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Cheerfulness

I have been living outside of the United States for just about four years now (it will be 4 years next month, to the day). It is fairly unsurprising that in that time, I’ve felt a slowly growing affinity with my country. I’ve felt more “American” as I’ve been away, the color of “my” Americanism set apart from the fabric of Canadian character with a slightly different tint that is all around me now. And I should say that there isn’t really an “American national character” at all. I think that the culture of the United States (or any country) impacts the characters of individuals, sometimes in drastically different ways, but there is an underlying unity in the structure of those changes. There is something in common that makes American liberals desire universal health care, and American conservatives desire the abolition of abortion - though these are two drastically different manifestations. And that unity is really something I intuit, rather than understand, and I certainly couldn’t really describe it, though perhaps I can offer some hints about what I see.

A friend of mine from Ireland once described the impression he had of the American character - and he focused on the word cheerful. I thought that was actually pretty insightful, though I don’t think that it means that Americans are always (or even mostly) cheerful. But I think it captures something about the underlying story of America, especially the expectations that Americans seem to have. There is a cheerfulness underlying both the “libertarian” expectation that people are rational deciders, and that the free market will guide us alright, and behind the expectation that a large government with many programs can be efficiently and honorably run. Both seem to presume that people are able to rise above irrationality and petty selfishness to live in a better world. And as this might suggest, this has a dark side in naivety, in which many Americans (of all political stripes) seem to have an almost supernatural ability to ignore things which should at least shake, if not demolish the expectations that they have underlying the political positions they hold.

I also think this “cheerfulness” manifests in other ways. In fact, I think this character is why Americans are often thought of as rude, and the exact character of this is something that has really stood out for me as a difference between Americans and Canadians (with a reputation for being excessively polite). I can’t really think of a more specific word that sums up what I have in mind - but it’s something like a presumption of familiarity, and in particular a quickness in abandoning politeness for “genuineness”, which I think has roots in the strain of American culture that focuses on egalitarianism.  I think there is something in American culture which views politeness as a way of keeping others at a distance - and I don’t think that this is entirely inaccurate. Politeness is really a way of moderating your own behavior, censoring yourself, and acting in ways that others are going to expect in order to make for smooth and easy social situations. But politeness often tends to fade in the American character as people become closer - it is viewed as “unnecessary”, and once someone has become a friend, then it’s okay to show them how you really feel, what you really think - to pull away a number of the guards and censors, often with a cheerful presumption that any issues will work themselves out. Politeness is there precisely to ensure that those “issues” never come up in the first place. And I think the American reputation for rudeness comes because many Americans want to push past politeness relatively early on in a relationship or social situation. It is a way of being friendly and “genuine”, rather than simply keeping things running smoothly. The quick abandonment of politeness is a sort of trust building and affirming transgression that is deeply implicated in an American character born of a great transgression this very day in 1776 (or so our mythology goes).

Of course, like all things, this too has a dark side. There is something self serving about the presumption that what is best and most genuine is to stop regulating your own behavior for the comfort of others - considering the full disclosure of your “true self” to be the highest social gift one can bestow on another regardless of what they want. But my point here is not that American cheerfulness or Canadian politeness is better or worse - cheerfulness can be warm or inconsiderate (or both), and politeness can be considerate or cold (or both). But a culture that prioritizes one or the other is going to have different expectations, and different ways of understanding something like a slap on the back, or the avoidance of potential controversies. It can influence the way one understand the “progression” and estimation of a social relationship. And, of course, it can shape the character of the relationship between two cultures. At times this pits a teasing and insensitive American boorishness, against a smoldering passive aggressive Canadian resentment (In Nietzsche’s sense of the word). But it can also pair genuine goodwill with sensitivity, generosity and openness with a healthy consideration of others.

On this July fourth, I will celebrate in my own heart American cheerfulness - but of course, it is not an unmixed celebration, as this cheerfulness causes problems as well as contributing in a positive way to the American character. But I’ll think also of American revolution, not simply as a celebration of events over 200 years ago, but as an ongoing process founded on “cheerful” enlightenment ideals of the ongoing potential for the betterment of the lot of humanity, and that the cheerful American attitude, while wonderful, always has room for growth, and this is no black mark against it, but yet another cause for celebration and ongoing revolution.

