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Shot away shot away shot away
Aug. 1st, 2006 11:59 pm
High today in KW: 34. Dewpoint then: 25. High dewpoint: 25.
High today, here: 36. Dewpoint then: 24. High dewpoint: 26.
... but is it really anti-Semitism? That's what I always found hard to buy. Mostly, what it really is is siding with the weaker. (And I start to wonder: is that all the left has going for it anymore? Is there nothing left but ressentiment? Is there nothing positive left, nothing but the basic principle: side with the weaker? (That was not Marx's principle: the lumpenproletariat are natural reactionaries. Gangstas.) There are those who affirm that, explicitly, as a virtuous principle. But that's crazy!
(Well, there's this: "Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free." That's Eugene Debs, in court. There's something in that. (Something, of course, that you might call Christian.) I guess whether it's good or terrible depends on the attitude behind it. It depends, firstly, whether or not it's just a principle for fighting, whether or not you're of the criminal element because it would destroy the people you resent.))
It's hard to distinguish. If the Israelis are overwhelmingly supportive of the current campaign, and it seems that they are, and the current campaign is a campaign of murder and atrocity, then you have to ask, well, what is it about the Israeli character that supports murder and atrocity, eh? But then, if Israel's enemies had the upper hand, I don't doubt the polarities would be reversed. Something was forwarded to a York union list today from a Communist Party list, an article from somewhere about how the US is pulling Israel's strings (as opposed to the articles about how Israel is pulling the US's strings), which said something, by the way, about a group of Democratic congresspeople trying to out-do the Republicans in supporting Israel by moving to block the Iraqi Prime Minister from addressing Congress (because he won't condemn Hezbollah)--which is, you know, just a stunning thing to say! I had, at first, wanted to say, how quickly people forget history, but: it's not even history! A majority of American Jews still vote for Democrats.
There were a couple of pictures in the Star on Sunday of a rally in Toronto--a rally that some activists in my union local were advertising. (The provincial division of my union has endorsed a "boycott and divestment" campaign against Israel. Israel is the new South Africa.) One picture is of the front of the march, the "Israel Out of Lebanon and Gaza" banner, and behind the banner, a guy carrying a picture of the leader of Hezbollah. (The guy is wearing an A's hat. He looks like the sidekick from Highway to Heaven.) The other picture is of some women standing around a poster of atrocities. Floating among them is a picture of President Lunatic of Iran.
Finally resumed Bloom's Republic commentary, finished it last night. For Strauss, it was the bit about kicking everyone over the age of 10 out of the city that shows it isn't serious; Bloom points out that the people the philosopher-kings are supposed to kick out of the city are the people the philosopher-kings are supposed to have convinced to compel the philosophers to rule them. Bloom also catches that bit I'd caught in Book X on my last reading, where Socrates says that Homer must not have been that great because he wasn't that popular in his own time. Some of the commentaries I've read since then portray Socrates as if he was popular, which made me doubt my interpretation of that line a bit, but Bloom takes it the same way I do. It looks to me like Socrates, at least the way Plato makes him out, was very popular among the people he was very popular among, but in general, not so very popular. I keep thinking of the Protagoras: when Protagoras comes to town, obviously, he's a big star in a way that Socrates isn't even close to being.
Read the Laches today. On first reading, it's interesting for a couple of reasons: first, whereas, in the Meno, Socrates insists on addressing virtue as a whole, rather than any "part" of virtue, in the Laches, he suggests taking up a part of virtue--courage--because, he says, it might be easier to take on just one part. The second reason, actually, is the twist that seems to move away from this approach to the Meno's: he says that courage requires knowledge of the future, but knowledge of the future is the same knowledge as knowledge of the past and the present, and knowledge of the past and present are relevant to other virtues, and so knowledge of the future can't be the defining mark of courage ... which seems to be a pretty obscure and pretty apparently fallacious way to conclude that virtue must be addressed as a whole, and not by way of its parts. (There is something known as Plato's doctrine of "the unity of the virtues", the main source for which is the Protagoras, and so that would seem to be the obvious thing to read next, and in fact it comes next in the Loeb edition.)
