“Self-Reliance”, Emerson, Dialogue 6 – D58

There are few things better to do at the MPC than read Emerson in the Jardín Ayau, sitting on the grass and reading it aloud. Instead of doing performing arts, we decided to keep reading Self-Reliance by Emerson. In this dialogue we discussed the things we value, the nature of observation, the scientific ethics, and materialism. The most important quotes we talked about were the followings:

“Yet they (material things) all are his, suitors for his notice, petitioners to his faculties that they will come out and take possession. The picture waits for my verdict: it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claims to praise.”

• Things related to this quote: “value what you value”, nature of observation, Polanyi: “Science has a moral dimension.”. 

“…it (the popular fable of the sot and the duke) symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason, and finds himself a true prince.”

• There are people, like Socrates, who we think of them as “gods”, but we forget they were once humans who have awaken. 

“Who is the Trustee? What is the aboriginal Self, on which universal reliance may be grounded? What is the nature and power of that science-baffling star, without parallax, without calculable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty even into trivial and impure actions, if the least mark of independence appear?”

• Here, Emerson puts in question materialism; something that we are still questioning in the 21^st century. 

Plato’s “Apology” Dialogue 3 – D54

For the Epicycle 1 of this week on Classical Works, we continued reading Apology by Plato. It was very interesting and we discussed important parts of this work. The main questions were, Is Socrates atheist? If not, why and what does he believes? Is virtue a way to improve the soul? In what does he believes to be the ultimate end? Wisdom? Is it doing what’s right? Then, what is to be right? Is it to question and seek for the authentic quest for meaning?

Here are my notes of the dialogue:

Dialogue 3 (3/12/12)

• Of what is Socrates being prosecuted for?
• First charge: of being an atheist.
• Second charge: corrupting the young.

• Euthyphro: what is it that we revere that would be a guide to our action? And how do we know what should be revered?
• Euthyphro has no grounds on what to justify his reverence. That’s the main point of Socrates’ dialogue. 

• What is Socrates doing? (p. 5 - 10)
• Demonstrating Meletus’s contradiction: “He is not an atheist.”
• He is doing the right things.
• Conceit of knowledge
• He is doubting the legitimacy of the procedure, because the people charging him are ignorant at the charges.
• What is God according to Socrates?
• What is to have virtue? To be faithful and true to what they revere. For Socrates is that wisdom, doing the right thing?
• Who has no foundation of the truth, the real atheist?

• Did ever any man believe in horsemanship, and not in horses? or in flute-playing, and not in flute-players?
• He believes in cause and effect. I’m wise enough to realize that I don’t know the cause, and that what differentiates me from you. 

• Demonstrated preferences
• It’s your actions that defines you, not what you claim you do. Foundations of social science.
• Your actions reveal who you really are.
• “There you are mistaken: a man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong - acting the part of a good man or of a bad.”

• Socrates knows that he doesn’t know, that’s his truth.
• The true, the beautiful, and the good.
• If we don’t cultivate the capacity to recognize it, we would not see it.

Morning meeting by Franz – D45

So, yesterday I was watching this TEDTalk about “The transformative powers of classical music” by Benjamin Zander, and I found it great and posted it in the group MPC at UFM. To my surprise, Franz decided to share this TEDTalk and at first I thought he didn’t prepare anything and saw my post on the group, so I was a little disappointed of him, but then, I saw my post and found out he didn’t saw it and that it was a very rare coincidence. Do great minds think alike? Maybe it was just a happy coincidence because it was a great talk. Everybody enjoyed it a lot. By the way, we changed Agora with the Morning meeting because of some sound difficulties.

At 9:30 a.m. we had a dialogue about “Apology” by Plato. We read out loud the first paragraphs and then discussed them, reaching to the conclusion (with a lot of Bert’s interventions, almost as if he dominated the dialogue) that Socrates, in his defense, is not only making the context and structuring his arguments for future refutation of the prosecutors’ arguments, but he is teaching how human mind works. It was a good dialogue for the Epicycle 1 about Classical Works.