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cincinnatus_c
Currently at Toronto Pearson: 4. High today: 9. Could've sworn it was warmer than that when I went outside at dinner-time. The last of the trees are finally turning. I don't know just how abnormal that is.
Read the Charmides for the third time today, and noticed a joke I'd missed before. The subject of the dialogue is "temperance" (sophrosune). Near the beginning, Socrates is talking to Critias, and Critias tells Socrates he'll get his pretty young cousin Critias to come over and talk to him by telling him that Socrates has a cure for the headaches he's been having every morning. Maybe it was the headache I had yesterday that primed me to realize that what gives you a headache every morning is drinking the night before.
When Charmides comes over, Critias announces that Charmides is the most temperate person in the world. Socrates asks Charmides whether this is true, and Charmides blushes, and says he doesn't want to say whether it is or it isn't, because if he says it isn't then he's calling Critias a liar, and if he says it is then he's bragging. Socrates spares him the obvious response--why don't you just tell the truth? Then Socrates says that if Charmides is temperate, he'll be able to say what temperance is--so what's temperance? Charmides pauses before reticently responding that temperance seems to be reticence. Socrates shoots that down with a wild fallacy, and Charmides's next attempt is that temperance is what makes you ashamed. It's what makes you blush when someone says you're temperate and you're not. And Socrates fallaciously shoots that down, and Charmides gives up trying to describe his own bit of temperance and says he's heard someone--who turns out to be Critias--say that temperance is doing your own work, which, oddly, is what justice is supposed to be in the Republic. When Charmides can't defend that, the argument is handed over to Critias, whose being ashamed to admit that he can't defend it either goes to show that being ashamed is not necessarily a sign of temperance, but could be the opposite.
Also read the first essay in Iris Murdoch's The Sovereignty of Good, which was the other book I bought on Saturday because of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
saintalbatross. It's also a good read. I very much like what she's saying--that goodness is something perceptible like beauty, and that it can be known and learned and grown into, and that it has to do with seeing things truly--though I have more sympathy than she does for the position she's arguing against--that morality is a matter of will. She identifies the latter as the "existentialist" position, but, as I've said something in the neighbourhood of before, I think both positions are in Sartre. (I also wish she wouldn't say "Angst" when she's talking about--I was going to say Sartrean anxiety, but I don't know that it's even that. Maybe more like Kierkegaard, but I haven't looked at his Concept of Anxiety in a long time. I don't know whether Kierkegaard uses the German word (or if maybe the word is the same in Danish), but "Angst" looks like Heidegger, and what Murdoch is talking about is not at all Heidegger. Heidegger is much closer to Murdoch than to Murdoch's "existentialists"--the way she construes freedom, as a kind of progressive access to truth and as reducing rather than proliferating "choice", is also very much reminiscent of Heidegger. (On the question of "choice", also reminiscent of Nietzsche in his "amor fati" mode--and this, with both Heidegger and Nietzsche, I'd guess has something to do with Luther. Here I stand and can do no other.) Actually, another quasi-existentialist she could benefit much from is Merleau-Ponty, who could help with the main technical problem of the essay, i.e., whether there are "introspective" moral phenomena (as opposed to moral phenomena being only public and action-oriented). Murdoch is stuck with the view that if something is not an action then it is a "thought", where a thought is something "in the mind"--on a Merleau-Pontian kind of view, what goes on when you undergo a moral change is only partly cognitive; it's something that happens bodily, a change in comportment.)
And went to talk today by a German on "happiness science". This talk was the second place in the last few days that I've heard of "purchasing power parity", which apparently is the fashionable new way to measure the wealth of nations, after never having heard of it before. Apparently, the average "subjective well-being" of countries correlates strongly with purchasing power parity, with the top five happy anomalies being in Latin America: Puerto Rico, Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, and El Salvador. Mexico is also in the top ten happy anomalies, and so is the Philippines, prompting the speaker to speculate that their purchasing power parities are underrepresented due to all the cash sent back by illegal immigrants and nannies. And Colombia because of the cocaine. But also the Latin American numbers are skewed by an unusual proportion of happy people reporting that they are extremely happy.
The second-most funny thing he said was that people expect countries with high suicide rates not to rank well on subjective well-being, but actually they do, because when people kill themselves they're not around to be unhappy anymore.
The funniest thing he said was, referring to two very influential social psychologists: "X and Y, you know, they're liars!" (What they lie about is the extent to which people are susceptible to cognitive biasses.)
