Caitlin Moran Proves You Don’t Need Any Education to Be a Philosopher

Well, just when you though you’d seen it all. I randomly came across a quote from one Caitlin Moran about death (more about that to follow) and it upsets me that anyone thinks they can throw the word “philosophy” around like it’s just a meaningless term. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not one of those people that thinks you should have a PhD after your name in order to be considered to have the right to speak about philosophy, but when it is obvious that they either have no clue what they are talking about or they are dishonest.

Now, before I continue, I should say that I write things in this blog about people whom the intellectual tradition does not touch one, for good reason. Partly, I must admit, it is because it is quite easy to point out their mistakes and, as so, they’re a nice exercise in logic. That said, I find it very scary that there is a multitude of people who believe these people and follow their advice. If you want an example (other than the one below), just look in the comments on my homepage, where Mystic Tiger Ashram accused me of attacking “alternate philosophies” (as if such a thing existed and as if it is a bad thing to knock erroneous ideas down).

But, let’s not get sidetracked. Onto that passage I was talking about:

“Death is not a release, but an incentive. The more focused you are on your death, the more righteously you live your life. My traditional closing time rant is that humans still believe in an afterlife. I genuinely think it’s the biggest philosophical problem the earth faces. Even avowedly nonreligious people think they’ll be meeting up with nana and their dead dog, Crackers, when they finally keel over. Everyone thinks they’re getting a harp.          But believing in an afterlife totally negates your current existence. It’s like an insidious and destabilizing mental illness. Underneath every day-every action, every word- you think it doesn’t really  matter if you screw up this time around because you can just sort it all out in paradise.”

-Caitlin Moran, How to be a Woman

So, in my preemptive defense for those who will think that I am doing this out of “support for repressing women” and for being evil and all that other crap, I have bolded the part of quote which, according to Moran, makes this a philosophical issue, so I have the right to judge its veracity, whatever the rest of the content is. Since we are on this theme, I’d also like to remind everyone that Plato, though being about 24 centuries away from women’s rights movements supported equal rights and equal education for women (in the Kaliopolis this is explicit).

A lot of philosophical discussions end in frustration and have no overall value because even philosophers forget the extreme importance of defining their terms. So, in order to be productive in this case, let’s do that.

Moran talks about death, about death we shall talk about. There are two basic understandings of the end of life, but current philosophy says that there are three, so let us examine them. They are the naturalist physical theory, the naturalist mental theory, and the eternalist theory. The physical (also biological) theory maintains that death, i.e. the end of life, comes whenever your heart stops beating and your brain stops working. The “mental” theory, also a materialist theory, says that whenever basic mental functions are stopped (go figure what that means), the end of life has occurred. This is a very popular idea today with the debate about euthanasia, because this theory holds than a person in PVS has, basically, already died. Of course, this theory completely ignores Aristotle’s point about first and second actualization, but that’s a different matter. On the whole, it is a materialist theory as much as the first one, which is why I say that it would be correct to say that there are two basic theories at play. The physical theory fits together much better with the reductive materialist side (type identity theory, eliminativism) and the “mental” with the non-reductive materialist side (functionalism), which is currently the orthodoxy of philosophy of mind, but Kim’s problem will probably change that.

The third theory maintains that the end of life is not necessarily the end of existence. It maintains that there is “something else” that preserves the identity of the person when their physical functions cease. That “something else” is commonly seen as the soul, the life principle of the body (i.e. you got life when you have this, at the end of life it goes away). Part of this theory are both Plato and Aristotle (yeah, despite what your teacher may have taught you, go read Aristotle’s De Anima), Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and probably every other religion out there. Clearly, this is an important issue, because so many people have believed in it for so long and, if this is wrong and so wrong that someone who has no experience in philosophy can figure it out, philosophy and theology students across the globe are doing a terrible injustice to their parents, their country, and themselves by pursuing an education which includes these disciplines. Of course, my own life is at stake here, because if Plato and Aristotle and all the Christian thinkers are proved wrong, I’ve just wasted all my college career and a lot of money learning about these people and, on top of that, am no longer relevant to the intellectual community and to the world.

In order to make things as clear as possible, let us divide the eternalist group into two sub-groups, namely pantheist religions and theistic religions. Why so, you may say? Well, the issue is that Pantheism seems to entail Monism (i.e. there is really only one being and everything is that being), so what the theistic groups are arguing is the eternal part which does not get destroyed when the body ceases to work (i.e. the soul) is quite different from what these groups claim is the eternal part (a part of the being that is everything).

First,let us consider Pantheism, the groups that entail Monism. This group includes the Hindu religion(s) (many people are confused when they find in the Vedas that both “only Brahman reincarnates” and “all who do not go to Nirvana reincarnate.”), Buddhism (even though it does not believe that the eternal part is actually a being), Hegel (the Absolute), and many others. To these belief systems, the above quote does apply. They would receive it with happiness. Hegel would insert it into a triad, the Hindus and the Buddhists would at the same time assert its veracity and, at the same time, argue for its polar opposite to be equally as valid (everything is part of god, remember?). That said, enlightened Buddhists and Hindus are not expecting for a harp or anything like that, Nirvana is simply ending the cycle of reincarnation. There is, therefore, no way to “sort it all out in paradise.” Being in Nirvana basically proves that there is nothing left to sort out, both Samsara and Karma are completed.

Now, the juicy part, the second group seems much more affected by this assertion and promises for much more heated debate. Plato (read the Phaedo), Aristotle, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc. all belong to this side, the theistic side. This second side believes that there is a God or gods that have created an afterlife of some sort for righteous people as a means of providing justice (i.e. if you’re good and you suffer unjustly in this world, this is the compensation plan). Of course, it seems, just from the sentence above that Moran does not even have a clue about what the Platonic, or Christian, or Jewish, or Muslim understanding of “paradise” entails, because, by its very definition, a person who has “things to sort out” does not go to paradise. The whole point is that if you do screw up on this side, you don’t get to go to paradise. It is the people who believe that there is something after death that look out for what they are doing not the opposite. Incidentally, it just so happens that all these belief systems happen to each have a very extensive and well-defined moral code. I do not know much about Islam, but if you want to see how close Platonism and Christianity are, check out John 11-14 and compare it to Socrates’ final speech to his friends before drinking the poison, where he basically says, “If you love me, obey my teachings.” In addition, it is usually the opposite world view, the idea that (physical) death is the ultimate end that fuels an absolute carelessness about ethics. 

Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov highlights this idea extensively, “if no God, no immortality. If no immortality, everything is permissible,” says Ivan Karamazov. Of course, the strict validity of his own logic smacks him in the face toward the end of the book as the homeless man sings, “Vanka [diminutive of Ivan] went away…” (boom, and I didn’t spoil the book) Within the realm of philosophy, one need look no further than Jean-Paul Sartre to highlight this point. While, seemingly, a lot of people jump with excitement at coming to accept that there is no Divine being and, therefore, no meaning of life and, therefore, that all things are permissible, Sartre understood the true connotations of that acceptance. That is the reason why he lived with the utter assurance that the only thing meaningful was to put as many things as possible (things and people) under one’s dominion and why he was a sexual sadist. He argued that “love” was illogical and that there was a word in every single language that had absolutely no meaning, namely “we.” This is the logical conclusion of believing that there is nothing beyond death. Of course, if there is nothing beyond death and no objective morality, then if you can commit a crime with the absolute assurance that you will not get punished for doing it, there’s nothing wrong with doing it. In fact, even if you do get punished, if you really want to do it, go ahead anyway. In other words, we have stumbled into Book II of the Kaliopolis. Whereas these evil belief systems like Platonism teach that, even if someone had the ring of Gyges, it would not be permissible for them to commit evil and that people should not even be frightened by death when it comes to doing what’s right (both Platonism and Christianity hold fast to both), Moran’s proposed safety net against complacency is to introduce atheism, which says, “it’s not wrong if no one saw it.” I don’t know about you, but, if we are looking for ethical expediency and a war against complacency, it is the first, not Moran’s choice that does the job.

