Digressions&Impressions

A Small Puzzle About Cattle, Pigs, and Vegetarianism in Plato's Republic

Then we shall have to enlarge the city again. For that healthy state is no longer sufficient, but we must proceed to swell out its bulk [and population] and fill it up with a multitude of things that exceed the requirements of necessity in states, as, for example, the entire class of huntsmen, and the imitators, many of them occupied with figures and colors and many with music—the poets and their assistants, rhapsodists, actors, chorus-dancers, contractors—and the manufacturers of all kinds of articles, especially those that have to do with women's adornment. And so we shall also want more servitors. Don't you think that we shall need tutors, nurses wet and dry, beauty-shop ladies, barbers and yet again cooks and chefs? And we shall have need, further, of swineherds; there were none of these creatures in our former city, for we had no need of them, but in this city there will be this further need; and we shall also require other cattle in great numbers if they are to be eaten.--Plato, Republic 373b-c, Translated by Paul Shorey.

The quoted passage is part of the transition from the healthy, "true city" (372e5)-- thanks to Glaucon's intervention known as the "city of pigs" (372d3-4)-- to the luxurious or feverish city. At this point we learn that the city of pigs actually does not contain any real pigs because they were not needed in a city devoted to meeting our necessary needs.

At first, I thought this meant that pigs were taken to be luxury (a bit like salmon today). Even so, this puzzled me because pigs have been domesticated for more than 9000 years,  and seemed to have been an important food staple.

The last quoted sentence ("and we shall also require other cattle in great numbers if they are to be eaten,") implies that the inhabitants of the city of pigs are vegetarian. This is also implied in 372b: "for their nourishment they will provide meal from their barley and flour from their wheat, and kneading and cooking these they will serve noble cakes and loaves on some arrangement of reeds or clean leaves." However, as 373c implies, there is cattle in the city of pigs (which is explicitly mentioned at 370e1).  

So, given the presence of cattle (and sheep) it is by no means obvious that the city of pigs is vegetarian. True, the only function explicitly and originally ascribed to cattle is to plough (3701e1). Since the good folk of  the city of pigs don't go around naked (they will have weavers for clothes and cobblers for shoes 369d7-9), it is not a stretch to assume the cows also supply leather. In addition, in response to Glaucon's horror, Socrates admits that the cows also supply the necessary city with cheese (the latter explicitly mentioned at 372c3), and so presumably also milk. So, why not meat?

It would, after all, be a waste not to eat cattle meat. And since the city explicitly trades of luxury for population growth, it would make sense for them to eat meat. But if they do, why not also farm pigs? Since the city requires export commodities (370e-371a), one could argue that the cattle meat is used to pay for necessary goods from abroad. Of course, this kind of local vegetarianism is not especially principled. 

There is a further more far-fetched hint that the inhabitants of the city of pigs were not vegetarians. When in Book 3, Socrates describes the lifestyle of the auxiliaries of the luxurious city when they are on campaign, he explicitly notes that soldiers prefer roasted meat because it is most easily available (404c2). If the inhabitants of the city of pigs would find themselves on a military campaign it's likely they would eat meat. However, (recall) Socrates explicitly denies that they go to war (372c). They maintain an optimal population to avoid poverty, luxury, and war. 

So, if the inhabitants of the city of pigs are vegetarians, as seems most likely (but not certain), it is odd that they keep cattle. But if they are not vegetarians it is odd that they do not farm pigs. Why are pigs only introduced in the feverish city. Perhaps, some classicist will inform me they had high status as a luxury item in Socratic Athens. But I doubt it.

One of my undergraduate students from a farming background* made the following plausible observation. Unlike cattle, pigs will eat almost anything. They thrive in environments such as the luxurious city with many forms of human waste. Whereas in the city of pigs, which, due to trying to maintain being on an equilibrium point of population growth, is constantly on the edge of hardship, it would require considerable and impossible effort to make sure that the pigs are adequately fed.  Since Plato's readers were gentlemen-farmers, it is not implausible they would have recognized this at once (unlike city-slickers like me).

