The City Not Built

Given the troubling similarities between Socrates’ original conversation with Thrasymachus and the eventual degenerative properties of the City-In-Words, some questions arise on a diagetic level. 

What would Socrates have discussed with those present if Thrasymachus had never arrived (or had given up his position without explaining it/defending it)? Would Glaucon/Adeimantus have responded in a similar manner to another Socratic conversation (as tailored as The Republic is in its current form to their specifications)?

Corruption of the Electorate

Alan Bloom’s reading becomes more disturbing the more that Plato’s Republic comes into focus. He calls the Republic a dramatic example of the “foundation of political science”, and sees the pallid restrictions on human character within the thought experiment as necessary for such a science.

Could the difficulties we have seen arise within Socrates' city-of-words been avoided? Are they essential ingredients of human society?

One of the reasons he gives for this characterization is his reading of the encounter at large: that Socrates is spending enough time with his conversants to be unable to avoid his own biases/doctrines. While this is supported at least on its face by other moments in Plato (the rehashing of the city or the tripartite myth of the self in the Timaeus or Phaedrus, the embittered tonal shift Laws x, etc.), the problems which arise in this reading seem to overdetermine its conjectural failings.

Even beyond the issue of Plato, are any points defended by Plato's Socrates his own (Socrates' own) beliefs? Do we believe this because of his defense of them or for some other reason (their subconscious recursion, their unchallenged nature as per chauvinism, etc.)?

I will have to return to the Interpretive Essay after completing the Republic, as much of it has to do with (the dialogue as a Socratic apology)(the place of poetry and myth within or against philosophy)(the characterization of Glaucon and Adeimantus as tyrants-in-training or possible-tyrants) rather than the political leanings of Plato. Not that these alternative points are irrelevant to Alan Bloom’s political point within the Interpretive Essay, but rather that the relevancy of these arguments’ presuppositions to the political require both literal and interpretive attention. 

A Few Unrelated Questions

Are the guardians warriors in the traditional Greek sense? Or have their educations strayed far enough in Books 4 & 5 so as to become some other thing than standing military force?

Furthermore, what evidence can we provide that this or is not a political thought experiment (a la Bloom)? Are the choices of rule and social authority mere shadows of the arguments surrounding justice, crafted for the audience at hand?

Finally, if we are evaluating the literary purposes of Socrates and his conversant, what level of analogy do these (little talks) (debates and speculations) have to our own education? Can we allocate “the dialogue” a place somewhere in the Socratic method (alongside the myth, the hypothetical, the bad argument, and the aporetic critique)? Are these dialogic disciples an example of education “writ large” or are they an example of pedagogical methods being bottlenecked by the complexities of personal preference (here being the youth and their focus on statecraft, war, and sex)?

The Utility & Danger of Skeptical Doubt

Socrates engages in near-constant flirtations with skeptical positions and sophistic manipulations.

 The most basic reading of this would attribute to him strangely modern presuppositions: either that morality can undergird manipulations/bad arguments with exculpatory/ulterior motives or that in the absence of accessible truth/definitions still virtue/education/good-faith must be preserved by Socratic figures.

Is there anything to the similarities we are finding between Socrates and the Pyrrhonians/Sophists/Pyrrhonists? Perhaps a pragmatic turn, an intentional divide, or a satirical mirroring?

Thrasymachus and Axiomatic Assumptions

Book I of the Republic dedicates a lot of narrative energy to establishment of setting, despite how economic its exposition is. We could interpret the minor arguments as just this: character-development and window-dressing. But this is one of the reasons reading Plato is more gratifying than reading secondary sources on Plato.

Thrasymachus’s spat with Socrates does not play out how we modern readers would expect. If we pay attention, we can pick out how Socrates differs in tact from even modern philosophers (who would pivot to the foundationally distasteful core of Thrasymachus’s assumptions). Can this restraint be attributed in full to Thrasymachus’s long reach, or (more likely) is the restraint Socrates shows against providing alternative models a telling move?

Homer & Mimetic Value-Systems

Shared texts can be the basis of a community dedicated to social betterment, while restrictions to unbiased information can form propagandizing machines of hegemonic totality. In Socrates’ era there were Homeric texts to fill this role, in the 19^th/20^th century in certain contexts there were Biblical translations, and in class we wondered whether a similar shared text existed in our new globalized modernity. This was in response to the implication (ideological model) that shared texts are an integral piece of societal order.

Given the aporetic effects of Plato’s dialogues, however, access to education/information/intellectual charity appears the more important component of fellowship. Socrates achieves conversation despite the homogenizing effect of counter-critical Greek culture, rather than neccessarily because of it. This is muddied by his constant use of examples and acceptable comprimise. Where is the utility of shared value for an elenctic model located? Does it provide dialectic hospitality? Is it more helpful in achieving rhetorical give-and-take? Or is it an obstacle to critical thinking when over-applied/over-amplified in such a way as to become collectively accessible? 

Other Readings

  Our focus on Platonic baggage has mostly been on Christian editorial bias (leading to a Plato without nuance who speaks through his characters in favor of fallacious arguments). While there are clear examples of this historical trend in modern Plato scholarship (Benjamin Jowett), it is also interesting to trace these complications back to eras closer to Plato’s. The three most prominent readings of Plato which arise from these literal direct-from-Plato interpretations are either theistic, hardline like some passages from Laws x, or in service of Presocratic-esque idealism. The turns taken by Aristotle or the Neoplatonists in their respective readings, for example, might be a place to find other inserted diversions into the literature of Plato in order to return to the text-as-it-was.