2009 07 04 Politics Comments (0) Permalink

Workshop facilitation again…

This past Saturday, I finished facilitating yet another workshop at the teaching center where I work. It was a workshop that I’ve done a number of times before, and each time I do it, it is always just a little bit different. This time I had one of the more difficult experiences - the group I facilitated seemed not to really “buy into” the workshop, but they also didn’t object to it, they just went along and did everything that was needed for the workshop. As a result, the energy in the room seemed quite low, participation was difficult to solicit, and there was very little opportunity to try and change anything (because they acquiesced to whatever I did as a facilitator).

Because of the difficulty, this was one of the more educational workshops for me. I have always focused, when doing these workshops, on individuals as instructors. This has been in part because the group has really grown organically on its own, and in part because I tend to be more suspicious of groups as opposed to individuals. I became really aware of the group as it’s own entity in a way that I’ve never really been especially conscious of before. I saw how different people can help to shape a group in very different ways, and I saw (and actually implemented) various ways of intervening, and a few of those were actually successful. Though the workshop was not the liveliest or best that I’ve ever done, I think I actually did a pretty good job of it, and that it could have been much worse had I not really pushed my facilitation skills. So, it’s a sort of tired and worn out victory, not terribly satisfying, but a victory nonetheless.

I really hope to continue to pay attention to group process as I do this work - it is still something uncomfortable for me, because of the way individual features get smoothed over and lost (and sometimes to very bad effect). I think, also, that there is something mildly horrifying about that feature of groups. Hearing last week about the kinds of things that were going on in Iran (and to my knowledge are still going on) - self satisfied mobs of “law enforcement” bodies dishing violence against political dissenters - this is the sort of thing that I associate with groups - this dark power to create an insular system of mores that allow such things to happen. I think that in many groups, this potential is available, just waiting for the wrong set of circumstances to activate it. These thoughts always trouble me more deeply - about what groups, and the evils that human beings can perpetrate through them - tell us about ourselves and our neighbors. Though perhaps groups are just like people - whether they are good or bad really depends on the way they are cultivated and trained. Which makes the understanding I’m picking out here even more important.

But I think it is a good thing to understand.

2009 06 29 Pro-D Comments (0) Permalink

Finished Plato’s Complete Works

It has been a while since I last wrote, though not much has happened in the intervening time. I’ve been reading, working, and wasting time playing video games mostly. One of the few accomplishments of the last month was that I finally finished reading the complete works of Plato. The Laws, which were the last of the “mostly recognized as authentic” works were a real slag to get through - probably my least favorite of his works thus far (though when I’ve said stuff like this before, the work thus derided ends up being one of my favorites). The contested works were also interesting - the Epinomis was done in the style of the laws, the Greater Hippias was more stylistically consistent with other works, and the letters were all interesting - all of their authenticity being the subject of debate, but the point of view they provide (or invent) is interesting - Plato writing “in his own voice.”

I think that the main thing that I’ve taken away from this journey has been a greater appreciation of the really strong distinction that is consistently made throughout the works between reason and the appetites. Plato seemed consistently worried that the appetites would overpower reason, there was in essence a constant threat of civil war, both within the individual, and seemingly also within the state. In both cases, this disruption could be avoided only by the subjugation of the appetites to reason, or the subjugation of the lesser to the better. In both cases, a sort of benevolence was assumed (of reason, and of the elite) - a failure of this general benevolence was simply proof that the claimant was an imposter. The fundamental challenge to Plato would be to provide some support for the heirarchy that he envisions - in essence a challenge to the presumed superiority of reason for bringing about happiness. This is a challenge that Nietzesche famously brought to a head with his claim about the inversion of values. The philosopher as envisioned by Plato seems to be a sort of aristocratic ascetic, focused on mastery of the appetites as the key to true happiness.

There is also the “Socratic” element, though - the irony and agnosticism - that seems to run in some ways contrary to the conformity to order and heirarchy that is prevalant throughout Plato’s writings. Socrates consistently claims not to know about the things that he asks about, be it knowledge, beauty, or goodness (truth be told, he asks about little else). It is at times puzzling to hear this character - Socrates - saying the things he does about the censorship of art in favor of conventionality, perhaps because it is odd to think of a character such as Socrates really believing anything to such an extent that it ought never to be challenged. The philosopher as exemplified by Socrates seems to be focused on curiosity and a hope for goodness, perhaps with a healthy dose of frustration with those who pretend to have arrived at goodness.

