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Monday, June 26, 2006
I have not thought it worth while making the small alterations deemed necessary.
I have reprinted these lectures more or less as they were delivered. I have not thought it worth while making the small alterations deemed necessary. Any inaccuracies or repetitions must be put down to the exigencies of the platform - to the essential difference between the Written Word, which is inscribed, and the Spoken Word, which is, essentially, speech.
I was rereading Derrida on “Plato’s Pharmakon”. And then beneath my eye happened to fall the Author’s Note to Stephen Potter’s Lifemanship [amazon]. Because Belle happened to remark that, as a child, she always wanted to visit the Lifemanship Association (681 Station Road, Yeovil). Imagine the crackle in my brain as I realize: that’s all of Derrida, right there.
Let me rephrase that as a question. Do you like Plato? Or does the thought that he is so important cause a feeling of grim weariness to well in your breast? Is liking Plato something people are born with? Or can you practice it? Or is it acquired in some third way? Extra points for frankness. Did your Intro Philosophy prof give you some earnest lecture about the greatness of Socrates’ drive to improve his fellow citizens’ souls. And you thought he was just being a passive-aggressive jerk? My impression is that most people find Plato tedious and mannered and implausible, when he isn’t downright sinister; which makes all the endless turnings and returning to him trying, in an “I have not thought it worth while making the small alterations deemed necessary” sort of way. He, the inexhaustible superscript, we the footnotes. Do you feel that way? How do you feel?
Comments
I’ll tell you what I don’t like: these new-fangled funny books you keep recommending. Brian Bendis, is it? I paged through this House of M business the other day. Terrible. I don’t have high hopes for the Civil War thing, either.
But I like Plato. Aristotle more, though.
As an undergraduate (I was a philosophy major) I did read a number of the dialogues for this or that course and I read bits and pieces of others for this or that specific purpose. I certainly did wonder why I was reading this old stuff.
During my last move when I jettisoned many books I rarely consulted, however, I retained by Bollingen edition of the Collected Dialogues. And every once in awile I’ll look through it for a passage or three.
Do I like Plato? It’s not that kind of deal. He’s a reference point, a guide post.
Oh yes, I like Plato. I’m not sure this is common anymore - lots of people do find him tedious, implausible and politically dangerous to boot (a view of Plato that contains a grain of truth). And Plato the moralizer never did much for me.
But writing on Plato I found that the apparently bland and tedious surface of some of the dialogues (especially some of the “later” dialogues, like the Statesman or the Sophist) concealed depths of baroque textual complexities and unexpectedly interesting arguments. I’d say it’s an acquired taste. Once I acquired it, though, Aristotle just stopped being all that interesting…
One other thing: do people really return to Plato for anything these days? Sure, there’s a flourishing industry of Plato interpretation, but I don’t get much of a sense from reading in it that professional philosophers think there’s much of value in Plato these days. There does not seem to be a flourishing Platonist tradition in philosophy the way there is an Aristotelian tradition (e.g., Nussbaum, MacIntyre, etc.), for example.
Plato was there at the beginning and tried out virtually every idea before settling on his final conclusions. If you’re not attracted to Platonism (I’m not) you can read him and look for the place where he took the wrong turn (e.g. Cratylus).
A historically contextualized reading of Plato, while anti-Platonic, lets you figure out his motives. He was a macho man (though probably bi) living a risky life in a turbulent world, but he would have preferred order. Most anarchists I know are weenies yearning for a disorder that they completely misunderstand.
This is an illicit question, but is Derrida’s interpretation in “Plato’s Pharmakon” regarded as plausible? I mean in particular the idea that Socrates’ deal was sacrificial.
Plato? Never heard of him.
Not only do I read Plato for the fun of reading Plato, I even went to an academic symposium on Plato for fun. Coincidentally, perhaps, my report also turned out to be my farewell to Derrida.
Finding pleasure in Plato (and in non-mathematical philosophy in general) is the most important thing I learned from college classes, and I remain grateful to my professors. I doubt pure auto-didacticism would ever have overcome that blind spot, given the importance of the experience of dialog.
"Socrates’ death was sacrificial”.
