10:40pm Sunday August 10 2025 CE (or AD)
I shall post just once per actual day, from midnight to 11:59pm of each calendar day .... this must be the firm rule i have when i've decided to be on a hiatus from posting more than once per 24 hr period. If my post appears late in the PM, you know i'll probably wait till the next day to post again, and what may disrupt this is that i'd be sleeping alot, and hence miss a whole day, even better i say, however it may be due to having to be around other people in physical space more than is my wont, and that i say is bad.
I've had so far today a very nice time learning, or what in my delusions call learning, making time fly by with the instruments of learning, perhaps i shall be able to say more confidently whether i am learning or not when i learn to do so, and that might happen or it might not happen. For the classical method is barred to me, in all matters the path before me is abnormal, not the prescribed way, and decisively experimental.
I'm settling on one Great Courses lecture series on Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, by a guy who's last name is Bartlett, not the quotes guy, he died before Great Courses started i gather, no this guy btw believes all 35 Plato dialogues are all non-spurious, and he chooses Alcibiades as a good Introduction to how Socrates taught, and indeed Alcibiades I from ancient times was what was seen best to begin one's Plato journey, i am somewhat convinced that it was penned from someone in the Academy a few decades at least after Plato bit the dust, but then as i type this i am wondering if ancient people ascribing it to Plato were a secret society keeping the truth hidden, so that it can be a great Introduction to Plato's thought? I dunno to be frank.
But anyways, i'm going through the dialogue, a little shorter than Timaeus, which is a dialogue that's over my head too much and i shall need to attack it when after some progress has been made, but this dialogue Alcibiades I is a corker, most straightforward says the editor's intro from the Hackett complete works, which btw is another reason to suppose Plato didn't write it, because of it's simplicity of teaching intent. However, it's a corker, and it's like this is a beginning, and very rudimentary, Socrates is trying to tell the title character (who was an illustrious fella who pops up in Thucydides and Plato's Symposium) that he doesn't know what he's going to be giving a talk about at the Assembly. By reading it you can see how a mind can be changed or the steps needed to change a mind that is falsely confident about knowledge that they have not.
I just happen to LOVE that whole topic, but what i should also pay more heed to is how like a mirror great texts like this can be, for this is the 1st part of the value of learning, to see your own shortcomings, and then to have a clue as to how to proceed out of the dark (or cave) into the sunshiny realm of figuring things out.
Now figuring things out this is where the classical method comes in sweetly and systematically, and also organically, with one's direct interaction with others, THAT is what will never be for me, i can only interact with things that are always the same, a book, a recorded message, something fixed, and the chaos inbetween my ears.
Maybe it's because of this chaos inside that dialogue with others would be instantly undoable.
My chaos is the result of normatizing myself to the fact that i've never even tried to talk with others, and when the internet comes around i'm too far gone for anything to change, there is simply more data to throw or politely place inside the chaos, and maybe if certain things like Platonic dialogues spurious or not, with the right kind of care and attention can either a) reduce the chaos generally, or b) intesify the chaos so that the chaos itself is more of a tool, a kind of gift, that i can master so to speak.
A master of chaos, maybe you reading this have mastered it, if so you will know i predict that it's only something one can find out for themselves all the hows and whens, the degrees and so on.
See you on August 11, have a good day/night .......:)
What an idea, i edit in further thoughts as the time rolls on relentlessly by. 1am as i write here, i should have included Plutarch as another source where Alcibiades crops up, a whole biography in the Parallel Lives no less!!
Know thyself, a key theme in it, and as i stated above, my invoking the facticity of a chaos for me is lazy stuff, but it explains something very important for me, that makes normal and sustained dialogue with others impossible. There are various reasons for this, where the blame is both with me, and with the ones who'd be the ones i'd supposedly converse with.
No, what i desire for my betterment is not just casual chit chat, or with equals, but with teachers, however if that was all there was to it, i'd still find it impossible for 1) having a teacher in actuality ended when i stopped going to places for learning, i remember the last lady i went to, she was great, that was the last person i verged on actually talking with, this was the late 90s early 2000's.
After Alcibiades I, i chase it now with Nicomachean Ethics, the snazzy 20 dollar version i got just the other day, footnotes galore, i should add here that the study of Aristotle is of immense aid to the study of Plato, and this is the peculiar and experimental part of my approach, which could be seen as chaotic, but it's to have an army or legion of great sources working together to result in whatever would make it not a waste of time for myself, if that is to happen, i shall have an uncommon learning, and continue the uncommon approach to everything, if it'll service the greater good or ill remains to be seen, i must remain skeptical till i see results like i would see my shaved beard coming back so as to need to shave again if i wanna look younger and all that bullcrap.
