Sunday, February 28, 2010
Can you understand what you do not know yet?
In class we had a large discussion on why glaucon could not understand dialectics. It seemed to me that the conclusion that he just wasn't smart enough yet wasn't quite what i was looking for. Because i mean do we all not know something? How can we gain any knowledge at all if we first have to understand it to learn it? Is that not part of understanding something? It seems like socrates himself just doesn't understand it's full meaning, so instead of just saying he couldn't define it he just said that Glaucon couldn't.
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Your question of gaining knowledge to understand something seems to explain the whole dilemma of recognizing intellection. How would you know even if you did manage to harness some ultimate truth that it was in fact true without a doubt. There are people who make such claims, we used to call them prophets but now days we just call them homeless crazy people. But I also think that Socrates has remained humble and that he recognizes that what he is describing may be beyond comprehension for anyone.
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