SOCRATES: "Glaucon, we've been through this before. You know the type of personwho would best rule the city."
GLAUCON: "Sure Socrates, the philosopher king."
SOCRATES: And what qualifies a person to be a philosopher king? "
GLAUCON: "He has to be honorable and have studied math til age 30."
SOCRATES: "And why should he study math?"
SOCRATES'S WIFE: "Because math is completely abstract and nobody ever has emotional arguments over it. Since all human activity can be expressed mathematically, a philosopher can settle disputes with numbers without fear of upsetting anyone."WIFE'S FRIENDS: "Wow! That's cool!"
SOCRATES'S CONCUBINE: "Wait a minute! Wait a minute! You can talk all you want about being honorable and all that but in our culture the honorable man is expected to serve without pay. This poor-but-honorable stuff sucks! Look at me! I'm your concubine and I can't afford underwear without holes!"
SOCRATES: "Those are virtuous holes. You should be proud of them."
WOMEN: "Boy, that Socrates knows how to pinch a penny!"
GLAUCON: "Quiet everybody! You're not giving Socrates a chance to answer! He says the philosopher king can solve the poor-but-honorable problem by appearing austere during the day and enjoying his luxuries at night, when the curtains are closed."
Um... why does everybody have their hands up? I'm just scratching my unmentionables."
FRIEND: "A different philosophy for the night? That's the dumbest thing I ever heard of! And that thing about solving disputes with math is just plain silly! Why does anybody bother to read about Socrates, anyway?
GLAUCON: "Glad you asked! Socrates is weird alright, but he's completely honest, even when he's advocating dishonesty. He has a way of getting to the root of a problem, and he expresses it in simple, human and very memorable terms. You only realize how rare that is when you read other philosophers.
Was he right about math solving all disputes? No, of course not, but when you think about it there is no satisfactory solution to a lot of disputes. Socrates reminds us that we should seek objective solutions while remembering how liable to error we are, and he does it in a uniquely poetic way that's likely to stick in our minds. And the closed-curtain solution really is the best way to handle the concubine's problem. It's not perfect but can you think of anything better?
I don't blame anyone for thinking Socrates is silly or boring on the first hearing, but the day will come when you'll be glad you read about him.
Many, many thanks to Barbie Miller for the terrific pictures. I stole them from her site:
36 comments:
Uncle Eddie, you've been hanging around too much with that sloppy cartoon guy, John K. That's why your Glaucon and Socrates aren't staying on-model!
Here's some more smilies so you know I'm joshin' ya':
:) :) :) :) :) :) (Keep the change...)
Hey, I'm not sure I agree with Socrates on his theory that math solves disputes. I'm in the middle of grading student art assignments, and I think my math is more likely to cause some disputes...
If you read up on logic especially Bertrand Russels stuff you'll realize that outside of math nothing can be "proven"
While with math any "proof" can eventually be extrapolated back to axioms that are pretty self evident x+x=2x, two parallel lines can never meet etc., arguments outside of math and science ineveitably boil down to value judgements.
While the Greeks ideal of every problem having a mathematical solution is a noble one it is clearly ridiculous in practice.
What really bothers me are reductionist guys like Daniel Dennet that see art as some kind of game theory problem that can eventually be solved by computers.
Doesnt it make you want to break things when some jackass designs some computer program that composes baroque music that superficially sounds like Bachs and then the Will Wrightish nerd that designed it makes some comment about how "music is basically math"
From what I gather art made plato and co pretty uncomfortable, they called it "divine madness" and advised philosophers to be leery of it
If youve ever read any BF Skinner you'll see what can happen when scientists try to reduce ridiculously complex subjects like human psychology to simple mathematical systems.
Thank god behaviorism is finally out of vogue
Great post! Really enjoyed it.
do you like the colbert report?
Congratulations on your first link! Long may it wave.
your pal
Steve
The Republic is certainly one of--if not the--greatest work of literature ever written.
