Dear Franz and Jutta,

I have not checked my e-mail, but feel to write to you now. Jutta, I still would like to know your essay, the sub-topics, and comment on it. We had started off very well, in my view, as well as it is possible spontaneously on the computer, without having much time to think! - I bought two books, and am reading them alternately: the "rororo monograph" of Jean P. Sartre, and Plato’s selected writings, of the dtv-Edition, series "Philosophie jetzt!", with an introductory essay by Peter Sloterdijk. I wrote a letter to Vijay about that, and repeat the main points from Sloterdijk’s remarks here.

1. Plato’s Academy became a model for European "schools", and kept in business for 916 years! A long time. Plato’s ideas, the "platonische Patristik" (!), laid the foundation of which the idealist mainstream philosophy of Europe was just a succession, "seemingly emerging from one single source". Plato’s influence (this is too mild a word) persisted over the next two thousand and more years, and even crossed cultural barriers; starting from the Romans, the other important ones were the Arabs, and then, the Germans. What had even more far-reaching consequences was the incorporation of Platonic Ideas into Christianity. Even tendencies of secularization of Christian Theology are still under the influence of Plato.

2. Plato’s works are the founding documents of the entire idealist European philosophy. They are a model for a way of writing, of teaching, and a way of life. His message: The human being can understand the world and penetrate it by logical thinking. (I say here: by the human spirit, which is from God, from the realm of pure ideas, which we have forgotten when we are born, but which we can re-remember - says Plato). This is also in accordance with Sloterdijk’s analysis.

3. Only the revolutions of the 19th and 20th century, (culturally) uprooted Plato’s Ideas:
- Schopenhauer’s metaphysics of a "blind will" of the world;
- Nietzsche’s perspectivism and fictionalism (whatever that means....);
- Materialist Evolutionism in the natural and social sciences;
- the newer Chaos Theories.

4. Platonism is a "religion of thinking". It even was compared to Shamanism, - it could be looked upon as a modernization of it in his time - that has out-of-body-experiences and soul travel as an element. With Plato then, the soul travels into the realm of pure ideas, into a logicalised heaven; the ascend of thinking is a trip that has concepts as a vehicle. It propagates an ethics of conscious living. ... There is a connection between personal wisdom and public order, which got lost at times, but still, peace of mind is a philosophical question by Plato.

Here is a freely translated citation of Sloterdijk:

"It was through philosophy that the indirect world power of school - which still keeps on ruling and confusing us today - began to impose itself on to the developing urban societies and their ideas of what education should be (!), as a moulding process of human beings, for a latently imperial world, or one that had already become manifest."

... Was it all Plato’s ideas? - No. The coming-up of a new risky and power laden world was the condition for such a philosophy to develop: urban cultures and imperial states, which created the necessity to train and condition the young in a new way, so that they fit into the city and the state, leaving behind their tribal and family traditions, and replace them with broader humanity: big, bigger, biggest. The soul (understood our way, as a term of common language), was to expand continuously, according to the ever enlarging concept of "GOD", of which the soul was an image.

5. We are able now to give up the idea of a "highest good" (but I say, we are not giving up the idea of God itself in this society). Having done away with metaphysical inhibitions, technological pragmatism and limitless experimenting are able to take place. On one hand, this has been a liberation, but psychologically, it has also been a destabilization. These two are intertwined, and this creates an ambivalent experience of ever-increasing power and simultaneous loss of inner safety: no firm base to stand on, but being able to do anything without ethical inhibitions except a few (I say that last bit, and add: this perspective of the one in power has the following as a counterpart: For the ones without power, there is no firm base of a belief to stand on anymore, just like it is for the ruling class, and their increasing power creates an uprootedness in the material realm for those without power, too - they have literally nothing to hold on to anymore.)

Sloterdijk continues: fundamentalism may be a result of this. I add: for those who do not follow any fundamentalist belief like e.g. Islam, there is a total moral disintegration (wrong term, find no other at present). I am thinking about the Venezuelan workers. Don’t they display just that? They, unconsciously, see what the ones in power are doing, including foreign powers. It seems o.k., economic and political success prove that it is o.k., and has no consequences of punishment by God. So why should they, the ones who are so poor, not try to get for themselves what they need and want? Don’t they just follow an example that s given to them by the ones in power? But, I say, they must be also schizophrenic to pray to the catholic deities, confess their sins, and, at the same time, be criminals.  It might feel for them, as if God, the Virgin Mary, the police of Venezuela, the government, are all like parents, who threaten to punish but do not follow it through. Maybe that is the mindset: they can take the chances of doing bad, and the more bad they do without consequences, the less likely in their eyes does the punishment come, most likely never.  ....