High today, here: 36. Dewpoint then: 24. High dewpoint: 26.
... but is it really anti-Semitism? That's what I always found hard to buy. Mostly, what it really is is siding with the weaker. (And I start to wonder: is that all the left has going for it anymore? Is there nothing left but ressentiment? Is there nothing positive left, nothing but the basic principle: side with the weaker? (That was not Marx's principle: the lumpenproletariat are natural reactionaries. Gangstas.) There are those who affirm that, explicitly, as a virtuous principle. But that's crazy!
(Well, there's this: "Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free." That's Eugene Debs, in court. There's something in that. (Something, of course, that you might call Christian.) I guess whether it's good or terrible depends on the attitude behind it. It depends, firstly, whether or not it's just a principle for fighting, whether or not you're of the criminal element because it would destroy the people you resent.))
It's hard to distinguish. If the Israelis are overwhelmingly supportive of the current campaign, and it seems that they are, and the current campaign is a campaign of murder and atrocity, then you have to ask, well, what is it about the Israeli character that supports murder and atrocity, eh? But then, if Israel's enemies had the upper hand, I don't doubt the polarities would be reversed. Something was forwarded to a York union list today from a Communist Party list, an article from somewhere about how the US is pulling Israel's strings (as opposed to the articles about how Israel is pulling the US's strings), which said something, by the way, about a group of Democratic congresspeople trying to out-do the Republicans in supporting Israel by moving to block the Iraqi Prime Minister from addressing Congress (because he won't condemn Hezbollah)--which is, you know, just a stunning thing to say! I had, at first, wanted to say, how quickly people forget history, but: it's not even history! A majority of American Jews still vote for Democrats.
There were a couple of pictures in the Star on Sunday of a rally in Toronto--a rally that some activists in my union local were advertising. (The provincial division of my union has endorsed a "boycott and divestment" campaign against Israel. Israel is the new South Africa.) One picture is of the front of the march, the "Israel Out of Lebanon and Gaza" banner, and behind the banner, a guy carrying a picture of the leader of Hezbollah. (The guy is wearing an A's hat. He looks like the sidekick from Highway to Heaven.) The other picture is of some women standing around a poster of atrocities. Floating among them is a picture of President Lunatic of Iran.
Finally resumed Bloom's Republic commentary, finished it last night. For Strauss, it was the bit about kicking everyone over the age of 10 out of the city that shows it isn't serious; Bloom points out that the people the philosopher-kings are supposed to kick out of the city are the people the philosopher-kings are supposed to have convinced to compel the philosophers to rule them. Bloom also catches that bit I'd caught in Book X on my last reading, where Socrates says that Homer must not have been that great because he wasn't that popular in his own time. Some of the commentaries I've read since then portray Socrates as if he was popular, which made me doubt my interpretation of that line a bit, but Bloom takes it the same way I do. It looks to me like Socrates, at least the way Plato makes him out, was very popular among the people he was very popular among, but in general, not so very popular. I keep thinking of the Protagoras: when Protagoras comes to town, obviously, he's a big star in a way that Socrates isn't even close to being.
Read the Laches today. On first reading, it's interesting for a couple of reasons: first, whereas, in the Meno, Socrates insists on addressing virtue as a whole, rather than any "part" of virtue, in the Laches, he suggests taking up a part of virtue--courage--because, he says, it might be easier to take on just one part. The second reason, actually, is the twist that seems to move away from this approach to the Meno's: he says that courage requires knowledge of the future, but knowledge of the future is the same knowledge as knowledge of the past and the present, and knowledge of the past and present are relevant to other virtues, and so knowledge of the future can't be the defining mark of courage ... which seems to be a pretty obscure and pretty apparently fallacious way to conclude that virtue must be addressed as a whole, and not by way of its parts. (There is something known as Plato's doctrine of "the unity of the virtues", the main source for which is the Protagoras, and so that would seem to be the obvious thing to read next, and in fact it comes next in the Loeb edition.)
