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!
Nice post...
ReplyDeleteThe most notable feature of the reading for me was Socrates' remark that _haploun_ ('single-mindedness') is the same thing as truthfulness. Whoa?!
Nate: I agree, that claim is very striking. I wonder if it gets any less strange if we understand 'truthfulness' in terms of truth-telling, as opposed to being true? A liar might be described as being of two minds (in the sense of thinking one thing and saying something else), and in contrast to this, perhaps, a truthful person is single-minded? Don't know if that's plausible ...
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