Elsewhere, she says that we should use the understanding that we are dying at every moment to live our lives. Of course, this begs one to ask what she means. If by that she means that the time to do the right courageous thing is now, then it is the understanding that our life begins its expiration process from the moment of birth taken together with the idea that, at the end of this life, one will have to face a Perfect Judge who will consider their actions in this world which would get one ready to do the right thing.

If, on the other hand, Moran means by living our lives a more subtle formulation of “YOLO,” then it is simply cliche, except stated with a little more whit and a British accent. It is, however, on the whole, unworthy of any consideration, since Hedonism has dropped out of the mainstream philosophical arena for a very long time now. If Moran wants to protect this, the view that, since we’re dying we should go out there and “enjoy” (the Platonist maintains that the momentary thrill does not provide enough good consequences for the destruction of the soul that results because of it) ourselves, then why does she talk about “setting things straight,” etc. in Heaven, as if she know what she was talking about?

Of course, it could be that this is simply another attack on traditional metaphysics and ethics, but a particularly dimwitted one, so it deserves not consideration on that regard.

Finally, a word about How to Be a Woman. I have not read any other words other than the ones I have quoted above from it, but if the aforementioned excerpt is a marker for the rest of the book, the prospects are not very high. Of course, one must consider the title and its proportionality to the thickness of the book. Whenever I go to bookstores, I often find it very amusing to see books with titles like, “History of the world: Babylon to the Fall of the Roman Empire” that are about 150 pages long. I may be mistaken, but if you were to write the book in micro print there would not be enough pages there to examine that extensive period of time for the whole world. No one except for the most intellectually doomed members of our society would buy a 200 page book titled, How to Be a Doctor, for the simple reason that there is simply no way that the complexities of being a doctor are examined in 200 pages. If that is true, then why would anyone think that the complexities of femininity and womanhood can be sufficiently treated in 200 pages? Of course, I could be wrong, How to Be a Woman could be a multi-volume work of high psychological and philosophical worth, but somehow I don’t think that is the most likely scenario. I wonder why it is that there are people who buy such a book and there are two choices, either people are extremely slow to understand that womanhood as a whole cannot be treated in 200 pages, or they believe that anything said by a woman about womanhood is valid, no matter what it said. If you are one of these people, you are probably very annoyed at this point, but wait, there’s more. If it is true that what any woman and only what a woman says about womanhood is true, then it is also true that all things that men and only the things that men say are true about manhood are also true. However, there are and have been in the past many women who have had many correct critiques of manhood and masculinity and many who have had incorrect ones. Their views were, thank God, considered and we are a better planet for it. If, however, the second option is true for Moran’s supporters, then it means that if a man were to write that men are vastly superior to women and throw around phrases like, “Are you meeting a woman? Don’t forget your whip…” he would be right. “What an outrage!” cry out radical feminists and I agree with them. Who, then, is this SOB?  None other than Friedrich Nietzsche, who incidentally happens to be the idol and teacher of many radical feminists, Mary Daly for once, who is able to reconcile her feminism with Nietzsche because she utterly rejects the idea of femininity as such. In so doing, she should lose the title of “feminist” in a blink, because she has betrayed the very idea that she says she is promoting and much of the jeering that pro-life women and especially young women get when they stand up for their beliefs (if you don’t believe me, go on YouTube or go down to Washington D.C. for March for Life and see for yourself) deserves to go to her instead of them.

In short, I am up to my nose with people who believe that I and many people much brighter than me just so happened to waste much of their lives (4+ years so far in my case, much more for many others) and an insane amount of money (college and graduate school tuition together is enough to buy a spacious house) in order to study this philosophy thing, when seeming Divine inspiration of Ion’s kind would have done the job just as nicely. Good thing we got them looking after society, otherwise the actual experts would have to speak on the issues and the world would be in a better place.

The Closing of the Western Mind

Hey guys, another paper from my political theory class. I hope you will like it and, as always, plagiarism is not cool.

As the West moved ever towards a more egalitarian organization of society, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave Flaubert were among those who stood up to point out flaws and problems with the new system. Though they write well before the current generation, they seem to capture the psychology of the current man with much diligence. Tocqueville points out that the modern man has lost his sense of “belonging,” which has led him into a never-ending race to succeed, a term which more often than not has a monetary meaning. From this arises a monotony of thought and action, which, though it hides a burning passion underneath, leads most to boredom and a sense of uneasiness with one’s self. Flaubert diligently depicts the life of Emma Bovary, a product of the Romanticism that many seek as an escape from the monotony of modern life, and the downward spiral that ends in her taking of her own life. In looking at both authors, one sees that they complement each other perfectly in pointing out the possible demise of our societal organization.

It is useful to mention, before beginning the argument, that the word “boredom” is not present in most ancient languages, certainly it is absent in both Classical languages. Boredom usually exhibits itself when the task at hand is, or is perceived to be, well below the skill set of the agent. Within Christian thinking, when every action is seen as a way to praise God[1], such feeling is illogical, because no task is too small or too meaningless to not require someone’s full attention, respect, and engagement. However, as the West moves ever farther from Christianity and classical philosophy, that mode of thinking is no longer appealing to most people.

Tocqueville points out that, due to the increased potentiality for upward mobility in a democracy, most people strive to enter into the highest socio-economical class. He points out that in the US there has a very fluid socio-economical structure and that love of money permeates over much that Americans do.[2] However, when Americans do acquire wealth, Tocqueville posits, they seek to use it in order to fulfill their small desires rather than fall into debauchery as the wealthy in aristocratic societies would.[3] The fact that Americans, or most of them, do not seek palaces and other similar lavish displays of wealth, but rather a fulfillment of small, daily pleasures, points to something about the character of the democratic soul, i.e. the constant need for entertainment. One very poignant case study concerning this is literature.

Whereas the classical and medieval school system was commonly founded on the study of Classical languages (whether they were the contemporary language or not), Philosophy, and Theology, students who concentrate in Classical Studies, Philosophy, or Theology in American universities today are a dying breed. Of course, it would be highly unusual to see a young adult or even someone older read Plato or a comparable religious writer for pleasure, if they were not assigned to do so for school or work. On the other hand, it is quite common, so much so that such books are considered common knowledge, to see the same people reading Harry Potter and other such books. There is not one environment that most Americans will find themselves in today where a mention of “Gryffindor“ or the like will be met with a puzzled look by most people in it.

