Wisdom and training
27
Sep
The most beautiful image that Plato made of Socrates about
philosophy was not the ordering of knowledge, the epitheme that is also necessary, through which the sophists were fought, but the image that exists in his book Symposium, the one with which we have access to philosophy and knowledge of the Supreme Good and in it “the” wisdom.
The one that says that a philosopher is not moved only by a “know-how” as the utilitarian world wants, the presence of Socrates by the “testimony” of Alcibiades, with an appearance without any compatibility with the Beauty of classical Greece, and which imposed to whom he was questioned a change of attitude, not a passive receiver of ideas.
Questions and interrogation are no less important than putting oneself actively in front of oneself and the world, there is a desire to take the lead and to respond to really important questions.
As we read in Theaetetus, Socrates is defined as atopos, with “no-place”, or even “weird”, as one who creates aporias, that is, he does not solve things, he only raises questions, he does not then help the harmony of the “polis”. ” or the cosmos.
What kind of wisdom is this then, “not knowing” is very significant for Socrates, he is a scathing critique of the pretension of the known, after all their knowledge is not the result of conversation, of dialogue, it is not aware of the contradictory questions of the your knowing.
Every Socratic-Platonic-Aristotelian edifice did not resist the brute force of the Roman empire, and falls into ruin before the mighty Roman army, as war won Greek wisdom, acquiring it and making it serve its purposes, the Roman gods were no other. but those corresponding to the Greek gods, but philosophy has decayed.
This is the possible current parallel, there is an almost general feeling that regret is no longer useful or reasonable, and philosophy would be nothing more than mere speculation, says Sloterdijk “it is not a favorable time for thought”, or we go for pragmatism of action or for the deleterious.
There is little room for the birth of the new, for Paidéia with its effect of education and training, everything goes towards the immediate and the market.
Even in environments where culture is present, it seems that the ideals of wisdom are under suspicion and vulgarity is promoted even with a certain ‘status/’, the way out is to call men to conscience and common sense.
Plato. The Banquet of Plato. CHICAGOWAY AND WILLIAMS, 1895. (pdf).
