The "problem of evil" in broadest terms is the problem of how to account for the existence of evil within systems of thought that would seem to exclude it -- that may identify reality with goodness in one way or another. Within Christian thought these efforts are generally called "theodicy.' But the problem precedes Christian efforts. Plato, for example, postulated a Form of the Good that is the most real of realities. This means that he starkly identified Good with Real, and THAT raises the question of -- why isn't it? Or not so much. When the neoplatonists came along a couple of centuries later and strove to put Platon's thoughts into more systematic form, tried to make linear treatises out of hints from not especially linear dialogs, they found this question staring at them. If the Good is the sun (Plato's metaphor in his culminating story of an escape from the cave) then evil is presumably the darkness: shade. Yet how decode this metaphor? What is...
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The name “Ammonius Saccas” comes down to us as part of a line of intellectual succession, the last link in a chain connecting Plato to Plotinus. Plotinus of course formulated a systematic Neoplatonic philosophy that, though I am not an adherent, seems to be both impressive and important. But we have Plotinus’ texts to study and argue about. We don’t have any such thing for Ammonius Saccas. What we have is just the predicate that usually follows his name as subject. Saccas “taught Plotinus”. And we have THE NAME, which is fascinating in itself but tantalizing. The name “Saccas” could be a reference to the "Sakyas", an Indian ruling clan. From this possibility some have spun speculation on the presence of a Vedic element in lessons he taught Plotinus. Such visual representations as we possess allow for this speculation. He might be Indian -- he might be Egyptian -- he might be a Greek. Such speculation is a game anyone can play. See the image above to play along. I love the b...
My dogs seem to have very different approaches to dog toys. They share the same (large) set of (small) toys -- generally plushy and squeaky. To the younger dog, Angus, they are a tool for play with his hu-Dad. Angus will bring a toy to me hoping I will throw it and he can fetch and return. What fun! To the older dog, Lena, the same toys are materials for contemplation, She wants nothing more than a quiet corner to which she can retreat with one of them and make it squeak, as if that is a meditation aid while she contemplates the world of forms. They are, in other words, the Aristotle and Plato of dogs and doy-toy lovers. I think of Angus stretching a paw out toward the world in front of him, while Lena points a paw upward, indicating that such is the location of a heaven of squeaks.
I went not long ago to a viewing of TOGETHER, a supernatural body-horror movie with, I was told, a philosophical angle. It stars Alison Brie, best known as the voice of Diane in BoJack Horseman and as Annie in the sitcom Community. TOGETHER does have a philosophical angle, and I admire Brie, but I cannot recommend this movie. SPOILER ALERT. Do not read further if you want the plot twists to surprise you. The plot plays out at two sites: one a rather generic US "big city," the other a much more bucolic environment at least an hour by car or train ride away. The screenplay offers few specifics about these locations (and the principal photography, I'm told, was done in Australia) but from what specifics we do get the story begins on the US west coast -- let us say Seattle -- and the bucolic scenes are well inland. The central couple are Tim and Millie, played by Dave Franco and Brie. Their relationship has fallen on a bad patch -- they are not sure whe...
Someone asked me on Quora what atheists think about the myth of the cave. I'm not an atheist, but I did have the following possibly responsive thoughts. The closest candidate for the title of God in THE REPUBLIC itself is the Idea of the Good. In another Platonic work, TIMAEUS, we learn of another figure Plato called the Demiurge, who actively fashioned the world. And the Abrahamic conception of God shared by the three great monotheisms is in effect a combination of Plato’s Idea of the Good and his Demiurge. The Good (upper case) is also the maker of the world, gazing upon it at each stage and saying “it is good" (lower case). But let us stay within the terms of the allegory of the cave, and so within THE REPUBLIC, as you suggest. A stray creature held as captive in the cave escapes, makes his way out and beholds the realities of the surface world. Then he comes to appreciate the uber-Reality that makes it possible for him to look at those realities, the Sun itself. Fi...
I mentioned Fuller the week before last, even posting a portrait of her above a list of key philosophers of the 18th and 19th centuries. Let us say a bit more.... She did not have a long life (1810 - 1850), dying in a shipwreck on a sandbar near Fire Island, attempting to return to the US after a trip to Italy. Fuller was associated with the Transcendentalist movement of the day, and with its organ The Dial, which she edited 1840 - 44. She brought a distinctive tone to that periodical, described sometimes as "noisy, histrionic and sincere," in contrast to the more cerebral and somewhat ironic distanced tone one finds in Emerson's essays. Philosophically, she was an unabashed Platonist. This meant that there was a Reason that surpassed understanding -- understanding is something we can get WITHIN the cave, “Reason” is the faculty through which a wise person conducts the Platonic Quest to go beyond the material in search of the ideal. Emerson, to continue th...
