Platos Socrates Essay Example for Free

Platos Socrates Essay In order for the concept of wisdom to carry any viable weight in the affairs of the world, it is necessary for said concept to acknowledge the link between wisdom as an abstract idea and wisdom as a guiding principle for pragmatic action. Although other thinkers within the list of writers and philosophers we have studies do promote the idea of wisdom as a pragmatically applied force; Henry David Thoreaus interpretation of wisdom and its applications in human life and in human society seems to me the most reasonable interpretation among those we have studied so far. Thoreaus basic idea of wisdom is relative easy to understand adn emerges, not from abstract philosophical discourse, but from the vantage point of everday life: Does Wisdom work in a tread-mill? or does she teach how to succeed by her example? Is there any such thing as wisdom not applied to life? (Thoreau 118) By asking these questions in connection to the idea of wisdom, Thoreau makes it obvious that he regards wisdom as a method of defining nd helping to instruct human behavior and not merely human thought. Interestingly enough, while Thoreaus definition of wisdom is steeped in the practical and the pragmatic, he admonishes his readers and listeners not to confuse materialism and wisdom, that is, not to mistake the pragmatic of earning a living with the pragmatics of wisdom: It is pertinent to ask if Plato got his living in a better way or more successfully than his contemporaries,or did he[ ] find it easier to live, because his aunt remembered him in her will? The ways in which most men get their living, that is, live, are mere makeshifts, and a shirking of the real business of life,chiefly because they do not know, but partly because they do not mean, any better, (Thoreau 118). The application of Thoreaus pragmatic vision of wisdom may elude some observers; however, Thoreau, himself, illustrates the application of his idea of wisdom by turning his sights to the gold rush fever which enveloped his contemporaries: Did God direct us so to get our living, digging where we never planted,and He would, perchance, reward us with lumps of gold? (Thoreau 119) where, obviously, Thoreaus hang up with gold-rushers is not their pursuit of earning a living, per se, but with the folly of their believing that gold can, in and of itself, replace the need for wisdom: I did not know that mankind was suffering for want of gold. I have seen a little of it. I know that it is very malleable, but not so malleable as wit. A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom,; where Thoreuas ironic contrast of gold and wisdom leaves little doubt, in the end, as to which he views as more crucial to humanity. (Thoreau 119) 2. Whose view of wisdom (Socrates, Thoreau, Huxley, Pieper, or Frankl) seems to be the least reasonable? Why? Although Platos Socratic writings on the nature and meaning of justice achieve and inner-harmony and function in logical consistency with the rest of his ideas regarding ethics, aesthetics, and civics, Socrates view of wisdom, as defined by Plato, strikes me as the least rational of the theories and ideas we have studied. Far be it for me or anyone else to accuse Plato of leaving holes in his theory of wisdom; that is not the issue so much as the circclar nature of Platos reasoning which leads me to feel that the concepts of wisdom which are described by Socrates offer very little in the way of practical application in life and seem more like abstract ideas meant to stimulate those who enjoy pondering theory, rather than to assist those who are truly seeking applicable means for wisdom in daily life. Primarily, it is Socrates insistence that wisdom exists beyond the human appreciation of it, which seems to cripple the overall argument on the nature of what comprises wisdom: Socrates considers there to be two general sorts of knowledge, one which makes its possessor wise and one which does not. Socrates, and others too, can confidently and quite correctly claim to have a number of instances of the latter sort; but no human being can rightly claim to have the former sort, since no human being has ever attained the wisdom Socrates himself disclaims having when he professes ignorance, (Brickhouse, and Smith 31). true enough, Socrates humility in professing himself to be without wisdom has puzzled observers adn scholars for quite some time; however, the admission that wisdom exists, apart from human understanding, nd must be pursued even to the point of admitting that it cannot be attained, leaves the entire issue of wisdom up in the air form a pragmatic point of view. Socrates may believe that human wisdom is of little or no value (23a6-7). What would be of great value, if only he had itnamely, real wisdomSocrates and all others lack. The greatest wisdom for human beings, as we have just seen, is the recognition that we are in truth worth nothing in respect to wisdom (Brickhouse, and Smith 33) and this type of vision is, of course, another variation on a religious or metaphysical concept: that of Divine Wisdom. For Socrates, wisdom is an abstract power deemed tor reside within the Divine consciousness but only sparingly in human consciousness. I would say that nay definition of wisdom which fails to forward a concrete, pragmatic application as pertains to human society and individual behavior is worthwhile only from a purely intellectual point of view. Works Cited Brickhouse, Thomas C. , and Nicholas D. Smith. Platos Socrates. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Harding, Walter, ed. Thoreau: A Century of Criticism. Dallas, TX: Southern Methodist University Press, 1954. Thoreau, Henry David. The Major Essays of Henry David Thoreau. Ed. Richard Dillman. Albany, NY: Whitston Publishing, 2001.