These images are not in direct contrast - yet they also fit uncomfortably well together, though I can’t quite put my finger on why. I’m interested, now, to read Xenophon’s Socrates and contrast him with Plato’s (mostly because I’m wondering if the picture of Socrates I’m getting now is inaccurate, as I try to mentally imagine away the elements that seem most clearly Platonic).  But in either case, I’m really glad I read through the complete works, and I hope to do so again (though perhaps after I’m done with the dissertation). I’m still hoping to read a bit more of the Greeks over the summer - Xenophon now, as well as Aristotle, though I might try to tear through an introductory level commentary on Plato before moving on.

2009 06 22 Notebooks
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Back

Well, I am back from my train trip - I posted a few backdated journal entries from the trip that I’ve only now put up. The wedding that we went to (the reason for the trip) was enjoyable - excellent food, really nice atmosphere, and the ceremony and reception seemed to go off without a hitch. I didn’t record any journal entries after I arrived, in part because I was pretty busy the first day and a half I was there, and in part because I was sick for the second day and a half.  On the day of the wedding, I started sneezing a bit - then increasing as we got toward the end of the day. I assumed it was allergies (and perhaps it was) but I was prevented from sleeping all night, and by the next morning, I had a hell of a fever. The day after was miserable for me, Lynda was a hero and did all of the packing to go home, and that night my fever shot up even higher, then broke sometime during the night (I remember waking up, drenched and finally not feeling feverish). For the trip home and since then, I’ve been fighting a mild cold, while Lynda, unfortunately, has come down with a nasty cold herself.

Being sick prevented me from recording much for the second half of the trip, or the journey home. There were some interesting experiences. We certainly met more characters on the train - including (on day 1) a older couple - dairy farmers - who about 10 minutes into dinner asked us if we were Christian. When we said no, they expressed concern for our souls, and tried a bit of evangelizing (but really nothing too extreme). It was a bit disconcertng, but I try to remember that such people mean well - after all, if one really believes that not being a Christian would cause one to suffer eternally in hell, the ethical thing to do would be to try to get everyone to be a Christian. So they mean well - their wrongdoing is epistemic, not moral.

It was interesting, throughout the trip, to see the very many different kinds of lives that people lead. There were just tiny glimpses, of course - over a meal, out a window - but I got a sense of the “smallness” of my own life - not in comparison to any other life, but in comparison to some dim inkling of the abundant variety of human lives, of these different forms of life. I suppose this is in part because I tend to only interact with people from my own socio-economic class. Being in a university, most of the people I interact with are highly educated and operate with fundamental assumptions which are characteristic of that kind of life, but which are totally alien to other forms of life. It was humbling in a sense - to see my own form of life as peripherial to all of these others, but humbling in a good way.

There are other thoughts - about the rich and wide landscapes, for example. It was strinkign to go through a few different climactic zones in the course of three days, and see the many different ways the land expresses itself. Also interesting was the sensation of being “unstuck in time and place”. I never really knew exactly where I was, and because of the multiple time-zone shifts, when I was. I was entirely broken free of my ordinary schedule, and the days all blurred together. (So much so that I kept thinking of my 3 days travelling in either direction as a single day). Thatwas actually a liberating feeling, if not a bit disconcerting.

That’s probably enough for now. It’s time for me to get back to work - now on my dissertation. I’ve got some planning to do, then I need to meet with my supervisor, and get this show in the road. I’d like to get one draft of a chapter done by the end of the summer. Let’s see how that goes.

2009 05 30 Health
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Train Trip pt. 3

Last night was a much easier sleep. As the sun went down, the stars came out and I was able to look up at the stars over North Dakota as I was falling asleep through the window. It wasn’t the starriest night I’ve seen (that crown goes to one day of a moonless night on an August camping trip) it was certainly starrier than I’ve experienced in quite a while. I love to be able to see the stars, the blue lie of the atmosphere is pierced, and we again experience both how big the universe is and how small we are in it.

Before Dinner yesterday there was a wine and cheese tasting, which was fun, though not terribly impressive (the only wine I enjoyed at all was a Gewürztraminer, but the chesse was pretty good.) Still, it was a nice little interlude, something that wouldn’t happen on a plane, certainly.

Today has been nice – I listened to some Mozart as we traveled alongside the great Mississippi river and the stark North Dakota landscape gave way to a greener and hillier Missouri. We had a somewhat awkward lunch with a couple, one of whom was a 92 year old war vet (and Mason) who was not shy at all about saying racist things about Mexicans and Italians. He also seemed to be trying to figure out if I was a Mason – he spoke about wine, bread and oil as “what we’ve always earned” – and I know that is a Masonic symbol, and I wonder if that is one of the ways Masons identify each other, before doing whatever handshakes they do.

