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ELPENOR EDITIONS IN PRINT

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Publication 12 By Zeron on Sunday, August 26, 2001 at 15:26   
Location: Unavailable   Registered: Sunday, August 26, 2001  Posts: 1    Search for other posts by Zeron Search   Quote
I am a Korean. 27. I like Latin that is one of the ancient languages. Teach me. I want to be learned by members and talk about wisdom and philosophy.

Publication 13 By absent-minded on Sunday, August 26, 2001 at 15:29   
Location: Greece   Registered: Friday, June 29, 2001  Posts: -166    Search for other posts by absent-minded Search   Quote
Dear Zeron,

You are very welcome to write about the philosophical issues you are interested in, and maybe some members or visitors will talk with you. Ellopos is not a school. Through our editorials and all the study material that we publish, we offer views on various cultural aspects, including philosophy and religion, but we don't have students, classes and lessons. In any case, you can talk about wisdom without becoming wise - if we accept that wisdom is different from scientific knowledge or information (general or specific information). In other words, what you seem to ask can not be taught! Start asking, start thinking, and you will find the answers. In this way, and only in this way, texts or people can be very useful, and almost everything will become a teacher for you.

Publication 181 By apprentice on Saturday, October 27, 2001 at 13:13   
Location: Australia   Registered: Saturday, October 27, 2001  Posts: 4    Search for other posts by apprentice Search   Quote
I am delighted to see that other people have shared thoughts on the topic that I am so much interested in.

"absent-minded" has made a very good point. Wisdom is definitely not something you can be taught. If I could relate wisdom to playing chess. The rules can easily be learnt or taught, but does that make you a chess player? I mean you know how to play chess, but can you be classified as a chess player? To be a chess player, it takes certain skills and there is no limit to them. The only way to improve your chess is by playing. The same applies to wisdom. To acquire wisdom you may well have the means (such as books and people), but until you start to think about what you read and hear, you will never increase your wisdom. Human brain is just like any muscle in the body. In order to increase its ability (wisdom), you have to train it regularly. The perfect training for it is real thinking. And that my friend is something that no one else can do for you.

Publication 182 By absent-minded on Saturday, October 27, 2001 at 20:10   
Location: Greece   Registered: Friday, June 29, 2001  Posts: -166    Search for other posts by absent-minded Search   Quote
Chess has a purpose, whether the game itself, fighting with a specific opponent, or victory, or something else. Thinking also has to have a purpose, even if this purpose may change during the game. It has also some conditions. In philosophy this is called, I think, "theory of knowledge", which in our days tends to be transformed by some fellows into a theory of knowledge as a biology of the brain, a kind of new stupidity in the form of a quasi-philosophical racism, that tries to see, what kind of a body would make a ping pong champion!
There is not only what I want, (which is equally necessary - you can't wake up one morning saying "today I will become wise"), but also what I can, or rather, what is possible.
I don't think that Plato was crazy about education - at least not in the sense of education as an infusion of knowledge. The art of giving birth, the Socratic irony, is just to help someone realize what he knows. This way, education is just teaching good reasoning, while offering to people that don't have equal or better exercise the results of that reasoning on a specific topic along with the process of reasoning or not, it is, for Plato, politics, not education - like letting a chess computer show you the next move.
A real student must, at last, leave Socrates in his peace and go on without him. This is what Plato did, for example. Maybe the main point in Plato's attack to the books, is not so much that written word is against memory, but that a dialogue must never stop, whether with or without books - which means: you don't really know anything completely ever but you must study it continuously, something like Zeno's space paradox, with the difference that the rabbit runs not to reach the finish, whether first or last, but just to go deeper, to submerge in the infinity.
Another of Plato's good points is that the answer to a problem, temporary, but also an answer, must be revealed in the mind like a lightning, which presupposes a passionate nature - you must really want it. But the lightning metaphor has also another dimension. If Plato is right, the limits, at least in this metaphor, are not defined by what you can not answer or by what you can not even ask, but by the very answer or the absence of an answer. This particular limit reveals the answer as something transcendental in relation with reasoning, as something that is not the output of reasoning, although reasoning has something to do with it. In a single word, this is usually called with a rather misunderstood word, i.e. inspiration. If this word can indeed be used in Plato's metaphor, then inspiration needs a lot of work - you have to become a big tree in order for the lightning to strike you.
Putting it all together - reasoning, education, inspiration, dialogue - we see that Plato is the end (in the sense of completion) of a period of thinking that started with Homer and includes philosophy, poetry and religion. Aristotle is already a scholastic, or, in better terms, with him thinking becomes the observation of a memory, dialogue is something that happens only in the past and between concepts, with the very persons as concepts. Aristotle studies Everything, because even limits have become a memory to be observed, without inspiration - without even surprise. However, Aristotle just followed some of the paths that the previous period of philosophy had opened - what was really lost, was the unity between poetry, philosophy and religion, it all became philosophical, or rather, scientific.