Flying Solo :: Flying Planes Personal Narratives Essays

Flying Solo Today is the day of my first flying lesson. For the last month I have been putting together a model of the Spirit of St. Louis, the plane Charles Lindbergh used to fly from to New York to Paris in May of 1927, the first transatlantic flight. I love putting together models; I love the intense concentration it requires, the knot of tension that forms at the back of my neck, the dizzying smell of glue. Charles Lindbergh was not the first pilot to attempt this flight, but he was the first to attempt it alone. All those who went before him had gone with flight crews and enormous quantities of equipment, and all of them had failed or died trying. Lindbergh had no crew, no radio, no parachute, no life raft, no food, one quart of water. He told reporters, "If I make it to Paris I won't need anything more, and if I don't make it I won't need anything more either. He even cut the borders off of his map with a razor blade. It was this simplicity that enabled him to succeed. I w ant to find that simplicity in my own life, to pare everything down to the bare essentials. But I can’t. Small pieces, spare parts, keep turning up in corners and under furniture. I think flying will lift me up and away from all the things that clutter up a life. When I arrive at Pulliam airport and look out over the rows of airplanes I feel so light that I might float away. I pay for the lesson with my Visa and shove the receipt into the pocket of my jeans. The waiting room is filled with orange plastic chairs. Waiting always takes on the same quality, no matter where I am or what I am waiting for. It’s the feeling of being trapped in time, removed from the rest of life. No matter what I do, like a reading a book or magazine, I can never forget that I’m waiting. I used to wait for my father every Sunday afternoon, sitting and staring out the window while time froze all around me.

Know Rhymesâ€Know Reasons

My parents are nerds.   I don’t mean they were nerds as kids and grew out of it; I mean my parents were nerds from the moment each was born, though their adolescence, and right into adulthood.   Today, my parents remain true to their heritage: they are full-fledged, adult nerds. As most people are aware, nerd hood requires a few supplies and traits: along with the requisite pocket protectors, the over-exuberance for all things academic, and thick glasses, both of my parents are bookworms.   Luckily, certain genetic traits skip a generation, and I can honestly say that I am not a nerd; however, I am a bookworm, and I am not ashamed to admit it because much of my life has been influenced by the things I have read. I grew up with Dr. Seuss.   My father used to spend time every week reading the latest Dr. Seuss book with me.   He’d tuck me into bed, and then I read to him aloud as the story unfolded one rhyme and one intriguing illustration at a time.   My goal was not so much to get to the end, but to learn new words, and each new word I learned was marked by my father with a bright, yellow highlighter. In this way, the progress I made became more tangible, and for all I know, that habit of my father’s allowed me the freedom to read all of my books with a dictionary and a highlighter by my side and never to feel as if doing so was a waste of time or a burden: new word were an adventure, and I loved learning them.   I don’t recall developing a particular favorite Dr. Seuss book as a child, but as I got older, I began to get the urge to unpack the box of my highlighted books and relive a little of my youth. The box of Dr. Seuss books had been stored in the family shed, and the years had taken their toll.   The change in temperature had caused the books to warp and mold, but they had not gone completely to waste: at least one family of rodents had nested in the box, shredding the pages of my early education for their own progeny’s needs.   One lone book remained untouched: Horton Hears a Who, and as I opened this last book of my childhood and began to read, I was struck by the power of the story.   Hidden in the text was one of the most important lessons I’ve ever learned: a single voice of the tiniest girl was strong enough to make a difference.   As hokey as it may sound, I leaned the degree to which an individual can impact the world that day as I read that book.   Perhaps I am a nerd. I won’t waste time by detailing the degree to which I read during grade school, junior high school, and high school; I will only clarify that while I admit to being bookish, I was also an athlete, participated in student body, and had a social life.   I was, however, not done with Dr. Seuss. I hit a wall with Shakespeare, and I felt the burden of reading for the first time in my life.   While many students had grown accustomed to that wall, I had never dealt with it, so by the time it happened to me, the stakes were high: I was in college, and I wasn’t getting it.   I had never skipped a reading—never worried about my English or literature courses. Suddenly, I was ready for a slug of the stuff Romeo had taken.   I did the only thing I could think of: looking for commiseration, I complained to my parents about how stupid Shakespeare was, pointed out that no one could really be sure he’d written his plays, and wondered out loud why anyone needed to read stuff that’s written like that anyway. My father would have none of it, but he suggested to me that anyone who had grown up on Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein had no business complaining about or being confused by Shakespeare.   Like many messages delivered when one isn’t ready to receive them, the point my father had tried to make was lost on me for awhile—buried by the frustration of not having been appeased.   Several days later, I tried to give in to the notion that there might be something familiar in the rhythm and rhyme of Shakespeare if only I’d do what my father had suggested: read it out loud and listen—really listen. I struggled at first trying to work through the colloquial terms.   I fought to remember that the ends of a line of text didn’t necessarily equal the end of a sentence.   I battled with Shakespeare’s sentence structure trying to remember that it was rarely subject-verb-object.   It was like running through sand that was waist deep.   Until it wasn’t.   Suddenly, everything fell into place: it was like I had learned a foreign language.   The words made sense; the story began to unfold around me; I got it; I liked it.   The only thing I can compare it to is sitting in a theater watching a sub-titled movie: there is a point at which the reading becomes so automatic that it is no longer a conscious effort but automatic.   It was just like that. Later, I met the wall that was Henry James.   I was reading Portrait of a Lady, and I had spent far too much time trying to decipher the first scene of the text.   When I realized that James had spent over a page beating around the bush to say that three men were at tea, I wanted to scream.   I wanted to ask the guy why he’d wasted so much ink and so many words simply to point out to the audience that it was tea time, but instead of there being women there, there were men—but I had a book to wade through, and Mr. James was long dead, so I moved on. Having figured out the context of the opening if the book, I went back and started anew, and I realized that I wanted to sit and talk to the man who had chosen such wonderfully descriptive words—a man who had taken such great care to spend the time to so completely describe the fact that three men were at tea.   I remember thinking to myself that if he were a painter, and he painted the way he wrote, that I would love his work like I loved Claude Monet’s Impression Sunrise.   Years later, when I began to read everything I could by and about Henry James, I had a private laugh over his affinity for painters—Monet in particular. Having cracked Shakespeare and James, I was never again afraid of a book’s language or  length.   I picked up Middlemarch and Tom Jones and Vanity Fair and loved each of them for  different reasons, but one day, I picked up Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, and like  Horton Hears a Who, I found a story that changed the way I viewed the world.   â€Å"The Book of the  Grotesque† made me think about truth, and the way in which each individual forms his or her  own truth and twists it to suite personal needs.   It made me consider that each person’s  quest for and claiming of truth can send ripples into the world, and these ideas changed me. Recently, I have discovered Flannery O’Connor, and while I struggle with the racial issues that threaten to ruin her works for me, I feel the now-familiar tingle beginning that I have grown to recognize as the discovery and excitement that only a well-written book can bring me.   I may have to break down and buy a pocket protector just to use as a book mark. What about writing?   Well, if one day all of the things I have jotted down in hopes of emulating the people previously mentioned ever manages to make its way to a publisher, I will blame that on the books I have read and the people who wrote them.   I will speak of the fact that when I walk into a bookstore, I marvel at all of the people who have managed to get published and allow myself an instant to believe it might someday happen for me as well. As I pick my words and paint my own pictures, I wonder if I have it in me to write the thing that for the right person will make a difference—the thing that might one day be highlighted in bright yellow—the page marked with a sticky note.   Maybe this year I’ll try my hand at NaNoWriMo.   