Gregory Sadler is the YT professor i go to for these philosophical things, and i deeply enjoyed his video on how to self direct study Aristotle, and there's 201 more videos for that very thinker, over 300 for Hegel. So to have all these tools, books that i can read and listen to, lectures and a chaotic but determined mind, who knows, good or ill, the former even seeming more likely for a split second is euphoric feeling.
I've had so far today a very nice time learning, or what in my delusions call learning, making time fly by with the instruments of learning, perhaps i shall be able to say more confidently whether i am learning or not when i learn to do so, and that might happen or it might not happen. For the classical method is barred to me, in all matters the path before me is abnormal, not the prescribed way, and decisively experimental.
I'm settling on one Great Courses lecture series on Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, by a guy who's last name is Bartlett, not the quotes guy, he died before Great Courses started i gather, no this guy btw believes all 35 Plato dialogues are all non-spurious, and he chooses Alcibiades as a good Introduction to how Socrates taught, and indeed Alcibiades I from ancient times was what was seen best to begin one's Plato journey, i am somewhat convinced that it was penned from someone in the Academy a few decades at least after Plato bit the dust, but then as i type this i am wondering if ancient people ascribing it to Plato were a secret society keeping the truth hidden, so that it can be a great Introduction to Plato's thought? I dunno to be frank.
But anyways, i'm going through the dialogue, a little shorter than Timaeus, which is a dialogue that's over my head too much and i shall need to attack it when after some progress has been made, but this dialogue Alcibiades I is a corker, most straightforward says the editor's intro from the Hackett complete works, which btw is another reason to suppose Plato didn't write it, because of it's simplicity of teaching intent. However, it's a corker, and it's like this is a beginning, and very rudimentary, Socrates is trying to tell the title character (who was an illustrious fella who pops up in Thucydides and Plato's Symposium) that he doesn't know what he's going to be giving a talk about at the Assembly. By reading it you can see how a mind can be changed or the steps needed to change a mind that is falsely confident about knowledge that they have not.
I just happen to LOVE that whole topic, but what i should also pay more heed to is how like a mirror great texts like this can be, for this is the 1st part of the value of learning, to see your own shortcomings, and then to have a clue as to how to proceed out of the dark (or cave) into the sunshiny realm of figuring things out.
Now figuring things out this is where the classical method comes in sweetly and systematically, and also organically, with one's direct interaction with others, THAT is what will never be for me, i can only interact with things that are always the same, a book, a recorded message, something fixed, and the chaos inbetween my ears.
Maybe it's because of this chaos inside that dialogue with others would be instantly undoable.
My chaos is the result of normatizing myself to the fact that i've never even tried to talk with others, and when the internet comes around i'm too far gone for anything to change, there is simply more data to throw or politely place inside the chaos, and maybe if certain things like Platonic dialogues spurious or not, with the right kind of care and attention can either a) reduce the chaos generally, or b) intesify the chaos so that the chaos itself is more of a tool, a kind of gift, that i can master so to speak.
A master of chaos, maybe you reading this have mastered it, if so you will know i predict that it's only something one can find out for themselves all the hows and whens, the degrees and so on.
See you on August 11, have a good day/night .......:)
What an idea, i edit in further thoughts as the time rolls on relentlessly by. 1am as i write here, i should have included Plutarch as another source where Alcibiades crops up, a whole biography in the Parallel Lives no less!!
Know thyself, a key theme in it, and as i stated above, my invoking the facticity of a chaos for me is lazy stuff, but it explains something very important for me, that makes normal and sustained dialogue with others impossible. There are various reasons for this, where the blame is both with me, and with the ones who'd be the ones i'd supposedly converse with.
No, what i desire for my betterment is not just casual chit chat, or with equals, but with teachers, however if that was all there was to it, i'd still find it impossible for 1) having a teacher in actuality ended when i stopped going to places for learning, i remember the last lady i went to, she was great, that was the last person i verged on actually talking with, this was the late 90s early 2000's.
After Alcibiades I, i chase it now with Nicomachean Ethics, the snazzy 20 dollar version i got just the other day, footnotes galore, i should add here that the study of Aristotle is of immense aid to the study of Plato, and this is the peculiar and experimental part of my approach, which could be seen as chaotic, but it's to have an army or legion of great sources working together to result in whatever would make it not a waste of time for myself, if that is to happen, i shall have an uncommon learning, and continue the uncommon approach to everything, if it'll service the greater good or ill remains to be seen, i must remain skeptical till i see results like i would see my shaved beard coming back so as to need to shave again if i wanna look younger and all that bullcrap.
Gregory Sadler is the YT professor i go to for these philosophical things, and i deeply enjoyed his video on how to self direct study Aristotle, and there's 201 more videos for that very thinker, over 300 for Hegel. So to have all these tools, books that i can read and listen to, lectures and a chaotic but determined mind, who knows, good or ill, the former even seeming more likely for a split second is euphoric feeling.
46-50, M