The Choice Not Taken

The explicit arguments in Plato’s Phaedo, as pertain to metaphysical and theological models, are not good arguments. Many of their assumptions are extravagant, and their reasoning more universalizing than necessary. Much of the dialogue’s import occurs elsewhere (in the implicature of behavior and tonal choice). There are ways that Plato’s Dialogues do things with their form that are irreplicable in others, but I am interested in producing analysis of other philosophical arguments that deal with avoided arguments (or avoided actions).

In Response to The Role of Protesting (with links)

Original post here

There is a definite ambiguity about whether the Platonic Socrates can refuse to defend himself against persecution to the best of his ability, or escape punishment to the best of his ability, without compromising his morals (as either way he chooses to do neither and remain steadfast in his commitments). And if there is a way to be morally uncompromising and live, why does Socrates not do so? Is he ignorant of it? Another possibility is that the death or noncompliance is itself is an illustrative Socratic choice, as an example of what is right to do in opposition to an unjust society. Or maybe still the uncompromising plainness of Socrates was an artistic addition of Plato, to make his friend seem a little bit less or a little bit more human than he was at the end. 

In Response to Force, Rhetoric, and the Apology (with links)

Original post here

Powerful nuance stems from examining the implicature of texts, not just their literal content (the moral selection of  their timing in context, the things which they leave out, the ways they direct the reader to be different in order to understand them). Plato’s Socrates seems to anticipate this turn in modern philosophy at times, when he chases truth as understood by himself/his audience and not logic alone on its own structural plane.

In Response to Dissolute Deity (with links)

Original post here

The two factors that come to mind first for me in this cognitive dissonance are: Greek endogamy and Greek religion-as-practice. Rather than an example of double-think, where the Greek gods can do no wrong despite doing obvious wrong, Greek myth seems exegetically to resemble more allegory/fable than moral code/scripture. Divinity takes priority as a discernible trait, and the non-literal social implications of myth have to be teased out with that buffer of divinity-as-different in mind.  Zeus operates on a clear double-standard to heroes (what is acceptable for a god to get away with does not end well for many mortals). Also, the endogamous Greek families were insular and duty-bound (to the best of my knowledge?). Much of Euthyphro’s oddity comes from his indictment occurring in the face of a clear hierarchical divide (the father a citizen and the servant as a servant, contrasted with the slave finally lowest) and social indifference (why is he, of all people, the prosecutor?).

Little Interests

This week three objects of study have intrigued me outside of the classroom regarding Ancient Greek culture (excluding assigned texts and suggestions).

I found archived recordings of Alan Bloom speaking on the Apology. His interpretations are striking in their keenness (always with an edge), and their starkness (not insight but crisp clarity). Listening to them while keeping notes (and attempting to hold fast on a different interpretation of say, Socrates or Philosophical Tension that differs from his) is an experience.

I had been meaning to look into Anna Carson’s treatment of Greek works for some time, and at a local library came upon If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho. It is a bit off-topic, but the book has quite the strange beauty to it and sets original Greek fragments next to interpretations/notes if you have the opportunity to check it out.

The Greek Bible, as with many historical/theological texts, has a motivated following online eager to share its contents. Sifting through these resources, while bumbling about cyberspace for tidbits on Neoplatonism in the Bible or Pythagorean scholars of the era, I came across this (abandoned?) guide to “real Greek”. Like all of my links this week, the academic reliability of it as a source is a bit idiosyncratic (Bloom’s forceful structure, Carson’s poetry, this having no real accountable authority, etc.). Something to cross-reference, at any least, but interesting. 

Aporia (ἀπορία) and other mysteries

I hope to use this space as a buffer (to catch related passing interests before they dissipate). The internet is a good place for collecting things of oddity or interest and holding them to task. I say "mystery" and "passing interests" here knowing full well that there are others more determined and learned than myself to whom these things will be neither mysterious nor temporary in character.

While down the rabbit hole of researching for my Capstone class (which has been using philosophy as a catch-all term for ideology and focusing on Foucault), I stumbled onto a hole in my knowledge.

On a whim, I had looked up on of the more obscure terms (there were many  obscure   terms) used by one of the less esoteric post-structural thinkers (Derrida). At this point I am not even sure if its current "aporetic" use was invented by him or just used idiosyncratically by him, as much of post-structural analysis seems to entail highly arcane readings of significant literature. The term was "aporia", or "aporias".

I suppose that this qualifies as several holes in my knowledge. Many of the structural critiques of the post-structural turn still escape me in import (especially in an articulate sense). But more importantly, this was several somethings that I did not know, all of which relied on things I had access to.

Derrida, and some secondary sources commenting on Deleuze, seemed to be using aporia in a manner according to Kant's antimony (sometimes about Kant's antinomies, in ways that would not occur to me as a reader of Kant to do in similar contexts). Dictionary pages cite it back to Greek, as "ἀπορία" originally. Is there a better translation? Finally, it seems to have some relevance to Plato's dialogues in which it appears as a concept. We may be reading some context in the coming weeks.

Rather than relying on the initial impressions I had during preliminary internet research, I am interested in learning (whenever I do) about the truth of the meaning in context. There is definite evidence of a concept evolving over time from cultural or intellectual pressure. As Platonic scholarship goes generally, I hope that the cases which involve charismatic accident come to light.