One of the worst things that ever happened to me happened to me last week. (I'd say it's not too bad, but I might just be like the guy on the boxcar going to the concentration camp in Slaughterhouse Five who keeps saying he's been in worse places than this, until he dies. Well, it's not that bad, by a long shot. I am, categorically, very lucky to be able to say that this is one of the worst things that ever happened to me.) Actually, it happened a few weeks ago, and really started happening in the summer. I just found out about it last week, which is part of the badness of what happened. I mean "happened to me" strictly: worse things have happened in my life, but this was something that happened just to me. It was done to me, not maliciously but negligently. It's turned progress into regress and has thrown my professional future into even greater peril--or, at least, returned it to the state of peril it was in in the summer, before what would turn out to be the whole misfortune began, and I was trying to figure out what other sort of career I could get into, just in case.
I'm happy to report that I don't feel bad about it. I felt bad about it last week, but I don't anymore. What has been worst about it is communicating with the people responsible. They, to varying degrees, have done too much to evade responsibility, which is probably what I will feel worst about in a lasting way. I have always thought that if I am decent and conscientious in my work, enough will come to me--other people can have more, but I don't want more. (There ought to be this corollary to the "Matthew Principle" (whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath): it works just as well for desiring as for having.) This incident has been the fullest indication yet that that ain't necessarily so. But, this week, I'm still believing it anyway. (Enough has come to me from elsewhere, for now and for a good while, from someone who, it could and by most lights should be said, had something much worse revealed last week. It's hard to know what to make of these things.)
What has been the worst thing about it, though, the worst thing about communicating with the people responsible, is the feeling I have that I will come to be in the wrong. Not that they will make it out to be my fault, though that too (and I have been afraid that they will want to fight me, because, as Hobbes says, there are two ways for someone to become an enemy in your eyes: first, they do wrong to you; second, you do wrong to them and resent the reproach they represent), but that I will push my case too far and misrepresent something and I will be dragged down by it. If thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. Well, it's an injustice, Cain says, an outright injustice. And what are you supposed to do? That's the question. You know, some people want me to fight it, with whatever I can fight it with. They think it's outrageous. It is outrageous. And I've thought about fighting it and I've wanted to fight it and I've taken a step toward fighting it but once you step toward fighting you step away from the truth.
(At the end of the Charmides, Critias tells Charmides that, since he can't say what temperance is, he must be led and "charmed" by Socrates, and Charmides (who is a wrestler, and a funny thing about this dialogue is that it's set at a wrestling school, and that Socrates says it's the first place he went, after being away at war for years, seeking philosophical conversation) tells Socrates that he will force Socrates to lead and charm him if Socrates is not willing. At the beginning of their conversation, Charmides said he would take the cure for headaches (which Socrates says is a "charm") from Socrates, and Socrates asked him whether he would take it with his consent, and Charmides said that he would. But Charmides shows himself insusceptible to the cure Socrates tries to administer (or to get Charmides to administer himself), the cure of autonomous reason, and so heteronomous reason needs to cure him by force, or at least guile--needs to be forced to cure him. "And when love is gone, there's always justice; and when justice is gone, there's always force. And when force is gone, there's always Mom. Hi, Mom.")
And then on the other hand: what I have wanted to communicate to these people is what they have done. Why? I keep thinking, why? It looks like I want them to feel bad about it, but I really don't think that's what I want. I want them to feel it. If they don't feel it, the truth is failing. I don't believe in fighting to right the scales--though I do see the merit in fighting to get the people who knocked you overboard to throw you a life-ring. (I don't believe in scales. Already the idea of fighting even for the life-ring seems strange, because getting knocked in the water seems like something past and gone.) I don't believe in fighting for honour--though I do see that there can be honour in fighting. (There are those who would say "good for you!" for fighting, for sticking up for yourself, because it would be a dishonour not to.) I do believe in truth; I do believe it's about the most important thing there is, that truth, if anything, is what we're for. (This sense of truth is one of the most important things I've learned from Heidegger. Truth: aletheia: unconcealment: the happening of being.) But can truth be fought for, or does truth always die in the fight? That I don't know. And how petty is this bit of truth, anyway....
Read the Charmides for the third time today, and noticed a joke I'd missed before. The subject of the dialogue is "temperance" (sophrosune). Near the beginning, Socrates is talking to Critias, and Critias tells Socrates he'll get his pretty young cousin Critias to come over and talk to him by telling him that Socrates has a cure for the headaches he's been having every morning. Maybe it was the headache I had yesterday that primed me to realize that what gives you a headache every morning is drinking the night before.
