul/body mix (464,465,466) near incomprehensible
 (as I suspected he also found it so, when playing as Polus).  Also
 His dependency on the soul/religion assumption, begs his nit-pick logic.
 (You can have it both ways if you write the book)
 
  His "natural difference between rhetorician and Sophist" [465] does
  have a spot of humor as they are "jumbled together".  You can near
  feel his emotional "intemperance" ocassionalllly bleeding through.
 
  [511] "Cal You always contrive somehow or other, Socrates, to
  invert everything"
 
  "Cal. Somehow or other your words, Socrates, always appear to me
   to be good words; and yet, like the rest of the world, I am not
   quite convinced of them"
 
  It is not always clear whether he is partly agreeing with his
  puppets! Plato had (as per "Gorgias") seeming little toleration
  for "GRAYs", the accepted true and natural condition of most
  everything!.
 
  NOBILITY FACTOR: Abundant in Plato's dialog is that category of human
  reach I am unable to fully stretch out to  ....Virtue, honor, stoicism,
  goodness, rightness, truth,...too much temperance..... are like flashes
  in the corner of the eye ....sort of there and not there. Though I would
  see such purified "high mindedness" as transient fragments of my species,
  such distillation into near intrinsic form (as I believe Plato reached
  for) would seem an almost unnatural state of species. Though drawn to
  such grand temperate characteristics, they seem alien to survival and
  my own mental and deed demeanor, which I would judge "just everyday good
  enough".  Whether such epic illusions (to sit at a Right hand) suggest
  future society options (as DB thinks can be taught), or are just
  occasional blips of mind, I do not yet know.  However!  As so many
  words of our language are devoted to such "high thought" and behavior,
  I would assume it an importance, regardless of my clumsy take on it.
  I might add to suggest that the more SOB-ish in our genes might
  have some value in a world thrown back on "brutality survival", like
  what could happen in one of your "catastrophe scenarios" ?
      As said initially, I may have missed the fundamentals of it all-
  his humor, irony, insights, quotations and most of all, his logic.
  If so ??? I'm probably better off reading *ABOUT* such stars of
  history (all edited, cleaned up and interpreted for public consumption).
 
  .....Plato seems not my cup of tea ........most more likely to have had
  "Gorgias" as comrade! .....but you may have already noticed that !
 
                            @@ >--- Dave
 
  NOTE: I did pick up a fragmentary expression that smiled pleasing
        into my memory ........ "on matters of the highest moment".
 
        Also found [513] the reference to the Thesalian witch that could
        bring down the moon. Been looking for the source of that quote
        for a long time.
--- Maximus/2 3.01
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