/lit/ - Literature

>>16111299
>>16096209
You guys should have read this >>16103561
I gave you the answer.

>Plato holds an opposite character. He is happy to be an entirely willless figure, to give over to his opponents the central column of Greek philosophy to which he will only decorate with paint or weave with ribbons. This is a true understanding of art, it is an antiphon quality that runs through the history of Greek art like the chasm which gave birth to the universe.

But I'll try and explain this better.

Plato's method is rather something of a reverse of the dialectic as we understand it, he does not intend to represent or repeat, nor even perfect his own ideas within the political arens, as if this were an individualist philosophy. His intention is to recreate the very form of the Greek understanding of eternal ideas through the conflict of Socrates and the other philosophers. This is the form of the dialectic, those who take part are not the subjects, they are simply wanderers attempting to catch a glimpse of the eternal laws which give rise to the forms. He often writes himself, or Socrates, out of the picture as in the Diotima lines or the famous "All I know is that I know nothing." This is Socratic humility, which may be set against Kantian humility.

In relation to ritual art, it is the weaving of ribbons around the maypole which gives it a natural sense of life and movement, the winding wheel of fate which downcasts even the strongest and grinds them into that which is greater than death. This is not a matter of revealing, which is difficult for us moderns to understand, but of apprehending, of transition to another world.

Or in other words, if we must understand the method in political terms then the Form is equal to that of the pomerium: the territory in which divine law rules, the autochthonous boundaries of the original city against the territory which it merely gains and holds. This boundary must be understood as the upholding of the city's oath: in the case of Rome the warring of brothers raised by wolves, and in Athens the accepting of Athena's gift of an olive tree rather than Poseidon's horses. All of the events of a city's history unfold as if by this law of fate, there is a certainty of movement and beauty which increases the sense that the city is in keeping with eternal laws, what will persist beyond any era. In other words, the laws are in keeping with time and even though separate from nature the city appears as if formed by its laws. It is no mistake that both Rome and Athens fall in a manner completely in keeping with their founding oath, as if it had been torn out from the stones beneath.