[MD] Greek stuff

[Matt Kundert]

Gareth said:
*The first is the Sophist route of pandering to the 
audience's assumptions (otherwise called "communicating").

*Is the above "ironic"?

Matt:
Yes.  Since Plato denounces the Sophists for pandering to 
their audience, Stanley Fish reconstrues the difference 
between Sophist and Platonist along the lines of their 
presentational orientation to their audience's assumptions.  
And communication only occurs if you and your audience 
agree on enough stuff, share enough assumptions.

Gareth said:
I see a trend to an increasing consolidation [from Socrates 
to Plato to Aristotle to Alexander the Great] of power or 
the attempt to rule others, both politically and intellectually. 
I do not hold Socrates responsible because we have no 
reliable account of his views.

Matt:
I've never run into anybody that quite makes that much out 
of that sequence.

And I think it's pretty pessimistic to say that we have "no 
reliable account" of Socrates' views.  We have 
material--more than for Jesus--and scholars have done 
decent work over the last 400 years in coming to whatever 
consensus they've been able to manage, which is that we 
know enough about Socrates to say a few likely things 
about him.

Matt
 		 	   		  
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