Laws (Book X) - Plato

This concerns only Book X from Plato's 'Laws'.


Book X begins with a discussion of blasphemy laws and how the men of Athens would convince outsiders that they are just.  If the outsiders don't believe in the gods, how could they believe they should be punished for speaking out against them.  This idea, that there must be some 'buy-in' from those judged by the law, is an important one.  The idea that there must be some consent from the governed, to borrow a phrase, is an idea that comes and goes and still can't be reliably counted on.  That Athenian men of nearly 2500 years ago thought it important is a key to understanding why we still read the ancient Greeks.


The first step, they agree, is to prove that the gods, do indeed, exist.  I wasn't very impressed with this effort.  The reasoning works like this:

• Living things have souls.
• Living things move around on their own.
• Things that move around must have souls.
• The greater the moving thing, the greater the soul.
• The sun, moon, planets and stars are the greatest movers, so they must have the greatest souls.

And of course, those souls must be gods.  This sounds utterly bizarre to modern science.  I don't know that it would have been passable even back then.  ("Wait, the wind moves.  Does it have a soul?  What about water boiling in a pot?")  Still, credit should be given for the effort. 


I don't know much about 'Laws' as a full text but I'm curious about it.  Last year I felt like I gained quite a bit by reading all of Plato's 'Republic'.  I don't doubt that 'Laws' would also be of great benefit to read in it's entirety.

Symposium - Plato

The narrative framing for this dialogue is really something else.  The story is told fourth or fifth hand; someone heard someone else telling about this and he heard it from someone.  This allows Plato to generously put words in people's mouths.  Who knows, it may bear some resemblance to an actual event?
In any case, 'Symposium' tells the story of a party.  The party goers partied too hard the night before and don't have a head for strong drink two nights in a row.  Instead, it is decided that they will each speak about 'love'.  They will take turns and go around the table and say something about it.
The speeches are interesting, though not world shaking.  They mostly range from 'love is the source of all good things' to 'some loves are more pure than others'.  My favorite is from Aristophanes (yes, that Aristophanes) where he suggests that in prehistory, all humans were joined together as a pair.  Each pair was split apart and 'love' is a strong desire to return to that earlier paired condition.  He also explains that some number of the pairs included men with men and women with women.
Socrates is the last to go (natch) and he explains that he was taught quite a bit about love by a woman who trained him in the arts of love.  He was primarily taught that love is a thing that, even when a man has it, he wants more of it.  In this, it is different than health or happiness in which people become content.  He also believes that love is a process in which the person perfects themselves as a person and (eventually) through pursuit of philosophy.
After Socrates ends, a latecomer, Alcibiades, enters.  He decides to also speak of love, though his is scorned love.  At an earlier time, he tried to let Socrates seduce him but Socrates didn't do so.  Alcibiades decided to pursue Socrates instead and ended up doing so by trying to become a better man.  This is where we get the term 'Platonic love'.

This work is rightfully praised as a look at what life must have been like in ancient Athens.  We learn a lot about how loving relationships worked, including older men with younger men.  The form here is much less conversational than the other Platonic dialogues I've read and more like an extended scene from a novel.  I enjoyed it quite a bit.

While reading this, I was constantly reminded of one of my favorite books, 'Time Enough For Love' by Robert Heinlein.  That book also features long stretches of people talking to each other about philosophical matters, including 'love'.  Heinlein has his main character, Lazarus Long, divide love into two categories, eros and agape.  He also gives an exact definition of agape love, 'the condition in which someone else's happiness is essential to your own happiness'.
I couldn't help but wonder if Heinlein had read 'Symposium' at some earlier time.

Phaedo - Plato

Socrates was sentenced to death by his fellow Athenians, for various reasons.  On the last day, before his death by poison, Socrates gathered together with friends and talked.  Some of this is covered in 'Crito', which I wrote about here.  I didn't realize that a different part of the discussion was wrote about in 'Phaedo'.  (As always with the works of Plato, we only have Socrates to go on here.  For all I know, there are twenty of these 'last day' dialogues, comprising weeks worth of actual discussion.)



