Thursday, June 17, 2010

PLATO: Dialogues of Plato - The Symposium



THE DIALOGUES OF PLATO - THE SYMPOSIUM


QUOTES FOR DISCUSSION



Concerning the things about which you ask to be informed I believe that I am not ill-prepared with an answer.
Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, Symposium, Great Books Volume 7, Pg 149


There was a time when I was running about the world, fancying myself to be well employed, but I was really a most wretched being, no better than you are now. I thought that I ought to do anything rather than be a philosopher.
Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, Symposium, Great Books Volume 7,Pg 149



… and I pity you who are my companions, because you think that you are doing something when in reality you are doing nothing. And I dare say that you pity me in return, whom you regard as an unhappy creature, and very probably you are right. But I certainly know of you what you only think of me – there is the difference.
Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, Symposium, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 150


How strange, said Agathon; then you must call him again, and keep calling him.
Let him along, said my informant; he has a way of stopping anywhere and losing himself without any reason. I believe that he will soon appear; do not therefore disturb him.
Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, Symposium, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 150



Socrates entered. Agathon, who was reclining alone at the end of the table, begged that he would take the place next to him; that “I may touch you,” he said, “and have the benefit of that wise thought which came into your mind in the portion, and is now in your possession; for I am certain that you would not have come away until you had found what you sought.”
How I wish, said Socrates, taking his place as he was desired, that wisdom could be infused by touch, out of the fuller into the emptier man, as water runs through wool out of a fuller cup into an emptier one; if that were so, how greatly should I value the privilege of reclining at you side! For you would have filled me full with a stream of wisdom plenteous and fair; whereas my own is of a very mean and questionable sort, not better than a dream. But yours is bright and full of promise, and was manifested forth in all the splendour of youth the day before yesterday, in the presence of more than thirty thousand Hellenes.
Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, Symposium, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 151


And greatly as the gods honour the virtue of love, still the return of love on the part of the beloved to the lover is more admired and valued and rewarded by them, for the lover is more divine; because he is inspired by God.
Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, Symposium, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 153


Take, for example, that which we are now doing, drinking, singing and talking – these actions are not in themselves either good or evil, but they turn out in this or that way according to the mode of performing them; and when well done they are good, and when wrongly done they are evil; and in like manner not every love, but only that which has a noble purpose, is noble and worthy of praise.
Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, Symposium, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 153




PLATO: Dialogues of Plato - The Republic



DIALOGUES OF PLATO – The Republic

QUOTES FOR DISCUSSION


Book 6

The true lover of learning then must from his earliest youth, as far as in him lies, desire all truth?
… He whose desires are strong in one direction will have them weaker in others; they will be like a stream which has been drawn off into another channel.
Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 374

Philosophical minds:
always love knowledge …
truthfulness … the will never intentionally receive … falsehood … from earliest youth desires all truth … absorbed in pleasure of the soul, and will hardly feel bodily pleasures …
temperate and the reverse …
no secret corner of illiberality …
whether a man is just and gentle or rude or unsociable; these are the signs which distinguish even in youth the philosophical nature from the unphilosophical.
Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 374

Pleasure in learning; for no one will love that which gives him pain and in which after much toil he makes little progress.
Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 374-5

The philosopher should have a good memory
Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 375

Try to find a naturally well-proportioned and gracious mind, which will move spontaneously towards the true being of everything … And to men like him, I said, … when perfected by years of education and to these only you will entrust the state.
Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 375

…but when you talk in this way, a strange feeling passes over the minds of your hearers; They fancy that they are led astray a little at each step in the argument, owing to their own want of skill in asking and answering questions; these littles accumulate , and at the end of the discussion that are found to have sustained a mighty overthrow and all their former motions appear to be turned upside down … for they have nothing to say in this new game of which words are the counters…
Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 375


Will he not hate a lie?
Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 375

… why so many are spoiled and so few escape spoiling – I am speaking of those who were said to be useless, but not wicked – and, when we have done with them, we will speak of the imitators of philosophy, what manner of men are they who aspire after a profession which is above them, by their manifold inconsistencies,
Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 377

