Can Socrates really “find a natural support for justice,” as Allan Bloom says he must? It is strictly impossible, as I say in “Bloom, Badiou, Ryle, Shorey.” Inevitably there is more that can be said, and I shall try to say some of it here.
Anatolian sand, Aegean sea, Lesbian mountains
Uranus over all
Profesörler Sitesi, Altınova, Balıkesir, Turkey
September 24, 2021
Book V of Plato’s Republic features three of what Socrates calls waves or breakers:
Such outlandish injunctions will have Socrates swept away, though he does not say by whom or what.
Our sixth scheduled reading covers the first two of the three waves, in Stephanus pages 449a–71e. Socrates is induced to spell out details adumbrated in the last reading, Book IV, concerning the sharing of women and children among the guardians.
Wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice
Profesörler Sitesi, Altınova, Balıkesir, Turkey
September 20, 2021
Our fifth scheduled reading in the Republic is Book IV (Stephanus pages 419–45). Socrates speaks
Intellect, spirit, and appetite
Profesörler Sitesi, Altınova, Balıkesir, Turkey
September 13, 2021
This is mostly about avoiding things. An early theme of Plato’s Republic is avoiding the deprivations of solitary life through politics. Some of us would rather just avoid politics. Such persons include Henry David Thoreau, Gilbert Ryle, and the inventor of the h-index (he is a physicist called Jorge E. Hirsch, but I know nothing else about him). I mentioned these persons in my last Plato post, “Badiou, Bloom, Ryle, Shorey.” I have some more to say about them here. In “Civil Disobedience” (1848), for example, Thoreau writes, “it is, after all, with men and not with parchment that I quarrel”; but measures like the h-index are used to hide the human factor in the equations used to judge us.
All photos are from Profesörler Sitesi, Altınova, Balıkesir, Turkey
September 21–3, 2021
The discussion having been postponed for our fifth reading in the Republic, I give here some remarks that started out as part of my commentary on Book IV. The remarks concern
I quote also Christopher Hitchens; A Guide to Plato’s Rupublic, by Daryl H. Rice; Agnes Callard; Martha Nussbaum; and Henry David Thoreau.
Palm trimmed
Profesörler Sitesi, Altınova, Balıkesir, Turkey
September 13, 2021
Here is a table of contents for this final reading of our group:
THE PROLOGUE OF THE NONNE PRESTES TALE.
EPILOGUE TO THE NONNE PREESTES TALE.
The angel seyde, ‘god lyketh thy requeste,
And bothe, with the palm of martirdom,
Ye shullen come unto his blisful feste.’
The palm of martirdom for to receyve,
Seinte Cecile, fulfild of goddes yifte,
The world and eek hir chambre gan she weyve.
Our fourth scheduled reading in the Republic is Book III, Stephanus pages 386–417. Socrates continues to direct the construction of the fantastic city. Plato’s brothers, faithful as dogs, agree to two infamous proposals:
The deportation from the city of any poet “who is able by wisdom to become every sort of thing and to imitate all things” (δυνάμενον ὑπὸ σοφίας παντοδαπὸν γίγνεσθαι καὶ μιμεῖσθαι πάντα χρήματα, 398a).
The teaching of the Noble Lie, that the citizens were formed under ground and distinguished, according to class, with admixture of
Later in this post, I shall try to analyze the reading into sections; but a serial summary of these seems tedious, and I shall focus on a few remarkable points, such as the ones above.
Two dogs with my copy of
Allan Bloom (translator), The Republic of Plato, 2016 edition,
on the beach at
Profesörler Sitesi, Altınova, Balıkesir, Turkey
September 8, 2021
I shall be quoting
We are reading now Book II of Plato’s Republic, Stephanus pages 357–83, covering:
Dog with copy of Alain Badiou, Plato’s Republic:
A Dialogue in Sixteen Chapters, with a Prologue and an Epilogue, 2012
Profesörler Sitesi, Altınova, Balıkesir, Turkey, September 2, 2021
In the selection from the Canterbury Tales taken up here,
Andrea Mantegna or Follower (Possibly Giulio Campagnola)
Judith with the Head of Holofernes, c. 1495/1500
Widener Collection
National Gallery of Art, Washington
In some nominal sense at least, the tales of the Prioress and the Monk have a common theme, Judaism; they also have a common character, Satan.
Constituting the latter part of Book I, the second of the Republic readings features the only sustained contribution of Thrasymachus, who argues that, if it can be pursued perfectly, injustice is superior to justice.
According to my electronic search of Jowett’s translation, confirmed with a search of Bloom’s, Socrates will mention Thrasymachus and his argument in Books II, VI, VIII, and IX, but the man himself will speak again only near the beginning of Book V, to agree with the demand of Polemarchus, Adeimantus, and Glaucon that Socrates explain the community of women and children in the imaginary city that Socrates will have been describing.
Polytropy 