Tocqueville points out a change in the aim of literature which had exhibited itself only in the US by the publishing of both volumes of Democracy in America, but which is now widespread throughout Europe as well. Differently from ancient books, modern “democratic” books are easier to read, do not require much outside knowledge of the subject matter, and are supposed to provide entertainment.[4] If someone were to attempt to read an ancient epic, such as the Aeneid—in English— they would need to at least read the Iliad and the Odyssey in order to fully understand the plot. If they read it in Latin, after years of studying Latin grammar, the language in which the Aeneid is written would still pose a challenge to them, due to its metrical, almost chant-like structure. It was, and it was meant to be, hard for native Latin speakers. In addition, its aim was to explore the story of the founding of Rome, but everyone knew the ending. If someone somehow happened to miss it, Jupiter proceeds to spoil it in Book I. On the contrary, if someone were just beginning to read the first book in the Harry Potter series and someone told them that Harry defeats Voldemort in the end, Ron and Hermione marry, and that Severus Snape ends up being one of the “good guys,” much of the enjoyment of the book would be spoiled.

In Chapter XIII of the Second Volume, Tocqueville mentions the character of democratic literature, “Habituated to an existence that is practical, contested, and monotonous, they need lively and rapid emotions, sudden clarity, brilliant truths or errors that instantly pull them from themselves and introduce them suddenly, almost violently, into the midst of the subject.”[5] The underlying reason for needing such literature is grim. Modern life is characterized by boredom, what Jean-Paul Sartre would later call the “nausea” of being alive. The need for escapism in this environment, the need for the novels, which Emma Bovary will find as necessary as food, is quite obvious.

Another very important problem with the new democratic wave is what Tocqueville calls “the tyranny of the majority.” He is quick to point out, “I do not know any country where, in general, less independence of mind and genuine freedom of discussion reign than in America.”[6] It is not just that the majority controls the legislature, but that once public opinion is set on one side of an issue, all people who disagree with that view are, very gently, pushed out and outcast. Of course, this presents a real danger should there ever be a need to have radical reform, whether legal or otherwise. In addition, seeing how the modern philosophers who can be regarded as the intellectual founders of the US and democratic society in general were speaking against public opinion without being made outcasts because of their beliefs, the environment they created may not provide quite the same convenience to the next generation of forward thinkers. Needless to say, this is very disadvantageous and dangerous to our society.

Perhaps because of the fear of rejection, modern society exhibits the characteristic of drawing people toward their immediate family and acquaintances into individualism. Individualism leads one to their immediate family and those like one’s self, thereby creating a microcosm and leaving the greater society aside.[7] With such a thought as its base, it is really easy to see how “the greater good,” is not such a popular phrase in the US anymore. The danger of such a sentiment is the fact that it withdraws the democratic man not only from his ancestors—democracy by itself is successful in doing that—but also from the greater understanding of his descendants—not just his children, but “the next generation” at large—and confines him to his immediate self and “the solitude of his own heart.”[8]

The end product of such a society reduces a nation “to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd.”[9] It is not very difficult to see how problematic this is. The same system that is supposed to be the peak of individual freedom can turn into being the end of all freedom. In the end, if, as Tocqueville posits, if the people cling to equality more quickly than liberty, it is possible to have a society of individuals who are perfectly equal, but are slaves. In fact, Flaubert allows us to see a very small glimpse into Tocqueville’s nightmare in the person of Charles Bovary.

There is no one passage that captivates this utter mediocrity about Charles Bovary, but the whole book is a testament to it. He is unceremoniously brought up, he studies for a meager position and gets a meager job—he can help out people with small problems, but Charles in no doctor, he can make no difference in a life or death situation—and never seeks an opportunity for advancement, he monotonously does his job, his first marriage is frighteningly monotonous and his relationship to Emma is just as monotonous, and his death is very anti-climactic. One would be hard-pressed to find a “peak” moment in Charles’ life where he is the agent. Of his own accord, Charles does all that he is asked for and no more. It is quite obvious that a book completely about Charles’ life would be the dullest thing to ever be written. A fitting description of Charles is, “… [his] conversation was as flat as a sidewalk, and it was traversed by a steady stream of the most commonplace ideas, all wearing their usual garb and appealing to neither the emotions, the sense of humor, nor the imagination,”[10] Nonetheless, Charles is a decent person, but his chief fault is that there is no mental capacity low enough to find him interesting or entertaining.

Opposite Charles is Emma, who is looking for all the right things in all the wrong places. Her tragic fault is her devotion to novels. She is introduced to them at a very young age and it seems that they shape her view of reality, or at least the ideal life. However, they are filled with, “love affairs, lovers, mistresses, persecuted ladies fainting in country houses, … dark forests, palpitating hearts, vows, sobs, tears and kisses, skiffs in the moonlight, … and gentlemen brave as lions, gentle as lambs, virtuous as no one really is, and always ready to shed floods of tears.”[11] On the other hand, she marries Charles Bovary, who is very little interested in much of these. It is important to point out that Emma casts herself in the role of most of the aforementioned female characters and seeks for a mate that would fulfill the male characters’ requirements, but never finds one.

In the end, the root of Emma’s deep problem is Romanticism. She is looking for the perfect love story, in fact, she imagines marriage as a prolonged honeymoon. If things were as she wished, it would necessitate a perfect world. She expects a romantic cottage in the mountains, waterfalls, lemon trees, birds singing and idealized idyllic life all around (which is especially ironic since he was horribly bored with living in a farm), and star gazing,[12] seemingly forever. Needless to say, this sounds like a description from a cheap romantic novel that would be available in grocery stores today. One can be nearly sure that Flaubert meant it to sound that way. This is Emma’s expectation in life and it is quite clear from it that she is not grounded in reality. Therefore, those who would attempt to please Emma are implicitly, trying to materialize a dream.

With this outlook on life, it is to be expected that Emma could not find a person that could fulfill her desires. Charles is good and faithful, but he is “flat as a sidewalk,” Rodolphe simply gets tired of her and throws her away. One cannot know how she would have felt if she had seen his collection of lockets and letters from his other lovers, but he would have fallen from her graces very quickly after. Finally, Leon is a gentle soul, but Emma vastly overestimates who or what he is and, in the end, he throws her away so as not to mar his image after a promotion.  Emma tries more than once to turn to her duties as a mother to the daughter she bore Charles and to Charles as a husband, but her motivation is so low that she gives up after she hits the smallest obstacle. She tries to seek help in the Church, but Fr. Bournisien, who is just as materialistic as her, simply does not understand that she needs spiritual, not material help.

Try as she might to live out the ideal life as prescribed by Rousseau, Emma simply cannot. Her frantic search for a place that does not exist, a place without worries, i.e. Paradise on earth, leads Emma to suicide. Her last action of defiance is against herself, as she swallows handfuls of arsenic. Rousseau’s ideal fails her. The return to a more glorified state, with her desires as her moral compass leads her to, on the objective scale, two illicit affairs, a neglected daughter who will soon be sent to a cotton processing facility, and Charles, who will soon discover her love letters and die of heartbreak because of them.