Publication 183 By apprentice on Sunday, October 28, 2001 at 09:45   
Location: Australia   Registered: Saturday, October 27, 2001  Posts: 4    Search for other posts by apprentice Search   Quote
I must admit I have never read much of the Greek philosopher's writings. It seems to me that these days they are almost considered assumed knowledge. I have bumped into some of their writings, however I found them rather difficult to understand and follow. Could you kindly guide me on some of the easier to follow writings, so that I can get a feel for their work. If you could, perhaps recommend sites or books.
Thanks

Publication 185 By absent-minded on Tuesday, October 30, 2001 at 01:30   
Location: Greece   Registered: Friday, June 29, 2001  Posts: -166    Search for other posts by absent-minded Search   Quote
Hi. An answer to your questions waits for you on a new thread : Knowing Plato

Publication 458 By noota on Wednesday, May 14, 2003 at 04:36   
Location: Japan   Registered: Thursday, April 17, 2003  Posts: 44    Search for other posts by noota Search   Quote
Hello ,everyone here

Talking about "Wisdom", I'm now taking Bible lesson every week, though I'm not a Christian and have no faith . But I have a lot of things important to learn on my life through Proverbs. The book of Proverbs is a collection of moral and religious teachings in the form of sayings and proverbs. So it is a very "Wisdom", isn't it?

Here is a good example of it. > do not walk in the way of evil.Avoid it, do not travel on it; turn away from it and pass on. -- Proverbs 4:14-15
Anyway we could get the key to cope with hardship. Wisdom has a good different categories.

Publication 459 By absent-minded on Wednesday, May 14, 2003 at 12:44   
Location: Greece   Registered: Friday, June 29, 2001  Posts: -166    Search for other posts by absent-minded Search   Quote
Hi Noota. I hope you'd like to listen to my opinion on what you write. I don't know who is giving these Bible lessons, but I think the first thing they should have told you is, that the foundation of Christianity, the crucial point beyond which nothing matters, is resurrection - not any moral commands or advices, nor any other knowledge or wisdom. Apostle Paul in his First Epistle to Corinthians (15.14), writes that "if Christ is not raised, then, indeed, vain also is our preaching, and vain also your faith".

Hence, you don't have many things to learn - to be accurate, you don't have any thing to learn - if you won't believe in resurrection, which, of course, doesn't need many lessons, not even one lesson. You just listen to it and you believe it or not. After this, there are more things to know, if God wills, but only after this. If you won't believe in Resurrection, be sure you have nothing at all to learn from christian faith and literature.

Publication 571 By wonga on Friday, December 12, 2003 at 03:47   
Location: Australia   Registered: Friday, December 12, 2003  Posts: 3    Search for other posts by wonga Search   Quote
Wisdom well what can you say? It can only be earnt and only by those who deserve it. It is one of the most special creations a person can obtain and must be cherished by one as one would themselves. So don't hurry it let it come and enjoy it when it does!

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ELPENOR EDITIONS IN PRINT
The Original Greek New Testament

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