It is probably the single best known sentence Alfred North Whitehead ever wrote. It appears in the third paragraph of chapter 1 of Part II of Process and Reality. "The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato." The next three sentences, though, give that one some important context. "I do not mean the systematic scheme of thought which scholars have doubtfully extracted from his writings. I allude to the wealth of general ideas scattered through them. His personal endowments, his wide opportunities for experience at a great period of civilization, his inheritance of an intellectual tradition not yet stiffened by excessive systemization, have made his writings an inexhausible mine of suggestions." It becomes clear that Whitehead is not interested in the overly thoroughly mined Republic and, say, the myth of the cave. He is much more interested in the esoteric Timeaus as a source for...
Book I of The Republic has four parts. Plato doesn't name them, but we may call them the Cephalus, the Polemarchus, the build-up of Thrasymachus, and the critique of Thrasymachus. Let us take them one at a time. I. The Cephalus. Cephalus is an old and wealthy man, who owns the home in which the disputants have gathered. He and Socrates have a brief and courteous conversation, which establishes that there are consolations of old age. One of these is that the passions (the desire for sex, for example) die down and allow reason to govern one’s actions unchallenged. That is an important foreshadowing of later elements in the book. Cephalus and Socrates briefly discuss the issue of what is justice. But the old man doesn’t want to get too deeply into the question and says goodbye. II. The Polemarchus . Polemarchus is Cephalus’ son and heir, and Socrates says only half-jokingly that he may have inherited his father’s part in this discussion. Asked what it is to be just: Polemarch...
At Quora, someone recently asked me who was the greater influence upon Plato: Socrates or Parmenides? It is a fascinating question, to which I could only answer with some further related questions, a dash of context, and a joke. I enjoyed it all so much, though, that I will reproduce it here. To begin with, there is no good metric of “influence.” You can’t measure influence like inches or Celsius degrees and say X is exercising more of this unidimensional stuff than Y is. Who influenced John Dewey more: Charles Darwin [pictured] or William James? Except that in the Dewey case we have much more information. We know what Darwin’s views on a wide range of subjects were, and what James’ were, and we can work to understand how Dewey’s thought was formed by each. We don’t depend on Dewey to tell us what James said or thought! In the Plato analog, though, we do largely depend on Plato to tell us what Socrates said or thought. There are other sources who help at the edges — Ar...
And the conservatorship is a metaphor for Sovereigns. Indeed, conservatorship is a near-synonym for guardian. And a "guardian" deserves its Platonic connotation. It is what we should call our rulers, because they tell us noble lies legitimating their rule. I've sometimes remarked that the word "free" in the term "free markets" should be read not as an adjective but as a verb. The phrase is a full sentence and states an imperative: free markets! In the case of the phrase "free Britney" we can play on the same double utility of the word "free." It is both adjective and verb. Free Britney, so there shall again be a free Britney.
President Biden's pick to be the new administrator of the US Agency for International Development (AID) has received Senate confirmation, by a 68 - 26 vote. I'm assuming this means 6 (Republicans) did not vote so she received the votes of all Democrats plus 18 Republicans, with 6 Republicans NV and the others No. I can assume that without looking it up because this is my blog, dammit. At any rate, if she did receive a supportive vote of 18 Republicans, roughly 1/3d of the caucus, that is a remarkable show of bipartisan support as such things go in 2021. One neat fact about the now confirmed nominee, Samantha Power: she was a reporter for US News and World Report before she was either an academic or a civil servant. She was a war correspondent covering the Yugoslavian helter-skelter in the years '93 to '96. I went to the US AID website, in search of a simple explanation for what the AID does, and accordingly for what Power will now be responsible. I ca...
