I had such a light bulb moment in class today. I think it was pretty late in coming, but I
finally realized the correlations Plato and Socrates have to normal, everyday
life from Judeo-Christian standpoint.
This whole time we’ve been studying them, I’ve had the thought process
of studying like history: outdated ideas that cannot (or rather, should not) be
used in practice today, more learning from the mistaken ideas of the past. After all, many of the books we’ve studied
have been that way; but today was the first day I realized what I personally
can glean from Plato. It’s not a sacrilegious
thing to have Socratic thought. Many of
the aspects in Plato’s Utopia are of course wrong, but there’s so, so much that
can be applied today, not just to our world, but to my individual life. Once again, I think this realization was a
little slow in coming, I’m sure I should have had it since the beginning of the
semester, but I’ve had a sort of bias against putting philosophy into work. However, it can certainly affect my entire
view of the world, the soul, and myself.
It’s very different, and very fascinating.
P.S. Commented on Michelle's "The Myth of Ur"
P.S. Commented on Michelle's "The Myth of Ur"
I definitely get your point here, and agree with you completely. So often we learn things of the past (whether myth or not) and think nothing could be applicable still today. It's exactly like how some people view the Bible, out dated, so it couldn't possibly help us in what we're going through today. That's of course, obviously wrong. Everything that happen in the past can be something we experience now and help us deal with the situation. Love those light bulb moments.
ReplyDeleteTheology has to interact with philosophy. There's no escaping it. American Presbyterian J. Greshem Machen wrote in his 1923 work Christianity and Liberalism,
ReplyDelete"The logical confirmation of the belief in God is a vital concern to the Christian; at this point as at many others religion and philosophy are connected in the most intimate possible way. True religion can make no peace with a false philosophy, and more than with a science that is falsely so-called; a thing cannot possibly be true in religion and false in philosophy or science. All methods of arriving at truth, if they be valid methods, will arrive at a harmonious result."
Men like Francis Schaeffer would tell you the same thing: if Christianity's true, then there's nothing to be afraid of, because truth is always true. Those men have been good Virgils in my descent through philosophy.