Knowing

In which our hero no doubt will butcher many great thoughts by many thinkers far his superiors as well as his own half baked contemplations......

I realize I have been about as regular about blogging as the Cubs have been about winning baseball games, I seldom have ideas that form themselves completely enough to put into words, and even less often do I have time to commend them to type.

Nonetheless, as I sit here, likely trapped by a cataclysmic *cough*typicalmidwest*cough* snowstorm, I find myself with necessary homework defeated and time before bed. I heard tell there was a ball game on tonight but I am not a Pathawks fan. Therefore I will strive with the dual demons of procrastination and consternation to blog, hopefully for your reading pleasure.



I have just finished reading the "Republic" by Plato. I must confess to knowing much of the content before hand, having had many a prolonged and Whimmish conversation on the material. The reading itself brought me a much stronger appreciation for the essence of the text. As well, I have been aided in the reading with the guidance of a wizened teacher who is quite adamant that he is no professor of philosophy, such a thing being, frankly, impossible.

In Plato's other writings, Socrates insists that the only thing he knows is that he knows nothing. This is a powerful statement, and defines the Socratic method of philosophy. One cannot have thesis, or antithesis, only hypothesis. Everything is a shadow of greater things. The cave, often misinterpreted in modern education as an allegory about perceptions, is all about knowledge. The life of the philosopher is to be the discovery of shapes each more startling than the last, and light sources each more striking and blinding. But at the end of the allegory,  Socrates points out that the Sun, the ultimate source of light for humanity, is still not the root source of light.

The light, which is both itself and a symbol of truth or goodness, has some other source, and philosophy then is to delve and contemplate the attributes of this source. Socrates, however, has bad news for all of us knowledge seekers: there is no finding this source. Knowledge of anything, is immortal, and like our understanding of dimensions, nothing mortal can grasp that which is immortal.

Socrates does have more to say about knowledge, however. Socrates knows the things of the flesh. He knows of erotic things, desires, hungers, fears. These things he knows. Men are intimately acquainted with the knowledge of the flesh.

It is for this reason then that he establishes all of his regimes under precepts which restrain the flesh, all of which, he says, are doomed to failure and can never succeed. He describes a healthy city, full of just men who mind their own labors and don't meddle in the labors of others, and immediately the young man say it is a boring city, without relish or comfort. They want lavishness, luxuries, and extravagances. They want the feverish city, doomed to self slavery, oligarchy, democratic license,  and finally tyranny. No amount of Music, Gymnastic, Culture, or Mathematics can prevent this slow death of the city by humanity. Socrates could not give the young men a logical reason for why they should be just. He finishes his narrative with a myth about Hades, in which Odysseus says he would rather live the life of a quiet just man. Socrates doesn't have their answer, there is no answer to their question.

Men know, they know their impulses, and more importantly, we know that we are dying. We know we shouldn't, we aren't made for it. We fight it, we strive all our lives for immortality, whether in our children, our work, or in our sciences. We seek after a life that will outlast this feeble frame that could not know anything other than the desires which we so often let rule it.

But I know this, I know that my Redeemer lives.

Man cannot grasp the immortal, he cannot reach it in his mortal weakness, but the Immortal reached down and joined humanity. He bound Himself to our desire ridden flesh, but was not subject to it.

This is the knowledge that brings immortality. There are no Socratic Christian Philosophers, because you can't start with the question 'what is justice?' when you confess the Sacrificed King. When the demands of justice were fulfilled by the only Man who has ever done His duty, and not that of any other man. For just as doctors are to be consulted for sicknesses, only the Son of God, and Him crucified could redeem His fallen world.

Christ is Risen, and there is no other knowledge, of things above the earth or things under the earth, by which men are saved.

I hope you enjoyed reading my rambles. Thanks for making it to the end.