RE: Does the head follow the heart in matters of truth?
March 15, 2018 at 8:56 pm
(This post was last modified: March 15, 2018 at 9:02 pm by Amarok.)
(March 15, 2018 at 8:31 pm)vulcanlogician Wrote:I'll grant you the majority of this. But i find this metaphor far to easy to hijack to other conclusions .(March 15, 2018 at 8:03 pm)Tizheruk Wrote: Consider the teenager again . On one hand the horses are tugging him toward his lessons . While the driver in his lust is motivated to his comfortable deception and tugs the reins with all his might . One will lead to success and ultimately true happiness if he listens to the horses . While one will convince him to avoid the truth for the pleasures of sex with often dire results . Likely ending in misery and a lack of real fulfillment . I choose the former . And the results that followed a good career and a loving relationship with two women . Many others i knew choose the later and now they are gone in a haze unemployment , Broken families , Suicide , And drugs .
You agree with Plato more than you disagree with him. You are merely reversing the roles of charioteer and horse.
The reason (I think) that Plato used horses as a metaphor for the emotional and desirous portions of the human psyche is because he recognized that humans are (for the most part) animalistic in nature. We have a few attributes which separate us from the rest of the animal kingdom. One of them is a capacity for logic. Plato's choice makes sense in this regard. Appetite and emotion are traits we share with other members of the animal kingdom, so they are represented by animals. Logic is distinctly human, so its representative in the metaphor is a human being.
If you put an especially profound passage from the Republic on the same page as a picture of boobs, one of the items would draw your attention whether you wanted it to or not. Which item would that be? That's the point that Plato was trying to make.
But the last part i must question. As it assumes that the Republic cannot be as moving as the superficial sight of boobs . For even if your mind is drawn to superical it will not stay there as the promise in it is minimal. Just as the driver will grow tired . The Republic offers more like the field of truth the horses wish to go.
But this is none the less interesting
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