Fourth Form of Madness

I love Socrates and Plato. As a philosophy student I still remember when I first started to explore these writings in an Ancient Greece class I took. I didn’t want to take the class, I thought it was going to be dry and boring. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Their writings on the soul and love and indeed, the “fourth form of madness”, breathed air into my life and beauty into my being. I always used to say, in my then drama queen way to one of my dear friends, that I loved picking up a new book as each time I wasn’t sure whether it would be this book that changed my life! These books changed mine, or at least changed the seat I was viewing life from (as life pretty much stays the same regardless).

There is considerable debate whether Plato and Socrates were the same person, a “writing’s name” for Plato so to speak. My belief is that they were two people, Socrates the exemplarily human being, if you will I guess an enlightened human being, like Buddah, Jesus or Muhammad. Plato was Socrates brilliant and devoted student who wrote down Socrates every word and then in Plato’s later work, expanded on these words with his own.

I love this pure unfettered “pass it on” sharing of knowledge. You see it in a lot of traditions and there is indeed real beauty in it. Knowledge is never owned, it simply has no value when kept to yourself and used to build your self-identity or add to your elusive self esteem (really what are these pshyco based terms anyway?). When shared, as you as it servant, it becomes a living thing, a dynamic beauty, the most glorious art that could never be captured in a painting, music or words. Although these things can take you a good way there, but never quite home. They will always be a paler version of the real thing. Indeed life is only to be found in the living, the real acceptance of living and all it brings, and never on the page or the canvas or a song sheet.