… the most gifted minds, when they are ill –educated become pre-eminently bad? Do not great crimes and the spirit of pure evil spring out of a fulness of nature ruined by education rather than from any inferiority, whereas weak natures are scarcely capable of any very great good or very great evil?
Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 377

Book 7
Allegory

I said, here they have been since childhood … legs and necks chained so they cannot move … above and behind them a fire blazing … like ourselves … they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another …
He said: how could the see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?
Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 388

At first, when any of them is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round and walk and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will distress him…
Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 388

But then if I am right, certain professors of education must be wrong when they say that they can put a knowledge into the soul which was not there before… and capacity of learning exists in the soul already; and that just as the eye was unable to turn from darkness to light without the whole body, so too the instrument of knowledge can only be the movement of the whole soul be turned from the world of becoming into that of being and learn by degrees to endure the sight of being and of the brightest and best of being or in other words of the good.
Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 390

I mean that they remain in the upper world; but this must not be allowed; they must be made to descend again among the prisoners in the den, and partake of their labours and honours, whether they are worth having or not.
Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 390


… the turning round of a soul passing from … ascent from below, which we affirm to be true philosophy … And should we not enquire what sort of knowledge has the power of effecting such a change?
Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 391


A something which all arts and sciences and intelligences use in common and which everyone first has to learn among the elements of education: numbers and calculation.
Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 392

…arithmetic has a very great and elevating effect, compelling the soul to reason about abstract number and rebelling against the introduction of visible or tangible objects into the argument.
Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 393

…those that have a natural talent for calculation are generally quick at every other kind of knowledge; and even the dull, if they have had an arithmetical training, although they may derive no other advantage from it, always become much quicker than they otherwise would have been.
Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 394

… geometry will draw the soul towards truth and create the spirit of philosophy.
Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 394

After plane geometry, I said, we proceeded at once to solids in revolution [he’s talking about astronomy]
Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 395

I have hardly every known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.
Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 397

Further, he of whom we are in search should have a good memory, and be an unwearied solid man who is a lover of labour in any line; or he will never be able to endure the great amount of bodily exercise and to go through all the intellectual discipline and study which we require of him.
Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 398

Do you remember that the children, too, were to be taken to see the battle on horseback; and that if there were no danger they were to be brought close up and, like young hounds, have a taste of blood given them?
Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 399

The same practice may be followed, I said, in all these things – labours lessons, dangers – and he who is most at home in all of them ought to be enrolled in a select number.
At what age?
At the age when the necessary gymnastics are over: the period whether of two or three years which passes in this sort of training is useless for any other purpose; … After that time those who are selected from the class of twenty years old will be promoted to higher honour, and the sciences which they learned without any order in their early education will now be brought together, and they will be able to see the natural relationship of them to one another to true being.
Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 399

… you know that there are certain principles about justice and honour, which were taught us in childhood, and under their parental authority we have been brought up obeying and honouring them
Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 400


Vocabulary
Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, The Republic
Great Books Volume 7

Illiberality, pg. 374 –
lacking of liberal education or training, without culture, narrow minded, miserly-stinginess

Arrant pg. 376
Out and out unmitigated, notorious, as an arrant fool.
Unmitigated – not lessened or eased, unmitigated suffering; clear and absolute, as unmitigated villain

Rogue, pg. 376
Formerly a vagabond, a scoundrel, a fun-loving, mischievous person, an animal that wanders apart from the heard and is fierce and wild, to cheat, to lie or act like a rogue.

Ignorble, pg. 386
One who ignores (new ideas, thoughts, concepts)
Ignore – to disregard deliberately, pay no attention to, refuse to consider




ARISTOTLE - The Works of Aristotle - On the Soul


THE WORKS OF ARISTOTLE: ON THE SOUL (De anima)

QUOTES FOR DISCUSSION

From biographical note on Aristotle:
He [Plato] is said to have been called by Plato the intellect of the school. There is also a tradition that he taught rhetoric. “The more I am by myself and alone, the fonder I have become of myths.”


