Hi David,
    Thank you for your inquiry.  It's been a while since I had any
Plato courses, but parts do stick.
DM> In reading your quoted passages and commentary, I could but wonder
-> whether the technical details Plato writes about god things and
-> concepts come from his common knowledge of Greek religion or from his
-> own exploratory imagination or a mix.
-> > Laws IV 716e: > Republic, II, at 382e > Statesman 271d > Phaedo
-> 111b > Phaedo 107d
-> Hal, you cover so much, I am forced to ask how you do it. Do you have
-> Plato memorized to pull so many quotes from so many places? And while
  The Bollingen _Collected Dialogues of Plato, including the Letters__
(Ed. E. Hamilton), 1961 is very valuable.   It has an index.
At this point I simply remember what to look for, and the index
supplies the passage number for checking.
   It seems that Plato and Socrates genuinely had some
experience of the Forms, of the divine, of the One, IMHO.
Socrates certainly speaks this way in the earlier dialogues.
Whether Plao engaged in conscious myth-making is another,
more complicated question.
-> Plato memorized to pull so many quotes from so many places? And while
-> at it, what/which of all you've learned has touched you as
-> ....IMPORTANT? .....you know of a lot, but I don't know who you are
-> (perhaps none of my business).
   Well I was a philos major for several years.  Not so much into
Plato as Nietzsche.   Then, when the Vietnam war came, I got
very politicized and studied Marxist thought for some years.
   My main interest for some time was ethics.
   Right now, it's philos of religion, esp. D.Z. Phillips.
I just read the rather nice autobiographical essay, "A confession" by
Tolstoy, in the _Portable Tolstoy_ among other places.
I was just re-reading Simone Weil and enjoying that.
She even moved me to write a few paragraphs expanding on
her notion of the religious basis for the concept of
respect for all;  She argued it was not derivable from
sceinific considerations. Will post if there's interest.
    So I'm quite interested in the intersection of philos, religion,
and ethics, including non-violence. You might say, the
issue of practice, which buddhists and quakers seem to have
got a grip on, is of supreme interest.  The metaphysical debates,
the issues of creedal religion seem secondary.
    Maybe that's an intro, and I would like to hear yours.
    Best regards, Hal.
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