I liked this hypothesis. But why does Socrates say that pigs are "needed" in the luxurious city? Why not use and expand existing cattle? Here my class proposed that pigs are more efficient meat producers than cattle. And so these are much better able to sustain a larger population without requiring ever expanding land something Socrates explicitly wants to prevent. For, territorial and population expansion of the territory of the Kallipos has to be governed not by population or farming pressures, but by the need to maintain (what we may call) social unity (423b). Unfortunately, I have no idea whether modern relative Feed Conversion Ratios (FCR) among animals match those in ancient times. But I'd like to think so.

Plato on Dangerous Truths

“When anyone images badly in his speech the true nature of gods and heroes, like a painter whose portraits bear no resemblance to his models.”...“There is, first of all,” I said, “the greatest lie about the things of greatest concernment, which was no pretty invention of him who told how Uranus did what Hesiod says he did to Cronos, and how Cronos in turn took his revenge; and then there are the doings and sufferings of Cronos at the hands of his son. Even if they were true I should not think that they ought to be thus lightly told to thoughtless young persons. But the best way would be to bury them in silence, and if there were some necessity for relating them, that only a very small audience should be admitted under pledge of secrecy and after sacrificing, not a pig, but some huge and unprocurable victim, to the end that as few as possible should have heard these tales. “Yes, and they are not to be told, Adeimantus, in our city, nor is it to be said in the hearing of a young man, that in doing the utmost wrong he would do nothing to surprise anybody, nor again in punishing his father's wrong-doings to the limit, but would only be following the example of the first and greatest of the gods.” ”--Plato Republic 377e-378a, translated by Paul Shorey [emphases added]

It is only natural, I suppose, that the noble lie (414c-415e, and anticipated at 382a-d) told by Socrates near the end of Book 3 is more attention grabbing than what we may call the doctrine of dangerous truths mentioned, really in passing, in 378ab.

In context, Socrates is articulating the best education of the guardians of the luxurious city. And he uses this as an occasion to both offer a critique of the standard stories told about the Gods by great variety of poets and to propose a kind of purification (even moralization) of public religion or theology (that is, the most important things). Hesiod's stories about Uranus, Cronos, and Zeus (the "son" of Cronos) involve castration, forced abortion, cannibalism of children, and parricide among the gods.

Hesiod's depiction is not just about the gods acting viciously with each other. It also involve a failure of orderly political succession. And so, while it is not unnatural to think that by 'the things of greatest concernment,' -- Shorey may be over-translating τὸ μέγιστον, but given the repeated 'greatest' with 'lies,' it's not silly -- Socrates means here talk of the gods (especially if one is all in on Socrates' piety), it is not impossible that what he really means here is talk about the nature of (properly ordered) political life. Is theology or political philosophy the most important  topic? My more cheeky Thomist readers will quickly say, that's an unnecessary or false choice.

I mention the political reading of this material because -- and now I get to the heart of today's digression, I find it startling that at the start of 378b, Socrates is explicit that in the kallipolis that he and Adeimantus are founding, there will be no dangerous truths. And because of this remark, I read the doctrine of dangerous truths mention in 378a as confined to second (or n-th best) cities. 

Now, it's true that I think this -- that the doctrine of dangerous truths is confined to second-best cities -- because it seems to anticipate elements of the nocturnal council at 961B in Plato's Laws (a book that was important to me in graduate school). And part of the point of the nocturnal council is to try to help reform those of who have violated the laws on impiety in Magnesia. (Magnesia is a nth-best city.) Of course, I accept the tradition that suggests Laws was written well after the Republic, so I don't think this would settle the matter. 

However, it is important to recall that Socrates had articulated the idea of a dangerous truth in his initial exchange with Cephalus at 331D (recall here). There, it was used to undermine Cephalus' definition of justice (speak truth and repay one's debts), which (to speak anthropologically) we may call the definition of justice apt for commercial society. And Socrates had explained that there are circumstances where, if one takes consequences seriously (as one is wont to do in commercial society) then one is not always obliged to repay one's debts or always to speak the truth.

