Tag Archives: φάρμακον

On Plato’s Republic, 14

December 13, 2021 – 6:48 pm

Index to this series

In the tenth and final book of Plato’s Republic (Stephanus 595–621), with the help of Glaucon, Socrates does three things:

  1. Confirm and strengthen the ban on imitative poetry carried out in Book III.
  2. Prove the immortality of the soul.
  3. Tell the Myth of Er about how best to make use of that immortality.


Bernard Picart
Glaucus Turned into a Sea-God, 1731
“Just as those who catch sight of the sea Glaucus would no longer easily see his original nature because some of the old parts of his body have been broken off and the others have been ground down and thoroughly maimed by the waves at the same time as other things have grown on him – shells, seaweed, and rocks – so that he resembles any beast rather than what he was by nature, so, too, we see the soul in such a condition because of countless evils” – Republic 611d

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By David Pierce | Posted in Aristotle, Art, Collingwood, Contradiction, Philosophy, Plato, Poetry | Also tagged , | Comments (3)

Nature

October 8, 2021 – 10:29 am

Index to this series

Can Socrates really “find a natural support for justice,” as Allan Bloom says he must? It is strictly impossible, I say in “Bloom, Badiou, Ryle, Shorey.” Inevitably there is more that can be said, and I shall try to get some of it said here.

Sand, sea, mountains, sky
Anatolian sand, Aegean sea, Lesbian mountains
Uranus over all
Profesörler Sitesi, Altınova, Balıkesir, Turkey
September 24, 2021

There’s a lot in this post. I drafted the final part first, while I was still at the beach; I’m not there now, and I have to move on. Here in Istanbul, I have added the initial part (and brought pieces of the early draft forward), largely to look at the relations between the thoughts of

  • Leo Strauss, Bloom’s teacher;
  • R. G. Collingwood, my teacher, through his books (he died twenty-two years before my birth), and the subject of some of Strauss’s criticism.

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By David Pierce | Posted in absolute presuppositions, Aristotle, Collingwood, Homer, Leo Strauss, Midgley, Plato | Also tagged , , , , , | Comments (7)

Doing and Suffering

March 2, 2020 – 6:35 am

To do injustice is worse than to suffer it. Socrates proves this to Polus and Callicles in the dialogue of Plato called the Gorgias.

I wish to review the proofs, because I think they are correct, and their result is worth knowing.

Loeb Plato III cover

Or is the result already clear to everybody?

Whom would you rather be: a Muslim in India, under attack by a Hindu mob, or a member of that mob?

You would rather not be involved; but if you had to choose, which option would be less bad: to be driven to an insane murderous fury, or to be the object of that fury?

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By David Pierce | Posted in Collingwood, dialectic, Euclid, Pirsig, Plato | Also tagged , , , , , , | Comments (10)

Hypomnesis

July 30, 2017 – 6:35 pm

When is a help a hindrance? The Muses have provoked this question. They did this through their agents, the cicadas, who sang around the European Cultural Center of Delphi, during the 11th Panhellenic Logic Symposium, July 12–5, 2017.

     Cicada, European Cultural Center of Delphi, 2017.07.15     

Cicada, European Cultural Center of Delphi, 2017.07.15

My question has two particular instances.

  1. At a mathematical conference, can theorems “speak for themselves,” or should their presenters be at pains to help the listener appreciate the results?

  2. When the conference is in Greece, even at one of the country’s greatest archeological sites, does this enhance the reading of ancient Greek texts, or is it only a distraction?

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By David Pierce | Posted in Archeology, Archimedes, Art, Collingwood, Education, G. H. Hardy, Language, Logic, Mathematics, Philosophy, Plato, Principles of Art, Tourism, West Virginia | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (12)