On Dec 17, 2008, at 3:02 PM, Chuck Grimes wrote:
> ...Plato's Republic, more or less. You know rich guys on
> top, laying around in the middle of the day, sipping wine, talking big
> ideas, while us slaves are up on hill building the Partheon or the
> nicely finished streets....
I have never read a word of Strauss, but this makes me anything but confident of Chuck's interpretations. The *politeia* not only includes the notion of intellectuals being the *poorest* class in society (not even rich enough to have families...) but is manifestly the first communist, sexually egalitarian, text in all history. If what Chuck wrote is the notion of Plato that he got from Strauss, than Strauss certainly is worthless.
By the way, "slaves...building the Parthenon?" Yeah, and Chartres was built by serfs. The ideas of the *politeia* are expressed by the character Sokrates who, a poor stone-mason in real life, had to have been among the builders of the Pantheon.
Shane Mage
> This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
> always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
> kindling in measures and going out in measures."
>
> Herakleitos of Ephesos