Alex Douglas has treated the debt case brilliantly in his book (and recall), so I won't elaborate here. At 331D Socrates expects Cephalus to agree to the claim one should not always speak the truth to the mad. They are (to foreshadow Hobbes, Foucault, and Deleuze) to be placed not just outside the realm of valid contracts, but also outside the realm of (possible) persuasion (and so political life). I do not mean to suggest that Socrates himself agrees with Cephalus about any of this. I think it is really unclear to what degree Socrates has to affirm anything when he is engaged in immanent criticism.

While the doctrine of dangerous truth is explicitly rejected in the best city, the exchange with Cephalus shows that is part of the common sense or a natural extension of it of a commercial polity. So, given that, it is not so strange that in 2nd-Nth best cities Socrates permits some such doctrine. 

An impatient reader may well think, 'sure, Socrates used the doctrine of dangerous truths in his refutation of Cephalus, but there is no evidence here that he is thinking about anything other than the Kallipolis.' I have to admit that I don't have a knockdown argument against this. But notice that the select few who are allowed to be in on the dangerous secret, have to be not just among the aged, but also fabulously wealthy because they have to be capable of sacrificing something great and very scarce.*

Now, shortly after 378a, it becomes clear that there will be wealthy folk among the non-guardians in Kallipolis (419ff). But also that this should be clearly delimited (422a). So, that in 378a Socrates cannot be speaking of his own city, but only be referring about places where great riches are permitted and also where possession of such dangerous truth would not corrupt the person holding it because they are already corrupt in some non-trivial sense (and, hence, a nth-best city).**

I do not mean to suggest Socrates' position here is very attractive: that in an oligarchic context, only Jeff Bezos is, if he is willing to forfeit a non-trivial amount of his fortune, allowed access to dangerous, secret knowledge about the truth about the lack of morality or ethical grounding governing divine rule.  The very wealthy, who benefit from the status quo in n-th best cities, are not inclined to encourage a revolution in religious or political manners and so promote corrupting stories that threaten their influence. 

Why does this matter? I think it's one of the places in the Republic (recall 351-352) -- well before Book 8 -- where Socrates shows an interest in the permissible mechanisms or functioning of non-optimal states (which are governed by the interests of their ruling elements). These are by definition unstable. In such places there will, thus, be always some truths dangerous to their functioning. And so 378a articulates its corollary: the circulation of dangerous truths must be restricted to those with an interest not to act on, or share, them. We may call this doctrine (with a wink): Straussianism for those that benefit most from status quo.

 

On Revolutionary Leadership and Feminism (in early Islam)

I want to suggest here that during the years that interest us - from year 3 (the defeat at Uhud) to the beginning of year 8 (the conquest of Mecca) - the Prophet's project for equality of the sexes foundered because he refused to minimize the sexual aspect of life, to hide it, to consider it marginal or secondary. The Prophet was in a vulnerable position. His aims came to nothing because he always refused to separate his private life and public life. He could only conceive of the sexual and the political as being intimately linked. He would go to prayer directly upon leaving ~A'isha's bed, using the small door that linked her room to the mosque. Despite 'Umar's advice, he continued to go on expeditions accompanied by one or two of his wives, who, accustomed to being directly involved in public affairs, moved around freely and inquired about what was going on. One scene in al-Tabari depicts 'Umar as being beside himself at seeing 'A'isha strolling around the battlefront beside the trenches: "But what brings you here?" he cried out. "By my life, your boldness borders on insolence! What if a disaster befalls us? What if there is a defeat and people are taken captive?"--Fatima Mernissi (1987 [1991]) The Veil and The Male Elite: a Feminist Interpretation of Women's Rights in Islam. Translated by Mary Jo Lakeland, p. 162.

