Day 28: Cratylus 413c-418d (pp 131-135)

(1) 413e-414a. Courage opposes flows. But it doesn't oppose every flow--only those flows which are contrary to justice. Two points. First, it looks like courage is derivative on this account. It only acts in accordance with justice.

Second, I'm curious why courage is a virtue. Socrates says that "bad movement ... is a restrained or hindered motion" (415d), while virtue is possessed by a good sound which is "always unimpeded" and whose movement is "unrestrained and unhindered and so is always flowing" (415d). If the function of courage is opposing bad flows, and bad flows are flows which are restrained, then does courage simply slow down those bad flows even more? Or does the "opposition" take the form of breaking up the hindered flow? That is, to act in an opposite manner to vice would be to oppose the hindering of flow. I guess that's a better understanding.

(2) 414c. "Yes, Socrates, but getting it to do so is like trying to haul a boat up a very sticky ramp!" Well said, Hermogenes!

(3) 417b. "the good penetrates everything". I don't know what this means. Here are some options: the good is the cause of everything, the good is present in everything, the good is more powerful than everything, and the good controls everything.

I'm still with y'all! Happy reading, everyone!

Day 27: _Cratylus_ 407e-413c (pgs. 126-130)

At 408c Socrates says that "Speech ... has two forms: true and false," true speech dwelling with the gods and false speech dwelling with humans. At 385b we heard that "[statements] that say of the things that are that they are, are true, while those that say of the things that are that they are not, are false." A few half-baked thoughts:

(a) At 385 I wondered whether that definition would leave some statements as neither true nor false; the 408 passage makes me want to resist coming to that conclusion about 385.

(b) It is very hard to read 408 without thinking about Forms versus participants (unless, perhaps, one is not in the grip of a two-worlds reading of Plato). There is at least prima facie plausibility to the idea that if X fails somehow to be really real, it fails to license any true statements about it. But this gloss on 408 does not go well with 385, where both true and false statements are "of things that are."

(c) Why translate logos as "statement" at 385 and "speech" at 408? Surely, for Plato as well as for us, there are many kinds of speech that are not truth-evaluable (or are there?). I could be missing something obvious here--I haven't looked at the Greek carefully. And of course this is not a big deal: English has a sense of 'speech' that is narrower than all speech-acts. I'm just not entirely comfortable that I understand the basics of what is being talked about in these passages.

Happy reading!

Day 26: Cratylus 402d-407e

A few small notes today:

1. Socrates is clearly trying hard to link the gods' names to knowledge and truth as often as he can. Pluto/Hades is even a philosopher, and "a perfect sophist" (403e). Of course, we might simply conclude from this that Socrates is using these etymologies to forward his own, non-standard theological views. But in addition, this is an interesting example of how the 'truth' of names, once it is recognized, could radically change - and not merely reflect - our more substantive views of the world.

2. I find the Pluto/Hades etymology particularly interesting for what it presents as criteria for Pluto's/Hades's philosophical nature. Specifically, Pluto/Hades has knowledge of a psychological and ethical variety: he knows that desire, not force, is the greatest motivator (shades of Socrates here), and that what we desire most of all is to become better people. (Sidenote: the motivational comparison of force and desire is an interesting one, since standardly force is involuntary, and so not 'motivating' in the same sense as desire, which is in some sense voluntary).

Happy reading!

Day 25: Cratylus 397d-402d

A few (slightly ranty) puzzles about the names of the gods: If we can know so little about the gods and their natures (400d-401a), wouldn't it be best not to name them at all? There is perhaps the need to use some language to refer to them in prayer, if that is required by your religion, but why give them names? Are names that are not intended to capture the nature of the named thing really names at all? From what we have seen earlier in the dialogue, there is perhaps good reason to think that these are not really names (just as a broken shuttle isn't really a shuttle). Or perhaps they are simply false names? In any case, there's something a bit troubling about Socrates giving etymologies of the gods' names immediately after admitting that they are neither (a) like the gods' names for themselves, nor (b) can the names we give them capture their natures, since "we admit that we know nothing about the gods."

