Plato

A good recent account of Plato's myth of the cave, by Simon Blackburn, followed by Bertrand Russell's discussion of Forms/Ideas/Universals:

The Ring

I've been enjoying the Pop Culture-themed midterm reports in Intro to Philosophy. Heard yesterday about "Family Guy," the brilliance of which I have yet to discover, and "Twilight" (same). Josh's "Matrix" report reminded me how hard it used to be to make Leibniz's monads seem remotely plausible, even by Hollywood standards, before 1999. 


Monday it was "Alice in Wonderland" and "Lord of the Rings," towards both of which I was much more favorably disposed. Must be generational? 


Allen's take on Tolkien's masterpiece, in particular, resonated. Naturally I thought of Plato's "Ring of Gyges":

Gyges was a shepherd in the service of the king of Lydia; there was a great storm, and an earthquake made an opening in the earth at the place where he was feeding his flock. Amazed at the sight, he descended into the opening, where, among other marvels, he beheld a hollow brazen horse, having doors, at which he stooping and looking in saw a dead body of stature, as appeared to him, more than human, and having nothing on but a gold ring; this he took from the finger of the dead and reascended. Now the shepherds met together, according to custom, that they might send their monthly report about the flocks to the king; into their assembly he came having the ring on his finger, and as he was sitting among them he chanced to turn the collet of the ring inside his hand, when instantly he became invisible to the rest of the company and they began to speak of him as if he were no longer present. He was astonished at this, and again touching the ring he turned the collet outwards and reappeared; he made several trials of the ring, and always with the same result-when he turned the collet inwards he became invisible, when outwards he reappeared. Whereupon he contrived to be chosen one of the messengers who were sent to the court; where as soon as he arrived he seduced the queen, and with her help conspired against the king and slew him, and took the kingdom. Suppose now that there were two such magic rings, and the just put on one of them and the unjust the other; no man can be imagined to be of such an iron nature that he would stand fast in justice. No man would keep his hands off what was not his own when he could safely take what he liked out of the market, or go into houses and lie with any one at his pleasure...


"No man," really? Guess I just still have an artificially-inflated opinion of myself, but I think I'd find better things to do with a ring like that than rape and pillage. Wouldn't you? (OK, I admit I'd probably get out  to more ball-games and movies.) 


No wonder Plato made his utopian republic so restrictively authoritarian, and entrusted it to Philosopher-kings.  

"my team"

In Plato's Euthyphro, Socrates poses a stumper question: The point which I should first wish to understand is whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods. 

Euth. I do not understand your meaning, Socrates.

Maybe a baseball analogy would help:

"There are moderates who revere the tradition they were raised in, simply because it is their tradition, and who are prepared to campaign, tentatively, for the details of their tradition, simply because, in the marketplace of ideas, somebody should stick up for each tradition until we can sort out the good from the better and settle for the best we can find, all things considered. That is like allegiance to a sports team, and it, too, can give meaning to a life — if not taken too seriously. I am a Red Sox fan, simply because I grew up in the Boston area and have happy memories of Ted Williams, Jimmy Piersall, Carl Yastrzemski, Pudge Fisk, and Wade Boggs, among others. My allegiance to the Red Sox is enthusiastic, but cheerfully arbitrary and undeluded. The Red Sox aren't my team because they are, in fact, the Best; they are the Best (in my eyes) because they are my team." Dan Dennett


Arbitrariness has its place, I guess. Who else should you root for than "your team"? But is life really a ballgame?

"Nothing to be frightened of"

"I don't believe in God, but I miss Him."

Julian Barnes' brother Jonathan, a philosopher, thought his brother's opening line in Nothing to be Frightened Of "soppy"; but it expresses the natural ambivalence that many atheists feel about the human condition. Are we up to the challenge of living in a Godless universe?

When their mother died and Julian relayed the undertaker's question about viewing the body Jonathan said "Good God, no. I agree with Plato on that one." What did Plato say? "That he didn't believe in seeing dead bodies."

New Yorker

"Yes, we're all individuals"

The Fall semester has about found its legs now, two weeks in. I'm doing something a little different in my Intro classes: on Fridays we're using Open Court's Monty Python and Philosophy, to supplement the week's more conventional approach. This week we read about "The Life of Brian" and took a look at a few clips, most pointedly the one in which Brian Cohen -- the mistaken Messiah -- insists to the multitude at his window that "you're all individuals" who don't need to follow anyone. I usually trot that clip out when explicating Emerson's Self-reliance, but it turns out to be a perfect comment on Plato's Euthyphro too.

The logic & critical thinking class has been fun, stocked as it is with lots of pre-law students who love to argue. And, as Monty Python reminds us, an argument isn't just saying "no it isn't!" (Yes it is!) (No, it ISN'T!!)