de Godots

"Lembrou-se do célebre mito do 'banquete' de Platão: dantes, em tempos muito recuados, os humanos eram hermafroditas e Deus separou-os em duas metades, que, desde então, erram pelo mundo à procura uma da outra. Amar é desejar essa metade perdida de nós próprios. 

Admitamos que assim seja: que cada um de nós tenha algures no mundo um par com o qual constituía em tempos um único corpo. A outra metade de Tomas é a rapariga com quem ele sonhou. Mas nunca ninguém há-de encontrar a outra metade de si próprio. Em vez dela, mandam-lhe uma Tereza dentro de uma cesta ao sabor das águas. Mas o que acontecerá depois, se encontrar realmente a mulher que lhe estava destinada, a outra metade de si próprio? Qual é que deve preferir? A mulher que encontrou numa cesta ou a mulher do mito de Platão?"

Milan Kundera in A Insustentável Leveza do Ser [pag270]

Platão no Matrix

"No interior de uma gruta, uns indivíduos permanecem acorrentados de costas para uma fogueira chamejante. Os reclusos só vêem o movimento das sombras projectadas sobre as paredes da caverna, e essas sombras constituem a sua única realidade. Finalmente, um deles liberta-se da clausura e aventura-se a sair da caverna, rumo ao mundo que se estende para além das hipnóticas projeções. Neste relato há um belíssimo convite à dúvida, à não conformação com as aparências, à quebra das amarras e ao abandono dos preconceitos para olhar para a realidade de frente. A saga cinematográfica Matrix adaptou a mensagem rebelde desta alegoria ao mundo contemporâneo da realidade virtual, da aldeia mediática, dos mundos paralelos da publicidade e do consumismo, dos boatos da Internet e das autobiografias maquilhadas que fabricamos para as redes sociais."

Irene Vallejo, O Infinito num Junco [pag 209]

Plato's Symposium

Plato - Symposium (The Drinking Party) Full Play.

Platão e o Corpo

Participam:
Jonathan Lear, University of Chicago: "Ironic Eros: Notes on a Fantastic Pregnancy"
Gretchen Reydams-Schils, University of Notre Dame: "What Does the Body Have to Do with Becoming Like God in Middle-Platonism?"
David O'Connor, University of Notre Dame: "Ice Cold Feet"

Miss Anna O

"Considering that Breuer is the beloved, but it seems that he was also a lover pregnant in soul. It's clear from the case history that he was impressed with Anna O, as well he should have been. Quote: 'She was markedly intelligent with an astonishingly quick grasp of things and penetrating intuition. She possessed a powerful intellect, she had great poetic and imaginative gifts which were under the control of a sharp and critical common sense, one of her essential character traits was a sympathetic kindness.' Unquote. [...] And if we look back at these pair of lovers with the benefit of hindsight, and if we try to cut through the draws of social pretense, and ask what was ethically significant about their interaction, we see that one person was asking another person for help and the other person was trying to offer help. And everything was going along smoothly in the production of a false theory and a false understanding of their relationship until miss O's unconscious interrupted it. And in effect, her pregnancy (her unconscience) was saying, 'I'm pregnant. I'm giving birth. This is your baby!"
Jonathan Lear



"How does wonder provoke us to put together our bodies and our souls? Something transcendent with something mundane? [...] If Wagner can't stir your anxieties about the relationship between the sensuous and the transcendent, you are stone cold dead. [...] King Marke, the legitimate spouse of Isolde, has been unable, ever, to have sex with her because he respects her too much. He sings this in music of great nobility and control. Which contrasts with the ecstatic eroticism of the music that the true lovers Tristan and Isolde tend to express their love in. Marke loved Isolde too much to become her sexual partner. He had a fantasy (I'm tempted to say) of love that would be undisturbed by the turbulence of erotic desire. I think Plato, too, knew all about this fantasy of philosophy without turbulence.  [...] The fantasy of philosophy without erotic turbulence is enacted over and over again by Plato (it seems to me).A fantasy that he indulges but that he also chases. "
David O'Connor

O que é uma opinião?

Plato distinguished between opinion or common belief (doxa) and certain knowledge, and that’s still a workable distinction today: unlike “1+1=2” or “there are no square circles,” an opinion has a degree of subjectivity and uncertainty to it. But “opinion” ranges from tastes or preferences, through views about questions that concern most people such as prudence or politics, to views grounded in technical expertise, such as legal or scientific opinions. You can’t really argue about the first kind of opinion. I’d be silly to insist that you’re wrong to think strawberry ice cream is better than chocolate. The problem is that sometimes we implicitly seem to take opinions of the second and even the third sort to be unarguable in the way questions of taste are. Perhaps that’s one reason (no doubt there are others) why enthusiastic amateurs think they’re entitled to disagree with climate scientists and immunologists and have their views “respected.”
o resto está aqui.

Aprender a dominar as nossas próprias criações

Maps of Meaning, The Architecture of Belief.

The continuity of identity / Persona / Personhood

Que metodologias podemos usar para, não só, proteger a identidade mas também torná-la excitante e inovadora...

Science is just science, it's a search for knowledge, but design is a process... Design is a practice that goes about solving problems.

You can have a body without a brain, but you can't have a person without a brain.

Perception is an illusion... And then we get back to Plato.

It's very important that we start thinking about our memories.

The major issue is: when can we backup the brain?

The whole issue here is about values, there will be many people who will want to stay biological humans and they ought to have that choice, there will be many people who will want to stay in a trans-human state and that ought to be their choice, and there will be the ones will want to upload and be post-humans and come back and be in a human body...

Solving problems requires a sense of compassion, of empathy, and strong design.

do sagrado e do profano (ainda)

Platão / Jesus

"A nossa é uma cultura de conflito única, produto de duas tradições poderosas e opostas. Outras culturas têm igualmente tradições múltiplas: a China, por exemplo, tem o budismo e o confucionismo. Mas estas tradições habitualmente complementam-se ou ignoram-se. Nenhuma cultura senão a nossa possui duas tradições tão abrangentes e ao mesmo tempo tão opostas. A descoberta grega de um acesso desprendido e espiritual a uma verdade universal e intemporal, contradiz o compromisso hebraico para com um Deus intervencionista e histórico [Jesus]. Um dos lados considera essencial a nossa capacidade de pensar; o outro tem o mesmo apreço pelo nosso sentido do sagrado."
Hubert Dreyfus e Sean Dorrance Kelly, in Um Mundo Iluminado

Carpe Diem / Avestruzes

Joerg Hardtke
O idealista refugia-se num mundo que nega a realidade
que o cerca.
Tenta mudar o mundo através da sua filosofia pré-concebida.
O idealista é incorrigível; se é expulso do seu céu, faz um ideal
do seu inferno.