I was one of many kids in my first-quarter humanities core class who thought I could easily, one-handed, outwit Plato, and that this crap wasn’t “philosophy” as far as I was concerned. Then I read the Republic, during my second year in college, and it seemed downright hateful. Then I had five million terrible debates about politics and philosophy and my hard lines began to seem vile. I took an amazing class on science and the ancient Greeks, I read some more Plato, and it delighted me (as it has ever since). The really *solid* cultural context was, I think, the key for me: after the many terrible debates I came to understand a bit more about “cultural context” and its importance.
Dear Bill Benzon,
I would take issue with your statement: “There does not seem to be a flourishing Platonist tradition in philosophy the way there is an Aristotelian tradition (e.g., Nussbaum, MacIntyre, etc.), for example.”
Stanley Rosen is, in my view, the leading interpreter of Plato at present, and Plato is important for Catherine Pickstock, who is one of the theologians associated with Radical Orthodoxy. Both Rosen and Pickstock have advanced devastating critiques of Derrida’s Plato’s Pharmacy, with Rosen picking apart Derrida’s inattentiveness to the poetic and mystical nature of the dialogues as well as his obliviousness to the political nature of Socrates’ attack on writing. Pickstock along similar lines exposes Derrida as a sophist. Rosen was a student of Leo Strauss, though he does not consider himself a “Straussian.” His study of the Republic, the culminating achievement of a distinguished career, was published last year.
As for myself, I consider Plato to be the greatest science-fiction novelist of them all, with only Kurt Vonnegut drawing near to him in sheer imaginative whimsy.
Diodatus, I believe you meant to address Xavier.
Diodotus, you’re right that one could understand the Straussian tradition as the form modern Platonism has taken. Straussians do go back to Plato for lots of things. So I stand corrected on my earlier formulation.
Rosen could even be considered a Platonist himself (though you rightly note that he does not consider himself a Straussian), even if a highly eccentric one (he does not appear to me to accept that Plato believed in forms, for example, if I remember his book on the Statesman correctly).
Yet Straussian Platonism has different goals in philosophy than say, the Aristotelianism of MacIntyre. It’s more a scholarship of recovery than a scholarsip of application or theory-elaboration. Thus the focus on interpretation, and the tendency to soften the differences between various ancient thinkers. Very different from, say, the neoplatonism of the ancient world or modern neo-Aristotelianism.
First, a note of sympathy with a commenter from above. As a first year undergraduate at a place where Plato is still taken quite seriously, I too thought I could wup Plato “one-handed”; I had already studied a lot of philosophy, and his arguments appeared to me to be ridiculous, loaded, as they seemed, with a lot of bad analogies to shoemakers, shipbuilders, and carpenders. (Alcibiades, I soon discovered, makes a similar complain about Socrates in the Phaedrus). Then, I too read the Republic. I found it utterly unpalatable--and set out to write an essay demolishing the argument in Book II. Yet, as I set about my “demolition”, I noticed scores of details along the way--for example, why all this trashing of poetry and images when Plato himself is a virutuoso at creating images and does so repeatedly?--and ended up on the last page of my essay in love with the book. And, with some further help from brilliant teachers and advisors, I also came to see the folly of my former ways.
I’m a PhD student philosophy now, and Plato is not--somewhat unfortunately--one of my areas of specialization. That said, whenever I come to wonder what it is I’m doing in a philosophy department, whenever I get worn down by the academic grind, I turn to Plato (among one or two others) as the thinker and writer in whose works I can always discover a fresh nuance, another layer of complexity and sophistication, each and every time I go back and patiently work through a dialogue.
A final, somewhat tendentious, and very broad remark. One problem with reading Plato, I’ve found, is the number of assumptions we bring to the text as modern readers. After many years of reading the dialogues, I think it is simply a mistake to treat them as though they were intended as something roughly similar to an academic philosophy journal. At any rate, I think it’s a style of writing that needs to be approached with caution.
Among mathematicians and theoretical physicists, a philosophical Platonism of Forms is rife.
Mathematicians profess formalism, but practice Platonism. (Not that many actually argue for Platonism, because it’s a hard position to defend.)
