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Maximo Velutti
10/02/2025
Platonic vs. Daoist Dialogue
Platonic (P) Daoist (D)
A devout follower of Plato’s school of thought sits on a city bench, mesmerized by the strength of the autumn sun. Picking at his scab on the back of his hand. Understanding fully the scar that will remain from a simple mistake of hand placement. He rolls the dried skin in his fingers and flicks it at the sidewalk. As he stares at the ground, a shadow of a skinny, freckle covered man sits beside him. The thin man reaches into his leather satchel and removes a booklet. “Zhuangzi” it reads. The Platonic smirks and positions his hands formally, one over the other, then looks straight.
P: “I wish to introduce myself”
D: “…”
P: “My name is Alexander. I see you are reading a Daoist text. I am fascinated by the teachings of such thoughts.”
The Daoist looks at Alexander, and smiles. Shifting himself to face the Platonic
P: “I wish to speak on love and desire, or as I see it, the facets of it. See, we have many, Agape, Eros, Storge, Philia… to name a few. And I wonder, does the separation within them give me the liberty to describe love and desire more accurately? Or does it limit the application of each individually?”
D: “…”
P: “Forgive me, allow me to give some context. You see, the thought of the physical realm, transcends that of the reality in which we reside. As to say, this sun is only as beautiful as the physical world allows it to be. Yet, on a cold winter’s night, I yearn for the strong September sun, for the warmth and glory of it that I have conceived, it is perfect. It encompasses all that the sun should be. Yet what does that leave me? The possible, and in reality, the inevitable disappointment of that September day in which I need the sun the most, and there are clouds. Do you understand?”
D: “. . .”
P: “Maybe I could articulate it better.” Alexander stands and begins to pace back and fourth. Occasionally blocking the sun from the Doaist. He notices each time head this, the Doaist shifts back and forth to catch the rays once more. “ If the material is an inevitable disappointment, and all that which we perceive is a product of such a world. Where can perfection reside? The only thing a man has outside of the physical world is his thoughts! Yet, the fantasy of the sun is only contextualized when faced with the reality of it? Were we doomed from the start? Am I a starved rationalist built to live as an empiricist? Aching to reason with inevitable calamity? An underwhelming reality?”
Alexander stops pacing. The Daoist smiles lightly and closes his eyes as he finally gets an uninterrupted moment of the sun. He looks at Alexander, as the Platonic eyes plead for an answer. The Doaist smiles fades, and he calmly shrugs. Saying nothing.
P: “And if all of this is true, and the World of Ideas is given context only through it’s comparison to reality, then is it the same with love? If the pursuit of beauty and the good is because there is a lack of it, then what happens when there finally becomes a reality of it? Is it subject to the same disappointment as the sun? Will love fail me?
The Daoist eyes widen. He fishes around his satchel and hands Alexander a small glass cube. Containing a beautiful butterfly. The insect propped on a small pin. The pixie dust on the wings refracting the light like a kaleidoscope.
D: “Which am I?”
P: “I- I don’t understand”
D: “A dream . . . of a butterfly. I am unsure if I am awake or not”
P: “I see. Outside of the empirical. Not in the cave, or outside of it. Do you revel in this uncertainty?”
The Doaist doesn’t speak. He shrugs once more.
P: “ But the beauty in the good, in the beautiful. The perfection of a form, a thought, a concept. That is a certainty!”
D: “Is it?”
P: “Well of course! If all that is not the “forms” is imperfect, then the “forms” must be!”
D: “Ought to be.”
P: “Excuse me?”
D: “I was sure as a butterfly, a tongue would let me taste the sweetness of a blossom. I am sure as a man, wings would let me soar and see the land in its beauty. What I am left with, the uncertainty of which I am truly missing. Or am I missing nothing? The sun, should be nothing other than what it is.”
P: “ But you are a man! You lack the wings!”
D: “Maybe so, or I am a butterfly dreaming of taste. You are a man in a world as it is meant to be, dreaming of a world that is not.”
Alexander sits on the sidewalk infront of the Daoist. He leans back on his hands, propping him up to face the bench. The sound of drum brakes hiss behind him as the bus arrives. A few depart, and an elderly woman and her grandson climb the steps.
P: “This is our bus.”
D: “It is yours.”
P: “Are you not waiting for one?”
D: “No, I saw a man on a park bench thinking. Thinking too hard.”
P: “Pfft, I wasn’t thinking that hard” The Doaist smirks. “Are you not curious as to the sense of it all? Do you not ponder the teachings of the Dao?”
D: “No… I try not to”
Alexander stands to hand the Daoist his butterfly. The Daoist stands, bows his head, and leaves. Alexander looks at the butterfly, yet, it has become a small effigy of a man. He looks down the street to call to the Daoist. Only to see a monarch butterfly, lost is a metallic and forced forest.
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