Happy reading!

Day 24: _Cratylus_ 392b-397c (pgs. 111-115)

Happy reading, everyone!

Day 23: 'Cratylus' 385d-392b (pp. 106-110)

388a ff: S argues that a name is a sort of a tool. Does this mean that names can be excellent, i.e., have aretê? Cf. Resp. 352e-353a.

388e: what's the craft that S is talking about at this point? Is it the craft of using names, or the craft of setting the rules that govern the proper use of names? (Or something else?) One good reason to think that it is not the first option is that there are lots of people who can use names. (Perhaps it is the craft of using names correctly.) But one good reason to think that it is not the second option is that if only the rule-setter can set the rules that govern the proper use of names, then it looks like an instructor--presumably, an instructor who teaches a student what things are called, etc.--does not possess the craft of setting the rules.

Perhaps that outcome isn't as odd or objectionable as I first thought ...

Day 22: Cratylus 383a-385c (pp. 101-105)

Nothing philosophically adventurous from me today. I just raise a few questions about this difficult dialogue.

383a: Cratylus's position: For each thing, there is a name that correctly belongs to it "naturally". "Naturally" seems to be cashed out as being "the same for everyone".

384b: "But as I've heard only the one-drachma course...". I take it that he's being sarcastic, right?

384c-d: Hermogenes's position is a little less clear to me. Is it that each thing has a correct name, but its correctness is simply a function of people agreeing to use that name for the thing? That seems to be suggested by "the correctness of names is determined by ... convention and agreement" and "No name belongs to a particular thin gby nature, but only because of the rules and usage of those who establish the usage and call it by that name". So, he is not an eliminativist about the "correctness" of names. Rather, he's a relativist.

385d: "So whatever each person says is the name of something, for him, that is its name?" -- The relativism applies to individuals and not just communities.

386e: "And if things are of such a nature, doesn't the same hold of actions performed in relation to them? Or aren't actions included in some one class of the things that are?" Actions are included in the things that are-existentially? So, actions exist? Or, is there a veridical reading of this sentence such that he means that actions are true?

387a-c: Each action has a nature such that there is a natural way to do it. For example, there is a natural way to cut and burn something which will lead to successful cutting and burning. Speaking is an action. Therefore, there is a natural way to speak which will lead to successful speaking. I'm still unsure on why we're granting that there is a natural way to perform all actions, but OK.

385c: "Is a whole statement true but not its parts? -No, the parts are also true."

What is a statement and what are its parts? A proposition and its subject and predication?

Day 21: Phaedo 116d-118a (pgs. 99-100)

Not much to read today. We can all somberly meditate on Socrates' death and prepare for the Cratylus.

Happy reading!

Day 20: Phaedo 109c-116d

Two short notes today:

It is interesting that, in Socrates' picture of the afterlife, wrongdoers can only be relieved of torment and punishment by persuading their own victims that they should be released (114a-b). If the punishment is just and correct in the first place, what reasons would properly persuade someone to cease the punishment? Is this persuasion rational argument, or mere pleading? Is Socrates perhaps looking forward to Meletus, Anytus, et. al. trying to persuade him that they ought to be relieved of their punishment? (Has Socrates ever been convinced by anyone's arguments about anything? The afterlife for his accusers doesn't look too rosy ... perhaps this is Socrates' idea of revenge?)

Also, poor Crito ...

Day 19: Phaedo 103b-109c

Enjoy untangling the relationship between deathlessness and life in 105c-d ff.!

Happy reading, everyone!

Day 18: Phaedo 96d-103-b (pgs. 84-88)

First, my apologies to IanH for accidentally burying his very fine contribution yesterday under my longest-yet post.

