Today: more mythologizing about the cosmos, more discussion of kingship, and more methodological discussion about the right way to divide classes into subclasses in an inquiry.
Happy reading!
Friday, April 8, 2011
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Day 65: Statesman 267d-271e (pgs. 309-313)
Today: a small discussion of some possible differences between kingship and other kinds of "herding" (why does the king need help in a way that, e.g., a shepherd doesn't?), followed by a myth (is 'myth' the right word? The visitor says there's an "element of play") about the structure and movements of the cosmos. A few quick notes:
(a) The cosmos is an intelligent living creature. (269d)
(b) It moves with the best possible motion for something embodied, which is not the same as the best motion simpliciter. (269d-e)
(c) Every now and then the universe has to change its motion such as to be a big shock to living creatures in it (including humans). (270c-e) The details of how this goes seem to be a matter of great controversy, down to how to translate various sentences in the text. (See n. 31, p. 313)
(d) There appear to be times when humans are generated not from humans but from the earth (271a-c)
Happy reading!
(a) The cosmos is an intelligent living creature. (269d)
(b) It moves with the best possible motion for something embodied, which is not the same as the best motion simpliciter. (269d-e)
(c) Every now and then the universe has to change its motion such as to be a big shock to living creatures in it (including humans). (270c-e) The details of how this goes seem to be a matter of great controversy, down to how to translate various sentences in the text. (See n. 31, p. 313)
(d) There appear to be times when humans are generated not from humans but from the earth (271a-c)
Happy reading!
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Day 64: Statesman 263e-267d (pgs. 304-308)
Today:
(a) More discussion of the divisions within "self-directed herding." It is easy to understand why John Cooper wrote the last paragraph of the dialogue introduction the way he did, exhorting the reader to work through the "visitor's use of lengthy 'divisions.'"
(b) Plenty here to help us try to answer Colfert's question from yesterday. What's pretty obvious is that part of the recommendation is not to split a class into class X and not-X, expecting an a priori guarantee that the not-X part will be a _class_. What's less obvious is (i) why this matters so much in context, (ii) what 'middle' means in this context, and (iii) what on earth a class is. Some brief, unresearched, and probably fairly obvious comments... re: (i), presumably the idea is that inquiry goes better if the things you're thinking about pick out (something like) natural kinds. Re: (ii), my sense is that 'middle' means nothing more being a location that allows for equal splitting, in a very deflated sense of "equal"--that is, the fact that a class splits into two classes under distinction X is sufficient to guarantee that distinction X counts as a 'middle.' Re: (iii), who knows! My instinct in (i) is to think roughly in terms of natural kinds.
(c) It's been a while since I groaned out loud at a math pun (see 266a-b). A brief note is that in the phrase "the power of the diagonal of our power," the phrase "the diagonal of our power" is not saying what the dunamis is the dunamis _for_, the way that the diagonal of the unit triangle is the dunamis of or for the two-foot square; rather, it is saying which dunamis the "animals' dunamis" is to be identified with; the diagonal of (what) our dunamis (is a dunamis for) is _itself_ a dunamis, and it is this dunamis that is the dunamis of the four-foot square.
That might not have made sense: the point is just that, unless I'm wrong, "diagonal" is coordinated (is that the right word?) with the first "power," not a statement of what the power is a power "for."
Happy reading!
(a) More discussion of the divisions within "self-directed herding." It is easy to understand why John Cooper wrote the last paragraph of the dialogue introduction the way he did, exhorting the reader to work through the "visitor's use of lengthy 'divisions.'"
(b) Plenty here to help us try to answer Colfert's question from yesterday. What's pretty obvious is that part of the recommendation is not to split a class into class X and not-X, expecting an a priori guarantee that the not-X part will be a _class_. What's less obvious is (i) why this matters so much in context, (ii) what 'middle' means in this context, and (iii) what on earth a class is. Some brief, unresearched, and probably fairly obvious comments... re: (i), presumably the idea is that inquiry goes better if the things you're thinking about pick out (something like) natural kinds. Re: (ii), my sense is that 'middle' means nothing more being a location that allows for equal splitting, in a very deflated sense of "equal"--that is, the fact that a class splits into two classes under distinction X is sufficient to guarantee that distinction X counts as a 'middle.' Re: (iii), who knows! My instinct in (i) is to think roughly in terms of natural kinds.
