imho
Regarding Socrates, his limitations were the concepts around him, and it seems he worked at breaking out of those limitations.
Plato, saw mathematics and geometry as the ultimate, and made his whole worldview subject to it.
………………I am saying that Awareness, Deep Nature, present living examples of how “DNA” works, where there is a base “stemcell” form out of which grow all diversity, and to then take that diversity and try to formulate the base from it is backwards upside down thinking.
Plato – Rather than a republic led by a philosopher king, who would assume they know how to make common folks life better (Mr. T. being a poor elitist example), A republic would need to be led by a commoner, who understands the needs and wishes of the masses.
- Originally, it seems that the visible world pointed philosophers minds to an unseen world where the perfect “models” were supposed to exist. The visible examples of those perfect models were what we see, and we could deduce that there were perfect models existing somewhere, from which the imperfect samples we see spring from. Their take on mathematics and geometry was that all the visible world was imperfect examples of the true unseen models.
In my estimation, the natural things we see are perfect in that they also display the “Systems” ability to grow to individuality.
– Humans have the urge to pigeonhole, so they define things very narrowly and diss anything that doesn’t fit. That is a human instinct, although I am not quite sure where it comes from.
In Aristotle’s point of view, the idea of “vice” included, for example, a lack of courage, but also included over-reaction, so his definition of vice seems to be about appropriateness or inappropriateness. To act with virtue in his viewpoint, would be to act with courage and prudence, to find an appropriate response to a situation.
Reality is Dharma 