Right now, we are somewhere in Wisconsin, headed toward Milwaukee, and this will incredibly be the second time I’ve spent time in Milwaukee (the first was a few days for a gaming convention in what feels like a lifetime ago.) A few short hours after that, and we will be off the Empire builder, and transferring to a regular train, then a Bus, bringing us into Lansing just after midnight. I’m going to have a chaotic and busy day tomorrow, no doubt – I’ve got to find a tux, figure out travel arrangements, and all in time to make the rehearsal and dinner in the afternoon and evening.

2009 05 21 Travel Comments (0) Permalink

Train Trip pt. 2

I’m currently about halfway through the second (and the longest) leg of our trip, on the Amtrak “Empire Builder” line, which runs from Seattle to Chicago. We have a roomette, which is a tiny sleeper room – two facing seats which convert into a small bed, and another bed pulls down from overhead to make a top bunk. We got on this train at about 4:45 yesterday, and have been going ever since – we’ll be on here until 4:00 or so tomorrow.

I’ve really enjoyed the experience so far. Traveling across the country like this, where you can actually see everything, and in a relative degree of comfort (as opposed to on an airplane) is just a wonderful experience. The scenery out the window has been amazing. Yesterday, we passed through the coast mountains, winding along and through the mountins, including about 15 minutes in a 7.8 mile tunnel through a mountain. We passed through orchards and wine country, through the temperate rain forest of the pacific northwest, and then things started to get a bit drier as night fell. Today began with a very early entrance into a highly overcast Glacier Mountain national park (which had some breathtaking scenery), then out the other side into “Big Sky” country – land flatter and wider than I’ve ever seen in my life. At one point, we could actually see distinct rainstorms off in the distance, seeing the whole storm at once. I’m used to thinking of the size of a storm in terms of duration, not area. But there has just been so much to see.

Riding on a train is itself quite an experience. It is a much more social experience than flying, and social without the sense of “shared peril” that I sensed when traveling by bus last year. The train staff is friendly, and there are a number of them who seem to have finely cultivated memorable characters. Our car’s attendant is a man named Austin with a handlebar moustache and a quick sense of humor. There were also two volunteers on board who worked for the National Parks service who would point out history and landmarks of all the sights we passed, especially through Glacier Park. One of them who we spoke to a bit more was retired Navy, as well as retired something-else, who was doing this job mostly for fun. We’ve also been seated “community style” at meals, we’ve sat twice with a couple from central Oregon (the husband is a retired social worker, who was at one time a farmer, and at another time fought in Vietnam), and at lunch we sat with a Biologist from a University in Missouri, and a woman who worked with native bands from Seattle (but who was originally from somewhere around here in Montana).

One of the things I like about this way of traveling is that it is in an important way “not rushing”. This trip would have taken us all of a day (layovers and such included) had we traveled by plane – but when you travel by plane, it’s really all about the destination, and one would just as soon be teleported to the destination, if it were possible. This kind of traveling is really as much about getting there as it is about arriving. It feels more connected to the land, one passes through communities and sees where people live, glimpse at the local pub in tiny towns, and witness the land itself changing personality as you travel through it. I’ve crossed this continent many times, but I’ve never really seen it. And I’m not sure what it is – it may simply be the location of railroad tracks vs. the location of interstate highways – but you really do see more than traveling by car. The train seems often to pass into communities, and is integrated into many of them, rather than just being a corridor the way most highways are.

I’ll try to write again about my experience as the days go on. I think now I’ll take a little nap, to make up some of the sleep I missed last night.

2009 05 20 Travel Comments (0) Permalink

Train Trip Pt. 1

The first leg of our trip is done – Lynda and I are sitting in a café in Seattle, during a brief layover before getting on the train. The café is bohemian and expensive – hipster I think. It reminds me of neighborhoods in Brooklyn. I kind of like it right now, but I think I’d find it tiresome to live here. The bus tip in was nice. The seats were a bit small for me, but otherwise it was comfortable.  It was nice driving through the coast mountains – we went from bright and sunny weather to a pretty steady downpour and back to a middle gray and about-to-rain.

