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PLATO, translated by Rowe, C.J. C1986. Phaedrus. 2nd ed.
Wiltshire, England: ARIS & PHILLIPS LTD.
Reader: Mr MD Pienaar
Page numbers refer to page numbers of
the translated book. Paragraph numbers refer maybe to an
original version of Phaedrus.
31 December 2011
Page 1
“ Diogenes Laertius, in his Lives
of the Philosophers, begins his account of Plato in the
following way:
'Plato, an
Athenian, son of Ariston and Perictione – or Potone – who
traced her descent from Solon [the famous lawgiver]. . . As
for Solon, he traced his descent from Neleus and Poseidon. And
they say too that Ariston claimed descent from Codrus, son of
Melanthus [mythical early kings of Athens], who are in their
turn reported as descended from Poseidon, . . . there was a
story in Athens that when Perictione was ripe for marriage
Ariston tried unsuccessfully to rape her, and as he gave up
the attempt experienced a vision of Apollo; from then on he
kept her as a virgin until she gave birth' ”
Apple dictionary
“ Poseidon |pəˈsīdn|
Greek
Mythology
the god of the sea, water, earthquakes, and
horses, son of Cronus and Rhea and brother of Zeus. He is
often depicted with a trident in his hand. Roman equivalent
Neptune
. ”
Page
2
“
'Plato', it was said, was a nickname, deriving from platus,
'broad', which he acquired – according to different accounts
– because of his breadth of his shoulders, his style, or his
forehead; his real name was
Aristocles from his paternal grandfather. ”
Page
2
- 3
“
As a member of a wealthy and distinguished
family . . he would have expected – as the letter confirms –
to enter a career in politics; and we are told that he was
actually invited by 'relatives and acquaintances' among the
Thirty
[tyrants] . . . With the restoration of democracy, he was
turned against doing so by the trial and execution of
Socrates in 399, at the age of seventy, on a charge of
impiety instigated by 'some of those in power' . . The
letter then sums up his feelings at this juncture:
'So
when
I saw this and the kind of men who were active in politics
and the principles on which things were managed, I concluded
that it was difficult to take part in public life and
retains one's integrity, and
this feeling became stronger the more I observed and the
older I became. Nothing could be done without friends and
loyal associates. . . Besides, the corruption of
written law and established custom was proceeding at an
astonishing rate, so that I who began by being full of
enthusiasm for a political career, ended by growing dizzy at
the spectacle of universal confusion. . . but finally I came
to the conclusion that the condition of all existing states
is bad – nothing can cure their constitution but miraculous
reform assisted by good luck – and I was driven to assert,
in praise of true
philosophy, that nothing else can enable one to see what is
right for states and for individuals, and that the troubles
of mankind will never cease until either true and genuine
philosophers attain political power or the rulers of states
by some dispensation become genuine philosophers.' (325 c 5
– 326 b 4*, in Hamilton's Penguin translation).
*The
standard
form of reference to the Platonic corpus, based on
Stephanus' Renaissance edition: the first number indicates
the page of the relevant volume, the letter the section of
the page, and the second number the line of the section. ”
Page
5
“
But Plato is not only, and not even primarily, a political
writer. The 'science of ruling, (or, as he sometimes calls
it, the science of
kingship') is the highest of all
the sciences, because it will include knowledge of what is
really good for us, i.e. justice, and the other virtues. . .
Only philosophical reflection, in his view, will enable us
properly to grasp the good, and realise our nature as moral
beings. This fundamental idea, together with the equally
fundamental model as philosophy as an unflagging search for
the truth, he inherited from Socrates. ”
Self
In
The
Republic Plato wrote that leaders, who he saw as
philosophers may lie to the ruled. Plato did not want to
enter politics because he would not be able to keep his
integrity as a politician. Deceit, in order to rule, he
allowed. He most probably then was not willing to lose his
integrity in other ways, which was of a more severe impact
than deceit.