Crito dealt with Socrates feelings toward the law that condemned him.  Phaedo deals with Socrates feelings about his upcoming death.  He isn't wracked with fear like many men would be.  Instead, he welcomes his upcoming death.  His friends don't understand so he tries to explain to them that his soul will finally be freed from his body.  Socrates' belief is that the soul is pure and the body is naturally corrupt.  Death moves the pure soul out of the mortal life that threatens to sully it.
He also believes in reincarnation.  He talks about evil men becoming wolves and lazy men becoming donkeys.  Some human souls will go back into other souls.  In fact, he is very clear that a soul is imprinted with knowledge from the start.  His theory of education is one of 'reawakening' that knowledge.  That knowledge must come from somewhere so therefore the soul must have some prior existence before going into a current body.
Socrates is challenged on this and he gives, to my mind, some very unsatisfactory answers.  He says that everything has a cycle and compares life and death to being awake and being asleep.  There are certainly superficial similarities but the idea that they are exactly comparable is wildly unproven.  I remain unconvinced.
Near the end, Socrates speaks of his understanding of the world, in terms of geography.  It is a ball in space, kept in place by the air around it.  Humans live in the depressions of the earth.  He compares the air around us to the ocean and the ground to the bottom of the sea.  He says that if we could reach up to the top, we could see above the 'surface' and into heaven.
He also speaks of Tartarus, the afterworld and what happens to the souls that are there.  They spend time in a vast sea of mud.  They can't come out until they are forgiven by the souls of those they wronged.  This is an interesting twist on the idea of Hell and eternal punishment.  It gives you incentive not to wrong people in life.  You also have a bias towards forgiveness, as you would want others to forgive you.
'Phaedo' closes with the Socrates drinking the poison.  He walks around until his limbs grow cold and then lays down and dies.  His friends will miss him dearly.  The world will read about him forever.

Upcoming Reads, Plato and Aristotle

So I go and make a big deal about how I'm going off list and what do I start with?  Some of the first selections that I would have started with even if I'd stayed with the list.  Maybe this is my way of disproving free will...
Anyway, it feels right to start off with the big guys, so that's what I'm doing.

I think I'm starting with:
Plato - Phaedo
Plato - Symposium
Aristotle - On the Soul
Aristotle - Categories
Aristotle - Metaphysics (Book VII)

Any advice on these works is appreciated.

Last week I reread the last 100 pages of 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'.  (I recommend the whole book.)  In this portion of the book, the protagonist goes on a search for Quality and tangles with members of the University of Chicago in this search.  This leads him to a deep dive into Plato, Aristotle and the important thinkers that came before them in Greek thought.
One of the points that he makes is that the 'dialectic' is used more as a weapon to prove a point than in its idea sense where it uses rules to keep a discussion on track in search of the truth.  This sticks out all over in Socrates discussions.  He almost never (possibly never), hears something that changes his mind.  Instead, he turns the discussion into syllogism that aids him time and time again.  This makes him frustrating to read but so, so worthwhile.

Plato and Aristotle

For the past ten or eleven weeks I've been steadily reading either Plato, Aristotle or a commentary on the two of them.  (The commentary has been largely this book, 'The Cave and the Light: Plato vs Aristotle' by Arthur Herman, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.)  I've been absolutely steeped in their writings and who/what they've influenced.  This means that I've barely scratched the surface.  The two of them together constitute years of study and I won't pretend that I'm at that level.

But I do have thoughts.

• I've  become accustomed to thinking of Aristotle as the patron saint of text book writers.  He set out to systematically figure out how things work and then pass them on to others.  In the same regard, Plato is the patron saint of op-ed writers and gadflys.  His job is to question how things are done and point out flaws in the structures that others have built.
• They each have enormous roles in the development of western thought.  Through Aristotle we learn the very basic lesson that we can understand the world around us.  We can use our senses and our human faculties to grasp what's happening.  We can sit down and understand the the how and why of the world and use those thoughts to shape our own lives and futures.
• Plato is more mystical but he's also more uncertain.  Or at least he leaves great room for uncertainty.  His greatest gift to the world is the sense that we ought to question everything around us.  I've long said that the Great Books have taught me of the great streak of rebelliousness in Western thought.  That started with Plato.  
• Both of these things are strengths.  Aristotle gave us absolute knowledge and objective facts.  At some point those facts became gospel writ and it was hard for people to question him.  Then the Platonic influence rebounded and the 'gospel' quality receded.  People again sought the same objective facts and we got a scientific revolution.
• Plato's 'Republic' is a landmark book, not for what it gets right but for what it attempts to do.  Aristotle's 'Politics' is a similar landmark, for the opposite reasons.  Today it reads as an utterly conventional book of political theory but it inspired much of our understanding of how government should work.
• The university model was based on the academy that benefited both Aristotle and Plato but it has wandered far off course.  Could such a thing be remade?  Would it still work even if you couldn't prove its utility?  Would an entirely free search for knowledge lead students into areas where they'd be condemned?  (If the last question is answered 'yes', it's an enormous indictment on modern society.)

