Reading for my reread of The Secret History and Socrates I love you?

"Now there is a danger in the contemplation of the nature of things, as there is a danger in looking at the sun during an eclipse, unless the precaution is taken of looking only at the image reflected in the water, or in a glass. 'I was afraid,' says Socrates, 'that I might injure the eye of the soul. I thought that I had better return to the old and safe method of ideas. Though I do not mean to say that he who contemplates existence through the medium of ideas sees only through a glass darkly, any more than he who contemplates actual effects."

ECLIPSE 2024 LETSGOOO

A week and change ago, I would've said the Socratic method was a method of continually asking questions about another's position to draw out the details and to clarify what they meant and highlight any flaws or contradictions. I'd still say that today but I've learned that Socrates does not use the Socratic method. More like he makes his point and then asks, "Is this not so?" and then the person he's talking to says yes or no.

Anyway, definitely found the first three the most interesting. They were more focused on the nature of virtue, ethics and justice and went interesting places. Definitely disagree with his conclusions in Crito but interesting discussion nonetheless.

The last two (Meno and Phaedo) were harder to follow and less interesting to me because they got more metaphysical. The logic may or may not have been sound but at some point when they're discussing Bigness and Smallness I lose track and start wondering, "What the heck are you on about?" But in Phaedo especially, when the discussion turned to Socrates' (or Plato's) view of the afterlife or the nature of the world it did get more interesting to me because it was an odd combination of familiar and very unfamiliar. Like Socrates thinking that just as there is land below the sea, there may just as well be land above the sky that treats the air as water and the ether as air (and perhaps lands above that). Or describing the afterlife as involving reincarnation and some kind of purgation of the faults from the soul.

I'm no scholar of either, but the way Socrates describes reincarnation does remind me of Buddhism and makes me wonder at a connection. Or perhaps there's something in the human condition that leads to that outlook. Anyway, getting way outside my bailiwick here.