Seattle, at least the part I’m in, is very hilly – like a tightly packed Vancouver mixed with a bit of hipster Brooklyn. I’ll say more later, but I enjoy this traveling – “slow travel” rather than “slow food” – though it is a different experience traveling with Lynda, as opposed to traveling alone (like last year up to Pentiction). I’ve got to leave now, got a train to catch…

2009 05 19 Travel Comments (0) Permalink

Free Time

I’ve handed in my grading, my prospectus is defended and my candidacy official, and I’ve given myself a start date for the dissertation that is a few weeks away. I currently have a brief and pleasant period where there is nothing in particular that I have to do, which is a precious and rare thing for a grad student. I still plan to be “active” - reading philosophy and such, though nothing for my dissertation itself - the pleasant feeling is that of not having some deadline hanging over my neck, not feeling like I’ve fallen behind, etc. Once I start, I really hope to barrel through this prospectus because I want to be done with this degree and get on with my life. We will see how that goes (I didn’t barrel through the comps by any stretch of the imagination, but I went from comps to defending my prospectus quite quickly).

Despite having nothing I need to do, I actually am going to go help a friend move today (giving me something to do). But at least it’s not a deadline.

2009 05 01 Uncategorized Comments (0) Permalink

Ancients

I’m well along in the dialogues of Plato - I finished the Philebus today - which leaves only the Timaeus and the Laws left to read among Plato’s canonical writings, and add to that the Epinomis, the Greater Hippias, and the Letters as the “contested” writings of Plato, at least according to these editors. The Philebus was enjoyable - a prolonged discussion of the relative merits of pleasure vs. intellect as being “the good”. In many ways, the conclusion here is closely connected to the conclusion of the Gorgias and the Republic (and to some extent the Crito) where we get a picture of goodness as being essentially related to rational control over the appetites. The Philebus, however, brings out the point that Plato did not think that it was reason alone that was crucial - pleasure is important, so long as it does not run contrary to reason. It has a place at the table of the good, but not at the head of the table (it is, I believe, the 5th seat so far as the Philebus is concerned).

There is also a bit more here on the forms themselves, which is interesting, Plato talks about the problem of “the one and the many” - how the forms can be both “one” and “many” at the same time (unified, yet each thing that participates in the form is distinct) and we get something of a chain between the one and the many - which might be thought of as the one, the definite number, and the multitude. Plato doesn’t develop this here, but I have a feeling that this is the inspiration for some of the neo-Platonic chain of being stuff.

Overall, the Plato reading is going well. I find that I don’t remember much of the details of these dialogues a few days after I read them (mostly because I read them, but don’t do anything with them immediately afterwards, besides a brief paragraph or two on here). Still, I think that this process has been useful, because I’m getting this stuff in my mind, even if it’s kicking around in my subconscious. I feel like I have a better image of Socrates and Plato as a result of this, and I think that as this sits and percolates a bit, I’ll have the opportunity to start connecting this stuff to other things, reinforcing both ends of the connection. I’m actually planning on going straight on to Aristotle after this. I won’t be reading all of Aristotle (I find Aristotle much less enjoyable than Plato) – but I have an edited volume on Aristotle which includes stuff from the Nicomachean Ethics and De Anima, as well as a good sample of other Aristotle which should be helpful in building up my understanding of what comes later. After this, I hope to read some Stoic philosophy, some Epicurean, and finally some neo-Platonic stuff, to round out my knowledge of the ancients – I’d like to be done with this chunk of reading by the end of the Summer (with the knowledge that I’ll be reading other stuff, that actually pertains to my dissertation alongside this reading). I may or may not get into commentary on the Ancients as well (I think I’d like to read Ficino on the Symposium, and I’ve got a good book by A.E. Taylor on a few of the major dialogues I’d like to read as well), but I’d like to lay a good foundation of knowledge in ancient philosophy. I suppose that invites the question “why?”

It is certainly not going to be the case that I will ever be a scholar of the ancients – I don’t know ancient Greek, and I don’t think I have it in me to learn it either (hell, I never got very far with German, and at least that uses the same alphabet I am used to). But, I suppose for lack of a better way of explaining it, I think the ancients provide me with a good spiritual foundation. Plato, especially, is inspiring at various points throughout the dialogues, and I think that the problems set out by the ancients really are the perennial questions of philosophy – that are either confronted time and again, or else haunt the discussion as much by their absence as they might by their presence. By no means to I think that one ought to stop at the ancients, or that they got tings essentially “right” – but I think that there is an honesty and a wonder and a sort of lost practicality in the engagement of the ancients with the problems of philosophy that has long since been lost. I think in many of these dialogues, these were above all questions of how to live – they do not strike me as theoretical. Even in Socrates ironic investigation into the claims that others make to knowledge, we have the expression of a kind of life – a sort of irony and humility at what we know (or think we know).