For my money the best recent interpreter of Plato is John Sallis, whose books _Being and Logos: Reading the Platonic Dialogues_ and _Chorology_ are unbelievably excellent (and well written). The way he exposes the “concealed depths” (from what could be called a more or less plain-language Heideggerian perspective), and makes them *exciting*, saved Plato for me… not sure how he feels about Derrida though…
Mathematicians profess formalism, but practice Platonism.
I had thought that what mathematicians practice was mathematics. Both formalism and Platonism are compatible with what you’ll find in most mathematical work. I’ll agree that Platonism is a useful heuristic fiction if you’re actually trying to do mathematics, but I’m not convinced it’s a plausible account of the subject.
If I remember correctly, Goedel thought that his work supported Platonism. I doubt that many would agree.
For what it’s worth, I really do enjoy Plato. It takes real nerve for you to drag one of the great figures of the past (Parmenides) into one of your dialogues, only to have him rip your favorite theories to shreds. The Phaedrus has its moments, too.
His politics I can do without.
Never really found Plato of much use, frankly...he always seemed to be posing the wrong questions, in the wrong way - and, I’ve always thought the pretence of dialogue ("Socratic stooging”, anyone?) to be laughable.
Reading Eric Havelock luckily alerted me to the really interesting ancient Greek thinkers, particularly Democritus, but also the much-maligned “Sophists” - still an insult, I note - and it took about two thousand years to recover from the damage Plato inflicted on Western thought so’s we could, again, start to regularly work in that far more fruitful way…
That’s not say, of course, that he isn’t a great writer - that’s much of the reason why he did all that damage - merely that he’s a profoundly delusional thinker, and had been a truly rotten influence on constructive thought.
Richard: We agree. The sentence “I’ll agree that Platonism is a useful heuristic fiction if you’re actually trying to do mathematics, but I’m not convinced it’s a plausible account of the subject.” means exactly what I was trying to say.
Aren’t Aristotle’s politics, given his pronouncements on slavery and on the role of women, more odious than that of Plato? Note that in the just city conjured forth by Socrates and Glaucon, there are no slaves, and the rulers are made to live austerely, without any luxuries. A healthy polis will avoid both poverty and affluence. Furthermore, the Republic also provides a coherent account of how the just city becomes progressively worse, becoming in the end a tyranny. I think that his account of how democracy gives rise to tyranny is especially pertinent at present, as the negative freedom privileged by liberalism has given rise to a situation in which even the most indulgent and destructive desires can no longer be held in check (whether it is sexual liberation for the Left and the right to drive Hummers for the so-called conservatives). Hence the ease with which sexual humiliation has become a weapon in the war on terror.
But this can all be read as a truthful fiction, as a sort of “what-if.” For Plato’s political moderation, as well as modesty, there is the Seventh Letter, in which he regrets his youthful opposition to Athenian democracy and provides an account of his own political entanglements in a power struggle in Syracuse.
is it not ironic that Plato’s own character - Socrates - was put to death by a culture who felt much the same way some of you do? And why is it that Plato is himself being addressed in so many of the above comments and not the particular ideas which you find so “odious.” i am not a philosopher by any stretch, but I would think it profoundly arrogant of myself to act as though someone who has been read and respected (however much he was disagreed with) for 2000+ years would have nothing of value to offer me.
I am reminded of something a teacher once told me…
“... in my zeal for the love of truth, let me not forget the truth about love.” - Aquinas
Some of you would, I think, find yourself far more capable of both disagreeing with and dealing with the question at hand (instead of falling back on a self-righteous form of ‘ad hominem’) if you’d love the man more and your own ideas less.
Just a thought.
I think the kind of arrogance that admits the possibility that a thinker revered for 2000 years could be totally worthless is admirable. The arrogance must be tempered with a receptiveness to being proven wrong, but the last thing the world needs is more pieties handed down from our elders.
to admit of the possibility that he was wrong is one thing… to admit, as our culture on a disturbingly widespread basis does, that because he is a 2000+ year old greek he is backwards and we, only because later in history, know more, is another. the former is honest, the latter is just pitiable.
