[Socrates]

You all may have noticed my post signature, I just thought I would explain what I think it means.

The Republic is all about Justice. When Socrates is put to death with hemlock, Asclepius is the God of medicine and to bring in some of Derrida’s thought here, that means Asclepius is the God of poisons and cures. Just as Socrates is dying, he upholds the value of justice as an ideal and requests that the God who this ‘remedy for life’ aka poison, be given a cock in return and so all is just and good as Socrates departs this world.

This is an example of Socrates life-denial – a tainted view of the physical world in favor of a world of forms, the ideal of justice is more real than the materialisation of justice in this world.

After reading Caputo’s essay on the Trace of religion, this is another example of how justice is always calling to us, we are constantly responding to it and it is like a projectile coming towards us right until the moment of death.

[kFoyauextlH]

Very cool, but I never much agreed with Socrates passive aggressive seeming final lesson. It is said he had nothing much to live for at that point though, considering his wife was a shrew or nag according to tales, the people generally hated him save a few, and he was old, fat, and ugly apparently. This way he could go out in one big final lesson, except his lesson was a bad one. He submitted to the people and the state, instead of burning it down to the ground just because he wanted to live.

You may want this for a separate thread but, if you had a final lesson to teach, what would it be?
Final words, final lesson, and in Socrates situation, what would you do?

I would’ve taken the escape route offered him and left the tyrranical country in order to live and breathe and work a little longer.

There is a big difference between Socrates and myself. Not only am I handsome, but I cling to life voraciously and have no faith or hope in much of anything really. At the end of the day, I am a violent and selfish person, who believes in little and would maim, kill, rape, and pillage as necessary to achieve whatever I desire for myself so long as there are no consequences, and I do consider the implications and consequences and threats and disturbances which keep me in check.

I abhor God and Life and Justice, and my true belief is only in violence and terror. Had I the power, I would cause suffering and harm to befall numerous people, I would enslave them or destroy them.

In the case of Socrates, I would work subversively to disrupt those enemies of mine who would have me killed, and even freely find ways to have them killed for what they did, destroy their Gods, massacre their lawyers, and murder those displeased with such as well.

That is the life and soul of a flower. A flower grows and blossoms and spreads and does not say to itself “oh if I stay down here, other flowers may thus be allowed to live” a flower strives for the light, blindly wriggling towards resources and pleasure and away from harm, defending itself as it can.

No one has the right to poison me, even if I am the most vile criminal. We will fight. I will fight so long as I am able, how I am able.

If Socrates was going to simply go to a better world, he should have killed himself from the get go.

Whoever believes in God and Heaven and that all good awaits them! Prove yourselves then why don’t you? Go to your beloved now!

I will wait here in hell. I will wait here because God is not my lover nor can be trusted.

If you don’t take your lives, then perhaps you are more like me afterall, faithless cowards who will fight for filth just because filth and torture is less threatening than the truly unknown.

So in the end, Socrates, who may have been right, was wrong.

He had something that I don’t have. A soul?

I would do whatever it takes to live or avoid torture.

If I were to be thrown into a fire to burn forever if I did not kill a little baby, I would kill the baby to spare myself, or the man or the woman or the prince or the king or thr noblest human or Mother Theresa.

I would tell others NOT to kill me and NOT to adopt these ideals, nor would I ever trust that they are truly going to spare me when their life is at stake, so I would be alert and wary of such people. I thus can never have friends, even if they are truly noble, because I would doubt they would spare me, hate them for that, and wouldn’t spare them myself.

I don’t believe in fairness, I only believe in me.

Its strange perhaps that one like me, willing to think in extremes to their exhaustion, ends up being a noble and charitable and utterly kind character compared to others.

I would never think “in order to escape this hell, I have to slit the throat of this woman, but will sit here burning or suffering because she is a guard and has a family and is in my way or complicit but wah wah for her life which I don’t know and can’t access” I would slit her throat in a heartbeat without question.

I would also slit the throats of EVERYONE except me who adopts a vicious life-desperate philosophy like mine. I can have no allies in this, and there is no honor among life hungry thieves. If one even appears admiring of such thoughts they are a potential threat.

How my “friends” would say “Oh yes if it came to it I would sacrifice you for my own life” What! Their worthless lives for mine? Their disgusting faces for mine? They should die! Thus I can have no followers or friends or allies that ever get too close, if they are like me, they are wolves and madmen and vicious animals and should stay in their own territories.

In the meantime, I would promote they give their lives for me, that I am more important than them. The people I like are the noble ones, the ones who have honor, who aren’t like me and don’t fear dying or torture. Socrates was a good man, I am a bad man, because I believe in nothing and cling to everything.

God help the Heretic.

[atreestump]

It is said he had nothing much to live for at that point though, considering his wife was a shrew or nag according to tales, the people generally hated him save a few, and he was old, fat, and ugly apparently

I do recall some anecdotes about how Plato was probably the only person present when Socrates died, so the paintings of his death are entirely of Plato’s imagination.
 

You may want this for a separate thread but, if you had a final lesson to teach, what would it be?
Final words, final lesson, and in Socrates situation, what would you do?

I like Keirkegaard’s last words: ‘Sweep me up!’ hahahaha

Last lesson, that’s a tough one, only cliches are appearing at the moment.

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