Lots of action today : Socrates's intellectual biography, some theorizing of Forms, and discussion of the method of hypothesis. Rereading this part of the text, I am even more convinced by Wolfsdorf's view (which I think he shares with others) that 'hypothesis' is an inappropriate translation of hupothesis. The former connotes, or possibly denotes, too much in the way of arbitrariness, conjecture, and haphazard (possibly 'intuitive' or 'speculative') formulation. Wolfsdorf, if I recall correctly, suggests that 'foundation' gets much closer to the meaning of the Greek. It certainly does not appear here that the hypothesis is something that is merely hypothesized, in the modern sense. I would defend this claim at greater length, but I've never managed to do so in fewer than 1000 words, and I'm exhausted.

Also, I probably didn't do justice to Wolfsdorf's very nice paper, which I recommend.

Happy reading, everyone!

Day 17: Phaedo 91a-96c (pgs. 79-83)

*****WARNING*****

I think I'll have to reread tonight's material, having had a quite seriously wrong picture of psychic harmony in mind as I was reading. The translation in the Cooper edition (Grube's) consistently, when Socrates and his interlocutors are thinking through the consequences of the soul's being a harmony, refers to a harmony of elements. Now, 'element' usually translates stoikheion, which is often a very specialized, technical term--Aristotle, at Met. Γ (1014a), lists uses of the term, and it is quite clear that its range is far narrower than simply 'constituent' or 'part.' A central--perhaps, depending who you ask, the central--use of the term is for the letter of a word; also, it is no accident that Euclid's treatise is the 'ΣΤΟΙΧΕΙΑ', because the term also (it seems) standardly referred to an important basic proof that was used as a component of other, more complex proofs.

The point is that to say that something is composed out of, or arises from relations between and among, stoikheia is quite different to say that something is a composition or a relation or product of a relation, simpliciter. Yet I haven't found any place where what Grube renders 'harmony of elements' actually translates the Greek stoikheion. I haven't checked all the instances--there are plenty!--but what I've seen in the Greek is either pragma or a pronoun.

There is one particularly interesting and important sentence, at 92b, where the pronoun Grube is translating with 'these elements' in fact seems to refer to 'the εἶδος and σῶμα of a person.' I haven't looked at the sentence carefully enough to be sure of that, but that would be (i) pretty interesting and (ii) not at all in the range of what is usually meant by 'element.'

So, if you haven't done the reading yet, I'd recommend spending a little extra energy trying to remain neutral, when Socrates speaks of harmony, on the questions of (i) what the harmony is a harmony of and (ii) what kind of composition or relation the harmony is.

*****END WARNING*****

One other note: when Simmias says at 92a that he would be 'very surprised' if he ever changed his opinion, the verb there is an optative of θαυμάζω, which I think is an important verb in Plato. If I recall correctly, in the Platonic statement that 'philosophy begins in wonder,' the 'wonder' is a form of θαῦμα.

Anyway, in our translation it appears that Simmias would be surprised if he changed his mind about one thing, but Socrates has just listed a set of statements. What exactly is Simmias saying he would be surprised about? (The abandonment of the whole view, or of some specific thesis?) Similar questions apply to Cebes.

In short: I'm just not sure what the dialectical function of those comments is.

Day 17: Phaedo 91a-96c

I'm back, feeling better, and caught up.

92c: "How will you harmonize this statement with your former one?" Good one, S.

93a: A composite cannot be in a different "state" than its elements. What does "state" mean in this passage? If it's just a general term for quality or property, the principle seems prima facie false.

93b: One soul can't be more of a soul than another soul.

93c ff: Socrates seems to be taking very seriously the suggestion that a good soul is in harmony while an evil soul lacks harmony. It doesn't look like it's just an analogy for him.

94b-c: The soul opposes the affections of the body, e.g., the body is hungry and the soul prevents it from eating. Quite a different picture than Republic IV in which the soul is responsible both for the desire to eat and the desire not to eat.

Have a good night, everyone!