I second Lonewolfe1978’s point that the sense of superiority felt by those now living towards earlier epochs is misconceived and unjustified. I would also like to observe that the very discursive space for questioning the “pieties” of tradition and the mythic bonds of community was largely opened up by Plato himself. Plato can thus be considered on the side of modernity, though his emphasis on the soul - and the implication that politics and philosophy are in fact theological at the root - is troublesome for the moderns.
What do you mean? Of course we know more. The human race didn’t spend the entirety of the last 2400 years in a coma.
Christopher A: I think most of us are falling into the lazy habit of using the author’s name as shorthand for his work—so the comments are less “ad hominem” than vague. But I don’t see any comments that uphold the view that his ideas are “odious” or valueless—my comment, and others, told a story of progressive humility and of coming to see the virtues in Plato’s work which my youthful arrogance had masked. Addressed to the person I was at 19, your criticism would be well-taken; at this point, though, it’s not really fair. This is not meant by way of attacking you, but rather as reassurance: Socrates seems to have fewer would-be executioners here than you think.
Oh, except “John Henry Calvinist“‘s comment. Missed that one. But it’s worth noting the original question—“Do you *like* Plato?”—to which everyone is responding: this wasn’t conceived as a strictly critical thread.
Walt - Your comment proves my point. Your claim that 2400 years necessitates a greater understanding presupposes epistemological, metaphysical, and anthropological presuppositions you’ve not substantiated.
Technology may have advanced a great deal, but given the measurable discrepancies between the realms of natural science (read “material science") and philosophy (read “abstract science"), the technological advances—all of which exist in the realm of natural science—are a small drop in the bucket.
Unless you’re prepared to make a claim to an absolute truth (and given your comments I’m supposing you’re not, though I may be wrong) then the questions which Plato raised 2400 years ago are still under debate and the fact that he saw them as important questions without the benefit of our high and mighty grasp of knowledge says a lot, especially concerning how much we don’t know or yet understand fully.
As a pragmatist, I have to agree with John Henry Calvinist’s assessment of Plato. As a philospher, Plato sent us down the wrong path.
To the extent that I read Plato, it is as literature, not as providing useful ways to think about the world.
You don’t think we have more insight available to us about Plato’s questions than there was available in Plato’s time? So the 2400 years of debate you invoke in your comment achieved literally nothing? We can throw it all away, because no one has made a new point since Plato?
I didn’t say that 2400 years have achieved no more “points” in the debate, nor would that be the outcome of my train of thought if you were to follow it out. What I did say, I thought rather clearly, is that the questions have not been answered. If you’d like to explain how they have been sufficiently answered I’m all ears.
The modern world has proposed certain answers, but the only one I know would take Plato off the table would be total subjectivity - which, by the way, leaves Plato alone and just runs off with the table—but you’re not going to claim that one, I hope, because if you did then your conversation with me would seem slightly ridiculous.
No, the question(s) of man’s nature; the nature and place of politics; the nature and existence (or not) of a realm of ideals; the good, beautiful, etc and their relation to man, society, politics, etc… they are all still very much at the heart of the debates we carry on. The fact that we have changed our terminology does not mean we have necessarily answered or even progressed on our journey towards an answer.
And just to clarify, so as to save you the effort of your hyperbole—I’m not saying that we haven’t progressed… I am saying that you haven’t shown anything to substantiate a necessary progression due only to time, and I am saying that if as a culture we think we can throw him away just because he’s been dead for 2400 years, then we haven’t progressed as far as we think.
Blah - could you, or Calvinist, expand on “wrong path,” “wrong questions,” “wrong way,” etc? I don’t necessarily disagree with you, though I sense we would disagree on our reasons as to why his path was wrong and what damage he actually inflicted.
Wow, that’s a rather staggering amount of words stuffed in my mouth. I would continue, but really, what’s the point? You clearly have worked up a lot of dudgeon on how we’re disrespecting your man Plato. You have some imaginary interlocutor out there that you really, really want to argue with, so I suggest you find that person and argue with them. (And frankly, I could have deduced from first principles that you’d end with “we haven’t progessed as far as we think”. Oh, the arrogance of all those progess people.)