Page
6
The
book
contains a discussion about love. As in The Symposium. I
commented at The Symposium about the relevance of the word
love at the time. Alexander The Great colonised Israel in
333 BC. At the time love seems to have been a topic of
discussion and interest.
Page
7
“
The Renaissance Platonist Ficino, together with this
Neoplatonist precursors, saw the account of love and its
compelling image of the chariot of the
soul as containing the 'principal mysteries' of the
dialogue, and this is indeed a tempting view, especially for
anyone fresh from reading the Symposium. ”
1
January 2012
Page
41
- 42
[Socrates]: “
Once upon a time, then, there was a boy, or rather a young
lad, and very beautiful he was; and he had a large number of
lovers. And one of them was cunning, because although he was
as much in love as any of them, he had convinced the boy that
he was not in love with him. And once in pressing his claims
he tried to convince him of just this, that one had to grant
favours to the man who was not in love rather than to the man
in love; and he spoke like this: 'In everything, my boy, there
is one starting-point for anyone who is going to deliberate
successfully: he must know what it is he is deliberating
about, or he will inevitably miss everything. Most people are
unaware that they do not know what each thing really is. So
they fail to reach agreement about it at the beginning of
their enquiry, assuming that they know what it is, and having
proceeded on this basis they pay the penalty one would expect:
they agree neither with themselves nor with each other. So let
us, you and I, avoid having happen to us what we find fault
with in others: since the question between you and me is
whether one should rather enter into friendship with lover or
non-lover, let us establish an agreed definition of love,
about what sort of thing it is and what power it possesses,
and look to this as our point of reference while we make our
enquiry whether it brings advantage or harm. Well then, that
love is some sort of desire is clear to everyone; and again we
know that men desire the beautiful even if they are not in
love. By what then shall we distinguish the man in love and
the man who is not? We must next observe that in each of us
there are two kinds of thing which rule and lead us, which we
follow wherever they may lead, the one an inborn desire for
pleasures, another an acquired judgement which aims at the
best. These two things in us are sometimes in accord, but
there are times when they are at variance; and sometimes the
one, at other times the second has control. Now when judgement
leads us by means of reason towards the best and is in
control, its control over us has the name of restraint; when
desire drags us irrationally towards pleasures and rules in
us, its rule is called by the name of excess. Excess is
something which has many names, for it has many limbs and many
forms; and whichever of these forms happens to stand out in
any case, it gives its possessor its own name, which is
neither an admirable one nor worth the acquisition. When it is
in connection with food that desire has achieved control over
both reasoning for the best and the other desires, it is
called gluttony, and will give its possessor this same name;
again, when it has achieved the tyranny in connection with
drink, leading the man who has it in this direction, it is
plain what appellation he will receive; and as for the other
related names, of related desires, we can see already that he
will be called by the appropriate one, whatever desire happens
at any time to be in power. As for the desire for the sake of
which all the foregoing has been said, it is already pretty
evident what one should say; bur everything is perhaps clearer
when said than when unsaid: the irrational desire which has
gained control over judgement which urges a man towards the
right, borne towards pleasure in beauty, and which is
forcefully reinforced by the desires related to it in its
pursuit of bodily beauty, overcoming them in its course, and
takes its name from its very force (rhōmē) – this is called
love (erōs).' ”
Self
Love is explained here as a desire.
The opposing force of deliberation. The explanation starts
with a plan to deceive.
Page 45
After the above explanation Socrates
then goes on to say that a lover is sick and that his sickness
will make him overpower his beloved because he will not want
his beloved stronger. The lover will therefore withhold good
things for example philosophy from the beloved, because
philosophy will make the beloved stronger. That is why a
beloved should rather give favours to a non-lover.