Every year of the reading list features works from Plato and Aristotle.  It's not hard to understand why.

Theaetetus - Plato

I don't have a lot to say about 'Theaetetus'.  The dialogue is (mostly) between Socrates and a young man named Theaetetus.  Theaetetus is very smart and humble and Socrates treats him with respect and gentleness.  The dialogue is concerned with how we know things.

The biggest thing that I learned was a bit of personal discovery.  Discussions of epistemology make my eyes glaze over.  This may be my problem with Kant, too.  Not sure what it is but I think the problem is is that the theories of knowledge seem incomplete or unconvincing.
This doesn't bode well for the rest of the year, either.  Both Locke and Hume have pieces concerning human understanding.  They're followed up by part of Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason'.  August and September could be long . . .

Questions about Plato's Cave

If you are unfamiliar with Plato's Cave or only vaguely familiar, please read yesterday's post, which has most of the text regarding it.  The entire concept is fascinating and well worth extensive study.

• How reliable a comparison is the suddenly freed person to a philosopher?  A philosopher, in this context, is taking a deep dive into the deep questions of life.  This separates the individual philosopher from the 'go along to get along' everyday person type.  Once they grapple with the deep ideas of ethics and the formation of the state, their life will be altered in such a way that they will be different than those who haven't.  That's obviously true on some level but is it overstated as well?  If you were at a party with various people, could you spot the philosopher?
• Then there is the idea that what we perceive in regular life is the same as flickering shadows from an unknown (to us) source.  Does that imply some other type of existence that is dimly communicating to us?  Are we getting garbled messages from some place else or is the world really what we see it as?  (This was almost certainly Ayn Rand's big beef with Plato.  She fervently believed that reality gave us all the tools we needed to understand the world around us.  The idea that this information was simply leaking to us must have appalled her.)
• Is there some kind of agent at work here?  The prisoners are bound and they see only shadows of puppets(?).  Does this mean that some other party must be . . . moving those puppets?  Or have created them?  Or am I taking the story too far?
• The idea that I find most personally powerful is the idea that we need to give thinkers some time and room while they figure things out.  Criticism should be gentle and understanding.  (This rule is probably suspended if the thinker is too brash and arrogant, of course.)  
• How much should we, the 'prisoner' really trust those outside opinions though?  Just because someone has told us that they have glimpsed an outside world that is closer to the truth, can we really be asked to simply go with that?  That probably depends on what exactly it is that they're telling us and how far from our normal experience they expect us to deviate.  But if the cave analogy is accurate, would we have any real gauge on just how far from normal is problematic?  The freed philosopher has better information than we do, certainly.  But how do you differ between madmen and those that have seen the truth?  (More worrisome, is there a difference?)

The ideas here are incredible but I'm not quite sure what else to do with them.  Think of them, certainly.  Watch for future references and arguments, I suppose.  But I'm not sure what else.  If I'm one of the prisoners, can I ever be in a position to judge?

Plato's Cave

Book 7 of the Republic opens with Socrates description of the 'cave'.  This is perhaps the most famous metaphor in all of philosophy.

Behold! human beings living in a underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show puppets.
And do you see, I said, men passing along the wall carrying all sorts of vessels, and statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone and various materials, which appear over the wall? Some of them are talking, other appear silent.
Like ourselves...they see only their own shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave? ... And of the objects which are be carried in like manner they would only see the shadows? ...  And if they were able to converse with one another, would not suppose they there were naming what was actually before them? ... And suppose further that the prison had an echo which came from the other side, would they not be sure to fancy when one of the passers-by spoke that the voice which they heard came from the passing shadow?
...
To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.  They couldn't know the true world.  Or rather, they could only get 

So everything that the chained humans would see and know would be the distorted images of shadows.  They couldn't know the subtle truths of the real world.  Socrates continues:

And now look again, and see what will naturally follow if the prisoners are released and disabused of their error. At first, when any of them is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round and walk and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will distress him, and he will be unable to realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows; and then conceive some one saying to him, that what what he saw before was an illusion, but that now, when his approaching nearer to being and his eye is turned towards more real existence, he has a clearer vision, -what will be his reply? And you may further imagine that his instructor is pointing to the objects as they pass and requiring him to name them, - will he not be perplexed? Will he not fancy that the shadows which he formerly saw are truer than the objects which are now shown to him?

