![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
High today, here: 27. Dewpoint then: 14. High dewpoint: 16.
High today in TO: 27. Dewpoint then: 14. High dewpoint: 16.
Low today on the balcony: 16.1. High: 27.4. Currently: 22.6.
And now, of course, Barry Bonds has a bad knee, and Giambi has a bad back, again. On the flip side, Derrek Lee is back. Now, who am I going to drop for Derrek Lee? Can't say I enjoy Adam Dunn's .201 batting average. He is, however, leading my team in home runs. Bonds is leading my team, as well as the universe, in walks. Griffey is leading my team in potential. (And now the Astros have BLOWN AN 8-RUN 7TH-INNING LEAD to take a win away from Roy Oswalt. Will someone please put Brad Lidge out of his misery. (I COULD NOT BELIEVE IT when sports.yahoo.com came up with the bases empty and the game still going on. Again? It happened to him again?!) Glad I don't have him. Wish I had Iguchi (who I'd have to bet is the first guy in major league history to have seven RBIs in a losing cause). Man. Wow. Mercy.)
And another thing: Kenji Johjima hits two home runs and a double or whatever it was, and the next day he's on the bench? What is this, the old Jimy Williams bench-'em-when-they're-hot-so-they'll-be-raring-to-get-back routine? (I wonder how many home runs that cost Jesse Barfield in 1986.)
Poked around a bit more today, having poked around a bit yesterday, in Heinrich Wegand Petzet's Encounters and Dialogues with Martin Heidegger, which is one of those books I see on the shelf every time I look at the Heidegger section, but for some reason either have never looked at or looked at briefly once and forgot about. It's, more or less, sketches of an intellectual biography, by a friend of Heidegger's--a close friend, apparently; he was present at the Spiegel interview. What's so amazing about this kind of writing about Heidegger is how completely it puts the lie to Adorno-style Heidegger-bashing (though any real attention to Heidegger's writing will do that) by showing how completely Heidegger lived his thought, and how intensely he strove to communicate it (and indeed how little patience--too little--he had for uncommunicative chatter). One odd thing: "On occasion [Heidegger] stated that etymology would be an obstacle to thinking as long as it was given priortiy vis-a-vis the essence of language and was considered the voice of the absolute. He offended the specialists with this sort of statement." Later on, Petzet makes an even less illuminating comment to the effect that Heidegger often expressed his opposition to etymology as deployed by linguists. Rather mysterious--if Petzet makes any mention of the positive use Heidegger makes of etymology, I haven't seen it yet--but the quoted passage certainly seems to back what I've been saying about the intent of Heidegger's etymologies.
Finally got around to reading Xenophon's Apology today. It is, really, not terribly interesting. I'm not sure why he bothered writing it, given that he wasn't there; he's just reporting what he says some other guy told him about the trial.
And re-read the Crito, and here's the new thing that bugs me: Socrates says that Crito can help him figure out what the right thing to do is, because Crito (unlike Socrates) probably isn't going to die tomorrow. Now, the thing is, the dialogue opens with Crito telling Socrates, bad news, the ship is coming in today, which means they're going to execute you tomorrow, and Socrates replying, nah, I just had a dream that told me I'm going to be in fertile Phthia on the third day--which everyone takes to mean that the ship won't come in until the next day, and Socrates will be executed, and go to a blissful afterlife, on the third day. Now: somebody somewhere that I read in the last couple of months points out that Phthia is in Thessaly. Thessaly is where Crito wants Socrates to go. When Socrates tells Crito about the dream, Crito says it's strange (atopon, literally out of place (one of Heidegger's favourite words: unheimlich)--a pun, maybe, surely?); Socrates says, no, it's clear; Crito says: "exceedingly, indeed, it looks like." Lamb, Grube, Tredennick, and Jowett all have "too clear" for "lian ge" (where "lian" can mean, simply, "very", but can range to "excessively", and "ge" is an intensifying particle); one or two of them preface "too" with "only": "only too clear, it seems." But this translation seems to be based on the interpretation that Crito understands being in fertile Phthia to mean, simply, being dead. But: Crito wants Socrates to be, literally, in fertile Phthia on the third day; he has come, precisely, to encourage Socrates to be in fertile Phthia, and not dead, on the third day! In the Phaedo, keep in mind, Crito is the one who is portrayed as having ignored the whole argument of the dialogue, failing, in the end, to understand that Socrates will survive his bodily death. If the dream says that Socrates is going to be in Phthia on the third day, then, it's easy to venture, Crito probably believes it means to say that Socrates is going to be in Phthia on the third day. So when Crito says "that's strange", maybe what he means is: "that's funny, that's just the place I came here to tell you to go to." And when he says it's exceedingly clear what the dream means, well, what could be clearer? The dream agrees with Crito: Socrates should go to Thessaly!
