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In lieu of flowers
Nov. 12th, 2007 11:59 pm
Currently at Toronto Pearson: 9. High today: 12.
I just read an article in the Globe that used "in lieu of" to mean "in light of". This is something I have seen many times; I use it as an example in a paper. But this is the first time I've seen it anywhere other than an undergrad paper.
Socrates did mention sophrosune first, not Critias. That's unfortunate. But I think I'll live.
The last couple of days, I've been reading a bunch of commentaries on the Charmides. Having not much in particular to do with the Charmides in particular, it has come to my attention that the Straussians have won in a rout, but most people haven't noticed yet. Which is to say: a lot of Plato scholarship these days says that everybody says that Plato thinks what Socrates says but this is wrong and we need to follow the dramatic clues to what Plato really wants us to get.
Actually, I've started to wonder about the Straussians themselves: is the esoteric doctrine that there is no esoteric doctrine? If we're treating the ancient texts as wisdom literature, then it may not matter whether the ancient authors were wise or not; what matters is whether wisdom can be gotten from the texts or not. In the same way that it doesn't matter for religion whether there is God or not. Another unfortunate fact I have learned is that the dramatic date of the Charmides is much earlier than that of the Republic. But Seth Benardete, who I guess was the second-most prominent of the second-generation Straussians, after Bloom, seems to read the Charmides after the Republic somewhat like I want to.
Despite the fact that the non-Straussians can no longer be distinguished from the Straussians by their hermeneutic strategies, they can be distinguished by their footnotes. The non-Straussians have very many, and the Straussians have very few. They both make me feel guilty by their examples.
One of the Straussians' commentaries put me on to a paper from a philology journal in 1951 about how the meanings of sophrosune and dikaiosune converge in Plato--because, the argument goes, Plato wanted to re-define justice toward moderation. (I was amused to see, at the beginning, the author saying that anyone who reads the Republic carefully is bugged by the fact that you can hardly tell sophrosune and dikaiosune apart. The author only cites people who aren't bugged, and--in the author's view--make up differences between them. (A couple of them, famous old Plato commentators, actually construe the relation between them in opposite ways--one says dikaiosune is a condition of sophrosune; the other, vice versa.) Which is to say, no one hitherto had read the Republic carefully.) Assuming this to be the case, it's completely unremarkable that a definition given for sophrosune in the Charmides is the same as one given for dikaiosune in the Republic. (Strangely, none of the Charmides commentaries I've looked at so far have found it remarkable enough to do anything more than remark on it. Which reminds me that most of them seem to miss the hangover joke, but the ones that get it say that of course his headaches are from hangovers. Benardete seems to think it's irrelevant whether they're from hangovers, because it isn't that kind of moderation we're after here.)
I'm not ready to buy it, though, and as of now I've got two reasons. First, what sophrosune is supposed to be in the Republic is the "agreement" that reason should rule over appetite--that thumos should restrain appetite on behalf of reason. Dikaiosune is supposed to be everything doing what is proper to its nature and not doing what is proper to some other nature. This, on its face, makes dikaiosune a bigger category than sophrosune. If appetite acts in the place of reason, then you are immoderate and unjust. But if reason acts in the place of appetite, then you are unjust but not immoderate. (At least a couple of the commentaries I've looked at so far suggest something to the effect that reason taking the place of appetite, or at least of emotion, is a problem in the Charmides. All the pieces of my puzzle seem to be out there, but I haven't seen anyone put them all together yet.)
Second, moderation and justice just are not the same thing.
Another thing I've started to wonder about the other Straussians, or "Straussians": where the heck did this "regime change" business come from? You know, when you hear about the Straussian neoconservative cabal, what you hear is that they think that if you change the constitution of the state, the constitution of the people will change along with it. I don't know why any student of Plato would not find that idea perverse if not silly. Look, ya gotta get rid of everyone over ten years old, fer cryin' out loud!
I just read an article in the Globe that used "in lieu of" to mean "in light of". This is something I have seen many times; I use it as an example in a paper. But this is the first time I've seen it anywhere other than an undergrad paper.
Socrates did mention sophrosune first, not Critias. That's unfortunate. But I think I'll live.
The last couple of days, I've been reading a bunch of commentaries on the Charmides. Having not much in particular to do with the Charmides in particular, it has come to my attention that the Straussians have won in a rout, but most people haven't noticed yet. Which is to say: a lot of Plato scholarship these days says that everybody says that Plato thinks what Socrates says but this is wrong and we need to follow the dramatic clues to what Plato really wants us to get.
Actually, I've started to wonder about the Straussians themselves: is the esoteric doctrine that there is no esoteric doctrine? If we're treating the ancient texts as wisdom literature, then it may not matter whether the ancient authors were wise or not; what matters is whether wisdom can be gotten from the texts or not. In the same way that it doesn't matter for religion whether there is God or not. Another unfortunate fact I have learned is that the dramatic date of the Charmides is much earlier than that of the Republic. But Seth Benardete, who I guess was the second-most prominent of the second-generation Straussians, after Bloom, seems to read the Charmides after the Republic somewhat like I want to.
Despite the fact that the non-Straussians can no longer be distinguished from the Straussians by their hermeneutic strategies, they can be distinguished by their footnotes. The non-Straussians have very many, and the Straussians have very few. They both make me feel guilty by their examples.
One of the Straussians' commentaries put me on to a paper from a philology journal in 1951 about how the meanings of sophrosune and dikaiosune converge in Plato--because, the argument goes, Plato wanted to re-define justice toward moderation. (I was amused to see, at the beginning, the author saying that anyone who reads the Republic carefully is bugged by the fact that you can hardly tell sophrosune and dikaiosune apart. The author only cites people who aren't bugged, and--in the author's view--make up differences between them. (A couple of them, famous old Plato commentators, actually construe the relation between them in opposite ways--one says dikaiosune is a condition of sophrosune; the other, vice versa.) Which is to say, no one hitherto had read the Republic carefully.) Assuming this to be the case, it's completely unremarkable that a definition given for sophrosune in the Charmides is the same as one given for dikaiosune in the Republic. (Strangely, none of the Charmides commentaries I've looked at so far have found it remarkable enough to do anything more than remark on it. Which reminds me that most of them seem to miss the hangover joke, but the ones that get it say that of course his headaches are from hangovers. Benardete seems to think it's irrelevant whether they're from hangovers, because it isn't that kind of moderation we're after here.)
I'm not ready to buy it, though, and as of now I've got two reasons. First, what sophrosune is supposed to be in the Republic is the "agreement" that reason should rule over appetite--that thumos should restrain appetite on behalf of reason. Dikaiosune is supposed to be everything doing what is proper to its nature and not doing what is proper to some other nature. This, on its face, makes dikaiosune a bigger category than sophrosune. If appetite acts in the place of reason, then you are immoderate and unjust. But if reason acts in the place of appetite, then you are unjust but not immoderate. (At least a couple of the commentaries I've looked at so far suggest something to the effect that reason taking the place of appetite, or at least of emotion, is a problem in the Charmides. All the pieces of my puzzle seem to be out there, but I haven't seen anyone put them all together yet.)
Second, moderation and justice just are not the same thing.
Another thing I've started to wonder about the other Straussians, or "Straussians": where the heck did this "regime change" business come from? You know, when you hear about the Straussian neoconservative cabal, what you hear is that they think that if you change the constitution of the state, the constitution of the people will change along with it. I don't know why any student of Plato would not find that idea perverse if not silly. Look, ya gotta get rid of everyone over ten years old, fer cryin' out loud!