(c) It's been a while since I groaned out loud at a math pun (see 266a-b). A brief note is that in the phrase "the power of the diagonal of our power," the phrase "the diagonal of our power" is not saying what the dunamis is the dunamis _for_, the way that the diagonal of the unit triangle is the dunamis of or for the two-foot square; rather, it is saying which dunamis the "animals' dunamis" is to be identified with; the diagonal of (what) our dunamis (is a dunamis for) is _itself_ a dunamis, and it is this dunamis that is the dunamis of the four-foot square.
That might not have made sense: the point is just that, unless I'm wrong, "diagonal" is coordinated (is that the right word?) with the first "power," not a statement of what the power is a power "for."
Happy reading!
Monday, April 4, 2011
Day 63: Statesman 259d-263e (p. 299-303)
Our reading today continues the search for the Statesman through the method of collection and division.
Happy reading, everyone!
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Day 62: Statesman 257a-259d (pgs. 294-298)
The first of 13 days of the _Statesman_! Today we got Cooper's introduction, some dramatic preliminaries, and a bit of discussion of knowledge and categorization.
1. At 258d-e we get a quick distinction between practical and theoretical knowledge, and the distinction appears implicitly also at 259c. Note that the distinction is put in somewhat different terms: at 258, between simply providing knowledge vs. also being naturally bound up with practical actions; at 259, the king's knowledge counts as theoretical because it involves much more "understanding and force of mind" than "use of the hands or body in general."
2. Arithmetic shows up twice in these first few pages of the dialogue, once as an example of theoretical knowledge, and once in the strange opening lines, when Socrates says that the sophist, statesman, and philosopher "differ in value by more than can be expressed in terms of mathematical proportion."
Happy reading!
1. At 258d-e we get a quick distinction between practical and theoretical knowledge, and the distinction appears implicitly also at 259c. Note that the distinction is put in somewhat different terms: at 258, between simply providing knowledge vs. also being naturally bound up with practical actions; at 259, the king's knowledge counts as theoretical because it involves much more "understanding and force of mind" than "use of the hands or body in general."
2. Arithmetic shows up twice in these first few pages of the dialogue, once as an example of theoretical knowledge, and once in the strange opening lines, when Socrates says that the sophist, statesman, and philosopher "differ in value by more than can be expressed in terms of mathematical proportion."
Happy reading!
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Day 61: Sophist 265d-268d (p. 290-293)
Today we have the final classification of sophists and statesmen, and we're done another dialogue!
Just two notes:
1. The role of appearances in Plato's metaphysics is fascinating. This is the obvious thing to say, but I'll say it anyway: For Plato, appearances are primarily things in the world: shadows, reflections, speeches, paintings, performances, etc. (266b-c). However, for most of us (and perhaps for Aristotle as well), appearances are primarily internal phenomena: they are, at least in part, how things seem to us. I don't have much more to say about this difference here. I just find it to be of general interest, and Plato's externalized view of appearances is clearly important to his last argument in the Sophist.
2. For a reader of the Nicomachean Ethics, it's hard to read the 'imitators of justice' passage at 267b ff. without thinking about the description of character development in NE II.1-4 (which shows up in Rep. IV as well). For Aristotle, in contrast to what Plato seems to be suggesting here, there is an important sense in which mimicking justice without yet being just is a precisely the way to eventually become just. Of course, the imitation of virtue isn't the same as the real thing, but when done in the right way, it can produce the real thing. Another important difference between some phases of Platonic thought, and Aristotle?
Happy reading!
Friday, April 1, 2011
Day 60: Sophist 261b-265d (pgs. 285-289)
Today: more application of the newly developed metaphysics to the questions of what falsity (especially false speech and belief) could be and what the sophist is.
In an exciting development, it appears that Plato holds that perception can be true and false. One reason this is interesting is in relation to the _Theaetetus_, where we learned that perception couldn't be knowledge because it grasps the wrong kinds of properties (e.g., redness and hardness, not being and unity). That would still leave it open whether, for Plato, when we see a red cube, we see the redness of the cube or that the cube is red. Here in the _Sophist_ it's looking much more like the latter.
Happy reading!
In an exciting development, it appears that Plato holds that perception can be true and false. One reason this is interesting is in relation to the _Theaetetus_, where we learned that perception couldn't be knowledge because it grasps the wrong kinds of properties (e.g., redness and hardness, not being and unity). That would still leave it open whether, for Plato, when we see a red cube, we see the redness of the cube or that the cube is red. Here in the _Sophist_ it's looking much more like the latter.
Happy reading!
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