It is absolutely stuffed with poetic metaphors, so it's best read for the first time under the instruction of a gifted teacher.
Plato basically gives the whole work away in its first page...even in its first line: "I went down to Peraeus..." Socrates has traveled down to the docks of the city...the cacaphonous port where cultures and ideas are loudly exchanged and intermixed...a messy democracy that neither Plato, nor Socrates, favor. 'Down' is a direction that, throughout the work, denotes a descent into the darkness of The Cave--the world of the unenlightened. The sun has set, furthering the 'cave' motif. Socrates is descending into the world of the common man and his ideas.
Socrates has attended a festival, and is leaving with friends when he is stopped...prevented from leaving by acquaintances who demand he spend time with them. In the end, we find out that they wish to quiz him and challenge his ideas. In other words, Socrates cannot leave the messy world of the common man's democracy without being questioned.
Retiring to the estate of a wealthy, elderly landholder, Socrates listens as the old man speaks of spending his life bending the rules of society to his favor, only to repent in wealthy old age by making sacrifices to the gods. He retires for bed, the example of a common, shallow man.
Four young men then set about quizzing Socrates on his definition of justice and the Just Man. In turn, each young man--by their responses and actions--will metaphorically demonstrate that they represent four different types of government: democracy, tyranny, timocracy and olilgarchy. Through questioning, Socrates improves each of the men's souls, elevating them to think and behave in a way so that they 'evolve' into the next-most-virtuous category of government.
Along the way, there are fantastical tales: one that inspired Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings, another that gave rise to the gold, silver and bronze medals in the Olympic games, and another that gives a truly psychedelic account of the Afterlife, and how man is responsible for his own moral destiny.
Some ideas are bizarre: Socrates suggests an ideal city where men and women are completely equal, even bathing in the same bath houses and wrestling together in the gynasium, nude, although he admits that the women's breasts will get in the way as they flop from side to side. "What will cover the breasts of these wrestling women?" asks one of the young men. He responds "their virtue."
Plato's assertion that arguments be settled by math can be translated as a desire to find truths and untruths through the application of sentential logic, which Plato is in the act of creating the rules for. Since there was no way to talk of "sentential logic" at the time, math is the closest metaphor. Those who study logic know that language can be reduced to equations that can be solved for their truth-function. Plato found math to be the highest form of thinking, and was seeking similar rules to apply to everyday discourse....and he was succeeding.
I also love the idea of artists being "divinely mad", but the metaphor (from The Symposium, I believe) is more than beautiful--it is a warning. Plato--who was not a fan of artists (called Poets at the time)--puts the idea into Socrates' mouth that they can access limited madness. The most creative person is the insane person, for they can put together completely disparate ideas at random in endless combinations. Artists can "dip into" this madness to think outside the box of normal thinking, but then return to the world of clear-thinkers to apply it. The lesson? An artist who does not have discipline is as useless as an insane person. Pure creativity is generally useless unless it is focused.
Sorry about the length of the post, Eddie, but you hit upon a passion of mine.
John Qualen, yay.
I have a feeling Uncle Eddie is very fond of Bertrand Russell. ; )
this is basically the only place on the internet I can name where arguments are actually constructive and vitriol free
Chris: Holy Cow! 'Looks like an interesting comment! I'll read the whole thing over coffee tomorrow morning!
I deleted the 2 tests like you asked me too. It looks like what you're doing is working.
Everybody: Thanks a million for the comments, which I'll respond to in more detail later. I honestly didn't know if anyone would be interested in this subject.
I don't really know much about it myself. I read most of The Republic years ago in school but I didn't understand it and my teacher taught it only from a sense of obligation. I only discovered that I liked Plato a few years ago when I read what Alan Bloom said about him.