I love Plato, myself, both as literature and philosophy. I don’t think there is an ancient writer as varied. The Gorgias, for instance, is --simply as dialogue—the best mimicry of everyday speech up until Don Quixote (although the Golden Ass is pretty good). There are plenty of dramatic instances showing anger—you get that in Homer, and in Sophocles, and Euripedes, etc—but the way in which the anger builds in this dialogue is much more subtle, much less ritualistic. Plato’s a great mythmaker—as in the Timaeus—and we don’t remember Socrate’s apology and the group of dialogues around Socrates death because of high school—I think we remember it because it has inherent power, and gives us a pattern for thinking about (and narrating) intellectuals and social dissent that we still, almost unconsiously, fall back on—compare it to the trial of Jesus to see how much richer Plato is. The so called early dialogues remind me of Shakespeare’s early works—the same absurd, puppyish word play, and the same portrayal of a society - much like Elizabethan England—in which there is an irrepressible feeling that some old restraint has been irrevocably broken. Some people hat Love’s Labors Lost humor strained, and I imagine those people will not like, say, Euthydemus.
Then, of course, there are the more solemn dialogues which—pace Walt’s idea that we have progressed on epistemological issues - seem to be tied up, still, in the way we think about these things - hence Wittgenstein’s comments on the Theatetus. Wittgenstein did not habitually comment on texts.
I like reading Plato.
Like Roger, I love Plato. I have devoted my life to him, in fact--to him and his many fractious children. Part of what I love about Plato is that he loves his fractious children as much as, perhaps more than, his pious ones.
You can compare him only to a few other figures--Shakespeare, for his complete transparency (since we *know* what Socrates thought, as we know what Falstaff thought, but no more about Plato himself than about Shakespeare). For his ability to write comedy as well as tragedy, dialogue as well as straight exposition, poetry as well as technicality.
You can compare him to Bach, for his thorough knowledge of the highs and lows of the human soul, and his sure hand following the contours of our moods. And for the fact that he is the father of everything after. Beethoven never wrote a note, phrase, or melody that Bach had not already created (Beethoven just wrote it louder, and then repeated it a few times for the stupid people). So too, Plato contains the thoughts that his successors will be thinking centuries later.
And Plato also contains his own best critics and criticisms. If you want to see the deepest worries about Plato, read Plato. It’s all there--Whitehead really was right.
I should also say that I hated Plato on first reading. I was forced as a freshman to read the Republic--made it through Book I and refused to keep reading. It distilled in Socrates’ person, I thought, everything that was wrong and hateable about intellectuals, thinkers, and know-it-alls. It took me a few years--and a clear separation of Plato from Socrates--to come to love Plato.
Now I think the Republic is simply the greatest single piece of work ever produced by the human brain. Right up there with Lear and St. Matthew’s Passion, only a little bit ahead. If aliens descend and ask why they should not exterminate this wretched squabbling species, those will be the first three things I’ll proffer in extenuation. “Read, listen, watch; a species that can produce this every few millenia might be worth keeping around”.
It’s not a matter of agreeing with him--do you *agree* with Bach? It’s just the rounded greatness of his presence.
But--John--what does all this have to do with whether Derrida ripped off Potter?
Sextus: Why? What makes the Republic so great?
I think the love of Plato is a inborn aesthetic. I loved him the first time I cracked open my collective works in my undergrad. That said, he is terrible difficult to read and even more difficult to pin down but such is the nature of dialogue and, I think, most respectable thinkers when they are doing justice to a topic.
However, would I pour over the naunce of Greek syntax as used by Plato and attend to the literary qualities of a dialogue as a whole in order to crack open just what it is that he thinks. No.
He may be an inexhaustible superscript, but I am not a footnote.
Also, to answer Walt’s question (not that I am as qualified as the sextus fellow says he is), judging the Republic in its historic setting sets it up as one of the greatest perserved works in history. I am not being clear: Simply put, how many other works had anybody in their own time seen like that?
I think that is legitimate argument number one for why it may be called great. This, by no means, settles the issue.