Mernissi's Beyond the Veil is, of course, better known than The Veil and the Male Elite. In fact, while scholar.google tells me that the latter book is cited plenty, I have never seen it discussed in high theory in political philosophy. This is a shame because in addition to the themes announced in its title and subtitle, it is a wonderful study in the challenges and trade-offs of revolutionary, political leadership. And while the narrative is not as gripping as, say, the masterpiece of the genre, Black Jacobins (recall here; here), it certainly held my attention through out while discussing key years of the Prophet Muhammad's early struggles and their significance to Islamic jurisprudence, historiography, ethics, and political life. 

As the quoted paragraph indicates, Mernissi treats Muhammad's original program for Muslim political life as fundamentally egalitarian. (The language of 'rights' in the sub-title is a bit misleading rights don't figure much in the book.) Throughout the book, she recounts his progressive views on women's inheritance, property ownership, and agency more generally. And she offers a plausible account how the history narrated in Qu'ran supports her argument.

In fact, in her hands Muhammad recognizes over thirteen hundred years before the second wave feminists that the political and the personal are intrinsically intertwined. And she shows this, in part, through a fascinating discussion of the spatial structure of the first mosque built in Medina with 'A'isha's apartment having its own entry into the mosque. 

Now, for Mernissi later Islamic jurisprudence (Fiqh), which governs Islamic communal life in practice, was corrupted, in part, by some dubious Hadith (sayings) attributed to the Prophet (these were promoted by interested politicians);  and, in part -- and this is more interesting -- by a flawed empirical method that treats all the data on par without regard to the systematic and ethical principles that might unify the Prophet's vision. And without some such principles, the evidence that is shaped by pre-Islamic patriarchy (and aristocracy) and by the late years' tactical regressions has no counterbalance (despite clear evidence in the sources that these regressions were challenged by important political agents in the moment).

In her book, Mernissi never mentions the Islamic philosophers (Falsafa) or Ibn Khaldun. But with them she shares a treatment of Muhammad as a political leader who, unlike failed prophets, recognizes that without arms the ethical message may not have successful uptake. And with them, there is an implied criticism that The Prophet did not handle the problem of succession very well (although with them she recognizes that the way succession was initially handled for the rightious caliphs at least has democratic potential). Because his companions are left without the right sort of guidance, within half a century the Umayyad have re-established the contingencies of (monarchic) birth as source of succession (familiar from trival life) and shortly thereafter the battle of Karbala shatters the very possibility of a unified community committed to justice (forever, it seems).

Okay, with that in place, we can now make more specific the significance of 'Umar to her narrative/analysis. 'Umar was Muhammad's father in law, one of the leading companions of Muhammad, and later the second caliph after his death. And in Mernissi's analysis 'Umar becomes the archetype of a key element in Muhammad's political coalition: strongly attracted to Muhammad's vision on intrinsic moral and political grounds, which provides a chance to overcome political and social crises, but unable to let go of what we would call male entitlement or patriarchy rooted in (tribal) martial virtues.

For Mernissi 'Umar represents resistance to "Islam as a coherent system of values that governs all the behaviors of a person and a society, and Muhammad's egalitarian project, are in fact based on a detail that many of his Companions, led by 'Umar, considered to be secondary: the emergence of woman's free will as something the organization of society had to take into account." (184)* And she describes the political circumstances in which Muhammad has to tack toward 'Umar's commitments in order to ensure the survival of the Ummah.

Now, it is important to recognize that for Mernissi 'Umar is not merely a traditionalist who lacks understanding of a part of Muhammad's vision. For she grants that the crisis years at Medina were fundamentally unstable. And she recognizes that he is not all wrong that part of the cause of the crisis or disorder were the Prophet's women (and women generally), who "were objects of envy." (185) And she implies that this crisis is not just due to the revolutionary internal regulation of Muslim communal life, but also to Muhammad's attempts to change the laws of warfare for his followers. In particular the abolition of using war as a means of enrichment and (sexual enslavement) if that meant turning fellow Muslims into booty (and slavery). (I was reminded of the issues surrounding Republic 470-1). Here's how Mernissi discusses the circumstances of the key decision at the height of the crisis:

In the circumstances of the military crisis in Medina in years 5, 6, and 7, the Prophet did not have many choices for coping with the insecurity in the city. He could either accept and live with this insecurity while waiting for the new source of power, God and His religion, to become rooted in the people's mentality, or he could reactivate the tribe as the police force of the city. The first option meant living with insecurity while waiting for God to show His power through military successes. With the second option, the tribe would assure security in the city immediately, but Allah and his community would disappear forever - at least in their original perspective. Muhammad's message - his dream of a community in which individuals are respected and have rights, not because they belong to a tribe, but simply because they are able to believe they have a link with a God - was dependent on the role that the tribe was called on to play during this transitory phase. Tribal power was the danger. Tolerating it, under any form whatever, as a means of control was a very grave compromise with the Muslim idea of a reasoning human being who exercises self-control. (187-188)**

But because tribal power is needed to make a successful transition from the crisis to Arab unification, 'Umar's more limited vision wins out. I don't mean to suggest that this is all of Mernissi's analysis--she roots the ultimate decision also in the fragility of age (and declining sexual prowess) of The Prophet. So, on Mernissi's view what Islam became after the crisis years is an unsteady mixture between Muhammad's original vision and the demands of realpolitik. 

Structurally, these circumstances are analogous to the way the initial outcome of the French revolution was a victory for men, while simultaneously a step back for women's political participation (and an unexpected disaster for slaves). The underlying problem here is a more general feature of transition problems. Recall that (here, here, here, and here), I understand the transition problem, as how to move from an unjust status quo to an ideal (or vastly improved) state and, in particular, with a population raised under bad institutions (or, if one conceives this [as I would not] in eugenic terms, bad breeding). This is intrinsically challenging. But the problem is made all the more difficult when there are foreign enemies or when the war-economy is a central feature of the pre-revolutionary society. 

Mernissi's feminist reading of the history of early Islam is an invitation to her fellow religionists to reject a millennium worth of jurisprudence and for a renewal from within (in this respect she is not unlike the fundamentalists who would have little time for her). But it is also a reflection on the challenges or constraints that pre-existing practices and beliefs generate to or impose on even the most successful projects of revolutionary renewal. To put this poetically, no prophet of political society can truly emulate God's creation from nothing, but s/he has to work with materials that cannot be fully cleansed from the effects of history, at least not at once. 

Seneca (Letter 53), Long Haul Covid, and Impiety

I was suffering too grievously to think of the danger, since a sluggish seasickness which brought no relief was racking me, the sort that upsets the liver without clearing it. Therefore I laid down the law to my pilot, forcing him to make for the shore, willy-nilly. When we drew near, I did not wait for things to be done in accordance with Vergil's orders, until

Prow faced seawards

or

Anchor plunged from bow;

I remembered my craftsmanship [artificii] as an elderly [vetus] devotee of frozen water, and, clad as I was in my cloak, let myself down into the sea, just as a cold-water bather should. Whaat do you think I suffered [Quae putas me passum], scrambling over the rocks, searching out the path, or making one for myself? I understood that sailors have no  reason to fear the land [Intellexi non immerito nautis terram timeri]. It is hard to believe what I endured when I could not endure myself; you may be sure that the reason why Ulysses was shipwrecked on every possible occasion was not so much because the sea-god was angry with him from his birth; he was seasick [nausiator erat].--Seneca, Letter 53, Translated by Richard M. Gummere (with modest modifications) 

It seems likely that this letter was written during the last two or three years of Seneca's life, around AD 63, so, to be on the conservative side, when he was nearly sixty. I am just close enough in age to feel some himpathy for his scrambling over rocks in his cloak, while not obtuse to the comic nature of the scene. One can imagine the local villagers telling each other stories down the generations -- too bad there were no spyglasses or iphones to capture it -- about the fabulously wealthy, once powerful courtier and philosopher, famous for preaching "the incredible force of philosophy is to counter all the forces of chance" [Incredibilis philosophiae vis est ad omnem fortuitam vim retundendam], going onshore in panic and unsteadily.