When Charmides comes over, Critias announces that Charmides is the most temperate person in the world. Socrates asks Charmides whether this is true, and Charmides blushes, and says he doesn't want to say whether it is or it isn't, because if he says it isn't then he's calling Critias a liar, and if he says it is then he's bragging. Socrates spares him the obvious response--why don't you just tell the truth? Then Socrates says that if Charmides is temperate, he'll be able to say what temperance is--so what's temperance? Charmides pauses before reticently responding that temperance seems to be reticence. Socrates shoots that down with a wild fallacy, and Charmides's next attempt is that temperance is what makes you ashamed. It's what makes you blush when someone says you're temperate and you're not. And Socrates fallaciously shoots that down, and Charmides gives up trying to describe his own bit of temperance and says he's heard someone--who turns out to be Critias--say that temperance is doing your own work, which, oddly, is what justice is supposed to be in the Republic. When Charmides can't defend that, the argument is handed over to Critias, whose being ashamed to admit that he can't defend it either goes to show that being ashamed is not necessarily a sign of temperance, but could be the opposite.
Also read the first essay in Iris Murdoch's The Sovereignty of Good, which was the other book I bought on Saturday because of
saintalbatross. It's also a good read. I very much like what she's saying--that goodness is something perceptible like beauty, and that it can be known and learned and grown into, and that it has to do with seeing things truly--though I have more sympathy than she does for the position she's arguing against--that morality is a matter of will. She identifies the latter as the "existentialist" position, but, as I've said something in the neighbourhood of before, I think both positions are in Sartre. (I also wish she wouldn't say "Angst" when she's talking about--I was going to say Sartrean anxiety, but I don't know that it's even that. Maybe more like Kierkegaard, but I haven't looked at his Concept of Anxiety in a long time. I don't know whether Kierkegaard uses the German word (or if maybe the word is the same in Danish), but "Angst" looks like Heidegger, and what Murdoch is talking about is not at all Heidegger. Heidegger is much closer to Murdoch than to Murdoch's "existentialists"--the way she construes freedom, as a kind of progressive access to truth and as reducing rather than proliferating "choice", is also very much reminiscent of Heidegger. (On the question of "choice", also reminiscent of Nietzsche in his "amor fati" mode--and this, with both Heidegger and Nietzsche, I'd guess has something to do with Luther. Here I stand and can do no other.) Actually, another quasi-existentialist she could benefit much from is Merleau-Ponty, who could help with the main technical problem of the essay, i.e., whether there are "introspective" moral phenomena (as opposed to moral phenomena being only public and action-oriented). Murdoch is stuck with the view that if something is not an action then it is a "thought", where a thought is something "in the mind"--on a Merleau-Pontian kind of view, what goes on when you undergo a moral change is only partly cognitive; it's something that happens bodily, a change in comportment.)And went to talk today by a German on "happiness science". This talk was the second place in the last few days that I've heard of "purchasing power parity", which apparently is the fashionable new way to measure the wealth of nations, after never having heard of it before. Apparently, the average "subjective well-being" of countries correlates strongly with purchasing power parity, with the top five happy anomalies being in Latin America: Puerto Rico, Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, and El Salvador. Mexico is also in the top ten happy anomalies, and so is the Philippines, prompting the speaker to speculate that their purchasing power parities are underrepresented due to all the cash sent back by illegal immigrants and nannies. And Colombia because of the cocaine. But also the Latin American numbers are skewed by an unusual proportion of happy people reporting that they are extremely happy.
The second-most funny thing he said was that people expect countries with high suicide rates not to rank well on subjective well-being, but actually they do, because when people kill themselves they're not around to be unhappy anymore.
The funniest thing he said was, referring to two very influential social psychologists: "X and Y, you know, they're liars!" (What they lie about is the extent to which people are susceptible to cognitive biasses.)
One of the worst things that ever happened to me happened to me last week. (I'd say it's not too bad, but I might just be like the guy on the boxcar going to the concentration camp in Slaughterhouse Five who keeps saying he's been in worse places than this, until he dies. Well, it's not that bad, by a long shot. I am, categorically, very lucky to be able to say that this is one of the worst things that ever happened to me.) Actually, it happened a few weeks ago, and really started happening in the summer. I just found out about it last week, which is part of the badness of what happened. I mean "happened to me" strictly: worse things have happened in my life, but this was something that happened just to me. It was done to me, not maliciously but negligently. It's turned progress into regress and has thrown my professional future into even greater peril--or, at least, returned it to the state of peril it was in in the summer, before what would turn out to be the whole misfortune began, and I was trying to figure out what other sort of career I could get into, just in case.
I'm happy to report that I don't feel bad about it. I felt bad about it last week, but I don't anymore. What has been worst about it is communicating with the people responsible. They, to varying degrees, have done too much to evade responsibility, which is probably what I will feel worst about in a lasting way. I have always thought that if I am decent and conscientious in my work, enough will come to me--other people can have more, but I don't want more. (There ought to be this corollary to the "Matthew Principle" (whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath): it works just as well for desiring as for having.) This incident has been the fullest indication yet that that ain't necessarily so. But, this week, I'm still believing it anyway. (Enough has come to me from elsewhere, for now and for a good while, from someone who, it could and by most lights should be said, had something much worse revealed last week. It's hard to know what to make of these things.)
