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"Joy of joys, oh happy day"
Jun. 7th, 2006 11:23 pm
High today, here: 27. Dewpoint then: 11. High dewpoint: 15.
High today in TO: 27. Dewpoint then: 12. High dewpoint: 14.
Low today on the balcony: 16.7. High: 28.4. Currently: 23.6.
Today, the not-quite-random train to who-knows-where lurched off to Mitchell Miller, "'The Arguments I Seem to Hear': Argument and Irony in the Crito" (Phronesis 41, no. 2 (1996)), and a good thing it did, too. Miller comes pretty close, broadly speaking, to what I want to say about the Crito: he conjectures that Socrates submits to his execution in the hope that it will sting the consciences of a few jurymen and chasten the Athenian democracy. So, Miller's thinking reform; I'd think more like revolution, but mostly just to forget about politics altogether, and be wary of the public sphere in general. He makes a bunch of very interesting points, some more convincing than others, along the way as to why each of the Laws' arguments is designed to persuade someone like Crito, but can't represent what Socrates actually thinks.
After that, finally started on the main thing I've been wanting to do lately, which is read through the sequence of dialogues from Euthyphro to Phaedo, and then the Euthydemus (because Crito reappears there). Got through the Euthyphro and most of the Apology. One thing that jumps out of the Euthyphro in light of the Crito: there's a bit that seems to be thrown in for no particular reason, about how everyone accepts that wrong-doers must pay their penalties, even though everyone disagrees about what's right and what's wrong. It's strongly tempting to try to map the Euthyphro scenario--Euthyphro is prosecuting his own father for causing the death of a slave, whom he had bound and left to die after the slave had killed someone else--onto the prosecution of Socrates, but I doubt that works.
High today in TO: 27. Dewpoint then: 12. High dewpoint: 14.
Low today on the balcony: 16.7. High: 28.4. Currently: 23.6.
Today, the not-quite-random train to who-knows-where lurched off to Mitchell Miller, "'The Arguments I Seem to Hear': Argument and Irony in the Crito" (Phronesis 41, no. 2 (1996)), and a good thing it did, too. Miller comes pretty close, broadly speaking, to what I want to say about the Crito: he conjectures that Socrates submits to his execution in the hope that it will sting the consciences of a few jurymen and chasten the Athenian democracy. So, Miller's thinking reform; I'd think more like revolution, but mostly just to forget about politics altogether, and be wary of the public sphere in general. He makes a bunch of very interesting points, some more convincing than others, along the way as to why each of the Laws' arguments is designed to persuade someone like Crito, but can't represent what Socrates actually thinks.
After that, finally started on the main thing I've been wanting to do lately, which is read through the sequence of dialogues from Euthyphro to Phaedo, and then the Euthydemus (because Crito reappears there). Got through the Euthyphro and most of the Apology. One thing that jumps out of the Euthyphro in light of the Crito: there's a bit that seems to be thrown in for no particular reason, about how everyone accepts that wrong-doers must pay their penalties, even though everyone disagrees about what's right and what's wrong. It's strongly tempting to try to map the Euthyphro scenario--Euthyphro is prosecuting his own father for causing the death of a slave, whom he had bound and left to die after the slave had killed someone else--onto the prosecution of Socrates, but I doubt that works.
