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Ihr hund kann sprechen?
Jan. 21st, 2007 11:59 pm
Currently at UW: -7. High today: -6.5. Moderately snowing now.
So, Meno paper is rejected by $ImportantJournal. Therefore, instead of opening my fancy bottle of port, I will be flushing my head down the toilet. Ho hum. (Actually, it probably had a slightly better chance of being accepted there than I have of making the Blue Jays in an open tryout. (Well, that's not really true. Actually, it had an infinitely better chance of being accepted than I have making the Jays, insofar as anything is an infinite multiple of zero. (Then again, Ricciardi could lose his mind! It's not impossible!)) But, ya can't win if ya don't play, 'n' stuff. And so on to the next roll of the dice.)
And on to the next little Plato project, which is reviewing Joshua Mitchell's Plato's Fable, which I started reading today. I am coming to think that it is one of Plato's virtues that so many good books are written on or about him. (Which means, I guess, that it is one of Heidegger's vices that so many bad books are written about him.) And this is another. It's about the Republic and politics and philosophy; in the copious footnotes, it's largely about Augustine--nominally, it's about Plato's claim that philosophy is needed to save the state; underneath, it's about philosophy saving the soul. Mitchell's approach makes for a fascinating comparison with that of Strauss & Co., in that it bears certain obvious similarities to theirs--the ancients are sources of a kind of wisdom which modernity has forgotten; and for particularities, he makes a big deal about something I'd first seen from Bloom, that the "city with a fever" is the necessary condition for philosophy, and hence for justice--but also explicitly distances itself from it:
It will be noted that Plato wrote esoterically, cognizant that only 'the few' can come unto knowledge. True though that may be, however, this insight has provided a warrant for a kind of Bolshevism of the mind, by which the inevitable and intractable situation that the Republic sets up is bypassed by a slieght of hand that separates the stained from the redeemed, those caught in time from those who purport to hover above it. In Plato's great fable, the light of unaided reason is dim, and remains that way unless illuminated by the Good. The claim that 'the few' can understand what Plato is really saying, while 'the many' cannot, while perhaps true, emboldens the honor-loving, noble, soul ... who knows nothing about the Good--and who pretends to have no need for such knowledge. Nobility, and the associated calculus by which the few are distinguished form the many, is, at best, ancillary, to philosophy proper, which takes the measure of things higher still. Nobility searches for the 'hidden truth' of the Republic, which must be protected from the many. The Republic, however, tells a different tale, namely, that truth hides itself from dimly lit reason.
... recalling, of course, that knowing nothing about the Good is "Strauss's Secret". That's from the second and third pages of the preface. The first page is devoted to differentiating between interpretation--which Mitchell says he is not doing--and commentary, with the difference being that interpretation belongs to its own age while commentary belongs to a tradition. (Hence, I suppose, the ongoing dialogue with, or translation into, Augustine, and others.)
Picked up some of the literary reviews today for the first time in a long time. Interesting bit in LRB contrasting the "sincere lies" of Tony Blair and John Howard with the "hypocrisy" of their finance ministers. (So, is this a pattern, or just a coincidence? First Chrétien-Martin, then Blair-Brown, now Howard-Whatsisface.) "Hypocrisy", here, means telling only as much truth as you need to to get what you want; the hypocrite, of this sort, holds back, whereas the sincere liar gushes forth. The sincere liar is, actually, what Frankfurt would call a bullshitter as opposed to a liar; sincere liars are sincere because they don't care what the truth is. The point of the article is that The People love the sincere liar, and hate the hypocrite, because they hate anyone to hold back from them--they don't care if what you tell them isn't true, as long as you're not not telling them everything you think is true.
And a halfway interesting bit in NYRB on Barack Obama, pointing out that he doesn’t seem to have much of a position on much (except Iraq, natch), and that he’s a civic republican rather than a standard Democrat (but then, you used to hear that the Clintons were communitarians; it takes a village, after all). (I'm still having a hard time getting it through my head that "Obama" is his last name. Every time I see "Obama" in print, for a second I feel like he's being put down, like "Hillary". Speaking of Obama's name, I wonder how long it's going to take for people to notice that his middle name is “Hussein”, if they haven’t already (and if Wikipedia isn’t shitting me, which reminds me that I have been meaning to launch that as a new internet acronym: IWISM.)) Personally, I’ll be shocked if either Obama or Edwards wins the nomination, for one reason only: they both look too young. If I were Edwards, I’d dye my hair gray. (Not saying that HRC will win, either, though. I’ve been wondering, actually, how often the nominee is someone no one was talking about eighteen months before the election.)