Not unlike Aristophanes' hiccup, Seneca, who chooses to share the story so he is clearly not obtuse to the comedy of it all, realizes that our physical infirmity can undermine our dignity. Not to mention that Seneca may have originated the tradition of taking a new year's day dip in the sea. 

I do not mean to suggest here we're just in the realm of comedy. Seneca's impious naturalization of Odysseus's journey is not an isolated feature in the letter. For in context, the force of philosophy, especially in the hands of the wise [sapiens], is compared favorably to that of God (singular). The beneficial effects of wisdom are our own achievements, whereas God is, we might say, beneficiary of natural luck.

Before I get to the main point of the letter, I have to admit that the unsteadiness he describes at sea, hit a bit home this week. On Wednesday I taught my first in-person class -- fittingly on Book 1 of the Republic -- in over 17 months. I had divided the three hour seminar into three, giving myself and the students a break every 45-50 minutes. In line of the advise of the occupational physician, my department had lowered my work-load by cutting the student numbers in half. They also tasked the teacher of the other half to be my back-up, in case I could not make it to class. (For my covid diaries, see here; here; here; here; here; here; here;  here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here, and here). 

The seminar starts at 5pm, and after lunch I developed an awful headache just as I was finishing up my hand-out. I usually just improvise my seminars, letting the conversation take us where chance directs (with a few sights I tend to wish to visit along the way.) But I had decided on the hand-out to take some of the cognitive load off my brain during the seminar. So, as I lay in bed, I contemplated initiating the back-up plan. Luckily, the painkillers worked and by three, I decided to bike the work. There I scouted the room, and even looked for a place outside in the heat. It was an evening for Plato under a tree, but sadly I could not find a quiet enough spot.

The students all arrived masked, and they turned out to be excellent. I was reminded again that even with inexperienced students in an introductory course, a seminar-style discussion is a site for mutual learning. A student's question led me to see that Polemarchus' attitude toward inviting Socrates anticipates Thrasymachus' understanding of justice. 

Unfortunately, in the second hour, just after I had gone through the course requirements, I felt my head go light (as if my sugar had dropped), and my legs went unsteady. In a moment of self-aggrandizing pity, I thought of the magicians that died on stage. Then I remembered Seneca's unsteady legs, and was comforted. Luckily, in my course plan, this was just the moment I had settled on a group assignment without my participation. So after quickly instructing and dividing them, I left the class room to get some fresh air and (against all my principles which forbid coffee after 5pm) an espresso. By the time I eased back into the class-room, I noticed I had not been missed and my head had settled.

My occupational physician has kind of settled on trying to convince me not to accept succor from medical science. But not to get too dispirited because while I am clearly not recovered, I am improved relative to some date months ago. More subtly, she tries to remind me that while my symptoms keep recurring -- weird memory loss, random headaches, what I call head-fatigue, lapses in concentration --, my recoveries of each seem fairly rapid.

And indeed, I managed to lead discussion in which we collected and analyzed the findings of the group assignment.  Because my students are so splendid, it was easy. But near the end I realized my brain was working at half speed. Good enough for the day. And not for the first time, I am reminded how lucky I am that, despite all the evils of the modern academy, I have landed in such a joy-producing occupation. (Of course, we'll see how many students show up for second class!)

There is a lot of interesting philosophy in letter 53. For example, Seneca insists that sometimes we know when we sleep that we sleep. And that there is an asymmetry in how we experience physical and mental/psychic pains.

But here I want to focus on the main point of the 53rd letter, which is Seneca's insistence that philosophy should be in some sense all-consuming (in context really, all conquering). "philosophy says to all things: "I am not going to receive at this time what was left over to you, but you will have that which I have rejected."" ['Idem philosophia rebus omnibus: non sum hoc tempus acceptura quod vobis superfuerit, sed id vos habebitis quod ipsa reiecero'.] This claim is out of fashion for three reasons.