If there is any way of acting or being acted upon proper to soul, soul will be capable of separate existence; if there is none, its separate existence is impossible.
Aristotle, The Works of Aristotle: On the Soul, Book 1 ch.1, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 632

It therefore seems that all the affections of soul involved a body – passion, gentleness, fear, pity, courage, joy loving, and hating; in all those there is a concurrent affection of the body. In support of this we may point to the fact that while sometime on the occasion of violent and striking occurrences, there is no excitement or fear felt, on others faint and feeble stimulations produce these emotions, viz. when the body is already in a state of tension resembling its condition when we are angry.
Aristotle, The Works of Aristotle: On the Soul, Book 1 ch.1, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 632

This implies the view that soul is identical with what produces movement in animals. That is why further, they regard respiration as the characteristic mark of life…
Aristotle, The Works of Aristotle: On the Soul, Book 1 ch.2, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 633

Mind is the monad, science or knowledge the dyad (because it goes undeviatingly from one point to another), opinion the number of the plane, sensation the number of the solid; the numbers are by him expressly identified with the Forms themselves or principles, and are formed out of the elements; now things are apprehended by either by mind or science or opinion or sensation, and these same numbers are the Forms of things.
Aristotle, The Works of Aristotle: On the Soul, Book 1 ch.2, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 634

Let the foregoing suffice s our account of the views concerning the soul which have been handed on by our predecessors; let us now dismiss them and make as it were a completely fresh start, endeavouring to give a precise answer to the question, What is soul? i.e. To formulate the most general possible definition of it.
Aristotle, The Works of Aristotle: On the Soul, Book 2 ch.1, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 642

… what has soul in it differs from what has not, in that the former displays life. Now this word has more than one sense, and provided any one alone of these is found in a thing we say that things is living. Living, that is, may mean thinking or perception or local movement and rest, or movement in the sense of nutrition, decay and growth.
Aristotle, The Works of Aristotle: On the Soul, Book 2 ch.2, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 643

Sounds, colours, and odours contribute nothing to nutriment; flavours fall within the field of tangible qualities. Hunger and thirst are forms of desire, hunger a desire for what is dry and hot, thirst a desire for what is cold and moist; flavor is sort of seasoning added to both.
Aristotle, The Works of Aristotle: On the Soul, Book 2 ch.3, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 644

That is also why the objects of sense are (1) pleasant when the sensible extremes such as acid or sweet or salt being pure and unmixed are brought in to the proper ration; then they are pleasant; and in general what is blended is more pleasant than the sharp or the flat alone; or to touch, that which is capable of being either warmed or chilled; the sense and the ratio are identical: while (2) in excess the sensible extremes are painful or destructive.
Aristotle, The Works of Aristotle: On the Soul, Book 3 ch.2, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 658

For imagining lies within our own power whenever we wish (e.g. we can call up a pictures, as in the practice of mnemonics by the use of mental images), but in forming opinions we are not free; we cannot escape the alternative of falsehood or truth. Further, when we think something to be fearful or threatening, emotion is immediately produced, and so too with what is encouraging; but when we merely imagine we remain as unaffected as persons who are looking at a painting of some dreadful or encouraging scene.
Aristotle, The Works of Aristotle: On the Soul, Book 3 ch.3, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 660

Thinking is different from perceiving and is held to be in part imagination, in part judgment; we must therefore first mark off the sphere of imagination and then speak of judgment. If then imagination is that in virtue of which an image arises for us, excluding metaphorical uses of the term, it is a single faculty or disposition relative to images, in virtue of which we discriminate and are either in error nor not? The faculties in virtue of which we do this are sense, opinion, science, intelligence.
Aristotle, The Works of Aristotle: On the Soul, Book 3 ch.3, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 660

And because imaginations remain in the organs of sense and resemble sensations, animals in their actions are largely guided by them, some (i.e. the brutes) because of the non-existence in them of mind, others (i.e. men) because of the temporary eclipse in them of mind by feeling or disease or sleep.
Aristotle, The Works of Aristotle: On the Soul, Book 3 ch.3, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 661

