Blog Sabbath

In church this morning, we studied sabbath. I have been on "blog sabbath" for the month of August. My apologies to all my many readers (especially Julie) for not posting a pre-sabbath blog to let you know not to expect anything for a month. However, I didn't actually go on sabbath until halfway through August. :)

Good news, I'm back. I've re-discovered a lot about myself this past month, and I'm sure I'll be hashing many thoughts out here. One such re-discovery is how much I love reading Plato! Being a Philosophy major, I've read and studied a lot of Plato's writings. However, I haven't read Plato at all since college, and I'm not sure I've ever read his writings for pure pleasure. This past week, Diane has started reading The Republic through a site that gives you a daily chunk of the book by email. She said the passage she was reading reminded her of me, and as she started reading some of it out loud, I realized how much I enjoy the "Socratic Method" that Plato employs. In much of Plato's writings, the main character, Socrates, is a wise old man whom young students come to for answers to hard questions. Often they are trying to define hard words such as knowledge, love, or justice. The Socratic Method is where the student asks Socrates a question (what is the meaning of Justice?) to which Socrates provides an answer (that the student always agrees with), only to completely refute the answer by asking the student a series of logical questions. Here is an example from Plato's Republic.

Tell me, do you think there is such a thing as a function of a horse?
I do.
And would you define the function of a horse or of anything else as that which one can do only with it or best with it?
I don't understand.
Let me put it this way: is it possible to see with anything other than eyes?
Certainly not.
Or to hear with anything other than ears?
No.
Then, we are right to say that seeing and hearing are the function of eyes and ears?
Of course.
What about this?
Could you use a dagger or a carving knife or lots of other things in pruning a vine?
Of course.
But wouldn't you do a finer job with a pruning knife, designed for the purpose than with anything else?
You would.
Then shall we take pruning to be its function?
Yes.
Now, I think you'll understand what I was asking earlier when I asked whether the function of each thing is what it alone can do or what it does better than anything else.

This is an example of the Socratic Method. Socrates is the character asking all the questions and posing all the answers. The fun part is that he's about to ask the unwise character to agree with the function of something (justice) only to ask another question that makes the function of justice something completely different! For some, this is confusing and a waste of time. But for me, it's like climbing a mountain: once you get to the top, there's nothing to do but go back down again...but it's not the destination that gives the journey meaning, but the journey itself.