What has been the worst thing about it, though, the worst thing about communicating with the people responsible, is the feeling I have that I will come to be in the wrong. Not that they will make it out to be my fault, though that too (and I have been afraid that they will want to fight me, because, as Hobbes says, there are two ways for someone to become an enemy in your eyes: first, they do wrong to you; second, you do wrong to them and resent the reproach they represent), but that I will push my case too far and misrepresent something and I will be dragged down by it. If thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. Well, it's an injustice, Cain says, an outright injustice. And what are you supposed to do? That's the question. You know, some people want me to fight it, with whatever I can fight it with. They think it's outrageous. It is outrageous. And I've thought about fighting it and I've wanted to fight it and I've taken a step toward fighting it but once you step toward fighting you step away from the truth.
(At the end of the Charmides, Critias tells Charmides that, since he can't say what temperance is, he must be led and "charmed" by Socrates, and Charmides (who is a wrestler, and a funny thing about this dialogue is that it's set at a wrestling school, and that Socrates says it's the first place he went, after being away at war for years, seeking philosophical conversation) tells Socrates that he will force Socrates to lead and charm him if Socrates is not willing. At the beginning of their conversation, Charmides said he would take the cure for headaches (which Socrates says is a "charm") from Socrates, and Socrates asked him whether he would take it with his consent, and Charmides said that he would. But Charmides shows himself insusceptible to the cure Socrates tries to administer (or to get Charmides to administer himself), the cure of autonomous reason, and so heteronomous reason needs to cure him by force, or at least guile--needs to be forced to cure him. "And when love is gone, there's always justice; and when justice is gone, there's always force. And when force is gone, there's always Mom. Hi, Mom.")
And then on the other hand: what I have wanted to communicate to these people is what they have done. Why? I keep thinking, why? It looks like I want them to feel bad about it, but I really don't think that's what I want. I want them to feel it. If they don't feel it, the truth is failing. I don't believe in fighting to right the scales--though I do see the merit in fighting to get the people who knocked you overboard to throw you a life-ring. (I don't believe in scales. Already the idea of fighting even for the life-ring seems strange, because getting knocked in the water seems like something past and gone.) I don't believe in fighting for honour--though I do see that there can be honour in fighting. (There are those who would say "good for you!" for fighting, for sticking up for yourself, because it would be a dishonour not to.) I do believe in truth; I do believe it's about the most important thing there is, that truth, if anything, is what we're for. (This sense of truth is one of the most important things I've learned from Heidegger. Truth: aletheia: unconcealment: the happening of being.) But can truth be fought for, or does truth always die in the fight? That I don't know. And how petty is this bit of truth, anyway....
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no subject
Date: 2007-11-07 04:32 pm (UTC)I*'ve got a situation now. I'm seeling my restaurant. The broker that is selling it for me can't tell the truth. It's amazing to watch. Even when the truth seems to be the best angle, his first impulse is to fabricate. Now, I am in a position where I haven't myself presented any bad information. But I know that everything that has been told the prospective buyer is not so. I think I clearly find myself on the side of untruth. But I desperately need for this sale to go through at the price they agreed to. (It is a fair price, I'd say, historically. But one I won't be able to get in three months. And my gut tells me the buyer will eventaully regret the purchase at this price.)
So much interesting stuff in here, Matthew. Wish I had time to really engage it.
~
no subject
Date: 2007-11-09 01:25 am (UTC)Well, you've said how important it is to you that God witnesses....
But the bottom line in my current situation is that it really is too petty to bother much about. (Not as petty as I think they've casually assumed, but petty enough.) And the less I bother about it, the better off I'll be, very likely.
That you're selling your restaurant was surprising, and then not. :) Are you selling it for economic reasons, personal ones, both, neither? Anything in particular on the horizon next?
My grandfather sold his house last month. (Which is why I don't have to worry quite so much about not having much work again next year.) He got a fair bit more than he was asking--more than 10% more--and feels like he committed highway robbery.
No country for old men, all right.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-08 09:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-09 01:12 am (UTC)I'm curious how much you Merkins are hearing about your dollar collapsing, btw. Up here, "Loonie sets new record, again!" and "Retailers suck for not dropping their prices!" have been near the top of the news seems like two days out of three since the end of the summer. It's only been in the last couple of days (especially with China rumbling about how maybe the US$ is junk now) that word seems to be bubbling up near the surface that it's not that the CDN$ is rising but that the US$ is collapsing and maybe we might have bigger things to worry about than retailers ripping us off.