Please correct me if there are others. But it seems to be there are five lessons the reader is meant to draw from the story about the cave. First, Plato is working to devalue what we would call empiricism. He is saying that keeping track of the shadows on the cave wall, trying to make sense of what you see there, will NOT get you to wisdom. Second, Plato is contending that reality comes in levels. The shadows on the wall are illusions. The solid objects being passed around behind my back are more real than their shadows are. BUT … the world outside the the cave is more real than that — and the sun by which that world is illuminated is the top of the hierarchy. So there isn’t a binary choice of real/unreal. There are levels. Third, he equates realness with knowability. I only have opinions about the shadows. Could I turn around, I could have at least the glimmerings of knowledge. Could I get outside the cave, I would really Know. Fourth, the parable a...
One of Plato's dialogs has Socrates arguing moral and related issues with Protagoras, portrayed here as the leader of the Sophists. Although as usual Socrates is the vehicle for Plato's presentation of what are almost certainly Plato's own views, Protagoras has some really striking lines. I like to think of at least one of these lines as a bit of the historical Protagoras, embedded here like the DNA of a dinosaur within a mosquito within amber. "The Athenians are right to accept advice from anyone, since it is incumbent on everyone to share in that sort of excellence, or else there can be no city at all." That speaks to the greatness of Periclean Athens, when it attracted the best minds from all around the Hellenic world, an extensive world stretching from the coast of Asia Minor to Sicily. Athens would, in that sense "accept advice from anyone. A closed city in in danger of becoming "no city at all." That brief passage speaks to the idea of an Ope...
Karl Popper, renowned as the inventor of falsificationism in the philosophy of science, also popularized the term "the open society," of which George Soros nowadays makes a lot of use. Early in his book THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES, Popper has admiring things to say about the pre-Socratic philosophers. He identifies their views with the open society of which Periclean Athens is a paradigm. He has a particular fondness for Heraclitus. Popper was especially fond of the idea that life is a river into which we cannot step twice. Popper takes this, along with certain other Heraclitean bon mots, as meaning that (in Popper's words now) "all matter, like fire, is a process." This, Popper think, put philosophy off to a promising start. It is this start that was unfortunately shut down by Spartan victory and Plato's codification of that victory in his dialogues. I don't believe this. I believe much that Popper has to say, but he is using Heraclitus as a ...
More than a year ago, someone asked the following question on Quora: "Is there any way to reconcile Plato and Aristotle? I like them both. How strong is the schism between them?" There is much with which I could quarrel in the framing of the question, aside from vagueness. The personal-sounding note, as if the question had gone to school with them both and retained some fondness for their memory. No ... he didn't. They are the collective names given to sets of writings and the systems of ideas we think we find therein. We can understand and appreciate them. The word "like" sounds wrong. "How strong is the schism?" Again, the wording is off. But this is the Trump era, and the predicate "strong" is ubiquitous. My quibbles notwithstanding, two Quorans offered answers to this question at the time. I was one of them. But I won't quote my own answer today. I'll give you a good chunk of the other one, which frankly is...
Philebus is one of Plato's Socratic dialogues. The title character barely participates. Socrates duels, rather, with Protarchus. And the central theme of the (wide ranging) discussion is hedonism. To what extent is the good life a life defined by successful pleasure seeking? The key passage runs thus: Socrates: Then would you think you needed anything else besides, if you possessed this one blessing [pleasure] in completeness? Protarchus: Certainly not. Socrates: Consider what you are saying. You would not need to be wise and intelligent and reasonable, nor anything like this? Would you not even care to keep your sight? Protarchus: Why should I? I suppose I should have all I want, if I was pleased. Socrates: Well ... inasmuch as you would not possess intelligence and memory and knowledge and true opinion, you would, in the first place, necessarily be without the knowledge whether you were pleased or not. For you would be devoid of any kind of wisdom. You admit this...
I only learned quite recently about the 5th century philosopher Syrianus, a late neoplatonist. I'm going to give you a rather lengthy italicized quote from him. He is discussing Aristotle, and in particular a critique Aristotle offered of both Plato and Pythagoras. I am not a natural controversialist, nor yet would I count myself as a disciple of Aristotle on merely a few or trivial topics; rather, I am one of those who admire both his logical methodology overall and who accept with enthusiasm his treatment of ethical and physical questions. And that I may not make a bore of myself by enumerating in detail all the excellent aspects of this man’s philosophy, let me just ask why every intelligent person might not justly marvel at the apt remarks, accompanied by demonstrations of the highest quality, to be found in this most excellent treatise on the subject of both forms in matter and definitions, and on the subject of the divine and unmoved transcendent causal principles of ...