So, Meno paper is rejected by $ImportantJournal. Therefore, instead of opening my fancy bottle of port, I will be flushing my head down the toilet. Ho hum. (Actually, it probably had a slightly better chance of being accepted there than I have of making the Blue Jays in an open tryout. (Well, that's not really true. Actually, it had an infinitely better chance of being accepted than I have making the Jays, insofar as anything is an infinite multiple of zero. (Then again, Ricciardi could lose his mind! It's not impossible!)) But, ya can't win if ya don't play, 'n' stuff. And so on to the next roll of the dice.)
And on to the next little Plato project, which is reviewing Joshua Mitchell's Plato's Fable, which I started reading today. I am coming to think that it is one of Plato's virtues that so many good books are written on or about him. (Which means, I guess, that it is one of Heidegger's vices that so many bad books are written about him.) And this is another. It's about the Republic and politics and philosophy; in the copious footnotes, it's largely about Augustine--nominally, it's about Plato's claim that philosophy is needed to save the state; underneath, it's about philosophy saving the soul. Mitchell's approach makes for a fascinating comparison with that of Strauss & Co., in that it bears certain obvious similarities to theirs--the ancients are sources of a kind of wisdom which modernity has forgotten; and for particularities, he makes a big deal about something I'd first seen from Bloom, that the "city with a fever" is the necessary condition for philosophy, and hence for justice--but also explicitly distances itself from it:
It will be noted that Plato wrote esoterically, cognizant that only 'the few' can come unto knowledge. True though that may be, however, this insight has provided a warrant for a kind of Bolshevism of the mind, by which the inevitable and intractable situation that the Republic sets up is bypassed by a slieght of hand that separates the stained from the redeemed, those caught in time from those who purport to hover above it. In Plato's great fable, the light of unaided reason is dim, and remains that way unless illuminated by the Good. The claim that 'the few' can understand what Plato is really saying, while 'the many' cannot, while perhaps true, emboldens the honor-loving, noble, soul ... who knows nothing about the Good--and who pretends to have no need for such knowledge. Nobility, and the associated calculus by which the few are distinguished form the many, is, at best, ancillary, to philosophy proper, which takes the measure of things higher still. Nobility searches for the 'hidden truth' of the Republic, which must be protected from the many. The Republic, however, tells a different tale, namely, that truth hides itself from dimly lit reason.
... recalling, of course, that knowing nothing about the Good is "Strauss's Secret". That's from the second and third pages of the preface. The first page is devoted to differentiating between interpretation--which Mitchell says he is not doing--and commentary, with the difference being that interpretation belongs to its own age while commentary belongs to a tradition. (Hence, I suppose, the ongoing dialogue with, or translation into, Augustine, and others.)
Picked up some of the literary reviews today for the first time in a long time. Interesting bit in LRB contrasting the "sincere lies" of Tony Blair and John Howard with the "hypocrisy" of their finance ministers. (So, is this a pattern, or just a coincidence? First Chrétien-Martin, then Blair-Brown, now Howard-Whatsisface.) "Hypocrisy", here, means telling only as much truth as you need to to get what you want; the hypocrite, of this sort, holds back, whereas the sincere liar gushes forth. The sincere liar is, actually, what Frankfurt would call a bullshitter as opposed to a liar; sincere liars are sincere because they don't care what the truth is. The point of the article is that The People love the sincere liar, and hate the hypocrite, because they hate anyone to hold back from them--they don't care if what you tell them isn't true, as long as you're not not telling them everything you think is true.
And a halfway interesting bit in NYRB on Barack Obama, pointing out that he doesn’t seem to have much of a position on much (except Iraq, natch), and that he’s a civic republican rather than a standard Democrat (but then, you used to hear that the Clintons were communitarians; it takes a village, after all). (I'm still having a hard time getting it through my head that "Obama" is his last name. Every time I see "Obama" in print, for a second I feel like he's being put down, like "Hillary". Speaking of Obama's name, I wonder how long it's going to take for people to notice that his middle name is “Hussein”, if they haven’t already (and if Wikipedia isn’t shitting me, which reminds me that I have been meaning to launch that as a new internet acronym: IWISM.)) Personally, I’ll be shocked if either Obama or Edwards wins the nomination, for one reason only: they both look too young. If I were Edwards, I’d dye my hair gray. (Not saying that HRC will win, either, though. I’ve been wondering, actually, how often the nominee is someone no one was talking about eighteen months before the election.)