2 Janvier 2012
Page 57
[Socrates]: ' But it is
worthwhile to adduce the point that among the ancients too
those who gave things their names did not regard madness as
shameful or a matter for reproach; otherwise they would not
have connected this very word with the finest of the sciences,
that by which the future is judged, and named it “manic”. No,
they gave it this name thinking madness a fine thing, when it
comes by divine dispensation; whereas people now crudely throw
in the extra t and call it “mantic”. So too when the ancients
gave a name to the investigation which sane men make of the
future by means of birds and the other signs which they use,
they called it “oionoistic”, because its proponents in a
rational way provide insight (nous) and information (historia)
for human thinking (oiēsis); while the modern generation now
call it “oiōnistic”, making it more high-sounding with the
long o. So then the ancients testify to the fact that god-sent
madness is a finer thing than man-made sanity, by the degree
that mantic is a more perfect and more valuable thing than
oionistic, both when name is measured against name, and when
effect is measured against effect. '
Self
See page 5. C.J. Rowe could have had
a different opinion about which science is the most intricate
science, because he refers to “ 'science of ruling' ” as the “
highest of all the sciences ”.
Page 59
[Socrates]: “ All these and still
more are the fine achievements which I am able to relate to
you of madness which comes from the gods. ”
Self
I currently think the interactions
between the two paradigms of honesties and deceits cause
madnesses.
Page 59 - 61
[Socrates]: “
All soul is immortal. For that which is always in movement is
immortal; . . It is in this way, then, that that which moves
itself is first principle of movement. It is not possible for
this either to be destroyed or to come into being, or else the
whole universe and the whole of that which comes to be might
collapse together and come to a halt, and never again have a
source from which things will come to be moved. And since that
which is moved by itself has been shown to be immortal, it
will incur no shame to say that this is the essence and the
definition of soul. For all body which has its source of
motion outside itself is soulless, whereas that which has it
within itself and from itself is ensouled, this being the
nature of soul; and if this is so – that that which moves
itself is nothing other than soul, soul will be necessarily
something which neither comes into being nor dies. About its
immortality, then, enough has been said; about its form we
must say the following. To say what kind of thing it is would
require a long exposition, and one calling for utterly
superhuman powers; to say what it resembles requires a shorter
one, and one within human capacities. So let us speak in the
latter way. Let it then resemble the combined power of a
winged team of horses and their charioteer. Now in the case of
gods, horses and charioteers are all both good and of good
stock; whereas in the case of the rest there is a mixture. In
the first place our driver has charge of a pair; secondly one
of them he finds noble and good, and of similar stock, while
the other is of the opposite stock, and opposite in its
nature; so that the driving in our case is necessarily
difficult and troublesome. How then it is that some living
creatures are called mortal and some immortal, we must now try
to say. All soul has the care of all that is soulless, and
ranges about the whole universe, coming to be now in one form,
now in another. Now when it is perfectly winged, it travels
above the earth and governs the whole cosmos; but the one that
has lost its wings is swept along until it lays hold of
something solid, where it settles down, taking on an earthy
body, which seems to move itself because of the power of the
soul, and the whole is called a living creature, soul and body
fixed together, and acquires the name “mortal”; immortal it is
not, on the basis of any argument which has been reasoned
through, but because we have not seen or adequately conceived
of a god we imagine a kind of immortal living creature which
has both a soul and a body, combined for all time. ”
Self
The distinction between physicality
and meta physicality of God was a problem for them because
sometimes they refer to humans (Plato) who were descended from
gods for example Poseidon. Above Socrates clearly says that “
. . we have not seen or adequately conceived of a god . . ” It
could mean that in his time he has not seen a human as god but
he believed the stories of gods for example that of Poseidon.
This relates to Godthoughts and self.
Page 63
[Socrates]: “
The region above the heavens has never yet been celebrated as
it is like this - for
one must be bold enough to say what is true, especially when
speaking about truth. This region is occupied by being which
really is, which is without colour or shape, intangible,
observable by the steersman of the soul alone, by intellect,
and to which the class of true knowledge relates. . . until
the revolution brings it around in a circle to the same point.