If thinking is like perceiving, it must be either a process in which the soul is acted upon by what is capable of being thought, or a process different from but analogous to that. The thinking part of the soul must therefore be, while impassible, capable of receiving the form of an object; that is, must be potentially identical in character with its object without being the object. Mind must be related to what is thinkable, as sense is to what is sensible.
Aristotle, The Works of Aristotle: On the Soul, Book 3 ch.4, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 661

Actual knowledge is identical with its object; potential knowledge in the individual is in time prior to actual knowledge but in the universe it has no priority even in time; for all things that come into being arise from what actually is.
Aristotle, The Works of Aristotle: On the Soul, Book 3 ch.7, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 663

If then Nature never makes anything without a purpose and never leaves out what is necessary (except in the case of mutilate or imperfect growths; and that here we have neither mutilation nor imperfection may be argued form the facts that such animals can (a) reproduce the species and (b) rise to completeness of nature and decay to an end), …
Aristotle, The Works of Aristotle: On the Soul, Book 3 ch.9, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 665

Lastly, appetite too is incompetent to account fully for movement; for those who successfully resist temptation have appetite and desire and yet follow mind and refuse to enact that for which they have appetite.
Aristotle, The Works of Aristotle: On the Soul, Book 3 ch.9, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 665

VOCABULARY - ARISTOTLE: ON THE SOUL
Great Books Volume 8

Analogous, pg 661
1. Similar or alike in such a way as to permit the drawing of an analogy.
2. Biology Similar in function but not in structure and evolutionary origin.
[From Latin analogus, from Greek analogos, proportionate : ana-, according to; see ana- + logos, proportion; see leg- in Indo-European roots.

Dyad, pg. 634
according to the Pythagoreans, is the principle of "twoness" or "otherness" Two people speaking is a dyad; the smallest unit of communication. Relationships between people; employer employee, etc., are dyads as well.
In music: a set of two notes or pitches

Impassible, pg 661
1. Rare not susceptible to pain or injury
2. impassive; unmoved

monad, pg. 634
a term used by ancient philosophers Pythagoras, Parmenides, Xenophanes, Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus as a term for God or the or the first being, or the totality of all being
In music: a single note


ARISTOTLE - The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics

THE WORKS OF ARISTOTLE: METAPHYSICS


QUOTES FOR DISCUSSION

From biographical note on Aristotle: He [Plato] is said to have been called by Plato the intellect of the school. There is also a tradition that he taught rhetoric. “The more I am by myself and alone, the fonder I have become of myths.”

 
All men by nature desire to know.
The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book I, Chapter 1, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 499

And in general it is a sign of the man who knows and of the man who does not know, that the former can teach.
The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book I, Chapter 1, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 499

… as has been said before, the man of experience is thought to be wiser than the possessors of any sense perception whatever, the artist wiser than the man of experience, the master-worker than the mechanic, and the theoretical kinds of knowledge to more of the nature of Wisdom than the productive.
The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book I, Chapter 1, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 500

… secondly, that he who can learn things that are difficult, and not easy for man to know, is wise… he who is more exact and more capable of teaching the causes is wiser in every branch of knowledge;
The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book I, Chapter 2, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 500

… in order to escape from ignorance, evidently they were pursuing science in order to know, and not for any utilitarian end. … Evidently then we do not seek it for the man is free, we say, who exists for his own sake and not for another’s, so we pursue this as the only free science, for it alone exists for its own sake.
The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book I, Chapter 2, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 501

… according to the proverb, the better state, as is the case in these instances too, when men learn the cause; for there is nothing which would surprise a geometer so much as if the diagonal turned out to be commensurable.
The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book I, Chapter 2, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 501

Those who have been driven to this position by difficulties in their thinking can easily be cured of their ignorance; for it is not their expressed argument but their thought that one has to meet. But those who argue for the sake of argument can be cured only by refuting the argument as expressed in speech and in words.
The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book IV, Chapter 4, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 528