Now, as I was saying: Socrates goes on to say that Crito, unlike himself, probably isn't going to die tomorrow. So, what: he really does think he's going to be executed tomorrow--and then what does that mean for "fertile Phthia"? Or he's just going along with Crito, because it's not that important? Or what? It's all so convoluted!
Something else that stood out this time: when the Laws tell Socrates that it would be even more impious to act against them than it would be to act against his own parents, they are flatly contradicting Socrates's implied position in the Euthyphro.
Today's lunchtime reading, during which I ate my dinner, having forgotten my lunch, was Strauss's Euthydemus commentary. Strauss's take is very similar to Levenson's; in fact, it's virtually the same, minus the religious trappings: Socrates really does want to learn from the two sophists, and the dialogue is motivated by Socrates's wanting to get Crito to pay the sophists' fee, and also to join him in their classes. (But Socrates also says, as Strauss points out, in Strauss's words: "they have brought their art to such a perfection that anyone can learn it within a very short time. This fact ... carries with it the inconvenience that a single public exhibition, which is meant to allure paying pupils, suffices for initiating people to their art.") Socrates, in fact, champions the sophists against the political intellectuals, a representative of whom, Crito reports, had expressed contempt for the two sophists, and for Socrates's engagement with them: "Socrates was not the mortal enemy of the sophists nor were the sophists the mortal enemy of Socrates. According to Socrates, the greatest enemy of philosophy, the greatest sophist, is the political multitude, i.e., the enactor of the Athenian laws." (That passage is prefaced by this: "We are still too much inclined to see the conflict between Socrates and 'the sophists' in the light of the conflict between the thinkers of the Restoration and the thinkers who prepared the French Revolution or took its side." I wish I knew what that was supposed to mean.) But the political multitude is not the political intellectual.... I do worry, with Strauss, about the fine line between, on one hand, laying traps and playing tricks, and on the other hand, just being sloppy. Maybe he never does cross the line, but I do worry.
And finally, read some of the beginning and some of the end of Thomas H. Chance's Plato's Euthydemus: Analysis of What Is and Is Not Philosophy--which I am amazed to see is available online, for free, in its entirety. (I am also titillated to see that Chance has a Wikipedia entry which links to his modestly extensive collection of usenet posts--in fact, the first entry in his Wikipedia history has the note "introducing notable Usenetter Thomas H. Chance". I am also disappointed to see that he has, apparently, not posted to usenet since 2001. Maybe he got a livejournal.) Chance's main purpose, apparently, is to argue, against most everyone (which, of course, makes him a natural usenetter--a couple of posts on humanities.philosophy.objectivism, even, God love 'im), that the Euthydemus is a late dialogue (but subsidiarily, that the "progressive view" is bunk and that it doesn't matter a whole lot what order the dialogues were written in--which is a notion I've been entertaining a bit myself, lately, because I'd really like to read Meno-Euthydemus-Euthyphro-Crito-Phaedo as a continuous set), so that, maybe, something like my self-criticism take is actually on. Or something.
And now it is, again, too late to cut my hair, which may be just as well, because the sun has been burning the top of my head.
