古希腊柏拉图美学.ppt

Death of Socrates Phaedo “Be of good cheer, and say that you are burying my body only…yet I may and must pray to the gods to prosper my journey from this to that other world.” Then holding the cup to his lips, quite readily and cheerfully he drank the poison. (Hemlock) “Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?” Phaedo, sections 116A-118, tr. Jowett. Alain de Botton: The Consolations of Philosophy. 2000. P.272. If the postcard struck me so forcefully, it was perhaps because the behaviour it depicted contrasted so sharply with my own. In conversations, my priority was to be liked, rather than to speak the truth. A desire to please led me to laugh at modest jokes like a parent on the opening night of a school play. With strangers, I adopted the servile manner of a concierge greeting wealthy clients in a hotel... I did not publicly doubt ideas to which the majority was committed. ibid I sought the approval of figures of authority and after encounters with them, worried at length whether they had thought me acceptable. When passing through customs or driving alongside police cars, I harboured a confused wish for the uniformed officials to think well of me... ibid That night, above the ice lands, such independence of mind was a revelation and an incitement. It promised a counterweight to a supine tendency to follow socially sanctioned practices and ideas. Plato “I thank God that I was born Greek and not barbarian, freeman and not slave, man and not woman; but above all, that I was born in the age of Socrates.” life Was born 427 BC, the son of noble parents, a handsome and vigorous youth with breadth of his shoulders; First studied music, poetry, painting, and philosophy with other masters and became a pupil of Socrates in 407, remaining with him until the latter’s death (399). Died in 347 BC. Journey of Plato 399 – 387 BC Egypt. Was shocked to hear from the priestly class which ruled that land, that Greece was an infant-state, with