Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm thankful for this blog, and THE CLASSICS, and all the things I've learned from them.

I made colcannon today, which might be a classic dish.

Plato's Phaedo (~400 BC) translated by Benjamin Jowett

 Plato's Phaedo

Bonus: 

Why is Plato like this?

Summary: A frame story for a knob slobbering wall of text.

Commentary: I've written before about how much I hate the dialogue as a format, and I think Phaedo does a great job of demonstrating this.

First of all, the entire concept of a dialogue is usually more of just an awkward frame story. The two characters don't usually add anything particular to what could've been an essay. In this case, we get about two pages of them talking before Phaedo starts the intro to the intro of his long awkward story.

The awkwardness is the second thing. The Apology while disagreeable in content, is generally pleasantly written. I liked Jowett's translation, although I can see how Grube's might be more appropriate for an intro course or whatever. I looked at about a half dozen editions/translations of the Phaedo, and they all have awkward constructions like:

ECHECRATES: What was the manner of his death, Phaedo? What was said or done? And which of his friends were with him? Or did the authorities forbid them to be present—so that he had no friends near him when he died?

Not only does no one talk like this in real life, but it's also unnecessarily wordy.  You could probably cut around half of it without even going particularly skimpy.

"How did he die? What happened? Did he have anyone with him, any friends, or did they make him die alone?"

Wow, that was easy.

And, of course, it's not a dialogue unless the listener is just absolutely orally worshiping the main speaker:

ECHECRATES: You will have listeners who are of the same mind with you, and I hope that you will be as exact as you can.

OMG Phaedo, you're as good as Socrates! Not a high bar.

 Anyway, after this threeish pages, Phaedo starts his story. He attempts to word for word explain exactly what was said and done. That means that about half of this "dialogue" is one uninterrupted speech by one of the characters. Why do a dialogue at all if you're not going to have them talk to each other!?

Plato's Apology of Socrates (~390 BC) translated by Benjamin Jowett Pt 4

 Plato's Apology

Bonus: 

He's on a mission from god to annoy people and make poor decisions.

Summary: Socrates is a mopey dipshit.

Commentary: I really think the last couple pages of this piece sum up why Socrates is such a loser.

 For if I tell you that this would be a disobedience to a divine command, and therefore that I cannot hold my tongue, you will not believe that I am serious; and if I say again that the greatest good of man is daily to converse about virtue, and all that concerning which you hear me examining myself and others, and that the life which is unexamined is not worth living - that you are still less likely to believe. And yet what I say is true, although a thing of which it is hard for me to persuade you. Moreover, I am not accustomed to think that I deserve any punishment. Had I money I might have proposed to give you what I had, and have been none the worse. But you see that I have none, and can only ask you to proportion the fine to my means. However, I think that I could afford a minae, and therefore I propose that penalty; Plato, Crito, Critobulus, and Apollodorus, my friends here, bid me say thirty minae, and they will be the sureties. Well then, say thirty minae, let that be the penalty; for that they will be ample security to you.

Delayed gratification is a hard concept for Socrates. Surely, if he truly thinks he's on some divine mission he should recognize that laying low for a couple months or a year to continue his work would be superior to dying now and doing none of it. It's not like he's making any kind of effective statement by martyring himself. I feel like when this story gets retold we hear that Socrates refused to let his friends try to pay a fine for him, but apparently not.

But really, the most important paragraph is this one on the next to last page:

Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see that there is great reason to hope that death is a good, for one of two things: - either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if you suppose that there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by the sight of dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain. For if a person were to select the night in which his sleep was undisturbed even by dreams, and were to compare with this the other days and nights of his life, and then were to tell us how many days and nights he had passed in the course of his life better and more pleasantly than this one, I think that any man, I will not say a private man, but even the great king, will not find many such days or nights, when compared with the others. Now if death is like this, I say that to die is gain; for eternity is then only a single night. But if death is the journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead are, what good, O my friends and judges, can be greater than this? If indeed when the pilgrim arrives in the world below, he is delivered from the professors of justice in this world, and finds the true judges who are said to give judgment there, Minos and Rhadamanthus and Aeacus and Triptolemus, and other sons of God who were righteous in their own life, that pilgrimage will be worth making. What would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer? Nay, if this be true, let me die again and again. I, too, shall have a wonderful interest in a place where I can converse with Palamedes, and Ajax the son of Telamon, and other heroes of old, who have suffered death through an unjust judgment; and there will be no small pleasure, as I think, in comparing my own sufferings with theirs. Above all, I shall be able to continue my search into true and false knowledge; as in this world, so also in that; I shall find out who is wise, and who pretends to be wise, and is not. What would not a man give, O judges, to be able to examine the leader of the great Trojan expedition; or Odysseus or Sisyphus, or numberless others, men and women too! What infinite delight would there be in conversing with them and asking them questions! For in that world they do not put a man to death for this; certainly not. For besides being happier in that world than in this, they will be immortal, if what is said is true.