Day 16: Phaedo 84c-91a

Somehow I always forget just how philosophically dense the Phaedo is. Just one fairly obvious thought today: The explicitly uncertain/conjectural status of the argument is very striking. At 85c we read: “One should achieve one of these things: learn the truth about these things and find it for oneself, or, if that is impossible, adopt the best and most irrefutable of men’s theories, and, borne upon this, sail through the dangers of life as upon a raft, unless someone should make that journey safer and less risky upon a firmer vessel of divine doctrine.” There’s an interesting comparison with Neurath’s boat here…

Happy reading, everyone.

Day 14: Phaedo 73b-78c

One small remark, and a related small question:

73c ff.: In this passage, perception seems to be quite a complex psychological event. Plato twice emphasizes that comparative thoughts about sizes and shapes arise directly from sense perception, and that these comparative thoughts themselves already involve reference to the Forms. (Clearly, we are not supposed to be literally perceiving the Forms, or the Forms in things, but our knowledge of the Forms informs our perception to a high degree.) For instance, Plato asks, "Whence have we acquired the knowledge of [the Equal itself]? Is it not from the things we mentioned just now, from seeing sticks or stones or some other things that are equal ...?" (74b). And again a few lines later, he says: "it is definitely from the equal things, though they are different from that Equal, that you have derived and grasped the knowledge of equality" (74c).

My question is: Just how much is going on in perception here? On one reading, this passage tells us we literally see equality and inequality in particular things, and that this is only possible because perception involves some small bit of recollection (which must mean that perception happens against a background of rational thought). On a more minimal reading, Plato is only saying that perception gives us the material for comparative judgments of equality (for instance), and that recollection is involved at the level of judgment. But if the latter, then why all the emphasis on perception as, itself, the first stimulus or occasion for recollection? (Secondary question: What might the role of the Forms in sense-perception tell us about the so-called "Two Worlds Doctrine" debate?)

Day 13: Phaedo 67e-73b

A note from Nate:

68c-d: We get a discussion of self-restraint that is remarkable both in its own right and in comparison with the _Rep._ passage. Here too there is at least a hint of the Socratic puzzlement at the very notion of self-restraint. Here of course Socrates is less Plato's Socrates, so a motivational monist, so the problem of making any sense of the idea is even sharper...

68d: As translated this appears to be an argument from contradiction.

69a-b: Compare of course the Prot. discussion of the metretic art.

Interlude

Congrats to Nate and Christiana!!! Forget reading Plato. Celebrate!

Day 11: Phaedo 57a-62a (pp. 49-54)

At 59a Phaedo says that when he was with Socrates he experienced a feeling of "an unaccustomed mixture of pleasure and pain at the same time". However, at 60b Socrates claims that one cannot have both pleasure and pain at the same time, but instead there is an "astonishing" relation between the two opposites in which if one catches one, one will also catch the other "like two creatures with one head".

I'm trying to picture what two creatures with one head would look like--one head and two bodies? Wouldn't that just be one creature with two bodies? Wouldn't a more apt simile be something like "like one creature with two heads"? I suppose if pleasure and pain were like that, then one might be able to isolate pleasure without pain or vice versa (by cutting off a head?), and Socrates's point is that one can't have one without the other, which would follow if they shared a head. I know this talk of the relationship between opposites comes up later in the dialogue. I'd like to revisit this passage when it does.

Day 10: Crito 53c-54e (pp. 47-48)

Not much reading today.

(1) 53c-d: Either (a) life is not worth living in a poorly governed city or (b) Socrates's particular life is not worth living in a poorly governed city. I'm inclined to see it as (b), but what is peculiar to Socrates's style of living that would make life in a poorly governed city not worth living? Socrates goes on to say that it would be "unseemly" (ἀσχήμων -- LSJ says it could also be "shameful") to continue discussing the virtues with people in his new home. Would it be unseemly because his new city would be poorly governed, or because Socrates' escape from Athens would somehow make his attempts discuss the virtues fraudulent, or both?

If I don't chime in tomorrow, I will have done the reading. I will just be out of town, and I'm not sure if I will have internet access.

