LFVE - "Plato"

PLATON 

1) LOGIC ("dogmatic") 

2) PHYSICS ("toiler") 

3) WILL ("bourgeois") 

4) EMOTION ("gawker") 

I think there is no need to explain to the reader who Plato was. Therefore, let us proceed at once to the analysis of his order of functions, at the same time highlighting with his help some dark places in the biography of the famous philosopher. 

The dark places begin with the interpretation of his nickname, Plato ("Wide"). Opinions on this matter have varied widely. But now, on the basis of Plato's 2nd Physics, we can say with certainty that those who explained the nickname by the wide construction of the philosopher's body were right. As it has already been said, the 2nd Physique is stocky, dense, short-necked, rounded, broad-breasted, and if there are people with such appearance among the reader's acquaintances, it will not be difficult for him to mentally reconstruct, approximately of course, Plato's appearance. An additional argument in favor of the version about the 2nd Philosopher's Physics can be the fact that, being engaged in sports in his youth, Plato achieved the greatest successes exactly in wrestling and even, according to rumors, once won first place in this discipline at the Isthmian Games. Very possibly. The 2nd Physique is by nature itself adapted to the sport, since the shortened legs below the average lower the wrestler's center of gravity and thus make their owner undefeatable. 

Plato's 2nd Physics is indicated, among other things, by his gigantic capacity for work and restlessness. By "restlessness" of the philosopher should be understood not so much the references to his numerous trips abroad, mostly legendary, as his restlessness in the literal sense of the word - he taught his philosophy on the go, strolling through the alleys of the garden of the Academy he founded. The wicked Greek comediographers liked to quip about the new, Platonic manner of teaching and put into the mouths of the philosopher's students confessions such as the following: 

"You've come just in time. I'm already exhausted: 

I walk back and forth, following Plato, 

I wiped my feet, but I didn't make anything up." 

After Plato's death, the tradition of restless philosophizing was continued by his disciple, Aristotle, for which his school was called the Peripatetic ("strolling") school. 

* * * 

Plato's 1st Logic is also not to be doubted. His belief in the possibility of a rational explanation of everything and everything, which reaches the point of absurdity, is clear evidence of this. There is nothing reprehensible in the very attempts to create a universal, applicable to every case, speculative concept - this is the task of philosophy as such. A different thing is that Plato's 1st Logic operated in this field hatchetically, with an obvious violence against the sense of life, experience, and without regard for real life, which led to the creation of utopian chimeras like his State, which makes the Gulag look like a sanatorium by comparison. The same 1st Logic of Plato is clearly indicated by his cosmogony, in which the first, fundamental place is occupied by the world of pure ideas, comprehensible only by the mind, the rest of the world - only a poor, corrupted derivative of it. 

Biographers love to clean up Plato's image by claiming that he was supposedly apolitical on the grounds that he refused to participate in the tyranny of the 30s. In fact, however, Plato was by nature, by the 3rd Will, a highly politicized man, and to be convinced of this it is sufficient to look at his most capital works such as The State and The Laws. The biography of the philosopher also clearly shows the invalidity of the thesis about his apolitical nature. The adventurous trips to Syracuse with the aim of changing the existing order of things, of what standing alone. Another thing is that, like any holder of the 3rd Will, Plato was not confident in his right to power, in his ability to subjugate people, so he preferred not to shape politics, but to influence it. According to one of his biographers, Plato had little interest in "any political events, wherever they took place, he was attracted only by the possibility of influencing the corrupt autocrat in the hope of having a beneficial effect on the entire Sicilian public. 

Of course, Plato tried to influence the Sicilian tyrants not with the power of his wounded, eternally fluctuating 3rd Will, but with the power of a superabundant, paranoid 1st Logic, which in itself is evidence of psychological blindness, naivety, short-sightedness and, strange as it may seem, a small mind of the philosopher. In Sicily, among other things, he tried to realize the crazy project of his "State", and Plato was lucky that the Syracuse tyrant was too stupid (or too clever), did not listen to the philosophical arguments and did not give land for a unique political experiment. 

Contemporaries describe Plato as a man shy, extremely reserved in his youth and unsociable and gloomy in his old age. Such a portrait looks quite plausible if we take into account Plato's order of functions, i.e. the mental type, in which the 3rd Will is combined with the 4th Emotion. The diseased 3rd Will, by weakness not restraining the freedom of manifestation of feelings, nevertheless tries not to demonstrate them especially, and paints the emotions in sickly, darkish tones. It is not without reason that a playwright contemporary of Plato wrote: 

"Ah, Plato, Plato, 

For you're the only one who knows how to sulk. 

And bend your eyebrows, snail-like." 

"Grumpy," after all, seems too harsh a word for the usual "Plato" type facial expression. 

It would be better to call it "emphatically serious, businesslike," which, combined with an energetic gait, carrying, like a cannonball, a short, dense body, produces, when viewed from the outside, a sometimes strong, if not frightening, impression. 

* * * 

The type of "Plato" is rare among the human race, and even rarer are its representatives included in the universal or, at the very least, local pantheon. The fate of the "Platon" is a behind-the-scenes role, the role of an advisor, a referent, a secretary to a figure, though not more significant in mental qualities, but more noticeable. And this role of a "gray cardinal" usually suits him fine (Alexander Yakovlev under Gorbachev). 

To make the portrait of "Plato" a little more voluminous, I will add that among literary characters this type is more accurately conveyed by Odysseus and Hercule Poirot. If the reader bothers to recall these literary heroes, the image of "Plato" will acquire additional colors, missed here. 

* * * 

The appearance of the "Platon" is usually unattractive: a low, dense figure. The gaze is floating, irritated, often tilted inward, without luster. Clothes are kind, neat, clean, but standard. Emphasis is markedly seekful toward those above him on the social ladder. He has a keen interest in everyday life, housekeeping, and tirelessness in his work. Gestures and facial expressions are free, but not to say expressive, the vocabulary often slips into harsh, low and even foul language.