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High today, here: 28. Dewpoint then: 21. High dewpoint: 21.
High today in TO: 28. Dewpoint then: 21. High dewpoint: 22.
Low today on the balcony: 19.8. High: 28.3. Currently: 21.2.
Spent most of today poking around in books on human nature, and was, briefly, somewhat excited about the prospect of centring a human nature course around E.O. Wilson's On Human Nature and Frederick Olafson's Naturalism and the Human Condition: Against Scientism. But Wilson's book, although it won a Pulitzer, seems mostly just a lot of hand-waving, and Olafson's book, although evidently aimed at the intelligent layperson, seems probably over the head of the average second-year undergrad. (You can connect the dots there.) And so, in the end, it's back to last year's textbook, and wondering whether that was basically a waste of two days.
And then, a bit of Weiss's book, from the beginning, the first 30-odd pages, in which I learned that she's got another bit of my Meno paper well covered (namely, the bit where Socrates substitutes agathon for kalon). I'm starting to get the feeling I'm way out of my depth, here. Actually, I think I'm just about finished getting the feeling I'm way out of my depth here. I think I've pretty much got it. However: I've still got my good goddamned analogy. Ain't nobody taking away my good goddamned analogy. I think the question now, though, is whether this is still going to be a paper about the Meno, or whether it's going to be a paper about what philosophy is, featuring an analogy from the Meno. The funny thing is, when I started out with this paper, I didn't really know what I might want to make of it, philosophically; there was just this analogy here, which nobody seemed to have ever noticed, which seemed like it ought to be pointed out. And so it began life as a Scholarly thing. But, since then, the idea has sunk in: the business of philosophy does not concern how things happen, but what things are. But this is, after all, Heidegger's idea.
Trying, in vain, to locate another source of a paper, about the Euthydemus and the difference between Socrates and the Sophists, that Weiss published in a hard-to-get-ahold-of book, I discovered that there is an article (on Plato's use of myth in the Meno and the Protagoras) by her in the current issue of Interpretation (in fact, her second article in Interpretation), which is the Straussians' journal. Naturellement.
High today in TO: 28. Dewpoint then: 21. High dewpoint: 22.
Low today on the balcony: 19.8. High: 28.3. Currently: 21.2.
Spent most of today poking around in books on human nature, and was, briefly, somewhat excited about the prospect of centring a human nature course around E.O. Wilson's On Human Nature and Frederick Olafson's Naturalism and the Human Condition: Against Scientism. But Wilson's book, although it won a Pulitzer, seems mostly just a lot of hand-waving, and Olafson's book, although evidently aimed at the intelligent layperson, seems probably over the head of the average second-year undergrad. (You can connect the dots there.) And so, in the end, it's back to last year's textbook, and wondering whether that was basically a waste of two days.
And then, a bit of Weiss's book, from the beginning, the first 30-odd pages, in which I learned that she's got another bit of my Meno paper well covered (namely, the bit where Socrates substitutes agathon for kalon). I'm starting to get the feeling I'm way out of my depth, here. Actually, I think I'm just about finished getting the feeling I'm way out of my depth here. I think I've pretty much got it. However: I've still got my good goddamned analogy. Ain't nobody taking away my good goddamned analogy. I think the question now, though, is whether this is still going to be a paper about the Meno, or whether it's going to be a paper about what philosophy is, featuring an analogy from the Meno. The funny thing is, when I started out with this paper, I didn't really know what I might want to make of it, philosophically; there was just this analogy here, which nobody seemed to have ever noticed, which seemed like it ought to be pointed out. And so it began life as a Scholarly thing. But, since then, the idea has sunk in: the business of philosophy does not concern how things happen, but what things are. But this is, after all, Heidegger's idea.
Trying, in vain, to locate another source of a paper, about the Euthydemus and the difference between Socrates and the Sophists, that Weiss published in a hard-to-get-ahold-of book, I discovered that there is an article (on Plato's use of myth in the Meno and the Protagoras) by her in the current issue of Interpretation (in fact, her second article in Interpretation), which is the Straussians' journal. Naturellement.