This is the philosopher.  He is released from the bonds of normal humanity and led into the true light.  It is painful and he is uncertain but he can actually see the Truth.  Socrates goes on to talk about how it would take time for the eyes to adjust and how badly the eyes would work if this person is led back underground.  After spending time in the true sun of philosophy, he would have trouble working in the normal conditions of everyday life, i.e. the cave.
This philosopher would also have a hard time convincing the prisoners of the truth.  They would distrust him and doubt his stories.  They would take his dim vision as proof that he had followed a dangerous path.  And the more radical his stories seemed, the more they would doubt.

The total idea here is enormous.  Instead of risking turning this post into something monstrous, I'm going to split it in two.

Plato's Republic

The assignment for February is only for two books of the Republic, books 6 and 7.  Back in year one, when after reading books 1 and 2, I didn't like how the conversation cuts off in the middle.  This year I decided that I'd go back and start from the beginning.  Kind of get a running start so I'd be ready for the part that is actually assigned.  Observations:

• Socrates is slippery.  There are so many analogies and syllogisms that desperately need to be untied.  After some struggle, I decided to simply let them be and let the whole of the conversation wash over me.  I don't know if that's best or not.
• The Republic is an incredible book.  Socrates decides to work towards a definition of justice by creating a state that is just.  He talks about how people would work, how they would be raised, how they would fight and so on and so on.  He makes a fairly honest attempt to give the state some heft.  Over the centuries, people must have looked at its arguments as they tried to figure out the best way to rule and be ruled.
• He puts women on an equal footing with men, which must have been incredibly controversial at the time.  
• There is just an incredible amount of meat there.  I bet you could read any two pages at random and come up with enough material to argue for and against that you could satisfy any thesis committee.
• As a general rule, Socrates is brilliant when asking questions and profoundly foolish when making statements.  I say this with full acknowledgment that he was much smarter than me.  However he is without the knowledge of the last 2000+ years of human history.
• If I had my druthers, I'd spend about a year going over this with a small group (fewer than ten).  We'd do about four pages a week and we'd argue gloriously.  Then we'd record and publish those arguments so other people could argue over them.

Would I recommend read The Republic?  Yes.  But bring some friends.  And a drink.  You'll need both.

Biography of Plato

I covered the great man about three years ago and you can read it here.  The short story is that we don't really know much about him.

Readings for February

Two things for February.


February
Plato: Republic (books 6-7) link
Plato: Theaetetus link

So, lots of Plato. 

Statesman - Plato

This dialogue starts strangely.  Socrates meets up with a stranger.  Accompanying him is a man named Theaetetus and a young man who is also named Socrates.  Socrates, the usual star of our dialogues, decides to let his younger namesake talk with the Stranger so that he can be taught about statesmen. 
The conversation is wide ranging and covers quite a bit.  The Stranger tells a story of a people that existed before mankind.  This story suggests cycles of time where things start out good and then evil creeps in.  I'm not sure how this ties in with general Greek mythology. 
There are many interesting questions raised, the most interesting was about the legitimacy of general laws. 

Stranger: He [the statesman] will lay down laws in a general form for the majority, roughly meeting the cases of individuals; and some of them he will deliver in writing, and others will be unwritten; and these last will be traditional customs of the country.
Young Socrates: He will be right.
Stranger: Yes, quite right; for how can he sit at every man's side all through his life, prescribing for him the exact particulars of his duty? Who, Socrates, would be equal to such a task? No one who really had the royal science, if he had been able to do this, would have imposed upon himself the restriction of a written law.

We only look to our laws in the general sense.  The idea of creating a law for an individual seems very off base.  The closest that we come to it is when laws are tailored for a narrow type of industry, for instance realtors.  But even then, the laws are based on broad concepts of justice like fraud and fair dealing. 
Again, as has been the case with other writings from Plato, I came away challenged but unsatisfied.  The dialogue veers from subject to subject and I'm never quite happy with the divisions and signposts that are put up.  My inner Aristotle wanted to yell 'Stop!' so that I could clean up the categories and actually explore them with completeness. 
Plato (and Socrates and in this case the Stranger) are obviously brilliant people.  I just continually get the impression that they're talking solely to win arguments.  I don't get the impression that they're actually illuminating a subject in the way that I do with writings from Locke or Mill. 

