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Show The Philosopher 51. in their own intrigues and conspiracies and idle gossip; -their political situation is desperate, and economic and social organization likewise: and it only takes the philosophers to LOOK outside their study-rooms, to SEE all this misery... They are only AWARE of all this - and they claim that, had Plato himself been a little less disdainful of the corrup&ed, sinful, wretched multitude, he himself would have grown a bit unrestful about his own sinister indifference:(a thing which, I suggest, many a philosopher and professor of philosophy stands in. need of learning -and 1earning, if need be, even from the mo'st "corrupted" of their students I..) If the Ideal does not descend to the corrupted realitjr, then, at least, those who are haunted by_ the Ideal, and yet who are in the Real., ought to rise, from within their very activities in real life, to levels nearer to the "Ideal". This, indeed, isyhie true meaning of idealism: and any "walaiStic idealism", which teaches us to abandon the stfife to attain the ideal,in waiting for the ideal to take the initiative and reveal or realize itself, is disloyal even to the ideal itself - which has no servants by* we ourselves, no locus but our hearts, and no power but the power which it arouses in us when we are inspired by it. Let us only be LOYAL to the ideal, and let us only CARE to SEE the misery and corruption of the real outside our study-rooms, and we will inevitably feel that we, who combine both awarenesses in our bosoms, are more responsible than anybody else for 'ridging the chasm between both- thru working, from within; our corrupted W social life, in order to make it better and better. |
