“I hate Plato. Man these relationship just aren’t working out. First I was in love with Dante because I thought he wrote Utopia and then I realized it was Sir Thomas Moore who wrote it and we had a picture of him but he looked horrible and now Plato has me reeling.” I was talking animatedly to my friends over the lunch table. They look at me as if I was hatched on some extra-terrestrial rock. I’m used to it.
I am not a philosophically minded person. It is not so much that I detest Plato, but rather it is the abhorrence of that brain-hurting feeling I receive after a good dose of Phaedo. Neither is it easy to detest the protagonist therein, Socrates, especially when he gives absolutely brilliant arguments for something which I am predisposed by my very religion to be in favor of: the immortality of the soul. Naturally, one would like to believe in the soul’s immortality, while practically at death’s door, as Socrates was. Yet his rational discussion proves that this is indeed a logical statement, and not simply the desperate need to believe that there will be something left of oneself after death.
Perhaps the basis of my conclusion that I am not a philosophically minded person, stems from the fact that I am a total romantic. My sense of beauty comes from the colors and shapes I see, or the music I hear. Socrates, however believes in Forms. That is, he states that the beauty we see around us is merely an example of Beauty itself. This statement is parallel to the metaphysical idea that the world is really only as we sense it. Put simply, we can never really be sure of anything that we see or feel or otherwise sense. I like to believe that what I sense is indeed reality. And it is that rather selfish notion that makes me begrudge Socrates his brilliance. It makes me question everything, even my most basic beliefs or axioms. It is humbling, and needless to say, uncomfortable. People do not like to question their own beliefs especially when they have been held in happy naivety for quite some time.
Philosophy has suddenly thrust me out of that happy naivety. What is truth and knowledge? What is good? What is reality? I am bombarded with questions and at times quite tempted to throw up my hands and scream, “Are there ever any answers?!” As if hearing my scream Socrates addresses that very issue. He warns against this disillusionment with argument. It ultimately comes from a person with faulty philosophy rather than the argument itself. He also encourages his friends to avoid the trap of simply wanting to win an argument, but rather to find the truth for oneself. Philosophical discussion is not for the exasperating purpose of proving one’s own cleverness. This general disillusionment is referred to a misology. It is like misanthropy-when someone has trusted so many people who prove themselves untrustworthy, that they simply stop trusting anybody. Misology is like this except with arguments.
Although most certainly one of the more dizzying classes in my college career, exploring it thus far has made known to me my ability to logically argue for the immortality of the soul, without the traditional response, “Well, it just is.” So I must concede that Plato has grown on me, despite my periodic lapses into misology. After all the Latin roots for philosophy means a love of wisdom. I imagine if Socrates were to try to dissuade me from this misology, he would simply restate “while I have breath and strength, I will not give up the search for wisdom.” [Apology] And what is wisdom, but the knowledge of that which is truth? Suppose one does spend all their life searching for truth, yet never find it? It would be a far greater tragedy for me to let the disillusionment of my own inexperience prevent me from that search. So did Socrates ever find that truth? I think he did. And I believe I shall.
Yours truly,
butterfly girl
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