Readings for March

It's a busy month.

March
Plato: Statesmen link
Aristotle: On Interpretation (Chapters 1-10) link
Aristotle: Politics (book III-V) link
Euclid: Elements (book I) link

I'm through the first three and they're worth your while. 

Update: I just started in on Euclid and found this series of videos to be wonderfully helpful.

Readings for March

It's a big month coming up:

March
Plato: Statesmen link
Aristotle: On Interpretation (Chapters 1-10) link
Aristotle: Politics (book III-V) link
Euclid: Elements (book I) link

I won't kid you, this isn't an easy month.  But its doable!

Plato Vs Aristotle Revisited

I've been thinking about this post earlier in the month where I quoted Ayn Rand on how Aristotle 'paved the way' for the golden ages in Western civilization.  As I said then, I don't know enough of the philosophical history behind the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, etc., to really comment on how true that is.  (I still don't, but I'd find some really solid analysis on this to be fascinating.)  I did think quite a bit on the approach that each one encourages towards learning.
Plato is famous for presenting the Socratic method, in which a pupil is asked a series of questions in hopes of finding true answers.  The Aristotle approach (well, the surviving records) are very much lecture notes.  Plato makes the student work and continually ask questions about what they believe.  Aristotle gives you the answers so that you can learn them.  If we look just at this aspect, I'd have to give the nod to Plato.  I'd much rather have a culture that respects questioning wisdom than one that simply applies the knowledge that has been given to it.
Which isn't to say that I'm all that fond of rejecting received knowledge simply because it is received.

The writings of Aristotle are like a guide book from a very wise man.  In more than 2000 years, I can't see any large improvements over his writings on drama.  Which is amazing!  I can see how he inspires a pure scientific approach.  He looks at what is and tries to explain that.  This is the 'objective' viewpoint that so inspired Rand.
The writings of Plato ask us to consider things.  His approach produces questions and sharpens definitions.  Sometimes the discussion goes into unproductive areas, but not always.  With good guidance, the method has obvious benefits.
I'd be very surprised if Western thought hadn't benefited greatly from both writers.

Searching for Virtue

A couple of days ago I started composing a little dialogue in which I try to engage Socrates in the search for the definition of virtue.  I come in all confident and quickly founder on whether or not 'virtue' is a synonym for 'good'.  I had some vague ideas as to what points I would try and make but now I'm not so sure.
The bombing in Boston has taken over some part of my mind's efforts.  This atrocity has hit me harder than some other recent events like the shootings in Newtown.  I'm not sure why.
I keep thinking of the supreme dedication and effort that marathoners put into a marathon.  The months of training and discipline.  We expect that kind of thing from professional atheletes.  It's not hard to think something along the lines of 'pay me $10 million a year and I'll dedicate that kind of time to diet and exercise'.  But the overwhelming majority of marathoners are every day folks.  They put all that time and energy into training themselves so that they can achieve a very personal goal.  There is no big payday ahead of them.  They'll get admiration from friends and family but that's about it.
On Monday some of these every day people ran in one of the most famous marathons in the world.  They pushed themselves for hours.  And then, just short of the finish line, some random group of them were targeted.  Some of them were just yards short when the bomb went off.  The explosion and the shrapnel were low and this resulted in multiple amputations.
This was evil in a very pure form and I don't know any other word that covers it.
So as I sat back and had a little fictional joust with Socrates over the definition of 'virtue', my mind kept trickling back to a sure antonym.  The Boston bomber(s) were the precise opposite of virtous.  They were evil.  They took a good and noble thing and destroyed it.  They took good and precious lives and blotted them out.  If you ask me what evil is, I can confidently hold up the Boston bombs as an example.

There was virtue in the story as well.  I think of the people who moved quickly to help the injured.  They displayed a quick and brave sort of virtue and they deserve great honors.  I want to think of them instead of the evil ones but I can't quite get there yet.

I'm kind of hoping that merely writing this will let me move past the very emotional state and let the more analytical part of the mind start working again.

Meno - Plato

'Meno' is a typical dialogue between a man named Meno and Socrates.  The conversation gets rolling when Meno asks:

"Can you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue is acquired by teaching or by practice; or if neither teaching nor by practice, then whether it comes to man by nature, or in what other way?"

Socrates, as is his wont, cannot give a straight answer.

