Posted by Babycakes on August 15, 19100 at 20:47:54:

In Reply to: To S.P. Swilley (Socrates) and BC (Plato) re form and context in art.... posted by Yours Truly on August 15, 19100 at 09:54:32:

Yours Truly wrote:
: As for the Platonic idea of Form, think of Paris and Hemingway’s “Paris.” Can one really conceive the one without an idea of the other?

Babycakes replies, [I may be mistaken here, but you apparently feel that you really cannot separate the "ideal" Paris from the "particular" Paris Hemingway created.
Of course, our friend L. Swilley may argue that it was Hemingway who created an ideal Paris, and that the "real" Paris is only a particular.
I would prefer to say that there may be an ideal Paris, that Hemingway's is a little less "ideal" and that the actual brick and mortar Paris is perhaps the most real but least ideal. L. Swilley and I disagree on the "degree" to which one may incorporate the milieu and the additional knowledge of the author while interpreting a work. My contention is that even using a dictionary, which Swilley agrees to, is really opening up the floodgates to using the exterior, the milieu (sic) because a dictionary is, by definition, based on the meanings of words of a culture based on time and location, precisely the items Swilley rejects. But it really is only a matter of intensity. I open the gates earlier than he does, that is all. BC

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• My "rashly" opening the dictionary L Swilley 22:27:36 8/15/100 (0)

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