The only other character in Madame Bovary that seems to have the same drive as Emma is Dr. Lariviére. Whereas Emma has no hard principles to hold herself by, the doctor “practi[ces] virtue without believing in it.”[13] This enables him to have a successful practice and to be productive in general. Even though the doctor seems to be just as disillusioned as Emma—hence his disbelief in virtue—he turns his efforts toward a selfless endeavor to salvage what he can of human life, whereas Emma not only makes life miserable for those around her, most notably her daughter and her husband, but also takes her own life. Whereas the doctor has imposed upon himself hard moral principals, Emma decides to follow her subjective feelings and they lead her to the abyss.

By buying into Rousseau’s theory, Emma gives in to an ideal that can never be fulfilled. This imposes an even more dangerous form of individualism on her than the individualism exhibited in Charles, i.e. he not only turns his attention from society at large to his own back porch, but he does away even with the back porch and keeps everything in. This is because he is a product of his flawed society, but Emma’s individualism is idealistic and self-imposed. It is quite obvious that Emma could care less about the greater good. In line with that, she goes through life simply hunting for feelings, looking for ways to entertain herself and relieve her eternal boredom. Because she is concentrated on feelings, she can place no stable value on anything. In addition, she is very severely uneducated, but she thinks of herself as the most refined being on this side of the planet. This last fact is mirrored in Mr. Homais, who is, like Emma a true child of the Enlightenment. Though Homais says that he believes in the God of Socrates, he knows very little about Socrates and philosophy, because if there were ever people who thought they were very wise but were not, Emma and Homais would make prime candidates.

Emma’s utter failure in trying to live out her idealistic, individualistic life, coupled with the monotonous, unexciting, and downright meaningless life of Charles show two seemingly opposite, but deeply similar ways in which democracy can spell the doom of a nation. Whereas Charles clings to equality, in a sense, and is turned into a sheep that can be weaned whichever way one chooses, Emma’s sense of individualism pulls her away from being able to have any positive impact on society. Needless to say, both these need to be avoided and it seems that a basic grounding in ethics, which the doctor exhibits, whether he believes in the underlying metaphysical foundations of it or not, is the cure to such problem. In the end, it seems that Aristotle was right after all when he said that any form of government could work, democracy included, as long as its constituents were selfless.

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[1] A famous 4^th century prayer mentions “Instill in us… thinking and doing only those things that are pleasing to you…” (Lit. acc. St. John the Chrysostom) though not emphasized in our current times, St. Paul is very adamant that we should “pray without ceasing” (1 Thes, 5: 17), which is to say to dedicate every action to God.

[2] De Tocqueville, Alexis. Democracy in America, Vol. I, Part I, Chptr. III, pg. 50

[3] De Tocqueville, Alexis. Democracy in America, Vol. II, Part II, Chptr. XI, pg. 509

[4] De Tocqueville, Alexis. Democracy in America, Vol. II, Part I, Chptr. XIV, pg. 450

[5] De Tocqueville, Alexis. Democracy in America, Vol. II, Part I, Chptr. XIII, pg. 448

[6] De Tocqueville, Alexis. Democracy in America, Vol. I, Part II, Chptr. VII, pg. 244

[7] De Tocqueville, Alexis. Democracy in America, Vol. II, Part II, Chptr. II, pg. 482

[8] De Tocqueville, Alexis. Democracy in America, Vol. II, Part II, Chptr. III, pg. 484

[9] De Tocqueville, Alexis. Democracy in America, Vol. II, Part IV, Chptr. VI, pg. 663

[10] Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary, Part I, Chptr. VII, pg. 40

[11] Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary, Part I, Chptr. VI, pg. 36

[12] Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary, Part I, Chptr. 7, pg. 39

[13] Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary, Part III, Chptr. VIII, pg. 316

Arguments, What Are We to Appeal to?

Hi guys, sorry for the sporadic posting during the summer, I promise to pick up and be regular once again.

What I wanted to talk about today was the rather chilling examples of rhetoric that I see around the Internet these days. I have no problem with advertisements (an argument against that can be made, though), but I would very much hope to keep arguments about serious issues on the intellectual level, with arguments that appeal one’s reason and because of their facts/evidence and logic, not meant to aim for one’s emotions or ones that outright diffuse the point at hand and redirect to something else.

As a Platonist, I value conversation very much. According to Plato, one can only reach wisdom through dialogue, so it is very important for me to see that, as a country and as a planet, we keep our discussions with each other light, but at the same time serious when they need to be and aimed at taking and giving away wisdom, instead of just rhetoric being thrown in all different directions.

Of course, there is a major problem with having such conversations, where people focus on the exchange of knowledge instead of simply getting one’s position across (or even winning the argument at all costs). The rather huge problem is that it forces people the think. We, at least in the US, but I am sure this is a world-wide problem, are very opinionated people. However, every now and again there is some pesky little moron who asks us why we hold a certain position and we usually have no answer ready for them. In other words, we are ready to take sides, but not ready to answer why we have chosen a particular side. I noticed, working with kids this summer in a camp, that a lot of the more “jumpy” kids were simply never talked to about reasoning. I remember one child who had gotten into an altercation with another boy of a different cabin and was about to be sent home, except for me putting my behind on the line for him, whom I talked to about the importance of asking “why?” inside one’s head before taking action. Knowing that I was all that stood between him and his parents being called, he gave it a try. He was exemplary for the rest of the week and, when he came back four weeks later for another week, was, just about, a changed man. The problem is we need the same therapy for adults, too, perhaps not just with acting, but with thinking in general.

I am not into conspiracy theories, so I will not start making claims about why or how we have come to this sad state of a daily lack in logic, but I will say that it clearly gets people to do things quickly. Thinking takes too much time and people actually inform themselves before making a decision. It is much easier to make people into donkeys and put a spiritual carrot in front of their face, so they’ll walk whichever way you want them to. Who are the people who place the carrot in front of the donkey? It depends on yourself and yourself only, but it is no secret that it has been statistically proven that the advertisement industry is doing better than ever and that’s saying a lot, seeing how advertising is the oldest profession in the world (“You see this apple? You want this apple! The price is entirely affordable, just one soul!”). I don’t know when the cutoff point between “Let’s use rhetoric to get people to buy our products,” and “Let’s use rhetoric to get people to buy into our ideas,” is, but I am more concerned with how to end it than with how it was started.

A perfect example of the people who say they are against abortion, but would not want to impose their views on someone else. This seems to be a twitch to gratify both sides of the debate, the pro-lifers and the pro-choicers with one swift retort, but that sentence makes no sense. The principal argument of  pro-lifers is that abortion is murder, whereas the principal argument of pro-choicers is that abortion is not murder, so someone saying they are personally against it but do not want to impose their views on others amounts to basically them saying that they are against murder but don’t want to impose their views on others, which is utterly illogical. Imagine how you would feel if someone said (way back in the 1800’s), “I am against slavery, but I would not like to impose my views on others.” How illogical! It basically reduces the issue to taste, akin to saying, “I am against the production of Mountain Dew, but I would not want to impose my views on others.” Either there is a huge lack of logic in that statement, or there is something seriously wrong with that person’s comprehending skills.