”
Self
The above
explains what Socrates' truth and epistemology was. It is
different from my opinion of knowledge because knowledge must
be something about which humans can agree. Something
observable which can be applied to the benefit of people,
specifically relating to physicality. Maybe a distinction
should be made between knowledge about physicality (science
and fact) and knowledge about meta-physicality (opinion).
Godthoughts are not scientific knowledge, according to me,
because it can only be shared and for each person it will be
different. I guess it also depends on the position a person is
in. When a person for example studies a human sciences course
in which discussion is central to the study Godthoughts could
be seen as knowledge. The understanding that Socrates'
“knowledge” is only his opinion and his truth (See The
Republic where a distinction is made between fact and opinion)
is relevant though. Socrates' opinion does carry more weight
though than most other people's. It seems in his view God is
not physical. His belief can be compared to Judaism and
current main stream Christianity, which propagates belief in a
Messiah and sacrifice of that Messiah, unless he believed
himself to be part of God but did not say it. When a person
belief himself/herself to be part of God that person could be
against sacrifice of God. It seems now to me Socrates was a
communalist , because I have not read somewhere that he
thought himself to be part of God.
Page 74 – 75
A man who seeks a boy to be his
beautiful god could become a homosexual and a boy who accepts
such praises from a “lover” could also become gay.
Self
In The Symposium the last speech is
about how Socrates became the “beloved” and several boys the
“lovers” after Socrates explained to them how he wants to be
there friend in philosophy. The speaker explained how he
wanted to be more than a friend to Socrates but that they
slept next to one another like father and son or two brothers.
That part of Symposium made me think that that is what real
love is. The behaviour between father and son and the
behaviour between two brothers. If that could be the behaviour
between men in general then the world would be a better place.
That could be the message from Socrates because although he
said all the things about desire between a “lover” and a
“beloved” according to Symposium he never acted on it. I
wonder if he had sons of his own. The relationship between
stepfathers and stepsons could be relevant because Socrates
explains how a man can become a tyrant towards a boy with very
mean intentions of the man if the boy does not accept the
opinions of the man.
Page 83
Note in pencil by a previous reader:
A Prayer to love
[Socrates]: “ This, dear god of love,
is offered and paid to you as the finest and best palinode of
which I am capable, especially given that it was forced to use
somewhat poetical language because of Phaedrus. Forgive what
went before and regard this with favour; be kind and gracious
– do not in anger take away or maim the expertise in love
which you gave me, and grant that I be valued still more than
now by the beautiful. If in our earlier speech Phaedrus and I
said anything harsh against you, blame Lysias as the
instigator of the speech, and make him cease from speeches of
that kind, turning him instead, as his brother Polemarchus has
been turned, to philosophy, so that his lover here may no
longer waver as he does now between the two choices, but may
single-mindedly direct his life towards love accompanied by
talk (logoi) of a philosophical kind. ”
Self
The above
could mean that Socrates' “knowledge” was knowledge about
love. “ Opinions ” which was not based on factual sciences for
example engineering. Socrates did however have an opinion
about “ necessity ” as part of the discussion. The homosexual
behaviour was not fully accepted by society as I thought
before. See next.
Page 79
[Socrates]: “ So because he receives
every kind of service, as if equal to the gods, from a lover
who is not pretending but genuinely in love, and because he
naturally feels affection for a man who renders him service,
even if perhaps in the past he has been prejudiced against him
by hearing his schoolfellows or others say that it is shameful
to associate with a lover, and repulses the lover for that
reason, as time goes on he is led both by his age, and by
necessity, to admit him to his company; for it is fated that
evil shall never be friend to evil, nor good fail to be friend
to good. ”
Self
Socrates supports my opinion above
about WE being the only true group.
