Plato's Good

Plato's Form of the Good is a little vague it seems. If anyone has insight on this, I would love to hear it. The Good seems to unify the other forms, and to be a part of them. Well, I can only interpret another man by my own personal experience of course.

At the moment Love seems like the Form of the Good. Or Beauty. But Love and Beauty are almost inseparable. What we love is beautiful and what we find beautiful we love.

Love transcends or is simply other than any of the concepts it lights up. We experience a fusion of emotion and concept, but this emotion must be conceptualized for us to speak/write of it. In face-to-face discourse we experience one another as fusions of emotion and concept. But the book can't give us this. No book can give us this. We can read about all the Forms, even the Form of the Good, but the Form of the Good, if indeed it is Love/Beauty is not and cannot be contained by concept alone. The letter kills. The spirit gives life.

It seemed real hip once to play the pragmatist and the relativist. And indeed, sophistry is ...well, sophisticated. Or it is in contrast to the unconsidered opinions of the non-philosopher, by which I mean those who aren't even interested in truths that are not practical. I currently propose that sophistry isn't so impressive after all when considered next to the strong points of a philosopher like Plato.

I did everything backwards, and maybe this was good. I was immersed in the acid of Nietzsche and the rest, all that cash-value pragmatism...This is great. It allows one to look a Plato with suspicion. His theory of Forms isn't perfect. He offers strange views (to me) on the afterlife, etc. Are there forms of mud and hair? Sure they're are! Of course. Or I couldn't have asked that question. Forms are just concepts. Yes, they are beautiful but this is only because of Love or the Form of the Good.

Concept is already the Form of Forms. If we really think what "concept" means, we have something great here. In my opinion, we just take it all for granted. We can't find our glasses anywhere precisely because we are wearing them. If we look at words like concept, abstraction, essence, it's all right there. But are we interested in this? It's not necessary really, but there is an eros toward clarity. The TLP is a manifestation of this. I always loved Witt for his austerity. I understood it. The minimal, the essence, the pure which is also the absolute. Of course! What else? The intellect desires the absolute, the eternal, the root, the equation (unchanging) that describes all flux. This is why calculus is heartbreakingly beautiful in essence. And not in its hyper-complex applications. It's the essence god damn it! And this is why the foundations of arithmetic and logic are so important for philosophy. Anyone can learn a few little symbols, but these symbols are arbitrary. Just as our digits are arbitrary. It's what's behind them that matters. I sincerely feel that we get caught up in complexities, because we like to impress ourselves and others, and neglect to examine what if anything we are standing on.

I go on and on about certain ideas and probably seem silly to many, and yet I see the beauty, simplicity, and obviousness of these ideas. I ask questions with utter sincerity, and perhaps I am misunderstood as playing some sort of game. What is concept? What is number? What are the fundamental building blocks of human thought? Or is there just ONE block. Is there just ONE cornerstone? And have the builders rejected it? Was it so simple that a child could do it? A purloined letter?

Let's say we find this Form of Forms. Does this threaten our beloved concepts? The word "concept" sounds a little cheap perhaps. Maybe we don't want our highest ideas put under the Concept of Concept. But this is to miss the beauty of pure concept. To gaze at pure concept is to gaze at utter perfect simplicity. The ultimate sculpture which is absolutely portable. You can call it Nothingness or Being. But the Form of Forms, pure concept, cannot be named. It can only be inferred. All of its names are temporal. The Form itself is eternal. But wait a minute! Eternal is a just a concept, just a form. So even Eternal is not the perfect word. There can be no perfect final word. The Form of Forms is what all Forms/Concepts have in Common. Their irreducible Core. I am capitalizing because it feels right. This is some beautiful heavy shit in my opinion. Concept, which is only an imperfect name/pointer, exists in its own "realm" (only a metaphor, and metaphors are concepts). Concept just is. And it just is in a way different than the way sensation just is. Sensation and Concept are unified in the mind by Concept but in Life by Love/Beauty/the Non-Form of the Good. Or the Trans-Form of the Good.

The Form of the Good must also be Formless. It unites the discrete and the continuous. Concept and Sensation. And the Trans-Form of the Good is the Living Loving Unity of All. The philosopher knows that all concepts are contingent expressions of the Form of Forms. She or He intuits Pure Form behind all Forms. He or She sees that Form Just Is.

What Hegel added to Plato was this. He saw that Forms were created and destroyed. Not all concepts are eternal. In fact, most of them aren't. Let's go farther. Only the Form of Forms is "Eternal" -- but "Eternal" cannot be the final word. There is no final word. Still, Eternal is pretty damn close. Man is Logos Incarnate. Logos is a system of concepts/Forms. Our speech is the play of Forms. We yakk only in terms of unversals,, essences. A quick check of this confirms it.

But we don't see that our everyday reality is a collision of concept and sensation. We don't see that the objects in our world are only objects because of Form of Concept that Unifies them. Because it happens automatically as far as vision goes and we learn to talk as children. For practical purposes, we know more than enough. We just don't examine it. That's my proposition. A chair is a chair not because the Form of chairness is eternal, but because forms are created and destroyed in the context of sensation and emotion. We can make forms like Chair and Love and Hate in the context of experience. ,The only Form that isn't created or destroyable is the Form of Forms. And words like Being / Essence/ Concept ? Unity are about as close as we can get to this in language. We must intuit behind these words and see that Form Just Is.

I realize this is bold post. I certainly don't want to offend. I see something beautiful here. If I turn out to be crazy..at least I meant well. I don't believe in Wisdom that isn't Joyful. These ideas fill me with love, a sense of beauty. A few months ago I was struck by these ideas in a less polished form, and it lit my life up. Since then I have tried to integrate and refine them. In my opinion, none of these ideas are mine at all. They are thousands of years old. All of them. So it's not about ego. It's about something clicking for me. And maybe it will click for you. I did drop out of negative third grade, of course. & I have only read 2 pages of half a book. Hoping that someone benefits from my Blather, I bid ye farewell......