At any rate, let me get to the point of this post. As we all know, the presidential elections are going on this year and there are many people who are really looking forward to the debates that are bound to happen (as if they forgot the silliness of the series of past debates during the Republican Primaries). Yet, in listening to a few of the past ones (each for a short amount of time, so as to ensure my sanity being preserved) I still long for just one candidate to make one concise, logical argument that elicits a concise, logical rebuttal. Instead, all there ever is is rhetoric and sophistry. I highly doubt that the Lincoln-Douglas debates or any other past debates in our country’s history were of the same sort, nor would people approaching any issue in that manner before be ever even nominated to run in a presidential election, but I digress.

Lastly, two concrete instances that inspired me (in part) to write this post.

First, this image that I found online. It is quite clear that it is targeted at the feelings we have (the feelings we hopefully have) when we see old ladies, which is gratitude and a willingness to help out, perhaps because they remind us of our own grandmothers. However, these feelings need to stay out of the debate about whether the US should legalize gay marriage. It matters very little as to whether the first NY gay couple is two ladies in their golden years or two 18 year-old men, the issue of whether gay marriage should be legalized as a whole should stay clear of specific examples, especially if the point or the punchline has nothing to do with the issue at hand. I do not think anyone arguing against gay marriage that is worth listening to has ever argued that gay couples pose an immediate threat to us in any way, but rather that gay marriage as an institution poses a problem. Going by the logic of the above image, the correct response by someone arguing against gay marriage would be to post a picture of two men who work out and are gay (commonly referred to as “bears”) and say that that particular couple does pose a threat to us all. But, of course, it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that such generalizations are nonsensical and silly. If anything, the above image weakens the position of the person arguing for gay marriage more than in strengthens it.

The second is a pamphlet from Planned Parenthood in NYC. I post a link to it hopping that someone will come on and say that it is a hoax, because it is simply disgusting.

Planned Parenthood Pamphlet

I found this on one of my friends’ wall and I could not read all the way through it. As I said, I hope someone can tell me that this is a hoax, because the ideas put forward by this pamphlet teach, if anything, to avoid discussion rather than to engage in it, which I can do nothing but sneer at, because it sounds like the tactic that only the side with the losing argument would use (i.e. you will never see the stronger army going out of their way to avoid a weaker one). That being said, I think that there are a bunch of good arguments for abortion made by philosophers and other intellectuals which, though perhaps may not conclusively give an answer to the issue of abortion, at least focus on giving logical reasons for it and elicit logical responses, whereas the guide given here is nothing but a horrific call to just dodge the question whenever you get a chance.

Jesus and Plato

Hey everybody, sorry for the long absence. I have been working as a counselor in the middle of the wilderness, so there was no chance for me to post a blog entry. However, I’m back now and that’s all that counts.

I opened the admin page today for the first time in a while and I noticed that one of the most recent searches was “was Jesus a Platonist?” For the record, you opened the doorway to me speaking about Christianity this time, so I must oblige. Of course, I must make a few comments on the phrasing of the question before I give my two cents about it. I have a problem with using the verb “was.” At some point, one of my philosophy professors gave a pop quiz (it did not end up being graded) which asked to list the ten greatest men alive. The point of the quiz was not to really find out which ten men students found most worthy of recognition, but whether they would remember that Jesus Christ is, in fact, a living man alive even today. So, that being said, I will set out to answer whether Jesus is a Platonist or not.

Of course, in order to answer this question, we must first define our terms. Namely, we must explain what we mean by “Platonist” and what we mean by “Jesus.” Among these terms, the first is way easier to answer than the second. In the most rudimentary sense, a Platonist is a person (a philosopher if we want to be technical) who aligns himself with Plato’s philosophy/metaphysics/ontology/psychology. In other words, a Platonist is a follower of Plato (getting right to the heavy stuff, aren’t we?). What that means in a deeper sense is far more difficult. Those familiar with the Platonic corpus would know that there is a very obviously missing dialogue to the Statesman and Sophist duo, namely a dialogue about the philosopher. Unless we want to say that either Plato died before he could finish up the trio or otherwise that the third dialogue is mysteriously lost to us (in the same way the “Holy Grail” is lost), there is only one solution to where the third dialogue of the set must be, that is, the whole corpus. The idea is, “What makes a sophist a sophist?-Let me look at that dialogue,” and so on and so forth, but, hopefully, what makes one a (Platonist) philosopher is the whole Platonic corpus, otherwise Plato owes me many wasted hours.

Of course, as is true of any profound work, there is a very stark difference between reading it and understanding/living it. I have met people that have a much more detailed knowledge of everything that Plato wrote and can readily quote things that I need a little bit of time to find in Plato’s writing, but who have not even begun to understand him. This is not to say, but the way, that I am the end all be all of understanding Plato, but I am not “out there” either. I have always found (and I have an earlier post on this) the section in Phaedrus where Socrates talks about the dangers of writing very intriguing and believe that it is one of the points to understand in order to understand Plato. Esentially, one of the points made is that writing, unless the living, breathing Socrates, cannot defend itself, so it can be used incorrectly. The obvious question then is why Plato would put that in his writing. The answer which I offer to the table is that the Platonist reader is to not simply read the text the same way they read most other books, but to have Socrates talk to them. I believe the overall goal of the Platonic corpus is to make the reader into a little Socrates. That is why the dialogues move from Socrates disproving the arguments of his opponent and not coming to a definition (the dialogue ends with negative knowledge), to Socrates coming up with a definition of the thing being examined in the dialogue, to Socrates appearing as a minor character to not at all in the dialogue. By the end, at the third stage of the dialogues, the reader himself is invited to step into Socrates’ shoes and evaluate each speaker’s arguments.Then, a Platonist must be a person who has read and understood the Platonic dialogues, which have not only taught him Platonic philosophy but also the ability to form and evaluate logical arguments.

Now, the hard part. Who is Jesus? For myself, I can guarantee you that I am by no means qualified to answer that question. I wonder whether whoever was looking for an answer took Jesus at His word for who He was, but I, for my part, will. For the purpose of this post, we will define Jesus Christ (that is, to distinguish from any other Jesus, I hope that the person who search was looking for an answer regarding this Jesus and not any other) as the Son of God, (begotten of the Father before all ages, Light of Light, true God of True God, of one essence with the Father…), and as “the Way, the Truth, the Life.” (John 14:6) This second addition may be surprising to some, but it is absolutely necessary to answering the question before us. The first shocking thing that Christ points out in this quote is that He is “the Way.” What does He mean by “way?” The only logical conclusion is that He is the Way to Salvation (which Plato defines as riding in harmony with the chariots of the gods). Second, He says He is “the Truth.” It is rather shocking to see here that truth is identified as a person rather than an abstraction. Plato may have argued that this was a category confusion, since truth is not a living being but an act (congruency with ultimate reality), but in the Timaeus, there is a puzzling point made about a God that existed before all else (the Alpha and the Omega principle) and that created everything, called the Demiurge in that dialogue, but “the Good” in the Kaliopolis, where all Forms (and thereby all truth) are rooted. So, it is not unreasonable that (after much dialogue) Plato may agree that Truth could be a living Being. Finally, “the Light.” If one is familiar at all with the Gospel of John they will realize that the light is often a metaphor for Christ as wisdom and revelation, so we will take “Light” to mean just that.

Having defined those terms in that way, it is clear that Jesus cannot be a Platonist. That would be like asking whether an ocean was a puddle. However, it seems that there could be a connection between the two nonetheless.

Let us reverse the question. Was Plato a Christian?