I also feel like this stuff gives me tools to think about and engage with other questions – certainly it gives both a historical grounding, and an ability to understand the worlds of the philosophers who followed (it was only very recently that a respectable philosopher might not end up not knowing a good deal of Plato or Aristotle, for example). I also think they have had, and continue to have a tremendous impact on our culture – though now perhaps their impact might be primarily through the things they have influenced (Plato and Aristotle via Christianity, for example).

I don’t think I’ll have time for Timaeus tomorrow, but I hope to finish up the Platonic dialogues by the end of the week, and perhaps my Aristotle book by the end of the week after that. Then, maybe I’ll double back and look at some Plato commentary (and perhaps even some Aristotle commentary) before going on to the Hellenics, and then, finally, the neo Platonists.

2009 04 28 Philosophy Comments (0) Permalink

Republic and Theatetus

Today was spent doing two things - finishing my test grading (to make room for the papers I’m picking up tomorrow), and reading Plato. The first isn’t really worth commenting on - grading is unpleasant, and reading student after student butcher Kant is even more unpleasant. Plato was, of course, better. I read the remainder of the Republic, as well as the Theatetus. Both works really have some good moments, but I suppose what I like best is the portrait of Socrates that emerges in these works. At one point in the Theatetus, there is a brief digression into the nature of philosophy vs. “oration” which could have been addressed at academia today. I’ll quote:

“The free man always has time at his disposal to converse in peace at his leisure. He will pass, as we are doing now, from one argument to another - we have just reached the third. Like us, he will leave the old for a fresh one which takes his fancy more, and he does not care how long or short the discussion may be, if only it attains the truth. The orator is always talking against time, hurried on by the clock; there is no space to enlarge upon any subject he chooses, but the advesary stands over him ready to recise a schedule of the points to which he must confine himself. He is a slave disputing about a fellow slave before a master sitting in judgment with some definite plea in his hand, and his issue is never indifferent but his personal concerns are always at stake, sometimes even his life. Hence he acquires a tense and bitter shrewdness; he knows how to flatter his master and earn his good graces, but his mind is narrow and crooked. An apprenticeship in slavery has dwarfed and twisted his growth and robbed him of his free spirit, driving him into devious ways, threatening him with fears and dangers which the tenderness of youth could not face with truth and honesty; so turning first to lies and the requital of wrong with wrong, warped and stunted, he passes from youth to manhood with no soundnes in him and turns out, in the end, a man of formidable intellect - as he imagines.”

This seems to describe the process of academic professionalization.  Oh Plato, is there anything in this world you don’t have some sense of? Of course, this passage also highlights the elite place of philosophy - it was something that could be done only with the sort of lesiure that allows one to have free time to let ones thoughts wander. That said, Socrates is usually described as being poor - but he was certainly free, and I imagine owned his home, etc. But following up on yesterday, I think much of what I don’t like about academic philosophy is in some sense a result of the effort to transform it into a product - to give it some place (bizzare though it may be) on a very small and specialized market.

Both the part of the Republic I read today, as well as the Theatetus had a great deal to do with the apprehension of reality. The Divided Line and the Allegory of the Cave both showed up in today’s reading of the Republic - and indeed there was a repeated emphasis of knowledge and wisdom at it’s most “true” and “real” as being a sort of direct grasp of the forms (or, as Plato puts it, the invisible). From what I’ve read today, though, it doesn’t seem like Plato (via Socrates) actually puts quite as much emphasis on the forms as “universals” as it seems is usually attributed to him. Indeed, something of the sort comes up in the Republic (I think) when he talks about the form of the couch which isn’t any particular couch, but at least the way I was reading that today, there was something of the character of an analogy there that came across. Certainly, the forms hold some kind of high ontological primacy for Plato, but I don’t really think they are supposed to be “general objects”, which is what criticisms of the idea seem to take them as being.

The Theatetus also has Socrates’ famous portrayal of himself as a “midwife of ideas” - in a much more extended metaphor than I had thought it was. An essential part of the metaphor was to reflect his own infertility (it was tradition, says Socrates, for midwives to be unable to bear children themselves, probably mostly because of age) - Socrates, too, had no ideas, but helped others to deliver theirs. This strikes me as a remarkably facilitative approach to teaching - once again, Plato anticipates everything.

2009 04 24 Philosophy Comments (0) Permalink