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Plato
Studies (Commentaries):
The Symposium
Here
is a link to a scholarly journal article
on Plato's Symposium by Robert R. Wellman (my dissertation
advisor.) The file is very long (1.33 MB), so don't click on it unless
you have a high-speed connection or are willing to wait awhile for it
to load. However, if you would like to read an excellent
commentary on one of the most central themes of Plato's Dialectic,
using the "functional interpetation" of Plato, this is very good. In
fact, this line of Plato scholarship has not been followed by many, so
this article is a rare glimpse into one of the most important
forerunners of DEPTH Dialogue. This means it has deep insight into what
really drives true deep Socratic dialogue.
To view this file, click here (1.33 MB, PDF format.)
(The
followingcommentary from me is brief for now, while I continue to work
on more practical aspects of DEPTH Dialogue. There will be a more
detailed commentary sometime in
the future.)
Plato's Symposium
is where he talks about the "Ladder
Of Love." That means the Socratic way of refining erotic love. This
is a central part of the practice of the Dialectic (DEPTH Dialogue.)
In the past it has been taken to be some kind of mystical fancy. In the
Symposium it sounds fanciful or mystical, depending on what you are
inclined to believe. It is neither.
As noted in the commentary on the Alcibiades
Major erotic love is transformed through experiential
truth-centeredness (sophrosyne
in the classical Greek of Plato.) The Ladder Of Love shows specific
steps in that transformation. Through the application of experiential
truth-centeredness to passionate erotic love the passion is harnessed
as an energy that awakens and activates consciousness to more and more
radiant levels of love, until you reach the level of pure radiant love.
The ladder of ascent is not sublimation but de-objectivization. You go
from associating love with objects that you desire to have or to have
union with for pleasure, to the ultimate experience of pure beauty
where there is no object at all but just pure blissful love-radiance.
This process gives us a concrete and practical way to accomplish the emotional
transcendence that is one of the key
factors in the ancient Socratic wisdom of self-realization. It is the
practical way to find the "trump card of the emotions" that ends all
emotional turmoil and suffering.
There are keys to the practice of the deep inner Socratic dialogue
(Dialectic, DEPTH Dialogue) throughout Plato's Dialogues, as if they
were codes waiting to be deciphered. This is one of the biggest and
most important of those codes.
To continue, return
to Commentaries or Plato
Studies.
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