For they think that the truth should not be determined by the large or small number of those who hold a belief, and that the same thing is thought sweet by some when they taste it, and bitter by others, so that if all were ill or all were mad, and only two or three were well or sane, these would be thought ill and mad and not the others. And again, they say that many of the other animals receive impression contrary to ours; and that even to the sense of each individual, things do not always seem the same. Which then of these impression are true and which are false is not obvious; for the one set is no more true than the other, but both are alike.
The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book IV, Chapter 5, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 529

… while there is some justification for their thinking that the changing, when it is changing, does not exist, yet it is after all disputable; for that which is losing a quality has something of that which is being lost, and of that which is coming to be, something must already be.
The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book IV, Chapter 5, Great Books Volume 8,  pg. 529

That physics, then, is a theoretical science is plain from these considerations. Mathematics also, however, is theoretical; but whether its objects are immovable and separable from matter is not at present clear; still it is clear that some mathematical theorems consider them qua immovable and qua separable from matter. But there is something which is eternal and immovable and separable, clearly the knowledge of it belongs to a theoretical science, - not, however to physics (For physics deals with things which exist separately but are not immovable and some parts of mathematics deal with things which are immovable but presumably do not exist separately, but as embodied in matter; while the first science deals with things which both exist separately and are immovable.
The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book VI, Chapter 1, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 548

QUA
Since the science of the philosopher treats of being qua being universally and not in respect of a part of it and “being” has many sense and is not used in one only, it follows that if the word is used equivocally and in virtue of nothing common to its various uses, being does not fall under one science.
The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book XI, Chapter 3, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 589

Philosophy does not inquire about particular subject in so far as each of them has some attribute or other, but speculates about being, in so far as each particular thing is. – Physics is in the same position as mathematics; for physics studies the attributes and the principles of the thing that are, qua moving and not qua being (whereas the primary science, we have said, deals with these, only in so far as the underlying subjects are existent, and not in virtue of any other character); and so both physics and mathematics must be classed as parts of Wisdom.
The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book XI, Chapter 4, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 590

For if the universe is of the nature of a whole, substance is its first part; and if it coheres merely by virtue of serial succession on this view also substance is first, and is succeeded by quality, and then by quantity.
The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book XII, Chapter 1, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 598

…if change proceeds from opposites or from intermediates, and not from all opposites (for the voice is not white (but it does not therefore change to white) but from the contrary there must be something underlying which changes into the contrary state; for the contraries do not change.
The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book XII, Chapter 2, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 598

Since changes are of four kinds – either in respect of the ‘what’ or of the quality or of the quantity or of the place, and change in respect of ‘thisness’ is simple generation and destruction, and change in quantity is increase and diminution.
The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book XII, Chapter 2, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 598

…that which ‘is’ has two senses, we must say that everything changes from that which is potentially to that which is actually, e.g. from potentially white to actually white, and similarly in the case of increase and diminution. Therefore, not only can a thing come to be, incidentally, out of that which is not, but also all things come to be out of that which is, but is potentially, and is not actually.
The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book XII, Chapter 2, Great Books Volume 8,  pg. 598

There are three kinds of substance – that matter, which is a ‘this’ in appearance (for all things that are characterized by contact and not by organic unity are matter and sub stratum, e.g. fire, flesh, head; for these are all matter, and the last matter is the matter of that which is in the full sense substance); the nature, which is a ‘this’ or positive and again, thirdly, the particular substance which is composed of these two, e.g.
The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book XII, Chapter 3, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 599

Yet, if we follow the theologians who generate the world from night, or the natural philosophers who say that ‘all things were together,’ the same impossible result ensues, For how will there be movement, if there is not actually existing cause?
The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book XII, Chapter 6, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 601

If then, there is a constant cycle, something must always remain, acting in the same way. And if there is to be generation and destruction, there must be something else which is always acting in different ways. This must then, act in one way in virtue of itself and in another in virtue of something else – either of a third agent, therefore, or of that first.
The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book XII, Chapter 6, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 602