In the direct sense, obviously not. Seeing how Christ was to be born three centuries later, Plato would need a lot of foresight to be a Christian. Clearly, there is no line in all the Platonic corpus which says, “I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior,” but then, there is no such line in the Old Testament. In a deeper sense, I would argue the positive position. Is Plato a Christian? Sure, he did not know it, but if we are to believe that Plato sought the truth in earnest and had being in harmony with the Divine as the goal of his life and Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth, the Light, though Plato was most certainly blindfolded, he was walking down that Way, sharing in that Truth, and being enlightened by that Light.

That being said, the fact that there is a very deep connection between Platonism and Christianity is not that surprising. Of all ancient philosophies, Platonism shares the most things with Christianity, while Christianity reveals points which make philosophy as a whole far more important and meaningful (for example, in the Phaedo, where Socrates identifies rebirth as the act opposite to death, which means that we get unlimited tries to becoming one with the Divine, Jesus Christ reveals that the opposite of death is, in fact, the resurrection of the body, whether for eternal bliss in Heaven or eternal punishment in Hell being the result of how well one has joined with the Divine). It is quite easy to call Platonism (among other things) natural theology, i.e. a science which discovers what can be found out about the Divine through reason alone, not through revelation, to be completed and expanded by revelation, or “the unveiling of the veil” as St. Paul puts it. The combined power of Christianity and Platonism has produced some of the most beautiful works of the Fathers of the Church, starting with St. Justin the Philosopher (known in the West as Justin Martyr), to St. Augustine, to the Cappadocian Fathers, and so on and so forth.

Timocracy and Other Forms of Government

I can see that several people are looking for this (or maybe one person multiple times), so I hope this helps.

This discussion withing the Platonic corpus is in the Kaliopolis (a.k.a. Republic), in Book VIII, where Socrates explains the deterioration of government from the just city to tyranny. As far as the just city is concerned, it would take way too long to explain that and all the other government forms, but if people want to read my take on it, please comment on this post and request it and I will do my best to respond as quickly as possible.

So, what is a timocracy? Well, the etymology of the word is Greek (surprize, surprize), from the words timia which means “honor” and kratos which means “power.” In an nutshell, it means power of the honorable. It is basically a military state. The shift that has happened here from the just city is that it is no longer the philosopher, the reasonable and rational person who rules, but the spirited (willful) and courageous person. Socrates says that this is definitely worse than the just city, but not that bad, since one would have to be fairly intelligent in order to be a successful military leader (which means they would make good decisions concerning the people under them) and because honor is dependent on other people. This second reason can actually both raise the quality of the timocracy and lower it. Because honor is dependent on other people, one seeking to become the leader in a timocracy may do everything in their power to keep his people happy, which in itself could turn bad, but there is no concrete standards for judging who should be considered honorable and who shouldn’t. Let us take two figures from World War II, General Patton and General MacArthur. There are many people who love Patton for all of his achievements during WWII and for his “give ’em hell” attitude, but there is definitely a rather large group that think he was a drunkard and a deranged moron who won so many battles simply because no one else would be crazy enough to do what he did. MacArthur on the other hand, many people love him, think he was one of the greatest figures of US history, but Eisenhower (and he is not alone in this) did not have much love for him. At some point he said, “I studied dramatics under General MacArthur” (I knew APUSH would be useful some day). Patton or MacArthur, what are we to make of them, honorable or not? See the dilemma? This was further compounded if we did not live in our current day and age, where not only were attacks a whole lot more vile (at some point, after Cicero’s third marriage, he was accused to his face for having sex with his sixteen year-old daughter, which was not true, imagine what would happen if someone said that for Reed today), but people had far less neutral information, so polarization was a whole lot more likely.

Next we have oligarchy. Etymologically, this word comes from oligos, Greek for “little” or “few” and arche, Greek for lead. It basically means leadership by a few people. I have heard people say that the just city is an oligarchy, which if we go my Socrates’ definition, is most emphatically wrong. Socrates explains that in an oligarchy, the soul has further deteriorated into being governed by its desires, not the will, and not reason. Nonetheless, though desires occupy the highest position in the oligarchic soul, they are followed by reason, since it takes a lot of knowledge to be successful in business. This is the government where merchants flourish (think of Ancient Carthage or Phoenicia), since the whole mentality of the state is governed by the principles of business. All in all, Socrates says that even though the hierarchy of the soul has definitely gone wrong, this mode of government too is not horrible to live in, since, if you have some wisdom, you can probably get somewhere under this regime. Of course, the problem is that the people who have power would never willingly give it up, so there is an infinite race to stay on top. Also, this type of regime is not typically very courageous or very warlike in general, since war disrupts business (war when this particular state is involved of course, war between two foreign states is great for business).

As far as democracy is concerned, you can see my “Democracy and Freedom” post, which deals with the problem of democracy in great detail.

Last and most definitely least, comes tyranny. This is the regime where the whole of the human soul is overthrown. Socrates says that democracy is usually to end up into a tyranny, because in times of strife people will gravitate toward a strong figure (reminds you of anyone in the 1930’s? I’ll give you a hint, he was from Austria). The soul of the tyrant is solely governed by the desire to obtain more power, so the well-being of the people is, to him, only an afterthought, specifically if it helps him obtain more power. However, Socrates points out that not only are the people miserable in this regime, but the tyrant himself is the most miserable among them. Because he knows only one measure for everything, power, he thinks everyone is out to get him, so he himself is made a slave of fear. It is fear of people going for his head that causes him to be cruel toward the people under him. Of course, when people (either those under him or others) have had enough of his cruelty, they rise up and demand his head, which was what he was trying to prevent in the first place, which makes him more cruel, which makes more people rise up against him and, eventually, have him overthrown. His fear of losing power turns into the principal reason why he loses power, the whole thing is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I realize that I have given just a blurb on the regimes, but if anyone wants me to treat any of them in more detail, please comment and I will be happy to help.

Plato and Inspiration

Hey guys, sorry about neglecting you for so long (again), but I have had a lot of work to do this past week. That being said, I figured I would post some of my philosophy papers as a sign of apology. The only think I want to say, obviously, is do not copy this or any of my posts into your paper. Not only is plagiarism morally wrong, but you will only end up looking like an ass in front of your teacher, because someone doesn’t wake up one day and think as if their whole life revolves around Plato or God or philosophy, so unless you have the behavior to back it up… alright, time for me to shut up for the present.

Looking at instances of inspiration in the work of Plato is rather difficult, because of the not-so-straightforward manner Plato puts everything in his writing. As pointed out in the letters, which, if not his, have to have been written by someone who was very familiar with his work, he is very reluctant to write openly, so one must take all of what Plato says with a grain of salt. That being said, we need not bury ourselves in the pit of skepticism, because Plato also assures the reader that, if he take to heart the philosophy of the dialogues, he will be able to understand and uncover what Plato is really trying to convey. For the purposes of this paper, inspiration will be looked at under two different fields, inspiration as witnessed by Socrates within himself and inspiration witnessed by others within themselves, though with the help of Socrates.

