Virtue in Plato

In the dialogue Meno, Plato explains that virtue is not a science, for if it were, there would be masters in the science, but there are not. He also says heroes in Greece, good in varied activities, and also virtuous, pursued the education of their sons in these activities, but in the field of virtue, they weren't capable to transmit it, as someone who transmits the arithmetic knowledge that two plus two equals four.

For Plato, then, virtue is not something the virtuous person has the possession of, but is a god gift. "If not due to science, then due to a happy opinion? Making use of it, politicians rule cities, not being in any degree differents, as to understanding, from inspired soothsayers or oracle pronouncers. For these too, when gods are in them, speak the truth, even about a lot of things, but don't know about the things they say." This theme will be treated again by Plato in the Apology of Socrates, when he pictures Socrates as the wisest man in Greece, even if he is not fully conscious of that, compared to other characters of greek life, specially ones from the poetical genre, which are capable of telling great stories with extremely beautiful words, but hardly know how they did it; while he, Socrates, knew he was ignorant in several matters others had the conviction, wrong one, they were masters of. Of course the common belief Socrates was a silly man afters answers is not proper, for he showed himself extremely ironical and soaring talking. He kept, nonetheless, a deep respect for the mistery of life.

The philosopher from the Academy finishes up the matter in the following manner: "But if us, in all this discussion, have researched and discussed to the point, virtue wouldn't be by nature something to be taught, but a god concession, which comes without understanding to the one it comes." This phrase throws to the ground any researcher who ever thought of calling him a gnostic. Here he explicitly asserts virtue does not derive from knowledge, for if it did, it could be taught, being though a god gift. Centuries lates Jesus would prefer among his apostles the common men, including two that could be called mediocre. Jesus did not repudiate intelligence, on the contrary, but he also did not despise the ones who didn't have it.

In the Urantia Book, it is told Jesus "taught morality, not from the nature of man, but from the relation of man to God." That means, the solipsist man can't be good, for man needs a personal relation with God. "Jesus' morality was always positive. The golden rule as restated by Jesus demands active social contact; the older negative rule could be obeyed in isolation."

Why do people stare at me in the subway? Don't they think they are bothering you?

I wonder why.

Andrew Johnson

In times the country went
when people elect saints,
he failed to grasp what meant
the public sentiment.

North Koreans' cry

If North-Koreans' cry is not forged, then it is the cry of the slave, which can only give way to its sorrow along with with his master's sorrow. Simone Weil explains that in her essay about the Iliad.

"And what does it take to make the slave weep? The misfortune of his master, his opressor, despoiler, pillager, of the man who laid waste his town and killed his dear ones under his very eyes. This man suffers or dies; then the slave's tears comes. And really why not? This is for him the only occasion on which tears are permitted, are, indeed, required. A slave will always cry whenever he can do so with impunity - his situation keeps tears on tap for him.

She spoke, weeping, and the women groaned,

Using the pretext of Patroclus to bewail their own torments.

Since the slave has no licence to express anything except what is pleasing to his master, it follows that the only emotion that can touch or enliven him a little, that can reach him in the desolation of his life, is the emotion of love for his master. There is no place else to send the gift of love; all other outlets are barred, just as, with the horse in harness, bits, shafts, reins bar every way but one. And if, by some miracle, in the slave's breast a hope is born, the hope of becoming, some day, through somebody's influence, someone once again, how far won't these captives go to show love and thankfulness, even though these emotions are adressed to very mand who should, considering the very recent past, still reek with horror for them:

My husband, to whom my father and respected mother gave me,

I saw before the city transfixed by the sharp bronze.

My three brothers, cildren, with me, of a single mother,

So dear to me! They all met their fatal day.

But you did not allow me to weep, when swift Achilles

Slaughtered my husband and laid waste the city of Mines.

You promised me that I would be taken by divine Achilles,

For his legitimate wife, that he would carry me away in his ships,

To Pythia, where our marriage would be celebrated among the Myrmidons,

So without respite I mourn for you, you who have always been gentle.

To lose more than the slave does is impossible, for he loses his whole inner life. A fragment of it he may get back if he sees the possibility of changing his fate, but this is only his hope. Such is the empire of force (...)."

How british authors love orphans!

Atheism doesn't exist

Atheism doens't exist. People think they are atheists because they don't believe in God's representation they were lead to believe in. Or they revolt themselves against the difficulties that the belief in a Supreme Being may bring, once the faithful personal growth doens't come without a struggle. In extreme cases, of socialist revolutionaries rebelled against God's authority, and of satanism practioners, it not about a disbelief in the existence of God, but rather a disbelief in his person, like somebody may distrust another person.

The greatest concept man has ever conceived for the divine reality is that of a Father, as such amorous towards his children. But this is still a representation, suited only for the relationship man develops with God. For example, for an angel, to say that God is a Father won't make much sense, since he didn't have a progenitor. The image of a father he can only glimpse putting himself in the place of other beings, which is not the same as having lived it. God is much more than any representation we can make of him, he is that best reality we know exists.

But that doens't mean representations are not useful. Myths always open human mind with a range of experiential possibilities that mere, let us say, metaphysical acknowledgment might sterilize. Good philosophy -- as Plato knew well and Lao-Tsé better yet -- transits through logical intuition and phantasies. 

Old Boy and spirit, or lack of

There is no goodness in the movie Old Boy. Oh Dae-Su leaves its private jail after fifteen years and does nothing to help a man willing to commit suicide. He will have the opportunity to kill his tormentor, Woo-jin, but, because he would lose the chance to know why he was incarcerated, doesn't do that. His friend No Joo-hwan's death would be avoided if he had.

Woo-jin is the psycopath who jails Oh Dae-Su. He has killed his wife and supervised his daughter Mi-do's upbringing. He hypnotizes both in order to have them become, father and daughter, lovers. His loathsome plan fullfills itself: it is a revenge because Dae-Su had gossiped to the school where they had studied that Woo-jin and his sister, Lee Soo-ah, had had sex. Soo-ah commits suicide then, which is the occasion for Woo-jin to allow himself to become a psycopath.

Once everything happened, Dae-Su just wants to forget and resorts to the same expedient that had him fustigated: hypnosis.

These stories of extreme-grade manipulation remembers me of Viktor Frankl, the psychiatrist who lived in a nazi concentration camp and lost wife, parents, brother and friends, but left the place to love his fellow human beings. There is spirit beyond the "repugnant desires to moral which were imposed to us by nature" (Freud).