I must ask you Socrates, what do you suppose is the upshot of all this? As I said a little while ago, it is the scrapings and shavings of argument, cut up into little bits.
Plato, Greater Hippias, c. 390 BCE
Art always opts for the individual, the concrete; art is not Platonic.
Jorge Luis Borges, "On Art," c. 1960 (via quote)
In our journey westward across the Atlantic we shall pass in sight of that spot where once existed the pride and life of the ocean, the Land of Mu, which, at the epoch that we have been considering, had not yet been visited by the wrath of Human, that lord of volcanic fires to whose fury it afterward fell a victim. The description of that land given to Solon by Sonchis, priest at Sais; its destruction by earthquakes, and submergence, recorded by Plato in his Timaeus, have been told and retold so many times that it is useless to encumber these pages with a repetition of it.
Jesse Richardson, Andy Smith and Som Meaden, "Thou Shalt Not Commit Logical Fallacies," c. 2012
Plato conceived of the Idea as being in the world of shapes and figures something perfect and sublime, to which imagined form those objects not accessible to sensory perception can be related by way of imitation.
If I were standing at the beginning of time, with the possibility of taking a kind of general and panoramic view of the whole of human history up to now, and the Almighty said to me, “Martin Luther King, which age would you like to live in?” I would take my mental flight by Egypt and I would watch God’s children in their magnificent trek from the dark dungeons of Egypt through, or rather across the Red Sea, through the wilderness on toward the promised land. And in spite of its magnificence, I wouldn’t stop there.
I would move on by Greece and take my mind to Mount Olympus. And I would see Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Euripides and Aristophanes assembled around the Parthenon. And I would watch them around the Parthenon as they discussed the great and eternal issues of reality. But I wouldn’t stop there.
I would go on, even to the great heyday of the Roman Empire. And I would see developments around there, through various emperors and leaders. But I wouldn’t stop there.
I would even come up to the day of the Renaissance, and get a quick picture of all that the Renaissance did for the cultural and aesthetic life of man. But I wouldn’t stop there.
I would even go by the way that the man for whom I am named had his habitat. And I would watch Martin Luther as he tacked his ninety-five theses on the door at the church of Wittenberg. But I wouldn’t stop there.
I would come on up even to 1863, and watch a vacillating President by the name of Abraham Lincoln finally come to the conclusion that he had to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. But I wouldn’t stop there.
I would even come up to the early thirties, and see a man grappling with the problems of the bankruptcy of his nation. And come with an eloquent cry that we have nothing to fear but “fear itself.” But I wouldn’t stop there.
Strangely enough, I would turn to the Almighty, and say, “If you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the 20th century, I will be happy.”
Now that’s a strange statement to make, because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land; confusion all around. That’s a strange statement. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a way that men, in some strange way, are responding.
Martin Luther King, Jr., I've Been to the Mountaintop Speech at Mason Temple, Memphis, TN, 1968 (via rhetoric)
nickkahler reblogged
Iveta Vaivode, Opera: The Spectacle of Society, c. 2013
'Opera was once seen as the exclusive reserve of aristocracy, a polite social occasion or an event to attend to affirm your cultural capital as a member of a social elite. Iveta Vaivode’s images tell a different story of intense participation by a more heterogeneous audience in a drama unfolding out of the frame. She watches the watchers, much as painters like Edgar Degas or Walter Sickert did at the music hall a hundred years ago. The long exposures she employs render the subject in a high contrast impressionistic way, like Édouard Manet, but instead of Baudelaire’s Flaneurs, Vaivode sees a more stratified contemporary audience. From box to balcony to stalls the make-up of the spectators clearly differs, but the difference from seat to seat is equally enthralling as many people sit virtually stock-still for the entire 45 minutes of the performance & exposure, whilst others move around to the point of visual extinction. Some sit forward in their seats wringing their hands as the narrative grips them, whilst others coolly recline, arms folded. In one image Vaivode shoots looking down from the balcony on the red velvet curve that separates the orchestra pit from the stalls. The marked contrast either side of the line, one of light activity against dark observation, puts us in mind of Plato’s cave or Debord’s Society of the Spectacle, as those in the dark sit transfixed by the energy of others – passion by proxy. And yet the work is less social critique than affective visual feast as the audience is drawn into the play.'
Any one who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eye are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind's eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye.
Plato, The Republic, c. 380 BCE (via algernon)
Definition: Anamnesis (n)
Socrates defines Anamnesis through saying "the soul is immortal, and repeatedly incarnated; knowledge is actually in the soul from eternity, but each time the soul is incarnated its knowledge is forgotten in the shock of birth. What one perceives to be learning, then, is actually the recovery of what one has forgotten. (Once it has been brought back it is true belief, to be turned into genuine knowledge by understanding.) And thus Socrates (and Plato) sees himself, not as a teacher, but as a midwife, aiding with the birth of knowledge that was already there in the student."
Sylvia Plath, "Totem," c. 1962
The engine is killing the track, the track is silver, It stretches into the distance. It will be eaten nevertheless. Its running is useless. At nightfall there is the beauty of drowned fields, Dawn gilds the farmers like pigs, Swaying slightly in their thick suits, White towers of Smithfield ahead, Fat haunches and blood on their minds. There is no mercy in the glitter of cleavers, The butcher's guillotine that whispers: 'How's this, how's this?' In the bowl the hare is aborted, Its baby head out of the way, embalmed in spice, Flayed of fur and humanity. Let us eat it like Plato's afterbirth, Let us eat it like Christ. These are the people that were important ---- Their round eyes, their teeth, their grimaces On a stick that rattles and clicks, a counterfeit snake. Shall the hood of the cobra appall me ---- The loneliness of its eye, the eye of the mountains Through which the sky eternally threads itself? The world is blood-hot and personal Dawn says, with its blood-flush. There is no terminus, only suitcases Out of which the same self unfolds like a suit Bald and shiny, with pockets of wishes, Notions and tickets, short circuits and folding mirrors. I am mad, calls the spider, waving its many arms. And in truth it is terrible, Multiplied in the eyes of the flies. They buzz like blue children In nets of the infinite, Roped in at the end by the one Death with its many sticks.
Aaron Betsky, MVRDV: The Matrix Project, 2002
"The notion that our reality is the outward appearance of data is a Platonic idea that recently has been given a new lease on life through the interpretations of scientific research that seems to continually question the material reality of anything we apprehend. Instead of only seeing the shadows of a real world, it seems we experience only electronic impulses acting on our nerve endings. It is now generally accepted that both solid form and the void are nothing but different states of energy - as we are as human beings. The only things that have eluded our ability to quantify all of our reality have been precisely those postulates that we derive from our attempts to reduce everything we know to calculable bits but cannot make real. These are the zero-conditions of God, consciousness, and the absolute state of non-being before, after or outside of reality."
Antoni Gaudí (1852-1926) and Joan Matamala i Flotats (1893-1977), Grand Hotel, Manhattan, NY (Concept, 1908)
Zeus, god of gods, who reigns by law, did have the eyes to see such things. He recognized the degenerate state of their line and wanted to punish them, as a way of introducing more harmony into their lives. He summoned all the gods to a meeting in the most awesome of his dwellings, which is located in the center of the entire universe and so sees all of creation. And when the gods had assembled, he said: ...