According to Socrates, there are two possibilities after death:

1. Sleepy nothingness

2. Philosophers' Teaparty

#2 is assinine. The idea that if there is an afterlife that's definitely what it's going to be is absurd (especially from the man who claims to know nothing). It's not even in line with (my understanding of) Greek's general beliefs at the time. Further proof of his heresy, I guess.

But #1 is what really reveals the whole game for him. Socrates would rather sleep forever than actually live a life, and he thinks that's how most people feel. I'm not going to pretend I know how most people in ancient Greece felt, and there are certainly days where I would rather not get out of bed (same as anyone). But to say that that would truly be better than the vast majority of the days of your life says one of three things:

1. You live in some absolute hellscape. This seems unlikely, no one else in Athens at the time is writing treatise on how everyone in the city should just off themselves.

2. You've got some serious depression. Sucks that Socrates lived a couple millennia before SSRIs, I guess. (Not that he'd have taken them.)

3. You're just a fucking loser. And he apparently thinks everyone is.

I've got whatever mental health issues, but I feel like even in my shittiest, most depressed episodes I never went, "Everyone is so miserable they'd be better off sleeping forever!" I might've felt that way about me but I was at least lucid enough to recognize I was an outlier.

Socrates is a loser.

Plato's Apology of Socrates (~390 BC) translated by Benjamin Jowett Pt 3

  The Apology

Bonus: 

Socrates needs to stop whining and start doing.

Summary: Socrates is a lazy asshole, but he kind of has a point.

Commentary: The last chunk of Socrates's defense has two main points:

1. Why doesn't Socrates become a politician/advisor if he's going to go around trying to "not teach" people all day.

This is a fair point, and I'd point Socrates to the sections in Fruits of Solitude on discipline. He talks about a voice that tells him not to do stuff. Most decent philosophy talks about how to not listen to that voice, but whatever, he's Socrates.

2. If he's corrupting the youth so much, why aren't the older youths that I corrupted and/or parents complaining about him?

Assuming this is true, and all the criticism is being made by the same couple guys, a fair point. I don't know if that is true though. 

Plato's Apology of Socrates (~390 BC) translated by Benjamin Jowett Pt 2.

 The Apology

Bonus: 

Stop going on the ruse cruise!

Summary: Socrates tricks Meletus into feeding the troll and proves nothing.

Commentary: Plato switches into a dialogue-esque mode for a bit, then into wall of text. I'm kind of surprised neither of the versions I'm looking at edited in quotations marks, paragraph breaks, etc.

The crux of this section is Socrates doing his Socratic method thing to prove... absolutely nothing.

 But now please to answer the next question: Can a man believe in spiritual and divine agencies, and not in spirits or demigods?

He cannot. 

I am glad that I have extracted that answer, by the assistance of the court; nevertheless you swear in the indictment that I teach and believe in divine or spiritual agencies (new or old, no matter for that); at any rate, I believe in spiritual agencies, as you say and swear in the affidavit; but if I believe in divine beings, I must believe in spirits or demigods; - is not that true? Yes, that is true, for I may assume that your silence gives assent to that. Now what are spirits or demigods? are they not either gods or the sons of gods? Is that true? 

Yes, that is true. 