First, it goes against the popular idea that philosophy is the mother of the sciences, who become mature (or at least adolescents) when they break off from philosophy. Now, we tend to think of philosophy as the diminished remainder, of what is left over, from the more successful, more progressive, and better funded sciences. This is familiar enough from the recurring crises of identity within philosophy which claims for itself (not entirely convincingly) expertise in conceptual analysis in one decade, in inferential practices in another decade, in analyzing arguments in another decade (or two), in modal thinking in another decade, and so on (yes, I plead guilty for having peddled synthetic philosophy). 

Second, it goes against the increasingly powerful idea that there should be a work-life balance, or a proper integration of work-life. And this reflects the idea that somehow doing philosophy professionally is in need of containment. And those of us who recognize the mad, publication arms race in the context of limited jobs, may well come to agree that someone should impose limits or we will be all consumed by trying to publish and refereeing the attempts to publish. 

Third, the very idea that philosophy is a way of life that can benefit us is taken to be archaic. And in so far as someone should be busy with how to live, and how to ground intellectually our experiments in living, it is thought this is best left to religion (we hasten to add, Eastern or Western) or to popularizing psychologists, who can draw on the best scientific insights. (I would mention our historical rivals, the poets, but our culture has let them wither.)

It is worth noticing that in so far as one accepts the modern intellectual division of labor, in the complex world of our open society (with heavy government involvement), this only makes more urgent that there should be a site of disciplined reflection on how to live collectively and individually. Rather than being embarrassed by wisdom, or relegating it to footnotes, or ceding it completely to mystics, philosophy should be inviting to those that seek paths to wisdom. Luckily the roads to wisdom cannot be patented or be turned into a trade-mark or turned into private property. As Seneca implies throughout the Letters, philosophy is our commons.

The activities that give us joy, community, and energy should not be limited. If we need to be protected against overworking in philosophy, perhaps we should re-organize how we construe the content of our work? Yes, Seneca's unsteady stomach and legs and my headaches are a reminder that there are physical preconditions to joyful activity that may be fragile along multiple dimensions. If you want to preach revolution, you may add the many unnamed slaves in Seneca's entourage, and the precariat at my own university to those material preconditions.

Let me wrap up. As regular readers know, I am myself not convinced that Seneca is right that philosophy can conquer uncertainty. And, Seneca's idea that philosophy should "rule" our lives is easily mocked. Yet, during the months I spent in my sickbed this year, I realized that such mockery is itself a sign that not all is well. That behind the mockery there is no insight, that nothing grows in its meaningless void. Our lives are relatively short, do not delay, "let us, therefore, rouse ourselves, that we may be able to correct our mistakes" and each take our baby-steps in our perhaps occasionally intersecting paths toward wisdom and let these shape our lives.

 

 

The Threat of Violence, Republic 1, and the Grounding of Philosophical Exchange

One oddity of Republic 1, is the ever-present threat of violence that hangs over the very existence or possibility of the conversation. This starts explicitly with Polemarchus' insistence that he will not listen to Socrates' persuasion and that he does not need to do so because he outnumbers Socrates (327C). And so Socrates is roped into a banquet at Cephalus' house. And while one may be tempted to treat this as an innocent joke, the initial exchange with Polemarchus can also be treated as an unflattering, structural analogy of the ways pure or direct democracies might treat minorities, and rational deliberation.*

Once alert to the possibility, I noticed that violence of some sort both keeps people (temporarily) out of the conversation and in it. So, Thrasymachus is literally prevented from speaking at first (336b), and then prevented from leaving (344d). And, of course, much of discussion itself, especially after Thasymachus joins, is presented in terms of -- if not lethal then -- a dangerous contest (leaving aside the fact that reputation, honor, money are all said to be at stake).

Now, let's leave aside, or pretend to leave it aside, the manner of the discussion, and renew focus on its partial grounding in the decisions of unnamed many to prevent and promote some to speak. Again, it is tempting to treat this as an analogy of the way pure/direct democracy behaves.  Since most of the 'restrainers' and 'promoters' are left nameless in Socrates' description of these events, they function very much like the choir in a Greek tragedy. We might be clever and notice that Thrasymachus' account of justice (in which the ruling element of the regime legislates law on its own behalf) kind of offers a theory for what is left as analogy earlier. And that Socrates himself claims (recall) that civic violence is the effect of injustice.