"...I confess with shame that I know literally nothing about virtue; and when I do not know the 'quid' of anything how can I know the 'quale'?"

Thus begins the Socratic dialogue wherein the seek the meaning of virtue so that they can circle back to the original question of how it is acquired.  (The smartass in me might have given Socrates some purposefully bad answer, 'Virtue is the quality by which one judges a horse!', just to force him into a straight answer.  We're probably better off that Plato didn't write 'Meno' in that way.)
Meno tries to define virtue. He speaks of administering the state, benefiting himself and injuring enemies and taking care not to suffer personal harm.  He lists a woman's duties as keeping house and obeying her husband.  Then he notes that different ages and conditions have different virtues.  "Virtue is relative to the actions and ages of each of us in all that we do. The same may be said of vice."
Socrates notes that the definition is 'a swarm' and not very precise and asks for some common element.  Meno finds this difficult but Socrates keeps at it.  He notes that both men and women must have temperance and justice.  Meno agrees that justice is virtue.  The verbal jousting goes on at some length.  Meno comes around to suggesting that 'Virtue is the desire of things honourable and the power of attaining them."  Socrates counters that everyone really thinks of themselves as honourable; is everyone virtuous?  No, of course they're not.
Eventually they get back to the main question. Socrates points out that virtuous men don't always have virtuous children.  If their children could be taught virtue, like they can be taught things like horse-riding, then these virtuous men would certainly have done a better job teaching them.  He concludes that the absence of teachers suggests that virtue cannot be taught.  There is a pretty obvious flaw in that reasoning.

I'm a fan of the Socratic method but there is a fine line between an honest search for answers and using verbal cleverness to make others feel foolish.  I have trouble reading Plato/Socrates as being on the right side of that line.

Plato vs Aristotle

While I was gathering material for this months readings, I was reminded that Ayn Rand's views on aesthetics were guided, at least in part, by Aristotle.  I'll write about that connection later, but while I was looking for it, I found this Rand quote on Aristotle:

"Aristotle may be regarded as the cultural barometer of Western history. Whenever his influence dominated the scene, it paved the way for one of history's brilliant eras; whenever it fell, so did mankind.  The Aristotelian revival of the thirteenth century brought men to the Renaissance. The intellectual counter-revolution turned them back to the cave of his antipode: Plato.
There is only one fundamental issue in philosophy: the cognitive efficacy of man's mind. The conflict of Aristotle versus Plato is the conflict of reason versus mysticism. It was Plato who formulated most of philosophy's basic questions - and doubts. It was Aristotle who laid the foundation for most of the answers. Thereafter, the record of their duel is the record of man's long struggle to deny and surrender or to uphold and assert the validity of his particular mode of consciousness." 

I've written before about the bright spots of Western history (ancient Greece and Rome, Renaissance Italy, Enlightenment Paris and England).  I don't really know enough about the darker spots to find common reasons for their declines.  This is something that I'll keep an eye out for now. 
I do want to write something that is at least a bit in Plato's defense.  After I wrote about Plato last year, Stan left this comment:

"I've always liked the Whitehead quote, and I've always viewed systematic interpretations of Plato with suspicion. Take the Republic: Is Socrates Plato's mouthpiece? Didn't Plato write the arguments of the other characters as well? Does dialectic lend itself to system? We don't think of Shakespeare as any one of his characters, so why think of Plato as any one of his? Whitehead is suggesting that the seeds of even contradictory philosophies are all found in Plato. For me, the dialogues are best read as a training ground for philosophic thought, rather than a source for statements of Platonic dogma."

This year when I read Plato I tried to keep the 'training ground' idea in front of me and that helped.  

Paparazzi of Plato

Every time I read Plato, I'm reminded of this wonderful New Yorker piece by Steve Martin.



TABLOIDUS: Socrates, I wanted to show you my new Nikon FM2 with a 600-millimetre lens.

SOCRATES: Thank you, Tabloidus. It looks fine for taking pictures of ducks flying off in the distance.

MO-PED: That is a very fine purpose, in combination with a motorbike and an infrared night scope.

CLOOLUS: What else do you photograph besides nature?

TABLOIDUS: I love to photograph children.

SOCRATES: That, too, is a good and noble profession.

TABLOIDUS: There is nothing more beautiful to photograph than a mother breast-feeding her baby. Especially if it is Madonna.

CLOOLUS: You photographed Madonna breast-feeding her baby?

TABLOIDUS: Oh, yes.