I didn't do a good job of explaining what I find interesting about him but it was the best I could do. He has a way of weaving poetic images with intellectual ideas that's unique. He talks about learning being an erotic experience and, even though he never defines that, you can get a sense of it from his writing style. Aaaargh! I'm still not doing a good job of explaining it!
Dont worry about understanding philosophical texts completely, I find that I get more personally out of misinterpretations than what the writer intended me to
Im sure most of us would be embarrarssed if we were shown transcriptions of past philosophical conversations weve had with friends but that doesnt make the experience any less valid
Socrates is one of my favorites probably because of the memorability of his quotes and the "grass roots" quality to his teachings.
As for me, all I know is that I know nothing.
That lady is wasting her time. That's Franklin Pangborn, for Pete's sake.
Pangy don't roll like dat...
music IS basically math
Great post, Eddie! In focusing on Plato's defense of the math-based consciousness, you picked the single most important thing about him, and the one reason why his influence on human development (in spite of his obvious faults) has fundamentally benign.
What if "D.O.G." were spelled "C", "A", "T"? Whoa!!!!! Weird!
Jenny: John Qualen? Is that the little guy with the hat in the top picture? He's great!
I'm not as big a fan of Bertrand Russell as I used to be but I'd still recommend his "History of Western Philosophy."
Anon: I agree. Some aspects of art could be reduced to a computer program but not all. I like beautiful things but I like them to be filtered through the sensibility of a unique individual. I like the fact that Van Gogh and Vermeer would paint the same room completely differently.
Chris: A psychedelic view of the afterlife? I never heard of that! What does he say it's like?
Lester: I didn't understand the methematical part beyond what I wrote about. What's he saying that's so benign?
The worst is when Bill Gates talks about art
I never read these guys, but I think I'm right in thinking that logic is mathematical. Because it's universal, shouldn't it be the highest expression of Right Reason?
It goes back to the whole truth/beauty argument.
chrisheadrick points out Plato's metaphor of going down (altitudinally) from the hills to the docks. It was a part of common wisdom in those days that the higher you got the purer the atmosphere, the more noble & sanctfied the environment. As you descended,the more base & unclean things became. That's where plagues spread & demons of malaria nested. This was supported by the observation that rich, high-born people lived on hilltops & nasty poor people lived in marshes.
This truism survived into the Christian era. When Galileo studied the paths of the stars & planets, he was forced to conclude that the sun sits at the center of the orbits of the planets. Remember how logic is like an escalator? You don't know where it's headed. What got people so furious with him was that he spoiled the very compelling theory that
God placed us at the center of the universe & that the heavens were the seat of Perfection, purer & more noble than the earth, that the constant & immutable movement of heavenly bodies was ordained by the Designer to whom the spiritual element of burnt sacrifice arose. Even today we think of our souls travelling in a general upward direction once we cast off our corruptible flesh. It was the thin end of the wedge that forced upon us the understanding that outer space is cold, barren & fairly inhospitable. Today we don't hold this idea to be overly cynical.
There is only mathematics to save us from false assumptions or seduction by what we want to believe. I don't mean to suggest that we've somehow outgrown our emotions or that these instinctual responses to new ideas have outlived their usefulness to the race, just that they don't excuse a sentient being from seeking proof.
There was some Greek (maybe you know his name) who famously referred to love as "that mammalian twitch", purely a base, instinctual function of the habit of reproduction. Quite a feat of logic. He later died of poisoning by taking a love potion to ease the pangs of unrequited love.
That's a man!
Eddie, This is just my own take of course, but I'd say that the biggest single change in intellectual history is one that happened in the West during the last couple of centuries: gradually, we came to think that the only way to understand the hidden workings of the world is the sort that uses mathematical symbols(aka science). Before that, when people tried to understand things, they would tell a story (eg., stories in The Bible). When we switched from stories to math, human progress went into overdrive. And the first person to consciously push for this change was Plato. In fact, for a long time, he was the only one! That's why he is one of history's good guys, IMHO.
