| Archive for literarydiscussions.myfreeforum.org Literature, Poetry, Essays, Dialogues, Philosophy, Theology |
| Sitaram |
Plato's RepublicI have started this thread on Plato's Republic because of the following postmade by a high school student at a forum on Fyodor Dostoevsky in the OFF TOPIC section. http://www.fyodordostoevsky.com/y...ard=5;action=display;threadid=492 I shall be posting a link to MY thread here, http://literarydiscussions.myfreeforum.org/ftopic985.php and at myspace.com in the St. John's Alumni group as well. There are over one hundred books on the Great Books list that are studied during the four years at St. John's. Certain books stand out above others as ones that may possible stay with a reader through the years. I feel that The Republic is one such book. Prospective students may benefit from a discussion of The Republic by graduates, and by current Freshmen at St. John's, as well as anyone else who may have a great interest in one of Plato's most well known dialogues. Since it is difficult to edit posts or add to posts at a myspace group, it is my hope that people might come to this thread and post their thoughts. Should any of the Alumni desire to create a free phpbb forum specific to St. John's, I am happy to help in that, directing them to http://www.myfreeforum.org which is a highly stable and reputable site, expertly administered, to start a phpbb message board. The phpBB message board is menu driven and is easy to master. On screen FLASH tutorials are available, which play like a movie on your monitor, showing you each mouse click necessary to administer, moderate and use a phpBB message board. You know, if enough people wanted to join in, then we could create a virtual St. John's on the Internet, using myspace.com and a message board. Wouldn't it be neat if every St. John's student spent an hour or two a week posting highlights from seminars, opening questions, excerpts from essays, synopses of Friday night guest lectures, profound remarks of Tutors? Such an activity would make the benefits of a St. John's education available to many who cannot attend. A message board could have one forum for each of the Great Books, plus a forum for Sophomore Music, Freshman Lab and the other three years of Lab. Of course, such an activity would only be of value if all participants are serious. A forum full of smileys and sarcasm and gossip or ad hominem will not help anyone. But, you already knew that! I shall post my recollections of my discussions of Plato's Republic at my message board, and then edit it and repost here, periodically. A project like this would also be a great way for alumni to have virtual seminars. I plan to start off by recalling some things that I heard from Jacob Kline. The first one, which I shall never forget, is that the very first word of Plato's Republic is KATABENEIN, which means "I went down [to the Piraeus]". Kline suggested that such a word was very carefully chosen to prefigure the entire motion of The Republic, as a descent into the underworld. |