(August 23, 2021 at 9:50 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote:(August 19, 2021 at 4:09 pm)vulcanlogician Wrote: The absurdist position breaks down when you have no need of it though. When you have reasons to live that are meaningful to you, no need to see life as absurd. Then we can (and should) have a Platonic disposition.
And the Platonic position breaks apart upon when scrutinized without veils rationalization. No need to see life in within the framework of any Grand Narrative to give the illusion of meaning. :-)
Perhaps there is a natural vacillation between feelings of nihilism and significance. It seems that the great men and women of faith had doubts at least as deep.
Any human being who engages in deep thought (religious or otherwise) is going to acknowledge such vacillation.
As for Plato breaking apart... I mean, yeah. I get what you mean. But I ultimately disagree. The world of forms... his model of the soul... it doesn't survive scrutiny. Especially modern scrutiny. But I don't think those ideas were ever meant to "hold up" as a Grand Narrative.
Above the entryway to Plato's Academy stood a sign: "Let no man ignorant of geometry pass through these gates."
We want to imagine Plato as some musty old thinker with antiquated ideas, but Plato was actually an opponent of antiquated ideas. Look at modern science.
Modern science acknowledges that mathematics is the language by which we understand the universe. Plato totally understood that.
The standard model and the four fundamental forces (another gift of modern science). These are immutable principles in nature. You don't discover these principles IN nature (as you would a rock formation or something). You discover these principles by understanding nature. By applying permanent "forms" upon what you get from natural observation. Science is just as involved in discovering "forms" as Plato was. Plato was just the first to really devote energy to the endeavour. He was clunky, got a lot of things wrong. And (what further obscures his philosophy) he is now seen through the lens of Neoplatonism. As if he "declared" his ideas as doctrines, like the Neoplatonists did. Plato did nothing of the sort.
Plato was searching for the truth. He was conducting an investigation into reality. His theory of forms was meant as an idea to be debated. That is, he put his theory out there to be criticized-- not accepted on his word. Plato was a student of Socrates. He knew better than to be a dogmatist.
When you see how much of modern science assumes Plato, he seems much less antiquated and more of a visionary.