Those who suppose, as the Pythagoreans and Speusippus do, that supreme beauty and goodness are not present in the beginning, because the beginnings both of plants and of animals are causes, but beauty and completeness are in the effects of these, are wrong in their opinion.
The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book XII, Chapter 7, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 603

The nature of the divine thought involves certain problems; for while thought is held to be the most divine of things observed by us, the question how it must be situated in order to have that character involved difficulties. For if it thinks of nothing what is there here of dignity?
The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book XII, Chapter 9, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 605

And all things are ordered together somehow, but not all alike, - both fishes and fowls and plants; and the world in not such that one thing has nothing to do with another, but they are connected. For all are ordered together to one end…
The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book XII, Chapter 10, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 605

But again there cannot be any contrary that is also essentially a productive or moving principle; for it would be possible for it not to be.
The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book XII, Chapter 10, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 606

… but the world refuses to be governed badly. The rule of many is not good; one ruler let there be.(Ci, Iliad, II.204)
The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book XII, Chapter 10, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 606

VOCABULARY – THE WORKS OF ARISTOTLE: METAPHYSICS

Elegy – a poem of lament and praise for the dead; any poem in elegiac verse. A poem written in a mournfully contemplative tone.

Lucidated, lucidity

Lucid – bright; shining; transparent; sane; clear; readily understood: as a lucid talk

Metaphysicsa

Obeisance
a gesture not only of respect but also of submission

Qua, pg. 589
qua kwä
conjunction
in the capacity of; as being : he's hard to pin down if you get him on entertainment qua entertainment.
ORIGIN Latin, ablative feminine singular of qui ‘who.’

ARISTOTLE - The Works of Aristotle - Physical Treatises: Physics


THE WORKS OF ARISTOTLE:
PHYSICAL TREATISES: PHYSICS


QUOTES FOR DISCUSSION

From biographical note on Aristotle:
He [Plato] is said to have been called by Plato the intellect of the school. There is also a tradition that he taught rhetoric. “The more I am by myself and alone, the fonder I have become of myths.”

Place can be left behind by the thing and is separable… We say that a thing is in the world, in the sense of in place, because it is in the air and the air is in the world; and when we say it is in the air, we do not mean it is in every part of the air, but that it is in the air because of the outer surface of the air which surrounds it;
The Works of Aristotle, Physical Treatises: Physics, Book IV, Chapter 4, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 290

…and if the “now” which is not, but formerly was, must have ceased-to-be at some time, the “nows” too cannot be simultaneous with one another, but the prior “now” must always have ceased-to-be. … If then it did not cease-to-be in the next “now” but in another, it would exist simultaneously with the innumerable “now” between the two – which is impossible.
… if coincidence in time (i.e. being neither prior nor posterior) means to be ‘in one and the same “now”’, then, if both what is before and what is after are in the same ‘now’, things which happened ten thousand years ago would be simultaneous with what has happened to-day, and nothing would be before or after anything else. This may serve as a statement of the difficulties about the attributes of time.
The Works of Aristotle, Physical Treatises: Physics, Book IV, Chapter 10, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 298

But neither does time exist without change for when the state of our own minds does not change at all, or we have not noticed its changing, we do not realize that that has elapsed, any more than those who are fabled to sleep among the heroes in Sardinia do when they are awakened; for the connect the earlier “now” with the later and make them cone, cutting out the interval because of their failure to notice it.
The Works of Aristotle, Physical Treatises: Physics, Book IV, Chapter 11, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 298

We have now discussed time – both time itself and the matters appropriate to the consideration of it.
The Works of Aristotle, Physical Treatises: Physics, Book IV, Chapter 14, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 304

VOCABULARY - ARISTOTLE: PHYSICS
Great Books Volume 8

ERISTICAL, pg. 532
A adjective
1 eristic, eristical
given to disputation for its own sake and often employing specious arguments

ANALOGOUS, PG. 548
analogous
A adjective
1 analogous
corresponding in function but not in evolutionary origin; "the wings of a bee and those of a hummingbird are analogous"
2 analogous, correspondent
similar or correspondent in some respects though otherwise dissimilar; "brains and computers are often considered analogous"; "surimi is marketed as analogous to crabmeat"