High today in TO: 27. Dewpoint then: 14. High dewpoint: 16.
Low today on the balcony: 16.1. High: 27.4. Currently: 22.6.
And now, of course, Barry Bonds has a bad knee, and Giambi has a bad back, again. On the flip side, Derrek Lee is back. Now, who am I going to drop for Derrek Lee? Can't say I enjoy Adam Dunn's .201 batting average. He is, however, leading my team in home runs. Bonds is leading my team, as well as the universe, in walks. Griffey is leading my team in potential. (And now the Astros have BLOWN AN 8-RUN 7TH-INNING LEAD to take a win away from Roy Oswalt. Will someone please put Brad Lidge out of his misery. (I COULD NOT BELIEVE IT when sports.yahoo.com came up with the bases empty and the game still going on. Again? It happened to him again?!) Glad I don't have him. Wish I had Iguchi (who I'd have to bet is the first guy in major league history to have seven RBIs in a losing cause). Man. Wow. Mercy.)
And another thing: Kenji Johjima hits two home runs and a double or whatever it was, and the next day he's on the bench? What is this, the old Jimy Williams bench-'em-when-they're-hot-so-they'll-be-raring-to-get-back routine? (I wonder how many home runs that cost Jesse Barfield in 1986.)
Poked around a bit more today, having poked around a bit yesterday, in Heinrich Wegand Petzet's Encounters and Dialogues with Martin Heidegger, which is one of those books I see on the shelf every time I look at the Heidegger section, but for some reason either have never looked at or looked at briefly once and forgot about. It's, more or less, sketches of an intellectual biography, by a friend of Heidegger's--a close friend, apparently; he was present at the Spiegel interview. What's so amazing about this kind of writing about Heidegger is how completely it puts the lie to Adorno-style Heidegger-bashing (though any real attention to Heidegger's writing will do that) by showing how completely Heidegger lived his thought, and how intensely he strove to communicate it (and indeed how little patience--too little--he had for uncommunicative chatter). One odd thing: "On occasion [Heidegger] stated that etymology would be an obstacle to thinking as long as it was given priortiy vis-a-vis the essence of language and was considered the voice of the absolute. He offended the specialists with this sort of statement." Later on, Petzet makes an even less illuminating comment to the effect that Heidegger often expressed his opposition to etymology as deployed by linguists. Rather mysterious--if Petzet makes any mention of the positive use Heidegger makes of etymology, I haven't seen it yet--but the quoted passage certainly seems to back what I've been saying about the intent of Heidegger's etymologies.
Finally got around to reading Xenophon's Apology today. It is, really, not terribly interesting. I'm not sure why he bothered writing it, given that he wasn't there; he's just reporting what he says some other guy told him about the trial.
And re-read the Crito, and here's the new thing that bugs me: Socrates says that Crito can help him figure out what the right thing to do is, because Crito (unlike Socrates) probably isn't going to die tomorrow. Now, the thing is, the dialogue opens with Crito telling Socrates, bad news, the ship is coming in today, which means they're going to execute you tomorrow, and Socrates replying, nah, I just had a dream that told me I'm going to be in fertile Phthia on the third day--which everyone takes to mean that the ship won't come in until the next day, and Socrates will be executed, and go to a blissful afterlife, on the third day. Now: somebody somewhere that I read in the last couple of months points out that Phthia is in Thessaly. Thessaly is where Crito wants Socrates to go. When Socrates tells Crito about the dream, Crito says it's strange (atopon, literally out of place (one of Heidegger's favourite words: unheimlich)--a pun, maybe, surely?); Socrates says, no, it's clear; Crito says: "exceedingly, indeed, it looks like." Lamb, Grube, Tredennick, and Jowett all have "too clear" for "lian ge" (where "lian" can mean, simply, "very", but can range to "excessively", and "ge" is an intensifying particle); one or two of them preface "too" with "only": "only too clear, it seems." But this translation seems to be based on the interpretation that Crito understands being in fertile Phthia to mean, simply, being dead. But: Crito wants Socrates to be, literally, in fertile Phthia on the third day; he has come, precisely, to encourage Socrates to be in fertile Phthia, and not dead, on the third day! In the Phaedo, keep in mind, Crito is the one who is portrayed as having ignored the whole argument of the dialogue, failing, in the end, to understand that Socrates will survive his bodily death. If the dream says that Socrates is going to be in Phthia on the third day, then, it's easy to venture, Crito probably believes it means to say that Socrates is going to be in Phthia on the third day. So when Crito says "that's strange", maybe what he means is: "that's funny, that's just the place I came here to tell you to go to." And when he says it's exceedingly clear what the dream means, well, what could be clearer? The dream agrees with Crito: Socrates should go to Thessaly!