SOCRATES: What was she like in person?

TABLOIDUS: Well, I didn't actually meet her.

SOCRATES: Was she so full of herself that she would not speak to you?

TABLOIDUS: Oh, no. Because of the lens, I had to be three hundred yards away and shoot through her bedroom window.

CLOOLUS: It seems odd to me that Madonna would agree to have herself photographed this way.

TABLOIDUS: Her agreement was tacit.

CLOOLUS: But it seems to me you have invaded her privacy.

SOCRATES: Cloolus, what is privacy?

CLOOLUS: Privacy is when you are alone.

SOCRATES: Are you private when you are alone in a crowded market?

CLOOLUS: Certainly not.

SOCRATES: Are you private when you are alone in a car?

CLOOLUS: More so, Socrates.

SOCRATES: Are you private when you are in a car with tinted windows?

CLOOLUS: That is starting to be private.

SOCRATES: Are you private when you are in your home?

CLOOLUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Is it not true that if you tint your windows or stay home you are in some way protecting your privacy?

MO-PED: It cannot be otherwise.

CLOOLUS: But Madonna was in her home.

SOCRATES: Yes, but her windows were not tinted with UV-40 Reflecto-coat. Nor was she alone.

MO-PED: She was with her baby!

SOCRATES: Therefore, she was not protecting her privacy. And how can one invade what is not protected?

CLOOLUS: I am confused.

SOCRATES: Can something be tinted and not tinted a the same time?

CLOOLUS: It would be impossible.

SOCRATES: Can something be private and public at the same time?

CLOOLUS: They are mutually exclusive.

SOCRATES: And is it not true that privacy and UV-40 Reflecto-coat are one and the same?

MO-PED: He has proved it!

SOCRATES: Tabloidus, where were you when you took the picture?

TABLOIDUS: I was hiding on a rooftop. Further, I was wearing black clothing and a hood.

SOCRATES: So you were merely protecting your privacy while Madonna invaded your camera lens?

TABLOIDUS: I cannot argue otherwise, Socrates.

CLOOLUS: But is it not wrong to spy on a woman breast-feeding her baby?

MO-PED: When you become a singing star, it is wrong to want your breast-feeding to be private.

CLOOLUS: But why?

TABLOIDUS: Because of the public's right to know.

SOCRATES: Is it not true, Cloolus, that when the public is shopping in a supermarket, very often at the checkout point it has an overwhelming desire to see Alec Baldwin's newborn or Frank Gifford having sex?

CLOOLUS: I cannot deny it.

Greek Timeline

Normally I'd put up biographies of Plato and Aristotle but I did that last year.  You can read them here and here if you'd like.  The main reason that I do the biographic sketches is so that I can get a feel for the people and their times. I've been trying to get a handle on the larger picture of ancient Greece by reading and watching documentaries on the period.  There were three different wars that pictured the ancient Greek worldview and it's useful to put the various writers in context of those wars.  (As future historians learn about the 20th century, they'll need to be very aware of both world wars and the Vietnam war.  Same deal.)

Trojan War - (Sometime in the 1200s or 1100s BC)  This was the legendary war that provided so many stories of heroism and courage.  The Greeks wrote and sung about the happenings of this war for centuries. 

Homer - (850 BC?)  The Homeric epics cemented the Trojan war and its aftermath in Greek storytelling. 

Aeschylus - (525 - 456 BC)  Wrote about Agamemnon's return from the wars and the ensuing bloodbath.

Greco/Persian wars - (499 - 449 BC)  Notably, this started with a Greek adventure into Persian territory.  The Persians counter-invaded in 492 and the incredibly influential battle of Marathon happened in 490.  Two generations of Greeks lived with the reality of war with the Persian empire.

Sophocles (497-405 BC) and Herodotus (484 - 425 BC) - Both men grew up in the wars.  It's notable that Herodotus traveled extensively during this whole period. 

Socrates (469 - 399 BC) - Grew up as the wars were winding down.  Was in his late 30's when the next war really heated up.

Peloponnesian War (431 - 404 BC) - This war had many phases, but the most important for this timeline is that Athens was completely humbled by the end.  We're set to read Thucydides on this subject next year. 

Plato (428 - 348 BC) - Grew up during the long fight with Sparta.  His adulthood was mostly in the post-war era. 

Aristotle (384 - 322 BC) - Lived entirely after the wars.  By this time Athens was no longer had an empire nor a world power.