CORPOREAL, PG. 588
A adjective
1 corporeal, material
having material or physical form or substance; "that which is created is of necessity corporeal and visible and tangible" - Benjamin Jowett
2 bodily, corporal, corporeal, somatic
affecting or characteristic of the body as opposed to the mind or spirit; "bodily needs"; "a corporal defect"; "corporeal suffering"; "a somatic symptom or somatic illness"

ARISTOPHANES - The Plays of Aristophanes: The Ecclesiazusae


ARISTOPHANES 

  The Plays of Aristophanes:  
THE ECCLESIAZUSAE


QUOTES FOR DISCUSSION



PRAXAGORA: Now do make haste and fasten on your beards, and all you others who have practiced talking.
1st Women: Practiced indeed! Can't every woman talk?
PRAXAGORA: Come, fasten on your beard, and be a man.
Aristophanes, The Plays of Aristophanes: The Ecclesiazusae, Great Books Vol. 5,pg 616

PRAXAGORA (to her)
... ye are to blame for this, Athenian people, Ye draw your wages from the public purse, Yet each man seeks his private gain alone. So, the State reels, like any Aesimus. Still, if ye trust me, ye shall yet be saved. I move now that womankind be asked to rule the State. In your own homes, ye know they are the managers and rule the house.
Aristophanes, The Plays of Aristophanes: The Ecclesiazusae, Great Books Vol. 5, pg 617
PRAXAGORA (ignoring this interruption)
That they are better in their ways than we I’ll soon convince you. First, they dye their wools in boiling tinctures, in the ancient style. You won’t find them, I warrant, in a hurry tying new plans. And would it not have saved the Athenian city had she let alone things that worked well, nor idly sought things new? They roast their barley, sitting, as of old;
They on their heads bear burden, as of old;
They keep their Thesmophoria, as of old;
They bake their honied cheesecakes, as of old;
They victimize their husbands, as of old;
The still secrete their lovers, as of old;
They buy themselves sly dainties, as of old;
They love their wine unwatered, as of old;
They like a woman’s pleasures, as of old;
Then let us, gentlemen, give up to them the helm of State, and not concern ourselves, nor pry, nor question what they mean to do; But let them really govern, knowing this, The statesmane-mothers never will neglect their soldier-sons. And then a soldier’s rations, who will supply as well as she who bare him? For ways and means none can excel a woman. And there’s no fear at all that they’ll be cheated.
Aristophanes, The Plays of Aristophanes: The Ecclesiazusae, Great Books Vol. 5, pg 617

PRAXAGORA: That he's more fit to tinker the constitution than his pots and pans.
Aristophanes, The Plays of Aristophanes: The Ecclesiazusae, Great Books Vol. 5,pg 617

Vocabulary - Aristophanes,
The Plays of Aristophanes: The Ecclesiazusae, Great Books Vol. 5


a·pos·tro·phe (not in text)
n.
The direct address of an absent or imaginary person or of a personified abstraction, especially as a digression in the course of a speech or composition.

a·pos·tro·phize, pg 615
tr. & intr.v. a·pos·tro·phized, a·pos·tro·phiz·ing, a·pos·tro·phiz·es
To address by or speak or write in apostrophe.


Laconian shoes

Kovorodes or xovorodes (? - not sure of spelling - original Greek )
- thin light sandals worn by old men, so called because the foot got covered with dust

aukwvukai or aukwvika (original Greek)
a kind of men’s shoes
tells us that the Laconian shoes were the best. ... These Laconian shoes appear to have been actually made in and imported from Laconia (Aristoph.

A dictionary of Greek and Roman antiquities, Volume 1 By Sir William Smith


sweltered, pg 616
Etymology: Middle English sweltren, frequentative of swelten to die, be overcome by heat, from Old English sweltan to die; akin to Gothic swiltan to die


The complete plays of Aristophanes