Originally Posted by
Hexachordia
I do not think most common chinese people really understand their own history and culture. Random chinese will always speak the stereotypical answers to everything as it being the norm for being a chinese anywhere. In depth discussion about religion you can hardly find a willing chinese citizen like me. Although I do not represent the majority of chinese people, but I am not historically groundless. I am as distinctive as in biological traits as well as in my religiosity, so distinctive that I can not sum up in an essay, but in books? I am not that vain. Rather than making a book for fame or distinction, I would rather look for similar predecessors or contemporary like-minds for inspirations. Socrates was one of these.
Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World
Tim Whitmarsh
His dialogue Phaedo, set on Socrates’ last day, argues for a kinship between the soul and the forms. On death, the souls of the virtuous are permanently released from the confines of the body, whereas those that are beholden to bodily pleasures are condemned to reincarnation. These theories depend on a series of parallel oppositions: body/soul, matter/spirit, this world/the next, senses/mind, particulars/forms. Whereas the Socrates of the early Platonic dialogues had thought it his mission to live a virtuous life in this world, the later Socrates puts the emphasis on escaping from it into a pure, transcendent realm of the soul, free from bodily impurity.
Plato laid the ground-rules for Greek philosophy, and his theistic swerve towards the end of his life had a major influence. For the Stoics, the Timaeus’ model of cosmic design was the proof-text. The Christian fathers, too, expended much energy on blending the Platonic and Judaeo-Christian metaphysics and creationism. It is no exaggeration to say that the design-based arguments for the existence of God that proliferate even now were stabilised by Plato. And yet the execution of Socrates for ‘not recognising the gods of the city’ is an integral part of that story of how Plato came to that position. Before Plato’s theism there was Socrates’ playfully subversive humanism: based, to be sure, in a sort of divine revelation, but its ultimate message was that you make your own principles and you live by them.
Socrates`s famous excution was a result of his religious reformation, but according to Plato, he clearly was not an atheist but had created his own principle of life based on daily practices which were not religious , but spiritual and virtuous. Sounds a bit like Buddhism, but however, in a context of his own self-confessed theistic conviction. I am the Socrates of China? China need countless Socrates not just one like me.
From the same essay:
But while Xenophon tries to present him as a regular Athenian, in religious terms, Plato takes the bull by the horns. His Socrates is a pious one–but in a wholly new way, which threatens to subvert the very foundations of conventional Athenian religious sensibility.
This spiritualism can hardly be definitely categorized into any established religious denomination, but each might claim different kind of religious background like Socrates still claimed he confirms he believes in god or gods however he was not acquitted of atheism and sentenced to death. Still Plato confirmed his faithfulness. So from thsi famous case, if some chinese people adopt similar spirituality even by oath Buddhism, they could still be considered as atheists. Our modern people are quick to stereotype and put epithet on people, so I think when comes to serious consideration of matter like religious culture, you can never conclude anyone is atheist simply by his words, untill he swear on the book of Das Kapital or sacred texts. For myself, you can hardly say how religious I am but I can swear upon my heart, I am not an atheist !!
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