Beyond Socrates’ Dia-Logos. Luigi Giannachi

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      so full of slumber was I at the moment,

      but in the escape from barbarism, that it is usual nowadays, I looked back for a moment realizing what I feared, what I was leaving behind,

      to look again upon the step which was never permitted anyone alive.

      I, only then, had the awareness that, if I hadn’t broke step, I would have risk to die: not physical death, but the spiritual one, surely worst and, however, often prior to body’s death. I realized inside myself, at the same time, how important was life. You don’t know it until facing fear and labours are going to become bigger, ‘til you almost have the feelings it gets out of hand, that you can’t control it, but that you can get inside like a tiny little element of nature, like a canoe on the river.

      Some time had now from early morn elapsed, and with those very stars, that in his escort were, the sun was rising, when Love Divine in the beginning moved those beauteous things.

      It was spring when God gave the first movement to sun and stars, it was the right season to start a never done journey.

      The wild beasts that I had to beat not far from where the ascent began weren’t any easier as the Leopard, the Lion and the she-Wolf, if they were transferred in today’s time. They were the fake profit, the petty cunning and the exploitation of media and laws brought to such a vile acts, that I lost the hope I had of winning to the top.

      However, after the poet appeared in front of me in all his splendour, I didn’t dare ask him, for modesty, the question that my curiosity pushed forward into my soul: who was the Hound of the prophecy?

      Until the Hound shall come, and bring her to a painful death, the wild beast alloweth none to pass along her way ... that never doth she sate her greedy lust, but after food is hungrier than before.

      If the beast to slay was already an allegorical character interpretable as the greed (in fact it is never satisfied), who was the Hound able to defeat it? The Poet answered me thus:

      Â«You need to consider that, being a Hound, it is a hunter and has a good sense of smell, like a dog or a greyhound in sum, than consider that it is a faithful friend of man and has an unmatched speed when he is ready for jerk. If you happen to see its action in rapid succession, you will barely glimpse its figure, but know that its work will be recognizable in the more distant future».

      I objected that I would have its name so that I could recognize it, but he said to me:

      Â«Knowing its name won’t help you, maybe you miss what it will do so important for humanity».

      I confessed to him that I didn’t understand anything until then, maybe that was why I had the courage to ask him a question to which it would be impossible to answer in a few words. Yet, from there started the most beautiful journey of my life.

      Â«You who gained wisdom with such a long journey, how do you think the wide and profound science called philosophy has begun?», I dared ask him.

      Â«Be careful to what I’m now saying to you, because no one understood well that open-mindedness which gave life to infinite movements of thought like an explosion of billion of stars in the sky, some identifying the only possible happiness with the vision of God, others conceiving reason with the help of divine light as the only means to reach God, others still entrusting on reason the duty to lead man to happiness, the latter considering the death as the end of soul.

      Yet if philosophy is an expression of one thing, can’t forget its origin from something that goes beyond death, indeed it could be said that it is born from the breath of life, as the sweet sound of the Greek letter phi repeated twice suggests, as a kind of whistle that gives the A (or the F) to the music, like the classical proportion with which Phidias gave harmony to his works, following the golden ratio.

      When man began to replace natural elements with physical realities, that tried to overcome on each other, in the representation of the world, the concept of origin and continuation of life (physis in Greek, natura in Latin) broke into the human mind in all its splendour, giving life to the thousand whys of philosophy. Physis is the origin, the progress, the fulfilment of life, is the vital soul of man and universe. When you pronounce it, you can clearly feel the sound of the universe.

      It may seem strange that man, considering the physical component of his being, has ended up falling in love with his own thought, but there it is, man is circular.

      Embark you now, take the sea to the Ionian coast of Mileto and from there you can continue to Athens, the cradle of democracy and the arts, in the period when Pericles and his circle did culture flourish in the Aegean Sea.»

      

      

      

      

      

      

      

      

      

      

      

      

      

      

       For never yet have I sailed by ship over the wide sea,

      but only to Euboea from Aulis where the Achaeans

      once stayed through much storm when they had gathered a great host from divine Hellas for Troy, the land of fair women.

      Then I crossed over to Chalcis, to the games of wise Amphidamas

      where the sons of the great-hearted hero

      proclaimed and appointed prizes. And there I boast

      that I gained the victory with a song and carried off an handled tripod

      which I dedicated to the Muses of Helicon, in the place where

      they first set me in the way of clear song.

      Such is all my experience of many-pegged ships...

      (Hesiod, Works and Days, 650-660)

      

      

      2. The flow of the mind

      

      

      Sailing had been heavy and constant, even at night, when the stars seemed to drive the ship, driven by gusts of winds, which from time to time made it go ahead with some headway. The waves followed one another at such regular rhythm to induce their eyes to close, as if this natural music enchanted them. The first lights of dawn were appearing.

      Suddenly the wind changed direction and intensity in a twinkling, the ship began to oscillate heavily forward, pitching like a big water bird. The ship’s master, seeing land on the horizon, didn’t think it twice and decided to aim at the island that he saw in the СКАЧАТЬ