Page 260
[Phaedrus]: “ What I have heard about
this, my dear Socrates, is that there is no necessity for the
man who intends to be an orator to understand what is really
just, but only what appear so to the majority of those who
will give judgement, and not what is really good or fine but
whatever will appear so; because persuasion comes from that
and not from the truth. ”
Page 97
[So]: “ When someone utters the word
'iron', or 'silver', don't we all have the same thing in mind?
P.: Absolutely.
S.: What about the words 'just' or
'good'? Don't we diverge, and disagree both with each other
and with ourselves?
P.: Certainly.
S.: So in which of the two are we
easier to deceive, and in which does rhetoric have the greater
power?
P.: Clearly in those cases where we
go in different directions. . .
S.: Well then, are we to say that lcve
belongs with the disputed cases or the undisputed ones?
P.: With the disputed, surely;
otherwise, do you think it would have been possible for you to
say what you said about it just now, both that it is harmful
to beloved and lover, and then on the other hand that it is
really the greatest of goods? ”
Self
The above confirms my previous
statement that love was a topic of discussion at the time and
there was not certainty about the word. I know of two words
they used for love. Eros and philo. Eros relates to erotic
love and philo to wisdom. Philosophy means love of wisdom
(sophia). Up to now I have not seen the translator referring
to the word philo. He put 'eros' in brackets after the word
love and used the
translated word 'philosophy' many times.
Apple dictionary (New Oxford American
Dictionary)
Philo
ORIGIN
Middle English : from Old French philosophie, via Latin from Greek philosophia
‘love of
wisdom.’
ORIGIN from Greek philein
‘to love’ or
philos
‘loving.’
Eros
ORIGIN
Latin, from Greek, literally ‘sexual
love.’
Page 101
[So]: We said, didn't we, that love
was a kind of madness? . . And that there were two kinds of
madness, the one caused by sicknesses of a human sort, the
other coming about from divinely caused reversal of our
customary ways of behaving. . .And of the divine kind we
distinguished four parts, belonging to four gods, taking the
madness of the seer as Apollo's inspiration, that of the
mystic rites as Dionysus', poetic madness, for its part, as
the Muses', and the fourth as that belonging to Aphrodite and
Love; the madness of love we said was best, . . ”
Self
Socrates
identify here 5 types of love. Maybe they had 5 words.
Page 111
[So]: “ The method of the science of
medicine is, I suppose, the same as that of the science of
rhetoric.
P.: How is that?
S.: In both it is necessary to
determine the nature of something, in the one the nature of
body, in the other the nature of soul, if you are to proceed
scientifically, and not merely by knack and experience, to
produce health and strength in the one by applying medicines
and diet to it, and to pass on to other whatever virtuous
conviction you wish by applying words (logoi) and practices in
conformance with law and custom. ”
Page 117
[So]: “ For
they say in the law-courts no one cares in the slightest for
the truth about these things, but only for what is convincing;
and this is what is probable, which is what the man who is
going to speak scientifically must pay attention to. For they
go on to say that sometimes one should not even say what was
actually done, if it is improbable, but rather what is
probable, both when accusing and when defending, and whatever
one's purpose when speaking, the probable is what must be
pursued, which means frequently saying goodbye to the truth;
for when this happens throughout one's speech, it gives us the
entire science. ”
26 December 2011
Page 105 par 267:6
[Socrates]: '
. . . And shall we leave Tisias and Gorgias to their sleep,
when they saw that probabilities were to be given precedence
over truths, and when they make small things appear large and
large things small by the power of speech, . . '
Pages 155, 179, 180, 182, 183, 184,
198
The forms of
Plato and Socrates is explained to be non-material perfections
which exist in the mind. Material things are subject to change
and can therefore not be known. Perfect knowledge can only
refer to the forms. The forms in Greek is eidē or eidos. The
sound is very close to that of ideas.