But this is just the ingenious riddle of which I was speaking: the demigods or spirits are gods, and you say first that I don't believe in gods, and then again that I do believe in gods; that is, if I believe in demigods. For if the demigods are the illegitimate sons of gods, whether by the Nymphs or by any other mothers, as is thought, that, as all men will allow, necessarily implies the existence of their parents. You might as well affirm the existence of mules, and deny that of horses and asses. Such nonsense, Meletus, could only have been intended by you as a trial of me. You have put this into the indictment because you had nothing real of which to accuse me. But no one who has a particle of understanding will ever be convinced by you that the same man can believe in divine and superhuman things, and yet not believe that there are gods and demigods and heroes. 

I have said enough in answer to the charge of Meletus: any elaborate defence is unnecessary; but as I was saying before, I certainly have many enemies, and this is what will be my destruction if I am destroyed; of that I am certain; - not Meletus, nor yet Anytus, but the envy and detraction of the world, which has been the death of many good men, and will probably be the death of many more; there is no danger of my being the last of them.

Rule #1. Never give him a straight answer. 

It's not clear why Meletus answers simply to the negative to Socrates's initial question. Why can't a man believe in spiritual/divine categories X and Y and not believe in P and Q? Why not flat out tell Socrates you're not here to explain his beliefs to the others?

Rule #2. Don't let him move on after "proving" something that he hasn't.

Proving that you believe in demigods doesn't prove that you believe in the gods of Athens. You might believe in other gods. You might believe in demigods without believe they aren't the bastards of the gods. Who the hell knows! Socrates doesn't specify, and "proves" his point by saying he does it.

I don't know what Meletus's actual obligations were under Athenian law. Did he have to submit to Socrates's questions? Could he be interviewed but refuse to give answers? Can he question/accuse Socrates himself besides just giving awkward answers that Socrates can twist in whatever way?

Either way, he comes across as an idiot here, as Socrates uses him as an unwitting prop in his non-proof.

Some Fruits of Solitude: Part 9 Industry (57-58)

Some Fruits of Solitude: Part 9 Industry (57-58)

Bonus: 

The Devil's Hands are Idle Playthings

Summary: Idle hands are the devil's playthings.

Commentary:

57: Work is good. It keeps you out of trouble.

58: If you don't have job-work, work on art, gardening, etc.

 

Topic List: Ignorance, Education, Luxury, Inconsideration, Disappointment And Resignation, Murmurs, Censoriousness, Bounds of Charity, Frugality or Bounty, Discipline, Industry

Plato's Apology of Socrates (~390 BC) translated by Benjamin Jowett

Plato's Apology

Bonus: 

I'm starting to think these are kind of cop outs.

Summary: Socrates humble brags and nonsequitars for a couple pages.

Commentary: I love when the translation used in T5FSOB is publicly available and still considered decent. Makes it much easier to grab and go. I'll be reading it side by side with the more modern and also popular Grube translation from here. Which one I prefer might effect what translation I use for other texts.

I'll be honest by saying I've never understood the public obsession with THE TRIAL OF SOCRATES! It's this crown jewel of every American gifted program, the cliché example of injustice, the litmus test for whether you're a cool philosopher dude. And it makes perfect sense that they killed him. Socrates was, as far as I can tell, some asshole who spends his day harassing everyone at the market like some kind of pre-social media debate influencer. "Wow, you didn't have a perfectly formed argument for your opinions when you went to buy wine at the market? What a moron!"

People make a big deal about the "corrupting the youth" part of the charges, but he's also accused of not believing in the city's gods, which he did do, and which carried the death penalty for other people. Add in the fact that he was associated with the recently overthrown Spartan puppet government, and I'm not saying we should execute people for being assholes and heretics, just that it doesn't really seem surprising that the Athenians chose to execute this particular asshole/heretic.

I mean, look at this:

 I mean when they told you to be upon your guard, and not to let yourselves be deceived by the force of my eloquence. They ought to have been ashamed of saying this, because they were sure to be detected as soon as I opened my lips and displayed my deficiency; they certainly did appear to be most shameless in saying this, unless by the force of eloquence they mean the force of truth; for then I do indeed admit that I am eloquent.

Yes, Socrates, you're a terrible public speaker, but also totally truthful. This isn't a borderline self contradictory statement at all.

Then he goes and repeats himself for a paragraph or two without actually saying/proving much of anything. Then starts telling some rambly stories that're tangentially related to his actual argument. Seriously, he's literally one of those assholes that yells at random people on the quad while they're just trying to go to class.