Day Nine: Crito 47c-53b (pp. 42-46)

Is there any way to follow the many other than with fear? -- "should we follow the opinion of the many and fear it ..." (47d). Couldn't you follow the many happily? Two points of comparison here (both from the Republic) are S's metaphor of the many as a beast who is handled, poorly, by the sophists (Resp. 493a) and S's claim that the philosopher who returns to the cave runs the risk of being killed by the ignorant (Resp. 517a).

49b: one must not inflict wrong in return for wrong. I suppose that this is compatible with both not returning harm when harmed, and also with punishing wrongdoers, since a punishment inflicted on a bad person can be corrective, and therefore cannot be a wrong or a harm. (Cf. the discussion in the Gorgias, where S suggests that the worst thing that you can do to a vicious person is to leave them alone--does it follow from this that a virtuous person cannot let a vicious person go unpunished ... since that would be to harm them?)

50e: "... you are our offspring and servant"--'servant' here translates δοῦλος, which I believe can also be translated as "slave". Nice.
 
53a-b: Sparta and Crete--it is Crete that is idealized in the Laws, is it not? What about Megara and Thebes? Any mention of those two in any other dialogues?

Day 8: Crito 43a-47c (pp. 37-42)

On to the Crito! A couple of small points:

(1) 44c-d: Crito claims that the majority are able to inflict the greatest of evils--presumably death. Socrates dismisses this suggestion and then says that if the majority could inflict the greatest evils, they would also be capable of the greatest good. Does this relate to Pryio's discussion of the Apology from a few days ago (ref: 24d-ish), where Socrates seems to imply that one who knows who corrupts the young also knows who improves the young? The thought goes something like this: If someone knows what is good for X, she also knows what is bad for X, and if one knows how to inflict the greatest of evils on a person, one also knows how to inflict the greatest goods on that person.

Also, what are the greatest good and the greatest evil, for that matter?

(2) 47a: "one must not value all the opinions of men, but some and not others, nor the opinions of all men, but those of some and not of others". This is a weird formulation of the principle. On first reading, I thought he was saying that one should value some of the opinions of some of the men, which doesn't seem to be what the principle actually says.

Day 7: Apology 34a-42a

38a: With all this talk of testing and provoking others, and the crucial shift in priorities that Socrates is uniquely able to bring to the other Athenians, it is a relief to hear Socrates admit that what he's really doing is "testing myself and others." But in what sense does Socrates test himself? When do we find him doing this? Do his discussions with others count as tests for himself, and if so, do they test himself in the same way as they test others? Is this part of what Socrates' human wisdom consists in, namely, the ability to reflexively test and examine himself?

Day 6: Apology 26d-34a (p26-30)

Hello all,

I shall try keep up with you and post when I have something to say.

I have one small question today. Socrates at c32b announces that he will now give a great proof of his claim that a man who fights for justice must lead a private, not a public life. Socrates begins by saying that "the things that I shall tell you are commonplace and smack of the lawcourts". Does Socrates here suggest that he has experience of the lawcourts? At 17d he tells us that this trial is his first appearance in a lawcourt. Socrates had never been on trial before, but would he qua Athenian citizen not have spent some time in the lawcourts? So how knowledgeable are we meant to think that Scorates was regarding the working of the lawcourts?

Day 5: Apology 22b-26d (pgs. 22-26)

Thanks to everyone for yesterday's comments. Two brief, unremarkable comments.

(a) Knowledge-standards seem to be shifting here (or, perhaps, Socrates is talking about two kinds of knowledge). On the one hand, he is happy to say of all sorts of people that they don't know anything. On the other hand, he says, e.g., at 22d-e that craftsmen have knowledge of their crafts. I haven't checked whether this is marked by a difference in the Greek verb.

(b) At 25d-e note the argument that establishes, or presupposes, that nobody does (certain kinds of) wrong willingly.

Day 4: Apology 17a-22a (pgs. 17-23)

Dialogue #2! Great material about which I have little to say.