The Periodization of the History of Western Europe

Historians generally define the periodization of the history of Western Europe during the Middle Ages into three eras: the Early Middle Ages (5th-11th Centuries AD); the High Middle Ages (1000-1300 AD); and the Late Middle Ages (1300-1500). Construction of the great Gothic cathedrals began during the High Middle Ages, which was an era that experienced a dramatic re-emergence of urban life and an increasing sophistication in secular culture (Singman xi). Major events in the High Middle Ages include the conquest of England by the Normans in 1066, the conflict between the popes and emperors for political control of Europe, and the Crusades. Indeed, the very idea of Europe during the Middle Ages was based on conflict between Christendom and Islam, although no unity existed between the Latin Christians of the West and Greek Orthodox Christians in the East (Delanty 17). In the Late Middle Ages, the Little Ice Age, the great famine and Black Death wiped out 40-50% of the population, and per haps more in some areas. In addition, the invention of gunpowder and firearms reduced the influence of the knights and the code of chivalry, while social, religious and political crises like the peasant revolts, the Great Schism and Babylonian Captivity challenged the power of the nobility and Catholic Church. Historians have studied the Late Middle Ages far more than the earlier periods, in part because more sources are available, although no overall paradigm exists that integrates theShow MoreRelatedAPWH Ch1306 Words   |  7 Pagesï » ¿AP WORLD HISTORY Chapter Processing Work INTRODUCTION Historical Thinking Skill Exercise: Periodization: Compare the author’s periodization in Parts One through Six to the Colleges Board’s historical periodization. How do the author’s dates and titles compare to the College Board’s? What explains the similarities and the differences? 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The indifference of the British government to colonial governance 11. Which group would most likely have supported the sentiments expressed in the passage above? a. Loyalists in the