[MD] Boromir's Journey

[Matt Kundert]

Ron said:
Platos glorification of the abstract, the best patterns, 
those of virtue and wisdom and their benefits in leading 
a happier life, were taken quite literally when 
re-introduced into Roman Christian culture.

Matt:
Pierre Hadot, in his What Is Ancient Philosophy?, blames 
the infection of Greek spiritual exercises with 
over-theoreticization--becoming too literal--on Christianity, 
too, but I resist the idea.  It seems Platonic to me, not 
specifically anything in Hebraic culture.

Ron said:
Sometimes Matt, I get the feeling Jesus was invented, at 
least the mythos of Jesus, the Platonic ideal of the perfect 
form steeped in the cult of Dionysus. Comfort is fine, and 
usefull but when mixed with the conflagation of mythos as 
literal,....trouble.

Matt:
Yeah...I don't think I like putting the point as "mythos 
becoming literal": it doesn't sound very useful to me.  
The literal/metaphorical distinction doesn't seem to be 
put to good use here.   I function fine with a literal rock, 
and seeing it as a rock is part of the mythos.  The 
problem isn't with literal truths, which are just 
non-ambiguous sentences (no matter that we cannot 
fully eliminate ambiguity from any particular sentence), 
the problem is with the idea that the ideas the sentences 
express are unalterable, or a certain class of them are 
(God's Ideas, Nature's Ideas, Logic's Ideas, whatever).

For instance, you're on the right trail about the Greek 
creators of our axioms--arche, the Greek word typically 
translated as "first principle," can also be translated in 
less elevated language as "beginning" or "starting point."  
I don't think the problem is easily stated as that we began 
to understand arche more literally--what's a metaphorical 
starting point, when I literally started with the principle I 
stated--but rather that these starting points were taken to 
be written in the stars, limning reality.

Biblical scholarship, since the 19th century, has delineated 
the problem of distinguishing between, as the slogan goes, 
the Historical Jesus and the Cosmic Christ.

Matt
 		 	   		  
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