plato valentine – 2/14/14

Kind of wrapping up on Plato’s Phaedrus for now:

1. We require madness from the gods to get anything done
2. He points to four kinds of madness:
   1. Prophecy
   2. Justice (This is so smart to me! In order to forgive, to move on from grave wrong – chiefly as the aggrieved but one assumes as perpetrator as well – it takes a super-human leap…)
   3. Art (from the muses)
   4. Love (love and rhetoric – their relationship the main theme of the dialogue)
3. We are paradoxically made – the idea that we are horses of two natures teamed together – the free (divine) and the attached (lustful, base). All action is the temporary consent of opposing natures to get something done; the base at the very least needs to be in the process of turning into the higher.
4. To act profoundly, you must be moving to change (sprouting wings, in visceral detail)
5. A way to change: See beauty. See beauty and be changed (in our work, show beauty)
6. Letters and forgetting – writing is a playful reminder of the real deal; impermanent (69)