(a) At 17c Socrates says that he will defend himself with "things spoken at random." Two questions arise. (i) Is this phrase supposed to contrast with the accusers' "embroidered and stylized phrases" (17c), some other standard way of speaking in court (perhaps suggested in 17d), or both? (ii) The 'random' here is Grube's rendering of εἰκῇ, which the LSJ says has a primary meaning of "without a plan," and which the LSJ also says appears at Protagoras 326d. It would be interesting to sort out the connection Socrates sees between speaking justly (or being just, or having the whole truth) and being able to speak without a plan.

(b) At 20a-b we get an identification of human excellence on the analogy of the sort of excellence in a horse one would expect to get from a horse-breeder. NB that the question is raised whether training by sophists conduces to development of this kind of excellence, and that Socrates speaks of it as a matter of "excelling in their proper qualities."

Happy reading, everyone.

Day 3: The end of the Euthyphro

I have just one question (or complaint) about today's text.

15d: Socrates repeats something he brought up at the beginning of the dialogue: "If you had no clear knowledge of piety and impiety you would never have ventured to prosecute your old father for murder on behalf of a servant. For fear of the gods you would have been afraid to take the risk lest you should not be acting rightly ..."

Apart from the dramatic effects of these sorts of comments, they also seem to have a strange philosophical upshot. This is only an impression, but it seems to me that Socrates is here trying to apply what is usually an epistemic principle to the practical sphere. We are usually told that we should not believe something unless we are absolutely sure it is true. (And we should probably also have the occasional Socratic discussion in order to root out those rash, false beliefs that we inevitably acquire in daily life.) But in the passage above, we are now also being told that we should not act as if something is true unless we are absolutely sure it is true.

Obviously, the second, practical principle does not follow directly from the first, epistemic one. So what justifies it? It is not the same as the principle that we should act from knowledge of what is best (whenever we can), since this kind of principle doesn't automatically recommend against acting when you don't have knowledge. Perhaps we should refrain from assenting in cases in which assent might produce a false belief; but why should we refrain from acting unless we have knowledge?

Day 2.

Today, Euthyphro 6c-11b(ish) (pages 6-10 in Cooper). A few notes, about the mechanics of the project and about the text:

(i) Ian will be joining us, which is awesome.

(ii) Ian thinks that the (italicized) introductions to each dialogue should count as part of the day's five pages. They certainly take time to read, and the idea to read five pages a day came by considering the total length of the volume, not excluding the introductions. So, unless there are protests, we can retroactively declare yesterday's reading to have ended at 6c, and today's at 11b.

(iii) At 9d Socrates says that he "will not insist on this point; let us assume, if you wish, that..." Given that any instance of something's being granted or posited for the sake of argument in Plato deserves some attention, I took a quick look at the Greek, and the 'assume' here appears to be a use of ἀφίημι, which the LSJ says has a primary meaning of 'let go of.'

(iv) For whatever it's worth, the Greek text available at perseus.tufts.edu has a couple instances of Euthyphro's name in that speech of Socrates's (9c-d) that our Cooper translator (G.M.A. Grube) has not preserved in the English. Perhaps there is a textual issue here that I'm not aware of.

(v) At 10a, when Socrates says that "there is something loved and--a different thing--something loving," the "things" translate pronouns, not (say) pragma. (I've got this book on the brain.)

Happy reading!

....And we're off.

Today: Euthyphro 2a-7d(ish). (Do the introductions count as part of the 5 pages or not?)

Very brief thoughts:

(a) It's nice to begin with such familiar material.

(b) The substance of the court case--that is, the story of what Euthyphro's father did--is even more complicated than I recalled.

(c) I'd remembered that Socrates says that the subjects we get hostile when we disagree about are justice, beauty, and the good; I hadn't remembered that he says that this is (in part?) because in other cases we can simply resort to measurement (7c). I wonder if anything interesting can be said comparing this to the discussion of the metretic art at Protagoras 356a-357c?

Happy reading.