Now, as I was saying: Socrates goes on to say that Crito, unlike himself, probably isn't going to die tomorrow. So, what: he really does think he's going to be executed tomorrow--and then what does that mean for "fertile Phthia"? Or he's just going along with Crito, because it's not that important? Or what? It's all so convoluted!
Something else that stood out this time: when the Laws tell Socrates that it would be even more impious to act against them than it would be to act against his own parents, they are flatly contradicting Socrates's implied position in the Euthyphro.
Today's lunchtime reading, during which I ate my dinner, having forgotten my lunch, was Strauss's Euthydemus commentary. Strauss's take is very similar to Levenson's; in fact, it's virtually the same, minus the religious trappings: Socrates really does want to learn from the two sophists, and the dialogue is motivated by Socrates's wanting to get Crito to pay the sophists' fee, and also to join him in their classes. (But Socrates also says, as Strauss points out, in Strauss's words: "they have brought their art to such a perfection that anyone can learn it within a very short time. This fact ... carries with it the inconvenience that a single public exhibition, which is meant to allure paying pupils, suffices for initiating people to their art.") Socrates, in fact, champions the sophists against the political intellectuals, a representative of whom, Crito reports, had expressed contempt for the two sophists, and for Socrates's engagement with them: "Socrates was not the mortal enemy of the sophists nor were the sophists the mortal enemy of Socrates. According to Socrates, the greatest enemy of philosophy, the greatest sophist, is the political multitude, i.e., the enactor of the Athenian laws." (That passage is prefaced by this: "We are still too much inclined to see the conflict between Socrates and 'the sophists' in the light of the conflict between the thinkers of the Restoration and the thinkers who prepared the French Revolution or took its side." I wish I knew what that was supposed to mean.) But the political multitude is not the political intellectual.... I do worry, with Strauss, about the fine line between, on one hand, laying traps and playing tricks, and on the other hand, just being sloppy. Maybe he never does cross the line, but I do worry.
And finally, read some of the beginning and some of the end of Thomas H. Chance's Plato's Euthydemus: Analysis of What Is and Is Not Philosophy--which I am amazed to see is available online, for free, in its entirety. (I am also titillated to see that Chance has a Wikipedia entry which links to his modestly extensive collection of usenet posts--in fact, the first entry in his Wikipedia history has the note "introducing notable Usenetter Thomas H. Chance". I am also disappointed to see that he has, apparently, not posted to usenet since 2001. Maybe he got a livejournal.) Chance's main purpose, apparently, is to argue, against most everyone (which, of course, makes him a natural usenetter--a couple of posts on humanities.philosophy.objectivism, even, God love 'im), that the Euthydemus is a late dialogue (but subsidiarily, that the "progressive view" is bunk and that it doesn't matter a whole lot what order the dialogues were written in--which is a notion I've been entertaining a bit myself, lately, because I'd really like to read Meno-Euthydemus-Euthyphro-Crito-Phaedo as a continuous set), so that, maybe, something like my self-criticism take is actually on. Or something.
And now it is, again, too late to cut my hair, which may be just as well, because the sun has been burning the top of my head.