One very obvious dialogue to look at in this matter would be the Ion. In this dialogue, Socrates encounters a rhapsode, a man who has mastered the art of retelling Homer’s epics and performs in various functions. In addition, Ion claims that he can explain Homer to his listeners, which immediately grabs Socrates’ attention. Socrates first asks Ion about whether he can apply his knowledge universally, i. e. recite other poets’ works just as well as he can recite Homer’s, but Ion rejects the idea, saying that he is an expert in Homer and Homer only. Socrates then turns to ask Ion about whether he has any expertise in any of the matters that are discussed in Homer and Ion surprisingly claims that he does. Ion goes as far as to say that he is the best general in the land, since he is the best rhapsode in the land. Socrates asks whether the best general in the land would also be the best rhapsode in the land, but Ion denies it. It seems that Plato decides to do the reader a kindness here, because he does not go into further detail about whether the converse of Ion’s statement must be true, partly because it does seem quite obvious to the reader that Ion’s claim is nonsense from the beginning. Socrates then logically asks Ion why he is not leading the Greek forces. At this point, Ion decides the hide behind the fact that he is from Ephesus, claiming that the Athenians would never let a foreigner command their army. Of course, Socrates shuts this argument down, too. Socrates then returns to the “magnet” imagery, where he claims that the magnet is a metaphor for the gods, who input their magnetism into the poet, who then magnetizes the rhapsode, who, in turn, magnetizes the audience. Ion seems to look kindly on this view, however, it seems that he forgets the implications made by his statement (541b-542b).

If, as Ion claims, he is simply the second iron ring in the system of a magnet magnetizing three rings, then he has no magnetism of his own, i.e. Ion really has no knowledge of what he is talking, he is simply wrapped up in a pseudo-Bacchic frenzy when reciting Homer, who is himself wrapped in a similar frenzy by the gods. In saying this, Socrates is going after Homer’s inspiration, as well as Ion’s (pg. 937). Despite the radical claim that Socrates is making about Homer, i.e. that he has no knowledge, this idea could fit in well with the understanding of Homer in Ancient Greece, which is that he was inspired by the Muses, except for the fact that Socrates makes it very clear, in the Euthyphro among other places, that he is not quite a believer in regards to Homer being inspired by the gods or conveying any truth about them. The question then becomes, who is the magnet? If it is not the gods, then who is putting words in Homer’s mouth? One could easily, at this point, draw on the Republic and Plato’s critique of poetry (Books II, III, and X), but matters are made even more complicated by the fact that Socrates himself, in the Phaedo (61a-c), is writing poetry, seemingly inspired to do so by his “daimon” (of course, the presence of the daimon itself is a further complication, in addition to the apparent contradiction between the Apology and the Phaedo about whether the daimon is ever a source of positive knowledge for Socrates, but this will be treated in the second part). It does not seem, therefore, that Socrates’ argument here is simply another critique of poetry. Once again the question at hand is, who is the magnet? If such a thing as “the magnet” exists and Socrates has it, what does that mean about Homer, considering Socrates claims he relies false information about the divine, and what does it say about Socrates?

In order to make sense of this, we must modify the metaphor of the magnet and the rings and, for a second, try to be Socrates in his absence. If the true magnet is the daimon and Homer does not, in fact, have a daimon, then he himself must be the magnet. What of this? Homer is then giving out his own knowledge about the divine. Except, of course, that Socrates would claim he has no knowledge of the divine (let us compare magnets, if we accept Socrates’ to be right, then Homer’s must not be a real magnet). It seems, therefore, that Homer is the predecessor of Euthyphro, in that he claims to speak knowledgably about a subject in which he has no knowledge (of course, the fact that Euthyphro draws on Homer for his own argument brings it into a very nice circle), a trend which Socrates sees very commonly among the Athenians of his own day. The question of Socrates’ person concerning the magnet, however, still stands. If Socrates has a magnet also, (if he did not, then we cannot judge Homer’s to be wrong) then does Socrates also have no knowledge? One could here draw on the Apology and argue that Socrates claims from the beginning that he has no knowledge, but also knows himself to have no knowledge, which makes him wiser than the rest of the Athenians, but I believe that making that argument would leave us to forever wonder about whether the teachings of Socrates through Plato have any meaning at all.

Rather, I believe that there is an alternate route one could take. Having found the real magnet, one must, for a second, ponder the rings. Some may consider stretching the metaphor past its breaking point with this, but the results might grant us some deeper understanding of Plato’s corpus. It is obvious to most people that not any ring would fit to make the system work, i.e. that in order for the ring to channel the magnetism of the magnet, it must have a special property, conductivity. Whereas rings of iron complete the system, rings of bone would make it fall apart. It seems, then, that the magnet cannot use any ring, but only a certain type of rings, i.e. conducive rings.

This means that the ring, quite differently from being ordinary, must, in fact, be extraordinary. It seems then, that Socrates is the true teacher of the divine (in the Platonic sense, of the Forms and the Good which balances them all), not because he has no knowledge, but because he is a very specific type of a knowledgeable person, i.e. one made out of iron (one made adapt for the understanding of philosophy, a lover of knowledge and one who knows himself). This knowledge is then passed on to Plato, the true disciple if that title can be placed on him, the second ring, which, like the first, must be made out of iron. Plato then serves as a “rhapsode” to us, not only reciting Socrates, but also interpreting and expanding his teachings. Plato, then, conducts Socrates’ teaching to the reader, who must change his essence from bone to iron (i.e. the imagery of “bone” was intentional, indicating a change from corporeal to super-corporeal, from physical to spiritual) in order to gain the deep meaning of the teachings of Socrates.

That being said, the question of Socrates’ daimon still remains. In the Apology, Socrates claims that he hears a voice that always dissuades him from doing certain things, but which never encourages him to do anything (31d1-4). Even then, one can argue that this passage is not set directly at odds with the passage concerning poetry in the Phaedo (61a-c), if we do not first look at a similar passage in Crito. When Crito comes to Socrates’ room at the beginning of Crito, Socrates is glad that Crito did not wake him up from his dream, since he believes that it has given him some hints concerning his death (44a3-b1). It is quite clear that Socrates regards the dream as objectively true, so one must assume that the reader is supposed to take this dream as it being divinely inspired. In this light, one must also treat Socrates’ sudden disposition to write poetry in the Phaedo as divinely inspired.

The only way to explain this situation, then, is to claim that the daimon evolves as the story goes on. In the Apology, Socrates’ daimon has dissuaded him from going into public life, but there is a perfectly rational explanation for it, i.e. that Socrates would not have lasted nearly as much if he were involved in politics, which means that his philosophy may never have taken off and that modern Classicist would be reading Plato’s tragedies instead of Plato’s dialogues. On the other hand, once Socrates’ work is done and his death awaiting, the daimon changes its role, from guiding Socrates to carry out his work to giving him one image of comfort and one instance of positive knowledge. As far as the dream in the Crito goes, the greater meaning of it will not be discussed in this paper, but as the meaning of the one in the Phaedo can help the reader make sense of a general trend in Plato’s corpus.

Anyone who has read a fair amount of Plato would realize that Platonic dialogues can be divided into three large groups, dialogues which end in positive knowledge, dialogues which end in negative knowledge, and dialogues where Socrates is either present at the beginning or not at all, where the reader is perhaps invited to judge according to his own mind. Of these, the ones that end in negative knowledge, i.e. learning about what something is not (or, rather, about the reader’s own ignorance), are the earlier dialogues, then the dialogues that end in positive knowledge (where the reader actually learns from Socrates), and lastly dialogues where Socrates is not present for the bulk of the argument (where the reader is perhaps invited to take Socrates’ position on his own). This fits in quite nicely with the progression of the daimon, from negative to positive information.

