Teresa is in Professor Vance’s philosophy class again. As a result of the ridiculous syllabus, and partly due to her own developing interests, she has stayed on top of her readings. The first year works through her texts, ravaged by the desire to know. Squirming around within the confines of her seat, vapors of curiosity begin to rise. The girl in the purple dress finally raises her hand for some sort of release. As she formulates her question there is a rush of energy which rises from within. Oh pleasures of the mind! The river of thought pushes through stagnant mental plating, a geyser which cannot be contained.
“Yes, Teresa.”
“What might Plato say about psychics?” She is breathing heavy now, the attention of the class crashing over her in a Heisenberg tug-of-war.
“You mean reading minds?”
The words fly out of her: “I mean...all of it. If the world of our senses is an illusion, hiding the eternal forms, then we know everything already. Plato says knowledge is an act of remembering, so, really, I could know what you’re thinking right now.” Her heart is racing; perspiration.
A few kids look around nervously.
“It was said that Plato’s mentor, Socrates, was advised by an oracle -- a psychic, by today’s standards. I think such a view is compatible with Plato’s writings. It is ironic, Teresa, that the oracle would tell Socrates he was the smartest man in the world because he realized that he did not know anything at all.”
Teresa bites her lip, confused.
Dr. Vance continues, occasionally looking around to the rest of the class. “In a sense there is the only one thing to know: it’s all an illusion. Socrates brought the eternal back through the fog of the human experience with the path of his questioning. This is the power of the dialectic. It is movement home.”
Teresa laughs, starting to get it. “So essentially the purpose of paying all that money to come here is to learn that I don’t know anything at all.”
“Should one realize this fully, it is my belief that we would behold them as the Philosopher King, or Queen.”
No comments:
Post a Comment