Jenny, Eddie, Yes, the guy on the left in the first picture is John Qualen. He achieved immortality as the pathetic Earl Williams in His Girl Friday. Nobody did sniveling weaklings like he did.
If logic can't solve a dispute, it still has a much better chance than non-logic.
But humans have emotional motivations, which is where logic falls short, unless it finds a way to discount or quantify emotions. In my own opinion, emotions can usually be discounted to get closer to reality, but usually not in the opinion of the person who is currently feeling them.
It's also where computer programs to make art or music fall short. Computers can only perform operations on a set of rules. There is no invention in that. There may be, someday, if machines can be imbued with motivations, opinions and experiences.
So music is not "basically" math, it's basically human emotion that uses math for expression.
HIS GIRL FRIDAY is a great movie. Cary Grant gives an outstanding performance and everybody else is very good.
Watch Cary's poses. They all read so clearly he could've been a great cartoon character. I can't think of another actor who understood the fun in physicality and how to play to the film plane to the same extent.
What happened to your evolution post? had second thoughts after realizing it might degrade into an argument between right wing christians and pro evolution people?
I dont think you have to worry about that, I dont think anyone who posts here is enough of a jackass to not believe in evolution and if there is we'll just ridicule them till they go away
P.S. --I think you should do a post on Orwell.
And don't forget the immortal Franklin Pangborn, one of the few Hollywood actors not tempted to look up that woman's dress.
(Gleason (and others)certainly understood the fun in physicality, but Gleason was patently comic. Cary Grant was perhaps the only one in his category, whatever that would be.)
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The psychedelic vision of the afterlife is the Tale of Er, at the end of the Republic.
A great warrior dies in battle, yet comes back to life to tell of what he saw....
...amongst many things, a massive spindle, stretching up into the heavens, spinning, with eight (?) other spindles inside, being turned by sirens, who all sing one note in harmony. The spindle, I believe, is the "wheel of neccesity". The description of this sight is very detailed.
People are gathered in a field, passing from early versions of Heaven and Hell,....when souls try to walk up from a cave-like hole in the ground back to the surface, the cave sometimes becomes a mouth that howls at them, scaring them back down if their souls are not ready.
The tale ends with Er witnessing a type of lottery, where souls are allowed to choose their terrestrial forms for their next life by selecting from a spread of gold(?) plates with images on them. Some choose to be rich, some humble,...some choose animal forms. Some choose wisely, some foolishly.
For Socrates to bust into such a psychedelic religious myth at the end of the Republic is a big surprise. Some have interpreted it as a digestable myth for those who do not have the mental capacity to make it through the entire text...a warning that man chooses his own fate, and that there is retribution in the afterlife.
"Jenny, Eddie, Yes, the guy on the left in the first picture is John Qualen."
I know it's John Qualen. That's why I posted "John Qualen, yay!". ; D Don't try & out-I.D. character actors to me, Lester!
(just kidding)
I'd totally forgotten about "His Girl Friday"...unfortunately, though I love Hawks and Grant and a lot of other people involved in the film I've never cared for it. Weird quirk, I know.
Chris: Wow! I never read that part! Well, it's on my reading list now! Thanks!
Jenny: I'd have thought you'd love that film. It's one of my favorites.
Eddie this is great!
I love how you used them!!!
Freckled: Glad you liked it and thanks a million for the pictures!
Woah! The guy on the right in the first picture looks kinda like you Eddie, except a little younger, no offense.
I wish I could easily draw understandable conclusions like Socrates did. That man may not have known most of the things we know today, but he had an assload of common sense and that's something I'll never have.
I wonder what he would say about society today, if he's having a heart attack over how we live our lives.
I think the Will Smith movie version of I, Robot perfectly explains why peopel can't eb governed by mathematics, especially if math values black males over pre-pubescent blonde girls.
And boy! Those are some great photos. I have some theories percualting as to why pre-1980s photography of humans is so vastly superior to modern photography.
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