Unit 13 Beauty

Period one

New Words

unable to walk properly because your leg or foot is injured or weak

lame

to make someone want to do something by making it seem very attractive or interesting to them

Seduce

the quality of being very pleasant or attractive

Enchantment

a member of any of the Christian bodies that separated from the Church of Rome in the 16th century.

Protestant:

regrettable; deplorable; deserving lament or regret

Lamentable:

a strong criticism or condemnation; harsh rebuke or reprimand

censure:

to climb, esp. with difficulty or effort, using the hands and feet.

clamber:

to make ( a book, etc.) shorter, by using fewer words; condense; reduce ( time, extent, scope, etc); restrain, limit

Abridge:

study or science of myths; body or collection of ancient stories.

Mythology:

irritable or complaining, esp. because one is unhappy or worried.

fretful:

to make oneself look tidy by combing one’s hair, etc,

Preen

to agree to give up ownership or possession of sth.; five up a habit voluntarily; abandon reject or stop following sb. or sth.

renounce: (fml.)

sb. that does not follow one of the world's main religions, but follow a less important religion that usu. considered questionable.

Pagan:

to estrange sb

alienate

careful

Wary

seemingly absurd or contradictory, even if actually well-founded

Paradoxical

About Socrates

The philosopher Socrates remains, as he was in his lifetime (469–399 B.C.E.),an mystery, an inscrutable individual who, despite having written nothing, is considered one of the handful of philosophers who forever changed how philosophy itself was to be conceived

. All our information about him is second-hand and most of it vigorously disputed, but his trial and death at the hands of the Athenian democracy is nevertheless the founding myth of the academic discipline of philosophy, and his influence has been felt far beyond philosophy itself, and in every age.

About beauty

Standards of beauty are different in different eras, and in Socrates' time beauty could easily be measured by the standard of the gods, stately, proportionate sculptures of whom had been decorating the Athenian acropolis since about the time Socrates reached the age of thirty.

Good looks and proper bearing were important to a man's political prospects, for beauty and goodness were linked in the popular imagination. The existing sources agree that Socrates was profoundly ugly, resembling a satyr more than a man—and resembling not at all the statues that turned up later in ancient times and now grace Internet sites and the covers of books.

He had wide-set, bulging eyes that darted sideways and enabled him, like a crab, to see not only what was straight ahead, but what was beside him as well; a flat, upturned nose with flaring nostrils; and large fleshy lips like an ass. Socrates let his hair grow long, Spartan-style (even while Athens and Sparta were at war), and went about barefoot and unwashed, carrying a stick and looking arrogant. He didn‘t change his clothes but efficiently wore in the daytime what he covered himself with at night. enemy soldiers kept their distance.

Socrates believed the true self is not the body, but the soul (or psyche). He believed that the appearance of the body is less important than how well it functions. True beauty is inner beauty, beauty of spirit and character. Happiness, like goodness, is a matter of inner qualities. He preferred a good and beautiful soul to a pleasing body that housed a lesser self. Socrates believed the psyche is the essence of happiness. His concept of the psyche was a combination of what we think of as mind and soul. The soul is the conscious self, intellectual and moral personhood.