I do not agree with anything Plato says, of course. But maybe it was a good thing, at his time, and maybe we would be better off if his ethical ideas were still followed by the ruling class, who knows? It would have to apply to everybody, of course: women, slaves, and younger ones.
If an ethical liberation really took place, as Sloterdijk says, then I say, that this liberation just freed the way for limitless exploitation of humans and of nature, and it was not replaced with anything else of an ethical quality. (For example the native Indians of North America see the earth and its beings as sacred, one cannot take from the earth and kill without real need, i.e. what is needed for survival. The total depletion of natural resources by the whites, in native view, is a sin. And it has consequences. ... A truly human society also would have to establish something like that - an ethics, that represents our relationship with nature.)

Well, maybe you do not agree and call me a humanist reformist, as Vijay does. But I have another argument. Without ethics towards nature, being concerned only with us "humans", is equivalent to the attempt of overcoming capitalism the way the Eastern Block Countries did, ending up destroying nature even more than the Western Countries. This shows, that something basic was lacking, apart from the fact, that they actually did not overcome the system of economic exploitation. At least, the basic things were guaranteed (DDR), for humans. So why didn’t their relationship with nature improve at least a bit, too, but deteriorate instead (in comparison with the West)?
If there is ever another system, it would have to learn from people like the North American Indians. We would have to understand the whole, possibly the universe.

Finishing Sloterdijk: He says that the change that occurred 2500 years ago, around the introduction of platonic "Patristik", and the change that is happening now, is equally severe. - No, he says, "might be equally severe". (I do not know. If he is right, then human history failed to take the left turn, and it will go into devastation.)
Why read Plato?: To get new information out of these old schools. And to update our intelligence, "with Plato, and also despite Plato". (I like the "despite").

Finally: Plato is the one who created the equation: good = beautiful = healthy = true.

I wrote the recapitulation of Sloterdijk to Vijay. I think she might be interested in that. You know we read Plato together. I also read about Sartre at the moment. I want to know what he represents in Existential Philosophy. To me, it is something that goes into another direction than previous philosophy, and is more down-to-earth, and potentially for everybody, not just for philosophers who sit in universities. I agree very much with Gene Gendlin, who says "go and talk to people about philosophy! It will get those in the universities all upset, because ordinary people are not supposed to talk philosophy, it is something for studied people only, in their eyes. So let them get upset! That is all right!"

My thesis is this: when one puts Focusing Philosophy into the context of human history, it could indeed represent a turn-around of the system. It has many parallels with you, Franz, and with some elements of Buddhism, which is a "religion" with No God ("no religion"). Franz, we briefly talked about this. What I mean here is Zen Buddhism, as it is taught in the West by someone who is appointed by the Dalai Lama. I say this here, so that you, Jutta, do not think I have become crazy! I have 4 tapes by this Zen teacher, taped from the focusing summer school; they invited him because of the many parallels to focusing. The main points, that make these three ways of thinking and being point to another direction than patriarchy, are the following:

-doing away with the split of body and mind
-saying that the truth is always nothing less than the whole
- total rejection of any form of hierarchy and power (over something):
   of judgement of people into good and bad
   of a split within the self due to such judgement
   of rating of anything over another (spirit, nature)
   of thinking in black and white ...
- doing away with the notion of an independent spirit in us, which we could put into the
   service of knowing about things instead, realizing, what are the factors that determine
   our knowledge (Existentialism)
- having a value system that puts peace in the first place (ZEN)
- valuing the body as a source of wisdom, including something like the "not yet known"
  (focusing), only in relationship with the mind, of course
- overcoming patriarchal logics, the most difficult task (Franz)
- putting all this together (me!)

What do you think? - I still look out for the concept of space in Plato and Sartre (for now) and later, in Heidegger, and generally would like to exchange thoughts with you two.

For now,
I say good-bye and best wishes and love,
Gisela.

(continued)