Another useful way to look at the instance of poetry in the Phaedo is as an apology for poetry in its own right. Though Socrates critiques poetry in the Republic and other places, it is the eternal question of having a material in Greek in the original form to ask whether Socrates is talking about poetry in general or the poetry existing at the time (a similar problem arises in Latin, one instance of which is in the Aeneid, where it is impossible to discern whether Lacoon in Book II is speaking about all the Greeks or the Greeks at Troy’s beaches when he says, timeo Danaum…). Of course, the fact that Plato’s corpus is filled with references from Homer in itself should be a pointing hand toward the fact that poetry, even in the form that Homer gives it, may be useful in illustrating a principle. However, one is left to ponder whether there can be poetry which one may regard as “Homer as it should have been.” A discussion in the Symposium may offer some help in this regard.

Toward the end of the Symposium, Socrates is discussing with Agathon (a poet) and Aristophanes (a comedian) that the skilled dramatic artist should be able to also write good comedy (223d4-5). This may be poetry’s saving grace. Though it is quite clear that poetry for poetry’s sake may not offer much help in one’s pursuit of philosophy, poetry guided by philosophy may be a useful tool in learning philosophy. Part of the point in Socrates saying that a good artist should be able to write both comedy and tragedy is that a good artist should be able to rise to universals (a point made in Ion), but also a two-fold path to knowledge, either through somber, academic discussion or through a more entertaining, titillating discussion. The emblematic examples of these two very different approaches to philosophy, which are both present in the Platonic corpus, are the Republic and the Symposium, respectively. In fact, all of Plato’s writing, whether in the genre of the Republic or the Symposium, are filled with drama and poetic language, though they are written in prose. This is not to add the fact that many Platonists throughout the ages have written in poetical language (C. S. Lewis and Tolkien not the least).

It seems, therefore, that inspiration has a very important place within the Platonic corpus, but, at the same time, within the corpus itself, are included many decoys, to condition the reader to understand that not “inspiration” is, in fact, genuine inspiration. From all of it, only what one can gather from Socrates is to be regarded as genuine inspiration, but the reader is cautioned that what the many hold to be inspiration may, in fact, be a fake. Inspiration, therefore, is both used as a form of irony, when it comes from people other than Socrates, which he discredits, as well as a true guide to philosophy, indeed, as the true spirit and muse of philosophy itself, when it comes through the ring of Socrates himself.

(References are provided in Stephanus pages)

Sex!

So, I realize I have not been posting for nearly a week (or has it been a week?) now. I apologize to my followers (and you ninja-followers out there), but I have been very busy and being a little sore after intramural football (go figure it would hurt that much after years of rugby) didn’t help. At any rate, I am better now, it is 12:44 AM where I live, and I am chuck full of caffeine, so let’s get started.

I know I’ve written on love before and this will be based, up to a point, off of the post on love, however, in this post my focus is much more on the physical and spiritual act of sex.

First off, physical sex. You know, birds and bees, that kind of stuff. If you, in fact, don’t know, this is a good time to ask your parents about it or about whether you should keep reading. At any rate, as far as the Symposium goes, which is different from most other dialogues of Plato, Socrates holds that love is one, i.e. the child of wealth and search (the synthesis of having much to offer and desiring much), which does not help us in our quest to learn about the Platonic view on sex, but Pausanias and Eryximachus may help us. Pausanias, whose speech comes first in the Symposium, identifies that there are two types of eros or sexual desire, desire based on physical countenance and desired based on the soul. Eryximachus, who, we are told, is a physician, goes deeper into the issue of the two distinct sexual desires. He says that physical attraction is comprable to sickness in the body, whereas the other kind of desire was the same kind that ruled over music, medicine, etc. From these two statements we can figure out something about what Plato thought about concerning sex. Right off the bat, it should be obvious that Plato gets a bad rap in modern culture over “Platonic relationships” when it comes to sex, because, somehow, we have come to understand a relationship between two souls as necessarily non-physical, which makes no sense. In fact, “Platonic relationship” is such a broad term that it would describe the relationship that Socrates had to his mother, friends, wife, three children, and friends, though, obviously, those relationships are not same. You will not get very many people in Ancient Greece saying that sex is bad, that is much more of a Puritanical position. However, what our two speakers do tell us is that Plato did not think much of hook-ups/one night stands, or even relationships that start purely as a function of the mutual physical attraction between two people. If one really thinks about the reason behind this reasoning, it is pretty obvious. For the follower of the man who looked for a reason behind everything, it would seem pretty silly to give the most intimate part of one’s body to someone else simply because they like how the other person looks. In ten years, that other person may look very different, but the act will remain done. The alternative, of course, is to fall in love with someone’s soul. The idea is that one cannot lose spiritual six-packs like they can lose physical ones, nor do the first get built as easily as the latter. The obvious counterpoint is that someone’s mind can change even more than someone’s physique, but Plato’s hidden assumption is that if you fall in love with someone who is well set in the ways of virtue and wisdom, they will not suddenly decide to pull a Diogenes (the founder of the cynics, who lived in a dumpster and masturbated most of the time).

That being said, physical sex is not the only intercourse between two humans. The alternative intercourse is entirely spiritual and not at all erotic, or necessarily happening between two lovers. At this point, a lot of people would jump to the conclusion that “sex” in this sense is only a metaphor, but I would caution them to remind that, as explained in the Timaeus, we live not in the world of the forms, but in the alternative world, so we should be weary about saying that spiritual things are metaphors of physical things, because it could well be the opposite. If you have been reading all my posts, especially the one immediately below it,  you might be a little confused by what I am about to say and believe that I have contradicted myself, but, please, follow on to the end, it will all become clear. The point is, whereas two bodies can come together in physical sex and produce a new child, two souls came come together in thought and create something new, a new thought, a new image, a new way to one of the forms. Of course, in the end, the reality that we are, as a genus, all female has to come into play. Though we can reach a lot in thought among humans, in the end, it is just spiritual foreplay and sooner or later the Groom finds us. A lot of people say that they are looking for the Divine, but are absolutely terrified at the idea that He is, in fact, chasing after them and not the other way around. C. S. Lewis offers the imagery of children playing burglars hearing the footsteps of a real burglar. The point was never to find  Him, it was supposed to all be a game. The point is that true spiritual union can only be achieved with the Divine, which is our real purpose in life.

If spiritual union with the Divine is our purpose, then, what is the original and what is the metaphor? It would be obvious that what is greater is the original (if you spend more to build a sign for the Versailles than the Versailles itself, you are utterly inefficient and quite stupid). It would seem, therefore, that spiritual sex is true sex and that physical sex should be taken as a metaphor for the other kind. This statement, of course, puts into question not only the place of sex in the modern Western life (everyone hates when people use metaphors too often or where they have no purpose being), but also the amount of reverence reserved not only for the act of sex itself, but also for the partner in the act, who mystically represents the Divine. Well, I bid you think about it.