Self
In the philosophy study guides of
UNISA a comparison is made between the materialist
philosophers like Marx who say that we are primarily
influenced by materials and physical things. On the other hand
the idealist philosophers say we primarily influence
materials. To generalise about the direction of influence is
noumenon currently for me. The materialists or communists can
be identified and the idealists or capitalists can be
identified. Probably it works for most people in both
directions with an overpowering direction which has the
biggest influence. Ideas also change because they are replaced
by new ideas. How fast ideas change depends on the quality of
the ideas.
Page 121
[So]: “ Well then, what I heard was
that there was at Naucratis in Egypt one of the ancient gods
of that country, the one to whom the sacred bird they call the
ibis belongs; the divinity's own name was Theuth. The story
was that he was the first to discover number and calculation,
and geometry and astronomy, and also games of draughts and
dice; and, to cap it all, letters. King of all Egypt at that
time was Thamus – all of it, that is, that surrounds the great
city of the upper region which the Greeks call Egyptian
Thebes; Thamus they called Ammon. Theuth came to him and
displayed his technical inventions, saying that they should be
passed on to the rest of the Egyptians; and Thamus asked what
benefit each brought. As Theuth went through them, Thamus
criticized or praised whatever he seemed to getting right or
wrong. The story goes that Thamus expressed many views to
Theuth about each science, both for and against; it would take
a long time to go through them in detail, but when it came to
the subject of letters, Theuth said 'But this study, King
Thamus, will make the Egyptians wiser and improve their
memory; what I have discovered is an elixir of memory and
wisdom.' Thamus replied 'Most scientific Theuth, one man has
the ability to beget the elements of a science, but it belongs
to a different person to be able to judge what measure of harm
and benefit it contains for those who are going to make use of
it; so now you, as the father of letters, have been led by
your affection for them to describe them as having the
opposite of their real effect. For your invention will produce
forgetfulness in the souls of those who have learned it,
through lack of practice at using their memory, as through
reliance on writing they are reminded from outside by alien
marks, not from inside, themselves by themselves: you have
discovered an elixir not of memory but of reminding. To your
students you give an appearance of wisdom, not reality of it;
having heard much, in the absence of teaching, they will
appear to know much when for the most part they know nothing,
and they will be difficult to get along with, because they
have acquired the appearance of wisdom instead of wisdom
itself. . . Well, my friend, those at the sanctuary of Zeus of
Dodona said that words of an oak were the first prophetic
utterances. So the men of those days, because they were not
wise like you moderns, were content because of their
simplicity to listen to oak and rock, provided only that they
said what was true; but for you, Phaedrus, perhaps it makes a
difference who the speaker is and where he comes from: you
don't just consider whether what he says is right or not. ”
Page 208-209
Commentary: “
The content and style of this piece of pseudo-historical
writing immediately call to mind Herodotus' account of Egypt
in Book II of his Histories ; and I believe that that
is the intended effect. The initial choice of Egypt as a
setting might itself have been suggested by Herodotus' remark
(II. 77) that 'of the Egyptians, those who live in the
cultivated part are the most careful of all men in keeping the
memory of the past, and by far the most given to chronicling
(or 'the telling of tales', logiotatoi) of all those I have
questioned'. When it comes to matters relating to memory (274
e 4 ff.), who should know better than the Egyptians? (CF.
Timaeus 20 d ff., where Egyptian records provide a suitable
pedigree for the myth of Atlantis.) True, Herodotus does not
mention a Theuth, though he does talk about the sacred ibis
(Thamus/Thamous/Ammon he calls by what he says is the Egyptian
name Amoun, II. 42). But Theuth probably still has Herodotean
connections of a kind. It is Herodotus' stated view that
'nearly all the gods' names came to Greece from Egypt'
(II.50): thus behind 'Theuth' there is an original (?) Thoth
(so at least the name is transcribed later), the chance of the
vowel sound suggesting Prometheus, who is his Greek
counterpart as inventor of the arts and sciences. (Relevantly,
Thoth is also the scribe of the gods: see E.A. Wallis Budge,
The Egyptian Book of the Dead (London 1895, republished New
York 1967) cxviii-cxix. For Prometheus, cf. Protagoras 320 d
ff., and Philebus 16c ff.; the latter passage again implicitly
connects him with Theuth, who this time becomes something of
an expert in theoretical linguistics.) Amoun, Herodotus says,
is the Egyptian Zeus: a different name, in this case, but the
same god. Of course, such ideas need not necessarily have been
restricted to Herodotus, and much of the authentic detail in
the passage clearly does not come from him. Nonetheless, that
Plato is alluding to (parodying?) him is still in my view a
possible hypothesis.
