Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'teachings' and 'Platonism and the Spiritual Life'

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5 ideas

7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 3. Being / d. Non-being
18933 Not-Being obviously doesn't exist, and the five modes of Being are all impossible [Gorgias, by Diog. Laertius]
     Full Idea: I. Nothing exists. a) Not-Being does not exist. b) Being does not exist as everlasting, as created, as both, as One, or as Many. II. If anything does exist, it is incomprehensible. III. If existence is comprehensible, it is incommunicable.
     From: report of Gorgias (fragments/reports [c.443 BCE], B03) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09
     A reaction: [Also Sextus Empiricus, Against Logicians I.65-] For Part I he works through all the possible modes of being he can think of, and explains why none of them are possible. It is worth remembering that Gorgias loved rhetoric, not philosophy!
19. Language / F. Communication / 1. Rhetoric
5864 Destroy seriousness with laughter, and laughter with seriousness [Gorgias]
     Full Idea: Destroy the seriousness of others with laughter, and their laughter with seriousness.
     From: Gorgias (fragments/reports [c.443 BCE]), quoted by Aristotle - The Art of Rhetoric 1419b
     A reaction: This sounds like brilliant tactical advice, which should be on the wall of every barrister's chambers. This is a case of rhetoric having something to teach us which is nothing at all to do with truth. It is more like learning karate.
9866 Gorgias says rhetoric is the best of arts, because it enslaves without using force [Gorgias, by Plato]
     Full Idea: Gorgias insists that the art of persuasion is superior to all others because it enslaves all the rest, with their own consent, not by force, and is therefore by far the best of all the arts.
     From: report of Gorgias (fragments/reports [c.443 BCE]) by Plato - Philebus 58a
     A reaction: A nice point, and it is not unreasonable to rank the arts in order of their power. To enchant, without achieving agreement, and to speak truth without persuading, are both very fine, but there is something about success that cannot be gainsaid.
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / e. Human nature
23060 The good is not relative, but is rooted in facts about human needs [Santayana]
     Full Idea: The good is by no means relative to opinion, but is rooted in the unconscious and fatal nature of living beings, a nature which predetermines for them the difference between foods and poisons, happiness and misery.
     From: George Santayana (Platonism and the Spiritual Life [1927], p.3), quoted by John Gray - Seven Types of Atheism 6
     A reaction: That is, he concedes that the good is relative to human beings, but that the relevant facts about human beings are not relative. I think he has the correct picture. The key point is that the good is 'rooted' in something, and doesn't just float free.
29. Religion / C. Spiritual Disciplines / 3. Buddhism
7607 Nagarjuna and others pronounced the world of experience to be an illusion [Nagarjuna, by Armstrong,K]
     Full Idea: Many later Buddhists (after Nagarjuna, c.120 CE) developed a belief that everything we experience is an illusion: in the West we would call them idealists.
     From: report of Nagarjuna (teachings [c.120]) by Karen Armstrong - A History of God Ch.3
     A reaction: This is just one step beyond Plato (who at least hung onto the immediate world as an inferior reality), and is presumably intended to motivate meditators to break out of the misery of existence into a higher realm. Personally I am against it.