Plato in the liabrary

Just finished a little bit reading about Book Ten of Plato's The Republic. There are some thoughts that I have to share.

I will say that reading Plato can always cheer me up when I am depressed. It is like touching truth and wisdom, like standing outside my body and thinking like a floating cloud. The logic underlying the dialogues is like a hand that leads me to a deeper thought about the world.

I was reading a Chinese introcution about The Repulic. There is one sentence claiming that a philosopher's living is the preparation for his death. It sounds pretty terrifying. It seems that we can only get the truth, wisdom and knowledge when we look and think through the soul. The body, on the other hand, is a negative force which is full of desires and tries to prevent us from the truth. Therefore, a competent philosopher should always try to seperate his soul from the body. When people die, or I should say when the body dies, the soul is completely seperated from the body, and therefore people can see the truth clearer. But in this way, how could knowlegde, the real knowledge or should I say the wisdom, be passed on generation by generation. If we can read a die man's thought or if we can talk to them, maybe we can get knowledge more efficiently, isn't it.

Another interesting arguement is about the art, or the representation to be precise. It seems that we don't really see what we saw. That is, we don't see the real thing. What we have seen is merely a form of the real thing. For example, the computer I am using now is not what the conputer is. The real computer is created by God and for some reason God only create one computer. All the computers we can see and use now are made by manufacturers. Different kinds of computers are just different forms of the real one. So I shall ask where is the real one? Does it actually exist, or it is only in the mind of God?

Let the question go first, and think about all the other things around us now. What we can see is not the real instance of the subject. We can only copy and imitate the real one. So is there any difference between a manufacturer who makes computer, an accountant who keeps books and a shoe maker who makes shoes? It seems that we are all the same, the copier!

And when we stay in the schools, having classes, doing assignments and taking examinations. Do we really know what we have learned? Or we just learn about the represetation and try to imitate the knowledge. What is the point of examination then? To see who can best copy the knowledge?? All these arguements remind me about a sentence saying that Learn Only in order to Create. We learn knowledge so that we can make the hill of knowledge higher by creating new stuff based on what we have learned. Isn't that the primary purpose of education? Great, I have just found another excuse for my poor GPA! :)

Plato further pointed out that what painters do is imitating the apperance of the representations. It is kind of even lower than the manufacturer. The painter can draw a portrait without knowing who the person really is and what he has actually done. He just draw it. So painters, without creativity can be worthless. So is poet.

This is all what I have read so far. The book is even beyond fanscinating! Somehow I feel that when I think, alone and quietly, I am becoming a better person. But back to reality, it sucks that I have to worry about so many things, like jobs!