The net result is a new version of an
old theme, the quarrel between Zeus and Prometheus (for its
original forms, see Hesiod Theogony 535 ff., Works and Days 42
ff.). Had Plato presented it directly as such, he would have
had to use the form of the myth, as Protagoras does in his
Great Speech in the Protagoras (reference above). But
through the device of translating it to Egypt, he is now able
to present it, by way of variation, as if it were history
(though as c 1-3 warns us, no more to be relied upon for
that): Egypt is a place where memories are long enough even to
recall the actual disposition of things in the beginning . . .
(That Zeus should be the real protagonist in the story will be
highly appropriate. The Zeus of the Phaedrus is the patron of
philosophy; Thamus' argument against the use of writing will
soon be the basis of the argument for the rival medium of
conversation as a condition of intellectual progress.) . . The
real Theuth/Thoth seems to have had no connection with
Naucratis. Naucratis was a Greek foundation, and according to
Herodotus the only port of Egypt in ancient times (II. 179):
is Theuth/Prometheus perhaps located there in the story
because of his dual nationality (see previous note)? (I owe
some of the information on which both notes are based to my
colleague Earl McQueen; he is not to blame for the conclusions
I have derived from it.) . . .
'Thamus they call Ammon': the MS
reading τόν θεόν ('while the god they call Ammon') would give
an intelligible sense, since Thamus—who must in any case be
meant—is undoubtedly a god. But it seems to make the reader
work unnecessarily hard, and is even marginally ambiguous,
given that only Theuth has explicitly been identified as a
god: Postgate's τόν Θαμουν looks altogether more convincing,
and can be defended palaeographically (see de Vries).
Apple dictionary
Prometheus |prəˈmēθēəs; -ˌθ(y)oōs| Greek
Mythology
a demigod, one of the Titans, who was worshiped
by craftsmen. When Zeus hid fire from man, Prometheus stole
it by trickery and returned it to earth. As punishment, Zeus
chained him to a rock where an eagle fed each day on his
liver, which grew again each night; he was rescued by
Hercules.
Self
Theuth sounds
like Zeus, therefore it sounds more likely that Theuth or
Promethues who lived in Naucratis, an Egyptian port,
quarrelled with Thamoun, the Egyptian king and with his
father. Theuth also sounds almost like Truth. Helen the wife
of Menelaus was Zeus' daughter. The war of Troy was ascribed
to her and Paris by many.
At Ugarit, an
excavation site and small town by the sea, if I remember
correctly, in Syria it is claimed that the alphabet originated
there. The people there said so when I was travelling there
and they also gave me a little information brochure.
The above
shows that possibly there could be a group attached to Amen
that controlled and maybe still control creativity. It could
also point to a type of group in general. It has relevance to
the remuneration rights of ICrM, because currently similar
circumstances exist. A question is whether a market or persons
control new inventions. One or the other maybe a mistake in
thinking because maybe it should rather be a market and
persons. Should the persons be only buyers and sellers or
should it include other controllers.
Apple Dictionary
Ugarit
|ˈ(y)oōgərit; (y)oōˈgärit|
an
ancient port and Bronze Age trading city in northern Syria.
Its people spoke a Semitic
language
written in a distinctive cuneiform alphabet.
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