Even so, what I am really interested in here is the thought that some kind of non-trivial (ahh) nudging and silencing may be a pre-condition to philosophical exchange. That such speech-policing is a kind of ground of philosophical life. Now, some readers of Plato may object that the exchanges between Socrates and Cephalus/Polemarchus and Socrates and Thrasymachus are not really philosophical exchanges. There is a hermeneutic tradition that Plato withholds from us Socrates' interaction with a philosophical equal (say Plato). But I don't belong in that tradition (for I think the exchanges with Protagoras and Parmenides are the real deal). And while the exchange with Thrasymachus is hostile and unsatisfying, it is not without intrinsic interest nor is obvious that Socrates really gets the better of Thrasymachus (at least by the end of Book I).

Another line of concern (mixing Stoic and Enlightenment ideas, which can be  traced back to Socrates) is that true (sage-like) philosophers are autonomous givers, receivers, and evaluators of reasons or arguments; that the policing (and canceling) element I have noticed is heteronomous to our beloved activity better left to the market place or spectator sports (etc.). I don't want to take this line of concern lightly. It obviously represents a noble normative ideal, especially when so many of us find ourselves threatened to be sacked or merged away by politicians, demagogues, and bean-counters with little interest in any such ideals, but all-to0-aware of the threats our seminars pose to their (possible) rule.

Even so, it's possible that Plato presents us with the idea that important philosophical contests have to be arranged or structured in ways inimical to the desires of the philosophers themselves. And before you protest this possibility, remember that one of the main claims of the Republic (anticipated in the very discussion of Book I) is that philosophers have to be forced to rule. It's not such a big step from that to they have to be forced and restrained from engaging with each other. 

Let me make this concrete: when there exist rival philosophical schools or traditions it is very tempting to disengage or to vilify or mocking without true engagement. The vilification prevents people from reading works produced in other schools and helps schools to be(come) more unified just reinforcing the benefits from not engaging. And often the opportunity costs of engaging are quite great, while engaging on shared terms is efficient, productive, progressive, etc. (In our intellectual universe it's also fruitful for the parceling out of jobs.)

Of course, there is a cost to non-engaging. And that's that one both misses insights discovered in a different vernacular and that many shared commitments in the in-group/school are never seriously questioned at all. 

The previous two paragraphs are, of course, a metaphor for the analytic-continental (etc.) divides we live in. And I do regret that David Lewis never sought out (say) Deleuze, or was pushed into it (just as circumstances made Carnap a very astute reader of Heidegger). I would admire some leading figures of my analytic tradition more if they weren't obviously so limited that they can only talk to each other. (Yes, I know the young kidz have changed all of that!) And I honestly feel sad that some billionaires give gigantic prizes to philosophers, but do so little to get philosophers to engage with each other. 

To put it in modeling terms, the moment one entertains the idea that the market in philosophical ideas is not efficient, then the possibility that heteronomous-to-philosophy forces can structure that market is not so far-fetched. Now, speaking in my own voice (go back to reading my old digressions), I reject the idea that the market in philosophical ideas is efficient. Of course, it's not unlikely that these heteronomous-to-philosophy-policing-of-speech forces do more damage than good. 

I could stop here. But I am reminded that when we parent and educate, we often police the choices of our wards (in a curriculum, a syllabus, etc.). In fact, even our most noble aspirations, the ones that may involve not knowing the full nature of these aspirations ex ante and not understanding all the ways/mechanisms that lead to them (go read Callard's book, or my digressions about it) are structured by such forced choices. Of course, in such cases the end justifies the means. And perhaps -- no, I am not confident -- that's also true of the policing required to get Socrates and Thrasymachus, like puppets in a wonderful play, to engage.