Although this is quite an old thread, pardon my necromancy, I wanted to recall that almost everything that we know of Socrates was written not by Socrates at all, but by others - Plato Xenophon, others. Can we point to a person and say that is the real Socrates? Such an awareness leaves us with the problem of determining the conscious-level of Plato or Xenophon, and whether their "bright" version of Socrates was equal to the man, bicameral or conscious.
I think we can find that Socrates was very probably bicameral or on that side of it. He heard a voice, and Plato/Xenophon wrote that he was very much a prophet of the Sun-God. Might his charge of heresy have been in part because the waking consciousness of Athenians was trying to distance itself from inner voice-authority? If he had espoused the more conscious topics in a more 'normal' way, would the charge have been leveled at all?
When I see a conversation about the charge of heresy against Socrates, I like to reread Apology (Plato). I remember that the city asked Socrates to come to the trial (Plato again), and the city wanted him to avoid being found guilty of heresy (Plato again); without Plato describing the trial from a more conscious mind, would we read about the city acting 'conscious' at all? If we allow Plato to be bicameral and able to write at length simultaneously, would Apology be just a factual timeline of events rather than text/story?
We read that Socrates felt a person should attend to the city and its laws, and Plato gave several reasons that he felt were relevant as a more conscious author, but if Socrates The Bicameral were indeed bicameral, he would have simply obeyed without all that extra-mentality being discussed. When people dredge up Socrates relating to their modern ideas of freedom and tyranny, they think like a modern conscious mind.
What would Socrates have said about his trial as Socrates The Bicameral?
_________________ Kenneth Pfaff Head Librarian, The Grotto Library
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